I am writing a very short story about a womble who is the reincarnation of a person who suffocated by accident on a plastic bag. If anyone thinks they know why or how the person suffocated on the plastic bag, I'd be very grateful to hear your views.
N.B. Contributors whose theories end up in my short story about the womble will not be acknowledged.
26 comments:
He was a Liverpuddlian miner who choked on the plastic bag while masticating his way through a pre-processed sausage. The sausage was later found to have been 88.3 per cent plastic bag and 12.61 per cent sausage. (The other .09 per cent was miscellaneous).
Why is everyone writing short-stories at the moment? I'm doing one based on a comment I made at Nails blog (thanks for the inspiration, Nails!)
The idea for the story began before I'd heard about this 'ere Vignette press short story competition...
Oh, by the way, I think it's very important that aforesaid Liverpuddlian miner gets to croak 'Soddit!' before he dies. VERY important.
That's a very good theory, but I forgot to mention that before she suffocates on the plastic bag, she works for 17 years in the Sunny Poppets Aged Care Facility, is expert in the insertion of suppositories, and has no known allergies.
But she could well be from Liverpool.
Like John Lennon.
First lines:
'"They don't make blood sausage like they used to", reflected _______ in a melancholic manner, as he wretched drily for air like a smoker who has had his cigarette snatched prematurely away from him...
Ah. Yes. Did take something of a risk on the 'Womble being a male in previous life' hypothesis.
Maybe she attributes her long life and health to her constant diet of blood sausages and cigarettes?
My first thought was "Laura Palmer-Womble", but I'm not sure that would quite work.
Perhaps an accident at the Womble Recycling Centre? Some scoundrel puts a plastic bag in their recycling bin (you are not allowed to do this where I live) and it causes much havock at the plant. Brave Womblina dives into the machine whilst it is still in operation so that there will be no pause in the Wombles' essential work. She is reincarnated in order to educate us about separating our recyclables and garbage properly.
Wombleina is enjoying a quiet evening at home over a cup of her favourite tea (Darjeeling, just lovely!) when she is rudely interrupted by a dump truck from the council uploading a truckload full of plastic bag on her house. She struggles her way up through the plastic bag pile, but just as she reaches the top, a plastic bag becomes caught in her throat.
The autopsy afterwards concludes that Wombelina dies from a tragic combination of 1) Overworked and sleepy dump-truck driver 2) Council guideline 237a, which stipulates an incorrect address for the plastic bag dump (it should have been 10001 Lambshanks Road rather than 101) 3) Enthusiastic overuse of plastic bags in the Liverpuddlian community.
Oh, I can't read! This is a human-to-womble transformation. I think we have to sort out whether being a womble is a higher state than being a human, then we will know if she was or wasn't doing something very wicked with that plastic bag.
(I was just thinking about the blue bower birds and the milk bottles and idly wondering if the wombles might be similar. This is not the sort of thing I should be thinking about at present).
Oh my! Womble-reincarnation meets David Lynch. I dunno if I could pull it off, but it's worth a try.
Speaking of idly thinking about wombles ... erm, serious scholarly research essay to write, anyone? Anyone?
"The Systematic Destruction of Womble-based Cottage Industries in Greater Slovenia and Outer Mongolia, By Plastic Bags: Yer Basic Downhome Everyday Apollonian-Dionysian Conflict."
Alexis,
How much will you pay me?
Note: payment accepted in tea, ice cream and cash, as well as filthy lucre.
If one had a lot of time, a video camera and a bunch of similarly minded comrades, the David Lynch-esque spoof of the wombles might be fun.
Erm ... I have a very nice paper clip collection?
Paper clips are tempting. Proffer bull dog clips, however, and I will sell you my soul. Are they bureaucratic, rather than cutesy, paper clips? I like stationery which is blunt, bureaucratic and has "Government of Australia" branded across it, especially the produce of the seventies and the eighties (I have a collection from my father's long and distinguished career of stationery theft, which I'm conserving for special occasions).
My rather late contribution - a very dull and ordinary one too - yonder human is just a tiny, tiny bit OCD and collapes head first into the plastic bag that she's emptying dust from the vacuum cleaner into. She collapses because she's high on cleaning products. Seriously, mould killer is good shit.
Oh yeah, bringing total lameness into a living room near you!
eyrie reminds me of a former colleague who referred to bulldog clips as bulls**t clips.
absent-mindedly eating shrink-wrapped grapes?
Wow, yeah, you've got to watch those shrink wrapped grapes: why hasn't the government warned us about this impending national health disaster?
OCDness works really well, actually. Thanks, Nails. I want to work in a car wash too.
While swimming naked in the Merri Creek/Port Phillip Bay/the lovely big pond at the sunny poppits aged care facility (no doubt that bag had held a lot of sweeties or old coffee jars sold by op shops at $2 a pop)...
Nice to almost meet you at the blogmeet!
Yeah, wow. The secret to this is in the bag's prior history.
Do folks swim in Merri Creek? It's not that I haven't been tempted, but it's pretty close to where the peops do their poo, and I'm wary.
Lovely to almost meet you too!
She was power-walking past a primary school and was taking large healthful gulps of air, when a sandwich bag -- that had held a peanut-butter sandwich in it only hours before -- blew into her mouth and as she accidentally swallowed it, it triggered a severe anaphylaxic reaction and she died.
Modern and simple. :)
Delighted to rediscover you (and everyone else) at the blogmeet!
I guess others weren't very environmental and the womble wasn't very aware of that.
I would like to mention that Borders books is now charging an outrageous 10c per plastic bag in its new Go Green campaign.
This should surely be worked into the story.
One day, a Womble was wombling along and it saw the sign on the Borders Bookstore. Miffed, it put a bag over its head, black of course, symbolically in protest at this commercial grab ffor cash in the name of environmentalism. It was terrible; you couldn't even get a plastic bag for the price of a good novel these days! And the bookshops were cashing in on a poor womble having to take home an unsheathed copy of "A Dummie's Guide to Womble's Womble-Cave Construction" or pay 10c which was quite a a womble, as any womble knows.
Unfortunately the poor womble died for his cause, but 'twas a worthwhile one. A momentous moment as he protested literally for his literature. And so endeth our womble.
Thanks, M. Wombles, you'll recall, who "make good use of the things that they find", are some of the world's best recyclers, so may not be entirely averse to Borders' call for customers to supply their own reusable baggles.
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