Short stories – Brave Ulysses

So, lucky or not, here we go again. Another collection of improbable stories. But, actually, did you expect better? Really? Am guessing the Trumpidemic and its attendant seclusion has gone viral.
The latest eruption from my fevered head revolves around midriffs, stretch pants, rigging, rope, quipus, and what knot. This time with more than 256 footnotes to amuse and confuse (257, actually.) There’s an excerpt below the pic.

Waist Not, Want Knot (the title story of this collection)

—Let’s get the nitty gritty out of the way at the outset. This story is not about waists or knots. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a heathen and a cheat.

If you bought this book under the impression that it would contain pop-diet information, something about how to lose ten pounds in ten days, or help in acquiring the Boy Scout Pioneering Merit Badge, perhaps a diagrammatic exposition of the Bowline or the Trucker’s Knot, you are going to be severely disappointed. Though, truth be told, if you haven’t mastered the Trucker’s Knot by now you are a sad, sad case and have likely lost numerous valuable items from your roof rack or pickup bed.

If you have not yet lost numerous valuable items from your roof rack or pickup bed, trust me, it is only a matter of time.

More than a few of you likely saw the word “waist” in the title and immediately pictured an attractive young woman being sawn in half by a stage magician. We might as well nip that one in bud as well. No magic here.¹

On the other hand, if you stumbled in here with an open mind and low expectations you might be pleasantly surprised.

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1But have you ever considered how many assistants those guys go through before they finally “get it right?”

Front cover of Bothwell's latest short story collection. — **Bothwell’s 12th book**

Cecil is at it again with another collection of short stories. This time with more than 100 footnotes to titillate and delight! The perfect gift for readers in a hurry with one story contained within a brief paragraph!
Within these pages you’ll meet an electrician/goatherd with a “steer”ing problem, an inflated whistle blower, the woman left behind in The Last Train to Clarksville, a ball player with a big head, an art thief, Johnny Appleseed’s spiritual heir, the patron of an unusual library, unsuspecting sisters of different mothers, and more.

Here’s one story in its entirety! When’s the last time that happened?

It goes without saying

We all knew it would happen, or at least suspected as much. Given the circumstances, the proximity, the who, and the who knew who. The how. Particularly after what transpired the day before. No, make that two days before. That would have been the twenty-fifth.

I mean, if you couldn’t see that coming … no, I don’t mean you, personally, but “one,” though that one could be you. If the shoe fits, dear heart. But if one couldn’t see that coming, one had to be intentionally looking the other way.

Sometimes of course it is easier to look away than to face facts, particularly uncomfortable facts. Or incontrovertible and boldly graphic facts. Think bar graph where the bar over here on the right is a whole lot shorter, indicating real change. Facts that make one (you?) choose sides, when neutrality seems far safer.

There are a whole lot of fence sitters on this planet, with one leg in each pasture, so to speak, unwilling to take a stand what with their feet a foot off the ground, or each foot a foot, meaning that in one context they are arguably two feet up. Lucky indeed to be seated on the flat edge of a split rail, rather than, say for example, on a run of barbed wire. Ouch! Ready to go one way or the other as needed to maintain plausible deniability.

“No officer, I was over on this side the whole time.”

Not that there are officers involved.

Yet.

So as the whole thing unfolded like a paper crane uncreased to its pre-origamic pristine squareness, as the true nature of the substance of the situation was rendered plain as the Wonder Bread® Mom used for your PB&Js, right there, nakedly exposed, for you to examine, corner to corner, obverse and reverse, proximal and distal, I heard someone say “See?”

It was not at all clear to the rest of us whether your nod indicated mild agreement or slight puzzlement.

I think it would be accurate to say that anyone who has followed the whole sorry affair to this point shares my concern. This is not a happy situation.

But we’ve gotten to the bottom of it now. Am I right?

Order yours here!