Here, as promised, is a more light-hearted under-one-hundred-word story.

A minor variant of this story just dropped on the Friday Flash Fiction web site.

Joy,
Lynn

Ahhh, now I know why I'm incapable of understanding English punctuation rules. It's not me, it's them.

Thanks for a very delightful short tale, Lynn

I like the way Glimru worked in a few of those errors in his/her/its situation report. And here I thought my muses were the only ones with seriously evil tendencies.

Funny short, Lynn. Thank you. Wish I'd come up with it.

Bahahaha! So true, so true!

Hi Bakasi, Terry, and Queenie,

Thank you all for your feedback.

Bakasi, to judge by your own writing, I would say that you understand English rules far better than do many native speakers of the language. You are not giving yourself enough credit.

Terry, your praise means a lot to me, especially on anything muse-related. Your muse meta-stories enchanted and enthralled me when I first read them. I had never before come upon anything like them.

Queenie, in a nice little bit of irony, I had to edit the story immediately after I posted it to add the "ue" to the end of "dialog" (sic). I think my years in the IT field of discussing "dialog boxes" has corrupted me. I also think my personal gremlin is trying to get back at me for exposing him

Joy,
Lynn

Thanks for the praise, Lynn. I think I've nailed most of the grammar rules, but the commas still remain a mystery to me. Terry, who betaed two long stories for me, probably thought that I simply put my commas into a box, shook them and scattered them across my text randomly. He was mildly appeased when I mentioned the German comma rules.

I tried reading the concise word on commas, but had to stop after rule three.

I don't think that I ever learned English comma rules in school. There are some different rules with speech tags, too, which regularly have me reeling.

So, your Gremlins certainly have a field day with me.
But I'm still trying to improve and I think that at least one comma rule has made it into my thick head.

Hahaha, so true! Thanks for sharing that!

My pleasure, DC. Thanks for the feedback.

Bakasi, although I have never seen the first drafts of your stories, I have seen your nonfiction posts. I think you may be living up to the saying of being your own worst critic. In any event, it sounds like you are seeing progress in your writing. Congratulations on that.

Joy,
Lynn