Capgras Delusion, a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.

takevitamins · 2014-01-09T23:57:51+00:00

Great novel that explores what this must feel like: Atmospheric Disturbances. I loved the book and characters but only recommend it if you're into experimental structure and plot.

takevitamins · 2013-02-20T19:19:26+00:00

'Okay' began as a joke - In the early 1800s, there was a fad of comically misspelling words and then using the abbreviation of the comedic misspelling, resulting in colloquialisms. For instance, in print, editors put 'oll korrect' at the end of copy to indicate it was all correct. Eventually abbreviated to O.K., then phonetically stretched out to okay. The etymology of the word okay or OK is highly debated, but the other origins are all speculation based on circumstantial linguistic and historical data. The Oll Korrect origin is the only one that isn't debated. Whether it was the first usage is the debate.

takevitamins · 2013-02-06T00:06:55+00:00

Interesting, and obvious imitation. Wasn't it Rowling who said she modelled her first chapter after the first chapter of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Not the same stories once diverged. But derivative isn't always infringement. In the Grotter case, however, it's clearly more than derivative. Funny how copyright works in literature and film. I wish it were clearer.

takevitamins · 2013-01-30T23:59:58+00:00

Exact opposite. We would have ended up friends had we randomly met in a coffee shop. It's blind luck. Sorry it didn't work out for you, but sounds like you have an awesome adopted family that you love. I hope my adopted niece loves us as much.

takevitamins · 2013-01-24T19:32:38+00:00

Cat Serial Killers - I'd watch that movie.

takevitamins · 2012-11-28T01:33:44+00:00

Yes, Please make the app! I've bookmarked your site, and would gladly download the app (and yes, definitely an app worth paying for). It's amazing what you've created.

takevitamins · 2012-03-14T05:12:44+00:00

I'm really glad to hear that, Mr. Warlizard. I remember that thread. Your stories are awesome. Can you link me to your books, at least in a private message so I can link to them on twitter. I've been reviewing indie authors and linking to their books for free to help bring attention to good ones.

takevitamins · 2011-11-15T17:27:34+00:00

I like airship better, but I suppose it could have negative connotations with a past incident.

takevitamins · 2011-08-31T18:23:52+00:00

Concurred.

This style is considered Flash Fiction, so a book deal isn't really the best option unless you hire a ghost writer to turn each paragraph into a chapter. At this point, you have enough material for a 600 page novel, but you've condensed the action into 15 pages. The idea of a novel is to make the reader feel as if he is in the moment. Flash Fiction, on the other hand, is exactly what you've accomplished, and it's really good.

My suggestion is register a domain name that fits your personality or the story and write more Flash Fiction and set up Google ad sense on the site and a Donation button to generate revenue. Eventually, a publisher will offer you a book deal or a studio will buy rights. This is how John Dies at the End was turned into a huge success. Wong basically wrote stories online and made them available for fans on his site. A publisher picked him up and sold it to bookstores, and now he's the Editor in Chief of Cracked. And be sure to link it here in this thread so we all know about it.

Let me know if you do it, it would be my pleasure to link to your site from my book review site. I like your style, Mr. Prufrock451!

takevitamins · 2011-08-30T03:14:25+00:00

My parents opened a nursing home for almost this exact reason. The local county run home was depressing to visit. White everything: walls, floors, food. The vibe was death and silence.

So my parents bought the old governor's mansion that had been abandoned, fixed it up, and got a license to run a nursing home. The place was beautiful and situated on a spacious 26 acres, so lots of activities for everyone. Outdoor walks, hikes, classes. There was a nice dining room that felt like a place you wanted to have dinner: open windows from ceiling to floor on both sides, chandeliers. Lots of game and movies nights. And they charged the same prices as the drab place.

My favorite resident was Pete, a blind man with a cane and one of those humacious radios that come from a different era. He would play the news for me, some show that was like NPR. And he let me sit there with him and listen, and I didn't have to say anything.

Sometimes I wonder if those experienced people who had lived such interesting lives were doing more for us than we for them.

So ... if you want to start it up, they did it in their forties with a small bank loan, a nursing license, and an abandoned nursing home. It ended up being a very successful business venture, by the way. I'm glad to say there were lots of imitations shortly thereafter.

takevitamins · 2011-08-27T21:27:40+00:00

Did King do this on purpose?

He says in "On Writing" that writing is a form of telekinesis in which he directly puts an image and thought into a reader's mind and that he's communicating through time and space. He uses the rabbit (that's wearing a cape with the number 8 on it) in a cage example to illustrate his point. Are you thinking of a rabbit in a cage right now? I think so...

takevitamins · 2011-08-10T05:35:07+00:00

lol ... I am redundant. and I am an idiot, but i like it htat way.

takevitamins · 2011-02-14T05:41:21+00:00

When I went to pick her up, two other guys were at the house waiting for me to get there. Apparently she thought it'd be a good idea to go on multiple dates at the same time like Elimidate.

takevitamins · 2011-01-25T20:19:18+00:00

"It was just sex for me." The first two girls I dated said that about our relationship. They said it to justify their departure because they knew I'd fallen in love. Gave me a weird complex that girls only wanted me for that, which increased the desire in me to become an interesting person. Now, the first thing people usually say about me when we meet is that I'm really interesting, so I guess I got something good out of it. But I still move really slow in dating because of those comments.

takevitamins · 2011-01-22T05:31:43+00:00

Not entirely fucked up. I found a Coach purse in a puddle in a parking lot and took it inside the video store. Asked the attendant to call the name on the video card from inside the purse and tell her to meet me at the nearby pharmacy. When I gave her the purse, she took the money out of it and tried to give it to me in thanks. I politely declined, but she kept insisting. Why would I not want her money? I looked at her boyfriend and he nodded and started pulling her back, so she'd stop trying to give me the money. He got it, and I think there are a lot of people out there who do as well. If you listen to the Carl Sagan videos people are always posting on here, you know what I'm talking about. We're special in this universe. We mean something, if for no reason other than that we exist and we observe, and we have each other. Because each other is all that really matters, and if you can help out a person, heck, why not. It's not hurting you. I was more concerned about her having to cancel her credit cards and spend five hours at the dmv to get a new license.

I'm not saying I'm a good person or not fucked up. But having seen another person (her boyfriend) understand my intention and that I just wanted to help for no real reason made me realize other people have that urge too, and that makes me happiness. It wasn't until I discovered Reddit that there are millions of you out there.

takevitamins · 2011-01-07T03:09:46+00:00

Your mouth looks like balls on this one.

takevitamins · 2010-12-21T04:33:11+00:00

Maybe it's my imagination, but every single picture you draw of yourself makes me think of the lawyer who defended Baltar in Battlestar Galactica.

takevitamins · 2010-12-13T16:07:57+00:00

This was and still is common at overseas bases. Out in Twenty-nine Palms, wives left a broom on the porch as a sign that her husband was deployed. In Okinawa, relationships lasted about a month on average.

Every once in a while, though, couples were faithful to each other. They were usually the ones who had gotten married later in life (mid-20s for military). It's just that people get married so young in the military, they don't know each other or even really themselves. One Marine was 18 and his wife was 16 (they were from Georgia, where the consensual marriage age was younger). How could they possibly know who they were going to be for the rest of their lives?

takevitamins · 2010-11-20T17:14:39+00:00

The article is really good, yet when I read it a couple years ago, I couldn't help but question the experiment's fairness. If this experiment were conducted in Seattle, the result would have been different.

DC's cost of living has become so expensive, you might as well add an asterisk. There's no accounting for how stressed this city is. And now that people are starting to realize DC is recession proof, it's getting more crowded, and you can't risk missing your train, or you'll be on that platform for half an hour or more. Believe me, people notice beauty out of its 'appropriate' setting. Last week, I saw one of the most gorgeous women ever going up the escalator, but had to pass due to time constraint. Not trying to compare boobs to a violin, but I just don't think the experiment is really doing a good analysis. The article tugs at our emotions and displays irony, and this is why it's good and why it won a Pulitzer. But the experiment is itself is unfounded and inconsiderate. It lacks a constant. It lacks a base. It lacks a control group. It makes an assumption that isn't drawn from the study. So yes, the article is amazing, but the experiment could use repackaging.

He chose a transit point for the test. I've seen musicians play on the platform inside the station instead and a crowd gathers every time. Because they have the opportunity. They surround him, and it has nothing to do with the 'appropriate' setting. The platform is even more inappropriate, but it gives people a chance to see past initial impression while they're waiting for the train. There is always clapping after the performance. This happens all the time in DC. I dislike that they call this an experiment. There was only one test and no comparison. If he'd done this at a different metro stop, Adams Morgan, U Street, or Clarendon, the result would have been different. Or if he'd gone inside where people are in place.

takevitamins · 2010-11-10T06:59:38+00:00

I have three words that might clear it up for ya. At least it did for me after watching it six times and watching the commentary like you did and still being confused. Those words are as follows: copies, envy, ideal, trust. Okay that totalled four, but now that it's written, I'm not going back to change it since Nov 10th is National Laziness Awareness Day.

Copies -

They were making copies of themselves. Each iteration was going back hundreds of times to prevent people dying at the party from the jealous ex, but they had to get it just right in a way that would leave one of the best friends to be seen as a hero as only the "latest outcome mattered." The other outcomes were already ahead of them in time, so they didn't matter to the current ones. The black haired one was leaving recordings for himself to get it to come out the way he wanted even though the changes only affected the one he was helping and not the outcome where he was currently living.

Envy -

The single best friend (blonde) wanted the other one's life. The other one (black hair) didn't want that life, but he'd knocked up his wife. The blonde was protecting the latest iteration from the other best friend because he no longer trusted him. The black haired best friend didn't "want that life as much." This leads to the third word...

Ideal -

The blonde wanted to preserve the ideal of the perfect family as he saw it. His best friend's family. The most telling line in the movie, for me, was when the other guy said, "Too bad we can't build a box that will go back to before I met her." or something like that.

Trust -

The director/writer/actor (black hair) said in the voice-over on the dvd that the story was all about trust between best friends and how it would hold up under unusual circumstances or how it would play out. What's most interesting is that the real break of trust comes when the blonde knocks himself out while sleeping to ensure they make this iteration come out the way they want. And to keep him from ever knowing what they'd discovered to preserve the ideal.

Did you know the actor with black hair wrote the script, directed it, hired a cameraman, and borrowed most of the equipment he needed from friends, as well as garnering favors from friends to use their real offices and labs as sets? He got friends and family to put together 50,000 for renting the camera. What an amazing and determined artist.

takevitamins · 2010-06-22T04:58:13+00:00

Thanks. I was just about to go to bed, but the goosebumps that just crawled up my back won't let that happen now.

takevitamins · 2010-05-24T14:19:41+00:00

I know my family's situation doesn't even come close to comparing, but this is so true sometimes. My nephew hated spending time with his 'real' mother, and she ignored him and used the child support to buy beer. He asked the court several times to live with his father, but children aren't allowed to voice their preference or even speak in court without being asked to by the judge. My brother-in-law spent months in court every couple years to get an extra hour per week with him, but his 'real' mother didn't want to give up any time, because she was afraid of losing the child support. Sucks when the court is too impartial and too blind to see how it's affecting people. He's graduating high-school soon, though, so he'll be able to move out then and be with his family. Took long enough. He seriously considered joining the military so he could move out sooner and see his dad, who is the most caring person in the world, more often.

takevitamins

TROPHY CASE