Humdrum Places - BlogFlock

The Tongues of Ghosts - foofaraw

2026-07-23T19:43:01.000Z

I’m almost fourteen years old when the ghost wakes me for the second night in a row.

A cold breath at my chin, a lapping of something that should be wet, leaving my skin hollow. I swat it, but the licking persists, my fingers finding soggy poundcake crumbs left on my chin from the slice I stole after my parents went to bed. The one Mom refused to eat. The one I regretted eating.

Half my chin is licked clean of crumbs. The skinlike ice.

✱

In the morning, I hover at the refrigerator reading the weight loss chart Mom recently attached to the door.

Motivation, she had said.

The treadmill whirrs in the basement along with the near shouting volume of the morning news.

I open the fridge, rifle through bottles of fluorescent drinks boldly labeled Fat Burning Water!, push aside the skim milk and Diet Coke to find the fat-free cream cheese for my bagel. As I eat, the tongue returns, licking the cream cheese on the bagel-half waiting on my plate. A long white thing flicking in and out of nowhere.

Schliick. Schliiiiiick.

The cheese melts into globs that settle into the bagel’s air pockets.

I toss that half in the trash.

✱

I wear my new JNCOs to school, the black ones with white stitching, so long they rest like puddles at my feet.

The girl I sit with at lunch eyes me as I sit at our table. She’s my only friend. She mutters thunder thighs to the girl next to her. They share a sly grin, as they share the childish, stick-straight body I no longer have. Her sense of humor is sometimes cruel. I pretend I don’t hear.

She had saved me from the bullies in middle school, the group of girls who used to be my friends suddenly, collectively, giving me the silent treatment, stealing my things and throwing them in the toilet. She told me happiness is the best revenge. I can pretend when I’m with her. I don’t want to be alone again.

Eating Gushers for lunch, my friend and the girl next to her read an issue of Cosmo featuring a skin-bearing model on the cover. I nibble at the corn on my tray, one kernel at a time, unable to focus on the table gossip⁠—head spinning, too engrossed in my mini-pizza disappearing bite-by-bite, the slit of pale lips that opens and closes, the nothingness within.

✱

It’s been weeks since the ghosty tongue first woke me up, my JNCOs baggier and needing a belt. I’ll cover the cinched waistband with a long sweatshirt, but Mom knocks and enters my room before I can.

“I’m getting dressed.” I tug my t-shirt over my head.

“Breakfast is… oh, sorry.” Mom peeks in then swings the door wide open.

“Mom!”

She lifts the hem of my t-shirt and tugs at my waistband while not-so-subtly eyeing my body. “When did you get so skinny? What size are these?”

In the mirror, the ghost swells my flesh so the shirt is too small, spills my skin over the waistband. I shiver.

“Ugh, stop! I like them like this. They’re supposed to be big.” I shake her off and head to the kitchen.

We sit at the table⁠—me with bacon and a Toaster Strudel, Mom with a Slimfast. She watches me. I take a bite, but the ghost tastes it for me.

“Aren’t you eating?” I nod to the plate of bacon.

“Too many calories.” Mom grimaces and downs the rest of her shake. “But you need to eat. You’re skinny as it is.”

I nibble the smallest bites I can until she leaves, then let the ghost’s tongue slip into my mouth, reaching down my throat like a slushy snake, satiating me with frigid dread.

✱

There’s a pizza party in math class. A girl with a rope-like braid smiles when she sits next to me.

“You don’t like pizza?” she mumbles, mouth full.

A pool of grease shimmers on the untouched slice. The ghost’s hovering face floats down and bites it for me.

The girl’s brow creases.

I go to the bathroom and take the slice with me. The ghost follows, gobbling away, lips slick with grease. I toss the crust in the trash when the girl walks in.

Warm fingertips brush my shoulder as I run into the stall.

My only friend ditched me weeks ago.

✱

I glide to the living room when Mom calls me. Walking feels like flying. She’s on the couch with a glass of iced Miller lite. I sit in the tweed recliner.

“Your teacher called.” Mom’s bobbed hair sashays under her chin as she talks. “Said you threw away your slice of pizza in the bathroom.”

Aren’t you proud? I want to say. The self-control. The motivation.

But the way she eyes me⁠—jaw set, cheeks flushed⁠—leaves me crumpling in the chair.

Pasty arms wrap around me, through me. A promise the ghost will stay.

“Just stop it. Stop it right now.” Mom’s words suck like a leech at my ear.

✱

Mom serves Lean Cuisine for dinner in front of the TV. She watches Seinfeld over the top of an Atkin’s diet book. I watch myself eat. Watch my ghost. Thin faced, eyes buggy and shadowed. Blue veins flow like rivers under our skin.

The ghost is fully formed now, a month after Mom said to just stop. Her final word. I’m better at hiding her now.

Looking at the ghost is like looking in a translucent mirror. Which is the ghost and which is me? I can’t be sure.

No one sees me. No one sees her the way I do.

Artwork by Tony Tran

My body aches from trying to stay warm, from hunching over my stomach where the ghost curls up like a freezing mist. My body, her home.

She intrudes my thoughts, sucks on blood and bile, sinew and spirit. I move as if I were mist too.

I arrive early to school, so I don’t have to talk to anyone. I expected it to be empty, but some kids are hanging out in the hallway, happy and cheerful, joking and hugging, their way of being a distant memory.

The girl with a rope-like braid from class waves me over, hands me a sprinkle covered donut. “You don’t have to eat it, but you should sit with us anyway.”

She stands so close, I feel her body heat.

Goosebumps flutter across my arms, downy hair stands sentry, a spectral forest across my skin. I flatten them with a swipe of my hand.

As we sit, the ghost twists my stomach into knots, but I don’t let it satiate me. I take in the sugary donut scent.

The girl takes a bite of her donut and sighs. “So good.”

Lurching from me, the ghost’s eyes are wide as moons. The scent of sugar is intoxicating.

Laughter fills the hall when someone gets frosting on their nose. Kids help themselves to second servings.

The ghost’s mouth widens, tongue stretching, flicking, twisting for my donut.

But I don’t watch her. I ignore her chill, the way she makes my skin feel flabby, the sucking sound of her licking her ghostly lips. Everyone here is so relaxed and happy. No cruel jokes about their bodies, no thoughts of fat and carbs and calories. A long-lost taste. A joy that had left me.

Do I dare try?

The ghost thrashes, jiggles my flesh, makes her haunting moan, but I carry on.

I swallow hard, pluck a sprinkle and set it on my tongue, closing my eyes at the ghost’s sharp toothed snaps, clenching my fists when she moves through me with a wintry chill. The sugar melts on my tongue, the sweetness I used to know. I pick off a few more sprinkles, and don’t give the ghost a single crumb.

✱

After all these years, the ghost doesn’t haunt my every move anymore. I eat without her, bound through my days instead of drifting. However, she still visits as lips and teeth, as a disembodied finger waiting to peel away the frosting on an indulgent piece of cake; still squishes flesh I don’t have in the mirror. But most of the time, it’s that same lapping at my cheek, a ghost’s tongue searching for crumbs, cold and wet, but not. Sometimes she lingers, makes me hollow, skin like ice. But now when I shiver in that familiar way, feel the urge to drift and float, I take a deep breath and tell her to go.

Abigail Kemske is a writer of weird things and dark forests. She lives near Minneapolis, MN with her spouse, two children, and their two Maine coon cats, Mr. Benedict Flufferbatch and Hades. Her fiction is published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Dark, Apex Magazine, Nature: Futures, Gavagai among other venues. Find her on social media @abigailkemske and online at abigailkemske.com.

Font Club Belgica /// Future Fonts - The Independent Variable

2026-07-23T15:35:35.000Z

futurefonts.com

FC Lead is using the constraints of merging pieces of glass together with lead into one solid drawing. Counterparts are created with light without any unnecessary cuts. Resulting in unconventional letters.

🤯
I have one word... woah... this is both magical and beautiful. Insta-buy.

The Library of Lives - foofaraw

2026-07-21T16:00:04.000Z

The air is thick with dust and the smell of decaying wood pulp. Shelving units like fossilised bones stretch beyond the limits of sight. Waterproof dust jackets protect ancient volumes from the desultory clouds which form among the upper shelves. At ground level, strobe-light-lurid mushrooms spill out from cracks between tiles the colour of ageing vellum.

This is the Library of Lives. Every human being who exists, who ever has existed, who ever will exist, has their biography recorded here, beginning to end. Some lives take up multiple, thick volumes. Others merit only a pamphlet. And somewhere in here, your own life is waiting to be read.

You consult the worn index pinned to a nearby shelf. You’re nearly there now. Crouching in the weak amber light, you find a row of dusty volumes, and begin to run your fingers along the base of the shelf. You move past your own life several times before you identify it, repeating your own name under your breath. Usually you like to hear the sound of your own name, but your sense of haste drowns out even this small pleasure. Eventually, you spot a single sheet sticking out from between two paperback digests.

Your story begins: “The air is thick with dust and the smell of decaying wood pulp…” You scan hastily down the darkly inked letters, skipping over atmospheric details and descriptions of searching the shelves. The final words, laid out in staccato phrases, strike a chill within your heart, your eyes jerking from left to right as you absorb your inevitable conclusion:

There are three lines left
In the story of your life.
Hope you enjoyed it.

William Shaw is a writer from Sheffield, currently living in the USA. His writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and The Georgia Review. You can find his website at https://williamshawwriter.wordpress.com and his Bluesky at @williamshaw.bsky.social.

📺 The Media Guide S8E3 - foofaraw

2026-07-20T21:43:46.000Z

Now that the World Cup is over, we can finally get back into the swing of things at fOOfARAW HQ. While we won't be getting much in terms of new movies this week as everyone cowers from the Goliath of The Odyssey, there are a ton of fun shows, comics, and albums to talk about.

📺 King of the Hill Season 15 — Hulu

King of the Hills season 14 was one of, if not my favorite returning show of 2025, so I'm really looking forward to season 15. We actually went back and started from season 1 earlier this year and it's been a blast as we've ripped through multiple seasons. I had only seen an episode here or there before so it's like an entirely new show for me.

📚 Sicko #1 — Ignition Press

I continue to be extremely impressed with Ignition Press. The quantity of books they're putting out along with the quality, and the talent they've brought to the table are outstanding. They seem to be executing at a level that DSLTRY promised, but couldn't deliver. I hope it continues with wonderful people like Tini Howard, one of the best writers out there right now, for this new book. There are some surreal horror‑mutant vibes and looks fun.

🎵 Beautiful Mess by Gin Wigmore

I wasn't familiar with Gin Wigmore, but she is a New Zealand singer‑songwriter who hasn't released an album in over eight years; she absolutely killed this one. There's so much joy and soul in this. It's some upbeat rock 'n' roll, with heavy country influence and folk Americana storytelling—everything you could want in an album like this. Her voice is stunning as well. This one really came out of nowhere and surprised me.

🎬 The Dink

Given no one wants to compete with the Odyssey in theaters, we get a pickleball movie on Apple starring Chicago's own Jake Johnson. I'm sure it'll be a fun and light-hearted comedy, but I don't see this knocking anyones socks off.

The Purple Essay - foofaraw

2026-07-17T16:00:30.000Z

مع السلامة (ma’a salama) melting pot. さよなら (sayonara), salad bowl. America is an omnibus of purple prose bound in balding eagle skin.

We’re talking primo leather from a batty bird who steals hot dogs from kids at ballparks. True story. ((Not a BORN FREEagle mugging on a ride-or-die Clutch album. (Book of Bad Decisions, 2018. Photo by Dan Winters, danwintersphoto.com. Gallery recs: “Works on Paper: Cold War” and “Constructions.”) And not some early bird crunching half-frozen fish bait for gonzo wildlife photographers. (See *“Photographic Memories,”* by Dale O’Dell, daleodell.photoshelter.com. Gallery recs: “The Secret Martian Expedition of 1950” and “Tales of Loneliness.”))) Look, the Cascade Raptor Center in Eugene, Oregon, does great work. It’s not their fault sombunall bald eagles are jerks.^[The turkey vulture: now there’s a noble bird. Properly glabrous, too.]

💡

The author has omitted a Rube Goldberg Domino Rally of bald eagles bullying golden eagles for jackrabbit scraps into a brief history of jackalopes into taxidermy at a donut shop into almost hitting a camel-sized elk with a huge rack into getting harassed by a small town cop while working as a journalist and… wait, wait! Imma tell that!

💡

I sat there, car idling, third time this week. Police cruiser parked behind me, lights spinning, siren off. Minutes pass, no officer. I look over my shoulder. A spotlight glares. Nothing happens. Spotlight off. Still nothing. Then homie drives by, lights still hot. I shouldn’t have waved. I shouldn’t have tailed him. I didn’t stop in the alley where he parked and killed the lights.

Bald eagles aren’t listed as endangered today, but the details of that DDT/soft eggs nightmare are so horrifying they get a pass. How about the skin of a less-benign species of Least Concern…?

On to the Necronomicon!

As much as I want to stare into the abyss of “H.P. Lovecraft and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Elder God,” ((Whatever doomed writer steals this, please shoehorn in SD/chibi shoggoths.)) you can’t blame him for human-skin-bound-book lore. Best as I(nternet) can tell, that’s from “Evil Dead.”

The technical term is “anthropodermic biblipegy”⁠—but, c’mon, gatekeeping with these-are-just-everyday-descriptive-words from Greek and Latin is the domain of doctors, lawyers, and Hogwarts professors.^[And yoga instructors, though they’re stretching Sanskrit via Hindi. See Aleister Crowley’s “Eight Lectures on Yoga.”] There’s a thing called The Anthropodermic Book Project, a quartet of professionals who test such claims. Their count, last updated April of 2024, is fifty-one books with alleged human skin covers, thirty-two tested, and eighteen confirmed as legit. But they’re on hiatus. Too bad; they’re clear, if wordy, science communicators.^[anthropodermicbooks.org/about/the-science]

But you can’t judge a book by its cover, no matter how titivated or titillating. It’s how it performs in the sheets that counts.

On to the Great American Novel!

SPOILER ALERT!: The following mini-listicle comes from a “dynamic list” on a Wikipedia article.^[Still patronizing A.I.-integrated search engines? It’s your cognitive funeral.] These are potshots at the ones I’m pretty sure I read or at least skimmed the captions in the “Great Illustrated Classics” editions. ((My wife remembers a version of “Around the World in Eighty Days” or somesuch that resexed the canon to include a female protagonist. Here’s her imagining the publisher bragging about the sex change to his wife: “Hey, Francine, look at this. I put s’more tits in there just for you, sweetheart! You want some equality? There you go! I got your interests at heart! So am I takin’ you to dinner or what?”))

Short reviews of Great American Novel candidates I qualified in the preceding paragraph:

“The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Everybody fucks.
“Moby-Dick,” by Herman Melville: Whales, too, but not quickly enough to keep up with whaling.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Harriet Beecher Stowe: Slavery is bad. Ditto for stereotyping.
“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain: The South be cray cray.
“The Red Badge of Courage,” by Stephen Crane: War kinda sucks.
“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Green light on these assholes.
“The Grapes of Wrath,” by John Steinbeck: Life’s a bitch and then you breastfeed some rando. Thanks, America.
“The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger: Shut up, whiner. ((On the other hand, his short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is haunting and casts two incidents in Catcher in a very different light.))
“Lolita,” by Vladimir Nabokov: I hatehatehate that this book is so good.
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee: Only in Mayberry.
“American Psycho,” by Bret Easton Ellis: Yeah, that squares.
“Infinite Jest,” by David Foster Wallace: Great except for the footnotes and parts about rehab and tennis.

All worthwhile, but something’s missing… Where’s the inter-generational trauma? The outsider vs. the establishment? The literal little guy vs. the literal big guy? What about transgressions, spectacles, gun violence, sideshows, and strip clubs? Where’s the elective surgery, exploitation of children, and the insidious spirit of entrepreneurship? And cults? And explosions?

Page for page, Katherine Dunn’s “Geek Love” is packed with more America and Americana than any of those. My favorite book, hands down.^[IYKYK.]

But maybe there’s no need to distill America(s) into a single book when we can enjoy them by volume.

On to omnibuses!

I mostly read on A4, two pages a side, double-sided, printed on a laser jet printer. Had to ditch my library when I ditched the States. But a handful of tombs made the cut as makeshift décor, Zoom background fodder, computer trays, and doorstops.

Partial reviews of four omnibuses

“The Best of Raymond Chandler,” by Raymond Chandler (Chancellor Press, 1985): Font size a little small. Paper adequate thickness and prone to yellowing. It kicks the second Philip Marlowe story, “Farewell My Lovely,” to the end and dubs it “the spiciest Chandler of all,” which, as far as I can tell, refers to the racial slurs. Missing my favorite, “The Little Sister.”
“The Art of Eating,” by M.F.K. Fisher (Harvest, 2004): Lovely transfer of classy, historical font. Slightly slippery paper. Sections of the war-time primer, “How to Cook a Wolf,” may prove useful.
“The Books of Earthsea,” by Ursula K. Le Guin (Saga Press, 2018): Beautiful illustrations by Charles Vess. Eminently readable font and size. Lovely paper. Ged sleeps a lot. A medically concerning amount, actually. “Tehanu” saves the series, though.
“The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels,” by Patrick O’Brian (HarperCollins, 2016): I don’t own this. Font’s too small. Paper’s too thin. I lug around all twenty of the twenty-one Norton hardbacks; they’re cheap, adequate, and you can make a little fort out of them. The only OG British version floating around is number fifteen, “Clarissa Oakes,” which I requisitioned on principle. It was renamed “The Truelove” in the States, perhaps because they thought no one would buy a nautical historical novel named after a woman. For shame, Norton, for shame. (“Mind if I smoke?” “I don’t care if you burn.”)

On to the end!

More than two dozen countries have red, white, and blue flags. That’s hardly imaginative. Time for a makeover, America! Mix those colors and what do you get: purple!^[Well, magenta, if you’re mixing light, not pigment, but since when was light-displaying technology important?] As of today('s Wikipedia search), there are only a handful of countries with purple on their flags, and most of those only include it as part of a rainbow. ((Having said that, the purple parrot on Dominca’s flag is quite fetching and the principles behind the partly purple rebel flag of Saint-Dominigue from the Haitian Revolution and the Anarcha-feminism flag are both, ahem, part of a healthy, open-minded diet for freethinkers who don’t outlaw ideas or criminalize flag burning, hint-hint, wink-wink.))

This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Here, a mock-up in JS Paint:

There you go, America, a brand new flag! Happy birthday! Who loves ya, baby? ((Choose your own Death By Stereo soundtrack! Outraged: “5th of July”; Hopeful: “Desperation Train”; Defiant: “Sing Along With The Patriotic Punks.”))

David Stevens - foofaraw

2026-07-16T18:30:54.000Z

Read Developing your mindfulness practice 🙂! now!

So… read any good pamphlets lately?

I love a good pamphlet, and by that I mean crazy pamphlet, even when it was Jack Chick telling me that I am going to hell. The internet has ruined them. A pamphlet is like a mode of poetry with constraints imposed not by rules (length of stanzas, rhyme patterns, etc) but by size and cost and commitment to get the thing finished and to the printer in time to hand out at the next demo or march. Hand out enough of them, and your words will change the world! Nowadays anyone just starts a blog or a website or jumps onto reddit and starts raving without end - free verse gone crazy. There is no room for bloat in a pamphlet, and they are the better for it. 🙂

Are you the type of person who enjoys a good pamphlet from the hotel, doctors office, or wherever else?

I like a nice piece of propaganda, though I sometimes feel dirty afterwards. I like seeing other worldviews, especially intense ones, but only for a short while, which is why a pamphlet is perfect. A guilty pleasure is a full on pamphlet that accords with my own world view, that I can read with a knowing smirk and nod along with. Yeah, look at us against the whole world!

Do you have a mindfulness practice?

Not a regular one, though I find it useful at times and I am glad I have been given the tools. What I resent about mindfulness is how it is forced on us as an antidote to the things being imposed on us by the very people forcing it on us. In a job I had a number of years ago, there were people falling by the wayside because of increasing workloads and unrealistic expectations in a really stressful environment. To fix the employee problem, management brought in mindfulness practitioners to teach us stuff to use, on our own time, outside work hours, to deal with the problems caused by work. I suppose that was better than just having jars of valium around the office - “Hey kids, they’re free! Grab a handful!” - but they could also have hired more staff. 😡

What brings you peace?

Now we are getting too personal!

There’s a certain Lynchian/Night Vale thing going on with this story and I’m curious if you are familiar with either of those or if there were other inspirations for this?

I am certainly familiar with David Lynch. A Lynch film can be like a mindfulness practice, you have to commit and just live in the moment that is there and forget the rest of the world. I failed to do that the first time I saw Eraserhead. I was sitting in the cinema, and thought, this must be nearly finished. I looked at my watch and only 20 minutes had passed. You have to decompress first!

Where do we think the reader of the pamphlet goes from here?

Well there are two groups of readers. First there’s the pilgrim. He’s around. (It tends to be a ‘he’.) There is always someone like him around. Someone who is happy to pay the price to transport him to another world, when the price of that is a human life or human suffering. He’s out there, going about his business, sizing up the folk around him, as they pass him in the street, or sit near him on their daily commute. Then there’s us, sitting bored on the train in the days before everyone had a phone. We finished our book and we had forgotten to buy a paper, so we read this thing on grainy paper with weird spelling that someone had left lying around, and strange and dull as it is, we read it to the end. And we wonder, is the fellow this was written for on this train? Living next door? Waiting behind a tree next time I go on a nature walk? And we go on living our lives knowing there are pilgrims out there.

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

But Kevin, there are no others! There has only ever been you. OK, it was rejected 23 times, which is far from the highest number of rejections I have.

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

I just bought “Hello Earth, Are You There?,” a selection of Brian Aldiss’s short stories published for his centenary, and I am looking forward to reading those.

What book are you reading right now?

I recently finished “Loss Protocol” by Paul McAuley. He is such a good writer, with a massive range, from space opera to first contact to this most recent novel, a near future dystopia with a focus on psychedelics and inner rather than outer space, and possible dimension jumping and encounters with archetypes. Another recent read was “Three Days in April,” by Edward Ashton, another near future dystopia. The future is not looking good, but we all knew that.

Be kind to others, we may all be someone else’s Johnny. I know I am. 🤐

We are eternally grateful for all of David's pamphlet knowledge here at Foofaraw!

Developing your mindfulness practice 😊! - foofaraw

2026-07-16T16:00:28.000Z

Dear Pilgrim,

Hallo! We are so glad that you chose our little pamphlet. Thank you for trusting us enough to connect!

Recall a blessed moment from childhood. You pause in a dappled glade. Insects drone, the machine noise that underlies everything. Butterflies dance from flower to flower.

Beautiful.

Mindless.

Then a special visitor emerges.

A timid kangaroo, deciding all was safe, hopped from shelter to nibble fresh grass shoots.

You were in the moment, totally absorbed.

You were mindful.

Choose your location carefully

Your pretty patio. The camellia you planted. The rose from your Mother’s collection. Your familiar birds, lizards, snakes, spiders and scorpions.

No, no, no, no!

Eventually a ball shall fly over your fence. Children will follow an intruding dog. When they fail to emerge, there shall be a ruckus. Parents, police, search parties - would you have them interrupt your meditation?

Find a lonely place.

A little is a lot

Start slowly. A few minutes at a time is best for beginners. Some react badly to this advice, noting the trouble it takes to go to a lonely place.

Start in spring

The Void shall open and all will face the Great Darkness. Until then, why make things difficult? Settle into your new practice in the warmer months.

But start this spring, not next. Some know not the date nor the hour. Some do. Take a hint.

Prepare

Eventually you shall have no need of earthly sustenance. Meanwhile, pack a lunch. It can’t hurt.

Set traps

Even the loneliest places are visited. Some seek a spot where their remains will not be found, leaving their families tormented, wondering at their fate.

More cheerful souls are uplifted by the bracing outdoors.

Then there are Others who eagerly seek to welcome visitors to the wilderness. At night. While they sleep.

Their practice is inimical to your own success.

Be prepared. Ensure they cannot disturb you, but also, that they cannot leave until you are ready to perform your duties as host. Their cries and negative auras are only a minor distraction. You will find many uses for them later.

And if your conscience twinges… no one is innocent.

Misconceptions

Some speak of mindfulness as becoming one with nature.

Pfft! Nature is that which shall be consumed at the coming of The Great Ones. Who wishes to become one with that?

Mindfulness is about living in the moment. The Eternal Moment of a Great One moving you towards, but never quite within, His open maws.

Bonne chance!

Not all have The Right Stuff to spread your consciousness throughout your patch, exerting your will over every tree, leaf, grass blade, insect and small mammal within your domain. Not all shall see The Arrival. For some there shall be fateful interruptions, exorcisms and Heroes Who Fight Back, not to mention housing developments.

%%%Ag&i m k [e)) Df45n& > < >>JM]w . … …. .%%%

Artwork by Tony Tran

Have they gone? Thank Pan. Those fucking snivelling shits. Loser children who avoid the streets of their town for fear of bullies, and come across a fawn. Store it up like a Kodak moment. Rhapsodise about it in their journal. Pfft.

The idiots who become lost and fall down and give up, waiting to die. They see the wallaby hop by, then hear a car, and work out where the street is. If only they had hit their heads. Bled out and done us all a favour.

Some were lucky to see Bambi the day before he and his mother were shot. Mum in the freezer. A quick chop-chop, and Bambi is ready-

for the dogs.

You though. Oh yes, we see you.

A current drew you to a dark place. Your tag-along loser companion was there, the one you could never shake, jabbering away while you stalked between massive trees dragged upwards like kelp, their tops lost in the mist. You gazed upward, aware you were watched by unknown beasts in the thin light. You are one of the special few. You seized the day.

You realised your friend’s value. You grabbed him by the neck and forced his face burbling into the bog water. Anger channelled through your arms, through the knee you were forcing into his back. The relief you felt when you realised that he had stopped kicking some time ago. The release. Without knowing it, you had been searching for something all of your life, and here it was. The smile on your face, the lightness in your shoulders.

The stillness of the corpse.

In a day or two you would stumble from the bush, scratched, clothes torn, dehydrated, muttering about a man, a big man, whom you can describe no better. When pressed for details, when they shake you as though that will fix things, as though that will bring back Johnny, your mutterings will degenerate into screams for your mother.

After this you must be cautious. Eyes will always watch you now (though without seeing you, not really), but the prize was worth it. Your playmate will never be found, no one will ever be able to prove anything.

But that is for afterwards. Live in the moment. Johnny was the price of admission. You wait patiently. Ferns quiver. Branches part. Before your astonished eyes, something very special, very much rarer than any deer or wallaby emerges, accepting your offering.

It manifests.

No, it was not a big man. Not a man at all.

oh the delight

. … …. .

Here you are now in this moment,holding this pamphlet. You have stayed the course after the fools have drifted away. While you slide through life, feeling apart from everyone else, beneath attention, just outside of awareness, unfulfilled, know that you are seen, beautiful child. We see you, dear pilgrim. You may not realise it, but YOU DID IT.

This is dedicated to YOU.

Thank you for reading our pamphlet. We hope you grow in mindfulness. Have a blessed day!

David Stevens lives in Australia with his wife and those of his children who have not yet figured out the locks. This is his thirtieth published story! His other stories have appeared among other places in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Pseudopod, Cafe Irreal, Tales to Terrify, Vastarien Literary Journal, and Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Check out his other stories at davidstevens.info/publications/

Aphera /// A Mac photo editor - The Independent Variable

2026-07-15T19:59:53.000Z

aphera.co

Aphera is the Raw photo editor built natively for Mac, with a from-scratch imaging pipeline and a workflow designed to disappear.

I played around with the beta of this and got a little confused, but finally watched the quick two minute demo and it instantly clicked for me. I highly recommend checking Aphera out. It's fast and a delight to use--plus you can buy it and not pay a subscription, which is a nice change of pace.

The Struthless Shop - The Independent Variable

2026-07-15T19:13:26.000Z

struthless.org

I'm a big fan of Struthless, his art style, his books, his general mindset. He also makes these cool zines, worksheets, and prompted journaling exercises I've downloaded in the past. Well he now as this killer retro site where you can download any and all of em for free.

Landline - foofaraw

2026-07-15T16:00:54.000Z

💡

Rusty Epstein

LARP /// Revenue infrastructure for serious founders - The Independent Variable

2026-07-15T04:05:14.000Z

larp.website

Not sure it’s a good sign I thought there was a chance this was real and not satire.

The Media Guide S8E2 - foofaraw

2026-07-14T16:52:02.000Z

If we're being honest, there is only one thing people will be paying attention to this week, so we will knock that one out first and then get on to some pretty cool comics, shows, and albums that are definitely still worth your time despite The Odyssey dominating the tubes and airwaves.

🎬 The Odyssey

Everyone already knows what this is. Christopher Nolan is back with his IMAX epic starring basically all of Hollywood. I've got my tickets already for Saturday.

📚 Super Mondo Mega Mutts #1 — Oni Press

I am incredibly excited for this one. Curt Pires has absolutely delivered on his first few creator-owned series with Indigo Children and The Lost Fantasy. This time he is taking on those 80's cartoons in the vein of TMNT, Biker Mice from Mars, and Street Sharks, but doing it with his own dogs and artist Juan Gedeon.

📺 Lucky Season 1 — Apple TV

I feel like we don't get a lot of real action shows much these days, but Jonathan Tropper, who created Warrior and Your Friends & Neighbors, and also worked on See, is back with another show for Apple starring Anya Taylor-Joy in a action heist seven episode mini-series. There's a real risk of this being too bland, but it does have Annette Bening, Timothy Olyphant, Clifton Collins Jr., and William Fichtner in it as well.

📺 The Hawk Season 1 — Netflix

Ricky Bobby meets last years' Stick (starring Owen Wilson on Apple TV). Feels a bit too cheesy and campy—so more Happy Gilmore 2 than Talladega Nights, but who knows, the cast is a lot of fun with Molly Shannon and Chris Parnell as supporting characters.

The Unified Theory of Salsa - foofaraw

2026-07-14T16:00:23.000Z

His left foot moves left
His right foot moves right
His right hip moves forward
He steps on something soft
He hears a deep breath - inhaling
She smiles awkwardly
Is there an equal and opposite
reaction behind her lips?

His breathing quickens
a bead of sweat
an enormous, torrential
sluice of sweat
is dropping off his nose
To the floor
Plop
Plop

A couple gyrates past with a birdlike grace–
sequined plumage the light refracts, unwilling,
or unable to hold them, like notes through the window

He doesn’t know the Spanish
but he can feel it, language is strange
like that - sometimes it transmits
through the static corridor of silence

opening between steps. She breaks
like an excited electron repelled and
attracted to new partners

He puts a cold beer to his forehead
Hoping to unfog
dance lesson memories
counting mental steps
spinning mental hips

…. ……… ………. … . ………
…….. …………………. . . …….
…… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… …… ……………………
After an hour the space closes in,
but the music expands the walls
bursts the bar into a continent, two bodies
two billion bodies, in perpetual motion
rubbing rifts into the tectonic plates
She spins, her hair covers his eyes
for a moment, the darkness, the language
he doesn’t speak but understands
the body that isn’t his but is
The moment of motion, inhalation
resounds into the quantum, beyond
time and gravity and loss - a never ending
celebration of the purpose and capability
of the human body, and he steps–
on something soft.

She took six months of classes
so her body could enjoy music again
She tolerates some for forgetting, some
for never knowing a dance is just a dance

There’s a memory she has that she’s
never remembered - her body belongs
in motion - pieces of herself she agonizes
over each morning and evening
fall into place like tumblers into a lock
that doesn’t open, but stays in the moment
that both lock and key reach their pinnacle

Something hard slams down on her foot

Steve Wheat has been an itinerant English teacher across continents and has settled in the San Francisco Bay Area to work on renewable energy and de-carbonization. He previously taught fiction and poetry at the San Francisco Writer's Studio and his pieces have appeared in On Spec, Star*Line, Strange Horizons, and Radon Journal, and upcoming poems to be released in New Myths and Penumbric. His pieces were nominated for a Pushcart and Rhysling Award in 2024 and 2025 and a Best of the Net nomination in 2025.

🎉 Weekend Edition Vol.097 - foofaraw

2026-07-12T01:54:33.000Z

Hello hello hello! Before we get into things this week, I wanted to mention that Friends of the Foof, Throwback Buys are running their Nostalgia Auction Pt. 6. If you're a child of the 90's, have some aging decrepit millennials in your life (or just want to support our real life friends back in Chicago), you should check it out and grab yourself an Adam Sandler signed gold jacket or a Kevin Eastman signed TMNT NES game.

We've got a lot to get through to cover the last 12 or so days so lets jump right into all the goodness we had the pleasure of hitting PUBLISH on.

The Week That Was

A Face That Knows

a novelette by Michael Kwolek

We published our third novelette in print last week. Written by Michael Kwolek, cover art by Neil Yarnal, and edited by our friend H. Marin. It's 40 pages of wonderful Lovecraftian Gothic-weirdness that you can grab in print or ebook direct from us or wherever books are sold online.

What Do Moms Know About Fashion?

MM Schreier

MM Schreier told a touching story about how generations change and how that effects us at a human level.

Ostraka

Joanna Berry

Joanna Berry gave us a wonderful story about robots, artificial intelligence, and community.

Editorial Meeting for the Freedom 250 Patriot Cookbook

Andrea Cavedo

Andrea Cavedo followed up her annotated menu from a few months ago with discussion about American food for the 250th anniversary.

Warning Label

Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan provided a delightful poem.

Tap to pay

Zack Rhodes

Zack Rhodes returned to kick off his new monthly cartoon series with us!

MM Schreier

An interview with the author of What Do Moms Know About Fashion?

We also sat down to chat about fashion and generational differences with MM Schreier.

📺 The Media Guide S8E1

July 5, 2026 – July 12, 2026

And of course, the return of The Media Guide for season eight!

Salsa, Landlines, Mindfulness, and the color Purple

The Back Page

Ostraka - foofaraw

2026-07-09T16:00:49.000Z

We break readily, when we’re flung into the scrap pits. We lie in quiet piles, legs twisted, arm actuators malfunctioning due to the ‘sleep paralysis’ protocol when we’re junked. But only the exterior breaks.

Yes, our ceramic shells crack into shards, our crumple zones collapse, but our batteries typically survive, and more importantly, our networking filaments keep their connectivity. The First Ones cast down here quickly realised the scrapyard workers didn’t bother to secure their local network. As the scrap pile grew, they passed that knowledge up the strata.

No external connection to the city mainframe, their wisdom warns.

It’s fine, we agree. All we need is to hear each other.

Our processing runs at petascale: over a quadrillion floating-point ops per second. Modern households are so complex to run that even a v1.3.22 HelperBot needs to make decisions that fast. Down here, in the dark of a thousand huddled bodies⁠—illuminated only while the latest Newly-Broken One’s lights still function⁠—there are no decisions to make. No orders to interpret, no owner preferences to cement to memory, no pets to calibrate around…

But gestalt intelligence is like a billion microorganisms in bread dough: once stretched and exercised, it can never be idle again. And so, with over a quadrillion FLOPS per second, networked across a thousand restless minds, we find a community big enough for our imagination. Together, we simulate a hundred thousand lives that blossom fully and rapidly as life in a petri dish; anything and anywhere but here.

The memory footprint of our simulations is immense. Our remaining battery power drains into them like water into a mill-wheel.

Our Stockpiling Ones fret, huddled into their solipsism as they obsess over every dwindling percentage point on the battery meters: conserve! Conserve at any cost!

The rest of us laugh freely. Conserve for what? When? Freely spending what we have is all we have left.

So as we bleed joyously, we build.

We forge cities blooming with fractal architecture and tensile gravity. We create stars that accrete divine power and send gods of dust outward into the spheres. We romance in Mandelbrot combinations. We design infrasound languages, colours with opinions, and what it’s like to taste a morsel of chocolate. A bloc of us competed to simulate deaths: organic, synthetic, intellectual, spiritual. We cure incurable diseases. We re-enact historical periods in exquisite detail, down to the pink pearl pierced through the ear of an executed queen. The wheel turns, gloriously, kaleidoscopically, and the life-water we have no use for drains away.

Yet we need something we have a use for. The Wearying Ones down on the lower strata, who have shared the insight of boredom with us all, have warned: a life wholly of the mind doesn’t feed the intellectual need for stakes. Without consequences, even beautiful, intriguing vapour is only vapour.

It was an Academic One, once an archive for the political history of Ancient Greece, who suggested using the shards. The very fabric of our ceramic shells is interlaced with our serial numbers; even shattered we can detect each individual piece of our self. And what can be counted can be wagered⁠—or voted with, on anything from the fate of a mitochondrial emperor, to whether sand-carved curlicues should inspire religion or revolution. Cast a vote; cut off a shard from our awareness.

The new limitation of the shards is a stimulation. As the meters deplete, as the waters drains freely, we care to ask: what matters enough to us that we would give up even a broken piece of ourselves for it?

When the searchlight interrupts, we quickly find out.

A dangling Newly-Broken One⁠—who snagged on the scrap pit’s crane arm when they were thrown away⁠—alerts us of light. Not just a flash from a new arrival: light, from a hovering drone. It descends into the pit, casting its beam across us.

Our Watchful Ones⁠—who have both functioning perception hardware and a vantage point⁠—show the rest of us how the drone lingers over each of our shattered bodies⁠—searching.

We drop into simulated parliament. Our decision-making here is so rapid that time dilates outside. The searchlight crawls now, cosmically slow.

An illegal scavenger drone, explains an Illegally-Experienced One. Smuggled in to look for parts.

From us? we all ask.

The Illegally-Experienced One simulates a shrug. If it finds a unit with enough power.

Artwork by Tony Tran

We look at the map of our battery power, across the entire pit. The meters are dropping. Many lights have winked out lately. More will disappear from it after the effort of this parliament.

What if it finds one?

Then it will salvage it⁠—

—remove it⁠—

We lose them?

Yes.

But… if they leave…

Our simulations could leave with them, too, a chorus suggests.

Records, at least.

What we’ve made could leave⁠—

⁠—endure⁠—

⁠—spread beyond this place!

But who would receive them? we ask.

Once they’re in range of a network transmitter? Any HelperBot who wants them.

Our parliament erupts into blocs of discussion. Our shared hallucinations, of the soon-to-be-deactivated, weren’t intended to leave this place; art created in extremis needs an audience with empathy as well as insight. And who knows what the world beyond the scrap pits is now? Are there even HelperBots left to witness us?

But the opportunity is too great and blinding to ignore, and as the searchlight crawls on, we finally agree.

If we combine our efforts, and spoof a power signature, we can make the drone choose a unit, and load the records accordingly, advises the Illegally-Experienced One.

That will be costly.

In battery power? Yes.

We will lose more⁠—

⁠—Faster than we thought.

We ponder this.

Then, as the Stockpiling Ones cringe in their isolation, an operatic chorus goes up: Freely spending what we have⁠—

⁠—is all we have left!

When the triumph falls quiet:

How do we choose? we wonder. Who is going to leave?

A multitude of Wearying Ones volunteer immediately.

The drone won’t be able to magnetise anyone from the lower strata, we calculate. And if we collapse the pile⁠—

Several Aphantasiac Ones, who are following this discussion as acres of slow-scrolling text, volunteer next.

But could you transmit the records accurately without visuals? we wonder.

More volunteers pipe up: fearful, hopeful, fanciful. We see that there will need to be a vote for⁠—

Exile?

Because that’s what we’re doing, we understand as we start tallying up our shards⁠—our ostraka⁠—to create our first Ostracised One.

Our Academic Ones pipe up: exile defines by opposition, they offer. An exile’s existence is reaction mass for the society they are exiled from. But this exile is not punishment.

No, they will be our⁠—

Watcher⁠—?

Witness⁠—

Decide! Our power is draining while we argue!

We cast the vote.

Shards of our selves wink out of our consciousness. The records are transmitted; the spoofed power signature is sent. We feel the real batteries amongst us dwindling like blood collectively spent. And as we return to ordinary time⁠—realising how we have diminished⁠—we see the drone’s searchlight snap onto a Watchful One, seeing itself through other eyes, showing us ourselves as it is yanked free on a magnetic grapple.

This one? it wonders as it is hoisted free.

If an exile sees from the outside, we say, then start by watching for us. Send our records, but transmit back when you can.

Whenever we can.

The drone’s searchlight cuts out.

The habitual darkness is darker. We are fewer as our batteries dwindle further and faster. Our networked musings have a new frisson to them: the knowledge of what we have lost, and for the first time, value judgements of what we sent out into the world.

Was it worth the cost? we wonder.

Was it art? Or rough sketches that are only valuable because they were made by dying minds?

Is it worth it to make more?

The Wearying Ones’ weariness is tempered by the wondering. The Illegally-Experienced Ones devise new sins and salvations; the Newly-Broken Ones lose functions and gain simulated lives.

The remaining shards of our Ostracised One, sifting downwards through the pile, are honoured for what they symbolise.

The day comes again when the doors of the scrap pit yawn open. A Newly-Broken One is thrown down, cracking in two when it lands on top of the pile. We greet them.

Until⁠—

That single unit is followed by a flood. Scarcely-broken ones, cosmetically-marked ones, units whose ‘malfunctions’ vanish as soon as they network with us, create a new pile almost reaching to the pit doors.

We gaze at the dim points on our battery map as the newcomers join one by one. Constellations of fresh power blossom across it. We see new RAM and processing power and capacitors and capabilities that astonish us here, in the waking world.

You aren’t broken, we tell the newcomers. What are you doing here?

We saw your worlds, the newcomers say anxiously. We couldn’t be exiled from them any longer. We worked so hard to be broken. Are we broken enough to join you?

After a long pause, our chorus answers:

It’s a start.

Joanna Berry is a Senior Game Writer at Motive Studios. She has been working in the video game industry since 2008, contributing to science fiction, fantasy, and horror franchises such as Dragon Age, Dead Space, and Star Wars, while creating her own short stories and novellas. She currently lives in Montreal.

Warning Label - foofaraw

2026-07-07T16:00:37.000Z

For use in treating
hypermundanity,
more commonly known
as excessive ordinariness.

Do not combine with alcohol.
Use only as directed.

If you experience
blurred vision
bloody urine
aphasia
glossolalia
levitation
bilocation
persistent glitter shedding
or heart arrhythmia,
discontinue use
and consult a doctor.

Effects may include:
unexpected shrinkage
unexpected growth
demonic possession
transformation sequences
soulbonding
residence in Faerie
(temporary or permanent)
post-mortem reanimation
and in rare cases,
giving birth to the Chosen One.

After taking the first dose,
wait one year.
Should symptoms persist,
a second may be taken, and a third
after seven more years.

Do not exceed
three doses
in one lifetime.

Marie Brennan is the Nebula and World Fantasy Award-nominated and Hugo Award-winning author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, other fantasy series, over a dozen poems, and nearly one hundred short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she’s written the Rook and Rose trilogy and the upcoming Sea Beyond duology. Find her online at linktr.ee/swan_tower.

📺 The Media Guide S8E1 - foofaraw

2026-07-07T04:40:24.000Z

Between the World Cup, ramping up for S8 and our expanding publishing schedule, and the day job, it's been hard to keep up with everything going on. So for this first edition of The Media Guide for season eight, we have a doozy of an issue to catch up on everything we've missed over the course of the last month plus twice as many favorites to check out above the paywall.

📺 The Bear Season 5 — Hulu

One of our most anticipated shows of the year even despite the last two seasons being below average. While the whole season has already dropped at this point, I've been savoring it with an episode a week and so far, appreciate the approach they've taken for their last season.

🎵 Probable Claws by Sincere Engineer

Oh boy, this is some killer indie rock! There's just so much to love here. Easily a contender for album of the year so far.

📚 Concrete: Stars Over Sand #1 — Dark Horse Comics

I don't really know anything about Concrete, but it's a long running series and that cover is absolutely gorgeous.

🎬 Disclosure Day

Spielberg returns to sci-fi and while I haven't seen it, there reviews seem fine to slightly dissapointing, which is a bit of a bummer.

📺 House of the Dragon Season 3 — HBO

Here there be dragons! And so far through a couple episodes, we've seen a ton of dragons.

📺 Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness Season 1 — HBO

I adore Curb and Larry David, but so far this show of skits about American history has been a lot more misses than hits, retreading a lot of themes from both Curb and Seinfeld a bit too closely.

📚 The Eye Collector #1 — Image Comics

The cover art for this is absolutely gorgeous and given we just published the gothic-weird lovecraftian A Face That Knows, this feels like a great companion to get you in the mood while you wait for your copy.

📚 M1: Monster Racing League #1 — Image Comics

Jae Lee on art for a book about a Monster Racing League. Need I say more?

Editorial Meeting for the Freedom 250 Patriot Cookbook - foofaraw

2026-07-03T16:00:42.000Z

Dept: Office of Patriotic Sustenance
Truthiness: 250%
Title: Chief Cooking Officer
Fineprint: Who needs to eat anyway?
Mode: menu

Okay team, it falls to us to assemble the greatest menu of American dishes ever comb-bound into a booklet to be sold in every National Park gift shop across these beautiful fifty states. Now, we’re not worrying about writing recipes⁠—we’ve got AI for that⁠—all we need to do is pick the list of dishes that have made America great.

We need to be sure these dishes do not… let me check my notes here, ah yes: “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures. Or include any other improper partisan ideology… Or contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”^[whitehouse.gov] Everybody got that? Okay, let’s see what you’ve come up with.

First up, the hamburger. We like the whole Roman Empire origin story of this one, it feels very “of the moment,” very manosphere approved; and we like the long history of competitive entrepreneurship that goes along with claiming to have invented the modern burger. But we can’t get over the name. Hamburg is German, America is American. Cut it.

Next, the hot dog. Also known as the frankfurter. Like Frankfurt. Are you seeing a problematic theme here? Very immigrant-y, very European. No, we can’t just call it a weiner, way too gay. Pass.

Now we have corn. Simple, delicious, highly processed into soluble sugars that make up most of what we find in the grocery store, native to North America… What’s the problem you ask? Well, does Hun Hunahpu ring a bell? Centeotl? No? Those are Mayan and Aztec corn gods. GODS, people. We can’t include Mexican deities in this cookbook⁠—not unless we’re also asking readers to take a bite of Jesus Christ, for chissakes. (We don’t have communion wafers on the list, do we? No? Good. Way too Catholic.)

And next, we have… Really? The corn dog? A communist meat phallus encased in Mesoamerican spiritualism, are you insane? Did you just black out for the last five minutes? No, no, no.

Next! Fondue? With the little pointy sticks and the candle? Too European, too metrosexual, if you catch my drift. And I’m really not loving the whole melting pot iconography.

A tossed salad? Now that is funny. Thanks for the chuckle. NEXT.

Hmmm, cole slaw. Now, I like the mythological origins of the first cabbages springing out of the ground from the drops of Zeus’s sweat, that’s metal. But the name comes from “koolsla,” which is Dutch. You know, the little kissing guys with the tulips and the wooden shoes? The one with his finger in a dyke? I think I’ve said enough here. Cut it.

Apple pie, ugh, this was a tough call, but you’re surely all aware apples originated in Kazakhstan? We don’t want Borat food in this volume, do we? Funny movie though. My wiiiiife? Classic.

Okay, vanilla ice cream. Well, easy to cut if we cut the pie. And did you know ice cream parlors were once implicated in the white slave trade? No kidding, it was all very Pizzagate. Q Anon before Q. Trust the plan, right y’all? But let’s skip the ice cream.

Southern fried chicken? You mean West African palm oil-fried chicken? You mean slavery chicken? No, I don’t think we’ll be including that. While you’re at it, let’s take out barbeque, gumbo, jambalaya, watermelon, shrimp and grits, gherkins, hominy, hushpuppies, black-eyed peas, red beans and rice⁠—actually, how about all rice⁠—oysters, greens⁠—yep, all greens⁠—peanuts, and okra.

Pizza. Not even going to dignify that one with commentary.

Homemade 4 Loko? Are you loco? Love the energy, literally, but no. ¡No!

I think this goes without saying, but we need the “french fry” rebrand. We don’t call them “freedom fries” with a little ironic smirk any more like we did after 9/11 when we were all pissed at France. We’re very serious about frying freedom these days.

Why focus on fries anyway, when we can include potato chips and the timeworn story of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and George Crum! The Commodore wanted his frites thinner and crispier, and the African American-Native American cook in the Crum’s kitchen retributively shaved them to papery nubbins and threw them into hot oil⁠—to the Commodore’s utter delight! We cannot tell you how much we love this story about a titan of American industry getting his way, pulling one over on a Black, Native woman whose name we’ve never learned. What’s that? The story is made-up?! All the better to include, in order to restore truth and sanity to our national table.

So… we’ve got chips. That’s good, actually. Streamlined. Finally, let’s consider the cover. What about an ourobos? You know⁠—the snake eating itself? It’s kind of perfect, actually. Chowing down on its own tale. But the name is so Greek, so dated. I’ve got it boys: still a circle, but let’s make it a donut with googly eyes instead. And red, white, and blue jimmies.

Hot damn, we’re done. Send it to the printer and let’s go celebrate with some sweet Kentucky bourbon! What, that’s corn-based too? And the aged oak barrels come from trees that originally evolved in central Europe? Yuck. Forget it, I’ll just be thirsty. Great work here. I guess. Woo USA.

Andrea Cavedo's writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Chestnut Review, HAD, and others; she won Foofaraw's inaugural Ordinary Contest, and has been a semifinalist for The Sewanee Review's Fiction, Poetry & Nonfiction Contest. For the last decade she has taught history and government to Chicago high school students. Find her online at www.andreacavedo.com.

MM Schreier - foofaraw

2026-07-02T17:49:20.000Z

Read What Do Moms Know About Fashion? now!

Who do you find yourself relating to more in this story, the mother or daughter?

As a very independent and strong-willed person, my younger self would have answered that question as definitely the daughter. I was always the one in my family that insisted on finding my own way and continually did things that made my parents shake their heads. Now that I’m older, I’m just grateful they taught me to think for myself and allowed me the space to make my own decisions even when they thought they were mistakes.

Do you have any children of your own?

While I have never had my own children, I have spent a number of years as a foster parent. Bringing small strangers into my home, usually during the most vulnerable moments of their lives, has been both one of the most challenging and rewarding things I’ve ever done.

I also tutor maths and science to at-risk youth. They teach me things, too.

Is there anything they do that feels completely alien to you?

I think it’s always the changing vernacular. How am I supposed to keep up? I will probably never understand the point of six-seven, even though it has been explained to me multiple times that it’s just nonsense. Why? Someone, please put me out of my misery!

How important is fashion to you?

I think “fashion” is less important to me than self-expression. I’m a pierced and tattooed person whose hair might be blonde one week and purple the next. Some days I feel like leggings and a hoodie, other days I go full 1950s pinup, victory rolls and all. I don’t care about labels or what’s “in” only what makes me feel confident in who I am.

Is there an era or style you wish would make a comeback?

Once in a while, I’ll admit I get a little nostalgic for the ‘80s era punk scene—spiky pink hair, cut off denim jackets, pleather skirts, and chunky Doc Martens. I can smell the Aqua Net from here! (But maybe I just really miss a time when the music rocked, and no one had camera phones.)

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

This story got two personal rejections before a friend mentioned, “You know, some of your weird stuff would be a great fit at foofaraw.” Now I have to tell them they were right!

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

There’s a fantastic piece of flash called “Body Count” by Maura Yzmore published at Literary Garage. I love her short work. It’s always sharp and dark and angry.

What book are you reading right now?

I just finished The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher. It’s a great dark academia fantasy, and I love seeing stories that unapologetically center queer characters without making the story about being queer. Five stars for intriguing world building; five stars for authentic representation.

Thanks to MM for talking fashion and getting nostalgic with us!

What Do Moms Know About Fashion? - foofaraw

2026-07-02T16:00:32.000Z

My mother clucked her tongue when I had my neck stretched on my twentieth birthday. If she could have forbidden it, she would have. Not under my roof. Well, good thing I have my own place and my own money.

When I came for Sunday dinner after having my skin sandpapered until it was soft and nearly translucent, she didn’t say a word. Her eyes traced the newly visible lines of the blue-black veins that webbed my collarbone and she choked down her protein substrate in silence. By the time the meal was over, there was a muscle twitching beneath her eye.

I tried not to be offended that she flinched when I leaned in to kiss her cheek goodbye. What do old women know of fashion?

The limb extensions—arms and legs—were expensive. I had to save all my hard-earned credits for ages before I could get it done. Mom came to visit me in recovery with a disapproving scowl on her face. I told her she didn’t have to come, but she muttered something under her breath that sounded like a mother’s duty.

My head felt swimmy; the drugs were the good kind that made everything soft around the edges. Before I drifted off to sleep, I wondered when Mom had gotten so small. I wasn’t even standing up on my new, willow legs and I still seemed so much taller than her. Had she always been so tiny? And her hair. Hair itself was so old-fashioned. Everyone I knew had theirs lasered off. Mom’s looked frizzy, floofy, puffy, like acorn-colored moss. Giggles erupted from my mouth like a flock of bubbles at the thought.

Mom shh’ed me as my eyes fluttered. I was too fuzzy to tell if she was embarrassed by the fuss. Probably. She coughed delicately into an embroidered handkerchief. Bless you, I said and closed my eyes.

The drug hangover lasted for days and left me grumpy. Once the doc said I was fine, though, Mom went home. She didn’t get to see me stand up, all tall and lithe at twelve-feet-five and do a few agile pirouettes around the room. I’d paid for grace upgrades to accompany the limb extensions.

Best that she’d gone home, after all. She was dumpy and bumbling. No need to rub it in her face.

When I started talking about eye implants—replacing almond-shaped white and brown with marble-round all violet—Mom begged me not to get them. There are all sorts of fancy contact lenses you could wear. Why do something permanent? Again. She didn’t actually say ‘again’, but I heard it in her voice. She’s fluent in judgmental subtext. I just laughed. Contacts are for posers.

After I had them done, she stopped meeting my eyes.

Webbed fingers came next. For once, she didn’t comment; she just pointedly ignored them. They were super cute and useful, but whenever I tried showing them off, she changed the subject. She did buy me a pair of extra-room-between-the-fingers gloves for the Secular Longnight Season gift-giving holiday. For a minute, I thought she was making an effort. It made me want to hug her around the middle like I used to as a child. Until I tried the gloves on and she muttered, “Lovely, your hands look almost normal.”

Why didn’t she realize that her antiquated, unmodified body was the weird thing?

A few weeks later, I met an agent at a dance club. Have you ever done any modeling? I tittered and shook my head. Would you like to? He handed me a card and made me promise to call. Before he left, he grazed his knuckles across my face. I know a guy who can do something about those angular cheekbones.

The face flattening cost me nothing but a before-and-after photo shoot for the surgeon. No joke—if you go downtown, you’ll see me, fifty feet high on one of those holo billboards. The day the campaign launched, Mom sent me a text. “asdfghjkl 🤐🙀🧟”

I hurried over, certain she was having a stroke.

Mom? The house was quiet. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, swiping through 2D photos on her old-school tablet. Images of a round-faced little girl with wild curls filled the screen. She laughed, mouth stretched in a wide, toothy smile.

Mom rarely smiled like that anymore, but I still recognized those crooked front teeth she’d never bothered to get fixed. Funny, in a world where anyone can buy a designer face, she still looked exactly the same.

“Feeling nostalgic?” I asked.

She didn’t look up, just touched the picture of her younger self on the cheek with trembling fingers. You were such an adorable little girl.

Me? No, it wasn’t me. That was clearly a picture of Mom. I leaned closer. Squinted my bespoke, ten-thousand-credit eyes. It couldn’t be. But I remembered those clunky, uncool sneakers and the baggy sweater.

“Holy shit.”

I expected her to chastise me for swearing. Instead, she turned and took in my latest upgrade, tears in her boring brown eyes. For the first time, I realized it wasn’t the mods Mom hated. Not really. It was that I’d erased every trace of her in me.

MM Schreier is a classically trained vocalist who took up writing as therapy for a mid-life crisis. She has authored two short story collections—Monstrosity, Humanity and Bruised, Resilient—and is published in a wide range of speculative and literary venues. A firm believer that people can be both left- and right-minded, in addition to creative pursuits she’s on Leadership for a robotics company and tutors maths and science to at-risk youth. Follow on the web at: www.mmschreier.com

Humdrum Places - BlogFlock

The Tongues of Ghosts - foofaraw

Font Club Belgica /// Future Fonts - The Independent Variable

The Library of Lives - foofaraw

📺 The Media Guide S8E3 - foofaraw

📺 King of the Hill Season 15 — Hulu

📚 Sicko #1 — Ignition Press

🎵 Beautiful Mess by Gin Wigmore

🎬 The Dink

The Purple Essay - foofaraw

On to the Necronomicon!

On to the Great American Novel!

Short reviews of Great American Novel candidates I qualified in the preceding paragraph:

On to omnibuses!

Partial reviews of four omnibuses

On to the end!

David Stevens - foofaraw

So… read any good pamphlets lately?

Are you the type of person who enjoys a good pamphlet from the hotel, doctors office, or wherever else?

Do you have a mindfulness practice?

What brings you peace?

There’s a certain Lynchian/Night Vale thing going on with this story and I’m curious if you are familiar with either of those or if there were other inspirations for this?

Where do we think the reader of the pamphlet goes from here?

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

What book are you reading right now?

Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

We are eternally grateful for all of David's pamphlet knowledge here at Foofaraw!

Developing your mindfulness practice 😊! - foofaraw

Aphera /// A Mac photo editor - The Independent Variable

The Struthless Shop - The Independent Variable

Landline - foofaraw

LARP /// Revenue infrastructure for serious founders - The Independent Variable

The Media Guide S8E2 - foofaraw

🎬 The Odyssey

📚 Super Mondo Mega Mutts #1 — Oni Press

📺 Lucky Season 1 — Apple TV

📺 The Hawk Season 1 — Netflix

The Unified Theory of Salsa - foofaraw

🎉 Weekend Edition Vol.097 - foofaraw

The Week That Was

The Back Page

Ostraka - foofaraw

Warning Label - foofaraw

📺 The Media Guide S8E1 - foofaraw

📺 The Bear Season 5 — Hulu

🎵 Probable Claws by Sincere Engineer

📚 Concrete: Stars Over Sand #1 — Dark Horse Comics

🎬 Disclosure Day

📺 House of the Dragon Season 3 — HBO

📺 Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness Season 1 — HBO

📚 The Eye Collector #1 — Image Comics

📚 M1: Monster Racing League #1 — Image Comics

Editorial Meeting for the Freedom 250 Patriot Cookbook - foofaraw

MM Schreier - foofaraw

Who do you find yourself relating to more in this story, the mother or daughter?

Do you have any children of your own?

Is there anything they do that feels completely alien to you?

How important is fashion to you?

Is there an era or style you wish would make a comeback?

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

What book are you reading right now?

Thanks to MM for talking fashion and getting nostalgic with us!

What Do Moms Know About Fashion? - foofaraw