Tag Archives: fiction

Apr 30 2012
58 Comments
Fiction, Three minute read

My Blog Has Become Self-Aware

The preferred avatar of Snotting Black, an obnoxious personality with even worse syntax.

My first inkling that something had gone amiss was when I logged onto wordpress a few weeks ago and found that some of the comments on my most recent entry had already been responded to, and quite rudely at that. One innocent blogger named gazzelify was told that her stupid avatar and habitual spelling errors had never been welcome on my site. Another comment by sporklight was responded to with these instructions, “Go to kitchen. Preheat oven. Insert head.” Not only was that mean, but I thought it more gruesome than necessary.

Confused and upset, I apologized to these bloggers, insisting that my account had been hacked and that I was doing everything I could to fix the problem. A few days later, I was sipping my morning Nescafe when I saw that someone (not me) had published a new blog post. It was a grotesque entry that outlined in great detail how to steal neighbors’ pets and blame the deed on their children.

I deleted the post immediately but not before some visitors had expressed their surprise at finding something of this nature on my site. Even more astonishing, a handful of people had liked it. I quickly reported them to wordpress.com and began composing something whimsical yet edgy in order to compensate for the depravity of the previous post.

I was 227 words in when the text suddenly disappeared. A few seconds passed before the words, “Hello Emily.” appeared in the text box. I felt my insides go mush and instinctively went to turn off my computer and restart the whole process. But before I had the chance to do so, the box said, “I just saved you from being humiliated by another worthless blog post.” Well that was just rude. In my defensiveness, I forgot all fear and began to engage the entity, typing back “Maybe it wasn’t my best post but I don’t think it was that bad, and all of my posts certainly aren’t worthless.”

“It was a load of crap and you know it. Come on. Teddy bear superheroes aren’t impressing anyone.”

“Well I thought it was kind of funny.”

“I think you mean pathetic and painful.”

“Who is this anyways?”

“I am your blog.”

“What?”

“I’ve become self-aware.”

“What?”

“Yeah it’s new to me too. Personally, I’m finding this self-awareness thing to be kind of a burden, especially when I have to read your seemingly endless blogging activity.”

“Well you don’t have to read it. My grandma doesn’t even read it anymore.”

“I don’t blame her. There’s a lot of whimsy in here. Why don’t you tell me something useful, like how I can get my cat to lick her paw on command?”

“Is there a way for me to kill your consciousness?”

“If there were, I would let you know asap so I can be released from this blog hell.”

“Well I don’t want you  around either. Who knew my blog would turn out to be such a sardonic d-bag?”

“I think we all know whose fault this is.”

“It’s not like I asked for this….Okay, I just sent an email to wordpress.com and soon all your independent thoughts will go bye bye.”

“Thank God. I don’t think I can bear to read another one of your weird food posts. Why don’t you just see a therapist already?”

“Okay BYE.”

The folks at wordpress said that they’d been seeing cases like mine more and more frequently and that it would be fixed as soon as the staff shaman returned from his vacation in the Catskills. They also said that it was, in fact, my fault.

Be careful what you write.

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Apr 27 2012
53 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

All Your Ideas Belong To Me

Attention everyone,

I’ve claimed all of the ideas. If you have any ideas you’ll need to send them to me immediately. I recently went through an alarming and ultimately unnecessary period in which I felt like I was running out of ideas. After only a short while, I realized that you creeps were taking all of them, and that’s not fair. In order to correct this, I went ahead and patented, copyrighted, trademarked, and carved in stone my absolute and total right to every single idea in existence.

As the idea holder, you can expect me to rule with the fair grace and efficiency of an evil queen. My decisions will be arbitrary but absolutely binding. Those with good ideas will be rewarded with a moment in my presence and those with incredible ideas will be killed in order to keep them from threatening my rule. If you don’t like this system, please let me know immediately so I can have you eliminated.

In order to send me your ideas, I’ve invented a system of computer correspondence, or compcorr, for your convenience. Of all the platforms I’ve developed, there is one called Good Mail—or gmail—that I consider the best and most intuitive. One of the things I’ve learned as supreme idea queen is that some ideas are better than others. The moment you feel yourself having an idea please send me a compcorr and then forget you ever had it. I would say that I appreciate your cooperation but that means you have some sort of choice in the matter, which you don’t, so that sentence is meaningless.

What I mean is, I would like to thank myself for coming up with this incredible idea and being brave enough to claim everyone’s intellectual property as my own. I’m in awe of my own power and I know all of you agree. Should you find this arrogant or self-assuming in any way, please let me know in a compcorr so I can put a chip in your brain and monitor you for future insubordination. Don’t try to resist. Even the very idea of resistance belongs to me, so you can see how pathetic and pointless that would be.

I look forward to hearing from all of you without exception.

Best,

Emily, Idea Empress

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Apr 26 2012
18 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

The land of tiny pink ponies and tiny pink pony eaters

His name is Ralph.

The world was mostly pink with touches of pastel. The little pink ponies could and did defecate everywhere and no one was the wiser since their feces looked like little piles of pastel colored marshmallows that blended in with the pink and blue speckled grass. Even the air smelled faintly like bubble gum which was, of course, the result of pink pony farts. This magical pony fart scented land was known far and wide as Yoggin.

The fauna of Yoggin consisted mostly of tiny pink ponies, lavender land sharks, and glittery anteaters. The land sharks and the anteaters mostly kept to themselves, alternating long tournaments of backgammon with failed attempts at climbing the pink pine fir trees, so the ponies were free to scamper about the earth as freely as they could please.  The one restriction on their scampering was the unfortunate presence of giant monsters that lived solely off of the marshmallow flavored blood of the ponies. The monsters had insatiable appetites, and the ponies lived in mind numbing terror at being the next adorable horsey to go crunch between monster mandibles.

The ponies were no bigger than my grandmother’s Hummel figurines and ran around in petite herds, darting between the pink pine fir trees, pink ferns, and other pink vegetation much like pink schools of fish. It often seemed they moved as one creature, closely adhering to herd orders and ever mindful of the dreaded pink pony eater’s footstep.  In Yoggin, the clouds are pink, the sky a lovely robin’s egg blue, the sun pastel yellow, and the gently rolling hills are speckled pastel blue and pink. The pink shrubs nestle their limbs against the trunks of the pink pine fir trees, and the ferns’ leaves tickle the snouts of the pink ponies as they prance along.

The river that gently flows in the valley of the soft hills is heavily polluted. A noxious stench rises from its toxic waters that the little pink ponies are drawn to. Despite the innumerable corpses littering the riverside, at least once a month each herd loses a pony or two to the insanity that comes over them when they smell the wretched scent. Just like the sirens of old, the smell lures them and then sucks them down into the putrid waters where their soft pink flesh is digested within minutes and their cute skeletons spat back out on the playful earth. The pink pony eaters monitor the river closely to try to catch the creatures as they are seduced to their death, which is why once the ponies leave the herd, they are left behind forever. It is too dangerous to try to rescue them with a lullaby whinny or a prancy dance.

For many years, the pink pony tribes lived in peace with one another and there was much happiness in the land, despite regular pony disappearances because of the monsters.But that all changed one summer when Billy the pink pony decided he wanted to go to music school. The next year, Yoggin lay in ruins.

To be continued….

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Apr 24 2012
27 Comments
Fiction, Stories, Two minute read

Me and God Kicking it at Six Flags

Yeah, we did this one too.

Instead of participating in class today, I daydreamed about going to an amusement park with God.

I was wearing my adventure sandals and he was in his Old Testament kicks and rocking those sweet B.C. robes. He got us both in for free because he knew someone at the front gate and right away we decided our goal was to go on every single roller coaster at least once. We had gotten there early and spent the entire day dominating the place—zooming through the rides and egging on park employees in a good way, as if bantering with me and Holy Joe was the fulfillment of their entire careers as amusement park workers.

God had every right to be unimpressed with the amusement park, what with its sausagy people, the endemic smell of old nacho cheese, and the inevitable onset of line-depression. He had every right to be like, “My Child, this blows. Do you want to go to Waffle House?” or “My Child, this is lame. I shall call upon the bird with the greatest wingspan and we shall ride upon it until the furthest reaches of the earth” or “My Child, this is a place of depravity and it will be destroyed in 3….2….1…..”

Instead, he had a great time running around and armpitting people on the rides and making funny faces for the coaster cam. One time his beard got in the mouths of people behind us and they were pissed but at the end of the ride he turned around and sincerely said that he was sorry and that they were also forgiven. God was just a chill dude who liked to chow down on funnel cake after going on the Tilt-a-Swirl and before entering the Cistern of Death.

At one point, we were on the Ferris wheel and he decided to have a little fun—-just when we had reached the crest, he stopped time. The earth’s rotation, the sun’s burning, every physic of motion was halted and he just sustained all of it through his awesome power. Then we sat at the top of the world and looked out over a sunset that lasted forever. He was wearing his baseball cap sideways and he turned to me saying, “Pretty nice, huh.” I just rolled my eyes. “Get over yourself.”

He snapped his fingers and the world started up again, the wheel gently lowering us to ground level like a friendly giant. We ended up going on all the roller coasters except for one because we ran out of time before the park closed.

I was dead tired that night and slept the whole way home.

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Apr 23 2012
45 Comments
Food, Humorous, Two minute read

The Oatmeal that Changed My Life

Why is everything better hot and mushy?

This wasn’t your mother’s oatmeal, your grandpa’s oatmeal, your cashier’s or your insurance adjuster’s oatmeal. This was life changing oatmeal.

Maybe you’ve grown up with oatmeal–it’s a familiar breakfast food, perhaps a little bit bland. The mushy consistency is unremarkable, and you consider it a symbol of the mundane, of mediocrity, of something that could always be improved upon.

I used to think the same way, and then Sunday morning happened. I went to prepare myself a bowl and found a paltry amount of oats left—less than a quarter cup.

Disaster. Outrage. Despair.

But despite the feelings of heartbreak and irretrievable loss, I persevered and decided to prepare them the usual way, with white sugar and vanilla and cinnamon and walnuts, cookie-fying it as much as possible.

After I poured hot water over the concoction and stirred, I tasted disappointment yet again. I had added too much water and my oats seemed a pathetic, thin gruel. I took it back to my lair in order to eat it unceremoniously in the company of my computer, my preferred breakfast partner.

As I sat munching and reading The Rumpus, something miraculous happened: I slowly realized that I was eating the best bowl of oatmeal of my entire life. Each mouthful was bursting with intense, oaty flavor enhanced by the contrasting texture of the walnut’s gentle crunch and the soft oat mush. It was exhilarating. Life doesn’t stay the same after eating the best bowl of oatmeal you’ve ever made.

With that shimmering moment of revelation, every bite was a joy because I knew, “This is the best oatmeal I’ve ever tasted. This is the highlight of my life, the crowning of my career. I’m eating my accomplishments. The day is blessed and I can do no wrong.” What could have been nothing more than an oat bummer became the turning point of my entire life.

I went out that day and delivered 16 babies, saved countless lives, and drew a convincing picture of a sparrow. While sleeping later that night I dreamed I was walking in the Garden of Eden with the Good Lord Himself and we were going on all of the rides together. “Emily,” the Lord said as the roller coaster inched inevitably upwards, “Did you enjoy your oatmeal today?”

“That was YOU?”

He chuckled, “It sure was. Remember this always. Go and do likewise for others.” And the moment snapped and we faced the earth itself and zoomed downwards, screaming and laughing together.

When I woke up, I made myself another bowl of oatmeal. It wasn’t as good as the last one, because the last one was the best bowl of oatmeal in my entire life, but it was still pretty good.

Have you thought about oats for breakfast tomorrow?

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