It’s been a while since we endured a flip-through of one of these Creative Activities Cryptic-Out-of-Place-Ellipses Program books, and this time, we’ll be Communicating! Considering how well these books have communicated ideas so far… Jesus. See, there was an example of how to use ellipses correctly.
#7 Communicating
(I’m skipping over #6 Collecting only because I don’t have it. Maybe someday I’ll be privy to the assuredly zany projects in that book [as well as #1 Making and #2 Playing].)
The subtitle is Meaning, Sense, & Nonsense. Sounds like my suspicions about the quality of the communication project ideas are already justified. Why didn’t they just name the whole series this?
We’ve got five chapters, assuredly containing projects that just barely fit the chapter theme:
- Mini Messages
- Maxi Messages
- Mystery Messages
- Media Messages
- Moving Messages
And we haven’t the time to waste! Let’s get communicating about communicating! I am abusing the hell out of this keyword.
Mini Messages
This chapter gives us projects that essentially concern stationery and playing around with words. Kids are urged to
- Announce family happenings, newspaper-headline-style, on their bedroom doors
- Make posters from stamps made out of halved onions (and then “form a parade of poster prints”)
- Fold a paper grocery bag into a book jacket (like when covering your school textbooks in the olden days!)
- Hang up a bulletin board and a chalkboard
- Create a calendar
- Send your pal a note on homemade stationery
- Make greeting cards
- Doodle a word so that the word looks like itself (e.g., make “fat” fat)
- Psychoanalyze yourself with homemade inkblots made from food coloring
- Create and sell your own bumper stickers
- Make and trade buttons and badges with your buds
- “Speak out with your B-jeans” (e.g., draw on your denim clothes)
Okay, I admit, I’d be super inspired by this chapter if I was a kid in the ‘70s. Make my own Halloween cards? SIGN ME UP! Make buttons and badges? I DO THAT NOW! So yeah, for sure, everyone in the house would be subjected to my bedroom-door headlines on their way to the loo.
Maxi Messages
Now, let’s get maxi. I don’t know what that means, but it’s happening. We’ve graduated from mini messages to doing stuff like this:
- Write messages like the clues used in the game show “Concentration” only not good
- Draw “Main Street, Sign Town, USA”, a town where mute illiterates live and communicate only via pictures
- Symbolize a scene from the circus using construction paper (What makes this a maxi message?)
- Tell a story using only symbols/shapes
- “Make up some Doodle Dabbles” (“Doodle Dabbles are pictures that don’t make any sense until you say what they are.” Why are we doing this to ourselves?)
- Create a comic strip, then a comic book
- Make animals by stringing together your fingerprints
- Doctor magazine advertisements to create ads for new products, like “Puffery Cigarettes”
- Draw a movie poster
- Describe fairy tales in a single, scandalous, click-bait headline
- “Publish a magazine for monsters”
Like, what was all that? What is a maxi message? What was a mini message, for that matter? Of course we have zero context. You’ll note this book failed to communicate with us.
Mystery Messages
This whole book is a mystery message, but only this single section with the following projects are deemed more mysterious than the others:
- Speak Pig Latin and Pig Greek
- Analyze strangers’ body language
- “Send messages with the picture writing of the Indians” (and be sure to put a feather in your hair for authenticity)
- Mark all your stuff with a “branding iron” (i.e., potato stamp)
- Make up your own secret code using symbols
- “Make your own Key-Poo” (“[The ancient Incas] kept records by tying knots in strings called quipo. You can spell it Key-Poo,” you delicate white child of the 1970s, you.]
- Tap out messages in Morse Code
- Signal with flags
- “Learn the language of the highways,” i.e., the hobos!
- Write a note in Braille
- Communicate like cave folk (“Thump your chest and make a sound. The others look at you. Do it again. Ahhh! They point and make the sound. They understand. You are you be called that sound.”)
The only thing mysterious about this section is why anyone would want to do most of these activities. Where was the mystery? Why weren’t we solving more crimes just then? The owl with the magnifying glass at the beginning really set us up to fail here.
Media Messages
Lord only knows how we’ll be communicating now. Actually, I also know, and now I share it with you. This is the communication tomfoolery we’re to engage in now:
- Record sounds and your own sound effects (including a machine gun!)
- Write a script for a radio show then record it
- Tell a story with photographs
- Take photos of people in action and self-orchestrated illusions
- Create a slideshow and inflict it upon not only your family and friends, but also “take it to school to show your classmates”
Though I did enjoy this drawing of Mr. Long Legs…
…overall I’m disappointed in how non-bizarre all that was.
Moving Messages
This is what we’re doing in this final section:
- Make a flipbook out of index cards
- “Borrow an 8-millimeter movie camera” (“A Super 8 millimeter camera is also good”) to make a stop-motion movie of moving felt letters
- Review the Movie Maker’s Rules (“Rule 1: The Director is always in charge. You are the Director. You are also the Cameraman.”)
- Film a movie for the provided script called “A Case of Magic” (I have no interest in reading it, but it involves a Mubbler! They return!)
THE END! Well, that was more boring than I anticipated. Like the other books, the projects seemed to fit the theme very loosely. “Meaning, Sense, & Nonsense,” indeed. You let me down, Communicating! Here’s hoping Book 8—Producing will be more exciting (i.e., more weird)!
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