Sawn-Off Tales

Happy Place HE HATED GROCERY shopping, hated the time it took. But he came up with a method. People bought the same things, more or less. So he would look for someone of his type, sneak up behind them and roll their fully-laden trolley off to the checkout. It made life interesting. Often there were things he would never have bought; once there was

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Heavy Java Guy LEARN THE JARGON and you can get any job. ‘Quick question, out of the gate,’ the technogeek says. ‘What have you done Unix-wise? It all seems to be,’ he glanced down at my CV, ‘shell scripting, some stuff on the thread management side. I’m wondering how I match you up with our environment. Aren’t you the heavy Java guy, done a lot of

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Uchafu I WATCHED HER face, listening closely, just like it said in the book. But loud laughter from the kitchen made it difficult to concentrate. ‘Your bill,’ the waiter said through a leery grin, ‘Mr Dirty Bastard.’ I looked at him. ‘The word on your T-shirt.’ The T-Shirt was from a trendy city centre shop — be casual, be modern, the book said. I’

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We Are the Robots SHE WAS THE third girlfriend to ditch me this year. ‘We went to this club,’ I told Gary, ‘and at the end of the night she’d completely changed. She was distant, hostile.’ He looked at me over the rim of his spectacles. ‘Did you dance?’ ‘Well,’ I poked at a beer mat, ‘at one point I did throw a few shapes.’ He tilted his head towar

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