WLBOTT Corporate HQ received the following email from Elder JimZim this afternoon:
Gentle People – I am in Northeast MA, just outside of Boston. When not shuttling various members of the Metropolitan Flute Orchestra around, I have been exploring the small towns and countryside. This local area is steeped in history – Lexington and Concord, Walden Pond, and birthplace of the PDP minicomputer at DEC just a few miles away.
You would then not fault me for being skeptical of a road sign saying “Welcome to Legendary Leominster”. I must say, the town looked like any run down mill town in this part of the country. BUT, some research showed the Chamber of Commerce was honest in their assertion – Leominster is legendary.
- John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, was born there.
- given strong Shaker influences, the town was an Abolitionist stronghold and an important stop on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves fleeing to Canada.
And most importantly, Leominster knew the road to riches was “Plastic”, well before the movie, The Graduate.
The town was the largest supplier of hair combs in early America. Things really took off with the invention of celluloid in the mid-1800’s. This material allowed the manufacture of combs (with their fine teeth) out of a molded man-made material rather than antlers and hooves.
The acceptance and innovation around moldable materials fostered a plastics mindset in Leominster. A local inventor molded eyeglass frames from early plastics and started the famous sunglass company, Foster Grant. When injection molding was invented around WW2, Tupperware was born in Leominster. Most importantly, plastic lawn flamingos migrated all over the US in the 1950’s from this humble hamlet.
If I was an artist, I would create a visual of Johnny Appleseed wearing sunglasses and sporting finely coiffed hair with a comb sticking out of his pocket. He would be driving a wagon with a lawn flamingos guarding the apple seeds stored in Tupperware. Just an idea….
Challenge Accepted!
We called an “All Hands On Deck[1]” to the WLBOTT staff of graphic artists. We fed them Elder JimZim’s verbatim email.
[1] Mandatory unpaid overtime
Some good results, but lacked a certain WLBOTT flair.
Perch to the Rescue
We’ve mentioned that we periodically use the services of Perchance, the under – and/or – overmedicated free AI image generator. It quickly goes off the rails, doesn’t seem to follow any rules, yet often ignites the flames of non-sequitur creativity.
So we decided to hire a new web artist that had the same spirit of loony outside-the-box creativity.
Meet Perch Parenthetical Periwinkle! Perch is from the La Mesa (Tx) Periwinkles. The family has never owned a ruler, a television, or social security numbers.
New Employee Orientation
Three months after Perch’s new employee orientation with Bev, our HR manager, both Perch and Bev both used the same phrase to describe the meeting: “A trip and a half.”
Normally the new employee orientation lasts about 30 minutes, and focuses on how to work the coffee pot, how to find the bathrooms, and our rotating chicken coop mucking schedule (new hires move to the top of the list). But Perch’s orientation lasted over EIGHT HOURS.
The orientation began at 8:00 sharp. Upon arriving, Perch’s first question to Bev was, “Who are we here? And is this A.M. or P.M.?”
At the close of the orientation, Bev had added three inches to Perch’s file (including two official write-ups), and Perch had completed four masterful crayon drawings and pitched seven new BLOTT ideas.
Perch was issued a standard WLBOTT ID badge. Within the first 24 hours, she had used the badge to scoop guacamole, scrape the ice off her windshield (in Austin? in July?) and clean her kitty litter box.
Perch’s first assignment was to deconstruct Elder JimZim’s challenge and come up with something fresh. The management team was not dissapointed.
Bev insisted that Perch meet with the WLBOTT Ministry of Virtue and Vice. Perch and V&V did not share the same vision.
Perch: On Assignment
We sent Perch to Leominster, Massachusetts to cover the annual “Combs and Cabbage Day.” Perch’s impression was that enthusiasm for this historic festival was waning.
Some of Perch’s images in response to Elder JimZim’s challenge were rejected by the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, and therefore will not be published here:
