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Some 'Splaining To Do
In 1996 while "acting" as assistant manager of a two-screen movie theatre, I found on my hands a plethora of free time. Most of it was spent assigning staff members arbitrary tasks in order to validate their $4.35/hr income. The rest of the time I could be found huddled inside the manager's office where I toyed aimlessly with an ancient computer equipped with a green monochrome monitor, the screen of which sported a lovely solarized burn of our box office ticker (as it was a model that pre-dated screensavers). One day, I discovered a primitive word processing program. Not about to take for granted a creative outlet at work, I began to type some improvised, stream-of-consciousness stories involving a character named Frank who had originally manifested years earlier in my high school notebooks. I called these stories "improvinovels." Though Frank's backstory is never revealed in any of the improvinovels, his history is simple: He was sitting in his living room watching TV one afternoon when his television set grew arms and legs and shot lasers into Frank's eyes. The lenses of his glasses became a pair of small TV screens, thus vaguely changing Frank's view of the universe somehow. I called the collection of improvinovels "The Undeniably Fiction Adventures of a Guy Named Frank and the Television Man Who Possessed Him," and used them as an excuse to learn HTML. By early 1997, www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/1243 had been launched, and what ensued was about three and a half years of irregular updates and, eventually, illustrations. In retrospect, some of the stories still amuse me, but I think others are just awful (I won't go into specifics). However, there would be no tact or artistic scruples employed in me changing them now, so while the artwork has been spiced up a bit, the improvinovels are the same, and if you don't believe me you can see the original site at the easier-to-remember URL www.geocities.com/eatcarbon. I don't suspect you'll
be seeing any new improvinovels. I know I had written a 22nd one some
time ago, and if I find it, I'll let you know. In the meantime, enjoy
the ones that are here - at least, enjoy the good ones - and make
sure your screensaver is on. kyle
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