Face of things to come.

In a near dystopian future, mutant fortune cookies take over the world, they save your personal information, oozing venomous messages to all those who dare challenge their supremacy - "Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can". All the helpless people can really do is give in to the oddball addiction. 

Human beings are constantly monitored, being accountable for every single stray thought that steps into the frame - "So, update us, what's on your mind?"  Their colleagues, friends, fathers, mothers and big brother silently watch. Humans feed, humans read, lapping up every bit of information thrown at them.
There is no such thing left as free will. Every decision taken through a series of questions to the one, tap of a finger, click of a button -  "What is my purpose in life?" "What should I have for dinner?"

People rub their eyes in the morning, wake up into a world where they can't dis-like things - they can only "like" the stuff. People compare people, rate them, order them, hand out superlatives. Flick of a wrist, click of a button. "Friend-unfriend", "Accept-ignore" "Red-pill, blue-pill"- they make their choices, the screen flashes in protest and they become a part of the system.  

The farmers become the herds -- some 11 million of them. They grow cash-crops - eggplant and strawberries. Somewhere, a lonely black sheep strays into their neighbour's farm. She feels very sad and needs a new home. There is no one to help them out.

While the farmer toils on, the soldier fights the new enemy. The mafia slowly takes over the city.  The war wages on, as the pawns in the battle lose their energy, health, and stamina by the minute.
Then there are the guerilla warriors who form the resistance, fighting the cookies and the mafia. They have no weapons -- they fight with their bare hands -- poking and throwing snowballs as they find spots to hide in a box.

Somewhere my taste buds protest, overwhelmed at all the force-fed information. Somewhere my cause to ignore a protest kicks in. Somewhere, I ride the nightmare where Facebook is skynet, and resistance is futile.

Somewhere I give up hope, somewhere I get bored of it all.

--

Gah, I really got bored writing this post, but decided to post it nonetheless, so don't complain about the abruptness of it all. kthxbai.

For posterity

Some jokes I heard over the week. Very niche, and heavily dependent on cliches (Isn't it unfortunate that those two words don't rhyme?)

- On Jazz bass players.

What is the difference between jazz bassist and a large cheese pizza?
A large cheese pizza can feed a family of four.

- About the electric bass players.

A man gives his son an electric bass for his 15th birthday, along with a coupon for four bass lessons. When the son returns from his first lesson, the father asks, "So, what did you learn?"

"Well, I learned the first five notes on the E string."

Next week, after the second lesson, the father again asks about the progress, and the son replies, "this time I learned the first five notes on the A string."

One week later, the son comes home far later than expected, smelling of cigarettes and beer. So the father asks, "hey, what happened in today's lesson?"

"Dad, I'm sorry but I couldn't make it to my lesson. I had a gig!"

To which a bassist said:

Q. What has six strings, is black and blue and lying in a gutter?
A. A guitarist who cracked too many bassist jokes.

-And a guitarist/lightbulb joke:

Q. How many guitarists do you need to change a light bulb
A. Five. One to change the bulb and four to reminisce about how good the old tubes were.

- And the one about Mac users, which you will get only if you have been hanging around with too many obsessive users, who can't get enough of telling you how great their iMacs are.

Q. How many mac users do you need to change a lightbulb?
A. One. Let him change the bulb and see the whole world revolve around him.

The calculus of story-telling

A story, simplistically speaking, is driven by a function. Like a curve - it has its ups and downs. You remember the once-upon-a-time when we all had to study differentiation, and calculate the maxima, minima and inflexion?? If you carefully observe, a simple story would ride on a curve.

• Boy meets girl, (At t = 0, perhaps? )
  
• Boy and girl fall in love, Maxima
• (Lo and behold, we discover that the families were always rivals. )
  
• Girl's dad-mom find out and threaten to kill the boy, Minima
• Girl and boy elope, Point of inflexion.

The point of inflexion. The point where the double derivative is zero (??). The point where the direction of the story changes. The point of freedom. The point where there is nothing left to lose. The real art of finishing up a story, I believe, comes with bringing your characters to this point of no return. Beyond this point, even if its a tragedy, the story itself takes over.

So, the aforementioned story could either be QSQT-esque tragedy ending in a bloodbath. Or, they could have a child and then the parents look at the grand-child and have a change of heart (Now which movie was it? Dil? Bobby?).
Of course, nobody is making these formula films anymore. But, even for a complicated story, it should be possible to identify such points.

Cheats, (like me), create a vivid landscape for the characters, write about the maxima usually soaked in nostalgia, drag the story to the minima, to the sadness/helplessness/despair, and let the pathos do the trick on the reader. Probably because of the lack the creativity and/or the courage to give a fair treatment to the characters.

What do you think?