To be entirely too pleased with myself.

[kiya]

That mysterious box I sent oneironaut turned up today.


Tesla laughs. The post office and/or Kevin misspelled 'Tesla'.
You say "I gather you have box."
Tesla says "I indeed have box."
You say "Yay box. :)"
Tesla says "I may have forgotten to get something sharp to open it with, which would just figure."
Tesla says "And the thing is, it says it right here. It's not like they couldn't check their spelling. They got 'Esq.' wrong, too."
Whitney laughs!
Whitney hopes you found the addressing as amusing as I did.
Tesla does. :)
Tesla says "And they transmogrified the 'S.' to 'Ship', which I suppose is understandable, but amusing."
You say "This is increasingly funny."
Babbage figures out the six-count double stick exercise. Huzzah!
Tesla says "And they just plain left out the Papaya Recreations thing. I think it gave someone a headache."
Babbage does a little dance. Maybe today won't suck after all.
You say "You realize that the to-part is almost exactly what you said wouldn't matter when I asked you about mail addressed to odd names."
Tesla giggles.
Tesla doesn't notice the ironic smile of the box until just now.
Tesla gets a sharp thing, and when I say 'sharp', I mean
Tesla --'as compared to our butter knife', and forces it through the duct tape, which makes an interesting noise.
Tesla LAUGHs.
Whitney gathers you found the little note.
Tesla says "Saltless!"
Tesla rolls.
You say "It scares the hell out of me, I'll tell you that."
Tesla says "And the bead, actually, is pretty. I'm not sure what to make of that. I may have no choice but to wear it just to alarm my roommate."
Tesla says "And, finally: Oh god, maple candy! O greatest joy of all possible joys!"
You say "Don't eat so much of it at once that you get sick. Which I say because, as you know, we are all Kita."
Tesla giggles.
Tesla says "I am being Very Restrained."
Whitney feels that her box has been a triumph.
Tesla actually reads the instructions, giggles helplessly.
You say "When I saw the bead in the shop I knew that it was Required that it be in the box."
Tesla says "I appreciate your sensibilities."
Tesla says "Mmm. Maple candy."
You say "But then there had to be a Reason For It. So I looked at the beads I had floating around, and wrote The Instructions."
Tesla is compelled to save the instructions for posterity.
Tesla says "I'm trying to decide whether I should taste the saltless."
Whitney is just deeply perturbed by the idea of saltless salt.
Tesla says "I was thinking about saltless salt just the other day, too, wondering if anyone had actually come up with some -- I believe because I saw an ad for sugarless sugar. This is so much more wrong."
Whitney is glad to have provided you with An Answer, then. :)
Tesla says "One down, all the other mysteries of the universe to go!"
Tesla bends the pin around the Bead and back inside the Image, and hangs the whole business on the chain he wears around his neck for just such occasions.
Whitney cackles.
Whitney ponders logging this conversation, formatting it, and putting it up in livejournal. In order to do this I should probably take the file for the Instructions and see if I can turn it into a jpg.
Tesla says "You should. Most people don't have that font, and it's such a New Age Woo-Woo Flake font."
Tesla says "Or I assume most of them don't have it."
You say "I think it's an OSX font. But I was pleased with it. And the colour choices matter."
Tesla says "Yes they do."
Tesla is so amused that you did 'rage' in all caps.
Tesla says "Ooh. It spins."
Tesla is pleased with the charm, not the least because he knows people who see it will ask him if he likes ladybugs.
Whitney graars and pokes at this file, trying to convert it into a file type that her graphic-mangling program can grasp. --Hee hee.
Whitney tries re-creating it in a graphics file rather than a text file to see if that helps.
Whitney hah!
Tesla experimentally reads bits of the newspaper to see if they were chosen for humor value too.
You say "No, they were chosen for 'we have this newspaper here and the box will rattle otherwise.'"
Tesla says "Yeah, they don't seem like the sort of bits of newspaper you'd choose for their humor value, though this book reviw is kind of interesting."
Whitney chortles.
Whitney feels very successful.
Tesla says "You are entirely within your rights to do so and, in fact, I encourage you."
Whitney also smugs.
Tesla says "You can do that, too."
Whitney pulls her log from here.

The idea for the box came about I think in November, when Squid happened to mention that gtst really likes maple sugar candy. I filed this away somewhere in my head and a few weeks later asked if I could have gtst address, so I knew where to send the Menacing White Powder to.

This of course required the acquisition of MWP. So we went to the grocery, and I was going to get a nice canister of salt, but most of the canisters of salt were Rotted Huge And Heavy. Because, you see, it's bad for you. Barring that I was considering powdered sugar, but Kevin suggested the Saltless Salt that was in the spice section and I came to the conclusion that I found it incredibly menacing.

Somewhere in here I asked if gtst was liable to have troubles receiving messages addressed to some odd name (at the time I didn't know gtst legal). I got a response something like, "You can address it to Nikola Tesla or Our Dark Overlord for all it matters, it'll get here." Some time later I heard about a pacakage delivered to S. White Pebble, so I addressed this parcel to S. White Pebble, Nikola Tesla, and Our Dark Overlord, Esq., Papaya Recreations. (The original address was Fighting Clitori, Inc., and I forget why I changed it aside from, possibly, the fact that Papaya Recreations was more recent.)

I was in Beadworks in Harvard Square recently to get finishing stuff for the collar I made, and saw the ladybug beads, which were, of course, required. And as a result I made the Instructions and such and put it all in a ziploc baggie.



As I was assembling the box, Lennon climbed into it, but I took him out; he wouldn't fit.

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

That is beautiful.

Saltless salt? Eek. ("Saltless slat", which is what I typed first, makes some sense.)

[kiya]

Beautiful in general or in particular? :}

[jinian.livejournal.com]

The anti-ladybug charm in particular.

[firecat]

I'm just hijacking this journal entry to say how much I like your maneki neko icon.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I just made it yesterday.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain if the saltless is abnormally white and ... opaque, or if it's just that I've lost my handle on what salt properly looks like. (Our current container of salt is of the Rotted Huge And Heavy variety, and twice as old as it would be under normal circumstances, because my roommate put the container the salt currently in this one came in on a burner that hadn't cooled off all the way, compelling us to play musical salt. Anyway, the container's started to yellow, so when I think salt, I think yellow.) When I first saw it, I thought it was an inexplicably small container of flour, or perhaps baking soda/powder.

It is very most menacing.

[brooksmoses]

You know, saltless salt's been around for quite a while -- I was familiar with the concept as a kid. (I think this is because my grandmother used it; I don't remember actually tasting it.)

It's basically regular salt, except with a s/sodium/potassium applied to it. Which means it's still, chemically, a "salt"; it's just not a sodium salt, and specifically not sodium chloride.

(Potassium is a metal that, when put into water in sizable quantities, creates dramatic instantaneous explosions. Chlorine is poisonous yellow gas. Saltless salt is a 50:50 mix of the the two, as measured by vapor volume. *evil grin* Trust me, it's perfectly harmless.)

Anyhow, I do remember somewhat that it tends to be a bit more opaque than regular salt; I think that's because it's not in nice little crystal cubes, but more powdery.

- Brooks

[kiya]

You're so reassuring, lover.