Crazy Town Narratives

Last weekend, after years of saying NO THANKS to Australian author Matthew Reilly's crazy town action / thriller works of fiction, I picked up Ice Station and didn't really put it down until I got to the other end. The bastard hooked me in right from the get go, and before I knew it, I had read my first completely improbable, multi-plot, non-stop-action roller coaster thriller ride of a narrative.

And I've been dreaming and hallucinating of kick-arse commando units, maghooks, Antarctic ice shelfs (shelves?), mutant nuclear radiation-generated elephant seals and killer whales ever since. Yes, that makes for a quite a daunting dream. And I don't always live through it either, so clearly I am not the leading man / super-marine superhero that I think I deserve to be in my own dream.  Perhaps my subconscious has self-esteem troubles like the rest of my brain.

The hero of the series, Captain Shane Scholfield, or Scarecrow - his Marine call sign - is relentlessly subjected to the vicissitudes of commando life. One minute he is standing around looking splendid in his flash-free ray bans, the next minute he is fleeing from an overgrown elephant seal the size of Sydney's Centrepoint Tower or a rogue British SAS commando that suffers from numerous and varied psychological and personality disorders. Ain't nothing mundane about being a kick-arse marine.

I've decided that my life, perhaps, would be more exhilarating if I too could own a maghook like Scarecrows. The maghook  is a small, albeit powerful, cylindrical electromagnet that can be used as a grappling hook. The magnet is activated and deactivated by pushing a button on and off, or some such. 

The maghook is guaranteed to get you out of any sticky situation, and it had its heyday during the Star Wars years.  But where does one purchase such a device? I doubt it's something you can pick up from K-Mart, or even Bunnings. Perhaps an army surplass store stocks what I want. Imagine how your life could change with a spiderman-esque gadget of this nature?

If you find yourself in a meeting that doesn't meet your exacting requirements for timeliness, efficiency or interest, you could simply excuse yourself briefly and maghook your shit out of there. Work would become most exciting; or, at least, like a Bond movie starring a plank of wood as the antagonist.  Or maybe that's just the bad guys in my workplace.