Dream Fragment/Story Idea: The democracy tree

I had this dream about the time of the general election it was of a society of woodland people, possibly elves possibly not. The people were in the process of democratically electing a leader, there were two candidates each of whom had their say on a podium facing the people in front of an enormous tree.

Once the candidates had had a chance to have their say, and they had fielded questions from the crowd, the who crowd broke into dance while chanting.

The leaves of the tree fell one by one, until the tree was barren. Then the leaves were collected and sorted by colour, the candidate who had the most leaves was the leader of the people until next autumn when the ritual would be repeated.

Story Idea: In Google we trust

I had an idea today about an alternate future where fanboyism has gone further and has superseded religion. Basically people have given up on putting their faith in insubstantial supernatural being and instead invest their faith in brands.

Anyone who has met an Apple fan boy/girl knows that the level of zeal and devotion they have towards their fruit computers. The same is true of the drinkers of Irn Bru and some Jack Daniels drinkers.

I envision this being a polytheistic society where people believe in different brands for different spheres of influence, but rival sects wouldn’t want to freely intermingle for example two people might be in the global cult of Pepsi both hating their arch nemesis Coca-Cola, but they may have religious differences when it came to which beer they supported.

Some brands have global appeal and some might be considered to be no more than Cults, For example Irn Bru is a cult which has a bit of a powers in Scotland but is fairly obscure elsewhere.

I think this is a little inspired by Max Barry’s Jennifer Government but not overly so.

Photoblog: 365: 138. Kinetic Star

/

365: 138. Kinetic Star, originally uploaded by Ohmzar.

I was really surprised at how well this photo turned out. I was in a panic trying to take my 365 for today because it was 11:45 and I’d not gotten a chance to take a photo. So I headed down to the clyde and thought I’d take a photo of Braehead from afar. Turns out those photo’s were rubbish because the exposures were too long.
I thought what the hell and spun the camera and seem to have gotten a 5 pointed star from my motion.
Score one for serendipity.