The BOTTOMLESS BAG paperback, complete with all 400 items, available here!
PANIC!
The situation has become dire. Confusion, darkness, and the unknown surround you. You dig deep into your bag, hoping for something useful, knowing that the bag will give you whatever fate decides.
Will you find help?
Will you find confusion?
Will you find glazed nuts?
This is the chance you take with BOTTOMLESS BAG!
Close your eyes
Reach inside
FROM WITHIN
This grouping was selected at random from a communally generated master list of four hundred. It is my hope that these ten items can be used as a forecast or guide to your week ahead. You can also use a ten sided dice to turn each weeks items into a miniature oracle. Whether you choose to take these items literally or metaphorically, it’s up to you to find how these things may help. For a more thorough overview go to Introducing Bottomless Bag and Bottomless Bag 01.
Item 231
#162: TOOTHBRUSH
A cornerstone for oral health
Item 232
#171: SALT SHAKER
Seasoned distribution
Item 233
#52: PLIERS
To squeeze, hold, or crush
Item 234
#299: TREE
Where wood comes from
Item 235
#259: AQUEDUCT
Directing the flow
Item 236
#376: EMPTY FRAME
An awaited presentation
Item 237
#197: FEDORA
A fashion staple
Item 238
#205: A ROLLED UP MAT
Stored absorption
Item 239
#107: RATHER GLOBBY ALIEN
A lumpy visitor
Item 240
#194: GARDEN
To cultivate and grow
DIGGING DEEPER
For DIGGING DEEPER a 10 sided die is rolled and I explore whichever item it lands on. Sometimes this section will explain different dimensions of the item and other times it will be a rambling story about what an item means to me personally. The thing I’m trying to do here is show that even the simplest item is multifaceted and has far more definitions than I can ever explain. Every item is it’s own world, it’s own entity.
The item we’ll be doing a deep dive with this week is:
#171: SALT SHAKER
I couldn’t figure it out.
I had been watching this old lady out of the corner of my eye while my son played in the roots of a downed tree and just couldn’t figure it out. I take my son to this nature park nearly every day and it surprises me on a daily basis. It usually doesn’t confound me, though.
She was a quiet and unassuming, just walking back and forth on the trail about twenty feet away from us. She was mumbling to herself. Every couple minutes she would crouch down low to the ground for about a minute before resuming her pacing. I could see something small and white in her hands.
When my son lost interest in the roots I made sure to steer him in the direction of the old woman. I had to know what she was doing. As we got closer I could finally hear what she was saying.
“Ugly, ugly, ugly. You ugly little fucks.”
It started to feel like approaching her with my three year old son was probably not the best plan.
“You can’t have ’em. You just can’t. You ugly fucks.”
It was a salt shaker. The white thing in her hands was a salt shaker and on the ground sat the melting carcass of a slug.
Looking around I saw that there were dead slugs EVERYWHERE. She had taken it upon herself to exterminate the whole lot of them.
Now, those slugs are one of our favorite things about that park. The slugs and the snails have become a point of bonding between myself and my wife. We’ve taken hundreds of pictures of them, competing with each other on who can get the best looking snapshot.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that someone could hate slugs so much that they would bring their own salt shaker to the park and devote that much time to their destruction. Obviously she had her reasons. Slugs had wronged her in some way in the past.
Maybe they ate up her garden?
Maybe she stepped on one while jogging, making her slip and fall?
Who knows?
The woman continued on her vigil as we left the scene. I don’t know how much longer she kept it up but I doubt she felt like the job was done.
It had rained the night before.
The slugs were everywhere.
There was much left to do.
That’s all for now. Come back next week for another dig into the BOTTOMLESS BAG.
As always:
SEE WHAT’S INSIDE
DIG DEEP
AND
HAUNT ON
The BOTTOMLESS BAG paperback, complete with all 400 items, available here!
ABOUT ERIC J. MILLAR
Eric is the artist and writer behind Outlet Press. He has published over 20 books over the last four year with VACA: Outlet Illustrated, Volume 5 being his most recent publication. He is also the creator of The Disruption Generator, the randomly generated bibliomantic oracle, and The Impossible Game, a cleromantic oracle, both published in partnership with We The Hallowed.
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