Humdrum Places - BlogFlock

🔭 The framing essay - foofaraw

2025-11-21T17:00:59.000Z

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—With apologies to Rod Serling. And Jeanne Marshall. Her typewritten notes from his Antioch College writing class are online at the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation. An insightful epistolary tale. Definitely worth a scan.

Consider, if you will, a series of expanding rectangles. Or, if you’re into “Flatland,” a frustration of frusta thrust through a plane. This morbid procession marches to the soundtrack of — hey, The White Stripes totally ripped this off for the “Seven Nation Army” video.

Tonight’s stars: Michael Richards, Wilhelm von Homburg, Graham Linehan, Mr. Van Klomp, and Marge Simpson.

Welcome, art lovers. Perhaps these five corner cases strike you as problematic. Perhaps you’d rather séance up elephants from living rooms past than tightrope over these fetid penguinariums. Perhaps you’re under the right big-and-proud-top. This is “Anecdotes of Delightful Happenstance & Dilemmas.”

“The Kramer”

It was ten years after Y2K ruined everything. I saw Jason Alexander perform as Donny Clay, a not-so-inspirational speaker, in Las Vegas. Mostly because Penn was busy preening jubjub birds and Teller had a sore throat.

There was a little audience participation. At one point, the Not George Costanza called someone a name. Not a slur or anything, but the wrong name, nonetheless. The drunken, money-deprived crowd was upset, and I — err, they — let him know it.

Alexander’s apology was swift and gracious. The incident did not make the news.

Cue door-bursting Michael Richards entrance. (Or was that an exit?)

“Vigo the Carpathian”

An Olivier salad of adventure, dancing, and caste-based comedy racism — they’re called “masala films” for a reason. Bollywood and Indian films cleave to sappy tropes and transition in jarring, ill-fitting shifts, much like the thrice-baked raccoon-for-Thanksgiving story on the “The Danny Brown Show” podcast I’ve chosen to end this sentence with. Sure, I could cater context, but isn’t it more fun to just enjoy the ride?

…

The answer is: No. None of this mess works. I’ll level with you: This is my fifth round versus this shambling mound of an essay and, staring down the mossy void, engulfment is imminent.

“Saint Matty Hislop”

It started innocently enough. I was reading a Jon Agee palindrome book and came across “Kramer’s remark.” Oh yeah, I thought, I have scribbled notes about problematic paintings in media.

The original idea was to couch it as a mid-2000s content farm listicle with punchy, drabble-length sections divided by convoluted breaks. I thought it’d be a funny way to explore nuanced subjects like race, caste, antisemitism, gender, misogyny, and feminism.

Yes, seriously.

Also, I’d just rewatched the “Pickman’s Model” episode of Rod Sterling’s lesser-celebrated show, “Night Gallery,” and, the hat on a hat on a hat was irresistible.

Yes, seriously.

“The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies”

That’s what passes for entertainment around here. Actually, back to the Agee stuff, my wife and I strained over anagrams a whole evening but were unable to wrangle “a gay Baba Yaga” or “odor rodeo.” We did, however, tame “sex of tit foxes,” “T. Tub Butt,” and the soulless A.I. art prompt-ready “draw ‘B.O. gnome lobs B.O. lemon gobward.’”

Anyway, each section was intended to be a bait-and-switch anecdote. “The Kramer” would’ve slid into an unrelated cast member mishap. “Vigo the Carpathian” would’ve followed a baffling Bollywood biography. “Saint Matty Hislop” would’ve recited a self-serious monomaniacal litany with factual inaccuracies.

“Scene from Moby Dick”

Things got weird with “The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies.” I tried juxtaposing the nine-season long WWII humor of “‘Allo! ‘Allo!” with the canceled-after-one-episode tour-de-reich “Heil Honey I’m Home!” and deep “An American Tail” lore. That might’ve crossed a line. Which meant it would’ve been better for the Graham Linehan section.

(“The Simpsons” over-the-couch painting reference was for the “fifth corner” joke and wordplay on the Homer/homo-erotic nature of the “A Squeeze of the Hand” chapter in “Moby Dick.”)

Also, I’d written a bunch of Indian film reviews for some reason.

Anyway, here are all those Indian film reviews.

All Those Indian Film Reviews

🍿 “Koi … Mil Gaya”: What if “E.T.” helped “Forest Gump” get laid?

🍿 “Krrsh”: “Wet Hot American Summer” crashes “Batman Forever.”

🍿 “Krrsh 3: Not Krrsh 2”: Lazy-eyed X-men dropout.

🍿 “Dilwale”: Hey, is that the painting from “Ghostbusters 2” on the wall? Click back. That's totally the Vigo painting! Highlight of the movie.

🍿 “Happy New Year”: Best once a year. Or never.

🍿 “Singham”: Copaganda where they fight police corruption with even more police corruption. Also lionaganda.

🍿 “Bhool Bhulaiyaa”: Despite the ghost-busting psychologist, this has nothing to do with Scientology. Or does it?

🍿 “Parvarish”: Good Twin and Bad Twin team up to harass Bad Girls Turned Good Girls Or Maybe Not as they seduce the protagonists by threatening to kill themselves in various ways to a bumping '70s song and dance number. Here's your first and only warning for saxophone and accordion jump scares.

🍿 “Bajirao Mastani”: Historical hero combat with sword whips and a love triangle that includes a warrior princess. Yes please. Last scene? Tears.

🍿 “Padmaavat”: Epic poetry-inspired drama about male gaze with a total badass leading lady who subverts the patriarchy from within. Sign me up. Last scene? Chills.

🍿 “Piku”: Road trip comedy (?) where a beloved actor portrays an old man with chronic constipation. Last scene? Full release.

🍿 “Sheshnaag”: Gods are snakes who are also people who manipulate “an illiterate” — or are they trying to help him score? And why's that a plot point in so many films? — and then … what the hell was that‽ Highly recommended.

So, um, yeah.

Good evening.

—Nicholas De Marino

🙃 Falling - foofaraw

2025-11-21T05:46:14.000Z

So. That was stupid.

There’s a cliché in the movies—a trope. Something terrible is about to happen; you know it, I know it, everyone in the audience knows it. The close-up of a nut vibrating its way free from a bolt in a rotor means fate is in the house. The words “don’t leave the path” echo in the theater as the camera pans down to the feet of someone not noticing they have already left the pavement means the clock is ticking. A sudden screech of scattering birds just as they think they’re safe means Bonnie and Clyde will barely have time to exchange tender, wistful looks before rough justice turns them into bloody rag dolls.

Like that, only different.

It’s not that the world slows down. It’s that your mind speeds up. You’re barely moving, but everything else seems frozen. No one has seen you throw your leg over the railing. They don’t know your world is barreling toward them.

At the desk, a clerk—tattooed and ponytailed—validates a parking ticket, the muscles in his hand and forearm flexing as he punches the card. A dusky woman waiting for the elevator wears bright primary colors. In her arms, she cradles a toddler with pink barrettes and thumb in her mouth, who is looking straight at the falling man (which of these things doesn’t belong?), the beginning of a string of drool dripping like a question onto the dusky woman’s incandescent dress.

Four stories up is a bad place to have second thoughts. Practical questions crowd into your mind. At what point do you reach terminal velocity? Is it better to face away from the landing?

Lobby.

Tall glass windows.

Light.

Atrium—an atrium is a chamber of the heart.

You fall through slices of time—thin like air on Everest. You are the rock in the slingshot, its rubber stretching taut. You breathe as if through a sieve.

If you ever dreamed of being a bird and believed dreams come true, this would be a good time for some proof, a good time to adjust flaps, throttle up, and roll out of this dive into stable flight. The word “plumage” comes to mind.

Plumage.

Atrium.

If you were a bird, what would they call you? A plummet.

A balloon of laughter inflates in your belly, but not enough to arrest your descent.

Artwork by Tony Tran

No one is directly underneath you—as far as you can tell—so at least you won’t be taking anyone with you (another thought that would have been more useful two floors earlier). You decide you’d rather not land on your face, but that choice is out of your hands.

Your shirt—released momentarily from gravity—flutters across your face. For the thinnest moment, momentum seems to stop, and you’re sure you’ve flown into a cloud or a flock of angels.

People will ask why. You would, too. You’d say—like Camus’ Stranger—“because the sun was in my eyes,” an answer but not a reply. Maybe it’s a bad translation. Perhaps he meant something else entirely. Were you ill? Unhappy? Was it over a woman? Were you on medication? You’d like to be able to tell them. You’d like to be able to say you thought this through.

More slices of time, more increments toward the floor. You want to believe in grace, but when they examine security cameras later, you know you’ll look as aerodynamic as an octopus.

Here’s the thing. You didn’t want to jump. Not really. At least, you’re pretty sure you didn’t. You think you’re pretty sure.

Reasons why not to jump:

Reason one: it’s stupid.

Reason two: it’ll hurt. =Not for long, or maybe not at all. Then you remember stories of guillotined Frenchmen whose severed heads still— nix that… not a useful line of thought.

Reason three: it’s stupid.

Reason four: really stupid.

Reason five: it accomplishes NOTHING.

Reason six: see reasons one through five.

You pass through the tipping point, and the slingshot snaps forward. The floor charges toward you like a lover in the airport returning from Seattle.

Consider your mother, brother, and sister. Consider your girlfriend. She thinks you hung the moon. Consider the friend you’re meeting for lunch, sitting before a basket of bread and water with lemon, staring at his phone, wondering what has become of you.

What has become of you?

The pattern on the floor comes into focus. You rehearse your apologies.

I’m sorry for this. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Plumage.

Atrium.

A security guard, with his weight on one leg—surprisingly agile for a big man—swivels and sinks into a sprinter’s crouch, but he’ll never make it. A woman in Armani, legs crossed on a sofa, looks up from her latte and phone, pupils expanding without comprehension. The mother is reacting now, her impulse to turn her child’s head away. The string of drool makes a diagonal in the air.

If you breathe out now, cold Mexican tiles would radiate your breath back at you, and you haven’t really thought about death until now; haven’t thought about what God or gravity might have in store for you, just processing data, taking it all in, how unbelievably stupid.

What has become of you?

Anyway, it’s only four stories. I probably won’t even—

Dudley Stone’s fiction has most recently appeared online in Danse Macabre and Snapdragon. Additionally, he is a produced playwright and his poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and Kentucky State Poetry Society, and a mechanic-in-training at Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop. Mr. Stone received his B.A. from the University of Kentucky and resides in Lexington, KY. More of his work can be found at dudleystone.com.

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

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🚧 OBSTRUCTION #11 - foofaraw

2025-11-20T16:35:02.000Z

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

Donate now

Matthew Burbridge

Issue #12

The story so far:

🤖 San Francisco’s youngest billionaires are betting on a new kind of job boom - The Independent Variable

2025-11-19T16:14:54.000Z

SF Standard

When I pressed Foody on his utopian vision, and why he thinks tech companies won’t hoard the spoils of the AI boom, he waved his hand and described a future in which everyone has $10 million in purchasing power, lives in a nice apartment, and works only if they want to.

Oh yeah, because every 22-year-old has vast experience of what it’s like at the workplace for all types of jobs across the country. Problem solved, everyone, you can now work when you want and buy anything you want! It’s getting ridiculous.

💸 Everybody Stand Down: New Yorker Columnist’s Child Doesn’t Care About Sports Gambling - The Independent Variable

2025-11-19T16:08:51.000Z

Defector

The people who own and populate the sports discourse have every professional incentive not to “freak out about sports betting,” because the vast majority of them are for all practical purposes employees of sports betting concerns. That, not to put too fine a point on it, is the precise reason why a question like “Is gambling really threatening the integrity of sports?” is still being treated as though it is up for discussion at a time when there are simultaneous active federal bet-fixing investigations against active players in three different highly visible professional sports

I didn’t read the original NYer column, but anyone who makes the points laid out by Albert here is crazy. There is no doubt that the integrity of sports is in trouble. And no, most fans of sports don’t think they are already fixed.

💽 Enema Of The Garden State by Madi Diaz - The Independent Variable

2025-11-19T16:06:42.000Z

Bandcamp

I featured this on yesterday’s media guide on Foofaraw, but wanted to give it another shout-out here. It’s fantastic and every penny goes to Defending our Neighbors.

🎙️ My new business + tech podcast - The Independent Variable

2025-11-19T16:05:09.000Z

annie’s blog

Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, burn it all down, etc.

I personally can’t wait for episode two! 😝

🧀 Hollywood’s Cheesiest New Star: Parmigiano Reggiano Signed By UTA for Film and TV Placement - The Independent Variable

2025-11-19T16:04:24.000Z

THR

United Talent Agency has signed the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, the governing body for “the king of cheeses” Parmigiano Reggiano, to get the supermarket staple placement in films, TV shows and streaming projects around the globe.

Big cheese has entered the building… Starring in next summer’s action-packed blockbuster: Parmesan cheese… Next down the red carpet, Parmigiano Reggiano! “What are you wearing today..?”

Apologies to all of humanity…

An ordinary contest results - foofaraw

2025-11-19T02:48:34.000Z

The results are in! If you just want to read the winning stories you can jump down to the bottom.

But first, I’d like to give a tremendous thank you to our wonderful judges, Casey Aimer (of Radon Journal), Charlie Fish (of Fiction on the Web), and Joel Glover (author and Foofaraw alum), as well as all of the writers who participated for taking a chance on our first writing contest.

Congratulations to all the finalists, honorable mentions, and of course, our winners, Zoe Carver, Michael Allen Rose, and Andrea Cavedo. My favorite part of these results was that both Michael and Andrea reside in the greatest city in the world, Chicago.

I’m already hard at work devising our next contest, which I’m aiming to run a bit earlier in Q3 next year. If you aren’t already on the list, you can stay in the loop for future contests and submission windows via our author newsletter.

Without further ado, here are the results:

Longlist finalists, listed alphabetically

Bad Friend and the Maiden by Brie Atienza
Come Eat the Bad Dreams by Naomi Koyama-Heath
First Time by E. Andrew
Lost and Forgotten by Alyssa Beatty
Out of Line by J.R. Vernham
Take Care by Sawyer Sinnett
The Momentonomicon by Joshua D. Martin

Honorable mentions, listed alphabetically

$10 each and a 1-year Chill Subs membership

All Those Yesterdays by Elmira Olson
Thanks for the Memories by Ian VanDuzer
The Pigeon Man by Ali McLafferty
UnBecoming by Laurel Hanson
Winter in the Poison Garden by Andrew Hodges

Winners

Third place: What’s In A Name by Zoe Carver

$110 and a 2-year Chill Subs membership

Second place: ‌To Make a Pie by Michael Allen Rose

$165 and a 2-year Chill Subs membership

First place: ‌A Cup to Save the World by Andrea Cavedo

$280 and a 5-year Chill Subs membership

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

Donate now

☕ A cup to save the world - foofaraw

2025-11-19T02:47:46.000Z

🏆

First place winner of An ordinary contest 2025

Exit, the punk bar on North Avenue—you know the one, just west of the overpass and the landfill beneath—that’s where we met. Well, that’s what we told people at parties, if they asked. It was a hardcore dive decorated with gas masks and motorcycle bodies, its exposed cinderblocks caked in asbestos and lime, its every surface a Hepatitis infection waiting to happen.

Dangerous.

Thrilling.

And it was a lie.

We met at the bus stop across the street.

I was waiting for the 72, my ears still ringing with Agnostic Front, eyes adjusting slowly under the purple-orange sodium glow of the streetlights. I didn’t see him walk up, or didn’t notice him already at the stop when I arrived. He just materialized out of the darkness. He wore black cowboy boots with evil-looking spurs, black leather pants and jacket, a black scarf that could have been the pelt of an unlucky goat, and sunglasses that were shiny and mirrored, but reflected only darkness. His head was shaved bare and gleaming like bone. While his face was drawn, there was a sensuousness to his mouth, to the way he quirked his lips when he asked me for a light. He was exactly my type.

He stood a respectful distance away from me and smoked leisurely and, after many empty minutes, asked if there was an Elston bus running.

“The 13,” he added.

“You mean the 41?”

He thought about that and then said, “What year is it?”

“What year do you think it is?” I asked.

He rubbed a black-gloved hand over his jutted chin and said, “It feels like 1968.”

That made me laugh. What a strange year to choose—the year I was born. He was always funny like that.

It was cold, one of those brutal January midnights in Chicago (early, by Exit’s standards), and the bus he was hoping for hadn’t been running for twenty years. We got to talking, then to walking—mostly to keep warm—first along the polluted north spur of the river, then under the roaring expressway. We ended up toe-to-toe on the sidewalk outside the Hollywood Grill. Hands jammed into pockets, shoulders hunched, conversation limping along one hopeful murmur at a time, neither of us quite prepared to let it die. Every time the diner’s door opened, we were bathed in a humid musk of hash browns and burnt grease, so strong as to be near-corporeal, like a finger curling out and beckoning inside. Like a voice crying “Come!” to my growling stomach. The pop tunes of the jukebox leaked out with the aroma of 24-hour breakfast. When the opening piano riff of “Closing Time” by Semisonic shimmered out to us, he interrupted himself mid-sentence.

“Demi,” he breathed, like he was telling me a secret. “I love this song.”

I laughed and took him by the elbow, which was sharp even through the creaking leather of his sleeve. “Come on then, there’s at least two verses to go.”

We sat at a formica-topped booth and listened to the singer’s plaintive wail: the old barkeep’s line about not having to go home but not being able to stay any longer, the line about knowing who you want to go home with. It seemed the song stretched on forever: past the waitress scribbling our orders with a late-night frown; past the eggs and toast and little packets of butter; past the corned beef and omelets and crepes and waffles. We talked and ate, each swipe of the napkin taking more black lipstick from my mouth, until the white paper came away clean.

Sometime around three in the morning, he ordered black coffee and shuddered at the end-of-shift sludge in his ceramic mug.

“I’ve been told I make a pretty good cup, if you want to get out of here,” I said, offhand, real casual, hardly daring to look at him for fear he might laugh at me, or worse, look serious and sad that I’d gotten the wrong impression.

But he said, “All right,” and paid the bill with cash he barely counted, and we were on our way.

It was still ten blocks to my apartment, and not even the buses were running at that point, but January never feels as cold with someone’s arm wrapped around you, or when your heart is hurrying, pumping hot expectation through your whole body.

In my apartment, he shrugged off his layers, dropped a set of keys and a small, wiry contraption on the kitchen table: dull brass, chains, and plates. An old-fashioned balance.

He plucked a pager from his belt, checked the display and said, “Can I use your phone?”

“Now?” The readout above the stove showed 4:17, sickly green in the low light.

“I need to call my answering service.”

I was impressed by that, I must admit. Most people I knew with pagers were dealers, or wannabes. There was something suave, something decadent about having access to a secretary who kept track of your calls no matter where you were.

“In the living room, on the table next to the couch.” I pointed down the hallway.

So as not to eavesdrop, I busied myself with the coffee. I knew I made a good cup, but I wanted this one to be extraordinary. I knocked aside Mr. Coffee, contemplated my French press, but finally settled on the Chemex in the very back of the cupboard. I hadn’t used it in ages; it was a gift from my mother, who didn’t really understand me, but knew I loved Bauhaus design and staying up late. The wood collar was faded from lack of care, and the leather thong looked nibbled on its ends. But it was special—and I had a feeling he was, too. I pulled it from its flimsy octagonal box and got to work.

He returned just as I was swirling the hot coffee around the bottom of the hourglass brewer, ready to pour. His face was stormy, pinched with irritation so that he looked more gaunt than he had in the diner. He accepted his mug with surprise, almost as if he’d forgotten why he’d come. He drank.

“This is good,” he said, as if the possibility had not crossed his mind when he’d accepted my offer. He took another sip.

“I know.” I tried not to sound too proud. “Coffee is my job. I own a shop down the block, Demi-Tasse.”

He took another sip, this time pausing to breathe in the oily perfume before letting it brush against his lips. “They used to call coffee the devil’s drink, but this—this is a cup to save the world.”

“Some people will tell you it’s all in the beans, and they are important. But it’s the ratio that really matters.”

“Is this how you make it in your shop?”

“I’m always in a rush there. Have to eyeball it.” I blushed, “I used your scales to measure out the perfect cup. I hope that’s okay...”

He stared over at the balance, which was lurking on the countertop like some piece of lost clockwork. I was sure, in that brief moment, that I’d ruined it all. That I’d crossed some unspoken line in my desire to please him.

“Never thought of using it for that,” he said finally. And smiled.

He stayed. That night, and the next, and the next. Each morning when I woke up, he would help me grind the beans and then watch—hungrily—as I measured each spoonful on his scales, adjusting it to the gram. He’d hold me close as the coffee brewed, and he always said, “Thank you, Demi,” for each cup I pressed into his long, thin hands.

It wasn’t a rigid tradition. We tried different roasts: dark, light, even decaf for a single unsatisfying morning before we laughed and took turns hurling the remaining beans into the alley dumpster from my kitchen window, each one cracking and pinging against the hollow metal like gunfire. I experimented with foamed milk, espresso shots, latte art; cafes au lait and cortados; flat whites and americanos. He said he drew the line at pumpkin spice, but I caught him late one night with his scales next to my spice rack, making notes about ground ginger and cloves.

And then one morning, on the eve of spring, he was gone.

I was 30 years old. Loneliness had made me lean and furious. It’s what drew me to bars like Exit, and to the kind of men who would wear sharp spurs. But over the months with him, I’d let my guard down. I’d stopped spending so much time hiding behind black eyeliner and metal rivets, and started learning more actively about my work: single-origin beans, the four stages of coffee’s alchemy. I had started—you must forgive me—listening to Semisonic with actual appreciation. I had gone gooey, like an underbaked loaf, a soft-boiled egg. So, even more than I was angry at him for leaving, I was angry with myself for believing he would stay. I let rage bury my shame. I would have ripped his scarf to shreds, or set fire to his leather jacket, but he’d left nothing behind. Not even the scales. I returned to my usual routine with laser-like focus: work, drink, sleep, repeat. Customers complained that their coffee was unaccountably bitter. “That’s just how it goes sometimes,” I said, and poured cup after cup down the drain.

That awful spring gave way to an obnoxiously green summer, which finally decayed into fall. One night when the cold had reasserted its iron grip on the city, I was waiting for another bus—in Lincoln Park this time, outside Neo. A carriage rattled by, drawn by a black horse. Swaybacked and matted, it looked as worn down as I felt, both of us cruelly shackled to fates we could not control, starving for attention. The driver pulled in close to the curb, so close I could see the rolling white of the horse’s eyes as it almost knocked into me. And there he was, on the coachman’s bench, his drawn face cracked in a wicked smile.

I was so shocked, I forgot about my rage.

“Is this why you left? You’re, what, a groom?” I asked, not daring to touch the horse, who was straining against the bit.

He looked down over the long reins, seemingly confused. “Not at all,” he said, and slid down from the carriage. He smacked the horse on its rump and it clattered away, dragging the empty carriage around the corner. I would have been worried—I should have been worried—but all I could see was him, staring at me like he could eat me whole. I knew I must have looked the same.

“My strange horseman,” I murmured, and he took me into his arms.

It was feast or famine with him. His first disappearance was over, but it would hardly be his last. He’d leave without a word, then appear again in the middle of the night, leaning against the glass block outside the Fireside Bowl or under the cherry-red awning of the 950 Club. Back at home, he would lavish me with gifts from his travels: wine, chocolates, olive oil in cut-crystal decanters, and tins of caviar like little golden hockey pucks. His work—whatever it was—took him to locales that were strange without being exotic: Somalia, former East Germany, North Korea.

“How do you explain caviar from North Korea?” I asked, once.

“Lots of connections,” he shrugged.

I wasn’t sure if he meant flights or people. I sensed it might be better not to know. We’d spend weeks, even months, constantly in each other’s company, severed only when he checked in with his answering service. He followed me to Demi-Tasse and proved to be a generous tipper. He boarded every bus one step ahead of me, always paying my fare. He held me close in the kitchen, in the shower, in the cocoon of our bed. And then he’d disappear again.

Years went by like this. I gave up my living room landline for a smartphone, though my horseman still preferred his pager and answering service. The shop where I got my first tattoo bought the Avalon Club and transformed it into the kind of salon where I couldn’t even afford a bang trim. Space Place, where I’d first gravitated as a twentysomething with hatred in my heart and a love for the obliterating chaos of loud music, mutated into a restaurant that sold $500 tickets for their tasting menu. Coffee prices soared and fell and climbed anew. He was my only constant—his bitter darkness, and the barely perceptible sweetness beneath.

He had been gone for a short stretch, only a few days, when I came home to a stranger sitting at my kitchen table. Broad and bearded, with thick, honey-colored hair brushing his enormous shoulders, he couldn’t have been more different from my horseman, yet there was a similarity there as well—something about the eyes.

“Is he in?” he asked, imperious. His voice made me shiver, made me want to tell him everything—not that I had anything to hide.

“He is not. You could leave him a message—” I added, “if you have his number.”

The stranger snorted.

“When you see him,” he said, “tell him we’re getting tired of waiting.”

“We?”

“He’ll know.”

He raised a foot onto the tabletop, tied his loose shoelaces in a careful bow, and swept out of the kitchen without bothering to close the door behind him. I noticed he left a paper crown where my horseman usually kept his scales.

I relayed the message faithfully over our first morning coffee when my love next returned; I showed him the crown, which he handled like some sort of talisman. He scowled and muttered something about business contacts and work commitments. I didn’t pry. I rubbed his shoulders—always so taut, his vertebrae sharp under my fingers—and made him a cup of medium roast with foamed oat milk, something new the shop was trying. It’s hard to stay mad when you’re trying to decide where you stand on non-dairy milks. We laughed. Nothing changed.

About a year later, a new stranger was sitting at my table and he had trashed my apartment. Books were torn from the shelves, lamps toppled, pillows bled feathers onto the windowsills as if they had been stabbed. Every room looked to have been ransacked. He sat in the same place as the previous stranger, so livid he seemed to be radiating heat.

“Where is he?” he asked, and something about his voice made me angrier than I have ever been, before or since. But instead of screaming at him or throwing my last un-smashed dinner plate at his head, instead of calling the police, I turned and calmly filled my now-dented kettle. Silence speaks loudest when it’s unexpected, any punk should know.

“Out,” I said.

“We need him. I need him. I’ve only shown this world hints of what I’m capable of. None of us gets to do our real work unless he does his. He gets so close, he starts making people really hungry, but he doesn’t commit. Do you understand?”

“Commitment isn’t really his thing,” I said.

“You stupid mortal,” he hissed, his voice boiling. “Ask him. Ask him about the seals. Ask him about the end times. Ask him what he does when he leaves.”

“Coffee?” I asked, real innocent. Because I was innocent.

“Is that how you keep him coming back?” he spat. “He has such a weakness for stunted luxuries.”

And then he seemed to be everywhere at once, flinging open the cabinets, sweeping every object from the counters. The Chemex—made of shatter-resistant Pyrex—exploded against the side of the refrigerator, and all I could think of was Iggy Pop falling on that table of glasses at Max’s Kansas City, all that bright, shining glass in the air, like a star being born. And like Iggy, I kept right on going with the kettle until the stranger had finished doing battle with my kitchen. I listened to the shush of the faucet, the water filling and overflowing the kettle, until he stormed out, tearing the back door from its hinges. I watched from the broken kitchen window as he ducked into a red Mustang idling in the alley and roared away. I drank the boiled water plain, hands shaking.

Showing my horseman around the house when he returned that night was like touring a disaster area. Here were the shattered pieces of our LP collection, here were the shredded remains of our curtains. He shook his head, and held me.

“They want me to finish up the job. But I just can’t.”

He rested the point of his chin against my head. I couldn’t see his face.

“I can’t leave you.” He touched my cheeks with his narrow fingers, tilted my chin up so I was looking directly into his black eyes. “It would end me. The world without you is only apocalypse.”

I shuddered.

“I would make you a cup of coffee but…” I gestured around the kitchen.

He nodded.

“And we’re out of beans,” I gasped, a laugh ricocheting out of my lungs. I was blubbering now, babbling. “I know that’s it, I know that’s what keeps you here. That man called it a luxury, but he’s wrong. It’s boring and familiar and everyday, but it’s what keeps us going.”

He frowned at me, like he was seeing me for the first time.

“Of course it’s not the coffee, Demi,” he said, pulling on his black leather jacket, his black fur scarf. “It’s you.”

A car rumbled down the alley, and I could just catch the music drifting up off its stereo, the tail end of a lyric about beginnings and beginning’s ends.

He held the arms of my coat open like an embrace. “They just opened a Dunkin’ down the block. Let’s try something new.”

Andrea Cavedo's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Razor, The MacGuffin, Chestnut Review, HAD, Craft Literary, and more; she has been a semifinalist for The Sewanee Review's Fiction, Poetry & Nonfiction Contest and longlisted for History Through Fiction's Short Story Prize. She teaches U.S. government and history to Chicago high school students and is very tired. She can be found online at www.andreacavedo.com.

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

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🥧 To Make A Pie - foofaraw

2025-11-19T02:46:20.000Z

🏆

Second place winner of An ordinary contest 2025

It was the day the whole world went away. The day when the messy, confusing, complicated summation of everything that ever is and was decided to pop, a reverse big bang, matter condensing and folding, smaller and smaller, until nothing remained but a dot. A dot so infinitesimally tiny, none of the formerly sapient creatures made from its matter would have been able to detect its presence.

And, it was clearly my fault.

Now I was outside of it. That meant I was the only thing in existence capable of caring for everything else and I honestly wasn’t sure if I was ready for that kind of responsibility. I didn’t even do well with the “take care of this egg” challenge in high school health class. I let someone grab it out of my hand at lunch and throw it against the gymnasium wall. Now that the entire universe could comfortably stack on top of an atom, I was afraid I’d lose it in between the folds of my own fingerprint. Is this how god got his job? Does that make me god? The theological implications notwithstanding, I was simply nervous I’d drop everything down a sewer grate or something.

That, of course, would be dependent on the existence of sewer grates, which did not exist—yet. I wondered if thinking about sewer grates hard enough would suddenly manifest one? I tried to see if I could invent the universe, starting with something small. A sewer grate. A hummingbird. Bees. Steven Hawking. The concept of regret. I squinted and grunted, trying to make a great show of thinking since thought didn’t usually have a physical tell, but all that happened is I felt a tickle deep in my sinuses. I immediately stopped before things got worse.

I should probably start from before, so you can understand what’s happening. It all began with a sneeze. This was no ordinary sneeze, not one of those tiny, squeaking, cartoon sneezes that make everyone around you chuckle gently and whisper a weak “bless you.” Some sneezes are so powerful they tear up your throat and send mucus flying. They buckle your legs, and make you bend at the waist, struggling to maintain your balance in a gale force wind coming from inside your own lungs.

This sneeze imploded the cosmos.

How could a simple sneeze do that, you ask yourself? Something people do all day, every day, all over the world. Something so mundane and common. The little death. A great, rolicking ka-choo. If that was the cause, why now, why this sneeze? Well, I had never sneezed before. This was my first. And much like any other object of scrutiny in theoretical physics, a sneeze unsneezed cannot be measured or understood until it is observed. Schrodinger’s sneeze.

Ever since I was a child, I was frightened of sneezes. The lack of control. The loud noise. I abhorred the itch of an obstacle in my nostril, a tickle in my sinus cavity. I would pick, blow, and squeeze the bridge of my poor, abused nose—anything to stop myself from experiencing the internal head explosion a sneeze represented. I carried handfuls of napkins with me from the time I had pockets. I saw people sneeze. It looked incredibly unpleasant. So I just… didn’t. Not for a very long time.

Until today. Cacio e Pepe. A simple, Roman spaghetti seasoned with black pepper and Pecorino Romano. A nice meal at my favorite little Italian cafe. I was enjoying a sidewalk table, a glass of white wine, and a light lunch. I liked my job. Being a programmer, I develop apps, and I liked the company where I worked. I just had a good review from my boss, the weekend was on its way, and I was feeling like I deserved a treat. The sky was partly cloudy with a small chance of rain, but now, the sun was shining. People walked by with dogs on leashes, smiles on faces, even the birds and squirrels seemed like they were having a good day.

The pasta twirled up my fork like stripes on a barber pole. It was delicious; a rich, creamy cheese dripping down noodles with just a hint of heat on the back end. I must have taken too big a bite, or accidentally inhaled at the wrong moment. I didn’t even feel it coming.

An explosion inside my head. My ears rang like a grenade went off. I convulsed forward, bending at the waist, bashing my head into the table, and knocking my wine glass to the concrete floor. I heard the glass shatter from somewhere far away, through a hazy tunnel of tinnitus.

Blue lights danced in the blackness, spinning endlessly like galaxies being born. My lip was wet, my nasal passages aching from the strain, and I softly groaned as tears formed in the corners of my eyes. Even with my paranoia, my apprehension, logically I knew what a sneeze was. Theoretically and scientifically. I walked myself back from the edge of panic. It was simply a bodily function. People experienced it all the time. It wouldn’t kill me. I would recover. I just needed to find a napkin, excuse myself to a bathroom to check for blood, apologize to nearby tables for the noise, and the wait staff for the spilled wine and broken glass.

Slowly, I detected a vague sucking sound, which transformed into a roar, like a distant jet engine, coming ever closer. As I opened my eyes, my vision began to ripple and twist, like I was looking through a heat shimmer on a blazing hot summer highway.

In an instant, everything changed. Reality tore apart like strands of taffy, pulled beyond its structural capacity. I suppose it was omniscience, in a way. In a fraction of a blink of an eye, I saw everything, heard everything, felt everything, as it all got sucked into a liminal space floating directly adjacent to me. I would say in “front of me,” but in that instant, concepts like front and behind, above and below stopped being relevant. Everything, everywhere, was condensing into a singularity, and I was at its epicenter.

The faces of people, both known and unknown. Animals, trees, rocks, and features, both human-made and natural, whizzed by. All the parts of the Earth, and then the sky, the very atmosphere itself. Chemical compounds and molecules, ideas formed by little electrical patterns in space, memories, and fragments. Space, the comets, and planets and stars. Other singularities, black holes, antimatter, all the concepts we call “physics” broken down to nothing more than theories, all strung along as a series of data fragments came rushing in. Atoms that could not get any smaller somehow did, becoming so dense that light, heat, and matter stopped existing in any recognisable form.

I blinked a few times and instinctively looked for my pasta. It too, as you might expect, had been condensed into abyssal nothingness. This was particularly egregious because, despite the trauma of seeing the universe end, I was still pretty hungry.

I’ve been thinking about my situation for some time now. It’s hard to tell how long, because time as a concept has stopped existing, making it very difficult for me to mark its passage. My watch still works, for some reason, but sometimes it stops, runs backward, or temporarily becomes something else. A sweatband, a handcuff. Earlier it became a turkey, which looked at me, made some angry gobbling sounds, and then vanished again.

Strangely, this gives me hope, because if I can observe and understand the concepts of bands, and the sweat that feeds them, or incarceration (or bondage) or giant, ugly, angry, but delicious poultry, then surely the everything that has become nothing still somehow has those things embedded into its code. Which means, a good programmer could reverse engineer the universe. I just needed to find the legacy code.

I immediately set to work, but ran into a problem right away, as there was no physical reality to look at. This was no ordinary treasure hunt, where I could look under a rug, or behind a rock to find a key. There was just me and the void. And my watch. My wallet. A phone. A few coins. My clothing. Okay, so that was a start, kind of. I couldn’t be wearing a shirt if shirts had never been a thing. Perhaps then, my memory of the shirt was what made the shirt so essentially shirty?

Carl Sagan, speaking on apple pies and universes, pointed out that in any creation project, one always requires some element derived from something else. A pie needs flour. If you want to make your own flour, you need wheat, and a mill. To get those things, you need a farm, and thus, soil. Also metal, which requires minerals. To truly say you made the pie, you'd have to have also made the dirt, mined minerals from it, and more. To make the iron, you need a star to form iron out of lighter elements. To make a star, you need plasma. Your apple pie can be traced all the way back to the big bang.

I began to reverse engineer everything I could. What is the essential element of a watch? It was gold. Gold is a pure element, but that’s only seventy-five percent of yellow gold alloy, which is also made up of silver and copper. Those are mined from deep within the ground. The ground requires a planet. Planets need gravity to hold together. So on, and so on. I have been working on this project for some time now, although it’s hard to say how long, because time has been a tricky concept to rediscover.

But I notice now, the long, white beard. It would make no sense to naturally grow hair, because that would require the passage of time, follicles, the idea of hair, probably a splash of evolutionary biology. However, this means that because I believe the passage of long periods of time would result in my growing a crazy hermit beard, it manifested.

Who knew the crystal healing types were right about manifesting things?

I’m pretty sure I’m god, now. That probably accounts for the long white beard, too. I’m pulling my self-image from what I remember of pop culture, when that was a thing.

The point here is, if you’re reading this, well, welcome to the universe. I did my best to fix up the place, although there are definitely a few bugs. I’m working on them though. I manifested a team of quality assurance people to test out various iterations. Truly, we apologize if you happen to be in one of the experimental timelines right now, I know they’re not exactly stable. Just know your prayers are important to us, and will be answered in the order received. I made operators. They’re standing by. If this universe ends in a terrible way, well, we’ll have to just try again. And again. Surely someone will figure this out, like I did, and create another one. And remember, if you see someone sneeze, say “bless you.” It might be their first time being god.

Michael Allen Rose is an award-winning author, musician, and performer based in Chicagoland. His novel Jurassichrist won the Wonderland Award for best bizarro fiction of 2021, and in 2022 he received the Wonderland for best collection for his illustrated horror primer Last 5 Minutes Of The Human Race. Blending genres including horror, comedy, and bizarro fiction, Michael has been published in numerous anthologies such as Tales From The Crust, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, and Dragon Mythicana. He also runs a small press called RoShamBo Publishing, makes industrial music under the name Flood Damage, and is president of the national Bizarro Writers Association. He loves tea and cats.

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

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📝 What’s in a name - foofaraw

2025-11-19T02:45:27.000Z

🏆

Third place winner of An ordinary contest 2025

Today—like most days—the amnesiac was really and truly in a pickle. He was late, though he kept forgetting what for, and as he drove—on muscle memory alone, for he couldn’t remember taking his driver’s test—he’d sped past little Maggie McGill and almost hit her straight on. It had taken him two circles around the block to find parking, and once he finally did, it wasn’t at one of the parking meters that took normal things, like fingernails or strands of hair. The parking meter wouldn’t even accept his money. Instead, it demanded his memories.

“Shit,” The amnesiac said. This felt familiar, like it had happened to him before. He got deja vu at everything these days. He thought about feeding the machine his drive into town, but he needed to remember where he parked once the day was done.

A woman passed him, with short black hair and the traces of a snaggle tooth once covered by braces, but slowly starting to re-emerge. They made eye contact, deja vu. Again.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am. Do you have any spare memories?”

“Of course,” the woman laughed, crinkling the skin around her eyes. She placed her lips to the parking meter. Mouth to glass, she murmured into it. “My sixth birthday party, my father brought out a cake with sparklers. It burned me, and I screamed.”

The parking meter whirred, eating her words, and then, with a click, deposited the receipt. The amnesiac put the token on his dashboard. The memory had bought him three hours, which he hoped would be enough for whatever it was he was supposed to be doing. The woman watched him with that pleasant, vacant expression people always get when they’re forgetting something.

“Thanks a million,” he said and meant it.

“Anytime, Steven.”

As he continued down the sidewalk, he frowned and thought, That’s funny. Who’s Steven? Then forgot the thought like it was never thunk at all.

He walked down the boulevard to the address he’d found on a sticky note half-stuck to his forehead when he woke up. It was a typical steel office building. The amnesiac tapped the button for the elevator, his fingers knowing instinctively which button to press. With the sour mechanical whirr of a machine powered by wires—not memory—the elevator brought him up to the thirteenth floor.

“Carol, he’s here,” an assistant called automatically as the metal doors slid open. The office was busy with bodies running back and forth in tight grey suits and little grey glasses. Nobody seemed too concerned about his presence, despite the fact that he looked terribly out of place in his worn-down jeans and faded t-shirt.

Carol, or the woman he assumed to be Carol, rounded a corner and shook his hand.

“Hey there,” her face had a certain pinched quality to it, like what he expected a middle school vice principal to look like. “I guess I’m on integration today, huh?”

“I guess,” the man responded, having no idea what she could possibly be talking about. Carol led him into a boardroom with sandy beige carpet and matching chairs. He sat down on one end, she on the other. The long mahogany table stretched between them like a soundless ocean. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was cast in the faint glow of morning. The amnesiac tried to remember which city this was, but couldn’t.

“What’s your name?” Carol asked boredly, like she’d asked him a thousand times before. She was holding a clipboard and a dainty red ballpoint pen.

“I don’t know,” the amnesiac answered honestly. He thought maybe he should be troubled by the fact that he didn’t know, but he was terribly tired of feeling troubled. All he wanted was a cool, glacial sleep.

“Alright, and what did you do last night?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What did you do this morning?”

“I woke up and found a sticky note telling me to come here at nine o’clock, and so I did.”

“It’s 9:45.”

“I slept in.”

“Do you know your birthday?”

“No.”

“Do you know your mom’s name?”

“No.”

“Do you know why you don’t remember any of these things?”

“I must’ve sold them. Otherwise, I’d remember, wouldn't I?”

Carol maybe-smiled, her tight skin drawn slightly tighter, “Do you know where you are?”

“101 North Memorial Drive,” he recited what the sticky note had proclaimed.

“Which is?”

“How on earth should I know?”

It was the day after the last, and the amnesiac was really and truly in a pickle. He was running late, of this he was certain, and blew by little Maggie McGill with such closeness he could’ve reached out and grazed her. He circled the block twice before finding a parking meter that blessedly accepted two fingernails as payment.

He found his way to the address that the sticky note had told him to go to—101 North Memorial Drive—clicked the button up to the thirteenth floor, and shook the hand of a woman with an acetic face.

“I’m Carol,” the woman said.

“Nice to meet you,” the amnesiac responded.

Carol led him into a boardroom, and after going through her answerless questions, she clicked on a slideshow. Tight grey shades whirred down to cover the glossy windows, the city shrouded in shadow. On the first slide, a slogan read: ‘Your Past Made Future.’

“What’s in a memory?” Carol read from her cue card. Her inflection was half-hearted. “In a self-conomical society, our world runs on people. And what’s more human than memory?”

“I don’t know,” replied the amnesiac. Carol glared at him. The question was supposed to be rhetorical.

“By giving up a piece of your past, you can afford a brand new you.” The slideshow clicked to a picture of a mansion with a jacuzzi; a picture of a private jet; a picture of a diamond necklace around a smooth, pale neck. “Memories are a lucrative and near bottomless resource. Memories are ten times more potent than a finger, and forty-seven times more potent than a lock of hair. In a capital-selfist world, memories are the most cost-effective part of yourself to give up.” The slideshow displayed children cheering. “But there are certain memories you can’t give up.” The slideshow switched to a stoic-looking family. “Certain memories your brain won’t let you forget.”

The people in the slideshow looked strangely familiar, like characters on a TV show he must’ve watched as a kid.

“Can you guess which memories, Steven?”

The amnesiac frowned, “Who’s Steven?”

The amnesiac was once again, as perhaps was his constant state of being, really and truly in a pickle. Maggie McGill waved her arms like a madman as his car glided by her, but he couldn’t stop, for he was already running late. Circling the block thrice, he finally found a parking spot, and just his luck, it was a memory-eating parking machine.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he accosted a passerby with traces of a snaggle-tooth. “Got any spare memories?”

“Of course, Steven,” she said, placing her lips to the parking meter. “Age thirteen, I locked myself in the girls’ bathroom at school, and the lock stuck. My math teacher had to break down the door to let me out.”

The parking meter hummed sweetly before depositing a receipt for four hours.

“Thanks a million.”

Carol tapped her clipboard impatiently as he strolled in, “Would it kill you to be on time?”

“I’m sorry, I slept in,” the amenisiac apologized. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Clearly perturbed, Carol led the amnesiac into the boardroom. She asked her questions and she showed her slideshow. The picture of a family was once again displayed on screen. “Can you guess which memories a man can’t sell?” She questioned.

“Your present?” He shrugged. It felt right. He must’ve taken a self-nomics class at some point, maybe in college, though he couldn’t remember what college or if he’d gone to college at all. “You can’t sell the right-now.”

“Correct,” Carol seemed unimpressed. “Your present is too potent; the brain protects it. But your present could power houses. It could power cities. If a handful of people gave up their present, worlds could be run on the sacrifice…” She trailed off, her expression tart. “Unfortunately, the body doesn’t like to forget.”

“Too bad,” the amnesiac murmured unconvincingly.

“So,” Carol asked flatly, “How did you do it?”

“Huh?”

“How did you sell your present?”

“How did I what?”

“This is pointless,” Carol called out, frustrated.

A grey voice on an intercom responded, “Careful, Carol.”

“Can we just torture him already?”

“No, Carol.”

“It’s not like he’ll remember anyway.”

“Continue with the questioning. We’ll try torture tomorrow.”

“That’s what you keep saying,” she huffed and returned to her interviewee. “Anyway, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Every day for as long as the amnesiac could remember, which wasn’t very long at all, he had really and truly been in a pickle. Every day, he woke up with a sticky note stuck loosely to his sweaty forehead, and every day he drove downtown to a steel office full of strangers. Every day, he mowed past Maggie McGill and every day, he let Carol poke and prod him in the hopes he would give way. Every day, Carol grew more frustrated, wishing she could lay him on a table and cut open that thin layer of skin across his forehead and dig into his pink, fleshy brain. If only he weren’t so singular. If only they knew someone else who knew his secrets.

Today, like always, like forever and ever and ever, the amnesiac was really and truly in a pickle. As he raced into town from that stale and shadowy house, he once again almost ran over Maggie McGill. She wasn’t just on the side of the road, though; she was in the center, staring down his tiny grey car like the devil herself. That’s odd, the amnesiac thought, and kept driving.

“We’re going to try something different today,” Carol instructed.

“Today?” The amnesiac asked, confused. He didn’t like this woman with the bitter, pinched face. He was starting to sense she didn’t like him either. “I just met you.”

Carol didn’t bother responding. Instead of a boardroom, she took him into another office, with a converted MRI machine and a table with straps. The amnesiac didn’t bother struggling, just got onto the table as Carol placed her lips to the side of the machine and murmured, “Summer by the beach, alone in the waves, riptide at dawn.”

The machine whirred to life, glowing like a beacon, like a cave, like the mouth of a monster about to swallow the amnesiac whole.

The pickle he was in was growing sour and moldy. The amnesiac was late once again, and as he plowed down the street, Maggie McGill stood in the center with a bright hand-painted sign that read: PULL OVER!

The amnesiac frowned and thought, That can’t be for me. But Maggie McGill was waving her arms high over her head, pointing at his car, and mouthing, YES, YOU!

The amnesiac pulled over.

“Thank GOD,” Maggie McGill huffed, coming up to his rolled-down window.

“Is something wrong?” The amnesiac asked, peeved at this odd girl in the middle of the road.

“Steven, you have to stop going downtown.”

“Stop?” He asked. “I’ve never gone downtown before. At least, I don’t think I have.”

Maggie McGill’s expression turned stormy, a cloud passing over her lacquered skin. She set her eyes on the amnesiac and, with dreadfully intense directness, commanded, “No more driving into town, no more passing me by. Leave your car. Follow me.”

The amnesiac paused. He didn’t know this girl with the wild eyes. But he also didn’t know the handwriting of the sticky note that appeared on his forehead this morning, telling him to go into town. Two paths, divulging, each stranger than the other.

Better to trust an angry girl than a red swatch of ink. The amnesiac followed Maggie McGill out of his car and into the woods.

“I’ve been trying to wave you down for weeks,” Maggie grunted as they traversed fallen logs. Bushes brushed their legs, and thickets threatened to scratch and strike. The path was wild, yet the amnesiac’s feet seemed to always find the right place to land. He wondered if he’d been here before. “But you’re always in such a rush.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t really, because he couldn’t remember having ever driven past Maggie McGill.

Maggie stopped. They were in a clearing; the sun dangled between the trees like golden thread, leaves as bright as stars backlit by its grin. “No,” she frowned like a hurricane. “This is my fault.”

“What do you mean?” The amnesiac asked, a question he was growing oh-so-tired of asking.

“I helped you sell your present.”

“I sold my present?” He looked alarmed. That was impossible, he was fairly certain.

Maggie nodded, “We didn’t think it would work. I didn’t know it would be possible to sell a name… I mean, fingers sure, and toes, and maybe siblings, but a name. It’s everything you are. And we sold it.”

“My name is my present,” the nameless amnesiac rolled the thought over his tongue. It made sense, in an awful, twisted way.

“And your future,” Maggie responded miserably. “It’s all gone.”

They paused in silence, taking in the stillness of the scene. Both looked terribly defeated. Steven, or rather, the man who had once been Steven, was right next to Maggie, finally—finally—and yet, he was unreachable. He was a shell. He’d sold himself for a future they’d never even get to see. She lost him, and lost their future too. There was no future without the present, without the you that strings it all together. The trees around them swished in the quiet. Leaves falling like they’d always been made to fall.

From the hush, a murmuring woosh in the distance. The stir of a motor, the hum of gas. The horrible grind of gears and metal. Bushes, being run over by thick rubber wheels, and the hiss of an exhaust pipe. A large back van appeared from the thicket like a harbinger, the lone black horse at the start of the cavalry.

A woman with a pinched face stepped out of the car. “Steven, you’re late.”

“Who the hell are you?” The amnesiac asked.

Carol rolled her eyes. Maggie McGill’s stormy face was starting to thunder.

“I knew there must be someone out there who knew about him.” Carol laughed, and the sound bubbled out of her like a cough. “To think, he’d been driving past you every day. Yes, yes, we’ve been keeping tabs.”

“I won’t tell you shit,” Maggie spat.

Carol grinned, the first real grin she’d spared in weeks, her tight little lips almost disappearing into the sharp creases of her cheeks. “You don’t have to, dear. You can still remember. Finally, someone we can torture.”

Carol, with the amnesiac and Maggie in the back of her pristine black van, was really and truly in a pickle. She was circling the block around 101 Memorial Drive and for the life of her could not find any goddamned parking. A little awkward with two prisoners in the back. Pseudo-prisoners. Captees.

The amnesiac, Steven, as he might’ve once been known, was staring blankly out the window, trying to remember whose car he was in and how exactly he had arrived at this point in the day.

Maggie McGill, with her cloud-ridden face and head full of secrets, was trying desperately to maneuver her zip-tied hands to the door latch. All those weeks spent trying to wave Steven down, all those months spent mourning him, all those years they spent planning a life together; all that time could not end this way. Torture was one thing. Giving answers to Carol and her company of dream-catchers and memory-takers was another. It would be apocalyptic.

Suddenly, a woman with the faint traces of a snaggle tooth darted out into the road, and Carol slammed hard on the brakes. The momentum was just enough to launch Maggie forward, for her hand to catch on the latch, click away the lock, and open it with a tug and then a push. As Carol screamed, “WATCH IT,” Maggie rolled out of the vehicle, onto the street, and to the nearby parking meter.

She couldn’t risk giving Carol any answers; it would be the breaking point that brought this capital-selfist city teetering into destruction. A world where you could sell yourself, all of yourself, was not a world she could live in. She saw it happen to Steven. She didn’t ever want to see it happen again.

There was only one way to ensure the answers stayed buried in her head, through torture or MRIs or whatever may come her way.

She placed her lips to the parking meter, and quiet as a dove, whispered, “I am Maggie McGill.”

The machine whirred to life, eating Maggie’s name and Maggie along with it. Her eyes glazed over, and the storm of her expression passed into pleasant, sunny skies. The parking meter clicked, depositing her receipt. Parking, good for four years, nine months, and six hours. A self-worth of parking.

“This is for you,” the newly born amnesiac nodded towards the woman with the once-snaggletooth, who had made it safely out of the path of Carol’s van. The woman seized the receipt, which the amnesiac could not touch, as her hands were still zip-tied.

“Thanks, Maggie. In this town, this is worth more than gold.”

She sauntered off, right as Carol came out of the van to place the new amnesiac back in, unaware of what had just transpired between the girl, the parking meter, and the secrets that had paid for her parking.

In the back seat, the two amnesiacs looked at each other, as if they were looking at each other for the first time. Maybe they were. Easy, simple smiles brightened their lined faces. The world was new and for the taking. The world was bright as a forest, as loud as a riptide. The world wanted these selves so terribly, but they’d already given all the self there was to give. Nameless as newborn babes, the amnesiacs had nothing to offer but their bodies, fettered by scars they couldn’t remember receiving. Worn as t-shirts well-loved, as parking spots always used.

Zoe Carver is an emerging writer published in Capitol Letters Magazine, Rainy Day Magazine, fifth wheel press, and was recently awarded the Julian Clement Chase Writing in Washington Award. Originally from Portland, Oregon, based in Washington, DC, and currently on a year-long writing fellowship at the American University in Cairo in Cairo, Egypt, she's enjoying learning Arabic, exploring old cinemas, and drinking dubious amounts of mint tea.

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

Donate now

📺 The media guide S6E18 - foofaraw

2025-11-19T01:50:14.000Z

Well, I spent the last couple of days spending way too much time teaching myself how to sew by hand and then mending and patching up over twenty different things around the house. It's become a bit of an obsession looking for holes or cuts in anything fabric-related, so I can keep practicing. I've even considered tearing things in perfect condition just to have something to fix...

As you'll see in this issue, things are really starting to slow down, so the media guide will be wrapping up for the year. We'll only pop up if there's something really worth talking about. Otherwise, we'll keep publishing new stories and columns and let you know what's happening every weekend. But for now, let's get into it.

🏡 Enema of the Garden State by Madi Diaz

Not much music or TV to touch on this week, so I wanted to highlight a few special things with this space. First is this cover album from Madi Diaz, covering the entirety of blink-182’s Enema of the State.

Not only is it a terrific cover album of one of my favorite albums of all time, but all the revenue goes to charity, helping immigrant families in need as the government uses every means necessary—legal or otherwise—to torment these folks.

Every penny it generates will go to Defending Our Neighbors Fund. This will help give immigrant families, adults, young children, and so many of those in need of advocates, access to resources through this support system.

🕹️ Final Boss #1

A new action-adventure book from Tyler Kirkham and David Miller. It looks like something with a video game vibe, maybe even some over-the-top Mortal Kombat-style fighting. It might have potential, but I'm not even sure if I'm gonna pick this one up. It's just a pretty light week overall—to say the least.

🎥 Rental Family

Brendan Fraser is back in his first significant starring role since his critically acclaimed performance in The Whale. In Rental Family, he plays an American actor living in Tokyo, struggling to get by until he lands a gig as a family member. I had read about this a few years ago, but people will play stand-in roles for strangers in Japan, I guess. Anyway, Fraser immerses himself in their world, blending performance and reality.

🍁 Gowillog by billy woods & August Fanon

And to wrap up this section, billy woods released Golliwog earlier this year, and for this version that came out a couple weeks ago, August Fanon reproduced and reimagined the album in its entirety with new remixes, new songs, and more. It's a fun experiment to see how different an album can be in someone else's hands.

🏛️ Paperwork will bring the apocalypse - foofaraw

2025-11-14T17:00:00.000Z

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In the month since President Donald Trump signed NSPM-7, there’s been barely any mention of it in the national media.

If it wasn’t for yours truly being terminally online, far too often wading through the filth that is the 24-hour news cycle, I probably would have missed it myself. Or, I would have seen the name in a headline and ignored it entirely.

It’s hard to blame the media for its lack of coverage. NSPM-7 sounds too innocuous, too bureaucratic to be something the average American should be concerned about. The media tried to bring attention to Project 2025 during Trump’s campaign against Kamala Harris, only for it to be handwaved away by the president and largely ignored by the general public.

In case you were wondering, nearly 50% of Project 2025’s policy proposals have already been implemented less than a year into the second term.

I can feel my editor ripping their hair out right now, so I’ll get to the heart of the matter.

The NSPM in NSPM-7 stands for “National Security Presidential Memorandum,” which is similar to an executive order, but focused on national security policy. This memorandum is titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”

The title sounds great in theory; we should advocate for rooting out all sorts of political violence and terrorism. It’s another way to easily brush this thing aside and continue living in ignorant bliss.

However, the meat of the memorandum builds a legal and bureaucratic framework to criminalize those of us who don’t fall in line with the new status quo.

“This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society,” NSPM-7 states.

It goes on to order the implementation of a new law enforcement strategy to investigate “all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them.”

If you’re still not following along, well, bless your heart for still believing justice exists in this country. A look at what this administration defines as the common motivations and indicia (legalese for signs and indications) should really spell out what’s going on:

Anti-Americanism
Anti-Capitalism
Anti-Christianity
Support for the overthrow of the United States Government
Extremism on migration, race and gender
Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

Are you getting it yet? This damn TPS-report-sounding memorandum makes most rational people into enemies of the MAGA-controlled government. It concludes by directing all sorts of federal law enforcement agencies to “disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society.”

It is unclear who actually wrote this memorandum. It certainly wasn’t Trump, a man who I guarantee has never uttered the word “indicia” in his life. This thing reeks of Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff who moonlights as a Joseph Goebbels cosplayer, and his cronies within the administration.

What is clear, however, is that these accusations of anti-Americanism, extremism, hostility, and support for overthrowing the government are actually confessions of everything this administration stands for as it works to dismantle the constitution.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism," he said after the memorandum was signed at the White House.

That’s not to excuse Trump’s role in this whole thing. He is, at best, a useful idiot who goes along with anything as long as he is personally enriched and those who he feels have wronged him are punished.

The important part here is that the machine being built through bureaucracy is larger than one man. While the world focuses on Trump’s latest soundbite or plans for his new ballroom, the machine is taking life and being used to target individuals who dare speak out against the new world order.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who has been a one-man army trying to sound the alarm on NSPM-7, has documented multiple cases of agencies like the FBI detaining or interviewing folks because of their political viewpoints. In one case, English teacher Elias Cepeda was detained at an anti-ICE protest in Illinois.

“A journalist and teacher at the University of Illinois,” a Department of Homeland Security press release states, “Elias Cepeda has suspected ties to the domestic terrorist organization ANTIFA and has a history of glorifying violence against … our brave law enforcement.”

Klippenstein conducted a thorough review of Cepada’s social media posts and found a couple of references to ANTIFA, primarily through reposted content. Unless DHS is hiding a whole lot of additional information on this teacher, we can safely assume Cepada is being held for little more than expressing views contrary to MAGA and being at a protest.

Cepada was eventually released and, to date, he has not been charged with any crime.

The response to this infrastructure being built before our eyes by organizations and politicians we should be able to look to for support and formal resistance has been tepid at best. Several Democratic members of Congress sent a strongly worded letter chastising NSPM-7, as did more than 3,700 non-profits and charities.

Many, including the American Civil Liberties Union, are telling us not to panic because what the administration is doing through NSPM-7 and other initiatives is illegal.

When the fuck has something being illegal ever stopped this administration, though?

The same administration that is unilaterally blowing up boats in the Caribbean and sending Americans to maximum security prisons in El Salvador has proven time and time again that the last thing it thinks about when pushing forward policy is the legality of said policy.

If anything, the courts are aiding in these illegal activities, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the judges and lawyers going against MAGA will fall under the same NSPM-7 indicators as the rest of us unfortunate souls who still use our brains from time to time.

It’s why Trump is such a useful idiot. He dances like a monkey, and the media eats it up for revenue while in the background, bureaucrats formalize and institutionalize the machinations of authoritarianism.

This all leads back to the big question of our time – what the hell can I do about it? What can I do in the face of a machine made of paper that keeps growing while my power in the world seemingly keeps shrinking?

If I had a definitive answer, this column would not be about NSPM-7.

However, we can look to folks who study authoritarianism for some guidance. One of the key themes in successful opposition is sustained opposition.

We must not grow complacent. We must not agree that 2+2=5 simply because it’s the path of least resistance. We must choose to love and support and laugh with those who are feeling the weight of this administration every single day. We must cherish the freedom we still have and use that freedom to show each other there is still hope in the world.

And, when all else fails, we can choose to chuckle at these incompetent fucks, these Model UN rejects who have to blame others for their shortcomings instead of looking at their ugly mug in the mirror. We can mock how frail they must be to pick on those easy targets.

We can show each other that the government, trying its best to be our abusive parents, will never force us to their level of pettiness and selfishness.

We can remind them that there are more of us than there are of them, and no amount of paperwork is going to change that.

—Baron

🎙️ Fendy S. Tulodo - foofaraw

2025-11-14T00:00:48.000Z

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Read Fendy’s story, Side A for secrets, side B for goodbyes, on Foofaraw now!

At the end of the story, do you think Leo is done listening to others’ memories, or do you think the obsession grows as he looks for more and more to listen to?

He’s not finished. Not at all. The end is not a stop, it’s a turn. When Leo finally understands what the tapes really hold, fear does not make him run away. It pulls him in. His guilt keeps him from turning back. Listening gives him a way out, into someone else’s pain instead of his own. And now that he knows these voices are not just echoes but real burdens from real people, he will keep following them, step by step.

Do you journal, or have you ever recorded voice notes at all?

I started recording voice notes back in high school when smartphones were just starting to get popular here in Indonesia 😅. For me, it is easier to remember things that way, and I can feel more emotion in whoever is speaking than in written notes.

In this story, it very much feels like Leo is peering into others' thoughts, memories, journals—have you ever read someone else’s journals or peered into another person in a similar way?

My father was a retired police officer here. After he retired, he often shared stories with me about how to study “evidence,” whether it was written notes, small objects, or random items, just by observing, not touching. From him, I learned that an object, even a note, can become a real and valid memory that helps you decide what to do next. Maybe I do not explain it very well, but I hope you understand what I mean 😅

As a musician, what’s your opinion on vinyl?

Vinyl, to me, is pure art, and only a few people can really enjoy it. It shows a kind of maturity in the history of music-making. Even now, I feel I am not yet ready to make something that deserves to exist in vinyl form.

I’m fascinated by this line in your bio, could you elaborate on what this looks like a bit: “He works with words and music to study how time feels different to people, and how connections linger even when they’re gone.”

Here is how I see it. We often listen (or read a story) to a song only for the melody, the lyrics, or the genre. But we forget to ask why the song was made, why we should listen to it, and what the artist wants us to feel after hearing it. When we try to go deeper, we can sense the connection that often feels lost, and I think that is a very fun thing to discover.

Here are 4 works where my writing appears:

The Mountain’s Forgotten Friend. This is a full book by me, published by Pecan Springs Publishing, released June 15, 2025.
Sublimation: Volume 2, Issue 3, A Midsummer’s Day Nightmare: A Magazine of Speculative Poetry and Art. This is an anthology with multiple authors, published by Sublimation, released June 27, 2025.
Edition 26 (The Stygian Lepus Magazine). This is an anthology with multiple authors, published by Stygian Lepus, released June 29, 2025.
Sea of Monsters: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology. This is an anthology with multiple authors, published by Dragon Soul Press, released June 30, 2025.

All of them were released in June, which happens to be my birthday month, so I am very happy that you are helping me share them with everyone.

Thanks so much to Fendy for chatting about music and memories with us today!

🎶 Side A for secrets, side B for goodbyes - foofaraw

2025-11-13T17:00:05.000Z

It started when the needle dropped itself, uninvited, onto a record I never bought. The air thickened like something was about to confess, and from the first scratchy note, I knew it wasn’t music. It was her voice. Telling me what she never dared to say when she was alive.

The record was in the wrong crate. That much I was sure of. The Museum of Analog Sound kept everything in order, and I had logged every item by hand for the past six years. I remembered cataloguing the H5 series—rock compilations from the seventies—but this wasn’t part of it. It had no label. No sleeve. Just a matte-black surface with the faintest groove lines, like something barely trying to exist.

I should have flagged it and returned it to admin. Instead, I cleaned it, placed it on the listening table, and lowered the needle.

Her voice came through like a warm exhale.

“Leo. I didn’t think you’d ever find this.”

I froze.

“Mira,” I said aloud, as if her name might echo.

Three years ago, she disappeared. No one said the word dead, but no one argued either. One day she left our apartment with her camera bag and never came back. No note, no suitcase, no report. The only thing left was an unpaid gas bill and an empty frame where her favorite Polaroid used to hang.

Now here she was, alive in sound, telling me something she never could when we were together.

“I wanted to tell you why,” her voice said, quieter now. “But I was always better at showing.”

There was no background noise. No hiss, no room tone. Just her, as if the recording had captured only thought.

“Find the rest,” she said. Then it ended.

I called in sick the next day, but came in anyway. I had the keys and nobody checked.

In the basement, among the donation crates not yet logged, I found a box marked LOST LOT 1976–2042. Not a real category. Not even a fake one we used for junk.

Inside were six unmarked records. One had a chipped edge. Another smelled like copper. I picked the least damaged one and brought it upstairs.

This one didn’t start on its own. I had to place the needle manually. The sound was distorted at first, like someone speaking underwater. Then it cleared.

A man’s voice: “I was seven when I buried the lighter under the floorboards. No one found it. Not even after the fire.”

The story continued, unraveling a memory—not a song, not a poem—but a confession. The man cried in the middle. I listened to all nine minutes without moving.

The record ended with a click. I rewound it and listened again. Same memory. Same voice.

Each record in the box played someone’s secret. One was about a woman who couldn’t remember her daughter’s birthday; one was a soldier whispering the names of people he left behind; one was just quiet breathing and the word “help” repeated softly, until the needle lifted itself.

I tested them. I checked for speakers, audio implants, anything electronic. Nothing. The grooves were real; the sound was analog.

They weren’t made by people. Not exactly.

Artwork by Tony Tran

The next Mira recording came after three days of sleepless sorting. I found it inside a hollowed-out sleeve for a Bee Gees album.

She sounded tired. “You’re almost there. I never wanted this much to happen. I just needed someone to see the real me—no more masks.”

She mentioned a place. “You’ll find it near the payphone that never worked.”

That meant the old gas station on Holman Street.

I left the museum during my lunch break and walked there. It had been turned into a flower shop. The payphone was still there, bolted to the wall, cracked but whole.

Taped behind it was a parcel. Inside: a portable record player and one final vinyl.

This one was gold-colored. The kind they made for collectors. It had her name etched on the center—not printed—etched.

Back at the museum, I listened. Her voice was relaxed now.

“I needed to say this face-to-face. But we both know you’d just nod and wait for me to finish. You never heard me—not until it was too late.”

She talked about the day she left. Not for drama. Not to disappear. She just couldn’t keep being someone who didn’t exist anymore.

“You once told me everything you love is either archived or imaginary. That made me wonder what you thought of me.”

She paused. I expected her to cry. She didn’t.

“I’m giving you this so you can stop wondering. You didn’t kill me. But you didn’t save me either.”

Silence. Then:

“Side B’s for you.”

I flipped it.

The second side was different. It wasn’t Mira’s voice. It was mine.

From a time I didn’t remember.

I was younger, maybe twenty. I was drunk, or pretending to be. I talked about how I didn’t believe people ever truly revealed themselves. That everyone was just a version they hoped others would keep believing in.

I said her name. Not in anger. Just a tired whisper.

I heard myself say: “She’ll leave, eventually. They all do. I’ll put her in a box. Keep her clean. Keep her perfect. She’ll be fine in memory.”

My own voice sounded like a stranger.

The next day, the museum director called me in.

“You’ve been pulling records without log entries.”

“Yes.”

“Unapproved items. Unauthorized listening. Private materials.”

“They’re not private. Not really.”

“Someone donated them?”

“No. They just appeared.”

She paused. “That’s not how it works.”

I showed her one of the records. Played the first few seconds. A woman’s laughter turned into sobbing.

The director pulled the needle off. “Destroy it.”

“I won’t.”

“They’re dangerous.”

“They’re real.”

She looked at me like I was unstable. Maybe I was. But I left with the gold vinyl tucked inside my coat.

That night, I sat in my apartment and thought about what it meant. These weren’t recordings in the usual sense. They were impressions. Emotional fossils pressed into physical form.

I wondered how many people walked around with a memory sharp enough to cut vinyl.

How many of mine were already out there?

I took a blank record and placed it on my home cutter.

I whispered. I talked. I confessed.

I told the story about the time I ignored Mira’s panic attack because I thought it was manipulation. I talked about how I used her steadiness as a mirror to feel better about myself. I said I missed her, but I wasn’t sure which version.

When I was done, I didn’t play it back. I put the record in a plain sleeve and left it on a bench at the bus station.

Let someone else find it. Maybe they’d understand. Maybe they’d think it was art.

A week later, a new record showed up in my locker. No note. No sleeve.

It wasn’t Mira’s voice.

It wasn’t mine.

It started with a deep breath. Then a child said, “He never knew I watched him leave.”

I pressed stop.

I waited.

Then I put on my headphones, lowered the needle, and listened to every second.

I didn’t know who the voice belonged to.

But they were remembering something only I could understand.

I wasn’t ready.

But I kept listening.

Fendy is an art worker from Malang, Indonesia. He works with words and music to study how time feels different to people, and how connections linger even when they’re gone. By day, he sells motorcycles. By night, he makes moody music as Nep Kid and writes stories in different forms. His art lives in the gap between words and true feelings.

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😿 Devoured - foofaraw

2025-11-12T23:00:55.000Z

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—Tony Tran

⚒️ Hello, children of Earth! - foofaraw

2025-11-12T16:44:56.000Z

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“Friends From Far Away”

Season 8, Episode 13: Energy

Presented by Dr Amma Choong-Twumasi

DR AMMA

Hello, Children of Earth!

I’m Dr Amma, welcoming you to another episode of “Friends From Far Away” where we all learn together.

For more than a hundred years, scientists have been worried about the Earth’s atmosphere.

The atmosphere is all around you; it is the air you breathe.

The way human beings live changed quickly thanks to science. With new technology we could feed more people, could travel further and faster, be warm when it is cold and cold when it is hot.

But all those inventions needed energy, energy which usually came from burning something: oil; coal; or trees. The gases released by that burning started to change the air all around us, trapping heat around the planet like a warm blanket. As the planet got hotter, that process sped up, in what we now call the Global Climate Emergency.

You might have seen—in films or books—animals that became extinct during the Emergency. If you look at old maps or globes, you will see that the seas have gotten larger, and the ice fields at the North and South Pole were much bigger.

Today, I want to tell you about how Cavendish Energy and their Friends From Far Away have prevented the Emergency from getting any worse.

You see, we still burn something to get our energy, but these days we burn water!

I know! Water shouldn’t burn!

Water is made of two parts of an element called Hydrogen and one part of an element called Oxygen. Cavendish Hydro Power takes seawater and breaks it into those pieces. Then the Cavendish Converter in your car, train, or boat burns the Hydrogen, turning it back into water.

All natural, all clean, and none of it possible without the help of our Friends From Far Away.

THIS CONTENT SPONSORED BY CAVENDISH HYDRO POWER AND THE CAVENDISH CONVERTER COMPANIES LLC, WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARIES OF CAVENDISH ENERGY.

“Friends From Far Away”

Season 1, Episode 7: FRIENDS

Presented by Dr Amma Choong-Twumasi

DR AMMA

Hello, Children of Earth!

I’m Dr Amma, welcoming you to another episode of “Friends From Far Away” where we learn together.

Who is your best friend?

What makes a good friend?

Are you a good friend?

My best friend is Flora Ansah.

She lived down the corridor from me when I was growing up.

When I lost my favourite doll, Flora let me borrow hers.

When my mother was working late, delivering food she had cooked in our kitchen, I slept at Flora’s house.

And when I graduated from university, Flora was there to celebrate with me.

I think that is what makes a good friend: someone who helps when you are in need, without you even needing to ask. Someone who looks after you when you need to be looked after. Someone who helps you turn your hopes and dreams into reality, and then celebrates with you.

All through my life I have been very lucky to have great friends. I hope you have great friends too!

My friend Valerian St John gave me the opportunity of a lifetime to work with him. Together, we reached out to the stars themselves, and there, we found more friends—friends beyond counting.

The word “unique” means something is totally different from everything else.

We found that humans are unique, but we are not alone!

There are friends waiting for us everywhere we turn, friends waiting to help us journey to the stars, friends who will share their sciences with us, who will celebrate with us as we journey through the galaxy.

I can’t wait for you all to meet them too!

THIS CONTENT SPONSORED BY CAVENDISH EXPLORATION AND THE CAVENDISH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER CORPORATION, WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARIES OF CAVENDISH ENTERPRISES.

“The Adventures of Doctor Amma and QUATZ”

Season 3, Episode 9: ZOO ONE

Coconut crabs run amok in the city behind.

DR AMMA

We’ve been over this; the crabs on Earth are millions of years away from evolving intelligence.

QUATZ

But Amma, it did a ritual dance! It raised its claws and shuffled to the left!

“The Adventures of Doctor Amma and QUATZ”

Season 2, Episode 5: Quartz comes out of his shell

People stream from the doors of Liberty in a panic.

QUATZ (off-screen)

Don’t come in, Dr Amma, I’m naked in here!

Joel’s grimdark novels "The Path of Pain and Ruin" and “Paths to Empires’ Ends” are available on Amazon, as is his fantasy novel “The Thirteenth Prince” and a collaborative project “Literary Footnotes”. Follow him on @booksafterbed on the website formerly known as Twitter for links to his other short work.

📺 The media guide S6E17 - foofaraw

2025-11-12T07:14:37.000Z

Another week has officially begun... and Friday seems so far away...

But our first writing contest is officially coming to a close as we’ve announced the winners, paid our finalists and judges—a total well over $600—and are preparing to publish the three finalists next week.

But until then, we have a ton of new movies to talk about this week.

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📺 The American Revolution (PBS)

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time recently watching Ken Burns’ documentaries on PBS. So the timing for his latest couldn’t be better for this six-part, 12-hour docuseries about the war and founding of America.

💽 Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan by The Mountain Goats

I’m not actually much of a Mountain Goat fan. At all. But I found myself really, really enjoying this one for some reason. It's an easy listen, but it's also quite melodic, and it gives off this sense that they had some grand plan when they went into the studio to record it and nailed every note. Plus it was a really lackluster week of new music...

🦸 DIE: Loaded #1 (Image)

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans are back with the sequel to their previous 20-issue series. Die was a really interesting concept and Hans' painterly art was beautiful, but I found the story to drag on a bit. Still, I’m intrigued to see how they dive back into this world a year after the previous one.

🎥 Keeper

Osgood Perkins’ second movie of the year is out this Friday, following The Monkey and last year’s Longlegs. I have much higher hopes for this one, starring Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) as neither of those felt like they fully delivered on being a complete film.

🎉 Weekend edition vol.084 - foofaraw

2025-11-09T15:48:01.000Z

This week’s ad slot was purchased by friend of Foofaraw, Evan Passero, in support of DIFFA Dallas—providing critical financial support to North Texas AIDS service organizations that offer direct care to adults, families, and children living with or impacted by HIV/AIDS.

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

Donate now

Good morning!

One day these will go out on Saturdays again, but today is not that day. I'm deep in 2026 planning, with 24 stories accepted to run next year already, and finally getting around to editing the 30+ stories we have for our first anthology, which was originally scheduled to be published this month. Spoiler: it will not be published this month.

Quick reminder, you can pick up our first novella still!

The Bodies by D.H. Parish

a 46-page print novella

foofarawfoofaraw

We kicked things off this week with the fifth story from Sarina Dorie's Devil's Delight series:

😈 Worse than a Devil

by Sarina Dorie

foofarawfoofaraw

Then Matty returned with the tenth issue of OBSTRUCTION, where things continue to get all twisted up:

🚧 OBSTRUCTION #10

a webcomic from Matthew Burbridge

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We had the pleasure of publishing Larina Warnock's The Calling, a coming-of-age story that captures the feeling of having to decide what you will do with the rest of your life:

🧑‍🏫 The Calling

by Larina Warnock

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Larina answered a few questions for us about life, teaching, and education:

🎙️ Larina Warnock

An interview with the author of The Calling

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Finally, James is back, taking a look at games for November:

🕹️ Ghosts & pits

A dispatch on games for November from James

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And we talked about Predator, Pluribus, and a ton more in this week's media guide: