Story Idea: Rebel Clone

This idea is roughlt based on a dream I had, in my dream I was a clone of myself and I was being forced to work writing software. As with most dreams it was a bit vague. But it spawned and idea in my head.

The idea has evolved into a much bigger idea of a group of short stories concerning clones. Much like how Issac Asimov covered the ethics and issues concerned in robotics the idea is to cover similar ground with clones.

The first story is about a scientist who clones himself to get more work done but treats his clone like a slave. The clone then rebels and tries to run away. Possibly killing the scientist in the process. I’m unsure of how the rest of it pans out.

Other ideas I’ve had involve clons with shared consciesness all controlled by whomever is cloned, and the issues that would arise when one of the clones became self aware.

I’ll have to spend some time thinking on this to see if I can formulate some bettter Ideas for the more short stories. I just wanted to get the idea down, now before I forgot about it.

Story Idea: I for one welcome our <x> Overlords

So I’ve thought up an idea for a seris of short stories that I’d like to work one. The basic premise is things that seems totally harmless rising up and taking ove the world.

I’ve so far got an idea for two of these, one is based partly on a dream I had a fewweeks ago and partly on a Poem/Song I wrote when I was 15 (I’ve got no idea where the poem is now, I may have a copy on my web server), the other is based on a random thought I had yesterday while tidying up the house, which as I was tidying just grew and grew.

I’m going to try to write these up as soon as I can, they shouldn’t come to more than 1k words.

But to give you a teaser The working titles are:

“I for one welcome our Faery overlords” and “Rise of the Butterflies.”

I’ve scribbled down the opening sentence of each of them on a scrap of paper, because I know that for me that is the hardest part.

Anyway I’ve got paid work to do at the moment.

Once Again I fail to go to sleep…

I’ve upgraded my word press install, and mucked about with it a bit. But I’ve failed to go to sleep.

I’ve also failed to have Dinner… Which means that today I have had lunch and… er… well thats about it.

I’m only vauguely hungry so part of me is thinking that I might just go to bed and worry about it tomorrow. Only I’m out of bread and milk and well a few other things that I’d considder having for breakfast.

I’m sure I’ll figure someting out, I think there are Eggs in the fridge… Could have them, I think, assuming they aren’t off…

Curses, working at home means that I don’t go to the shops.

Any way, I have spent this evening tidying the house, so it is both spic and span. Just a few nick nacks to sort before Annabels parents arrive tomorrow.

I’ve failed to mow the lawn because it despite being sunny most of the day we had a torrential down pour for half an hour which means the grass is wet, and I am never ever cutting the grass when it is wet again. Not after last time. I still have Nightmares of the Horrors that were unleased on that fatefull day.

Sweeny Todd, the demon barber of… Luxor.

Avarinne and I went on holiday to Luxor in Egypt last month, and while there we did many cultural things.

I’ll blog about the cultural things soon this post is about something we saw on our third day in Luxor while wondering about in one of the many random alleyways.

Thats right it’s a barber shop called sweeny Todds. I had to take a photograph of it as we were passing by and just after I took the photo the guy inside the shop came out and told us to come in. We were a bit wary not because we thought he was going to kill us (there wasn’t a pie shop in miles so we knew we were safe) but because by our third day in egypt we were sick of people telling us a minute fact about something, or offering to take our photo and then asking for “Bakhshish” which is basically them asking for a tip for having done you whatever service they did.

Never the less we decided to risk it, we wen’t in and had a great chat with the guy who ran the barbers shop, he was a really nice guy called Rafat, to be honest I felt really guilty of my skepticism by the end of it.

The reason the place is called Sweeny Todds is because when Rafat was opening his barber shop he asked a friend who worked in one of the Hotels to ask the guests what a good “Famous” name for a barbers shop would be, and apparently they all said that Sweeny Tod would be a good name, so thats what he called it.

It wasn’t till much later that he found out about the real Sweeny Todd when he had a tourist in with his girlfriend and when Rafat got out the Razor to shave the tourist his girl friend asked jokingly that he not kill her boy friend.

Rafat said that he was really confused by this and asked why they’d think that? And they told him the story of Sweeny Todd. Since then Rafat has managed to aquire a book about Sweeny Todd and a couple of weeks beforehand somone had brought him a copy of the film.

We took some pictures posing with Rafat with a razor to our throats:

Rafat and Avarinne
Rafat and Me with the Sweeny Todd Book

The guy was a really nice guy and I felt guilty about my initial reluctance to speak to him, as I was going out I reached for my wallet to give the guy some spare change, which he refused! This is unheard of in Egypt. He did say that I needs a shave and should come back, I did need a shave, but I never got round to going back.

Here is Rafat’s Business Card in case you want to have a close shave with death while in Luxor:

Note the Arabic Spelling of Obbosite
Note the "Arabic" Spelling of Obbosite

If my memory serves me right this map should tell any wayward tourists how to get there, worst case just call the Guy his number is on the business card.


View Sweeny Todds Luxor in a larger map

Story Idea: Judge Dredd Re-Imagined

I had the oddest dream last night, I was a super hero, who was a Judge, and I fought crime using Implements that a Judge would have. When I say a Judge, I’m not refering to a 2000 AD Judge like Judge Dredd I mean a regular Judge with a wig, robes and a gavel.

In fact the only thing I remember about this dream was that I had Gavel-rangs, which much like Batmans Batarangs were Gavels that I threw at villains and they came back to my hands.

The comedy nature of my dream made me think of the campness of The 60’s Batman TV series which is a “campification” of what is in actuallity a really dark and troubled character. I wonder if the same thing could be done to Judge Dredd? Or if “The Judge” with his Gavel-rangs will make an appearance else where.

I leave you with this thought…

Here comes the Judge, Here comes the judge, here comes the Judge…

Relegion and Memes

I was reading over the shoulder of somone on the bus this morning because I’d forgotten to pick up a copy of the Metro and the internet connection on my phone wasn’t working so I couldn’t check twitter and I saw that they were reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene which I’ve never read but I’m familiar with some of the concepts of, Albeit because I’ve read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson…

I’m facinated by the concept of the Meme (Wikipedia) which is:

“is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that gets transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena”

Dawkins postulates (from the few paragraphs I could read over this poor guys shoulder) that memes are like organisms, in that they evolve and also try to stay alive byt combining. For example the section I was reading said that Hellfire in it’s self is a scary thing, and the fact that worrying that it might happen to you when you die if you are a bad person perpetuates it, RD also postulates that the concept of god is a meme, but if you mix these two concepts together you get a God whom if you don’t beleive in you go to hell, the hellfire meme in essence make the God meme more powerful.

Anyway…

I got to thinking about how all of these memes at some poin had to be thought up by somone, they passed into common lore and then became revered, which led me to…

Ceiling Cat is Watching you Masturbate.

(Wikipedia)

I thought up a society where hundreds of years from now all the internet memes that we take one look at and think “Hey thats pretty funny” were the tennents of society.

  1. Everyone fears the almighty ceiling cat which has merged with the God meme.
  2. Rik Astley’s Never gonna give you up is the accepted way of ending a formal letter.
  3. Macro cat Images are considdered high art.
  4. The Starwars Kid‘s (You tube) moves are considdered to be a sacred dance.
  5. Leeroy Jenkins (Wikipedia) Becomes synonymous with CHARGE!

Et cetera…

Would it be such a bad world, I’m sure it would be a world filled with mirth and amusement, maybe though there would be a dark side and people would use the message of peace and love that Ceiling cat intended to bring to us as a reason for wonton slaughter.

Anyway I leave you with this…

Best Friend with Caveats?

I woke up this morning with a phrase spinning around my head, the phrase was “Best Friend with Caveats”. It’s wierd I don’t know if I dremt it or how it popped into my head but all day I’ve been mulling over the concept, trying to figure out what this implies.

Everyone knows the term “Best Friend with Benefits” the implication being a friendship that allows you priveliges that even a best friend would not get, usually used to mean sex.

But what is a best friend with caveats?

You can really read it in one of several ways:

You are a best friend but there are certain aspects of “best friendship” which you don’t adhere to.

Maybe you are a best friend who refuses to acknowledge a partner, or who takes great pleasure in putting your friend down. Maybe you will stand by your friend through thick and thin except when it relates to one particular thing.

I’m your best friend but there are certain aspects of best friendship that I Don’t adhere to.

As above but it’s the other wy round the caveats are one my friendship to you, there are certain circumstances in which I will just abandon you, or worse still take the other side. One such caveat might be that I am your best friend but my significant other takes precedence over you, or I’ll be your best friend so long as I’m Sober, when I’m drunk however I want nothing to do with you.

We are both bet friends but we both accept that there are limitations to our friendship.

We both agree or at least acknowledge the fact that there are certain circumstances in which we may not acto towards each other as friends. The circumstances could be shared, or each of the two friends could have there on set of particular circumstances in which they refuse to act like a best friend.

The latter of these two is just really an amalgumation of the first two reading, you just both do it in different ways. The former however could lead to some interesting social situations, where two people are the greatest of friends but hate each other when they are drunk, out on the town, pursueing someone. I’m sure there are better examples.

Conclusion?

I don’t really have a conclusion, I’ve wanted to write a blog post for ages and I decided to stretch this four word phrase which I though had interesting connotations into a whoel blog post.

I also thought I’d be the first person to mentions it, as it doesn’t seem to be in any of the hits for the phrase in google.

Are you “Best Friends with Caveats” with anyone? If so you can tell me how in the comments.