My pal Kdunk, who gave me a lucky dollar to hang on my wall on the occasion of my going full-time on kotte.org, recently posted an intriguing photo to Flickr. As the first commenter notes, "there goes a story". As a creative writing exercise, what's your take on what's going on here? Doesn't have to be true, just make something up. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I think this one may have a few more in it than that.
It was a dark and clear night, quiet; hardly a soul on the street. An elderly woman pulled a blue bag out of her window.
Gladys continues to elude the unisex police -- but for how much longer?
I've heard that near the end of his life, Salvador Dali used to tie a string to a coffee mug, lower it out of his window and into a bucket of tar, and then sign the mug and sell it for extra cash. I don't know if that's true, but I think something similar is going on here.
The lady is obviously dropping down food to her daughter on the lower story, where the bag will be then filled with a note thanking the grandmother, and promising success and moving out.
No no, look at the bag again.
It's a head in a duffle bag! Unisex hair-styling gone bad.
Gone Cat Fish'in
in the absence of her children, mother would spend her toothless time collecting baubles from pedestrians. She didn't need anything, we provided adequately. But she derived great pleasure from acquiring objects from stranger's pockets as they would so often freely give away cherished objects freely. Today I find myself hard pressed to discard worthless matchbooks, key chains, foreign coins, credit card receipts.
It's the CIA. They've been using old people and barber shops for years to do their dirty work. I bet this pic will be pulled in less than an hour.
Put the f****** lotion in the basket!
As is the norm for immigrant women of her generation, Maria is not an overly educated woman. This wouldn't stop Maria, though, from spelling out her favorite word to blurt out at parties...bluenisex.
Maria always finds a way, and her friends love her for it.
wait...thats a guy, isn't it?
Okay. So, this is tangentially related. My documentary class ware recently visited by a Danish Film Studies master's student who gave us an amazing lecture on contemporary Danish Documentary. Max Kestner, an amazing filmmaker, whose film "Max by Chance" is incredible, and unavailable in the US, said:
"Film school cemented my belief that people, not ideas, are what matter, that no story can be separated from the language in which it is told. It's such a misconception in our business that stories are something that exist out in reality, which you can simply go out and find and then tell in some medium. I don't think it's like that at all. Stories comeout of those who tell them, out of language. It makes no sense to say that something is a good story, but poorly told. If that is the case, it really is a bad story - because the two cannot be separated."
She's trying to kill a kitten litter by dropping them to the floor inside a bag. Only halfway into it, she's repented.
She's poisoning the neighborhood cats with arsenic-laced mice.
Flo has chosen to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
the person is trying to get buff by lifting the bag up and down
but somehow the person hit someone on the way down
and came to the window to make sure the person was out cold or dead.
too bad they weren't and they had a camera
Woman? Man? No, no... you all have it wrong and it is in right front of you, plain of day. She is, unisex.
Jezebell Flowerinski, the widow in the picture, was born and raised in Manhattan. For her first 68 years, she hadn't ventured further west than New Jersey.
At the age of 69, she won a church raffle and enjoyed an all-expenses-paid long weekend on Oregon's Columbia gorge. While there, she attended a water aerobics class; the instructor, a widower named Juan Maria Gonzales, age 72, a native of Madrid, suggested, during a break, that they venture out into the gorge and take a spin on his kite surf. They had a smashing time. And they fell in love. Jezebell returned to Gotham and decided, hey, life's too short, and since Juan Maria hates New York, she resolved to move to Oregon to spend her twilight years with him.
In this photo, she is lowering her 14" PowerBook and her 30GB iPod Photo, swaddled in a water-tight kite surfing electronics holder, down to Juan Maria, who has made the trip to the Big Apple to help her move. Alfredo Mancuso, her morbidly obese downstairs neighbor, yesterday became lodged in the stairwell; Jezebell and Juan Maria have been forced, in fact, to lower all of her belongings down to the street in this way. (What a pain.) Jezebell, three minutes later, would herself jump down. She would not be injured.
" 'Since my elevator accident, I have not been able to walk my dog Pete. Fortunately, I trained him to get into the bag again, after he has done whatever he needs to do,' Consuelo told to the Police."
Day had just broke, the sky was a clear carribean sea. The sun was too far off in the east to soften the spring air. I was off to work, hoping to beat the tide of workers washing in from the suburbs. At the corner an otherwise lifeless blue bag hung from a nondescript and seemingly unattended perch above the sidewalk. It bobbed and rolled with the wind, wanting the passerby to briefly explore its contents. I slowed my pace as I closed in on the bag, a feeling of great need washed over me, my fingers traced the outline of the bag, smooth and cool, but the current was strong and I headed on towards work.
On the return home, the bag, still hanging from the uninhabited window, still waiting for to be entered, stayed itself in the stagnant night air. A boy, not nearly six, stood to it's side, probing the bag with his eyes, tracing the leash to the window and back. Two tiny hands reached out, tugged the bag down to where his eyes could meet its contents. The boys eyes shot open. Candy! A toy! Something to excite the senses! But the bag, now so deep, the boy plunged his arms into the bag, standing on the very tips of his toes, straining to grasp what now was surely almost within his reach. So very close, so so very close, the boys chest and head now fulling engulfed by the bag's walls, his feet lifted from the ground as he folded over at the waist, his legs flailing to propel him that inch farther.
A ferocious lurch upward! the bag jumped, toppling the boy into the bag, his legs up and over the side of the bag and in, the boy squirming and thrashing about, caught in the blue bags aweful snare! A trap! Up! Up! Up! the bag went, reeled in with great big pulls, the cord zipping as passed over the balcony, and two great arms, I could see to great arms now, and a face, an old miserable face with glasses, with a wretched smile! So aweful! Bring that boy back! Set him down at once I said! Oh, and how I wish the boy could stay!
But, alas, this is the life of the urban fisher.
"Put the denture cream in the bag! If I open the door for the delivery boy, my 237 cats will escape!"
s/kotte.org/kottke.org/
Oh, silly me. Needed to scroll a bit there.
Granny Annie's School of Unisex Styling was in constant need of cadaver heads for students to practice on. She would throw down a fiver strapped around a small rock with a rubber-band, for every head the neighborhood children would bring by. Annie smiled like the winner at a gurning competition as she tried to five-bomb the little ones while they avoided the scurrying rats, gnawing at the rotting skulls tossed in the alley below.
New York nights yield treasures to the persistent. Pat understood the blue bag's role. A pillow on the ledge for varicose veins, Pat cackles to those below.
"Get it together boys, this dangling ain't forever."
Obviously, she is liberating the hair from the salon below. It was destined for the garbage heap, but quick thinking, and an accomplice below, allowed the woman to donate the hair to a cancer support group. This group will use it to create wigs for people undergoing chemo and radiation therapy.
I bet there is like a witch head in there, or possibly something worse.
Rapunzel let her hair down for her prince charming. I am no less, but you better send up some milk and cookies first and then we'll see if this string is strong enough for you :)
With the new Lower for Life (tm) Home Kit, it's easier than ever for the elderly and homebound to donate organs at the time of death -- or even in advance!
The real...perhaps more boring story compared to the creative guesses above is here-http://www.morethandonuts.blogspot.com. And hey-thanks for the link!
Just seconds earlier, Eunice's fiercely swung bean-filled whack-bonk had claimed yet another pedestrian victim. Per usual, the neighbors were laughing too hard to call the police.
i think she's just getting her marble rye.
Lila stood at the window, her arms resting on her dead husband's pillow. Looking across the street at the baker's, she slowly lowered the blue bag down on a string.
She had found the bag in her youngest daughter's flat once. Risa, her daughter was not at home of course. But that didn't stop her poking around. Lila always loved the colour blue. Even her wedding dress had blue ribbons.
"Eh, boy, you got me six, right?"
"Yes Mrs. Fritchboon."
"Alright, so put it in.." Lila stuttered profusely on the last word, her excitement getting the better of her.
The buns were in and she leaned forward, carefully pulling the bag up. The stuffing must not come out, you see. Slowly, don't let it drag on the wall. Finally, she held the package in her hand.
"Warm." She whispered.
"Ma'am, that'l be a dollar twenty." The boy shouted from below.
Lila turned away from the window. She didn't hear him anymore.
"Cream buns," she murmured, as she reached in to the bag.
Hmm.. Well, I guess that someone will get a marvellous dinner! :)
Luke loved to visit Gramma Lupe. While his Mom was out on a date, he and Gramma would talk and eat and play games, and watch TV until it was late.
When he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, Luke would lean over and stretch out onto the couch. Lupe would cover him up with an afghan, turn off the TV, then the lights, and retire to her small bedroom in the back of the small apartment.
As Luke fell asleep, his head rested on one of her homemade pillows. As he fell asleep, he wondered what made them so soft, unaware that they were stuffed with human hair from the salon downstairs.
with the downfall of the mafia, the drug market is wide open now in new york. even grandma is trying to make some cash.
At long last, she would be able to see the world from the comfort of her own home.
After turning up the fire of her gas stove, and dropping the last sandbag from her window, her apartment slowly started to drift away like a hot air balloon.
"If I may Ma'am, may I ask what are you doing with that blue bag?"
"Oh my, well the strap on my red bag is broken so I had to use the blue one."
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.
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smoothj45 24 2005 8:45AM
Seems like someone's got dinner.