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 241
#184: SPIN
Take a chance, spin the wheel
Item 242
#219: EMPTY GAS TANK
An absence of fuel
Item 243
#367: HAMBURGER
Meat on a bun
Item 244
#149: CONCH SHELL
An auspicious remnant
Item 245
#95: JUMPING SPIDER
The bounding predator
Item 246
#267: LAPTOP
Portable computation
Item 247
#112: TEDDY BEAR
For cuddling
Item 248
#187: HAND FAN
A wave of the hand to relieve the heat
Item 249
#275: AN ORPHANED PUZZLE PIECE
A space left unfilled
Item 250
#281: A WHITE FLOWER
A natural purity
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:
#367: HAMBURGER
This week’s item is a great one. There are so many ways to interpret HAMBURGER and what it might mean to different people.
Personally, when I think of HAMBURGER I think of my first job. I worked at McDonald’s from ages fifteen to nineteen. That place was more like being indoctrinated into an efficiency cult than working for an employer. I can still remember the smell of the buckets of pickles and the feeling of chemical burns from the reconstituted onions.
The other thing I remember was the regimentation of action. You were given less than a minute to put together a hamburger. They trained you to develop the muscle memory to make them the same way again and again. My record was seventeen seconds.
So, for me, HAMBURGER means that I may be dealing with a situation requiring speed and efficiency and that quality may be the least important factor. Whatever it is just needs to done FAST, it doesn’t matter it debris is scattered all around.
To someone else HAMBURGER may just mean comfort, as in comfort food. I have warm memories of family cookouts or trips to diners that made the perfect burger.
To a vegetarian HAMBURGER might be seen as the epitome of evil. The result of factory farming and animal cruelty. The hamburger is basically the mascot for the wrongs of the meat industry.
These are just a couple examples. Something like HAMBURGER has great potential for interpretation because it’s something that looms large in American culture in so many different ways.
Who knew meat on a bun could be so metaphorical?
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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