DAILY MONSTER 165

Good morning. How are you? Did you have a good weekend? I hope you got to relax and do something fun! For some of you fun obviously included writing some new monster stories. I want to say “As always there’s excellent stuff here,” but “as always” makes it sound as if I’m taking it for granted. I don’t. I’m a bit behind with sending out Thank You notes to each of you who posted stories, and I apologize. Please don’t think I suddenly stopped appreciating what you do. I’m just suffering from a severe case of third and fourth arm deficiency — let’s call it Bucher’s Disease. Or possibly Hyposhivaminosis. At any rate, I love the stories you’ve been sending. Once you read them, you’ll understand why:

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And what’s that over there? Could it be Monster 165?

First off: Is this the same branch Monster 160 was perched on just a few days ago? If so, what’s up with that? It makes me wonder if 165 is as peaceful as it appears. It also casts a bit of suspicion on that third leg all of a sudden, doesn’t it? I’m not even going to speculate further, because I want to hear what you’re thinking about all of this. If you can eek out a few minutes, I hope you’ll…

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Three more Daily Monsters are waiting after this one. After that I’ll show you the monster mural I’ll be painting in Seward, Nebraska this week. I’ll also keep you posted on the Monster book launch party at the Time Travel Mart on the 15th. And on April 1st I’ll start one more month of Daily Monsters to take us up to the UK launch of the book. So there’s a lot of stuff to look forward to.

In the meantime I’ve also put up a Flickr group for the monsters. If you’re so inclined, you can post your own monster drawings there, or photos of yourself reading the monster book, or sightings of monsters out in the world, or anything that you think is connected to the monsters. I’m a total Flickr newbie, so if you have suggestions how I can make the monster group more fun, please let me know.

For now, I hope you’ll have a good time with 165,
and that the new week will bring you lots of fun!
Why? Oh you know because 344 LOVES YOU

14 Comments

  • Camellia
    3 March 2008 4:56 am

    Sandy, who sat alone on her row this week, stood, face forward. The way Ms. Featherbrite likes.
    Sandy found it hard to contain the smile that was spreading it’s way across her beak. For it was, the last day of school. What a glorious day.
    Ms. Featherbrite, her teacher, stood with her back to the class on her teaching limb. She glanced skyward and took note of the position of the sun high in the heavens and she knew the reason for the restless wings, the chirping, she knew class was nearly over. She turned around.
    The rustle of movement waved through the class. The way it always does when the Ms. Featherbrite looks at them. Backs straightened. Wings folded properly.Eyes on her.
    All eyes except Sandy’s. Her eyes peered past the bramble of bare branches that was her classroom, past the full, cool leaves of her school tree to the blue open air beyond.
    She couldn’t feel any movement of wind. But she knew a breeze was blowing… she could see it, as it tickled the edges of the tree she was in, and the edges of all the trees she could spy from her appointed post that she would in minutes resign from.
    And… she could smell it. Coconut and apple blossoms hung heavy in the air. And whispered across her young feathered face. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and smiled again.

  • sue bebié
    3 March 2008 5:38 am

    it’s much better to mutate to a longleg bird and to feel happy, than to be on two short clubfeet in a very bad mood.
    it feels so great, because its heavy tailfeathers are shrinkeld and a third leg has grown. now it has a marvellous view, not only on the branch, all over it wants to be. not al all, now it is much faster than the others on their two feet.

  • Foobar
    3 March 2008 6:18 am

    Wow, just wow. Thank you.

  • jak
    3 March 2008 6:20 am

    Lars tightened his grip on the branch, smiling tenuously at Artie, the ferula perched two branches over. Artie’s hatchet head was pulled down into his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a linebacker and looking equally as ferocious.
    “Ahem…” Lars cleared his throat, nervously raising and lowering his middle leg (an unfortunate habit picked up at an early age when his 2-legged nestlings would peck and pull on it for fun.) “Nice weather we’re having, eh?”
    Artie narrowed his eyes to slits. “Shut up, tri-pod.”
    Lars’ feathers quivered, but he’d just completed lesson three, ‘Speaking up in awkward situations,’ in his self-confidence training class. (How to Win Friends or at the Very Least Not Get Beat Up Daily.) “No need to, uh… you know… use insulting sla—”
    “I said, ‘shut up’ scrawny butt. And you will, unless you want a piece of…” Artie tipped his head slowly up and down in a chopping motion.
    “No, no…” Lars scooted a little closer to the edge of the branch, preparing for a hasty departure. “Just commenting on, you know… the, uh, weather.”
    “Who cares about weather?” Artie stared at a tree across the meadow.
    Lars followed Artie’s gaze, all the way over to Artie’s girl, Rowena. And, Lars leaned forward peering more closely, having left his spectacles in the nest. La! She was canoodling with Rex!
    “Gee, Artie…wow…that’s aw–”
    Before the words were out of his mouth, Lars was blasted head-over-heels off the branch. He landed, feet-first, in a mud hole. Looking, for all the world, like a cake top decoration.
    Hmmm, he thought, I wonder what’s in lesson four.

  • Graymalkin
    3 March 2008 7:02 am

    One thing Jack could never understand was, why they only sold the damn shoes in pairs…
    There are so many bird- like monsters recently, that I start wondering if you’re planning on a remake of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” 😉

  • heathers
    3 March 2008 11:03 am

    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting —
    “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
    Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
    Take thy beak from my ear, and take thy form from off my door!”
    Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”*
    But surely he meant to say “Monsters? More!”
    *Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

  • Deborah
    3 March 2008 1:28 pm

    Malcolm could still hear the twitters and caws of the other bird as they walked away…”three legs~~who can’t run when they have three legs??”
    He didn’t really care. Those birdbrains!! He knew that someday the extra leg would come in handy. In fact, he was already looking forward to field day this year. He was planning on running in ~ and winning~~ the three-legged race. BY HIMSELF!

  • Brooke N.
    3 March 2008 4:11 pm

    I am invisible. I am Ira Glass behind a microphone, a Funny Monster with a big mouth. I am the serious writer, scanning the Stories below. The austere Thing, I am this Branch.
    (You don’t know I’m watching you.)
    Below, you call me a bird or a space cowboy for my audacious attempts at flight, although you speak of “flight” always in quotes, as I cannot fly and you know this. You speak of me in metaphors and in hyperboles because you can’t comprehend my reality. You can’t comprehend your own and this is Natural. I watch you and record you and create a story from you in a kind and endearing manner. I write your life because I have to, because I want to, and because I can. I am god in this way. And you know it.
    (You must know I’m watching you.)
    You look up to Me because you realize I am on your side. You are angry sometimes and you look to Me for Guidance and I can give you some sometimes, but sometimes I cannot and you cannot accept this, even though you do, and you cry and rage and shout up My Tree. I accept your chatter and swallow it knowing how it helps you. I am a receptacle for your wrath; I digest your words. I am your funny monster with a big mouth.
    This branch is your dendrite and I sit here.
    Waiting for you.

  • ergodicity
    3 March 2008 4:43 pm

    The troondlebeak sighed. It was such a beautiful day out, and yet he felt deeply discontented. The frustrating thing was that he couldn’t quite put his talon on why. Perhaps it was the fact that he was the only troondlebeak in existence. He was born only this morning, so he didn’t really understand what loneliness was all about, yet he felt it keenly. He also had a sense of impending doom when he considered the future — almost as if he were about to be replaced…

  • 3 March 2008 5:53 pm

    Upon the scaled branch of a tree
    a Birded Beakmonster I see–
    of long pink legs, he havest three.
    I smile at him. He smiles at me.

  • 3 March 2008 8:36 pm

    It *is* the same branch: This is how Monster 160 looks after I’ve had one too many Old Fashioneds.
    I REGRET NOTHING

  • GristleBean
    4 March 2008 12:38 pm

    Clubbing Clown Puffins usually beat the living heck out of various shellfish in tidepools for food. They will drag a large branch several miles with a third limb, all the while practicing clubbing techniques and grinning. Woe to the small lizard or soft-shelled frog that falls across the path of a Clubbing Clown Puffin returning to shore to feed.
    Little is known of the methods of this dangerous smirking bird as though several attempts have been made to record data, few recording devices can withstand a good pugeling and mocking.
    Its particular favorite nemesis is the Armored Dour Barnacle which when smashed makes a melodic squeaky-toy noise.
    It is somehow eerily related to ‘Unseen Jeffff’ (#148), perhaps a penpal and clubbing-enthusiast.
    He has library fines. Doesn’t seem to care about them, though. Lots of junk mail too. And he drinks chocolate milk by the carton.
    Ok, so we went through its garbage to find out more.
    Don’t give me that look. I washed my hands…

  • 18 March 2008 5:51 pm

    Amazing! This could keep the kids mesmerized for hours. You have many itty bitty protegees.

  • Sue Bebie
    29 October 2008 9:51 am

    Was pure Willenskraft alles vermag…
    Einst knurrig und grantig auf kurzen Beinen
    Mit Federn, so lang, es war zum Weinen
    Allein mit seinem Willen nur
    Hat schrumpfen lassen er den Schweif
    Gewachsen draus ein drittes Bein
    Jetzt ist er gross und nicht mehr klein

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