Back of the Envelope

Welcome to the sixty-ninth Storyblogging Carnival. We have four entries this time, but a number of them are significantly longer than usual, so there's plenty of reading material. Enjoy.

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Loneliness
by Fred Vaughan at Reason and Rhyme
A 650 word brief story rated PG.

Ray finds himself minimizing his good fortune with statistics and analogies to discovery.

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The Ark
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 956 word brief story rated PG.

So you thought you knew what Noah was on about...

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At Recess, There will be Worms
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 2,500 word short story rated G.

A semi-autobiographical story about April worm-flinging and other childhood rites of passage.

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Bangkok Adrenaline
by Conan Stevens of World's Biggest Action Hero?
A 25,075 word screenplay rated G.

"This is a script I wrote, which has been filmed and is due for cinema release in Sept. The script is about 4 broke foreigners living in Thailand coming up with a plan for some easy(?) cash."

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This concludes the sixty-ninth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Sluggy Freelance — We finally leave Torg and Aylee as they leave the mall. They've finally gotten tired of the cruelty they were inflicting on the ghouls. They may be soulless monsters, but there's fighting evil and there's just being mean. Now we're back to Sluggy Prime and get to see what the government's up to. It looks like they have a lead on Schlock.

Day by Day — Jan meets the military in Kuwait. It promises to be enlightening for both of them. Meanwhile, the Democrats are looking for enemies, and spending a lot of time fighting each other and their base.

Scary Go Round — The team's boat converts to a sub, and their soon underwater, where they find the real kraken. Moon goes hunting, and soon she's reeling in one really big fish.

Dominic Deegan — Dominic does his best to talk Jacob out of murdering Nielen. The thing is, I'm not sure why he'd even want to. Is it some twisted sense of family loyalty that drives him? Dominic does his best to talk him down, then runs to try to explain to Cassafin why going to Maltak is very dangerous, what with the xenophobic Shintula clan on the way.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Margaret does her best to convince Diane that Roger's been selling his body. What a twisted way to win back a girl! It seems to work, though. I just hope Mike can stop April from doing anything rash with that knife.

Schlock Mercenary — After realizing that Pronto doesn't have Kevyn's self-repairing nanotech, Shufgar decides to shoot Elf. Just as he's about to get on with it, his sweep team finds Kevyn. He orders them to execute him, but it looks like Kevyn has the advantage.

I'll be hosting the next Storyblogging Carnival, the sixty-ninth, here at Back of the Envelope. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals. This next carnival will be going up April 30th.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, April 28th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Sluggy Freelance — So Torg and Aylee go to the mall and have some more ghoul fun. I'm hoping they'll be reaching the end of this soon... I'm getting tired of it.

Day by Day — Damon helps Sam with her crossword puzzle, although his sarcasm makes it hard to take his answer seriously. Meanwhile, Zed and Jan arrive in Kuwait.

Scary Go Round — So what's up with the freaky kraken cultists and their fake kraken? Something weird's going on here, but I really want to see the real kraken soon.

Dominic Deegan — It's gone... all gone. The orc homeland has been wiped out. The academy students do their best to help out, while Dominic does the same with a pebble from the destroyed orc homeland. Unfortunately, in the meanwhile, Jacob is up to no good.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — The dragon's goons kick Dave out of the helicopter, while Marsha takes a knife to April. Fortunately, her crazy jealousy fit is a lot less murderous than it used to be.

Schlock Mercenary — Shufgar captures the mercenaries and brings them back to the hideout, where he asks them about Kevyn. Of course, they don't know Kevyn's still alive... er, alive again, so the questioning confuses and insults them. And then Shufgar shoots Pronto. Aw, I liked Pronto.

Andrew hosts the latest Storyblogging Carnival, with six stories, at Dodgeblogium. Go read.

Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium will be the next Storyblogging Carnival. Be sure to send your submissions to him at lagwolf-at-gmail-dot-com by Saturday, at 11:59 pm, including the following:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

I'm looking forward to reading the entries.

Sluggy Freelance — Torg's flashback explaining how they got to the ghoul universe ends up being really short, which is good, as avoiding weeks' worth of flashback allows us to find out that Aylee has Kesandru runes on the inside of her body. Ooh, interesting! Torg's dreams say that she's really dead, but the runes are using her ghost to power her massive body... a sort of soul-powered zombie, I guess. Seems needlessly complicated to me, so I'm not assuming Aylee's undead yet. As if things weren't bad enough, both of them are having dreams about a strange guy in a robe who's after Aylee. Hmm, I wonder... do you think that it could be that in this universe, Kesandru managed to return? I'm not sure where the ghouls come from, but it would explain why they aren't showing the robed guy's face, if it's really Torg's, and Torg did say that the events in this universe happened about five years ago, while the Kesandru incident happened four years ago, in 2003.

Day by Day — Damon and Sam are missing their significant others, but otherwise getting along fine. They fight less with each other than with Jan and Zed. Not that this keeps them completely out of trouble. The other person getting in trouble is Pelosi on her trip to Syria

Scary Go Round — Amy tries to convince the witch to teach her magic, without much success. In the meantime, Moon gets an invitation from the Lord of the island, who apologizes for the sons Moon beat up.

Dominic Deegan — Nielen flees Runcible Spoon's job offer, but it turns out that it was just a ruse. Miranda hasn't made her selection yet. While she's still trying to decide, she hears from Donovan, who has news from the Orc homeland. It doesn't sound good... everything and everyone has been destroyed.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Marsha corners April, and judging by the knife she's holding at her throat, she's not happy. I'm wondering how this one's going to end. It's not like Marsha's incapable of violence. Meanwhile, Dave and Blue are trying to get her Dad treatment, but Dave's attempts to explain himself aren't helping.

Schlock Mercenary — While Kevyn hides, the others reach the edge of the continent, and Elf tries to convince them to turn back and take on Shufgar. Pronto unwisely hits on Elf, and receives a warning from Nick that Elf is cursed, so he doesn't want to go there. This prompts Elf to kiss them all, since, if they're doomed anyway, they might as well help her.

Jeremy Pierce is asking whether gal is a derogatory term. Well, technically, he responding to a websearch that brought someone to his site. He says:

If a derogatory term requires that the speaker intends it to have a negative connotation, I don't think it's derogatory. And I do think that's what it means to be derogatory. But I've never been comfortable with the term. It's always seemed like a diminutive. I understand that it's intended to be a substitute for 'girl' to refer to people who are supposed to be old enough that 'girl' feels inappropriate but who aren't quite women yet.

As usual, I posted something in his comments, but now I'm going to say pretty much the same thing here (but with better grammar and HTML encoding). And that is that while I've never liked gal, I'm perfectly okay with "girl" as an informal term for a woman, no matter what age. It's exactly the complementary term to "guy," as in: Girls' Night Out/Guys' Night Out, just the girls/just the guys, etc. If women prefer another term, I wish they would define it. None of the old ones seem appropriate anymore: chicks, dolls, and gals all feel out of date.

Now this is interesting. It's supposedly a press release from the Jews living in Iran in support of their government (hat tip Michael Rubin in The Corner):

The Association of Iranian Jews…renewed its commitment in a message issued on the threshold of the Jewish religious festival of the Passover, which starts Monday night.

"In obedience to the instructions of Jesus, in the new Iranian year, which has been declared year of national unity and Islamic solidarity, Iranian Jews voice their readiness to defend all national interests of Iranians and to observe the guidelines set by Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei) for the sake of strengthening national unity and solidarity in the fight against present-day pharaohs," the message said.

Notice the reference to Jesus. Now, I'm hardly an expert on Iranian Jews, but to quote Jesus not just approvingly, but as a source of authority who should be obeyed, does not represent orthodox Jewish beliefs. While there could very well be Christian Jews in Iran, I doubt they're in charge of the Association of Iranian Jews. So what can we make of this? Pure propaganda written by the Iranian government, whose knowledge of Judaism and Christianity is equally abysmal, or, as Michael Rubin suggests, are "Iranian Jews living in the Islamic Republic (there are still around 20,000) ... signaling that something is very wrong"? Either way, it fails to convincingly demonstrate the support of Iranian Jews for the revolutionary government.

Sluggy Freelance — Concerned that Zoe might bring the wrath of the Feds if she blabs about Aylee on the radio, they use her camel tattoo curse to keep her home. Are they prepared to deal with the wrath of Zoe, though? And while Zoe and Gwynn spend some quality time together, Torg's off in another dimension fighting ghouls. So why can't he end up in a pleasant dimension. Even the Dimension of Lame, while pleasant enough to visit, got invaded by demons.

Day by Day — Zed and Jan leave for Iraq, and now Sam and Damon are on their own. They aren't getting along too well. Jan's having some trouble dealing with her carefully non-profiled fellow passengers on the trip there.

Scary Go Round — While trying to learn more about the Kraken, some rowdy guys give Moon trouble. She quickly puts them in their place, and attracts the attention of the local lord in the meantime.

Dominic Deegan — Nimmel tries to deal with Nielen and gets his butt kicked. Luna helps, but doesn't want to deal with Nielen and is nearly attacked for ignoring him when the sheriff arrives and puts an end to it. Turns out that was Nimmel's plan in the first place, although he still gets community service. Miranda then disciplines Nielen, by calling in the new headmaster...

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Margaret finds Mike and wakes him up, and he quickly realizes that they've got to do something about Satan's plans. He's going to help Roger with Diane... I hope he's quick enough.

Schlock Mercenary — With his life about to be snuffed out, Kevyn convinces the nanobots to dump some rocket fuel into his cells. He's got thirty seconds to escape incineration and find someplace where he can heal. Somehow, he manages the escape, but now what?

Welcome to the sixty-seventh Storyblogging Carnival. We have five entries this time. I won't bother writing a long introduction, and instead we can jump straight to the stories.

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Small Packages
by Jeremiah Lewis at Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A man contemplating suicide sees something that changes his mind.

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Loneliness
by Jeremiah Lewis at Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A girl sees her singleness as a measure of time.

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Taxing Times
by Mad Kane at Mad Kane's Humor Blog
A 570 word brief story rated PG.

Humorous adventures in tax return preparation.

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Faithful are the Wounds of a Friend
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
A 970 word brief story rated PG.

While technically more of a homily, this story recounts some painful, yet helpful, real life events.

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The Shaft
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 1391 word short story rated PG-13.

It takes place just after the Norman invasion. A man gets an odd knife from a Saxon raider.

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This concludes the sixty-fifth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.