The web provides a convenient means for posting and publishing all kinds of nonsense and I figure I might as well take advantage of some of that capability. I have had, collecting dust since high school, a series of stories that some readers of this blog will be familiar with. The Something DumbTM series of stories were written by me and strausmouse between the years 1988 and 1990 at Cleveland High School in Reseda, California.
It is my idea to make these stories available online and to have Eric and I comment on them to explain some of the references and other interesting items about these stories.
These stories were never intended for submission to magazines, real publication, or anything more than entertaining a handful of our friends and ourselves. Many of the stories, including the first one we right, “Something Dumb”, we written in very small print on a brown paper bag book cover during various classes, when we should have been paying attention to the teachers. The stories are highly influenced by Douglas Adams, but also have elements of existentialism to them that were not obvious or intentional when we wrote them. Furthermore, you can tell by reading them that they are dated. There are humorous references to blowing up classrooms, which would probably have gotten us expelled today, but which were taken as mere metaphor eighteen years ago.
We would trade off, writing several paragraphs each, and then handing it off to one another to do more. In reading through these again, I can sometimes identify what I wrote and what Eric wrote, but not always.
The stories in the series are:
- “Something Dumb”
- “Um…
- “We Haven’t Thought of a Title for It Yet”
- “When You Need To Clean Up, Hire a Maid”
- “Something Dumb II: Something Dumber”
- “Everything You Wanted To Know (And Less)”
- “Not So Popular Entertainment”
I should point out that the humor style in these stories, while often derivative, also anticipates The Simpsons, South Park, Dumb and Dumber and many other similar comedies. Why we never decided to become writers in Hollywood is beyond me.
Anyway, look for more information, coming soon, about where you can go to read these masterpieces of high school comedic literature.
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