Think Spin

The Case of the Missing Font Family. Hint. The Delete Key Did It!

Filed under Writing by Lauren on May 17, 2012 at 9:10 pm {4 comments}

Sherlock Holmes (Photo credit: givingnot@rocketmail.com)

Hey, you blanking page. What happened to the Font family?

They vanished somewhere between the margins, their characters decimated by Jihadist spelling terrorists.

Alas, I fear the fragment may be dead, but I can’t find the body of words.

I need an English detective to solve the case – Sherlock Holmes. Prep your pipe and tip your bowler.

Holmes turns to Watson.

“The Delete key killed the words this time, not the Butler.”

Delete key on PC keyboard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Are you sure, Holmes?”

“Why yes. Don’t you see? It’s the perfect crime – no evidence or DNA. Just D.O.A. Yes, I dare say, the delete key is a letter of interest.”

“We should put it under surveillance, Holmes.”

“Quite right, perhaps, a desktop disguised as a potted plant. And it doesn’t need sunlight or water.”

The conjectures stopped there.

Watson and Holmes suddenly left the scene after an incident with the Device Manager, who accidentally ejected them from the case.

Oh, well. The desktop has limited memory anyway. 2.99 Gigabytes that gobble up RAM and fragment jam that get stuck between the CPU and a hard drive.

Who cares? They’re only words and memory of words in this version of Word, an ecosystem of micro bits on the page.

If a biologist were to study the desktop habitat, he would find infinite lifeforms amid the fonts. The most noble one of all, the infamous Font de Leon, a blue-blooded Times New Roman.

With his sidekick Thesaurus, he wanders around the white drifts of spaces in a quest to find the perfect word.

One day, while traveling through the mirage of pages, the Font closed the window and lost his way. There was no turning back and no keyboarding forward. All is lost when there’s nothing to save.

This is the heartbreak of Psoriasis and flaky fingers tapping letters that don’t know an “a” from an “n” but know when a sentence ends.

Meanwhile, the Recount de Calisto hired a courier to hunt down the Algerian, who was seen lingering amid rebellious lowercase letters, along with a petulant typeface that demanded attention in bolded UPPERCASE words.

Big Boned™ Rounded Typeface (Photo credit: _Untitled-1)

All of the letters promptly disappeared in the quicksand of the document, an accidental demise, and not a felony by the prime suspect, Delete, the key to every crime.

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Mother’s Day Rap

Filed under Cultural Satire, Family, Pets by Lauren on May 13, 2012 at 6:04 pm {12 comments}

I’m a mother with a son, two dogs and cat

I try to cook and clean but fail at that

After work, I want time to clear my head

But have to feed the dogs and cat instead

If they don’t get dinner, they get under my feet

When you fall on your face, it’s harder to scream

I’m just a gal with a job, a hubby and kid

Got no time for a facial or sweet spot to fill

Want a safe-room to hide from my family and pets

Sitting alone in the dark is as good as it gets

After the dogs and cat got food in their gut

Got to make an ingestible for my husband and son

If I don’t feed them, they get cranky and gruff

Don’t want a coup on my hands while juggling stuff

Cook is a four-letter word and meal is, too.

Can’t my family get their own damn food?

I’m just a gal with a job, a hubby and kid

Got no time for a facial or sweet spot to fill

Want a safe-room to hide from my family and pets

Sitting alone in the dark is as good as it gets

Gotta put food in the fridge or on the counter it sits

The stack in the sink needs a dishwasher rinse

I stick them on the shelf, as if a piece of puzzle to fit

If I put them in wrong, there’s no place for a dish

Want to push all the buttons and begin the soak

Before I stumble into hubby in the comatose zone

My son’s M.I.A., stuck in the World Wide Web

Outside, the dogs avoid the shock of the electric fence

Suddenly, the cat wants to be my friend

She shows it be scratching the counter’s edge

“Stop it!” I scream, then she hits the catnip

Hubby wakes up barking with the dogs, who want to come in

Oh, God, I don’t wanna open that door

I’ll never get a moment of quiet time du jour

Just want one day to clear my head of crap

That’s why I wrote this half-baked Mother’s Day Rap

I’m just a gal with a job, plus a hubby and kid

Got no time for a facial or sweet spot to fill

Want a safe-room to hide from my family and pets

Sitting alone in the dark is as good as it gets

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100 Words of Attitude

Filed under Political Satire by Lauren on May 8, 2012 at 7:40 pm {7 comments}

Literary Agent, Janet Reid, periodically holds a flash fiction contest (100 words or less) at her blog.

For the last contest, we had to include the following words:

double
trouble
bubble
twin
spin

I didn’t win but had fun writing this 100-word piece.

Warning: Left-wing political satire. Last chance to bail out before I rip dimwit Mitt and the far right twits. Sounds like a Doo-Wop group.

Double Trouble

In the Spin Galaxy of the Wingnut Zone, King Rush’s dimmer twin, Putz, hijacked the royal space bubble with cyborg pal, Trouble.

Equipped with sunspot acceleration, the bubble popped into the earth’s atmosphere above the Cayman Islands. After pinpointing the location of the 1% vault, Putz said, “Trouble, you’re programmed to become Mitt Romney’s double with a hint of Groucho wit.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Trouble. “Romney’s a bigger stiff than Nixon.”

“Silence! We proceed as planned. Kidnap Mitt, strap him to the roof of the bubble and travel the universe until after the election.”

Note the effects of centrifugal force from riding on the roof of a space bubble.