This death by a thousand techno cuts has gone on for decades and was the inspiration for the 2014 Japan Times humor column below, which aims at payment cards, a form of e-money. Is high tech leading us ahead or pulling us back? Whichever, the noose is too damned tight. Below, then, is a bit of old coot fun involving my rebellion against a system that has been slowly killing me for years.

Mid-August is Japan's traditional ghost season, when the spirits of the dead are believed to return to visit their families. Japanese also believe that nothing takes the heat from a sweltering summer night better than a spine-chilling tale of ghosts. The story below, first published in The Japan Times, is my fictional tribute to that tradition.

I once overheard a teacher tell his students that to succeed in life all a person needed was a single clear focus. At that same time, I also had a friend who could talk like a duck. Somehow these two threads ran together for the quacky and quirky short story below.

She jiggled in blue-striped pajamas before the bathroom mirror. She looked a fright, a witch, a hag. Her eyes were packed in red, her hair a ratted ball, and her face sallow and lifeless and above all old! She stuck out her tongue. Of course, it was caked! She put a cold hand to her throat and said, “La, la, la…” The sounds croaked out. Oh she was sick! How could she possibly, possibly sing?

A comet is not a matchstick hissing through the night and a galaxy is not a scoop of sugar tossed against the sky.

“The Keeper of Dragonflies” is the initial work in my online short story collection of the same name.