Book reviews, art, gaming, Objectivism and thoughts on other topics as they occur.

Feb 8, 2006

True Story

Ways in which truth continues to be stranger than fiction:

  • After inadvertantly sending a Sharpie marker out with an irradiation lot at work, I decided to crack wise about the marker needing a hazardous label. My Russian coworker informed me that if I wanted a real hazard, I should have lived with him, 30 miles from Chernobyl. "Oh," I said, "I'll bet you were glad you moved when it blew up." "That's where I was when it blew up. May 5th, it was a big holiday for the Russian people, and they had parades, they didn't cancel it even though they had dust all over and so on." "They had people marching through fallout?" "Yes, pretty much."
  • A crack dealer is arrested after he begins to give out business cards.
  • Paul Hsieh writes about things medical practitioners have learned from their patients.
  • My friend's parents have a dog that sorts Kibbles 'n' Bits and only eats the ones she likes. They stopped feeding it to her because they kept stepping on the piles she left and falling.

It takes real skill as an author to take a bizarre event like those above and make it not only plausible, but universal and meaningful as well.

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