OddThinking

One way to reverse blog-fade is to lower your threshold of excitingness. Here is one of a few posts in the pipeline that explore the blogability of the mundane.

A Handwritten Postcard From My Five-Year Old Niece, Transcribed

Dear Julian

we have Seen uluru
and we Have Been doin^g LOTS
Of Swimmin^g

I miSS You

LOVe T-

An Emailed Response To My Five-Year Old Niece

Dear T-,

Thank you for your postcard. It was very nice to read it.

On Saturday, I helped to make a movie about monsters.

I pretended to be a spooky monster. I dressed up in a big black cape and a black hood. I wandered around scaring people.

Then the wind started blowing. It blew my black hood across my face. I could not see where I was going.

I walked into a wall! I was not hurt, but everyone was laughing. No-one was scared of me any more.

Will you please tell my story to your sister for me?

Love,

Julian

How I Lied

• It wasn’t a wall. It was a gravestone. That seemed like an adult theme, so I edited it out.
• I didn’t have bony hands. I wasn’t wearing my skeleton gloves, because I was supposed to be some variant of a vampire, not a skeleton.
• It wasn’t merely a hood that blew over my face. I was also wearing a black semi-transparent mask that hid my face. All I could see was the tiny light mounted on the front of the camera. I had to walk menacing towards that, and then veer off just before I hit it. I veered slightly early.
• I didn’t say “I can’t see! Ooof!” I said “Bugger! I can’t see a damn thing in here.”
• I didn’t really scare anyone before the accident. However, everyone certainly did laugh at me afterwards.
• I neglected to mention that I saw the rough edit the next day; I only appear as a small flickering black shadow in the background of a dark shot; it is barely recognisable as a humanoid.
• My niece’s name isn’t really T-, but the Internet doesn’t need to know her name just yet.