Ahoy from Spawn:
Driving back to State College yesterday after flying back into Philly, I stopped for some beverage at a travel center (or whatever they call it) on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I happened to be wearing my least smelly of shirts at the time, that being the famed Flailceratops T-shirt. After having worn it in three countries, I received the only comments on it at this place (except when I met up with Hazel's player in Dublin last week; she said she loved my shirt). At the check-out counter the following exchange occurred:
Guy: Is that a real dinosaur or what?
SoE: Uh, no. It's made up. I mean the body's real, it's like a triceratops.
Guy: Yeah, I know triceratops but this flay ... flail-ceratops .... What's a flail?
SoE [with travel-scrambled brain]: It's a ... spiked ball and chain on a stick. [Motioning] For beating people with.
Guy: Oh. So why's it on a shirt?
SoE: It's a thing by an artist guy. For a book he made. So I got the shirt.
(I wasn't in a headspace to start talking about D&D at that moment, dear readers.)
Guy: Well it's amazing the way they come up with these names for dinosaurs and things that have been dead forever, not just dinosaurs but everything.
SoE: Yeah, there's a group of folks that check the Latin names to make sure they follow the rules and everything.
Guy: Yeah but for things that are so old and we have no idea what they were. Like right now there are ten flavors of ice cream that are exactly the same as Ben and Jerry's out there ...
SoE: Yeah?
Guy: ... but there are no names for them because they are completely unknown flavors. They were made up out of nothing. Unknown flavors.
SoE: Wow. Well it just goes to show ....
And then I left and got back on the turnpike. I have yet to fathom the true depths of that man's words.
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You really encountered something there. Sort of like a Zen koan but funnier and more American. But don't think about it too hard. That way is not the path to enlightenment, I think.
ReplyDeleteThere is wisdom in these words. If only we knew how to understand them!
ReplyDeleteErm, yeah. I'm SURE it was the picture that caught his eye. :)
ReplyDeleteCool story, Bro.
It actually makes more sense after I've written it out than it did as he was talking. But it's a slippery sort of concept he was working with.
ReplyDeleteHmm, icre cream that tastes of...nothing.
ReplyDeleteYes, I can see that being a big seller ;)