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shalanna(After reading the early entries for this round, I figured we needed a little humor.)
This post is a flash fiction for The Real LiveJournal Idol, round something-or-another. Not to be taken seriously. Do not expose to open ridicule. Close cover before striking.
My Metamorphosis
(with apologies to Franz Kafka)
The other morning, I awoke from a restless sleep bookended by unsettling dreams to discover that I had turned into an iPod.
A Fifth Generation 30 GB, shiny silver, personalized video iPod engraved on the back with "Klaatu barada nikto, Gort," loaded with music and fully charged, but still.
At first I lay motionless under the heavy covers, the sunlight through the window blinds glinting off my huge screen--through which I had the power of vision as well as hearing--and speculated on who might've slipped the hallucinogens into my pizza last night. I knew I shouldn't have ordered the Ultimate Supreme Deep-Dish--it masked the psychedelic taste of mind-bending drugs too well.
A podcast of "Weird Al" Yankovic singing "Don't Download This Song," with video of Al bouncing wildly around the stage, flickered helplessly on my color screen.
"What the frell?" I said aloud. Only it came out as a song.
There happened to be a song in my catalog with precisely that title, by the Texas HeckRaisers, and it was as though I had moused over and selected it. It began blaring from both speakers.
Speakers? I appeared to be plugged into the clock radio on the nightstand by a Y-cord.
"This is bullshit. . . ." I attempted to say, but ran straight into an ERROR that knocked me out for a moment. ***ACCESS VIOLATION*** My 2.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD screen went dark, but after a moment of sheer panic at the thought of the abyss, it lightened.
Apparently, I was rebooting.
As Kafka writes in "The Trial," “Waking up is the riskiest moment of the day.” We tend to take it for granted that what we were the night before, we will be the next morning. *bzzzt* Fooled ya!
But anyhow, this was like some kind of nightmare. Daymare. I hadn't dropped any tabs of LSD or smoked pot or taken mushrooms . . . well, I did have mushrooms on my pizza the previous night, but they weren't THAT kind of 'shrooms.
No, I had to be in some kind of waking dream.
Perhaps it was some kind of Phildickian alternative reality. Things were not as they seemed. I was having a schizophrenic break/interlude.
"Crazy," I muttered.
Naturally, the strains of Patsy Cline's rendition of Willie Nelson's genius song came through the speakers. I couldn't help but sing along, as I *was* the music.
Now how in the hell was I supposed to get to work and teach middle school math to my classroom of shiftless slackers?
Bobby Darin's song "Multiplication" began playing as I stewed and turned the problem over in my mind. Or was it actually in my random access memory . . . my available virtual memory . . . whatever.
I couldn't be fully awake. This was one of those waking dreams like the ones in which you're paralyzed or move in slow motion through the quicksand as the jackals gain on you.
I decided to go back to sleep, and then when I woke up, maybe I'd wake up for real. But I can't fall asleep unless I'm on my left side. I couldn't get myself to stay "on edge." No matter how hard I threw myself onto my side, I always flopped right back down onto my back. Chrome is really slippery.
It was chilling to realize that I could've just as well toppled over on my face--on my screen--and maybe even onto the hardwood floor. Then I really would've been in trouble. And I'm so easily scratched.
"Help!" I cried.
The Beatles' "Help!" began to play. Rather loudly, but I needed more volume in order to attract someone.
The dog started to bark from the foot of the bed. Apparently I no longer emitted that comforting mammalian smell. And I was noisy. My click wheel hurt. Don't get me started on that itchy center button. I couldn't bear my ports one more minute.
Hubby strolled in. "What's the trouble, boy?" he asked the dog. Puppy isn't even a pointer, but he pointed right at me. Hubby looked at the bed, then did a double-take.
He scratched his head. "Where is your mama, dog, and what is this huge overgrown iPod doing here?"
"It's me!" The song "It's Pat" came on, from that old SNL feature about the androgynous actress. Well, close enough.
"I don't know a Pat," he mumbled in confusion.
I never realized that "Weird Al" had recorded a song titled "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" until I started playing it.
He looked at me, then at the dog. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
A rap song, titled "@$#!@@&%^$" with several lightning bolts implied, blasted from the speakers. I found a directory with still photos and displayed a recent shot of me raising both fists in the air and baring my teeth.
"What?" He stared at the image. "You've gotta be kidding."
"No Kidding, Vern, It's For Real" by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys came through the clock radio.
"Okay, let me think. Calm down. Take a chill pill." He reached over and selected "Sailing" by Christopher Cross from my playlist. It was really off-putting for someone else to be handling my controls without even asking. "There, now. Don't you feel better?"
While I was searching for songs with the lyric "NO NO NO NO NO," he unplugged the speakers. "Now it's quiet," he remarked to the dog. "Now I can think."
I found my "Video Playlists" menu and started scrolling through. I settled on a protest march from the 1960s, for lack of a more specific image to show. Although it was silent, he got the message. He plugged my cable back into the radio just as I segued into Engelbert Humperdinck's classic, "Please Release Me."
"So you've turned into an iPod." He shook his head. "I told you not to spend so much time playing with electronics. What do you want me to do about it?"
I played "Save Me" by Queen off their Greatest Hits album.
"Well, I don't know how."
Janis Joplin's "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" came on without my even trying.
"Let's figure out why this might have happened. Maybe it's what you were worrying about. What were you supposed to do today?"
I showed a still photo of the school and played a few bars of "Hot for Teacher." It was the best I could do.
"How are you going to teach? Do you have appropriate podcasts?"
I couldn't very well do it, unless I could find appropriate podcasts. And how was I supposed to locomote?
"I don't know why this happened, but try to enjoy the experience. It's all fodder for the writer's mill, as Hossie always said. Maybe at midnight, you'll turn back."
* * *
It has been a few days now, and we don't try to guess when or whether I'll turn back. He carries me around and listens to music and podcasts, and I get to see where he goes during the day. It's interesting, in a passive sort of way.
I suppose this is all part of the great Learning Experience of life.
And it could be worse. I certainly wouldn't want to be a white video iPod playing Green Day, unless it were March 17th. And I could've been loaded with all hip-hop . . . or with all the podcast episodes of "Prairie Home Companion." Talk about a nightmare!
But why would this happen? I suppose it's all a metaphor for society's treatment of those who are different. Or it's about the loneliness of being isolated. About alienation and the fear of failure of a life's mission. Maybe just the absurdity of existence in general.
But frankly, it's difficult to say who has experienced more of a metamorphosis. Other people now reach for me . . . they like me. They talk about what a great invention I am. It's pretty different from when I was a people.
Still, hubby takes me for granted even MORE now. If I get dropped--there goes the disk--so I've noticed he's a little more careful. But it's pretty stifling inside his jacket pocket.
It has been a few hours now since he took the jacket off, in fact, and I think he has forgotten I'm in here. I feel strange. Light-headed. Uh-oh; I'm totally discharged--my screen is fading. Plug me into a USB port, dummy!
I'm trying to shout, but my output isn't connected to anything.
Fading . . . hello? Is there anybody out there?
The music spirals into the Grateful Dead's "'Til the Morning Comes," and the song and I spiral on down endlessly in a parade of colorful teddy bears, forever and ever, amen.
This post is a flash fiction for The Real LiveJournal Idol, round something-or-another. Not to be taken seriously. Do not expose to open ridicule. Close cover before striking.
(with apologies to Franz Kafka)
The other morning, I awoke from a restless sleep bookended by unsettling dreams to discover that I had turned into an iPod.
A Fifth Generation 30 GB, shiny silver, personalized video iPod engraved on the back with "Klaatu barada nikto, Gort," loaded with music and fully charged, but still.
At first I lay motionless under the heavy covers, the sunlight through the window blinds glinting off my huge screen--through which I had the power of vision as well as hearing--and speculated on who might've slipped the hallucinogens into my pizza last night. I knew I shouldn't have ordered the Ultimate Supreme Deep-Dish--it masked the psychedelic taste of mind-bending drugs too well.
A podcast of "Weird Al" Yankovic singing "Don't Download This Song," with video of Al bouncing wildly around the stage, flickered helplessly on my color screen.
"What the frell?" I said aloud. Only it came out as a song.
There happened to be a song in my catalog with precisely that title, by the Texas HeckRaisers, and it was as though I had moused over and selected it. It began blaring from both speakers.
Speakers? I appeared to be plugged into the clock radio on the nightstand by a Y-cord.
"This is bullshit. . . ." I attempted to say, but ran straight into an ERROR that knocked me out for a moment. ***ACCESS VIOLATION*** My 2.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD screen went dark, but after a moment of sheer panic at the thought of the abyss, it lightened.
Apparently, I was rebooting.
As Kafka writes in "The Trial," “Waking up is the riskiest moment of the day.” We tend to take it for granted that what we were the night before, we will be the next morning. *bzzzt* Fooled ya!
But anyhow, this was like some kind of nightmare. Daymare. I hadn't dropped any tabs of LSD or smoked pot or taken mushrooms . . . well, I did have mushrooms on my pizza the previous night, but they weren't THAT kind of 'shrooms.
No, I had to be in some kind of waking dream.
Perhaps it was some kind of Phildickian alternative reality. Things were not as they seemed. I was having a schizophrenic break/interlude.
"Crazy," I muttered.
Naturally, the strains of Patsy Cline's rendition of Willie Nelson's genius song came through the speakers. I couldn't help but sing along, as I *was* the music.
Now how in the hell was I supposed to get to work and teach middle school math to my classroom of shiftless slackers?
Bobby Darin's song "Multiplication" began playing as I stewed and turned the problem over in my mind. Or was it actually in my random access memory . . . my available virtual memory . . . whatever.
I couldn't be fully awake. This was one of those waking dreams like the ones in which you're paralyzed or move in slow motion through the quicksand as the jackals gain on you.
I decided to go back to sleep, and then when I woke up, maybe I'd wake up for real. But I can't fall asleep unless I'm on my left side. I couldn't get myself to stay "on edge." No matter how hard I threw myself onto my side, I always flopped right back down onto my back. Chrome is really slippery.
It was chilling to realize that I could've just as well toppled over on my face--on my screen--and maybe even onto the hardwood floor. Then I really would've been in trouble. And I'm so easily scratched.
"Help!" I cried.
The Beatles' "Help!" began to play. Rather loudly, but I needed more volume in order to attract someone.
The dog started to bark from the foot of the bed. Apparently I no longer emitted that comforting mammalian smell. And I was noisy. My click wheel hurt. Don't get me started on that itchy center button. I couldn't bear my ports one more minute.
Hubby strolled in. "What's the trouble, boy?" he asked the dog. Puppy isn't even a pointer, but he pointed right at me. Hubby looked at the bed, then did a double-take.
He scratched his head. "Where is your mama, dog, and what is this huge overgrown iPod doing here?"
"It's me!" The song "It's Pat" came on, from that old SNL feature about the androgynous actress. Well, close enough.
"I don't know a Pat," he mumbled in confusion.
I never realized that "Weird Al" had recorded a song titled "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" until I started playing it.
He looked at me, then at the dog. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
A rap song, titled "@$#!@@&%^$" with several lightning bolts implied, blasted from the speakers. I found a directory with still photos and displayed a recent shot of me raising both fists in the air and baring my teeth.
"What?" He stared at the image. "You've gotta be kidding."
"No Kidding, Vern, It's For Real" by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys came through the clock radio.
"Okay, let me think. Calm down. Take a chill pill." He reached over and selected "Sailing" by Christopher Cross from my playlist. It was really off-putting for someone else to be handling my controls without even asking. "There, now. Don't you feel better?"
While I was searching for songs with the lyric "NO NO NO NO NO," he unplugged the speakers. "Now it's quiet," he remarked to the dog. "Now I can think."
I found my "Video Playlists" menu and started scrolling through. I settled on a protest march from the 1960s, for lack of a more specific image to show. Although it was silent, he got the message. He plugged my cable back into the radio just as I segued into Engelbert Humperdinck's classic, "Please Release Me."
"So you've turned into an iPod." He shook his head. "I told you not to spend so much time playing with electronics. What do you want me to do about it?"
I played "Save Me" by Queen off their Greatest Hits album.
"Well, I don't know how."
Janis Joplin's "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" came on without my even trying.
"Let's figure out why this might have happened. Maybe it's what you were worrying about. What were you supposed to do today?"
I showed a still photo of the school and played a few bars of "Hot for Teacher." It was the best I could do.
"How are you going to teach? Do you have appropriate podcasts?"
I couldn't very well do it, unless I could find appropriate podcasts. And how was I supposed to locomote?
"I don't know why this happened, but try to enjoy the experience. It's all fodder for the writer's mill, as Hossie always said. Maybe at midnight, you'll turn back."
It has been a few days now, and we don't try to guess when or whether I'll turn back. He carries me around and listens to music and podcasts, and I get to see where he goes during the day. It's interesting, in a passive sort of way.
I suppose this is all part of the great Learning Experience of life.
And it could be worse. I certainly wouldn't want to be a white video iPod playing Green Day, unless it were March 17th. And I could've been loaded with all hip-hop . . . or with all the podcast episodes of "Prairie Home Companion." Talk about a nightmare!
But why would this happen? I suppose it's all a metaphor for society's treatment of those who are different. Or it's about the loneliness of being isolated. About alienation and the fear of failure of a life's mission. Maybe just the absurdity of existence in general.
But frankly, it's difficult to say who has experienced more of a metamorphosis. Other people now reach for me . . . they like me. They talk about what a great invention I am. It's pretty different from when I was a people.
Still, hubby takes me for granted even MORE now. If I get dropped--there goes the disk--so I've noticed he's a little more careful. But it's pretty stifling inside his jacket pocket.
It has been a few hours now since he took the jacket off, in fact, and I think he has forgotten I'm in here. I feel strange. Light-headed. Uh-oh; I'm totally discharged--my screen is fading. Plug me into a USB port, dummy!
I'm trying to shout, but my output isn't connected to anything.
Fading . . . hello? Is there anybody out there?
The music spirals into the Grateful Dead's "'Til the Morning Comes," and the song and I spiral on down endlessly in a parade of colorful teddy bears, forever and ever, amen.
