Proctodontologist: an MD who treats people with their heads stuck up their butts. (Heard at work.)

What makes the setting of a story worth revisiting? What makes the world of a story — even a non-genre world that is supposedly the same as our own — worth revisiting? Any book which has a sequel must have a world worth revisiting. What makes a story worth revisiting, from a writer’s point of

The world’s best rememberance: My wife’s grandfather died last week. He was 96 years old and had not shaved his beard in 30 years. Lately he’d taken to carrying business cards with his name and title printed on the front: Stephen Edward Eastman, W.O.M. “W.O.M.?” I asked him. “Weird Old Man,” he explained.

I was talking to Ray on the way home the other day, and for some reason we got onto the topic of vampires. She decided there are three basic vampire food groups, as follows: Tomatoes Blood Fruit (red).

But Hugin, being the raven he is, just can’t leave it alone. Eventually, Munin gives in and brings him to the fields of the fallen. Out back behind Yggdrasil* is this place you’ll never find unless you’re looking for it, because it’s hidden. It’s a battlefield. And it looks just like any other abandoned battlefield

If you would, check out yesterday’s Devil’s Panties.

The leaders of the drones rose up and called for a change in the social order: no more queens! The queen, Hymenoptera, took this in stride. First, it was only the drones, which might live or die for all that anybody cared, if only they mated when they ought. Second, She was just as glad

If you could make a machine to do anything, straight out of dreams if necessary, what would it be? It must do something, that is, it cannot “make world peace” — but it might make a pill that caused the people who took it to be unable to resolve a conflict with violence for the

selcouth (SEL-kooth) adjective Strange; unusual; marvelous. [From Middle English, from Old English seldcuth, from seldan (seldom) +cuth (known), from cunnan (to know).] -Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

Okay, here’s the story: one day, somebody screwed up a cake. Oh, no! Then, suddenly, inspiration hit. Add pudding to broken cake pieces, decorate with fruit… Voila! The trifle was born. I’ve been trying to figure out a birthday dessert to make for someone at work. When I asked her, she said her favorite dessert