Insane Mushroom Posse

All over a corner of the hill, a swath of mushrooms has popped up like, like, mushrooms. This is just one small portion of them. And the visible portion of a fungus, the fruiting body, is just one small portion of the whole organism. There must be a giant mass of mycelium under there. The […]

Re: Hello, said the Stick

It’s unfortunate that my first encounter with Michael Swanwick’s stories was “A Small Room in Koboldtown,” which underwhelmed me. I thought “From Babel’s Fallen Glory We Fled” was pretty good, but still unsatisfying. These two left me unprepared for how much I would love “Hello, said the Stick.” I first encountered it a reading on […]

Re: My Father’s Singularity

For this week, Torque Control short story club refrains from giving us a monster story for Halloween, instead suggesting you read the relatively sentimental “My Father’s Singularity,” by Brenda Cooper. Paul’s father is always telling him that he will live to see the Singularity and become something his father can’t understand. When Paul goes to […]

Fall colors

Here’s some random colors from pink to red. Most are the usual suspects for autumn, from pink snapdragons to orange euonymous fruits to red Alpine strawberries back after the heat for an encore. And every year my warm spot for tomatoes shelters them way longer than you might expect. Yes, we have tomatoes!

No excuses

I got no excuses, but No post. No pictures. No inspiration. Not even a blather. You know?

Embrace the surprise

Last week, when I said I was going to put down my head and butt it against a story until it was done, I was feeling pretty frustrated. Every time I poked at it, the story would go in a new direction, getting weirder and weirder. On the good side, this was exactly what made […]

Squirlfeeder

A little-known variety of the North American trickster animal is the Squirlfeeder. Somewhat like the Japanese tanuki, this small furry animal resembles a squirrel in its natural shape, but when threatened can transform itself into other objects to fool humans. The backyard variety favors the bird feeder, for obvious reasons. Here you see an incomplete […]

Re: The Cage

About the worst thing I can say about “The Cage,” by A.M. Dellamonica, is that the beginning gave me totally the wrong impression. On my first read, I bounced off the weight given to a story about the bloody murder one Pamela Adolpha, werewolf. I thought this going to be a gory story about werewolves. […]

Bread!

It’s cool enough to bake again. Actually, it’s been cool enough for a while, but I need to add enough motivation to overcome my work function of inertia. Anyway, I made a nice big loaf of multigrain bread. And since I forgot that the recipe I’m working on usually makes two loaves, I baked a […]

See?

I told you you might see some short posts here.