12:00 - Come Up With a Title for a Blog that would be a Pun Headline. Write this story, article, what have you based on the headline.

City Experiences 'Rain of Cats and Dogs'
After Animal Shelter Explosion

In what experts are calling a 'potential biohazard', an explosion rocked the North Quincyshire Animal Shelter late last night, spreading the atomized flesh of hundreds of potentially rabid animals across the county.

Radical animal rights advocate group 'Crows Before Crowds' has claimed responsibility for the attack. In a video released this morning by the group, all dressed in anatomically correct crow costumes, group members laid out their mission statement in a vicious manifesto rap.

'You killed our flapping babies/
Now you all got rabies.

Our flow remains the freshest/
Antibiotics are not effective/
It's the virus from Old Yeller/
Look at that frothing feller/
We drop our rhymes like Kanye/
You're all hydrophobic bums, ye."

Rap experts continue to analyze the lyrics for meanings, hidden or otherwise.

In the meantime, men in lab coats have stressed that the public should remain calm and not 'Fuck around panicking and shit.' They then picked up a test tube, peered at it intently, and then said 'Don't be fucking morons.'

This reporter would like to make an editorial comment, urging readers to stay indoors, barricade their windows, and shoot anyone who steps onto their porch, lest the deadly rabies sneak through the mail slot and kill them. Also, he would like a glass of water.

Come over here. Bring me a glass of water.

This? It's just shaving foam. I was shaving.

Come here.

11:00 China

Some people like to say they wouldn't do something for all the tea in China. What's that about? I like tea. I like China. But I don't need a whole country's worth. A cup is enough for me. Why do people need so much tea?

And for that matter, what's up with the Great Wall of China? I've seen walls before. What makes this one so great? Show me a Great Roof of China, maybe I'd be impressed then.

People say China's going to take over the world. That's fine with me, I've never had much use for the world. And the Chinese are efficient - maybe they'd have a good way to distribute all that tea.

Why do they call it Orange Chicken? It's not orange. Or maybe it is - I'm not a color expert. Chicken is pretty good, though, although that's just my opinion. Maybe you don't care for chicken. Someone who told me they didn't like chicken, I'd tell them to take a slow boat to China.

What's that about? Why do they make slow boats? Just take the parts from the fast boats and make them fast. Then build them out of that stuff they make the black boxes in airplanes from.

They probably make them in China.

TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK

12:00 - Tell the story behind the 15th picture of you on facebook

When you're younger, you're desperate to form an identity. To convince yourself that you're part of something larger than yourself, that the connections you've formed with another person aren't just lies. And that's why, almost inevitably, you start naming your social groups.

Because once you've put a name on something, it's real, right? You're not just people hanging out together because no other group would have you... You're a team. There's a bond there.

And that's why this picture exists. Because several of the young men posing there once proudly declared themselves, semi-ironically, to be in a gang. And that gang was called The Ineffective Funk.

I had forgotten the name of the group, until I ran into a former member last month. Makes me feel sad.

Makes me feel old.

INEFFECTIVE FUNK FO' LIFE, YO

11:00 Map out a road trip you'd like to take

Aw, come on, Google. Meet me half way here. It's only 2 light years away...

10:00 - Make a treat of a gift for your friends and blog about it.

My previous post was a subterfuge. You see, my true gift to my friends... WAS THE GIFT OF MYSTERY!

A few hours ago, I hatched a scheme: I would take control of Blog Day by grasping the seat of Blog Day's power: The blog topic box.

It is not easy to steal a box off of a table that 6 people are sitting at, even if they are distracted by typing. The key was in the recruitment of an accomplice, the deft-fingered Andrew Preston. With his help, and just a smidge of subterfuge, the box was stolen away. The fate of Blog Day was in our hands.

Of course, to take control, we must make demands.... and those must be done anonymously, through a proxy. And thus was the Twitter client @BlogDayBox birthed. BlogDayBox quickly began following all of the BlogDay participants, tweeting taunting clues at them. It was a MASTERSTROKE OF DECEPTION only slightly marred by the fact that nobody seemed to notice it was happening.

So I walked into the dining room and asked if anyone else had been followed by this mysterious Twitter fellow. Then everyone accused me of stealing the box and engineering some sort of stupid mystery. After a BRUTAL interrogation, Andrew and I relented, and the box was returned from its hiding place... And a wonderful time was had by all!

But my true gift is this: I call for someone else at today's Blog Day to take the Box. The password to the Twitter account is "blogday". Take it over, hide your treasure, and confound us all with your genius!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

9:00 - Pick a random sentence from a random book. This is the 1st line of your story.

"But he has clearly been working toward some evil purpose for many years."

"Doug? The captcha writer?"

"We're a billion dollar company. Why do we need a guy to write captchas for our web sites? Every other company has an algorithm for it."

"Well, it's artisanal. Hand-crafted captchas, perfectly tailored to the individual. It's a service!"

"That's SO inefficient! And some of the captchas are kind of... sinister."

"Sinister? The last one I got was 'LUMINESCENT CARDBOARD.'"

"Really? All of mine are stuff like 'APOCALYPTIC BLOODFIRE' and 'WOMB EXPLOSION'"

"Maybe it's just a coincidence."

"Well, lately they've been weirder. They all have a number in front of them, and then 'IT COMES'."

"That's terrible web security. A computer could totally get through that, no problem. Someone should talk to that guy."

"I'm not worried about f*cking spambots! I'm worried that he's a crazy Satanist trying to bring about the end of days. The last one I did was 664 IT'S COMING!"

"Well.... maybe you shouldn't fill out any more captchas. Just in case?"

"Screw that, man. It's the only way to get into my e-mail."

"Fair enough."

8:00 - Go outside. Pick a starting spot and direction. Walk 100 steps. Find something from that spot and blog about it.

Nobody sees me. I blend perfectly into this grass. Man, this grass is tasty, I should take a nibble...

NO! Discipline is my shield and my sword. Even if someone sees me, they will think I am a beautiful statue of a bunny, sitting on the grass. The delicious, springy grass...

I am a Suburban Bunny. I flee the dog and imperil the garden. When my Bunny King demands, I steal through lawns and under fences, seeking carrots and dispensing lapine justice. I am not controlled by my base impulses to mate with OH GOD THERE IS A FEMALE BUNNY OVER THERE

NO MUST BE STRONG

Soon, I will steal away. Back to my den, to report on the state of the neighborhood. I am a hero. With any luck, the Bunny King will choose me to carry on after he is run over by a car. He will name me the Royal Hare.

In the meantime, maybe just a nibble of grass...

7:00 - A look at yourself through the eyes of your pet

It is cold and dark here. That is a lie. It is nothing here.

If I was smarter, I would tell myself it was cold and dark, because then I could comfort myself with the thought that I still exist. But I am not that smart. I am a dog.

I was a dog.

The boy? The boy was fine. Fed, watered, loved. As much as a dog could want. But I do not have much memory. I am a dog. Mostly I remember the pain. When you are a dog (I used to be a dog) you can only remember yesterday and maybe the day before. And yesterday was pain. Today was pain, until today was sleep.

Some spark of training remains. Sit, stay. Sounds, not words. Lifted into the car. Up on the table, girl. Sit.

Stay.

The boy is not there. I lied, there are memories that do not leave. The pack. Pack of two. The boy and I. But he has been gone so long. Grown up, gone away. Just the mother and me and the pain. Sometimes he comes back. But he has not come back today. Today the mother put me in the car and we drove and she cried and it hurt so much. Today I went to the place with all the other dogs, but they were not my pack. When I fell asleep my pack was not there.

A smarter person would say "The boy was there in spirit." "He loved you even if he couldn't be there." "He wasn't told that you'd be gone by the time he came home." But those are people thoughts. Those are the comforts of intelligence. I am a dog. I was a dog.

My name was Hannah, and now I am where it is not cold and it is not dark, and there is no pain.

6:00 - Write a blog from the perspective of your favorite fictional character

Hey there, my little blog munchkins. You're so cute out there, reading these words and -

HEY! YOU IN THE BACK! I SAW WHAT YOU DID, AND I ALREADY DID IT TO YOUR MOM LAST NIGHT!

Am I drunk? I am drunk. I am loquaciously drunk. Low Quay Shish. I had to let Blogger spellcheck that for me. You're doing a good job, Blogger. Way to not be a dick, guy.

Don't have long to write this, people to meet, boyfriends to kiss. Oh, don't look at me like that; they're not all my boyfriends. Is my hand on your leg? That's so fun. You're fun! Is that your girlfriend?

The trick is to have confidence. It's like I was telling Scotty - it's not the size of the guy kicking the crap out of you, it's the size of the hickey you left on his mom the night before. There's no situation that can't be helped with a few well-timed yell-

SERIOUSLY! I CAN SEE YOU! IT'S PRETTY UNPLEASANT!

In closing, your mother and I are very proud of you, and hope that someday you'll be a real boy. Possibly (definitely) in my bed.

Drunk now Wallace sleep.

5:00 - What the world would be like if people had gills/wings

So, you (and every other person who ever lived) was born with both gills... and wings. How to maximize your potential here? READ ON, FLYING FISH!

A) You need a super-efficient circulatory system in order to fly with wings (and I assume you want to be able to fly in this scenario). That means you can't half-ass this by being amphibious - it's go gill or go home.

B) That means that you're only fully functional when you're in the water. But those big ol' wings on your back are going to slow you down, making you way less efficient in the water than those atavistic wingless throwbacks. So you're going to be in constant competition for food.

C) In order to fully function, you're going to have to survive long enough to fashion a SCOBA (Self-contained Overwater Breathing Apparatus). Once you've got that full-body, gill-bathing piece of equipment, you'll be able to soar... After you spend an hour above-water waiting for your wings to dry out. So you're going to have to spend a lot of time engineering a watertank for the SCOBA big enough to hold enough breathable water, but that won't weigh you down to much. Maybe recruit the people at the Waterjet Propulsion Laboratories to help.

D) Once you can fly, the world is your oyster, where once oysters were your world! Fly onto land, craft weapons, burn fossil fuels, raise the temperature of the ocean, and boil those dolphin-kissers back below the waves. That's what they get for making fun of you back in fish-person high school.

4:00 - What your life would be like without computers

Which is to say, it would be like a poorly drawn skull and crossbones with inexplicable eyebrows.

Look at those things. But don't try to explicate them. That would be folly.

3:00 - Your favorite Make Believe Game

My favorite game involving make believe is the one I was playing instead of writing this blog on time: improv.

Improv comedy is a battle of the wits, a fight between brains, with intellects rubbing against each other, getting sweaty and sticky and....

Here's the thing. I've said it many times - I love puzzles. And improv is the best puzzle there is. The goal of the game: get a suggestion or idea at random. Build threads of connections based off that one idea, and then find all the strange thematic connections between these threads. And all the time, you're looking for the linchpin of the whole thing, the one strange idea hiding at the center of the web. Because once you find that one specific line, that one thing that distills everything you and your team have been doing for half an hour into it's core, singular idea... The room will explode, no one will be able to stop laughing, and for a moment you'll have united every mind in the room into one unified, hilarious whole.

So yeah. I like improv.

2:00 - How to make the food you eat the most

There is nothing so delicious as efficiency, my friends. And what can be more efficient, a better example of humanity's ability to master foodstuffs into convenient form... than the noble Pizza Roll? (Not to be confused with the Nobel pizza roll, which was designed as a way to quickly clear icy rubble from the back of old freezers).


But how do you get the perfect pizza roll? Do you just drop them, frozen on a plate, and then gnaw at them until your teeth fall off? Or do you throw them into the sun, trusting its radiant majesty to tenderly cook them, and the whims of gravity to return them to you? Maybe you put them in the oven, on some sort of cookie sheet.

Those are all stupid ideas. You're stupid. So stupid.

What you do is array Totino's Treasures (TT) on the plate in the manner of... A STARFISH, the most pizza roll-y of animals.



Specifically, you array 8 rolls on a plate. Cover them with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture (and hide the pizza rolls from prying eyes, as they are a shameful, shameful food). Then, set the microwave at full power to 1:23 (cooking times will vary with differently powered microwaves, so just come over to my house and use mine). Then, take them out of the microwave. Then, put them back in the microwave, and turn it on. Wait for one minute (also, twenty-three seconds).


If the pizza rolls were Pepperoni flavored, eat them. If they were any other flavor, use them to make some sort of art project, I guess. Or give them to a homeless. They eat garbage.



BLOG DONE.

24 HOUR BLOG DAY

Hey guys,

I am taking part in 24-Hour Blog Day today. That means I will write 24 blog entries in the next day! THAT IS CRAZY, RIGHT?

First blog post follows.

Facebook hub for the day's event:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=235951963111296