Yes, it's a cop-out. Give me a break.

Sadly, I've kind of run out of things that I really find hugely interesting to post about this week. There's a couple of posts that are kind of brewing in the background, but will take a little time (read: will require me to get round to it) before I get there. Luckily, I haven't quite been reduced to Wikipedia's ever-dependable On This Day feature (although I feel that I must wish The Undertaker a happy birthday), though, as I did come across a pretty cool site via the Boing and the Blue: namely, Ficlets.

Ficlets is a collection of short stories written by contributors to the site. And when I say "short stories", I mean seriously short - these things are a maximum of 1024 characters long. Obviously, that doesn't give you much space in which to produce a complete story, although some people manage it; I don't think I could add anything to that one that would make it any better. The twist is that although each story is so short, anyone can add to them, either as a prequel or a sequel, meaning that you can easily end up with an enormous, branching story thread.

Well, theoretically, anyway, as the site's still pretty new. At the time of writing, there's a total of 1313 stories on there (I have no idea in how many threads), but more are being created every day. Moreover, they're all available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, meaning that so long as you credit the author and impose the same restriction on anyone who receives the work, you can do what you like with them. So, theoretically at least, you could use a random number generator to select a random story, then do that a couple of times more and put the three together as prequel, story and sequel in a kind of Dadaist short story.

Like so.

(Highlight the blank line between the paragraphs to see the author credit for that paragraph)

It’s 7AM and the sun it just starting to peek through the horizon.
“This is going to be a great day,” I think to myself.
Looking down at my coffee mug, I realize my coffee isn’t black—it’s clear.
I look over at the coffee machine and am shocked with fright when I realize I had poured gasoline in my cup.
"Suspense" by RyanMorrisB
"It’s mine! The doll was mine to begin with. " Morgan screached, clutching an old doll tightly to her. Jessie picked up her skirts and sprinted after her little sister.
A sea crusted old man sat at the bar and vaguely wondered why the bar wench was argueing over an old tattered doll with a child instead of serving him more mead. It was a nasty looking old thing with one eye hanging by a thread and more patches than he could count.
Jessie managed to wrestle the doll from Morgan. She wrapped her hand around the neck of the doll and pulled. Out from the abused doll’s stomach came a dagger. Jessie got a better grip of the handle through the doll’s head.
"The doll was mine before it was yours, and the dagger will always be mine.”
"The Wench's Prize" by Rieb7
Part of the problem lies with availability. I mean, how many virgin women are there these days?
I could go for the younger ones of course, the teenagers, perhaps even pre-teens and babes. But, darn it, they’re only a nibble. I don’t need a snack, I need a full blown meal and, Hell, there ain’t a lot of them walking around.
I’ve tried everywhere.
African’s are too chewy and stringy; folk in the Middle East blow up when I eat them. Europeans aren’t much better, being all oily and greasy. Eating a good French woman is akin to drinking garlic flavored olive oil and so very few are virgins. Doesn’t settle too well on the stomach, these non-virgins.
I tried sticking with vegetarians for a while, but all those beans gave me chronic gas. Had to evacuate the cave for a couple months to let it air out.
I guess I’m going to have to give up the diet for now. Ah, sorry about that, that’s just my stomach rumbling.
Now, tell me about yourself. How did you find this cave?
Are you a virgin by any chance?
"Trouble With Diets" by SJHundak