1. Visit the Rourke Art Museum in nearby Moorhead, North Dakota. Find a couple of guys to help you kidnap the priceless… no, wait… just enjoy the art. It’s nice. 2. Watch an exciting matchup between the USHL Fargo Force hockey team and a Western Conference rival, both made up of the finest non-kidnapped players in the north playing of their own free will. 3. Kidnap a great meal from Marlin’s Family Restaurant, a favorite local eatery. 4. Visit the Fargo Theatre and take in a great show – maybe something about kidnapping? (It’s okay to just watch.) 5. Head over to the stunning Red River…
Author: Michael Ferro
Michael Ferro
Michael A. Ferro's debut novel, TITLE 13, will be published by Harvard Square Editions in February 2018. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His fiction and humor writing has appeared in numerous journals in both print and online. Born and bred in Detroit, Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the American Midwest. He's not a big fan of other Midwests. Additional information can be found at www.michaelaferro.com.
1. Gilbert Gottfried impersonating a dial-up modem. 2. A drunken man attempting to play Taylor Swift songs with a vuvuzela. 3. A cat choking on a chicken bone. 4. A chicken choking on a cat bone. 5. The piercing alarm my iPhone makes at 3 a.m. when there’s an Amber Alert. 6. The piercing silence of my father’s disapproving glare. 7. A voicemail from my mother informing me that she forgot how to work her iPad and to call her as soon as possible (this is sometimes piercing, too). 8. My ten-year-old nephew’s first-ever clarinet recital. 9. A recording of Gilbert Gottfried snoring within an empty cathedral. 10. A baby…
Robot Butt contributor Michael A. Ferro’s novel TITLE 13 (Harvard Square Editions) is available now, and we’ve got the synopsis and a fresh excerpt for you right here: Heald Brown might be responsible for the loss of highly classified TITLE 13 government documents—and may have hopelessly lost himself as well. Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots. Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with his concerned…
1. Sarah McLachlan volunteers at local soup kitchens for homeless people but secretly spoons most of the soup into a large plastic bag which she then takes out back to give to homeless dogs. 2. Whenever Sarah McLachlan stops by her local party store, if she sees a homeless dog sleeping outside, she will buy it beer. 3. When buying toys to donate for the “Toys for Tots” program, Sarah McLachlan always buys chew toys so the needy children will have to give up the toys to their local homeless dogs. (This also has the added benefit of teaching the needy children the gift of giving, which Sarah McLachlan…
In a safety deposit box In your old VCR in that slot where the videotape goes in In your cowboy hat In other people’s cowboy hats Under the boardwalk In the pipe organ at church If you live in D.C., at the Smithsonian If you live in Seattle, at the Space Needle Under your children’s beds Sprinkled out on the lawn by the weeds In that hole in the tree where the squirrel lives In the tailpipe of the car belonging to your neighbor who keeps asking to borrow your lawnmower In a cornfield In a kalefield In the ocean…