It's hard to keep motivated when you're unemployed and inexplicably keep failing to be hired and money is running low. I am trying, but the discouragement gets to me and that affects the movement of fingers on keyboard.
But I did write today. It's not very good and I won't post it, but it's what I had to do. I felt better for it. I'll do better tomorrow.
However, if you feel like offering encouragement or advice or high fives... I don't think you comprehend how much that would mean to me right now and that's taking into account how smart I know the people who read this blog are.
I think I must rest now. Good luck and goodnight.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Things in History You Should Know: Pierre Trudeau
Today is the tenth anniversary of Trudeau's death. At the time, I'm not sure if I cared overmuch. Class was in session when the news broke and the option was given for those students overwhelmed by it all to go home and think about this great democracy. There may have been some genuine feeling among those who took advantage of it, but it was largely understood as an officially-sanctioned excuse to play hooky. I think I stayed at school.
I grew up and learned. I learned that history didn't have to occur more than a century ago to be interesting and that I damned well better know and understand the more recent stuff if ever I were to have a perspective beyond the previous week. I learned just how recently the national character of Canada consisted of reactionaries who seemingly longed for the heyday of the British Empire even as they struggled for a visible place on the world stage. Unless they were Francophones. Then they were just reactionaries. Don't ask about the First Nations.
That's not to say that all of Canada consisted of bigots and reactionaries. It's just that if you weren't, you were obviously a communist. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but not as much as I'd like.
Come the fifties, a sea change became apparent. First, you have Diefenbaker who was otherwise insane with his humble Bill of Rights. Second, you have Pearson with his bow tie and his student loans and social security and all sorts of other goodness. (Not to mention the bow tie. Bow ties are cool.) Third, you have... Trudeau, who among other things, made being Canadian something genuinely cool.
To think on this again makes me long for a Prime Minister with a sense of vision - someone who understands that we can go to so many wonderful places from here. Right now, we have a fellow who combines the worst worlds of fiscal irresponsibility and reactionary politics that seem like a throwback to the bad old days. We can do better and we will do better.
This article was originally published on December 9, 2009 in the University of Lethbridge student newspaper, the Meliorist. I was a week shy of graduating and being done with Alberta forever - hence my bitter tone towards the province. To be fair, anyone would feel like that after hearing Stelmach speak.
So read on. Toast to Trudeau afterwards if you're so inclined and hope that one day, I'll write a more fitting tribute to him.
~
Screw it. For what’s very probably my last article for this esteemed chronicle of news – hurrah for imminent graduation! – I’m going to piss off as many Albertans as possible. Because I will move away, and you will not find me.
That’s right. It’s Pierre Trudeau time. And I will start off by saying this: he was a better than average prime minister. If you wish to argue with me on this point, attempt to name a Tory PM that was better than him. Mulroney? Harper? Thor forbid, Diefenbaker? Sorry, Macdonald and Borden were the only awesome ones. So what did this chap do, in his multitude of years in office (1968-1979, 1980-1984, apologies to Joe Clark) to merit my relatively high opinion of him? Dude, I will tell you.
He made the world give two shits who the Canadian prime minister was. This was likely aided by Richard Nixon being the US president during a respectable chunk of his tenure, an ugly sort of man in every possible way. But even if Nixon had been a worthwhile human being, Trudeau had him bang to rights on the charm and wit front. Which is why John Lennon chose to hang out with him. (Nixon did get to talk football with Hunter S. Thompson, though.)
He rocked as Minister of Justice, which was what Lester Pearson, our nicest PM, made him in 1967. What on earth did he do in that position? Well, I’ll tell you! He legalized contraception and homosexuality, and shoved a foot in the door for the eventual legalization of abortion by making it legal to perform the act if the mother’s life was in danger. Oh, and he made it illegal for you to drive if you had one too many. All of this came from the massive Bill C-150, which also placed restrictions on harassing phone calls, gun ownership, and animal cruelty. Separate from all this, he further enabled one to leave one’s loveless sham of a marriage, should one please.
He was kind of bad ass. This was a man who just sat there calmly while separatists chucked bottles and rocks at him on the very eve of his first election as Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, while everyone went and hid like thesensible people children that they were. His successors in the party tended to exercise this trait as well, with Turner saving Diefenbaker from drowning and Chretien’s development of the Shawinigan Shake. Ignatieff must learn from these exalted examples if he is ever to become PM.
He introduced official bilingualism. Yes, this is a virtue. Whether we like to admit it or not, historically speaking, French language rights in this country – not just in Quebec, mind you – have been kicked repeatedly in the teeth. Frankly, having that bit of extra text on your cereal box or having that additional bit of a requirement if you intend to enter certain sectors of the federal bureaucracy is not an overwhelming sacrifice to redress this.
He engineered the patriation of the Constitution. It is a rather ridiculous thing that for 165 years after Confederation, we did not have the ability to tinker with our own constitution. Nay, we had to go all the way to the British Parliament and ask nicely, perhaps bringing along a tasteful gift basket with a nice selection of tea and biscuits. Regardless of the political circus that surrounded the process (Night of the Long Knives, anyone?), it was something that needed to be done if we were ever going to become independent from Britain on paper as well as in fact.
His newfangled constitution included the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights of 1960, while well-intentioned, was toothless. True, it caused the dawn of judicial activism in Canada, bringing forth such terrible thing as full abortion rights and same-sex marriage and Native land claims. (Note: the word ‘terrible’ in the last sentence is sarcastic. I can hear your hands wringing, campus Right to Lifers.) Plus, it has been argued that such activism limits democracy in this fair country. However, I would argue that human rights should not be subject to the whims of the electorate because if history has shown us anything, it’s that the electorate haven’t been too great on that count. Pity about that notwithstanding clause, though.
Oh yes, National Energy Program – the implementation of this is a legitimate gripe, no matter how well-meaning it was, although it may have sheltered Canada as a whole from the worst effects of the global recession that was all the rage at the time. And there was the whole ‘invoking the War Measure Act’ thing with the FLQ Crisis. Still, my filthy lefty self can’t help but appreciate Trudeau, ginormous faults and all.
And as a final, I’d like to say this: the brands of small ‘c’ and big ‘c’ conservatism to be found in this province are rubbish, the tar sands are rubbish too, ‘feminism’ is not a cuss word, and your wind is far too apt to cause shenanigans (such as making me feel like frickin’ Shackleton whilst out walking last weekend). But what the hell, Alberta beef is still delicious.
Farewell, all! I head now for hillier climes.
I grew up and learned. I learned that history didn't have to occur more than a century ago to be interesting and that I damned well better know and understand the more recent stuff if ever I were to have a perspective beyond the previous week. I learned just how recently the national character of Canada consisted of reactionaries who seemingly longed for the heyday of the British Empire even as they struggled for a visible place on the world stage. Unless they were Francophones. Then they were just reactionaries. Don't ask about the First Nations.
That's not to say that all of Canada consisted of bigots and reactionaries. It's just that if you weren't, you were obviously a communist. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but not as much as I'd like.
Come the fifties, a sea change became apparent. First, you have Diefenbaker who was otherwise insane with his humble Bill of Rights. Second, you have Pearson with his bow tie and his student loans and social security and all sorts of other goodness. (Not to mention the bow tie. Bow ties are cool.) Third, you have... Trudeau, who among other things, made being Canadian something genuinely cool.
To think on this again makes me long for a Prime Minister with a sense of vision - someone who understands that we can go to so many wonderful places from here. Right now, we have a fellow who combines the worst worlds of fiscal irresponsibility and reactionary politics that seem like a throwback to the bad old days. We can do better and we will do better.
This article was originally published on December 9, 2009 in the University of Lethbridge student newspaper, the Meliorist. I was a week shy of graduating and being done with Alberta forever - hence my bitter tone towards the province. To be fair, anyone would feel like that after hearing Stelmach speak.
So read on. Toast to Trudeau afterwards if you're so inclined and hope that one day, I'll write a more fitting tribute to him.
~
Screw it. For what’s very probably my last article for this esteemed chronicle of news – hurrah for imminent graduation! – I’m going to piss off as many Albertans as possible. Because I will move away, and you will not find me.
That’s right. It’s Pierre Trudeau time. And I will start off by saying this: he was a better than average prime minister. If you wish to argue with me on this point, attempt to name a Tory PM that was better than him. Mulroney? Harper? Thor forbid, Diefenbaker? Sorry, Macdonald and Borden were the only awesome ones. So what did this chap do, in his multitude of years in office (1968-1979, 1980-1984, apologies to Joe Clark) to merit my relatively high opinion of him? Dude, I will tell you.
He made the world give two shits who the Canadian prime minister was. This was likely aided by Richard Nixon being the US president during a respectable chunk of his tenure, an ugly sort of man in every possible way. But even if Nixon had been a worthwhile human being, Trudeau had him bang to rights on the charm and wit front. Which is why John Lennon chose to hang out with him. (Nixon did get to talk football with Hunter S. Thompson, though.)
He rocked as Minister of Justice, which was what Lester Pearson, our nicest PM, made him in 1967. What on earth did he do in that position? Well, I’ll tell you! He legalized contraception and homosexuality, and shoved a foot in the door for the eventual legalization of abortion by making it legal to perform the act if the mother’s life was in danger. Oh, and he made it illegal for you to drive if you had one too many. All of this came from the massive Bill C-150, which also placed restrictions on harassing phone calls, gun ownership, and animal cruelty. Separate from all this, he further enabled one to leave one’s loveless sham of a marriage, should one please.
He was kind of bad ass. This was a man who just sat there calmly while separatists chucked bottles and rocks at him on the very eve of his first election as Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, while everyone went and hid like the
He introduced official bilingualism. Yes, this is a virtue. Whether we like to admit it or not, historically speaking, French language rights in this country – not just in Quebec, mind you – have been kicked repeatedly in the teeth. Frankly, having that bit of extra text on your cereal box or having that additional bit of a requirement if you intend to enter certain sectors of the federal bureaucracy is not an overwhelming sacrifice to redress this.
He engineered the patriation of the Constitution. It is a rather ridiculous thing that for 165 years after Confederation, we did not have the ability to tinker with our own constitution. Nay, we had to go all the way to the British Parliament and ask nicely, perhaps bringing along a tasteful gift basket with a nice selection of tea and biscuits. Regardless of the political circus that surrounded the process (Night of the Long Knives, anyone?), it was something that needed to be done if we were ever going to become independent from Britain on paper as well as in fact.
His newfangled constitution included the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights of 1960, while well-intentioned, was toothless. True, it caused the dawn of judicial activism in Canada, bringing forth such terrible thing as full abortion rights and same-sex marriage and Native land claims. (Note: the word ‘terrible’ in the last sentence is sarcastic. I can hear your hands wringing, campus Right to Lifers.) Plus, it has been argued that such activism limits democracy in this fair country. However, I would argue that human rights should not be subject to the whims of the electorate because if history has shown us anything, it’s that the electorate haven’t been too great on that count. Pity about that notwithstanding clause, though.
Oh yes, National Energy Program – the implementation of this is a legitimate gripe, no matter how well-meaning it was, although it may have sheltered Canada as a whole from the worst effects of the global recession that was all the rage at the time. And there was the whole ‘invoking the War Measure Act’ thing with the FLQ Crisis. Still, my filthy lefty self can’t help but appreciate Trudeau, ginormous faults and all.
And as a final, I’d like to say this: the brands of small ‘c’ and big ‘c’ conservatism to be found in this province are rubbish, the tar sands are rubbish too, ‘feminism’ is not a cuss word, and your wind is far too apt to cause shenanigans (such as making me feel like frickin’ Shackleton whilst out walking last weekend). But what the hell, Alberta beef is still delicious.
Farewell, all! I head now for hillier climes.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Ogre
Another story set in the same universe as Strike. Please you enjoy. If you do, consider regarding the 'donate' button to the side or telling your likeminded friends about this site.
There was an ogre underneath the bridge.
This wasn't a normal concern for Losa. All the children in the mining village whispered about it, true, but the bridge in question was so out of the way from any place anyone would want to go that she little feared it gnawing on her young bones.
That was how the case remained until she fell in love with a handsome boy of the advanced age of fourteen. All that he required to prove her love was the steal a rock from underneath the bridge, where the ogre dwelled.
She agreed. Infatuation had that effect.
The next morning, during the false dawn while her mother and father still slept, Losa crept out of the cabin. Over her shoulders, she slung her pack, filled with sensible things such as an extra set of clothes, a firestarter, and two days' worth of meals, should matters get chancy for her. Attached to her belt was a sheath and in the sheath was her knife. She did not think it would do much against an ogre, but then she was not at all sure that the ogre even existed.
The children of the village had a rhyme: "Follow the spine up the mountain tall / There the ogre your bones will maul." There were other verses, each progressively nastier, but they were not much use so far as directions were concerned. So Losa cast them from her mind, or at least tried to.
The journey did indeed devour most of the day, with the sun rising – up, up, up, until it was directly overhead, before taking a decided westward direction. A hungry journey, it was too. She ate her ‘rations’ of biscuits and jerky with an unseemly relish and wondered whether she would have enough should her journey was an extended one after all.
The wonderings ceased when the river bended, revealing a bridge so ancient it must have been built by the grandparents of the grandparents of the grandparents of the three tribes that sometimes ventured up the mountain in alternating years. Underneath it, the bank dipped precipitously down to the water, although the bridge must have been flush with the river when the snow melted.
Losa relaxed and smiled. No ogre, no problems. Her scepticism had been proven correct and now the only dilemma that existed for her was whether to tell the truth of the matter to the other youth. So it was that she strode confidently up to the bridge, knelt down to pick out the handsomest and most distinguished of the pebbles she could find, and nearly dropped dead with fear when a leathery hand five times the size of a man’s fell upon her shoulder. That hand lifted her up, turned her about, and tossed her bodily into the weeds. Her feet scrambled for purchase and failed and she fell onto her ass. She ignored the pain from the burrs’ scratches and her bleeding calves and looked up.
The ogre was a hairy, overgrown creature that looked much like the tales she had heard from the more well-travelled adults in the village of 'apes' and 'gorillas' and 'chimpanzees' dwelling on the impossibly far-off continent of Kiloses. Its fur was damp and matted, twigs and leaves and mud generously coating much of it. Perhaps 'it' was the wrong term - the maleness of the creature was much in evidence. He had very large teeth and a smile that looked like a bear's. The knife remained in its sheath. It was unlikely that it could even penetrate his fur.
Losa did not think he could read minds, but he must have been able to tell plainly what was going on in hers by reading every bit of her body’s language. "I do not eat children," said the ogre. "The forest and river provide enough food for me; why should I bother with humans and their spawn and bring down their wrath? Answer me that, child."
Losa confessed that she did not know.
“Now what have you come to steal from my humble home?”
“A pebble… sir. From underneath your bridge. Someone asked for one as a gift.” As calm as she tried to keep herself, she could not keep the tremble from her voice or the increase from her heartbeat. “I won’t ask for your food or anything else. Just a pebble. Then I’ll go. I won’t even come back.”
The ogre put his head back and laughed, a booming, gravelly sort of laugh. “Oh, I haven’t any doubt of that! Ha! Every generation or so, one of your kind comes along to bother me about pebbles or somesuch. Proving yourself for the one you lust! So romantic! So mundane, to brave an ogre over the leavings of the mountain! Don’t you want something more exciting than that? Something more worth wasting your day over?”
Losa considered this. She did not think now that the ogre thought to consume her, unless his character was akin to a cat’s. But even still, even still…
"If you come closer, I can show you your future. And I shall give to you your pebble." He leaned in close to her face and opened his mouth with all its fine, large teeth. Before Losa could even think of backing away, even in instinct, he breathed in. He breathed out. It smelled of rot and she blacked out.
But did she?
Ever slowly, her vision cleared, as though she were waking up after a nap in the noon sun. Spots danced across and coloured her sight; she blinked rapidly to banish them. And then she saw.
Not herself. It quickly became evident that her own body was not in the picture, as she could not see her hands or feet or arms or torso, or even the tops of her cheeks and sides of her nose like she would normally. She could not feel her limbs at all, no matter how much she tried to move them about, and it was not as though they were numb. Rather, it felt like they did not exist, like the only things to her name were her mind and eyes and… ears and nose. She could hear the call of birds in the distance and the buzzing and chirps of summer insects. She could smell the fir and wildgrass and crisp mountain air, so much fresher than that of the town’s and with less of the underlying aroma of horse apples.
She could see the graveyard, but it was wrong. There should only have been five markers, for the stillborn Fonger twins, for her elder sister, for Mr. Ephraim and Ms. Challenger, as it was preferred to lay the dead to rest down in town in almost every circumstance. But here there were three dozen wooden markers, spaced at regular intervals in an overgrown clearing, rectangular patches of grass slightly elevated directly in front of each.
Losa read the names and dates etched on every single marker. All but the original five proclaimed the same year of death. The year was not far. Not far at all. And she knew that they could not have represented all of the dead, for surely the town’s graveyard grew more crowded that same year.
The graveyard faded, to be replaced by ogre. That was enough; Losa wept.
"What becomes of me?" she asked when she grew tired of the ogre’s smug countenance, enough so that it slowed her sobs and brought her back to coherence.
"Sweet child, that has always been up to you." He stalked back to the bridge and bent double over the bank. He hemmed and hawed for half an eternity before picking a lumpy grey pebble of no particular distinction and he forced it into Losa’s shaking hand. “There you are. Off with you. I’ve had enough entertainment for one day.” The ogre did not have to repeat the request. Losa turned and ran in the space of a breath, never looking back in case he had been fibbing about not eating humans.
Night fell over the village before Losa returned. No one was out; the glow of lamps flickered in the cracks of the cabins’ shutters. But before she crossed the threshold of her own home and endured her inevitable punishment, there was another home to which she had to call on first. She went and knocked quietly on one of its shutters, the one above the boy’s bed. Then she stood by it and waited.
He appeared soon afterwards, slipping out through the doorway and tiptoeing over to her. “You’ve come back,” he said. Losa pulled his hand over to her and forced the pebble into it.
He regarded the pebble with a speculative expression, rubbing it between his fingers and catching the available light off of it in all different directions. "This is it?" he said. "You're not kidding me, are you? It'd be a bit of poor play for you to get the whole village up in an uproar over a fake." The boy must have caught her own expression and adjusted his. “It is it, isn’t it?”
He smiled at her and she smiled back and forced herself to blush. The only thing she could think of when he kissed that pebble and placed it with exaggerated care into his leather pouch was the wooden marker in the lonely clearing, with its name clear as the ogre's river. And then she thought, if her own destiny was up to her, surely it was so with others? Surely the vision could not have been set?
"Have you ever thought of going to the coast? To Englin?" she blurted.
The boy looked at her crossways. Not even a word - just a furrowed brow and a corner of a mouth that could not decide whether to go up or down.
“There’s work there,” she continued, even though she knew that her cause became more hopeless by the second. “Moreso than here or in town. We wouldn’t have to be trappers like our mothers and fathers. Wouldn’t that be good?”
But the boy shook his head. “You can do what you want, but I like it here. Thanks for the gift, Losa. I’ve got to go back in now, so goodnight.” He ruffled her hair like her elder sister did and departed back into the cabin, shutting the door behind him.
Her destiny was up to her and so it was with others, but she could never force their minds.
And then she left.
It does not matter how or when she did so, just that happened before that year came bearing down upon her. She kissed her mother and father goodbye, invited them to come and see her once she was settled, and set her feet down and down the mountain. Whether she would see them again, she did not know yet. With any luck, they would take her hint.
There was an ogre underneath the bridge.
This wasn't a normal concern for Losa. All the children in the mining village whispered about it, true, but the bridge in question was so out of the way from any place anyone would want to go that she little feared it gnawing on her young bones.
That was how the case remained until she fell in love with a handsome boy of the advanced age of fourteen. All that he required to prove her love was the steal a rock from underneath the bridge, where the ogre dwelled.
She agreed. Infatuation had that effect.
The next morning, during the false dawn while her mother and father still slept, Losa crept out of the cabin. Over her shoulders, she slung her pack, filled with sensible things such as an extra set of clothes, a firestarter, and two days' worth of meals, should matters get chancy for her. Attached to her belt was a sheath and in the sheath was her knife. She did not think it would do much against an ogre, but then she was not at all sure that the ogre even existed.
The children of the village had a rhyme: "Follow the spine up the mountain tall / There the ogre your bones will maul." There were other verses, each progressively nastier, but they were not much use so far as directions were concerned. So Losa cast them from her mind, or at least tried to.
The journey did indeed devour most of the day, with the sun rising – up, up, up, until it was directly overhead, before taking a decided westward direction. A hungry journey, it was too. She ate her ‘rations’ of biscuits and jerky with an unseemly relish and wondered whether she would have enough should her journey was an extended one after all.
The wonderings ceased when the river bended, revealing a bridge so ancient it must have been built by the grandparents of the grandparents of the grandparents of the three tribes that sometimes ventured up the mountain in alternating years. Underneath it, the bank dipped precipitously down to the water, although the bridge must have been flush with the river when the snow melted.
Losa relaxed and smiled. No ogre, no problems. Her scepticism had been proven correct and now the only dilemma that existed for her was whether to tell the truth of the matter to the other youth. So it was that she strode confidently up to the bridge, knelt down to pick out the handsomest and most distinguished of the pebbles she could find, and nearly dropped dead with fear when a leathery hand five times the size of a man’s fell upon her shoulder. That hand lifted her up, turned her about, and tossed her bodily into the weeds. Her feet scrambled for purchase and failed and she fell onto her ass. She ignored the pain from the burrs’ scratches and her bleeding calves and looked up.
The ogre was a hairy, overgrown creature that looked much like the tales she had heard from the more well-travelled adults in the village of 'apes' and 'gorillas' and 'chimpanzees' dwelling on the impossibly far-off continent of Kiloses. Its fur was damp and matted, twigs and leaves and mud generously coating much of it. Perhaps 'it' was the wrong term - the maleness of the creature was much in evidence. He had very large teeth and a smile that looked like a bear's. The knife remained in its sheath. It was unlikely that it could even penetrate his fur.
Losa did not think he could read minds, but he must have been able to tell plainly what was going on in hers by reading every bit of her body’s language. "I do not eat children," said the ogre. "The forest and river provide enough food for me; why should I bother with humans and their spawn and bring down their wrath? Answer me that, child."
Losa confessed that she did not know.
“Now what have you come to steal from my humble home?”
“A pebble… sir. From underneath your bridge. Someone asked for one as a gift.” As calm as she tried to keep herself, she could not keep the tremble from her voice or the increase from her heartbeat. “I won’t ask for your food or anything else. Just a pebble. Then I’ll go. I won’t even come back.”
The ogre put his head back and laughed, a booming, gravelly sort of laugh. “Oh, I haven’t any doubt of that! Ha! Every generation or so, one of your kind comes along to bother me about pebbles or somesuch. Proving yourself for the one you lust! So romantic! So mundane, to brave an ogre over the leavings of the mountain! Don’t you want something more exciting than that? Something more worth wasting your day over?”
Losa considered this. She did not think now that the ogre thought to consume her, unless his character was akin to a cat’s. But even still, even still…
"If you come closer, I can show you your future. And I shall give to you your pebble." He leaned in close to her face and opened his mouth with all its fine, large teeth. Before Losa could even think of backing away, even in instinct, he breathed in. He breathed out. It smelled of rot and she blacked out.
But did she?
Ever slowly, her vision cleared, as though she were waking up after a nap in the noon sun. Spots danced across and coloured her sight; she blinked rapidly to banish them. And then she saw.
Not herself. It quickly became evident that her own body was not in the picture, as she could not see her hands or feet or arms or torso, or even the tops of her cheeks and sides of her nose like she would normally. She could not feel her limbs at all, no matter how much she tried to move them about, and it was not as though they were numb. Rather, it felt like they did not exist, like the only things to her name were her mind and eyes and… ears and nose. She could hear the call of birds in the distance and the buzzing and chirps of summer insects. She could smell the fir and wildgrass and crisp mountain air, so much fresher than that of the town’s and with less of the underlying aroma of horse apples.
She could see the graveyard, but it was wrong. There should only have been five markers, for the stillborn Fonger twins, for her elder sister, for Mr. Ephraim and Ms. Challenger, as it was preferred to lay the dead to rest down in town in almost every circumstance. But here there were three dozen wooden markers, spaced at regular intervals in an overgrown clearing, rectangular patches of grass slightly elevated directly in front of each.
Losa read the names and dates etched on every single marker. All but the original five proclaimed the same year of death. The year was not far. Not far at all. And she knew that they could not have represented all of the dead, for surely the town’s graveyard grew more crowded that same year.
The graveyard faded, to be replaced by ogre. That was enough; Losa wept.
"What becomes of me?" she asked when she grew tired of the ogre’s smug countenance, enough so that it slowed her sobs and brought her back to coherence.
"Sweet child, that has always been up to you." He stalked back to the bridge and bent double over the bank. He hemmed and hawed for half an eternity before picking a lumpy grey pebble of no particular distinction and he forced it into Losa’s shaking hand. “There you are. Off with you. I’ve had enough entertainment for one day.” The ogre did not have to repeat the request. Losa turned and ran in the space of a breath, never looking back in case he had been fibbing about not eating humans.
Night fell over the village before Losa returned. No one was out; the glow of lamps flickered in the cracks of the cabins’ shutters. But before she crossed the threshold of her own home and endured her inevitable punishment, there was another home to which she had to call on first. She went and knocked quietly on one of its shutters, the one above the boy’s bed. Then she stood by it and waited.
He appeared soon afterwards, slipping out through the doorway and tiptoeing over to her. “You’ve come back,” he said. Losa pulled his hand over to her and forced the pebble into it.
He regarded the pebble with a speculative expression, rubbing it between his fingers and catching the available light off of it in all different directions. "This is it?" he said. "You're not kidding me, are you? It'd be a bit of poor play for you to get the whole village up in an uproar over a fake." The boy must have caught her own expression and adjusted his. “It is it, isn’t it?”
He smiled at her and she smiled back and forced herself to blush. The only thing she could think of when he kissed that pebble and placed it with exaggerated care into his leather pouch was the wooden marker in the lonely clearing, with its name clear as the ogre's river. And then she thought, if her own destiny was up to her, surely it was so with others? Surely the vision could not have been set?
"Have you ever thought of going to the coast? To Englin?" she blurted.
The boy looked at her crossways. Not even a word - just a furrowed brow and a corner of a mouth that could not decide whether to go up or down.
“There’s work there,” she continued, even though she knew that her cause became more hopeless by the second. “Moreso than here or in town. We wouldn’t have to be trappers like our mothers and fathers. Wouldn’t that be good?”
But the boy shook his head. “You can do what you want, but I like it here. Thanks for the gift, Losa. I’ve got to go back in now, so goodnight.” He ruffled her hair like her elder sister did and departed back into the cabin, shutting the door behind him.
Her destiny was up to her and so it was with others, but she could never force their minds.
And then she left.
It does not matter how or when she did so, just that happened before that year came bearing down upon her. She kissed her mother and father goodbye, invited them to come and see her once she was settled, and set her feet down and down the mountain. Whether she would see them again, she did not know yet. With any luck, they would take her hint.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
50-Word Short Story #3
Aw yeah, everyone. It's Go Time. Everyone is welcome to make their own contributions in the comments and I shall respond in kind!
There were fast times at Fort Whoop-up and the American purveyors of illegal spirits were in a fine mood. They were well on their way to meeting their unofficial corporate goal of having the entire population of the prairies stinking drunk.
Until the Mounties spoiled everything. Just like the Man.
There were fast times at Fort Whoop-up and the American purveyors of illegal spirits were in a fine mood. They were well on their way to meeting their unofficial corporate goal of having the entire population of the prairies stinking drunk.
Until the Mounties spoiled everything. Just like the Man.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Exhumed
Brief, silly thing I wrote a bit ago. The concept could probably make a decent novella if I worked at it.
Ten years ago, a man died. They placed his body in a coffin, they buried his coffin in the soil. A lovely, shady spot that overlooked the river, to the right of a child that had succumbed to any one of a number of diseases back in 1896. Over the course of this decade, bugs and maggots made their way into the coffin, stripping the man of his clothes and flesh and guts. Except the brain. The brain was still there.
The reason I knew this was simple: we were drunk, it was grad, and there was nothing to do in town except drink more and egg cows. Someone in the group - I forget who now, it might have been Jesse - suggested we go boo around at the cemetery with our booze. We all agreed. Someone else dared Rick to pee on a headstone. That, of course, was done. And it just kept going and going, until...
"Dare you to dig up Principal Baker," said Heather. Okay, maybe a bit more slurred than that. Naturally, we all agreed. We scrounged some shovels from the groundskeeper's shed and went to work. I can't tell you how long it took, because the work was constantly interrupted by giggling, laughing, shushing, beer breaks, pee breaks, and general horsing around. Someone dug their shovel into my foot. It hurt.
Finally - it had to have been past midnight, maybe even closer to two - we uncovered the coffin. This was a ritual accompanied by many cries of, "Aw, dude, wicked!" and similar. Principal Baker lay there in all his glory, illuminated by flashlight. He was pretty much just a pile of bones by this point, except...
"Guys, look at this," I said, pointing my flashlight right where his eyes ought to be. They looked. They recoiled. A greyish-pink mound could be seen inside the cavities and it pulsed.
A strange, wheezing sort of sound came from the open jaw. It sounded something like this: "Oh, hello. Have the Canucks won yet?"
~
Naturally, having made such a miraculous discovery, we decided to bury Principal Baker right back up again and never speak of it ever again. We did have a good conversation with the poor man first. We weren't monsters, after all.
Grad finished. Summer happened. Half of our ten were leaving come September, so we decided to make the most of it. By 'most of it', I mean dirt biking, drinking beers on a mountainside, and tubing down one of the rivers. It was good times. Except until July 30th.
That was the day Rick drowned. We'd been tubing. And kissing. He and I were lounging on two inner tubes and he leaned over to either do more kissing or to grope me or both and... he slipped. And got sucked underneath. We couldn't save him. We just weren't good enough.
I was inconsolable for precisely one week. On the seventh day, his body was found. And here's the strange thing: the guy who found him? He said Rick tried to speak with him. "Did someone tape True Blood for me?" was Rick's plaintive cry, his skin bloated and grey.
Naturally, our town being what it is, everyone heard about it in an hour, along with some doctor confirming the brain was pink and a hundred percent intact. It also got out that he wanted to speak with me. What could I do? Of course, I went to do so.
I stood shivering in the cold, sterile room, clad in my tank top and shorts. Rick lay on the gurney, much uglier than he used to be. My feet shuffled the rest of me over to him.
"Rick?" I said, trying hard not to retch. Skeletons are easier to deal with.
In a quiet voice, he said, "Closer..." I leaned over him. "Closer..." I leaned further. "Wanna make out?" I leaned back so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.
~
He lived with his parents for many years afterward, I heard. Worked his way through a degree, distance-style, before becoming a professional spam artist. Even got himself a girlfriend. It takes all types.
~
Rick was the first - okay, maybe Principal Baker was the first - but he wasn't the last. People simply ceased to die properly. Don't mistake me, they didn't become ravenous zombies or anything like that. They just stuck around, lounging like lumps, chattering on about inanities.
It happened to the seniors. It happened to the random heart attack or cancer victim. It spread outside of town, to Kelowna and Spokane and Nelson and Trail and all the little places along the way we don't like to talk about. From there, it spread to Vancouver and Seattle, to farthest Nova Scotia and Florida. The dead lived and would not shut up about hockey.
Borders were shut down. It didn't help.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, disasters of all sorts unleashed themselves upon the world. They left behind masses of corpses, complaining about the weather. "Can someone at least bring me a cup of tea?" they cried, as the living struggled to drag them back in from the ruined streets.
The nations of the world decided, as one, to resume the space race in order to colonise a world in which they could have elbow room that was not clogged up with the dead. Our neighbours to the south got flung into a constitutional crisis when President Khan was assassinated and insisted on serving out the rest of his term.
Now there's me. I died five minutes ago, on a planet far from home. It was due to natural causes, so don't get too weepy.
My daughter certainly isn't. She held my hand during the last seconds, yes, but now she's busy with paperwork. "Mom, do you really need the deluxe holopad? Only the regular version's almost as good and half the price and we could really use the money to redo the kitchen."
"No and no," said I. "The deluxe has the Titanic adventure. The regular doesn't. End of story."
The dead must maintain some dignity.
Ten years ago, a man died. They placed his body in a coffin, they buried his coffin in the soil. A lovely, shady spot that overlooked the river, to the right of a child that had succumbed to any one of a number of diseases back in 1896. Over the course of this decade, bugs and maggots made their way into the coffin, stripping the man of his clothes and flesh and guts. Except the brain. The brain was still there.
The reason I knew this was simple: we were drunk, it was grad, and there was nothing to do in town except drink more and egg cows. Someone in the group - I forget who now, it might have been Jesse - suggested we go boo around at the cemetery with our booze. We all agreed. Someone else dared Rick to pee on a headstone. That, of course, was done. And it just kept going and going, until...
"Dare you to dig up Principal Baker," said Heather. Okay, maybe a bit more slurred than that. Naturally, we all agreed. We scrounged some shovels from the groundskeeper's shed and went to work. I can't tell you how long it took, because the work was constantly interrupted by giggling, laughing, shushing, beer breaks, pee breaks, and general horsing around. Someone dug their shovel into my foot. It hurt.
Finally - it had to have been past midnight, maybe even closer to two - we uncovered the coffin. This was a ritual accompanied by many cries of, "Aw, dude, wicked!" and similar. Principal Baker lay there in all his glory, illuminated by flashlight. He was pretty much just a pile of bones by this point, except...
"Guys, look at this," I said, pointing my flashlight right where his eyes ought to be. They looked. They recoiled. A greyish-pink mound could be seen inside the cavities and it pulsed.
A strange, wheezing sort of sound came from the open jaw. It sounded something like this: "Oh, hello. Have the Canucks won yet?"
~
Naturally, having made such a miraculous discovery, we decided to bury Principal Baker right back up again and never speak of it ever again. We did have a good conversation with the poor man first. We weren't monsters, after all.
Grad finished. Summer happened. Half of our ten were leaving come September, so we decided to make the most of it. By 'most of it', I mean dirt biking, drinking beers on a mountainside, and tubing down one of the rivers. It was good times. Except until July 30th.
That was the day Rick drowned. We'd been tubing. And kissing. He and I were lounging on two inner tubes and he leaned over to either do more kissing or to grope me or both and... he slipped. And got sucked underneath. We couldn't save him. We just weren't good enough.
I was inconsolable for precisely one week. On the seventh day, his body was found. And here's the strange thing: the guy who found him? He said Rick tried to speak with him. "Did someone tape True Blood for me?" was Rick's plaintive cry, his skin bloated and grey.
Naturally, our town being what it is, everyone heard about it in an hour, along with some doctor confirming the brain was pink and a hundred percent intact. It also got out that he wanted to speak with me. What could I do? Of course, I went to do so.
I stood shivering in the cold, sterile room, clad in my tank top and shorts. Rick lay on the gurney, much uglier than he used to be. My feet shuffled the rest of me over to him.
"Rick?" I said, trying hard not to retch. Skeletons are easier to deal with.
In a quiet voice, he said, "Closer..." I leaned over him. "Closer..." I leaned further. "Wanna make out?" I leaned back so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.
~
He lived with his parents for many years afterward, I heard. Worked his way through a degree, distance-style, before becoming a professional spam artist. Even got himself a girlfriend. It takes all types.
~
Rick was the first - okay, maybe Principal Baker was the first - but he wasn't the last. People simply ceased to die properly. Don't mistake me, they didn't become ravenous zombies or anything like that. They just stuck around, lounging like lumps, chattering on about inanities.
It happened to the seniors. It happened to the random heart attack or cancer victim. It spread outside of town, to Kelowna and Spokane and Nelson and Trail and all the little places along the way we don't like to talk about. From there, it spread to Vancouver and Seattle, to farthest Nova Scotia and Florida. The dead lived and would not shut up about hockey.
Borders were shut down. It didn't help.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, disasters of all sorts unleashed themselves upon the world. They left behind masses of corpses, complaining about the weather. "Can someone at least bring me a cup of tea?" they cried, as the living struggled to drag them back in from the ruined streets.
The nations of the world decided, as one, to resume the space race in order to colonise a world in which they could have elbow room that was not clogged up with the dead. Our neighbours to the south got flung into a constitutional crisis when President Khan was assassinated and insisted on serving out the rest of his term.
Now there's me. I died five minutes ago, on a planet far from home. It was due to natural causes, so don't get too weepy.
My daughter certainly isn't. She held my hand during the last seconds, yes, but now she's busy with paperwork. "Mom, do you really need the deluxe holopad? Only the regular version's almost as good and half the price and we could really use the money to redo the kitchen."
"No and no," said I. "The deluxe has the Titanic adventure. The regular doesn't. End of story."
The dead must maintain some dignity.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Translink Haiku #9 and #10
These were inspired by recent nights out.
Poor, beleaguered Bo!
The transit drunks flock to her.
A fix: pepper spray?
~
Prepare as one might,
The night bus is proof against
The size of bladder.
Poor, beleaguered Bo!
The transit drunks flock to her.
A fix: pepper spray?
~
Prepare as one might,
The night bus is proof against
The size of bladder.
Sorry for the silence.
Life stuff, followed by friend's birthday shenanigans and the resulting Consquences, happened. There should be a proper update tonight.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
50-word short story #2
Piper, Jimmy - it's on! Read the comments, everyone else, and post if you got 'em.
The mountains crumbled. The seas ran dry, spilling into the cracks in the earth. Volcanoes cooled. Winds stilled. Fire ceased to burn.
The survivors of humanity gazed upon their broken world as they drifted in their spaceships. Captain Rodriguez turned to his fellows and said, “Glad we left that place.”
The mountains crumbled. The seas ran dry, spilling into the cracks in the earth. Volcanoes cooled. Winds stilled. Fire ceased to burn.
The survivors of humanity gazed upon their broken world as they drifted in their spaceships. Captain Rodriguez turned to his fellows and said, “Glad we left that place.”
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Things in History You Should Know: Queen Crisantha
This is an attempt at writing one of my history articles about the world in which Strike takes place. It was fun times.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away – okay, Spira – us peasantry got it in the teeth a plenitude of times. And it wasn’t all that long ago, being more like a century and a half, give our take. Yet now we live in a happy fun world where the colonies are their own nations, parliaments reign supreme, and the nobility don’t have a whole mess of privileges with which to lord it over us lesser folk. And who do we have to thank for this?
That’s right. Crisantha fuckin’ Landrell. Queen Crisantha, that is.
Nevertheless, democratic reformer types don’t just magically spring fully-formed from the foreheads of the nobility. Sure, there had been revolutions, both peaceful and violent, springing up pretty much all over the Estelian continent and a suitably idealistic young noble might possibly, without further provocation, take up the cause of the downtrodden. Might, but not likely.
The key element here is the Shulmanian Revolution, in which that country, its last emperor having got himself killed through act of horse and his remaining relatives being so distant they might as well be on another hemisphere, decided that elections might be worth a try. Thus so did Abelard von Aschenheim became their first president, a couple of generations before Crisantha got started. Why is this relevant, you may ask? Well, it just so happens that Crisantha’s mother was a cousin of his. And that Crisantha was sent over to Shulmania in her youth to go get educated. And who was in charge of her education? Come on, now. You can figure this out.
So you have this young noblewoman, who’s next in line to inherit her father’s duchy of Belsworth and who also, incidentally and through the most technically correct interpretations, has more of a right to the throne than the then-queen Lucina did. And she’s off in foreign parts, getting her head stuffed full of ideas.
Now, if you’re a sensibly minded monarch, you’ll leave that branch of the family well enough alone and find some nice little cause they can distract themselves with. Queen Lucina was hardly sensible. In fact, most historians say, she was downright crazy. She had the Duke of Belsworth arrested, along with Crisantha’s younger brother Tiberian, and told the whippersnapper to stay out of the country, lest she have the two executed.
Too bad the prison conditions were so lousy that the duke died. Also too bad that rumours of torture, involving said duke and her brother reached the newly-fledged Lady Crisantha’s ears in not-far-enough-off Shulmania. (These later turned out to be true.) And you better believe that she declared it on. Or the 13th century equivalent thereof.
She got herself an army. This was easy enough, considering the Shulmanian Congress had already voted to support her and oh, incidentally, there were a lot of people down south in Spira that thought she might possibly make a better queen than Lucina. Wholesale oppression of the lower – and middle classes, who had quite the percentage of the nation’s wealth in their ample pockets – had that effect. Rebellion had begun.
It lasted an entire year, fracturing the country like a mirror that got a rock tossed at it. Brother against sister! Parent against child! Pristinian against Nelurian! (Although as those last two were foreign, no one was really paying attention to what they had to say about it.) Long story short, the ‘Belsworths’, as they were called, were victorious, despite more than their fare share of near finishes.
Crisantha celebrated her nineteenth birthday on February 29, 1211, the very day she was crowned. And your parents thought you were precocious. The former Queen Lucina was executed just afterwards and she was lucky enough to watch the whole, wonderfully choreographed coronation. Her last words were recorded for posterity; alas, they’re but a string of expletives.
Then the nobles who supported her got a nasty shock: she really meant her grand speeches of reform and democracy and egalitarianism. She stripped her former fellow dukes and duchesses of most of their privileges, particularly those of tax avoidance and their hogging of almost all of the seats in the House of Commons, not to mention all of the laws that gave them a free pass for almost any offense committed against someone of a ‘lesser’ class. Good thing the middle class supported her, then – the uppers wouldn’t lend her money anymore.
She carried along those lines for the rest of her days, fitting in a couple of scandalous affairs to spice up the quiet times. Counter-rebellions were quashed, including that headed by the late Lucina’s brother, Asher. (We don’t know what happened to him – if he died in battle or was captured, it was never reported.) Then she died in 1291, so peacefully as to annoy all of her enemies and having already declared that the monarchy was to be a strictly ceremonial position from that point onwards.
In interest of full disclosure, one of her grandchildren did have the unmitigated gall to attempt a coup, as did some other scions of the royal line over the years. And for some of the colonies, most famously Abelia, the transition towards self-government didn’t come fast enough for them, leading to their own rebellions to gain their independence. (This hasn’t prevented them from wanting to snatch independence from others for the sake of some sweet, sweet land.) And, yes, she didn’t do it alone – many of her prime ministers, including Evelyn Godsmark, did much of the grunt work in getting her reforms passed through Parliament in the first place.
It couldn’t have happened at all, though, if it wasn’t for one young woman on a revenge kick. Now that’s a moral for the ages.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away – okay, Spira – us peasantry got it in the teeth a plenitude of times. And it wasn’t all that long ago, being more like a century and a half, give our take. Yet now we live in a happy fun world where the colonies are their own nations, parliaments reign supreme, and the nobility don’t have a whole mess of privileges with which to lord it over us lesser folk. And who do we have to thank for this?
That’s right. Crisantha fuckin’ Landrell. Queen Crisantha, that is.
Nevertheless, democratic reformer types don’t just magically spring fully-formed from the foreheads of the nobility. Sure, there had been revolutions, both peaceful and violent, springing up pretty much all over the Estelian continent and a suitably idealistic young noble might possibly, without further provocation, take up the cause of the downtrodden. Might, but not likely.
The key element here is the Shulmanian Revolution, in which that country, its last emperor having got himself killed through act of horse and his remaining relatives being so distant they might as well be on another hemisphere, decided that elections might be worth a try. Thus so did Abelard von Aschenheim became their first president, a couple of generations before Crisantha got started. Why is this relevant, you may ask? Well, it just so happens that Crisantha’s mother was a cousin of his. And that Crisantha was sent over to Shulmania in her youth to go get educated. And who was in charge of her education? Come on, now. You can figure this out.
So you have this young noblewoman, who’s next in line to inherit her father’s duchy of Belsworth and who also, incidentally and through the most technically correct interpretations, has more of a right to the throne than the then-queen Lucina did. And she’s off in foreign parts, getting her head stuffed full of ideas.
Now, if you’re a sensibly minded monarch, you’ll leave that branch of the family well enough alone and find some nice little cause they can distract themselves with. Queen Lucina was hardly sensible. In fact, most historians say, she was downright crazy. She had the Duke of Belsworth arrested, along with Crisantha’s younger brother Tiberian, and told the whippersnapper to stay out of the country, lest she have the two executed.
Too bad the prison conditions were so lousy that the duke died. Also too bad that rumours of torture, involving said duke and her brother reached the newly-fledged Lady Crisantha’s ears in not-far-enough-off Shulmania. (These later turned out to be true.) And you better believe that she declared it on. Or the 13th century equivalent thereof.
She got herself an army. This was easy enough, considering the Shulmanian Congress had already voted to support her and oh, incidentally, there were a lot of people down south in Spira that thought she might possibly make a better queen than Lucina. Wholesale oppression of the lower – and middle classes, who had quite the percentage of the nation’s wealth in their ample pockets – had that effect. Rebellion had begun.
It lasted an entire year, fracturing the country like a mirror that got a rock tossed at it. Brother against sister! Parent against child! Pristinian against Nelurian! (Although as those last two were foreign, no one was really paying attention to what they had to say about it.) Long story short, the ‘Belsworths’, as they were called, were victorious, despite more than their fare share of near finishes.
Crisantha celebrated her nineteenth birthday on February 29, 1211, the very day she was crowned. And your parents thought you were precocious. The former Queen Lucina was executed just afterwards and she was lucky enough to watch the whole, wonderfully choreographed coronation. Her last words were recorded for posterity; alas, they’re but a string of expletives.
Then the nobles who supported her got a nasty shock: she really meant her grand speeches of reform and democracy and egalitarianism. She stripped her former fellow dukes and duchesses of most of their privileges, particularly those of tax avoidance and their hogging of almost all of the seats in the House of Commons, not to mention all of the laws that gave them a free pass for almost any offense committed against someone of a ‘lesser’ class. Good thing the middle class supported her, then – the uppers wouldn’t lend her money anymore.
She carried along those lines for the rest of her days, fitting in a couple of scandalous affairs to spice up the quiet times. Counter-rebellions were quashed, including that headed by the late Lucina’s brother, Asher. (We don’t know what happened to him – if he died in battle or was captured, it was never reported.) Then she died in 1291, so peacefully as to annoy all of her enemies and having already declared that the monarchy was to be a strictly ceremonial position from that point onwards.
In interest of full disclosure, one of her grandchildren did have the unmitigated gall to attempt a coup, as did some other scions of the royal line over the years. And for some of the colonies, most famously Abelia, the transition towards self-government didn’t come fast enough for them, leading to their own rebellions to gain their independence. (This hasn’t prevented them from wanting to snatch independence from others for the sake of some sweet, sweet land.) And, yes, she didn’t do it alone – many of her prime ministers, including Evelyn Godsmark, did much of the grunt work in getting her reforms passed through Parliament in the first place.
It couldn’t have happened at all, though, if it wasn’t for one young woman on a revenge kick. Now that’s a moral for the ages.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The 3-Day Novel contest...
...needless to say, was a bust. And what I did do was painful enough to turn me off of writing for a few days. I suppose I a) forgot how hard it was the first time and b) needed the registration fee to force me through it. But again, $50 is a fair chunk of change to spend on such a thing when you're unemployed, you know?
Happily, I'm working on a short story now and I hope to have it posted this evening or in the morning. And I should get some non-fiction going; that stuff is fun times.
Happily, I'm working on a short story now and I hope to have it posted this evening or in the morning. And I should get some non-fiction going; that stuff is fun times.
Friday, September 3, 2010
It Must Be Bunnies
Another 500-word, written in an hour story. Prompt provided by Isaac.
In the hall of the High Emperor, a debate of the gravest importance was underway.
Courtiers, clad in their house colours, swarmed about the throne. They shouted and seethed. Those with an arm free were using it to either raise their fist in the air or point at others in a most unseemly fashion. Every one of them held a small, furry mammal – one of a dizzying array of species then represented in the hall.
The High Emperor held his hand aloft for silence. Immediately, the courtiers ceased their bickering, aside from the occasional dagger-like glares.
“Gentlemen and gentleladies,” said the High Emperor in his ancient, highly-enunciated way. “This matter is too great to be wasted on such common prattling. We shall go through the candidates one by one and by those means, judge their qualities. Present the first candidate!”
Nobles being nobles, they had the order of precedence sorted out centuries ago. Thus it was that the Duke of Delia stepped forward, pot-bellied piglet in hand. He bowed as he presented it to the High Emperor, who picked it up gingerly. Soon, the piglet was squirming with glee as the High Emperor scratched it behind the ears.
“Yes, yes,” said the High Emperor. “Not as fluffy as we would like, but a charming and agreeable animal all the same. Given its species, we think it would grow into an intelligent beast, but how clean would it be?” After five minutes of petting the piglet and cooing at it, he returned it to the Duke of Delia. “Present the second candidate!”
The Duchess of Arshane was next, clasping in her arms a tiger cub. She handed it over to the High Emperor, whereupon it proceeded to gnaw and slobber upon his silken robes.
“Certainly adorable,” declared the High Emperor. “And fluffy. But we are concerned about its potential for destruction as it ages into maturity and also feel that it might be happiest frolicking on a reserve. Also, we believe that it would terrify the servants.” He shook his head, almost mournfully. “We are sorry, Arshane. But it cannot be. Present the third candidate!”
The Duchess of Arshane took this rejection with the stoicism for which her line was known. She reclaimed her beast and backed away into the crowd, the cub chewing on her brocade sleeves.
On it went. The monkey, the puppy, the kitten – all were examined and found wanting. Until Sir Lockley presented to him a most floppy-eared creature.
The bunny cast a most disapproving look upon him – black, beady, and unyielding.
“Bunnies!” declared the High Emperor. “It must be bunnies!”
He let the astonished murmurs of the courtiers carry on for some time before holding his hand aloft again. “It appears we must explain our decision. Look upon the bunny. See its disapproval! Clearly, it is the most honest and forthright creature in this land! Therefore!”
The High Emperor stood, bearing the bunny on high. “The bunny shall forevermore be the symbol of this royal house!”
In the hall of the High Emperor, a debate of the gravest importance was underway.
Courtiers, clad in their house colours, swarmed about the throne. They shouted and seethed. Those with an arm free were using it to either raise their fist in the air or point at others in a most unseemly fashion. Every one of them held a small, furry mammal – one of a dizzying array of species then represented in the hall.
The High Emperor held his hand aloft for silence. Immediately, the courtiers ceased their bickering, aside from the occasional dagger-like glares.
“Gentlemen and gentleladies,” said the High Emperor in his ancient, highly-enunciated way. “This matter is too great to be wasted on such common prattling. We shall go through the candidates one by one and by those means, judge their qualities. Present the first candidate!”
Nobles being nobles, they had the order of precedence sorted out centuries ago. Thus it was that the Duke of Delia stepped forward, pot-bellied piglet in hand. He bowed as he presented it to the High Emperor, who picked it up gingerly. Soon, the piglet was squirming with glee as the High Emperor scratched it behind the ears.
“Yes, yes,” said the High Emperor. “Not as fluffy as we would like, but a charming and agreeable animal all the same. Given its species, we think it would grow into an intelligent beast, but how clean would it be?” After five minutes of petting the piglet and cooing at it, he returned it to the Duke of Delia. “Present the second candidate!”
The Duchess of Arshane was next, clasping in her arms a tiger cub. She handed it over to the High Emperor, whereupon it proceeded to gnaw and slobber upon his silken robes.
“Certainly adorable,” declared the High Emperor. “And fluffy. But we are concerned about its potential for destruction as it ages into maturity and also feel that it might be happiest frolicking on a reserve. Also, we believe that it would terrify the servants.” He shook his head, almost mournfully. “We are sorry, Arshane. But it cannot be. Present the third candidate!”
The Duchess of Arshane took this rejection with the stoicism for which her line was known. She reclaimed her beast and backed away into the crowd, the cub chewing on her brocade sleeves.
On it went. The monkey, the puppy, the kitten – all were examined and found wanting. Until Sir Lockley presented to him a most floppy-eared creature.
The bunny cast a most disapproving look upon him – black, beady, and unyielding.
“Bunnies!” declared the High Emperor. “It must be bunnies!”
He let the astonished murmurs of the courtiers carry on for some time before holding his hand aloft again. “It appears we must explain our decision. Look upon the bunny. See its disapproval! Clearly, it is the most honest and forthright creature in this land! Therefore!”
The High Emperor stood, bearing the bunny on high. “The bunny shall forevermore be the symbol of this royal house!”
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
3-Day Novel Jitters
First, a happy hello to those travelling here from Longshot Magazine. I hope you enjoyed the John A. article, lovable sot that he was.
Anyway, I have decided that I will indeed participate in the 3-Day Novel Contest that is happening this Labour Day weekend. Unofficially. $50 is a bit much for me right now and that money would be put to better use by the purchase of supplies for this venture. You know, like easy-to-prepare food bits, Pepsi Max, and booze. And tea. Lots of tea.
I'm getting nervous just thinking about it. No, I don't have any idea what to write about. Suggestions are welcome, but I assume, like last time, that it will come to me.
Okay. Breathe. Breathing's a good and much underappreciated activity. So!
There will be an actual content post later today. Cheers 'til then.
Anyway, I have decided that I will indeed participate in the 3-Day Novel Contest that is happening this Labour Day weekend. Unofficially. $50 is a bit much for me right now and that money would be put to better use by the purchase of supplies for this venture. You know, like easy-to-prepare food bits, Pepsi Max, and booze. And tea. Lots of tea.
I'm getting nervous just thinking about it. No, I don't have any idea what to write about. Suggestions are welcome, but I assume, like last time, that it will come to me.
Okay. Breathe. Breathing's a good and much underappreciated activity. So!
There will be an actual content post later today. Cheers 'til then.
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