You have reached the end of the current build of Microwave Head. Thank you for your time and I apologize that I do not have more to show you at the moment. Microwave Head is a hypertext speculative/autofiction piece that I developed as my creative writing capstone project. What you have just read (or clicked through) is the first two parts of a planned three part narrative that follows Clancy as he blogs about his life and slowly uncovers a strange artificial intelligence called microwave head. The piece ends on the entry into the second part, which will further break down the blog-structure by having you click through disconnected websites that are a part of Clancy's archive. The third part will be a long conversation between Clancy and the microwave head. Moving forward, I would like to, of course, finish the narrative arc. I would also like to recruit people that may be willing to help me with the web design aspects of this project. Every website was designed and coded by me (except for a few pages, in which I used premade layouts), and I am far from a competent web designer. I also would like to recruit artists that can create original art for the piece. I think this would allow the piece to have its own visual identity that is not constrained to random Pinterest pins that I've compiled over the last couple of years.
Just to clear some things up: Clancy, his friends, and anyone else I mention by name (except for Robby Mills and Ernie Fletcher, who are actual politicians) are fictional, though the events in this story are not entirely fictionalized. About half of the posts on the website are actual journal entries that I have written within the last four years of college. Most have been spruced up and cut down, but much of the wording and details remain the same. My hope in this project is that the fictional posts and real journal entries are indistinguishable from one another. I wanted to push the boundaries of what can be considered the "fictional" and the "real." Clancy shares a lot of details of my life, but we are not the same person. Much of the fun in this project was drawing lines where Clancy and I separate. This is also why I also decided to make the places that surround Clancy fictional. De Kalb is a pantomime of my hometown. It is just real enough that I could invent fictional elements that still felt true. I sometimes wonder if memoirists actually remember all that stuff from decades ago or are they just astute liars. This project gave me the opportunity to reflect on the past even if I did not remember it fully, or if I thought it would be more interesting if something else happened instead.
I also wanted to give a quick A.I. disclosure, since that is a frequent topic in this piece. No element of this project was generated, it was all either written or edited by hand, even the writing that was supposedly done by A.I., I even created a Wix website by hand while their stupid agent was interrupting me the entire time! Satirizing A.I. wasn't my initial objective for this project, but when I decided that the story should end with Clancy interacting with a chatbot that is a genuine sentient machine, the process followed from there. This project has allowed me to recognize that I do not think artificial intelligence as a concept is inherently bad. In fact, I think that it has made me more willing to hear out potential innovation. There is just so much wrong with the current reality surrounding generative A.I. and the companies that develop them. If you are wondering what those problems are, they are littered throughout this entire project!
I want to thank the developers sadgrl and teppy, who created layouts that I used for a few pages on this site. It became apparent while learning HTML that I would not have enough time to make anything that looks as good as the websites that inspired me, so I was thankful to find website layouts that fit exactly with the concept in my head.
I used sadgrl's layout builder in Collision and the Salacious B. Crumb Fan Site. Here is a link to their website. Check it out, they have some really interesting writing on there too.
I used teppy's layout Isolationist for Julian's corner. Here is a link to their website. They have some truly amazing layouts on there. I highly encourage you to check out their work it's incredible.
Image Sources:
(note: I did not attempt to find sources on the geocities or tenor gifs)
Dayag, David. Trifid Nebula. 2019, Wikipedia.
Friedrich, Caspar David. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. 1818, Wikipedia.
Kallio, Ville. Bikers. 2014, Cartoon Brew.
Landseer, Edwin. Man Proposes, God Disposes. 1864, Wikipedia.
Richter, Daniel. Army of Traitors. 2011, Grimm Gallery.
Unknown. Dreamhack convention LAN party. 2000s.
Wilson, James. Mark Zuckerberg in Facebookâs office in 2005. 2005, The New York Times.