Sds #1

The "challenge" was to find quirky or whacky books in Milner and then use some phrase, sentence, subject-matter, idea, or image in those books to put together a story (or narrative) in 30 minutes. Ryan, Jamison and Shailen played this game and each one got a book from the other two. That means everyone ended up with two books in total. The stories are below and the book titles are footnoted too.

With Paper Clips

 by Jamison Lee

It was in a hairless state of fuschia melancholia that I decided to do it.  I had recently facilitated the laying of many eggs and was beginning to host an unnerving spur on my left leg.  I’d lost my glasses and run out of napkins.  So it went.

The maps were secondary, tertiary perhaps.  But they were integral to the project.  I only needed one megaton bomb now.  But, having recently acquired the necessary paper clips, I knew that would only be a matter of time.  After all, I was not trying to reverse the sex of a duck.  Well, yes I was.  I most assuredly was indeed.

When you go for a walk with a rooster
attached to your wrist by a leash of paper
clips, expect to get some looks.  You quack.
I remembered where he lived.  I remembered
symbolism.  And I remember the debate,
but the freeze had not really prevented
any nuclear war.  Is the reality of what was
what we are grieving?  I think bereavement
depends on could-have-been ideas.  In any case,
do not expect to break a sweat before
the rooster.  Coming home winded
is neither likely.  The paper clips, however,
will almost always hold, but only
because no one really cares if they do.


...(rest of the work not published)
(Written with the aid of The Midwife and the Witch and Freeze! How You Can Help Prevent Nuclear War.)

What the Wolf-Headed People Can Teach Us

by Ryan Clark

Surrounding the dog-headed people are other people in the final stage of sleeping sickness. The figure of Jesus as dog-headed viewed them with suspicion. He ate the tsetse fly that caused this disease through his penis and stored it for later use. These people were deemed to be cannibals, uncivilized, not at all dog-headed. A mother makes a distinct buzzing sound, not at all a barking sound. Jesus jokingly calls this the “post partum blues.” But it might really be a “sigh of relief.”

The dog-headed people were cruel and apt to eat everyone they could find: cows, fake cows consisting of hanging rectangles of black and blue cloth impregnated with a deadly insecticide, a female uterus, or Zimbabwe. They were born of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, a swollen river of dimensions unknown. Although this sounds like a typical human birth, it is not. It is dog-headed.

Pictures that portray the dog-headed people biting the other people, those dying of sleeping sickness, are seen relatively rarely. Most commonly it is particularly hostile and doglike.

The religious dog-headed person, not Jesus but the other one, The Master, is not much bigger than various antelope-headed people, due to a loss of protein supply, bouts of fever, weakness, nervousness, drowsiness, extreme sluggishness, and churches. He was born as part of a moralizing tale before changing his name to Christopher. Christopher was martyred, the mystical dog-headed St. Christopher, got by the whisk and the flashing lights of their daily dog-headed lives.

Jesus, with his hairy tail, eventually becomes comatose, tsetses laying their eggs in his dog-head. Accounts indicate the alleged travels of the fully grown larva burrowing into the soft, moist soil of the Andaman Islands.

Books: Insights From Insects: What Bad Bugs Can Teach Us (Gilbert Waldbauer)

The Dog: 5000 Years of the Dog in Art (Tamsin Pickeral)

“A Day in the Zoo”

by Shailen Mishra

We are like Meggendorfer…

And Nister too, he added.

Yes, we’re like both of them. The pop-ups will fascinate you, crazyhead, and we’ll surprise you, you’ll see. We’ll blow your sock off. Bring the cats, somebody. Bring them out. Parade them before audience! Bloody hell! I’m being ostracized, is it?

You mean “we.”

Yes, us that is. Spring out the lazy lions. Whoa! Spring them out! See them leaping! You didn’t turn the page right. Turn them right, will you?

Just a child he is.

Indeed! Turn them swift and eloquent. Focus, crazyhead. Focus. Who are we?

Meggendorfer & Nister, he added.

Not precisely. But like them. Whoa! Did you see that? You did right, kid. You did it awesome. They thought that I am no longer a good ring-master. That I am incompetent and that I cannot control the big cats. That I traded them off to Hollywood for money because they were jumpy and bouncy and undisciplined. That they’ll bite my head off if I keep them caged for too long. That if they don’t glamorize themselves then they will be spiteful. Damn those New York press. Damn them for being unkind to me.

No one criticizes the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circ…

Whoa! Don’t be afraid, crazyhead! Don’t you weep. The cats won’t bite you. Turn them pages swiftly again, will you? Turn them eloquent. Let them pop out from their prosceniums.

From what?

Don’t confine them. Let them out. Let them out of the pages….

What was that again? Pros…what?

P…R…O…S…C…E…N…I…U…M…S

(Books were Facing the Big Cats: My World of Lions and Tigers by Clyde Beatty & Edward Anthony & ’86 Annual of Ad Productions in Japan by Teruyuki Kunito)