I’m having a little trouble deciding what to write about today. I’m tired, and it was a pretty brainpower-consuming day at work, and I nearly froze on the way home because I got passed up by a few buses, and generally I don’t want to think about anything except staying warm and possibly watching Heroes in a few minutes.

As such, I had initially thought I would perhaps poke around a bit and look for writing prompts. I’m not generally a big writing prompt person, but it couldn’t hurt to see if anything happens to jog something that would be fun to write about, right?
Wrong.

In place of a real journal entry, I offer you a gift - a look at all the horrific writing prompts I found but am not using tonight, just to spare you the agony. Real honest-to-god prompts I found online just now, and the first sentences to the responses I am not going to write.

1. Compare your relatives or friends to things you might find on a bathroom, using simile and metaphor.

He was like a roll of toilet paper; it was easy to take it for granted that he’d always be there, but when he wasn’t and you needed him, boy, did that suck.

2. Write something about vitamins. Do you like them to be chewable or not?

Vitamin E is the best vitamin ever!

3. Write down the first memory you hear when you hear the word “rabies.”

Cujo is some fucked-up shit.

4. List the best qualities of your five best friends. Then make up a fairy godmother, bestowing each of these qualities upon her.

My fairy godmother has a great rack, knows more curse words in German than anyone I know, always knows where to get good weed, hardly ever sleeps with underage girls, and boy, can she make a margarita!

5. Describe a desk you’ve seen in your life. What does furniture mean?

It was made of fiberboard, and it meant something very special to me - that I would never again get splinters from writing my term paper on the floor.

6. What would your car’s New Year’s Resolution be?

Tell people I love them more often.

7. How would a broken plate feel?

Like a broken plate.

8. Write from the point of view of a clean sock that was mistakenly placed in the hamper.

Well, shit.

9. Write about a time you thought someone was watching you.

Dear Penthouse Forum…

10. Compare some part of your life to water.

My feet are really cold right now, like if water could somehow take on a different form - a hard, clear, solid form that would suck the heat right out of you!

11. Everyone has an idea of what Heaven is like, even those who don’t believe in religion. What’s yours?

Uh, no. No, I don’t.

12. Write a story whose title would contain the word “starch.”

That Time I Did The Laundry And Starched Stuff.

13. Complete this famous tagline with your own: “Please don’t squeeze the: ___________”

Ever-Loving Shit Out Of That Kitten, Little Billy!

14. Write about your dumbest daily rituals

Sometimes, I smoke crack.

15. Come up with ten reasons to stop bathing.

I hate everyone around me.

16. Write a piece of fiction where a baby’s first word i.s surprising.

“Fuck, I killed the kitten!”, said Little Billy.

17. Brandi and Greg meet. One of them is allergic to almonds. Write their story.

For a moment, Greg wondered whether his coffee tasted like almonds or arsenic - until he realized he was a dead man either way, and had only seconds in which to make his move on Brandi before he started swelling up like a balloon.

18. Write a story about a swing. Consider writing it from the swing’s point of view.

Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Back. Forth.

19. Write about someone watching a parade that has lasted too long.

“Yup,” said Jim, “That makes sixty-four baton-twirlers. Nope! Make it sixty-five.”

20. Make up a fictional scary encounter with your hairdresser.

As the lifeblood drained out of me, I thought with my last dying breath that Johnny Depp really shouldn’t have recycled his Edward Scissorhands hair.

So there you are. Never say I didn’t do anything for you. Just for you, I did not write a story about starch from the perspective of a broken plate sitting next to a sock in a hamper full of vitamins.