Late Night Food Run

From the headlines: "Not it! Mass. elementary school bans tag"


Being back in good old Massachusetts, I am somewhat of an authority on the game of "tag" Attleboro felt compelled to ban... In Attleboro, kids are raised on cornbread and raw meat, and sometimes bred to sizes measuring over 9 foot six. Which is why the townspeople built a ten foot two and a half inch high wall around the town some years ago. It was originally ten feet, even, but they did it without a level, and wound up adding more and more bits to the wall to try and level the thing off by line of sight, and you know how it goes. So the height of ten feet, two and a half inches is a rough average, as the wall is still not entirely level, though it looks a lot better than it used to. But that's beside the point.


The game of tag, as played by these feral children, involves a pickaxe, corn husks, and a monkey (which is why the game is rarely played in the winter - monkeys hate winter). The pickaxe and dwindling supply of corn husks, coupled with the limited availability of monkeys (even a single monkey, you only need one), are the big reasons for "banning" tag.


This was a compromise, as at the original town meeting the people of Attleboro wanted each child put in a bubble, so as not to hurt themselves. This was completely unfeasible, as you might imagine, given the size to which these children grow and ill-advanced methods of making bubbles for every day use with a child inside. Someday, should bubble technology advance to such a degree, we may see tag return to Attleboro, but until that day, it's best to put the pickaxe and corn husks and monkey down, and leave well enough alone.




disclaimer:

Again: NaNoWriMo. Not that we're even pretending we're gonna hit 10K words. November is the cruelest month, in a lot of ways.

So hey ho, we can skip National Novel Editing Month next and just keep on plugging with our Pynchonesque pace.

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Based on Khoi Vinh's idea at Blockwriter.com, it's about a word processor that's more like a typewriter than you've ever... well, okay, if you've used a typewriter, it's a bit like that. But if you haven't, then it's more like a typewriter than you've ever seen. You can go select text with your fancy mouse, by if you type over it you'll only strike out the text... you can only type at the end, so there's no going back, no worrying about editing too much. It encourages you to get writing. Well, not actively. That'd be distracting. It does it in an eminently non-distracting way.

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If you had feelings about this week's issue, be sure to let us know how you felt. If your feeling isn't covered here... well, I guess you're stuck, then, aren't you?
Liked it.
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Would have liked more references to bats.
I'd rather be boiled in vinegar.

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I miss it.
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What summary, you mean I can get away with reading less?
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27 Nov, 2006

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