4 replies to this topic

[Callista]

We're a collective of writers. Our imaginations make mundane situations hilarious, terrifying, sometimes even both at once. Ordinary life becomes something to poke at. So I propose that when something happens - something strange, something we catch - we jot it down here, for our fellow writers to (perhaps) work into their imaginings.

For example. Just a minute ago, I was in my kitchen. I looked out the window and there was a young man, my age or a little older, bent over a plastic shopping cart. The cart was full of fire extinguishers. This is not a common sight. So I want him as he pushes the cart away, off to the office. There's a fat, yellow, curlicue cord leading from the top of his cart to a silver tank at the bottom. He passed the swimming man, the one who swims from 9 to 9:30. He passed some old guy getting out of his car. No one looked or even really seemed to know he existed. I realize now that he was probably filling up the tanks, but the moment he ditched the cart and sauntered, hands deep in his pockets, into the office, I was thinking, holy crap, he's going to blow us up!

Yes, I'm an American. *sigh*

A quick google told me that yes, you can use fire extinguishers as an explosive, but they have to be punctured first. Logic settled back into my cerebral cortex and I thought, huh, wouldn't it be funny if he DID try some kind of terrorist attack? Why now? Why the office? Hmm....

Your friendly neighborhood paranoid freak,
- Calli

[Thoth]

Let me get this straight. You want us to post personal weirdnesses on the forum as grist for each other's mill? Don't people have blogs for that?

Okay. Fine. A weirdness. Let's see.

Back in 2005 I lost my right leg. (Not a joke. A true story.) The hospital said that I had to go to rehab to learn how to use the prosthesis. I said sure. There's a rehab center a short distance from where I lived and it specialized in just this sort of thing. They said fine. A day later they said that the insurance company wanted to send me to a different center that was affiliated with the one I wanted but it was far from my home and I'd have to live there for a month. The night before my discharge from the hospital I had this weird dream that I was a Viking in a sword fight and the bad guy chopped off my leg before I killed him I told this story to the nurse and she said that amputation dreams are common among recent amputees. So the ambulance comes and they take me away to my new home for the next month. But the ride just seems to be going on forever. I ask one of the attendants where this rehab center is. He says it's upstate and we are just entering the town. He then points out the sign to me. It says: Welcome To Valhalla.

You're such a Leo.
-Thoth (Aries)

[Callista]

Thoth, on Nov 29 2007, 04:18 PM, said:

It says: Welcome To Valhalla.

Oooh....

My best friends are Aries. Flaky bunch, but I love them. Rawr.

The Leo'st Leo,
- Calli

[pjl]

I thought all writers were paranoid

I'd go so far as to say that after awhile the writer's brain can take any mundane event, or extraordinary event and project a series of future events to make a whole. It's the 'what-if' principle in full effect.

One of my recent stories was a result of just such a thing. You've heard the saying 'strangers talk only of the weather', well I was riding a bus and I heard the exact same conversation several times with the same sentiment. -- I'm' sick of this cold, I can't wait for summer. Then I remembered people in the summer saying the exact opposite. My writer brain kicked in -- what if the weather was always constant? What if the weather was 'just right' all the time, what would we complain about then?

A couple of hours later I had completed a slender little tale about a weather engineer on a moon colony wishing for a change in the weather.

PJ

[nadinbrzezinski]

Well let me give you one that helped me understand something about rites of passage.

So I have not been a good girl and when I finally got to the dentist I found out I needed a crown. So we are well in the middle of the process, and my dentist went to a convention. And murphy being murphy the temp came off. Anybody even distantly familiar of the process to put a crown in?

In case you don't, the doctor needs to sand the enamel off, so they can fit a new crown on it. Now that means that the rather sensitive under layer (dentine) is exposed. Not to worry, they fit you with a temo... which in my case failed last Sunday. So for the last week or so I have been going around with a Nekiid tooth, as my hubby put it.

Here is where the insight comes.

You all have seen those wonderful National Geographic specials with rites of passage that include chipping and otherwise doing damage to teeth of young boys, haven't you? I usually go, OUCH and now even more... but... as the week has passed the sensitivity is going down, ever so slowly. So this unwanted experience has told me that yes, if I put a similar rite of passage into a fantasy novel, it is more than survivable and our kids teeth will adapt, in most cases.

By the way, that tale that opened this thread, kudos for paying attention to things out of place, but truth be told your chances of being caught in a terrorist attack are far lower than getting hit by lightning. That is even in places where Terrorism is a real problem,(aka England during the Troubles for example). So we really need to keep these things in perspective.

Yep former EMS worker, and trust me, I have been in some really nasty situations, probably why the attempt to frighten me by our government is not working... then again I have the very fatalistic attitude of if this is my time to go, so be it. Then again, been shot at since the war on drugs is a real war, near real bombs, near industrial explosions, and more car crashes in busy highways (with drunks on them) than I care to remember. At times I joke that buying a lottery ticket is a waste of my money. I've used my luck up. But the reality is what I stated, your chances of being caught in a terrorist attack are extremely low. And I offer this as a reality check. Oh and fire extinguishers make lousy bombs... (HAZMAT training) but great missiles, why the puncturing part is relevant. The chemicals (and I am assuming your office uses a C class fire extinguisher) are under high pressures, and why you should have your extinguishers hydrostatically checked every five years, if I remember correctly, if not more often. Other possible missiles due to system failure, Oxygen tanks, welding tanks, your barbeque tank... those actually make nice booms. when they go off and that does happen every so often, so be careful when you use yours next Summer. Just a note from the trenches.