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How can fiction be funnier than reality?
by Sarah Littman
published January 25, 2005
For a year after graduating from college, I lived at home with my parents. One
of the more positive aspects of that experience was sharing the morning commute
to New York with my dad. We'd fight over who got to read the business section of
The New York Times first and discuss the day's headlines.
We also had a game to see who could find the strangest story in the paper. I
remember my winning entry about a woman was attacked by a groundhog until she
managed to detach it from her leg and throw it into a pond.
Life in the 20-odd years that have passed since our train travels, and most
recently my experience as a novelist, has taught me that odd as it might seem,
the truth really is stranger than fiction. If you don't believe me, take a
gander at the news services.
For example, the BBC reported that a tutor at Cardiff University has come up
with a formula, that concludes Monday, Jan. 24, (yesterday, by the time you read
this) is the worst day of the year. The formula for the "Day of Misery" reads:
1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA, where W is weather, D is debt minus the money (d) due on
January's pay day, and T is the time since Christmas. Q is the period since the
failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is
the need to take action and do something about it.
Not strange enough for you? How about the Jan. 18 Associated Press report that a
man in a Batman suit spent several hours on a rooftop balcony atop a courthouse
in the Dutch city of Utrecht last Monday, protesting the treatment of fathers in
divorce cases?
This got me pondering: What's the relevance of Batman to divorced fathers? Was
Robin really his son, not his ward? Do divorced fathers see themselves leading a
double life and living in a cave? E-mail me if you work this one out.
The BBC also reported that scientists believe failing to make your bed in the
morning may actually keep you healthy. Research from Kingston University
suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it's unappealing to dust
mites, which are thought to cause asthma and other allergies. I can just hear my
kids now: "So what if I haven't made my bed in days? It's for the good of my
health. Seriously, Mom, do you want me to get sick, just so you can satisfy your
obsessive-compulsive need for tidiness?"
However, the strangest recent news story by far was the Washington Post piece
about a 1994 research project proposed by the U.S. Air Force's Wright Laboratory
in Dayton, Ohio, to look into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad
guy'-identifying chemicals."
Among the more bizarre proposals was a "What? Who, Me?" bomb, which would
stimulate flatulence in the enemy ranks. When my friend Diana Klemin read
William Kotzwinkle's "Walter the Farting Dog" to our critique group, reducing
five "mature" grownups to tears of laughter, I never in a million years would
have thought that the idea of a dog who scares off burglars with his extremely
odiferous emissions could be the basis of a $7.5 million national defense
proposal.
The mind boggles -- especially when one learns from the government papers,
obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by the Sunshine Project, a
group monitoring research into chemical and biological weapons, that the "It was
the dog" device has been under consideration since 1945. However, researchers
found it to be a rank non-starter, because "people in many areas of the world do
not find fecal odor offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis." Curse
those democracy-hating people!
Weirder still was the proposal for the "Love Bomb," containing an aphrodisiac
chemical that would make enemy troops find one another sexually irresistible.
The idea being that causing widespread homosexuality among enemy troops would
cause a devastating blow to their morale. I can imagine it now: "You know,
Mohammed, I woke up this morning all fired up to kill infidels, but all I want
to do is sit here and check out how cute your butt looks in camo." And next
thing you know, they'd want marriage and partner health benefits.
Apparently, none of the systems in the 1994 proposal have been developed. But
next time I'm stuck for an idea for a novel, I know the "truth" is where to
look.
Sarah Littman, who lives in Greenwich, is author of "Confessions of a Closet
Catholic," to be published in February by Dutton Children's Books. E-mail her at
sarahlittman@hotmail.com.
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