"I've got to go leave some shits in the toilet."

"Wait, what's that a euphamism for?"

"Oh, it's Tuesday. His kids have swimming lessons."

• Qdoba is advertising about the wonders and glories of authentic Mexican street tacos, and about how DANGEROUS they are to acquire. You might have to go OUTSIDE, to the STREET, near MEXICANS. So instead you can acquire Mexican street tacos in the safety of Qdoba.
• Meanwhile, a Lasik company has released a whole slew of commercials advertising the sheer INCONVENIENCE of glasses and contacts. With glasses, you're always putting them on and taking them off and having to put them on in the morning. With contacts, you always have to put them in and take them out and *gasp* find space in your luggage to carry a spare pair on trips.

How many other easy/harmless things can we rebrand? I'm thinking:

• "Having lungs was such a pain. All that inhaling and exhaling. What a hassle!"
• "Now I can get a five dollar hooker in safety and comfort."
• "Now you can experience the dirty, urine-smelling back alley, and we'll guaranty our hobos won't attack you!"

 

A pay parking lot, long after the days when there's anywhere that you can park for free. A man parks his car to go get lunch in a restaurant, only to find that someone has set up an invisibility field around the payment machine. (You can tell it's a field on account of all the cars missing their back halves.) He tries to work the machine, but can only find the button to make it give him his card back, which is good, anyway, but that means he can't pay. Oh, well, there's another meter near the door.

Which has a crowd of about 20 people around it. Which would make sense, based on all the motorcycles on the way in, including the one someone had just bought and asked if he wanted to ride. So this meter will be a while.

Screw it. He'll go in and see how crowded the restaurant is, and maybe he won't even go here.

So he does. It's crowded. He doesn't want to go here.

Only now his car is gone. It's already been towed.

The problem with video phones is that you can see the tow truck drivers laughing at you as they wind their way down back streets, towing your car as far as they can, so that they can charge you for the mileage. Also, the invisibility field is gone. Coincidence?

In the end, they bring your car back, anyway. But they charge you 90 bucks for the privilege. Someone at the restaurant feels terrible about it, though. You end up with a gift card for 90 bucks to make up for it. It's not cash, but hey.

Then again, you'd have to park in the parking lot again. But at least you feel better. So the aliens don't win this time.

A Setting: A tiny cabin up in the woods, a 19th century style home, with only the door outside and the rest of the house buried back into a moutnain, mostly still with 19th century furniture and ammenities. Inhabited at any given time by 2 people, whose job is to live in a (more or less) 19th century style and give tours of their home to any interested tourists who stop by. On the downside, there is only one room where more modern implements are allowed, there's electricity, but it's sketchy and goes out a lot, and food is mostly canned, as the road *will* go out from time to time, and that house is at nearly the bottom of the list to clear out. On the plus side, there's not many tours, as hardly anyone knows the house is there, so no one ever really asks for tours.

Also, there are wolves, and it's possible to find the door by stumbling across it from the other side of the mountain.

A Character: "My daughter broke both her legs. She was in a full leg cast for like a YEAR. It was awful. She couldn't even do dishes, and I had to do them all. And it was so bad she couldn't even use crutches, so I had to carry around this wheelchair in my car all year."

Condo Highrise with 1 Resident: What's remarkable to me is that the company in charge is still keeping up the pool and front desk.

Architecture of the Blink: Perhaps a way to hide a magic world in this one? It's not so much that it hides, just that it makes people blink when they come into contact with it. Seeing it is nothing but a matter of keeping your eyes open.