Except for the Sickness I’m Quite Healthy Now. You Can Believe That.

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Nice title, right? In my efforts to knock your socks to obscurantist skies, I’m willing to offer a dollar to the first listener who can prove he or she already knows of this story (currently in the running (BY THE WAY) for Miette’s Top Short Fiction Find of the Decade, and how’s that for a reason to listen?). And how to prove this? I don’t know.

My Bludjeon and the Bobbed White

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But would you believe that I spent the last couple of weeks dedicated to trying mightily and hard to uncover the identity of tonight’s author before hurling the fruits of these findings to splat on your walls. Maybe I spent the week after mired in self-pity at having failed you… failed YOU, the Internet, whom I adore.

On a Grand Scale

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So, Ilf and Petrov met while working on a newspaper for railway workers, which is intriguing to me. For starters, where’s the podcastresses’ newspaper, and why have I not been invited to participate? My life’s literary collaborator could be waiting there, slinging the pen on the audio-coding equivalent to pieces on socialism and coal hauling,

Talpa

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Another Listener has asked whether I might be kind enough to share a few words about my reading process for aspiring podcasters and podcastresses. I am, of course, always glad to share secrets, although in this case I don’t think there’s anything illuminating about it. In typical sarcastresse fashion, I could just say that it’s a matter of opening a book and opening a mouth.

The Scarlet Ibis (Unabridged)

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I know the great controvery of the Scarlet Ibis has bothered you, and I confess to great shame at using this controversy to draw attention away from the various corporate scandals, celebrity affairs, and political horrors that are sucking the steam off the almost pervasive media coverage known to some as HurstGate.

The Scarlet Ibis

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A Listener (you know who you are) wrote to me recently requesting that I laugh hysterically for fifteen minutes into my microphone and post this as a short story for you. Now, while I agree that this would be a particularly amusing johncagey experiment, I have not, unfortunately, seen hyenaic laughter transcribed this way, and … Read more

The Joke

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Does the title of today’s story affect you in such a way that the person nearest you is now asking what you’re sighing about? Or maybe you rolled your eyes so far to the side that you now have a stress headache and need to refocus before reading the rest of this blurb? (If so, please, take a moment.

Señor Payroll

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There is a bottling facility close to where I live, and while “bottling facility” might look like elusive high-security stuff to the random passerby, between you and I, it’s best described as a warehouse for bottled beers.