DAILY MONSTER 60
Good morning! How are you? I hope things are going well for you. Things didn’t go so well for yesterday’s monster. Number 59 has a real stress management problem. High blood pressure. High cholesterol. The works. Please check out the detailed reports from our trusty correspondents in the field:
Monster 60 is much happier than 59. 60 is a bit of a showboat. Do you think this one is compensating for its small stature? Or is it actually a truly big bird? Seems like it’s bowing. What performance just ended here? Music? Theater? Oratory? Motivational speaking? I hope you’ll let us in on 60’s secret.
In other news, I bought some ice cream tonight—Häagen-Dazs “Extra Rich Light Caramel Cone.” So, right from the start, that’s a bit of a contradiction. It’s extra rich, but it’s also light. Well… OK. Alright. Opening the pint, I find this message under the lid: “We spent ten years with European scientists perfecting our Extra Rich Light ice cream.”
Wow! Scientists! From Europe! European scientists! Because if you want to get into some serious ice cream engineering, you really want European scientists on the case. As a European, I just want to tell you—my American hosts—that I’m sorry. I’m sure American ice cream science will one day rise again. (Of course, the particle accelerator at Fermi Lab in Illinois is due to shut down in 2009, and CERN is about to go online with the Large Hadron Collider, so… get ready for Über-rich ultra light ice cream. From Lake Geneva. Unless, of course, the Fermi team finds the Higgs boson before then. In that case, I’ll happily cue up for a pint of Bosonberry Sorbet.
This has nothing at all to do with monsters, but it struck me as odd on many levels and I thought I’d share the experience with you. The actual caramel cone ice cream was decent, but no match for Ben & Jerry’s stuff.
There is something, though, that does have something to do with the monsters: Once we reach Monster 101, the Daily Monster is going to become the Weekly Monster. Once we reach Monster 100 I’m going to put together a little book about the Daily Monster. Maybe it’ll be called 100 Days of Monsters. Or maybe The Daily Monster — 100 Days of Wayward Ink. We’ll sort that out later.
The book will feature the first 100 monsters along with a selection of your stories. I’m going to look for a good home for this book, so if you know a publisher (or if you are are a publisher), please give me a call. Or I may print the thing up myself and sell it here on the site. Either way, I can’t wait to put some of your excellent stories into print. If you haven’t posted a story yet, you’ve got 40 more opportunities to stake your claim. I’m excited to see what you come up with!
Be it in RGB or CMYK, be it daily or weekly,
you can always rest assured that 344 LOVES YOU
Having settled for a dead end, boring accounting job just after college with the smallest accounting firm in the city, Clayton Bartleby desperately needs a creative outlet. Searching for months in vain for the outlet to express his pent up emotions, Clayton gives up in despair. The very next night Clayton find himself in a bad part of town having flown off course in an one of the up drafts that the city tends to create, Clayton finds himself in a part of the city he has never seen before. Thirsty, he wonders into a nearby club, where he discovers his dream of dreams, his purpose in this present life. Now after years of devotion to his new found craft, Mr. Clayton Bartleby can be found most nights headlining at the Tooky Tiki club as their resident Can Can dancing, flying Marionette puppet master!
Yay for Clay!
Dookie knew he’d never be a match for a late, great blonde bombshell. But when he spotted a certain iconic subway grate on 52nd and Lex, he had to give it a go.
“Now after years of devotion to his new found craft, Mr. Clayton Bartleby can be found most nights headlining at the Tooky Tiki club as their resident Can Can dancing, flying Marionette puppet master!”
As he took his bow on this fateful evening, he realized that his dorsal tentacles were not behaving! They disliked the roll of posing a lowly “marionette strings” and had been vying for a larger roll for some time now. They had been happy in Clay’s old life of accounting, for they gave Clay an advantage when it came to entering figures into the computer (they are very agile)!
Clay tried to distract them by launching into a encore Can-can performance, but as he watched in horror, the tentacles reached for his fellow marionettes on stage and…
“Clay tried to distract them by launching into a encore Can-can performance, but as he watched in horror, the tentacles reached for his fellow marionettes on stage and…”
tickled them. The tentacles tickled the fellow marionettes so violently that they fell to the floor in roaring laughter.
The puppetmaster was so furious with this display of unprofessional behavior that he gave Clayton the starring role in the Can-can performance (along with national exposure in all their advertising campaigns)and punished the other lowly, giggling marionettes by…
Hey! I like this new trend! Smart moves, everyone!
Otto Lilienthal was often seen investigating the flight of fluttering fowl, storks mainly. But occasionally he would graph the wing pattern of a different variety, the High-heeled Gliding Hamerkop. With a wingspan of over 12 feet, tip to tip, the Gliding Hamerkop was a perfect candidate for a human hang gliding counterpart. The only issue Otto came across in his studies concerned the wind drag from the Hamerkops’ pumps. Lop those babies off and you’ve got some smooth sailing. The stringiness of the Hamerkops’ wings was also a problem, but Otto only used the skeletal form as a starting point. He eventually learned to spread a sheet over the entire mess to gain some height and soar along with his feathered friends.
Black Winged Mudge Bird – Often seen in the high slopes of the Appellation Mountains in New England, it eats mainly sheep and other live sock from area farms. Originally native to regions of South American, the Mudge Bird was hunted nearly to extinction. W ever the northern progression of people to the north gave the Mudge bird a new home. The have been few accounts of the Mudge Bird attacking humans, how ever caution is used when approaching these animals. They are usually peaceful but can attack if provoked. This is an endangered species protected by law.
Remember The Ant and the Aardvark? (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGdgZf3J7Ik&mode=related&search=)
This is his cousin, Fred, the Winged Ant Monster. He has just been awarded his own cartoon TV show, after years of waiting in the footlights while his cousin, Ant, got all the glory. But now it’s Fred’s turn to shine.
He will be starring in Winged Ant and Bait Monster (seen here at Monster 53 http://344design.typepad.com/344_loves_you/2007/01/daily_monster_5_3.html). The cartoon will depict the wacky antics of both characters as Bait Monster tries to tempt Winged Ant to his certain doom. Chaos and laughter ensue as both monsters utilize the implements of death and transformation so familiar to the monster world: cudgels, snow blowers, toaster ovens, European scientists, and non-dairy creamer.
Winged Ant and Bait Monster will be airing on the Monster Network on Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. and on Saturdays at 10:00 a.m. (for the monster kids).
“….punished the other lowly, giggling marionettes by…”
tangling up their strings like a big tangled thing, sp that none of them could prance and pronate. Undeterred, the marionettes presented the knotty situation (their bums and bits were bumping together!) to Clayton, who in addition to being a former accountant with massive dexterity, was also a Junior Monster Scout and had won numerous badges for tying, retying, and untying undying and unending variations of knots known to man, can-can dancer, and monster alike.
whew.
nice stories everyone!
So, this is year 4 for me. I’m not doin’ to bad. Sure, the ‘ol wings don’t have the plumage they once had, but it’s all good. Serving out exile terms has its ups and downs, and believe you-me, this ain’t no picnic. I’ll serve my time, and then be living fat on the hog once again. Speakin’ of, I heard Tony Fulbotom has some new digs, thanks to a little bribery on his part. What do I care? I’ll tell you what, I was workin’ the South Side rather nicely before I was framed for that fiasco. They says I was a stool pidgeon — ya, I sees the irony — says I ratted out my crew, if you can believe that. So, I now has to pull down a dime for all the charges they trumped up on me. I’ll be back. This is just temporary. I may look all frail and whispy now, but I’ll get back to full health, full girth and back to my old roosts. I need to ration myself, though. First time for me to be in one of these things and I didn’t realize the food allotment would be so sparce.
My name is Johnny “Two-Tails” Libiani and I’m a Cordasian Tapeworm servin’ 10-15 of an exile sentence for Grand Larceny and Attempted Evacuation of a Fellow Parasite — to be carried out on this Walulee Bird.
Wer genau das Scheibenwischervögelchen entdeckt hat…
Der Brehm war’s nicht auch nicht Cousteau.
Die Schlauen unter den Lesern dürften es bereits herausgefunden haben.
Es ist…StGB…(hat nichs mit Strafgesetzbuch zu tun)
Aber nun zurück zur neuentdeckten Spezies, den Scheibenwischervögeln. Mit ihrer graziösen Körperhaltung, könnte man sie sich durchaus als Kühlerfigur für Luxusautos vorstellen. Die langen dünnen Schwingen würden, bedingt durch den Fahrtwind aber sehr schnell knicken, das wiederum würde einer Luxuskarosse einen leicht ungepflegten Touch verleihen. Deshalb diesen Gedankengang schnell auslöschen. Denn das Federvieh heisst ja Scheibenwischervögelchen.
In die Sprühdüse der Scheibenwischanlage gesteckt, putzt es mit Hochgschwindigkeitsbewegungen, die den Flügelschlägen des Kolibris ähneln, sehr effizient die Frontscheibe jedes Autotyps. Der flexible Kopf und Rückenflaum trocknet völlig streifenfrei in Windeseile.
Nach dem Verlassen des Fahrzeuges ist es empfohlen, das Scheibenwischermonster auszustecken. Täglich gefüttert und mit einigen Streicheleinheiten versehen, wird eine lange Lebensdauer garantiert.