The Contraption

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“Think of it as an art installation,” explained Jimmy.

Frank stood gawking at the warehouse sized contraption in awe; gears, pulleys, ropes, springs, chutes, tubs, barrels, cages, nets, buckets, mops, brushes, and even an old fashioned bellows and a medium sized crane. Hard to tell what all of it was for but it was definitely for something.

“You are going to have to explain this to me…”

“It is basically a full size Rube Goldberg machine that I built to win the bet,” said an amused Jimmy.

Cruel Machine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Never leave a used MakerBot alone. I really have no one to blame but myself. For what I paid I knew it had to be stolen, I knew the software had been cracked, and when the sales guy assured me that the security protocols had been removed just to free up more AI memory it couldn’t have been more obvious. So Knuckles had worked for days getting ready for Halloween. The party was a huge success, the whole house had a crazy demented Beetlejuice meets steampunk vibe that blew everyone’s mind. The extra bedroom had become a neat and orderly construction zone stacked with raw materials (wood, fabric, foam, leather, polymer resins, etc…) that Knuckles used to turn the house in to a Halloween wonderland. It was nuts, he had even disassembled some of the furniture and used the parts to make a more appropriately themed set of chairs. But why “Knuckles” you ask? Well, his two upper extremities (arms) have four manipulative appendages each. When retracted in their resting position they look like a pair of big fists. The previous owner had written the letters L-O-V-E on one set and H-A-T-E on the other set to be funny. So now Knuckles was cleaning up from the party. Carefully breaking the decorations down into their component parts to be recycled into whatever my next whim might be. The spare bedroom was suddenly restocked and ready for the next assignment. I was heading out to work in the morning when Knuckles announced that he was ready for his next assignment. I am still not exactly sure what I said, but it was something like, “I don’t know, be creative, surprise me with something you think I will like.”

Baobab on Gromet's Plaza Archive

The Contraption

Cruel Machine