Found art by a past self
Thanks to Miles, much of our house is in disarray. A recent exploration of his uncovered a notebook, which I didn’t pay any attention to until Denny picked it up and opened it the other day. There’s a handout there on the subject of educational technology, and some notes from what was obviously a conference (though I couldn’t tell you anything more than that; the notes aren’t very exciting).
A couple of pages in shows what was actually on my mind as I sat in the conference. I have no memory of writing this, but it’s in my handwriting and follows my general aesthetic, so there you go.
Some good inventions:
- A necklace that sends tiny electrical shocks through your neck, keeping your hair fluffy and exciting.
- Tiny robots that live under your tongue and periodically squirt minty juice, which keeps your breath fresh.
- A giant dictionary that lives in the sky and falls on people’s heads when they misuse words [examples]. [blogger’s note:Â I guess I was going to fill in the examples later]
- A robot that looks just like you—it follows you around and apologizes to everyone you’re mean to.
- A tiny human that grows inside you, then comes out and can be molded to believe the things you believe and hate the things you hate. [blogger’s note:Â maybe I was pregnant when I wrote this.]
- A pair of shoes made entirely out of shrimp—walk home on a hot day, have dinner. Added benefit: popular with cats.
- Opposite scissors:Â put things back together again.
- A pen that uses pee instead of ink—-good for writing letters to your enemies because the letters smell bad.
- Wine that tastes just as good in barf form as it did originally.
- Disposable kittens:Â when they stop being cute, they turn into plump red strawberries ripe for the eating.
- A giant mouth that you can sleep in.
- A flame-thrower that looks like a fire extinguisher:Â handy when your enemy is slightly on fire but you wish he/she were completely on fire.
Our friend Danny is visiting right now, and his 6-year-old wants to be a scientist/inventor when he grows up. I think I’m going to recruit him to make these dreams a reality.
I have thought about a couple of these basic concepts, but evidently, I have not attended nearly enough conference presentations to fully envision or refine the literary possibilities.
Most of these concepts probably will not fly even in literary context, except perhaps Numbers 1, 3, 7 and 10.
If that dictionary existed, I’d like it to take out anyone who says “theory” when they mean “hypothesis.” But that’s a pet peeve of mine.
Pregnancy mush-brain is probably to blame for not being able to remember writing the list. Who could forget such a list?
Have you read “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”? This reminds me of that, but weirder–and I mean that as a compliment.