Welcome to The Plotted Line, a blog for comedy stories, geeky nonsense and personal musings.
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My name is Toon and I will be your guide through this wondrous adventure of comically unfortunate events, science and nerdiness, and possibly some drama when I’m in the mood for it.
The stories found on this blog are all true stories, or at least based on events that happened to me or people in my environment. Some stories might seem absurd, but you would be surprised at how much of it actually happened. Among my family and friends this is known as the Curse of Andries. The curse is similar to Murphy’s Law – “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” – but with more absurdity, higher survival chances – although sometimes just barely – and the probability to laugh about it afterwards. To use a fitting quote by Terry Pratchett from his book Mort:
“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. And as is so often the case, the beginning seems like a good place to start. Like everyone, I started out as a baby – my grasp on biology amazes even me. I was born and raised in Beveren, a town in the North of Belgium, where not a lot of exciting things happen. This also means that English is not my native language – it’s not even Belgium’s second or third language, so please be forgiving of spelling and grammatical errors.
As a little kid I was very interested in science and wanted to be an inventor. So I studied to become a master of science in ICT, worked for a software company for a couple of years and I’m proud to have web designed a lot of this blog myself.
At the age of 6 I learned how to write, and I really liked writing. I wrote my first stories on my mother’s old typewriter; stories with such thin plot lines, character development and emotional engagement that it would make a professional author cringe. It’s 23 years later now – I’ll leave it up to you geniuses to work out my age – and here I am writing stories for this blog, to try and gain the confidence and experience needed to write a book.
Other hobbies in my curriculum include drumming, creative cooking, some arts and crafts, science (mainly physics and astronomy), board games, books and the usual geeky stuff.
But enough about me. There will be plenty more to tell in future stories. If you’re still reading and haven’t run away at this point, there is a good chance you will appreciate my sense of humour. Feel free to leave a comment and to subscribe.
I try to focus on quality over quantity and it takes me a while to write, edit and have the perfectionist in me be satisfied with the story, so I will not be posting daily.