These have been developed spuriously and sometimes out of desperation at my daughter’s bedtime since last Thanksgiving. I usually tell the stories in mad lib style, leaving blanks for her to fill in and guide the plot or character actions. She’s five and is not short of ideas or decisions.
Main characters:
Four quadruplet (but not [...]

This is a longish response to a post on the blog, Round Dice, on Evolution of the Obvious. Read it first, then come back here if you like. Or stay there and soak up more of Mr. Menon’s encyclopedic mind.
The Day Before Yesterday (also the title of my upcoming disaster novel) my sister-in-law’s chimney caught [...]

right here: SOFIA Seeks Secrets of Planetary Birth
I know it’s silly to see an alternate spelling of my daughter’s name in this context and imagine her becoming a groundbreaking astronomer when she grows up. Or building a massive intelligent telescope for which she is the namesake. Romantic parents imagine their children as pioneers. Pragmatic parents know [...]

Keeping with the oldies pop theme, this made me so very happy:
Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine

Speaks for itself: http://xkcd.com/137/

Fiction Stimulus
Actively engaging people (via text, chat, and video) in the reading and writing experience until Oct 13, then it remains as an archive. As David Bowie once said, they invitate you to join. Requires a Ning login.
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books
Thoughts on “how bookstores might evolve to give publishers a way [...]

Fresh spam, hot off the griddle:
Permanent enlarged penis
What should I do?
I failed to find you
In that very bed
Can’t answer?
Fine, then
Erase my photo
I canz chatz w/ celebrity
The gmail pre-spam spam filters are reasonably effective, so I don’t have a really gooey rich cache of spam from which to draw. [...]

In seeking inspiration for fridge magnet storytelling, look no further than your local e-mail spam queue. Here’s a sampling of subject lines from the last two days, in order of appearance:
Torment of cheerleader girls
Our school’s in trouble!
What should I do?
Everybody be cool!
Don’t panic, I’ve found a solution!
Bro, you sure?
To [...]

Hmm, this theme isn’t allowing comments on pages (i.e., About), only on posts. Or, themes add that ability and this theme, very simple and clean, with almost no code or metatags in the page content–lacks that ability. I’ve got a little work to do–I’d like to retain that ability without changing themes right now.