It has been a long time since I’ve brought Captain Semantic and General Pedantry out to play and they do love an outing, where they can play and frolic all within pre-agreed and consensual boundaries. Today, feels like they need to get involved, just because the daily prompt today raises so many questions, it would unfair to keep them penned in all day. Continue reading Someone Else’s Island
Yet more time away from the blog not commenting on stuff in a random and I hope fairly interesting way, but I find myself in the rather unenviable position of not really being arsed to do anything. Pro-activity is not really my buzzword at the moment.
Having said all that, I’ve found a few minutes out of my day to write something. I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be or where it’s going to go, but at least it’s something.
“We all have that one eccentric relative who always says and does the strangest things. In your family, who’s that person, and what is it that earned him/her that reputation?”
Right, well today’s daily prompt is pretty interesting, so much so that I’m going to do it even though I’m a day late.
“You get to spend a day inside your favorite movie. Tell us which one it is — and what happens to you while you’re there.”
Right, well my favourite film is Silent Hill, which for all those not aware of it is a kind of horror movie based on the famous survival horror video games of the same name. The games are cram packed full of bizarre imagery, and the film isn’t any different. Continue reading Living in Silent Hill?
So, it appears that astral physics and temporal mechanics have been added to the omnipotent array of skills in the Daily Prompts’ arsenal.
“Good news — another hour has just been added to every 24-hour day (don’t ask us how. We have powers). How do you use those extra sixty minutes?”
I wasn’t supposed to ask why but I do wonder how they did it. I guess the only way this could be done would be by slowing down the earth’s rotation by 1/24th, or 70mph to make each rotation last 25 hours rather than 24, though I’m sure the consequences would be monumental across the globe, tidal shifts, earthquakes and so on. Continue reading 25 Hours? No Change
So what is today’s daily prompt?
“Congrats! You’re the owner of a new time machine. The catch? It comes in two models, each traveling one way only: the past OR the future. Which do you choose, and why?”
Ah, I do like a hypothetical question. It is hypothetical right? I haven’t actually got a time-machine waiting for me? Figured not.
As with any time-travel based question I need to ask a few questions about time itself, as the responses will likely affect my answer. Continue reading Temporal Quandry
“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” — Allen Ginsberg
Do you follow Ginsberg’s advice — in your writing and/or in your everyday life?
An interesting and thought provoking daily prompt today.
Before I start it is worth specifying that in this context, madness is to the level of zany, or dare I say it weird. I’m not talking about bona fide mental health problems, which are a whole other kettle of fish of which the sufferer often has very little control of.
So should you hide the madness or let it all show? Continue reading Howl at the Moon
“To be, to have, to think, to move — which of these verbs is the one you feel most connected to? Or is there another verb that characterizes you better?”
For any regular visitor of this blog, this is a mind-stonkingly easy question from the Daily Prompt that any of you should be able to answer. I’m a thinker, one of the great thinkers you might say. Though not ‘great’ by way of what I think, but because of the sheer overwhelming crappy volume of things I think about.
If you need some proof then have a read at a few of these…
You see, the amount of sheer unadulterated gobbledygook that crosses my mind on a daily basis is unparalleled. Well, at least I hope it is. I hate to think there’s some other poor sod wondering the planet with a head like mine.
Thinking is, almost by definition a good thing. Every action has a thought behind it, yet I can say without doubt that not every thought has an action behind it. In fact if I was to plot the question as a pie chart it would look something like this.
The difficulty with thoughts is that you rarely know if they are going to help you avoid bad experiences or block you from new ones. You know where you are with actions. You take the action to run across a busy road, you’ll find out pretty darn quickly if it was the wrong thing to do as a juggernaut slams into you at 60 miles an hour. A thought that stops you walking down a certain street, is that going to stop you being mugged or meeting your one true love.
Imagine if there was some way to receive a report on your thoughts, something like this.
“Mr Franklin,
Please find attached your Thought Report for September 2014.
Number of thoughts = 63,456,734
Thought to Activity Conversion rate = 12%
No. of incidents avoided by thought = 15 (Breakdown here)
No. of opportunities missed due to thinking= 76 (Breakdown here)
Primary Monthly Emotion = Paranoia (Breakdown here)
(If you wish to stop receiving paranoid thoughts, please contact our customer services.)”
Of course, the thought has just occurred to me (which of course it would) that the prospect of someone interrogating your mind so thoroughly may just have the teeny-tiniest of downsides. Though if the report was just created out of the ether, with no-one other than myself involved, I think it would be very useful.
“You’ve just been named the casting director of your favourite television show (or movie franchise). The catch: you must replace the entire cast — with your friends and family. Who gets which role?”
As a writer this is something that I think many of us like to do. Rewrite movies and TV programs we’re watching, as well as recasting anyone who doesn’t hit our impossible expectations.
In this case the biggest difficulty I have is that I tend to watch an awful lot of Sci-fi and Fantasy stuff, and apart from Lost in Space they don’t really go with the whole family unit thing. Plus, when was the last time I actually did what the daily prompt said? They’re just a guide anyway, right?
Well, I’m going to flip this around and think of it this way.
“You’ve just been named the casting director of a new television show (or movie franchise) about your friends and family. Which actors would you get to play each role?”
“In a reversal of Big, the Tom Hanks classic from the 80s, your adult self is suddenly locked in the body of a 12-year-old kid. How do you survive your first day back in school?”
Right, well as with most of the daily prompts, I do like to mire about in the semantics. My guess is that the situation would play out in the opposite way to that of the Tom Hanks film, Big. Basically, the year or time wouldn’t change, but I would exist as I did when I was 12 rather than the fantastic and not at all creaky age of 34. Continue reading Small?
I’ve been watching a lot of The Walking Dead lately, desperately trying to catch up on the episodes I haven’t seen, and I’ve been playing the iOS game of the Walking Dead as well, both series. So, you could say I have zombies on the brain at the moment, which may be the first of many zombie-esque puns I will inflict on you, and it probably explains yesterday’s flash fiction. This post could be considered kinda gross at times, so you’ve been warned. Continue reading Zombies? Crap!
Keyboard Pizza 