Nuts Are Wood

Crunch ‘n Munch [Crunch grown on plantations under the blue skies of the south pacific, Munch being harvested above the 67’N latitude, found amongst the thaw of the spring tundra] is really the only food that can turn nuts into the most rewarding part of the eating experience.  Despite my falling away from cracker jacks, somehow Crunch ‘n Munch maintains a firm place in my stomach [with all the nuts clumped at the bottom].

Still, otherwise nuts are just wood – even their stealthy legume cousins, which are really just clever imitations of wood, and will otherwise never rise above the middle of the pack in any given combination of ingredients. Even almond M&Ms, the Cadillac of M&Ms, are still largely delivery mechanisms for chocolate and candy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt13rfXA6ts&hl=en&fs=1]

Hulk Smash CNN

The news media, long being a tug of war between information and idiocy, often displays its worst tendencies on the CNN front page:

CNN Front Page Screen Shot
Surely this can't be true.

Huh. I’ve also heard that there’s no good way to turn putting down your dog into edutainment, nor any good way to sit in a tiny overly white room as your family huddles around the last rattling gasp of a dying grandfather. I wonder how many child soldiers, after a long afternoon of removing the hands from an entire village’s worth of corpses, think: “Jeez, really, shouldn’t there be a good way of doing this. Where’s the job satisfaction? Where’s the laughter? Maybe we should institute casual Fridays.”

Burt Cooper

I’ve been remembering my dreams quite a bit lately, so I thought I might start imparting them here.

Anderson CooperLast night I dreamt that we – meaning my compound family – lived in South Dakota – it being the kind of dream that is for some reason very specific about location – surrounded by houses that we felt a paranoid mania about watching. We’d scurry in the dark across massive and empty hard wood floors, from bay window to bay window, hiding behind huge white vinyl hanging slats. All to observe, from a distance, the kinds of houses you might find on the edge of a small town golf course.

The bulk of the dream focused on something threatening that I can’t quite recall, but there was an on going side plot involving us trying to puzzle out if Anderson Cooper lived in one of the houses. It was especially odd that what prevented us from really being sure was that he kept entering and exiting the house with Burt Reynolds (amongst others).

I’m not sure what this means, or what had us worried in the first place. Drug dealing werewolves spring to mind, but that might be a post-waking mad lib.

znaniburt-reynolds

victory blip

Still no regular content, which should change shortly, but I did want to mention that I’ve just theoretically* sold a story for the January issue of Necrotic Tissue.

There are a variety of reasons I’m pleased about this, but possibly my favourite is that I get a t-shirt out of the deal. Pictures will follow when* it arrives.

* Like a quantum physicist, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Say It Ain't So

A piece of flash fiction I wrote was recently accepted by 365 Tomorrows:

“So, are ya?” He’s maybe twelve, wearing blue shorts and a Mexico City Raptors t-shirt, a leg up on the wrought iron patio fence. My lobster is getting cold.

“What?” I ask.

I realize he’s holding up a thin rectangle the size of a credit card, alternating his squints to get the thing’s picture to match my face.

“CEO Benjamin “Crush ‘Em” Hinton?”

I remember signing off on licensing my likeness to FlatMedia last May, but I hadn’t seen the cards in the wild.

I ignore him.

I missed it when it originally went up, but you can find the full story in their archive.

scrap, 2006, let's see

There’s a short hallway at the top of the stairs. The walls are filled with framed newspaper clippings, all starring the same starchy lady holding the diner’s pride, a burger larger then your head. Really the clippings are just there to act as landing lights for the drunks trying to find the washroom. I, like most of the clientele, have stumbled into this place seeking salty food. Being the only 24 hour eatery in a college town’s sea of bars makes it a pretty popular place.

The problem with the hallway is that it has a blind turn onto the staircase at the end of its run, a hall that’s already barely wide enough to steer down when you’ve had a couple of wobbly pops. I can only assume collisions like mine are pretty common, at least after midnight.

So I knock a pregnant lady down a staircase. What the hell was she doing out at that hour anyhow? We both got lucky, but it was before she’d even finished her backbone slide down the stairs that I noticed something funny: a man with a very round face was watching me instead of the expectant tumbler. To be fair the whole restaurant was taking in the action below the banister, but while most of the patron’s eyes seemed to be viewing a very lopsided tennis serve, the man with the round face locked eyes with me from beneath a retro ‘Drink Cola!’ poster.