Category: Editor Picks

All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 396: Stumbling Leaves; Another Week That Is; Autumnal Vexations

ireneallison12

I like fall, but I avoid saying “I like autumn.” I went to school with a girl with that name and hated her. I wouldn’t want the little god whose job it is to check up on the likes and dislikes of people like me to get confused. So, to be clear, I like autumn, but not the Autumn I knew in seventh grade.

But there are things about fall I can do without; for instance, grownups who wear “onesies,” and those who get as excited as a three-year-old seeing Santa for the first time when the subject is “pumpkin spice.” Usually these people are one and the same. I will hear no defense for normal adults who wear onesies with little fire trucks and/or race cars, Bunnies, Unicorns, Cows, Green Aliens and Sea “Horseys” on them and must tell me about it. What you do at home is your own business, but unless you want me to wonder if you wear a “dype-dype” and rubber panties to bed, don’t bring it up, especially if I am eating.

Continue reading “Week 396: Stumbling Leaves; Another Week That Is; Autumnal Vexations” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Where Have All The billigits Gone by Leila Allison

ireneallison12

-1-

If you can imagine a realm that is both infinite and a place where nothing is farther than a mile from anything else, then you can imagine my land of make believe. You see, I failed High School Geometry and have no sense of scientific proportion. I went every day, but it was the first period, and I fell asleep with my eyes open. I wound up with four A’s and one F on that report card. I got my high marks in History, Drama, Music and Sociology. But the world is run by Slide Rule Supremacists who’d rather have kids bomb out in those and score big successes in the ometries.

I had to take an extremely remedial math class (which was as intellectually demanding as “Celebrity Jeopardy”) to gain my diploma. My crowning glory there was the creation of a coordinate graph. When connected, the numbered points revealed the face of Fred Flinstone with dollar signs in his eyes and the caption “Bedrock Lotto.” Although giving up on a freshly minted adult and releasing her into a high tech society armed with no fancier arithmetic in her head than how to arrange a Fred Flintsone graph is probably immoral, that’s just the way the old hypotenuse bounces. Besides, it continues to give me the freedom to create scientifically impossible vistas. Hooray for the armor of ignorance.

According to the 70’s band America, “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t, didn’t already have.” Well, the Wiz was hardly Great and Powerful then, now was he? For I, the ruling Penname in my little metaverse, have endowed all my Fictional Characters (FC’s) with unretractable Free Will, which they most definitely did not already, already have going in. The person who employs me (whose experiences, skills, shames and lacks are identical to mine) did the same for me; alas, you don’t need a head full of logarithms to conceptualize the vicious circle.

Continue reading “Where Have All The billigits Gone by Leila Allison” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Week 392: J.D. Raccoons Tip Flower Pots Because Cows are Too Tall; Another Week That Is, and the Operation Snapped Shoelace Diary

ireneallison12

(3 A.M., 22 August)

Life is full of idiotic vexations that should not be. Silly, inconsequential events that should mean nothing yet are something enough to fret over. A continuing woe of mine involves my part in a neighbor (from here, “Green Thumb”) having her flower pots tipped by Juvenile Delinquent Raccoons.

As I’ve stated in earlier posts, my building features a common yard inhabited mostly by flitting little Birds and Squirrels by day and semi-wild beasts after sundown. The beasts include my feral Cat friends, Alfie and Andy, an occasional Opossum named Olivia (who has a way of popping out from under the bushes and scaring the hell out of people) and a marauding band of four to six Jugglao/J.D. Racoons who drink Faro and smoke discarded cigarette butts. Green Thumb seems nice enough, but she operates under the delusion that she can place potted flowers in the courtyard and expect nothing bad to happen to them overnight.

Continue reading “Week 392: J.D. Raccoons Tip Flower Pots Because Cows are Too Tall; Another Week That Is, and the Operation Snapped Shoelace Diary” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 390: The Week That Is and Old L.S. Has a Robot Farm, A.I., A.I., Oh-One-One-Oh!

ireneallison12

“I compare ‘Intelligence’ to the dubious garment ‘chaps.’ All intelligence is artificial as all chaps are assless. I see thinking itself as something that creates items like chaps then almost always describes them as ‘assless’ even though that is a redundant observation. No where else in the natural universe does the non-extant difference between chaps and assless chaps exist other than between human ears. And if chaps had asses then they would be sewed on via artificial means–Ergo the concept of all things related to chaps is artificial, and any mind that ponders such must also be fabricated.”

Continue reading “Week 390: The Week That Is and Old L.S. Has a Robot Farm, A.I., A.I., Oh-One-One-Oh!” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Week 389: An Ode to Cynicism, Good Stories and Dubious Advice Dispensed by A Herbivore

ireneallison12

Beginning

It’s hard for me to not be cynical; to not check every would be gift Horse’s bridgework; to not hold the suspicion that the evil that dwells in my heart must be in everyone else’s; to suspect myself for wanting the same evil in the hearts of others to license my own. Funny word cynical. As a belief system it prevents you from go-funding Phishy Royalty, yet in application it can aid you in successful phishing and lying in general. Thus you could say that cynical is a dubious, double-agent sort of concept.

Continue reading “Week 389: An Ode to Cynicism, Good Stories and Dubious Advice Dispensed by A Herbivore” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 388: Interstellar Juice Boxes; The Week That Is and Visual Velveeta

ireneallison12

In a Saturday post several months ago I took aim at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Looking back, I discovered I did not insult it enough. The Great Eye recently opened and discovered (brace yourself) more galaxies. At work, I often deal with large shipping boxes separated from their invoices, thus they arrive as mysteries that I must explore. Whenever I open one to see what’s inside nowadays, I always say “Look gang, more galaxies.”

Continue reading “Week 388: Interstellar Juice Boxes; The Week That Is and Visual Velveeta” →
All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Editor Picks, Fantasy, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 387: Blame It On The Tintintinabulator; Five New Memories, Plus a Season Finale

ireneallison12

I blame it on the Tintintinabulator, that musical Spirit who goes from ear to ear and secretly whispers catchy songs into semi-catatonic minds. That is my theory for why tunes get stuck in our heads. Currently, Kate Bush is singing Wuthering Heights in my mind. “Cathy” has been at the window for about a week. She’s done it before and will again. It usually takes ten days for her to go away, satisfied that she has once again qualified me for a berth in Crazytown.

Continue reading “Week 387: Blame It On The Tintintinabulator; Five New Memories, Plus a Season Finale” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 386: What’s It All About, Five, No Four Works of High Fiction and the A to Z of Buying a Round For the Unsteady Jukebox

ireneallison12

What’s It All About?

I’ve begun my fifth year of feeding the little gray menace in the header–Misster Andy Hisster. Andy is in fine health and continues to live the pirate life even though I constantly offer him different situations. Off and on for the last few months, Andy has had a sidekick; a young Tuxedo Cat (also pictured–goody, I see he was photobombed by my device) first named Patch, but after an exchange of enlightening interoffice communications with Diane, I now call him “Alfie”–as in the ne’er do well portrayed by Michael Caine.

I’ve always been suspicious about Alfie during the six months or so he’s tagged along with Andy, for me to feed under the hedge. Alfie never shows up when the weather is bad nor does he ever appear to have slept under the building, covered in cobwebs like Andy often is. Andy is indifferent to personal grooming, which is unusual for a House Cat, but not unseen in the ferals. Alfie is a dandy. Never a hair out of place. Fop.

Continue reading “Week 386: What’s It All About, Five, No Four Works of High Fiction and the A to Z of Buying a Round For the Unsteady Jukebox” →
Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 376: The Eldritch Horror, The Week That Still Is and a Saturday Special

ireneallison12

The Eldritch Horror

I’m an insomniac. I do not claim to “suffer” from it because it is a consequence of my ridiculous daily intake of cigarettes and coffee. I suppose I could drink myself unconscious every night, but that will have to wait until retirement.

I often lie awake and watch beautiful fancies flee my mind–up to heaven they go, without me. Yet my ugly chimeras are made of fulsome stuff. They linger like the afterdream of boiled cabbage in a poorly ventilated room; and I eventually find myself examining the left behind junk for something to think about other than that jug of Crown Royal in the pantry.

Continue reading “Week 376: The Eldritch Horror, The Week That Still Is and a Saturday Special” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

374- Dear Daisy, The Week That Still Is, And Nine New Ways To Avoid Heaven

ireneallison12

Dear Daisy

Greetings!

Leila caught a cold while composing this weekly update and claimed that she was only worth “two-thirds of my usual genius” (a statement which proves that the common cold has no ill effects on the ego). Instead of calling out sick and thrusting her duty on her fellow Editors, she asked that I, Daisy Cloverleaf, write the introduction to this week’s wrap and that she would handle the middle and end. Which is precisely what has happened.

Continue reading “374- Dear Daisy, The Week That Still Is, And Nine New Ways To Avoid Heaven” →