Ray vs. Wal Mart Stores

By C.E. Alexander

Twenty million customers will visit a Walmart today, and one million Walmart employees will show up for work. Statistically speaking, these 21 million people own about 21 million guns. Enough of them brandish their weapons—and the results are so combustive—that the world’s largest retailer has been forced to write a de-escalation clause into their national theft prevention policy:

The zidi retweet #2

It’s not like the bad news slowed to a crawl after last month’s retweet. Perhaps this should become a monthly feature: a brief respite from war, war drums, Ebola outbreak and new Apple products. Here were some of our favorite articles we filed under Other News:

1. The interactive, one-billion-pixel view of Mars, as taken by the Curiosity rover.

2. We have mixed feelings about the “Go to Give it Up” lawsuit. We love Pharrell Williams, love Marvin Gaye, do not love Robin Thicke, but–above all else–music plagiarism is a blurred line.

3. Does Saturn repeatedly create and destroy small moons?

4. An unexpected crash in the market for nude celebrity selfies reveals just how deeply the hacker community has cut. Read this one with a stiff drink.

5. Amazon pays $1 billion for Twitch, a social media site for watching others play video games. And here we are in North Texas wringing our hands about a $60 million football stadium.

6. “I’ve met countless news consumers like that woman in Florida, trapped in a luxury high-rise, surrounded by information they refuse to access or consider.”

7. When this hoax-band actually released an album, their Wikipedia hoax-page kept the same URL and bio.

8. “If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct? A: 25%? B: 50%? C: 60%? Or D: 25%?”

9. For those of us living in the U.S. border states, there are familiar scenes at Spain’s land border with Morocco.

10. What We See When We Read.

C.E. Alexander is the author of four short stories and a short story anthology. Book of Constants is currently free, here.

Book of Constants second edition: excerpt

Tomorrow through Sunday, Book of Constants will be free to download. In expectation of the second edition we have reworked the excerpt, which we originally published in July 2013.

ZD-002: Book of Constants
A short story by C.E. Alexander
List price: $0.99
Promotional giveaway: September 10-14, 2014
ASIN: B00E1X3H5C
Book trailer
Literary, General Detective, Short Story
Purchasing link

We settle in a new town by misstep. I bring only my camera and some frames of captured sky. My son Kobe has a book he will not read out loud, and a stuffed frog his mother found while buying antiques. He seems to understand it, that she could rarely leave the house and that this toy was out of the ordinary. We had to name it for him, so I call it Cucumbers.