World Domination

I was looking into mind-mapping software last week for the nth time (and for the nth time I decided to stick with pencil and paper).  Mind-mapping is a useful technique to have in your writer's toolbox, however you do it.  This post isn't about mind-mapping, though; it's about world domination.  What do the two have to do with each other?  Well, planning for world domination is a frequent topic of mind-mapping software examples and tutorials, that's all.

So I started thinking about world domination.  I mean, how would I go about it from a literary perspective.  Let's say I wanted to take over the literary world.  Or maybe take over the world through literature.  How?

The first thing that sprang to mind was the way certain soft-drink companies (all of whom are bent on world domination, don't you know) want to place their product in retail outlets and vending machines all over so that no one will ever have to walk more than a hundred feet (or something like that) to slake thirst with one of those soft-drinks.  "Slake thirst" -- I like that.  Thirst slaker in a can.  Yeah.

We should have reading material (but not advertisements) within reach of everyone.  We could slake thirst in this intellectual reality-tv dessert, this Bikini Atoll of culture.


And then I thought about how we have all these soft drinks available, all these empty calories helping us get and stay overweight.  Of course, there's the other class of soft-drink, which is the zero-calorie variety, the purpose of which is to counteract the weight-increasing kind.  So we're surrounding ourselves with products that give calories to those of us that don't need them, or products that give us a way to spend our food-money on something that has absolutely no food value.  All in a world with starving millions.  Slake that.

That got me feeling kind of negative about world domination.  I decided to seek a more local solution.

Writers could form gangs.  I'd call mine the West Side Story.  We'd roam the sidewalks at night forcing people to read our works at pen-knife-point under the street lamps, or just chase them into bookstores.  On second thought it sounds too much like dancing.

Maybe we could enlist the Secret Society of Fiction Librarians (come on -- you know the SSFL exists), but they're already busy with their turf war with the reference section, and fending off the book burners....

I guess I'll skip the world domination thing for now.  I don't have time anyway -- I have a story to tell.