Stompt!

Bridges.

Based on a True Drawing

JUMMY BARES!

Chairektors

GO MAMMALS!

Wizmo!

GO MAMMALS!

Wooooooooof!

GO MAMMALS!

Lateral Bananas

EXPLORATORY WRITING ON THE BANANA BEHIND THE CORNER WRITTEN ON A SCRAP PIECE OF PAPER FOUND BY A BORED MAN.

How do we know what we know? We take input from our senses and arrange them into reality. We have ideas about what is real and tell our senses to find that and ignore what doesn't fit.

There's a smiling banana that lives behind the corner in my hallway. He is friendly. When I approach the corner and look behind it, he vanishes. I continue walking down the hallway and when I turn around to see the corner from the other angle, he appears. He is behind the corner on the other side this time.

I want the banana to be there. He is there because I see him. I alone. Except for the banana. Also, the roommate who lives here. But, I live alone. Half of the world is dark at any point in the day. My roommate lives alone. The ideas resist touching. I live alone. My roommate lives alone. You can say them easily enough. The banana only lives in the corner, not on any one side. It's hard to fit a tube of deviled eggs into a donut hole. My roommate doesn't see this. My roommate does see the banana. But, only when I am there. I live alone. The banana lives in the corner of the hallway. He is friendly.

Tiny Sea Horses

It was picture day today. In honor of picture day, I made this picture terrible. Looking back, I wish I had taken the opportunity to realize that picture day teaches us that everyone has the same self-consciousness and inner loathing that we feel we alone must hide and endure to get along in the world. It also teaches us to single out those who appear genuinely proud of their pictures and shun them mercilessly.

I don't hate school. I like school. Would I say it's a positive experience on a day-to-day basis for most students? No. But you're not there to be entertained. You're there to learn and learning comes from failure. But failure is funny. Failure is useful. Failure is scary.

I feared failure. I definitely fear failure in school more than I enjoy success. And that's probably not the way I'd like it to be. But, at the same time, by my own standards, as best as I can judge so far, it worked. So, I don't really know where I stand. Maybe I would rather fear failure than want success.

I think, maybe, that you're asked to do a lot of different things in school. And, of those things, you can probably only want to succeed in a few of them. There are only so many things that you give you satisfaction just for doing them. But you're asked to do a lot more than that. And maybe you haven't even found that thing yet. But there's no limit to the amount of things you can fear failing. My capacity for fear is a boundless ocean. So, because we live in an imperfect world where you can't be fascinated with everything, maybe school allows us to manage and use that fear of failure while also hopefully providing that outlet where we want to succeed. Maybe. Most of it will probably become useless and the stuff that is relevant will only be apparent many years later.

School Pictures.

You can't always get what you want, but if you fear failure, you get what you don't really want but are compelled to get.

Making Me Nervous

Ned Ternsten speaking to a fake plant on the subject of what it means to be human.

Ever since the meteorite thing, I've been having these waking dreams. It's like I see everything I would normally see; except, there's this other reality super-imposed over it. And, I can observe it and explore as I move around doing whatever I normally do. 

Yesterday, I was in this dungeon basement bunker deal, in the dream I mean. There were no windows and the air was thick and hazy. In the middle of the room was a large wooden table. It was very tall and serious looking. All around the table were these enormous, six--no--seven foot creatures. They were man-sized roaches and their legs and feelers clicked and snapped like machinery. They were all gathered around the serious table and inspecting whatever was on it very excitedly. They didn't seem to notice my presence. Nothing ever does in the dream. I approached the table and stood up on my toes to see a clear, plastic jar about a foot tall. Inside the jar were two desperate looking men. The sight of these poor souls in the clutches of absolute crawling evil turned my bowels to stone.

One of the men, with bloodshot eyes and frantic shakes coursing through his limbs, pounded furiously against the plastic shell. He mouthed silent screams and calls for help. Somehow, I could sense that he was unaware of his captors. Beyond the jar he saw only shadowy forms shifting in the dim light. He no longer believed anyone would rescue him. He was simply mad. The other man was completely still, crouched in the corner, head down between his knees. 

The roaches clicked excitedly, their slender appendages twitched and touched all around. Some basic curiosity had been roused.

But then, I realized that this was unacceptable. Victory demands itself! Man's imagination is not bound to his circumstances. Victory demands itself!

The crouched man rose and began to summon his inner chaos to birth the burning star of his freedom! A brilliant light shot straight up from his eyebrows and penetrated the lid. The grime and filth of the room was illuminated and began to fume. Both men were growing now. They grew in size until they burst through their plastic prison and stood tall about the sturdy table. The roach monsters receded in fear. They were shrinking! The indomitable will of man had restored the natural order and great stompin' boots rained from the heavens for ten days and seven nights until the land was cleansed of all but two miserable cockroaches. These two held each other every night and never gave up hope until their hope was exhausted and they too were crushed by the weight of their own wretchedness and a large steel-toed boot.

HUMANS WIN! HUMANS WIN!

And that's my dream and what it means to me. Thank you. 

Bad Attraction

Alien speaking to deer.

Hello, little female deer. I am an alien and I have taken you to this nice restaurant on the waterfront of a vague, unspecified city. Here are some answers to the inevitable questions that will arise. Firstly, the dark spot located above my eye is not some kind of horrible third eye; it is my ear. Secondly, I am aware that your neck is far too short and that your proportions as a whole are subject to great scrutiny being that you are an actual animal that exists in the world. Secondly again, the writing on the wall is unrelated to our current situation. It is merely there to tell small children who live in another dimension what they will be consuming at the end of their school day. I hope that clears up what needs clearing up.

To business, I feel as if you have grown distant. In fact, looking back, I get the feeling that you have never reciprocated my affection because you are a deer and do not possess notions of romance. It is just now dawning on me that my attempt to assimilate myself into this world has gone horribly awry because I have wasted the past two months trying to establish companionship with a doe, a female Earth-deer. It also occurs to me that you still are not understanding any of the words I am speaking and even if I used my ability to transmit my thoughts directly into your brain, they would stick the way an old tomato sticks to a mirror that has been lathered in Crisco...which is to say that they would not stick well at all. Well, that is all I have to say to you deer, I will pay for me food and go, at which point Animal Control will arrive and detain you and release you back into the wild. This has been a most unusual experience for us both.

Themes: Calling it like you see it.

Heartstines Day

POSTED! BOOM! HEARTS FOR SNACK!

Speaker: Dr. Panther

Audience: Textbook Writer

Themes: Fact

Facts about the Human Heart. The human heart is the largest muscle made of blood. It can squirt a dram of circulatory fluid from the toes to the nose and back again. It will not be sunburned if left out in the sun because it is not encased in skin. Albert Einstein was. Michael Douglas had two first names which came at the terrible price of his heart being appropriated as a dragon's egg sack. When we think about the human heart, it angers us. The Greeks postulated that imagination moves at the speed of heart beats. When your heart rate is fast, your imagination moves very quickly. The opposite is also true. When my feet pace is slow, my math equations are static. When we place a 't' in front of 'heart' we get something that is very close to a threat. The important thing to remember about threats is that they are alive. They will grow and get stronger and when you try to outrun them they will work even harder and as you sleep they will recover and gather their strength for a final assault. This is why we employ anti-oxidants in our diet because fortifying our bones with anti-oxygen will allow us to vanquish the oxygen born ailments like hurtful words and throat-based chicken pox.  

Monkeys tiny!

POSTED! BOOM! NO RULES!

Urban Ranger Frank scaring a group of children away from premature pet ownership.

Now, some of you first graders might think you have a great idea of where babies come from. We don't need to get into the nitty gritty, slimey times but I'm going to tell you write now that animals are operating on a whole different set of rules. Let me start with a question: who here would like a puppy? Don't bother raising your hands, you aren't going to get one. Does anyone know how puppies are made? No. You don't. I'll tell you. That's why your teacher hired me. When a mommy dog is full with child, she retreats into the woods and constructs a crude baby-holding device out of small planks of wood and nails. After doing that she consults a biology textbook to learn where the egg should come out. She deposits the egg which severely weakens her heart and she must retreat into the woods to look for medicine or a match for a donor. The puppy then incubates in the egg while the baby-holder keeps it above the ground of the woods where the tiny monkeys play and dance. It's not an insignificant fact to mention that the tiny monkeys will get in your socks and they will never leave so it's important to check any and all puppies for tiny monkeys. Anyway, there's a lot left on this paper but I don't really have time to read it and I can tell you stopped paying attention after I said 'nails'.

Here's the quick message: strange dogs on the street can make great pets if you establish yourself as a reliable source of food. Remember that. Treats get the meats.

Cup and a Cake and a Jump

POSTED! BOOM!

Not TIMMY!

POSTED! BOOM!

Connect Fours

Mr. Wandy--Daycare Man--Connect 4 Enthusiast

Addressing his Countless Vanquished Foes.

These are the principles.

-At its highest level, Connect 4 is a deterministic game. The winner will win because they have created a situation in which victory is the only option. 

The loser will lose because they have no other choice but to accept their failure.

This is the truth at the heart of the game--you've only realized you've lost when it's too late and everything you've done up to this point has caused you to lose.

--"Pretty sneaky sis" has nothing to do with this.

--Don't be distracted by the patterns of pretty colors

--Or the satisfying clicks

--The enormous piles of money burned at the end of every game.

Two Parts of a Sheet

Gipper Beanhard.

The tiny march of minutes marches smallly.

The word 'small-ly' requires 3 consecutive 'L's.

I feel like the Robot half of me and the Melted Candy Bar half of me are limply slapping each other. 

Everyone has a Robot half and a Melted Candy Bar half. The Robot half is clean. The Melted Candy Bar half spreads and is, therefore, filthy. Chaos and Order. Fear and Laziness. Right angles and wiggles. 

Here's something that makes me think the world is impossibly big: One time, and I may have already written about this here but, one time I was sitting on a bus as a kid and I saw this woman walking down the sidewalk and she looked sad and slow and unremarkable. Anyway, I remember thinking that that person, that random person, had, by necessity, lived a whole life full of countless significant events and that, all the information, the massive amounts of information that go into just being a person was more than I could ever possibly know. I mean, all I can ever possibly know is my experience. It was too much to try to imagine another person living an entirely different life. But it all fits. It has to, right? Does that make sense?

Like, you can imagine a lot of things. You can imagine a shark becoming the President of Nicaragua. But you can't imagine all of the crazy, unique, once in a lifetime things, that happen to one random person on the street. And you know that they must happen. They've happened to you. If you want try to moralize from that, I guess acknowledging the uniqueness and fullness of someone else's life is to acknowledge their equal share of the world and...equal share of specialness? Knowing that because they must be the center and the main actor in everything they experience, then you can't also be the only person who is the main actor in and center of everything you experience. Which is a bit humbling but it adds a lot of wonder and space and vastness to everything going on around you. Probably.

Audience: The Couch Crevice

Themes: Things I'm still thinking about 13 years later.   

Cliffs Top

Rising cracks and veins in solid blocks of rock.

Dear Marty,

This wall stands in dead defiance of my progress. Stupid. The whole thing is a shear, dull, lumpy blank face. Shadows creep over me. I mean, I'm not turning back or climbing up or going around or leaving my body to rise above on the astral plane. I'll just sit here and describe this stupid cliff until it buckles under or I keel over. 

Should I feel small right now? Is that the idea? Is this vastness supposed to make me aware of grander scales of time and space? That's normal, right? The colors, the lights and darks shift and change. You would think the whole thing was carved from clouds and rays and the tiny march of minutes. Stupid. 

What are you, barren wall, to me? I am the teeming super organism! I am the host of millions of generations of bacteria and micro-organisms where empires and cultures rise and fall in nothing but the ridges of my gut. This surge of life, this flashing spark, feels no sympathy for the desolate chunk. Do not lower your funk, Marty. Do not try to negotiate with the mean and the dead I will climb this wall. But,...not...not because....because...there are hard facts in the world, Marty...and you can't deny that but...but...no sensible person is stupid enough to be that stubborn!

Sincerely,

Grover Stetch, Rambling Man.

Addressee: Marty Stetch, younger sister of Grover

Themes: Scales and Pride

Doopiter

The Guy From Samples in Songs and Stuff Presents!:

Good evening, boys and girls. Perhaps you can tell that something isn't quite normal, lately. It's hard to describe normal but we all have a sense of it when we see it. You might be going about your day and feel a creeping sensation from out of nowhere. It feels as if someone is watching you or that everything has shifted in some slight, almost imperceptible fashion. Your skin may feel as if it no longer fits your body. Has something been taken from you? Is everything the same as it was before you went to sleep? Can you remember falling asleep?

The important thing to remember is that this feeling is also normal. There are lots of kinds of normal. Part of living in this modern world is adjusting to these different kinds of normal. In fact, probably the only thing that will make you feel uncomfortable, is questioning whether something is, or is not, normal. Remember this, boys and girls, and I'm sure you'll all get along fine. Now run home and eat lots of frozen beasts and the juice of the spinning beat. Rotate. Rotate. Make minor adjustments to keep from having to move. The object is to remain standing for as long as possible.

Audience: Boys and Girls

Themes: Affirmative Messages

These Guys

The Ugly Killers of Cool (as told by Urban Ranger Frank)

As I recall, there were four of them. A big guy, who we called, "The Big Guy", and three medium guys called "No Sleeves", "Luscious" and "Skeevy Rose". They were inseparable--the greatest bunch of chums you ever saw. Make no mistake about it, though, these guys were not cool guys. Nothing could be further from cool with these guys. They were also ugly--that's why we gave them such good nicknames like "The Big Guy" and "No Sleeves". No, they weren't just uncool. They were anti-cool. Wherever they went they made otherwise cool things and events the opposite of that.

One time, on the night of Labor Day, we call it Labor Night, for short, I saw this young woman walking her dog down the sidewalk in front of the smoldering remains of a Red Lobster. As an Urban Ranger, it's my job to identify cool when I see it...one of my jobs, anyway. This girl was seriously cool. She had confidence, boots, charisma, a jacket, style, hair, and a dog all rolled in to a burrito drowning in mustard. But then, the Ugly Killers of Cool emerged from some lame bushes they'd been squatting in and were headed straight for the girl. Every muscle in my body tensed. The girl eyed them warily. The dog hunkered down. And then the Ugly Killers of Cool toasted the cool like a pile of dusty leaves. Skeevy Rose took out an old graham cracker and started licking it. Luscious sang a twangy rendition of "The Cow Coughed Up Another Leg Blues". I can't put into words how uncool it was. Pure anti-cool dissonance. Even when dissonance is cool, it wasn't this time. The Big Guy stood there like a statue made of marble farts. No Sleeves cried. He cried and cried. Oh, my anger still boils thinking about how uncool they were. If it wasn't for themselves pushing themselves into that bottomless pit, we Urban Rangers would have had to push them into a bottomless pit...and then make it look like they'd done it to themselves.

Audience: Attendants of the Actual Middle School yearly "Don't Be Uncool" Assembly.

Themes: Being cool is really really important.

Pencil Cliff

Write a Piece about the Theme of Excellence

When from out of the mundane muck rises stakes so high that they lick the tender feet of the clouds, excellence is near. Picture in your mind's eye a bottomless cliff. And now, picture that above the shelf of that cliff is another cliff that is even more bottomless than the first. Then dare to imagine an even higher tier of bottomles cliff, with a bottom so bottomles that it's lost the second 's' in 'bottomless'.

Perched upon that shelf, overlooking the lowest deeps, is an enormous pencil. It is a pencil that would fit in the hand of a churlish mountain. If you stood on that pencil and looked out at the land stretching away from the pit of excellence, you would see yourself. You would catch 'you' trudging across the empty plain under the hot sun. Now you're you. You reach the giant pencil and learn to master its ways. Grasp it firmly and dive majestically from the cliff's edge. The pencil, which you ride like a cowboy, can navigate your plunge through the pit that reaches beyond time and space. It's your ride! Enjoy it! Keep track of it on the walls as you fall along them. Other people will read them and gasp at all the awesomeness you claimed with your senses and words. You have only yourself to embarrass and millions to prove wrong. Look all around. This falling is a feel you should learn, you have a lot of it to do. 

This must be some kind of description to something similar to excellence to someone somewhere.

Audience is 'the you'.

Speaker: Scrap piece of paper you find in a mailbox to a house where a dead guy lives.

Thing with a Ring

My toaster is infinity.

What?

About 15 minutes ago I was hauling down the highway. I had my high-beams on for no reason and a toaster in my passenger seat. Actually, I did have my high beams on for a reason. The toaster I had no reason for. Except for toast. Anyway, I was chasing beams of light. That's what I do for a living. I chase light. I'm not like a bounty-hunter or anything. I'm an enthusiast. Sometimes these crazy rays spin out of the sun and they end up on Earth. They zip around looking awesome. I catch them in a modified ant farm and sell them out of my truck. So, I'm on the highway, with my toaster, and up ahead I this long thin ribbon of purple and blue. It's floating just about the double yellow line. It's a real beauty. Did I say I had my high beams on? That's not true. You don't use your high beams. You chase light by turning your high beams off. Then you follow the light in front of you. That's the fun part. It's just you, the dark, and the cool blue stream of whatever going wherever. You know, so you do that for a few days and see where you end up. But I was getting low on gas so I stopped here to fill up. I haven't eaten or slept in three weeks. It's the craziest thing. I thought I was a banana yesterday. I climbed into a shopping cart strapped to a rocket. Crank stop gel lit tooth pop fish wrap. Punkin pie.

Speaker: Ned Ternsten

Addressee: Ned Ternsten (gas station attendant, neither of them realize they have the same name, and birthday, and parents' names)

Themes: Light is cool.

Splattermin is (real) In

The Splattermin did everything he could. His drive was supreme. He saw the Robort at dusk, mourning the loss of his toaster. The toaster was like a small mouse or ferret to the Robort.

"Congratulations on your happy day!" said the Splattermin, bounding over to the Robort with his head cocked cheerfully to the side, beaming up at the mask of anguish on the Robort's face.

"I am not happy, mister Sir. I have lost my dearest toaster." blubbered the Robort.

"ha-Ha!" said the Splattermin, "Sure, you're happy! This is happiness."

"No! No!" The Robort shook his head, spilling tears of battery acid all around him. "This is sadness. You are very confused."

"I know what I'm talking about, Mr. Robort. There is no other moment where you can be happier than this. Don't tell me you're waiting for some kind of permission to be happy. You couldn't possibly be hoping for a magic alignment of events to feel good. Imagine only breathing when the right puff of air comes along. Preposterous. You can try to tell me you're not breathing, Robort, but I will call you a silly liar."

"If this is happiness, I don't want it." cried the Robort, looking down at this toaster.

"Well, there you go," said the Splattermin.

"This is making me sad.  I want to be sad right now!"

"Well, there you go," said the Splattermin.

"I mean, I am sad," said the Robort. "You can't control it."

"Except when you decide the conditions of your own happiness. There are only these moments, Robort. Not much more or less remarkable than this once you've been around it long enough. Don't poo-poo them for not being good enough for happiness."

"I will not apologize for having standards!"

"Standards for what? Protecting yourself from happiness? You let yourself feel bad and call it undeniable. But you only want happiness on your own terms. I submit, Mr. Robort, you don't want happiness at all, you want control. You want control of the things that happen around you, this is what gives you pleasure. To be happy, to decide your happiness, would be to give up your hope of controlling what happens in exchange for controlling how you feel about it."

And then the Robort engaged his awesome arsenal of radioactive missiles and titanium limbs of smashing, and with the firing up of his rocket boots, it was so ON!

Speaker: Master Chuck, the Sandwich/ Burrito kung-fu delivery Master

Audience: Parking lots and Grocery Carts

Themes: Licking? and the misspelling of Robot