This is an election year. It is also a leap year. Tomorrow, the annual American football championship game will be played, and the teams competing in this year's Super Bowl are the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. Four years ago it was also a leap year, and an election year, and the Giants faced the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Something I noticed the other day while doing laundry:
Most pairs of striped boxer shorts have the stripes running vertically, while striped panties usually have them horizontally. Why do you suppose that is?

The http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog page changed.

I've been trying to write the next episode of my serial, "Stephanie's Deal," and I'm having trouble making it interesting. My attempts so far have just felt like filler, merely describing Stephanie's day to day life. She's starting a new school, so for her there's a lot of nervous tension and wonder at meeting new people and learning new things, but I can't seem to get that emotion across to a grownup reader that knows those things aren't that serious.

It seems I'm not going to finish in time for Short Story Month. I have only about 80% of a story done, and still no idea for an ending.

Oh well.

I think I'll steer clear of story challenges for a while and concentrate on Stephanie. (Episode 24 is about halfway completed at the moment, and both of my readers deserve a better update schedule.)

As promised, since it won a prize in the contest, I added an epilogue to Santa Monica.

Scroll down to the Kilroy-looking separator, where it says:

~o~O~o~
Epilogue:

Any planned challenges/contests coming down the pipe?

Can we expect the usual holiday themes?

There's an article posted today at the io9 blog that might interest those of you playing around with superhero genders:
The 10 strangest sex-swapped versions of superheroes.

What time of day does the "daily hits" counter reset to zero?

A grifter with an unusual technique has to take things further when he finds himself in a tough spot. (This was supposed to be my entry in the “March of Fools” contest, but I missed the deadline by a few months, so I reworked it to fit the new theme and then finished it.)

Because of my own stupidity and laziness, I'm chilling at home today instead of going to work.

I heard this song on the radio, and it reminded me that I hadn't written anything for Song Month yet. So here is my silly song parody, with apologies to Paul Simon (who can’t count; he only came up with 5.)

Have enough people complained yet about the author checkboxes on the submission page that it can get put back to the scrolling list thing (like this friendly "submit forum topic" page has)?

Or is there a theme or a configuration option I can pick to make it work the old way?

How do you get your muse to stop prodding you about a story idea that shouldn't be told? Every so often my writing goes to a dark place, but I've got a story concept stuck in my head that's unwriteable, and I can't figure out how to make my subconscious shut up about it.

Warning! What folllows is a description of an offensive story.

Sibling rivalry is a powerful thing. Sixteen years of his twin sister receiving obviously superior presents sends a boy into an unusual battle of wills with his father. How far is he willing to go to prove a point? (This one runs a little longer than the challenge guidelines wanted.)

Tampax has a fictional blog / video series about a 16-year-old boy who suddenly has "girl parts down there."

Find it here.

When a plane crashes on an uninhabited Caribbean island, a young man does what he can to help the other survivors. This one goes into some pretty dark places and gets a bit graphic, so be warned.