The Idea Mill #10

It’s time to revisit the Idea Mill. These are news bits that I get pushed to me via RSS feeds and Zite Magazine. I save them in favorites and post them when I get enough to make it interesting. These are the kind of information that spurs my imagination, and occasionally find their way into my fiction.

Okay, the first one I found in a local newspaper, but the rest are online. I hope the copy and paste function works. I may have to edit after it goes live.

Apartment building planned for Fifth and Idaho

 

 

A group of local partners plans to build an 84-bedroom apartment building on the northeast corner of Fifth and Idaho streets, an approximately $11 million project that would replace the vacant Gibson Funeral Home.

 

It’s like these people aren’t even reading my stories. Apparently, these kinds of things really happen. Poltergeist just got got more realistic in my mind.

 

Okay, I was going to leave the stupid dress out. It got so much internet action that it won’t be new to anyone. The question becomes one of what color is it. The real dress is black and blue. Like a bruise.

 

To my eye, it’s gold and white. This article gives some idea of why certain people see it differently. (I’ve always seen the world differently, so no surprise here.) The science behind this has to do with light sources. If you need some reptilian aliens with chameleon like abilities in your science fiction, this might help you explain them. In case you were living under a rock somewhere, there is a photo in the article, along with an explanation, here.

 

This one involves artifacts, phallic artifacts to be exact. It seems they were believed to ward off the evil eye. The evil eye is an ancient curse that could do, well, just about anything the giver intended, but it was always bad.

 

Fortunately, there was a solution to avoid the influence of the evil eye, in the form of various artistic boners. How come Indiana Jones never had to go after one of these? I suppose in an emergency, I could just unzip and wave it at my antagonist. Go ahead and look, you know you want to. Here. Actually, that wind chime is kind of cool, and would really piss off my neighbors. I wonder if it would ward off door to door solicitors. I wonder what kind of power that ring has if worn on the same finger I give to neighbors and door to door solicitors?

 

There is a space rock somewhere out in the asteroid belt named Ceres. It’s not big enough to be a planet, but it’s a whopper nonetheless. We have a remote ship moving in on Ceres, and Ceres is giving off lights. This article even has pictures.

 

These don’t look volcanic to me. It could be a distorted image, considering the distance and equipment. Then again if you needed to start an intergalactic war over a huge diamond deposit, or find some kind of malignant species in your science fiction this ought to provide some inspiration.

 

This article Is about a gigantic Elizabethan tapestry map. There is text that alludes to a mystery that happened in some hills where, “The Worldesend”, “was dryven downe by the removyng of the ground”. I have no idea what it means, but with a little research and some imagination, I’ll bet I could come up with a story.

 

This one is just weird. Although I did have bronze penis wind-chimes in here, so maybe it isn’t that bad. These are baby cages from the 1930s. They were designed to hang on the outside of apartment windows far above the city streets. Apparently, people were worried that baby wasn’t getting enough sun, so dangling him in a cage seventeen stories off the ground was the solution. People chastised Michael Jackson for doing something similar. I don’t have a specific idea here, but it sure adds some reality to your 1930s era story. Look at these photos here.

 

I don’t know how to put all these together, but I’ll try. A character, who looks a lot like Drew Barrymore (because Poltergeist) moves into her new apartment that was built from the remains of an old mortuary. Strange things start happening in the foothills outside town. Drew is drawn into her own imagination and believes ghosts from the old mortuary are at fault.

 

She soon discovers chameleon-like aliens, from their city on Ceres, are removing earth from the foothills and are about to undermine her new apartment. In a desperate bid to expel them from our planet, she places her baby in a window cage and steps outside to shake her ancient bronze Roman wiener at them.

 

Drew wins, and opens an adults only shop right down the street from Tom Hanks’ tapestry shop. They all live happily ever after.

 

Whew! More articles makes it harder to come up with a story at the end. Maybe I’d better stick to three from now on.