ITT: Original Story Ideas

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A formerly aristocratic family of vampires who went to ground in the Florida everglades after the Civil War took away their primary means of protecting themselves from townspeople (and their primary food supply) come unexpectedly face to face with modernity a hundred years later, when a hippie with an organic chemistry background wanders into their hippo enclave and (after they take him prisoner) falls in love with their (middle, apparently-16-years-old-but-actually-150) daughter. After an acid trip, they decide to run away together by hijacking one of the hippos, and the remaining family descends into petty infighting over their inability to do anything about it.

I'm unclear where the hippos came from but I love the imagery.

[Cain]

From the hippo store, one presumes.

Also this: http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

From the hippo store, one presumes.

Also this: http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/

I just HAWHAWHAWed out loud. I am now so, so disappointed that hippo farms, and the inevitable feral hippo and resultant invasive hippo problem, never came to fruition.

[Junkenstein]

From the hippo store, one presumes.

Also this: http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/

I just HAWHAWHAWed out loud. I am now so, so disappointed that hippo farms, and the inevitable feral hippo and resultant invasive hippo problem, never came to fruition.

Hey. Hey guys.

Remember Pablo Escobar's hippos?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27905743

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them.

Nobody knows how many there are. The local environmental authority, which bears responsibility for them, estimates between 50 and 60, with most living in the lake at the park. But 12 are known to have paddled past the flimsy fence and into the nearby Magdalena River - and maybe many more.

How much the hippos like Colombia can be judged from how much sex they are having. In Africa they usually become sexually active between the ages of seven and nine for males, and nine and 11 for females, but Pablo Escobar's hippos are becoming sexually active as young as three. All the fertile females are reported to be giving birth to a calf every year.

[Cain]

Hippo is said to taste quite nice, "hippo meat is one of the finest of game foods ... The taste is mild, less than lamb and more than beef, slightly more marbled than usual venison. It tastes exactly like, well, hippo."

Escobar's Hippo Burgers Inc has a potential future, is all I'm saying.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

From the hippo store, one presumes.

Also this: http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/

I just HAWHAWHAWed out loud. I am now so, so disappointed that hippo farms, and the inevitable feral hippo and resultant invasive hippo problem, never came to fruition.

Hey. Hey guys.

Remember Pablo Escobar's hippos?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27905743

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them.

Nobody knows how many there are. The local environmental authority, which bears responsibility for them, estimates between 50 and 60, with most living in the lake at the park. But 12 are known to have paddled past the flimsy fence and into the nearby Magdalena River - and maybe many more.

How much the hippos like Colombia can be judged from how much sex they are having. In Africa they usually become sexually active between the ages of seven and nine for males, and nine and 11 for females, but Pablo Escobar's hippos are becoming sexually active as young as three. All the fertile females are reported to be giving birth to a calf every year.

I am sure this will shape up to be some kind of disaster for the  local ecosystem. Still, there is an irony, given that they are now endangered in Africa.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

From the hippo store, one presumes.

Also this: http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/

I just HAWHAWHAWed out loud. I am now so, so disappointed that hippo farms, and the inevitable feral hippo and resultant invasive hippo problem, never came to fruition.

Hey. Hey guys.

Remember Pablo Escobar's hippos?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27905743

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them.

Nobody knows how many there are. The local environmental authority, which bears responsibility for them, estimates between 50 and 60, with most living in the lake at the park. But 12 are known to have paddled past the flimsy fence and into the nearby Magdalena River - and maybe many more.

How much the hippos like Colombia can be judged from how much sex they are having. In Africa they usually become sexually active between the ages of seven and nine for males, and nine and 11 for females, but Pablo Escobar's hippos are becoming sexually active as young as three. All the fertile females are reported to be giving birth to a calf every year.

I am sure this will shape up to be some kind of disaster for the  local ecosystem. Still, there is an irony, given that they are now endangered in Africa.

Story idea:
A slightly unhinged environmentalist deliberately tries to create exactly such a situation with the plan of eventually rounding up the hippos and transporting them to Africa.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

In the near future, sensory deprivation space tours become popular among the west-coast-hippie-billionaire set ("Explore inner space -- from outer space!"). Such things are relatively profitable, because occupants willingly lock themselves in tiny sound-proof unlighted rooms and lay in their sleeping bags for large portions of the trip and don't particularly care about the scenery, so cheap cargo spacecraft that typically dock at low-earth-orbit space stations (i.e., no capability for landing or atmospheres) can be repurposed as luxury cruise lines without actually adding any luxuries. Unfortunately, on one such ship, a string of violent closed-room murders occur. Because a small segment of the crew has access to an emergency unlock for the rooms, they are suspect -- however, ships logs indicate the doors never having opened, either automatically or from the inside, and security footage agrees. Eventually, it becomes clear that the culprit is a popular grey-legal hallucinogen that has a side effect of causing short bursts of increased blood pressure -- which, in people who are already stress-prone and already not particularly physically fit can cause violent arterial bursts when gravity is no longer enforcing normal patterns of blood flow; many of the customers took this immediately upon entering their sensory deprivation chambers and then their necks exploded 15-20 hours later.

[axod]

Hip slackers take the world by storm upon realizing that the working class is not used to operating at low atmospheric pressure.  Herding a legion of autonomous air-recycling dirigibles from giant stilts, slackers syphon away millions of pounds of earth's air into outer space.  Ex-ambassadors and politicians are the first to pop.  Like a terry gilliam version of total recall.

[axod]

From the hippo store, one presumes.

Also this: http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/

I just HAWHAWHAWed out loud. I am now so, so disappointed that hippo farms, and the inevitable feral hippo and resultant invasive hippo problem, never came to fruition.

Hey. Hey guys.

Remember Pablo Escobar's hippos?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27905743

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them.

Nobody knows how many there are. The local environmental authority, which bears responsibility for them, estimates between 50 and 60, with most living in the lake at the park. But 12 are known to have paddled past the flimsy fence and into the nearby Magdalena River - and maybe many more.

How much the hippos like Colombia can be judged from how much sex they are having. In Africa they usually become sexually active between the ages of seven and nine for males, and nine and 11 for females, but Pablo Escobar's hippos are becoming sexually active as young as three. All the fertile females are reported to be giving birth to a calf every year.

TY for remembering this to me.  Sooo fukcing fertile!

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A little boy suffers a near-death experience on the operating table and journeys to the land of the dead, where he observes wonderful and fantastic things, including a peaceful race of superintelligent asexual mules, an all-female race of proud warriors with detachable heads who impregnate each other with their feet, giant intelligent lobsters who work as feather merchants, tiny people who become extremely large when exposed to direct sunlight, forests full of trees that are sheep, talking vines, and a race of sea-faring butterflies. He comes back to life and tells his family all about his journey. In other words, a mashup of the fantastic travelogue genre (True History, Gulliver's Travels) and the heaven tourism genre (Heaven is Real!, Dante's Inferno), with the moral lessons of the latter completely omitted.

[Freeky]

A little boy suffers a near-death experience on the operating table and journeys to the land of the dead, where he observes wonderful and fantastic things, including a peaceful race of superintelligent asexual mules, an all-female race of proud warriors with detachable heads who impregnate each other with their feet, giant intelligent lobsters who work as feather merchants, tiny people who become extremely large when exposed to direct sunlight, forests full of trees that are sheep, talking vines, and a race of sea-faring butterflies. He comes back to life and tells his family all about his journey. In other words, a mashup of the fantastic travelogue genre (True History, Gulliver's Travels) and the heaven tourism genre (Heaven is Real!, Dante's Inferno), with the moral lessons of the latter completely omitted.

I would read the hell out of this.  I would read this to the monkey, even.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A little boy suffers a near-death experience on the operating table and journeys to the land of the dead, where he observes wonderful and fantastic things, including a peaceful race of superintelligent asexual mules, an all-female race of proud warriors with detachable heads who impregnate each other with their feet, giant intelligent lobsters who work as feather merchants, tiny people who become extremely large when exposed to direct sunlight, forests full of trees that are sheep, talking vines, and a race of sea-faring butterflies. He comes back to life and tells his family all about his journey. In other words, a mashup of the fantastic travelogue genre (True History, Gulliver's Travels) and the heaven tourism genre (Heaven is Real!, Dante's Inferno), with the moral lessons of the latter completely omitted.

That's an great idea!

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A comedy skit in which a goes to a doctor and asks for medical marijuana, claiming to have Munchausen Syndrome and/or Factitious Disorder (both of which are characterized by a compulsion to report false symptoms to doctors and/or self harm in order to retroactively justify an unjustified desire for medical treatment)

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A man gains superpowers after a bizarre accident and decides to fight crime, but is quickly and constantly imposed upon to instead use these powers for mundane purposes by opportunistic and passive-aggressive friends and family members