Friday, August 08, 2008

Short Stories With Long Titles

Just what they sound like!  But they're great, really, if you can get past the title.  Speaking of getting past the title, click the title to go to the story:



"The Guantánamo military commission for accused USS Cole bombing mastermind [DEFENDANT] had its first, but certainly not its last, secret session last Friday, June 14. According to ...[MEDIA], the hearing was 78 minutes long, and was closed both to the public and to the defendant. The subject of the hearing, and the title of the government motion being argued, were also classified. Defense counsel were permitted to attend but [DEFENDANT'S] attorney... told [MEDIA], “There was a secret session. That’s all I can say.” 

Based on a true story.  A true story you never heard about and didn't care about if you did.  But it's an important true story nonetheless.



If you are going to write about giraffes, the temptation is to call them all names like "Gerald" or "Rafael," but if your story is one in which a boatload of giraffes goes to war in the beginning of time then... wait, "Rafael Giraffe" actually sounds pretty good. It was the beginning of time, and the giraffes had just found out that Human God was going to flood the world.  But Rafael has a plan.  He has TWO plans, in fact. Neither works. 




A story in which the main characters are a dinosaur and a baseball player but they never meet and may not, in fact, have anything to do with each other at all, depending on how much you think about it.  Piatnitzkysaurus like chocolate.  The baseball player likes card tricks.  See what I mean about not having anything to do with each other? 



A rook is not a castle. That is true. It is also true what it says in this story about the number of possible configurations of a chess board, but that does not become important until the end. You are going to love the main character of this story, who is a rook.  That's right. A chess piece. But he's a very optimistic chess piece and in the end, isn't that what it's all about? 



Buzzards Loop:  originally published at The Truth Magazine, then in my collection Just Exactly How Life Looks.  Meet Presley and Josh, two cowboys wanderin' in the desert, talking about having sex with women in Albuquerque.  Well, one of them is talking.


If An Aardvark And A Komodo Dragon Were Actually To Decide To Engage In Combat, It Almost Certainly Would Not Go Like This, But, Then, Maybe It Would As There Are Many Things About The Natural World We Do Not Yet Understand.  
The title tells it all!  Not really.  But the title tells you what the story is about!  Story is here.

No comments: