Location

By definition, a location is someplace where things happen. However, there are exceptions to every rule. Sometimes, nothing ever happens somewhere but nevertheless it is a location. Let's examine some of those locations more closely.

The Oklahoma Panhandle

Windswept Plains

Sitting atop the Texas Stovepipe is a strip of land 166 miles long and 34 miles wide. It exists, like a disturbing number of American "fun facts", because of slavery. You see, Texas wanted to enter the Union as a slave state, a short time before the Union really stopped being united. Unfortunately a law known as the Missouri Compromise prevented Texas from having slaves in the uppermost 34 miles of its proposed boundary, so they shrugged and said "Eh, let someone else have it." This ended up being a trend and eventually it became part of Oklahoma for lack of anything better to do. Legend has it to this day there is still nothing better to do there.

The Georgia Nipple

Peachy Keen

Trapped between the Okefinokee National Wildlife Refuge and the Osceola National Forest hangs a sad little teat of land. It exists because at some point somebody thought it was a good idea to use the St. Marys River to define the southern boundary of Georgia. Unfortunately for us, this river mumbles around for a little while before giving up and turning into a swamp less than fifty miles inland. The southernmost named settlement in Georgia is here, the unincorporated community of St. George, which claims to have 2300 people in it. It's impossible to know if this is accurate because you would have to go there to find out, and no one has ever done that.

Foulness Island

The English countryside has the most charming names

Foulness Island is a coastal island near Southend-on-Sea, east of London. It is a military base used as a firing range and managed by the British defence company QinetiQ. Two hundred "tenant farmers" live there, but the only vehicle bridge to the island is not open to the public. Public access is via The Broomway, a centuries old walking path that requires you to literally walk into the north sea and across tidal flats during low tide. The Broomway has a long history of killing people, making it the deadliest walking path in all of Britain. As a result, nobody knows if anything happens on Foulness Island because no one is brave enough to walk there and find out.

New Zealand

What do your elf eyes see?

Now I know what you're thinking. It's a whole country! Surely things happen there! They filmed those movies about rings and guys with hairy feet there, didn't they?

Ah, yes, but you forget: Movies aren't real, nor are feet, and for our purposes non-real things happening don't count. What's more, if this were a place where things happen why do so many world maps neglect to include this antipodean island?

Point Nemo

Get away from it all

Point Nemo is the so-called "most remote place on earth" at the center of a 1,670 mile circle of open ocean in the south Pacific. There is no land anywhere within this circle. There is only one thing you can do at Point Nemo: leave.

Outer Space

Outer Space as viewed from Outer Space

According to Astronomers, stuff is happening in Outer Space all the time. Solar flares and exoplanets and space probe landings and comets and cupids and donners and blitzens. But have you ever seen what Astronomers do? They take weird devices on spindly legs and they use them to beam strange rays from the deep beyond directly into their minds! Or worse, they force this torture on innocent machines! Can we trust their judgement?

Even worse, if you press an astronomer on any of their so-called events, they'll admit what they've seen happened days, months, or years ago. They claim the distances of space are so vast that almost everything you look at happened in the long-forgotten past. Get an astronomer drunk and they might admit to looking so far into the depths that they see the first thing that ever happened. Nothing they say can be trusted.