Ten Contemplations on the Facebook Like Icon

1) Interesting. Everybody who "likes" me seems to be a latex glove fetishist. 2) I'm not pulling over, hitcher. I'm stepping on the gas. Oh no. Get out of the way! 3) Who's got your nose? 4) If this hand were bearing an unbuttoned sleeve, everything you liked would seem ...dirty. 5) The universal symbol for social approval in the 21st Century is a dismembered hand. I like that. But it's kind of overkill. Surely just a single digit would do. 6) A grammatical sin is committed by our passive acceptance of this plurality of "likes" -- that is, the…

Arnzstigation Days end January 31st

I am honored by this heart-warmingly weird tribute that surprisingly erupted as a meme over on Facebook yesterday. Raw Dog Screaming Press is sponsoring a fun creative celebration called "Arnzstigation Days" in support of our successful funding of The Fridge of the Damned (for which all backers receive a copy of my upcoming story idea lighter fluid, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side). It's basically a creative writing challenge and a call for memories of weirdness we may have shared. If anything from my classes, workshops or posts in the Instigation department of this website (or the prompts in…

Dog Star’s New Title: Resnick’s “Miracle”

Happy to see the expansion of Dog Star Books -- a hot new SF line put out by one of my longstanding publishers, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and edited by my former co-editor from Many Genres), Heidi Ruby Miller. They've just released the cover of a new book by the prolific SF author, Mike Resnick: SUMMARY: The best way to learn about an alien species is not only to live among them, but to become them in both physical form and function, but could a human really learn to think like an alien, and at what cost to his humanity?…

Other Damned Refrigerators

[In honor of our Kickstarter campaign for The Fridge of the Damned...(remember: the chance to pledge and receive great rewards ends Feb 1st!)] The Fridge Peep Show http://thefridgepeepshow.wordpress.com/ Freezer Friday by Charlie Layton http://freezerfriday.tumblr.com/ Abandoned Appliances Flickr Group http://www.flickr.com/groups/1207990@N24/pool/ Fridge Monster by Daywalt Fear Factory http://youtu.be/g8xHq3S6pgM The Undying Horror of the Refrigerator http://www.fright.com/edge/UndyingHorrorRefrigerator.htm