All these things we've done

Midnight last night the GISHWHES timer struck zero, but that wasn't the end for us.  I mentioned before that I'd written a letter to the editor in an attempt to satisfy item 13, "An op-ed piece published in a local paper about how "petty, vindictive birds are stealing from the elderly!"", and that Adrian had submitted it for me.  Well, nothing really came of it, and I figured that the newspaper had saw through my pretty prose to the absurdity that it most obviously was.  This morning, I opened the paper to find this:

It may have been too late to submit it for points, but, well... it ended our GISHWHES chronicle with a bang, alright.  Moving on to some of these other things that myself and the rest of the ibsasscats have thrown together over these past few days of GISHWHES:

Item 6:  If your child were a prodigy artist and had a marker and you were deep asleep and they were inspired to "beautify" your face, what would the result be?

Item 69:  You and a friend must take at least 50 of your stuffed animals/dolls on a field trip to a grocery store. All of the stuffed animals/dolls must EITHER be attached to your clothing or in a grocery cart or both.

Item 53:  Carve a Jill O'Lantern! Carve a pumpkin to look like a feminized Misha Collins. Bonus points for realism.

Item 149:  Draw or paint a picture of Miss Jean Louis riding a school bus like a horse as it flies off a cliff into a volcano. There can be no passengers and she must have a dialogue bubble above her head that says something she would definitely say at this moment.

Item 54:  Elmo Gone Wrong. What would a Tickle-Me-Elmo look like if it had a serious crystal meth problem?

Item 37:  A screen cap of a chat thread on Misha Collins' IMDB page. The thread must be started by a user with your team's name and must pose an unusual question about Misha's personal life, such as, "Is it true that Misha Collins eats nothing but the hearts of human babies?" Or "Why doesn't Misha have any fingers?"

Item 146:  Make a children's doll from items found in your refrigerator or pantry. Go ahead and really creep us out with this one.

Item 5:  Let's see what Twister would look like with 13 people. Each person must be wearing only one color of clothing, i.e. all yellow, or all red and no two people can be wearing the same color clothing.

Item 22:  We've all heard of a "flea circus". What do "flea strip clubs" look like?

Item 83:  You holding a picture of you holding a picture of you holding a picture of you holding a picture of you holding a picture of an apple. You must have a gold frame suspended around your head.

Item 148:  A picture of you and a loved one kissing. Here's the catch though - you must have at least 11 food items between your lips and the lips of your loved one.

Item 14:  A person in a business suit with a leather briefcase jumping into leaf pile.

Item 78:  A one-page GISHWHES comic strip involving a rhinoceros, a tangerine, and an appendectomy.

Item 150:  It's Medieval Battle Time! Huzzah! You and a friend or loved one, dress up in your best battle gear/armory comprised entirely of kitchen ware. You can be wearing nothing else. Strike dueling poses.

Item 98:  A dog taking a human for a walk. Human must be on all fours and have a collar around their neck and the dog must have the leash in his mouth.

Item 51:  How long was Miss Jean Louis's "kale binge"? One might find the answer on one of our social media platforms.

Item 10:  Find an object that was manufactured the day and year you were born in city or town of your birth. Prove it. (Note: the "object" in question cannot be you or your twin.)

Item 35:  Draw or paint a portrait of Misha Collins and the Queen of England, both dressed in Steampunk, riding on a single stallion.

And we didn't just have to take pictures; we had to make videos, too!

 

Item 100: In mime, depict one of the following phrases: a) "The pen is mightier than the sword." b) "You're the bees knees!" c) "Holkyn kolkyn!"

Item 140:  A stop-motion film depicting the two by two loading of Noah's arc and the ensuing flood.

There were a few other videos done to which I don't have links:  Item 129, "One of you pulling up to a fast food restaurant drive-thru to order a meal, but instead of ordering a meal, you are only allowed to make sheep noises into the intercom. Must clearly hear the person on the other end of the intercom" and Item 119, "Recite "The Raven" to a crow", but this is the majority of the zaniness we engaged in over the past few days.  My principal contributions were writing item 13, organizing and participating in item 5, making item 37, and the two videos shown here, items 100 and 140, were both my doing.  I'm actually ridiculously proud of my videos.  I don't know... just having created something in this way makes me feel giddily happy.

So, what did I learn during the course of this event?

• Our local newspaper has exceptionally low quality standards.
• All it takes to be able to raid the school drama department is to ask for the key.
• Together we can accomplish so much more than we could ever imagine doing alone.
• All neighbours deserve to be rescued from their homework for a dramatic sword/pen duel.
• Perfect planning is impossible, especially in a group; what's important is how you improvise.
• Sometimes circumstances don't play by your schedule.
• There's always time for the things for which you have absolutely no time.
• A good instrumental track improves any video.
• Like Murphy's Law says, anything that can go wrong, will.
• When placing plastic animals on inclined planes, don't overestimate the force of friction.
• There's people all over the world who see things in the same insane way I do.
• Creativity is craziness. It's having fun, it's that feeling of insane pride you get when you make something that is completely and pointlessly yours.  It's dreaming up intricate, precise concepts and then it's making plans up on the fly and fixing things as you go.  It's your grandiose outlines and your wild, illogical ideas, your best laid schemes of mice and men.  I'm not very artistic:  I can't draw or paint or sketch, but that doesn't mean I'm not creative.  I can write and I can do, I can edit films and come up with zany ideas and set them to music, I can find things and fix things and organize things...  creativity is so much more than just being able to draw pretty pictures, and GISHWHES celebrates true creativity in all its insane, imperfect glory.

So, that was my experience with GISHWHES.  It was strange, it was embarrassing, it was off the wall, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.  It was a great opportunity to bond as a class and to do things I would never have considered doing otherwise.

As one of my favourite books ends, "May God forgive me for this and all these things I've done".