Short Stories

Inundated with science-fiction, the first draft of this post was flooded with entries by Ray Bradbury. My preoccupation with his short stories are parallel with this young woman's love for him. This list, assembled in ascending order, are recommended short stories for you. Some come from renowned authors, others from pseudo-anonymous Internet authors. I hope you find them as fascinating, thought provoking, and impactful as I have. If you have any recommendations of your own, feel free to post them in the comments.

Ambrose Bierce - Haita The Shepard - A sort of dark satirist, Bierce writes on seeking happiness.

'RICHH' - Sagan's Pizza - True or false, an interesting account of a pizza delivery to Carl Sagan.

'Isis' - Wackers: The Secret Life of a 'Fantasy Maker' - Buried along with other such gems as "Mail Fraud" and "My Life as Santa's Rubber Clad Love Slave" in the Cult of The Dead Cow Publications are the experiences this author had as a phone sex worker.

Ray Bradbury - Pillar of Fire - When his grave is disturbed, a man who died four centuries earlier rises from his tomb to infiltrate a utopia. On my own, I do not know if this story exists to serve any sort of metaphorical purpose. It is simply bad ass, and I daydream musical interpretations of it. Unable to find a file of it on the Internet, it is the second entry in Bradbury's science-fiction anthology S is for Space, and it follows an equally amazing story Chrysalis (reminiscent of Johnny Got His Gun, now come to think of it).

Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - The only survivors in the world are tortured endlessly by a sentient machine which brought on a apocalypse.

David Sedaris - The Santaland Diaries - Now a tradition for NPR's This American Life to play every Christmas time, this story cannot be found online, however audio transcripts read by Sedaris himself are plentiful. The actual text can be found in the back of Barrel Fever.

Ambrose Beirce - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Made into a Twilight Zone episode, this classic short story is set during the Civil War, where a man is about to hang for being a Confederate sympathizer.

George Orwell - Shooting An Elephant - A metaphor for imperialism, Orwell's essay is an account of an experience he (probably) had while being stationed in Burma.

Ray Bradbury - The Pedestrian - Originally I wanted to post The Tonybee Convector, but I have a penchant for dystopias instead utopias. Perhaps the two stories belong together, as together they display Bradbury's love and disdain of what the future could be.

A random entry from the ASSTR - The Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository is an archive of virtually every adult story posted on the Internet, dating back to the aforementioned Usenet group, Alt.Sex.Stories. One cannot possibly imagine the bizarre "erotic" fantasises posted here. To say that Freud would have had a field day here is a gross understatement.

Bypassing Craigslist Phone Verification

As a preface to this post I would like to say that Craiglist's phone verification system is fascinating to me. Phone phreaking is a topic I have a lot of interest in even if it has now more or less become an artifact of the past. I figured it would be interesting to discuss the various ways one can approach the problem, I do not intend any harm by providing any of this information. If you have any other insights into the verification system, please contact me.


If you do not have a valid US number, and you are trying to post on Craigslist... well you're probably reading this now. There are a few avenues you can try to take to get past the verification step, but all of them are probably going to result in you getting a US number somehow. You can not get past verification without providing the code they give you.

My would-be go-to answer, a 711 pre-paid phone won't work... unfortunately. Craigslist does have guidelines, you will need to keep them in mind:

• You may only try to call a phone number once every five minutes.
• You may only enter the code five times.
• You may only try three phone numbers per account every twelve hours.
• You may only receive three calls per account every twelve hours.

Disallowed numbers:

Some phone numbers are not usable for phone verification, including the following:

• phone numbers from outside the U.S. or Canada
• pre-paid mobile numbers
• toll-free numbers (area codes 800, 877)
• some Voice over IP (VOIP) phone numbers (including Cricket, MetroPCS)

About a year ago I tried verification through Skype, and it did not work, so I would not recommend wasting money trying this step unless something has changed since this article was last posted (11/14/12). Getting a 800 number is a hastle in itself anyways. Perhaps a mailbox on a non-800 number phone system would work though. Maybe getting the verification to dial in to a conference call? Once again if you know anything about this, email me from one of the links above.

A method which used to work was using Virgin mobile phones, because you could change your number online for free. They now charge $10 each time you want to do this. However if you post on Craiglist often this could be worthwhile to you as it is likely that making multiple posts within 48 hours of each other will end up with your ad not getting published, even if they tell you otherwise. Services like Textplus has been suggested to me in the past but I have never used it. Use at your own discretion, for all I know it's a terrible virus that texts all the pictures on your phone to the "Mom" contact in your phonebook.

If you do have a problem with your ad not showing up, you can try calling Craigslist here:

Phone: 415-566-6394 
Phone: (408) 988-6395
FAX: 415-504-6394 
Toll Free: 800-664-0633

...however it will be impossible to get in touch with a human.

Another simple option is to ask your American friend to register using their phone, after all most people still have landlines laying around anyways. Alternatively there are suppliers out there that will try to sell you verified numbers. I would recommends against this as Craigslist now has you reverify your number repeatedly if need be. This method also counters the Virgin Mobile method as well. If you are still interested in purchasing a number, you can try googling "PVA accounts". Ironically, asking an American is probably your best bet. If you live near a pay phone that still exists, you could try getting the verification code through it too.

Let me know if ANYTHING here was helpful at all.