BFCDAW #2: My New Robot.

It’s time for Bullshit Filler Content Devised At Work #2.

This one was important. Today was crazy busy. I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to come up with an original concept after the long commute home. If I wanted to post anything tonight, I needed a BFCDAW miracle.

I think it was around 3PM when I asked my editor to ignore me for a little while. He didn’t. Can’t say I blame him, because it’s pretty tough to ignore a coworker when he’s building a robot out of Twizzlers and paper plates, right behind you.

For the record, my brain was against this. Very, very much against this. I told you, it was a crazy day. I know it’s hard to believe, given that I had time to build a robot and all, but you don’t understand. I built this robot FAST. Nobody has ever built a robot faster.

My brain said, “Don’t be stupid. Just draw another Troll 2 goblin. That’s all you have time for.” But my heart won out, because it knew the truth. If I started making every BFCDAW a goblin sketch, people really would start to see these things as filler posts.

Nope. HAD to be a robot.

My materials: A paper plate, a plastic cup, a few markers and some individually wrapped Twizzlers. Post-Its, too. I don’t know. I was just grabbing whatever I could find. It was madness. The whole activity couldn’t have lasted more than fifteen minutes, but it was fifteen minutes of madness.

Slowly but surely, more of my coworkers came in and out of the room. “Don’t ask,” was all I could say. They obliged. In fact, I carried on an entire conversation even as I was trying to tape paper claws onto my Twizzler robot arms. Not once was my robot addressed in that conversation.

Gotta say, for a robot built out of licorice in fifteen minutes with my nerves shot to shit, I think he came out pretty okay!

He seems like the type of robot who’d have a “letter-and-numbers” name. Let’s call him DD-577.

DD-577’s main attributes:

1. Twizzler arms with paper robot claws. I’ve already mentioned those. And they’re cool enough to mention five more times.

2. A Post-It “chest” with all kinds of quirky robot buttons drawn on. This is how you program DD-577 to perform different tasks. For instance, the button on the upper-left makes him do absolutely nothing.

3. A Dum Dums lollipop antenna, which is covered in paper clips for reasons I’ve yet to determine.

Now, here’s the sad thing.

I couldn’t bring DD-577 home. It’s hard to transport robots that break when you cough on them.

I also couldn’t let DD-577 become a permanent fixture at the office, in part because it would raise too many questions, but also because he was made out of exposed licorice. Remember…gnats.

So, I sat there with DD-577 by my side, fully knowing that he was destined for the trash heap. It was perhaps that knowledge that allowed me to eat his arms and antenna before the day was over, guiltlessly.

The rest of him is now in a garbage bag with the remnants of everyone’s lunches.

Now it’s a little after 10PM, and I already miss DD-577. I can’t believe I ate his arms. I can’t believe he’s in a garbage bag, surrounded by oily salad parts. What was I thinking?

I’m ashamed of myself. And I’m concerned that this shame stems not from building a robot at work, but from throwing said robot away.

Fortunately, it should be easy to build a replacement.

So long as those fuckers didn’t eat the rest of the Twizzlers.