HeyJaredShort Mean Fiction
At long last, fiction the length of the average American attention span- short! And free, for the time being. Read them, every week or so, and tell me what you think.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 9
- Latest publication
- Sep 27, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
Latest issues
The Short-lived Words for Birds Book Club (opens the original)
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Their rather high-minded, quasi-scholarly, all-female book club, was initially dedicated to the Russian writers of a romantic bent but had at long last de-evolved into what it was ever meant to be, a Hen Party. Books be damned!There were a dozen or more of them, all in their mid-thirties, each with at least one college degree, some more, all highly successful, dressed down for success on this particular evening. They began telling stories on themselves and one another, all in good nature. They d
Eat and Sleep on the Battlefield (opens the original)
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Virgil Barnard had lived his whole life just outside of Birmingham. He had been a senior in high school when the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War rolled around. The media of the day consisted of black-and-white television, the local newspaper, and a few magazines. They all acknowledged this anniversary and came forward with the occasional Special Edition.Life Magazine in particular published chronological articles on the various battles and other occurrences crucial to the “recent unp
Interdependence (opens the original)
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I got up this morning and put on my shirt. It was made in Honduras. Says so right on the tag.My paint stained pants were made in Bangladesh. They are too short and sexy for worshipers of Allah to wear, but excellent for export. Our balance of payments with countries like Bangladesh leaves much to be desired.My shoes are from Taiwan, and my watch was made in Switzerland. A most efficient people, the Swiss. Think of the cuckoo clock.The medications I take are mostly from Germany.I’ll go to the s
Boom Shakalaka (opens the original)
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In the mid-twentieth century, when rock ‘n’ roll was just finding its voice on the front porches and juke joints of the rural south, there was yet another musical phenomenon occurring on the street corners of Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and other urban sites.The so-called doo-wop singers were emerging. This acapella gathering of young men owed a debt to the rather bland barbershop quartets of the vaudeville era. Yet, they brought something more significant to the form. The same rich harmony
Forsythia (opens the original)
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Those wacky Victorians. If they weren’t making plaster casts of it, they were transplanting it into the gardens of their massive estates upon which sat marvelous country houses. All of this was made possible by the wealth earned from an empire on which the sun never set “and not a single sauce,” as Oscar Wilde is alleged to have said. (If he didn’t, he should have!)Forsythia is a harbinger of spring and a welcome one. Its yellow flower can be forced during the long winter with the help of dry he
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