Write Noise Machine

Greg Harries is a writer and educator living in Omaha. He's on Twitter as plusgreg The dog's named Ruffles.

[plusgreg]

Hero Cats Save Lives

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

Shelter volunteers at Nebraska Humane Society have identified Coco and Wasabi as truly heroic cats. They’re a bonded pair, and belong together forever. They just need a new home to do that in.

“It seems a little extreme to say they save lives, though,” said skeptical shelter volunteer Bibby Lowers.

Does it? Even though cat owners report dramatically lower stress on account of their pets? Even though scientists measure lower resting heart rates and blood pressure in cat owners?

“Is this an article? An interview? What’s going on here?” stammered Lowers.

It’s neither, really! This reporter just thinks that they’re good cats that would be helpful to anyone’s health and well-being.

“Okay...” hedged Lowers.

And this reporter knows that the shelter has been hard hit during a financial downturn, facing drops in adoptions and inability to execute important fundraisers.

“Well that’s true,” agreed Lowers.

And THIS reporter thinks that with people staying at home more, especially dealing with the stress of a global pandemic, would do well to bring two good established friends into their social circle.

“Okay, can I go now?” queried Lowers.

This reporter thinks you can. But this reporter also thinks people should know they can fill out the adoption application here, including “Coco A1318882” to set up an appointment to visit them.

“Thank you. This was a very strange time for me.” muttered Lowers.

This reporter is sorry for that.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We attempted to reach Coco and Wasabi for comment, but we could only hear the sound of soft batting and plaintive meowing when they picked up. The Pawst can confirm they sound very soft and kind.

Also, “this reporter” has been reassigned.

[plusgreg]

Three Ghosts

The Past crinkles out from beneath the

Christmas tree skirt, a fire truck

teetering and wobbling with one missing wheel,

the stickers applied to it fading and peeling at the corners,

the chirp of its microchip horn growing faint and tumbling down

a staircase that runs

out of railing

halfway.

It is never easy to face.

There was promise in the plastic gone

stiff and brittle from disuse, disneed,

and the pliable stretch of what could be

has gone, replaced by the unyield

of my unwant, it totters against my feet, feeble, laden with the smell of melted crayons turned to crafts,

its batteries final pulses

sputter its motor against my heel

I pick it up, place it on the coffee table

give it a friendly tap

and it rolls imperceptibly

toward my touch.

Then, tumbling down my shoulder I feel the Present, cold dead bulbs of thin delicate glass

and the rigid cable connecting it,

The Present is insistent, loud,

it is a kudzu vine of sentiment

clattering bulbs, rustling cards,

crinkle of foil Advent calendar wrappers,

the branches of me

grow dry and dead

beneath its touch, its need,

my own regret at not feeding it.

I throw it off to the floor,

bulbs scintillate

to powder glass snow upon impact.

The Future comes, then.

Summoned by sudden dark,

I hear the whisper of

its bones, the skeletons of mice

yet to be killed in echoing, empty, future homes.

They move in

where the warmth is, where the space is,

and I have so much.

They gathered my empty coathangers,

my healthy food left

to spoil in the fridge,

the waste of me

and my wasted potential,

they clambered into my frozen trash cans,

built themselves a body of unpaid bills,

chilling empty beer bottles and I am powerless to stop them.

The Future skitters inhuman toward me.

I fall back, push myself away from its approach

It is the shape of my body not leaving its bed,

not walking the dogs,

not opening the advent calendar

with chilly fresh-from-covers fingers,

it rustles with the sounds of the mice eating chocolate

at my inattention,

my last real breaths as dread

sinks into these bones,

their home sweet home and–

–the Past's batteries flicker back to life, playing its cheery tune on warping tones.

The bulbs still unbroken on the cable of the Present spark on, hum and buzz incandescent,

the cards float into my lap, my fingers fall to the signatures pressed there by friends and family.

I invite the Future toward me.

The bones of the mice move toward the lights and huddle around them for warmth,

the Future surrounds our little multicolor bonfire

and I finally pin down the tune the Past plays,

"We Need a Little Christmas."

I hum it,

hold the spirits close,

hold this Spirit close,

and I know what we have always known:

If you make it through the longest night of the year,

the morning sun only starts reaching

farther and farther

toward your waiting hands.

The brightest string of lights you've ever seen.

[plusgreg]

My Myers-Briggs personality type is ECRJ: Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen

[julieschulerart]

[julieschulerart]

In 1930, Helene Adelaide Shelby patented an apparatus for obtaining criminal confessions.  The police put the suspect into a darkened chamber where they are confronted by a human skeleton with glowing red eyes that questions them with a voice transmitted from the interrogator behind it, through a megaphone in its mouth. A camera concealed in the skull was to record the confessions

[slimy]

WHAT

[aiweirdness]

New D&D magic spells, designed by neural network

I’ve trained this open-source neural network framework on a variety of datasets, including recipes, Pokemon, knock-knock jokes, and pick up lines. 

Here’s the latest: a list of 365 different spells you can cast in Dungeons and Dragons. 

It’s a really small dataset, actually - so small that in almost no time at all, it learned to reproduce the original input data verbatim, in order. But by setting the “temperature” flag to a really high value (i.e. it has a higher chance of NOT going with its best guess for the next character in the phrase), I can at least induce spelling mistakes. Then the neural network has to try to recover from these, with often entertaining results.

I give you: D&D magic spells, designed by neural network

Moss Healing Word Hold Mouse Barking Sphere Heat on Farm True Steake Finger of Enftebtemang Fomend’s Beating Sphere Purping Lightsin Farming Wrathful Hound Q’s Invisibility Cow of Auraly Mind Blark Stone Share Puijune Magic Furs Grove of Plants Conjure Velemert Vicious Markers End Wall Mous of Farts Cursing Gland Growth

[plusgreg]

You're done, Justin. Joke written by @thisjenlewis.

[plusgreg]

Am I doing a shitpost right?

[plusgreg]

With his ears fully attenuated, the Midwestern Trashhound can detect even the smallest crumb hitting the ground.

[plusgreg]

6/30 J'aime Paras

An Ode to Paras Scuttle, skitter, gentle go-getter, your fungi suited for shade and hide, your eyes dart to the daylight, flyers above, fire of sun, danger all around. You are a host, your mushrooms cling to you for life, you will keep them safe with your fear your shy, your wide-eye, your weak. You grow, you molt, shed skin, survive, fast reflexes, hard chitin symbiosis shifts, and you evolve. The parasites take hold, reach down into your nerves, burn the fear from you, fog over your twitching eyes the world goes white, simplifies sense leaves your numbing mind, only a voice like rustling grass remains YOU KEPT US SAFE the fungus whispers WE CARRY YOU NOW

[plusgreg]

4/30 Transformers

"14 new Transformers stories outlined by franchise writing team, Michael Bay reveals." I found an Ed Hardy notebook under an empty bottle of Goldschläger at a Hollywood bar. A number of sequins were peeled off to spell out the word "FUCK" and "YESSS" so I know it belongs to Michael Bay. This was on the last page. Transformers: The Fires of Mount Cybertron Transformers: The Threshening Transformers: A Hip-Hopera (CALL THAT LONNY MIRANDA DUDE) Transformers: The Dark of The Moon 2: The Moon's A Robot Now Transformers: Toby Keith's "Truck Yeah" Transformers: Public Enemy Number 1101001 Transformers: Reckoning: Apocalypse: Beyond the Fallen Stars: Armageddon Francestormers: Normandy, Oil on the Sand Transformers: Echoes of Benghazi Transformers: Linkin Park Reunion LIVE! Transformers: The Acid Blood of Robot Jesus Transformers: Fast and the Furious 15 Transformers: This Time, a WOMAN Mechanic? (PLEASE FOCUS TEST, DON'T RISK IT) Transformers: MAKE AMERICA BOT AGAIN

[serotnin]

[plusgreg]

3/30 manses

manses (noun) mæn-sez 1. The frequent, painful renewal of a Men’s Rights Activist’s mouth lining. Caused primarily when a treasured movie or comic is recast with women or people of color, and they begin gnawing at their own flesh. 2. The mixture of spit and blood resultant from definition 1. Frothed and dashed onto keyboards and smartphone screens between death threats on Twitter. 3. The bloody assuredness a man feels that something is being taken from him when it is given to someone else, that toys once his should always be his, even if the real reason there are toys for others is there are just more toys to go around. 4. The pressure of society cramping around those who have only known the mother’s-kiss sunlight of being raised to top of the heap, who have never felt the pressure of anyone else’s need, have never felt heel press on their cheek as mediocrity stumbles over them. 5. Growing pains. Adjust. Muscle up. Start climbing.

[plusgreg]

2/30 Better

It's daily, now. The couples, the way they accumulate likes, hearts, feed them to the algorithm and let them ascend to the top of your daily scroll: their love, thick, cloying cream. 9 years, 12 years, 4 years, 6 months with my better half. Here's to 10 more, 20 more, 30 more, here's to this artful bokeh-filter wedding picture of our initials in tree bark here's to the bottle of unity sand that he saved from the fire AND the flood here's to dying mere moments apart in each other's arms so we never know again separate, unattached, the unknowable vacuum of Woe be unto the singles, the miserables, the undateables, the rough shards of those too unpolished to make meet cute with the halves that could better us. Could let down our unwashed hair. Pull off our frumpy glasses. Dab foam on our noses as they motivate us to shave every day. Woe be unto the alones, the grievously dumped, the wish-we'd-held-on-tighters, the should-have-learned-to-fighters, our knuckle tattoos read LOVE and (not HATE never HATE be approachable) and PLZ? in florid, curling cursive. Woe be to we worse halves, frantically swiping left but mostly right in the dying embers of birthday candles, midnight marching toward the odometer tick of another year on the dating profile thinking of that special someone's harsh unfeeling maximum age settings making them into our one who got away. Woe be to the worst of us, to those of us who cling to our own sharp curiosity our unpairable individuality we who wield the serrated edge of our worse to saw down sycamores, stomp our initials into mud that will only landslide, unprotected, deforested, the rains are coming and earth knows only hunger for picket fences better-half hand-built, swingsets, patios, grills, he's-an-ARCHITECT dream houses and Pinterest-perfect gazebos.

[plusgreg]

1/30: Tilt

There is this thing that dogs do when they are lost, confused, the head tilt. They adjust their ears to find the sound, to be exact articulate their pinnae to place the noise, to be very exact. When a dog does this, it has the shape of curiosity, the facial wag of attentiveness, of attenuation, of I’m listening. I care. Good dog.

There is this thing in my left eye a cramp, a limp, a palsy, ocular palsy, to be exact. Ocular palsy of the left orbital muscle, to be very exact that can make my eye go a little bit slow, lazy double vision, in the morning especially, as the muscle stretches flexes releases relaxes squints away sunlight too early slept too late was up too long But. If I just tilt my head a little bit, it all lines up. The double vision resolves, locates what I look at.

I am not a dog. I wish I could be a dog. The concern, the care, the investment, the stakes a dog has in every interaction are beyond my knowing. My dog cares so much.

Sometimes, I do the conversions. His seven years to my one, when I don’t get up early enough to let him out, does the time dilate for him? Is every 3.24 hours a day? Every day a week, each time I slip, leave food dish crumbs, water dish dry, when he looks at me, tilts his head, is he trying to locate my heartbeat, echolocating its faint lubdup to be sure I am still alive, still his, do I still care for him through dog weeks, dog months, dog decades, of letting him down? Good dog? Your dog?

In my morning, his whole day, I stumble through my house, my head untilted the world shifted, one eye sees color a little more brightly, one sees detail a little more keenly, I eat two meals untasting take two showers, swinging hot to cold, scald to chill, unfeeling take two pills, one colorless, one lettered, medicate two minds. I cannot even register the two worlds as mine, cannot place myself in either of them, but then I step on a squeaker.

A toy he brought to the bed, nudged under my limp hand, only for me to shove it away, to floor, fall asleep again. The squeak snaps against my eardrum, I tilt my head, find the source, my eyes lock the world together, color, detail I look to the blanket where his face has emerged, curious, his nose twitches in pinks and ridges, his eyes shine in ambers and pupil throb, the two worlds of tone and texture collapse around every awkward detail of dog. We tilt our heads at each other. Attenuate. We ask each other the same question: Hey. Buddy. You wanna go outside?

[plusgreg]

Real good.

[plusgreg]

I never posted the pictures from the picnic to celebrate 10 years of Ruffles! It was real good.

[plusgreg]

Me MEEE-mememe-MEE MEE MEE?! <You want HOW many blended drinks?> #halloween #muppets (at Spielbound)