Thursday, December 02, 2004


No one ever imagined it was possible to build a spaceship out of a bag of balloons, a fire extinguisher and an electric fan. That's why the rockets seen taking off from Cape Kennedy all looked entirely different. But Jack and Jill knew better. They hadn't gone up the hill to fetch pails of water. They were communicating with aliens who told them how to do it. The balloons filled with hydrogen gas and connected in a semi-circle would generate an electrostatic field to power the propulsion unit attached at the upper left of the flight module (the fan), at the same time protecting the passengers inside from the rigors of space. The fire extinguisher was merely a safety precaution, as everyone knows what happened to the Hindenburg. The formal attire was dictated by the occasion of the full moon, which Jack and Jill, aided by their craft, planned to jump over that night. They would be seen! What a shame they had assembled the spaceship indoors. Now they would have to rewire the CD player into a 16 megawatt laser and blast the ceiling away before taking off.

Story #96

5 comments:

The Mushroom said...

Narrow wooden stairs, covered in brown carpet.
Turned wood posts on the rail stained red.
A brick wall against the staircase.
'Club' curtains over the window.
Rec-room layout.

We know when this house was built. :-D

The 16 MW laser would do the house a favor, if this weren't the basement. But as Steven Wright said, "I put in a skylight. The upstairs neighbors are furious."

The Mushroom said...

Oops, I meant spade curtains, not clubs.
Recommended reading for more about that house (balloons not necessarily included): Interior Desecrations by James Lileks.

arthur decko said...

hi there, you left a note on my blog, so i came here to see who you were. you, sir, ROCK! taking a random photo and making a story for it is absolutely excellent. and the stories i have read are pretty damn well crafted. nietzsche would be proud of you making such art out of the chaos. but he is dead and doesn't really matter. i am in awe and a bit jealous that i didn't come up with the idea first. excellent stuff you got going on.

Indeterminacy said...

Today I read two blog posts that made quite an impression on me. I found them both through the random referrals that blogspot keeps cycling. The first post by retarius (see two comments above) begins with the words: "i should be a comedian or writer for a show on comedy central. i think i am pretty damn funny." My first thought was this guy has just dug himself a 100 foot wide grave and is about to fall into it. But he didn't. He jumped right over it, and doesn't even land. His post proved to me he has a comic sense of the cosmos. This is the post: http://retarius.blogspot.com/2004/12/eudaimonia.html. By the way, retarius, my idea for this blog was my own, but other people have had similar ideas before me. Most notably, Mushroom (see three comment posts above) at http://spackle.saysomethingcryptic.com, who has been doing this for years.

The second post that impressed me is on a debut blog by triggerfinger (see above comment). It was a short story called "Bob, who was almost the 5th Horseman of the Apocalypse". It had a wonderful mix of existentialism, absurdism and surrealism. I loved it. http://supastylin.blogspot.com/2004/12/bob-who-was-almost-5th-horseman-of.html

Thanks everyone for all the comments!

M.P. said...

Another terrific writing moment, Dr. Mabuse! I really enjoyed it! And it's of good practice for my English too ! :)**