So many wonderful short stories have already been mentioned! So many of these are wonderful favorites.

Might I add: A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin
Hop Frog by Poe (actually any Edgar Alan Poe makes my list)
The Veldt by Bradbury (any Bradbury makes my list, too!)
The Bet by Chekhov
Leiningen versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson
Why I Live At the PO by Eudora Welty

In political news, Al Franken has his first two TV ads up. I like that his tagline is "I'm Al Franken, and I'm serious...about [whatever the ads' topic is]."

Skipping to the end: this week can fuck off and die already.

Some numbskull plowed through our t-whatever down in southern Md and we lost internet starting at noon. Not that I noticed because I discovered a really weird anomaly in the database and went madly chasing my tail after that and I still have no clue.

Got my car back, $900. HOWEVER, it is making a peculiar whine (they noticed it) that sounds like a little motor, tied to rpm. That had to have started recently, because it is noticeable. So I need to take it back so they can pinpoint it and do whatever billiondollar work that will involve, but tomorrow's weather is scheduled to suck and I just didn't want to deal with it tonight. So I'll probably take it back tomorrow or Friday or fuck, I don't know.

Just fuck it.

And of course, the holiday cc bill came in. I LOVE WRITING BIG CHECKS.

Good for Al! I love the commercial with his old grade school teacher.

Skipping to the end: this week can fuck off and die already.

I'll agree and drink to that.

Nutty, for middle school kids. But some read at much higher levels and some don't. And I'm trying to thematically link them with novels they are already reading. It's a bear.

The problem is I can't think of short stories easily off the top of my head.

I'm trying to thematically link them with novels they are already reading.

What are the novels and themes?

is that it was written in the 1930s and yet reads like it came out a generation later.

C.L. Moore was in a class by herself. Well, she may have shared that class with Leigh Brackett. It was a small class.

I'd been looking for the out-of-print collection of CL Moore's stories for about ten years when, one spring, I went on a spree of hitting all of the local libraries' Friends of the Library fundraising booksales (each library in the NW 'burbs seemed to be having one on succeeding weekends from March through May), looking for collectible books to invest in. I found some classic romances that I had heard were worth something, but wasn't expecting to find anything in Lake Zurich since I wasn't able to get there until Saturday afternoon. Sure enough, they were completely picked over, and I only reluctantly decided to stick around and look at the general fiction hardcover table. When I saw the Moore collection I quite literally squealed in delight, and garnered some strange looks from other people in the room. Only one dollar, and it was mineallmine!!!

I keep reminding myself that I'm fortunate to be able to have this stuff done and not have to drive the car until a wheel falls off due to finances. But I swear, this is the spendiest couple of months I'll have had in a while (dental bills too!)

And I was thinking of replacing my computer soon. Hnh.

One of my favorite short stories probably doesn't even qualify as a short story. Or maybe it does, I don't know. Fictional essay? It's a page. "On Foot" by Barbara Selfridge in a random anthology called Unholy Alliances.

It's really quite simple and evocative, someone stumbles, falls and two strangers help her up. That's it. Starts out "Who loves the world? You do. And does the world love you? I don't know. It's hard, sometimes, to say yes."