May 27, 2014

From “There’s Gold in Them Thar Cavities” by Len C. Gloff

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ANNOUNCER: This Thursday, your favorite treasure hunters return for an all-new season, and the pickings are good.

THOM: What’s this on the underside of your table here?

HOARDER: Not sure. Picked it in ’79.

STAN: It’s a rare hymolymph crystalline crust. Give you $100 for it!

HOARDER: Make it $150 and you got a deal.

ANNOUNCER: This time, the stakes are higher…

THOM: We’ve heard you have a collection of rare squamous gelatins on your bathroom wall. May we come in?

HOARDER: No! Get off my property before I get me shotgun!

ANNOUNCER: …and the picks are juicier.

STAN: We don’t just deal with classic picks, you know. The hospital says you have mucosal nasalitis, and we’d love to pick your collection for cash.

HOARDER: Music to my sinuses!

ANNOUNCER: All in the new season of American Nose Pickers, premiering this Thursday on the Archives Channel. The Archaeology Channel: if it weren’t for the name, you’d never know we had ever been about archaeology instead of reality shows.

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May 26, 2014

From “Synonym Rolls” by Roslyn Helm Tyson

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Having trouble coming up with the right word? Are you simply not erudite enough in your elocution? Have games of Scrabble and crossword puzzled become an unbearable–and embarrassing–headache? Then Gerund Farms has just the treat for you!

Introducing the Synonym Roll, a hot pastry baked up fresh and loaded with flavor, vitamins, and alternate words for similar concepts. With a fresh steaming batch of Gerund Farms Synonym Rolls, you will be a stronger writer and speaker within minutes. Or should we say that you’ll be a matriculated scriblarian and orator?

Gerund Farms Synonym Rolls: they exemplify the elephantine nature of our lingua franca. And for those more disagreeable mornings, try our new Antonym Rolls, coming soon to a grocery store near you!

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May 18, 2014

From “Scare the Bee Jesus” by Natalie J. H. Able

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And so it was that compassionate Clohl, whose caress is as gentle as that of a summer potato, came to the aid of Bee Jesus (the hive was in the Latin part of Minosia, you see, Jesus being a common given name thereabouts), a Hymenoptera drone who had been expelled from his hive after a nuptial flight and was wandering without purpose or even the ability to feed himself.

And so did Clohl come upon Bee Jesus and did show him that in order to rediscover his purpose and believe in himself, yea did he need to look deep within and scare himself out of himself. For it is only in scaring the self out of oneself that we can begin to look outward rather than inward and act with selfless compassion rather than selfish selfishness.

And these words did inspire Bee Jesus, and he did scare himself out of himself and return to his hive. And yea did he cast out the forces of wickedness within his hive, in essence scaring the Bee Jesus out of all his bretheren and sisters, before leading the hive in the charge toward a new golden age of honey. At least until he died after 90 days, as is the fate of all drones, and his colony collapsed for want of a queen.

So sayeth the Book of Apiary, the word of Clohl for the people of Clohl.

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May 17, 2014

From “Schadenfräulein” by Charlene Fundis

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“I guess the best translation of schadenfreude would be ‘damage-joy’ which gets at the essence of the thing, sort of: you’re happy at another’s misfortune.”

“Oh, neat! What are some more German words that have no direct translation?”

“Well, there’s drachenfutter. It kind of means ‘feed the dragon’ but it’s really a word for presents you give your wife after you’ve been an ass. Or maybe sehnsucht, which is more or less ‘I’m addicted to the feeling I get when I miss something.'”

“Wow, the Germans have a word for everything!”

“They sure do have a word for everything. It’s alles.”

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May 16, 2014

From “Odessa Mullen and the Marching Grislies” by Petra Natalia Langley

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Columns of zombies streamed through the rift, lurching in perfect formation as they moved between the Zombieworld and Dessie’s world.

“How do you get them to do that?” asked Dessie. “Zombies, whether in the movies or in your zombieworld, aren’t exactly known for their coordinated movements or being able to march. Even the zombie soldiers in 8 Fortnights Afterward didn’t really have much semblance of-”

“It’s the Marching Grizzlies from the university, okay?” snapped Fext. “My thrall lieutenants laughed when I said I would zombifiy the lot of them just to make an impressive spectacle. But who’s laughing now?”

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May 14, 2014

From “The Neglected Undead” by Hugh Lettvik Graveline

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Zombies and vampires, thanks to enthusiastic supporters on the one hand and a carefully calculated public relations campaign on the other, have never been more popular among mortals. But they are not the only corporeal undead. The Society for the Advancement of the Neglected Undead would like to remind you of the many other varieties that are often overlooked, discriminated against, or even endangered:

Liches, so called after the Norse lík for “corpse,” are powerful mortal spirits that retain their faculties and bodies after death or the completion of a powerful ritual. Contrary to the depiction in media of the skeletal or cadaverous undead being stupid and clumsy, liches are extremely intelligent and skilled: they are master necromancers and virtually immortal. Their body deteriorates only because it is a husk whose presence is an unfortunate necessity, as they have long evolved beyond any sort of personal vanity. But appearance-conscious mortals constantly recoil from them, shallowly, and accuse them of consorting with viler forms of undead. But who else are they to associate with

Wights, named from the High German for “unpleasant person,” are far less powerful and more ordinary spirits that remain bound to their bodies even after death through sheer force of willpower. While admittedly strong-willed persons can often seem unpleasant to observers, where would we be without them? In addition to being tarred with such an unpleasant name, wights can’t rely on sorcery or science to sustain them after death like liches can (though the more clever ones occasionally are able to ascend to glorious lich-hood). Instead, they must consume life energy stolen from the living. Merely touching a mortal can provide enough energy to sustain a wight for some time at the expense of only some nausea and one less day of life on the mortal’s part. Imagine the harmony that could be sown if wights could receive life energy transfusions just as mortals receive blood!

Ghouls, whose name comes from the Arabic ghul for “to seize,” have a stable source of life energy after death, usually due to being slain by unnatural means. But their bodies constantly deteriorate and, driven by trends and fashions left over from their mortal existences, strive desperately for biomass to replace that which is constantly rotting away. This desperation is behind their unsavory reputation as cannibals–though it should be noted that plenty of mortal cultures have practiced cannibalism in the past, shielded by busybody anthropologists. Mortals, as a race, have inert corpses to spare; surely some donations would go a long way toward building ghoul culture and civil society!

Ghasts, a term coined by noted friend and benefactor of the neglected undead H. P. Lovecraft, are ghouls who have been particularly successful and therefore begin to evolve in a new and wonderful direction. They become much cleverer, cast off many unnecessary and vestigial mortal features, and obtain others (like talons and fangs) most evolutionarily suited to their diet. Occasionally obtaining near-lich intelligence, they are the leaders of groups of ghouls, zombies, or wights and must feed somewhat less voraciously on a choicer selection of cuts from mortal flesh. It’s worth noting that they have nothing in common with the foul black death-dogs of Yorkshire, the barghests, aside from their mutually disagreeable odor to mortals and undead with noses.

And those are only the most common sorts! Mummies, animate skeletons, beautiful penanggalans, manananggals…there are all sorts of corporeal undead severely discriminated against and neglected in favor of trendy and popular vampires and zombies. So please, open your hearts, your minds, your wallets, and your rib cages to the Society for the Advancement of the Neglected Undead. We wouldn’t be caught dead without you.

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May 13, 2014

From “Introducing the 2014 ‘What’s My Genre’ Panelists” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the May 2014 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Take a Character, Leave a Character”

MELINDA: Hello and welcome to our program! We’ve got quite the show for you here today, as always! But first, let’s meet our panelists. First up is Ulgathk the Ever-Living, Elder Lich of the Seven Lands. Tell us a bit about yourself, Ulgathk.

ULGATHK: Well, Melinda, I’m currently a sitting member of the Council of Undeath, sole ruler and commander-in-chief of the Unholy Army, and Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in the Obama Administration. In my spare time, I do volunteer work to help rehabilitate the public image of what I like to call the ‘neglected undead:’ liches, wights, ghouls, ghasts, and my other non-zombie and non-vampire brethren.

MELINDA: Touching! Executive experience, leadership, and volunteering? He’s a triple threat, ladies and gentlemen.

ULGATHK: I am a threat to all that lives or cools in undeath, Melinda.

MELINDA: Our next panelist is sure to be familiar to all you sports fans out there. It’s Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting. Tom, I hear next season is looking pretty good?

TOM: That’s right, Melinda. I look forward to providing meaningless patter to help fill the otherwise dead air in between sacks, home runs, zombie attacks, and other pulse-pounding moments in sports.

MELINDA: And what would you say to people who call sports commentary boring or vapid? Are they wrong?

TOM: That’s right, Melinda. I would challenge those people to actually listen to one of my rambling monologues, delivered in a sports voice, during the interminable pregame show for a major sporting event. In addition to the usual useless statistics that assume causation, I touch on themes as universal as the philosophy of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and predestination as I am chained in that chair for hours on end with airtime to fill but no one paying attention. Unable to live, unable to die. Back to you, Melinda.

MELINDA: Also joining us on our celebrity panel is Dowager Empress Cnhyn Hallud of the Crimson Empire. Viewers of the popular reality show Princess Search know her as a judge there, but before that she was the 19th and final wife of Crimson Emperor Testarossa, plucked from obscurity for her beauty before outliving the Emperor by 40 years and counting.

HALLUD: The many splendid mushrooms of peace be upon you and yours, Melinda. I seek only to see the beauty in everything, especially that which has no beauty. For what is life but a journey of self-discovery and love and flowers and smiles and puppies and rainbows and love?

MELINDA: Dowager Empress Hallud, how do you respond to critics that call you out of touch, given your fabulous personal wealth and unimpeachable position as stepmother to Crimson Emperor Testarossa II, or criticize the Crimson Empire’s human rights record?

HALLUD: I don’t think about it for even a moment, Melinda. I was a lowly milkmaid until my beloved Testarossa executed his former wife in my favor; as a self-made and powerful person, I seek to help others realize the self-actualization and harmony with nature that I have already achieved. Human rights are but a fleeting shadow substituted for true enlightenment, as my old bocce ball partners Elena Ceausescu, Imelda Marcos, and Madame Mao would tell you.

MELINDA: Here in the corner, still in his neural interface suit and HUD rig, we have noted RPD (remotely-piloted drone) jockey and interstellar prospector Cameron “Cam” Hickson, RPD (remotely-piloted drone) jockey. Cam, I understand that RPDs use faster-than-light communications technology to remotely survey the far reaches of our galaxy with the human pilots safely back on Earth.

CAM: Bullseye, Melinda. Communications are fast, spaceships can be made fast, but we humans are awfully, awfully squishy. Space exploration becomes an order of magnitude easier and cheaper when you strip out the parts needed to keep humans from becoming chunky salsa.

MELINDA: So you sit at home and pilot your drone all day? What makes you any different from a gold miner in an MMORPG like Dungeons of Krull?

CAM: Well, for one thing, I am paid in cash for my surveying and prospecting, and I own my own rig, and I don’t have to kill a hundred kobalds to level up my piloting mojo. For another, when your character in Dungeons of Krull dies, you just respawn. There isn’t a chance of a neural feedback loop that might kill you. And instead of farming the same patch of ground endlessly, I–or, more accurately, my drone–am out there finding real things that will be actually exploited to make life better for everyone. Provided that claim jumpers and psychotic griefers don’t wreck my rig.

MELINDA: Perhaps our most distinguished panelist is next: French filmmaker Auguste Des Jardins, director of Les trois Juliets and multiple Oscar nominee and Palme d’Or laureate. Forgive me for asking, Mssr. Des Jardins, but didn’t you die in 1976?

DES JARDINS: A man must have his secrets, Melinda, and a filmmaker even more so. A wiser man than I once said that no one dies until the last person who knows them through their works can no longer remember; by that measure, I have never been more alive and have, I hope, many long years ahead of me.

MELINDA: Mssr. Des Jardins, your films are as divisive as they are critically acclaimed. There have been widespread reports of seizures, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences viewing your cinema, especially your last film, The Sacred Cenote. Would you care to respond?

DES JARDINS: I will only say that filmmaking as a whole is a violent seizure, a vivid hallucination, an out-of-body experience of the most profound kind. It is a linking and a meeting of minds, of souls, and I was able to make only very gradual progress toward that ideal with my work. The Sacred Cenote came closer than all my other works combined to the true unity to which I realized I had been aspiring all along. If that makes people uncomfortable, there is always Jaws.

MELINDA: Splendid! Our final panelist was chosen from a pool of applicants to help add a more popular dimension to our program. Please welcome Odessa “Dessie” Mullin, paranormal enthusiast and native of Hopewell, Michigan.

DESSIE: Oh man, it is just such a huge honor to be here, Melinda! I watch this show so religiously that I really ought to be ordianed in it as a high priestess or something. I do just want to say, though, that ‘paranormal enthusiast’ is kind of a misnomer. I do love all aspects of the paranormal, but my first and truest love is zombies. And, in fact, I sometimes slip into a horrifying alternate dimension where the zombie apocalypse, or zompocalypse, has already occurred, and-

MELINDA: Ms. Mullin? I-

DESSIE: -it hasn’t done anything to decrease my love for those lovable brain-eaters. On the contrary, I love them more than ever! But I also love ghosts, and ghouls, and liches, and banshees, and wights, and ghasts, and barghests, and Ulgathk the Ever-Living, and…you know what? Maybe ‘paranormal enthusiast’ is an okay thing to call me after all.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
Sixpence
writingismypassion
Sneaky Devil
BBBurke

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May 10, 2014

From “The Ernest Smedley Distinguished Faculty Award” by Chastity Gudiel Fundis

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As you know, each year at commencement it is Southern Michigan University’s pleasure to present the Ernest Smedley Distinguished Faculty Award. The recipient of this year’s award is Dr. Horace Butler, a dual appointee in our Biology and Pre-Medicine. As any of his pupils will tell you, Dr. Butler is a tireless advocate for his students. The nomination letters we received said that he is always available for consultations, day or night, rain or shine. He has answered students at 5am, on vacation in Hawaii, and from his hospital bed after a major car accident.

Dr. Butler’s dedication to helping his anatomy and physiology students is so great that he will cut open his own chest cavity to demonstrate how various human organs work. He has tirelessly pitched in up to and including distributing test answers, grading on a vertical curve, and allowing students to take his exams up to five times in practice.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Dr. Butler’s volunteer work in the community. Because he hates his wife and children, he dedicates nearly every waking hour that he is not teaching to community involvement. Dr. Butler has put in over 1000 hours personally collecting, transporting, and spaying or neutering feral cats, dogs, and freshmen. He is the faculty advisor to the local campus chapter of the Illuminati, recipients of that organization’s prestigious Invisible Hand award and growing its membership from less than 10 to over 200.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s Ernest Smedley Distinguished Faculty Award winner, Dr. Horace Butler.

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May 9, 2014

From “The DrillDive™ Spring Break Experience” by Liv Riddle

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Hey there party animal! We all know that spring break is a time to get your drink on and hang loose, but have you ever stopped to think about all those calories? College is a time of changing metabolism and expanding waistlines, dude, and all that drinking and eating and partying can really build up. Bulimia can only get you and your smokin’ hot babes so far, and as we all know the Freshman 15 can soon be the Senior 16 if you’re not careful!

That’s why Amazing Dude Tours (a subsidiary of Globomex Petroleum LLC GmbH) is pleased to offer the all-in-one inclusive DrillDive™ Experience, a combination exercise regimen and rustic getaway on the scenic Gulf of Mexico! It’s a well-known fact* that oil workers have some of the highest calorie burn rates of any profession in the world, and that their no-frills existences and low-calorie foods meshed with the natural beauty of the Gulf give them some of the highest job satisfaction rates in the world.**

With DrillDive™, you get to participate in the same fitness activities as oil workers in a controlled and welcoming environment aboard the Trapezoid Nowhere themed resort platform. Our level of verisimilitude is unparalleled, yo: you’ll swear that our efficient hot bunking, simulated well capping and pipe welding, and “high-risk”† diving inspection and repair programs are the real deal. Once you’ve signed our totally rad nondiscolsure agreement†† you’ll be whisked away for an unforgettable one-week getaway on the gulf that will have you as fit and trim as you’ve ever been. And our exclusive oil treatments for exposed skin are guaranteed to help combat the aging process, sun damage, and dozens of other disorders that serve to fade the youthful glow of your skin.‡

Drilldive™: the combination spring break getaway experience and weight-loss experience that all your friends will be talking about for years to come.‡‡

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May 6, 2014

From “The Football Draft Dodger” by Jacelyn “Bali Mojo” Marina

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“As you are aware, we have been asked to read a statement from the Continental Football League,” said CFL play-by-play announcer-at-large Carl Drake.

“That’s right, Carl,” added Tom Hicks, his color-announcement partner-in-crime and Gal-Friday. “We have the somber duty, as designated neutral third parties, to announce to you that Ulysses Calhoun, who you may know as the star forward of the Southern Michigan University Fighting Grizzlies, has failed to report for duty at the Richmond Squires spring training camp.”

“This constitutes evasion of the CFL draft, one of our nation’s most sacred institutions,” continued Carl Drake sorrowfully. “Those of you with a passion for history may recall that the CFL has not had a draft dodger since ‘Dike’ DeSilvo refused to report for training with the Iowa Caucuses in 1972, and that no draft dodging player has been convicted and sentenced since ‘Kiddie’ Voles failed to appear at the Birmingham Klansmen’s Grand Wizard Stadium in 1923.”

Tom Hicks, his head lowered, pursed his lips. “That’s right, Carl. It is our sad task to inform you that Ulysses Calhoun is now considered a fugitive from professional football. Under CFL Bylaw #237-B, it is hereby prohibited for anyone to give him aid or succor, and it is further required that anyone seeing Ulysses Calhoun or with knowledge of his whereabouts must come forward with this information. Failure to do so will constitute a violation of CFL Bylaw #237-B, and any such persons will be held as equally guilty of draft dodging.”

“While we urge the public’s help in assisting in the apprehension of this draft dodger, we must caution that Ulysses Calhoun is to be considered unarmed and dangerous. Do not approach him. We also wish to avoid a repeat of the unfortunate incident from the 1955 CFL draft when Swedish recruit Diks Vloeide was accidentally lynched on his way to training camp after a rumor emerged that he was a draft dodger.”

“That’s right, Carl,” sighed Tom Hicks. “Do not approach, confront, or attempt to apprehend Ulysses Calhoun. Report his location to the nearest local branch of the CFL armed forces and take shelter until the CFL Special Operations Group has had the opportunity to deploy. These dedicated professionals, many of them CFL veterans themselves, have the necessary combat, sport, and large animal handling experience to apprehend Calhoun and bring him to justice.

“The CFL Special Operations Group has honed their skills reining in CFL players during drunken escapades, drug binges, outbreaks of roid rage, and the rare, regretful circumstances when a player breaks containment and is allowed to roam free among the populace,” said Carl Drake. “Report any sightings, let them do their job, and soon we will be able to put these unfortunate events behind us.”

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