Aliens and Spaceships and Axe Heads, Oh My!
The protagonist of my current work-in-progress picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be full of conspiracy theories, junk science, and old-fashioned stupidity. He regales my poor protag for miles, and eventually gets thrown out. But writing him, believe it or not, was pretty easy, because all I had to do was draw on the long list of stupid things I’ve heard over the years, all of it reported to me as firm belief.
I’ll cite just two examples:
The Axe Head Mystery:
You may or may not know it, but there’s an easy way to (at least temporarily) tighten a loose axe head. Invert the axe, so it is hanging clear of the ground in your off hand from the end of the handle, and pound on the end of the handle with the biggest hammer you can find. There’s a very simple explanation for this, involving the weight of the axe head and its subsequent inertia, but that wasn’t quite good enough for the guy who needed to tell me why you can never trust science:
Scientists tell you that they understand gravity completely. And yet they cannot tell you how the interaction between the cast iron* axe head, the wooden handle, and the pounding cause gravity to reverse itself, making the axe head crawl right up the handle, or why it only works when the axe is inverted. So you can never trust a scientist to tell you the truth.
(*axe heads aren’t cast iron)
The Federal Mirror-Law Mystery:
Bet you never knew there’s an obscure federal law requiring every photocopier made or sold in the United States to have a mirror detector built in, did you? Here’s why:
If someone were to attempt to photocopy a mirror, the resulting image would show the end of time, and result in the destruction of the universe. Therefore, federal law requires every photocopier made or sold in the United States to have a built-in mirror detector that will prevent this from happening.
And they were both dead serious!
So that got me to thinking. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever discovered someone actually believing? No fair making stuff up, or telling about a belief you know wasn’t seriously held (like my own “belief” that we make the universe up out of mutual imagination. Doesn’t count – it’s just a fun way to harass people!). Please enlighten and entertain us all by leaving a comment here, and for the sake of the end of time, please change the names of the guilty!
We’ll call it an exercise in character development, ok?
