A botanical hero arises
Many friends have asked for a copy of Bob’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe:
I know, too small to read, but I don’t want to pollute people’s friends pages with the full-size version.
This guy was serious
“You guys charge by the word, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay, the ad reads: 1998 Framistan 300, 2001 Geezberg 197, 1972 Hoopyloc 180, and 1986 Felgercarb 200. $1000 for all. 540-555-1234.”
“Okay, sir, that’s 17 words.”
“No, it’s only seven words. The rest are numbers, so I get them for free.”
“… what?”
Tonight’s ST:Enterprise
After seeing the first few episodes of the season, I began to feel quite good about where the third season was going…
Spoiler and ranting protection activated
Look! Bigfoot!
Two of my co-workers were excitedly passing around an e-mail reprinting a quote from Chapter 9, Verse 11 of the Koran predicting that an enraged Eagle would cleanse the lands of Allah. Needless to say, the e-mail’s a hoax (as a quick online check confirmed), but they were pretty disappointed to discover so. I then had to inform them that no, neither Mister Rogers nor Captain Kangaroo were Navy Seals or Marine sharpshooters.
Hmmm… I think I need to make something good up for them and send it to them through an anonymous remailer. Any suggestions?
My anniversary was quite good… nice and quiet; raininva and I lead busy, interesting enough lives that a low-key evening counts as a welcome vacation these days. Invisifest was a lot of fun, too, though I discovered that it’s unwise to try to learn Amplitude while DDRMax is pounding away behind you. The XBox game with the full ‘Mech control panel was cool-looking, but I’d rather play it sometime when I can sit and actually learn what’s going on.
I’m almost finished (finally) Red Faction on the PS2; when I do, I can start the first episode of dot/Hack. Rain bought me all three for our anniversary!
I’m still not sure what my costumes will be this year for Halloween and Rising Star Emcee, though Jerry’s suggestion of a rather desperate Tokyo Civil Defense worker as my costume for the latter was pretty good. Less than six weeks to get them together…
Today’s Dumb Thing To Say:
Radio Announcer 1: The crows are huge around here!
Radio Announcer 2: They’re like chickens!
Radio Announcer 1: Yeah, well I’d like to see a crow lay an egg!
Today’s Dumb Thing To Do:
After tracing a cryptic 911 call, police found a woman naked, bound, and gagged in the back of a car. When untied, the woman asked, “What are you guys doing here?” Apparently this was a bit of kinky role-playing, and the boyfriend thought it would add spice to actually call the police. The VHF amplifier had no comment. (No, sorry, I made that last sentence up.)
This Morning’s Good Thing:
Despite attempts by a Blacksburg landlord to claim that the hosting computer for elfie.org is actually an international terrorist, elfie is back on-line, and I am once again in e-mail contact with the world. Also, LiveJournal seems to be working again, and I will be very careful with my posting client until I can verify that it’s not the one flooding the network.
Last Night’s Bad Thing:
I spent late last evening and most of overnight blackly depressed. I’ve come out the other side now, but memo to myself: Don’t watch ER when you are feeling that way.
Tonight’s Possibly Good, Possibly Bad Thing:
SheVaCon starts tonight.
Tomorrow Night’s Good Thing:
raininva‘s 3000 point, house rules, massive MechWarrior:DA slugfest.
Battle Fury
Every time I see a hostage situation in the movies, the angry, violent part of me wishes I was watching the Klingon version, where the good guys sorrowfully declare the hostages martyrs, sing songs of their brave sacrifice, and blow up the building.
One of the worst times was actually during a Star Trek episode, where some culture had gotten hold of a space probe of ours, reverse-engineered the matter-antimatter technology (wrongly), and wrecked their planet. They then had the gall to blame us, and kill off a hostage to show that despite their idiocy, they still had really big sex organs. And to make it worse, our captain starts feeling guilty about the whole thing!
On the other tentacle, the Klingon version:
Terrorist: “Despite the fact that you were agreeing to our demands, we’ve killed one of the hostages. I bet you regret your mistake now, huh?”
Klingon captain: “I sure do. Good-bye, honorable landing party.”
Klingon landing party: “Bye! You’ll find some death song ideas in our personal logs – we’ve been working on them just in case!”
Terrorist: “What? Hey! Wait! Wait a minute!”
The landing party’s communicators, being really sturdy, register the first half-second of incoming photon torpedo fire.
Klingon captain: “Too bad. Let’s go find a planet with some real warriors!”
Now, I want to make it clear that I’m not suggesting this as a solution to any real-world situation. Whatever the flaws in the idea, though, I bet it would cut down on hostage crises.
Declaring a vent order
Just read an article yubbie posted elsewhere on the impending return of Battlestar Galactica… it’s a somewhat annoying article, full of smug talk like “we’re taking the opera out of space opera”, and “our spaceships won’t go woosh”, and “we’ll never do a time-travel story”, and “no bumpy-headed aliens”.
It makes me want to grab them by the throat and say, “Look – you morons!” Since the days when our hide-clad ancestors squatted around a fire and told stories of the gods to avoid thinking about how cold and hungry they were, storytelling has only needed two elements: engaging characters, and a stong plot (in fact, if you’ve done one of those elements extremely well, you can often skimp on the other).
If you’ve got those elements, you can do anything else you want. Technobabble? Fine, the fen will compose dictionaries for their own amusement. Bumpy-headed aliens? Makes it easier to tell ’em apart. Time travel? I’ll just point out that time travel is at the core of much of the favorite science-fiction and fantasy of the last 40 years.
Stop telling us what you won’t do, and show us some damn good writing. Do that, and all else will be forgiven.
While I’m in the mood to rant… yesterday, I was once again informed by a younger fan how lame classic Star Trek was, which is something I’m so sick of hearing. Kid, maybe the show isn’t to your taste, which is your right as a language-using primate. But I challenge you to find me a better science-fiction show with a continuing set of characters on late 1960’s American network television. Can’t think of one? Fine, then don’t blame a Ford Model T because it couldn’t break 100 miles per hour and didn’t have a CD player.
Aaaaahhhhh… that felt good.
Must… control… fist of death…
“I know that was supposed to be camera-ready, but I don’t know how to do that right, so I sent you something you could fix. Oh, I didn’t tell you that before you went to press? Well from now on, just fix all my ‘camera-ready’ ads before you print them, and it’ll be fine. And call me if you have any other graphics problems, I have years of experience in this field.”
More Tales from the Ad Biz
A local firearms dealer is advertising his new stock of Bushmaster .233 rifles this week. When questioned about the taste level, he shrugged and and said, “I can’t help it if I’m suddenly getting 15 calls a day for the things…”
One of my co-workers suggested darkly that everyone could make even more money if Bushmaster re-issued them in a special “Sniper Edition.”
