Today, I was out substitute teaching a 7th grade science class in Dewitt, and I had very little to do for long stretches of time as the kids were lesson-planned to fill out worksheets (God bless glorified babysitting) and I actually started and finished a new short story, "Johnny and His Robot," an ultra-short story that at least attempts a giddily dark take on those ridiculous Isaac Asimov robot stories (which were referenced--inaccurately, by some one who had clearly never actually read any of them, ignorantly assumed that the "I, Robot" movie was an accurate representation of the original and wanted to sound marginally well-read by referencing it to the short story collection instead of the movie--in an article in this morning's New York Times.) Anyway, "Johnny and His Robot" is the sort of thing that probably comes off as either satisfyingly evil and horribly fun or really dumb and pointless--the disadvantage of this sort of thing is that it's hard to score mid-range like you can with something more seriously intended. In any case, even if it doesn't quite detonate with any one else, it gave me tremendous satisfaction to bang it out.

Meanwhile, this is the funniest damn thing I've seen in a while, and can probably even provide a few giggles to non-Lovecraft-fans.