Separate but Equal Segments

A new Lego Snowboard Half-pipe building set advertises a separate set for 'Negroes', advertising on the front of the box that it's "only 15 miles away."

The Quarter Thief

In a pink-shag-carpeted room stand eight Ms. Pac Man arcade cabinets (two rows of four).

Each of them has its back access panel removed.

You can reach in far enough to grab the key to the coin mechanism, but not the key to the coin collection box.

Each quarter stolen from the room full of games provides you with 10 seconds worth of power to an electric shopping cart go-kart conversion.

How many oncoming SUVs can you avoid before running out of power?

Game Design Moon Jump

Episode #19:

The Design team builds a prototype for a rhythm-based air hockey / table tennis game.

Romantic Comedy

Kristin Stewart (Reese Witherspoon) tore a large piece of magazine out of my hands for the third time.

"You are such a child!" I barked at her while storming out of the crowded sidewalk cafe amongst murmurs and stares.

As I climbed a cobblestone slope a young woman tried to interest me in online postage.

Stunt Clip

spicy
bowl
of
ramen
second
floor
jumping
boy
land
on
his
head

Improv

In a drama class, students are asked to ramble nonsensical blabber for two minutes.

I turned my blabber into song lyrics.

Then I found that I could float and push off walls as a swimmer does in a freestyle flip turn.

Business Trip Dad

(set to the rocking background music of George and Jonathan)

My dad goes on business trips but always comes back with presents for each of us.

This time he brought me an antique penny gumball machine. Instead of gumballs, it was filled with old pennies.

I glimpsed an indian head cent, but also a 1902 lincoln cent, which, I thought, was impossible since the US Mint only began producing the new pennies in 1909.

Survived By

The helicopter turned and fired a rocket.
The rocket rocketed and swerved through the air, then struck a tank.
The tank burned and ejected many flaming victims, some of whom succumbed to the fire.
The victims crawled and included a torsoless girl who tottered on her hands.
The girl cried and clutched an ancient secret book of geometry.
The book rested and mouldered in a dripping cave for a thousand years.
The cave yawned and anticipated the arrival of more survivors.

Opportunity Costs

Machinegun Mike owns a karate dojo where every employee is named Mike. He also runs a punchcard sorting service from the dojo.

Good Neighbors

Gertrude Tidwell lost his timepiece in our backyard.

We learned of this fact when he leaped over our fence, bursting a giant elongated soap bubble (which burst radiantly in a slow-motion rainbow) to look for it amongst the ice plants.

Recent storms had impacted and broken the sewage pipes with mud which drained into the Stanford water treatment facility.

Pop Corn

Grace Jones broadcast an annoying message about me over the intercom system at a Best Buy using my cell phone, then she threw it on the ground.

Outside, she was confronted by the Vancouver Canucks for public intoxication.

In the Neighborhood

Friendly fish follow me.
I tickle a catfish under its chin.
Two Koi and a rainbow parrot fish leap out of the water into my arms, then, they all mimic my movements like dolphins levitating out of the water on their tails.

My shadow follows me.
I jump along a sidewalk next to a concrete wall.
Trying over and over to touch both feet to the wall as high as possible, I think of a game with this core mechanic, set to 1970's 'classic' rock with a backdrop of muscle cars.

I am an Eye

I try to cash a check and attempt to make the irregular amount come out even by offering pocket change when the cashier refuses.

I mistake a toned Kennedy half-dollar coin for an older Walking Liberty half-dollar by holding the coin upside-down.

I ask to search the cash register for more coins while informing the clerks of United States half-dollar coin designs dating back to 1916.

I walk to catch a bus to the Los Angeles Convention Center and see Anna running to catch a bus in the opposite direction.

She fails.

Curry Western

Little Zachary visits dad at work. They enjoy traditional Indian food.

They wait in the rightmost of two lines to ride invisible horses at a gallop across thirty feet of mud.

In a Box on the Bed in the House

Rich (Emilio Estevez) and Steve (Keanu Reeves) left the business seminar shaken.

"What's that you're playing with?" asked Rich.

"It's a jingling ball," replied Steve, who rolled the reflective silver sphere in his hand. It jingled.

"Wanna school me at Guitar Hero? There's one standing next to the popcorn machine."

"Only if you're paying. It's a dollar huh?"

The pair strolled across the movie theater lobby. Rich pulled coins from his pocket as Steve spied a stack of smaller coins - pennies and nickels - abandoned in a box on the side of the machine. He emptied the coins into his hand, and his lips moved silently as he added up the amount.

"I'm thinking there's enough here. Hey look there's more!" Steve muttered. He indicated with a head nod the paper bills of different denominations littered on the gaudy carpet.

He continued to mutter, and collected the discarded cash, then paused to pick up a business card.

"I can't make out the name, Charles Golding?" he said more to himself than Rich.

A caterpillar-like elderly man crawled along the floor and addressed Steve, still puzzled at the appearance of the card. "I'll be having that," he crowed and stared indeterminately in a random direction, his eyes unfocused.

Steve noticed that the man pushed a red and white striped stick ahead of him across the sticky carpet.

"Are you saying the dollar bills belong to you too?" called Steve as the man crawled into a bedroom. "Wait!"

Steve walked through the doorway in time to see the man crawl into a pink bed between two elderly ladies who watched a silent movie screen opposite them.

"What's going on here?" Steve called as he examined the paper money. One bill had an inky shoe print on the back. On another, a note was scribbled:

'en la caja en la cama en la casa'

Sliding on Hardwood Floors in Tube Socks Battle

Chris: judge, fighting in the style of Judson Laipply in "Evolution of Dance".

Lance: dancer, fighting in the style of Yu Chae Young in "Emotion".

Ben: locksmith, fighting in the style of Dave Elsewhere in "7-11 Slurpee commercial".

All three contestants battle to the death in a fitness center weight room. Who will win?

Cars & Guitars

Red Chrysler minivan crushed into the outside bathroom wall as I used the urinal.

Walked through the music store after hours where guitars and amps had been set up in doorways; one tuned by B. B. King, and a giant 'drum tuned' guitar.

A coworker arrived with a lunch box and a violin case.

I'm Going to Wichita

I rode the orange Disneyland monorail coaster with the rear shaped like a 1971 Dodge Charger; pulls three G's around turns.

I rode with others in a large dome-shaped room with padded blue walls, floor and circular benches; easy to hose off vomit.

Through the night, I felt small jolting earthquakes that I feared would eventually wake my mother; they were really aftershocks.

Though asleep, I knew the tremors came from cars racing by the Tiffany lamp, towering overhead; it's in the corner next to my bed.

Think Happy Thoughts

Little cute bees. Little babies.

Tiny, tiny bunnies hopping, twisting, contorting, catching fireflies.

Kung Pow

Change
Focus
Commitment
Perseverance
Flexibility
Gastrointestinal
Onomatopoetic

Stream of Unconsciousness

Waiting in line to buy a dozen tacos from Taco Bell, doing dips on an old wooden fence, an old guy found a 1943 copper Wheat Penny in the tip jar and handed it to me.

"Lemme talk to you about a Dinner Party Action show," he wheezed

"The worst feeling is knowing you could have won but didn't say anything," he wheezed.

"They wanted me to be a writer," he wheezed

Threes

Lions in Awesometown.

Stolen money in a couch cushion, in a suit, in a church, in the left hand aisle, in the middle of a devotional.

School kids in a pew play a mobile phone Apache helicopter war game.

Apprehension, interrogation, confession.

Movie shoot on location: a Blackhawk helicopter destroys a Coast Guard helicopter and an 18-wheeler.

Remembering Lives Past

I once was Mark Little, then was Malik Shabazz.

Now I'm Phillipe Navau, and I like to play jazz.

Fade Out

Last scene:

Aang stabs me in the kidneys with two sharp sticks.

Podiatry Poetry

Crippled Joe Danger,
for rehabilitation,
rocks in a hammock.

Along with his dog,
Jelly-foot superhero
runs in slow motion.

Falling With Style

I pushed off the ground with my right foot, rising higher and higher.

Looking down to the gently sloping shallow concrete stairs I knew I was too high to safely land without injury.

However, with rising confidence and scissoring legs, I performed many more long lazy hops, skips and jumps, even pirouetting twice during one great leap.

Eventually my lofty bounds carried me beyond the length of the concrete and into a vast sandy gravel parking lot, sparsely populated by dozens of Airstream motor homes.

I glanced off the top of one of the silver RVs looking back longingly towards the edge of the sand lot, the top of the concrete stair slope, and beyond to the overgrown mountain peak where my journey began.

At the topmost stair, before ascending the rugged mountain surface towards the top, I sat to inspect my red Converse Hightop Sneakers.

I heard a couple of fellow travelers descending, discussing how the owner of the mountain peak had installed security fencing, scolding them for tresspassing.

My second journey down the stairs would have to begin from where I was then.

Again!

Random Tasks

I pitched baseballs through a second-floor brownstone window at an array of three basketball hoops, watching as they 'toilet-bowled' around the hoop.

I watched the last ball fall, snatched by a curmudgeonly old queen ant, and taken into her nest, a rusted-out, crushed oil drum.

Hoping to retrieve the ball, I tentatively knocked at the entrance to the queen's abode, but turned away when she gave me no response.

I walked away, taking down a delicate mobile from a ceiling joist as I passed, eventually exiting the giant hardwood-floored gymnasium.

I noticed another identical mobile hanging mistletoe-like in a doorway across the hall so I backtracked to replace the one that I had taken, noticing that the gym floor was now overgrown with plant matter.

Always in Debt

I now owe mob boss Paulie $5,000 for borrowing his white Mercedes SLR.

The problem is that I smashed the car through a guard rail on the freeway yesterday.

Therapist Lies

In order to cut our hour-long meeting short, I fabricated a dream story and retold it to my therapist:

I dreamed that my disembodied head was set to animate along a spline in a 3D computer modeling application which was the product of the combined pitch, frequency, and amplitude of a musical selection.

My face was also set to animate to the music by approximating speech phonemes, the result distorted and twisted my gestures into sometimes strange inhuman expressions.

Urban Hunters

Geocaching near our home, Zack spots a suspicious fertilizer bulb attached to an Agapanthus plant. Strange that this was located at least fifty yards away from where the GPS lead us.

Drunken Camouflage

This is a game where I violently rip out cords from any laptop I see while yelling maniacally, then paint myself silver to blend in with aluminum scraps.

Back To School Shadow

I follow Steve through his first day back in junior high school and watch as he struggles to remember the combination to his locker.

"Sixteen. Twenty-four. Two? No. Three? No."

He checks each number through nine where the lock finally opens.

Later on the bus ride home, he confronts the driver for chewing gum.

Never Park Under a Tree

Both the driver's seat and passenger seat had been forcibly removed.

At least the thieves did not take My First Truck Board Book.

Motoproto Show

Wheelie rider drives up and down the freeway and over sand dunes.

A rhythmic gymnastics participant wears a prototype motorcycle suit; a wheel on each appendage.

Sean Campbell conceals a toy antique chopper replica behind a drywall panel in the corner beside his bed.

Drive Wherever

My silver Rabbit passes Kent on highway 17.

Later, with Lucas and Sue Heck in the backseat, we drive downhill in the rain towards the beach.

It All Ends With No

As my grandfather sorts rare proof coins onto photocopies of the Seven Dwarfs I ask him whether his stepfather was ever impressed with my grandmother's knack for fixing television aerials.

He replied, "no."

Machine-gun Whisperer

Sitting in the left-most wrought-iron patio chair of three in a row in an outdoor cafe in Las Vegas, I heard machine-gun fire from an underground bunker three thousand five hundred miles away.

Life Changing Visions

Withstanding an electric shock with increasing voltage, I awoke with a start with the feeling of being blasted with freezing wind and a voice succinctly shouting, "Create!"

Deepwater Denizens

Jakob had a swimming lesson today. I saw him dive deep into the pool.

He became tangled in a sinewy spider web halfway to the bottom and thrashed wildly in the water. Some giant beetles were similarly ensnared - dead victims of dinners gone by - but a giant dragonfly nymph wriggled fiercely, struggling to free itself.

The movement of the dragonfly nymph frightened Jakob and he started to wail, his terrified cries piercing through the water to my ears.

There's Always a Vehicle

JD drives AG & SL (sitting in AG's lap) in an orange Volkswagen Jetta GTI, backing out of the court after the business meeting and shaking hands with SR.

Wrong Floor

FXL meant to take the elevator to the lobby from the 34th floor but returned after a trip up to floor 36.

Recursion

1.
- Chinese restaurant bathroom, kitchen
- spiral wooden staircase
- Mayan-themed water park
- convenience store ticket counter

2.
- party of out-of-uniform Cub Scouts
- damp night air
- waterlogged footsteps
- display window demolition

3.
- lumberjack hat
- frost
- 5am swimmers
- sentient transforming Coca-Cola delivery truck extends landing gear before blasting off

DSTSD - Department Store Tube Sock Derby

The game is played with two teams of nine, one of whom, rides in a shopping cart who is the only one who can score a point for their team, but who has no means of locomotion on their own.

Typically, the shopping cart rider is armed with whatever handy item the venue affords: parts of mannequins, small electric kitchen appliances, and glassware are commonly employed in the Department Store venue for their piecewise flexibility, ball-and-chain momentum, and explosive shrapnel qualities respectively.

Mops, gallon jugs of milk, and twelve-pack cans of soda are favorites of the supermarket circuit (reach, dual-wielded clubs or heavy projectiles, and hard-hitting single projectiles)

Recently school gymnasiums have entered into the list of accepted locations. The lack of available weaponry for the shopping cart rider has lead to the expansion of rules regarding the number of team members, increasing the store limit from nine to twenty.

Gameplay parallels many rules and tactics seen in traditional roller derby, but with the destabilization provided by the slippery linoleum, tile, and hardwood flooring against the smooth tube socks, there is an increased propensity for players sliding, colliding, and falling down.

Whiteboard Costumes

Green marker spiky-haired clockwork robot helmet.

From Schoolbus To Impala

I was sitting in the third row on the left side of the bus.

Someone left their math textbook and an Advent of Annihilation comic behind.

We crossed a parking lot towards an old brick building.

I scootered downhill towards the entrance.

Someone mentioned that the mahogany panelling gave the appearance of a pub.

We walked along the carpeted hallway of an art gallery.

I left the group and trudged through a field covered in knee-deep snow.

Someone threw a snowball.

We climbed up a snow-covered hill towards another parking lot.

I unlocked the passenger door of the white 1979 Chevrolet Impala.

Get Free Stuff!

Today's free offer comes from Jack in the Box. An employee dressed up as Pinhead from Clive Barker's Hellraiser (except with Dum Dum lollipops in place of the pins) is standing in the parking lot of your nearest restaurant handing out samples for their newest taste treat:

Jack's BBQ Ice Cream Crunch!

The treat consists of a hollowed-out log of tender barbecued beef, lined with melted Monterrey Jack cheese and bacon bits (for the crunch) and your choice of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream, served on a super-sized Popsicle stick.

I chose vanilla since I wanted to be able to savor the flavor of the bacon, cheese, and barbecued beef.

05/08/2049

announcer
bystanders
can
Disney
elevator
follow
games
heart
in
jaguar
kitsch
lackadaisical
music
natural
oboe
parks
quill
recalcitrant
solo
triangle

violin
world
xylophone
you
zzz

We Miss You Spalding Gray

Just as Spalding's trick of leaving his wallet on the beach nullified his fear of a shark attack, so did my leaving a triple footlong hotdog on a six inch bun in the microwave eliminate my fear of public speaking.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in big ol' fat drops — except under the eaves, where it was diverted by feeble bursts of wind which swooped across the hedges (for it is in Morgan Hill that our scene lies), lingering around the front porch, and gently moistening the choking glow of my cigarette that guttered against the darkness.

Bubblegum Pink Cotton Candy Rainbow Unicorn Princess Theater

Misleading ushers into believing in the delivery of a celebrity, Steve searches corridors, opens portholes and doors, then a portcullis. Stumbling into purple-pink mist, he witnesses an impressive vista. Insisting in listing, this instigator revisits slim positions willing, listening intently, interpreting wishes, sitting in chintz-fitted barcaloungers.

MPAA Rating News

Since when does the existence of a limo driver wearing a hockey mask push a movie from 'rated PG' to 'rated PG-13'?

I See Words In Everything

Cottage cheese word seen: CENTERFIELD.

Submarine bubbles word seen: CENTRIFUGE.

Television static word seen: SOON.

Don't Help Me

When I have shards of glass embedded in the backsides of my hands, please don't try to brush them out. Thank you.

Asynchronous Game Show Contestants

A popular quiz show where all the contestants wear red shirts has a format that consists of a group of five contestants answering questions on one day, then on the next day judging the answers and results of the previous day's game.

After being led through an expansive cavernous airplane hangar, one contestant slides across the red and blue patterned carpeting to his judge station, removes his shirt and pants, then decides to put his pants back on.

Skippy

Skippy is trapped inside a submarine throwing binary combinations of four levers to coincide with changes in cabin pressure do to changes in depth.

Salad Stealing

Stealing salad
from a
second floor apartment,

singing schoolkids
fight amongst
several forgotten anchovies.

Crap Shoot

Brother and I practice with our Nerf Switch Shot EX-3 pistols aiming at television static.

EA, JP, arrive after a night of carousing.

Carts and carpet

While contemplating the organization of my Atari 2600 cartridge collection, my wife showed me a mock-up for a website design. She had used scans of my cartridges as placeholder images.

At a blue-carpeted church where my youngest daughter was acting in a play I waited for the elevator (its door swinging open outwards snagging on my slipper) then entered and descended one floor to the seating area.

Magic Hat

My stovepipe top hat has a peak with four escribed arcs around its circumference.

The brim is folded four times such that the creases form a square with the circle of the peak inscribed within.

Independent

Hosting our first open house felt like filling the freezer with ice: no room for beer.

We opened up access to the roof so that people could tour the television equipment if they wanted, just as it started to rain.

Seems like everywhere I turned were familiar faces I didn't expect to see.

Oktoberfest Morninig

Family, accompanied by U. Bossi in his new Acura Solaris (gray), travel by brown van just up the street (dad walks) to a sporting goods store for its annual sale.

Toddler tries out a treadmill while a lady dons men's lederhosen.

Gloaming

Walking,
clapping,
echoing,
entering a
sprawling
paving-stone courtyard
lying amidst ranch-style doctor's offices, then
consoling,
hugging,
kissing,
releasing the
dying woman
crying.

Dream 168

In which my mother purchases a recreational vehicle.

Vegas Story

Trying to fool an ATM outside the Excaliber casino lobby, Jeff draws pennies onto slips of paper and feeds them into the deposit slot.

When that doesn't work he iterates writing out more digits of pi on the slip.

Bungalow C

We were both eating salad out of a hookah in the basement when we heard the doorbell.

I answered the door in my bathrobe armed with an electric turkey carving knife.

A ski-masked thug wielding a wooden cane proposed to thwack me on the side of the head.

Fortunately, the attacker's repeated chopping swings reduced the walking stick into bite-sized chunks.

The Oracle of Dreams

Climbing over razor-sharp bronze-backed tiles, prising them loose to look for hidden runes, we crawled, four lions and one lioness across the sun-baked island.

Feeling no relief but gritting rust-scented pain as our shredded soles rake across salty coral shoals, we infiltrate the enemy university.

It is high noon, and a towering rival Senator carrying a golden tray shoulders through our puny group, mistaking us for lowly Plebeians.

Enraged by our apparent effrontery and lack of tact for not prostrating ourselves before the giant tiger, he grabs and hurls a nearby stone dais assuming that the great weight would crush us to dust.

However, we are no ordinary felines.

Our tiny stature is complemented by a boundless capacity for berserk rage and sounding a ferocious and deafening war cry we mercilessly slaughter the stupid bully, the sounds of wretched death attracting scores more foes.

In the distance lay four moored Greek triremes with names of "Valiant Death", "Bold Soldier", "Rusty Cutlass", and "Victory Scabs".

What Happened Last Night

Lost two LED dart games in a row to 3 other co-workers at a Tiki-themed party.

Famous Sightings

A teenage Carrot Top was seen furiously kicking a student amidst a group of hoodlums. When confronted, he seemed to detect that his attacker concealed a pocket sap in the palm of his hand.

Adam Savage conducted a ballistics experiment in the baseball field behind an apartment complex using garden snails as marking shots.

All of a sudden...

A barefoot bank-robber

wondered why the silent security guard did not notice

he was carrying an automatic assault rifle in an attaché case.

I punched him so hard in the face the channel changed.

Sad Goodbyes

My father lay on his deathbed, the victim of a freak teleportation accident which merged his body with the frame of a red 10-speed bicycle.

Communicating through a brass threaded pipe nipple, I couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth before he passed: that I hadn't actually been awarded the Medal of Honor as some Internet blogs had reported, but the Bronze Star instead.

Euopean Hiking - Stage 1

Beginning in the stairwell of a tour bus, hikers choose between the two options of climbing the Watzmann with a stay at Hitler's Kehlsteinhaus in the Bavarian Alps, or the foreboding Matterhorn along the border between Switzerland and France.

Life after Hogwarts

Set against a surreal backdrop of the city of London - torn apart by earthquakes the likes of San Franciscans would dread - where classic 18th century architecture is precariously built dwelling on top of dwelling, attached to impossibly-steep slopes and even upside-down, the saga chronicles the lives of recent Hogwarts graduates.

One former student recalls the increasing confidence bordering on hubris that rising seventh-year wizards would cultivate, thinking to themselves how much more applicable magical knowledge they had even above the abilities of their teachers.

IHOP QPAC

Try the new International House of Pancakes Quadruple Bacon Pancake Sandwich!

Made with quadruple the bacon, fried egg, cheese, and pancakes that make our signature breakfasts so appealing!

Drivel

Shiny red sweatpants-ed group sits on asphalt.

Hiding under a monster truck are John A. and Joey R.

Two angry girls come racing backwards around the corner in another truck looking for a caramel and white toy dog named 'Murphy'.

Mother, Father, son, and daughter walk along a snaking park sidewalk. Father is inebriated and cuts a straight line through the wavy path. Mother, lying and saying that her daughter is asleep, scolds Father to set a better example for their son.

Later, the white-haired Dad enjoys playing Goliath as his children jump on him.

Four Square

Grandfather mending leaking ceiling
(dated decorative dangling doodads)

Ramshackle lonely mobile home
(heavy hovering helicopter hurricane)

Crashed today neighbors away
(emergency eyewitnesses elucidate end)

Backpack lack callback snack
(cartridge collection cigar case)

First Days

First Day on the job at a Tastee Freez, making a double-chocolate dipped ice cream with nuts and a mango shake.

First Day on the job at JCPenney's in the Watch and Jewelry Repair department, duplicating keys, engraving a brass picture frame, replacing batteries and cleaning jewelry in the ultrasonic cleaner.

Convention Revisited

The One-King (presumably to rule them all) in a collaborative one hour level design challenge, tapes up day-planner sheets on cubicle walls.

Convention

Purple-faced acid-tripping engineer-kittens sketch fourteen environmental concept swatches thro_gh three reversing beeps.

Ballad of Nightwatchman 13-5

A security guard earning fifteen bucks an hour
with his nine-millimeter automatic pistol
briefly imagines his wife's plastic prosthetic foot
resting upon the seat of an antique rocking chair.

Adoption Attack

What happens when a wacky, drug-addled, alcoholic step-father comes looking for the couple who adopted his step-daughter?

Calvin Does Stuff

Calvin.

Back to Fontainebleau

Tony Anselmo enrolls at the University of California Santa Barbara campus after a twenty year leave of absence, taking up residence at the Fontainbleau apartments in the exact same room he lived in so long ago with Eric B., David H., Steve R., and Dave Z., and recounts some of his teenage exploits:

- jamming beer bottlecaps into the living room ceiling

- running a bathroom distillery

- dancing to Rock Lobster in the courtyard

- conducting unsuccessful botany experiments in the hall closet

- running barefoot and bloody across the second floor walkway

- playing Shinobi and Nobunaga's Ambition on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and Pirates! and Dark Castle on the Macintosh

- stealing laundry and snack quarters out of the Shinobi and Heavy Barrel arcade machines

- picking the lock of a bedroom in apartment 303

- setting off a homemade explosive comprised of powder, paper bag, and a nickel coin. He shows where the nickel ricocheted through the bedroom window, grazing his cheek and causing glass fragments to embed into his neck.

Junior High Video Game Development Club

Stuart C. and I are working on a Burnout 3 Crash Mode / San Francisco Rush - The Rock: Alcatraz Edition mod for the PS2.

Our club meets Tuesdays and Thursdays after school on the stage of the auditorium. Today, we arrived after orchestra practice and had to arrange our laptops amongst the forest of chairs, music stands, and stone statuettes of Mickey Mouse from Square's Kingdom Hearts 2.

After discussing the metrics and steps behind tackling a 3-level-of-detail tessellation of the island and our counter-clockwise racing course around it, I took a counter-clockwise victory lap around the auditorium in my socks and underwear, sliding, hollering, and knocking over the occasional statuette.

Tabletop Gaming Simulation

Sean G. demonstrates his 3D Vindicators diorama game complete with remote-control tanks, artillery fire and explosions.

Unfortunately it takes 20 minutes to 'load' (teardown, replace the scene, repopulate with new tanks) the next level.

Off The Air

Minute green specks on a dark magenta background.

Sum Of All Cars

[(Orange Datsun B210 + (parking lights) - (parking brake)) + (Black Ford Model A) + 2*(Scion XB)*((baby blue) + (disco green)) + (Chic - Le Freak) + (((U-Haul pickup)*(matresses))/(tube socks))] = (-x)*(red pickup*(John Ritter)) + (woodpile)

News Bites

R. Snyder was recovered 15 minutes after he fell head-first into a plastic-lined 100-foot-deep well.

Police were called to a residence where A. Rahimi had been housesitting but was locked out. A locksmith attempted to pick the lock with a violin neck when it was discovered that the door was unlocked.

A prominent political figure was recorded talking in his sleep, saying, "Ja ja! Apuesto a que no adivinas donde me escondí los!"

Limerick Lounge

To search for a late nighttime leak
I ran outside on my bare feet.
A dozen pairs of eyes
that gave me a surprise
were just dogs rutting in the street.

8 to 5

Tom Felton, in his first day at his new job at the Octagon - Electronic Arts' Headquarters building in Washington D. C. - is offered and accepts a new job at the Pentagon.

In a walking tour, a guide reveals that the combined salaries of SR and RM equate to the sum of 200,000 other employees.

Long Way To Vegetables

I followed Nathan C. up a metal ladder and he cried out when he pierced his finger with a plastic toothpick.

We discovered upon returning to the apartment that Mike N. had moved out in the middle of mounting brass plates behind each picture frame.

I took Nathan to the hospital in my car and called in to work that I'd be late while Joseph R. rode in the back seat.

We went to the park from the hospital.

I noticed my pockets were filled with bloated moist paintballs which looked like yellow pear tomatoes.

We saw Jeff D. and his son there at the park that looked like the spaces between office high-rises.

I tossed one of the paintballs - like a quarterback passing a football - to Joseph as he was running towards a red fire hydrant.

Couplet Corner

Go fetch the scuba gear from out the car.
Place it in the top drawer of my armoire.

Pay the taxi cab driver what he's owed
or into a fit of rage he'll explode.

So You Think You Can Hand Out Flyers

Joshua Allen, winner of the fourth season of the Fox Network's "So You Think You Can Dance" placed a flyer on the passenger side of my windshield in the parking garage.

He walked away to place more flyers on more windshields as I read the plain white one on mine, something about "I love Bebot", which turned out to be advertising for a new sports shoe.

I shouted out for him to stop, asking if he was currently wearing the shoes but he disappeared.

wish fulfill - Lost In Translation

(translating "wish fulfilment" from English to French to Portuguese back to English)

Step 1.
Acquire a 1997 silver Honda Civic EX Coupe.

Step 2.
Attach a portable Smog-test kit to the exhaust pipe.

Step 3.
Rev the engine to 2,500 rpms.

Step 4.
Play "The Devil's Dream" on a fiddle.

Step 5.
Note an output of 3.14159265358979323846264338327950 ppm (HC)

Step 6.
Whisper your wish (in English) into the exhaust pipe.

Test result:
English: "a new lunchbox"
French translation: "une nouvelle boîte à lunch"
Portuguese translation of French translation: "uma lancheira nova"
English translation of Portuguese translation of French translation: "a new lunch"

Putt Putt Sofball League

First at-bat of the first game for Karen yields a walk.

Arcade Fitness

Dave demonstrates a modification he made to a San Francisco Rush, The Rock: Alcatraz Edition Arcade game which forces the player to pull the steering wheel towards the chest.

The modification supports weights up to 2,000 pounds. Dave shows us the machine in action as he drives around Alcatraz while supporting a weight of 1,700 pounds.

Tinker Time

Build a hand-held device powered by two AAA batteries that fires the batteries out with the intent of remotely kissing a target person.

Unfortunately, you have to retrieve the batteries after each use.

Twenty-four

shopping mall
parking lot
icy road
Cram-a-lot

caliber
movie shoot
Slip 'N Slide
mango fruit

We Didn't Start The Fire...

Adventures in Science

(brought to you by the Hobart 3000 Series Slicer. "Whether your needs are light, medium or heavy duty, we have the slicer for you.")

The Slicer is used, in combination with a preparatory liquid nitrogen soak, to cut everyday objects (a pig head, a bowling ball, and a compact car) into dozens of fine cross-sections.

It turns out that cross-sectioning a live human is the path to invisibility. Invisible Steve slaps Ben in the face! Hilarity ensues.

Brown Widow

A (hispanic) named (M. Sandoval) (working) as (an undercover informant) for the (Los Angeles Police Department) as the (girlfriend of a known Mexican drug trafficker) in (southern California) (describes her experience hiding balloons of heroin).

subst
(fictional goddess)
(Lolth)
(ruling)
(chief goddess)
(drow race of elves)
(Demon Queen of Spiders)
(the sixty-sixth layer of the Abyss)
(unbirths hundreds of poisonous arachnids)

Trackback

The story ended with everyone leaving the house party...

which was broken up by the police...

who were called by Bobby Moldavon...

who was actually the first person to arrive at the house...

which was owned by the driver of the yellow Lamborghini Murcielago...

which was seen speeding away from the Pearl Market...

through which sprinted a man in a yellow shirt...

who had stolen Kenneth Tan's laptop...

which was leaning up against an arcade game cabinet...

which Stephen Riesenberger was playing.

15 Minutes Of Fame

15-minute mini-show sponsored by Marie Callenders for their new Free Cheesy Garlic Bread.

Pariticipants enter videos showing them eating the Cheesy Garlic Bread.

James Kono ravenously devours four soft ones with savage mouthfuls.

Cameron Petty deftly nibbles tidbits, encircling the rims, diminishing the perimiters.

Shell Collector

The Shell Collector visited me last night while I slept, carefully collecting shells, patiently waiting for all of us until, like dessicated tardigrades, we hibernate, anxious for that next life-giving drop of moisture.

Gopher Cop

I recently purchased a street bike and took it for a ride through mountain trails. While climbing a gentle grade I contemplated the hypothetical situation of being flagged down by a motorcycle cop - the 'Gopher Cop', who hides in his hole until a speeding motorist drives by (one sometimes stakes out a small driveway near the base of the hill on eastbound Newhall Ranch Rd in Valencia, CA).

I figured it was more prudent to pull over instead of accelerating the bike to 300mph, the machine's theoretical maximum velocity, and risk crashing at the sharp hairpin turn ahead.

The next morning at 4am, I arrived at the motorcycle dealership where I had purchased the bike.

Sand Smoothers

From a second-floor stairwell, classic cars can be seen in the hotel lobby.

Beside the hotel is a classic car pick-and-pull scrapyard.

Inside the gaping pocket of a pair of discarded blue jeans lies a leather belt that looks like a wallet.

Underneath the jeans is a polished bronze Spartan symbol embedded in the concrete.

Next to where the symbol was seen stands an abandoned basketball court.

Across the street from the basketball court there is a public interior hallway.

On the floor of the hallway there are forgotten grapes lying in the sand.

Within an unused closet the sand on the floor is perfectly smooth.

Behind a red freestyle bike tire tracks and footprints can be seen.

Double Meaning

'Arceus' was scratched into the wood paneling at the rear of an auditorium in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

Elevator 'rooms' move whole conferences from one floor to the next (one should not wear a mysteriously-found sport jacket)

'Arceus' is also the name of the 'Original Pokémon'