Everyday Junglist
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About me. You know how everyone says to be a successful writer you should focus in one or two areas. I continue to prove them correct.
Stories (712)
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Technonomatopoeia
There can be no doubt that modern technology is noisy. From the dings and blings of cell phone notifications to cshooooooooos, bwaaaa-bwaaaaa-eeeeerrr of old school internet connections, technology has brought us a huge number of new sounds, many of which are difficult or impossible to capture in words. The sound made when making a selection on a touch screen cell phone is a good example. I think it is intended to be a click, similar, but not exactly the same as the click of a finger on a physical keyboard. To me however it sounds more like an abbreviated snick. Actually I would say it sounds like a depressed version of the famous snikt sound made when Wolverine unsheathes his adamantium claws in the X-men comic books. Really it is SNIKT! because it is always written in all caps and emphasized with an exclamation point and a hyperaggressive font choice. Comic books have brought us a huge number of onomatopoeia. Batman is well known for having introduced Pow and Ka-pow into the lexicon along with hundreds of other words for noises. Today, technology like cellpnones and computers bring us access to comic books and graphic novels of a seemingly infinte variety. The graphic medium forces the onomatopoeia on those works. If one wants to make sounds in a visual medium, one has only words to work with. Technology itself however has brought us very few. I think that should change and technonomatopoeia is what those words should be called.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Fiction
Microfiction is My Favowrite Genre
Like just about everyone else these days my attention span is only a Plancks length long. In case you don't know, a Plancks length is the shortest measurable unit of distance, in other words, very short. Focusing on any one thing for more than 5-10 seconds really stresses me out, so, when I learned about the exciting and fun world of microfiction I knew this genre was the one for me. At last I had found a place where I could churn out hundreds of shitscicles for publication and/or read hundreds of other people's crapstorms in mere moments. Microfiction allows me to scratch my reading and writing itch without all the investment in hard work, thinking things through, and whatnot that comes along with reading and writing in all those other "boring" genres of yesteryear. I mean, who has time for long form fiction? Snoozefest. Even so called 'short' stories take so much freakin effort, and time I just don't have to spare. My job as an app developer for a major silicon valley corporation keeps me so busy I barely have time to stop for a massage in the office spa more three times a week, let alone to read or write a 3-10 page epic, that is probably about as exciting as whatever non exciting thing I would use as an analogy if I were not such a terrible writer with such a short attention span, which, it should be obvious by now that I am.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Fiction
Nefall
Roughly speaking the Japanese written on the headstone in the small Tokyo graveyard translated as follows. Here lies Shinzo Ito, the man who never fell. Born Oct. 29, 1900, died Sept. 3, 1981. Shinzo is believed to be the only adult on planet earth who never once, from the time of his first steps as a toddler in Nagasaki, to the time of his death in Tokyo, fell out of control down to his knees or worse. He was not a particularly athletic man, nor was he particularly clumsy. He was not particularly intelligent, nor unusually dull. He was not extremely handsome, nor was he considered ugly. He was not rich, nor was he ever poor. In fact, he was average in almost every measurable way, but for one, he never fell once in his life; from the day he drew his first breath to the day he breathed his last, dying peacefully in his sleep at age 81, after lying down under his own power to go to sleep for the night. Shinzo died unaware of his amazing accomplishment. His wife reported that his last words whispered to her as he fell asleep the night of his passing were, goodnight honey, I love you. Shinzo is survied by his wife Anyi, two adult children Akira and Akima and three grandchildren all of whom, like every other adult human known to exist on planet earth, have fallen at least once in their lives.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Fiction
When Guyitis Strikes
Melanie glared at Tod from the passenger seat as he weaved left then punched the gas attempting to pass a slower moving vehicle. Though she very much wanted to scream, instead she grit her teeth, and managed to keep her voice calm as she spoke "Tod, we have to get off at the next exit, why are you passing this idiot now? You are not going to make it around him before the turn off and we are going to miss it. Don't add twenty minutes to our drive just because you got a bad case of guyitis on the highway." She paused briefly for effect, expecting some sort of verbal retort from Tod. Instead he remained silent, and pressed the pedal all the way to the floor. The force of the acceleration pushed Melanie back in her seat, and reflexively she grabbed tight onto the door handle. Irritation was obvious in her voice as she continued. "Why do guys always have to pull this shit when driving? They just cannot stand to be behind a slower driver. Thirty seconds and we would have been to our exit. But no, you had to pass some fool at the last minute because why? Because guyitis that's why." As she spoke Tod had managed to make the rapidly approaching exit, with only a few feet of clearance to spare. He smiled and laughed in relief then said quietly "There is no such thing as guyitis, and we made it didn't we?"
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Fiction
The Microbiomics Revolution Has Arrived
The age of microbiomics is upon us and with it opportunities for promising new areas of research have arisen that build and expand upon the excitement of the original but add a previously thought unrelated dimension. By combining the study of the microbiome with some random other non-microbiology related thing that people study not only will you gain notoriety as a trailblazing pioneer in the field, but more importantly you will instantly at least double the number of funding agencies to which you can apply for grant money. Confused? Me too a little bit, but to help clarify some I have proposed a few new fields and brief descriptions of possible research focus areas for each. Note that I own any and all intellectual property associated with the name of each field and any valuable discoveries made within them.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Humor
Nice Guys Finish Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh in Local Marathon
Each year since the inception of the local marathon nice guys, the brothers Tod and Ted Stephens, along with friend Jim Thorne, had finished last. Most had speculated that this year would be no different. Today, the Stephens brothers and Mr. Thorne proved the haters and doubters wrong, finishing fifth, sixth, and seventh respectively. A visibly tired, heavily sweat pit stained, but still smiling Ted Stephens said the following about the nice guy trios historic result. "I am just so gosh darned pleased with my performance, and especially that of my brother Tod and old college roomie Jim. With this finish under my belt maybe Cherry (Tims) will finally go on an actual date with me and agree to that candlelight dinner at Chez Rouzeau I have been asking her about for years. Assuming she says yes, I might be given the opportunity to patiently lay the groundwork for a long term relationship by listening intently and responding with genuine warmth and caring as she talks about the horrible day she had at the shoe factory where she works. This would be in contrast to our other 'dates' which have mostly been us meeting at the local Denny's and splitting a Moons over My Hammy for breakfast, as I listen intently and respond with genuine warmth and caring as she talks about the terrible day she had at the shoe factory. Those are really a waste of mine and her time. Although, she really does need a good shoulder to cry on, and, I am a really good listener. I guess it's not so bad. Eventually she will have to tire of empty passionate sex with various members of the high school football team. I can give her so much more than that. Except for the sex part, I can only handle so much of that until I get really tired and sleepy."
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Humor
State Fostered Complexitivity and Lovecraftianism Among the Masses Has Brought Us to the Brink of Disaster
When the project was completed, and what we had been working on was finally revealed to the world the reaction was swift. Moral outrage, anger, and fear. It was the most complex system ever created by man, yet it's primary function remained a mystery. The machine was so complex that it was impossible to explain what it was or how it worked to the intentionally under educated masses. The state propaganda machine had been emphasizing the importance of Occam's razor their entire lives. Part of the people's moral code was based on it, therefore that which was complex was viewed as morally inferior and less desirable then that which was simple. Moreover, the masses had been taught that the the state was omniscient. A thing which was unknown, was a cause to be very afraid. The state knew that the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind was fear, and that the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. They had used that knowledge to great effect, but now it threatened the very existence of the state itself. We had to destroy it, the machine we had built, before it could destroy us. On September 26th, 2036 at 10:26 am a ten megaton thermonuclear warhead was launched from an orbiting satelite and exploded at a height of 1 mile directly above the project site, incinerating the machine and everything else within a 100mile radius.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Fiction
Bloody Pencilvanian-Penlander War Continues With No End In Sight
The ink stains of the dead Penlanders are as fresh as the horror and dismay over the fates of the many Pencilvanians erased from the front lines. This centuries old conflict shows no signs of abating as fighting renewed again yesterday at the contested border between the two warring nation states. Hardest hit by loss were the famed Penlander fountaineers claiming some 500 dead in the first five minutes of fighting alone. They stormed the Pencilvanian front lines early and with numbers but ran head first into a hail of graphite re-enforced artillery shells lobbed from deep behind enemy lines. The battle tested #2 company of the Pencilvanian army then counter attacked with a neat pincer move attempting to sever the head of the Penlander BiC brigade, so named for its legendary leader General Brad (ironside) Cotton. General Cotton called for a counter-attack but the Pencilvanians gelled as a unit, hardened their lines with their mechanicalized troops, and repulsed the counter easily with a simple brush stroke. In a last ditch maneuver to salvage something from the horrendous string of losses the General fielded razor company and the 101st lighter brigade consisting of several thousand battle tested Penlander shock troopers. They attacked in ball point formation exploiting a small crack in the Pencilvanian lines. At the point of impact ink and black carbon flew in all directions as the ancient enemies met in bloody tip to tip fighting. This reporter will never forget the horror of that sight and prays for a swift end to this seemingly never ending war.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Humor
Doomsday Peppers Prepare for the Apocalypse
Doomsday peppers the world over are busy preparing for the Ripeture, the event which is said to foretell the coming apocalypse. According to the peppers when the Ripeture happens all good peppers will suddenly disappear leaving only their neatly folded husks behind. The non-peppers unfortunate enough to be left behind will be forced to spend their remaining days fighting to survive in a hellish nightmarescape of death and destruction. Stuck hanging on their shrubs as they slowly rot from radiation exposure or die from dehyrdation due to lack of available clean drinking water. A leader of the local pepper movement in Sinaloa, Mexico, Pablo Ano said the following in a prepared statement. "All good peppers must prepare now for the Ripeture. It will come suddenly and without warning. Those sinful peppers who do not believe in our great leader Dr. Pepper, blessed by the holy ghost, will be left behind to rot. Those non believers will never gain entry to the heavenly garden of eden where peppers of all varieties live forever in paradise." According to pepper lore the garden of eden has soil so rich all peppers can live for eternity without any need for fertilizer, inseticides, or replanting. In fact, it is believed that no insects are allowed in the garden lest they disturb the holy peppers planted there.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Humor
Local IT Manager Hires Hollywood Production Company to Create Content for Anti-Phishing Campaign
Local IT manager of Openz Industries, Ted Stephens, announced today that he had hired a Hollywood production company to create content for an anti-phishing campaign aimed at rank and file employees. Openz is a global leader in the manufacturing and distribution of automatic garage door opener remote controls and provides remotes for all of the leading automatic garage door manufacturers world-wide. The company has recently been hit with a spate of phishing attacks and employees have been easily fooled by fake emails exposing valuable company data to hackers intent on using the data to extort Openz or its customers for large sums of money. Specifically the hackers are believed to be targeting Openz' database of garage door opener codes. If those codes were compromised it would cripple Openz and possibly put hundreds of thousands of garage door opener remote control users at increased risk of break in. The previous attacks used fake emails that appeared to be coming from Openz corporate headquarters in Pittsburg, PA, and informed employees that they needed to update their user names and passwords as the company would soon be transitioning to new customer and pricing management software. The emails instructed the employees to click on a link which led to a fake website where they were then asked to input their current user names and passwords and asked several personal identifier questions during which many employees freely gave up their social security numbers, home addresses, personal cell phone numbers, and even detailed information on the whereabous of their sons, daughters, husbands, and wives. In the first atttack some 72% of employees fell for the scam. That number dropped to 40% for the second attack, but that second attack also saw several senior executive sduped. Mr Stephens said of the phishing attackss "While it is true that 40% of our employees were completely tricked by the fake emails and foolishly surrendered personal and confidential information, that leaves 60% who were not fooled. Those 60% need to fully understand the seriousness of the threat we face. They may have sniffed out the first wave of phising attacks fairly easily, but let's see how they do when Hollywood production company New Wave Entertainment steps up to the plate."
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Humor
Cigarettes Were Never a Combatant in the War on Drugs and Yet They Have Been Soundly Defeated
Be it the war on drugs, or the war on poverty, or homelessness or any of a hundred other social problems the US and other countries around the world have declared war on, our record remains abysmal. It remains where it has been stuck seemingly forever at zero victories and very little tangible ground gained. The record is actually so bad that it appears as if declaring war on a thing is the metaphysical opposite of what one should do if wanting to make a positive change to a persistent social problem. The war on drugs is perhaps the best known example of the failure of the let's declare war on something we want to go away approach to social policy. Many, many drugs became and remain combatants in this many decades old war. Cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and other opiates, meth, marijuana, LSD, etc. Interestingly however one of the drugs that somehow managed to be left out of the war on drugs was nicotine. Specifically nicotine in the form of cigarettes. And, surprisingly to some I guess, they are the one drug (technically cigarettes are only a particularly deadly delivery mechanism for the addictive drug nicotine) that has been soundly defeated. They have in fact had their asses kicked. Completely, totally, absolutely crushed. In less than two decades cigarettes have gone from the hip, cool, must have accessory of the rebel without a cause, to a disgusting, hated, and reviled evil that no one in their right mind wants to have anything to do with. Cigarette smoking has become about as popular as Yahoo mail. That is to say, not popular at all with demand and usage at record lows. Meanwhile all the other addictive drugs still slugging it out in the war on drugs remain as popular or more so than ever. As popular as Google Maps. That is to say, quite popular and in heavy demand with usage at historic highs (no pun intended).
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Psyche
