Alien bunnies, or the blog I should have done.

Silence Dogood here. Does this happen to you? You’re constantly having great ideas, thinking up fantastic inventions, and the like. There’s just one problem: You’re incapable of turning the idea into reality. It just sort of hangs out there in space, tantalizing you with the concept of all the money you could be making, if only. If only you had the technological ability to make your idea or invention a reality.

This is, tragically, what separates you from Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver and Bill Gates, and, say, the inventor of styrofoam peanuts or the pumpkin garbage bag: Unlike them, you simply can’t get from here to there. Your brilliant concept is as far out of reach as the dazzling stars in the night sky. Or, sometimes, as an apple dangling temptingly on a 30-foot-tall branch. That’s the case for things like children’s books, which I can write with great delight, but know I’ll never get published unless I have an illustrator. An illustrator, moreover, who’s willing to work for free until we do find a publisher. Strangely, I don’t know any. Sigh.

So the other night, I was having a dream about getting engaged to Hugh Grant. In retrospect, I think this was because our friend Ben and I had been watching the series version of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which is much concerned with Precious Ramotswe’s engagement to Mr. JLB Matekoni.

In any event, I’m trying not to think about why I was getting engaged to Hugh Grant. But in the dream, our outing to choose an engagement ring was rudely interrupted by the arrival of a horde of alien bunnies from space. These were not live bunnies by any means; rather, they were stuffed animals like Easter bunnies, but far more ominous, with glittering button eyes and bodies made of dead birds. And they were marching closer and closer…

Needless to say, OFB has not let me live this down. In fact, he’s brought up the topic of alien bunnies at least once a night since I had the dream. (GRRRR.) Then last night it hit me: This was the perfect blog. I happen to still have a battered old Easter bunny from early childhood. It was a favorite toy and had been loved pretty much to death long before it began its sojourn in assorted attics. By now, it probably looks almost as scary as an alien bunny.

So, I thought, imagine a blog called “Alien Bunnies: Adventures of Our Deadliest Foes.” Every day shows a new photo of the battered bunny in some location or other, ominous in the lack of commentary. There’s the location, there’s the bunny… What is it doing there? Is it watching that birdfeeder with its one good eye? How did it get on top of that stoplight? What’s it doing in that cab, and what happened to the driver?

I can see the cult following now. There are just two problems: I can’t take a photograph to save my life. And I wouldn’t know how to upload one if I could. Technology is hell. So I guess it’s back to the drawing board. And Hugh Grant, wherever you are, sorry about that!

             ‘Til next time,

                       Silence