I didn’t follow the rules...but I did walk around the house holding a candle and muttering to myself. Can’t wait to see where I converged with others.
---
insert wick into your mouth (or your anus) for a minute. Pull it out, verify that it is emitting blackbody radiation at human internal body temperature. Declare it to be “lit” in the sense of “nontrivially emitting light”
simply de-identify with any version of yourself living in an everett branch in which the candle does not spontaneously combust. (you can use a similar anthropic trick to win the lottery)
put the candle in the heating chamber of your drip coffee machine
stick some slivers of tin foil into the wick and microwave the candle. or something. man, there’s gotta be some household method of abusing microwave ovens to make fire.
bury the candle in Centralia, Pennsylvania.
rub your hands faster and faster and faster until they catch on fire. light candle with finger.
put the candle close but not too close to [contemporary icon of sex appeal]
hallucinate the candle being lit
wait for heat-death
define “lit” to include quark-gluon plasma, whether highly dense or highly sparse. wait for the Big Crunch, or the Big Rip.
butterflies
don your eye protection and reflective armor and walk around a hall of mirrors while holding out the candle and waving around a high-powered laser
start injecting steroids, grow a mustache, and keep buying merchandise from The Art of Manliness until your grip strength reaches superhuman levels. Replace the wick with a high tensile-strength metamaterial. remove the wax, grip each end of the wick with max strength, and pull apart.
wait for nanotechnology to become commonplace. go out into the neighborhood while parents are still at work but kids are home from school. follow the yelps of teenagers burning themselves on rapidly assembled sex dolls. pick a still-hot assembler array and press the wick against it.
just—idk put it underwater...
finally drop that single you’ve been incubating for the last five years. place candle in front of speakers. play.
undergo a self-esteem character arc, let go of your self-consciousness, consult a fashion advisor, put your chin up, let your hair down, and flash your best Blue Steel. Yes, YOU :D
forget everything you know about evopsych and find your soulmate. fall in love. show them your special, secret, inner life. bask in their loving acceptance release your emotional restraints, look them in the eyes, and let your chest swell with energy as you give into the heat of the moment. press the wick to your heart. ♡( ◡ ‿ ◡ )
arc flash
disable your fire extinguisher. bump your housemate’s hand while they’re cooking so that a grease fire starts. tell them to go get the fire extinguisher from the other room. close the door and don’t let them back in until the candle has caught fire. divert all blame to another housemate.
wait for lightning to strike the candle
stop waiting and put the candle at the top of a lightning rod.
run a simulation which contains an identical world to our own except the candle is pre-destined for glorious candescence. run the simulation a bunch of times so that your version of events gets more of the magical reality fluid than the version that happens in your own layer of reality.
Make a little man out of clay, breathe life into him, and when he asks what you want of him tell him to light the candle.
swallow the candle
replace one arm with a cigar lighter and the other with a spark plug. Ask your friend to light the candle while you are recovering from this unholy cyborg surgery.
chew on it until it catches on fire
just beg the gods to light it
steal fire from the gods, and blame it on prometheus.
pump a bunch of oxygen into the room, wrap both hands in sandpaper, and clap
flint, steel, and a ripped up $100 bill for tinder
pyrokinesis
potassium and water
stick both ends of the wick into an electrical outlet?
squeeze a ziplock bag of water into a convex lens and focus sunlight onto the wick
rub chocolate onto the underside of a soda can to turn it into a concave mirror and focus sunlight onto the wick
become twitter famous. befriend elon musk. get him to put the candle on a spaceX landing pad “as a joke”
sniff candle to identify chemical composition. get chemistry textbook. find the relevant reaction with the lowest possible reaction energy. light candle really efficiently.
hang out with contrarians who smoke, and smugly announce that your candle is unlightable
stick it into the most chemically unstable layer of your disgusting, caustic laundry pile
use a cattle prod or a branding iron to light the candle. pivot into becoming a rancher. promote minimum-cruelty meat.
make your friend really mad and stick the candle in his ear
get into a fiery car crash while holding the candle (but sign up for cryonics beforehand, obviously)
post a gif of your unlit candle on r/UnnecessaryExplosions
conduct a psyop on world leaders, incite nuclear war, store the candle in or near the highest-risk target
Seduce....Apollo? Yeah, I think he’s the right one. God of fire and...some other stuff. Then go ahead seduce his sister. She’s purdy.
use one of those super-heated steam guns
put it next to your fireplace and keep poking the logs to make sparks fly out
turn the lights on and off really fast...
cover it in peanut butter
scan the news for grain silo explosions and haul ass over to the next one that happens in your area
build a network of dyson spheres and use them to broadcast “bring it on, weaklings” in english on the hydrogen line along with a corpus of english words. the aliens will probably figure it out. ehhh, but they might not set us on fire… okay, just use one of your dyson spheres to light the candle directly.
move to australia and just wait for a good firestorm (avoiding dropbears and other large, venomous animals in the meantime)
move to somewhere on the pacific rim and continually blaspheme pele-honua-mea until your house is swept away by a lava flow. obviously, you’ll need to keep the candle in your house for this to work...
steel wool + battery
fresnel lens
Katon, Goukakyuu No Jutsu!
use your charisma to trick the candle into eating a ghost pepper
invite your friends over for a bbq. flex your status as grillmaster and alpha male by sticking your candle into the coals. Make sure not to be the first to break eye contact or else they become the grillmaster (and more importantly for the task at hand, you’ll have to hand over the candle).
buy a set of identical candles and sneak them into your friend’s petrov day ritual kit
same as above but for חֲנֻכָּה
discontent and radicalize the candle. convince it to self-immolate in front of parliament or city hall or wherever
take a vow of silence, open your third eye, and unlock combustionbending. combust candle.
pipe all your neighbors’ air-conditioning exhaust into a chamber containing your candle. Have one wall of the chamber be a piston. Drop an elephant on the piston.
realize that “Danger: High Voltage” is just italian for “Free Sparks”
rub two candles together until one or both catch fire
shoot an arrow so that it passes through a torch before it hits the candle
ingratiate yourself with elon musk and bro it up with him while on drugs. get him to put the candle in space and drop it back to earth “as a joke”
I didn’t follow the rules...but I did walk around the house holding a candle and muttering to myself. Can’t wait to see where I converged with others.
---
insert wick into your mouth (or your anus) for a minute. Pull it out, verify that it is emitting blackbody radiation at human internal body temperature. Declare it to be “lit” in the sense of “nontrivially emitting light”
simply de-identify with any version of yourself living in an everett branch in which the candle does not spontaneously combust. (you can use a similar anthropic trick to win the lottery)
put the candle in the heating chamber of your drip coffee machine
stick some slivers of tin foil into the wick and microwave the candle. or something. man, there’s gotta be some household method of abusing microwave ovens to make fire.
bury the candle in Centralia, Pennsylvania.
rub your hands faster and faster and faster until they catch on fire. light candle with finger.
put the candle close but not too close to [contemporary icon of sex appeal]
hallucinate the candle being lit
wait for heat-death
define “lit” to include quark-gluon plasma, whether highly dense or highly sparse. wait for the Big Crunch, or the Big Rip.
butterflies
don your eye protection and reflective armor and walk around a hall of mirrors while holding out the candle and waving around a high-powered laser
start injecting steroids, grow a mustache, and keep buying merchandise from The Art of Manliness until your grip strength reaches superhuman levels. Replace the wick with a high tensile-strength metamaterial. remove the wax, grip each end of the wick with max strength, and pull apart.
wait for nanotechnology to become commonplace. go out into the neighborhood while parents are still at work but kids are home from school. follow the yelps of teenagers burning themselves on rapidly assembled sex dolls. pick a still-hot assembler array and press the wick against it.
just—idk put it underwater...
finally drop that single you’ve been incubating for the last five years. place candle in front of speakers. play.
undergo a self-esteem character arc, let go of your self-consciousness, consult a fashion advisor, put your chin up, let your hair down, and flash your best Blue Steel. Yes, YOU :D
forget everything you know about evopsych and find your soulmate. fall in love. show them your special, secret, inner life. bask in their loving acceptance release your emotional restraints, look them in the eyes, and let your chest swell with energy as you give into the heat of the moment. press the wick to your heart. ♡( ◡ ‿ ◡ )
arc flash
disable your fire extinguisher. bump your housemate’s hand while they’re cooking so that a grease fire starts. tell them to go get the fire extinguisher from the other room. close the door and don’t let them back in until the candle has caught fire. divert all blame to another housemate.
wait for lightning to strike the candle
stop waiting and put the candle at the top of a lightning rod.
run a simulation which contains an identical world to our own except the candle is pre-destined for glorious candescence. run the simulation a bunch of times so that your version of events gets more of the magical reality fluid than the version that happens in your own layer of reality.
Make a little man out of clay, breathe life into him, and when he asks what you want of him tell him to light the candle.
swallow the candle
replace one arm with a cigar lighter and the other with a spark plug. Ask your friend to light the candle while you are recovering from this unholy cyborg surgery.
chew on it until it catches on fire
just beg the gods to light it
steal fire from the gods, and blame it on prometheus.
pump a bunch of oxygen into the room, wrap both hands in sandpaper, and clap
flint, steel, and a ripped up $100 bill for tinder
pyrokinesis
potassium and water
stick both ends of the wick into an electrical outlet?
squeeze a ziplock bag of water into a convex lens and focus sunlight onto the wick
rub chocolate onto the underside of a soda can to turn it into a concave mirror and focus sunlight onto the wick
become twitter famous. befriend elon musk. get him to put the candle on a spaceX landing pad “as a joke”
sniff candle to identify chemical composition. get chemistry textbook. find the relevant reaction with the lowest possible reaction energy. light candle really efficiently.
hang out with contrarians who smoke, and smugly announce that your candle is unlightable
stick it into the most chemically unstable layer of your disgusting, caustic laundry pile
use a cattle prod or a branding iron to light the candle. pivot into becoming a rancher. promote minimum-cruelty meat.
make your friend really mad and stick the candle in his ear
get into a fiery car crash while holding the candle (but sign up for cryonics beforehand, obviously)
post a gif of your unlit candle on r/UnnecessaryExplosions
conduct a psyop on world leaders, incite nuclear war, store the candle in or near the highest-risk target
Seduce....Apollo? Yeah, I think he’s the right one. God of fire and...some other stuff. Then go ahead seduce his sister. She’s purdy.
use one of those super-heated steam guns
put it next to your fireplace and keep poking the logs to make sparks fly out
turn the lights on and off really fast...
cover it in peanut butter
scan the news for grain silo explosions and haul ass over to the next one that happens in your area
build a network of dyson spheres and use them to broadcast “bring it on, weaklings” in english on the hydrogen line along with a corpus of english words. the aliens will probably figure it out. ehhh, but they might not set us on fire… okay, just use one of your dyson spheres to light the candle directly.
move to australia and just wait for a good firestorm (avoiding dropbears and other large, venomous animals in the meantime)
move to somewhere on the pacific rim and continually blaspheme pele-honua-mea until your house is swept away by a lava flow. obviously, you’ll need to keep the candle in your house for this to work...
steel wool + battery
fresnel lens
Katon, Goukakyuu No Jutsu!
use your charisma to trick the candle into eating a ghost pepper
invite your friends over for a bbq. flex your status as grillmaster and alpha male by sticking your candle into the coals. Make sure not to be the first to break eye contact or else they become the grillmaster (and more importantly for the task at hand, you’ll have to hand over the candle).
buy a set of identical candles and sneak them into your friend’s petrov day ritual kit
same as above but for חֲנֻכָּה
discontent and radicalize the candle. convince it to self-immolate in front of parliament or city hall or wherever
take a vow of silence, open your third eye, and unlock combustionbending. combust candle.
pipe all your neighbors’ air-conditioning exhaust into a chamber containing your candle. Have one wall of the chamber be a piston. Drop an elephant on the piston.
realize that “Danger: High Voltage” is just italian for “Free Sparks”
rub two candles together until one or both catch fire
shoot an arrow so that it passes through a torch before it hits the candle
ingratiate yourself with elon musk and bro it up with him while on drugs. get him to put the candle in space and drop it back to earth “as a joke”