Dave's Fiction Warehouse

Often overlooked in the hand-wringing over the slumping global economy is continuing growth and upbeat outlook in the piracy sector. Just last year, Kenya's foreign minister reports , a band of hearty swashbucklers, led by the mischievous Captain Farrah Adid Sparrow, extracted at least $150 million in ransoms from hapless ship owners. As they say in Mogadishu, that's a lot of shillings . And it'll only get better. Governments and shipping companies whine about it, but $150 million is still chicken feed in the global marketplace. International conglomerates have a lot of money, but not many destroyers. The last time piracy flourished like this, it took about 30 years before the U.S. government got it sorted out. If Farrah Adid Sparrow's men don't start grabbing Carnival cruise ships, they've got a good future ahead of them. This is African aid you can believe in. No doubt most of the pirate's profits have been earmarked for infrastructure, AIDS prevention ...

My wife Tess has asked me to play along in a game of blog tag. Because I'm a fun, agreeable guy, I'll comply. Basically, the rules are these: Write 6 random things about yourself. Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Tag 6-ish people at the end of your post. Let each person know he/she has been tagged. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. So, here are six things about me: 1) I am not, technically, a high school graduate. Two weeks before graduation, I was arrested at the senior kegger. Normally this kind of thing was punished by probation or community service, but the kegger was held on some forest land owned by the mayor, who was also president of the school board. The primary bonfire at the kegger somehow spread out of control. Owing to some previous infractions, a close friend and myself spent a night in jail and were denied our diplomas. We later viewed the ceremony from outside the gym doors without much regret. I ended up acing the test f...

So it has come to this for print journalism: selling souvenirs. Most of the time, the Wichita Eagle has trouble giving away its print product. Drive down any residential street late in the afternoon and you'll see plastic-wrapped Eagles still lying in the driveways where the carrier tossed them that morning. Then you get an historic event like the one we've just witnessed. Then people realize they don't have a hard copy of what they've just seen unfold via the magic wall and the fake holograms of CNN. On that one day, they're kind of glad they subscribe. As noted in the New York Times , most newpapers saw a huge spike in demand for their post-election issues. Demand remains robust: the Eagle is charging $10 for a paper that normally goes for 50 cents -- or three for $22. Other papers are peddling T-shirts with the front page on it, and framed copies to hang on your wall. They'd probably sell you some earrings, too, if the headline could remain legible. Some idio...

Here in Wichita, the lines started forming as soon as the polls opened, so it's probably going to be a long day for those poor election officials. I'll just laugh when I drive by on my way to claim my free Starbucks coffee and free Krispy Kreme donut. I laughed at the wife too, when she suggested we stand in line to vote early last week, but now it seems like a stroke of genius. The coffee's free and so is the day. Tonight will be the first presidential election in 30 years that I don't have to work through the night at a newspaper. I'm taking it easy. It's the Super Bowl, and I'm making nachos. Last night everybody talking about the election on TV seemed giddy, even those who lean Republican. But why not? It's been two years of endless campaign blather and eight years of specific ineptitude at the top. Everybody needs a break once in awhile. The good news for Republicans is that they'll have a lot less to be embarrassed about. I get the sense all of...

Seems like only yesterday that blogging was considered hip and cool and thoroughly modern, not to mention a force that would transform the world and probably lead to many lucrative offers. In fact, it was only yesterday. Today, I read in Wired , it's become quaint, as dated as shouting into a mobile phone the size of a refrigerator, the way Michael Douglas did in the movie Wall Street . As Wired 's Paul Boutin explains , blogging peaked in 2004 -- about three years before I got into it. Now it's all Twitter and Flickr and Facebook and YouTube. Video clips and crappy cell-phone photos speak louder than words, and 140 characters is all the text anybody has time to peruse. Nobody cares to read a few deft paragraphs; it's about phrases , baby, and the shorter the better. Nobody cares about your thoughts; it's about your impulses. What you feel right this minute. I got a kick out of this quote from longtime blogger Robert Scoble: "I keep my blog mostly for long-fo...