Story of the Week #32: Daggy Shog

Not much to say about this one, really. So, enjoy “Daggy Shog”, Story of the Week #32.

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Yay!

If you don’t know why I find this video cool, then you don’t know me well enough.

One Word Meme

One word meme, taken from my good friend barelyproper. Describe me in one word… just one single word. Positive or negative. Leave your word in a comment before looking at what words others have used. Then copy and paste the meme to your journal to find out how people will describe you when limited to [...]

Story of the Week #31: Day of the Tuber

The prompt for this story actually came from my wife. It was a line that she found in the subject field of a spam email that a coworker received, and she challenged me to use the sentence in context. I won’t give the sentence here, because it might spoil things.

This story also involves the staff of Interstitial Interfaces, just like Stories of the Week numbers 28 (“Code Zombie“), and 30 (“Vampire Pears and Other Diabolical Fruits“). Don’t worry about the fact that there are some inconsistencies between these stories. It’s actually kind of the point.

So, enjoy!

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Story of the Week #30: Vampire Pears and Other Diabolical Fruits

I think that “Cryptomnesia” is the term to describe when you have “hidden memories” that aren’t necessarily conscious memories but which influence you anyway. In this case, specifically, I’m talking about Story of the Week #26: Mixed Signals. I was digging through the old stuff on my hard drive, looking for interesting things and ideas I may have stuffed in there, when I encountered a story I wrote for my writers’ group back in 2005 or 2006. It looked disturbingly familiar, and I realized that “Mixed Signals” is almost a word-for-word rewrite of that earlier vignette. Am I growing senile? Stupid(er)? Or is there some more diabolical force at work here?

I choose to believe that my brain simply misfired. Like a sparkplug that misfiles, making your car go all jumpy or something.

Anyway.

Last week, I asked publicly for challenges and prompts that would help jump start my Story of the Week project. I received a number of excellent suggestions, and I plan to use them all.

This week’s story is “Vampire Pears and Other Diabolical Fruits”. My friend Kat gave me the prompt “Vampire Pears” and I decided I simply had to use it, even if it would require a very silly story to make it work. So here’s a silly story built around the notion of vampire pears.

I realized as I was writing this that the setting and some of the characters were the same as in Story of the Week #28: Code Zombe. Both of these stories take place in a small software company called “Interstitial Interfaces”, which I picture as being located in a small building on its own in the middle of a vast parking lot, surrounded by other buildings with other offices. So what the heck, I decided. I’ve already got a couple of running stories (the Little Fluffy Wiggletoes saga, the adventures of Delilah the Vampire in Roosterville, and a heist story featuring Hastur), so one more couldn’t hurt. I’m calling this cycle “The Apocalypses of Interstitial Interfaces” until I come up with something better.

So enjoy this story, and here’s hoping that I haven’t written it before. I’m pretty sure I haven’t. But, well, you know…

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D’oh!

I was not aware that the email form on the Contact Richard page of my website was broken. I suppose it’s only to be expected, since the email form was, you know, broken.

Story of the Week #29: Little Fluffy Wiggletoes and the Revolution

This one is, obviously, a sequel to ‘Little Fluffy Wiggletoes” and “Little Fluffy Wiggletoes and the Big Revenge“. I have another seven stories planned for the Little Fluffy Wiggletoes saga (all of them complete with titles), and you won’t believe what happens. Or maybe you will. Who knows. This story is, at best, a transitional little snippet between “Big Revenge” and the next one.

Anyway, this is Story of the Week #29. Enjoy!

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Ireland Pictures

After nearly three years, I’ve finally uploaded our photographs from our Ireland trip to Picasa. Click on the picture of the guest house we stayed in in Trim, below, to see the album. Ireland 2006

Challenge me

Several of my Stories of the Week — “Roosterville“, “Sir Reynold Fights Another Ogre“, “Beach Wish“, and “The X of Doom” (both Take One and Take Two) were inspired by suggestions, challenges, or outright dares given to me by different people. I’m always seeking such suggestions, challenges, and dares, so if you have any for me, please let me know. It’s a heck of a lot of fun to come up with ways to incorporate the ideas, and I think that the above stories are some of my favorites, if not my best.

70s PSA

I  love the old Public Service Announcements from the 70s. I remember this one in particular from when I was fourth or fifth grade; it was kind of creepy back then, but now it’s just sort of goofy: I haven’t really followed through on this, though, so I’m not even sure if the Keene Act [...]

Political Stereotyping, Part Two

It’s been pointed out to me that there is a class of folks who would drive a Toyota Prius *and* have a Palin 2012 sticker on their car, and that’s the class of people who are still outraged over the Democrats’ selection of Barack Obama as the Presidential nominee over Hilary Clinton. It’s a position [...]

Indulging in Political Stereotypes

Weird is seeing this bumper sticker on a car during my afternoon walk: (Click to embiggen if you so desire.) Surreal is seeing it on a Toyota Prius. Now, it’s been pointed out to me that this is surreal only if one indulges in political stereotypes. In my own defense, I have to say that [...]