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Saturday, February 14, 2004

Poke the Bunny

Last Thursday I had a physics lab report due, so you can guess what my Wednesday was like. Or maybe you can’t. In that case, I will tell you—it was an absolute joy! I just love writing lab reports! Especially when I have a cold and have to wipe the snot leaking out of my nose every five seconds in addition to the brain leaking out of my ears! Loads of fun, last Wednesday was.

At some point in the evening, I was having WAY too much fun writing this report and decided I needed a breather. I took a gander at Big Ben’s SubProfile, which is pretty witty, and at the bottom of his links section I saw a link titled, “Poke!” This intrigued me, so I gave it a click. The click took me to a web page with a purple background and a bunny sitting in the middle. Hovering in the air above and to the right of the bunny was a gloved hand with an outstretched index finger pointing at the bunny, and below the bunny was a round button labeled, simply, “POKE THE BUNNY.” There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot to do at this website, so I gathered my courage and clicked on the button.

You can probably guess what didn’t happen—my computer did not implode, nor did fairy cows fall from the sky and crash through my roof, although that would have been kind of cool and did in fact happen here, minus the fairy cows. The hand moved swiftly downward and—get ready for this—poked the bunny. When I clicked on the button again, the hand poked the bunny again. This was clearly one of the dumbest websites ever made, so naturally I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet. I was poking away at the poor rabbit when suddenly I heard:

“What the fuck?” It was my roommate, Matt.

“Poke the bunny!” I exclaimed. “You click on the button, and it pokes the bunny!”

“Yeah…I see that, but…” I could tell right away that Matt was excited.

“Is that all it does?” he eventually asked.

“No,” I said jubilantly. “It also makes a sound.” I turned up the volume so that Matt could hear. Indeed, when I jabbed the bunny, it sounded like a boxer jabbing at a punching bag.

“Look, you see how the bunny nudges when you poke him?” I continued. The forward nudge was very subtle and slight, but supremely implemented, I thought.

“Um…okay.” Clearly Matt was just as impressed as I was.

“And look how realistic this is!” My fascination was endless. “When you click the button fast, it makes a different sound than when you click it down and hold it.” A fast click made the jabbing sound described before; a slow click resulted in the jab sound plus the sound of deflating air. In hindsight, I’m not entirely sure why the bunny had an air leak, but it made perfect sense at the time. I demonstrated the difference between the two sounds to Matt and proceeded to pound out some mega-cool beats: fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuhhhhhhhh, fuh-fuh, fuh-fuhhhhhhhh; fuh-fuh, fuh-fuhfuhfuhfuh fuhfuhfuhfuh-fuhhhhhhhh…

“No,” my roommate said, “if it was truly realistic, then the bunny would turn around and bite the—“

My computer interrupted Matt with a loud CHOMP! When we looked at the screen to see what had caused the sound, we saw that the previously placid picture was now replaced by a dark and grisly scene. The gloved hand was still hovering in the air, but the index finger was no longer peacefully pointing at the bunny from afar. It was in the bunny’s mouth. The rabbit no longer looked cute and peaceful; his ears were pressed back flat against his back and the squint in his eye gave him a chillingly evil look. The “POKE THE BUNNY” button was still there, but clicking on it did not make the finger poke the bunny. Ohhhh no. Those happy days were gone. A click on the button did not produce any poking. Instead it made the bunny tug at the finger in his mouth, as if trying to rip it clean off.

I could not believe my eyes. Here is my roommate, joking around that the bunny should turn around and chomp on the finger, and then the bunny actually gets pissed off and does it!

“Have you seen this website before??” I accused Matt in puzzled bewilderment.

“No, I swear!” he exclaimed, and we both fell apart in spasms of uncontrollable laughter. I hope nobody saw this.

Then the moment was gone. Our room returned to the state in which you are most likely to find it at any given moment: me and Matt sitting at our respective desks, each of us with headphones on, our backs to each other, intently focused at our respective computers. On this particular Wednesday, Matt went back to watching Stargate, the TV show. He’s become obsessed with it and downloads every episode off the wonderful Case network. I, for my part, returned to the dreary physics lab and fired up my usual jazz playlist. It’s not that I like to have ambient music; in fact, I vastly prefer working in silence. But I figure it’s better to listen to my own music than to the shitty gangster rap/boy band combo that some of the fuckheads on our floor blast all day at ear-damaging decibel levels.

In other words, our room became the crappy, boring thing it always is. My roommate eventually finished his Stargate episode and I eventually finished my lab report, and I think both of us were thankful for the happy moment that happened in between.

You, too, can poke the bunny.

.: posted by Boris 3:18 PM

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