On "Eugenia Will Come Back To You Someday" by Kaj Tanaka (2424 words) ****

I'm reminded of a Japanese film called *Afterlife* in which people are sent, after death, to a place to live out their most cherished memory in eternity. It's a very strange film, but it raises a lot of interesting questions about life in general. Tanaka's piece is also about such a place. The afterlife is this strange limbo in which everything we do is meaningless (much as, when you get down to how much remains of any one thing we do here on earth, real life is). Here, a couple of people start a program to help people integrate into their afterlives. This couple is in love, but as the narrator comes to recognize, the afterlife is just one big long wish for what we longed for in real life. Read the story here at Knee-Jerk.

On "5 Tiny Things" by Brandi Wells (539 words) ****

Is Brandi Wells real? I see her name splattered across the Internet, assigned to certain stories and even at one time a journal. Well, now, via Knee-Jerk, I have confirmation, the craziness belongs to a person who has an actual photographic identity (unless it's a fake one). Here, Wells brings her latest wacky ideas to form in five very short pieces, wherein bears make flashlights and dinosaurs wear dog suits. I put her in the class with writers like Amelia Gray and, to a lesser extent, Tao Lin, writers who you never know quite what you're going to get, but you know it's going to be interesting, linguistically, mentally, if not narratively. Read the weird here at Knee-Jerk Magazine.

On "Dracula in Six Movements" by Megan Giddings (1023 words) ****

Here's a clever take on an old tale. I haven't read many works about vampires, but those I have read have obviously paid much homage to certain gothic elements. Giddings work doesn't have that feel, however. Dracula here is caught up in the pop cultural milieu, in fact his own image within the milieu: he looks at himself in the mirror, he thinks of movies he's figured in, he worries over the letters he sends. His life--and his dreams--aren't all that different from ours. He wants to impress the woman he's in love with. Read the story here at Knee-Jerk.

On "Correction" by Heather A. Slomski (1746 words) ****

There's a simplicity to the writing in this story and a kind of predictability. I really enjoy how Slomski simply places one word in front of another and makes it look so simple. We have an art show, a couple having problems, and set of paintings they both admire that feature drawings that include WhiteOut. Much of the story consists of a description of these drawings, but in them we get the heart of what's happening in the relationship itself. Read the story here at Knee-Jerk.

On "The Second Summer of the Recession" by Melanie Datz (2554 words) ****

I've been one of the blessed ones so far; some of my friends have not. I work for a living still--no food cards, no paltry unemployment check. Datz's story is about one of the not-so-lucky, about a set of them. I've been the unemployed before, though never for as long as noted here, and the experience is not just stressful but in some ways surreal, for it is when one is poor that the expenses often go up rather than down. You're counting every penny, and not sure if more will arrive. Datz gets the feeling down perfectly. And in the midst of it, she provides a bit of grace. Read the story here at Knee-Jerk.

On "The Meaning of The Hat" by Anne Leigh Parrish (993 words) ***

One comment on a story covered on this blog quite some time ago agonized over the fact that I hadn't revealed the "meaning" of the story (I assume this was a student wanting clarity for some class paper or project). The problem for me would have been that establishing a "meaning" for the story wasn't my aim, nor was it something I felt like I could establish, outside of historical or literary context, nor was it something I really wanted to do. A great story--or work of art--often doesn't have an easily defined meaning; it's mysterious and so is the power that it holds over us. I could, perhaps, provide a list of themes or motifs that work through the piece, but a single "moral"--no.

Parrish's little piece is about that same sort of function in art criticism. Having been trained in how to read a book through college literature courses, the ability to do so now seems much easier and natural than it was when I was younger. And yet, I never got so far with art criticism that I have background enough to be able to say X is so-and-so's postmodernist response to W's modernist concepts of space, etc. I look at a piece of art and think, that's an interesting picture. Maybe, if it moves me, I might try to investigate the picture more deeply. And that's essentially what happens in Parrish's story. A woman brings home a set of paintings and wonders about what they are about. Seems simple, but what Parrish seems to suggest is the the painting is really about the viewer. Our interpretation is necessarily colored by who we ourselves are. A hat is not just a hat. It's what we long for, whatever that uniquely is. Read the story here at Knee-jerk.

On "List for My Ex-Husband" by Andrea Kneeland (722 words) ****

This strange, affecting piece comes in the form of a list. It would be easy to think that the popularity of lists as a formats for pieces of writing before the Net was minimal, but when I think about that, it's probably not true. Popular magazines, with the short, snappy articles, often include(d) lists, and lists were also a popular thing to route via e-mail near the start of online culture. What is different about Kneeland's list is that it is personal, and by the accumulation of details, it builds toward a portrait of a woman on the edge. Something tells me she's not quite been the same since her husband left her. Read the story here at Knee-Jerk.

On "There Are No Right or Wrong Answers" by Christine Fadden (1602 words) *****

Fadden's story about questions and answers starts out like an essay. In fact, it could be an essay--or a letter--to you. It's one of those pieces addressed to the reader, or rather to a reader. We're just the person perching over the true audience's shoulder; we're just the voyeur (unless our name happens to be Matt, and we're in college and live with our mom, and we like older women). Fadden's piece is a flight of fantasy, started with those Internet quizzes that are supposed to tell us things we don't know about ourselves and our futures and following through. Just how accurate is the quiz? Does it matter? There are no right or wrong answers. Read the story here at Knee-jerk.