Not too long ago, I saw a guy walk past my desk eating something on a stick.

It looked like it had little legs, that thing on a stick.

It jarred me.

I soon realized it was just a corn dog, but it gave me a great idea for a short story. Well, that and the troubling reality of acronym-inflation.

Add an interesting item from my son’s recently acquired book on Northern California insects, and I had some of the primary elements of my new short story, “Some Kind of Rugged Genius,” which now appears in 3:AM Magazine.

Of course, if roasted rat on a stick, California stink beetles and acronym insanity ain’t your thing, you may wanna pass on this one.