Ooh, Story-Ness!!1 <--intentional exclamation point error

“Zippy The Flying Unicorn Man”

Written in 20 minutes by yours truly

"Glasses sucks," I think as I drag myself out of the optometrist's office. Really. Eyewear and me are the best metaphor for oil and water that you can find: we don't mix. Ever. And if anyone ever tries to make us mix, it screws up EVERYTHING.

I mean, literally. I'm so miserable that I didn't even bother to correct my mental grammar error.

Anyway, I'm wandering down the bustling Wal-Mart when something very ordinary happens: I become bored. So a giant flying unicorn man named Zippy crashes through the ceiling and crushes a few aisles of television sets. I think I saw what looked like the remains of a shopper, but I'm not sure.

"Hi, Ariana!" Zippy says. "I've come to rescue you from your eyewear-induced misery! Care to join me?"

Now, at this point, any rational person would have run screaming out of the building ages ago. And most irrational people would leave (or at least lose consciousness) upon being asked a question by a giant flying unicorn man. However, I'm a hardy breed.

I am a member of a breed best described as a Crazy, Bored-Out-Of-My-Skull Loser(TM).

And when I see Zippy offering me freedom from my daily woes, what could I possibly do but follow him?

I snag an iPod touch off one of the shelves (I was always a quick thinker) and hop on Zippy's back. "Mush!" I cry, sure that's the most cliche thing in the world to say but too euphoric to care.

"A'right, mate!" Zippy cries, and lifts off through the Wal-Mart ceiling.

Riding on the back of a giant flying unicorn man is pretty indescribable. Like a lot of things. People say that having an Out Of Body Experience is indescribable. Lots of people think music is indescribable, at least through words. (Some famous guy that I don't remember said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture", which is where I get the right to make that statement.)

Well, being propelled around one's humble hometown astride a giant flying unicorn named Zippy is one of those indescribable things. Even now, sitting at my writing desk with all these adventures behind me, I can't think of any suitable comparison to make.

I'd compare it to a helicopter ride, but I've never been on a helicopter, and Zippy doesn't make as much noise as a helicopter. I'd compare it to gliding across the sky in Apollo's chariot, but that would be far too poetic and pretentious and whatnot for my tastes. I could compare it to riding atop a dragon, but that doesn't help anybody understand since nobody's ever ridden atop a dragon, anyway. (At least, no more people than those who have ridden on a giant flying unicorn man.)

So, I'll just say that it was exhilirating, zooming all over the blue sky that smelled like tapioca pudding and had freaky yellow dots on it and made me roll my eyes and this is the biggest run-on sentence ever but i'm too bored to stop and i'm going to actually stop now because i'm a big hypocrite and why do i keep un-capitalizing my i's okay i'm done now the end.

With the sentence, that is.

Oh, and you know what? Zippy didn't have wings. But he could fly. I asked him why on the journey, and he said that it was all very simple, really, and it had to do with the slight odor I could smell in the moments where he wasn't flying as fast.

By then, I'd already received way, way too much information. I tried desperately to halt my mental processes before it was too late, begged the gods of innuendo for mercy...I even would have lit some incense and shoved rusty squid tentacles up my nose, but I didn't have enough time.

But it wasn't enough to halt my brain. None of it worked.

I knew.

Zippy the Flying Unicorn man was powered by beans and propelled by farts.

Luckily, there didn't look to be any people below us at the point where I puked.

Now, I've pretty much finished the tale of Zippy The Flying Unicorn Man...but, wait. I still have 4 minutes left and I haven't told how we landed.

So, after an hour or so of flight, Zippy The Flying Unicorn Man screeched (I don't know how Flying Unicorn Men screech, exactly, but that's what he did) to a halt and landed back in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I was at that point very dizzy from all the commotion, and I would have stopped to complain about that if it weren't for the fact that another, far vaster inconvenience made itself known to me right then.

Zippy's fart stench.

Now that he wasn't flying, the (quite commendable) remainder of his fart stench was swarmed around us like bees around a beehive.

He was nice enough to provide me a Q-tip to lose my lunch in. I gave him a perplexed stare when he told me that, but just then the Q-tip morphed into a Magic 8-ball, and everyone knows that it makes perfect sense to lose your lunch in a magic 8 ball. So I lost my lunch yet again in a magic 8 ball and that was that.

And then...then I noticed something. My hands flew to my face, and I didn't feel any dreaded plastic frames.

"They're--they're--"

But no. It was impossible. My glasses did appear to be gone, but...I could see perfectly, too. Could it be...I dared not hope, for I had done that so many times before and had seen my dreams smashed into nothingness the way a mustard bottle can get smashed into a slippery and life-threatening mess of yellow and plastic.

Then, Zippy the Flying Unicorn Man turned right at me and smiled. "YES, Ariana!" he cried. "They're gone! And replaced with See-Right Brand CONTACT LENSES!!11"

I couldn't believe my ears. "See-Right? But..I could NEVER afford those...they're so expensive..."

Just then, I noticed a group of four people dressed in business attire behind me. "You have won, Ariana. Won the See-Right Lenses competition! And Zippy has been so kind to award you your prize!"

I was speechless and weeping with gratitude. Zippy had rid me of the eyewear I loathed so much, and given me a gift that would last a lifetime! I looked lovingly in Zippy's bile-colored eyes. "Thank you," I whispered.

"ANYTIME! EAT BROCCOLI SALTS!!!" Zippy bellowed, and, after letting me off his back, charged headlong into the air, miles and miles above Earth.

When I looked behind me, the four people were gone. I looked forward and saw no trace of Zippy.

Even here, even now, it would be easy to think it was all a wonderful dream, a fantasy, a product of an active imagination. If it weren't for one thing.

My blessed See-Right contact lenses.

May the love of pencil sharpeners stabbing people with artichokes be with you, always and forever.

Prompt: Eyewear

Hungry

I am hungry. I have just eaten two slices of bacon. But I am still hungry.

It is Saturday. I have unfinished schoolwork that I need to attend to. I refuse to accept this paradox.

Life is like a big basket of poisonous vipers. The more writhing, slithery masses you try to grab, the sooner you'll die.

Eggs are delicious with a side of buttered toast, but would do much better with some nuclear syrup on 'em.

I'm going to think about squirrelly squiggly screwdrivers, since such squirrelly squiggly screwdrivers seldom sip sippy-cups, so squirrelly squiggly screwdrivers sing superbly.

In the immortal words of AnnaethGreenleaf on DeviantART: "Pie is equal to...GOOGLE! mwahahaha a bowie google...mmmm pie, bowie on a pie...WOOOO! Bowie in a google pie!"

Am I A Hippie?

It is a question that pops up every now and again, and one that I am discussing in detail here.

I am not sure exactly when or how the idea wormed its way into my psyche. I am sure it has been there for quite some time, though probably not before I was incarcerated into Ye Olde Dwyer Hellhole way back in '05. I am certain that my love of '60s-'70s music is partly to blame.

The thing is, the basic core of hippie idealism is kind of hard to disagree with. I mean, who doesn't like the idea of worldwide peace and compassion? Some of the less universal aspects of it, however (i.e. free love, recreational drug use, hedonism, and, often, left-leaning politics) don't have that quality. I personally don't find anything in the list above that especially resonates with me. (If you're wondering what that says about my political views, I would be best described as a libertarian, a viewpoint that doesn't fit into the right or left of the political spectrum.) Therefore, while I'm far from being the uber-conservative Anti-Hippie, I am not a hippie ideologically.

I consider hippie-esque fashion to be cool. However, I also consider it to be hackneyed. I've never been fashionable by anyone's standards, not because I have tried and failed, but simply due to the fact that I don't give a hoot. So, the "hackneyed" part of the equation could just be the ol' "Sour Grapes" effect, as explained by my good buddy Aesop. Now, this category is slightly different from the first, as my fashion preferences aren't as set-in-stone as my ideology. I may develop an interest in hippie-esque fashion. For that matter, I have a few peace-sign shirts in my possession even now (though the number probably isn't higher than average). So, I am most likely not a hippie in terms of fashion.

The only area where I am even somewhat of a candidate for that esteemed category of Hippie-Dom is music. I consider hippie-esque music to be cool. (Note: by "hippie music" I am referring to the psychedelic genre [i.e. Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Yes, and Barrett-era Pink Floyd], along with anything peace-and-lovey that was recorded in the 1960s. Yes, I am stereotyping here. No, I am not going to do anything about it? Why? Because I'm lazy, and this post is already getting ridiculously analytical, anyway.) "Hippie music" isn't the meat-and-potatoes of the music I listen to, but I appreciate it and listen to it regularly. (If one counts Barrett-era Floyd as "hippie music", then it is safe to say that I listen to some sort of hippie music almost obsessively.)

Here it is tempting to say, "Alright, I listen to hippie-ish music; therefore I am a hippie." But that wouldn't be quite right. Many people, especially music aficionados such as myself, listen to, among other things, "hippie music." My dad likes Airplane, Hendrix, and Yes to some degree, but he isn't a hippie. If the majority of the music I cared about was "hippie music" (I am so tired of using that phrase [and these parentheses/brackets for that matter] but can't think of a suitable subsitute for either, so bear with me) then that would be a legitimate argument for the Chutney Prophet vs. The Rest Of Humanity case, but this is not so. Therefore, musically, I display some hippie-like characteristics, but not especially so.

Then there is the notion of hippie slang. I regularly use and abuse terms such as "man", "dude" and "dig." I even rip out the occasional "groovy" when the mood arises. Then again, many teens in my area regularly use "man" and "dude", and "dig", while not as common, is by no means obscure in non-hippie pop culture, either. The only thing that could really give me some Hippie Points would be "groovy", which I hardly ever use.

So...in short, the answer to this age-old question is no. I am not a hippie. If I called myself a hippie in front of a crowd of hippies, the crowd of hippies would beg to differ. If I walked up to John Lennon and asked if I was a hippie, he would most assuredly say, "No." (Granted, it is even more likely that he'd say, "Get away from me and mind your own business, stalker," but that's not the point here.) If I went back in time to Woodstock and tried to mingle with the hippie audience, they would most likely give me weird looks. I would be subjected to what is surely best described as "the social equivalent of being stoned to death." Or perhaps one of the more aggressive ones would strangle me with his/her love beads.

Man, that's how I want to die. LOVE BEAD STRANGULATION, BABY! Seriously, behind "Gilded Fiery Chariot Ascending Into The Heavens", it really doesn't get better than that.

Ramble aside, this would be my first post here at Blogspot, so I guess that deserves some sort of acknowledgement. Welcome to my blog. :)