Skewed Slightly to the Left - Excerpt from a secret meeting

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 2) and The Slacktiverse.]

[Remember the meeting in Trib Force where the President of the United States randomly revealed his plans to Buck for no reason whatsoever? If it's ever rewritten for Skewed Slightly to the Left this should be in it.]

Fitzhugh: “You're one of our most useful assets.”

Cameron: “I tell you what's in the news, you could get the same information from CNN. I give you memos, but they aren't exactly classified. I don't even have a security clearance.”

Fitzhugh: “You sell yourself short. You tell us what they don't want reported and that's very useful indeed. That thing in Kansas City is something we never would have found out about without you, and that was major.”

Cameron: “What was happening in Kansas City?” (He knew there was a coverup, he never knew what it was a cover up of.)

Fitzhugh: “Do you want to have to keep that secret?” (Serious question, he will tell Cameron if Cameron says, "Yes.")

Cameron: [thinks about it] No. No, I don't. [pause] On that note, this could be a trap for all I know...

Fitzhugh: That's always a risk.

Cameron: We've been ordered not to report on the myriad shortcomings of the New Babylon construction. One of them that we uncovered before the order came down was that the antiaircraft... uh... stuff in the northwest isn't working.

Fitzhugh: That could be very useful.

Cameron: Or it could be a trap.

Fitzhugh: We'll look into it.

[Cameron tries, again, to convince Fitzhugh not to do this now. Any time but now. Fitzhugh tries to convince Cameron to use the control of the world's media he's been handed against the person who gave it to him. (Bite the hand that feed you. You know you want to.) The farewell, which is to almost the entire remaining (former) White House staff has a surprising amount of hugs in it, and Cameron realizes that none of them expect to live. They hope to win, but even if they win they don't expect that they personally will survive to see the victory. Cameron feels like a coward.]

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[Left Behind Index]

Romulan Tangerine Lamps

So there are four tangerines that my mother got. Now if you're like me your first thought on hearing this is... well truthfully it's probably, “I like tangerines and haven't had them in a while.” But your second thought is probably that you can make lamps with them. If not, it's got to be in the top five.

I learned that you could make lamps out of tangerines from the Official Star Trek Cooking Manual, which is not where you'd expect to find directions on making a lamp but it is made out of fruit and … well, theoretically olive oil, but I didn't have any so I made a substitution. I've had some limited success in the past with clementines.

So far my results with actual tangerines have been... Well, that depends on how you look at it. The two that I've peeled so far have utterly failed as lamps (one of them I couldn't even make a wick, on the other one the wick burned up) but they're really nice candle holders.

The reason for the difference in color between the two is that I oiled one of them. Oiling lets more light get through and, since it's supposed to be an oil lamp, the bottom half tends to get oiled anyway. The one I couldn't form a wick in I never bothered oiling. It looks more interesting that way, I think. (Though is obviously less useful as a light source.)

The pictures aren't of the best quality probably mostly because I have no idea what the best way to photograph a light source is. Especially something that glows instead of shines. If it's in a well lit place then you can't really see it's glowing. If it's in a poorly lit place, as in the case of the first picture, quality drops and the glowing isn't as clear as it might be, if it's in a not at all lit place... well you can really see the glow, but it's not exactly a crisp image.

The technical term for the lamps is Romulan Lucernae*, because Romulans, being Romanish, speak Latin. The next time you have tangerines, or clementines for that matter, if you're wondering what to do with the peel afterward you might consider making a lamp.

-

* Singular would be Lucerna. It's a simple first declension noun. My brain almost broke down when I went to verify that because I was looking at forms I had never seen before and very confused. Then I realized that I'd accidentally looked at the declension of the noun as it exists in Hungarian. As with most first declension nouns, it is feminine.

Hungarian is, based on things I've recently heard from Pthalo and Hannah, a very cool language. It just happens to be a very strange thing to see when you're expecting Latin.

NaNoWriMo - Status Update

Yeah, so somehow this got posted before I wrote anything. Hang on a minute. Words will appear here.

-

Ok, words. In the past four days I've written 1,723 of them. That's an average of 430.75. That average is inflated by one day with more words than all the rest of them combined. Or, in other words, I'm somewhat stalled here. I was pretty far ahead and that aheadness has been snuffed out, if I don't get back into the swing of things today I'll be behind.

Some of this is stuff that I do have some idea about, but I just haven't written yet because I haven't been in quite the right frame of mind. Some of it is because things are jumbled and I haven't quite figured out what order things go in. Some it is because I've got stuff that goes beyond not knowing the order, I don't even know how it fits in at all (see footnote*) and some of it is because I know what happens but not how things get there.

For example for the plot to work out at all at some point after they break up Erin, Ryan and the superhero to be in the same general place at the same time. That time being when the superhero is chasing Ryan through the city and pretty much everyone else has already made their way to safety. In the original concept Erin was a reporter. It wasn't hard to find out why she was above ground. She was reporting. You can't very well report from inside of a bunker, you've got to be where the action is.

That's gone now, Erin is an engineer. Her job will take her to places where things might go wrong, and where things have gone wrong, but there's not a lot of call for her to be there while things are going wrong. I've already used Erin is in the middle of a, "Things could go very, very wrong here," presentation when things go very, very wrong there. So that's taken.

So what the hell is she doing there? I have no idea.

But, generally, I'm simply stuck. It's not specific problems, it's just general trouble producing words. Words do not go on page.

Though I think the jumble is a real problem. Jumping around was the only way I was able to write what I've already written, but it also means that there's no one place where I can pick up and write from. And a lack of clarity on the order of events isn't helpful.

I've been considering, against Firedrake's better judgement, just throwing up much of what I have, rough and drafty as it is, in hopes that someone will say something that will give me that little bit of inspiration needed to actually, you know, write.

-

* For example:

“People of the city, your attention please,” I said. “I feel like it's been a while since we had a chat with each other. That's a shame. What's happened to us that we can't find a little time to have a friendly conversation?

“These days it seems like I rob a bank, or steal a Picasso – by the way, how is it that you convince people to send expensive works of art to our museum in the first place? If I were in charge of keeping something safe this is the last place I'd want it to be. Even if the Museum is built like a fortress.

“Sorry, I got distracted. It seems like there's no communication any more. I do what I do and you do what you do and we never really say anything. I think it's time that we change that. That's why I've taken the time out of my busy schedule to talk to you today.

“I think it's time that we get back to the old days. Theatrics. Cackling evil genius stuff. Except, as you know, I can't cackle.

“I figure we'll start small. Remember that time a few years back when the whole city lost power for three days? It was annoying as all hell but hospitals and so forth kept their power going on generators so no one was hurt. Remember how much it cost the city?

“I've placed explosives in various substations throughout the city.

“What I'm thinking is this. You can pay me a modest fee, say a mere half what that time cost our economy, or I can detonate the bombs throwing the city into darkness. Insert cackling here.

“I know, it's not much, hardly the most evil thing in the world, but like I said, we'll start small.”

No idea where that goes. I'm not even sure if it's a part of the story, it could happen in flashback or be some kind of epilogue, or it could go right in the middle. No idea at all.

Nick Andes - I'm taking the day off

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 2) and The Slacktiverse.]

[Previous stories about Nick Andes aren't on Stealing Commas yet. He's an Antichrist, he's following the checklist because if he doesn't God will improvise (a Tribulation is hard enough to prepare for when you know what's coming) and might stay out of reach, in which case there would be no chance of getting the children back. Anyway, this starts with a meeting about the state of New Babylon.]

“There's no commerce in the city, there's no city in the city. It's just our offices and nothing much else is functioning like a proper city. Everyone's just there. We're not on any trade routes, we don't produce anything, there's really no purpose for us being here. The entire thing is just a massive waste of resources, if we want to-”

“Fuck it,” Nick said.

“Sir?”

“I never wanted to come here in the first place. If we had to set up camp in a dead city off the beaten path I was holding out hope for Machu Picchu. God wanted us here. We're here. We're holding up our end. If he wants the city to bustle let him do it his own damn self.

“I don't care if the city doesn't function as a city. I don't care if it sucks. It's the capital, we'll use it as a capital, leave everything else to the other side. If God wants this place better than we've built it have the fucking angels do it! Let them use their resources.

“I don't... I can't...” Nick opened and closed his mouth several times, but no words came out. Eventually he was able to speak again, “I'm taking the day off. I'm sorry, I just... it's been eighteen long months and... I just...” He put his head in his hands. Everyone in the room was silent. They had never seen their leader like this before. “I'll see you all later,” and with that the ruler of the earth left his advisers at the conference table. He retreated to his office, closed the blinds, and curled up in a ball on the carpet.

He didn't know how much time passed. He heard footsteps, he didn't look. He heard someone lower themselves to the ground behind him, and then felt a gentle embrace, the warmth of a body against his back, an arm laid across his side, a hand on his shoulder.

“You ok?” Lucifer asked.

“I can't take it,” he told her. “You should have gotten someone else to be Antichrist. I'm not...”

“You're doing fine. Everyone needs a break sometimes. I took off the entire seventh century, more or less. Everything finally got to me and I couldn't take it any more. Walked right out of Hell, left my responsibilities behind and did nothing for more than a hundred years. Spent it lying in a secluded room just like you are now. Except I wasn't breathing, because I don't need to and I didn't see the point.

“I learned two things from that.”

“What?” Nick asked.

“The first is that it gets better. When you're ready to face the world again, if you work at it, things get better. The second is that music helps.”

The sound system in the office started on its own.
I was walking down the street
In the town where I was born
I was moving to a beat
That I never felt before
So I opened up my eyes
And I took a look around
I saw it written cross the sky
The Revolution Starts Now.

-

[Rapture Index]

What are some hobbies?

The time has come again for me to try to get someone else to do the hard NaNoWriMo work for me. Who? You, gentle readers.

I've decided that that Erin isn't a very extroverted person. Asking Ryan to go out for coffee would have been a fairly major thing for her because she ordinarily doesn't do that sort of thing. Outside of work I'm seeing her as not doing much of anything with other people.

But she's introverted, not unhealthy. She'll be making use of her time alone, it's just that I'm not sure how she's making use of it. Whatever she's doing is enough that she's pretty damned content with her life. I've just got no idea what it is.

Well, I think she might possibly spend a certain amount of time making scale models of various cities (one at time) so that her iguana can crawl around on them. But other than that, no idea what she's doing. She's going to have more than one interest though, so that can't be it.

Any suggestions on what some of her other interests might be? The only requirement is that it has to be something you can do alone. (Or with an iguana.)

Sea Lions

[Originally posted at The Slacktiverse.]

[The underwater kingdom in The Little Mermaid has various predators in it, dolphins and octopi for example. One possibility is that they've learned to live with the fact that part of the population eat other parts of the population, which might help to explain why Ariel has so little trouble likeing the fish eating humans. Another possibility is that Triton's kingdom has found a way to have a stable non-borked predator heavy ecosystem without anyone eating anyone else.]

Simba: "But, dad, don't we eat the antelope?"
Mufasa: "Yes, we do, and it sucks for them that they have to die horrible painful violent deaths, but Triton lord of the merpeople refuses to share the secret of maintaining a healthy carnivore-heavy ecosystem without hurting anyone. The jerk. If I had gills I'd swim down there and rip his throat out. [Pause, while Mufasa reflects on how much this gets to him; he's usually not this murderously angry about stuff.] Anyway, that's not important. When we die our bodies become grass and the antelope eat the grass."
Simba: "So everyone eats everyone?"
Mufasa: "That's about the size of it, son. It does not have to be this way, but that damned half fish keeps the secret of ... I'm sorry, you probably want us to get to the song."
Simba: "Yeah."
[Musical number]

Completely bizarre idea:
Alternate universe crossover story. Mufasa sends Scar on an expedition to steal the secret of not needing to eat animals from Triton. Scar is portrayed exactly the same way he is in The Lion King but now he's a protagonist leading the savanna equivalent of a special forces team on an aquatic adventure. (And by adventure I mean, in all likelihood, action movie. Scar uses violence and manipulation to get what he wants, after all.) The hyaenas are definitely in on this because they're hungry. The only thing that needs to be figured out is how the animals from The Lion King are able to breathe under water.

What magic character who would be morally opposed to hording food related secrets could visit the savanna?

[The original thread is definitely worth reading. The name Sea Lions comes from Froborr, ]

A Jasper Did It

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

[We've been using Jasper's power to manipulate emotions as an explanation for the various bits of strangeness in Twilight, but we tend to assume it's directed at humans, this posits that it's the explanation for Edward.]

Damn it, he's gone over to talk with Bella. Hate! Revulsion! The desire to cause emotional pain! Come on Edward, get the message, you don't like her.

[Later]

[Edward says, "I'm sorry, that was rude."] No! Come on, feel the petty need to lash out I'm sending your way [Edward says, "I'm not saying it isn't true."] Yes! [Edward: But it was rude to say it...] No, no, no! [Edward: anyway] Not a bad save if I do say so myself.

[Later]

[Edward: "Well, I was planning to go to Seattle in the next few weeks] Arrogant Jerkishness! Arrogant insulting Jerkishness! [Edward: and, to be honest, I'm not sure if your truck can make it.] Better, somewhat.

-

And so on.

[By the way, if it wasn't clear, the things in italics are what he's using his power to instill in Edward.]

[Twilight Index]