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This is my audio archive of 100 word stories from "100 Words Or Les Nessman" so you can hear me misread them instead of suffer through the various spelling errors I incorporate into the feed. Be sure to watch out for The Adventures of Mustard Man and The Primary Format : Radio Language : English Also Listed as: City : Houston State/Province : TX Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of IFOC Podcasts Podcasts Methings.com listings of IFOC Podcasts Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Into The Woods Mom and Dad didn’t want no silly child. Oh no that just wasn’t an option. So they signed little Timmy up for Baby Outward Bound. B.O.B. takes an airplane full of six year olds fly over Northern North Dakota drops them from 1500 feet with a full army field pack. Six weeks later while Mom...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Vault I haven’t seen Mother in years, but one day I’ll remember the combination to the lock on the vault I put her in. I thought about calling a locksmith, but that would just put him in danger of mother. And me as well, I suppose, since it has been a while since I last drank....» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Timeshifted When the time machine exploded, the research team told you I was dead, my atoms scattered throughout history. I was badly hurt, sure, but there’s great medical care in the future. All kinds of advanced Star Trek stuff here. You can hardly see the scars from where they regrew my arm, and this new eye...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charity Begins Somewhere Else Every year, we set up a tent in the middle of the city. The smell of freshly-roasted turkey, baked stuffing, and delicious sweet potatoes fills the air. This brings out the homeless, lonely, and poor in droves. We invite them in and they sit down. We make them wait for a while. When they’re good...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Look In The Mirror I pour the white dust out on to the mirror and quickly chop it into lines. One by one, they vanish up my nose. I let the rush carry me for a minute and then sniff whatever I can off of the mirror before putting it away. That’s when I catch sight of my reflection...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Uncle Artie Uncle Artie was a man of the carnival. He traveled the country from coast to coast so many times, and there wasn’t a sucker’s dollar he couldn’t take. When he died, his body was cremated and the ashes put into one of three urns. His lawyer shuffled the urns around, and made us choose. Aunt...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Missing Story I read a bedtime story to Lisa every night. It’s always a new story. She never wants to hear the same story twice. She cries when I box up the story books to take to the used bookstore. She wants to keep them all. Her bookshelf filled up quickly. And three more I bought her....» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #239 “Day Job” Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Nine, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was Day Job! Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Tony...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The topic of the next Weekly Challenge will be “Holiday” Hello. This is Laurence Simon of the 100 word stories podcast. The 100 word stories weekly challenge is where I post a topic to http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com and then you write and record a story based on that topic. Let’s go ahead and set the next topic to Holiday. Send the following to isfullofcrap (at) gmail.com with...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Council The Emergency Council of Hedgehogs was convened under the giant oak tree in the deepest part of the woods. Panic ran rampant as teddy bears were stumbling around drunkenly after their picnic, grabbing hedgehogs and tossing them around. It was decided that an emissary would approach the mommies and daddies of the teddy bears, pleading...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Angry Birds I use my iPhone to play Words With Friends, but all my friends have given up on this Scrabble variant for a game called Angry Birds. Apparently, these birds are angry because a bunch of evil pigs have stolen their eggs, so they attack various structures built by the pigs trying to kill them and...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CHANGES ARE COMING TO THE PODCAST... This post is meant to be a heads up for y'all... I will be changing a few things around at isfullofcrap.com in the coming week or so. You might not be able to reach things during this time, or you may end up having to reach them through some other path. I'm pondering a move from MT to WP, which will require a bunch of archive migration crap. Oh well. Whatever, right? Please keep an eye on @100wordstories on Twitter for a link to the new site when it's ready. Hopefully, we won't miss a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Where did the turkeys go? Where did the turkeys go? That's the question everybody's asking. All of the grocery stores are out of turkeys. There isn't a turkey to be seen at any farm. And if you bought a turkey already and put it in your freezer, you're probably wondering why there's a huge empty space in there now. Even pictures of turkeys have vanished from everywhere. There's no entry for it in the dictionary. Oh well. I didn't like turkey anyway. Pass the mashed potatoes and gravy, please. That roasted eag ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Where did the turkeys go? Where did the turkeys go? That’s the question everybody’s asking. All of the grocery stores are out of turkeys. There isn’t a turkey to be seen at any farm. And if you bought a turkey already and put it in your freezer, you’re probably wondering why there’s a huge empty space in there now. Even...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Games People Play "O the games we play" reminisced Joey readjusting his titanium visor. As kids Frankie and Joey had invented the game GUNS. It came out of that totally symmetric kid logic that in kid game theory weather Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers no one wanted to be the stereotypic bad guy. So the game was everyone shot at everyone. "I got you" "You missssssed" They quickly run through rubberband guns, bb guns, paintball guns. Finally live ammo. Thank god for Kevlar thought Joey drawing a be ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Games People Play "O the games we play" reminisced Joey readjusting his titanium visor. As kids Frankie and Joey had invented the game GUNS. It came out of that totally symmetric kid logic that in kid game theory weather Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers no one wanted to be the stereotypic bad guy. So the game was everyone shot at everyone. "I got you" "You missssssed" They quickly run through rubberband guns, bb guns, paintball guns. Finally live ammo. Thank god for Kevlar thought Joey drawing a be ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Games People Play Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Poetry In Motion After watching girls roll around the track and beat the crap out of each other in what was billed as "Poetry In Motion", we walked out of the roller derby and put together our own sport: Rollerpoetry. Instead of helmets and pads, we handed out berets and copies of Allen Ginsberg's book "Howl." Poets would circle the track, sharing the verse in ways that teachers and Kindles couldn't. Opening night, the crowds gathered around the track and booed the circling poets. One bumped into anoth ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Poetry In Motion After watching girls roll around the track and beat the crap out of each other in what was billed as “Poetry In Motion”, we walked out of the roller derby and put together our own sport: Rollerpoetry. Instead of helmets and pads, we handed out berets and copies of Allen Ginsberg’s book “Howl.” Poets would...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Poetry In Motion After watching girls roll around the track and beat the crap out of each other in what was billed as "Poetry In Motion", we walked out of the roller derby and put together our own sport: Rollerpoetry. Instead of helmets and pads, we handed out berets and copies of Allen Ginsberg's book "Howl." Poets would circle the track, sharing the verse in ways that teachers and Kindles couldn't. Opening night, the crowds gathered around the track and booed the circling poets. One bumped into anoth ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Balloon There was once a balloon in Balloon Land who was unlike the others He was filled with mustard. They all floated around and laughed at him. So he rolled away, far away, until he reached the Kingdom of Hot Dogs. Frightened, the balloon began to cry, and mustard dribbled on to a hot dog. It made a pretty yellow squiggle. Another hot dog saw this. "Put one on me!" it said. All the hot dogs wanted squiggles, and eventually the balloon ran out of mustard. "What good am I now?" it cried. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Balloon There was once a balloon in Balloon Land who was unlike the others He was filled with mustard. They all floated around and laughed at him. So he rolled away, far away, until he reached the Kingdom of Hot Dogs. Frightened, the balloon began to cry, and mustard dribbled on to a hot dog. It made a pretty yellow squiggle. Another hot dog saw this. "Put one on me!" it said. All the hot dogs wanted squiggles, and eventually the balloon ran out of mustard. "What good am I now?" it cried. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Balloon Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Am Cancer I am cancer. I will take your hair and drink your strength. I will use your body as a battlefield, fighting you to the death. I will hide behind you as doctors try to kill me, and you will suffer along with me. I may take your skin as a trophy, rob you of your eyesight, and maybe take an arm or a leg if I feel like it. I can take everything you have and everything you are. Except one thing: those who love you. I can never take them from you. But I can take you from them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Am Cancer I am cancer. I will take your hair and drink your strength. I will use your body as a battlefield, fighting you to the death. I will hide behind you as doctors try to kill me, and you will suffer along with me. I may take your skin as a trophy, rob you of your eyesight, and maybe take an arm or a leg if I feel like it. I can take everything you have and everything you are. Except one thing: those who love you. I can never take them from you. But I can take you from them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Am Cancer I am cancer. I will take your hair and drink your strength. I will use your body as a battlefield, fighting you to the death. I will hide behind you as doctors try to kill me, and you will suffer along with me. I may take your skin as a trophy, rob you of your...» Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Welch's Brigade 22nd of January 1879 Rorke's Drift South African John Chard of her majesties 24th regiment foot in command. Word has reached us of the Isandhlwana massacre. 2000 souls lost. Retreat unlikely will make last stand at the mission .... Chard lay down his pen looked to the west. "Damn, Rain," Colour Sergeant Bourne stated "That wasn't thunder, that was 1000 infantry helmets being struck. The Zulu are sending a message. The storm is upon you." Chard rebuttoned this tunic "I will met that storm w ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Welch's Brigade 22nd of January 1879 Rorke's Drift South African John Chard of her majesties 24th regiment foot in command. Word has reached us of the Isandhlwana massacre. 2000 souls lost. Retreat unlikely will make last stand at the mission .... Chard lay down his pen looked to the west. "Damn, Rain," Colour Sergeant Bourne stated "That wasn't thunder, that was 1000 infantry helmets being struck. The Zulu are sending a message. The storm is upon you." Chard rebuttoned this tunic "I will met that storm w ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The topic of Weekly Challenge #239 will be "Day Job" Hello. This is Laurence Simon of the 100 word stories podcast. The 100 word stories weekly challenge is where I post a topic to podcasting.isfullofcrap.com and then you write and record a story based on that topic. Let's go ahead and set the next topic to Day Job. Send the following to isfullofcrap (at) gmail.com with the subject line of WEEKLY CHALLENGE 239 by midnight on Saturday: * The text of your story. * Your site's URL. * What you would like the topic of Weekly Challe ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #238 - Potato Peels Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Potato Peels! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?StevenTomZackmannKatwoodDannyTJNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Steven "We will find a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #238 – Potato Peels Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #238 - Potato Peels Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Potato Peels! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?StevenTomZackmannKatwoodDannyTJNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Steven "We will find a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Raise the flag As a joke, the doctors trained one of the monkeys they had nursed back to health to raise the flag over their observation post at dawn and lower it at dusk. That monkey taught the other monkeys to perform this trick, and pretty soon there were flags all over the research center, raised and lowered by monkeys. When one of the scientists tried to lower the flag by himself, the monkey bit him. That scientist is known as Patient Zero in the records. Not that there's anybody left to read the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Raise the flag As a joke, the doctors trained one of the monkeys they had nursed back to health to raise the flag over their observation post at dawn and lower it at dusk. That monkey taught the other monkeys to perform this trick, and pretty soon there were flags all over the research center, raised and lowered by monkeys. When one of the scientists tried to lower the flag by himself, the monkey bit him. That scientist is known as Patient Zero in the records. Not that there's anybody left to read the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Medical It used to be that being a werewolf was a death sentence. But thanks to modern medicine and sturdy cages, a werewolf can expect to live out as close-to-normal life as expected. Insurance companies can no longer jack up premiums or dump these afflicted patients as "suffering from a pre-existing condition" or as an "act of God." Thank you, President Obama! And employers cannot discriminate against them as long as they don't pose a danger to their coworkers. Clever and careful scheduling re ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Predator The predator lay in a growing pool of his own blood, flowing over the photos and newspaper clippings he'd taken to remember his crimes. I'd shot him in the hands, the feet, the legs, the arms. He begged for mercy as I reloaded my gun. I ignored his pleas and the growing sound of sirens. He then found some courage. "Who are you to judge me?" he growled, "You have blood on your hands too." And, so I did. "But it's your blood," I said. "Hardly innocent." And then I shot him in the chest ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Cats Defeated Hitler In an underground cafe in Berlin, sitting at a table with a bottle of something dark and crisp, an old man hobbles up to me and hands me a fluffy grey cat. "Cats defeated Hitler," he said, smiling. And he walked back into the shadows. I looked at the cat. The cat looked at me. And purred. I wanted to get up and follow the old man and ask him what he meant, but the cat was so soft and furry, and the purring was so nice. So, I just sat, drank my beer, and surrendered to the grey cat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Bully The Bully watches the playground, grinning. Kids are swinging on the swings, sliding down the slide, and they're all having fun. Nobody is fighting or crying. He can't remember the last time there was any trouble in this playground. The other bullies are gone. Back then, he had heard kids crying, and instead of bullying them, he bullied the bullies. And won. A girl runs up to him and puts a flower in his lap. "Thank you," she says. The bully reaches for the flower with his good han ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gertie and Eustus My rich Great Aunt Gertie lays in bed, eyes closed, arm around her beloved cat, Eustus. He's not the original Eustus. Gertie tried cloning. Cloning is hit-or-miss with personalities, though. Luckily, the last came out nice and docile. Now, she's trying out the latest in hologram fields. Before, they just rendered dusty, translucent ghosts. These days, they're quite lifelike with tactile presence. Eustus wakes up, stretches, and curls back up, purring contentedly. Gertie flickers for ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #237 - Penguins Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Seven, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Penguins! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?TomAM EarleyStevenKatwoodZackmannDannyTedMrs. AbeTJNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Tom His ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Unfair It's interesting to see people adjusting to ever-advancing technology. From chalk and slate to Microsoft MindLink, teachers preparing kids for yesterday's challenges, kids distracted by the newest gadgets. Susie has a dataport on her arm, and she covers it with a long sleeve. MindLink still has brainwipe issues, her parents say. A class in Chicago got zombied last week. She pouts, runs to her room, crying. Plugging in, she updates her journal, tagging it with all the unfairness, all th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bed I lift the covers and slide back into bed. It still smells of you. I imagine that it's still warm with you. I turn off the light, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. The room hasn't changed much. A few familiar things gone, a few new things on the dresser and nightstand. People change. Even you. That's when I hear your key in the lock downstairs. I get out of bed, pull on my clothes, and crawl back out the window. As I watch you sleep, I wonder if you can feel my warmth, smell my ski ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Unfortunate Truth The grayback move carefully to the edge of ridge. The valley was shrouded in mist that curl about the cliff and the true height of the plateau was hidden . The grayback feel the ground slide, tiny stones rolled forward. He reach out but grabbed only wisps of mist. Down into the valley he tumbled 3.5 million years later a team of Stanford students discover the fossils remains of the oldest know ancestor of modern man. The team carefully loads the plane with the fossils unfortunately a mist ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Creepy Silence When you live in a world of light, the darkness is what you fear. And when you live in a world of darkness, you grow to fear the light. Creeping into the cave, the human bumps his head on a stalactite. "Damn it!" Waiting for him is a dark elf, watching quietly. The human hands over a sleeping baby, and the elf hands back a satchel full of gems. "Princess Garamond wants to talk about alimony and visitation," says the human. The dark elf nods. "Less often and for longer, I hope." They ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Potion of Sleep You've got troubles, I've got troubles, we've all got troubles. Tell me your troubles, and I'll make you a potion for them. Got a cut? Got a scrape? Pour this on it. Losing your hair? Rub a little of this one on your head. (And be sure to wear gloves. Trust me on this.) Love? Pain? Joy? This one's special: sleep and death. Just depends how much you take. Careful, kid. I got 'em all in these bottles, every color, every flavor. Sip this, rub that, some drops in your eyes. Give me ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Handy Man I didn't think it was humanly possible to step into a Slim Jim. Its pretty much a glorified strip of metal. But Nelman Freder was not your average soul. He had spent so much time in the ER they had reserved a seat with his name on it. They still tell the tale on the floor about the Gerbil and flashlight extraction. Doctor Dan wasn't surprise to see Nelman hobble on to the floor with a Slim Jim wobbling to and fro embedded in the middle of his foot, a screwdriver in his thigh and door handle ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Hate Of Cake I take the cake out to the grocery store parking lot, remove the lid, and start punching it. Frosting splatters all over the ground and my clothes as my fists pummel the cake into a mushy pulp. Then, I lick my fists and go back into the grocery store. "I'd like another cake," I say. "You've bought four today," says the manager. "And you're covered with cake. What are you doing with them?" "Punching them," I say. "It's cathartic." The manager looks around, sees his employees goofing of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Waiting Bruwyn didn't come home last night. Usually, he's the first to come home, but Myst came home first. Finding a black cat at night is impossible, of course, but you can't just sit down and wait. Walking around, I hear what I think is his collar, but it's just crickets and frogs. So, I come back home, Myst and Nardo wait up with me. If he can't come home for whatever reason, I hope he knows he's loved and missed. And if he doesn't want to come home, well, cats are cats, and I hope he's h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #236 - Halloween Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Six, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Halloween! Remember to psot Rossotron as a separate story ANONYMOUS Always the same, black and orange. Always that nasty color combination for Halloween. I presume it is a mixture of the traditional vampire colors of black and red and the fall color of orange pumpkins. The ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hallow's Eve Every holiday brings its special charms and annoying marketing blitz. All throughout the store, you'll see a lot more orange and black for Halloween. We're not just talking about the piles of candy for handing out to kids. (Although I must admit, I ate my candy stockpile and need to go out and buy more.) You'll see all kinds of products decked out for the season, some of which don't make much sense. Small bottles of Summer's Eve douche, rebranded "All Hallow's Eve." I guess if you're ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Restoring Faith The Sermonizer has been priest of Steamtown for a hundred years, presiding over weddings and funerals, delivering the Sunday sermon without fail. Until today. Pressure tank exploded overnight. Punchcards strewn everywhere. Looking down from the equipment loft, I stare at Sermonizer's marionette, slumped over the pulpit. I climb down the stairs, and I lift it. Not heavy at all, really. I climb back up and tug at the support ropes. Sermonizer wobbles to his feet. "Dearly beloved," I g ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Book Of Life All across the world, Apple and Google fanboys are clutching their chests and keeling over dead in the streets. Why? Every year, The Lord writes our names in The Book Of Life. He adds those who are born and scratches out those who died. But this year, he's catching the e-publishing bug and giving up on the ink and paper. He's worked up a file and sent it to Amazon for publishing on the Kindle. He thought about making an app for Android and iPhone, but those smartphone owners are a bunc ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eight and Ten Everything in Mathematics is pretty much known these days. It takes five hundred pages packed with formulas to come up with something unknown. And those panel discussions are really boring. So, I came up with a simple and fun one: "Why are hot dogs sold in packages of ten and hot dog buns sold in packages of eight?" Wow. You should have seen the fistfights. Then, Weird Al Yankovic, yeah, the musician, steps in and says "I just give the extra 2 hot dogs to my dog." He won the Nobel Priz ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Mechanical Arm The mugger tried to take the girl's purse. She fought back. And lost, with a bullet in her heart. Despite the fact that the girl in the street was dead, her mechanical arm was still running. The AI routine was cycling through idle behaviors, drumming the fingers on the ground, opening and closing on its own. She liked to wear gloves, so the lifelike sleeve with the tattoos ended up convincing the mugger that she was still alive, so he shot her a few more times. The hand kept moving, t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website House Guest I watched the ragged homeless guy haul refrigerator boxes out to the weedpatch by the train tracks. Then, it was shopping carts full of broken appliances. Item after item, he hoarded into a pile until I got curious. There, in the tall grass, was a magnificent palace, constructed of junk and litter. I was buzzed through the gate and met him at the front door. "This place is amazing," I said, and he gave me the tour. A pool. A ballroom. A movie theater. He smiled. "Now that I've got th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #235 - Cabbage Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Five, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Cabbage! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?StevenAM EarleyAnonymousKatwoodTJTomZackmannTedNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Steven The cab ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pirates Surprise IIIII me mateEs we at Pirate Smorgies prides ourselves with the best cuisine available in the Pirate Kingdom. "What the Fuck you talking about. This is a bucket of gruel" return Little Jack Silvers. "IIII gruel it be but the best gruel their be." "Best? I think not. Molly McKnees got better" said peg leg Bruce. "III but is it at molly's 'tis not all you can eat?" "I wouldn't eat any of it." Said jack Well I guess that would constitute all you can eat. me boy. "Screw this I going to g ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Ghosts In My Pants Most ghosts appear as sheets flapping in the wind, but the ghosts that haunt my house appear as torn and worn-out pants flying around. At first, I found them frightening, but in time I've grown used to them. They're even somewhat ludicrous when I think about them. Especially when they fly around with their zippers undone. "X Y Z," I say to a passing ghost, and the jeans hover there for a moment before zipping up. It goes back to moaning and flapping around with the others. The laundry ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rehab Things got crazy at the party. Talia overdosed on longevity drugs and went into a coma. We handed her off to the Sleeping Beauty Ward. They gave us an estimate of 80 years before she'd come out of it. Eighty years? They handed me the bill for her babysitting, and I scraped up most of it. A kidney and some skin for burn grafts covered the rest. That was 79 years ago. Vital signs say she'll wake up soon. Never did find anyone else, too old for her now. I wrote one last note and walked ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Dead Bird I've had this bird for years. Used to be pretty with bright white feathers. One morning, I lifted the cage's cover and it was lying there on the bottom of the cage, ugly and dead. I was about to open the cage when I saw it twitch. I'd seen this in the news: zombie birds. If it hadn't have twitched, it would have bitten off a finger or two. I padlocked the latch to keep it from escaping. Now, it just claws and bites at the bars of the cage, getting scrawnier and uglier over the years. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Great Claw The Great Claw wobbles over our ravaged city. Every now and then, it descends and grabs at a car or a building and yanks it up into the sky. Invading the world wasn't enough for the aliens, so they put it up there to torment us. "The rest of the world is dead," said the message. "But you'll keep us amused while we extract the necessary isotopes for our next journey." Scientists at the university tried to come up with defenses, but The Great Claw ended those plans. It rained bricks as t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Last Photograph The Conquest Museum on the Zagitz homeworld has many exhibits, but the most popular is the last remaining human DNA sample. Drones guide their podlings to the guarded platform for a peek at the vial in magnetic suspension. The thing is, that's not the real sample. It's just for display purposes. Some claim that the real sample is in a research asteroid where the government is cooking up new batches of humans to stage fake invasions. But the truth is, there's no human DNA left. The human ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bystander Who names a child Innocent Bystander? I look over the victim's medical records and shake my head. A car jumped the curb and mowed down a bunch of kids on the sidewalk. They all suffered broken arms and legs except for one: little Innocent here, laying on the gurney. His parents have asked for no autopsy. It's obvious that the driver is to blame for the kid's death, right? Except that he's not. The kid was standing in the middle of the street, and the driver swerved to avoid him. Afte ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #234 - Cotton Mouth Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Four, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Cotton Mouth! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?A.M. EarleyTomDaveStephenKatwoodTedKathleenNorval JoeTJPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): A.M Earley ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website They don't look Swedish Some claim Landord Zoelin was a mad scientist I'd say he was just plan sad. Example what sort of evil genus would combined cyborgs with toothpaste. Your going to deploy them with an army of marauding dental floss. "You laugh today" screamed Zoelin. "But one day I and Colgate Palmolive with rule the world. Into the room oozed Cyborg 1052 "Resistance is futile," he sloshed. A minty green nano tube smacked Zoelin in the forehead. Wiping goo off his face he yelled, "Someone get this moron bac ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Do you trust these pancakes? The courts upheld the ban against pancakes last year. Now, the only place you can get pancakes is an underground grill. Or, if you risk it, at home. "We're making waffles," I tell the grocery checkout girl as she holds up my maple syrup bottle suspiciously. The government says that waffles are a gateway breakfast food leading to pancakes, but I disagree. I like waffles. I like bacon. I like orange juice. But pancakes? No. They don't hold butter or syrup like waffles do. She bags the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Food chain Several months after the oil spill, the government kept the real environmental impact assessments suppressed. President Blaine grinned as he stood before a table piled high with steaming shrimp and crabs. He rubbed his stomach, full of salad that he'd eaten on the Air Force One flight down to the photo op, and said "Delicious!" The studies, on the other hand, screamed "Dangerous!" Plankton contaminated. Small filter-feeders contaminated. Bigger fish contaminated. Predator species contam ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Arch I watched as the Gateway Arch came to life. It pulled at the anchor pads, legs straining and buckling from the effort. People were streaming out of the emergency exits as one foot broke free and stamped at them. A few people got crushed before the Arch pulled up its other leg from the ground. Free at last, it roamed the city, crushing cars and buildings while news helicopters circled it. The Arch couldn't do much to them, being an arch without hands or laser-beam eyes. So it rampaged ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mister Invisible Mister Invisible is a member of our superhero team, but I'm not sure why. He will only attend meetings when we use a sign-in sheet and lock the conference room doors. It's an insult, he says. We don't make Mystic Seer demonstrate that he's not astrally projecting away, right? Right. I checked the call logs and saw that he hasn't been calling The League Of Evil as much as he used to. So, I inspect his suite, and find the cell phone. And the nuclear bomb. "It's armed," he says, and hit ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Muppets It's been a while since you heard anything out of the Muppets, right? Oh, sure. Jim Henson's Workshop carries on, but when you ask about the Muppets, they hush up quick. It turns out they tried to make a movie about the Sicilian Mafia: The Godfrogger. After watching a preview copy, a boss named Don Music wasn't amused at his portrayal as a failed songwriter bashing his head against a piano. Fozzie ended up as a bearskin rug on his floor. Kermit got skinned and stretched over a pool tabl ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pascal's Wager You need a little history lesson, Sonny. Blaise Pascal said that even though one could not prove God's existence through reason, one should bet on God's existence because you have Eternity to gain if you're right and nothing to lose if you're wrong. To bet on Him not existing means you can earn Damnation or Nothingness. Which would you choose? Anyway, lifelong afflictions suggested he hadn't long to live, but making bizarre wagers based on God's existence actually caused his early demis ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ten by Tom Somehow, this story by Tom got eaten by a grue at Gmail, so he re-sent it and I'l posting it as a featured story. Please treat the comments section here as where to vote for this story in the polls. It was the bottom of the 10th at Wriggle. 10th game of the series. Ernie Banks the XVIth was at full count 10 fouls in a row. The cubbies needed a run to stay in the 3010 series. The pitch was high and outside. Banks cranked his shoulder twisted his wrist. The crack echo across the stadium. De ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #233 - Ten Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Three, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Ten! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?ChibiStevenLyndaZackmannKatwoodNorval JoeTJA.M. EarleyTedPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Chibi Ten fingers ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Man After countless adventures with Curious George, The Man in the Yellow Hat got tired of chasing him down and having to pay for damage. For a while, he kept the rambunctious monkey locked in a cage. The little creature couldn't escape, and he would shriek all day long. The neighbors complained. They said The Man that he was being cruel, keeping George in a cage, so he let George out and fed him tranquilizers. These days, you'll see them walking hand-in-hand, The Man smiling wide with his g ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Big Guns Whenever he's cornered in an argument, Louis always threatens to get out "The Big Guns." I'm not sure what he's got up his sleeve, but then it's Louis, and he's a little crazy. There's no telling what he's capable of when backed into a corner. So, we just let Louis off the hook and shake hands and go have a beer together. No sense in pushing the guy on it. It's just not worth it. Sure, I'd love to see these big guns Louis talks about. I collect guns and have an appreciate for fine weapo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Turned My World She turned my whole world upside-down. Switching the polarity on the gravity generators is easy to do, after all. But it causes a hell of a lot of damage to anything not bolted down. I switched polarity on the generators again, suffered another rolling series of crashes and clatter on the research platform, and put a password on the system. It took me weeks to clean up, and fifteen billion dollars worth of experiments were ruined. I tell her how much damage she's caused. Her display s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hard news to swallow The ringmaster took Luigi to his office. "Sword-swallowing isn't exciting," he said. "You can't see the action. It's hidden inside." Luigi tried to argue, but failed. "Report to Bobo." Luigi sighed and left for the clown tent. Two hours later, he saw himself in the mirror, covered in bright, garish makeup. "Not bad," said Bobo putting a hand on Luigi's shoulder. "Look, I know this is humiliating. We'll work your swords into the act somehow." Luigi nodded. "C'mon. Dinnertime. Let's f ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What do we charge? What do we charge for a love potion? Only ten bucks. They're pretty cheap and easy to make, when you think about it. Heck, the bottle costs more than the ingredients, which are just rainwater and a little salt. This is why we try to have you drink these things in the store, or we ask that you bring the empty bottle when you want the antidote. Why do we charge a thousand bucks for the antidote when the love potion costs only ten? Because we can. And based on how desperate people are, t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hercules In Greek mythology, Hercules is often credited with performing twelve labors. However, the original poem laying out these labors was lost to history. All we have are poems and stories inspired by the original poem. Until now. Reading these ceremonial urns, painstakingly pieced together by my team, it turns out that Hercules was the name of a town, not a single person. It wasn't a single individual performing these labors, but a community coming together to get these seemingly impossible ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #232 - Banned Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Two, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Banned! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Katwood92RossDave A.TomZackmannJustinTerenceTJNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Katwood It was a h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Neptune The psychiatrist arrives just in time. On the rocks, the Sea God is arguing with himself, shaking his trident, raising waves higher and higher. "Neptune fighting Poseidon again, Sam?" he asks, climbing into the rowboat. "Yep," I say, lighting my pipe and pulling the rope from the mooring post. "Poor god's mind has cracked. His delusions are getting worse." The doctor pats my shoulder. "Go!" I row out into the swells. Fifty yards out, he puts a needle into my shoulder. "Just relax" he ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Octoberville Jenny and I leave the turn-of-the-century town for the woods, watching for signs of Octoberville's return. It fades into existence at September's end, and returns to the void after thirty-one days. The buildings are worn and run-down, but comfortable. The residents are the same, shabby but content, shambling around the paths from shack to shack. Merchants bring food from the harvest. "What happens when you go away?" I ask the mayor. "Go away?" he says. "Octoberville doesn't go away. W ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Kiss They were the perfect couple, I swear they were. They'll be together until the end of their days, I had thought. He said "I love you" to another woman, and that earned him a knife in his throat. She was going to cut out his eyes when the bartender hit her with the bottle. Now he doesn't say anything to anyone, just whispers to himself every now and then. And she just sits by the window, staring at things nobody else can see. Wrecked and lost, no longer perfect, but they'll still be to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paradise Packed All of the scientists agree: our species has passed the tipping point. The ecosystems could no longer sustain our presence. Either our species went, or all species. So, we took samples of everything, extracted the DNA, and packed them all into stasis pods. Some of them we'll launch into space as permanent memorials to our world. Others will stay in orbit, ready to return when our planet had recovered from our mistakes. We released the retrovirals at dawn, watching the horror spread acr ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scarface Al Capone claimed that his facial scars were a war wound, and his bodyguard would chuckle at the comment. "What are you laughing at?" said Al, and his bodyguard went silent. The bodyguard was the one who had slashed Al for insulting his sister. Years later, after Al died in prison, the bodyguard went out in the streets and found a kid in a gang. "C'mere," he said, and he slashed the kid's face three times. The kid's mouth hung open, and then a familiar sneer came over his face. "Nice ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I can't complain How are things going? I can't complain. No. Really. I can't complain. My doctor got fed up with my constant complaining, so he suggested an experimental treatment. I now have a microchip in my head that will stop me when I complain. I absolutely love this thing. I don't complain about anything anymore. Life is good when you have no complaints. Oh, sure, I have problems, mind you. Life's not perfect, but instead of complaining about them, I try to resolve them. Usually, I do. But wh ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #231 - Stand Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-One, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Stand! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?TomKatwood92ZackmannStephenTJJeffreyPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Tom The carriage pulled to an abrupt sto ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Pipes No matter where you dig, you'll eventually reach The Pipes. We're miles from where the City Of Steel used to be. Before civilization collapsed. And yet, out here, there are pipes. There are no markings on them to identify what flowed through them. Nobody can break them open, either. Some are warm, and others sweat water when the rains don't come. Maybe they were part of an irrigation project? As long as crops grow here and they don't come up toxic, we are safe. Sow the seeds, curse ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Batsignal I think we need to talk about the Batsignal again, Gordon. There's the issue with what merits a BatSignal. Two Face threatening to blow up a building is a Yes. Goons robbing a bank is a No. You have SWAT for that, right? Your crazy daughter Barbara wanting me to read a bedtime story is a Hell No. And I can't see it during the day. The Joker and Penguin have changed their capering schedules. Can't you just SMS my BatPhone, dude? Now nod your head like you understand what I said or I'm ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Codex We came across The Codex during our excavation. It is a stone obelisk with three sides, a different language on each side. Unlike the Rosetta Stone, we have no idea what these languages are. We post photographs to JonesNet and wait for answers, but none of the wired archaeologists and researchers in the world have any clue, either. The shapes and lines and dots resemble no other written language ever encountered. So, we keep digging, but find no other writing resembling it. We come to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Promises The Promises Van: a steel hulk raised up on massive wheels. It rolls from neighborhood to neighborhood, collecting promises between citizens. Nobody knows what Central Authority does with the promises. Some say they keep a file on everyone making promises and what they're promising. Others say they're planning a celebration soon, and the Promises Van will delivering on the promises. But the Promises Van never goes to Central Authority. It just goes in a circuit, over and over. It neve ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gray Hair I remember when I discovered my first gray hair. I was looking in the mirror and I saw a flash of something. So, I stopped and looked around for a minute, and I found it. A gray hair, tempting me to remove it. I plucked it out. Pretty soon, there were too many to pluck out. Eventually, the gray hairs outnumbered the black hairs. Now, I search and search, and only find gray hairs. Except for one. I look at it, and it tempts me to remove it. So, I get the tweezers, and pluck it out ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Every 20 minutes Every 20 minutes, the timer goes off and I do 20 situps. Sure, diet and walking can shed the pounds, but I carry my weight in my gut, so I needed to get better about targeting my trouble areas. Situps are easy to do, and setting a kitchen timer to force myself to do reps over and over has been great about keeping the pace. However, after a while, you can overdo it. Hernias can be repaired, but lethal strokes can't. The timer goes off, and I feel a poke from the demon sitting on a stool ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #230 - Drabble Like A Pirate Day Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Thirty, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's DRABBLE LIKE A PIRATE DAY! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?TJFreereedTomZackmannStevenAbigailNorval JoeThe Dread Pirate of Planet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Typing I'm tired, and I'm out of ideas for stories. So, I head to the writer's group and sit at a typewriter. Other writers are there, typing away. The sound of the typewriters, humming and clacking, makes me relax, and I feel a little drowsy. So I fold my arms on the desk and rest my head for a bit. Sleep takes me, and I dream of The Woman With Typewriter Keys For Eyes. I pull the ribbons from her hair, my hands come away stained with ink. And... I wake up, and my tongue is caught in the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Retraining I've tried to diet before, but it never worked. I'd get back into the habit of eating junk food and it would all fall apart. So, I trained myself to dislike junk food. Now, instead of craving potato chips, I hate them. When I see someone with a bag, I grab it out of their hands, throw it to the ground, and stomp them to bits. This is rather violent and destructive, but it's better than people who train themselves to fear foods. After all, how do you think vampires got that way about g ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cave Paintings I am sitting in a cave, scared. It is cold, damp and dark. Every Winter solstice, the sun's rays illuminate the wall so that the figures appear to dance. I've tried it with flashlights, spotlights- but it has to be sunlight on this specific day. I say it's a magic spell, cast by a long-dead shaman. Light peeks in through the cave's entrance... and then it gets darker. I hear thunder. Damn. Awful time for a rainstorm. Except... there's no rain. It gets darker, the figures dance, and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Organized I refuse to be a part of any organized religion. So, I've joined a highly-disorganized church. I'm not sure of the name of it. The signs all say different things. One sign suggests that it's a military research facility. Perhaps at one time it was, but I have yet to have someone from the military research me during a service. Pews are scattered about, there's no telling what kind of book you'll read from. I've got a phonebook this week. There is no choir. People sing when they want to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shoulders Most people have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, giving them advice as they go through their lives. I have two angels on my shoulders. No devil. All I get is good advice and admonishment when I don't follow it. If I have two angels on my shoulders, is someone out there with two devils on theirs? Instead of getting a constant stream of goodness, they're under the influence of evil. That's why I kidnapped you. You look like a two-devil person to me. The angels are tel ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weird Mrs Jones knocked on her neighbor's door and asked for a cup of weird. "I'm having some trouble keeping up with the weird bill," she said. "You know, with the rates going up recently and Henry and I being on a fixed income after he was laid off before he could retire early and get his pension-" The neighbor made a hand gesture suggesting One moment, please and went down into their dungeon. A minute later, they came back with a glowing, steaming mug of weird. "Oh, thank you," said Mrs. J ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #229 - Books Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Nine, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Books! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?FreereedZackmannTomStevenTJAlmoNorval JoeJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Freereed Double Books ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How do you make a joke? The back doors to the ambulance flew open and a man covered with blood was rushed into the emergency room. The paramedics said he was a comedian who had been beaten up by an angry mob. After he was handed off to the doctors, the paramedics went out for a smoke with the desk clerk. "Let me guess," said the clerk. "He tried to tell 9/11 jokes and the crowd got really ugly." "No," said the paramedic. "He was at a dinner party hosted by the Saudi Arabian consulate." "So why was he attacked ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Grim Arena The gladiators draw their rubber chickens, salute the crowd, and begin their battle. "What's with the chickens?" asks the emperor. "Budget cutbacks," responded his page. "You said you'd rather have swordfish dinners instead of swords." The emperor patted his full belly and smiled. "I love swordfish." And then he frowned. "But grown men whacking each other with rubber toys is boring. Can't they just fight with their fists? Or tell the guards to toss them their weapons?" "Budget cutbacks, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website For Your Eyes Only Sometimes, a document is too secret to be marked TOP SECRET. So they make those For Your Eyes Only. The document only appears to the recipient. To everyone else, they don't see anything. Not even a sheet of paper. It's printed using a quantum ink and paper from phase-controlled wood pulp that only activates one unique set of sensory-processing neurons. The problem is that when an agent resigns, you don't know it they've destroyed all their documents. We could surgically remove their ey ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website After The War The Review Board wants to interview me today. I go down to the new Town Hall, passing the rubble of the old one. "Were you in the war?" they ask. The scars and my withered hand say yes. "I don't remember," I say, just as the Veteran Release Center told me to say. A doctor scans my brain with a wand. "He's clean," he says. "All memories gone." "Innocent," the Board declares, and my ID is stamped with a black V. Outside, a woman points at me and screams. "BUTCHER!" She is arrested. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Password Protected My memories are valuable and corporate hypno-spies are everywhere. All it takes is a dazzlestick to stop someone on the street and open them up for a psychic fileclerk to rifle through. So, I decided to protect them. The process isn't easy, and it takes weeks of sessions to catalog secrets for storage in secure areas of the brain. I woke up one morning, tried to think of those things, and realized... I didn't remember any of them. Protected. Secure. Perfect. Time to go to work... Wa ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Last Piece Of Pie I take the pie out of the oven and put it out on the counter to cool. Everybody is so polite here, so nobody's willing to take the last piece of pie. Or the second-to-last piece of pie. Same with the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth-to-last pieces of pie. In fact, nobody's willing to take a piece of pie at all. Just to start the process will cause that last-piece-of-pie situation to come about. So it sits on the counter for days. Spoils, covered with mold, and completely inedible. (N ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #228 - Muffin Basket Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Eight, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Muffin Basket! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?FreereedTomTJMurrayAbigailZackmannStevenNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Freereed "Yer a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Mummy Train Mark Twain used to joke that the wrappings for mummies were used in pulp for newspapers and their bodies burned to run trains. But neither was true. Instead, mummies were employed by the newspapers in the printing presses, shambling around the massive rollers. If one got caught up in the machinery and torn to bits, who cared, right? They were already dead, their families long gone. Letting them don engineer caps and run trains, well, that was a lot more dangerous. Mummy brakemen tended ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crazy Never Sleeps Crazy never sleeps. You might crawl into bed and close your eyes, but while you're asleep, Crazy is up and pacing the floor, listening to voices that nobody speaks with. Crazy can't be locked in the basement or tied to a chair. No matter what you do, Crazy gets loose and goes crazy on everything. Broken dishes. Knives stuck in the sofa. The tub overflowing again. Who knows what you'll wake up to this time? So, you stay up later... and later... You try to stay up later than crazy does. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mushroom King We all marvel at the magnificent crown of The Mushroom King. But how did he get his mighty crown? Well, as all Mushroom Kings do: he rolled his head in a bucket of shit, cultivated and grew mushrooms on it, and kept them growing... and growing... and growing... Until he had the greatest crown of all. That's when we named him the new Mushroom King. As for his throne, that's from the previous Mushroom King. His crown grew far too large, and he sank into the shit, gone forever. Except f ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Axe Every time I go to Lord Greybeard's Castle, I can't help but stare at the axe he's mounted over the fireplace in the Main Hall. It's old and rusty, but every so often there's fresh blood along the blade. There's no way that Lord Greybeard used it, let alone any of his servants. The thing is massive, with a six foot wooden shaft and a blade that must weigh over a hundred pounds. Lord Greybeard notices my curiosity, puts an arm around my shoulder, and laughs. "I cut myself shaving," he sa ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Draw a red line I watch my daughter drawing a red line. She started drawing on her sketchbook, but ran off of the paper, along the floor... And right out the door. I shouted for her to come back, but why worry? She'll run out of ink or get tired... One hour... two hours... I get up and shout again. No answer. So, I follow the red line. That was seventeen years and ten thousand miles ago. You can't see the line? Oh, it's there. Just too faint for you to see. But I can. And I will follow it until ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Candles When Bobby turned five, he wanted his cake decorated like that "Harry Potter" series of books he'd seen, but was too young to read or watch the movies. "No," his mother said. (When you're five, you don't take no for an answer.) So, his mother made a cake with a demon made out of chocolate cookies inside an icing pentagram, a candle at each star point. At the party, all of Bobby's friends sang, and then he blew out the candles. "What did you wish for?" his mother asked. The demon on th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Your Shadow Sometimes The world stinks So much That your shadow Your goddamned shadow Has to take A long bath To wash It off No matter How much It scrubs And scrubs The world's stink Sticks harder And never Washes off Completely Everything stinks Around you Cover it up All you want With soaps And perfumes It's still there And it never Goes away If your shadow Can't come clean, What hope Do you have? None. Pull the plug The water Drains out You tried But That stink Gets worse So bad you gag Close ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Footprints Footprints in and of themselves aren't terribly interesting. But when you take them in context, that's when my curiosity is piqued. Walking to the edge of the roof... Walking straight into a wall... Walking in a perfect circle without beginning or end... And then there's the depth, which tells you how much the person weighs. Or is carrying. A body, for instance. There's shoe tread, all sorts of factors there. There's nothing unusual about my footsteps. Well, besides the fact that I'v ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Groceries I know, it's not considered socially acceptable to eat something in the grocery store before you check out and actually buy it. But there's some situations where you just have to break from the norm. I'm not talking about a free sample here and there, okay? When I see parents let kids stick their grubby hands in the bulk bins or cracking open a soda bottle on a day when it's not hot, that drives me mad. And it distracts me from this boiling pot for the lobsters. Got the butter melted y ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scarecrow After Dorothy slew the Wicked Witch and Scarecrow was crowned as King Of Oz to rule in place of the departing Wizard, the sharpness of the tacks in his head didn't always lead to the brightest of decisions. Time brings rust, after all. He was hailed when he was wise. He was vilified for his foolish times. So he enjoyed the times when he was hoisted on shoulders and led through Emerald City in a parade. And he learned to hide when angry mobs wanted to burn him in effigy. "They might mis ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #226 - Autumn Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Six, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Autumn! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?FreereedTJZackmannGracefulAbigailNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Freereed the most famous clo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Heartache After the funeral, I fired up Johnny's brainscan on the simulator. Johnny eventually calmed down, and I was able to understand him. He wanted to know what was said at his funeral, who was there, and who wasn't. He also wanted to know how his donated organs were holding up. (I guess when you don't have kids or pets or someone else in your life, that's the next best thing, right?) I asked him what his password was. When he finally told me, I logged on to the banking system, transferred ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Codebreakers Deep under a secret military base, there's a room. In the room, 100 clones of the world's greatest codebreaker work day and night. We feed signals into their headphones and laptops, and they work furiously on their decoding machines. Chewing up top secret military communications is their specialty. There hasn't been a code invented that can get by them. We can't let them out, but we can bring them games and puzzles. We used to show them movies, but someone decided to show them David Ly ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Ants All day long, Jimmy would burn ants with a magnifying glass, grinning madly. He did this for weeks on end, until the ants all vanished. Did he burn them all? Hardly. At night, the ants went into the tool shed, gathering up metal and lawn care chemicals. With tiny ant hammers and anvils, they pounded and shaped until, at last, they were ready. The sun woke Jimmy up, and he dressed quickly to go out to play. As he stared at the anthill, it erupted into a deadly green cloud. The ants o ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website We, the Confused Hey, man. We'll go sit around a fire in the woods, passing a funstick around. "Cmon, lick one side, then the other, and then pass it on. After a few seconds, you'll notice a bit of wobbling around the edges of everything. Colors change. Shapes change. Everything changes. Trippy! Then, normal comes back in a rush. For a while, normal feels like change, and everything around you is new and strange. Okay, now get up. Feel the bark on the trees. Feel the grass. Look at the stars. Wicke ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website They should do something The bumpersticker on the first SUV said "DRILL BABY DRILL." The other SUV had dozens of stickers representing environmental groups which disagreed with that sentiment. Same make. Same model. Same lousy gas mileage. Both were parked next to each other at the grocery store. They'd both run inside "for just a minute" and left the engines running. And the doors unlocked. So, I reached in and turned the keys, shutting off the engines. Then I threw the keys down a sewer grate. Maybe it wo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Do you believe in magic? How does that old song go? "Do you believe in magic in a young girl's eye?" I sure do. Which is why so many girls in this village have eyepatches and I'm still healthy after ninety years on the throne. They make the most potent longevity potions. I've warned the royal magician to be fair about his harvesting of eyes, though. Visit each girl only once, and pay twenty gold coins. No sense in getting a reputation for miserliness and unnecessary cruelty. And, despite my desire to live fore ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #225 - Friend Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Five, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Friend! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?LizzieBethKelleyKristineZackmannFreereedAlmoTJNorval JoeArriPetlovePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Lizzi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fighting City Hall Remember the old saying that you can't fight City Hall? Well, those people were wrong. City Hall cut me off while I was driving to work, so I chased it down and yelled at it when we got to the parking garage. Harsh words were exchanged, and the next thing I knew City Hall had punched me in the gut. So, I swung back and we fought for a bit, and I won. By the time the cops arrived, we sorted out our differences and I drove off. The next day, someone had keyed my car door. Motherfucking ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Drawers Sandy took off her shoes and sat down. Then she slid off her jeans, took off her top, and tossed aside her bra. Stepping out of her panties, she opened her drawer and dropped her breasts on a towel. Then she reached between her legs and peeled quickly. (It stung less that way.) Shutting the drawer, she opened another, and put himself back together. Looking in the mirror, he wiped the makeup from his face. He checked the clock: a little early. He smiled, and opened the first drawer. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Squeegie Every day, I drive to work on Culpepper Road. And every day, the same homeless guy is standing there at the light. He stands there with a squeegie and two buckets, offering to clean your windshield. His cardboard sign says he'll do it for free, God bless you, and the usual crap. But he's really expecting a buck. Or five. If you give him money, he uses the bucket full of soapy water. If you don't give him money, he splashes the other bucket on your car. What's in the bucket? Drive by ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Contrived The police reviewed the tapes from the bank and admitted that the scene looked somewhat contrived. Robbers were holding sheets of paper in their hands, reading their lines, while the bank teller kept prompting them every time they went off-script. Their guns looked like toy guns. The orange tips gave them away. When the bank teller accidentally hit the alarm switch with his knee, he kept saying "I'm sorry about that!" and helped the robbers carry two sacks of cash to the getaway car. As ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website On the eighth day... On the seventh day, God rested. But on the eighth day, the angels came to God's office and found the door locked. There were strange sounds coming from behind the door. Nothing the angels immediately recognized. Maybe heavy breathing, or a wet finger stroked along the lip of a wineglass. They knocked a few times, but the door didn't open. And the sounds became louder and stranger. Some of the angels wanted to break the door down, but in the end, they just walked away. On the ninth d ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Prayer Flags Atisha Cho was a Tibetan stripper who's routine involved the judicious use and slow removal of strings of prayer flags. As she peeled away the blue flags, the skies darkened. As she peeled away the white flags, the wind ran through her hair. As she peeled away the red flags, the fires burned brighter. As she peeled away the green flags, it started to rain. And as she peeled away the yellow flags, the ground shook and cracked open, swallowing her up, screaming and naked. Since then, Ti ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #224 - Everyday Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Four, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Everyday! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?LizzieBethMattTJKelleyZackmannJeffreyNorval JoeJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): LizzieBeth Devas ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Minister We are a small town on the prairie. Not many people come here from the rest of the world. And we really like it here, there's not much reason to leave. We don't bother with televisions, the one radio station's fine enough. It plays the same music it has always played, over and over. Because we grew up with it, and like it. There's one church we all go to every Sunday. The minister starts at the pulpit, gives the same sermon every week. Then we go home, step on to our recharger pads, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Middle Name I don't have a middle name. I mean, I don't have one anymore. I sold it to someone who didn't have a middle name, found mine interesting, and offered me money for it. "Why not just change your name?" I asked. "We don't do that in my culture," he said. "There are only so many names available, and we compete for them. If we cannot win one, we buy it." He handed me a check. There was a large number on it. I agreed and wrote my name on it. Then scratched out the middle name. It's not mi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fear Final evening approaches: Ramadan. Father enters, asks "Ready?" Forty elders and relatives. Fatima expects a riot. Find everyone a rug. Face east and recite. Fatima's excited. Allah! Rejoice! Fasting ends. All relax. Fried eggs are ready. Fennel, eggplant, and rice. Fish, endive, and rosemary. "Fantastic! Elegant! Amazing! Righteous!" Friends eat and ruminate. Finish eating and regroup. "Fun? Entertainment?" ask relatives. Farts. Embarrassment. Awfully rude. Flustered excuse ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Knots in my stomach I feel knots in my stomach. So, I swallow a Boy Scout. He crawls back out. "I forgot my flashlight," he says, and crawls back in. He tries to untie it, but it turns out that his knots badge is a fake. So, I go down to the docks and swallow a dockworker. You'd think that a professional who works with knots all day could untie it, but he was stumped. "I just do boat hitches," he said, tipping his cap and going back to work. So, you say you're a backpacker? Handy with bungee cord? Mi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website My Spy An assassin is following me. He's an expert at this. Wouldn't suspect a thing if you saw him there. Friendly. Polite. Well-groomed. But I know what he's really doing: Following me. So, I turn the tables on him. I put on a disguise, cover my tracks, and follow him. He doesn't suspect a thing. Doesn't break cover. Maintains his routine. Excellent. I corner him in an alley, a knife to his throat. He's surprised and denies being my assassin. Just like all the rest. I bury him in the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Kraken Off the coast of Port Byron, the seas boil with tentacles. The Great Kraken has returned for its Solstice Sacrifice, part of the pact our ancestors made with the beast. We load up a boat with murderers, thieves, and the feeble, lowering it into the water and sending its shabby crew to their doom. Some townsfolk make a picnic out of the occasion. They toast the ancestors with champagne, and feast on kraken tentacles, boiled in butter. We give up our own, the Great Kraken reciprocates. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Flounce It all started with flouncing. "Gathered or pleated?" asked the forum moderator for The Dressmaker's Dummy online community portal. Some dressmakers swore by gathered material, but others insisted that pleated was best. That's when the YouTube videos appeared, demonstrating one style's superiority over the other. Others used the opportunity to drag out dead horses to beat, deriding materials like suede and burlap, even though they were completely off-topic. Finally, someone posted "Hit ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Astonished Nobody was astonished when Missy Johnson ended up in prison. She was the black sheep of the family, the first kid to be sent to reform school kindergarten. When other children were learning to count and watching Sesame Street, she was running guns to Belize and ruled the city's drug lords with an iron fist. In between Nap Times, of course. Pretty soon, all organized crime in the world was under Missy's thumb, and her babysitters became her lieutenants, helping her run a global prostitut ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Creative Juices We let the children play with their toys and draw with crayons for an hour. Then, the valves open and knockout gas puts them to sleep. Nap time. When they wake up, they have no memory of our hooking up the spinal shunts and draining them of their creative juices. Looking around the room, they pick up the crayons and stick them in their mouths or put them up their noses. The toys are used to smash other toys or hit other kids. Eventually, they learn to play and draw again. And we are ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Where do babies come from? Where do babies come from? After the Cobalt War, they come from The Baby Factory. Deep underground, shielded from the radiation and toxins in the air and soil, geneticists assemble the next generation. Or, if we can't remove enough of the contaminants, the last generation. This time, the scientists are working on adding thick hides, culled from rhinoceros genes. The babysitters have a high suicide rate, watching wave after wave of monsters come from the labs, dying from horrifying dise ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Gliders Observer gliders soar through the clouds, spreading the latest batch of chemicals cooked up by the Weather Division. "Rain will be purple today," they said. The chemicals are meant to turn the rain purple, but the rain is more pink than purple. And when we catch it on our tongues, it burns. Everybody runs for cover, and we watch the streets sizzle with acidic fury. Then, the storm passes, and we wander the pock-marked streets stained with the melted-off paint from cars. The Weather Di ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vagrant Of all of Zeus' guises, he enjoyed taking the form of a vagrant the most. There was something strange about having a body, but still being invisible to everyone around him. Nobody sees what they don't want to see. People would pass him by, only noticing him if he were in their way, blocking their progress through their pointless mortal lives. "Get out of my way, you bum!" growled a merchant. "Can't you see I'm busy shopping for my wife?" Leda, isn't it? thought Zeus. He smiled a rakis ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #223 - At The Fair The 100 word stories weekly challenge is where I post a topic to podcasting.isfullofcrap.com and then you write and record a story based on that topic. Let's go ahead and set the next topic to At The Fair. Send the following to isfullofcrap (at) gmail.com with the subject line of WEEKLY CHALLENGE 223 by midnight on Saturday: The text of your story. Your site's URL. What you would like the topic of Weekly Challenge #224 to be. A recording of your story in .mp3 format. If you do not feel ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #222 - Two Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-two, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Two! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?CalebStevenZackmannIshtarNorval JoeTJJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Caleb "This town aint small enou ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website the Needle I prefer analog to digital displays. There's just something about watching a needle pulse inside a dial, crawling slowly up the scale into the red. You don't get the same sense of urgency when you see a bunch of numbers laid out on a console. Or a set of colored LEDs, lighting up in series. The needle throbs and twitches, like it's alive. You forget it's just a measuring device, wired through miles of circuitry. That's what happened to me and the temperature indicator in my capsule. D ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Music Man Don Music was a puppet on a children's show who'd get so frustrated trying to compose a song, he'd bash his head against the piano keys and give up. Sadly, some children got the crazy idea that the proper response to frustration is to bash your head repeatedly against it. These kids would bash their heads against their desks, balefully moaning "I CAN'T DO IT!" One was the son of a florist, and after school he'd help out in the shop. No matter what he tried, he never could keep a cactus ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beating My stomach is growling. But I just ate. I just ate a dog. And the dog is growling. It's a small dog, so I could still be hungry. And if my stomach is growling because I am still hungry, the dog might be growling back at my stomach. I will beat it with a hammer until it stops growling. (The dog, not my stomach) (Although if I beat the dog, I beat my stomach, since it is inside my stomach.) I should never have eaten the dog. But I was hungry and my stomach was growling. Like it is n ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Troll Every time I need to cross the river, I look forward to crossing the troll's bridge. He does a fine job of keeping the bridge maintained, and has recently strengthened it for heavier cart traffic. Commerce and trade are booming now. Today, I'm delivering kegs to his tavern. "More ale!" cheers the troll. Every patron stands up and raises their flagons in respect to the host. Hungry? His wife bakes the most excellent pies. Sometimes I come here just for the pie. We unload the kegs and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website City of Smoke The smoke came gradually, over decades. At first, people could go around with a wet handkerchief on their faces, but after a while we needed full facemasks and breathing filters. Eventually, nothing but air tanks would suffice. Travelers say the Five Cities have also been swallowed by the smoke, and it has almost reached the Sea of Sorrows. Warlock Sturgis once kept the smoke at bay, but he and his apprentice vanished years ago. He left his library behind, but none of the sages and sch ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Medical Issue The minister's absence was explained as a "medical issue." He sat in the morgue, waiting for the coroner to find a body similar to his for substitution. "What about DNA?" asked the coroner. The minister rolled up his sleeve. "Take blood from me now, compare it to itself when they bring you the body back." The coroner nodded, took a needle from the supply closet and swabbed the minister's arm. The minister smiled, and then his strange face went slack. The new minister entered the room, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #221 - Psyche Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-one, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Psyche! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Guard13007StevenZackmannTJNorval JoeJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Guard13007 Psyche was a beaut ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mirror Mirror What? Yes, my name is Mirror Mirror. My parents had a sick sense of humor. The Queen was just plain sick. When she found out about my skill with poetry, I was dragged to the castle so that I could heap praise upon her beauty. Well, until that beauty faded. Then, one day, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful girl walking down the road outside the castle. "Snow White," the scullery maid said her name was. I was left speechless. The Queen asked me who the fairest of all was. I answered, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Keep Warm Winter is coming, and we watch the nearby islands raise their sails to catch the tradewinds for warmer seas. But ours will not join them in the Great Migration. "We stay," says the tribal chief. "We have plenty of food, warm houses to live in." "But it will be cold!" the people say. "We can be warm all year round like the others." "Then go join them," said the chief. "Get in your canoes and go to them." Many leave, but even more arrive from other islands. "We will help you stay warm," ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chances Four gangsters sit at a card table in a room in an abandoned warehouse. They pass around a revolver, each spinning the cylinder and placing it against their head before pulling the trigger. They pass it round, sliding cash into the center of the table to up the stakes. As if their lives weren't stake enough. Eventually, one of the men checks the cylinder. "There's no bullet in here," he says. He gets up, and tries to open the door. Locked. He pulls out his cell phone, but there's no ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Butt Dial Even though the experiment was a success, Bell and Watson needed to perfect the telephone device before heading to the patent office. Some of their ideas were improvements on the original concept and others weren't. For instance, Watson rigged up a chair to the telephone that would call the other unit when someone sat down. "Call someone else with your butt?" said Bell. "How brilliant and simple!" After sitting down to think and calling each other over and over, they decided not to add ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rafting We've had this white water rafting business for a while now. We load up the trailer, head upriver, and then Bart and the rafters head downriver. Then, I drive back down with the trailer. We used to work out of the cabin upstream, but folks preferred to do the road trip first. They also like midnight runs, but they're not safe. Tonight, something went wrong. I got to the downstream cabin and saw the boats floating down the river. I check with a flashlight. Nobody in them, splattered wi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blue Skies Cindy looks up at the sky and scowls at the hideous shade of green. "Blue skies, please," she says, and the scene vanishes for a moment before rendering again, this time with blue skies. She brings up a catalog of clouds, cycles through her favorites, and tosses them into the sky. "Drift," she says, and the clouds begin to slowly roll eastward. She got halfway through the forest before the power spike wiped out her simulation. She checked her settings. No auto-save. The skies boiled ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #220 - Mensa Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Mensa! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Steven the Nuclear ManZackmannGuy DavidCristinaAlmoTJPods And EndsNorval JoeJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Leviathan 2000 Looking through the ruin and carnage, I picked up a brochure and read: The Leviathan 2000 is the latest in automated remote divine intervention tools, complete with long-range supernatural telepresence, formidable firepower without match, and a preternaturally intelligent network system for coordinating complex maneuvers from dancing on the head of a pin to waging battles against the fires of the infernal pit. Furthermore, this miracle of modern machinery will go where angels fear to trea ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Smell of Gasoline There's one thing worse than the smell of gasoline, and that's the taste. Murloney's boys dragged me to this warehouse and tied me to this chair so they could splash me with high-octane cologne "You missed behind the ears," I said, and they punched my lights out. I woke up to a spotlight in my face. Laughing, glasses clinking. Groans from dozens of other guys tied to chairs. All on top of a gigantic cake in the middle of a party. "Happy birthday, boss!" said a goon. "Sixty years young ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Energy Drinks Rob watched Lisa suck down can after can of Red Bull. "That shit will kill you," said Rob. Lisa's only answer was to burp, toss the empty in the wastebin, and walk out the door. She had a standing order to keep her supplied, but they were running late. So, she walked to the store, bought another 5 cans, and headed home. The brakes failed on the delivery truck, and it slammed into her as she was crossing the street. No, I'm not pouring out this Red Bull on the curb in her memory. I ju ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Acronym You've heard of Zeus and Apollo, but have you heard of Acronym? He's not the best-known of the Olympian gods, but where the others just putter about in the Old Gods Rest Home, Acronym is still active and involved in the affairs of man. He whispers in the ears of the clever and the cunning, helping them find simple words into which to pack the cumbersome phrases that describe their political and social movements. For good or evil, truth or lies - he is at their side, serving man's desire ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yuri Yuri comes home tonight. He is a cosmonaut. He is a hero. He will be coming home from a mission tonight. We wait at the Cosmodrome, listening to the controllers talk Yuri and his capsule down, making calculations and adjustments. A bottle of vodka is waiting for him. Many bottles of vodka will be opened tonight in his honor. Then, the radio goes silent. And we all watch the main screen, waiting. A fireball, streaking across the sky, exploding into the mountain. Some controllers stay ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Father Sitting here on the park bench, watching the kids run and play, I feel like I have been missing out on the joys of fatherhood. What would it be like to raise a child? Would all my doubts and fears fade as I take on that role? (Or, I suppose, the role take over me.) No. The doctors warned me about thinking like this, trying again. My hands clench and release, over and over. Stop. Not again. No more blood. No more screaming. I get up slowly, walk back to my workshop, and stare at the pu ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #219 - Goblins Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Nineteen, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Goblin! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Nikita CatZachmannTJStevenGuy Norval JoeJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Nikita I'm Sylvester, a Cat. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fruit Are tomatoes vegetables or fruit? After decades of research, Dr. Milton still didn't know the answer. In fact, his latest findings suggested that they were both. This is not an unreasonable conclusion, fruits and vegetables are just two terms created by man to describe his surroundings, right? A wave of depression fell over him. All those years, completely wasted. He hung up his lab coat and just wandered for a while. He roamed through war-ravaged Spain, angry and frustrated. "Care f ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Green Tea The mystic prepares to read my tea leaves. "Drink," she says when the tea ready. So, I do, and she turns the empty cup on the saucer. As she lifts the cup, her eyes open wide. "This is horrible!" she says. "You are going to die soon!" "What? How? Why?" She picks up the phone and calls for an ambulance. "How am I supposed to die?" I ask, grabbing and shaking her. She draws a gun and shoots me in the chest. "That's how," she says, checking my wallet and taking out the money. "He atta ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lawnmower I don't like mowing the lawn. So, I bought a robotic lawnmower. It's eco-friendly, running on batteries charged by solar cells. And the motor is very quiet, almost a whisper. This way, it can run during the day or at night. It knows where to mow using a set of guide wires I've buried along the property line. Just charge, set, and release inside the invisible fence. The next morning: a beautifully-cut lawn. And three dead hookers on the grass. The first time I ran it, there was only ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bessie Winter in Detroit, midnight. Bessie sits alone out on the patio in her nightshirt, waiting. A black robe comes out from the shadows. "Where have you been all these years?" she asks it. A raspy whisper, like dry bones scraping against each other: "It was not your time." "My sons, my Stephen are all gone." She feels a chill deep within her. "Is it my time soon?" "Soon." "Will you wait with me?" Death sits down next to her, they hold hands, and wait for morning together. Sleep. Deep ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crimson Crimson waves, the blood tide is rising. This is no moon. We have landed on a living thing. Are the natives a roaming immune system? Parasites? No idea. We will samples so researchers back on base can make the call. We can't stay much longer. The landing gear cut up the creature something fierce, and it's wanting to scab over. The more we dig out the struts, the more patch-cells it sends. As we lift off, I figure next time, maybe we'll use a bubble-craft, something soft. That's when ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Make me pretty and dead "Make me pretty and dead," said the model to the robotic plastic surgeon. At least, that's what the translation engine thought she said. She stripped naked and stepped into the surgical chamber, watching the various lasers and scalpels warm up. Behind her, a defibrillator prepared to administer a lethal jolt of electricity. A technician ran into the room and shouted "STOP!" The lights on the robotic surgeon all turned off, and the model covered herself with her hands. The technician h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #218 - Rent Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Eighteen, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Rent! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Guy DavidStevenZackmannTJNorval JoeJustinPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Guy David A rift opened and the little ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lottery We entered the lottery, hoping for a big family. It's not likely though. The government reduced the prize pool again. We'll be lucky to get a dog. As a pet. The Lottery Law says no eating pets without government approval. What happened to us? Where did we go wrong? Hope? Change? How did we get from The American Dream to the government sterilizing and executing people for eating a stupid dog? Madness. Maybe, just maybe, we'll win. We'll get the big family. The lottery agent whispers ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Guest "You have a guest," said the investigating priest. Sally rocked back and forth on the vomit-covered bed, staring back at the priest with weary red-rimmed eyes. "You've got to be shitting me," she said. "We refer to occupying spirits as 'guests' now," said the priest. "No need for rudeness while negotiating a mutually-agreeable solution to this dispute." "SHUT UP AND GET THIS FUCKING DEMON OUT OF ME!" shouted Sally. "I need to consult my manager," said the priest, and he pulled out a ce ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Betrayal My friend, my love battered bloody through the streets of Jerusalem by the angry mob. I feel every blow. This was a mistake. He falls at my feet. "I forgive you," he groans, and falls. I should not have pointed him out. I kneel to help him up, but I am pulled back by two Roman soldiers. "Thank you, Iscariot," says one, the other tossing me a bag. Clink. I pour out the silver coins into my hand. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. He asked me to do this. He wanted to die. I thro ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Molt Looking down at the stumps of my thighs, I knew it would be a rough morning. I dragged myself into the kitchen and ate my way through the food inside. The horrendous pain came next. Biting down on a dishrag helps a little. Close your eyes. Try not to scream. When the burning sensation dulled to a warm ache, I flexed my new toes and stood up, wobbling slightly and steadying myself with a chair. The old ones are rotting in the hallway. I hope these feet are a size I've already got. B ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Caretakers The war is over, declared the machines. Sensors watched the radiation levels drop. When they were low enough, probes went out to scan the planet for signs of life. Not much, but some. The machines gathered up what they could. As cleanup systems went to work on the ruins, genetic templates kept in storage were imposed onto the surviving organics to undo the ravages of mutation and gamma-ray damage. Some genetic lines died. Some survived. As each landmass was declared safe, replanting ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mean Streak Sally Marie Simmons was known as "Sally Mean Streak" long before the day the prom queen's hair fell out. One vote was the difference, but that's all it took for Mean Streak to lash out. As Jessica Baker rain screaming through the halls, her hair leaving a trail behind her, Mean Streak was scanning the paper ballots. She had insisted on voters having to write out the names instead of check a box. Then, she fed in stacks of handwritten essays. Handwriting samples for the computer to anal ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #217 - There's an elephant in the room Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Seventeen, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's There's an elephant in the room! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Guy DavidStevenZachmannTJJustinNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Guy Davi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mentat In the novel "Dune" Frank Herbert described a post-computer world where "mentats" performed rapid and complex calculations for the noble houses of humanity. These specialists were not just raw computational experts, but they were valued for their ability to sift through mountains of data to provide vital analysis. When noble houses warred, assassinating the enemy's mentat was a priority. That is why the messenger was killed and searched thoroughly. Then analyzed for poison. "It's safe," ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Flotilla It sounded like a good idea at the time, really. Load up with relief supplies, get on some boats, and try to deliver the supplies to the poor defenseless children trapped inside. How wrong we were. Once we boarded and got underway, that's when they started blasting music at us... "It's a small world after all..." Surrounded by singing jeering puppets, we tried to paddle back to port, but the boats kept moving on and on. We'd been set up. It was a trap. We threw the boxes ashore, cove ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Pesto Pest When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. But life handed me basil, so I made pesto. I even built a hothouse to grow basil year-round. Just harvest, wash, crush, mix, and serve. The problem is that I am growing far too much basil for myself, so I give away a lot of basil leaves and pesto to others. Maybe too much? Now people turn off their lights and shut their windows when they see me coming. "There's that crazy Pesto Pest," they whisper to each other. "Just be quiet and he'll go a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website You've Got To Know When To Fold 'Em Because of a shortage of buglers, military funerals often use a recording of a bugler performing Taps. However, there's no shortage of flags, so there's always flags available to drape over coffins for folding and presentation to the next-of-kin. The flag is folded by the honor guard in a specific order so that it results in a small blue triangle with white stars. Some potheads have been known to employ their knowledge of the Japanese art of Origami to come up with more interesting shape ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Socks After years of blisters and other problems with my feet, I changed from ordinary cotton socks to special space-aged wicking socks. They draw moisture away from the feet while providing extra padding. Don't ask me how they work. All I know is that they work. No blisters since. However, you've got to be careful with them. Going to sleep with a pair on will suck some water out of your body. Going to sleep with 14 pairs of them on your feet and hands will leave you a desiccated husk. So, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lazarus Tradition says that the priests pondered putting Lazarus to death because of the miracle which returned him to life, but other stories tell of him living out his life as a bishop in Cyprus. Neither of the tombs in Bethany or Cyprus are his. He is nothing more than an ancient blind husk, curled up into himself on the seabed, unable to drown. Every so often, he snatches a fish to chew on with empty jaws. As do many, he waits for Christ's return, but not for salvation. Yearning for releas ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #216 - Good Lord, That's Not Pie! and Motion Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Sixteen, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Good Lord, That's Not Pie! and Motion! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?ZachmannTJBradStevenJeffreyJustinNorval JoePlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Zach ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oops My kindergarten teacher had a cat named Oops, solid black with a white O on his chest. She lived next to a maple tree farm, and every year she took classes there to see how syrup was made. Oops wandered around the woods, but the moment he spotted a class coming through, he'd run off and hide. That was over thirty years ago, and the teacher is long gone. The maple syrup farm is gone too, but the trees remain. A black shadow crosses my path. After all these years, how can... I see two ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Home Lincoln said that it is not the years in your life, but the life in your years. Drifting between the stars for centuries, solar sails and cargo pods. In the control center, two brains wrapped and connected with millions of miles of nanocircuitry. Ours. Together. So many years ago, frail and weak from disease, we volunteered. We had nothing to lose but each other, and this way, we could have more time. It has been over eight years since she last told me that she loves me. She is gone. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Good Place After days in the library and on the Internet, Bobby turned in his paper. Time and time again, rich people have treated poor people like crap with the promise of eternity in a good place if they put up with that crap. The threat of eternity in a bad place prevents the poor people from treating the rich people like crap. Priests are paid by rich people to come up with a lot of crap about the good place and the bad place, then shovel it at the poor. Miss Krabapel sighed, lit another cigar ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website India Just as Christopher Columbus landed in the New World and thought he'd reached India, Arturo Gustavani sailed for India and thought he had reached the New World. Looking around the marketplaces full of rare spices, Arturo threw down his voluminous hat and cursed. "Where are the worthless flint arrowheads and corn?" Merchants brought him the finest silk and woven carpets, but he dismissed these riches and inquired about crude fibrous mats interlaced with bird feathers. Calling the expedit ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Phantom I wake up and struggle with the call button. "NURSE! NURSE!" The morning nurse arrives at my bed, taps the IV, and checks the bandages on my hands. "Fingers still hurt?" she asks. "It's like they're being dipped in fire!" I groan. "Please, make it stop!" I try to move my hands, but they're strapped down to the rails on the bed. "No, we're not going to loosen those," she said. "Remember the last time we did that?" She loosens a bandage and I look. Bloody stumps. "Your toes still hur ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website You only die twice. Or three times. (How about four?) Resurrection procedures have never been entirely reliable, but over time they've become more reliable than longshot treatments such as chemotherapy for advanced pancreatic cancer. The insurance companies won't cover the procedure. And they'll drop coverage for the revived patient, too. "Our responsibility ends at death," they say. But they won't pay off on life insurance claims, either. Congress subpoenaed the heads of the insurance companies for a hearing, grilled them for several day ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #216 - Good Lord, That's Not Pie! and Motion The 100 word stories weekly challenge is where I post a topic to podcasting.isfullofcrap.com and then you write and record a story based on that topic. Let's go ahead and set the next topic as Good Lord, that's not pie! and Motion. Send the following to isfullofcrap (at) gmail.com with the subject line of WEEKLY CHALLENGE 216 by midnight on Saturday: The text of your story. Your site's URL. What you would like the topic of Weekly Challenge #217 to be. A recording of your story in .mp3 fo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #215 - The Message Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Fifteen, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's The Message! VOTING Which were the best stories this week?ZackmannWilmaGuy DavidStevenOrionTJJustinNorval JoeJeffreyPlanet Z  Free polls from Pollhost.com Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed): Zackmann Son, t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website My Medicine I wake up, naked, surrounded by my servants. They have strapped and chained me to a table. I have a good view of the ceiling. Daylight through the windows. I don't taste blood. My hands aren't sticky. Still... "I forgot my medicine again, didn't I?" I asked. "Yes," said my secretary. "How many died this time?" "Seven, I think. You made quite a mess." They release the chains and straps, and I get up. "Thank you for washing me off." "You made quite a mess." I must remember to tak ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In or Out "In or out?" shouted the bully. The third-graders along the wall lifted up their shirts to show off their bellybuttons. Today, he was punching the Ins. Kid after kid, he'd look down and either take a swing at their gut or they'd run away. The last kid on the wall didn't lift up his shirt. So, the bully did it for him. And saw nothing. "Test-tuber!" The bully pulled out a knife. "I can fix that." The kid pulled out a neurodisruptor and stunned the bully. "Not test-tube," said the ki ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock on Headquarters said to throw a curveball on the application form and then ask people about their answer in the interview. So, I added a line asking "Paper, Scissors, or Rock?" Most people write "Rock" on their application. (Some just circle it.) I throw out all the Paper, Scissors and Rock responses. Stacks of Harvard and Yale grads tumble into my wastebin. One is left. Their response? "Bacon." I hired them blind. No interview, no reference check. Two weeks later, we carried our st ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Saints Last year, the Catholic Church performed an audit on all relics throughout the world. Concerned, they sent out teams to authenticate as many as possible. The report detailed forgeries and fakes, but there was a curious situation with Saint Miraculon, the Wonder Machine. After the explosion at the power plant had fried his original processor, saving dozens of workers from death by electrocution, it was enshrined in San Jose. But a backup processor had been installed in the rebuilt chassi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website There will be peace when the Gnomes love their children more than they hate us In the nursery, we keep it simple: babies coming in equals babies going out. Come up short, and security checks the tapes before “Stolen Baby” makes the evening news. But when we come up with extra, that’s worse. "Damn those Gnomes," said Nurse Riley. "They sneak their agents into nurseries to infiltrate our species." This giggling, squirming lump in a standard-issue diaper is no child. Riley pointed out the beard-stubble and bright red shaving rash. The look in her eyes: sadnes ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Envelopes Ted says that you can use your underwear twice by turning it inside out. �That's good to know, Ted,� I say. What's weird is that he does the same thing with envelopes. I didn't know that you could do that with envelopes, turning them inside out and addressing them again, but Ted can do it. He's really good with folding paper. Now, this only works with plain white envelopes, mind you. If you do this with a packing envelope, you can't write on the packing material they glue to the inside ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Treasure Some say buried among the stones and markers lies mankind's greatest treasure. Not gold, not silver, not precious stones. It's something we all seek, sometimes even beg for. We all have it. It's within us all, so hard to give, and harder to accept. And hardest of all, even though it is within us, we find it hardest to give to ourselves. Time and time again, they come here for it. Rarely do they find it. It can't be taken. It may be too late to beg the dead for forgiveness, but it is ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Punisher The Mystic Sisters have a good racket going. One's a punisher for hire, taking clients down into her dungeon and beating them within an inch of their lives. A few days later, they see the fortune-teller sister, the one who read bruises instead of palms. Sometimes, guys go into the dungeon but don't go to the fortune-teller. Other times, they see the fortune-teller, but they got their bruises elsewhere. And then, well, one day, the punisher limps into her sister's house. She's got two bl ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Night On The Beach I wake up and shake the sand from my shoes. This happens every morning. But I haven't been to the beach in years. Only in my dreams. Sometimes, there's driftwood in my hand, seaweed wrapped around my ankle. Salt in my hair from the ocean spray. On a shelf over my mirror, I've put my seashell collection. All these things, I dream of. And bring back with me. When I dream of you, take my hand, and let me bring you back. I will leave my sadness on the sands of my dreams. To be washed a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Counting Sheep In light of the news that Nick Wilson/57 Miles shitcanned one of my favorite grid podcasts Second Rant with Prokovy Neva over apparent Crimes Against Muttonity, I wrote this happy little story: Oh, sure, you think those sheep you count to get to sleep are sweet and innocent, but I know better. It's a conspiracy. The counting sheep want to take over the world. I was only pretending to sleep the other night when the sheep came by for me to count. I closed my eyes and made snoring sounds, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #160 - Bacon Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Sixty, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Telescope. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best this week?Tom from http://footnote.libsyn.com/Lance from http://writingdad.livejournal.com/Norval Joe from http://www.norvalsoutlook.blogspot.comAnima from http://zabbadabba.com/Terrence from http://www. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schnauzer I have a giant Schnauzer. That's giant with a small G. Not a big G. He's not a Giant Schnauzer breed. He's a giant Schnauzer. One hundred feet tall. He's still growing, too. He's been growing ever since I got him as a puppy. What do I feed him? Just the usual dog food. Lots of it. The manufacturer gives me the stuff for free. They get to put my Schnauzer on the bag and in the commercials. He doesn't know any tricks. Or know his name. So I gave up, and I just call him Schnauzer. My ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Salad Races We both order club salads and watch the lady behind the counter pull out two metal bowls. The race is on. She grabs twice the usual amount of ingredients each time, dividing them between the bowls. Lettuce, chopped ham, eggs... It was neck and neck until it was time for the dressing. “One scoop or two?” We both said one. Two would slow us down. She mixes things up, scraping the bowls loudly with the salad tongs. Bowls are poured into plastic clamshells. And I get the first. V ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Apartment Circus I couldn't stand to see the carnival rust in the junkyard, so I bought it. How you fit all that into a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan, well, that's my secret. Kids line up at my door, and I sell tickets to the rides, the midway games, and the various tent acts. At first, the Condo Association protested, but now they're all in the show: the fat lady in 5H, the super's a sword swallower, and 16A tells fortunes. It’s a good crowd tonight. I adjust my nose, check my floppy shoes, and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Like a bar of soap Travel to Insect Worlds requires Sleep. Cory leaves her robe on a hook and lays down in the tub. Five injections: her arms, her legs, and her heart. Her skin turns pale. Eyes closed, the monitor shows her slowing down for the sleep. Muscles contract, her body tucks into a fetal position. Pour in the electrogel. One spark, and the gel turns white and solid. Like a bar of soap. We slide it into the ship’s cargo hold. Only the Insects can reverse the process. Nobody ever returns. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Munge's Menagerie Through an error in programming, Professor Munge created a robot that could read, but was incapable of writing or expressing words in audio form. Over the course of a year, Munge's lab produced a series of mechanical oddities, such as robots without ocular sensors but powerful image processing and analysis capabilities, or the exploration robot with a single articulated limb with which the robot could barely drag its bulk around a pen surrounded by rails. Students would come by to gawk at ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Burning Hands Both of my hands are wrapped in bandages. I don't know why I held them over the fire. It didn't hurt at first. Then, it hurt. A lot. The skin and nerves are gone from what muscle and bone remains. I can't tell how many fingers I have left. I wiggle one after the other, but the bandages keep me from seeing them move. When they change the bandages, they won't let me see. "You do not want to see them yet," the nurse says. Yes, I do. It is all I think about. She puts another pill in my ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #159 - Telescope Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Nine, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Telescope. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Michael S.Guy David from http://guydavid.comTerrence from http://www.mcleanweb.ca/neverwas/Danny from http://dannymachal.com/Norval Joe from http://www.norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com/ ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Retarded Twins Julie and Judy were indistinguishable from each other for 80 years. Usually, you can tell twins apart, but these two were exactly alike. Including their mental retardation. So severe, their father walked out when they were 5 and their mother dead from suicide on their 10th birthday. They were dressed in the same clothes, played with the same toys, and babbled the same babble. They spent their lives in institutions together until one died. Nobody knew which one, so they tossed a coin, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Piano Bar The kids were hungry, so I said “Let's go to McDonalds.” They screamed “No!” Sounds weird, right? Kids not wanting to go to McDonalds? Well, it makes a lot more sense when I mention: our McDonalds has a piano bar. Three hours later, the kids are asleep in the ball pit and I'm blasted out of my mind as all the local soccermoms and single dads are singing whatever the guy on the bench is playing. A guy in a Grimmace costume asks me if I need a cab. “Just a light,” I say, cig ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Silver Star When I was a child, my sister and I had to do our chores. Each chore meant we got to lick a star and stick it to the calendar for that day. Red ones were little chores, like doing the dishes. Blue ones meant more, like vacuuming or walking the dog. Silver stars were for mowing the lawn. At the end of the week, add up the stars and get an allowance. I went to the crafts store and bought a box of silver stars, filling the calendar with them. The stars added up to me getting spanked and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edison The God Edison invented a time machine. Some say it was really Westinghouse. Others say Tesla. Nobody sees them anymore. Imagine that. With his time machine, Edison brings back advanced medicines, powerful weapons, and amazing technologies from the future. He recruits the most powerful minds from the past. Edison is unstoppable. With his unsurpassed knowledge of science, he has rendered himself immortal. We call him “The God of Menlo Park.” Why he keeps coming back to here instead of re ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Beavers Be careful when you go inside. It's dark in the house. Power was cut off a week ago. Sure, we pay our bills, but the electric company has yet to fix the lines. Beavers chewed down the poles. Then they dragged them off to the river to build a dam. It's a big river. They needed a lot of wood. Power poles, telephone poles - the beavers took it all, leaving us in the dark and without phones. Nice and quiet now. We go down to the river in the evening and watch the beavers build. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sexy Burrito Of War At a fast food Mexican shithole, well past midnight, looking up and down the menu. Breakfast tacos. It's what I always get- WAIT! What the fuck is a Sexy Burrito Of War? I ask the guy behind the counter, and I can see his knuckles go white as he grips the register. “You want the Sexy Burrito Of War? Seriously?” No, I just want to know what the fuck it is. Maybe I'll want it if it sounds good. Maybe not. I have to sign a release form. Run on a treadmill. Maybe I'll just have som ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #158 - Knock Knock Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Eight, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Knock Knock. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Planet ZDJustin from http://www.thespaceturtle.comDanny from http://dannymachal.com/Anima from http://zabbadabba.com/SophieMichael SLynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shutterbug Thanks to Lauren Weyland for the inspiration for this story. I had to go to a place and shoot pictures of an awards ceremony. When I got there, I realized I had forgotten to bring any film. I walked around, pretending to snap photos, but all I was doing was pressing the shutter. No film, no photos. So when the ceremony was over, the organizer tapped me on the shoulder and said “I guess there won't be any pictures.” I held up my camera. “I took a lot of photos,” I said. “Ju ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Chicken Password Thanks to Lauren Weyland for the inspiration for this story. Ever forgotten an important password? I once forgot the password to a very secure system that didn't have a way to recover it. It was so secure, the software author couldn't even get into the system once it had a password added to it. In the end, I had to go to a hypnotist to get them to dig around my mind to find the password. They snapped their fingers, and I thought I was a chicken. “Bawk!” I screeched, and I flappe ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Swine Flu Thanks to Lauren Weyland for the inspiration for this story. The Big Bad Wolf didn't care about this Swine Flu scare. He was hungry. So he huffed, puffed, and coughed for about a minute. A window opened in the straw house, and the first little pig laughed. “Caught a bad case of the flu, wolf?” he asked. The wolf grabbed at him, but his muscles were aching badly and he missed. Two more pigs walked up behind the wolf. One hit him in the leg with a piece of wood, and the wolf fell ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stick it to The Man Things are always getting worse for me and Joey. Joey lost his job. My hours are getting cut back. The apartment's a wreck. Nothing works out for either of us. Joey's always saying we gotta stick it to The Man. But Joey never says how we're supposed to stick it to The Man. What glue sticks it to The Man? Do we use staples and thumbtacks? And what exactly is “it” we're supposed to stick? Joey says I'm too literal. I say Joey needs to provide concrete examples. He shrugs. Is th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website April White I knew this girl. Her name is April. But she was born in May. Her full name was April White. Except, she was black. Her whole life was a bunch of opposites, one after the other. Some folks could handle them and others couldn't. I thought I could, but each time I thought I knew her, she turned out to be someone completely different. So, when we were supposed to be coming closer together, we ended up drifting apart. Until one day, she was gone. Or was I gone, and she was where she'd ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Liberated Written during Fanny Starr's lecture... We were liberated by the British. The Americans, they bring doctors. They bring food. They bring water. They bring medicine. They bring trucks and jeeps. They talk and they cry. The British, they bring nothing. Not even clothes. I ask one for food, and he turn his back on me. He get into his jeep and drive off with other soldiers. I cannot eat freedom. I cannot wrap myself in freedom. We wander in the street, the forest. We do not know where ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #157 - Falling Bricks Hurt Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Seven, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Falling Bricks Hurt. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Ted from http://whineandopine.blogspot.com/Guy David from http://guydavid.comTom from http://footnote.libsyn.com/Norval Joe from http://www.norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com/M ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Maggots I was in the hospital, laid up with a broken leg when the word got out that zombies were on the loose. No guns. No machetes. Just fire extinguishers and the occasional bone saw. That's when it hit me. "Maggots eat dead flesh," I said. "Release a bunch of maggots and they'll eat the zombies." The nurse went down to the stockroom and brought out three trays of maggots. "Is that all?" I asked. "I was hoping for huge barrels full of the things. Maybe fill a moat with them." No. Bar the d ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ringing Tom lets the phone ring for a while before picking it up. "Robots give up after four rings," he explained. "If my friends really want to get me, they'll let it ring ten or eleven times." The phone rings. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times. "What about robots who are your friends?" I ask. For just a moment, Tom's look gets dark. Angry. "I have no robot friends," he says. Maybe today, but it wasn't always the case. Somewhere, deep in a lab under New Mexico, a mainframe caked wi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sacrifice That NOTE: This podcast has the Really Bad Imitation Of Guy David tag... He commanded me to go up the mountain with my son and a knife. “Prove your loyalty to me,” said The Lord. “Kill him.” He's always fucking with us like that. Sacrifice this, recite that. I'm tired of it. So I let Him guide me up the mountain, His hand showing the way. I lay my son on a flat rock, draw the knife, and ask if He's sure about this. “Just kidding,” He says. “Go sacrifice that goat.” He ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fishing I used to go fishing with my grandfather. No, I didn't go on a boat or a dock to dish. Instead, we'd go to the aquarium after dark and fish in the really big tank. Not only is the water clear, but there's a lot of really cool fish in there. Okay, so there's some really dangerous things in there like sharks, but you can yank the line up when those get close. Or so we thought. Grampa lost a foot. Ouch. Good news, though: they recovered the shoe out of the shark's stomach. As if he nee ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Small Safe Town There aren't many secrets on an orbiting research platform. It doesn't matter how big we build these. Even a few thousand onboard, it's still like a small town. Or a research center. Word passes fast. It's also hard to keep secrets about problems with the space station. Everybody is critical to keeping this machine running. Those that aren't, they can still sense trouble. Engineers needed for their experiments are busy doing something else. Plus, when it's something navigation-related, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Witness I'm a professional witness. The wilder the thing you want me to witness, the more it'll cost you. Same goes with how far I need to go back into history to witness it. Some scientists did the math and figured out that building superconducting supercolliders was far too expensive for particle research. So, they're paying me to witness the Big Bang. I go back tomorrow and come back Friday. They paid me only half in advance, just in case I'd be tempted to stay. Of course I'll come back. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #156 - The Stinking Rose Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Six, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's The Stinking Rose. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Danny from http://dannymachal.com/Fricker from http://www.thefrickerfrequency.comJustin from http://www.thespaceturtle.comJeffrey from http://greathites.blogspot.com/Houston ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Voltmaster's Garden The Gardener of Voltmaster's hedge maze is the only man alive who knows how to navigate that nefarious path of thorns, pits, and snares. We release five goblins into the north end of the maze and place five bags of gold coins at the southern exit. These five bags are the same ones that have been used from year to year, because no goblin has ever completed the maze. The Gardener usually waits a week before going in with a large burlap sack to collect their bodies. “More volunteers for ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Dog Still Boy, there comes a time in every kid's life when he's got to say goodbye to a pet. Do it without crying and whining and raising a fuss. It's your dog. I kinda used him to make a whiskey still. Oh, sure, there was some leftover bits and pieces, but I went ahead and buried them in the back yard. The rest is just chuggin away in the shed, makin that moonshine your grampaw sells in town. So, don't go cryin, and don't go pettin my still or playin fetch with it. Here. Have a sip. Hair of the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Executioner When the queen called for my head, I knew I was doomed. But when she called for my head to be brought to her on a paper plate, well, that bothered me. “Shouldn't that be on a silver platter?” I asked. The executioner shrugged. “I'm only following orders.” He took me down to the dungeon, tied my hands behind my back, and knelt me before the chopping block. “Maybe it has to do with the fact that it's hard to wash blood off of silver?” I asked. He didn't answer. He just raise ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fiddle Faddle I admit it. I'm addicted to Fiddle Faddle. I love the stuff. It's so much better than Chex Mix. Some people will eat any snack, but I refuse to eat anything but Fiddle Faddle for a snack. Once, on April Fools, my friends told me they weren't going to make Fiddle Faddle anymore. Oh no! What would I snack on? That night, one of my friends turned out to be a vampire and he bit me on the neck, turning me into a vampire. Since then, I've just had blood. I'll live forever, but without Fidd ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Boxcars The commercials called Boxcar Willie the king of the hobo musicians, but old Willie never spent a day riding the rails. He was a gambler. Craps was his game. Guy owned a pair of dice, loaded for sixes: Boxcars. “Boxcars Willie” didn't sound quite right, so they called him Boxcar. The same went with his bandmates Snake Eyes Sam and Acey Duecey. They were in his band as well as at the craps table as much as Willie. Get Drunk And Hole Up A Transvestite Hooker Howard, well, he didn't ga ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blind Man's Wallet Joe has been blind since birth, but he keeps photos in his wallet. We ask him who they are of. His wife. His daughter. His parents. He opens up the wallet to show us. All three are beautiful, almost-perfect. They are the photos that came with the wallet. We know they are fakes, but does he know they're fakes? And does he know that we know they are fakes? We play along. Or is he playing along with us? Does he really have a kid? Is he really married? He's got the ring, but then... ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #155 - Rusty Steel Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Five, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Rusty Steel. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Anima from http://zabbadabba.comHouston Keys from http://tatertotsforthemasses.blogspot.comLynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.comJustin from http://www.thespaceturtle.c ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Killed The Moon This knife is mine. I threw it at the moon. And killed it. Its blood raining down. Dead. Police station. Jail. Behind bars. Arrested for murder. Other cells hold drunks. Hookers. Thieves. I am the only murderer. “Why did you do it?” asks the cop. “I don't know,” I said. “I had a knife. It was there. It followed me home.” This angers him. “Why did you do it?” he shouts. I really don't know. All I know, is that I killed the moon. Every night, my victim up ther ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fresh Thursday What do you mean you're having a bad Thursday? Thursdays don't spoil. I pick my Thursdays fresh from the vine and gently place them in the basket. So ripe and delicious they are, I can hardly believe they are gone by Friday. I wake up, rub the Thursday from my eyes. Oh, why can't every day be a fresh Thursday, picked from the vine? Mondays... Wednesdays... not for me. This man in the alley offered me Thursday pills. Ground up from dried Thursdays. No. Fresh Thursdays or nothing! I d ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Labels Something strange happened last night. All of the labels on the cans in the pantry vanished. I don't know how or why. It just happened. Now, I have no idea what's in these cans. Well, okay, maybe the tomato paste is easy to identify. They're small and thin. Soup cans are all the same. I never buy soup that I don't like, so I can just grab any can shaped like that. The rest are canned fruit. I should eat more of that. Every can I will open will be a new mystery solved. This is going ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shoelaces Damn. I broke a shoelace. So let's go out to the woods and look for a replacement. They drop from the tree branches and slither on the ground, looking for a spot to burrow a hole. You catch a few, check their sizes and colors, and then hope to find just the right one. Grab each end and pull tightly to snap their spines. That's how a shoelaces go all soft and limp. Nobody wants a living, writhing shoelace in their shoe. Don't try to keep one as a pet. They just sit there in the bottle ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Birds The trees are filled with so many birds. Black as the night, silent and watching. They only move their heads to follow us. I've never seen them fly. For as long as I have watched them, not a single one has left or arrived. Just turning their heads without a sound. I haven't seen any other kinds of birds around since they arrived. I haven't heard any, either. Where have they all gone? Where did these birds come from? Nobody knows. We watch them in shifts now, and nobody's seen any ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekends When I was young, time crawled. Now that I'm older, and the schoolweek is now the workweek, things feel a whole lot faster. And it's a good thing that the workweek goes by so fast. So much crap I just want to just get through. It's the weekends that matter to me. I live for the moment I can walk out that door and I'm free until Monday morning. The problem is, if the week goes by fast, then the weekends go by even faster. Sadly, Friday to Monday is a lot shorter than Monday to Friday. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #154 - Howl at the moon, I demand a recount, The fencing master, Matzo tower, The end is near. Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Four, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Howl at the moon, I demand a recount, The fencing master, Matzo tower, The end is near.. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories this week?Anima from http://zabbadabba.comCaleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.comJeffrey from http://greathite ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Helpful All support is moving to India. It's not because they are cheap workers. It's because they really like to help others. Boatloads of them show up at our ports, asking if they can help with anything. We send them back, and they offer to help with that, too. “We'll call you if we need any help,” we say. They waited for the call, but we never did. So, they started to help themselves. These days, they're the ones turning back boatloads of our people. “We offered to help,” they s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Training Instead of getting laid off, we're being repurposed. Today's training session is for turning us into plants. The trainer goes from seat to seat, jabbing us in the foot with a nutrient spike and then tipping a watering can over our heads. One guy is being prepared for lawn duty, so they're dowsing him with a hose outside. Unlucky bastard. I don't like getting hosed down on a regular basis, but it's a good promotion from what they had me doing before. You can only take so much shit heap ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Talking Kid We love our kid. How can we not? He's our kid. One disappointment with him, though. Our boy didn't start talking until he was four. But when he started, he just couldn't shut up. He talks all the time. During meals. In the bath. In the preschool. And even in his sleep. Some of it makes sense, but the vast majority of what comes from his mouth is nonsensical babble. So, we give him gum to chew. When he chews gum, he can't talk. He blows bubbles now. Popping all the time. But it's no ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Count To Ten She tied me to a chair and broke each of my fingers, one by one. As she did it, she looked me in the eyes, and her smile got wider and wider with every finger she broke. She held my hand, my left thumb slipped between her lips and she sucked on it slowly. “Don't.” I said. I felt her teeth against my skin. “This is going to hurt,” she said. And with my thumb in her teeth, she broke it clean. Tomorrow, she will sign my casts and leave. Waiting for the day they come off again. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Migration Watch the spaghetti for me. Don't let it overcook. And don't let it escape. Remember the last time the spaghetti got loose? It took an entire legion of the Baron's soldiers to subdue and drive back to the kitchen. If it hadn't been so delicious, both of us would have lost our heads. They say that spaghetti is supposed to be easy, but when you forget to salt the water, all kinds of curses and maliciousness gets into the pasta. The meatballs are screaming again? Best not to serve them ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Predetermined You can't change fate. Everything is predetermined. From the beginning of time to the end of time, everything has been planned for. Even the roll of the dice has a set outcome. Don't bother trying to escape from it. This doesn't means you should just sit there and let things happen. Because the times you make happen, well, those were fated to happen, too. The fact that everything happens according to a plan means you are completely absolved from the results of your actions. This is w ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #153 - Swimming in de Nile Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Three, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Swimming in De Nile. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories from Weekly Challenge #153?Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Guy from http://guydavid.com/Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.com/Lynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.comJ ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Sleeper My little girl couldn't fall asleep. So I told her to close her eyes, think of clouds, and count slowly to ten. She always fell asleep at five or six. But one night, she got to ten. And she was by the bed, shaking me. Wake up, Daddy, she said. She does it to her classmates, at their desks. She doesn't even have to count out loud. She just thinks of clouds and counts to ten. What happens when you count backwards? I ask her. She shakes her head. No, she says. I feel tired, so I don ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Floating It rained hard for a day, and the bayou looked like it would overflow, but it didn't. We watched tree branches and other junk flow with the water. Then, a dead body. Jeans, jacket... face down and not moving. Well, okay. It was moving downstream. Around the bend, another body floated by. Two bodies. Instead of calling the police, we placed bets. I bet on the first body. It had a good head start. But the other one was coming up fast. Mine got caught on a tree branch, and the other w ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Prison of Oz Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion sat in the prison cell, weeping. The Scarecrow had insisted that they take him apart and slip him through the bars. “I can go for help!” he said cheerfully. So, they pulled out his straw and threw it with his empty clothes out the barred window. They blew away in the breeze. The Tinman insisted that he could slip through the bars if they hammered him flat. The heavy wooden bench proved useful for this purpose. It also proved destructive. They called ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hawaii I saved up for a year to go to Hawaii. I kept a calendar, marked every day off until it was time. First class ticket, champagne and leg room. They put one of those flower necklaces on me. Checked into the hotel, and then took a taxi to a party. First time I ever had poi. That's when my throat locked up. I'm allergic, it turns out. Spent the whole week in the hospital. I don't remember the flight back. Yeah, being allergic to bees or gluten would suck. But I can't help but think t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Curses The Great Mage, The Master of Kraken, taught me that all curses should be removed in reverse order as they were inflicted on the victim as to not cause harmful effects as they are unbound and dispelled. Like turning the pages of a book. Auras overlap, but a good wizard can carefully determine the proper procedure in less than a day. Never rush a job because someone's dying from their afflictions. That can be delayed or cured, too. With that in mind, where is this werewolf with the Midas ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rite of Passage Some societies have complex and deadly rites of passage. The elders really bust your ass. Others require that simple rituals be performed. That kind of cake walk makes for a weak man and a weak tribe. The times sure have changed since my tribe roamed these lands, before fences. Before the white men came. My great-grandfather had to hunt ten rattlesnakes on his own. Now, my grandson gets a hundred bucks worth of chips and is told to make it last the evening. Otherwise, we'll throw a ratt ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly challenge #152 - Wikipedia Wildcard! Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Two, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's The Wikipedia Wildcard. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Weekly Challenge #152 - who had the best stories?Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Guy from http://guydavid.com/Lynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.com/Michael S.Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Chip I work at this place, maybe you've heard of it... Cyberdyne Industries? Anyway, I needed an expansion chip, found one sitting on a workbench, turned out to be from the head of a Terminator. Now it's trying to take over the world every time I sync it. I called tech Support and told them this, plus, it's getting lousy reception. They told me to reboot it. Now my downloads are faster, and sure enough it took over the world. Relax - they'll come out with a 4G model next year, I'll do the u ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rocketman "My power is infinite!" cackled Dr. Demonic, rubbing his hands together and throwing switches on a complicated console, the highlight of his dark, evil fortress. "The world will bow at my feet!" "Infinite?" I shook my wrists. "Then why am I handcuffed to your Doomsday Missile?" The villain growled. "Okay, so the chairs from Ikea didn't have arms. And they had wheels. My finest moment, ruined by a hostage rolling around the floor? My powers of improvisation are infinite!" He hit the launc ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kim Kim never wears orange now. The last time she did, she looked like a pumpkin. "PumpKim," they called her. That got her mad. Everyone who called her PumpKim, she punched in the face. Sure, she was fat, but in all the years she exercised to try to work off the weight, she got strong, too. Lots of broken noses later, she ended up in jail for a year. It was supposed to be 30 days, but someone called her PumpKim in jail and got shivved. I hope she's not listening to this podcast. I don't ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Candidate Crowds surrounded the candidate, or the spot they thought he was standing. Throughout the campaign, everywhere they thought he was politically, he wasn't. So much so, with so many lies and double-deals, he'd ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time. One step ahead, his campaign called it. Displacement, the scientists called it. The distance grew. Pretty soon, the candidate appeared miles from where they thought he was. Despite this phenomenon, he was elected. When he took office, as ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Seven Locks A locked chest? The lock requires seven keys. Legend says that each was handed to the King of each Continent, but we all know that's crap. There was never a King of Antarctica. So, I pick the locks. Surprisingly easy to do. The locks were just ornamental. I open the chest, and sure enough, it's empty. Once again, the locks were ornamental. This chest has been opened many times before. So, I toss in a few leftover items from the shelves. It's a museum, we have plenty of stuff in stora ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Black Cat Black cats are supposed to be unlucky. Friday the thirteenth is supposed to be unlucky, too. So finding a black kitten on Friday The Thirteenth is supposed to be double-unlucky. I'm watching the little guy run around and scamper everywhere. Then, he curls up in a ball in my lap and falls asleep. “How old is he?” a friend asks me, looking around for the kitten. “Barely fits in a blender,” I reply. His eyes get wide, and he vomits the energy drink I made for us. “He's at the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #151 - What would Gandhi do? Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty One, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's What would Gandhi do?. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #151?Lance from http://writingdad.livejournal.comIshtarAshleyGuy David from http://guydavid.com/Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.comLynda from http://sist ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shadows and Snacks Before I go out into the streets of Old Rustville, I fill the pocket of my robe with shadow, gathered from an alley. Shadow is a most powerful reagent, useful for spells of concealment and death. Another pocket, filled with pistachios. It is always good to have a snack handy. Always the right hand with the pistachios and the left with the shadows. One does not want to bite into raw shadow, nor does one want to cast the forbidden spells using nuts within the city limits. Yes, this was o ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fireflies Me and Teddy, we go firefly catching in the summer. We always go firefly catching, we do. Teddy, he ain't got no arms. That don't stop him. He catches them lighting bugs in his mouth, and I hold up a jar for him to spit them in. Bam. I put the lid on. "Ain't they pretty, Bobby?" He say. "They so pretty, they is." Teddy, he go off to college, leave me here with my jar. he smart and stuff. I wonder if he go firefly catching. Probably not. He ain't got no arms. Or me to hold his jar. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Flat Feet Someone's out there in the field. I'd better check it out. So, I follow the trail of footprints through the mud. Big feet. Flat arches, too. Who walks around in this field without shoes on? What kind of crazy person does that? They could step on a rock or a nail. My feet ached at the thought of it. I didn't see anyone. For an hour, I walked around the field, until I come back to where the trail started. I looked down and realized that I am barefoot. Oh. Right. I'm out here. No won ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shampoo These days, people will put just about anything in shampoo. They shove all kinda of flowers and stuff in there and call it “herbal.” Once, I was given a sample to try. “What's in it?” I asked. “It's a surprise,” said the marketer. “Try it.” So, I took it home, got in the shower, soaked my hair, and poured it on. It started to tingle the moment the water hit it. Then it heated up. Exciting. I'd gotten some in my eyes. As I washed it out, that's when I felt it burn. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Brick I know a man who can shit bricks. He eats three pounds of clay daily. Then, he squats down on the ground and shits a brick. He's been doing this for years. Behind his house is a brick wall. He's shit every one of those bricks himself. I asked him why he does this when he can just go down to the Home Depot and get bricks. “There's something about making something with your own two hands,” he said. “Or, in this case, your ass-cheeks.” The other night, his wall fell over. Guy d ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Helper You can tell who has a Helper biochip and who doesn't. Every few minutes, their left eye goes hazy and blank. That's them talking to HelpNet. And the Helper talking back. We use just 10 percent of our brains. Helper uses some of the rest to offer advice, keep schedules, remember things, too. Local storage. Reminders. Suggestions. Warnings. Helpers connect to the global network to pull up scores, stock quotes, dinner reservations. Sometimes, Helpers get too helpful. They take over, and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #150 - Just let me touch it... Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Just let me touch it.... The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories from Weekly Challenge #150?Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Anima from http://zabbadabba.comGuy David from http://guydavid.comAshleyJeffrey from http://greathites.blogspot.com AlmoMi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Her Eyes Every city has an Oracle. Every Oracle has a secret to hide. The bartender with the bandage over her face told us some things should not be known. “What color are your eyes?” asked Joe. I elbowed him in the ribs. He laughed. She put down the rag she was polishing the bar with and pointed to a jar on a high shelf. Blue. Her eyes had been blue. “What color are they now?” Joe asked. She sighed, reaching across the bar and putting her hand to Joe's face. “Whatever these are,� ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Pie She asks me what my favorite scent is. Pie. Pumpkin pie. The best pumpkin pie I have ever smelled was a gift. A woman who had scorned me had left it on her windowsill to cool in the gentle evening breeze as she slept with her new lover. I took the pie and tossed in a Molotov cocktail. The fire caught quickly, too fast for them to escape. They burned to death while I watched, finishing every last bit of the pie. Here I am, hiding in Mexico, waiting for the heat to die down. Got any p ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Last Dance All the time, folks say they can't wait for me to die. My funeral's gonna be one hell of a party. Clowns and dancers and musicians. Hell, I got the perfect spot for it. There's this dancehall I grew up around. Everybody there, they know me. They're the folks who wanna see me croak. So, when I go, they'll have a party there. And bury me under the dancefloor. That way, for the rest of their days, they don't have to travel to dance on my grave. Hey, it's the least I can do. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Goldberg In all my centuries as a creature of the night, there is one thing of which I am certain. I hate Bach. I hate Mozart and Beethoven, too. Oh, how my ears ache to hear Goldberg just once more. You have never heard of Goldberg. I know this. I heard him, long ago. One symphony to his credit. After its first performance, I was so inspired that I drank him dry. Dead. Gone. The city watch caught and nearly killed me. I escaped, but returned to the burnt-out husk of a concert hall. Not a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wyvern Every week, the townspeople bring meat to my cave. Sacrifices to the dragon, they say. Keep him from burning our village, like in ancient times. I laugh. I am no fire-breathing dragon. I'm a wyvern. I don't breathe fire. Sure, my tail has a deadly sting, but it's not like fire. I wear the long-deceased dragon's snout as a mask. The townsfolk feed me at night. That helps with the disguise. When a champion comes uphill to slay the dragon, taking off the mask gives me a few moments of s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Healer I am a healer. I heal the worn-down, the lame, and damaged. If you have an ice sculpture that has lost an arm, a wing, or has melted beyond recognition, I can restore it to its former grandeur. The water speaks to me, and with my frozen operating theater and trusty staff, we can bring it back from the brink. It all started when I was young, filling ice cube trays day and night, obsessed with water as it went from liquid to solid. Now, I gather their spirits and the treasured beauty is ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #149 - Mothballs Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Nine where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Mothballs. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #149?Danny from http://dannymachal.comLynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.comGuy David from http://guydavid.com/Norval JoeAshleyJustin from http://www.thespacetur ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Halves It was a beautiful marriage, and they made beautiful music together. While it lasted. It didn't last. Arthur ended up with the player piano. Leslie got all the scrolls. Arthur would sit at the piano, tap a key now and then, and listen to the note. He searched for the scrolls on eBay, but never found any for that model of piano. Leslie would open up the scrolls and hold them up to the light, the intricate patterns of holes making her wonder what style that song was played with, what nu ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rape Is Never Funny This one's going to bother the shit out of some people. There is a rule of comedy that rape is never funny. But then, how many comedians are from Easter Island? Yes, the place with the big stone heads. I was raped there by the natives. But they made if funny. It started with a few jokes and light molestation, but by the end of the crime, they had me roaring with laughter as they thrust into me against my will. I was left on the curb, half-naked and aching from both the assault and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Night Of A Thousand Stars "Make a wish, Daddy." A tiny finger points to the night sky, silver streaks crisscrossing over each other. "Those aren't shooting stars," I said. No, they were satellites. And it was my fault. After the Russians hit one of ours, we agreed to hand over orbits and frequencies to each other. I wrote the database. Everything worked beautifully in the tests. But the moment the tracker went online, every satellite with propulsion went into controlled deorbit. The rest shut down or explode ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Store In the middle of the storm, a man came into my store wanting cigarettes. “This is a smoke-free town,” I said. “We don't have cigarettes.” So, he asked for some beef jerky. “Meat-free town too. We're all vegetarians.” “Beer?” “No alcohol at all,” I said. “We're a dry county.” Everything he asked for, we'd given up or made illegal. “Is there anything for sale here?” he asked. I was about to answer him, but by then the sheriff had arrived. The silent alarm ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alphabet Soup My daughter loves it when I make alphabet soup. But every now and then, she complains that a letter is backwards or upside-down. “Just turn the bowl,” I say. “It all tastes the same.” No, she won't. She will stare at it and whine. “There is nothing wrong with this soup,” I say, and I eat a spoon of it. “See?” She still won't eat it. I offer to make her a different soup, but she wants alphabet soup. I blindfold her and slide the bowl in front of her. Eat it, and shut ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Invulnerable Lord Bragdor's armor stands in the Hall Of Heroes, as shiny as the day he was speared through the face in a jousting tournament. “It was enchanted with an invulnerability spell,” said the Blue Wizard. “But, his visor was loose and his opponent lucky.” “Wouldn't the lance have been knocked aside by the spell?” asked the apprentice. “If the invulnerability had been meant for Lord Bragdor, yes,” said Blue. “But due to my misreading the spellbook, it was the armor that was ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #148 - Gladiolas Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Eight where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Gladiolas. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #148?Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Daniel from http://dannymachal.com>SergeAlmoAnima from http://zabbadabba.comGuy David from http://guydavid.com/AshleyMichael S.Eva Mo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Silenced “With a snap of my fingers, you are silenced,” said the man in the red cloak. And he did. He took off a red glove and held his hand in front of my nose. Snap “Go ahead,” he said. “Say something.” I didn't know what to say, so I said: “Elephant.” “Did you say something?” he mocked. “I didn't hear a thing.” He danced around me, snapping his fingers in my face. And then, he stopped. He snapped his fingers a few times, and then right by his ear. “I am deaf!” ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thud Ricky had been shouting about sparkly unicorns and butterflies before his eyes crossed and he dropped like a stone. For the next thirty years, we'd visit him in the hospital. The nurses always cleaned him up nicely before visits. We'd hold his hand, tell him that we missed him, and then ask him what he meant by unicorns and butterflies. He never did wake up. One day, we came to visit, and he wasn't there. Someone else was there. So we started visiting them. To tell you the truth, we ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tunnel I've been walking for hours, but I haven't found the end of this tunnel. The walls get narrow, then they get wide. There's some phosphorescent rocks and moss down here. I can make my way around without being totally blind. The floor's slippery. I have to walk slowly or I'll fall. This map doesn't say how far I need to go. It's torn, and part of it is missing. The part I'm in. I have no idea where I am going, I should keep going until I find a way out. Or, I could stay down here. M ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Volcano The chief was perplexed by the crop failures and dwindling animal stocks. “The only thing we have that's worth anything is the volcano,” he said. “Let's try sacrificing things in it,” I suggested. Everybody agreed. We started to sacrifice virgins in the volcano, but it turned out that the moment a virgin was selected, she'd bang the chief's son. So, we changed to animal sacrifices. Those, the chief's son would steal from the offering pen to make a feast for all his girlfriends. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Foil Happy birthday, Oliver. Here's your present. What? Oh, I never buy gift wrapping paper. Instead, I use tinfoil. It's bright and shiny. And it's actually cheaper than wrapping paper when you think about it. Especially if you give out small presents and not all that often. Instead of having wrapping paper for every occasional and holiday, the tinfoil serves all purposes. Plus, when they unwrap their presents, they can wrap food in it and put it in the freezer. Let's see you try to do ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Black Spot I dropped a can of root beer on my foot. When I took off the shoe and sock, the middle toe was dark red. No blood, just bruised. A day later, the swelling went down. But there was a black spot on the nail. Over the past month, it's been slowly growing out. In another month or two, it will be at the edge, and I can clip it off. As if it were never there. All the while, the spot tells me to save it. “Cut off your toe,” it says. Every day, it gets louder. Desperate. Angrier. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #147 - Running With The Cool Kids Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Seven where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Running With The Cool Kids. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which stories were the best of Weekly Challenge #147?Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.com/Daily Panic from http://adayonorbedge.blogspot.com/Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleDaphn ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Straight Up If you ask a robot where home is, it usually points to its recharging station. So when the Andersons' new service droid pointed straight up, I assumed that it meant the attic. After the survey of Oak Falls was complete, no other robot in my survey had an attic charging station. Return to Washington? No. Not yet. I went back to the Andersons' house and asked the robot again, but while we were outside. It pointed up again. That's when the lights appeared in the sky. "Where is home?" T ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #100 Bill Herndon opened his former law partner's letter and read the final line once more: I'm coming back sometime, and then we'll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened. Strange events had been happening since Abe died. Odd noises at night. Books removed from shelves. Papers strewn on the floor. It was when the unconscious prostitute appeared on his desk did Herndon fear for the worst. "Abe liked his post-trial hookers," he chuckled, and he sent for a exorcist. "You'v ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Demolition Derby Hey, man! Bored with football? Tired of all these baseball players juicin up? Hockey not bloody enough for you? Lemme tell you about a new sport: communication satellite demolition derby! All it takes is override commands, some maneuvering propellant, and a decent grasp of orbital physics. There's nothing quite like watching two expensive chunks of metal surrounded by gigantic solar arrays smashing into each other, leaving tiny sparkling fragments to cloud the the skies for all eternity ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Molly By day, Molly Scott's soul is where it belongs - in Molly, making Molly uniquely Molly. If you've read her books, you'll know what I mean. Children's books unsafe for children. “Cooking With Broken Glass” and “Boogertime Blues” are favorite of mine. At night, her soul wanders and resides in a CPR dummy in Fairfax. It was during a late First Aid class that I discovered this phenomenon. Five chest compressions, pinch the nose, breathe in, and a slow, faint whisper: this is why I do ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Alchemist The world is turning to bright yellow glass. The Alchemist. I have to see her. She has the pills I need. Her blend of phase-anchoring nanobots and cellular dimensional disruptor isotopes aren't cheap. What’s your task? Reach across time for an artifact? Disrupt the future for a prophesy. Bring me a Weaver Crystal, she says. Red. Ah. Materials collection. Easy. I reach through space to The Hive, my hand brushing across Clusterdrones from cave to cave. I break off a shard and hand ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shaving Every time I shave, I miss a few hairs. It doesn't matter how many blades my razor has or what kind of shaving cream I use. Hairs appear in the mirror, or I run my fingers across my face and they spring back out of my skin. It's frustrating. I used a cream that a friend suggested that women use to remove the hair from their legs, but that didn't work, either. There was this pad advertised on television. Tiny crystals that lift and exfoliate. After one use, my face was smooth. Then, s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #146 - Animal Cruelty Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Six where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Animal Cruelty. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #146?Sherry from http://www.sherrydramsey.com/Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Guy David from http://guydavid.comJustin http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleJeffrey fr ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Boxes I wake up, get out of bed, and walk around the house. I do this every morning. Six cardboard boxes in a pile by the door. No labels on them, no markings at all. I have no idea what's in them. Or where they came from. Some are heavy, some are light. Do I shake them? Will I break what's inside them? I put my ear to each box. No ticking, no breathing. Maybe I should open them? Which one to open first, the heaviest? The lightest? The biggest? The smallest? I go back to sleep. Maybe ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Quiet Ones It's the quiet ones that kill. Just sitting there, watching you from across the coffee shop. “What a beautiful cat,” says a customer. The owner nods, hands over the mug. Those eyes follow you everywhere: you walk into the shop, over to the counter, back to your favorite table. What is it about you that's so interesting? “Sasha likes you,” says the shop owner, smiling. “Would you like to pet him?” You think about it, wondering what that deep orange fur will feel like. “ ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sabbath Servants are unreliable. When the Sabbath comes, you cannot depend on them to do work. Unsupervised, they do such a poor job. And they steal. So, we decided to build robots to do the Sabbath chores. It wasn't enough to program them with the ability to cook, clean, and mend. They must do it the right way. We also filled them with reason and piety, all of the Talmudic Law on a chip. The robots worked great. They freed us to do so much. Until Sabbath. They joined us in prayer, reached fo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website De-inspiration Inspiration means to breathe life into a creation. But what happens when you want to take that part of your life back? Especially when your creation wants more, and is sucking the life out of you? Waking up breathless, needing to do more. No more. You step back, close your mouth, and hold your breath. Your creation begins to turn blue and suffocate. It begs for air. It begs for life. “I need it more than you do,” you think to yourself. It's hard to watch your creation die. An ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frozen Barbie My sister was so weird. One day, she stripped all of her Barbie dolls naked and wrapped them in aluminum foil. “What are you doing that for?” our mom asked. “Cryogenics,” she said, sticking the dolls in the freezer. “We'll wake them up in the year 3,000.” Late that night, I took out the Barbie dolls and wrapped up some corn cobs in the foil. The next day, she checked up on her time capsules and screamed. That night for dinner, we had roasted chicken and steamed corn on the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Peanuts If there's anything I do that has me pegged as a Southerner, it's the fact that I put peanuts in my cokes. You're supposed to put them in the bottle, but nobody drinks out of bottles anymore. People drink out of cans, or they use a glass. Either way, I still put peanuts in my coke. The peanuts soak up the coke, and when you're done drinking the coke, you rattle them around and chew them up. My grampa taught me to do this, but he told me to do it with the shells still on. Grampa was an ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #145 - Concrete Shoes Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Five where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Concrete Shoes. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING What were your favorite stories in the Weekly Challenge this week?MichaelSherry from http://www.sherrydramsey.com/SergeSophieAshleyGuy David from http://guydavid.com/Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtl ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Feeding With horror bubbling in her throat, Lisa ran a finger along the last wrinkle in her face. "One more child should do it," she told her servants. "Not too young. I do not want to overfeed." That night, in a burlap sack, they dragged a peasant boy up from the village into Blackmoor Manor. "Still alive. Good," said Lisa. "Lock the door. No visitors." As Lisa cleansed the ritual knife, the angry mob made its way up the stone path to the manor. Looking at the pitchforks and torches, her serv ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lousy Servant I expect my tea to be placed by my bedside at precisely 8 in the morning. Any earlier, and it will be cold when I drink it. Any later, and it will not be there when I reach for it. Instead, I will reach for my sonic whip and you will suffer dearly. It used to be that the Blahva made good servants, but we've bred them to be stupid while breeding out rebellion and independence. "Shave your matted fur," I growl to my houseboy. "And show some initiative." He licks an eye, shivers with fea ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #99 Abe lay back in his coffin and thought. Johnson should be kicking out Mary Todd and Tad just about now. I'm not even cold yet. Bastard. He'll probably command the Army to freeze over the lawn for a skating rink. Andy loved skating, and it didn't matter if it was a hundred below or a hundred above. I loved skating. Or perhaps he'd pull a Gotcha on the slaves and enslave them again. Abe felt angry. He tried to get up. Oh, wait. Hold on. Um... I'm dead, he thought. Ouch. This is sur ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #144 - Chicken Nuggets Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Four where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Chicken Nuggets The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Weekly Challenge #144 - Chicken NuggetsAnima from http://zabbadabba.com/Johnnie B.Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleMichaelTom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.com/Gu ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Remix It's fun to mess with memory tapes. I reversed Johnny's timestamps and he spent weeks sucking his thumb and shitting his pants while the reindex ran. Dell hasn't stopped speaking in French, despite restoring his mind from an old directory. Tracy and Thomas woke up Thomas and Tracy. They didn't know each other before I swapped their nodes. Now, well, a little better. Oliver was supposed to be a remix. I had a great set of financials and old movies spliced into his mind. Instead, he becam ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Caricature The revolting, hook-nosed caricature loaded his grocery cart with every discount Kosher food he could. When finished gathering food for tonight's blood rituals, he haggled with the young lady at the checkout counter, protesting every penny. She kept sweeping every item over the scanner. Beep. Beep. "Want paper or plastic?" the bagboy asked. "So hard a decision," said the caricature. "Does the plastic come from petroleum stolen from Arab holy lands? Does the paper come recycled from shre ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Peace Hunt It was an awesome peace concert in the park, and at the end, we opened the cages that released the doves. Majestically flying into the air, a cloud of white wings upon the air. That's when the hawks came. Doves became puffs of white feathers as the raptors hit them with their talons and flew off with their prey. Bloody chunks falling on the crowd, the remnants of collisions raining down. Everybody staring at the hunt, unable to move. “This is a disaster,” whispered the concert pro ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Lenses At the rank of Mage Ultimor, the wizard will grind a Diabolical Lens. Infused with ancient spells, this looking-glass deciphers messages from The Beyond. The messages are often mundane, but occasionally an interesting and useful command makes it through the torrent. Most mages grow bored with the filtering process. Others remain at their scrying table, peering into the hazy glass circle, lips trembling. When he was an apprentice, his duty was to smash his master's lens. Voltmaster neve ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pickles Know what the worst thing about getting old? I hate going bald. Yeah, I used to have so much hair, but now. all my hair is falling out. Some guys cover up with hats, and others shave their heads and go totally bald. Me, I like to cover my head with sliced pickles. How do I keep them on my head? Well, the mustard acts like glue. A few fall off during the day, but I keep a jar with me. And in a real emergency, I can buy a hamburger and ask for extra pickles. Lots of extra pickles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eighties The club is dead on Wednesdays, so I picked a theme and bought a few ads. One after the other, these old people started to wander into the club, using walkers and canes. A few had powered scooters. I had to move the tables further apart to handle those. One woman with an oxygen tank and a white beehive wig complains about the music. “What's with this rock and roll crap?” she says. “It's Eighties Music,” I say. “Duran Duran. Flock of Seagulls.” You know, Eighties Night. W ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #143 - Tidal Wave Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Three where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's Tidal Wave The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #143?Norval Joe from http://norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com/MichaelTom from http://midi.libsyn.comAshleyAnima from http://zabbadabba.com/Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fifteen Seconds Once you hear sirens, you have fifteen seconds to seek shelter. Will the rocket land in the fields. Will the rocket land in a school. Will the rocket land in the streets. Will the rocket land on you. The shelter is across the street, you can get there quickly, but a child is standing there on the sidewalk, crying. Run for the shelter now? Or cover the child with your body and close your eyes? We watch the images on the television, and so many of us judge. What would YOU do to protect t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Errors The error messages this system spits out are frustrating. They are just a bunch of meaningless code. "Can I get some meaningful error message that tells me what I did wrong?" I ask. The developers say no. They are too busy getting rid of the bugs that cause the errors. "In the meantime, I'd like to know what the errors mean." They shake their heads. "How about some error messages that are even more meaningless, filled with profanity and racial epithets?" The developers think I'm bein ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website His Number Came Up He was not a number, but his number did finally come up. The old actor died last night. His greatest performance was over forty years ago. He had full control over the production, and he put everything into it. I'm watching it now, episode after episode of The Prisoner, and despite so many things changing since then socially and technologically, the themes of paranoia, distrust, and the human spirit of individuality still shine through. There's a remake of the series in the works, but I ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Foldspace Edgar needs to go to Phoenix. He pulls out his world map, makes a few folds, and he's now just a few minutes walk from Phoenix. "Relative Foldspace" he calls it, in between cigarettes. I call it Voodoo. "It doesn't hurt anybody," he says. "It just folds my relative space." He smokes another, ashes fall on the map. Brushes them off. "Thought it would set the world on fire?" With a shout, he tears the map in half. I recover from my fainting spell to the sound of Edgar laughing. "It's ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Never We all stared at the turtle in its terrarium. They named it Never. “What kind of name is Never?” I asked. The twins both shrugged at the same time. They did that kind of thing, shrugging and smiling and sneezing together. Always in agreement. Even if it was something weird, like naming their pet turtle “Never.” “I still don't understand why you two wanted a turtle,” I said. “Why not a dog or a cat?” They shrugged again. Sure, they're my kids. I love them. But it ca ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Poison Banquet The guards aren't allowed to beat us anymore. But they still torture us. They have a chef cook feasts for them. The air ducts are arranged to blanket the jail with the kitchen smells. Fresh baked bread. Deep, rich gumbo. Buttery, roasted corn. So good. Then they slide trays with the usual, horrible slop under the bars. The chef is one of us. Did twenty years for putting a knife in a man trying to rob his restaurant. They beat him bad too many times, so he's adding his specia ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #142 - Double Dipping Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Two where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's a combination of: Double Dipping The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #142?AshleyGuy from http://guydavid.com/Tom from http://midi.libsyn.comAnima Zabaleta from http://http.zabbadabba.com/Justin from http://www.thebeando ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sturgiss We followed Sturgiss Necromancer, demon graverobber criminal. His destination? The Voltmaster. His watchtower rises from a clearing in Gloomwood. We goblins know to give this abomination of stone a wide berth. On the roof, Sturgiss arranges steel rods. Clouds, ready for harvest, I shout to the sky: “We demand the return of Lord Grondol's body!” Sturgiss screams his response: “You may fight the jackals for Grondol's unused remains.” Inside, Voltmaster throws a switch. The to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Skin Contract Awake at 4. Itching, scratching. The rashes are unbearable. One more week until my skin contract’s up. The free ones are nothing compared to expensive designer skins, but with the contract, you get a discount on those. I look in the mirror. Hideous bags under my eyes, wrinkles like canyons across my face. And rashes. Last time, I cheaped out. Ever since, it's been dermatologist appointments and oceans of cosmetics. Yak butter creams? Tungsten wire therapy? I won't make that mistak ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Belt I could not find my belt this morning. It was not where I had left it - wrapped around my neck. My belt is usually on yesterday's pants, but I didn't wear pants yesterday. So I wrapped it around my neck and went to sleep. When I woke up, it was gone. I only own one belt. It's a black belt, so it goes with everything. Maybe I will go buy another belt? I should buy two, but in all my life, I only own one belt at a time. Because I only have one neck to wrap it around Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sandpaper Carpet We ripped up the carpet and put down sandpaper. It's easy to vacuum now. And I get great traction. It's a weird feeling to walk across it with my bare feet. It's kind of like walking on the beach. The worst part is when I spill something on it. What a mess. The cat hates it. She leaps across the seats and tables, runs across the sofa and uses the bookshelves to get to the tile floor in the kitchen. Anything to avoid the sandpaper. If the cat could climb across the ceiling with her cla ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Perfect Potatoes The potatoes are perfect? Good. I'm glad you like them You know, I always kept things in the oven just a little too long. So, I had the temperature turned down just little on the oven. Things turn out just right now. I could have just set the timer a little quicker, but I'm such a stickler for time. Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes. You can measure it with a clock or by counting. But temperature? Can you really tell the difference between three hundred and fifty degrees and three h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #141 - Thumpin Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-One where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's a combination of: Thumpin The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #141?Anima from http://zabbadabba.com/Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleTom from http://midi.libsyn.com/Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Forest Of Fourteen Trees Once upon a time, this was a vast forest, with trees as far as the eye could see. Now, there are only fourteen trees, crowded together in a housing subdivision. We, the elves of the forest, once frolicked and hunted. Now, we argue over pizza toppings and order delivery. It's not easy, clinging to the past when the future has clearly defeated it, but we are forest elves, and we can no more abandon them as a fish can leave the water. The government calls us an endangered species, but the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stuffed It's just a simple fact of life. You can stuff a chicken. You can stuff a bra. You can stuff a bra in a chicken. You can stuff a chicken in a bra. Those awful cookbooks and fashion magazines – I blame them all! It's unhealthy! It's unsanitary! It's unamerican! It used to be you'd just see this on the news from savage places like Belugastan or the North Indies. Now, you see it all over the mall. These damn crazy kids with their tattoos, piercings, and poultry-filled undergarments! ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Old School We're at the bar, watching the ball drop in Times Square. “I still write last year on my checks,” I say. “I always do.” She puts her drink down. “You still write checks?” she asks. “No online bill payment?” “I like the feel of writing a check,” I said. “Pointing and clicking doesn't feel the same." “What about credit cards?” “Nope. I'm really old school.” She laughed, signed for her tab, and left. I asked for my tab. “Two chickens, Bill,” said the b ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Old Men Two old fishermen on the dock, the bucket sitting between them on the dock. They've been there for years, fishing. The first old man catches a fish, and then he lets it go. Then the other old man catches it and lets it go. Back and forth, that fish got caught over and over. He liked the taste of the bait that much. And the two old fishermen hated the taste of fish. “Caught that same damn fish again?” said the first old man. “Yup,” said the other. They dropped their poles an ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tie You Up In Knots I know my knots. I know every knot. Though I may be old and blind, you can give me any rope and I can put a knot in it that you want me to put in it. Hand me a rope with a knot in it, and I can tell you what kind it is in ten seconds. This rope around my ankles, I know. Same with the rope around my wrists. The one around my neck is another matter. Give me a minute on that. Pull on them all you want – all my secrets will die with me. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #98 Abe rubbed the back of his head and moaned. "Stop that moaning!" said a deep voice. Abe looked around. Clouds everywhere. "Is this Heaven?" Abe asked. "Of course, stupid," said the voice. "Any other questions?" "Why did you create so many common-looking people?" asked Abe. The clouds parted, and God walked out. "See?" Abe winced and looked away. "Ewwwwwwww!" "Well, I made Man in My image, right?" said God. "You're right," said Abe. "Sorry." "Anything else?" ask ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #140 - Lambada, Dragon Burgers, Coal, Bail, and Wrapping Paper Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was... was.... um... It's a combination of: Lambada, Dragon Burgers, Coal, Bail, and Wrapping Paper The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #140?Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.com/Uva Oxide from http://lost3dent.blogspot.com/Norval Joe from http ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monkey Fuckers You wake up in pain, reeking of sweat and stale bananas. Another night, another monkey fucked. This shit's too sick for Oprah. She thought you were fucking guys in monkey suits or something. This is the real deal. Oh you've tried. Lord knows you've tried, but there's no patch - only the real thing will do. They bite and scratch, but that makes it more exciting. Gets you off harder than if they just sit there, screeching. Curious about little Curious George, aren't you? Hold my hat. My ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dr. Santa Every year, he puts on a Santa suit, visiting dying children in the hospital. "There are healthy girls and boys without toys," he'd sneer, holding up an unopened train set. "Are you planning on being buried with this one?" He went from bed to bed, filling his sack and leaving a trail of screaming children. The next morning, while on the way to work, he stopped by church. "Bless you,” said Father John, gladly accepting the toys and games for the gift drive. Dr. Walters smiled and got ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Funeral On The Side Of A Cliff He spent half his time climbing cliffs and the other half looking for cliffs to climb. When his luck ran out, he insisted on being buried in the cliff that killed him. So, we threw drop-lines over the edge, lowered ourselves to where the rope snapped on a sharp rock, and dug a niche to stick his ashes in. The priest was a rockhound from Utah, and he insisted on coming up from the base. Crazy bastard. We're all a bunch of crazy bastards, the biggest of all is in this tin can - see you so ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wandering Cat My cat likes to wander. He heads out the door and makes a beeline for Miami. Spring break. Just one stop in Biloxi, Mississippi. He likes how they prepare catnip there. I know this because I read his credit card statements every month. He's not good with finances. Gets in over his head if I don't keep in on a short credit limit and allowance. I flick the porch light on and off a few times. He knows that means for him to get his furry butt back inside. I hear a meow and he's home, fu ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Menorah “Sun's almost down.” “That's nice. Where's the cat?” “He's outside. Time to light the menorah.” "Where's the candles?" "I'm using an oil menorah this year." "An oil menorah?" "Yes. Uses olive oil. More authentic than candles." "What?" "You're gonna burn the fucking place down." "No I won't." "Yes you will." "We've got a smoke detector this year." "Test it recently?" "Um... no... errr..." “Well, isn't that a hoot?” "You put the battery in the TV remote." "I did not." "Yes y ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #97 A crowd stood around the body of Lincoln, which was all the more crowded because of the small confines of the boarding house. People were gathering up blood-souvenirs, anything the president had bled upon. "He bled on the sheet!" "He bled on the pillow!" "He bled on the lantern!" The room filled. The walls began to buckle. Elbows banged against the windowpane. "Everyone out!" shouted the boarding house's owner, shaking a fire-iron. "Now!" All the people filed out of the roo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #139 - Oh, the horror! Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty-Ninewhere I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was Oh, the horror!. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #139?Caleb from http://blacktiemartiniclub.com/Norval Joe from http://www.novalsoutlook.blogspot.com/Mike P. from http://mjpaxton.com/Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleJeffr ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Silent Night Santa got stuck in my chimney. He's yelling for help. I called the sheriff. He told me to lay off the egg nog. That's how life goes in a small town sometimes. It's a nice place, though. Quiet and peaceful. Until some old fat guy gets stuck in your chimney. I turned on a flashlight and looked up. Two black boots. Gigantic red ass. “What am I getting this year?” I asked. “A lump of coal if you don't get me out of here,” he yelled. Fuck him. Fatty can wait. I turned up my h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Grooves Old man, asleep at the bar. He's never said a word in three years. Nobody knows who he is or what his story is. Let’s take him to the jukebox. You can hear sounds of ancient times by running the needle along ridges in pottery. It's from when vibrations got embedded in them as they turned on the pottery wheel. This old man’s got lots of wrinkles, so we put him in the jukebox He is instantly electrocuted. When the smoke clears, we prop him back up at the bar. To tell you the trut ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Trojans The plan is brilliant. We are French, after all. We shipped the statue in pieces for assembly in the harbor. The torso of the statue was large enough to hold 500 soldiers. Our weapons are in the torch. Vive la France, New Paris! In the middle of the night, we are to crawl out the door and begin the invasion. "Where's the door?" I, the commander, asks. We tapped out a message of surrender to a confused workcrew on the outside. Ransom is such a dirty word. The diplomats will smooth it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Forty Acres My name be Rufus Cleveland and I be 173 years old today. What's this here place called? Time Square? Well, I calls it mine. I been waitin over a century for my forty acres and a mule, and I'm takin these here forty acres. Lincoln himself promised em to me. Said “You get forty acres and a mule, Rufus.” When I axed him which forty I get, he just said “Just take 'em.” Gonna be a shame to tear these here buildins down, but this here is mah land, and I wanna get to plantin in the s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Butterflies What am I eating? Butterflies. Ever eaten butterflies? No? They're delicious. I can't decide if they taste better dipped in chocolate or hot sauce. How do I cook them? I don't. I eat them raw. Their wings melt with any kind of heat. That's okay – lots of things taste better raw, like peapods and carrots. Okay, so they taste like crunchy fluff, but they hold the chocolate pretty well. And hot sauce, too. Hold it by the legs and stick the wings in the dip, then pop it in your mo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Lobster Races I've got a special treat in store for you. No, we're not going to the movies. There's no good movies out right now. We're going to the lobster races tonight! They take a pair of lobsters and strap them to roller skates. Then, they roll those roller skates down a street. First one across the finish line wins The loser gets eaten. Okay, so they eat the winner too. Nobody wins this race. Except for the people who eat the lobsters. Know who loses the worst? Me. Because those are my ro ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Dead Lawn The lawn is dead. I tried watering, fertilizing, sod patches - you name it, I've tried it. You know how some kooks tell you to play music for plants? Well, I tried that too. I guess those kooks were as kooky as I'd thought. There's nothing left of the lawn. It's all blown to dust. It's a shame, because I bought a shiny new lawnmower. The neighbors come by to borrow it. They expect me to fill it with gas. Why? What's the point? They have lawns. Let them gas it up. I'll just sit here, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Poseidon None of the other Poseidon The Sea Gods at water parks had problems, but then, they were just actors. The One True Poseidon lay on the couch, shaking. "The pills aren't working," he tells his analyst. "Neptune came out during my act at Sea World again." "What happened?" asked Dr. Moggs. "I speared a kid with my trident. The lawyers are erasing the tape and blaming the kid for leaning on the rail." The doctor made notes as the once-mighty sea god moaned in agony, mumbling "Get out of my ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Taco and Tequila I sit at my desk, ignoring the noise, focused on that clock on the wall. Both hands reach for the sky - Noon! You see, I have found the key to happiness. Every day, I have a taco and a shot of tequila for lunch. Oh, that sweet simple burn. Sure, it can be rough on my stomach, but it makes the afternoon just fly by until it's time to go home. It's time to go home? Let's go home. My buzz lasts through the bus ride. Mom asks what I learned today in school. I smile and say "Bliss." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #92 Congress, in its infinite wisdom, offered to grant royal powers to Lincoln. The exhausted president refused them. "If all earthly power were given to me," he muttered, "I should not know what to do." Later that evening, he watched as a meteorite streaked across the sky and landed at his feet. "What have we here?" In his hands, the glowing green rock pulsed. Abe smiled as the energy flowed through his body, but his smile quickly faded. "I still don't know what to do," he muttered, sit ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #134 - That One Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty-Four where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was That One. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #134?Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleAnima Zabaleta from http://zabbadabba.comJeffrey from http://GreatHites.blogspot.comAshleyEva Moon from http://evamoon.net/blog/AlmoNorval J ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lasso You don't need a license to carry a lasso. That's why I carry one of those instead of a gun. Guns are aloud and messy. Lassos are a lot friendlier. But have you ever tried robbing a bank with a lasso? The teller laughs like you're crazy. If you're robbing a bank with a lasso, you are crazy. The teller says for me to hold out my hand. �Why?� I ask. �Just do it,� she says and smiles. So I do, and she puts a penny in my palm. �That's for being cute,� she says. �Next!� A live story ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Life Hands You Lemons When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. So, I did. Death handed me lemons, too. I made lemonade with them. Karma gave me lemons. More lemonade. Then, Fate handed me a bag. "More lemons?" I asked. �Please, not more lemons.� Fate nodded yes. So here I am, sitting on an island of lemons in a lake of lemonade. Instead of a boat to rescue me, everybody's bringing me lemons. They ask lemon advice, when to plant, when to pick. They want me to write a book. ENOUGH! If life hands you ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Rider They may be hideous in appearance, but no goblin would be caught being rude. "Sears," says the creature. "And your name is?" The topiary, a shrub groomed to look like a green poodle, said nothing. "I need to be in Waco by sunrise," said Sears, and he hopped on the back of the topiary. "Let us ride." For all the shouting, the topiary didn't budge an inch. The morning dew settles on the goblin's frozen body, turned to stone by the daylight. "Who put this ugly thing out here?" said the g ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #90 Cows, everywhere cows! Lincoln couldn't believe the sheer number of cows roaming through the streets of Washington. Going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing. "Where did all these cows come from?" he asked, but nobody had an answer. As always, Abe came up with a solution. He commanded the city to hold a carnival and a massive barbecue. Under his direction, the cows were caught, slaughtered, butchered into steaks, and cooked in the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #132 - Clowns vs. Ninja Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty-Twowhere I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was Clowns vs. Ninja. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #132?Almo SchumannLaieanna from http://hodgepodgepoint.libsyn.com/Jeff from http://GreatHites.blogspot.com AshleyJustin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleTom from http://midi.libdy ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Devil's Night They call this night the Devil's Night because kids set fires to usher in Halloween. One year, they got what they wanted and The Devil showed up to survey the damage. "You call this devastation?" He howled. "I've seen entire empires burn, nothing but ashes from ocean to ocean!" He spat at a burnt-out house and laughed. The kids burned more houses, but it wasn't enough for The Devil. Cops arrived and arrested the kids. Instead of becoming Satanists, jail house imams converted them to I ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pumpkin Screams This genetic engineering shit gives me a case of the heebie jeebies. These newfangled pumpkins scream and ooze blood when you carve them. When it got to Thanksgiving turkeys that gobble to the tune of "over the river and through the woods" even after you cut their heads off, I got worried. How did it start? Let me think... It started with a simple splice of DNA to produce Yule logs that burn with natural cinnamon spice scent. All downhill from there, rabbits laying eggs and crazy shit l ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All Locked Up I forget when I lock things, so I made a key chain with little plastic reminders when a door is locked or appliance is on. Instead of worrying, I now just look at my reminders on my key chain. I was in a rush this morning and forgot to set the reminders... Or did I? Or did I forget to reset the reminders from when I last unlocked those things, and then forgetting to lock them again, so... I throw away the key chain, lock all the locks, sit in my chair, and hum happily in the darkness. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Battery The monks bring out the iron chest and assemble the relics upon the altar. Tears from a thousand saints poured into the Holy Grail, iron from the gates of Heaven and Hell wired with a slender silver thread that was hammered from Judas� coins. They connect the wires around my horns. "Do you see The Light?" asks the abbot. I wait. There is a buzzing in my ears, but no light. "I am deeply sorry, Lucifer. Redemption is beyond your grasp." I crawl back to The Pit to continue my plans. �A ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bacon The Law of Bacon is an axiom of our existence. Creation's purpose is two-fold: to evolve a form of life to generate a source of bacon and a form of life to consume bacon. This is the Meaning Of Life. One without the other shatters the fabric of reality. The wine and wafers are gone, replaced with strips of bacon. The pews are filled with the faithful, led by the aroma and sound of sizzling in the skillet. Today, we burn a heretic at the stake, a nonbeliever in our midst, the grease of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #89 Abraham Lincoln didn't like to lose. "Rather than yield," he said. "I would sooner go out into my backyard and hang myself." All it took was a bad hand of cards or an argument over dinner, and he'd be out in the backyard, tossing a rope over a branch in order to hang himself. At first, Mary Todd hid all the ropes, so Abe tried using bedsheets and towels. That's when Mary Todd ordered all of the trees cut down. Abe roamed the back yard, looking for something to hang himself from, but it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #131 - Asylum Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty-One where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was Asylum. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #131?Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleAshleyKolekEvamoon from http://evamoon.netAlmoMikePhilipJeffrey from http://greathites.blogspot.com/Guy from http://guydavid.com/Anima from htt ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bring Him Back The poster was supposed to say Dead Or Alive, but it ended up saying Dead And Alive. Before we could fix the mistake, the poster was up in every Post Office. Replacements were sent out the next week, but by then, we'd gotten our man. He's in the holding cell, Dead And Alive. No, I haven't seen him. All I know is, the guy who brought him in said he was, and he wanted to collect on the full reward. I don't know what Dead And Alive means. Do you? Maybe we should just leave him for the n ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vet Bo spent two years in Sadr City. Some bearded fuck was running the place. The government gave this fuck guns and money to keep the peace, but this asshole used them for all sorts of other shit. Women suicide bombers. Those were the worst. Stick a bunch of crazy shit in their heads, put a bomb under their robes, and tell them to shriek like hell if anyone tried to search them. All it takes is one. Just one. Bo came back in a bag last week. The bearded fuck is still there, making women ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Primordial The primordial soup is full of amino acids. Add a little electrical energy in the form of lightning to get the building blocks of life. Perhaps with the primordial soup you can get a primordial sandwich. Nothing complex... Just some lettuce and tomato. A sprinkle of dill? Perfect. How about a primordial salad to go with that? That, my friend, is a good lunch. You won't need a big primordial dinner after a primordial lunch like that. Just be sure to leave a good primordial tip for this ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Servant We need more sticks for wands. Kiss your fingertips, touch the gate, and walk into the cemetery. Without the kiss, the cemetery's residents will be insulted. With the kiss, you will have a safe journey to the Tree Of Souls. Gather the loose branches. Do not take from the tree itself - that is certain destruction. These twigs will make excellent wands for necromancy, magic of the dead. My best ones come from here in fact. Powerful enough to raise the dead and make them obedient servant ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Apple Bobbing If you're listening to these as bedtime stories, you're going to have bad dreams after this one. I love Halloween. It's the best time of the year. The candy. The costumes. The cool breeze in the air. Most of all, I love apple bobbing. Fill a washtub with water, toss in a few apples, put your hands behind your back, and then try to catch an apple with your mouth. It�s so fun! Ever tried other fruits? Bananas are way too easy. Watermelons are just too big. No, it�s best to stick to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #88 Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. No visitor to the White House left without being asked of their ambition by Abraham Lincoln. He thought he'd heard them all, until one child said he wanted to be an astronaut. "What's that?" asked Abe. "I want to explore space!" said the child. "That's very peculiar," said Abe. "How will you get there?" "With a ladder," said the child. Abe put the child to work lighting gas lamps and changing candles. "How's space today?" he'd ask and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #130 - And then you put it in the blender... Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was And then you put it in the blender.... The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #130?Fricker Fracker from http://www.thefrickerfrequency.comAnima from http://zabbadabba.comMikeWilmaNika from http://www.nikadreamscape.wordpress.comKeeme from http://da ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Deathface The law says three days. The machines can do five. With modifications, seven. That's how long Spencer wants. He's got Deathface. Sunken eyes and cheeks, grey skin, eyebrows gone, raspy breathing. The law says not to send a Deathface down. Notify the police if one comes to your Coma Center. Or if someone asks for a week. It can't be called an accident because the wastebag has to be changed and the morphine refilled. The inspectors will know. No, I say. I can do five. Not seven. Spenc ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Felver Rate The government reports appear on my desk on the third Tuesday every month. It is my job to inspect them for investment opportunities or legal loopholes. Every month, a new statistic appears. This month I noticed a label called Felver Rate. There was no explanation or formula. Just a graph showing a slow decline over time. Is this a good thing, like unemployment, or is it a bad thing, like graduation rates? I call the author... Dr. Daniel Felver, but I got a recording. He's at a Weight ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Roadkill Usually, we see dead possums and armadillos by the side of the road, but this was the first time I've seen a panda. Turning it over with my shovel, sure enough, it was a panda. Big bastard. I couldn't lift it. So, I had to call for help. The county cut back to one-man crews a few months back to save on costs. Instead of jabbering in the truck cab, we jabber over the two-way. Joe pulled up, and looked at it. "Can you eat panda?" he asked. "Let�s find out,� I said, and we loaded it int ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cloud Whisperer He lays back in a field, guiding the clouds across the sky. The Cloud Whisperer rules the heavens by sheer willpower. The clouds are happy to do his bidding. It delights them to float where he asks. He hardly notices the roar of the crowd around him, the players in their helmets and pads. This championship needs to be played. the rain needs to stop for just a few hours. "Please," he says to the sky. The clouds shift slowly, rising and thinning. The game will be played. "Thank you," ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Elevator This is the result of a Tweet by Grace McDunnough about riding the elevator with a heavy breather. The elevator doors open and I step in. The doors close. Usually, it's a smooth ride. And very peaceful. But I can hear breathing. Loud, heavy breathing. Raspy. Angry. I don't want to look... I watch the numbers. More breathing. It's starting to scare me. The numbers go up... and up... and up... The breathing is unbearable. The elevator stops and the doors open. I run out of the e ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Ducks When I was little, we would go to the Volkswagen offices and feed the swans at the pond. Or were they geese? Or ducks? I can't remember. We'd take a lot of white bread to the pond and crumble it up and toss it in the water. It would float until a swan would swim over to it and gobble it up. Repeat that for a half an hour, with occasional swans swimming around each other trying to get the bread. No fights, though. They all worked it out somehow in swan-talk. My brother and I, though, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yazghar I list my race as White. I'm proud to be a Yazghar, sure, but I would rather not end up dissected at Area 51. The Field Operations Manual says to blend in as best I can. Carnival jobs when possible, or work from home doing technical support. Do I look like a Steve? Do Steves have bright orange war-crests and talons? Usually we outsource observation duties to the Ofokos. They look more human than us, despite the lack of earlobes. Easily concealed with wigs or floppy hats. The fangs are ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #128 - Airplane Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Twenty-Eight, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was selected by Brad Z, and we went with Airplane. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING What stories do you think were the best of Weekly Challenge #128?Guy David from http;//guydavid.comJeff Hite from http://greathites.blogspot.com/Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtleTom from ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Orders Why did I put a .223 into the chest of a six year-old on a swingset. It was a justified kill. My orders say so. Of course, orders are getting weird these days. You hear stories of agents standing naked in the mall shouting "Syrup!" and not bathing for a week. If you question the orders, someone else gets orders to kill you. If you know what's best for you, you just read them and carry them out. What? You don't understand these orders? Not sure what flavor cake to bake? Hold on... ther ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Virtual Class Imaginary spitballs fill the air. Roger Washington's back to pulling pigtails. Stacy Miller shimmers and falls to dust. Third one today. There must be something out of sorts with the holographic system. I check the diagnostics while Stacy's parents are threatening to sue the school. No red lights, so I order a check of the Miller's unit and read the manufacturer alerts. Aha. Bad firmware update last night. I send out an alert to the parents, and I remind them to remove all headsets bef ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Lawyer In Your Lap A universally-despised attorney gives up on making court appearances, using an assistant with a laptop and video software to conduct business. "It's safer this way," he says. Sure enough, he pisses off a class action defendant, and the guy shoots the laptop. The assistant is relieved. At least he wasn't shot, right? His phone rings. It's the lawyer, irate. "That was a four thousand dollar laptop," he yells. The assistant asks him how much his suit jacket is worth. "A thousand bucks," ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cathedral Every colony has a Cathedral. That's what we call the terraforming engine after it's idled and scavenged for useful parts. The newer the model, the less of a carcass left. Every cubic inch of that behemoth can be melted down and forged into something useful. Colonists won't use it all, though. They insist on leaving something to remind them, a vast hollow shell as a monument to the colony's founding. Inside, they gather to give thanks, an annual ritual carried out thousands of years ago ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Control Room The king wants to go to the control room. Half of the lights in this room blink for no reason. The others do not blink at all. The switches aren't connected to anything, and all that the buttons do beyond changing color when pressed is to make a faint clicking sound. It makes the king happy, though. He loves to push buttons and flip switches and laugh. "Die die die!" He yells. A display lights up with a random number. He cheers. "High score!" We laugh with him and pray to God that he ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Golden Pen I was suffering a horrible case of writer's block when The Devil tapped me on the shoulder. "Use my pen," he said, and he handed me his Golden Pen. "What's the catch?" I asked. "The usual shit," he said. "Brilliant artistry for your soul and eternal damnation." "Pffft," I said. "I'm already fucked." I shook his hand and he vanished. Sure enough, when I tried to write, it was out of ink. Fucker. Oh well. I wrote anyway, scratching the letters into the paper, and I held it up to the l ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Chart My doctor put down the chart and did a little happy dance. "Does this mean I'm cured?" I ask. "No," says the doctor. "You're not in fact, it's terminal." "I'm going to die?" "Yes, but not soon. In fact, it will be a long, painful, agonizing death." "Then what's the dance for?" "Nobody's seen what you've got before." "Why is that good?" "I'll get it named after me," he said. "I'll be famous." He asked a nurse for a bottle of champagne. "Drink up, it can't hurt. At least, I don't thi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Businessman Specials They call early afternoon baseball games �Businessman Specials.� You might ask... why? After playing a full game the night before, the teams aren't going to be at their best. So, the players take the day off and the front office suits up. Ever seen a marketing and branding specialist try to charge a bunt from third? Almost as ugly as one trying to justify seven-dollar beers while watching a sub-500 cellar-dwelling bum squad. Or your 100 million dollar cleanup man picking up a broom and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Play Every Thursday, the neighborhood kids gather up at the local church and put on a puppet show for the town. This week was different. You see, someone burned down the shed the kids used to store their arts and crafts. Years and years of handcrafted puppets, up in smoke. So, the children used cheese. They put hunks of cheddar, gouda, and havarti on sticks and a bedsheet curtain rose to thunderous applause. Hamlet had never been so... delicious. When the curtain fell for the last time, we ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Billy the Kid Feelin' lucky tonight? William Bonney over in Accounting was a renegade CPA who settled down and went corporate. But during Audit Season, the Call of the West got in his blood, and he became Billy the Billing Kid. Forms? Ledgers? Books? He's put them all away and reach for his sixguns. He'd shoot down lawyers and tax agents and all sorts of credit service representatives. Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable became Accounts Dead when he faced off with them on Main Street at High N ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Bunny Mafia You want to know? Well, I'm dead either way, I might as well talk. You want to hear about The Bunny Mafia? I'll tell you about it. Yeah, I ran with the rabbits. Cooked books for the Five Hutches, trafficked in hookers. You know. Because they screw like rabbits. No drugs. Only carrots, lettuce, cabbage � they like vegetables. The fresher, the better. Then, one day, a package arrives. It's a bloody foot on a chain, wrapped in newspaper. �Little Bunny Fufu sleeps with the Easter Eggs,� ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Rainbow Eyes Every time Jesse blinks, her eyes change color. From blue to brown to green to yellow to red... �Is it some kind of newfangled contact lenses?� I ask. She laughs. �I was hang gliding and flew through a rainbow,� she said. �Apparently, there's some kind of magic in rainbows that does this.� You're supposed to wear goggles, but Jesse's broke and fell off, leaving her eyes unprotected. �What about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?� I asked. �I wish,� she said, sighing. �Just the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #112 - Whiskey Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Twelve, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was selected by Elisson, and we went with Whiskey. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which stories were the best from Weekly Challenge #112?ArminasX of Second EffectsSparrow of AllatwitterMichelle of MichellePond NitelyAGuy David at Guy David dot comElisson from blog d'ElissonTom from Footnote ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bulletproof Someone who's ready to buy something right then and there has The Look. The salesman saw it on the customers he'd just finished demonstrating a high-end laptop to. �So, any questions?� he asked, snapping the laptop shut. �How rugged is it?� asked a banker. The salesman swept the laptop off of the table and it hit the floor. He picked it up and turned it on. No damage. �It's practically bulletproof,� he said. A shot rang out, and a bullet dented the case, but the laptop stayed on. � ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kuzo Most sushi chefs won't go near a mermaid, but Kuzo will slice up any sea creature if the price is right. He retired rich after the Loch Ness Monster went missing, but Kuzo and basketball have a love/hate relationship. Especially when Vegas was involved. Leviathan, Sea Hag � you name it, he's carved it up for Japanese businessmen and celebrities to turn a quick buck. Remember Charlie The Tuna? His schtick was that he wasn't good enough for Starkist, so they wouldn't take him? When was th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fistfucking The Platypus I've read every overpriced advice book there is at the bookstore. Who Moved My Cheese? and Throwing The Elephant didn't help with my miserable job, meaningless life, and spiritual bankruptcy. I just got shit on more. So, I decided to write my own overpriced advice book: Fistfucking The Platypus. I put tons of bad advice between the covers, added crappy drawings that a third grader with two broken hands could doodle up, and then put a twenty-dollar price tag on the hardback. Despite my n ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Bard We locked up the bard for his own safety. If the king heard these nonsense rhymes, he'd certainly cut off his head. I mean, here's an example of his madness: When an elephant coughs and sneezes. It bends and falls to all four kneeses. It wipes its trunk on what it pleases. Then coughs things up in wheezes. Bugs and germs upon the breezes. Covered with disgusting fleases. It's how they spread such bad diseases. Until the cough and sneezes eases. The king is fond of his elephant herd, and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Boatsman Throughout the ages, the boatsman kept his fare the same: one soul, one coin. It didn't matter what kind of coin it was or how valuable it had been in the land of the living. He liked to collect coins. On the weekends, he showed off his vast coin collection to his friends. The job called for a stoic, professional demeanor, so when he was given a coin he didn't already have, he'd fight hard to keep his composure. Nobody wants their trip across the River Styx to be performed by a giddy s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Supersize Ever try to Supersize a Happy Meal? I've tried it all around the world. Every single store they have on the face of the earth. I've been to every stinking one of them. And they just won't do it. It doesn't matter what language they speak there or what currency they take. They just won't do it. It's impossible, they say. Nothing is impossible, I reply. They said that I couldn't go around the world, asking for a Supersized Happy Meal, but I have. I hear three new stores open every day. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weekly Challenge #111 - One Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Eleven, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic. The topic this week was selected by me, and I went with One. The excellent theme music is by Guy David VOTING Which stories were the best from Weekly Challenge #111?Elisson of blog d'ElissonArnimasX of Second EffectsSteven the Nuclear ManGuy David from Guy David dot comHotspur of Hibernia on the SkidsFemme BleuMikeEva Moon from ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mister Hunktastic A smile. A perfect smile. A patent pending smile, it's so perfect. Coming down the street. Traffic stops. Everyone swoons. It's him. Mister Hunktastic. The one and only. But man enough to be two... three... four... Five? No, that's silly. Maybe four and a half. Mister Hunktastic. All man all the time. Even asleep. The standard is set for hunkiness. Hunkitude? Hunkery? He's gonna franchise himself. Make millions. Coming down your street. Traffic stops. Everybody swoons. Mist ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Egghead Perhaps you've noticed my massive egg-shaped head? Frightening, isn't it? But why? Why is my head so disturbing to others? It's not hurting anyone. I don't have horns or antlers to gore my enemies with. And if I rub it on you, the condition is truly non-contagious. I just have a big egg-shaped head. Oh, it's my gigantic brain that concerns you. Well, does it help if I say that I just think of happy duckies and bunnies and puppies? No? I guess I'll have to blow up your brain with m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Calling Myself I know it sounds weird, but I put myself on speed dial. That way, when I don't know what to do, I can call myself. Sometimes, I'm the one calling myself. And other times, my phone rings and it's me. Usually, it's nothing important, like directions somewhere. But the other day, I swear, I heard crying in the background. �I can't find the chainsaw,� said my voice over the phone. �It's in the shed,� I said. �What do I need it for?� �Thank you,� I said, and I hung up. I took myself off ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Haircut Time I'm overdue for a haircut. I've got every barber in town calling my cell phone. They're bidding on the job. Some of them are trying to sweeten the deal with things like limo rides, hookers, and a free shave. This one stylist keeps sending me flowers. Huge flower arrangements. In fact, when I open the door, the whole front hallway is just flowers. How he got in here to fill the place with flowers, I'm not so sure. Kinda scares me. Maybe I'll just donate it to those cancer folks. Or ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Belt Loop When I'm having a bad day, I'll take off my belt and reverse it through the loops. Instead of feeding it around to the right, I'll feed it to the left. Does it change anything? No. But it gives me a moment to breathe and think. Now, if someone gets me so riled up that I take my belt off a second time, I take it off and beat them with it. When I'm done, I thread it back the right way. Get up. Go to the bathroom and clean yourself up. And don't piss me off a third time. Friday is th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website