From the category archives:

Contributed

Finding Out About My Grandmother’s Death While in Basic Training

March 11, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY P.R. GRIFFIS (Austin, TX)
At ease, Private.

(assuming parade rest) Yes, Drill Sergeant.

Private, I’m afraid I’ve got some very sad news for you.

Drill Sergeant, you aren’t sending me home because I’m patently unfit for military service, and it’s stunningly obvious to everyone here that I’ve made a life-destroying mistake, Drill Sergeant?

(Blinking, [...]

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A Review of Every Pizzeria in New Jersey Actually Worth a Damn

March 4, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY EIRIK GUMENY (New Jersey)
At first glance, the pizzeria isn’t anything special. At second glance, it’s still not. It’s a tiny little space in the middle of a strip mall, next to that Korean nail place your sister goes to.
The neon in the window advertises PIZ A, HEROS, and CALZONES. [...]

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Omnivore

February 25, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY  YT SUMNER (Melbourne, Australia)
The only thing I don’t like about the Aquarium is the smell.
It stinks.
Not so bad as working in a butchers, which I did once for work experience. I lasted the whole week but I never ate red meat again.
People get pissed off when I eat fish and say, “You’re not [...]

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Submission Guidelines (Revised)

February 18, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY
DANIEL McDERMOTT (Boston, MA)
Attention Writers:
Read all
submission guidelines before submitting your work.  You’ll know you’ve accomplished this when you reach the bottom of the page and there are no more words to read.  If you reach what you think is the bottom of the page and feel stuck in mid-sentence, scroll down and more words [...]

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Insect Parade

February 11, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY SONA AVAKIAN (San Francisco, CA)
Herb barely looked at me when we ran into him today at the grocery store. He’s uncomfortable my wife Marie keeps telling me. Oh, he’s uncomfortable. I was lurching from the celery and carrots to the mixed nuts bin. He’s symmetrical. But he’s uncomfortable. Plus Marie has to drive [...]

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An Open Letter from the Family Dog Upon the Occasion of the Birth of Our Daughters

February 4, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY JAMIE POISSANT (Cleveland, OH)
People—
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Scooter, and I used to matter. In fact, I used to be kind of a big thing around here. Nights, I’d curl up in Mother’s lap, maybe get a scratch behind the ears. When I was a good boy, I was [...]

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Block-Fest: When Family Facebooks

January 28, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY CYNTHIA HAWKINS (San Antonio, TX)
First of all, let me just say it had been nice to be your friend before the unfriending-slash-blocking.
Before, I never knew that you were interested in networking or that you watched Biggest Loser or that you were “all that and a bag of chips” or that you were [...]

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Things I Probably Wouldn’t Have Time For If… Breathing Stopped Being Involuntary

January 21, 2010

This is our first in a series of “Things I Probably Wouldn’t Have Time For If… ”
CONTRIBUTED BY JUSTIN McBRIDE (San Francisco, CA)
Things I Probably Wouldn’t Have Time For If…
Breathing Stopped Being Involuntary
Signing up for online payments
Dealing with these kidney stones
Donating money to the worldwide family of Jesus, my Mexican pen pal, whose family [...]

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The MF Interviews Claude Oscar Monet

January 14, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY LAURA ROBB (Hartsdale, NY)
The Murky Fringe: You were a painter, but you developed cataracts. Isn’t that poetic irony?
Claude Monet: I’m not sure. Is there even such a thing as poetic irony?
MF: Touche. Let’s talk names. Your other given name is Oscar. It would be cliche to ask if you’re an asshole just based [...]

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Teenage Mexican Girl With Nail Gun

January 7, 2010

CONTRIBUTED BY MATT RIORDAN (New York)
Jack was in the middle of what would later become known as his Mexico period.  He was smoking bales of the local skunk and reading all this crap about land reform and native spiritualism and lots of Chomsky.  Grocery lists by Chomsky.  He went down there after he got kicked [...]

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Barbara at 12

December 31, 2009

CONTRIBUTED BY PETER ORNER (San Francisco, CA)
Detroit, 1946
It’s said Grandpa Leo got deranged a few years after FDR died. They had to put him in the Home for the Jewish Aged on Petoskey Avenue.  He despised the place with a wrath he’d never shown towards anything else in his life. Once or twice a week [...]

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Pat on the Butt

December 10, 2009

CONTRIBUTED BY DAVID DRISCOLL (Chicago, IL)
Hector Burrito lost his temper and had an embolism so severe it busted through the doughy flesh of his La Preferida epidermis, spilling the beans.  Everybody knew he was populated with microbials—La Enchilada Loco was always getting shut down for health code violations—but no one could have predicted that a [...]

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My Year as a Freelance Bicyclist

December 3, 2009

CONTRIBUTED BY JUSTIN McBRIDE (San Francisco, CA)
“A Guide to Surviving Old Dirty Sal”
The following is intended as a guide to surviving old dirty sal. It is not exhaustive, but the advice that it provides is likely applicable to a broad range of scenarios. The bullet points signify a break in the story where we here [...]

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Me and Hugo Chavez Contest Results

November 26, 2009

WINNER
PR GRIFFIS (Austin, TX)
It started when President-Probably-For-Life Chavez stole my cab in New York City the day before Thanksgiving. I mean, we made eye contact. He knew what he was doing. You can’t just nationalize a cab, I remember thinking.
And maybe the God that likes democracy was smiling just a little on me that day, [...]

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Me and Hugo Chavez Contest Finalists

November 23, 2009

P.R. Griffis (Austin, TX)
Justin McBride (San Francisco, CA)
Mike Blank (Twin Cities, MN)
Thank you to everyone who submitted. The winner will be announced Thursday, November 26th. The hoody mailed shortly thereafter.
TAKE THAT “Me and Raul Castro Contest!”

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