You run into them all the time. I find it shocking whenever I do, but I guess society just kind of beats it out of people. These are the people who have probably spent one year too many in a cubicle staring and gray fabric walls, climbing a corporate ladder that has no top and constantly being stepped on by those climbing over them faster. These are the people who have no imaginations. I run into them a lot when it comes to things like books and movies.

“What were ALIENS doing in that Indiana Jones picture?” They ask. I have heard this one a lot. There has been this backlash against what I found to be a rather fun, entertaining film.

OK, so, let me get this straight. You were able to buy a magic box containing the power of God that could fly out and vaporize Nazis in the first one? You were then able to buy into magic rocks that glowed and got hot or a guy who could mystically remove someone’s heart in the second one? You were willing to suspend your disbelief and believe in an immortality-bestowing cup and a centuries old knight guarding it in the third? But what REALLY made you draw the line was aliens? Really?

Now, I will grant you that the idea of hiding in a lead-lined fridge in the middle of a nuclear blast as a survival method may be stretching things just a tad. I mean, I doubt the lead would stop the searing heat and the blasting winds and the tumbling around might kill you. You would, however, probably at least be safe from any radiation.

“She has a machine gun for her leg!” Said another friend once when we were discussing movies.

The movie was “Grindhouse” which was Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s ode to those cheesy, poorly-directed, badly-acted, terrible-special-effect movies in low-rent and rundown movie theaters in the 70s. They were notorious for being horrible. They are good because they are so bad. In Rodriguez’s contribution he envisions a world of zombies and a stripper who loses her leg has it replaced with a machine gun. One she can fire without hitting the trigger, has an endless supply of bullets and grenades and one she can use to fire a grenade beneath her and have it propel her up instead of blowing her to bits.

It’s hilarious, in other words.
“Yes, I know,” I replied. “It’s SUPPOSED to be ridiculous. Don’t you get it?”
“But she has a GUN for a LEG!” He repeated.

“Yes, I know that,” I replied patiently as though dealing with a particularly dull student in a film class. “That is exactly the reaction he WANTS you to have. You are supposed to laugh and shake your head at the mere idea.”
“She has a GUNNNN for a LEGGG!!!” He cried.

I don’t know what happens to these people. There was probably a time in his life when the idea of having a machine gun for any body part was considered very cool. Something decided that he needed to be practical and that movies should be as well. I find that very sad.

I once ran into someone who said she just couldn’t get into the “Lord of the Rings” movies. I asked if it was because they were too long or she just found the story boring. “No,” she said, “I just can’t get into all of the wizards and Orcs and monsters and things. They just seem silly.”

I ran into another who couldn’t finish reading any book if that book had anything to do with aliens or UFOs. She once handed me a book by Dean Koontz and said, “I think you’ll like it. It’s pretty good up until you find out there are aliens and spacemen involved.”

To me your imagination is what keeps you free. There should never be chains or limits on it. No matter where you are and what you are doing, no matter what the real world has thrown in your path, you should be able to fly away inside your mind. Your mind should be filled with aliens, angels, demons and every other creature both real and fictional.

At the same time, I am a writer. I write fiction as well as humor columns. Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of imagination. I don’t know. I just know that my mind is filled with awesome and scary stuff standing side-by-side. Machine-gun-legged strippers fight valiantly against giant demons from other dimensions who are backed by evil aliens from some planet with a name you puny humans could never pronounce.

I encourage you to free your imagination. Maybe even take out a pen and paper and try writing some of it down. Maybe people get embarrassed. They feel that their imagination is something shameful and something to be locked up and put away like a naughty child. Let it be naughty.

I think you’ll find you can fly again.

Bryan Alaspa is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here .