Mark A. Rayner's Blog: Mark A. Rayner's Goodreads Blog, page 14

What Groundhog Day Means on Alternative Earths

Our Universe: groundhog sees its shadow = 6 more weeks of winter. Foofy Bum Universe: annual celebration of Lord Fuzzy’s victory over the Lizard Horde. Zentropia Universe: day of the year when all rodents are allowed to drive. It’s-in-the-hole! Universe: Bill Murray [praise be his name] emerges from his four-fold slumber and chooses what remakes will […]

New Fiction: Wormageddon

My latest short story just appeared in The Saturday Evening Post: Less schmaltz-y, WAY more worm-y. You can find Wormageddon here.

He’s My Man: Leonard Cohen

I’m sure most people are still trying to understand Trump’s win, but seriously, they’re missing the meaning of Cohen’s loss. He made the personal epic, but in the right way. Leonard Cohen will be lauded as a songwriter, and a poet, but for me, he was always a consummate storyteller. The kind of storyteller I […]

Excruciating Album Cover Art — Mr. Bat Sings

“Can’t sleep, clown will eat me.” –Bart Simpson I always used to think one of the silliest phobias was coulrophobia — the fear of clowns — until I saw this album cover. This thing is terrifying. I mean, it just reeks of menace! Mr. Bat is wearing some kind of traditional Pagliacci-type of outfit, and […]

The 2nd Monday of October

Meanwhile in Canada … Every year on the second Monday of October, Canadians celebrate the end of the Moose Ascendency. During this dark period of Canadian history, the moose reigned supreme, forcing our provocatively dressed women to worship them, and slaughtering any man who got in their way. Eventually, Canadians discovered the mystical powers of […]

New fiction: The Real Primo

Corvus Review just published a new short story that I’ve been noodling with for some time: The Real Primo. (pp. 59-67) If you’ve ever watched (and enjoyed) Groundhog Day, or read Friedrich Nietzsche’s difficulty concept of the Eternal Return, or have a passing familiarity with the “Eastern” concept of reincarnation, then this story will appeal […]

Alexandra Leaving – a short history

This song is based on a poem by the Greek poet, Constantine P. Cavafy. He based it on a story from Plutarch about Mark Anthony, as he watched his allies and supporters leave Alexandra before his enemy Octavian attacked the city. The original poem is called “The god forsakes Antony,” and is a meditation on the […]

Crazy like a fox

Reagan did a lot of this during the Reykjavík Summit with Gorbachev, but it was part of his strategy. He was TRYING to make Gorby and the Russians think he was a maniac. Hell, maybe he would launch the nukes — he was that crazy. Though this did cause a breakdown of the talks at […]

The side benefits of coulrophobia

Alltop is afraid of skin tanner. Chart by Indexed.

Furious George

Angry monkey with a chaingun. I’ve been there. Alltop would never give a weapon to a lower primate. From Otipess.