The Big Stupid Review
- Idolatry
- By Robert Smith
- I was only on comfort break for five minutes tops, but by the time I get back in there Frank has gone and went and hotdesked me again. Fifth time this month. I come in to find him swiveling his fat ass around in my caster chair, this nasty evil smirk plastered on his aftershave-reeking ugly mug like a neon bowtie. I notice too how he's whiteouted his own initials in the earpiece of my brand new headset. I feel like crying. more...
- P H I L E M A T O P H I L I A
- By Traci Chee
- So when Helena kissed that bullfrog, she didn't do it because he swore that he was royalty. She did it because watching the reflection of clouds in the lake was like watching cream being poured into a blue cup. She did it because he was a talking frog! And how often do you meet a talking frog. And how often is the afternoon perfect like that, with the faraway mountains looking so much like footstools, like you could just long jump the valley and land that close to the sky. more...
- They Do!
- By Al Po
- Hook chafed at mall management's expecting him to be, at worst, a melodramatic parody of evil, evil Disneyfied, evil co-opted and made commercially palatable for the Christmas-shopping mall crowd. How he would have liked to skewer one of them with his sword or the prosthetic hook at the end of his left arm that the Theater Department's prop and costume people had rigged up. What a surprise for the sweet families that would be! more...
- The Theft of the Magi
- By Gregory Anthony Schneider
- Issey was a lousy thief, but a good son. The vases always found their way to his mother's doorstep; the few items he did sell, Issey got gypped at the pawnshop. The rare high-end hot stuff, what he couldn't pawn, went to his fence, but the fence was an informant, though on a similar level of competence. And Issey kind of knew anyway — he just wanted to help out the guy. So, he never did much time in the clink (as no one called it except him) and the informant was eventually retired in the good ol' cold meats fashion. more...
- Love Fwd'd On
- By Chris Vaughan
- It wasn't that I felt compelled to admit the hacker; I just felt that people were being unfair to him. Who knew why he wanted to see the contents of my PC screen, and really, if he really wanted to. So I didn't mind. I still don't. Plasma palpations, the song eases odorously among the network cables and I fall into swivel bliss. more...
- Sam Edwine Gets That All-Important Publishing Contract, and Decides What the Key Word of His Book Shall Be
- By Tom Bradley
- Sam was intending to put "pecker-snot" into the conversations of several socioeconomically disparate characters, to make the term seem, at least in the context of the book, to be a major part of the contemporary American idiom, an everyday cuss word like fuck, shit, or piss. In a bestseller, this prophecy of the coming of "pecker-snot" would self-fulfill; and "pecker-snot" would be smeared on paper, both slick and newsprint, and on pixels and celluloid, and on the lips of every young person all across this great civilization of ours. more...
- Notes on a New Financial Year
- By Chris Vaughan
- Our first day under the new scheme was an ominous reflection of the last days. We first conceived the calendar policy under the influence of a severe financial crisis; we ended our days under the weight of a large self-spun apocalypse.
- Rereading these notes I compiled over that financial year makes me regret the sterile attitude I showed through to the end, only at which point I embraced it; only when it was nothing more, New Years Eve 2011. That date has a peculiar effect.
- It took a vote to get things going. A week prior to the vote held in the cafeteria we handed out short explanations of the Mayan long count calendar attached to a chart explaining the immediate benefits to each employee on an individual basis.
more...
- The Diddling of the Immensity
- By Thor Garcia
- But it was really her beauty — ah, her beauty. She was ogled at, moaned after, despaired over in passing. Hers was not the beauty of skin-moisturizer adverts and network television alone. That wasn't enough anymore: not in these times; not in this town; not with this bunch. She was more apt to don the rare Ecuadorean beanie; the occasionally unexpected brown argyle; the suddenly appearing German high-collar; the vaguely unfashionable Vietnamese sandal.
- Or, as on this night, the flimsy cloth summer floozy dress, which she had snapped up for eight dollars at the refreshingly dilapidated K-Mart downtown.
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- The Right Woman
- By Roger Castle
- Her mouth opened to his. Their tongues twiddled and sloshed and were sucked deeper and deeper. This lasted for a few minutes when she began moaning: no, no, no, no, no, yet the clasp around his neck tightened. He was aroused more by the negative supplications. more...
