Bad, old

Reviewing things I wrote in middle school

I regret to report I recently unearthed The Chronicles of Randomness, a series of stories I created in 6th grade and then kept in an accordion folder for the past 20 years.

Some of these were coauthored with my friend and fellow niche Substack diva,

Cristina

of Found Object Sound Bath. We worked on them in our Social Studies class, furtively passing the time while our teacher played her prerecorded class lecture on a tape deck. The five Chronicles of Randomness are not sequential and are (you guessed it) completely unrelated to each other:

1. The Tale of My Aggressively Friendly Friend! (co-authored with Cristina)

2. Crump

3. THE BAD SEED (co-authored with Cristina)

4. Julius Moo

5. Attack of the Muffin Clones

I created the cover and hand-bound each one with horrible yarn.

The mauve-to-yellow gradient on the Julius Moo yarn is really something

Cristina and I would rent them out to other students for a nominal fee. I rarely got in trouble at school, but the times I did were directly related to the production and distribution of the Chronicles.

I cannot stress enough how little I remember the plot of any of these stories. So upon finding them again, I could read them with unbiased eyes. And what I saw was chilling.

Here is a rundown of each.

The Tale of My Aggressively Friendly Friend!

Plot summary: Raspberry, a 12-year-old huge bitch, is assigned to show a new student, Muriel Toblerone, around her school. Muriel is very excitable and can be overbearing:

They chose to dine at a hot-dog-on-a-stick place entitled Corny Island. Before Raspberry decided what she wanted, Muriel took over and ordered them both a Jumbo Jim Mammoth Dog. Raspberry was NOT pleased.

Raspberry proceeds to moan and groan about her clingy new friend, until a ride at the county fair knocks Muriel briefly unconscious, and Raspberry realizes how much Muriel means to her. Months later, while they play in Raspberry’s backyard, Muriel puts on a headband that is too tight, and she explodes.

We’re led through these events by a twee, imp-like narrator who is often preoccupied with explaining how he arrived on the scene.¹

The good: The neon red cover is a nice touch, as is the lime green typewriter font used inside.

Skipping right to Chronicle #3 in this note is also funny:

But that’s about it.

The bad: Most of it is just really bad. We tried to do too much. Raspberry’s sudden acceptance of Muriel doesn’t land. I have no idea why the French flag is on the cover. It never comes up in the book. There’s also some pretty blatant xenophobia in here.

Rating (out of 5): ⭐

Crump

Plot summary: A little man named Crump, who usually wears a tall plaid hat, goes about his daily life—going to the market, meeting a friend, and “taking part in the invention of Jell-O.”

In one of the more notable chapters, Crump bites into a pear and finds a diamond ring inside.

“But what am I to do with it?” he thought. “I suppose I’ll just give it away when the time comes.” Then he finished the pear and worked on a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of an ostrich for the rest of the day.

We’re light on plot with this one. The preface warns that this (3-page) book is only for “those with randomness and patience” and advises the reader to go purchase “2 to 3 cans of Red Bull” before starting.

The good: Pleasant as fuck. Almost a cottagecore manifesto. Best cover in the series.

The bad: No plot is fine, but we need to up the vibes for that to work. This falls short on vibes. And my author photo looks like Ziggy.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

THE BAD SEED

Plot summary: Amelia, a “bad AND demented seed,” gets a new sister, Claire, whom she hates and torments relentlessly. Amelia is ordered to go to therapy, where the therapist is disturbed that Amelia doesn’t have any human friends:

“Oh yes, I do have a friend. He is a wolf named Archibald, whom I met when I was merely 4 years old, wandering around at the dump.”

“Oooookay….” the doctor continued. “Do you have a picture of this ‘Archibald?’”

“Yes. I have wallet sizes.” At that moment I opened my wallet and out rolled about twelve identical pictures of my deranged friend Archibald.

As part of her treatment, Amelia is paired up with Judice, an older girl she also hates and ditches on a trip to the ice cream shop. Back at home, Amelia tries to frame Claire for a federal crime, fails, and gets sent to “Dr. Rutabaga’s Bad Seed Camp.” The final chapter takes place five years later with Amelia still at the camp and her treatment unsuccessful.

The good: I like that we swing for the fences with our fully darksided narrator. Support women’s wrongs! We also experiment here with shorter segments/mini chapters. And the author bios in the back hold up very, very well.

The brown stain is glue OK!!!

The bad: This does some plagiarism of The Bad Seed (1956). But it’s not as shameless as I expected. It is concerning to me that every female character I wrote as a child was so full of hate for other girls.

Rating: ⭐⭐

Julius Moo

Plot summary: Julius Moo, a “twisted little boy” living in the Rocky Mountains, and who is by turns British and vaguely Bavarian, seeks universal domination through genetically engineering cows. And also sending some to space for some reason.

After hours of hard work and thinking, Julius came up with a plan.

“I have come up with a plan!” exclaimed Julius. Julius’s plan is as follows:

1. Buy a wagon in which [sic] can be attached to llama.

2. Make multiple trips around the Rocky Mountains collecting cows for “lab testing.”

3. Place cows in large fenced area, telling uncle that his cows are being collected for vaccines (Julius’s uncle isn’t too bright).

4. Sell the lot of cows to an oblivious American, saying that the milk from the cows will make one never go bald.

5. Use money from scheme to create J. Moo Industries—a monopoly that will eventually, if large profit is made, send cows into space in a massive space shuttle by the year 2019.

“Genius such am I!” cried Julius.

His plan is mostly successful. We don’t get many details, though.

The good: Honestly, considering I wrote this using AppleWorks, which at the time did not have spell check,² the lack of typos is a flex. And the cover is fun.

The bad: This is the longest and least cohesive Chronicle by a wide margin. I once again prove my inability to fucking talk normal in a work of fiction. And the parallels between Julius and Elon are jarring.

Rating: ⭐⭐

Attack of the Muffin Clones

Plot summary: Dr. Igneous Norton Sayne decides to clone foods to cut costs, with the help of his groundskeeper-slash-assistant, Barnaby. In a fugue state, Sayne builds the FOOD CLONER 360, and things go downhill from there.

“If you don’t mind, Barnaby,” replied Dr. Sayne, “I’m going to clone your mother’s muffin!”

“Oh… is there like a contract or something that I have to sign?” Barnaby asked.

“No, my laddie,” said Dr. Sayne. “You really don’t have any control over it anyway!”

Barnaby looked happy, but defeated. He loved signing things. Especially contracts.

Dr. Sayne clones thousands of banana nut muffins and ships them across the country, including to military bases, before realizing the muffins have become giant, radioactive, and evil as a result of the cloning process. Large-scale violence ensues. The muffins force-feed themselves to people, turning them into muffins and then killing them. Dr. Sayne is among the first to die. Barnaby, who is immune to the mutation or whatever,³ buries all the evil muffins on Dr. Sayne’s estate and pursues van life in the desert.

Hundreds of years later (“present day”), archaeologists unearth the muffins, miniaturize them, and ship them worldwide to sell. The cycle repeats.

The good: This is an unapologetically anti-capitalist, anti-war cautionary tale about the folly of mass production and nationalistic greed. Considering I was going to Bush rallies at the time, this one legitimately shocked me. So I consider it a slay.

The bad: Should have been longer. And the cover design is a little basic.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

BONUS: “they.”

Summary: I don’t really know what this is. Tween gender theory???? Basically a hybrid essay about pronouns.

11-year-old me was clearly working through something:

section two.
possibilities of the who.

There have been many theories regarding who exactly “they” is. Or are. Whichever you like better. There are so many possibilities that one could hurt onesself [sic] whilst trying to think of them all. Examples of who “they” could be are as follows:

The government.

Bored housewives from the 17th and 18th centuries (if there was such a thing).

A random person off the street.

One’s mother.

This one is a series of musings interspersed with fictional vignettes of people self-destructing out of frustration over the definition and usage of the word “they.” One character gets so angry at the lack of clarity that she “destroys the entire concession stand” at the movies. Another “locks himself in a bathroom stall, where he remained for approximately seventeen years.”

section three:
the future of “they”

Some beleive [sic] it will one day be replaced with a more specific word. Others believe that the power of this term will completely conquer pronouns as we know them.

This is… prophetic?

Rating: NR

IN CONCLUSION

• This is why I don’t write fiction

• A LOT of the evil spawn trope! A lot of negativity all around!

• It’s funny that Cristina and I started this pretty much immediately upon meeting

• I grew up between A Series of Unfortunate Events and peak bacon/mustache/llama hours, and it shows here

• Intertextuality and genre play is my home

• Should I get into bookbinding?

1. This narrative layer is consistent throughout the 5 stories and makes them all significantly more annoying. The narrator’s persona changes, but it’s always some type of “jolly good!” or “what ho, dear reader!” type of shit.

2. AppleWorks possibly never had a fully functional spell check, according to this support forum post from 2008.

3. This on account of “the chemicals in the spray starch Barnaby ate so frequently.”