The Dream That Came Undreamed

Ever since my childhood, I have wanted to write fiction.  And, specifically, I have wanted to write in the field of science fiction and fantasy.  People tell me that I am a good writer.  Unfortunately, though, I am not a good storyteller.  Successful fiction writers are filled with story ideas just waiting to burst out.  I almost never get any ideas for stories, and on the rare occasions that I do get ideas they are often more suited to a visual medium like television than to the written word.  Thus, although I would like to write, I generally have nothing to write.  

The one exception to this problem comes from my dreams.  Every so often I will have a dream that arranges itself into a narrative, or suggestions of a narrative.  

Years ago, perhaps fifteen or more years ago, I had one such dream.  In the dream, I was in eighth grade.  Another boy and I decided to skip class and go to Las Vegas, which was conveniently located next to the school.  There we saw a sign saying that on New Year’s Eve, a spacecraft high above the city would release two million ears of corn, which would burn up in the atmosphere, creating an artificial meteor shower.

An artificial meteor shower lighting up the Las Vegas sky on New Year’s Eve seemed like a good basis for a science fiction story.  I carried the concept around in my head for a long time, and a few years ago I started trying to develop a narrative around the concept.  (One immediate change that I made was to turn the ears of corn to grains of sand.)  But since I had a lot of other things to do, and very little self-discipline, I never got very far with the story.  

Then about a year ago I came upon an article on the internet reporting that a Japanese company is planning to implement an artificial meteor shower in the Hiroshima area in early 2019.  (A more recent account places the meteor shower in early 2020.)  Instead of ears of corn or grains of sand, specially-concocted pellets will be used to provide multiple colors.  

Normally one considers a dream coming true to be a good thing.  But in this case, my dream is robbed of its prescience, and thus of its effectiveness as a science fiction story. 

And so ideas become rarer still.

Harvestmen Eating Blueberry Muffins

I went camping a few weeks ago with some friends from high school. (We were at Burke Lake in Fairfax County, so it wasn’t exactly the deep wilderness.)  When night fell, our campsite was swarmed by harvestmen.  The next morning, we found dozens of them crawling over our tents.  But what was even odder was that during the night harvestmen were crawling over the picnic table, apparently looking to eat our leftovers.  

(I should note here that harvestmen are arachnids of the order Opiliones.  They differ from spiders in lacking a constriction between the two body segments, and having one pair of eyes rather than three or four  pairs.  An alternate, and probably more common, name is “daddy longlegs”.  I am using “harvestmen” here, because it is simpler, and because I am unsure of the plural form for “daddy longlegs”.  Is it just “daddy longlegs”, or “daddy longlegses”, or is it “daddies longlegs”, in the tradition of “courts-martial” and the Latin “patresfamilias”?) 

The harvestmen seemed particularly to like the blueberry muffins.  

Here are some pictures.

Harvestmen are known to be omnivores and scavengers, which would leave them well-suited to consume human-produced foodstuffs.  My casual internet searching provided two mentions of harvestmen eating human food, here (“One in a terrarium will survive on tidbits of bread, butter and fatty meat as well.”) and here (“A harvestman will eat little ants on a crumb of bread and then eat part of the crumb.“).  I have to wonder if the reason that harvestmen were common at the campsite was that they had become accustomed to scavenging the remains of campers’ meals.  

The Maize Maze

Autumn is the time for corn mazes, at least in areas that, unlike this one, still have agriculture.  This prompted me to think that if corn mazes were planted in countries where corn (Zea mays) is known as “maize”, then corn mazes would be “maize mazes”.  

And I thought that maybe I could write a short blog entry about that. 

But then I did a little very basic research (i. e. Wikipedia) and discovered that corn mazes in the United Kingdom are indeed known as “maize mazes”, which surprised me, because I had assumed that corn mazes were a uniquely American phenomenon.  

At this point, I can only remark that if British Prime Minister Theresa May were to construct her own corn maze, it would be May’s maize maze.

It Started With “R”

Following somewhat on the theme of an earlier post . . . 

Months ago I was walking in a park.  A band composed of three teenage boys was playing a song that I recognized.  I recognized it as “What I Like About You” by the Kinks.

After a minute or two it came to me that I had recognized wrongly.  The song sounds like the Kinks, but it’s not.  It was recorded in a later era, by a band in the Eighties.  

My next thought was that I had heard “What I Like About You” by the Replacements. 

But again I was wrong; I realized that it was not by the Replacements, although they are considered an iconic Eighties alternative band.  I felt duly embarrassed by my error.  

As I walked along, I continued to ponder.

Was it the Refreshments?

No, the Refreshments did the King of the Hill theme song, and that song about giving your ID card to the border guard.

Was it the Rembrandts? 

No, the Rembrandts did the Friends theme song.  

I spent the rest of the day thinking, but I couldn’t remember who sang “What I Like About You”.  Not remembering bothered me.  I’ve been hearing the song for most of my life, and I used to know who the band was, and I’m a music snob, so I should know these things.  Finally, late at night, I gave up on trying to figure it out, and checked the internet.  

It wasn’t the Replacements, or the Refreshments, or the Rembrandts . . . it was the Romantics.  

But perhaps you can understand my confusion.

I’m Running out of August

I’d like to post on the blog two or three times a week, and I have a million billion trillion things about which I’d like to blog.  But I just don’t have the self-discipline to do it.  Honestly, I barely have the self-discipline to hold down a job.  

The one blogging commitment that I try to keep is to put up one post per month. Now August is almost over without a post.  I guess that I should post a picture or something.  

I’ll go with: debris floating in the Potomac. 

Strange Flower

I came across this very weird flower growing wild in Arlington.  I have no idea what it is.  (And by “it”, I mean the flower, not Arlington.  I am well aware of what Arlington is.)

You’ll definitely want to click to enlarge. 

The Greta van Problem

I have to wonder if confused people sometimes walk up to Greta van Susteren on the street and accuse her of totally ripping off Led Zeppelin.