Because this fiction business got me kind of curious

After yesterday’s navel-gazing bonanza of “Wow, Ma! Lookit all the posts I wrote in the past three years!” I got to thinking about the short fiction pieces.  Specifically, I realized that while there was a pretty steady sprinkling of that kind of stuff when I first got started and followed into 2011, there otherwise hasn’t been any in the not-quite-two-years following.

Zero.

Zilch.

Nada.

Bupkis.

By itself, that fact didn’t strike me as being wrong or anything, it’s just kind of how things are. Like guacamole: some people don’t like it, some people apparently don’t mind eating green, nearly-phosphorescent nuclear goo-snot-paste.  And that’s fine, no matter which side of that particular fence you fall.  Life isn’t always multiple choice.  There doesn’t always have to be a right answer (well, except that in this case there is.  Guacamole is gross and wrong.  Not as wrong as sour cream, but still wrong).

The no-more-fiction realization, though, kind of itched at me a bit in a spot I couldn’t quite reach.  Somewhere in the middle of my brain stuffs, deep down, probably in that squishy spot between where I keep my bar-stool trivia answers and that sepia-toned, hazy memory of asking a girl named “Brandi” to be my girlfriend in the 6th grade.

Come to think of it, I still couldn’t tell you what, exactly, the benefits of that arrangement might have entailed.  Someone to eat lunch with, maybe?  Someone to swing with at recess, perhaps?  It’s not like I was regularly sweeping the ladies around town or anything.  Besides, my bankroll at the time was effectively non-existent.

Then again, compared with the Puddinette’s current arrangement, I’m not sure fortunes have improved in the realm of my, um, romantic interests.  I seem to cause my wife more irritation than comfort most days, I snore enough to rattle the Fort Knox’s window, as I’ve said, and I don’t know that my bankroll has gotten really any fatter, proportionally.  A guy whose major claim in adulthood is that he can handle himself with a plunger seems poor compensation to me, but, hey, if she’s content to think we made a even deal of it when we got hitched, more power to her.  I mean, clearly I came up in the “Win” column there, but I’m not about to explain that she got swindled.

So, um, anyway…back to the fiction.

While I’m sure there are people who have no use for the occasional short piece of fiction here, I wondered if maybe there weren’t others of you who would appreciate a shot of it here and there.

This, then, is the part where, 400 words later, I finally get the point: what do you think?  Would you like to read more shorts like the ones I linked in yesterday’s post?  Or are you happy with my typical brand of post, where I ramble in the cosmic vicinity of a topic?

Sound off.  I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

In the meantime, I’m going to go plunge something.

Because, yes, somehow there’s always something that needs plunging.

Pud’n