CPSC Micro-fiction #8

CPSC Notices 5/27/10

Cost Plus Inc. Recalls Tea Glasses Due to Risk of Lead Exposure - The Moroccan tea glasses contain excessive levels of lead in the exterior coloring. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects. No injuries reported.

Buckyballs® High Powered Magnets Sets Recalled by Maxfield and Oberton Due to Violation of Federal Toy Standard - The high powered magnets sets were labeled "Ages 13+" and do not meet the mandatory toy standard F963-08 (effective August 17, 2009) which requires that such powerful magnets are not sold for children under 14. Magnets found by young children can be swallowed or aspirated. If more than one magnet is swallowed, the magnets can attract each other and cause intestinal perforations or blockages, which can be fatal. The firm has received two reports of children swallowing one or more magnets. No injuries were reported.

Micro-fiction 5/27/10


"It's beautiful, isn't it?"
I held the tea cup in my hand. The light stroked over its china curves, it's thin handle. I wouldn't let anyone to touch it. Only the light.
"Should you really be holding it?"
I looked at him. He would ruin this moment.
"Just a few more minutes can't hurt."
"But it's been ten minutes now. And days previous."
"A few minutes more won't kill me."
"Your exposure is already intense at best. We need to run tests. We have to extract some of your bone marrow as soon as you destroy that thing. With the output of that thing, you're brain might already be microwaved leftovers."
"Don't call it, 'that thing'."
I held it up once more, and smiled, as the reflected sunlight beamed off its yellow paint, the intricate details of the design."
"It is beautiful, isn't it?"
He sighed. "Yes, it is beautiful."
I let the tea cup rest lightly in the palm of my hand, and thought of its beauty. I pushed the vision I absorbed from the cup, back out of my mind, up my arms, and into my fingers, where the force of its weight drawn by gravity pressed into my skin. I concentrated, briefly. I pushed back. The tea cup rose out of my hand, a few inches into the air, and spun slowly on an invisible axis in the morning sunlight.

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

CPSC Micro-fiction #6

CPSC Notices 5/21/10

Chocolate Soup Recalls Children’s Hooded Sweatshirt Sets with Drawstrings Due to Strangulation Hazard - The sweatshirts have a drawstring through the hood that can pose a strangulation hazard to children. In February 1996, CPSC issued guidelines (pdf) (which were incorporated into an industry voluntary standard in 1997) to help prevent children from strangling or getting entangled on the neck and waist drawstrings in upper garments, such as jackets and sweatshirts. No injuries reported.

HP Expands Recall of Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Fire Hazard - The recalled lithium-ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. Since the May 2009 recall, HP has received 38 additional reports of batteries that overheated and ruptured resulting in 11 instances of minor personal injury and 31 instances of minor property damage.


Micro-fiction 5/21/10

Your chances of exploding are roughly one in fifteen-hundred.
Used to be far worse.
And one in fifteen-hundred? Yeah, it could be you that bursts into chemical flame while downloading data to your hoodie. But the vast majority of people will enjoy the fabric net, and will live their entire lives comfortably in their e-clothes, until the day they're hit by a bus, die of radiation exposure, or one of the other hundred ways to catch it in this day and age.
We need electricity. The info-blankets in which we shield our naked flesh require energy. Better lithium-ion covering your skin than fissile material, or soaking yourself in gasoline. Chance could be one in a hundred--could be one in ten. They'd still line up outside my shack for a battery swap, and then go off down the street, connected into the network, as they must be. As their employers must. As their friends must. As their sexual partners must.
Without these batteries pressing against their flesh, they would not be human beings. They would be monkeys with sticks. Neanderthals covered in hair. Peasants digging in the mud. Don't believe me? Look it up. Check out the pictures. See? Explosive-free living is as about as fun as dysentery. I said, look it up. It's all there.
You know what, kid? I'm busy. You don't want it, live your life trailing a plug behind you. Standing against the wall. I've got customers here. I'll have another thousand and five-hundred by 3PM.

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

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.

CPSC Micro-fiction #4

CPSC Notices 5/17/10

Mall of America Recalls Plush Toy Due to Choking Hazard - Young children can remove and ingest the squirrel's nose, which poses a choking hazard. No injuries reported.

Children's Deaths Prompt Recall of Toy Dart Gun Sets Sold Exclusively at Family Dollar Stores - If a child places the soft, pliable plastic toy dart in his/her mouth, the toy can be inhaled into the throat and prevent the child from breathing. CPSC and Family Dollar have received reports of two asphyxiation deaths involving a 9-year-old boy in Chicago, Ill. and a 10-year-old boy in Milwaukee, Wis.

Micro-fiction 5/17/10

"It's no crime," she said, first time she kissed me.
First time we stuck up that man on the avenue for cash, it was.
Don't matter where it starts, matters where it goes.
Where we were now, I don't know, but I'm not letting her hold me back from where I'm going.
"No more of that Dollar Store shit," I speak to her purple top, cinched tight in the middle how she wore it, always trying to change my mind. "I'm gonna knock off the Mall of America."
"I know," Susan looks at her bare feet. "And that's why I called the cops. You won't make it. They'll kill you."
I raise my Gordy Auto Fire 238, and pull back to cycle the first of eight bright red shells into the chamber.
She has a single tear running down the scar across her nose. "Sarah, I love you," she whispers.
"Love is a crime, " I say.

(The first actual injuries we've covered in this series, and two deaths to boot. Two deaths from a toy gun deserve some memorializing hard-boiled micro-fiction. Yes? No? What's appropriate? More toy guns?)

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

CPSC Micro-fiction #3

CPSC Notices 4/13/10

Children's Sweatshirts Recalled by Tommy Hilfiger U.S.A. Due to Violation of Federal Flammability Standard - The sweatshirts fail to meet federal flammability standards for wearing apparel, posing a risk of burn hazard to consumers. No injuries reported.

Junk Food Clothing Co. Recalls Children's Hooded Sweatshirts with Drawstrings Due to Strangulation Hazard - The hooded sweatshirts have a drawstring at the neck which can pose a strangulation hazard to children. In February 1996, CPSC issued guidelines (pdf) (which were incorporated into an industry voluntary standard in 1997) to help prevent children from strangling or getting entangled on the neck and waist drawstrings in upper garments, such as jackets and sweatshirts. No injuries reported.

Microfiction 5/13/10

His shirt was brown, and my shirt was blue. He pulled up his hood and I pulled up mine and I looked and him and he looked at me. He was an inch taller than I was but I weighed fifteen more pounds. He was an evil little sun of a bitch, and I was the only good one left on the earth. He knew he would attack me and I knew he would too, but he knew I would wait for him to move first and I knew he was impatient. He was the last one left to kill, and I was the last one left to do it. He was the devil child, and I was the murderous kid.
He leaped at me with his hands out stretched, I pulled all my chakra into my fists. He got his hands round my neck and my hands went up into his belly. He twisted his fingers into my flesh like screws, and I pounded against him like iron pistons. His flesh sprung alight, and his skin began to blister. My air disappeared, and the world went dark. He choked me, and I burnt him. He was a raging torch of holy flame, his life turned to ash. I was a stretched out Tartarus, falling into blackness. He was consumed, and I consumed myself. Together we died.

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

CPSC Micro-fiction #2

CPSC Notices 5/12/10

Rome Snowboards Recalls Bindings Due to Fall Hazard - The snowboard binding’s base plate can break at cold temperatures, posing a fall hazard to snowboarders. The firm has received 14 reports of base plates breaking. No injuries have been reported.

Remote-Controlled Helicopters Recalled by Imagine Nation Books Due to Fire and Burn Hazards - The rechargeable battery inside the helicopters can overheat, igniting the helicopter and posing fire and burn hazards to consumers. The firm has received 49 reports of the helicopters overheating, including six reports of flames coming from the helicopters, and one report of minor property damage. No injuries have been reported.

Microfiction 5/12/10

No one would die today. The small helicopter fell out of the sky, in flames. The controls dropped from my hands, and I did not see them land. I flew into the air, as my broken snowboard bindings caught upon the white blanket of snow. I heard a snap, and felt my feet begin to move separately from each other. The helicopter began to fly erratically, not responding to my commands. I sailed down the hill faster, eyes in the sky, watching the helicopter attain its target. The wind picked up as I took off from behind the tree where I waited. I launched the helicopter on its mission, sailing through the air silently, it's deadly package hanging below it. I put down the binoculars, knowing it was time. I looked at the men on the trucks, unaware I was stalking them from up the hill. I pulled the binoculars and the controls to the bomb from my white parka, two black objects against a pure white hillside. I would have to follow the bomb down the hill to stay in range. I had been practicing my snowboarding technique for weeks, preparing for this attack. I took a deep breath, and steeled myself for what I was about to do.

(I forgot to mention that the criteria I'm using for the micro-fiction is less than 250 words. If this gets boring, I might decrease it to 99 words, which for me anyway, is much more of a challenge.

CPSC Micro-fiction #1

CPSC Notices 5/10/12

A) Claire's Recalls Children's Metal Charm Bracelets Due to High Levels of Cadmium

B) The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced today that the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act's (P&SSAct) State Grant program is now accepting applications for funding from eligible states. The P&SSAct intends to enhance the safety of pools and spas by reducing child drownings and suction entrapment incidents and educating the public on the importance of safety devices and constant supervision of children in and around water. CPSC is the lead agency in implementing and enforcing the Act, which was signed into law in December 2007.


Micro-fiction 5/10/12

I found the letters, each a different shape, just lines really, all bent together. I drew them for father and he thought they were pretty. "You say they spell words?" I showed him how. He went down into his shop and he got out the metals--he melted and smelted and poured and pounded. Then he asked me again to draw the shapes. I did, and he slowly etched them into metal, one each on the clasps, twenty-two in all, and then fastened them into a band. He slipped it around my wrist. "Now you'll always have them with you."
I showed them Europa, and she thought they were neat. We went out by the pool to play while father took a nap. We tossed the bracelet back and forth, so light, so shiny. My letters flew back and forth between us as we sang. I threw them up high, and Europa missed. We could see them sink down below, in the clear water. "I'll get them for you," she said quickly, and dove in the water. I saw her go down. But she never came back up. Neither did the letters. I've forgotten Europa's little face. I still remember the letters though.

Microfiction and Product Death

I have a lot of literary balls in the air right now, so it's time to start committing a few to the Internet, to get them out of the way.

I've been thinking a lot about micro-fiction recently. At first I was against the idea of some sort of gimmicky constraint on the fiction-writing process. But then, after I tried writing a bit of micro-fiction, my perspective changed. The process by which one writes micro-fiction is different than simply writing. The space constraint means that each sentence must be packed full of meaning, taking the reader somewhere very purposefully. Adjectives are deleted, as is repetition. Sentence structure is made as minimal as possible, very efficient. You start discovering ways to hack the grammar, to say more with less. What subjects and objects can be dropped completely? When would simply a verb suffice as a sentence on its own?

A thing I always look at, in any sort of literature, is the assemblage of the writing. Sure, you've written something enjoyable of a certain length, it's a novel. But what does this novel attempt to do? Does it have a goal? Why or why not? What goals should writing have, if not just informative depiction, or entertainment? If it is less than a novel, what is it, and why? With micro-fiction, often the goal is a joke or a riddle. You let on only enough information for the reader to discover the "catch" by the time they get to the last line. Hemingway's "six word story" is one of these (and often the classic example of micro-fiction). The goal of that story is that you "get it", but only at the very end. The Joke formation is a classic trope-goal of human literature. It is like a vector model of motion: you move in one direction, and then another vector sends you in another direction. You thought you got it, but the punch line makes it mean something different, and NOW you "get it". There's nothing wrong with this; except, maybe that it is all do easy to use this as the "goal" when you have only a few words to use.

What else can micro-fiction do? What is worth saying in just a few words?

If you follow my Twitter feed, you might have noticed I have a certain preoccupation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission's product recalls. I follow their RSS feed (which is available through the link) with great interest. The interest is macabre--not quite dark, perverted, or Modernist enough to be considered Ballardian, but still there is something quite bizarre about the physical dangers of every day consumer objects. It's kind of like an infomercial coupled with a death announcement. Sharp blades, hazardous chemicals, high voltages, extreme temperatures, pinch and choke points, and deadly stored inertial energy are around us all day long, but normally sealed within lovely consumer design, like a butler with a pistol. The CPSC does fantastic work. We may think to mock the safety-conscious "nerds" who test every day products for any conceivable danger, but the days of caveat emptor have been replaced by strong protections against the profit-seekers. Most recalls come from these elaborate safety laboratories, protecting us from the danger we need never know. And yet, if you search the CPSC's public records, you will find that several product recalls a year do not occur without registered deaths and serious injury being attributed to faulty design, materials, and construction.

A consumer device--something so innocuous and common-place--can also be the symbol of any person's particular death drive. The death we seek out, and pay for, in the form of convenience and good design. Death lurks under all of our desires, the entropy at the end of the joke that is our lives.

Perhaps micro-fiction and consumer-hazard were meant to be together. The short, consumable package, the encased, enclosed, economically-packaged power--and the end result, the final toll, the end of the story. Maybe together, they can find a meaning for each other.

I'm going to write a micro-fiction story inspired by each day's worth of CPSC recalls, and publish them here (amid my other blog rambling). Not every CPSC recall is interesting, and they may not come out every day. Not every story I write will be interesting, either. But at least they will be short and easily consumable. And in some of them, we may just find the product we've been searching for. I'll continue the experiment until I recall it, or until it's made obsolete.