Category: Short Fiction

We have now reached 2000 followers (At the time of writing) which I am so proud of. But in the whole scheme of things, that isn’t that much. If I was a Kardashian holding a puppy with my nipple out, I’m sure that number would be in the millions in less than a day. I think I used that line when we reached a thousand but as that was about three years back I thought I could get away with it once again.

Continue reading “2000+ Lovely People, One Arse For Number Ten And No, I Didn’t Forget ‘Pulp Fiction’, I Wanted It In The Title.” →

Thanks to Leila for holding down the posting fort over the last few weeks.

I see that very little has changed.

We are still getting in some excellent stories.

We are still receiving courteous submissions.

But!!!

We are also still receiving initial pig-ignorant submissions where the person hasn’t even had the decency to glance at the site that they are sending to.

Some folks, even when we gently point them towards the guidelines, they still ignore our request.

If we build up a relationship with a writer, then we are happy to come and go with some quirks and mischievousness but if you are new to this, do yourself a huge favour and check out guidelines and type of stories being published.

And this is a huge bug bear of mine, if someone asks for feedback, we all spend time and effort in doing so. I don’t think it is much to ask that a simple ‘Thanks’ is headed our way.

I wonder if this is a ‘sign of the times’ thing, you know, bad manners or are we just unlucky with some arsehole type behaviour??

Censorship has also reared its ugly head yet again. There is a Scottish Comedian called Jerry Sadowitz (The man who played Ebeneezer Good in the song by ‘The Shamen’ Seemingly they just wanted to chant ‘E’s are good and using his name was a way around promoting drug use) His show was pulled due to racist remarks. Now here’s the point, the billboard to his show announces that there will be offensive material so should anyone take offence. You can’t get away with saying well that wasn’t offensive to me, but that was. It is all relative. But you had been fucking warned, so don’t go if you can think on any topic that would offend you as sure as hell, that will be mentioned.

I wouldn’t go and see Jerry Sadowitz not because I’m one of the powder puff, snowflake professionally out-raged fuckwits – I wouldn’t go simply because his humour doesn’t appeal to me.

Connolly, Boyle, Carr, I love to listen to them work. Jimmy Carr actually has a section called the career ender, you can imagine what is in there and if you can and you couldn’t handle it then don’t be a tit and go just to complain.

Political correctness and wokeness (Is that a word??) will be the downfall of stand up comediennes. Even if they tried to make sure that it isn’t their POV they are using, it somewhat gives you an idea of where the story is going when it starts ‘A racist walks into a bar…’

Franky Boyle once said that he was asked if he was being serious about the subjects that he talked about. His answer was, ‘Serious, I’m a fucking comedienne up on a stage playing to an audience, telling made-up jokes, what do you think?’

If you are a level minded person, jokes won’t offend as they are ‘meant’ to be jokes. They shouldn’t be taken as anything else. Some you will laugh at, some you won’t, that’s as much thought as you should give them.

Censorship is a form of discrimination. It is discriminating against the intelligent who can separate a made up story that is told to amuse against a rant that is caused to incite!

Okay into this week’s stories.

This is a bit different as Nik has already done an introduction to them, but I can still let you read our initial comments for our first ever themed week, which really just happened more than was planned.

…We are not that organised!!!

…Truthfully, we don’t do prompts as we would all get bored reading the same type.

…Hell for me would be a romance week – All those idiots writing about chiseled torsos, heaving breasts, and green eyes would give me the fucking boak!!!

I was first up on Monday – Fuck knows why I took this on, probably because I am slightly masochistic and hate both genres so I gave it a go. But it was an absolute privilege to be included with the other five amazing writers. (I could never forget you Mr Henson!!!!!)

On Tuesday we had our only new writer Kat Hutchson with ‘Becoming Human‘, so a huge welcome to her to the site. Kat has two plaudits, one for being accepted and secondly for being included in something that we’ve never done before.

‘Very well done. There is something creepy about this machine!’

‘For an AI story, this was excellent.’

‘The characters were unlikeable and the whole thing was nice and gruesome. I loved it.’

On Wednesday we had the genius that is Mr Marco Etheridge. Now as I have said, we don’t do prompts and this was a one off. BUT if there is ever such a person as a Historian of the site, they will know that Marco has been tempted by comments before and taken them as prompts. And the man has knocked every sodding one of them out the park!!!!! To do this shows a writing brain that is up there with the best of them. I tip my hat to you sir!!!!!

‘Created Image’ was Marco’s twentieth outing for us.

‘Marco got every reference in. He must have had Hugh’s post open!!!’

‘What a clever writer!!’

‘This is a brilliant story, even if you don’t know the origins!’

Ailbhe Curran was next up on Thursday with ‘Magical Demise‘

This was this wonderful writer’s second story for us.

‘A parable for the loss of imagination done brilliantly.’

‘There is an excellent point being made.’

‘A little bit of weirdness that I really like!’

And we finished off the week with our wonderful fellow editor Leila. I think, I hope she lets me know if I’m wrong, this is Leila’s 111^th story for us!

Now I have been hanging on to second place with 116 from the legend that is Tom Sheehan (200 and still submitting!!) but I will admit defeat into third place sometime soon. Leila’s imagination is too tuned for her to dry up. Me – I have no imagination and would need to do a helluva lot more people watching and eavesdropping for me to continually write. My liver would be fucked and I may be punched a few times as a pub is my source of inspiration…And I’m getting to that age that the folks I talk to talk about thickness of pads and early bed-times!! (Whit a source of inspiration!!!)

Leila doesn’t need anything like that, her amazing imagination takes over and I’ll be happy to hand my silver medal over to her.

I honestly wish I had even a tenth of her imagination!!!

‘I, Feckwit‘ completed the week.

‘Brilliant!’

‘I read this with a big grin on my face.’

‘Loved this to bits!’

Usual bit here guys – I do need to thank a few more folks who are getting involved with comments – I can’t thank you enough.

I also spotted an old friend, Darnel commenting – Great to see you back!!!!!

The Sunday Re-Run…Well there is no point really as no-one takes us up on this. It is all promise, just like the lady with the padded bra or the guy with the sock down his trousers, all talk and no substance.

Just to finish off…

I see that the baldy prince thing and his straight up and down wife are sending one of their spawn to a school that costs £50 000 a year.

That figure is beyond my comprehension but I wonder if you are allowed to be stupid?

At Dalmilling Primary where I went, you could be stupid. You could be down right backward and you were told so in no uncertain terms.

We had daily remedial classes for the ‘thick as mince’ weans and some of us were told, ‘I knew your dad and he was stupid, your mum, I knew her and she was thick and now I have you. Guess what you are?’

If you didn’t answer, ‘I’m an amoeba Sir’, you got belted for insolence. You also got belted again for knowing the word ‘amoeba’ as that was being contradictory to the teacher’s point.

If you (Sorry – Us the fucking public) are spending that kind of money on your offspring, do you want to hear that your kid is a pot of soup, of the vegetable kind??

What would they do if you asked for your money back as the kid’s stupidity should be taught out of them, especially at fifty grand a year.

I feel sorry for those teachers because some of the kids in my day just need a little persuasion to learn. That persuasion took the form of violence and humiliation. But how can you beat up a sprog if it’s over-privileged fuckwits of parents are paying that kind of money?

Also you can’t beat those specific kids up as the Met will shoot you.

So the simple solution is, let them pass all of their exams as it’s not as if the fuckers will end up doing anything worth-while anyway…Unless you include them procreating and having more sprogs that will go to the same school at the taxpayers expense.

Hugh