Have you ever noticed something out of place? Something that just seemed a little odd at first, but after a second look and a third, it expanded into a world that transformed your everyday reality into something else entirely?

Well, I haven't, at least not in the real world. In terms of the real world of the web, however, you can, add something to your browser to imbue your daily information streams with the potential for cracks to open up between your world and another. Tumbarumba itself is not electronic literature, per se, and the stories it delivers are not technically interactive or hypertextual in any of the ways we've been studying in class. But the way it inserts itself into your life is certainly uniquely electronic.

Here's how it works. First, you should be using Firefox. If not, you should strongly consider downloading it. (Not only is it better at some security things than Internet Explorer, it also makes it easier for developers to create powerful research tools like Zotero and slick web design assistants like Firebug. )

If you've already got Firefox, your next step is to install the Tumbarumba extension. This will add an extra menu to your browser, but it won't be immediately apparent what else it's doing.

Once that's installed, just start browsing, and forget about Tumbarumba. It will quietly watch what you do, and at some point, make a small change on a webpage you're viewing. It might be a few words here or there. You might notice an out-of-place reference to Martian colonies in the middle of a NY Times article on the financial stimulus bill. Or you might find yourself reading dialogue between mermaids seamlessly integrated into the middle of a wikipedia article on thermodynamics. What you're seeing is a story insinuating itself into your daily life.

Whenever you do see that thing, that phrase that doesn't make sense in context, click on it. If it's Tumbarumba's doing, then that fragment will expand into another sentence, then another, and another. Eventually, the story will take over whatever page you're viewing and replace its content with the story's, leaving the design and layout as close to the original as possible. To switch back to whatever you were reading before, just use the Tumbarumba menu in your browser.

I obviously like this extension, but to be honest, I rarely read an entire story. I really love the subtle intrusion it makes and the way it forces me now to read everything more carefully. Whenever I come across something with odd syntax or apparent non-sequiturs, I look a little more closely, hovering my cursor to see if it will yield into a story. I even find myself shifting into that mental category of meta-reading when I'm looking at printed text. Once, I actually caught myself unconsciously dragging a finger across a line of words to see, I suppose, if they would transform before my eyes. (They didn't).

So try it for yourself, and see if it makes your world a little more surreal. At the very least, it encourages you to take a second look.