It looks like they’ll soon get an opportunity to a larger work. Bloomington is expecting 5-9 more inches of snow tomorrow.

Murray Hill Incorporated is Running for Congress

It’s a ridiculous premise for Murray Hill, Inc. to run for elected office, but it would be nice to hear a court put into record that corporations aren’t people. They’d have to rethink their position on how involved corporations can become financially in political campaigns. I doubt we’re going to see that kind of quality outcome from a publicity stunt.

Thanks to @aschweig for the tip.

Prior to one of Carter’s preschool year parties I tried it- I sent out invites with a cute, “your presence is our present” message and promptly got a phone call from the mom of one of his best buddies at school.

Friend’s mom: Amy? Your invitation says no gifts.

Me: Yes.

Friend’s Mom: Are you serious?

Me: Um, well, yes. Well, blah blah plastic and the environment, blah blah budget and plenty-

Friend’s Mom: Hm. My son has already been talking about shopping for Carter and he’s very excited about it, so I’m sure you won’t begrudge him a chance to give a good gift, will you? I mean isn’t that part of the fun of birthdays?

I started paying attention to what Carter was learning and doing on gift-giving occasions. Even at a young age, he was a generous and thoughtful giver. When he scours catalogs, he isn’t only looking at things he enjoys- he lists which items would be perfect for which friends and why. We’ve never wandered Target aimlessly searching for a ticket into the party, we’ve headed out with a mission, Carter listing the qualities that would make the gift “perfect.”

Since that year, Carter has received homemade gifts, stories, pictures, action heroes and books for his birthdays- he enjoys all of them, but I think what he enjoys most is thinking about those people thinking about him. Giving a gift says, “hey- I thought of you when you weren’t here- you stay in my heart.”

As to the plastic accumulation, there are several alternatives. Coupons for special events, tickets to the movies, parts to a toy he already has like Legos or K-nex are all things that don’t contribute to further clutter in our home. Sharing a book you have already read and treasured or finding the perfect used toy is a way to reduce the impact on the environment. One of Archie’s favorite gifts is a robot made of cardboard boxes, aluminum cans and duct tape. It truly is the thought, and communicating it, that counts.

Though taking a back seat to Chicago, my love of the Colts is motivated mostly by their quarterback—who I saw play as a high schooler in New Orleans and spent four years trading for first-round picks to draft in my fantasy football league—and the better part of two decades I have spent living in this state. It apparently isn’t a strong enough love to look past the potential impact of their half-hearted effort in the final two regular season game.

Losing does not lead to titles

In the 43 years of Super Bowl seasons prior to this one, the title teams have gone 68-18 in their final two regular season games. The losing teams are almost as good, at 65-21. Fifty of those 86 clubs won their final two; only three Super Bowl teams have gone 0-2. So, it is relevant to note that two of the teams playing in the conference championship games—the New Orleans Saints and the Colts—came into the post-season with a losing streak.

Broadening the search to include all 443 playoff teams, we find that just 32 clubs ended the season with back-to-back losses. Those teams had 20 home games to their advantage but combined for a 21-31 post-season record, winning just 5 road games. There was one titleist in the bunch, but we have to go back to Super Bowl II to find the Green Bay Packers.

NFL Playoff Teams Who Finished the Regular Season 0-2:

• Tampa Bay 2007
• Dallas 2006
• Cincinnati 2005
• Minnesota 2004
• New York Jets 2004
• Philadelphia 2004
• Atlanta 2004
• Oakland 2001
• Minnesota 2000
• Detroit 1999
• Miami 1999
• Miami 1997
• Pittsburgh 1996
• New York Giants 1993
• Denver 1993
• San Francisco 1993
• Washington 1992
• L.A. Raiders 1991
• Houston 1989
• L.A. Rams 1986
• New York Jets 1986
• Seattle 1984
• New York Giants 1984
• Dallas 1983
• Dallas 1982
• Atlanta 1982
• Denver 1979
• Minnesota 1978
• Buffalo 1974
• Washington 1972
• L.A. Rams 1969
• Green Bay 1967

NOTE: Prior to 1975, home-field was not determined by regular-season finish. The playoff field expanded to 10 teams (with first-round byes) in 1978 when the NFL started playing 16-game seasons. In 1982, the NFL strike forced a 16-team post-season bracket. In 1990, the NFL expanded participation again to allow 12 playoff teams, and in 2002 the league realigned to a, 8-division format.

I type this not yet knowing the outcome of the games today. Both the Saints and Colts are hosting their opponents and statistically favored to win. By virtue of winning the previous week, they also busted the myth that resting starters leads to rust (sometimes it does, usually it does not). That was never the key gripe, at least for the Colts, who decided a chance at a perfect season was meaningless compared to the chance of suffering a key injury before the playoffs. This is a question of whether champions are built from losing streaks.

If the Colts should beat the Jets, it should be deemed more amazing than just a favored team advancing. They would become one of just a handful of clubs to ever struggle down the stretch and still wind up playing the final week for a title. Should they lose, however, I hope that those facing similar December decisions in the future will rethink the value of throwing away chances to win games. It is arrogant to believe you can purposely turn success on and off like a lamp.

This week we took some grandparents to visit the Museum, and I took advantage of the extra adults to pay a visit to the gift shop. The boys were happily learning science:

boys learning science at the Children's Museum

Matilda and I wandered into the science section ignoring the massive pink Barbie display dwarfing the cool legos.

I left the store and cornered my father-in-law.

“I need your camera so I can document the sexism in the gift store.” He handed it over. This is the same guy who actually made his buddies quit joking about wifely duties at our “couples shower” 17 years ago. My outrage is rarely news to him.

I took the camera back downstairs and used that time to try and pinpoint my upset. I’m not opposed to dangerous boys- I’ve got two of my own. I’m all for bubble baths, and I think making my own perfume sounds lovely. It wasn’t about what was on that wall, it’s what was missing. There was nothing on that wall that encouraged girls to take risks. The science available to girls was science designed to make them more attractive mates. Boys? Here- light stuff on fire, make sparks. Girls? You get to bathe. I felt like the first little girl in the pony ad.

Learn science, smell pretty.

A clerk approached me, looking concerned.

“Can I help you find something?”

“How do you choose which science kits to offer?” He led me over to the science kit wall, eager to introduce me to their cool products, and then saw my point and cringed a bit. “I’ve been a parent of boys for almost ten years,” I explained, “and I’m happy to see stuff that celebrates boyhood. But now I’m a parent of a girl, and when I walk into your science section I just feel sad for her and worried that there won’t be fun, dangerous stuff for her to try.”

He told me I’d managed to arrive just after the Christmas rush and I admit, I stooped to a bit of sarcasm when I asked if that meant all the dangerous girl science kits, perhaps including the daring kit of nail polish, had sold out. In the end, he apologized and told me that when marketing toward 9-16 year old girls, dangerous doesn’t cut it- bubble bath does. He thanked me, assured me he’d pass on my concerns, and asked me to continue the dialogue as my daughter grows.

We’ve already bought our annual membership, and I’m certain we’ll return to the museum this year. It felt a little silly to be arguing about science kits for teenagers when the center of the debate was strapped to my shoulder teething on a toy, but if 9-16 year old girls prefer perfume to science, then we need to get started at an earlier age.

Take a look at this ad aimed at people buying for little girls:

You didn’t misunderstand- the little girl really sings, “I love when my laundry gets clean, clean, clean.” I spent way too much time trying to find an equivalent ad for boys- the closest might be Hasbro’s 2007 “built for boyhood” campaign, which certainly made it sound more fun to be a boy getting muddy than a girl doing his freaking laundry, but there’s nothing I could find that sends the message, “here boys, do basic self-care. It’s loads of fun.” There’s no surprise that we’re not raising girls who think dangerous science could be fun- we’re too busy telling them cleaning is fun.

This is a big year for me. Having survived the past decade as a first-, second- and third-time parent, the Tens will bring me teenagers with cars, dates and college tuition. I’ll feel more prepared to take that on if I can wrap up my own education.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions, but here’s a few goals I have for 2010:

1. Graduate.
   I’m so over this academic thing. Being in the Ph.D. program has made me reflect on the type of work I like doing, and that is the research, development, and design of stuff. I need to dissertate with abandon this year to make it happen, but I don’t want this particular goal to ever show up on my radar again.
2. Write a book.
   The Twitter API experience with O’Reilly scratched a lot of itches for me, giving me the confidence to do it again and do it better. When the dust finally settles on my dissertation proposal this month, the focus of my plan will be having a new book at the end. If I am to squeeze any more learning out of the Informatics program, it will be directed at gathering the skills and research rigor to tackle any topic and turn it into a 180-page tome in 9 months. Hell, with a little help, maybe I’ll do two.
3. Drop 20 Pounds.
   This is a fairly arbitrary number. Despite what Wii Fit keeps telling me, I’m not in dire shape physically. Whatever I lack in endurance, strong knees, and a love of the outdoors, I make up for in confidence. I survived age 35 a while back, so now I feel like Fame. As the kids grow older, though, I see opportunities for biking, softball, soccer, and a host of things I used to enjoy. Shedding some weight is the tangible payoff for the more important goal of re-establishing physical activity in my daily routine.
4. Launch a startup.
   As if I didn’t have enough on the plate … Actually, this may be the easy one since it’s underway right now. I have been privileged to latch onto an interesting design challenge spearheaded by a Bloomingtonian at the Business School and funded by a French Turk. I never followed my gut with ideas I had in the 1990s, and I have generally lacked time and other resources in the Oughts, but I’m sticking with this particular project. We’re currently in Phase 3 leading to a Beta launch in February, but if all goes well there’s at least two more major iterations left before next Christmas.
5. Tame the homestead
   Due to a number of factors, our home has suffered our occupancy for over a decade. I may be reaching on how much can be done under financial duress, but I’m hoping for a summer of green grass and reduced clutter. To help my dissertation quest along, I’ll start by reclaiming the space that used to be my downstairs office. Anything else will be gravy.
6. Play.
   I want to transition back to a life with more games, from the board variety that Archie is starting to love to the computer kind I’ve shunned to keep from being distracted. I miss running fantasy sports leagues and participating in game nights. There’s a lot to do in 2010 to succeed with my first two goals, so I’ll consider it a victory if I merely spend the next 12 months transitioning to a life that includes Madden NFL.

Wish me luck!

My first post partum run was slow and painful.

I kept going though, a little at a time, and recently I completed a 15 mile training run.

Completing a 15 mile training run left me feeling on top of the world.

I started off my 40th birthday wanting to be a runner, longing for the rush or creativity and confidence that seems takes over somewhere during the third or fourth mile of a longer run, but the reality was I was a walker who ran a little bit. Over the course of a summer I became the runner I wanted to be. This change occurred not through martyred, suffering workouts but expressions of vitality and joy. There were certainly days I did not want to run, but after ten minutes I was either pleased I had chosen to plug away. Only one time did I pass the ten minute mark and decide to go home and shower instead of finish the run.

Now it’s New Year’s, and I’m looking around my home. Prior to the holiday, I decided I wanted to focus on inviting joy into my life- choosing the joyous path rather than the martyred, cranky mama path that frequently beckons me. I am surrounded by obstacles to the joy though- a small cluttered home filled with chaos. Today is officially my first “run” back to having an uncluttered life. It is just a beginning. 15 miles seems impossible, but I plan on jumping in for as much as I can handle until I can handle more.

I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. While some Colts fans immediately dismissed the loss as unimportant in a quest for a second Indiana title, that was largely motivated by the boos the team received at home by Sunday’s crowd—dissatisfaction aimed not at the players, but at the managerial decision to throttle down midway through the third quarter.

There was no guarantee that the Colts would best their opponent that day, the New York Jets, with Manning playing all four quarters. However, the chances a squad of second- and third-stringers would do so were not great. The logic for this strategy rests on a few key assumptions.

This was a meaningless game

Meaningless is as meaningless does, of course, but I think most onlookers would agree that it has to do with the playoffs. I define a meaningless game as one where the final outcome has no bearing on standing.

Traditionally, this is limited to playoff seeding, with the key regular season milestones being:

1. playoff berth
2. division title
3. first-round bye
4. home field advantage (ranked order)

In rare cases, there is a historical context as well (i.e. undefeated season, or individual achievement). I would argue the Colts had a responsibility to both their fans and the NFL community to make a go at a perfect season.

While the organization immediately claimed perfection was never on the radar, it is clear that other non-playoff-impacting streaks are “meaningful.” Brett Favre holds the current ongoing record for consecutive starts by the quarterback with 284. He’s got a 6-season head start on Manning, who is second with 191. If that badge of durability and immortality meant squat, the star quarterback for the Colts wouldn’t be taking the field at all.

Injuries will wreck a title quest

The strongest case for resting starters is the threat of injury. The reality of football is that it’s a dangerous game, one where injury is a part of the sport. As a result, the league constantly tweaks rules to try to officiate against injury, and strength and conditioning training is an essential part of a team’s success.

The truth is, though, that the risk for injury perseveres all of these precautions. The number of players seeing time on injured reserve has been consistent over the past half dozen years, around 280 a season. Many injuries occur away from football or in non-contact situations—Kicker Martin Gramatica once required surgery after jumping up to celebrate a successful field goal. If you really want to keep football players healthy, don’t play football.

It is rare when a backup quarterback leads a team to a Super Bowl victory, but late-season injuries at other positions have been a part of other team success stories. Football is a team sport, requiring things to click from top-to-bottom to sustain what can amount to a 25-game schedule and turn it into a title. It is never helpful to lose a talented player, but neither is it a guarantee against victory.

Resting starters is a common strategy

A veteran of 25 fantasy football seasons, I’ve endured this Rest-The-Starters strategy many times before. In fact, it became so common for Buffalo to rest Jim Kelly in the final weeks, our league shortened our season to avoid Game #16 on the NFL schedule. Sometimes, as was the case for many fantasy owners relying on Manning last weekend, that isn’t enough.

The NFL, rightly so, doesn’t care about fantasy titles, just the real deal. The conventional wisdom at the end of the season is to protect against injury and minimize the exposure of your star players. The opportunity to be put in this situation has changed over the years as the NFL has expanded the season and playoff participation.

Until 1975, winning percentage was not a consideration in seeding or location of the 8 best teams. In 1978, the league expanded the season to 16 games and added two more wildcard teams. By 1990, the NFL playoffs had grown to 12 participants, and in 2002 the league realigned to an 8-division format. While these changes have increased the chances of any given team reaching the postseason, it has also created more “meaningless” games.

Among the 378 playoff teams since 1975, only five of them have had potentially meaningless games show up as early as Game #14. Three of those clubs won titles, and the other two made the Super Bowl. That number jumps to 26 for Game #15 and over 90 for the regular season finale. Two-thirds of the estimated meaningless games have come since the expanded playoff format.

Resting starters helps the title quest

The king of the rest ‘em strategy is arguably Bill Polian. His organizations—Buffalo (1986-1993), Carolina (1994-1996) and Indianapolis (1997-present)—have produced extremely successful regular season teams, although with very little hardware to show for it.

In making the AFC playoffs six times between 1988 and 1993, Polian’s Bills earned 5 first-round byes, three top seeds, and made (and lost) the Super Bowl four consecutive years. In two of those seasons (‘91 and ‘92), the club ended the regular season with meaningless games, prompting the club to rest regular starters and maximize the rest they’d get before the next “meaningful” game in the divisional championships. He helped the expansion Carolina team make their first playoffs in 1996, earning another first-round bye but losing just short of another Super Bowl trip.

With the Colts, Polian has an organization about to make their 10th playoff trip in the past 11 seasons, with three first-round byes to their credit. Including this year, the Colts will have closed 5 of the last 6 regular seasons giving their starters a breather. The only season in that stretch where Manning played the finale? The 2006 title run.

If resting starters late was really an important ingredient for championship teams, Polian should have a half dozen Lombardi trophies by now.

Since 1999, six eventual title teams earned first-round byes in the post-season and four of those clubs closed the regular season with meaningless games. Only one, however—the ‘99 St. Louis Rams—had their starting quarterback fail to put up typical numbers. In other words, the last champion to successfully employ the Rest-The-Starters strategy came a decade ago.

Resting starters doesn’t hurt the title quest

Although I did sic Wayne Winston on the question of statistical validity of this strategy—I hope to see an article from him on this topic in the near future—some of the circumstantial evidence can still be explored here. There are two ways the NFL gives starters a chance to rest up before the playoffs. The first is by earning a bye, and the second is manufactured by an organization using the Rest-The-Starters strategy.

Top seeds—the clubs with the best record, who earn a bye and home field advantage throughout the playoffs—are notoriously ineffective, particularly in the AFC. In the past 33 seasons, only eight Super Bowls have featured the top seed from each conference (the last time was Super Bowl XXVIII). Following the Packers title run in 1996, the best teams of each conference have 32-21 postseason record.

In all, the 66 top seeds made the big game 38 times have won 19 of the 33 possible titles, helped mostly by dominant individual teams in the NFC winning 12 titles in the 1980s and 1990s. AFC top seeds have appeared in only 5 of the past 17 Super Bowls, failing to win at least one playoff game eight times. Since 1984, the AFC top seeds won just two titles (‘03 Patriots and ‘98 Broncos).

Relying on ESPN’s boxscores available online since 1999, teams facing meaningless regular season finales benched starters 29 times resulting in a 12-17 record in those games. These teams made the big game just 5 times (losing all but once) and failed to win a playoff game 11 times.

Finishing the regular season strong doesn’t matter

Finishing strong is a signature of title teams. Dating back to 1993, only three of sixteen Super Bowl winners have lost their regular season finale. The 1997 and 1998 Denver clubs and the 2007 Giants lost two of their final three games, costing two of those teams first-round byes on their way to their titles.

The sixteen champs collectively finished the final three weeks winning 73% of their games, while the also-rans in the postseason tournament won 67%. In Game #16, however, the champs won 81% of their final games, 14 percentage points better than the other playoff teams.

The 110 non-champs in the previous ten seasons lost their final regular season game 16 times due to resting starters. Those teams had a postseason record of 23-28 with four Super Bowl losses.

Conclusion: The Colts should have played to win

Last weekend’s game was not meaningless, either to the Colts or the Jets, who needed a statistical miracle last week to be able to control their own playoff destiny this week. While I firmly disagree with the contention that playing for history should be so easily dismissed, there isn’t much past production supporting a correlation between resting starters and earning titles. This is a big mistake the organization can never take back.

I love this post. But I hope it’s okay if I present ‘the dissenting opinion’ and dig deeper into some presuppositions with which I’m not sure I agree.

I’m happy to delve deeper into this discussion, particularly if we’re going to do so without dangling prepositions! While your tweet started me down this road, what ultimately sent me over the edge was a post at huffpo suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s feelings might be hurt that there was no PCILF website. While I’ve since recalibrated my expectations, I originally believed Huffpo would be in line with my feminist values.

I just don’t see VPILF carry all the connotations you suggest. It’s an objectification to be sure and the discursive power of a label is powerful, I agree. But why can’t a VPILF have a powerful mind? Why can’t she be ambitious and strong? Or intuitive and emotional? Or have a business in finance, or solar energy, or construction? Nothing of course. At least, not to me. The notion that the VPILF comment carries the “and I wouldn’t vote for or listen to or respect such a VPILF” seems more an assumption you (at that particular time) were projecting on this whathisface.

VPILF is different from “Wow, she’s hot,” because of the word “fuck”. When I hear “fuck” I don’t think of a romantic evening, or even a meaningless roll in the hay, I think of being screwed. That’s why when you hear, “I’m fucked,” you don’t think, “wow, she must have had a great time last night.”

A vice president is powerful. Fucking the vice president is an easy way to diffuse that power. Certainly you might vote for a powerful, attractive woman, but the fact that you can call her fuckable reduces her power to that of a barbie doll.

And, as the whathisface, I, with great respect, politely resent that. As a proud third wave feminist, I believe a person is a complex personality with a plurality of facets that cannot be reduced to a single label. So whether a candidate is a VPILF or VPINLF has no bearing on whether she gets my vote.

VPILF at best skews the focus to her sexual attributes rather than her credentials (or lack thereof). A simple test for sexism is to ask yourself if you could change the genders in the situation and have it make any sense. While it might be simpler to argue that no sexy men have been vice president, the truth is, male presidential candidates are not judged as much as women on whether or not they are sexually attractive. There’s no PILF website despite the fainting at Obama rallies.

The princess thing strikes a different chord. I have a niece and nephew and I view much of my feminist reading through the lens of helping raise Lily. The aunts love to get her princess toys and gear. I’m the uncle that buys her soccer balls and throws her equally hard around the room when we play games like Kung Fu Panda or Star Wars (I am always the villain who gets defeated).

Several of the commenters mentioned parental influence in princess indoctrination and that’s a piece of it, but the underlying problem is a societal system that forces women into one of several unappetizing stereotypes- princess being one of them. Kudos to you for offering your niece opportunities to punch out of those molds.

But if someone were to mistake Jack for a girl – that’d be okay. That’s a mistake. But Princess? . . . I can feel (internally) my emotional reaction for the mistake-as-princess is different than the mistake-as-girl. I think it is because of the marginalizing connotations embedded in our cultural consciousness of damsels in a dress in distress. Your version of a princess is far cooler, and if someone mistook him for *that* princess, I can feel my internal reaction changing entirely.

Thanks! I am pretty damn cool. I hadn’t thought of the distinction between mistaking him for a girl, and mistaking him for a princess- and you’re right. I suddenly felt empowered picturing Matilda at Disney asking, “what makes you mistake me for a princess?” Changing that internal vision of girls, princesses and vice presidential candidates is central to a more egalitarian society and discussions like this one help move us forward.

From my perspective at least, it seems to me that it’s not the boy-as-girl mistake that causes distress at all — it’s the boy-as-’weaker sex’ that distresses me. [And that is of course my projection on 'princess' as mediated by your post.] The only difference in those two is that one has ‘weaker’ in it. We must seek out and destroy those ‘weaker sex’ connotations, I agree wholeheartedly (and I wonder if it relates to the make-up video you link to). To do that, we will probably have to tear down some ’stronger sex’ connotations as well.

Calling a boy a girl is calling him weaker. I disagree with it, but that’s the connotation our society has given it. There are people who are horrified at the notion of Carter being mistaken for a girl and it goes deeper than homophobia. It’s because deep down, they think being a boy is somehow better. It’s just anecdotal, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about being pregnant with a boy, and I’ve reassured more than one tearful friend that her husband will still love her child, even if it’s a girl.

You’re right- we have work to do on both fronts- tearing down negative stereotypes of both genders. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great book about problems men face as a result of our patriarchal society.

But we will also have to raise children (even those not our own) with a skeptic eye for underlying assumptions. And we must challenge those underlying assumptions, even when they’re their – or our – own.

Well said, Sean. Thanks for the conversation. Feel free to drop by for some holiday cheer, candy, cookies or kung-fu panda.

*Isn’t it really cute that he substituted “woman” for “girl” in an effort not to infantilize the stars of this video?

“What if I’m pregnant with a girl? And what if she has different political ideas than we do and she runs for office? We’re bringing a girl into a world where if people disagree with her they aren’t going to talk about issues, they are going to objectify her and take away any power she might have with the almighty ‘that’s where I want to stick my penis’ card, and laugh.” Extra distress resulted from the fact that the people perpetuating VPILF were people I would normally consider my liberal allies, and any upset from me was dismissed as me being humorless. (A huge mistake, let me tell you. I am hilarious).

Several months later I found myself teary after every day spent at the magical world of Disney. Every day we listened to the wait staff ask Carter what “the princess” wanted to drink, then act embarrassed to discover the princess is a boy- because boys can’t ever be something as horrible as a girl- then step outside to see the princesses, complete with makeup and hairspray.

“If this is a girl, we can’t go to Disney,” I lamented. “I let the boys be boys. I’ve welcomed squirt guns and swords into my pacifist home, side by side with dora, dolls and play kitchens- but I draw the line at makeup for toddlers.”

I was filled with new admiration for my friends who raise girls. Boys have their challenges, certainly. I never imagined I’d have to say things like, “no, honey, you need to keep your penis in your pants,” or “that squirt gun won’t last longer than a few hours if you use it as a hammer,” and those are just the tip of the boy-iceberg.

Here’s the thing though: squirt guns and swords are fun. They involve running, screaming and action. Traditional boy play is actually what I think of as natural child play- it’s what kids do when left to their own devices. Makeup and hairspray aren’t fun (to me at least)- they are what we do to look presentable, to attract mates, to hide the sleep circles.

Princess for a day should involve the capacity to chop off pretend enemies’ heads, ride pretend horses and play with dragons, not hold still for a long time while people paint you. Disney’s version of a dream day for little girls sounds like teaching little boys to work in middle management for the day. Here boys, suck it up, wear a tie and pretend to be in charge. Fun times. Why on earth would we think little kids should “play” that way?

Stay tuned for part two: in which I justify my crappy housekeeping as a political statement. You won’t want to miss it.

I did it!!!!

“Great. Another chasm,” I thought. But, as it turned out, it wasn’t that at all. It was. . . a flying carpet? Yes. A flying carpet came up out of the ravine straight at us. It was moving so fast that I didn’t have time to dodge. It ran straight into my ankles and tripped me right onto it. It did the same thing to Plittereeg, knocking him onto it behind me.

“I have no idea how to steer this thing!” I said, my cheeks flapping from the g-force. (Editors note- I was wearing a space suit, so take notice that it was the g-force, not the wind.) We shot back down into the ravine through endless tunnels of ice and rock until we came to a palace that looked like the Taj Mahal. We stepped off the carpet and inside the palace cautiously. Plittereeg created foot pads so that we wouldn’t be heard and I rode piggy-back so the footsteps of my space boots wouldn’t be heard. (Editor’s note: it’s about time I told you that Plittereeg wasn’t actually wearing a space suit but due to his wildly adaptive evolution he was able to survive in space without needing breathing gear.)

Plittereeg ran as fast as he could without emitting so much as a single pat on the icy floor. He slid to a stop and pressed himself against the wall in a spread eagle position next to the door. Unfortunately, since I was still on his back, this made for a very uncomfortable stop for me. Plittereeg jumped around the corner and into the door. The first room was a long hall, at the end of which were two spiral staircases leading up to one very wide staircase vanishing up into the darkness of the highest turret. The walls of the hall were lined with marble columns and the floor was a very long carpet with pictures of dragons devouring humans and large animals like hippos and rhinos.

Plittereeg leaped towards the marble columns on the right side of the long hall ducking behind column after column and making sure the coast was clear. As I watched the scene go by from Plittereeg’s back, I realized that Plittereeg was actually humming the James Bond theme song while he ducked for cover behind tremendous columns. He flew, not literally flying, by that I mean leaping, from the last marble column to the edge of the spiral staircase on the right.

Plittereeg hopped up the stairs, with each step humming a new note. We made it to the top of the stairs and Plittereeg tip toed from the top of the stairs to the wall, then shimmied across the edge to the next staircase. He hopped from stair to stair up higher and higher into the tallest turret, at the top of which he completely forgot about trying to be sneaky and started humming the theme song louder and louder.

“Well, well,” came a voice from behind us. Plittereeg lurched and hopped and I was thrown from his back. As I struggled to see whoever had been talking, I realized Plittereeg was also sprawled on the floor. Looking up, I saw sitting on the throne was somebody who looked like a sultan. He also looked like a human.

“Welcome. I may look like a Sultan, but I am certainly not the famed Sultan of Space. That, my friend is the palace you are in now. This entire palace is actually a space ship. It’s been hidden down here for centuries after being forced to make a crash landing due to -a-hem- heavy interferences from-” he paused, “dislikable patrons.” With that, he pulled a lever and the Sultan of Space shot up in the air and crashed through the roof of the cavern the palace was hidden in.

Plittereeg and I ran as fast as we could down the stairs and along the hall. We leaped out of the door about a hundred feet above the ground and went careening downwards at an incredible pace until we suddenly slowed. I looked up to see if there might be some reason for this. Plittereeg’s hands had melded together and formed a giant parachute. We settled down safely on the ground and ran even faster than we could, surprisingly, back to the Great Flying Pickle Jar. To our relief, Dave had woken up. He had a bandaged wing, one bandaged tentacle and a bandage wrapped around his head, but aside from that he seemed to be okay.

I ran to the control room and said for Alabaster to gun it and get us out of here as fast as he could. With that, we took off into space and, as it turns out, that’s where we’d be for a long, long time.

Plittereeg, Alabaster and I agreed that this was definitely a last resort. As we walked out of the ship Weasel continued to hop up and down supplying ideas.

“Or we could lower a television down, or we could lower a lamp down, or a maybe a laundry basket. . . ” Weasel continued on with ridiculous ideas as we walked towards the crater. The Plittereeg did something that, even with his vast array of tricks, seemed to be unaccomplishable. He shut his eyes, concentrated, and his right index finger shot off of his hand like a rocket, became pointed in midair, and hit the wall of the crevice on the other side, leaving a gooey strand of flesh behind. Plittereeg demonstrated how strong this was by swinging down into the pit. He continued to jump down farther and farther until we could no longer see him.

He came up holding Dave having formed a platform with the bulb on his left second finger (because he only has two fingers and one thumb). He hoisted Dave up through the walls and tunnels of the great pit. He set Dave down on the ground and kneeled down to feel his heartbeat.

“It’s beating,” he said, “but only very slowly. We don’t have much time.” The next few hours went by like a blur. Checking Dave’s vital signs, darting out of the room to grab a breathing mask of a bottle of pills, standing amidst the blur of figures running past and worrying about Dave filled all the time. The moment the blur stopped going past was when Plittereeg asked me if I would come with him to the ashes left behind by the giant larval insect and take samples of it for Alabaster to turn into medicine.

Plittereeg used yet another of his amazing tricks to contain the ashes- the bulbs on all the fingers on his right hand swelled and then mushed together to form a kind of large orb. His hand rounded out until it looked like part of his wrist. A line appeared around the diameter of the orb. Plittereeg flipped the lid open and began to collect the ashes.

After we were finished collecting the ashes we went back down the crevice and attempted to salvage the moon buggy. This was hard work, but at least the pickles were easy to collect. Plittereeg formed a container on his back and became our self-assigned container for collection.

After climbing back out of the chasm, we went back to the space ship. Me and Plittereeg ran as fast as we could back to the space ship. We dumped the salvaged parts into a bin and hurried back outside to continue our mission, but trouble was afoot. (dun, dun DDDUUUUUNNN!!!!!!!)

Weasel wasn’t too thrilled about this idea, but he was glad that the jar would at least eventually be opened, even if he didn’t get to eat the pickles inside it. Once Alabaster had opened the jar in one twist- (”after I loosened it,” insisted Weasel,) they poured the pickles into the fuel tank and we headed out.

Alabaster stayed behind and took atmospheric readings, which I figured was okay because he was hard to phase and wouldn’t be too surprised at Plittereeg’s amazing abilities. We trundled along the dusty surface of the planet all clad in space suits. I was surprised at the incredible array of different size and shape space suits that Dave had, because seeing how the Great Flying Pickle Jar had once been a Ductopi colony, there should only be ductopi space suits. I was awed as without a second thought he pulled a small, four-armed space suit for Weasel out of the glove compartment of the buggy- but then again if all of the ductopi colonies were like the Deathbird then they probably tailor-made all sorts of space suits for their various mutants.

As we headed out, we didn’t see much at first. There were three moons orbiting the planet and there was about as much gravity on this planet as there had been on the great blue expanse of desert that had been Plittereeg’s home. But it wasn’t wrong before we ran into some problems.

The first problem was the precarious rocks and mountains and hills everywhere. We had been lucky enough to land next to a valley- a shallow valley and some flat ground- but we were still surrounded by hills, mountains and large boulders. Nervously, I glanced back and forth, setting my gaze on Dave and the rocks. I realized that it would have been better if Alabaster had come along, because Dave had displayed how terrible he was at driving. Dave later explained that when he was a military exus leader he didn’t have to do the steering, he just had to be in charge, so he had limited experience in navigation.

Dave’s first driving mistake came when he started talking about how he couldn’t possibly measure how lonely his childhood was, and swerved into the side of a rocky wall. Dave immediately pulled the buggy back into the middle of the valley but the boulder still came tumbling at us. This is when Plittereeg displayed the first of his tricks. He concentrated very hard and the bulb on the top of his antenna grew at such a tremendous speed that it nearly burst before leaving his head. He swung his head around madly and the bulb detached itself at maddening speed whistling through the air with one side burning up with friction. It hit the boulder so hard that both the boulder and the bulb disintegrated on impact.

The next problem came not from Dave’s driving mistake, but just from the fact that we had neglected to wait for the results of Alabaster’s atmospheric testing. We had stopped to take some rock samples when Weasel started juggling rocks. He was incredibly good at it, given that he has four arms. He started tossing them higher and higher until one of them stayed in the air. Weasel watched it in awe. It started to shake thirty feet above the ground, then it was pulled back like a sling shot up into the atmosphere and shot down like the atmosphere was spitting out a watermelon seed. Plittereeg moved so fast I could barely see him- he was a blur- he did a variation on the hammer arm trick. Rather than forming his arm into a hammer, he left it as a hand, the other part that he changed was that the elbow stayed bent the entire time, so he used it as a boomerang. He tossed his arm up into the air and it grabbed the rock mid-flight. Plittereeg flinched with the pain of the rock hitting his hand with such tremendous speed, but I imagine that the hit severed his telepathic connection with the arm, thereby letting him work without having to concentrate on the stinging pain.

The arm flew back to him like a boomerang, just like he had planned and he held it up in the air in a dramatic pose, trying to look like, well, like who I don’t really know, and in any case, he was doing a dramatic pose. He let Weasel keep that arm but he did so in a confused manner. I don’t blame him. I had no idea why Weasel would have wanted a disembodied arm.

Dave took some rocks, hid them in teh glove compartment and trundled on. The third problem came, not because of atmospheric pressure or because of Dave’s bad driving, but because of the first signs of life we had seen on this planet- a giant larval insect. (I have to call it that instead of a grub for scientific reasons).

The giant larval insect came slithering and lurching out of a cave and attempted to absorb the buggy into its gelatinous body. Plittereeg’s fingers grew longer and the bulbs shrank and his fingertips sharpened. He coiled up his fingers, sticking his thumb up into the spring shape and flicked them out, shooting razor-sharp needles at the beast. This was the first time I’d gotten to see the actual effect of Plittereeg’s finger trick on a living creature. The embedded needles started to shake in the flesh of the larval insect and shot out snaky tendrils that also embedded themselves then flopped end over end across the creature, like a slinky down stairs, leaving horrible chemical burn marks where ever it flopped. The snaky tendrils invaded the body, burning it all over until the entire larval insect shriveled up, burned with very small low-heat flame for about a minute, then crumbled into ash. Plittereeg stood proudly in the backseat of the buggy.

Dave, worried about any more mishaps, drove us back to the pickle jar, but before we could make it to the pickle jar, a boulder fell on the ground in front of us causing a cave in. Dave attempted to turn around, but instead of doing that, he gunned it and zoomed into the hole. Plittereeg and me alone managed to jump off of the buggy. Weasel also tried but failed miserably, falling short by about a foot.

“I’m okay!” We heard Weasel’s voice through our radios. We could only keep in contact with Weasel because he had caught onto a ledge. The others’ radio receivers were most likely broken. With that, we headed back to the space ship to inform Alabaster.

The more cool stuff consisted of a large static shock, a super magnet, a skeleton key and lock picking set, and a limited stretch which allowed my arm to stretch out to three feet. The less cool stuff consisted of an airbag (I mean who needs an airbag in a hand?). That’s it. The kind of neat stuff consisted of an automatic rock, paper, scissors microchip that could sense what the other player was going to do, (I didn’t use it much because I consider it cheating) also a candy dispenser, used for firing tiny lead pellets but I assumed it could also be used for candy. Unfortunately I never got to test out my assumption because there are no M & Ms in outer space.

Plittereeg and I spent hours hunting down these various functions. Our deal was that I would let Plittereeg help me discover the functions and Plittereeg would teach me some new tricks I had never learned. When we finished discovering the various functions of the arm, Plittereeg did something I would never have expected of him. He shut his eyes, concentrated really hard, and the bulb on the end of his antenae lit up and started glowing with a tiny pulsating throb. The more he concentrated, the brighter the glow got. Eventually it got about as bright as an average light bulb. After a while it got so bright I couldn’t look at it directly, then the brightness went back down to a steady, glowing pulsating throb and the bulb began to swell until it was about the size of an exercise ball.

Then Plittereeg began to nod and shake his head at the same time. The glowing exercise-ball-sized-bulb began to swing in circles until it detached itself, flew across the room and hit the wall, exploding with a band and sending green flecks everywhere. I conveyed my amazement as best as I could without clapping and hurting my left hand a lot. Plittereeg did another trick. He concentrated very hard and spread out his fingers. His long dexterous digits became even longer. The bulbs on the tips of his fingers and thumbs shrank until his fingertips and thumb tips became wickedly sharp. His fingers coiled up into a spring shape and his long thumbs curled slightly and slid inside the cage of fingers. Then he flicked open his fingers and thumbs and tiny green razor-sharp needles shot from the tips of his fingers and embedded themselves in the wall.

The bulbs on the tips of his fingers grew back and his fingers shrank back to normal size. Very vaguely, Plittereeg attempted to explain.

“Most of my species’ tricks of self-defense and attack are possible because evolution has made most of our body parts detachable.” He displayed this concept by detaching one of his arms and dropping it on the floor. He shut his eyes and began to concentrate again. The fingers on his detached arm fell off and the stub of his wrist flattened out into a hammer-like shape, which he picked up with his remaining arm by the stub that used to connect to the shoulder. The elbow in his hammer-arm bent and he threw it with his remaining arm with all his strength. The elbow of the hammer-arm remained bent until it was about half-way from Plittereeg to the opposite wall. Then it straightened out and spun wildly out of control so fast it blurred in a way I had never seen before, looking more like a flying ball than a flying hammer. It hit the wall with such force that it almost dented it, and would have dented it if it had been made of any normal metal.

Plittereeg was lucky it hadn’t dented it or Dave would have made him rebuild the wall from scratch. Plittereeg’s missing arm grew back slowly, but completed its growth cycle in a matter of minutes. Plittereeg was about to display even more tricks when Alabaster called him to get to work on the terra-buggy we were building to help explore the planet we had landed on.

I watched as Plittereeg bounced over to the entrance to the maze in his usual energetic fashion and imagined what his next trick might be. With that, Dave called me to work on figuring out a power source for our buggy and figure out what we would use as protection. I grinned at the thought of how many possibilities there could be for self-defense.

When I woke up everything was a million times bigger. I was lying in shattered pieces of eggshell on an incubator platform. A humongous creature in a detox suit was reaching down to grab me. I attempted to stick my arms in the air and motion for it to stop and not pick me up, but I realized that I only had one arm.

It was dark inside the creature’s hand and the room he brought me into was also dark. I was full size again but that didn’t reassure me. Another creature in a detox suit came over to me and dropped a pill into my mouth. I was forced to swallow it, and immediately after that I fell asleep.

When I came to, I was lying on a hospital bed in a well-lit room with no one in sight. As I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, I heard voices coming from the other room. Two of them were the talking dog guards, and one of them was Kaptain Kronk. In my mind I went back to #476248 telling me that Kaptain Kronk performed mental hypnotism on his mutations. Without paying any attention to anything around me I leapt out of my bed and made a break for it down a random corridor.

I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that my arm had been replaced with a robotic one, but I guess that didn’t really matter at that point. I ran down the corridor and searched the various passages for signs of an escape pod. Then I realized something: Dave. I had to get to him.

I ran back to the crib and saw how incredibly lucky I was. It was the one day a week that Dave was unlocked from the wall and given the freedom to sleep in a cot rather than in chains. I woke Dave up as fast as I could and hauled him through the corridors and into the escape pod I had found. Without a second thought I rocketed off, without giving a second thought to the fact that I hadn’t the slightest clue how to pilot a escape pod.

The first thing I did was set the steering on a lock and make sure the coast was clear. Then I located the brakes and acceleration. Then I unlocked the steering wheel and began to steer. It’s as simple as that. I set the space coordinates for space sector .92872. I had no idea where this was, but Dave was murmuring about it in his sleep so I assumed it must be something good.

When we reached sector .92872, I realized why Dave had been murmuring about it. It was actually a landing area that he had plotted out for Alabaster. I settled the escape pod down next to the Great Flying Pickle Jar and woke Dave up. He led me through the maze and down into the control room. There was nobody there, so we left the control room to the sleeping quarters. There everybody was, sitting on the various sized cots and murmuring about me and Dave in worried and hustled speech. When they saw us, for the first time in as long as I had known him, Alabaster’s jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide. Weasel paid no attention- he was still trying to open the pickle jar.

Before I could even turn my eyes toward Plittereeg, he was already rushing towards me. I gave him a hug. I told them all about the mutation lab and then after a long, excited evening we went to bed.

At first its comments were unintelligible, but with some twiddling of the knobs on my headband I could understand it. It revealed that it truly was an “it,” and not a “he” or “she” of any kind, due to heavy mutating from Kaptain Kronk. It also told me that its name was #476248. Technically speaking, its name used to be something else, but yet again, due to mutating it could no longer recall what its previous name was.

As I was listening to it speak, my eyes darted around the room. I noticed an immense creature sitting in the darkness in the far corner of the chamber.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the creature.

“That,” muttered #476248, “is the arm.”

“Why is he called the arm?” I questioned.

“Well you’ll be able to see once he comes snaking out if the darkness again.” Just as #476248 had predicted, the Arm came slithering out of the darkness. It looked like some sort of deformed version of Quasimodo, and Quasimodo is already deformed, so it’s like a deformed deformity. The Arm, like his name implied, had only one arm, and one of his legs was longer than the other. His hip bone was shifted sideways so it looked like he had a spike jutting out of the left side of his body. A shiver went up my spine. I tried to avoid eye contact with the Arm. I turned my attention back to #476248.

“How did the Arm get here?”

“I have no idea,” it replied. “I have a better idea of how I got here, and like I’ve already said, I’ve had a complete memory wipe of anything that happened before my mutations. But I can tell you about the mutation process, if that will satisfy you.

“Kaptain Kronk used to be head of mutation sciences for somebody called The Military Exus Leader of the Great and Mighty Deathbird.” I think that #476248 rolled its eyes at this point, but it was hard to tell because they were solid black. “Apparently they had some sort of fight and Kronk was forced to leave the ship. He constructed his own ship, the Mayfly, and has been building up creatures for his mutant army ever since. The mutation process is simple- I’m not really explaining how the machines work, I’m just explaining what they do. First, several different specimens are transformed into various combinations of sand, water and fire. Then, three specimens are mixed together in different formulas:

“sand, sand, sand,
“water, water, water,
“fire, fire, fire,
“sand, sand, fire
“sand water fire,
“water water fire, etc etc. until you’ve reached all possible combinations. Then, one of the various combinations is put into an incubator and sealed inside a synthetic egg and sent to another part of the incubator to be hatched. After the eggs hatch, the miniscule creatures are surgically refined and given extra limbs, artificial coloring and and unnecessary bone matter including spikes and extra long spines. Then, the creatures are put under special memory-loss hypnotism by Kaptain Kronk.

“I don’t know what happens after that, all I know is its a long, painful series of events that leads to super creatures.”

“Bzzzt Bzzzt!” #476248 turned its head. “It’s my turn, it said solemnly. “See you later, if I even get the chance.” With that, it walked out of the room and our conversation came to an abrupt end.

“This is the Krib,” he shouted gleefully, pointed to a rotting wood sign hanging above the door. One of the nails in the sign was rusted and broke in half as soon as he pointed to it. I continued to assume this was a coincidence.

To my surprise, the first creature I saw upon entering the Krib was Dave. He was chained to the wall and had beads of sweat dripping down his forehead and through his feathers. Next to Dave, there were several other tortured prisoners from other corners of the galaxy. The Kaptain pushed me into the room and slammed the door shut. With a loud klanking, a key fell into place and Kaptain Kronk locked the door.

I tottered over to one of the cots and just sat there. There was nothing else to do. I couldn’t talk to Dave, and I couldn’t talk to any of the other prisoners, either. The only thing to do was just sit there. So that’s what I did: I just sat there. For hours. I sat there until I started to see tiny ducktopi floating around my head, from sleep deprivation.

When I did fall asleep, I had cluttered dreams about the Military Exus Leader and Weasel fighting over the glowing egg. I often had visions about the unseen creature from the egg attempting to tell me the future. It talked about robotic arms and extra features, and strange things I couldn’t picture. I had dreams in which I attempted to save Plittereeg from a giant fire-breathing snake. And just when we were in mid leap from the falling rope bridge to the edge of the cliff on the other side, somebody would rewind and it would play over and over and over. I never got to see if we made it out alive.

Those were the dreams of the first night. They got worse every night I spent aboard the Mayfly.

I had diabolic visions of what the Deathbird would look like from the outside—signs and portents from the tiny creature in the egg—and even more terrible monsters attempting to destroy Plittereeg, with no sign of whether we got out alive or not. Every night I awoke dripping with sweat from another nightmare. Each night, the nightmares were worse and worse, leaving me in worse and worse situations with Plittereeg with more terrible predictions from the creature in the egg.

One night, as I was waking up in a cold sweat, before I had a chance to throw my head back down onto the dusty featherless pillow, I was picked up by two metal arms and carried at ferocious speeds out of the Krib. My first month in the Krib was over. Whenever the arms went around a turn, I was swung against the wall, being knocked almost out of my senses. I eventually arrived in the biggest room I had ever seen on the ship. There were chairs and benches and tables everywhere. A sign above the door read: “Waiting Room.”

As I strained my eyes to read the sign above the door at the other end of the chamber, my heart skipped a beat. This was the waiting room for the Genetics & Mutating Lab.

It whipped a warty mottled tentacle at me. Its beak snapped open and shut but I couldn’t hear what it was trying to tell me due to the soundproof glass. The octopus creature whipped a tentacle out into the darkness where it had emerged from. Five deformed mutant guards that looked like dogs standing on their hind legs only, you know, deformed, started to madly press buttons on a control pedestal next to my container. The tube began to rise until it had completely slid up through the ceiling into a humongous tank of water where it opened and I was set free out into the building/spaceship/whatever it might be.

I swam towards the “shore” and pulled myself up out of the tank and onto the metal floor. I attempted to stand up and make a break for it but before I could even start to run, I was hoisted up into the air by a metal claw. The metal claw deposited me onto a stainless steel chair, the armrest immediately shot out tiny grapnels that wrapped around me and restricted my movement and erased the possibility of leaving the, well, I’m not going to say the long thing about the spaceships and buildings, but I’m just going to call it spaceship since that’s what it was anyway even if I didn’t know at that point.

The octopus thing slithered into the room and immediately started talking before I had time to ask a question.

“Fligamerhc slke agododo” it was cut off by my shouting.

“HOLD ON” I said, as I strained to pull my arm up and change the dials on my translator headband. I eventually succeeded and the octopus creature continued to blabber.

“First of all, before you ask, I am Kaptain Kronk. Second of all, you are on board the Mayfly and thirdly you are actually going to be turned to a hideous mutant.”

“I actually wasn’t going to ask that,” I said. “Well, I would have asked what your name was, but I wasn’t going to ask if I was going to be turned into a hideous mutant.” But Kaptain Kronk wasn’t listening. He was too busy rattling off the other things he assumed I would ask.

“Yes, the Mayfly is a spaceship, yes you are going to be kept in a prison cell, no you aren’t going to have your own personal buffet table,” and on and on. When he finally stopped rattling off the things he assumed I would ask, he started to talk about all the “inside facts” that you probably didn’t know about the famous Kaptain Kronk. For example, “I used to live in a fish bowl. Before that I was the captain of a submarine. Even before that, I was an egg. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?”

I assume he continued to go on even after I had fallen asleep.

We had probably been asleep for hours when he finally passed out from sheer exhaustion. We assumed this because when we woke up, Weasel was left lying on the floor clutching the pickle jar and murmuring something about rusty pickles. When Weasel eventually woke up, we had already been planning our lift off for a couple of hours.

By the time Weasel figured out which room we were in, Dave had already plopped down into the pilot’s seat and was fiddling with a nonsensical array of levers and buttons, but before Weasel could ask what we were doing the ship shot up into the air at such an incredible speed that anybody who wasn’t buckled in was thrown backwards against the opposite wall.

It was dark most of the time because Dave had neglected to back the space ship out of the cavern before lifting off. We rocketed upward through level after level of family cave. When we finally reached daylight, I was too dazed to actually pay any attention to it until it got dark again. We were back in space.

Numerous times, Dave started to tell us his story, but then had to stop to avoid an asteroid or the gravitational pull of a planet that he didn’t see because he was too busy talking about how he had a lonely childhood. Several times Alabaster had to pounce at him and grab a lever at the last second to avoid crashing into a neglected and broken satellite.

Eventually, after several dozen near collisions, Alabaster just gave up trying to help and sat down in the pilot’s seat himself. Dave motioned us out of the room and slid the door to the pilot’s cabin shut.

“Ummmm, what are out here for?” said Weasel.

“So I can tell you my story without being interrupted by a meteorite,” replied Dave. “Well. When I was young I had a very lonely childhood-”

“We knew that already,” I interrupted.

“You did?” said Dave, feigning surprise. “Well, after that, I had a very lonely-”

“I think we knew that too.”

“Anyway, about halfway through my lifespan, an army of my kind came marching through my clan and said that our planet was going to explode, like Krypton, and that we had to leave the planet in spaceships. Our spaceship,” he said, motioning to the ship around us, “was originally named ‘The Dark Duck’, but I renamed it ‘The Great Flying Pickle Jar’ later, after it came into my possession.”

“How did it come into your possession?” I asked.

“That’s for later. Anyway, after spending several years on ‘The Dark Duck’ working with my military exus leader-” two of Weasel’s four arms shot up in the air.

“Ooh! ooh! ooh! ooh! ooh!” he said. Dave rolled his eyes, which was strange because, as I had mentioned before, they were about the size of baseballs.

“What is it, Weasel?”

“What’s a military exus leader?”

“What I became after mine died,” replied Dave, as if that answered the question. Weasel looked satisfied and pulled down his arms. “Anyway, like I was about to say- Oh look at the time,” he said, pretending to look at a watch, “I must go,” and he ran out of the room through the maze of corridors I had come through when I entered the ship.

Weasel started to follow but I explained to him that it was a maze, not just a hall. He pretended to understand and then shot out after Dave through the maze of corridors. The last thing we heard from him was, “I’ve had plenty of practice with mazes.”

Me and Plittereeg reported back to Alabaster. He answered that they’d come back in the morning and we shouldn’t worry, although he did murmur something about how he’d have to work the night shift. Then, without another word, he said, “Good night,” and pushed us out of the room and flicked off the light.

I had a small conversation with Plittereeg under the light of Dave’s red eyes glowing back through the maze and after that we went to sleep.

“And my friends are inside of it?” I asked suspiciously.

“I think so,” said Dave.

“Well, okay then, let’s go inside- Wait a minute- did you say ‘the great flying pickle jar’?”

“Yes indeed,” gushed Dave. “I came up with it myself.”

“Oooookay,” I responded in a dubious tone.

Dave slithered inside and I followed him, feeling insecure. The first room was pitch black, but we ascended a flight of stairs into a well lit control room. Dave reached over to the control board and pressed an ominous large red button. A hatch on the left wall slid open, and a gorilla charged across the room and vanished into another hatch on the right wall. Dave pressed a different button, and a robot with a flame thrower attempted to transform into a pogo stick. Unsuccessfully, it attempted to hop across the room. That, too, vanished into a hatch on the opposite wall. Dave reached over to press another button. I could tell this was going to take a while.

After several more malfunctioning mishaps, Dave finally found the right button, which activated an elevator platform to lift us up into the next room. In this room, the light was dim, though not as dark as the first room. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that it wasn’t much of a room at all. Rather, it was a long tunnel. Dave led me through. I could see his eyes glowing in the dark. In fact, I soon realized that his eyes were the only light.

Eventually, we came to a fork in the tunnel. Dave led me in the right direction. And by that, I mean right, not not wrong. We came to another fork. He led me through to the passage way to the left. It continued on this way: left – right – right – left, sometimes even straight or up and down. When we finally left the maze, there would have been no way I could have possibly found my way back.

When my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the next room, I was surprised to see my friends fast asleep lying on various size cots. Dave pressed a button on the wall. When he pressed the button, a panel on the wall just above the button slid open and deposited a bike horn in seconds. Dave non-chalantly pulled a sledge hammer from a weapons rack on the wall and proceeded to bring it down upon the bulb of the horn. A noise that sounded like a goose being strangled by another very sick goose that was constantly coughing came from the horn.

My comrades woke up immediately and shot out of bed, literally in the case of Weasel. I have no idea how he did that.

“What’s happening?” he said. It was great to hear his way-too-thick Irish accent again.

“Yeah, where are we?” added on Plittereeg.

“You,” I said, pausing for dramatic effect—just as the Military Exus leader had done at the end of Chapter Two—”are in the Great Flying Pickle Jar.”

“Yes.”

“Why Dave?” I asked confused.

“Well, because…I’m named Dave.”

“So, how did you get here, Dave?”

“I walked here.”

“Walked to this planet?”

“No, walked to this cave. I got to this planet by means of an escape pod.”

“So did we.”

“Anyway, did you see a group of a white lion, a four armed weasel and a little green, sort-of-hard to describe creature?”

“No, I didn’t see them, but I do know where they went.”

“Where?”

“I’ll show you.”

So I followed him through about 20 to 30 minutes of winding maze until we reached a large open space with a smashed kerosene lamp lying on the floor. He lead me across the cavern to a battered up and half rotted wooden trap door. With some effort, he wrenched open the trap door and led me down.

After some time we exited the shaft and came to a tunnel. After about a minute of walking, or half slithering in Dave’s case, there was dim light at the end of the tunnel. The light got brighter and brighter until we reached an exit. It was an incredible view of the expanse of desert outside of the maze of caves. I was so drawn in by the miraculous blue desert that I barely noticed that Dave had climbed down a series of ladders and was standing on the ground next to something. What it was I couldn’t tell at that point. He motioned for me to climb down after him and I obliged. After managing to clambered down the series of ladders I saw what he was standing next to. It was a rusted up submarine hatch like the one from the Deathbird. Dave raised two tentacles and wrenched open the door. We climbed inside.

After about a minute of adjusting to the dim light, I looked up to see what an amazing thing could possibly be in this cavern. What I saw before me was the most stupendous thing I had seen upon reaching this planet. It was a humongous starship.

I expected just to fall on the ground, brush it off and keep running, but instead of a hard stony ground, I fell onto a damp, squishy surface. As I tried to pull myself up I realized it was sticky and actually coming up with me and then popping off. In my attempt to pull myself off the surface, the sticky ground made a “pop” noise as one of its suctions released on me and a pair of huge glowing eyes appeared in the dark.

The eyes blinked themselves open as if they had just awakened from a long nap and an unseen mouth made a grunting noise. Using the small amount of light from the eyes, I looked down. The surface I was on wasn’t a surface at all but a floppy mound of spongy tentacles. I realized with horror what was happening. I flung myself off of the mound and flew face first into a mound of grimy rocks and mud.

I stood up and ran in a random direction as fast as I could, dodging boulders and stalagmites as I ran through the dingy corridors of the cave. When I stopped to rest I heard Weasel’s voice echoing through the cavern: “Where are ye?” I attempted to answer but was too exhausted. In a couple of minutes, I fell asleep.

I dreamed for some strange reason, that there was a minotaur pinata above me, and I was tied up, and the Military Exus Leader was brandishing a baseball bat and threatening to smash the pinata. He did, and suddenly a herd of hairless feral cats jumped out of the pinata and attempted to devour me. I woke up with a start.

A Minotaur pinata and a herd of hairless feral cats? Well, dreams can be strange. I stood up and brushed off the mud and wet sand and attempted to find a way out of the labyrinthian maze of corridors. I called for my friends and heard a distant echoing of their voices and tried to follow it through the maze. After hours of wandering I came upon a long passageway with several doors in the wall. I looked into them. Most of them were dark, but there were a couple filled with piles of rocks and sticks and at the very end of the corridor was a brightly lit room full of offerings.

I grabbed some food offerings from the offering room and nibbled on them while I walked along the dismal corridors towards the rapidly brightening haze around the corner at the end of the corridor. I turned and I didn’t see my friends- they must have been looking for me- but the room wasn’t totally empty. Bewilderingly, there were carcasses of small animals like rabbits and cats.

I scanned my surroundings but didn’t see anything aside from small animal carcasses. I sat down on a large rock and thought about the situation. It wasn’t really much of a situation, I just needed to wait until they got back. So I waited. . . for about an hour, and they weren’t there. They didn’t come back. Just when I was about to stand up and actually start looking for them I saw a shadow slinking around the corner. Was it them? I couldn’t make it out in the dark. Before I could call out to the form around the corner, it turned its shadowy head and I saw two huge glowing eyes just like I had seen before.

I started slinking backwards to the mouth of the cave. I was going to climb down the ladder and make an escape across the desert when I realized something: this cave didn’t have a ladder. I was ready just to accept my fate and be devoured by a giant monster when out of the darkness came. . . . a Goostopus?

“I’m Dave,” it said.

How the Web Sees the Makice Family

On the surface, there appears to be some value in compressing all of the blogs, articles, and social media postings into a compact visualization. The high-level descriptive words about a person are easy to understand. In looking at our three most active online family members, one striking observation is that 9-year-old Carter has 20 category descriptors compared to just 11 for Amy. The outcome doesn’t completely make sense: I’m a designer, but politics and management both eclipse that category in my visualization.

Does it mean anything? Potentially, it could, if you revisit the process over time.

It would be interesting to see how Carter’s description changes as he continues to publish his own material, rather than relying on his parents to share his life online. Ambiguous design like this is a collaborative process between the viewer and the system to co-create meaning, often by comparing what one sees now with what was experienced previously. To mine value in this way, though, there needs to be some longitudinal consistency in how the data is processed.

That consistency isn’t there. I ran the same search for “Kevin Makice” three times in succession. With each run, Personas created a different interpretation of the same data:

Blink, and the interpretation changes

That’s OK, because this is one of the quirks the creators want to reveal.

Personas is a critique of data mining. While acknowledging the real value Google and Netflix bring to people through statistical analysis of large data sets, there is also a dark side that includes TSA watch lists (to name one). The Personas site explains this insight:

Data mining is “technologically neutral” in the sense that its power is derived from what people do with it. The creators of an algorithm choose how to model the world, deciding (somewhat arbitrarily) what inputs and outputs to use. You as the potential “victim” of data mining cannot control any of these factors, especially given the usual lack of transparency of the process.

The purpose of this project is to allow people to peek into one such black box, while still preventing access to controls to shape its engine.

Inside the Black Box
The analytical process of Personas starts with a Yahoo search for public data using “characterizing” queries (which are different from a simple ego search) and limiting the results to no more than 30 items. Some filtering is done on the results to remove hate speech and focus on English language, and words are also stemmed to remove suffixes and simplify the data sets.

Using a technique called Latent Dirichlet Allocation, the results are categorized with an unsupervised algorithm—which means the computer doesn’t know if its work is “correct.” In this case, a method of clustering called topic modeling was used to guess which categories best describe a given document.

Personas was created as an art installation by Aaron Zinman (with help from Alex Dragulescu, Yannick Assogba and Judith Donath) as part of an interactive exhibit—Metropath(ologies)—by the MIT’s Sociable Media Group. Zinman is a PhD student whose past work included “Is Britney Spears Spam” (PDF), an attempt to classify users by the humanness of their communication behavior and social structure.