Joining the whole

Sat, 6 Sep 2008 10:25:54 -0400

Went walking this morning as Tropical Storm Hanna passed through. Stopped in the Duke gardens to admire the perfect hydrophobia of the lotus leaves...watch the little droplets join the central blob!

The Drive-By Podcast Lives Again!

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:31:18 -0400

I’ve only recorded one episode of the Drive-By Podcast so far (thanks Remi) which was derailed by technical difficulties that I think are now solved. So I may be contacting some of you local people to drive ‘n’ record one of these days or weeks upcoming.

Note to self

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:12:40 -0400

If one intends to write something each day, one may not wait until after 10 when 10:30 or so is one’s bedtime. One is apparently fighting a battle of attrition with oneself.

The return of the return of the mermaid

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:34:05 -0400

Nothing like having only a few days of summer left to kindle my writing muse, who is apparently as perverse and self-sabotaging as any of her various co-muses that dance in my head, such as Anxiea, the muse of pointless worrying and Blizzardia, the muse of wanting to re-install World of Warcraft. 
The story based on the Little Mermaid (the original H.C.A. story, not the movie) is, despite my firm intentions to abandon it, reviving itself in my head, and proposing how to drastically simplify its dramatic structure and cut down on extraneous characters. And make it more tense. 
It remains to be seen if I have the willpower to make my characters as miserable as they need to be for the story to work. 
I am stating publicly that I will continue to write, even after teaching has begun. 
There is no point #5.

Posted very nearly unproofread as it sprang into my head this morning as I woke up.

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:25:01 -0400

“You’re kidding’
The professor smiled and shook his head. “Nope. It works. I perfected it about a month ago…”
Jonas interrupted - a MONTH ago? And you’re still..” he gestured around him at the dingy, cluttered studio that the professor called home. “Why haven’t you been selling, oh I don’t know, first editions from the Library of Alexandria or something?”
The professor shook his head, smiling at his friend’s agitation. “I’m afraid that the temporal field only encompasses a sensorium.”
“meaning what, in English,” Thomas demanded.
“Meaning you can’t carry anything with you - nothing from the present goes into the past, and nothing can get carried from there…” his brow crinkled in momentary confusion..”from then? You can’t carry anything either way, at any rate,” he finished somewhat lamely. “Even your clothes don’t make the trip.”
Thomas’s eyes got large. “So you arrive NAKED? Jeeze!”
Then he looked sharply at the professor. “That sounds like the Terminator movies. Are you sure you’re not making this up.”
The professor shrugged. “I assure you, it works. It’s just not going to change the world.”
“Not going to change…” Thomas broke off. “Are you insane? We could go back and...and...and sell the secret of gunpowder to the Romans, and live like kings! Emperors!”
“And change human history forever?” the professor asked mildly.
Thomas snorted. “We’d be living in ancient Rome. What would we care? And it’s not like human history has been a parade of kindly wonder anyway. Maybe a change would make things better!”
The professor nodded thoughtfully. “How’s your ancient Latin?”
Thomas shrugged. “I could re-learn it…”
“And I’m impressed that you know the formula for gunpowder well enough to recognize all the ingredients and know where to find them in ancient Rome…”
“We’d ask the alchemists…” Thomas’s voice was a little less certain now.
“Really? You know all the terminology the Roman alchemists used - in Latin - well enough to explain to them how to obtain and prepare the ingredients for gunpowder?”
Thomas abandoned his pacing and sat down on the ancient, cigarette-burned recliner. “OK, fine. So we’d have to do a lot of research…”
The professor was shaking his head. “You’re still not thinking. How do you think we’d even get an alchemist’s attention. Naked, penniless madmen pounding at your door - would YOU listen to them if they said they had a great secret that would change the world?”
Thomas’s mouth opened. He closed it again without saying anything.
“And think about ancient Rome. Naked, penniless madmen, if they weren’t killed outright, would probably be in the slave market before the day was out.”
There was a moment of silence. “So what GOOD is it?”
“None at all, it practical terms, I’d imagine,” said the professor. “But we can go back and witness some of the greatest…”
“Naked, penniless, and probably enslaved,” Thomas interrupted bitterly. “Well, the return time is set at this end of things, so the enslaved wouldn’t matter much, since we’d just vanish out of there and reappear here. As for the naked, there are places with more of a tradition of charity than ancient Rome…”
Thomas snorted. “So we can go back and beg loincloths from annoyed housewives throughout history, for the privilege of seeing some battle, or some king passing by so surrounded by courtiers you can’t even see him. If we don’t get knifed by random historical psychos. How exciting.”
The professor shrugged. “This is why I haven’t used it in a month. But I’ve thought of a trip that might be quite interesting…”
“Worth being naked and possibly sold as a slave,” Thomas asked sarcastically
“Yes,” said the professor, with no irony at all.
*************************
The machine itself looked unlikely. Thomas peered at it with suspicion. Vacuum tubes, in this day and age?
“This looks a bit unlikely,” he said to the professor, who was rummaging around in the little closet for something.
“What does?” called the professor over his shoulder.
Thomas gestured toward the tall cabinet of knobs, dials and vacuum tubes. “The time machine of course!”
“What?” asked the professor in genuine confusion, turning around and looking at Thomas. “Where?”
Thomas raised an eyebrow and pointed at the machine.
“Aha! There it is! Thank you Thomas!” the professor exclaimed.
Thomas blinked. “A bit hard to loose, isn’t it?”
“You’d be surprised…” the professor crossed the room, and lifted a tiny black box that was sitting next to the machine. “And here it is.”
It took Thomas some seconds to realize that ‘it’ was not the towering electronic menhir but the tiny, nearly featureless black box the professor was holding out. “But, but...what’s THAT,” Thomas spluttered, gesturing towards the vacuum tubes. The professor gave him an odd look. “That’s my stereo amplifier.”
Thomas blinked.
The professor plugged the little box into his computer (“time travel uses USB?” Thomas wondered, but decided to keep his doubts to himself this time) and gestured Thomas over. Four wires, stripped at their ends to the copper core, dangled from the black box.
“Just take those two wires in either hand,” said the professor, taking the other two as he said so.
Thomas did so, though his heart sank. He suddenly realized how ridiculous this whole situation was, and what he would say to the professor when the ridiculous apparatus failed to work. He should stop this now…
“Professor,” he began
And then they were naked in a alley in the stifling air of a summer morning. The smell of offal - human and other - was choking.
Thomas reeled against a plaster wall and struggled to stay upright as everything went swimmy. “I...it...oh my god…”
The professor peered at him worriedly. “Are you all right?”
Thomas spluttered. “It...it WORKS!”
The professor frowned at him. “Of course it works! I told you that.”
Thomas looked around the alley. Trash and debris, mostly wood and pottery…”Where are we? WHEN are we?”
The professor merely smiled.
*************
The process of begging cloth to gird their loins was, despite the language barrier, fairly straightforward. But it took a long, humiliating time before someone threw them what looked like a soiled horse blanket, and there had been some spitting and half-hearted kicking in the meantime. And Thomas could already feel the fleas where he least wanted them.
“Goddamit professor, no sight-seeing could be worth this,” he muttered. The professor, leading them through the crowded - medieval? Thomas wondered - streets ignored him. Thomas tried to figure out where they were - the professor insisted that it was to be “a surprise” - but could guess that they were somewhere on the Mediterranean. The people around them, mostly, were dark, Arabic looking, with covered heads, though Thomas did see a Roman centurion here and there, and wondered nervously about the slave market…
“Here we are,” the professor said with satisfaction.
Thomas looked around. Clearly, a parade was coming. Men, women and children were gathered on either side of the street, talking excitedly. Some of them were already waving...were those palm fronds?
A dim, Sunday-school memory came back to Thomas. “Professor, we can’t possibly be about to see…”
The roar of the crowd made the rest of his question inaudible. And, around the corner, a small crowd, some riding some walking, came into view, waving. As they came close, Thomas could see that they were mostly young men, bearded, more than a little ragged, but broadly smiling, talking among themselves and laughing. At the front of the procession, a young man, no different than his companions in raggedness or youth, rode a donkey. The crowd waved their palm fronds at him and shouted, their voices mixing into an indecipherable babble, though Thomas was pretty sure he heard an “Emmanuel” in there somewhere.
As he drew closer still, the man on a donkey called out a few words and, unbelievably, the crowd stilled to hear him. Thomas stared in fascination as the man passed; he looked like any of his companions, a little dirty, a little ragged - and yet....
“That’s him, isn’t it?” He said to the professor, never taking his eyes of the man who was passing. Thomas had to raise his voice a little, now, as the crowd begin to chatter and shout again. “That’s the man himself! Professor, this is amazing -”
Whatever else he was going to say went unsaid, however.
The man on the donkey pulled his beast to a halt and turned to stare at Thomas. “You’re American!” Jesus said excitedly. Even in only two English words, the Southern accent was unmistakeable. “Man, am I glad to see you fellows!” said Jesus.

On watching the old Muppet Show DVDs

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:29:50 -0400

So, if you had a time machine and considerable TV studio pull, which modern celebrities (actors, singers, dancers, comedians) would you transport back into the 1970s to be guest stars on the original Muppet Show? Who do you think would be entertaining in that venue?

Here’s my list so far

Lucy Lawless (proven sense of humor, can sing)
William Shatner (as he is today - humor demonstrated and, bizarrely, musical ability.)
Vin Diesel (just because)
Robyn Hitchcock (‘cause he seems weird enough to enjoy it)
Nathan Fillion (again with the funny and can sing)
Kristen Bell (“Veronica Mars”)
Helena Bonham Carter (“Madder than a box of frogs”)

Who would be on your list?

Increasing Complexity 2.0.1

Joining the whole

The Drive-By Podcast Lives Again!

Note to self

The return of the return of the mermaid

Posted very nearly unproofread as it sprang into my head this morning as I woke up.

On watching the old Muppet Show DVDs