The Big Diogenes: And Other Stories From The Anthropocene

The Big Diogenes

Ray Darwin is a disciple of Jeffrey Lebowski and an ordained minister in the Church of the Latter Day Dude. With his two sidekicks John and Rog, he convinces retired British rock star, Alex Watt, to write a theme track to promote Dudeism and The Tao of the Dude as the faith best able to inspire the revolutionary change needed to save humanity from the global climate crisis. Accompanying them on back-up are Liz Watt, former London stage actor and wife of Alex; Little Diogenes a blind, anti-social dog; and The Pisser, AKA: Ape, Apeman, Apemanus, Manus, or Big Diogenes, a homeless, misanthropic philosopher of the Greek Cynic tradition. Will it end well? Possibly not. But there will be music, intoxication, and frank exchanges of views.

Death of a Boomer

Norman Wolfe is a successful real estate salesman in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, divorced, working too hard, and making too much money. One day the thought dawns on him to search for the great unrequited love of his adolescence. Flying across the continent from the west coast to the east, in effect travelling four hours into the future, he passes instead into a world where past, present, and future are all cast into doubt.

Ah, Paradise

An Alberta petroleum executive’s vacation idyll is impacted by karma.

The Idiot

A dying man receives a lesson in Russian literature, when all he wanted was a smoke.

Graveyard Shift

An old man recalls his final shift as a youthful convenience store clerk.

Easter, 2021

Contrasting Yeats’ tribute to the heroic, self-sacrificing actions of ordinary citizens during the Irish rebellion of Easter, 1916; Easter, 2021 depicts the selfish and essentially self-destructive actions of modern day citizens during a time of global pandemic and climate crisis.