DAILY MONSTER 197 (of 200)

Good morning. Please excuse me for posting a bit later than usual today. I’ve been up all night trying to coax Monster 200 out of hiding, so that I’d have a little bit of time to spruce it up for its big day on Friday. Alas it was to no avail. 200 was not quite ready to show itself yet. That’s OK. I’ve got 21 new ink blots that will one day become monsters in their own right. They just weren’t #200. 200 will come when it’s good and ready.

Right now I’m happy to point you to an all-star
lineup of brilliant stories for Monster 196:

196banner

Needless to say, Monster 197 is already waiting for you, too:

If you’re reading this on my Amazon blog, please click here to see the video.

197 looks dazed. Possibly confused, as well. Do you think that’s an accurate assessment? Or is 197 so strange that it merely appears unexpressive to us humans? Or is it a strategy on 197’s part? Does it know exactly what it’s doing? More than ever your theories and speculations are vital! I do hope you’ll share your thoughts and…

Postyourstoryhere

I can’t begin to imagine what you’ll make of this one.
But I know I’ll get to laugh when you tell me.

Three days out from the Grand Finale
I have only three words for you:
344 LOVES YOU

12 Comments

  • 29 April 2008 6:02 am

    –excerpted from the entry on Birdmonsters
    Machiato–A denizen of inhabited areas, the Machiato birdmonster has made perhaps the most unusual adaptation to living amongst humans. They are most easily spotted at coffee shops in the early morning. They can be closely approached before they acquire their caffeinated beverage of choice, which is poured into the bony breastbone extrusion. In this timeframe they are sluggish and unaware. After caffeine begins to hit their bloodstream these enormous birdmonsters, most reminiscent of ostriches or emus, move with a speed only equalled by hummingbirds–and cannot be seen with the naked eye.

  • Sue Bebie
    29 April 2008 6:24 am

    Mars swallows Wrigley! It sees the bad moon rising. That’s the only reason, why it looks so dazed. It likes chewing gum very much. Normally it chews by day and by night. But now it is so confused about this bad news, that its jaw stays moveless. Chewing is its life!!!
    And now?… The future will be like a big black cloud, without a good old real Peppermint-Wrigley-gum! A Wrigley with Mars flavour… uhhh!!! HORRIBLE!!!

  • 29 April 2008 6:31 am

    What a charming, yet luckless monster 197 is. He’s more than happy to make a fool of himself in his relentless drive to rise money for the School of Disadvantaged Monsters. We all remember the time he did a televised skydive from 30,000 feet? Got his fur caught in the plane door and did the whole thing naked … getting more and more blue as he reached the ground? Poor guy.
    His glass is always half full though – he was back out the next week getting signatures for his sponsored ‘hop across Texas’ alongside Ben Affleck.
    I love monster 197, he’s one of the good guys. I’m rooting for him.
    Interestingly he has no sense of smell.

  • Clover Field
    29 April 2008 1:47 pm

    Based on his appearance, it was always easy to get the Wildlife Rescue teams to come near him… the blank look in his eye provided the evidence that they should save him… yet they never noticed the fact that in his den, there were piles of wildlife rescue badges, all with dried blood on them…

  • Aiden A.
    29 April 2008 3:21 pm

    Theresa was never like the other ostriches. She would always try to make friends, but she would never succeed. They would start talking and all would go well until her might-have-been friend would look down and see the hideous horn that protruded out of her chest. Then Theresa would recieve a look of disgust and be left standing there. Nothing ever went well, that is, until monster 198 came along.
    To be continued…

  • Tess A. (4 years old)
    29 April 2008 3:34 pm

    Tuiz is the name of this monster. Catsaleekees always plays with him. Tuiz lives on a humonguos house in the middle of an island. He knows how to spin webs. Singing Zipadee do dah is what he loves to do. Tuiz always loves to cut his hair on the island. Nobody else can get there hair cut. Only steady people like Luiz can get their hair cut. He lived happily ever after. The End.

  • Zaboo
    29 April 2008 5:25 pm

    Radeocrav used to have teeth, you understand. Big, bold, beautiful teeth. All the same colour, none missing, all aligned perfectly straight and even. Until the unfortunate golf incident, that is.
    It was a bright Saturday morning. The day of the annual Ookpok Golf Tournament. Radeocrav and his foursome sauntered up to the first tee. They were confident, as they were reigning Ookpok Golf Tournament champions… six years in a row. They were unbeatable.
    Mooflak teed up and hit a rocket off the tee onto the green. Golf claps all around. Streepem was up next and he also drove to the green. The excitement was building. Equipof strode to the tee.
    “I’ve been working on my swing all winter,” he announced to Radeocrav. “I’ll be an even better golfer than last year!” He teed up, took a few practice swings, then lined up his drive. He was concentrating so hard, he didn’t see that his ball has fallen off the tee. Radeocrav leaned forward to replace the ball, just as Streepem began his back swing. He didn’t realize that Radeocrav was so close. Neither did Radeocrav.
    The driver caught Radeocrav full in the mouth and knocked out all his big, bold, beautiful teeth. They flew everywhere: onto the fairway, into golf carts, one was even found in the hole!
    That’s the story of the unfortunate golf incident. And the first known occurrence of the use of the term ‘face angle’.

  • jak
    29 April 2008 6:50 pm

    Grizelda slunk out of Cuts by Candi. It had gone wrong – oh so horribly wrong.
    Like every three-toed Carpathian Boreck, she had great pride in her breast beak and the perfect arch in her neck. (Mother always said it came from her side of the family.) Her eyes were just the right size and set nicely on either side of her delicate, yet ample, nasal protrusion.
    Oh, why didn’t she listen to Mother and go to Flora’s House of Plumage? But, no, her stubborn streak (from Father’s side, no doubt) got the better of her and she strutted into Candi’s, expecting to walk out with the latest do.
    Yes, she sighed – she was done all right! Her behind looked like she’d been sucked through the wrong end of a Boeing 747 and oh…the shame of leg stubble!
    Of course, just half a block from home – Rudy, every female Boreck’s dream, rounded the corner with Edda June Bagley. Griz would never, ever, hear the end of this…

  • Bob Coogan
    29 April 2008 7:30 pm

    the querulous stygg
    it eats as it goes
    dispatching blue post-its
    with the end of it’s nose
    it produces wee babies
    as a matter of course
    through long hairy fibers
    on its wooly tough bloorst

  • 29 April 2008 8:03 pm

    Just a stone’s throw away from the pots and pans is the decorative can opener isle. Models range in style and price, but one opener in particular seems to catch people’s attention. The woolly slack-jaw knife-top with plumage is by far the best seller. Even comes with tripod foot stands. Keep it out on the counter and you’ll turn heads. It’s at the high end of the opener spectrum at $344.00, but it’s worth every penny.

  • 30 April 2008 4:40 am

    Tweeparots were never the prettiest of bird-monsters, but what they lacked in looks they make up for with their linguistic skills, which in turn lead them to become the bird of choice for the Pirates of the Aquaticia.
    The Pirates were ruthless in their pursuit of riches, stripping ships of anything they could sell on ebay – or they would have been were they not handicapped with the thickest of accents. Many a time they were forced to leave a ship empty handed as no one could understand what the hell they were saying.
    And then one day they raided a ship with a Tweeparot aboard and the course of history was to change.
    For Tweeparots were not only able to understand the pirates but also to translate for them, and that, my friends is how the Pirates and ebay got to be so big.

  • GristleBean
    30 April 2008 7:19 am

    There’s a noise this particular creature makes with his soft beak that sounds like a short, staccato but bassey… kissing noise. It’s that same sound, you know, that that one kid was making on the El in Chicago when you were visiting friends, but it turned out they weren’t ready to see you just yet, so they told you to just ride the El about and scientifically adventure about, but this kid is ruining your adventure by making this… noise. It’s cheap to say that it sounds like ‘Puck’ or ‘Pk’, but he’s doing it over and over like an accidental fused loop in someone’s head when they’ve undergone some sort of mental anxiety stress-fracture and are stuck doing a repetitive motion aver and over. You hear this noise from this kid, and it’s disharmonious enough with the clattering repetition of the tracks of the El to knit your brow in severe disapprovement. You unconsciously start tapping your foot to the rhythm of the El, hopefully metronoming the kid’s wandering mindset to the train’s hypnotic measured beat, but he’s staring off into The Void, or pretending to watch TV. That noise, it sounds like a racquetball hit off your nerves, echoing throughout your every cell. That disharmony, coming from a child so unknowing, accidental, evil, had put you off the trip completely and you apologized to your friends later though you think they never really forgave you. You rewrote the moment in your head much later that it was their lack of spontaneity that ruined the trip. But instead what did it was the kid, and the unceremonious realization that you had grown up.
    This creature, it makes that noise.

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