A coefficient was dropped sometime during the calculation process, but the Million Writers Award has finally settled upon the Top Ten Stories of 2004. The winners are:

• Terry Bisson "Super 8" (Scifiction.com)
• Jai Clare "Bone on Bone" (Agni)
• Xujun Eberlein "Second Encounter" (Paumanok Review)
• Alicia Gifford "Toggling the Switch" (Narrative Magazine)
• Richard Grayson "Branch Libraries of Southeastern Brooklyn" (Fiction Warehouse)
• Trebor Healey "The Mercy Seat" (Blithe House Quarterly)
• Dave Housley "Ryan Seacrest Is Famous" (Barrelhouse)
• Joan Shaddox Isom "Remade Tobacco" (Eclectica Magazine)
• Corey Mesler "Madame Sabat’s Grave" (Pindeldyboz)
• Chika Unigwe "Dreams" (Eclectica Magazine)

Robert Birnbaum, the hardest working online interviewer in the literary world, talks with another Robert by the name of McCrum. Unfortunately, the two Roberts waste too much time trying to determine which one of them is the better Robert. This unexpected hubris is a remarkable letdown from the normally astute Birnbaum.

I’d like to take the opportunity to personally apologize for the “Fuck you, crack open David’s skull and chug some blood” message that had appeared here for a few weeks. To be perfectly candid, I don’t know who David is, nor do I have any desire to crack open anybody’s skull, much less imbibe blood at a kegger.

Like other authors, the original plan was to leave a mysterious, yet profane message in reaction to all the angry Indians who had crashed this site. I was feeling morose that the usual publicity I got for this site had backfired. And I had briefly considered a one week experimental period as a vampire.

Unfortunately, to my great surprise, I discovered that I did actually enjoy the sunshine and that I did not burst into flames when I left my apartment. I was so pissed off at my failure that I decided to leave the message.

I still don’t exactly know what to do with this site. I’ve thought of donating it to the orphans. Perhaps they can come over and apply their box of Crayolas to my monitor.

Uncle Rake sits down with Steve Erickson. They talk about everything from typocgraphy to the Arcade Fire.

Salon: H.P. Lovecraft is “a hack,” “literature’s greatest bad writer,” “not very scary” (has she even read “The Rats in the Walls” or the Cthulu stories?), Cthulu as “an unpronounceable name,” “Cthulu isn’t scary,” “camp,” “purple prose,” relying desperately on Joyce Carol Oates’ asseessment of “The Colour Out of Space” when she obviously despises Howard’s groove, “hasn’t the psychological acuity,” and not “wholesome at all.”