If you’re reading this before listening to the podcast… and you know, I have no idea whether you read or listen first, or if you just read, or just listen, and find yourself lost on those rare occurrences where I can hold a thought long enough to prattle BOTH orally and epistolarily about it… but [...]

I was sitting here eating little sugary hearts with terms of endearment printed on them. They’re pretty popular with the young people, and surely you must know them: cheap things, sort of disgusting in the way that totally fructosified food product is, but sort of terrific for the same reason. And besides, [...]

I was talking to the resident genius here about false memories and the publishment thereof, when an idea emerged, an idea with such potential for industry salvation that there’s no choice but to document it here, in the interest of knowledge open-sourcing, or whatever.
The idea involved all these made-up memoirs floating about these [...]

A disclaimer: the Wiki says that tonight’s story is… how to put this… Big in Middle School Circles. But don’t let that put you off (especially if you yourself run in Middle School Circles, or are Big therein). I can be as big of an arrogant elitist as the next lady when it [...]

Well, pilgrims. It’s that day once again when the poisoned blankets of history are celebrated with turkey and squash. And I want to get all excited with you about Delmore Schwartz, and rave a while about how you should be able to listen to the rhythm of his narrative with an almost painful [...]

So it was decided that I needed a table, but in thinking about the sort of table I might need, for the purpose the table would serve, it was further decided that the table needed to have certain bench-like properties. A hybrid, as we say in these times.
The problem is, as you may have [...]

This was going to go up during Banned Books week, but then I got a nasty visit from Uncle Rhinovire, and then there was the trip to the Akvariet and then it hit me that neither a short story nor the oral presentation of one qualify, really, as a “Banned Book,” although for reasons that [...]

As I noted in the whole wide verbal megillah setting up tonight’s reading, I’m taking great issue with the Wikipedia entry on tonight’s author. Here, again, is the first sentence, with my call to fix it:
Jesse Hill Ford (December 28, 1928 – June 1, 1996) was an American writer of Southern literature who produced [...]

But in order to be mad scientists, first we had to learn how to be normal scientists.
It’s funny, imagining John Fahey sitting in a hotel rampantly scrawling. Not because he’s so otherwise voiceless, or should relegate his expressiveness to the steel-stringed style, or other reasons fascistic or idiotic. He’s just one of those [...]

This story was brought to my attention a few months ago, making its way inbox-ward on the anniversorry of my trip down Amniotic Lane, timing not unintentional. Now, I would share with you my thoughts on why this was selected as a Birthday Story, but that would involve psychographic profiling of the sender’s right [...]