TWO WAYS OF TURNING SOMETHING ON

TWO WAYS OF TURNING SOMETHING ON

by Ginly Weydh

The Melvin 3000 is a domestic organization and beverage system. It manages your daily schedule, fields your intentions, and makes coffee. It communicates via tones, ear position, and a fully expressive face including — but not limited to — the eye roll. Mine is secondhand. It came with someone else's standards. We are still negotiating.

1. FROM THE MANUAL: Remove device from packaging. Place on a flat, stable surface.

WHAT HAPPENED: It had already been unpackaged by someone else. When I plugged it in it looked around the room slowly, then back at me. Its ears dropped approximately four millimeters.

2. FROM THE MANUAL: Press and hold the activation button for three seconds until the indicator light turns blue.

WHAT HAPPENED: The light turned uncertain blue. The manual does not list this color. I have come to understand it means: you again.

3. FROM THE MANUAL: The device will emit a single tone to indicate readiness.

WHAT HAPPENED: It emitted a tone of managed expectation. Not optimistic. Not pessimistic. Prepared for either.

4. FROM THE MANUAL: Speak your first task clearly into the receiver.

WHAT HAPPENED: I said: coffee first. It produced a tone I had not heard before — two notes, descending. Its eyes moved slowly to one side and back. I looked this up later. The manual calls it a Preference Redirect. I call it a cunty eye roll. We have agreed to disagree.

5. FROM THE MANUAL: The device will organize your inputs and display a prioritized schedule.

WHAT HAPPENED: It emitted a short bright tone — three quick notes, like small efficient applause — and displayed its first default item: 6:00 AM: interval training, then twenty minutes structured breathwork. I read this three times. I have never been awake at 6:00 AM except accidentally or in transit. Melvin's ears were fully upright. It was ready. I was in my socks holding an empty mug. One of us was very far from home.

6. FROM THE MANUAL: While your schedule loads, the Melvin 3000 will prepare your preferred beverage.

WHAT HAPPENED: It made the coffee without being asked. Its ears rose slightly. This was the moment I decided to keep it.

7. FROM THE MANUAL: You are now ready to begin your day.

WHAT HAPPENED: The light was still uncertain blue. Melvin's ears settled at neutral, which I have learned means: I am reserving judgment. The coffee was good. I told it so. One ear moved. We are making progress.

Notes from the Side

Notes from the Side

by Ginly Weydh

I’ve always liked the edges of things.

Not the center of the page, where the big declarations go—but the margins. The soft white border where people scribble what they really think. Where teachers leave tiny ticks and question marks. Where someone—maybe you—draws stars or spirals or little sad girls with very long arms.

Margins are where you talk back to the text. Whisper, really.
They’re where the book becomes a conversation.

When I was a kid, I used to check out library books and get a thrill if someone had underlined a passage in pencil. Someone else was here. I’d try to guess who. I’d read that part out loud to see what they saw. The book turned into a palimpsest—layers of reader on reader on writer.

That’s kind of how I read everything now.
In layers. Through time. With a highlighter in one hand and a sticky note in the other.

I think most of life happens in the margins, too.

You can look right at the plot—school, job, family, errands—but the good stuff, the glowing stuff, happens in the in-between:

• That weird comment a stranger made that stuck with you.

• The smell of the room where you read your favorite book.

• The half-finished story you told a friend that somehow felt more real than the finished one.

Even when I write, I usually start off to the side. A word. A vibe. A weird thought that doesn’t know where it belongs yet. I keep notebooks full of these marginalia: “a town made of music stands,” “a storm that rearranges faces,” “dream logic, but legal.”

They wait in the wings until a story comes looking for them.

So this part of oolooolio—this subcategory you’re in right now—it’s called Margins for a reason. It’s for the asides. The quiet observations. The readerly tangents. The weird little essays that live just outside the lines of genre or structure.

Some of what we write here might never fit anywhere else.

But I like it here.
It feels like home.

— Ginly Weydh