When I was in high school A Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was considered the greatest rock song (greatest as in “progressive”–whose heyday was from the mid-sixties through the mid-seventies). Anyway, that’s what the guys on the FM radio said. At the start of this month (fifty years later, on the station that’s always playing where I work) Seattle’s “Home of Classic Rock,” KZOK, again voted it number one (narrowly edging out Bohemian Rhapsody, which finished second for the fifth year in a row). For the record, the Queen song is truly an innovative thing–it blew minds when it came around in 1976; and to be honest, I have always disliked Stairway. Fairly or otherwise I associate it with the slacker in an army coat who stank of weed and sat behind me in Social Studies class. He always fell asleep and I had to whack him on the head with exam papers when it was time to pass them back. A minor annoyance in my life, yet I have yet to forget it.
Continue reading “Week 466: Greatness Schmerateness; Five New Stories and Dueling Old Lists”Author: ireneallison12
Literally Reruns – The Flight of Time by Yashar Seyedbhaheri
It is said that one doesn’t get old until regrets outnumber dreams. I don’t know if that is true, but The Flight of Time by Yashar Seyedbagheri certainly states the case in a most persuasive fashion.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Flight of Time by Yashar Seyedbhaheri”Wuthering GOAT by Leila Allison
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Meanwhile, “inside” a song playing in the fantasy multiverse….
A middle aged man dressed in late 18th century finery stood pensively at a window. It was late in the evening and he was gazing across the wily, windy moors at an ethereal, yet extremely familiar young woman in a fleecy white dress. She was singing (incredibly, accompanied by an invisible orchestra) and steadily progressing toward the window in an artistic dance. He heard his name in her song, “Heathcliff.” (The lyrics also contained some character observations that Heathcliff could have done without.)
Continue reading “Wuthering GOAT by Leila Allison”Auld Author – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – By Leila
“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.”
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
There was a good film of the same name based on Betty Smith’s autobiographical novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which came out shortly after the book was published in 1943. But as it went during the days of the Hays Code of “decency,” much of the book could not be filmed due to content that the movie people figured viewers would be offended by. This involved a wildly over-sexed female character, pedophiles, alcoholism, antisemitism, children pulled from school to work after sixth grade, suicide, racism and persevering only for the sake of survival, for no greater aim than to prolong the misery. Some of those topics (especially the gentle father’s self destruction via the bottle) were addressed passingly while others were let alone.
Continue reading “Auld Author – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – By Leila”Week 464: Happily Never After and Antisocial People Have Feelings Too
Happily Never After
I cannot help but knock feel good fiction. It reminds me of Heaven, which no one has ever described to my satisfaction. From what I have seen, Heaven looks like an eternal installment of Songs of Praise (I thought the USA had a monopoly in the department of hokey religious programming, but the UK has once again exposed my ignorance).
Continue reading “Week 464: Happily Never After and Antisocial People Have Feelings Too”Weight Gain by Hugh Cron
“I take it you eat most of your food at home, gorging, where no-one can see?”
“I suppose so, at home that is but never gorging.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“What’s your favourite? Kebabs? Chips and Cheese? Sweet And Sour? Trifle? All of the above?”
“…Probably fish.”
“Oh, I do like a fish supper but you know, my waste-line doesn’t look after itself! So is it chips and curry
sauce and a battered fish for you?”
“No. I like a Salmon Caesar Salad with a touch of lemon mayonnaise. Or a Sea-bass on a bed of
courgette, tomatoes, asparagus and mange-tout.”
“Really! Well fuck me! Puddings though, I take it you like your puddings? All of them/ Isthere any that
you prefer?”
“Yep, I love fresh fruit.”
“Well it’s getting a bit clearer now, you never see a skinny gorilla! I suppose it’s a good job that they don’t
like ice-cream…What’s your favourite flavour? I bet it’s chocolate”
“Ice cream goes right through me so I avoid it.”
“…But you are really fat, so maybe some of it sticks.”
“My weight is an enigma to me. I am the only person that I know who can defecate, stand on the scales
and be two pounds heavier…How that makes me laugh.”
“What about sweeties, you must eat loads or is it tonnes?”
“Nope, I prefer plain crackers.”
“With what?”
“Nothing really, just a glass of red wine.”
“A glass or a case?”
“…Just a glass, enough for my crackers.”
“Hee-Hee same sort of question, just the packet or a case?”
“A few does me.”
“So you’re telling me that you eat the way that you do and yet you are still fucking enormous??”
“I suppose I am.”
“I don’t believe you. You must be shovelling in a dozen or so doughnuts. Maybe you are one of those
weird fucks who sleep eat, walk, eat and walk…Does your food go missing? And does the staff of your
local twenty-four hour Spar look at you in a funny way?”
“No.”
“Exercise! I take it you are a lazy bastard and do fuck all?”
“I walk to my work so I do around twenty miles a week.”
“Twenty?”
“Around that and that isn’t counting me being on my feet all day.”
“You can’t be watching what you eat. I know fucking everything that goes into my mouth.”
“I don’t watch what I eat as I know that it doesn’t matter”
“I take it that you’re happy to be a fat cunt?”
“I don’t think any folks are.”
“Can you even see your cock in the shower?”
“Yes, it’s big enough thank you very much.”
“Jesus fuck…I could never be your size. I’d need to kill myself. But it’s great to see a bloater who is happy
with the way that they are – Fair play to you.”
“I can understand that and do you know what gets me through?”
“Chocolates??”
“No. Mindless violence to the likes of you, so I’m going to kill you now and save you from ever having to
take your skinny anorexic arse and vomit up another cheeseburger ever again you fucking weight
watching cunt!”
Week 462: Rule 17; Necessary Words; A to Z of Needless Words
Well here we are, the holidays behind us, in a brand spanking New Year, which, in my eyes, already looks as fresh as a recently widowed elderly French rent boy cruising the cafes in search of a breathing benefactor. But to those of you who insist on at least benign, if not kind or P.C. expressions–well, happy new year to you and many more I am sure.
Continue reading “Week 462: Rule 17; Necessary Words; A to Z of Needless Words”My Fair Juan G Starring Boots the Impaler By Leila Allison


I was watching the 1969 Science Fiction flick The Valley of Gwangi on TV last month. It was playing on the ancient Philco set that connects the PDQ network in our sister realm of Other Earth to my home realm of Saragun Springs. The film was the final Ray Harrhausen/Willis O’Brien dinosaur picture. The story involved a thirty-foot tall, psychotic Allosaurus named (brace yourself) “Gwangi,” who somehow managed to reproduce (apparently without a Mrs. Gwangi) and survive at a “Forbidden Valley” in Mexico with other unlikely creatures for at least 145-million years–without, mind you, attracting notice until 1969–that from a reptile with the brain power of a caraway seed.
Continue reading “My Fair Juan G Starring Boots the Impaler By Leila Allison”Literally Reruns – Half by Doug Hawley
Well here we go, we now say farewell and thank you to 2023. And as the year cleans out its desk in the present and moves into the archives, we close it with the last of ten reruns over the past nine days!
Longtime site friend Doug Hawley specializes in making the absurd seem possible. And that talent is extremely present in Half. It begins with an almost religious disease matter-of-factly diagnosed by perhaps the most dubious physician since Wm. S. Burrough’s Dr. Benway of Naked Lunch.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Half by Doug Hawley”Literally Reruns – Mary, Joseph and the Baby by Diane M Dickson
To locate this Holiday Rerun, I had to go way the hell back in the vault to find this wonderful little piece by our own Diane M Dickson. Mary, Joseph and the Baby is truer to the spirit of the occasion than anything you can buy at Amazon and the dialect is musical. Unique but it gets across.
It’s an old story in many ways, but blessed are the poor and meek no matter what the corporations say.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Mary, Joseph and the Baby by Diane M Dickson”