I have an old friend who gets email updates from the absurd. I get sale flyers from Lamps Plus because I bought a ceiling fan on blow out years ago. He gets mini-novels as news stories. I confess to having used pieces of things he’s sent me, and embarked on a weekly series a year or so ago where I’d publish something he’d sent me as story starter fluid.
It’s not 2020, y’all. It’s just people. We live in an incredibly obscene world. I say that because yesterday I published a follow-up to the lopped-off heads investigation from Russian Interference. Here’s where it came from.
Then there’s this from Dallas. Jag Booty and Wee Wee, the murderous butt injectors? You can’t make this shit up.
Okay, so she had an affair. This is how you deal with it? Seems to be a sort of fad in India these days. Think of the Law and Order episode where the lawyer tries to get the husband a light sentence for diminished capacity because, your Honor, only an idiot would behave this way.
See what I mean? There’s a Welsh crime drama, 35 Days, where it opens with a body then rewinds 35 days to play out how it happened. One could start with any of these headlines and write the lead up to death by butt injections, greedy child, or angry husband. With a cast of whack jobs that would take Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, and Irvine Welsh combined, all on acid, to even get close to. So I ask you, why bother with fiction? My answer is that fiction, like a lot of stand up comedy and music, takes the edge off the pain of reality, removes it a step to make it more digestible. I mean the song “Hey, Joe” could easily have been a (reasonably commonplace) page six newspaper article.
The big question here – Is fiction a fallacy, a coping mechanism? Because life is way stranger.
The two severed head stories were from the Daily Mail. The death by butt injection from Fox 4 News, Dallas.
I’m gonna go with “therapy”.
My main focus when I write is to put my characters into a world where nice guys at least finish in the middle of the pack instead of last. No one reads my drivel, but it’s at least therapeutic!
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I resemble that remark. I write fairy tales. Nobody cares but me! Pure escapism. Cheaper than docs or meds. How’s the syrup?
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OMG…I feel like I sure blurb out an update on that. It’s sooo effective, I need to pay another visit and see if they have a “get shit done” syrup to put me back into play in the morning. I’m sleeping 10 hours on syrup nights!
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It’s like Anthony Weiner. If that had been a fictional story, it would be pretty stupid. Or stupider than in real life. But you get what I mean.
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Indeed. Particularly with a name like Weiner.
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You’re right. You can’t make this stuff up, but keep trying.
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I think I put some people in a room and say okay, Brad sent me a couple of severed heads, now what? And we improv with that plus whatever I’ve read recently news wise or have stored somewhere like the Wrecking Crew bit to riff on. Crazy.
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There’s a lot of weird stuff on the news… guess it’s cherry picked though. Most people are only a bit bizarre. Except republicans. I do wonder what the point of fiction is, although I write it. Maybe to explore with the imagination places you can’t ordinarily go. Maybe someone should write a novel about the butt injectors.
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