DAILY MONSTER 26

Good morning. And Bon Giorno to everybody visiting from Giavasan, who describe this site as follows: Stefan G. Bucher capovolge il test di Rorschach e trasforma ogni giorno, nel giro di pochi tratti, una macchia di inchiostro in un mostro. Doesn’t that just sound very sexy? Thank you for the passionate link!

Let’s talk about yesterday’s monster: The Magnificent Three all weighed in with great new stories: Simon tells another tale of isolation and grim ends, Mogabog reports of a photographer’s layover in Iceland that leads him to come face to face with some trusting walruses, while Sam Berkes’ entry of the almost eaten barber is clearly a great, lost silent movie comedy script. Well played, gentlemen.

But there was much else to delight in. Some exciting new voices stepped up for their solo: Sus, a recent new friend of the 344 Empire, posted the first story of the day, pegging Monster 25 as the whale that had swallowed Pinocchio. Rose introduces us to Zeebles, the Parrot Life Left Behind, while Sara wants us to meet Gerald, the spiked hypno-frog, whom she correctly identifies as a cousin of the Hypno Toad. (All Glory to the Hypno Toad!)

Finally, Brooke N posts the story of Argus Basilicua, who redeems his life of wasted potential by finally investing in 344 Design stock and striking it rich. Brooke, I want you to know that this kind of shameless pandering to your host… well, it certainly works and is always appreciated. Who does Monster 25 listen to? Laura says that it’s Death Cab For Cutie, and who would argue? Monster 25 was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere when the water filled every hole, and thousands upon thousands made an ocean, making islands where no island should go.

Simon, Sam and Mogabog are getting a run for their money from the new Monsterista. Excellent! I hope you’ll all weigh in once again on Number 26.

So… what then of 26? Is its bad posture congenital? Or just teenage slackerism? A general lack of enthusiasm? Or the product of a rare gravitational instability that makes a straight back unsustainable? What of its feet? Or lack thereof? Are they pincers? Or are the feet just too small to see? Perhaps the creature has perfect size 10 feet, but is 800 feet tall? What’s the story?

Today is December 14th, 2006. I graduated from college exactly 10 years ago. What a strange sensation. It feels like it was so long ago, but is only a few moments gone. Oh well… time is for the exceedingly linear. Some things are constant: 344 LOVES YOU

14 Comments

  • 14 December 2006 4:11 am

    Awesome 😀
    or “Fantastico!” if you prefere 😉

  • 14 December 2006 4:27 am

    Awesome as usual! 🙂

  • 14 December 2006 4:47 am

    I finally built up the courage to post a comment on your monsters. 🙂 I’ve been around since monster 10 or so, and I just love all of them. What you do is fantastic, and the idea is so unique. I think my favorite thing about them though, is the sounds of your marker moving over the page. 😀
    I like this one today, he seems a little nerdy. I think it’s his posture that makes him seem that way, plus his skinny limbs. Maybe he’s the first monster computer technician? 🙂

  • 14 December 2006 7:29 am

    He looks like a cross between a worm and a grasshopper!
    Daily Monster is the first thing I look at every morning…keep up the awesome work!

  • LAURA
    14 December 2006 7:37 am

    monster 26 is listening to Something To Talk About by Badly Drawn Boy…and you should too!

  • 14 December 2006 8:07 am

    Well; I think I know who, this monster is!
    He’s less of an original creation; rather one of many. He lives in the bowels of office supply stores (eg. Staples, Office Max & your local store). Blogs are a food source for him, he thrives in graduate theses, romance novels – his favorite.
    You’ve seen him before; he’s invaded your words and mine. His footprints, like dirty footprints in virginal snow, ruin an otherwise clean scene. By now, you wonder, what is this loon, this silly blog poster, this (what the hell is a mogabog anyway?) PERSON talking about? Well, wait: it’s coming. Soon. Next paragraph… bear with me.
    Sometimes, he hides right in front of you – disguised as something so innocent as a comma,. Ah! See!? Right there he was – hiding! He’s the monster of unnecessary punctuation, as well as the monster of excessive verbiage. Silently inserting himself (giggle) into writing, adding extra words, extra thoughts, mudding up writing, adding extra punctuation, making run-on sentences & extra long lists. You can fight him with only one thing. The red-pen editing monster (who has yet to be created).
    His small appendages, used to swing from line to line, adding things, eating “n”s. Rearranging the “h” & “e” in “the”. And when you thik you catch him, he turs ito a comma. Never to be seen. I mean, you aren’t a bad writer – it’s his fault! Right?

  • 14 December 2006 8:14 am

    Ollie grew up as a tadpole.
    Undulation for movement was lateral.
    Lacking arms and long legs,
    He wished to be changed,
    And soon figured out he could make some.
    Taking glue and newspaper,
    Strips were cut, soaked, and draped here,
    On tubes leftover from craft school.
    Though they hang limp and useless,
    His morale has been boosted,
    And he no longer needs psychotherapy.

  • 14 December 2006 11:21 am

    I’m here from Giavasan actually and your work is wonderful…oppure meraviglioso,maybe it sound sexier 😀

  • 14 December 2006 11:51 am

    Oznob Galosha
    Living in the shadows was always going to be Oznob Galosha’s destiny. When he was 16, his mother was still in her Buddhist phase and would open the summerhouse as a weekend retreat. It was during one of these weekends, when they were studying The Gospels of Sri Ramakrishna, that Oznob met J.D. Salinger. They seemed to really hit it off and much of the weekend was spent in each others company.
    On Sunday afternoon when everyone else was doing their Sun Salutations, Oznob was upstairs showing J.D. his diary, which he’d whimsically called, Snatcher in the Sky (after a habit he had at 3 of trying to jump up and catch a cloud). Later that evening when everyone had left and Oznob went off to write his day’s entry in his diary he found it gone.
    From that day onwards, Oznob made a promise to himself never to write another word as long as should live. Instead he took up the piano and wrote music, although never the words.
    By now his mother was no longer a Buddhist having discovered drugs. Now, the house was full of Hollywood stars, gangsters and trapeze artists. It was during one of her weekend parties that Oznob bonded with another young and troubled man called Reginald Dwight, who seemed particularly taken by one tune in particular, Yellow Thick Road.
    It was a week later that Oznob found all his music missing.
    In the following painful years Oznob found comfort in sport and in particular golf, which he would bully the next door neighbour, a sweet kid called Tiger Woods, into playing with him, even though he would often spend more time teaching the kid than actually playing.

  • Rose
    14 December 2006 7:31 pm

    Oh little Sally, she was so sweet,
    with bright red hair and stocking feet.
    She was always happy and would never sway,
    until the IRN took it all away.
    Her head was left bald – a frightful sight,
    all of her friends ran away in fright.
    And for reasons that nobody knew,
    they took away her stockings too.
    So now her hair was gone, her feet were bare,
    no one listened and no one cared,
    her mom and pop, they couldn’t care less,
    and for extra money, they sold her dress.
    But she realized what she could do,
    She would sell herself to the zoo!
    So she grabbed a pair of dentures and a bucket of tar,
    and now people come to see her from near and far.
    And that, my children, is the story of Q-Ball Sally the sideshow freak.

  • Julia
    14 December 2006 8:55 pm

    I found this site by way of Ze, and I had this idea a while back, just so you know I’m not competing with Rose’s prose.
    Haiku:
    Number twenty six,
    A sperm so glad to be free.
    344 loves you.
    P.S. I love 344!

  • The Respected Taxonomist Kukuttan
    14 December 2006 9:54 pm

    What we have here, if I may be so bold to assume, is a prime example of a Blooper. Affectionately nicknamed in the cartooning industry for its onomatopoeia [“bloop”], it deviates erratically from the scientific name “Hairylegged Bingbangbong” (scientists everywhere were very disgruntled at the cartoonists ‘childish’ nickname of a very serious creature).
    Cartoonists and scientists alike have been silently warring over possession and credit of this rare specimen for decades. Being that it is such a rare find in the scientific field, such people are compelled to claim and study it, why it exists.
    The ‘Blooper’ however is seen in the cartooning field all-too often, they are sometimes seen in herds gathering around the Inkwell to drink, for they are in a constant state of migration. When one happens to become lost from the herd, it causes nothing but trouble for an artist should it set foot on a piece of paper. For you see, its frayed legs resembling roots of some sort act in the opposite manner that the roots of a plant work: Instead of taking nutrients from the environment around it, the frayed stems act as tubes for excrement. Such excrement is most unpleasant for aspiring artists, considering that with each step the Blooper takes, the liquid ink-like excrement bleeds into the paper all-too easily.
    Biologists worldwide have puzzled over the Hairylegged Bingbangbong incessantly, wondering just what its purpose is existence. Moreover, they struggle to analyze just why it has the characteristics that it does (due to the root-like legs, most scientists were led to believe it was a carnivorous plant–a distant relative to the Venus Flytrap). What is most unusual is its backward posture and awkward manner of walking on two leg-like structures.
    A long-running theory judged the rubber-like and moist surface of its skin to be shared with that of a dolphin’s. Its oversized head and dwindling body lead one to believe that it shouldn’t be walking on land at all–especially considering its flaccid arm-like structures hanging uselessly behind it. Its dark coloring and wide eyes are possibly the only two characteristics that fit together immediately–the Hairylegged Bingbangbong is a nocturnal creature perceived to be living in caves or the like, the black making for an excellent camouflage.
    Considering these facts, it stands to reason that the Hairylegged Bingbangbong is an aquatic creature thriving only in the darkest depths of the ocean. Then how does it make its way to land one might ask? In such case turn your attention to the skull structure: notice how the jaw is a much larger scale than the teeth it contains–obviously a herbivore. Of course, at the depths of a Bagillion knots below sea level, there is only one kind of source of nutrient–the Shikito plant. A distant cousin of the kelp family, it is a very hardy and near-indestructible plant which thrives only near undersea volcanoes resulting from cracks in the tectonic plates. The amount of sulfur and other noxious chemicals it contains would be enough to kill a man [and in some cases, his entire family]. It is assumed that due to a chemical reaction the Hairylegged Bingbangbong’s body undergoes a drastic change in form centered at the alignment of the spine, and instinctively heads for the surface to forage for more nutritious Ink.
    SOME radicals prefer to claim that the ‘Blooper’ is nothing but a mistake, a cute muck-up of a previous action–or some daresay that it is but a doodle on paper started from splattered ink. Tabloid banner-titles of this caliber hardly span past the realm of the yellow press.
    This concludes your first Silly Analysis from The Respected Taxonomist Kukuttan, sponsored by our friends at Ukekeke Industries–the makers of this year’s favorite snack-treat Sweetmeats™
    (On a side note The Respected Taxonomist Kukuttan would like to express that the lettering skills of a Mr. Bucher rate rather high on a scale of One to Awesome. 😀 This may or may not reflect the views of Ukekeke Industries)

  • 15 December 2006 1:57 am

    Lenny, Markus, Hoopla, and Rain: Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad you’re enjoying the Daily Monster. I hope you’ll come back and maybe share a story or two. I’d love to hear more from you!

  • sue bebie
    10 April 2008 10:51 am

    Ricarda mit den Quappenhänden tänzelt vor Tim Burton’s geistigem Auge herum, um ihm als würgender Nachtalb zu erscheinen. Gruselig genug um ihn zu einem neuen nightmare Streifen zu inspirieren.

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