Sometimes when writers are working, our minds enter this strange place where reality is a bit distorted.
Me: Canadian High Society.
Google: Canada High Society, a community of cannabis connoisseurs.
Me, very tired and misreading: A community of cannibal connoisseurs? In Canada? They are so polite, why in the world would they allow cannibalism… Is this even legal? Do people donate corpses to them after death? … Oh.
Friend: Could you read this and tell me if it’s too violent?
Me: … Yes.
Friend: Really?
Me: She cuts her clitoris off.
Friend: Right, so it’s too much?
Friend: A wormhole is a transcendental bijection of the spacetime continuum, an asymptotic projection of the Calabi–Yau manifold manifesting itself in Anti-de Sitter space.
Me: Yes.
Friend: Okay, so I know that in theory it connects two distant points in space.
Me: Yes.
Friend: But do you know what that bijection word salad actually means?
Me: No idea.
Friend: I have read three articles on physics and I don’t know either. I researched this all day, my brain hurts, I am tired, I wrote no words, and I still don’t have enough knowledge to bullshit so it would seem like I know what the hell I am talking about. Why am I doing this to myself?
Friend: So he throws him into a wall, and then the wall breaks, and the werewolf is like right on top of him, and my guy is on his back, and I think he should do that thing where you throw sand into the opponent’s eyes.
Me: Aha.
Friend: Do you think when the wall breaks, there might be some sand? Like would the mortar between the bricks crumble enough to make some sand?
Me: The wall is brick and it breaks?
Friend: Yes.
Me: Why doesn’t he just throw a brick at the werewolf?
Friend: …
Friend: …
Friend: OMG. I need coffee. Like a gallon of coffee.
Me: So what do you think?
Friend: I think you were tired.
Me: …
Friend: It reads like a movie script. What was he feeling here? And here? And over here? I am really invested in this couple and you made me so frustrated, I want to shake you until their feelings fall out!
Me: I’ve read it, it’s really good, there is just one thing.
Friend: Yes?
Me: Is the heroine diabetic, because she constantly wants to go to the bathroom?
Friend: ….
Me: It’s just that the need to pee is mentioned six times in the first 50K.
Friend: ….
Me: …
Friend: I had to meet the deadline, so I locked myself in my office with a giant coffee and wouldn’t leave no matter what until I made the word quota for the day.
maybe the home used to be infested with rodents…and then when the wall breaks, the hero could throw rat poop instead of sand and/or bricks? Sigh, we are renovating our new-to-us home. took down ceiling dry wall due to a leak in the upstairs bathroom, a ton of dried rat poop came raining down. home-ownership is fun…
Honestly, if someone were thrown into a brick wall hard enough to break it, the trauma would probably kill him on impact.
Lol interesting friends and dialogue. I bet you rarely get bored.
I love this. My question is: Do you several interesting friends or one AMAZING friend?!?!
Thank you for making me laugh out loud. It rarely happens. You are the best!
I love the writer’s POV!
You may not remember this, but about 2 years ago, you were standing next to me in my kitchen, helping me prepare dinner (I think I always put you on chopping/slicing duty for the fruit salad). I mentioned that I was having a really tough time with this particular scene where the action didn’t exactly make my hero heroic, but I still needed the scene. The alternative you suggested was so perfect and so simple that I think I just stared at you for a moment with a deer-in-the-headlights look before I finally said “I love you. Go sit down with your wine. I’ll finish the salad.” 😀
As a card-carrying cannabis user in Ohio’s medical database, I have never confused “cannabis” for “cannibal”, but as someone who knows someone who desires cannabis and cannot get a medical card, I do know someone who would bite your arm off for some cannabis. Those of us who are legal to use it never give it away or share it, because we could lose our only pain relief that works. I’ve backed up a few times!
But seriously, this entire post was too funny to even say it’s too funny. I can relate to needing to pee and thinking only of that. I can relate to not understanding diddly about wormholes. I can also see cutting off a clitoris as something that used to be practiced regularly in some societies. I also adore the man in the pictures. That outfit, that hair, those eyes! Someone’s photo shoot went very well there.
You two are the gift that keeps on giving. I await your next product with anticipation.
Thank you!
???????????? Amazing post, thank you !!!
My physics teacher was working on his PHD thesis. Physics was the entirety of his world. He was trying to explain E =mc2 (I can’t make the 2 sit in the proper place. It means squared) and dropped a pen on the floor. He said earnestly that there was energy stored in the pen on the floor. I know that I just used an adverb and the word said together but he was very earnest. I managed to hold in my laughter. I stopped trying to understand physics and concentrated on memorizing the equations instead. I got an A and didn’t learn a darned thing. I loved Algebra as it was solving puzzles.
Love when you share these little gems.
A good chuckle to end the day. Thank you.
Thanks for the giggles!
???????? “bijection word salad” ???????????? throw some Cosmic Ranch dressing on it and call it good. ????????????
But Tactical Pocket Sand exists. Why wouldn’t they have a pocket full of it? https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/pocket-sand/
Ilona, I think all your posts on writing could be turned into a book themselves. ????
I so needed this.
I love the last interaction; the subliminal effect of reality on fiction production.
BWAHAHA
I have read the original Mash books. The word “transcendental ” always reminds me of Trapper John saying he was into “transcendental meditation of my navel” Ever since, that word always meant to me as fluff thrown out as a red herring. So the wormhole theory, as above, struck me as fluff thrown out to disguise the fact they did not know what they were talking about. Not a physics person here, so if you told me that a wormhole was a bleach hole connected to a quasar, it you totally believe you. Totally!
BLACKHOLE! Not bleach hole (funny, weird autocorrupt! )
When I tell you my mind was SPINNING with the possibilities ????.
I concluded it was a cosmic bleach that dissolved through the fabric of the universe hehe.
I can fix it for you if you want, but I personally think it’s great ????
Blame Canada
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I think this is one of my favorite posts of all time. Thank you for sharing this! It really helped make me smile.
Thank you, Ilona Andrews for the post. LOL.
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What is the longest amount of time you were able to sit down and write? Does it make it easier that there are two of you writing, like a relay?
your stories are awesome, and so are your friends!
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Now that I have stopped laughing and am coherent…
We were driving my 9 year old daughter to a class when she suddenly said,
“Mommy, aren’t hookers illegal in this state?”
We have to think a moment because we did just move to New York from the Bible belt.
Us…”…….nooo, why do you ask? And how do you know what a hooker is?”
She rolls eyes so hard there is only creepy white, she is 9 and we don’t have a TV.
“The sign on the building said hookers here, reservations expected.”
Me, “Turn the car around?”
We slowly drive by small strip-mall.
Sign at …restaurant? –
TABLE HOOKAS AVAILABLE
reservations accepted
We can’t drive because we are laughing so hard and we can’t tell park from reverse.
Gasping “Have to check her video games….”
Child – arms folded glaring
I can so relate….
Thank you – I needed that!