In preparation for NaNoWriMo I’m doing various writing exercises. I will write one paragraph of two-hundred words or less about anything you suggest in the comments below.
GO.
Erich: “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Discuss”
I’m verklempt. Twalk amongst yourselves.
This ‘Coffee Talk” quote was loosely based on a quote from Voltaire, “Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.” There is no way more than ten percent of the SNL audience had any idea of that, however watching the clip reveals raucous laughter nonetheless. I’m guessing it’s because they tell people when to laugh, how hard and for how long. It would make sense too because SNL has really sucked for the pas few years and yet the laughter quotient of the audience has stayed the same. Perhaps there’s a sort of emptiness to it that the early (funny) years of SNL didn’t have. How long will it be before they just switch to a laugh track? ‘Coffee Talk’, however, will always be funny.
Jaime: “science.”
Did you know that there’s a really good chance there are anywhere from four to an infinite number of other dimensions? That one-sixteenth of an ounce of neutron star would weigh one hundred million tons? That we’re all made out of stars and that eventually, we’ll be stars again? That there was once a shark big enough to eat whales? That every human has millions of symbiotes? If you put a pizza on the surface of Venus it will cook in nine seconds. The Haiti earthquake was so strong it changed the axis of the planet. Every day, I read about a new theory or discovery that sends chills down my spine. Sometimes I’m pissed I’m not immortal because I won’t get to see our first Mars base, or the first human clone. Or the first dinosaur clone! Science is awesome.
Juno: “Death by tickling”
Being a forensics-minded person when it comes to anything related to human death, the first thing I thought about when introduced to the concept of death-by-tickling was “how on earth would the medical examiner come to that as the cause of death?” Assuming that someone wouldn’t willingly be tickled to the point that they died, one must assume that the victim was bound somehow. Perhaps there would be other post mortem signs of tickling – light cutaneous reddening on the torso or feet suggestive of finger tracks, maybe. But the most unsettling thought is this: what if, at the moment the victim dies, their faces are frozen into a massive, open-mouthed wide eyed expression of simultaneous elation and sheer terror? It doesn’t seem like it would be possible because of the onset and eventual release of rigor mortis but…you never know.
