CPSC Micro-fiction #5

CPSC Notices 5/20/2010

Walmart Recalls General Electric® Coffee Makers Due to Fire Hazard - The coffee maker can overheat, posing fire and burn hazards to consumers. Walmart has received 83 reports of overheating, smoking, melting, burning and fire, including three reports of minor burn injuries to consumer’s hands, feet and torso. Reports of property damage include a significant kitchen fire and damage to countertops, cabinets and a wall.

Target Recalls Storage Trunks Due to Strangulation Hazard - The lid of the trunk can drop suddenly when released, posing a strangulation hazard to small children opening or reaching into the trunks. CPSC has received two reports of injuries that occurred when the storage trunks’ lids suddenly closed on children, including one report of an 18-month-old girl who reportedly suffered brain damage when the trunk’s lid came down on the back of her neck and pinned her throat against the rim of the trunk.

Micro-fiction 5/20/2010

He made the coffee. He always does. He's so attuned to the vibrations coming through the grinder that he can feel the precise moment when the beans whirring through the blade are the optimal size, when the particulate matter is in the exact concentration of fragment, grains, and dust to best percolate through the filter. Something like that.
He poured the water into the reservoir, pushed the button, black on stainless steel. Then we sat at the kitchen table and didn't look at each other. We looked at the wicker trunk, under the window, the rays of sunlight highlighting the dark gaps between the weave.
"I'm sorry," I finally said. He didn't say anything. The coffee pot clicked, and gurgled. He never says anything. This is my vibration.
"We never should have opened it. We knew, and we did it anyway."
He folded his hands on the table and sighed, but imperceptibly, so I wouldn't see.
"I'll get rid of the trunk. It's all we can do now. It'll be gone by the time you come home."
The coffee was finished. He stood up, and reached for the mugs.
"I never would have thought... inside there..." I started, but couldn't finish.
He handed me a cup. "Be careful. It's hot," he told me.
We both sat quietly, watching the steam rise in the morning sun.

(I'm resisting the urge to provide commentary on these, to explain my motivations for the fiction based on the CPSC notices. The urge is made more intense by the fact that often there are real deaths, injuries, and damage associated with the recalls. I feel I need to phrase the fiction as a response to this distruction, to ensure my literary action is adequate. But of course, this violates the principle of micro-fiction, skirting the "rules", as it were. Anyway, this "need to speak as action" dynamic was in my mind when I wrote this one, and perhaps that says it better than anything.)

For information about this series, please see the introductory post.

Let My Boxcutter Be My Guide

One of the bizarre things that interests me is the symbols printed on boxes. In various jobs I've had, I've spent a good deal of time staring at the underside of boxes. There's a lot more information there than one would think. Such as crush weight parameters. How about that?

There are also some esoteric symbols printed onto various cartons, for the purpose of telling warehouse personnel how to treat the boxes, given the contents. Some of these are obvious, others are not. Some of my favorites are the stacking diagrams--drawings of how to palletize the boxes for maximum strength, product capacity, and all while keeping the product safe.

For those of you interested in "architectural fiction", and such things, we might think of these as visual-commodity-infrastructure-planning-geometries. Or, for those of you interested in "architectural fantasy", these are packgnosis-mobiscriptural-palletamulet-mandalas.

Materials handling to Third Bardo, man!

I believe these is the old packaging of digital printer developer. Most of these are from digital printing supplies of some sort. Even from looking at the box, I have no idea what this is supposed to symbolize, other than not to stack more than ten layers deep.


Toner, I think. The far left means stack no more than 25 high. The far right means the toner's holy halo will be visible when glorified with rays of the one true god.


Boxes of bottles of fuser oil. Also, the blueprints for "the endless staircase of holy knowledge."


This is also from the fuser oil box. To me, it evokes twisted intestines, and the dark voids that lie within us all.


More from the toner cartridge box. The cartridges come two to a box; and somehow, in the way they fit, they easily slide out of the box, but when they are empty and I am ready to take them out to the trash, I can never fit two back in the box. Maybe I don't pay enough attention in the first place. Or maybe, just maybe, this diagram depicts the boxes shrinking once the cartridges are removed.


This is actually from a box of instant Thai soups. Which is a printing supply to me, in an abstract way. Note, first of all, the mystic hand symbol on the left, which I'm sure I saw in one of the seizure-inducing gnosis scenes in Lawnmower Man. You might also notice how they managed to fit "protect from rain and sun" into one symbol, which is more efficient than another example above. Then, although I can easily figure out that the far right symbol means, "this soup is not for peasants who still use archaic and symbolic tools," I am at a complete lost as to what the bottle means. I thought the whole point of these things was to symbolize a message understandable in any language! Does it mean, "do not consume with pure whiskey?" Or, "Made with 100% Not Holy Water?" Maybe, "Only serve in Eylermeyer Flasks?"

Anybody who speaks Thai is more than invited to ellucidate in the comments.