So, yeah. That’s the big secret to eliminating chaos. Self-help platitudes. >_>
But really, what where you expecting from a B-movie? One of the preconditions for becoming a B-movie writer is a complete lack of understanding of science, so there wasn’t any chance in hell that there was anything like a real, scientifically plausible work-around for the second law of thermodynamics waiting.
And as for useful tips for dealing with chaos in the more mundane, everyday sense? Well, again – if B-movie writers were capable of maintaining an orderly, structured work(and life-)flow, they’d be in a better place – a place where they wouldn’t be B-movie writers to begin with. Instead, they’d be engaged in some better reputed form of writing…like, I dunno, writing lists of ingredients on food packaging, or something honest like that.
So, yeah, some set of standard self-organization tips was as good as it was going to get. And, hey, most B-movie writers might even believe in their efficacy. They would probably tend to blame the fact that they’ve never worked for them on themselves, rather than on the rules…but they’d be only half-right on that.*
Which is not saying that that sort of advice is useless as such…it’s just not normally useful to the people who are looking for it, since it puts the result before the process. Still…I’ve decided not to blur out the text, just on the off-chance that it’ll actually prove helpful to somebody. =P
Key is, in the context of this fictional universe, this sort of advice is actually really effective against chaos, and Mopey has no managed to send it to the rest of the team…whether she finally got that group message app working, or just coded her own alternative out of desperation, remains undisclosed.
I’m not going to show every team member’s individual reaction to receipt of this message, I think Gregory’s reaction is representative enough. He was my go-to guy for this, since he’s been in a growing state of despair over existence in general for some time now…and that’s the perfect mind-set for this sort of underwhelmning revelation, isn’t it? I can identify with Gregory on so many levels, by now, I’ll have to be careful not to turn him into an Author Avatar…
More on Monday.
*And, n.b., I’m not talking down to them. It’s not like my own state of organization is anything to write home about, save perhaps in an attempt to entertain the people there. For example, I’m pretty late with writing this comment because I interrupted the process in order to clean my windows…which was, admittedly, overdue, but still wouldn’t really have required doing that very moment…
“…complete lack of understanding of science…”
Yep! I remember watching some cheap sci-fi movie in which an Air Force Major was calling a Master Sergeant “sir”, asking him not to push the RED BUTTON that would nuke the “hurricane” in the Pacific.
Yeah, everyone has their own favorite B-Movie science moments. I fondly recall the scientist who was able to clearly identify a giant “anti-matter space buzzard” at first sight…or the other one, who answered the question “The same pattern was observed in the other incident. Do you think it’s the same?” with a simple “No.” That last sequence, in particular, taught me everything I felt I needed to know about B-movie script writing. XD