Category Archives: semi-fiction

LOSING GOD by Peter Nolan Smith

April 2, 2024 – 12:52 am

A week before Christmas of 1967 I received my midterm report card from Our Lord’s Health High School. Having a stutter and stammer I had been expecting worst, however Bruder Karl had graciously passed me with a D+ in German. He loved that I read the poetry of Rilke. Brother Valentine had seen no merit […]

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THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL OF PASSAICH by Peter Nolan Smith

March 27, 2024 – 9:11 am

When Cecil B. DeMille released THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1956 and it was an immediate box office success, earning the cinematic retelling of Exodus over $180 million dollars. In 1962 Paramount Pictures re-released the film for screenings at drive-ins across the nation and my father loaded my five brothers and sisters into our Ford station […]

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Happy Purim

March 24, 2024 – 9:18 am

Five years ago I wandered through West 47th Street looking for a job. No one was interested in hiring a goy on Purim and my Hassidic friends cajoled me into having a drink with them. “Whiskey is kosher.” They poured a good measure of Scotch into a glass. “Shalom.” I clinked glass with the religious […]

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Finite Immortality – Pattaya – 2010

March 19, 2024 – 1:14 pm

The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that For years I thought Dtam-ruaat meant ‘make blood’, however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent […]

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NAPS OF THAILAND by Peter Nolan Smith

March 18, 2024 – 10:33 am

When a Chinese general was asked about the defeat of the People’s Army by the Vietnamese in 1979, he replied, “We get up at 5am and they get up at 4.” The draconian work ethic of NVA seemed to have been sapped by the torrid climes closer to the equator, because Thais and Laotians are […]

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