Invention Friday: What IF Poetic Justice Was Flammable?

1. Place frying pan. 2. Add oil. 3. Turn on flame.

When I last indulged in late-night cooking, I nearly mixed up the order. I’d like to blame that on good exhaustion which might have led to bad combustion, but in all honesty, I think it’s just me. :P

It’s a pen that I brand-name “Poetic Justice” which beats the original name “The No BS Utensil” – but just barely so. It’s a pencil that cuts down the low-grade writing and composing that people spew out on a daily basis but actually get published. It would react to bad writing/compositions the way that readers and listeners would – thus giving the author/composer a good estimate of the potential effects (read: hate mail and death threats on the part of the writer, and additional toilet cleaning for readers who just had lunch). Two examples of hack/“ack!” writing and composing, and the effects:

1. “He got angry, like people get when other people do things which make them angry.”
OR composing in keys with more than 4 sharps for no apparent reason:
Pencil will break mid-way and send splinters that will impale the offensive paper into the table, ensuring it never gets to the publishers.

2. Only giving physical descriptions of characters halfway through the story, when readers have already formed mental ideas of their own (JK Rowling got dangerously close to this with the whole pronunciation of Hermione bit) OR writing in weird time signatures like 19/16.
Pencil will poke the writer in between the eyes as a warning as to where the sniper lasers would be aimed if he/she/it dared to continue.

3. “The dashingly handsome hero, with eyes as dark as a starless night and the wind in his hair, strolled up confidently to the princess, who was breathless at his aura of hero-ness.” OR using superficial knowledge of instruments to write instructions like semiquavers in col legno or rapid accidentals that make a harpist look more like a person on an overspeeding treadmill than a harpist.
Pencil will dial the phone number of the person most avoided by the writer, and then throughout the high-strung conversation which inevitably follows, jab at the phone keys, producing tones which will either annoy the person calling, or make it seem like they were *bleep*s of censorship.

Unfortunately it would never work since everybody’s at the computer instead of at pencil and paper. Thus the only recourse would be to invent a keyboard that would send subliminal messages to the writer to get cooking, and mix up the order in which to do so, resulting in an instant barbeque haircut.

Uh-oh. :P