The rabbit in the kitchen with a knife
December 29, 2010
My first thought was to make this a 3-D zucchini sculpture, but as soon as I picked up the knife I knew that would be overly ambitious. So instead I made a simple, woodcut-like carving. Now what?
The alien quietly kicked the electronic dead body. It was dead. It didn’t react. The alien thought for a moment. Maybe the body simply needed some hydrotherapy to restore it, but it was unready to make the decision. The alien thought for thirty seconds longer. Then, with one boisterous gesture, it grabbed the electronic dead body and plunged it into the pot of boiling water. And waited. While it waited, it poured itself a small aperitif of sherry.
The water bubbled in anger, the alien sipped, and gradually, those two things conspired to make the alien’s stomach itself burble. The alien was quite hungry. It gazed longingly into the pot at the electronic dead body. Although the boiling water was splashy, the alien could see that a transformation was taking place in the cauldron. The protracted hydrotherapy had caused the electronic dead body to transform into an edible zucchini.
The alien’s revery was interrupted by the doorbell.
Phrases and words in bold came from random generators. I went where they took me, for better and for worse. The initial sentence came from here. Subsequent words were generated here. Another fun creative writing mini-exercise.
Hooli G. An versus the robot
December 10, 2010
And so, the robot quickly spat on the green book. It experienced only a moment of remorse. “I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it!” it monotoned in a metallic voice. “However, that doesn’t mean that things are going as planned.”
The robot shuffled off. It was winter, so it moved more slowly. This meant Hooli G. An had to wait. The stress was enough to give her a nosebleed. Her one goal was to get to the green book before the acid from the robot’s saliva disintegrated it. Time was of the essence. Up until this point, the plan had seemed well-choreographed, but now she was beginning to conclude it was an irreversible misunderstanding between all parties involved. And really, it might not be just the robot who was insane.
As various scenarios ran through the hooligan’s thoughts, she realized she was having trouble breathing. “I’ve come too far for it to end in asphyxiation,” she opined, ‘but I’m a little unsure … “ and things went black.
When Hooli regained consciousness, her first thought was, a happy pair they made, so beauteously laid beneath the gay illuminations all along the promenade. As lucidity set in, she realized that didn’t make any sense. If she were going to complete the mission and depict herself with anything approaching credibility, she had to shake the cobwebs off fast and get back to the business of saving the green book. Dithering about would not do. The time for jocularity was past. She had to get serious.
Hooli sat up and surveyed her surroundings. Wherever she had been taken, the place was definitely in disrepair. And at least her captors hadn’t tied her up or put her in a straightjacket, she thought thankfully. It was just then that her robot adversary entered the space. Hooli didn’t hesitate to give it a piece of her mind.
“I will not let some two-bit, tin-can robot—who might be insane despite the logic of your programming—cost me this mission,” she ranted. “This whole situation”—she gestured vaguely around the room—”is, I have to admit, somewhat unanticipated. But it is not insurmountable.” The robot meeped non-commitally. Hooli went on. “My whole life, I have been self-supporting. Retrieving the green book is supposed to be my last mission and I’m not going to let you spoil it.”
The lime-green lasers of the robot’s eyes shone into Hooli’s. It appeared to be unfazed by her declarations. It stood there calmly, maddeningly. She didn’t actually know what to do. Hooli furrowed her brows and considered options as quickly as she could, given her puny human brain. When this was over, she’d need therapy for sure.
The rules of her employers were restrictive, that much was certain. But with each passing minute, she believed the guidelines were less and less relevant. Then she saw the hutch against the side wall of the room and, more importantly, spied the green book on the far end. She glanced up to the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Insects orbited it like planets around a sun. An idea began to take shape.
Earlier in the day for lunch, Hooli had eaten some Chinese take-out. The fortune cookie had advised, “Don’t eat any Chinese food today or you’ll be very sick!” Robots, of course, didn’t eat food, but they still needed additives in order to maintain their functionality. It was winter and the robot looked stiff. Hooli took her one, her last, chance.
“You haven’t gotten your winter weight robot oil yet, have you?” she wondered with what was, she hoped, an air of nonchalance. “Your joints must be rubbing like a molar on a canker sore.” Once again, the robot meeped non-commitally. “I had a sneaking suspicion,” she said.
Hooli drew in a deep breath. This was her best chance to destroy the robot. “It’s your lucky day, robot, because for some mysterious reason, I happen to have winter weight robot oil with me. It’s right here in this glitzy canister.” She pulled a rhinestone-encrusted object from her bag. She shook it so that the motion caused the myriad of facets to catch and reflect the light from that single lightbulb. The robot was bedazzled. To add to the confusion, she made a finger moustache.
The robot, who had initially looked rather roguish when it had been spitting acid on the green book, now had the air of a crumpled soda can. It was powerless to defy the sparkles coming from Hooli’s blinged-up reusable water bottle.
“Sorry, robot, but you’re going to have to take a rain check on world domination. I know that as a machine, you’re used to dealing with exactitudes, but that’s where I have the upper hand. I am not logical. This is not a tug of war. I’m taking the book. You may not admit to being insane, but I am a lunatic!”
The robot waved its arms rather lamely as Hooli continued to waggle her rhinestone bottle in the light. She grabbed the green book and was pleased to see that the aqueous coating on the cover had slowed the effects of the robot’s acid. She exited via the wrought iron fire escape ladder and gave a satisfied nod of her head once she was clear of the building. Hooli G. An was back in control.
Credits: Phrases and words in bold came from random generators. I went where they took me, for better and for worse. The initial sentence came from here. Subsequent words (other than the “Hooli G. An” name, which was inspired by a friend’s comment elsewhere) were generated here. Alien poster from here. All in all, a fun creative writing exercise.
Message in a bottle, yeah
May 15, 2010
As I recall, I only ever did this one time in my life when I was pretty young. I think it was in the little stream that goes through the Indiana University campus where we summered when I was little. I loved that stream, and a message in a bottle seems like something I would have done there.
Today, I was working with a much larger canvas???the Mississippi River. My office is only a few blocks from it and I met Tori for lunch at the sushi restaurant Origami in the same general direction, so I declared to my coworkers that I was taking a long lunch and set out.
I didn???t actually have a bottle so I had commandeered a small plastic jar that previously housed colored toothpicks. (We photoshoot quite a bit of food preparation at work so we actually have a pretty well-stocked pantry.) My note read:
“I am a member of a web site http://tweaktoday.com, which has daily missions for its members. Today I am sending a message in a bottle.??I dropped this jar in the Mississippi River at the Hennepin Avenue Bridge in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on May 14, 2010. Its first obstacles will have been the Upper and Lower St. Anthony Falls and U.S. Lock & Dam #1. If it made it through all that without being destroyed, please do me a favor: surf to http://tweaktoday.com/missions_accomplished/2010/5/14 and let me know that you found it.”
I printed it on bright yellow paper so that maybe the jar would be more noticeable in the water and perhaps thus be more likely to provoke interest should someone see it along shore. Then just because, I also included a little plastic alien. Cracker Jack it isn???t, but I was trying to do what I could to promote a response by the finder.
As it turns out, the St. Anthony Falls and Lock and Dam were not the first obstacles my little jar encountered. I biked over to Origami and as I sped around the corner from Hennepin Avenue onto Washington Avenue, the jar flew out of my shorts pocket into the road. I screeched to a halt (well, you know, as much as screeching is necessary when you were only going 12 or 13 mph to begin with) and parked my bike on the sidewalk. Trafffic on Washington was still stopped for the red light, but turning left right behind me from Hennepin was a city bus. I dashed into the road and snatched the jar back from what certainly would have been a flattening with just moments to spare. I oriented it the other way in my pocket and went on to have an enjoyable lunch.
Once at the river after lunch, it took me a few minutes to find the perfect spot from which to launch the jar. I first went to a place where steps take you right down to the water, but I quickly determined that I wouldn???t be able to throw the jar far enough to get it into water that was moving forward in a decisive manner and that it would probably just bounce along the bank for not very far. I took the photo and concluded that I had to go onto the Hennepin Avenue Bridge (in the background) and drop the jar from there.
A few minutes later I was in place about a third of the way along the bridge. I was paranoid about getting ticketed for littering, so I waited about five minutes until the gap between pedestrians was large enough that I felt I could make my pitch without anybody being very sure about what I had done or being so interested that they felt the need to stop and chat about it.
In hindsight, I should have gone further toward the middle of the bridge. The jar caught the current, but it looked like its trajectory was going to take it into the Lock and Dam to the right in the photo (more hazardous) rather than more toward the middle to the Falls (more natural). Hopefully it will make the pass through the lock with a little pleasure boat rather than a freighter. And I really hope somebody finds the jar and picks it up and responds, preferably from out of town or, better yet, out of state.
Mail a random person a cryptic letter
April 7, 2010
I had grand intentions of pointing to a name in the phone book and mailing a piece of paper through the USPS. (Phone book, huh? Does anybody even use a paper phone book any more?) But then as usual, I ran out of time and took the easy way out, doing it online. I did it twice, each time with the emphasis on one aspect over the other.
My first cryptic note was, I feel, the more cryptic of the two, as it was a response to the cryptic note that had been sent to me. The sender explained his selection process: “This message sent to a recipient I determined randomly from a list of people who were most likely to not reply “wtf” Fortunately, I did not wonder wtf and instead found a translator with which to craft my reply.
Later in the day, I received another cryptic note: “Zegabee-dash-coovran-dos-leek-va-ich-nop-hu-8797-hay-deek-dosh.” I initially thought it was a cryptogram like a few other notes had been, but it looked too much like actual language. I briefly though that maybe it was an elaborate anagram as the sender was British. I searched for the entire phrase and found nothing, so I searched in smaller and smaller chunks. Eventually (I don’t remember how, because I’m unable to recreate the search results now) I got to the lycaeum.org website. What I saw there looked very much like the cryptic note I received. When I entered any of the words in my message in the Search box, it seemed to generate a page based on that word. Weird, and interesting. Thanks, Jack!
The second cryptic note I sent was not so cryptic, but it was to a random person. A truly random person. I found an online name generator, entered the minimum parameters, and got a name: Ella J. Harrison. I performed a Google search for Ella Harrison (okay, you sticklers, my computer performed the actual search) and clicked on the first result. That took me to a seemingly regular person on Facebook with about a thousand friends, so I was hoping she’d be receptive to my overture.
I posted my not very cryptic note to Ms. Harrison: “I used a random name generator to make a name. Then I did a Google search on that name. Yours was the first result listed, so you’re the lucky one! If you’d like to know what I’m up to, please visit this link. It’s good, clean, creative fun!”
She has not responded.
March 12
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 