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Carnivals are swampy places. Vermin and salt and sweat. I’ve never actually been to a carnival, so this may only be a bad reputation. Unless you count the time I worked at a carnival, of course. A slick commercial carnival, perhaps.

Posted By an octopus On 02.13.2012 @ 8:57 pm

Clamps held the piece securely on the table. It smelled of balsa wood and sawdust. Delicate slices had been made using the slick saw and I was making the tiniest corrections with my file. My masterpiece was almost complete.

Posted By an octopus On 12.24.2011 @ 11:05 pm

The non existant gods smiled down upon the pitiful creatures. Thunder was a plaything. The real art was in ripping the air apart. Such a feat could do nothing but create a thunderous noise.

Posted By an octopus On 12.19.2011 @ 7:47 pm

The papers fell out of the sleeve. It was a nightmare. avalanche. the carpet got a new covering. she threw her hands up in the air. They rustled through the air like millions of wings. I stood, listening to the fluttering of the insects flying straight down my ear canal

Posted By an octopus On 12.15.2011 @ 6:29 pm

the roof of my mouth is made out of sandpaper. I don’t have a radula because I am not a mollusc. so where is all this sand coming from? sandstorms in the snow and a million dustbowl particles hitting my eyes. too bad I don’t have a camel’s eyelashes

Posted By an octopus On 12.13.2011 @ 9:19 pm

I never wanted to be a princess. A princess was boring, she married a boring prince and lived in a boring castle. I wanted to be a wizard. Or an adventurer. Feminine is boring.

Posted By an octopus On 12.12.2011 @ 7:14 pm

the lighthouse beckons. one day I shall live in its lonely tower. light shines on the treacherous reef below. all I hear is foghorns in the distance. towers are fortresses.

Posted By an octopus On 12.10.2011 @ 6:02 pm

The leopard waited in the shadows. It was perfect camouflague. Leaves rustled, and no one suspected a thing. As they lay in their beds, far off in the treetops, the bringer of death was waiting below them. How sneaky.

Posted By an octopus On 12.08.2011 @ 6:06 pm

platinum is an element. it comes between iridium and gold, i believe (that was off my head so don’t quote me) it is a transition metal and is quite valuable apparently. it’s something like Pt… or is that plutonium?

Posted By an octopus On 12.07.2011 @ 9:21 pm

Hit return.

Look, I just hit it twice

There it goes again.

It is useful for making page breaks, which can make your writing seem more

dramatic.

Posted By an octopus On 12.06.2011 @ 9:53 pm

No one deserves anything. There is nothing to judge who does and doesn’t, and therefore, this word is meaningless. Some things are dessert though, like ice cream. Nobody deserves ice cream.

Posted By an octopus On 12.05.2011 @ 4:14 pm

The stables were in the creek. Horses stood in them. Chestnut and white and black and a sort of yellowy colour, with hooves and smelling of hay. Their coats were thick. Steam rose in the cold air from their wide noses. The chuffed and stamped. I dodged their backsides, not wanting to get crushed between these massive creatures.

Posted By an octopus On 12.02.2011 @ 8:18 pm

Slouch. I have one, my friends tell me. Muscles strain, but they are misguided. It’s more my neck is at an odd angle, I tell them. Is that true? I have no clue. In an infinite universe, there must be an infinite number of people with odd necks

Posted By an octopus On 12.01.2011 @ 7:56 pm

I wish I could be anywhere. I have always wanted to go to Switzerland, Rome, Peru, Moscow, Paris, Australia, California, anywhere but the same country I have lived in my whole life. I’ve always wanted to leave these borders, I might come back, or I might not.

Posted By an octopus On 11.30.2011 @ 8:20 pm

I was back in the museum. Bones leered out from the shadows. But it was differet this time. I happened to be the world’s leading expert on these bones, and they didn’t scare me this time like they had when I was little. Nope, I was thousands of dollars and many years away from that, and I had come to do my job. It was old, dusty, and smelled like old books, but how I loved it all.

Posted By an octopus On 11.26.2011 @ 7:31 pm

The laughter of the man echoed through the submarine control room. It was a small, cramped space, filled with monitors and gear, and the laugh seemed to fill it to the brim. He was laughing at the image, spread out over a multitude of monitors. It was a laugh of joy, because they had actually managed to pilot the little yellow rover to the right spot, where they found what they had been looking for this whole time.

Posted By an octopus On 11.21.2011 @ 8:24 pm

Rulers help you measure things. Or they lead a country, a kingdom, an empire, something. It could be either one of the two. If rules are made by rulers, are centimetres the same thing as laws?

Posted By an octopus On 11.20.2011 @ 1:55 pm

Everyday I’m shufflin.

Sorry, that was just the first thing that popped into my head.

It reminds me of that dance they do in the iPod commercials. Shuffle your feet.

You have to shuffle the deck before you can do a magic trick,

Posted By an octopus On 11.18.2011 @ 5:51 pm

Endless hours at playing solitaire in the tent were how I spent my social camps. I was dragged along for the camping part, but you see, it was the social part I really had a problem with.Not to mention the freezing cold, and the fact that our tent was buried in snow drifts. I closed my eyes and imagined myself where I almost had been, warm, aquatic-smelling air, and ghostly white shapes tumbling through the murk behind the glass.

Posted By an octopus On 11.17.2011 @ 4:32 pm

Hearts were trumps this round. I held my hand up to my eyes, shielding my gaze. I was terrible at hiding things. I could feel the thumping of my own heart inside me. Thump thump thump. The good news was my blood was still circulating through my veins.

Posted By an octopus On 11.16.2011 @ 5:10 pm

left of centre is where I stand politically. orange is my favourite colour, too. once, officials were organized from right to left depending on their stand on a topic. my ancestors were the drinking buddies of famous canadians, but who knows who they’d support today.

Posted By an octopus On 11.15.2011 @ 4:33 pm

Zero orchestra. That’s part of a song. Violins, horns, trumpets, bass, percussion. All rise in a glorious, harmonious cacaphony of sound. Strings vibrate. Flutes and clarinet shape the wind into sound. But really, it’s all just compressed air waves finding their way to our inner ears.

Posted By an octopus On 11.14.2011 @ 7:11 pm

The icicles hung down on the side of our house. It was s ign that we finally had a true Canadian winter. I was glad, winters without snow were tiring and lame, and we had all together too many of them on the west coast. The snowflakes fell all around. It smelled like winter. I hadn’t smelled the smell of winter in years. It’s funny how water can have a smell sometimes.

Posted By an octopus On 11.12.2011 @ 12:58 pm

The ions were postiively charged. They attracted other ions, negatively charged ones, because that’s what ions do. Together, they formed a compound. (That sounds liek they’re some kind of superhero, but they’re not, they’re just an ionic bond). And that is what we learned about in chemistry last year.

Posted By an octopus On 11.10.2011 @ 5:09 pm

The patent office was downtown. An eclectic mix of people sat in the waiting room. There were several old men with tufts of white hair, slightly singed at the tips. There were young business men in suits and several tired looking women.

Posted By an octopus On 11.08.2011 @ 4:31 pm

Death and decay. Trees have no way to get rid of waste so they let it all fall away to the forest floor with their leaves so it rots and all the bright colours fade to ugly brown. How I love autumn. Firecrackers sparkle and the smell they leave behind hangs in the air for days.

Posted By an octopus On 11.07.2011 @ 9:29 pm

The truthers sat in a frayed old tent. They passed out pamphlets to anyone passing by who made the mistake of making eye contact with one of them. It rained today, so there was barely anyone out on the streets, but they were still there, looking just as determined as ever.

Posted By an octopus On 11.06.2011 @ 5:03 pm

The tires were only all-season tires, so I knew they didn’t have a chance going up this highway in the winter. I winced as the car spun out for under us, because of the low coefficient of static friction between the tires and the icy road. “See,” I said, turning to the man driving, “i told you.” Oh well, it was a good thing we were carrying chains at least.

Posted By an octopus On 11.05.2011 @ 11:45 am

I was caught in the downpour at 3 AM, but I didn’t care. All I thought of was you, and where you were, and how I was going to get there. The woods were spooky and grey, and the cars’ headlights were blurred by the rain as I walked along the highway. The water soaked into my shoes. I knew you were just up ahead, or at least, I hoped.

Posted By an octopus On 11.04.2011 @ 9:45 pm

The combination of ingredients is a delicate balance. Cooking is like chemistry. But not quite as exact, and you don’t have to learn about balancing equations and molar masses. I guess it’s more of an art, of soirts. Because who would think that curry powder and maple syrup would taste good together?

Posted By an octopus On 11.03.2011 @ 8:05 pm