
The Drew’s community of River Heights is in many ways a typical Midwestern town, yet it presents serious challenges to risk mitigation due to the unprecedented number of carnivals, cults, traveling circuses, organized crime syndicates, and counterfeiting rings in its vicinity….
Dotted across this perilous landscape are myriad secluded inns, tea rooms, mansions, and castles which contain hidden staircases, secret passages, haunted spirits, buried treasure, and/or smuggled goods. These structures figure prominently in N.’s daily movement. They also explode and burn down with alarming frequency.
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I was immersing myself in women’s literature the other day—by that I mean I was reading a cookbook—and that’s when I knew what I should do. I will write the next Great American Woman’s Novel. It’ll be part romance fiction/journal/doodles/musings/sestina about kittens and friendship/an illuminating treatise about the way we live now/word cloud, and it will cover the typical subject matters women write about: marriage, motherhood, yogurt, dating as a competitive sport, emotional warfare, housework, tampons, rainbows, midwifery, gardening, hysteria, beauty products, weight gain, weight loss, the art of being shrill, divorce, magic, and light bondage.
One chapter will be an audio file of Taylor Swift songs.
One chapter will be just emojis.
One chapter will be my grocery list.
One chapter will be a link to my Pinterest page.
One chapter will be manufactured with drops of my blood, sweat, and tears.
One chapter will be me making a sandwich for all the “American Novelists.”If I have any deep, universal, logical thoughts or opinions, I’ll write them down on Post-Its and then chew them up and swallow them to maintain the illusion women don’t write about those things.
FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing The Next Great American Woman’s Novel by the inimitable Elissa Bassist
Ted Wilson Reviews The World #179: Slimer gets 4 out of 5 stars.
His actual name is not Slimer. No one knows his real name or who he was before he died. Nor does anyone know how he died. His missing legs may be a clue. Perhaps they were blown off in combat and he bled to death. Or maybe he just never had legs. Whatever the circumstances of his passing, something kept him here on Earth. Possibly his search for his missing legs.
It makes no sense that he would eat. As a ghost, his physical manifestation has no way to metabolize the food he consumes. My guess is that it’s an emotional based eating, possibly a cry for help.
When one of our kind objected to a particular modern vice, we shouted him down and called him a poltroon. Our ranks held, and we got more creative.
Here were some of our stances:
“Artisanal foods are bull.”
“9/11 was an inside job.”
“Sadness is a choice.”
We professed absolute indifference to the success of regionally popular sports teams. We forwarded email chain letters. We drank too many alcoholic beverages and had earnest online chats with old flames late at night.
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