I’ve published a story about lobstering. One is forthcoming about farming potatoes. And I’m writing one about maple sugaring now. I have written about clams, about building stone walls, and about chopping down trees. One by one I seem to be fictionalizing the full range of New England’s traditional industries (I’m coming for you, Irish Moss!). But none of those stories actually name their setting in any specific way. Huh.

She says we should discourage our daughter’s fondness for snacking on kibble from the dog’s bowl. But I say in these difficult times we should embrace the savings on groceries.

I made myself a twitter-er a long time ago but I’ve never used it because I’m afraid if the fragments of my attention become any more fragmented I might fall apart into a pile of atoms or something. Some people signed up to follow my twittering and I feel bad about that because they’re following nothing all this time. But I don’t feel too bad because following nothing is leading so really I’ve taught them to find their own way.

Severed Press seeks short stories for its new anthology, Dead Bait. Stories should have a Fishing or fish/sea life theme. Genetically altered Frankenfish, Zombie Whales sticking it to Japanese whalers, killer bass in secluded lakes, monsters from the deep, voodoo zombies from puffer fish toxins or maybe that tiny fish from the Amazon that swims up your wiener are just a few ideas. Stories can be based any where in the world and be salt or freshwater.

The prospect of an entire anthology only about “that tiny fish,” the candirú, is frightening enough on its own. Frankencandirú, zombie candirú, whale-sized candirú, and so on. Yikes.

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road…

@ Washington Post

Like squirrels ever need an excuse to embark on crazed rampages.

(photo credit)

“Mainers rally with knife, fork to aid struggling lobstermen”
From the state Capitol to the grass roots, Mainers are being asked to help out the suffering industry by eating more lobster — during the week, as a family, and as a dietary staple that now is sometimes as inexpensive as bologna.

@ Boston Globe

An underreported but related story:
“Lobsters rally with claw, other claw to aid struggling lobsters,” concerning the increased occurrence of lobster gangs attacking (and eating?) lobster gangs on the shores and wharves of Maines. Because nature is a vicious delicious circle.

I thought I’d packed a kiwifruit in my lunch, but I guess it was really a wikifruit because just as I was about to slice and eat it a stranger rushed over and told me it was a peach. And before I could say anything, a second stranger ran up and said no, not a peach, it was a rare variant of hairy nectarine, secretly developed by the CIA in the 1950s.

They debated and I thought things might turn violent but a third stranger calmly approached and convinced them to be satisfied — for the time being — with labeling my kiwi with a sticker that announced its controversial condition, and he promised they could return to the discussion once they’d had time to calm down. The sticker was applied a little bit crooked, and out of nowhere a robot — a robot! — rolled up and fixed it, then left.

So I thought I could finally get down to eating my fruit, whatever it was, but then a teenager who smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a while stomped over and wrote a bunch of crude nonsense on the side of my kiwi. I rubbed the words away on my sleeve, but he came right back and did it again. And then a spokesperson for the Kiwi Council — which I’d never even heard of — came by and slapped an ad on the side of it, which I had to scrape off to get to the fruit.

By that point my kiwi was so mangled and mashed that I couldn’t recognize it anymore, so I gave up and threw it away, and went to find some food elsewhere.

New strategies for job search:

1. Show up daily. Look busy. Wait some months. Ask for salary reassessment, citing reliable performance.
2. Put self on ebay.
3. File for personal non-profit status. Continue present non-profitability.
4. Build time machine. Travel backward until meagre savings become a fortune.
5. Hire calligraphist. Change ‘MFA’ into ‘MBA.’
6. Sew bear suit. Live at zoo. Enjoy free meals, frequent swimming.
7. Befriend celebrities. Blog.
8. Plastics.
9. Transfer funds for Nigerian royal family.
10. Lower expectations.
11. …

I think I’m on a listserv with a bunch of time travelers, because my inbox regularly fills up with responses and commentary and discussion of some posting for hours or days before the original message arrives.

Maybe when I post this their comments will already be on my site?

Infant socks present a curious anomaly of physics, because the gravitational pull exerted upon them seems vastly out of proportion to an object of their size and mass. Perhaps even more curiously, this anomaly consistently affects only a single sock in each given pair, and field trials suggest it is more pronounced outside the home.