Where You Find It
Just in case there was any doubt, here is further proof that inspiration can be found anywhere. I came across this website through a Lovecraft fan, but there’s so much more to appreciate than just a nod to Dead Cthulhu.
Someone stumbled onto the fact that, in addition to its staples of books, music, and videos, Amazon.com sells ballpoint pens, and, because Amazon decided to use the same template for the pens as it does for all its other products, the page devoted to purchasing your pens through Amazon includes an invitation to comment. Doubtless, many people stumbled onto the same fact and thought nothing of it. What is there to say about cheap, disposable ballpoints, in a design that’s been around since at leas my infancy?
What indeed. Not satisfied with merely clicking “back” or “add to shopping cart,” one enterprising customer took the comments box as a challenge: produce useful, or at least interesting, customer feedback on a product only slightly less mundane than gravel.
The results were not, one must admit, useful, and they were only interesting in a “meta” sense—the interest lies not in what he has to say about the pen, but that he chose to say anything. Good enough! Others, inspired by his example, took up the glove and tried to outdo this first offering, in style or substance. And, since there isn’t much to say about disposable ballpoints, the field has quickly become crowded; at this point, it’s a fair challenge simply to produce substantially different text, let alone superior comments. Additional meta humor lies in the fact that these idle fancies are far, far more more interesting, more extensive, and more numerous than those devoted almost any other Amazon product.
Of course, once that particular joke’s been done, there’s no point in imitating it. You’ll need to think of another to make a mark. But I still take heart at this reminder that a good verbal riff can come from anywhere.