View post on imgur.com

Frank the mutt woke up the to the sound of the mail truck. The mail man, his arch nemesis, must be at the Chihuahua from down the street’s house. No matter the amount that Chihuahua barks he will never give the mail man what he deserves, a good biting. As Frank watched from the front window the mailman came down the street to stop at Frank’s house. The mail man got out and approached the door only to smile at the sight of Franks nose pushed up to glass of the door. Today was different tho, the mail man didn’t just have letters, he also had a box. Franks owner answered the door and kept Frank from doing the deed he was born to do, murdering the mail man. Franks owner opened the box and pulled out a brand new doggie bed!  Frank was so excited he sat down immediately in his bed! Frank could sense that something was wrong with his owner. Was it his lack of murder of the mail man? Was it the fact that the new doggie bed was too small? One may never know but in Frank’s eyes the doggie bed was just right!

This story was for a writing assignment for Ds106 “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” The assignment is worth 3 stars

  This guy was already having a tough time planing his twin son’s birthday party, and he has to deal with this idiot baker.

Snuffles trained his whole life for this moment, and nothing could stop him now… As the clock counted down to the start of his first Olympic extreme squirrel water surfing finals, he took a moment to reflect. He remember his squirrelfriend Elizabeth, all the fights they’d had, all the fun they had, that one time she got scared when running across a power line a pooped on the head of some unknowing passerby down below… Without her support, and all the hours she spent gathering nuts and searching for shiny things none of this would have been possible. The gun sounded, the race had begun, and Dr. Snuffles MacArthur squishytail had work to do.

I chose this assignment because it seemed fun.  I’m a big fan a memes, and they often come with a bit of context with the original image so you can understand who the person or animal being depicted is and why they are the figurehead for that particular subject.  Since I’m so used to having context for the crazy pictures I see on the internet, I sort of automatically start building it for things that don’t have any.  Thus, this assignment came pretty naturally.

For this assignment, I googled crazy pictures, and found this near the top.  As soon as a saw it I had a picture of this squirrel training so hard to get to the Olympics.  Then I thought about the things he was probably neglecting in his life to accomplish that, so I gave him a girlfriend to establish a foundation for his success.  I figured they would’ve been together for some time, since it’s a big liability to accept the responsibilities of someone else’s life on their shoulders, so I wanted them to have some endearing memories together.

I imagined them hanging out, and was trying to decide what a squirrel couple would do together.  I remember a few week ago my girlfriend and I were leaving poppy hill restaurant in downtown, and I saw a squirrel running across a power line, I said to her “careful, you don’t want it to poop on you.”  That gave me the idea, and rounded out the story well.  I wanted the story to end with a moment of solitude and triumph for the squirrel, since he was so unique I wanted to make sure he got his moment in the sun at the end of the piece (also, for him being such a good sport and letting me write about him).

Elizabeth was a happy child and a daddy’s girl. Her father was a botanist who spent many hours outside reading. When Elizabeth was only 11 years old her father died and her mother, who was so distraught at losing him, became an alcoholic. She began to pay little attention to Elizabeth. Elizabeth spent many hours alone in the attic among her father’s belongs just so she could feel close to him. When she was eighteen she was in an old bookstore where she came upon a book written in a bizarre language. The storekeeper told Elizabeth that the book had a rich history connected to witchcraft and that it was apparently a book of spells. Elizabeth remembered seeing a book with the same kind of writing in her attic. She bought the book from the storekeeper and took it home. Elizabeth began rummaging around in the attic until she found the old book stored among her fathers belongings. The book turned out to be a translation guide that enabled Elizabeth to understand what was written in the book of spells. She spent months reading the spells with the help of the translation guide. One day Elizabeth found a spell that said it would join those of the mortal world with those of the grave. Could it be that this spell might bring Elizabeth’s father back from the dead? Elizabeth was afraid, but she missed her father so much, and her mother while living, was lost to Elizabeth too. Bringing her father back might help bring her mother back as well.

Elizabeth followed all the steps required in the spell exactly. She waited until midnight, wore a white dress, and went to the grave of her father. She erected a makeshift cross out of logs and drove it into the ground at the gravesite. She stood directly over her father’s buried remains, and she read the words of the spell. The spell seemed to be working. Elizabeth felt the ground under her feet begin to loosen. Out of the grave rose an arm, Elizabeth was filled with excitement. Her father was actually coming back to life. They would be joined just as the spell had promised. Elizabeth bent over to help pull her father from the grave and his hand clamped around her throat and before she could even scream he began pulling her down into the grave with him. The spell had worked, it did join Elizabeth from the mortal world with her father in the grave.