The saint is in the sinner

10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!

In the course of my stories, someone may or may not have:

- been hung upside down in a glass box for no discernible reason
- had a screaming match with a ghost in the basement
- stripped naked in a restaurant kitchen
- drunk truck-stop coffee
- fought an evil army of sentient scarecrows
- lit people's socks on fire

This is excluding the usual swords/sorcery fuckery that comes with the territory.

child is slowly taken

Okay, guys. I have dealt with a lot of bullshit over the course of my online Bio class, but this really was the last straw. And it seems I am all kinds of a smartass on meds.

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Look at the population in the picture below. If you were to sketch an imaginary line on the picture where the area covered by birds-in-flight was roughly divided into six squares an estimate, per area, could be accomplished.



13. To make a population estimate, count the number of birds-in-flight in one square and multiply the total by six.


____18_______ X 6 = ____108_________ (total population)


14. How close did you come to the actual population? Count every bird in the photograph to find out.

Exact count of the population = Wow, you actually wanted me to count all of that? I think I would go blind before I could figure out exactly how many birds are occupying the same space in that photograph. Two-dimensional images do not an accurate count, make. Although, given how the forgiving the margin of error seems to be, I think you’re just messing with us. I suppose there is no getting over the factor of human error, though, so the large amount of give makes sense. And yes, I understand the nature of this exercise. Populations are subject to random environmental factors, but there is a semi-predicable curve to be found within it all, just by the nature of statistics. It’s kind of cool that life, as we know it, in all its complexity and inexplicable variation, can be predicted by simple mathematics. (Or not-so-simple mathematics, if you struggle with analytical thinking.) By implementing spatial constants, you can make sense of what would otherwise resemble chaos. In essence, science. Rock on, science.
But still. Count each and every bird? I’d rather kill them mount them on the hood of my truck and let Fish and Wildlife do the counting, right before they put me away for single-handedly decimating the waterfowl population of this particular image.

15. Check one of the following to rate your estimating accuracy.

Within 5 birds of the actual count total: Accuracy 100%
Within 25 birds of the actual count total: Accuracy 90%
Within 50 birds of the actual count total: Accuracy 80%
Within 70 birds of the actual count total: Accuracy 70%
Within 100 birds of the actual count total: Accuracy 60%
*According to Heisenburg: Accuracy 0%
*According to Schrödinger: Accuracy Infinite

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I definitely submitted this as my real answer, and I regret nothing.

* my contribution to the choice list

Do you memorize theatrical lines that seem to lead them in?

ENDLESS DAYS by pandarus

A series of Pirates of the Caribbean/Sandman stories that did the impossible and made pirates even cooler.

...

The Call of the Wild
by Robert W. Service

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert's little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies).
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew).
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things --
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --
But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling. . .let us go.