His hat said "Show Me Your Tits." It was for special occassions.

I may have mentioned before that I fancy myself a writer. I am sometimes asked, as I'm sure many writers are, where ideas for stories come from. The reality is that they come from everywhere, but the most recent incident is from a story I was just reading earlier this evening.

I was reading a story in which one of the main characters was upset with the other, and due to the situation he couldn't do anything to react outwardly, so he went into the bathroom and bit his own arm, drawing blood. See, that's one of those strange scenes/occurrences that hit me weird and then my train of thought goes off the tracks.

• I start to think about what kind of person would bite their own arm when left with nothing else to do.
  
• I start to wonder what else someone could do in lashing out that would be relatively equal to biting yourself.
  
• I try to imagine what would happen if the character had stayed in the room and bitten the other person's arm instead.
  
• I think about how much it would hurt to bite your own arm until you draw blood.
  
• I wonder if I could bite my own arm that hard.
  
• I consider biting my own arm--then decide against it.
  
• I wonder how much harder you would have to bite to just take out a chunk of your own skin.
  
• I start to think about the zombie movie I watched the other night when the damage ranged from a single bite to people being torn apart screaming.
  
• I wonder why I don't take more notice of the people who receive a single bite and scream at first, but then are ridiculously fine and shooting at the zombie horde with the rest of the survivors--that is, until they either sacrifice themselves or the infected bite turns them into a zombie.
  
• I try to think of ways someone could take a bite out of themselves or someone else without there having to be zombies involved, like in the story I mentioned earlier (mostly because zombies seem to be fighting vampires for the rank of trendiest monster, and I don't want to be a bandwagoner).
  
• I decide that it could probably be done (obviously), but since it hasn't come to me right away, I'll put it on a shelf and if it comes to me eventually, then it comes to me. If the initial image is good enough, it'll come to me.
  

So that's a short glimpse into what goes on. Nothing too glamorous, I'm sure. Maybe even a bit disappointing. But if you're ever hanging out with a writer and their eyes suddenly sort of go out of focus on you, snap back, and then they act impatient for no apparent reason, they'll probably appreciate it if you'd wrap it up or allow them a gracious retreat, because they're either going to go write or to the toilet. Either way, there's a massive dump about to happen.