There are all types of world gone wrong pieces in the LS vault. Simply, we find Dystopia much more interesting than Utopia; same goes for Hell and Heaven. Perhaps it is indicative of the human species that we are much better at imagining pain than we are happiness.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Hangings by James Hanna”
I recently recalled a cherished Halloween memory from my childhood: I was in the living room watching a Casper the Friendly Ghost Halloween special on TV the Saturday morning prior to the big day. My monumentally hung over grandfather just came out of the kitchen, a glass of what surely held only healthy tomato juice in his unsteady hand. A great question had formed in my mind.
“Grandpa, how did Casper die?”
“He asked the wrong people a lot of stupid questions.”
By now it must be obvious that I have seized upon Halloween as the inspiration for this post. Since the Nobel prize for literature has already been passed out, I see no reason to introduce revolutionary literary techniques or topics until the next voting cycle begins.
Continue reading “347: Mental Scar Tissue, Curtain Calls and Scares A to Z”
Life as interpreted through the eyes of a child is a tricky thing for an adult writer to pull off gracefully. We can remember believing certain things as children, but not why. The most challenging aspects are understanding adults; parents tell children that grown ups know what they are doing, even though they know that is usually not the case.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Night Game by Jennie Boyes”
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They say that trouble arrives in threes. That old bit of nonsense came to mind when a trio of my home grown Fictional Characters (FC’s) came to my office on behalf of an alien FC, also of my creation.
The petitioners were Renfield (my lead human FC), Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess and a Siamese Cat named Boots the Impaler. The creeps either walked, trotted or sauntered in, each one via her, her and his natural mode of locomotion. I just sat there and watched as Renfield gently hoisted the small animals onto my desk and sat on the corner of it herself.
We all sat in silence, save for Boots, who was purring. It worried me that the chocolate-point fink was content about something that I was unaware of. For I’d designed his personality to be “like Genghis Khan in an Angora sweater–soft and fuzzy, but don’t touch him.”
Continue reading “Citizen Pie-Eyed Peetie the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon By Leila Allison and Daisy the Pygmy Goatess”
I view Tom Sheehan’s Johnny Igoe, Spellbinder Remembered as more of a link to rather than an item lost to the enveloping past. This tale is full of remembrance, Ireland, poetry and a melancholy for those little things lost. There are certain persons in our lives (sadly, too few) who make you sad to think about what it will be like when they are gone, even as they live.
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Q: From what I observe, good oral storytellers, those who make you lean forward as they weave a yarn, are an endangered species. Yet there is nothing out of date about that ability. It is still desired, but has fallen off. In your estimation is there anything besides our reliance on devices (for communication and entertainment) that has contributed to our lack of good speakers?
Q: I keep casting about my mind for a better way to phrase this question, but have come up empty. Simply, is this a true story? Seems so to me. Even if it is fictionalized, it has great truth to it.
Tom’s response:
Too much attention elsewhere for many folks, Leila, and Johnny Igoe hangs in my mind as if it is his memorial, every word like an echo I grab on the run through his life again and again., so lucky to have known him so close for a long time, though I am a poor mechanic at this machine and often can’t remember what I want to look up, which is a stumbling block, there is so much work captured here someplace.
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Mister Hisster
For the past three years I’ve been feeding a “neighborhood cat” I call Mister Hisster (yes, that is him in the header). I figured that by giving him a name I’d eliminate the “stray” stigma. Mister Hisster is a smallish long haired gray tabby, and leads with his right. There is nothing overly tragic about Mister Hisster because he is feral and has no use for the human race, but tolerates me–to a quickly arrived at point. Whenever I place his food at his spot under the boxhedge, I’d better get my hand out of the way awfully damn quick or the next thing I will do with it is open a tube of neosporin.
“Good morning, Mister Hisster. How’s my favorite little son of a bitch today?”
Continue reading “Week 345: Mister Hisster, Star Turns and Things That Need Inventing”
There’s always something that is both hidden and in plain sight at the same time in Hugh Cron’s stories, and Jim’s Aunts definitely has that quality in abundance. Although it is a short piece, all the words tell and the thing that it causes to form early on in the back of your head comes to light with the final sentence–even though it is also open ended.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Jim’s Aunts by Hugh Cron.”
Flo and Andy were a Trade Rat couple who lived at the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico. Flo had dug their den (aka “midden”) on an abandoned ranch, close to an old well that had dried up ages ago. Although they weren’t exactly in the desert, the land was thick with mesquite, chaparral, agave cactus and peyote.
Little did the couple know that the ranch had been a hideout for famous bandits and desperados in the nineteenth century. Or so the new owner, who’d recently moved in, claimed. And if Flo and Andy had been cynical Trade Rats attuned to human affairs then they might have made the connection between the advent of the new highway that passed less than a mile from the ranch and its heretofore unknown history as an outlaw hideout. And if Flo and Andy knew how to read read, they would have understood the sign that the new owner had erected at the ranch’s entrance:
Continue reading “The Wishingwellwraith and the Trade Rats: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison”
Diane M. Dickson is a successful Crime novelist; I’ve read three of her excellent eighteen books so far, but I have yet to see anything like the Brush Off in any of them.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Brush Off by Diane M Dickson”
Some Good Things Lost
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Wisdom
I asked my grandmother if everything was wonderful in the good old days. She told me that “wonderful” can exist at any time as long as you are young and have enough money. She also said it’s better to be young than anything else, but since nobody stays that way, sources of money should always be cultivated.
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THRIFT
My Grandpa Henry was a custodian at a community college for forty-three years. And although he made a decent “working man’s wage,” and in all other ways was a generous man, not once in his life did he pay more than two-hundred dollars for a car.
He had a thing for extremely tuckered government vehicles at state auctions. One year he landed a 1970-something Plymouth Fury for twenty bucks because he was the only one to bid on it. Grandpa Henry was proud of that car even though the only way to start it was to wrap your left arm behind the wheel and pull hard on the shift while cranking the starter with your other hand and pumping the accelerator, hoping it fired before the battery croaked.
Continue reading “Week 343–Some Good Things Lost, Gained and A Celebration of Hairspray”
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