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scioscribeI'm trying to think of some of the most banally baffling lines I've come across in fiction, lines where the component parts are all seemingly normal but just come together in a way that makes you think you and the author live on different planets.
My all-time favorite is "Rats scurried over his hands and face, but he ignored them." No, he didn't. Not in my world, buddy. Maybe if he were a professional stuntman or rat trainer, but otherwise, I don't care how stressed you are, you're paying at least a little bit of attention to rats crawling across your face.
What made me think of this was recently encountering "Cops go through girlfriends like veal cutlets." My attention was immediately derailed by trying to figure out how many veal cutlets these people are going through. More than I am, presumably. I desperately needed follow-up on this, maybe with a series of thinkpiece articles. Veal Parmesan: Surprising Popular with Cops?
EDIT: Rachel reminded me of another gem: "...I, who had refused for years to let the husband in Paris realize his lifelong dream of photographing a scorpion in my vagina."
My all-time favorite is "Rats scurried over his hands and face, but he ignored them." No, he didn't. Not in my world, buddy. Maybe if he were a professional stuntman or rat trainer, but otherwise, I don't care how stressed you are, you're paying at least a little bit of attention to rats crawling across your face.
What made me think of this was recently encountering "Cops go through girlfriends like veal cutlets." My attention was immediately derailed by trying to figure out how many veal cutlets these people are going through. More than I am, presumably. I desperately needed follow-up on this, maybe with a series of thinkpiece articles. Veal Parmesan: Surprising Popular with Cops?
EDIT: Rachel reminded me of another gem: "...I, who had refused for years to let the husband in Paris realize his lifelong dream of photographing a scorpion in my vagina."
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-11 09:37 pm (UTC)At a movie studio where I worked we had the Board of Shame where we'd pin lines from screenplays. My all-time favorite was Fear burned like piss in his veins.
Just... what? How would you know what piss feels like in your veins? Are you a piss junkie? More importantly, why would you think that was such a good metaphor that it should be repeated on a later page of the same screenplay as Power burned like piss in his veins.
post the scorpion line too. It counts!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-11 10:43 pm (UTC)I'm almost wondering if the piss guy had some kind of urethral condition that made peeing burn and so he was like, "What if the fear burned like piss, but like, he felt it in his veins? Oh, man, that's good, I'm going with that."
The girlfriends hung in the sky in much the same way that veal cutlets don't.