What will the computer tell me to write about?
As I’ve mentioned before on here, I’ve been heavily into fiction writing for the past year or so. It takes my brain a while to become functional after I wake up, so I do certain exercises to help jumpstart the writing lobe. My favorite is the Random Word Generator: you tell a website to spit out four random words, and then force yourself to use them, in order, in the opening paragraphs of a piece. These exercises are usually messy and/or goofy, and very few of them turn into actual short stories, but they can be kind of fun, and I’m going to start posting some of the results on Bored In Pittsburgh in the hopes that they might make someone’s day a bit stranger.
SOFT
SERVICE
SAFARI
MOSAIC
The water is soft. Too soft. When I apply a pore-cleansing CBD scrub to my face and body, the water from the shower melds with the scrub to create a slime. I’m supposed to feel calm as the CBD seeps into my body, but I just feel amphibian, like a big salamander. I’m used to the hard minerals of the city. They cut through a pore-cleansing CBD scrub like a diamond through a pane of glass.
I don’t get service here, either. Two bars if I’m lucky, and our host is too hungover to come down and give me the wi-fi password. Nobody else seems to know it. There are too many people here—cousins and second cousins and cousins-multiple-times removed—to not know the wi-fi. Many are retired, even the younger ones. Three separate people have asked me if I’ve gone on Safari. Not a safari, but Safari. Like it’s some pilgrimage.
“Those people down in Zimbabwe are just great,” someone proclaims in a strong Philadelphia accent. Phonetically, it’s “Thews piyple deawnin Zimbabwee ur just grayt.”
“Except the malaria,” they add, elongating the second A in malaria so that the word sounds a bit like the word “alacrity.”
Another person—Marge or Mary-Margaret—chimes in. “You just gotta get down there on safari. Those lions are so fierce, and those people are so brave. Living like that, around lions, like it’s nothing.”
I realize that she’s talking to me. I tell her about the time I saw a bear in Tennessee.
“Oh wow,” she responds. “Oh, wow.”
Our host staggers out of the wooden elevator in the foyer, led by an enormous leashed dog. The dog has a humped back and watery eyes. It grumbles and woofs as it bumps its head into the pool table.
“Big Fudge!” cries our host.
Big Fudge shakes his head and whines.
With a flourish, our host produces a can from the folds of his bathrobe. With another flourish, he pops the tab of the can. The can has a design like a bunch of brightly colored tiles. It reads, “Let our mosaic hops send you on a mosaic of flavor.” Our host tilts the can toward his mouth and glugs the contents in three seconds. Everyone cheers. It’s eleven in the morning.
Bored In Pittsburgh 