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.