Digital Publishing and Traditional Media

Ever since my last article about ghosts that raised eyebrows across the country, MCM has sent me daily emails asking me for a real article about digital publishing. He won’t lay off. I’m going to start calling him Scuff, because I’m a hard case and he’s all over me.

So I think to myself, Scuff sure wants this article for his site. And I’m a nice guy, so I’ll turn it in. But I’m going to make him wait, let him sweat a little, because I’m also a hard case. Gonna let that deadline sail past like a galley in a hurricane. But while I’m waiting for midnight to roll around, so many emails from Scuff are coming in that I start to get hungry from the exertion of reading them.

I go into the kitchen and make myself a six or seven Michelin star snack, starting with a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips and ending with the finishing flourish of a bowl. Ah, the clatter of haute cuisine!

Before I go back upstairs, I decide to garnish my magnificent dinner with an old carton of chip dip that I’d forgotten about. It was called “Devil’s Foot.” I opened that sucker up to get my dip on, but when I broke the seal a devil’s foot came out and kicked me square in the jaw, followed closely by the rest of the devil.

“Your kitchen is disgusting,” the devil said. “I mean, there are chips all over the floor and everything.”

That’s when I got mad. I’m fine with Scuffs sending me a dozen emails a minute asking me where that article is, I’m fine with a devil hangin’ out in my kitchen, but it will be a cold day in hell when my culinary pride is bruised.

“Those are not chips, that is the delicious dinner that I prepared for myself that you just ruined!” I yelled at the devil.

“Seems like you prepared your dinner by ripping open a bag and dumping them into a bowl,” he said.

This, of course, was a slap in my face.

“How dare you speak to me like that!” I yelled, not sure whether or not that turn of phrase needed a question mark.

“I’ll speak to you any way I want. I’m a devil. Now make me some food, I’m hungry from my interdimensional travel,” the devil said, sitting down in my kitchen chair and putting his feet up on my table.

“I’ll do no such thing!” I said.

“If you don’t, I’ll do something terrible to you,” the devil replied.

“Like what?”

“I’ll turn you into a groady toad,” the devil said, his eyes narrowing, “and set a flock of ravens upon you. I’ll hang you by your ears over a chasm filled with spikes, lava and scorpions floating in tiny lava-proof rafts. Do you have matches?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Then I’ll set you on fire, too,” the devil said, flicking out his sandpaper like tongue as he made an evil face at me.

“Oh no, I better make you dinner,” I replied. “Those all sound ghastly.”

The devil smiled and leaned back in his chair. Thirty minutes later, I had a dish prepared for him.

“It appears that you’ve emptied a bag of chips into a bowl filled with very alcoholic liquor,” he said.

“No, it’s haute cuisine. When was the last time that you were on Earth?” I asked.

“True, I didn’t think that fish eggs would take off, either,” the devil replied, throwing the entire bowl into his mouth and chewing it.

A moment later, he burst into flames.

“How?!” the devil said as he melted.

I brandished a box of waterproof matches at him. “I taped one to each chip that I put into the bowl! I saw your tongue rasping around in that horrible face of yours and knew that it would work to strike the matches, and that liquor that I gave you is so concentrated that it would ignite if left out in the Sun on a hot day.”

“Curses!” yelled the devil.

Of course, a flaming devil in your kitchen is virtually guaranteed to burn the house down, as I’ve recently discovered. Among the casualties of my moral victory was the article about digital publishing. Sorry, Scuff!

About Greg X. Graves

Greg X Graves is a young, angry man who is full of ideas. He’s a rebel, baby. You can’t take him home to Mom and Dad, because he’ll probably start railing against the Man and his stupid Establishment, and your parents will say “Whoa, Daughter, no way are you dating this hooligan,” and it’ll just be a whole big scene, and Greg’ll be like “Whatever, toots,” and ride away on his bitchin’ hog and then everyone will be sorry.

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