Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The Tiled Chamber of Terrible Ideas and What Ifs
Let me set the scene: It’s 6:47 AM. I’m standing in the shower, contemplating the meaning of existence while simultaneously wondering if I remembered to feed the pig. (Spoiler: I didn’t.) Then it hits me—not enlightenment, but something far more dangerous: a story idea with a what if.
What if Douglas Adams had been working with a slightly cheaper supercomputer? What if Deep Thought, after seven and a half million years of calculation, had concluded that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything wasn’t 42, but 32? Maybe it had to be rounded down due to budget cuts. Maybe the pan-dimensional beings went with the low bidder and got what they paid for.
Would Ford Prefect have shrugged and said, “Well, that’s ten less meaningful, isn’t it?”
And then, because my brain apparently wasn’t done torturing me, another thought: What if the answer wasn’t a number at all? What if it were O.J. Simpson?
This is how stories are born in my house, not through careful planning or thoughtful outlining, but through shower-induced psychosis.
Why Do Deep Thoughts Come From Shallow Minds
Here’s the thing about weird thoughts: they’re like raccoons. Ignore them, and they’ll knock over your garbage cans until you pay attention. So let’s follow this particular trash panda down the rabbit hole.
What if the supercomputer calculated for millennia and finally announced: “The answer is… O.J. Simpson? The pan-dimensional beings who commissioned the computer would be understandably confused. “The football player?” they’d ask. “The guy from The Naked Gun?”
“No, no,” Deep Thought would insist. “Not THE O.J. Simpson. Just… the concept of O.J. Simpson. The duality. The hero and the villain. The Heisman Trophy and the white Bronco. The juice is loose, and therein lies enlightenment.”
What if this revelation sparked an interstellar crisis? Civilizations would crumble. Philosophers would weep. Someone would inevitably write a really uncomfortable think piece about it.
And somewhere in the cosmos, a writer standing in a shower would think: “Yeah, I could work with this.”
How to Go From Lunacy to Literature
This is my creative process, folks. It’s not pretty. It doesn’t involve mood boards or inspirational quotes typed in Papyrus font. It consists in wondering if the universe is just as confused and absurd as we are, and then writing that down before the water gets cold.
What if every story started with someone asking an increasingly unhinged series of questions? How about we stop pretending that “serious” writing is somehow more valuable than the story about O.J. Simpson being the meaning of life? What if the point of creativity isn’t to make sense, but to make people laugh while they’re trying to figure out how that just happened?
The truth is, the best stories come from the worst ideas. Or at least the weirdest ones. Because… and hear me out on this… normalcy is overrated? What if the stories that stick with us are the ones that make us go, “Wait, what?” followed immediately by “Tell me more”?
The Art of the Absurd and Why
Christopher Moore once wrote about a death merchant and a girl raised by ravens. Douglas Adams gave us depressed robots and poetry so bad it could kill. These weren’t safe choices. These were what-if choices.
What if I told you that every book I’ve written started as a shower thought that should have been drowned at birth? What if I admitted that “Otter Boy” began with the question: “What if conspiracy theorists were right about government-enhanced animals, but it was otters?” What if the only difference between a published author and an unstable gent is that one of them writes it down?
The answer, friends, is that there is no difference. We’re all making it up as we go. Some of us have the audacity to charge $25.95 for our delusions on Amazon.
What if that’s okay? Or the world needs more stories about 32 being the answer instead of 42? What if we need more absurdity, more satire, more writers willing to stand in their showers and wonder about O.J. Simpson’s role in the cosmic equation?
Conclusion: Embrace the Weird
So here’s my advice: Next time you have a weird thought—whether you’re in the shower, driving to work, or staring at your pig wondering why she’s judging you—don’t dismiss it. Ask yourself, if this irrational idea could become something interesting? What if the universe is waiting for someone weird enough to tell this particular story?
What if we stopped apologizing for our creative insanity and just let the raccoons knock over the garbage cans?
After all, the answer might not be 42. It might not even be 32.
But it’s definitely not O.J. Simpson.
…Or is it?
Now go write something weird. The universe is counting on you.
Key Takeaways
- The article explores creative ideas, starting with absurd thoughts often generated in unusual contexts, like the shower.
- It proposes entertaining scenarios, such as alternative answers to the Ultimate Question of Life, using O.J. Simpson as a humorous example.
- The essence of creativity lies in asking ‘what if’ questions and embracing weirdness in storytelling.
- Authors like Douglas Adams and Christopher Moore exemplify how unconventional ideas lead to memorable stories.
Related Links
See my Amazon author page.
His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos. He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
- When God Closes a Door, He Needs to Go Get Some Paprika - March 5, 2026
- Monkey Testicles, Missing Documents, and the Eternal Quest to Stay on Top - March 3, 2026
- Under the Blood Worm Moon, Nobody Has to Learn Anything - March 3, 2026
