Tuesday 1 April 2008

Aliens!

There's still digging going on at Stonehenge. Wonder if they've found anything yet.

I was doing some digging of my own (see what I did there?) and came across this little gem.*

I particularly like the wealth of detail that they include.

Examples:

"Our ceiling came alive with strange sounds." So..how else would a ceiling come alive? Does it normally do it differently? Perhaps by spinning plates? Or doing origami?

"A flock of pigeons was killed in flight when tangling with the Thing. They brushed into fatal contact with paralyzing sound beams in woods in Crockerton, near Warminster... Stiff-winged, they plummeted earthward..." Hmm, has someone been reading too much John Wyndham? I like the sound of The Thing though.

"Their pet... cat... was sick" Why the ellipses? Is it the way it was related, with many horrified pauses? Or was there even more detail that has been cruelly excised? What was the cat's name? What colour was it? Did it sick up anything interesting? We need to know.

"Then her own rooftop was besieged by the furious frolics of the Thing. Mrs Haines sat up in bed, face ashen, heart pounding swiftly until the deluge of the soundwaves swished to silence." Lord, sounds terrifying. Was the cat also ashen-faced, I wonder.

"'It was obviously huge but high up,' said ... Colin Hampton, so surprised he fell into the lake." Excellent. I have been surprised enough to do many things, but never to fall into a lake. I think we need a properly calibrated Scale Of Suprisedness to clarify the magnitude involved. Maybe start with Saying Gordon Bennet! and end with the climactic Falling In A Lake option.

"To my eyes it was the size of... a bedroom wall... " To your eyes, yes. What did your tape measure think? And how big a bedroom? A Harry Potter cupboard? A Donald Trump Mansion? Be more specific.

"[T]he attractive wife of a Royal Air Force pilot ... [was]... 'woken by a terrible droning sound. " Riiiight. It was probably just her husband telling her he was an RAF pilot. I love the inference that all the other RAF pilots have hideously unattractive wives.

Aaah, Wiltshire. It's completely mental.

*I'll link it properly later.**
**Done. Damn, I'm efficient.

2 comments:

Mr Farty said...

Nice. Your analysis reminds me of a Terry Pratchett story where the heroine saw a monster "with eyes the size of ten-inch dinner plates." Keep up the scepticism!

livesbythewoods said...

Well, reminding you of Mr Pratchett I will take as a great compliment.

I keep re-reading the original website and killing myself laughing.