To the Friends of Evil everywhere, Good Evening
Be it known that
JOSIAH DARKSHADOW
having completed the required course of study, is this day, by action of the Faculty and of the Board of Untrustees, declared a
DOCTOR OF DARK ARTS
of the UNIVERSITY OF DOOM and is admitted
to all rights and privileges accruing thereto.
In testimony whereof this diploma duly certified by the signatures
of the proper officers, and the seal of the University, affixed this the
31ST day of FEBRUARY in the year of our Dark Lord 2015 and in the 666TH
year of the University.
April 13, 2015
From “Dr. Josiah Darkshadow, DDA” by Anonymous
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: college, fiction, humor, story |Leave a Comment
April 9, 2015
From “Review: The Great Unmaking” by Isola Playford
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, libraries, parody, review, story |Leave a Comment
Pallafor, Yodis. The Great Unmaking: How Mississippi Will Fare in the Doomtimes. Jackson: Universal Press of Alternate Mississippi, 1206 ACE.
Mr. Pallafor has a firm vision of what he calls the Doomtimes, the end of all life in Mississippi (and Mississippi alone); he sets these ideas forth in this screed, due out from UPAM soon and available for preorder.
The overall thesis of Pallafor’s Doomtimes is that an 11.0 earthquake will occur along the New Madrid fault, causing the Mississippi River to change direction once again and sucking up vast quantities of seawater to inundate the Delta and most low-lying areas of the state with brackish water. This will, he writes, then lead a race of crawdads, mutated and given intelligence by the BP oil spill of 2010, to enter the state and dominate the surviving humans.
As support for his claims, Mr. Pallafor offers up verbatim transcripts of conversations he had with the archangel Metamucil after suffering a series of blows to the head as part of the confirmation process for his former position on the Mississippi IHL. These, serving as a lengthy appendix, are exhaustively indexed and cross-referenced.
While this title is probably not suitable for school, public, university, or special libraries, it certainly belongs in any Mississippi Doombrary worth its salt, and indeed the first inscribed copy was donated to the Delta Doombrary after publication.
Isola Playford
Underlibrarian
Mississippi Delta Doombrary
April 8, 2015
From “Review: A Guide to Mississippi Fanfiction” by Floro Alpis
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, parody, review, story |Leave a Comment
Poydras, Fiallo. A Guide to Mississippi Fanfiction. R’lyeh: Great Auk, 2016.
As readers of Fifty Shades of Grey can attest, fanfiction—works written by fans based on existing universes but not authorized or condoned by rightsholders—has never been hotter. However, the existing treatment of fanfiction tends to dwell on the phenomenon at a macro level for very popular milieus. Twilight, Harry Potter, Star Trek…all of these have been well-covered by other authors at length.
However, Mr. Poydras—an amateur working out of Biloxi—has undertaken to write the first guide to fanfiction written by Mississippians about Mississippians. His encyclopedic volume, complete through August of 2010, features extensive treatment of the Faulkner fanfics that are so popular in Mississippi circles. Special attention is paid to the Yoknapatawpha Wars cycle, an epic tale in 27 volumes that brings characters and situations from As I Lay Dying and Sanctuary into a 31st-century setting dominated by space zombies.
Poydras also treats Eudora Welty fanfiction—so-called Weltfic—at some length, though it is clear that his interests lie more with Faulkfic and the intense subculture of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote slashfics, which re-imagines the characters and situations of those writers in intense and often lurid heterosexual relationships.
That weakness aside, this volume is recommended for all libraries, especially those with large numbers of circulating vampire movies.
Floro Alpis
Director
Yoknapatawpha County Public Library
April 7, 2015
From “Using Sorcery 2.0 Technology for Library Programming” by Isola Playford
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, libraries, parody, story |Leave a Comment
It’s no secret that today’s library patron is exposed to more sorcery than any of us in the profession right now. And it’s also no secret that they are exposed to sorcery from a much earlier age, with many of today’s youth, high schoolers, and incoming college students never knowing a world without sorcery and getting their first spellbooks as young as age 5.
Clearly, these patrons are expecting a library experience that is compatible with their cantrips and incantations, one that offers storage space for spell books and physical ingredients and has mana potions available for when the sorcerous ichor within runs low. Sadly, due to lack of centralized state funding, Mississippi is currently 49 out of 51 states in sorcery resources offered to all segments of the population; only the state of Denial and the state of Confusion have lower uptake rates.
It has become something of a cliché that librarians are slow to embrace sorcery, preferring tried and true methods of magic that rely on augury, interpreting the flights of birds, and of course Magic the Gathering card catalogs. But as useful as these once may have been, and may continue to be for some older patrons, the time has come to use sorcery in public programming and outreach to show—at no significant cost to the institution—the patrons of the future that libraries are still relevant.
An easy way to incorporate sorcery is to move your library’s arcana collection from your archives into the main circulation collections. While in the past it was traditional for bestiaries and books of forbidden knowledge to be library use only, those days are fading in the era of Wikibestiary and Glitter shamantags like #forbidden and #cthulhu. Even if they are offered only as exhibits, these older materials have the potential to excite patrons.
Make use of your staff as well; chances are that a few of them know a spell or two or have an Apple SpellBook Pro sitting around. Ask them to develop events and displays, to keep your Glitter account and Witchterest page up-to-date, to try and find new and novel spells to cast and ways to make existing library collections spell-friendly. Do your books support enchantments that allow them to float into users’ hands? Can they be used as prisons for demons, or portals to fantastic worlds of the imagination? It may take some work, but adding these features will pay off in the long run.
Perhaps the best resource is education: the more we learn about sorcery and spellcasting, the more we can help our patrons. Be on the lookout for low-cost séances, astral projections, and other means of networking and learning with peer and the Great Old Ones. Either way, remember that for our patrons, ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn is not a new thing: for them, Cthulhu has always wgah’nagl fhtagn.
Isola Playford
Underlibrarian
Mississippi Delta Doombrary
April 6, 2015
From “Attracting Sparrow and Squirrel Patrons to Mississippi Libraries” by Floro Alpis and Rolf S. Paoli
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, libraries, parody, story, Yoknapatawpha County Public Library |Leave a Comment
The University of Northern Mississippi (UNM), in partnership with the Yoknapatawpha County Public Library (YCPL), recently announced an initiative to increase library access to two particularly underserved populations: sparrows and squirrels. “To my knowledge,” said YCPL director Floro Alpis, “this is the first such program in the country, which is a shame. Prior to 2015, there was no known record of sparrows or squirrels being issued UNM or YCPL library cards, and walk-ins were few and far between.
With Alpis and UNM library science professor Dr. Rolf S. Paoli spearheading the initiative, both libraries launched an intensive program to issue library cards to sparrows and squirrels in January 2015 and to step up outreach efforts to those populations. YCPL staff actually began their preparatory work in fall 2014, standing in the same place every day on the library patio with a handful of seed to acclimate sparrows—who are not traditional library users and require additional support—to their presence.
Eventually, YCPL was able to start mixing scraps of paper in with the birdseed, and by February they were ready to begin issuing their first library cards to sparrows. “We had an excellent first day,” said Alips. “Our volunteers actually ran out of library cards after the morning seed rush, and we have anecdotal evidence that many of the cards were actually brought back to the sparrows’ nests.”
For its part, UNM focused on outreach for squirrels, who are often on campus to make use of the free garbage resources it provides to the local community. Initial efforts at putting library cards on small fishing poles and lowering them to potential squirrel patrons failed due to, as Dr. Paoli put it, “lack of angling skills” on the part of UNM library staff. Further experiments in December 2014 and January 2014 with hiding library cards under piles of nuts and twigs and a direct marketing campaign to scale trees and place the cards directly in squirrel dreys failed due to opposition from local mice and privacy concerns that information about individual squirrel dreys might make it to the National Nesting Agency.
Ultimately, UNM was able to get 75% squirrel uptake on offered cards by smearing them with peanut butter, though Dr. Paoli is quick to note that this is not a permanent solution given the danger posed to squirrels with nut allergies. Nevertheless, squirrels that did not bring the library cards to their dreys did at least bury them, leading Paoli to confidently predict a surge of squirrel patrons next spring when the library cards are dug up.
| Squirrel Patrons (YCPL) | Squirrel Patrons (UNM) | Squirrel Patrons (Total) | Sparrow Patrons (YCPL) | Sparrow Patrons (UNM) | Sparrow Patrons (Total) | |
| Sept. 2014 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Oct. 2014 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| Nov. 2014 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 7 |
| Dec. 2014 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 6666 | 5 | 0 |
| Jan. 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 55 |
| Feb. 2015 | 0 | 715 | 715 | 23 | 5 | 28 |
| Mar. 2015 | 0 | 1337 | 1337 | 213 | 5 | 1065 |
| Total | 0 | 2052 | 2052 | 13804 | 35 | 394.4 |
As shown in the chart, card issuance numbers are up significantly but not the actual number of sparrow and squirrel patrons. Alpis and Paoli have announced initiatives to remedy this with a variety of in-library features friendly to sparrows and squirrels: seed bells in the stacks, dried corn-on-the-cob in reading and study areas, and staff that mask their scent and make no sudden movements.
Floro Alpis
Director
Yoknapatawpha County Public Library
Rolf S. Paoli
Dean of Libraries
University of Northern Mississippi
April 5, 2015
From “Library News as of April 1, 2015” by Anonymous
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, libraries, parody, story |Leave a Comment
The director of the Mississippi Delta Doombrary has retired, nearly 60 years after dying at his post. “While we have enjoyed our director’s tireless efforts, literally tireless since the undead sleep not nor tire, he has decided to retire to spend more time in his grave and visiting his great-great-grandchildren as an apparition in a mirror,” the Doombrary said in a statement.
The University of Northern Mississippi is hiring for a Defense Against the Dark Arts librarian. “We’ve had an awful lot of trouble keeping this position filled,” said the Dean of Libraries. “We never seem to have any new hire last longer than one year.”
Requirements for the position include an MLIS, at least two years’ experience in a library, three letters of recommendation, and a blood sigil that is binding in states bordering on Mississippi.
The Yoknapatawpha County Public Library is holding its first annual public book burning on May 1. Anyone with a tome that is on the Black List that has been posted in local newspapers and in social media is welcome to attend the event, which is dedicated to General Secretary Joseph Stalin. While the book burning is an optional family fun event, with weenie roasts and s’mores for the children, the Yoknapatawpha County Public Library does remind all participants that possession of a title on the Black List after May 2 will carry the punishment of penal transportation to a local gulag for a period of not less than 20 years.
The Sparrow and Squirrel Bookmobile had its inaugural run in March, doing its pest to spread literacy and love of reading to the wildlife of the state. For a list of scheduled visits, see the official bookmobile tracker app available from the sponsoring library.
April 2, 2015
From “Yes, the Bees” by Betsy Heese
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: airplane, bees, desperate measures, fiction, humor, story |Leave a Comment
The strange diminishing of honeybees in the summertime, desperate measures were called for. Apiaries throughout the USA were willing to pay top dollar for live bees, especially vital queens and viable sections of comb. Most wound up coming from India, where the beekeeping practices might not have been up to snuff but the bugs were cheap and plentiful.
That’s where I come in. Bees, live bees especially, are considered to be dangerous animals. They need to be escorted by a courier at every step of the way. That doesn’t necessarily mean cuddling up to them, but you have to keep the box in sight.
I boarded Eastern Airlines Flight 887 from Delhi to London with the courier case, all wrapped in bright orange quarantine tape, bumping against my leg as I limped to my seat and stowed my cane.
“Did you need a hand, hun?” a stewardess said.
“What I need is a leg,” I joked. “I’ve tried everything from surgery to magnets, but it still gimps out on me.”
“You were injured by…magnets?”
I set the case of bees down on the seat I’d bought for it–the profit was more than enough to pay for their own seat. “I took an arrow to the knee,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, clearly getting neither that joke or its predecessor.
“It was a work accident,” I said, deciding to level with the lady who’d be bringing me my booze over the course of the next sixteen hours. “The bees got out once, and I’m allergic.”
What can I say? I like to live on the edge.
March 17, 2015
From “St. Patrick Unseals the Well of Souls” by Anonymous
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, St. Patrick, St. Patrick's Day, story |Leave a Comment
March 16, 2015
From “Jokes Which Only Work Read Aloud, 3rd ed.” edited by “Wry” Ron Pilkinton
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: “Wry” Ron Pilkinton, fiction, humor, jokes, puns, story |Leave a Comment
Laslo Sunseri hated the letter “M.” No one was quite sure why; perhaps it had something to do with the old Wonky M Ranch going under. Perhaps the day they had covered the letter “M” on Sesame Street had been a really bad one.
Laslo liked to hang out in the square, feeding the pigeons and telling anyone who would listen how much of a menace the letter was, always taking as much care as he could to never use the letter itself save to denigrate it.
One day Jamie Parkerson came to the square looking for Henry, his uncle. Henry was about the same height and the same age as Laslo and a bit of a pigeon-feeder himself, so Jamie approached the latter from behind, thinking it was his uncle.
“Umm…Mom wants to know if you want meatballs or mash for dinner,” Jamie said.
Whipping around, Lazlo startled the boy with the ferocity of his reply. “Don’t be so careless in using that accursed letter, boy!” he cried. “The letter ‘M’ is the tool of the devil! The letter ‘M’ is a pox upon our language! Call those beef spheres if you have to, call it potato pudding if you have to, but never, ever use the letter ‘M’ except to curse its foul sound to the heavens!”
Startled, the boy mumbled a reply and beat a hasty retreat.
“Who’s that?” said a concerned passerby who knew Jamie from elsewhere, wondering what all the shouting was about.
“Well,” said Jamie, “He’s not Uncle Henry, but he sure is anti-M.”
March 8, 2015
From “The NPC Local 983” by Colt Chaplen
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, story |Leave a Comment
Are you sick of people barging into your home or place of business and ransacking the place without a word of explanation?
Are you tired of being asked the same questions over and over by armed interlopers?
Is your business buckling under the financial strain of customers who demand payment in cash for stacks of 99 crisp basilisk urethras, even though you don’t run a pawnshop?
Then we have good news for you!
We are now accepting applications to join the NPC Local 983, a very special kind of trade union dedicated to curbing the abuses of self-proclaimed heroes and adventurers. Membership is open to all small business owners and employees, local homeowners, police and private security guards, as well as loiterers and hangers-on. Anyone who wants to get on with the business of living their life without interference by outside interlopers is welcome!
Our recent successes include:
– NPCs working at a Pizza Hut on Starbase 37b successfully opposed the efforts of a group of three malefactors in powered combat armor who tried to talk themselves into being given the contents of the cash register.
– An NPC family in Hearthburg was able to lock and bar their home to prevent entry by a man in plate mail after he had entered their property on several other occasions to smash jars and steal anything of value.
– The staff of the Rosina Arsenal was successfully able to refuse to purchase a stack of 99 Cockatrice Scales from a customer who demanded that they be accepted in trade for a brand new Falchion worth 2500 GP. This success was especially noteworthy given that the customer was in fact the King of Rosina and demanded a discount.
Don’t delay! Unionize, fight back, and together we can forge a more equitable shake for the working NPC everywhere.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 