Two Old Men, One Time Machine, and the Lie Both Parties Tell

ChatGPT Image Dec 28, 2025, 01_16_44 PM

The phone box was parked in open space the way a confident cat parks itself on your keyboard: with total disregard for physics, your calendar, and your dignity.

From the outside, it was an ordinary public phone box, the sort you would ignore on a wet street in Manchester. From the inside, it was a lounge, a studio, a parliamentary bar, and—if you looked too closely at one corner—possibly a … Read the rest

Canned Laughter (and other falsifications)

Content advisory 18+ When I was a kid back in America and would watch the sit-coms on TV (which now leads me to reflect “Did I HAVE a life?”), I was always struck by the laughter that would erupt in the background every time someone said something that was supposed to be funny. Didn’t matter if it actually WAS funny — the knee-slapping merry-makers in the television studio (“coming to … Read the rest