I’ve mentioned a few times that we go through the same process as anyone else when we submit our work. To be fair though, I think we’ve all changed from the early days when we first started doing this.
Continue reading “Week 369 – Statistics, (What a cracking word – It’s up there with ‘crocodile’ – A nod to the Kemp Brothers!) Opinions And Worth The Watch.”
Oh, yeah, here he come. A handsome young, broad-face, dark skin, Black boy with curly hair. He walks with a swagger and a smile. A smile that would strip girls and women, boys and men, out of their underwear at the glint of those sparkling teeth. And he got moves. Athletic, strong, and fast. And he come up here to the log with a smile and style, not knowing he’s still a child.
Continue reading “Dauntless by Frederick K Foote”
My wife went ahead to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving, so I had to catch up to her after work. It’s a four-hour drive, and after two hours driving up highway 35, I needed to get off the road for a burger and beer. As soon as I got out of the car, I was surrounded by this white light, which I initially thought was just a floodlight from the shopping center. Before I got to the door of the microbrewery, I felt myself dissolving into a thousand little bits, and in five seconds, I went from the parking lot of a pour house to some kind of oval room with bright, white metal walls. Then, an alien walked in through what could have been the orifice of a metallic uterus. When I say an alien, this guy could have been taken from the fake autopsy video Fox tried to sell us all in the 90s. As cliché as it may be, he was a grey stick figure with oval, black eyes. The first words out of my mouth were “Dude, you’re an alien!”
Continue reading “A Probing Interview by John Willems”
Oh! To be born again like this! Sweet Beaver!
It’s a crispy, young morning in the infancy of spring and there is still frost to be found in the hollows and places that are shaded all day. As the sun emerges in yellow shards of a nearby eastern mountain, so too do you emerge from your cozy beaver home. Yawning out at the sky, your big beaver teeth glisten.
Continue reading “Smile, You’re a Beaver by Jeremy Johnson”
He stood in the rain to wash his sins away thinking it would do the trick, cleanse his soul, invigorate him once more, to be what he once was. That’s our hero, Viking Arel Tor, neighborhood leader, pointer of straight or straighter paths, finder of fame, good luck, saving for you the best lady of all in your welcome arms, for now and always. Viking’s way in the world.
But where did he go wrong, our Viking?
Continue reading ” Standing in the Rain to Wash the Sins Away by Tom Sheehan”
From the backseat, Callie yowls and scratches her claws against the front grate of her carrier. It’s a miracle I even got her in the thing—she hates being cooped up. They say pets take on characteristics of their owners.
Continue reading “In the Eye by Chrissie Rohrman”
When Galileo published a similarly themed dialogue which featured a God-defending character named “Simplicito,” who had the mental acuity of a centipede and was obviously meant to represent the Pope, he had to recant or die. Fortunately the world is a little more forward thinking overall, but we still live on a planet in which religious “heresy” can still get you killed quicker than a Star Trek phaser. If Hugh Cron’s The Ten Commandments somehow got published not all that long ago, in the historical sense, he’d probably wound up on the gallows or had his head decorating London Bridge. One should think he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Ten Commandments by Hugh Cron”
I love wild animals yet I know that some cannot love me back because I am human. Them’s the breaks. Still, I do my best to be friendly to the peripheral critters who hang around my hometown in abundance. Yet no matter how much I try to ingratiate myself to the wild things, some refuse to look past my status as a human being.
Fortunately, no majority of any wild species finds me disdainful, only a few devout misanthropes and the occasional bad apple. To be fair, I would say that a higher percentage of people find me objectionable than do, say, Voles. But, sadly, there have been exceptions to the tranquility.
Continue reading “Week 368: Adventures With Wildlife and Top Do-Overs on My Unsteady Jukebox”
I’m not saying society is unstable here, but Kidnapping is the third-leading sector of employment. When I flew in, I was shocked by the ubiquity of it, and the apparent randomness of who is selected. So different from back home. Six months later I’ve adapted and am making mind-blowing amounts of money driving a Kidnap Van on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I could ask for more assignments, but the quality of the work-life balance is so important. Two days a week pays all my bills and then some.
Continue reading “Van Damned by Todd Mercer”
It would be a lark to sit before a cartoonist at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, a joke because last night two of her oil paintings were hung in an art exhibition hall side by side with a pair of her husband’s oils. Would not a cartoon of her be the perfect ironic token to give him to commemorate their recognition? One local art critic dubbed them the “Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera” of Orange County, California. Granted, her husband had cultivated him and planted the phrase, but now it was out there.
Continue reading “The Cartoon by Cy Hill”
literally stories 