"The Date"

(The following was written roughly around October 30, 2002, with a few touch ups here and there by me today. There's really not much too it, but it still tickles me and I thought I'd share it.)

---

[What we have here is your friendly neighborhood McDonald's. Brightly lit, perhaps even cheerful. Today there is only one CASHIER at the counter, a perky little girl with a bright smile. She handles each customer in a perky, cheerful manner that no doubt grates after a few hours of hearing it.

[Standing by her are two brutish men named FRANK and EARNEST. They should be working in back or manning a register. Instead, they try to start up a conversation with the Cashier and glare at the customers who keep interrupting them. The Cashier hardly seems aware of their presence, as she is focused on helping people.

[The next customer is a young MAN of no clear age. He seems to be a wee bit nervous, looking over his shoulder at something or someone we can't see. He doesn‘t order right away. He keeps looking at the menu, then back over his shoulder.

[Below his waist, out of sight of most everyone else, including us, he holds a weapon.

[With the stage set, we are ready for some action. It starts with the man, noticing some movement in the booths behind him. ]

Man
[flustered, over his shoulder]
Honey, just find us a seat, okay? I’ll get the food…
[someone speaks, but we can’t hear what is said]
No, no, it’ll be fine… I’ll be right there…

Cashier
[perky and cheerful]
Sir, may I help you? There are others in line.

Man
All right, sure. What I would like is for you to…
[raises weapon]
REACH FOR THE SKY!!!
[Everyone stares at the weapon. It is an ancient crossbow. Looks like it’s about ready to fall apart]

Man
[getting into his part]I WANT TWO QUARTER POUNDER MEALS AND I WANT THEM NOW DAMN IT NOW!!!!!

Cashier
[polite]
Sir?
[points at the crossbow]
That isn’t loaded.

Man
Wha...um…
[The man checks and sees that she’s right. Surprised; could have sworn he loaded it before he came in]

Cashier
[patient]

Even if it was, you’d only get one shot off with that. While you’re reload, either Frank

[gestures to her left]
or Earnest
[gestures to her right] would take you down. So it really doesn’t make any sense to even humor you, now does it?

Man
[flustered]
Well now…

Cashier

Besides, whoever heard of sticking up a fast food place with a crossbow? Earnest, have you?

Earnest
Nuh-uh.

Cashier
Frank?

Frank
Nope.

Cashier

You see? Even Frank hasn’t heard of such a thing, and he’s been to Des Moines. Now how can I take you seriously, hmm?

Man
[desperate]
It’s all I’ve got…
[realization]
Wait! Wait!
[The man drops crossbow. He digs through his pockets as everyone else in the store watches on in mild disinterest. Finally he pulls out pocketknife.]Man
[triumphant]

Ah HAH! NOW GIVE ME SOME FRIES AND A DRINK OR ELSE…or else…well, you know…

Cashier
[irritated, but still perky]
Oh, give me that.

[She grabs pocketknife from the Man. Frank and Ernest are both impressed with how fast she does this]

Man
[rubs his hand]
OW!

Cashier
[polite tone of voice]

Now look at that. Me, a slip of a girl, disarming a grown man. Sir, I hate to say this, but you’re pathetic. Really.

Man
[outraged]
You caught me off guard! That’s not fair!

Cashier

Sir, this is a place of business, and while I can think of nothing I’d rather do than rid you of your delusions of grandeur, I really must ask you to either give me a civil order, or step out of the line and let the next person order.

Man
[hopeful]
Can I have my knife back?

CashierSir, I might be perky and cheerful, but that doesn’t make me stupid.Man
[crushed]Um…Okay. I’ll take…um…two cheeseburgers and two waters. Um, please? Cashier
Certainly, sir. I’d be delighted.
[punches the information into the register]
The total comes to two twenty eight.

Man
[jaw drops at the amount]
Um… um…
[hollers over his shoulder]

Hey honey, can I have five bucks? Ah, come on, baby, just this one last time…

[And thus we leave them, problem solved, crisis averted]

The Doctor Speaking About the Doctor

I had three Big Heroes of my youth. I've already blathered on about the mighty Godzilla. The other two are the amazing Spider-man and the Doctor (Doctor Who). I'm not prepared to talk about these two just yet. The former is currently suffering under a inept writer and careless editors, which has resulted in a story I can't even think about without growing white hot with rage. The latter will take a wee bit of work to do right, and as of yet those type essays haven't been flowing as well as I would like.

However, there is a little snipit I ran across while surfing the web that tickled me. I read it over at

Outpost Gallifrey, which, in turn, had picked it up The Stage.

The article is an interview with Peter Davison, who was the fifth actor to play the Doctor during the series inital run.

---

On his children's opinion about the New Series:

They reckon the new Doctor Who is too scary and asked if they could watch Daddy playing him instead. Although in fact, I'd say that was a compliment to the new series, as it implies that my episodes weren't scary at all and they merely wanted to be comforted by them.

I love that. As a kid, I never liked Davison's episodes. A part of that stems, no doubt, from him following Tom Baker, an actor who, when on, blazes like the sun. However, I wonder if it because Davison's stories weren't as scary as Baker's

---

On the current Doctor's sudden departure

I feel sorry for the fans, as I feel they've been rather let down. What it really needed, after all the effort and dedication of the fans over the years to get the show back on air, would be to have someone committed enough to stay with the role for two or three years. As it is, the fans must be disappointed and left feeling up in the air a bit.

Two or three years tends to be the average for most of the actors playing the part. The current Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, has opted out of doing more than one season. Which is too bad.

However, whenever I think of his leaving, I keep thinking about Colin Baker, the sixth Doctor, who was wrongly fired from the part, Sylvester Mcoy, the Seventh Doctor, who really didn't get that great of a send off, and Paul McGann, the Ninth Doctor, who had just one televised episode. I think we fans will survive this hiccup.

The full interview, including what Peter Davison is currently working on, can be found
here

What Kind of Science Fiction Writer am I?

There are a whole slew of these questionnaires all across the net. One of them is "Which Science Fiction Writer are you?" (Link at the end of the post) My answers gave me this result:

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which is a stitch, because I can't read Gibson's stuff. At all.

Which science fiction writer are you?

An On-line Conversation.

For those out there with no baby siblings and those without elder siblings, here is a small sample of what it's like, via on-line communication. Bear in mind that the philosphic question posed at the begining was not direct at yours truly, and yet I felt it necessary to add my two cents worth...

From Broken, the Live Journal of Dead Robin

Dead Robin: Did you know that thesaurus isn't in the thesaurus? what if you bought one to look up what it is?

Me: Of course thesaurus isn't in a thesaurus. There's only one word that means thesaurus. Do you even know what a thesaurus is for?

DR: they have "related words" as well, you know, such as lexicon or somethin.

Me: A lexicon is a dictionary!! It says so in the dictionary and thesaurus! Goof.

Sad, innit?

A Writer's Advice

I probably should be the very last person to give advice. However, several thoughts hit me, and, as I needed to return to a semi reoccuring presence on my own Blog, I thought I'd share.

The first thought is, of course, the old saw, "Write what you know." Couple that with "Know everything" and you've got something.

The second comes from either Gene Wolf or James Blish, I can't remember which: Whenever thinking of who should be the main character of the story, think "Who does it hurt?" Who suffers the most during the course of the story? Who has the most to lose? That's who the story is about.

(Obviously there are stories that don't quite mesh with this, but I think it would work as a rule of thumb.)

Finally, God alone knows from where this thought came from. Perhaps another writer, perhaps my muse Gwen (assuming she's done napping or doing whatever she does with her time). "Write every story as if it is your last." This is your final work. This is what you want to be remembered for. It doesn't matter if you just wrote King Lear, what you are on is the most important thing you've ever done.

(Perhaps that's my problem. Perhaps I should be saying "This is trash! Who cares!"

(Or perhaps it should be a little of both...)

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about. More later. Hopefully.

Fun and Games with Spell Check!

What's wrong with this sentence?

He made it to the way station before the fish twinged in his stomach again.

According to the spell check on Microsoft Work 8 (and, in fairness, Blogger's own spell check), "twinged" isn't a word. "Twinge" is, but not "twinged."

Now, giving the spell check the benefit of the doubt, I looked up the word. Lo and behold, I was right and it was wrong. "Twinged" was a word. Maybe not used right in the sentence, but it is a word.

As a brief aside, there is something sad about me being right in spelling. I have never been the best speller. In fact, Eye always xpect too c my posts two luk lik thiz, rather than the halfway readable stuff I actually do come out with.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The point is that the dictionary I used was Work's own dictionary. How hard would it have been to copy a list of words from the dictionary and put it in your spell check?

God, I love working with computers.

Sithless

Well that turned out to be a banner weekend! I am well on my way to being one of the few people in America who hasn't seen Revenge of the Sith. It was a near thing, too, as I had tickets to see it Saturday and was weakening... But sleep came first and foremost, I'm afraid.

The films getting great reviews, the net buzzes with good word, my parents and one of my brothers seemed to have enjoyed it... and I can't work up the energy to give a damn. That's what comes of producing two installments worth of dreck, I guess.

Oh, I'll see it. When it comes out on DVD. Or on cable. Or on network TV. But in theaters...

Well...

We did get a new IMAX in my city, and if it came there...

Maybe.

From the Welltun Cares Dictionary

Frustration - frus·tra·tion - noun - having not one but two scenes for a novel appear so fiercely in your head that it brings tears to the eyes, making you eager to write them down, only to come home and stare at an empty screen as not one damn word comes to you.

see also irritation, depression, impotence, and bad blog entry.

Livin' in the Dead Zone

I have absolutely zero to say, and may well keep saying it for the next few days. Oh, I've tried to say something, tried to pick up where I left off, but so far, nothing.

Oh well. What can you do?

May

I never realized it before, but May is a pretty busy month for the Waters family. Why I didn't know this, I can't say. Probably because I don't pay that much attention to things.

In May my family celebrates at least four birthdays (both brothers, my Aunt, and my grandfather). Then there is Mother's day. All of these are packed fairly close together. I just have my baby brother's birthday left to screw up deal with.

On top of the usual course of events is a bit of sadness. This year, earlier last week, in fact, we lost my Great Uncle Vern. My head isn't always the best for collecting dates... But I think he was ninety or so. For the majority of his life he was as spry as could be. In his advanced years, he flew an ultralight. At eighty (give or take) he fell out of a tree he was climbing and I seem to think he broke a collar bone. More recently, he suffered at least one stroke which pretty much took him out of things.

Note a lot of vagueness. I wasn't exactly close with Vern. I'm not the most outgoing of human beings, and that little failing has probably cost me a chance of knowing a very interesting man a little better.

Such is life.

What I'm Up To - What If

As I contemplate what to do next on this blog, I've been working through this book of writing exercises called What If. Actually, working through What If is sort of like my writing a journal; I start it, have every intention of keeping it up, only to let it slip by the wayside. Some fun.

Some of the exercises are fairly fun. The very first own suggests writing five first sentences every day. A real quick sample would be something like this.

• On the third day in the apartments, Enid noticed a door that shouldn't have been where it was.
• The flower whispered something new whenever she neared it.
• The men came back with two more than they left with.
• Murphy never worried about the crocodiles when he went into the pit to wrestle them because by this point they were due a bit of revenge.
• The robot danced and sang to itself.

Another exersices gives the reader a first sentence, "Where were you last night?", and asks for the reader to come up with a story. There's a bit of leeway in how the sentence can be used. Like so:

Graves glared at Wells as he strode into the room. “Where were you last night?”

Wells grinned at his partner. Same old Graves, same old stick up his ass. Who cared if he blew off a night every now and then? Not like anything ever happened in this dump. Not like there was anything worth stealing.

Since no matter what he answered would be wrong, he said “That would be telling. Anything interesting happen last night? One of the rats make a break for it again?”

“Funny you should say that,” Graves said. “Someone broke in last night.”

The grin died on Wells’ face. “What?”

“They didn’t take anything. They just killed every last rat in Doc Brown’s lab. Only the control group, mind you. Five years of work gone,” Graves snapped his fingers. "Like that."

No prize winner, I know.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. Well, at least one of the things I've been up to...

Temperamental Artist

Learned something interesting this weekend about myself. If we were to be creative (and why not?) certain thought processes I have would run sort of like this:

First draft essays?
No problem. Up they go, everyone can see.

Pictures?
Not a big deal. Here they are, warts and all.

Poetry?
What do I care? Here's what I've got.

Fiction?
ARE YOU MAD?! THAT'S NOT FINISHED YET!

Yes, but I made a comment on...
NOT GOOD ENOUGH! PULL IT AND WAIT TILL IT'S DONE!

Yes but I said...
THAT'S NOT MY FAULT, NOW IS IT? PULL IT!

So what can you do? They pull the red font out on you, you have to listen at the very least.

Here on out, at least for a bit, no scheduales, no pre-planning. I'm tying myself in knots over it and for what?

This week will be sporadic posts at best. My Grandfather's birthday is tomorrow and Things have been Planned.

Hopefully I'll return to a more or less constant updates, but I'm not going to promise them anymore (until the next time.)

Sorry for the hassle.

(Boy, are my archives going to look weird... Ah well. I DO say "Reader Beware" in my Blog description...)

Site Update - Hang on a moment

I might not be updating for a little bit. I hope to have something more substantial in a bit, but I'm having wee troubles inspirational wise. It stinks, but...

Sorry about all of this. Will be back soon.

Site Update - What's Up for the Next Couple of Days

Like has been so often the case dealing with this Blog, my little "weekend" has been a fairly interesting experience. Before, I'd been bang my head against a wall trying to come up with some fiction for the site. I had an idea for a sort of serial novel type deal, but that didn't gel just yet. I started a science fiction piece and a fantasy piece that both grounded to a halt. Frustration after frustration.

In other words, a typical couple of weeks.

Along came the weekend and BAM! Got an idea. A real nice one. Spent Wednesday night, Thursday morning grooving with it. I had the usual Cullen troll whispering in my head that the story was too familiar, that I was copying something I read and was only half remembering now, but that didn't matter. The words came flowing out and it was fine.

I didn't finish it before going to bed and spent most of Thursday thinking about how the story was going. I was driving home from my Borders fix, and suddenly it all went south in a major way. Over thought the whole thing maybe, or maybe I started seeing holes in what I had.

Whatever it was, I put the story on a back burner in my head rather than risk losing it completely. Because even as down on it as I was, it still is worthy of seeing through.

However, and here's the interesting bit, by that time I already had a second story idea ready to go. This never happens. The rule of thumb is I finish one story, then go about redecorating my house with bits of skull embedded in the wall before coming up with the next.

This second story I intend to post later today. How much later, I can't say just yet. It's (hopefully) close to being half finished, and I've had some additional projects pop up. Plus, I need to sleep sometime.

When it does come, it will be in at least two parts. I'm going to publish the first part as soon as I finish with it, and get the next post up by the next day. (If I can't get to the halfway point , I'll put up what I have and edit in the new stuff later... a pain, but it'll do, I hope.)

Next I will either tool on the first story, dabble on a new Fantastic Writer essay, rewrite the "send out" short stories, fumble about with the novel, or explode in a ball of green flame. Whichever proves easiest.

(Between you and me, I'm putting my money on Spontaneous Human Combustion...)

Site Report - The First Weekend

Tomorrow is the first intended break from my 7 day a week schedule. Which is an odd thing to write, now that I think about it.

I hope to have, on Friday, a bit of fiction to post. At the least an essay.

See you then.

Site Report - BRILLIANT!

I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but my woes of site design are now OVER! Everything looks about how I want it, without annoying shifts in location. I don't have to mess around with the template any more.

All that work and I still don't understand half of what I did.

My ignorance appalls me. Just not enough for me to do anything about it.

Any way, from here on out, smooth sailing!

I Don't Want to Sound Like I'm Complaining...

...but I've been having a wee bit of problem with Blogger this past week. I've enjoyed my time here, and really shouldn't be carping, especially when all of it could be due to me and my computer, but it's lead to a bit of aggrivation, and darn it! what's a Blog for if not letting off some steam? Please bear with me.

Earlier this morning I had a post almost ready for publishing when, for reasons unknown to me at this time, the site ate about half of it. Which was a serious let down, as I'd worked hard on it, put in several links, and the like. This is not the first time it's happened to me. Maybe it's a problem with the site. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

The solution, as I see it, is writing everything out on my word processor (the termanaly depressing Works). I've been doing that half the time anyway for Works' (depressing) grammer and spell check. Problem is, when I transfer everything over to this side of things, the Blogger doesn't like Works apostrophes and quotation marks. And I have to reinsert them. All the while wondering if I'm going to lose the page.

Fun!

Then my page starts looking funny. I don't know how it looked on any other computer, but on mine it looked sort of like this:

My witty posts here. My
witty posts here. My witty
posts here. My witty posts
here. My witty posts here.
My witty posts here. My witty
posts here. My witty post here.

My sidebar down over here

someplace, looking lost and

forlorn and stretching on

and on and on and on and on...

This is not acceptable. I don't want my Blog to look this way. It might have been just me and my computer, but if it is, then how can I tell when something REALLY doesn't work? I've already give up Blog Preview as a waste of time...

Now, as I'm mucking with the HTML code with all the skill of a chimp working on a Roll Royce (using a jack hammer no less), I can see that this particular situation is, indeed, my doing.

It doesn't make me any less upset.

So bear with me. Next few days I will be meddling with the HTML code to get things to my liking. Again. My links will return (I may change out the pucture, though... "Galatic Duel" is getting a bit old...) as well as what past as my wit and wisdom.

Now, having said all of this, I would like to repeat that I've enjoyed my time here. All in all, this is an excellent service. But right now I'm a little frustrated. Once I figure out what I did wrong, things will chill out for me...

Until the next problem in my life creeps up, of course...