Who among us hasn't been asked by a teacher or a boss to think outside the box? It's all well and good when you're looking at a word problem on a Denny's application, not so much when you're staring down a problem with lives on the line.
We tend to think of classic art as being all dignified and serious, if perhaps a little stuffy. But that's only because we're not looking closely enough.
If you want your memory to stay strong, you probably already know what to avoid -- excessive alcohol, beating your head on things, getting any older. What you probably didn't know is that there are other, lesser known everyday threats that may be slowly turning you into that guy from 'Memento.'
It's easy for us to hide the bad things from our kids that appear in works today. Things get a little trickier when classics of children's literature suddenly let fly with the sort of out-of-the-blue casual racism usually reserved for old Southern men after a few too many drinks
In the grand scale of things, not much changes when a single dude decides he'd rather be a Communist than an American, or vice versa. The balance of power is still basically the same, right? But every balance has a tipping point, and sometimes all it takes is one turncoat to change the course of history.
You know what the problem with 'Sharktopus' was? It just wasn't necessary. Nature provides enough science-fiction-level aquatic horrors all on her own. Hell, some of these are less believable.
In real life, people don't suffer freaky events like getting struck by lightning or getting part of their brain removed and then suddenly find themselves with new superpowers, like heat vision or flight. However, people do apparently suffer freaky events and then gain the ability to do art.