The Big Stupid Review
- Injustice for All
- By D. E. Fredd
- Judge Judy called me an asshole. Of course, it didn’t come out that way when they aired the episode. Bo Felton taped the show, and it has her using “idiot,” but you can see her lips saying “asshole.” The producers did some fancy editing. Even the rent-a-cop, what’s his face, Bird or Bert, who keeps order, looked surprised when she yelled that at me. more...
- The Polysyllogistic Curse
- By Gary J. Shipley
- Reginald Woolly is searching for a universal algorithm for the detection of clarity, so that it might be clear whether some collection of beans/seed/wheat x is clearly a heap or not, thus enabling him to rid his toolbox of those pesky, embarrassed silences and ‘don’t knows,’ leaving him with a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ and nothing more. He wants and needs (and has already started) to make the move from infallibility to omniscience. He had spent years wasting his time with nihilism, starting off local, but turning global within hours. more...
- Ghost Dance
- By Connor Caddigan
- She checks her watch. Almost time. She flicks the smoldering butt out the window and slides the pistol into her purse. For a moment she stands in the parking lot, breathes the city air poisoned by the blast furnaces of the nearby mill. A flock of ugly blackbirds, common grackles, slide feverishly between the telephone lines and drop their heavy white payloads on the hood of her car before disappearing into the yellow sky. With fury and revulsion she stares after them but stops herself from taking aim and firing.
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- How It's Done
- By Anjoli Roy
- I thought of the handy green safety pamphlet that I had been clutching like a rosary on the plane ride from California. Along with a few brochures with bright, full color pictures of the smiling faces of South Africa’s new democracy, the green pamphlet was supposed to prepare me for the seven weeks I’d be spending in Cape Town, living with a host family. The pamphlet hadn’t mentioned anything about a nightlife. In fact, somewhere on the list between “Don’t wear sweatshirts with American universities written on them” and “Keep your voice down in public; American accents attract thieves,” I thought I remembered reading a tip that cautioned against going outside at night, ever. Was I a fool to go out at all, let alone on my first night?
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- Two in a Van
- By Pavlo Kravchenko
- I feel no cold, only the wind. The wind is on my face, in my face, but it is still. I am the one that blows. I am made of steel, plastic and glass, and I slice the wind like a knife. more...
- Uncreated Creatures
- By Connor Caddigan
- With a haughty smile she touches his hand and, leaning in close so that her breath makes his flesh tingle, she tells him how the work of Luís Vaz de Camões inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning to write Sonnets from the Portuguese. “Allow me to give you a little recitation,” she whispers. “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…’”.
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- Invisible
- By Anjoli Roy
- She would think of his mother, just a wall away. Did the crazy woman who he would bark at to stay in her room do his washing? Would she notice the splotches on these sheets, the kind worn thin from use, whose flower-print design had long since faded behind recognizable stains?
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- One of Us
- By Sonia Ramos Rossi
- We look the same, you and me. You, and all these people around me. They’re dressed just the same, we speak the same language, but I am not with you. more...
- Storyteller
- By Alan McCormick
- When the first bomb went off we thought it was masonry falling from a nearby renovated block. The second blast smashed windows in our lab, and a few of my colleagues were cut by flying glass. I checked they were okay, and when I was satisfied the wounds were superficial, I took my medicine bag and went outside to investigate. It was carnage. An elderly man lay by the side of the road with half his face missing. more...
- 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...
