Jaw-dropping · 12:32pm Jul 2nd, 2012
I don't know how much sense it makes to post this here, but I fear if I do not tell someone, I may burst. Besides, empty text boxes call to me. They demand to be filled with words. Worst yet, they rarely remain sated for long.
So. Anyway. Today I saw a man demolishing a house. That's not the jaw-dropping bit, you understand, perfectly normal thing. It's an old house, a bit crooked, a bit broken-down. It needs to come down for something new to come up. Fair enough. It's the place this fellow was standing while he was working, taking a whacking great sledgehammer to the roof joists.
You're thinking he was standing directly under, in risk of life and limb?
Nope. He was standing on the roof itself. Fully twenty feet into the air, he was endeavoring to to shatter the only thing keeping him there.
Yeah. That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen someone do and that includes time spent in chemistry lab classes where I've seen people treat things like life-threateningly huge slabs of sodium metal or fuming nitric acid with insufficient respect.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen someone do and I have cable television..
P.S.
Not that anyone should care that much, but I'm nearing completion on my very first story -- a comedic one-shot intended to be a sort of trial-run. It is, even as I write this, under the tender loving attention of my pre-reader, a gentleman and scholar of great probity and, I am told, exceptional cruelty to insufficiently awesome words. I confidently expect a missive questioning my right to own and operate a keyboard.
I remember doing a construction zone safety course a few years ago. Some of the things they taught you there were just asinine, basic stuff (wear a helmet, stay aware, don't touch wet concrete with bare hands, etc)... but the fact that it was there at all meant someone, somewhere, needed the heads up.
You have encountered one such person.
PS
Looking forward to the tale!
To quote Spike, this won't end well.
Looking forward to the story! If DH doesn't eat it for breakfast, that is. (You don't have to confirm or deny the identity of your beta, it's merely that the description sounds familiar.)
207397
I know why all appliances have all those "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO COOK, SEASON AND EAT THIS ELECTRIC CAN OPENER" stickers. It's this guy. Real world's answer to Wile E. Coyote.
207432
I must deny it, at least for the sake of honesty. DH isn't my pre-reader for three very good reasons:
1. DH pre-reading my story[1] would take time away from DH re-writing Nocturne. This would be a crime against equianity
2. I would need a gall transfusion[2] before I'd have enough to ask device heretic of all people to look at my story. I only ever asked the current pre-reader[3] because he essentially offered himself up for the position in an act of supreme self-sacrifice. An act, incidentally that's certain to be worth a commemorative plaque or possibly a statue once they find the poor fellow dead with my ravings clutched in a death-grip awash with blood and red ink in about equal measure.
3. DH scares me more than any man living or dead. I fear that if I were to send him the story, the answer would be something like "INADEQUATE. KILL YOURSELF." Only it wouldn't come via PM, oh no, it would be on my front door. Written in blood. And I would obey.
[1] Well, I say story. Perhaps more accurate would be "my poor brain's last semi-coherent screams before years of abuse caused it to melt and leak out of my ears". Accurate, but doesn't quite roll of the tongue.
[2] Don't think about this concept too hard. I certainly didn't.
[3] Dagger Tongue who is indeed rich with probity and laden with well-meaning cruelty. Also the co-author and chief literary sadist of On Wings of Change. I should have named him, but I liked the "man of mystery" vibe my original posting gave off.
The only thing stupider that I can think of offhand was something I did myself, using only my lack of common sense, a bag of peyote, several miles of desert, and no water. It's too embarrassing to describe, which is why I'm writing a story about it.
"Not that anyone should care that much, but I'm nearing completion on my very first story."
And we, the proud, the few, the followers of GoH, shall be ready for it.
207432 "To quote Spike, this won't end well."
To quote Skywriter quoting Princess Celestia, "I cannot foresee any problems with that."
207550
Well, I did exaggerate for effect. A bit. I don't actually believe you would use eldritch[1] powers to compel me to kill myself. That being said, your user page used to advise against picking you as a pre-reader on pain of terrible rending death amidst gnashing teeth. Sharks were mentioned.
To be entirely, embarrassingly honest (the Internet is good for that sort of thing) I hold you in some measure of awe. As such I'd be embarrassed to send you my work unbidden. Mind you, if you are volunteering for that bitter work, I'd be happy to sample your temporally transcendent scorn with some later story. Provided, of course, Dagger Tongue doesn't convince me to take up a vow of silence and spend the rest of my life as a Stylite[2] monk.
[1] Yes, Firefox spellchecker that so IS a word. And since I have your attention so is sorcerous, sortilege and batrachian. Begone with your red squiggly lines, BEGONE!
[2] That's it Firefox spellchecker! We are no longer friends.
207577
I make no promises. I do have a splendid eulogy all lined-up if he should...succumb. Of course, someone ought to pre-read it...
Uh-oh.
207580
You few, you happy few, you band of bronies?
Y'know victory at Agincourt notwithstanding, a goodly number of people who heard that speech died. It is unknown if that 'gentled their condition'. Presumably not.
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>I said these things to stave off random requests for this service. Please believe me when I say this only increased their volume.
Well, it worked on me, if that's any consolation.
>For example, I was recently asked to read a fic someone sent randomly, and would have ignored it save that the gdoc link was
>included already (which I think is rude in and of itself). The story's premise involved Pinkie Pie accepting the cosmic burden of
>keeping Discord amused in her dreams to prevent him breaking out of his stone prison, but alas, she has fallen in love with him
>since it turns out (ugh) he is actually just misunderstood (ugh ugh ugh).
Yech. I'll buy just about any clever reinterpretation of canon out there, but I draw a line at misunderstood!Discord. No. Hell, no.
>The reason it was sent to me is because there was Twilestia in...because when Pinkie reveals that she's fallen for Discord,
>and he for her, Twilight explains that unconventional relationships can work out just fine...
>after all, she's been sleeping with the princess since she was about 12 years old.
...and there goes all that faith in humanity I had stored up. Damn.
i.imgur.com/7GPKZ.jpg
Please tell me that the author woke up to find "YOU HAVE FAILED AT EVERYTHING. DIE." written on the ceiling just above their bed.
207727
Is it wrong to be curious about your own gossip? Somehow, it strikes me as somehow perverse.
207940
I thought that...whatever dark force[1] snuffed out the author's existence, so onerous to the universe in general and ponydom in particular, would have wanted to savor that horrified moment of realization.
Unless of course...you can control dreams...
Crap.
You can control dreams, can't you?
[1] See, nothing actionable there at all.