You turn a corner at the edge of the pedestrian district of a small and unfamiliar city, and find yourself on a busy streetcorner. Your eyes doubledart, and a fleeting bzzzt of disorientation riles your brain. You stand still and look about, gawking, as mild disbelief ensues.

Time is running backwards. Headlights smoothly recede from you, turning with little warning onto side streets; taillights approach, extinguishing as they accelerate; bustling walkers squeeze by on all sides in reverse, deft and oblivious, laughing and chatting in bizarrely paced vocal zips. A series of chimes sounds -- each a jarring crescendo -- and then an overhead clock hand slides from 5 to 4. A busker sings to an unfamiliar tune -- something about cranberry sauce? -- as coins occasionally appear to leap from his open case into the hands of passersby. A stick-wielding uniformed woman haphazardly stabs pieces of paper and plastic into gutters and patches of grass.

A few minutes of this, and suddenly a voice you can understand, clear above the hubbub: 'All right, people, that's a wrap. Nice job everyone'.
-- n-pearson, Sep 19 2003

lufrednow
-- Worldgineer, Sep 19 2003


snub
-- thumbwax, Sep 19 2003


Baked, sort of. My son and his friend, emulating some music video or other, spent the tail end of summer videoing eachother walking backwards through the crowded streets of New York, so they could then play the film backwards.
-- DrCurry, Sep 19 2003


streetvendors are surprised when they have to pay for regurgitated food.
-- po, Sep 19 2003


[Dr C] surely you're not old enough to have children?
-- hazel, Sep 19 2003


Yeah, [po], I was also gonna have dogwalkers carefully placing steam-absorbing dog turds in the grass with plastic bags, but that would also entail a dog then squatting over each turd and sucking it up its ass, which would be quite a trick to teach a poor pooch also required to trot backwards away from rolling balls, defuzz furniture with its flanks, bounce sticks high in the air with its mouth, suck up grassy puke, resuscitate pheasants, and angrily protest the departure of letter carriers.
-- n-pearson, Sep 19 2003


reminds me of an episode of Red Dwarf. very funny..
-- po, Sep 19 2003


Very creative! Congratulations!
-- Pericles, Sep 19 2003


hazel: I dunno - how old do you have to be?
-- DrCurry, Sep 19 2003



random, halfbakery