Xypo-6 Decides to Buy Balloons

His name was Xypo-6, he was a robot. Gripping 28 balloons, he flew over his home planet Hubbbbvou while pondering his situation, which was precarious at best. Xypo-6 searched his database for any information pertaining to soaring 600 meters over rocky terrain (more specifically, the Gagaragamoomoo Mountains in the western hemisphere of Hubbbbvou). His memory scan produced nothing, not even a mere kilobyte of data; nada. "This is going to get worse before it gets better", he thought to himself as clouds whispered by. The ground descended further and further away. In his peripheral vision he spotted the reds, the greens and the purples of the latex treasures he had purchased just minutes before. But as the atmosphere grew darker, he realized he was entering deep space.

If only he would just let go.

Special Weekend Edition: About Rat Boy

I first met Rat Boy seven years ago while waiting in line for the Tubs O' Fun at the local carnival. Predictable music filled the air alongside smells of popcorn, corndogs and corn on the cob. I chewed candy corn impatiently as I once again checked my watch; it had been twenty-six minutes since I first placed myself in line. A small boy was staring at me uneasily as he held his father's hand. I stared back. The child's gaze suddenly widened while his jaw slowly opened. My eyes followed his stare catching a glimpse of a small creature of brown, blotchy fur. It was a boy, yet at the same time it was a rat. It was some kind of rat boy. Without a moment of hesitation, I began chasing this monstrosity into the darkness, uncontrollably drawn to the mysteriousness of a rodent creature with a human face. He scurried away but soon found himself cornered. "No use resisting Rat Boy", I said. Scooping him up, I gently placed him in my shirt pocket, patting him on his little balding head.

Frank's Clouds

Right off of Rt. 95 in downtown Philadelphia is the world's largest and most prestigious cloud factory. As you are passing the Cottman Avenue exit, look to your left (if you are heading south), you will see a giant, neon sign which reads "Frank's Clouds, Inc.", you can't miss it. They are the world's supplier of stratocumulus, cumulus congestus, altostratus undulatus and even cumulonimbus with mammatus. No matter your cloud necessities, Frank's expert cloud-techs will work directly with you to provide the clouds you need to your exact specifications. All on time and under budget.

And hey, be sure to tell 'em Yummy Hut sent you.


This was a paid advertisement for Frank's Clouds, Inc. Philadelphia, PA

Friday Haiku X

~CLEVELAND~

Manufacturing
Progress and prosperity

The forest city

No Use Crying Over Spilled Blue Paint

One glorious, sunny morning as singing birds gathered outside of my window, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Carelessly, I swung open the cabinet door whacking myself in the forehead; the impact sent me reeling backwards through the open basement door and down the steps with a repeated thud. I landed underneath a shelf which had been loosened by my fall overturning an entire bucket of blue latex paint which was now steadily flowing on top of my head. After a moment, I stood up feeling dizzy; everything was a swirl of blurry blue. Without realizing, I reached out towards my wood burning stove (I thought it was a support beam) trying to brace myself. Scream. Pain. Smell of flesh burning. Instantly I ran towards the sink for some cool water relief, but instead stepped on a poorly placed rake which slapped me in the face upon its swift upright positioning. Stumbling out of the back basement door, I bumped my knee on a circular saw as I made my way into the backyard; which incidentally is a field of cacti. Predictably, within moments, I had cactus pricks all over my body. That's when I noticed that at some point I had managed to get a glass jar stuck on my left hand. Pain was all I knew as I blindly tripped over a tricycle into a murky, alligator infested swamp. I sat up, wiped the mud from my face, clearing my vision just in time to see the alligator with its open jaw. Somehow my shirt was on fire. All in all, it was still the best day I had had all week.

Yummy Hut Guest Writer: Vladimir Nabokov

One of the greatest writers of the past century; Yummy Hut presents Mr. Vladimir Nabokov.

YUMMY HUT by Vladimir Nabokov

Yummy Hut, light of my life, fire of my mind. My blog, my soul. Yum-ee-hut: the tip of the tongue taking a trip three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Yum. Ee. Hut. Did Yummy Hut have a precursor? It did, indeed it did. In point of fact, there might have been no Yummy Hut at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial blog-site. In a  princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Yummy Hut was started as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Thanks Vlad! 

Friday Haiku IX

~PANTS~

Pleated brown chinos
Red sun, fades the blue denim
I fear acid wash

Yummy Hut Guest Writer: Dr. Seuss

Yummy Hut is proud to finally present the first installment of our "Guest Writer Series". We are honored to have Dr. Seuss as our first contributor.

BALLOON RACE by Dr. Seuss

The Funwazzles and Blandoodles at the town fair.
Catching balloons to fly through the air.
Red ones, blue ones, green ones and yellow.
"Nice work!" says Mayor Gumbunch, a round, jolly fellow.
A Funwazzle has three balloons, as he starts to fly.
A Blandoodle with four, begins to glide very high.
The sky is soon filled with flyers galore.
Blandoodles and Funwazzles gracefully soar.
Town folk cheer; they cheer and they cheer.
The flyers are specks that soon disappear.

Friday Haiku VIII

~I LIKE SEARS~

Three-spoke quill handle

An extra-large head casting

My Craftsman drill press

Friday Haiku VII

~TECHNOLOGY, SOMETIMES NOT SO COOPERATIVE~

Laptop malfunction
I press the keys; tap, tap, tap
Nothing happens; tap

Friday Haiku VI

~THREE DAY WEEKEND~

Friday Haiku time

Forlorn, I will let you down

Doing other things

Global Warming... Hurry Up!

My name is Bog, I have been frozen inside this wall of ice for over 40,000 years and I love bananas. It all began one Upper Paleolithic spring morning, I departed from my rocky dwelling to hunt mammoth but lost my way amongst the trees that always seemed so familiar. For days I tried retracing my steps for a way home, only to find nothing in the form of help or direction. It was on the seventh day that I met the shining man. His body was a glimmering silver color, his head covered by a sort of shield. At first, he simply stood still in the middle of the forest as I watched him from afar. When he noticed me staring, he beckoned me to come towards him. As I approached, he handed me a yellow object and gestured for me to eat it. "It's a banana", the shining man said. I took a bite, it was splendid! I gestured back to him to give me more. "Peel it this time", he said while showing me how to remove the outer, protective layer. This made the banana taste even better! My elation at this discovery made the shining man smile. "For you", he said pointing to the entire banana pile. I eagerly grabbed another, then another. When I turned around, the shining man had vanished without a trace. For years I stood there, eating the bananas oblivious to the changing climate that was transforming the world around me. Then it happened, my freezing fingers could no longer peel bananas. To this day I stand here frozen, holding a delicious banana as I wait for a thaw so I may taste the sweet mush once more.

Those Pesky, Scheming Farm Animals

I'm pretty sure that the entirety of my cattle are plotting some sort of effort against me, it looms in the air alongside purple storm clouds. I sit in my chair, peering out of the window while pulling the lace curtain aside, shotgun within my clutch. I see one of them gnawing at the grass as if nothing is amiss, playing the coy cow. No doubt the chickens are wise to the situation at hand. Several of them peck the ground for bits of feed that remain, eyeing me from the corners of their beady little eyes. I release the curtain; I've seen enough. I load my shotgun and watch the door as thunder rumbles across the cooling sky. A long moo in the distance, the signal has been given. I brace for the attack.

Friday Haiku V

~IN MEMORIAM~

Tattered kitchen sponge
Hygienic service no more
Into the garbage

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Eerschay! 

Just Another Tuesday

There is nothing I love more than dancing the night away. Tonight however, I have the realization that there is nowhere for me to “get down”, so I remove my (very fine) dancing shoes and scorn the twilight. Once again I’ll just lay on the floor, listen to some records and feel sad.

Home Sweet Home

How I ever got here I do not know, but for five years I have been stuck in this box. The room is a perfect cube, approximately twenty feet in every direction with no doors or windows to speak of. On one wall, there is a clock in the shape of a cat, whose eyes shift back and forth with each passing second. On the opposite wall is a small painting of a shoeless boy fishing off of a pier. Other than these two items, the room is void of decor. In the middle of the ceiling there is a sliding hatch which randomly opens to drop various items down into my space (books, clothes, photographs; I was once mysteriously given a gold trophy). Each day at exactly 11am, a parachute carrying a tray of food slowly descends, gently landing on my floor. These meals are not your ordinary dishes, all are unique and more delicious than the next. They transcend all varieties of cuisine, sometimes being atypical enough to be "unclassifiable". In fact, all of the items I've received are one-of-a-kind and of the highest quality. The books (written by authors I've never heard of) contain stories that are more interesting and gripping than anything I've read in the outside world. The photographs are always beautifully composed while the clothes are soft, comfortable and quite frankly, look great (as if they were custom made just for me). Suddenly, I hear the sound of the hatch slide open and I look up, horrified to see what is plunging down to greet me.

Friday Haiku IV

~THE CLOGGER~

Succulent, shaved steak
Salami, bacon and cheese
More than a sandwich

Pod Nosem

"You have one more wish left", the plump, silvery fish informed me. I had been fishing all morning and this was the first catch of the day. In exchange for his freedom, this fish was to grant me three wishes. The first two had been spent hastily, so I wanted the third one to really count. After several minutes of pensive brainstorming, I came up with the one thing that I truly fancied above all else. "Um... I'd like to grow a mustache" I said. The fish nodded his head (as he had done the previous two times) , chanted his magical fish language chant "Ulla bubble nof-nof gazoo!" and I was instantly showered with glimmering confetti and mini balloons as the transformation began. My eyes strained to look down at my upper lip while the handle-bar facial hair curved into place; the excitement was terrific. I gave a playful pull on the squeaky, curled up facial hair just to make sure it was really there and that I was not dreaming. "Thank you", I said. After tossing him back into the big blue sea, I waved good-bye. The rest of the afternoon, I fished without a care in the world.

Beware: The Future

The winding road spread infinitely before me along the rocky, coastal cliff. I took a sip of beer, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and threw the empty can onto the blurred blacktop below. "Say What You Will" (by Fastway) was on the radio as I mindlessly maneuvered the convertible through another dangerous curve. In the passenger seat, my robot was going on and on, complaining about his rusty, malfunctioning servo harness. Within the span of a few hours, he had already smoked up half my cigarettes while boring me with story after story, anecdote after anecdote. Storytelling was not part of his original programming, but over the years he had unfortunately learned this new trait from all the degenerate robots in Type-C specification school. He continued, "So then this variable-sequence robot comes up to me and he says..." I stared at the road, not listening to my counterpart. After a minute or so there was laughter, then immediately another monologue about Carnegie Mellon's robotics club and robot armies and blah, blah, blah. I pondered driving off the side of the road into the water below, but the lack of bones and organs would certainly insure his survival and he'd probably just keep going on and on as I lay there dead. "Hey, I'm getting hungry, you mind if we stop at an oiling station?", he inquired suddenly enthused. I didn't respond as I stared ahead wishing this heap of scrap metal seated next to me would just power down. "You mind if I bum another cigarette?", he asked reaching over taking one before I could respond. My fingers gripped the wheel harder as I sped up. Four more hours and we'd be there. Four more long, excruciating hours. "Nothing like the open road", he said exhaling a puff of nicotine. I cracked open another beer.