Enter The Plankton
If I’m lucky!
Spoiler alert: I’m not exactly the world’s greatest conversationalist.
For the curious, the opening line above is an example of my patented Start-By-Telling-Them-How-You-Suck approach to writing. You can buy a pamphlet describing the technique – and much, much more – for only three easy payments of $19.99. -Ed.
As the holidays cascade down upon us like a perfect storm, I’m already anticipating how I’ll surf that wave and/or navigate the complex maze-like quagmire of quicksand in quixotic fashion.
The holidays means lots of group settings of social interactions. Historically I do not fare well in these and opt instead to spend my time studying in minute detail the nearest potted plant. I’m bringing my magnifying glass just in case.
Since I remain ever hopeful, however, I’ve been role-playing various stratagems in my mind that might increase my odds of getting the occasional word in edgewise. Or I could give up in advance and just play the lotto.
A normal conversation consists of the following:
Person A: Me.
Person B: No, me!
Person C: Bloody hell to both of you. Me, me, me!
Person D: Did I ever tell you about me?
Person E: Did you say something?
Person F: … Apple’s tri-tone sound …
Person A: Ahem. You weren’t listening. I say again …
Every once in a while as the conversation morphs dynamically through these shifting realities, I may actually have something interesting to add. I hate it when that happens.
Person A: Yeah, there are a lot of elephants in Thailand
…. 20 minutes and 420 topics later I finally awkwardly interrupt and take my dream shot …
Me: An elephant sat on my head once.
Everyone: What the fuck are you talking about?!
Yeah. About that potted plant.I’ve heard that one thing that helps make you seem interesting is to ask questions about the other person. Especially if you can appear thoughtful and fake sincerity in the process. If successful, your only job is to tlean back, stay silent, let their mouth do all of the work, and celebrate a job well done.
I’m looking forward to trying this out. To that end I have prepared some questions in advance.
My only worry is that the conversation will run through a googolplex of permutations before I get my first chance to speak. That would be bad and could go down like this:
Person A: So, can you tell us what’s new with your son?
Me: Eeeeiiiiii!
… swift kick to the nards …
Me: I was gonna ask that question!!
Person B: Someone dial up the whambulance!
Lastly, sometimes the floor is occasionally dished my way. If and when that happens I should be ready. Usually this is a provactive attempt to surprise me so much as to induce heart attack. Assuming I survive long enough, I usually succumb to the intense pressure. The stress of filling that space is simply too high. I usually stammer out something like, “Goo goo gah gah.” Then everyone shrugs, wonders why the hell they bothered to give me a chance, and resumes talking about the fractal shapes of their bunions.
Also, something about the spirit of the season and it’s better give than receive but I can’t remember any of that crap right now. I’ve been much too busy with the pre-conversation planning.
I just hope I’m not over-thinking it. Perhaps I should limit my dreams to the Ribbon of Participation.
I have a voice: Twittering whispers to myself
I added an app to my iPod Touch called “Dragon Dictation.” It’s free so at least I know I didn’t overpay. This app converts speech to text. So now I can talk to my iPod (which feels a little weird), have my voice converted to text, then easily send that text as a tweet.
The other night I was at a restaurant and decided to take it for a spin. Let’s see how it did.
Tweet: Hey Twitter this is my voice converted to text. How exciting
Analysis: Not too shabby. That’s what I said, although I’m pretty sure I implied a period at the end of the sentence.
Tweet: Hi text max’s voice tweet from a rest salon marvel at my greatness
Analysis: This is so mangled I can’t remember my exact words. But I do know that “rest salon” was supposed to be “restaurant.”
Tweet: There’s a guy here at the restaurant with the laptop will ask for his e-mail address so I can tweet
Analysis: This one is almost decipherable. It was actually: “There’s a guy here at the restaurant with a laptop. I will ask for his e-mail address so I can tweet him.” I was feeling pretty damn high tech and social at the time.
Test: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Nailed it.
Test: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country
Nailed it again.
Tweet: I sure hope you’ll enjoy the best tweets to you by dragon dictation. Peace out
Analysis: This was the end of my test. It think it was “you’ve enjoyed” but I’m not sure.
Conclusion: The app worked fairly well. I noticed that it works by recording audio then processing it. The longer you talk, the more you record, and the longer the processing time. It was a bit annoying it didn’t keep up in real time.
Overall, I recommend this app at the price of free. It’s a good value for making your tweets look like they came from someone with English as a second language and/or an elementary school dropout.
Do you want to pet my dragon?
RAWR!
I just had a great idea. I’ve always wanted to write a screenplay and I think I finally have a concept unique and interesting enough to justify a treatment!
This is pretty exciting for me. If you’re willing to read on a bit, perhaps you could be kind enough to let me know if I’m on the right track.
It’ll be a movie about dragons. You may not have heard about these mythical creatures yet, but I’ll bet you will soon. If my efforts are successful it won’t be long until “dragon” is a household word.
A dragon is generally reptilian or snake-like, winged, has the ability of flight, and can breath fire. Yeah, I predict these creatures will be fascinating to unsuspecting audiences.
Although dragons can be found in the mythology of Asian cultures, they were also present in Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, too. In fact, the English word “dragon” is derived from a Greek work that means “dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake.”
I haven’t fully worked out a plot yet, but I’m pretty sure it’ll work something like this. There will be a land where dragons are hated, feared and hunted. In that land we will find out hero, most likely a young person, a criminal, or some other form of outcast from mainstream society.
This hero will, at some point, by chance, encounter a dragon. The dragon might be freshly hatched from an egg, perhaps even bonding with our hero. Or the dragon might be older. For super special drama the dragon might even be the last of his kind. (But this admittedly might be taking things too far.)
During that initial encounter things will, at first, go mostly as expected. There will be dramatic explosions of fire, courage, daring, etc. Yada yada yada. One or both of our main characters might even be injured. But at some point something unusual will happen and the two will decide not to finish each other off. One or both of them may realize that the propaganda they’ve been fed about the other just might not be true.
That’s the end of Act I.
Act II primarily deals with boring shit where the two get to learn allegedly interesting and fascinating things about the other. I won’t bore you with these details. Suffice it to say they hang out a lot, go on some mildly interesting side adventures, and, through this process, grow to become lifelong friends. Blech.
Act III is where it all comes to a head. Just when the two heroes are so close that they are about to take things to a whole new level of physicality (if you know what I mean), something tragic will happen. Suddenly the two will have to drop all of their fun frolicking because they’ll be in a world of shit. Some big bad guy will be doing Something Bad. Perhaps it will be a hunt for the dragon that we all now love. Or perhaps someone will be trying to take over the human’s village, stab all the people with swords, etc. Whatever the mechanism, it will arouse the audience, inducing anger and a desire for resolution.
That’s when our outcasts, the two heroes, will ride/fly in like John Wayne and save the day.
The end.
Pretty good, eh? Think I can talk Hollywood into it? My vision, if successful, will be that someday we’ll get a movie like this ever other month or so. I think the possibilities are endless for minor variations on this same theme.
I know this idea is so damn unique it’s almost mindblowing that I was even able to come up with it. I admit right now I had to resort to LSD. That really fuels the creative process.
So, that’s it. That’s the idea. Now bring on the criticisms. Don’t worry, I can take it.
RAWR!
Shouts from the Abyss 
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