| Long Live the Alliance! |
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| 04:45pm 10/12/2006 |
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Just to give you froods something to look at, assuming of course that anyone is there doing the looking.
I have a passing interest in flags, even though RMG's are way better than mine. This time I had an idea, though, and I took it. As far as I know it's original - that's the worst thing about flags, it's so easy to unconsciously some banner that was designed a century or two before you were born.
Regardless...
LONG LIVE THE ALLIANCE OF FREE NATIONS!
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| The Second Protracted Silence |
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| 04:37pm 10/12/2006 |
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I really don't make much use of this journal at all. No one reading it, I suppose. I just make this entry to mention that I did win NaNoWriMo this year. Tranquility squeaked in over the wire, with a total of 50,012 words on November 27th. It is, however, a pile of shit and requires substantial editing time in order to make it halfway worthwhile.
I may post an excerpt or two on here, as that's the extent of good material within it. |
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| This Protracted Silence |
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| 11:51pm 28/10/2006 |
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I know I haven't been active on here for some time. I do this a lot, fade in and out and in again, only posting when I have something interesting to deal with, and that's not that often.
One of the reasons I've been not posting much as of late is because I've decided to participate this year in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. To that end I will be attempting to write a story of at least fifty thousand words during the course of November. Looking at my past efforts, recent warmups and history with deadlines, I think there's a fair chance that I can make it.
A story's only as good as its plot, though. I finally nailed down some of the last niggling bits today - Sunday and Monday will be more of the same. The importancies need to be locked in before I start writing, otherwise I'll just end up spinning my wheels.
I have found, though, that EVE Online music has been instrumental in setting the moods for a lot of scenes.
With that, here's the introductory teaser for the story I'm going to be writing, titled Tranquility.
***
It is the early twenty-second century, eighty years after a devastating apocalypse born from nuclear war, plagues, and the assorted horrors of mankind unchained put Earth's civilizations to the torch. Despite the destruction that overtook the world below, the settlements of Luna managed to survive and thrive, first preserving what they had and then building upon the foundations left to them. One such state, the most populous and powerful, is the Republic of Tranquility.
Nevertheless, it is a harsh life for the Loonies, and every lunar schoolchild knows that the moon is a harsh mistress. A major activity fueling the Republic's growth and lunar progress in general is salvage of space debris, particularly the wreckage of destroyed space stations that have gathered in the Lagrange points since the end of the war. Operations close to Earth itself are few and far between, as a few of the killer satellites placed in orbit by Earth's superpowers before the war are known to still be active.
As of late, the ksats have been sighted more and more often, and further away from Earth. In the past months reports of attacks against salvage vessels at L4 and L5 have become more frequent. Luna's technologies and skills are advanced but her resources are few, and the situation is fast becoming intolerable.
A prospect of renewed hope comes from Earth itself, as lunar astronomers have identified clusters of city lights burning when Earth falls into shadow, clusters of civilization that survived or rebuilt themselves from the ashes of war. Where there is civilization, there are potential allies, and potential sources of resources to fuel the mighty factories of Luna. However, radio communication with these enclaves is impossible, as Earth's atmosphere has been saturated with interference since the beginning of the war. No coherent signal has been received from its surface for eighty years.
Instead, the Republic of Tranquility prepares a scouting expedition to Earth, to determine the nature of surviving civilization on the homeworld and report back as best they can. Luna's resources are thin, however, so the expedition is small. Two people - Zelazny "Zed" Hakaraia, a veteran roughneck of the salvage ships, and Kyoko Fremantle, one of the few licensed mages in all of Tranquility - carry the hopes of a world on their shoulders. |
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| No Regrets - A Storywork |
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| 03:44pm 07/10/2006 |
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Here is a story I wrote on the bus back from Peterborough on Tuesday night. I was surprised that a bus was so conducive to creativity. Maybe I should ride intercity buses during the night more often.
****
Tisiphone Zeeman held a warrior's stance, savage and defiant. The sleek, grey revolver was heavy in her grip, but it was a feather compared to the responsibility that she bore. She took one step forward, eyes filled with anger and contempt, toward the prideful man in green.
Her finger quivered on the trigger. The man's head was in her sights.
"It's over," she said, and her words were absolute. Kings and emperors had fallen with similar finality. "The Jieitai's seen to your distraction, Colonel. I don't know what you expected to achieve, other than the sacrifice of your men, but that's hardly out of character."
"You wound me," Colonel Choi answered in a self-assured tone that had grated on Tisiphone ever since she'd first heard it, two years before in the labyrinth beneath Pyongyang. "They have done their duty as all patriots should, the efforts of your friends in the Self-Defense Forces notwithstanding. Don't think for a moment that the fulfillment of their duty has left me unable to do mine."
Lightning flashed, and for a split second the tiny shrine on the promontory was illuminated with divine light. It stiffened her resolve, and she stepped forward again. Choi stood with his arms outstretched like a reverend blessing his congregation.
"Good for you. I've got my own duty to think about, you fucking pinko," Tisiphone said, spitting the words like venom. The symbol of North Korea, that obscene badge that presided over the enslavement of millions, was prominent on Choi's uniform. "Get on the fucking ground."
"Such crude language from such a lovely woman," Choi said, and Tisiphone could only glare. While the charm he wore didn't provide absolute protection, it would take quite a few bullets to punch through its defense. Choi knew it, and that knowledge only riled Tisiphone more. "This is hardly something you should be concerning yourself with in any event. The last time I checked, you didn't hold Japanese citizenship."
"I have some friends in Tokyo," Tisiphone said. "Maybe you'll be able to meet them, once you're shown how to be a decent fucking human being."
"Really, madam, there's no call for that," Choi said. "What is life, at its fundamental root, but ensuring the survival of blood? You and I, we follow different paths, that's all."
Choi took a step toward the altar. Tisiphone let her gun answer. The North Korean commissar staggered back from the impact, but there was no blood. It was, at the best, as if he'd been hit by a rubber bullet. She hoped she would need less than five more to finish the job.
"You should be the last person standing in my way," Choi said. There was a look of betrayal in his eyes. "I know you have a respect for the works of the ancients. This is a work that should be reclaimed by its rightful inheritors, not sat upon by shrinemaidens."
"Somehow I doubt the king of Gojoseon would like to acknowledge Fearless Leader as his inheritor," Tisiphone said. "Almost as much as I doubt that you'd let an artifact as powerful as that see the light of day."
"The artifact belongs to the Choson, not the filthy Japanese," Choi said. "It is only through us, through me, that this artifact will ever see the light of day. I know that you and your ilk would be perfectly content to leave it here, hidden and forgotten, until doomsday."
"I'd rather it be forgotten than used to do the work of evil," Tisiphone said. "I know what you would use it for. You won't be content until you can enslave all of Korea, and Japan besides."
"One woman's enslavement is another man's stewardship," Choi said. "No matter, this discussion has served its purpose. I do enjoy sparring with you, Miss Zeeman. I'm almost saddened to think that one day, it will all end."
"With me standing over your cooling corpse, it'll end," Tisiphone said. "You can count on that."
"Yes, well, we'll see when we get there, won't we?" Choi said. He waved a finger above the largest badge on his tunic, and it shone with a mystical light. "After all, we're just slaves to the river of time. Sooner or later the current will carry us to our future selves, and then we'll know just whose corpse will cool first. With that, my dear lady, I can only say farewell."
For a moment the rage overwhelmed Tisiphone, and she emptied the six-gun into the North Korean colonel. His shield flickered and threatened to give, but before it collapsed entirely he gave Tisiphone a knowing smile. He made no move to run or otherwise defend himself, and with the final bullet he crumpled.
Tisiphone took a moment to reload the chamber before taking another step forward. Choi was just the sort of man to exploit appearances, and she put another three slugs into him before she was confident enough to approach him.
His face was locked in an expression of serenity, smiling as only a man with no regrets could smile. |
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| The Right Words |
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| 11:38pm 27/09/2006 |
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I've always thought, often against my better judgement, that in every situation there are a handful of words that, if used at the proper time and in the proper combination, will slice through any argument like a well-tempered blade and, for lack of a better phrase, cut through all the bullshit. Perhaps it's because I prefer to believe that every human is rational at heart, and that there has to be some phrase that will open their eyes.
I feel like I proved the truth of that feeling a bit today.
For the purposes of backstory, I've been working on a project for the last few months, one rather significant in scope. Before he died, my grandfather wrote his memoirs, and the book's a big and bulky thing more than six hundred pages long. That doesn't diminish what it is, though - an artifact of an entire life lived, an ordinary life that cut through extraordinary times. A while ago I got the idea to start typing it up into a series of text files - first, so that I could ultimately take a copy with me wherever I went without having to lug around the book itself, and second, to correct some of the more egregious spelling and grammatical errors. Whoever typed it up originally didn't do the best of jobs.
It's become something more than that, though, and for the last month or so I've been posting the resultant stories on the Something Awful Forums. I'd told my mom about the project almost right when I started, but she was under the impression that I was only putting up choice excerpts, not the whole book itself.
Things came to a head when I went home a couple of weeks ago. Emotions were high and tempers were heated, and while things eventually cooled down I had a fundamentally different outlook after that. I left the book in my duffel bag and didn't take it out. The problem was that the process of transcribing the book, and in so doing internalizing it, had a far deeper effect than simply reading it, and emotional wounds I'd been ignorant of for seven years were torn open.
Ultimately, I traced the source of my reaction to a long-standing regret I had. My grandfather died in January 1999, but he spent the Christmas of 1998 with us as he usually did. When he left the house for what would be the last time, I wasn't there to say goodbye. I was in the basement playing Brood War, which had come out only a few days before. Sure, I hollered a goodbye upstairs, but it was not the same. I have not felt right about it since then.
Earlier this evening I had a chance to hash out this situation with my mom, and I managed to get to the heart of the whole affair in a way I'd never been able to express myself before. Beyond what I went through in the preceding paragraph, I was finally able to put into words the driving force that was behind all of my efforts in this project - fear. In this case, it was the fear of loss.
My grandfather only had four copies of his book printed. One of them ended up being lent to the friend of a cousin, who subsequently went to the States and took the book along. It hasn't been heard from since. Thus, with three left, the stories the book contains are not spread very far at all. My greatest fear regarding this project is that one day, they would all be gone, and nothing would be left in memory of the story they told. I had to preserve the words at all costs.
Those words were the Right Words.
Up until that point my mom had been uncomfortable with the whole enterprise, particularly in terms of "giving it away." After I said that, though, the entire conversation shifted, and we were able to see eye-to-eye. My mom said that she had been concerned, first and foremost, with the protection of the book. I'm not saying that's not an admirable goal, but in this case, she was feeling uncomfortable about my project because it was "cheapening" the book, to use an imprecise phrase.
After the Right Words, though, the situation settled immediately. I gained a new zeal for the project and a drive to carry on. The way I see it, the only immortality any of us can really have is through people remembering us when we're gone. To give my grandfather's story to people who never met him, but through his words can know the man he was, will give him that.
Beyond that, it gives me my chance to say goodbye. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| The Crumbelievability of the Modern Plot |
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| 08:42pm 22/09/2006 |
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mood:  contemplative music: EVE Online - Nouvelle Rouvenor Hero
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I write. Whatever my job-of-the-moment might be or wherever it might be that I sleep and eat and screw around on the internet, in my opinion the continuity of writing is the keystone of my character. As I'm still an amateur that may well be nothing more than an exaggerated sense of self-importance; I don't really know, but I don't get many opportunities to use semicolons, either. It's what occupies most of my time, if not in the actual, physical, clacking-of-keys mode, then in the quiet, lengthy, cogitating mode that looks suspiciously similar to Doing Nothing At All.
It takes a great deal of first-hand experience to distinguish one from the other.
Presently, I've started work on a self-contained story universe for me to investigate old ideas afresh and do things that I was unable to do in the previous shared universe I wrote for. The introductory fragment that I posted on Wednesday is the foundation of that initiative. During my recent cogitation sessions, though, I've come to be disenchanted with the work that I've got. In my mind it's not only too linear, but it's progressing too slowly and too simplistically. Things are happening, it seems, for no other reason than I have decided that they have to happen in order to enable future events to happen.
That kind of attitude, I think, won't result in something grandly readable. Mediocrity does not require much effort to achieve, and I feel as if what I've got is headed in that direction.
As a result I've made the decision recently to revamp and retool the idea, and consign most of what I've written so far into the outtakes file. Maybe they'll give me better ideas later on, but for now, the structure has sufficiently ossified that I can't really conceive of doing anything different. The absence of choices and the paving of a flat, straight road from Introduction to Conclusion is not the mark of a particularly skilled writorb.
It's just that there's the intimidation factor. It's a pretty big mental leap to admit to yourself that what you've written so far is not on the highest tier. After that is when you're free to work again - when you're truly free to create again, unfettered by the shackles of the everyday. |
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| An Alert for the Ages |
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| 05:41pm 20/09/2006 |
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The German version of 99 Luftballons is greatly superior to the English version. I feel perfectly comfortable in stating that regardless of the fact that I cannot recall ever having the English version. I am fortitudinous in my conceits.
That is all. |
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| I Live |
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| 11:03pm 19/09/2006 |
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At least, that is assuming anyone notices. After more than sixty weeks without an update, I would not be surprised if this post passed from the Net unremembered and unsung. Though it's not as if many people sing about LiveJournal - or at least, if they do, I don't want to hear about it.
I will attempt to be more verbose in the coming days. Recent events have impressed into me the importance of keeping records - if for no other reason than it makes things a lot harder for meddling time travellers, thanks to the Observer Effect. I am doing my part to keep the space-time continuum pure and unmutable. Are YOU?
Also, I'm writing. Here's a sampling.
*****
The man had to be mad. Siobhan Cameron tilted the brim of her hat down, wishing it could keep the sweat as well as the light out of her eyes, and regarded him with a long stare, as if enough attention would make him fade from existence like the mirage that he was.
Whoever the man was, he was persistent, and steadfastly refused to disappear.
"Well, this don't look all that usual at all, Brendan," Siobhan said, one hand stroking her horse's thick brown mane. "How's about we make a stop, see if we can find out what the deal is, and give you a couple minutes of rest as part of the bargain? You'll like that, you will. Go on now, Brendan."
Siobhan urged her horse forward at a slow walk and leaned forward in her saddle, squinting as if she was staring into his soul. The man didn't seem to have noticed her presence yet, or if he had, he wasn't giving any hint of it. His attention was on some device Siobhan didn't recognize, what looked like a solid brick of iron on the end of a metal pole, that was connected by a tangle of wires to his backpack. He moved in a straight, regular pattern in a square of land, never going over his footsteps in the time Siobhan watched him, moving like a horse lashed to a plow.
He was a white man, that much was obvious. For all the savagery of the local tribes, Siobhan knew that none of them would be crazy enough to let themselves roast under an unforgiving sun. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| That Was Certainly Some Kind of Day |
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| 12:48am 16/07/2005 |
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It's been two hours since I got back from work, and still my legs hurt. It's not a common feeling for me, as unlike my last job in Toronto, working at a gas station doesn't demand that I stay on my feet for seven hours. That's one of the perks of the position, I feel. On days when it's slow I'm able to just sit on the stool, listen to the radio, and reflect on how much I like being where I am as opposed to, say, stagnating in Barrie. I know that there are probably a bunch of those who don't share my opinions, but after having lived there for twelve years, I can think of nothing better than to put that place behind me except for occasional family visits.
But anyway. Today was indeed some kind of day, mainly because of the sheer volume of the traffic that came through seeking gasoline. As my memory of previous shifts is spotty at best - after a year of working at the station, I've come to the conclusion that this is in fact a defense mechanism to ensure I don't become overwhelmed by the boredom of sitting in a kiosk smaller than my bedroom for hours at a time - I can't say that it was the busiest shift I've ever worked, but it was certainly one of the Top 5.
As an aside, some drunk guy just walked down the sidewalk downstairs yelling about faggots. Last night at 3 AM some guy was screaming about how horsemen never lose. I get such eloquent late-night discourse in this city.
So yeah, shift. On an ordinary Friday shift, I'll take in somewhere between $650-$900 in cash and $200-$400 in credit and debit transactions, depending on how our gas prices compare to the other stations around town and whether or not any special events are going on in the downtown core. Recently things have been steady but not too out of the ordinary. Today was something special. In the space of seven hours I processed more than $1300 in cash transactions, almost $1100 in credit and debit transactions, and at least a few hundred more in credit and debit transactions paid at the pump. It was an incredible thing to witness, a mixture of a train wreck and a piece of film looping endlessly.
If this job's taught me anything, it's that the universe is capricious and that there are no coincidences. Last autumn I recall that for the period of about three weeks, whenever I tried to do a safedrop during my shift, a vehicle would inevitably pull up to one of the pumps while I was counting the money. One of the other major Rules of the Gas Station that I've learned is that, all things being equal, if only one car is fueling up an additional car will arrive just as the first one is preparing to leave. My spirit gets crushed a little every time that happens, but at this point it's probably approaching that wad of aluminum foil that you can't compress any more no matter how hard you squeeze and cajole it.
That particular Rule held for stretches today. In particular, from about 6:10 to 6:45, the longest space of time where there was no car in the station waiting for or receiving fuel was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-seven seconds. It tends to grate on you when you're tired, covered with sweat from the unholy 37-degree humidex, or need to go refill your water bottle only to have another car jander into the lane after you've put up the "be back in 5-10 minutes" sign, turned off the pumps, and are about to lock the door so the skinheads in the park across the street can't break in and steal sixteen packages of beef jerky.
It was vexing, to say the least. |
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| Onward For Soviet Glory |
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| 04:09pm 07/07/2005 |
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music: Digitized NES Bleeps
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Managed to make it up to 147 lines today. I can only gather that my brain-meats are thus in greater sharpness than usual, as my last few attempts at juggling Tetrads left me blasted before hitting triple digits. Curiously enough, the game seemed to decide that giving me a bunch of utterly useless S- and Z-shaped Tetrads wasn't turning out to be an effective method at getting me to lose, so it just let its patience do me in. It's hard to win when you can't even rotate the L-shaped Tetrad ninety degrees before it smashes atop your already unstable structure.
I think I might play M.C. Kids for a bit next. When Virgin Galactic starts orbital tourism services, that game is going to be the only form of in-flight entertainment. Mark my words. |
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| Seven Months Can Occasionally Be A Long Time |
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| 02:20pm 07/07/2005 |
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Like the past seven months, for example. I was originally going to write six. I seem to be living in some reverse-temporized fantasy world, or at least like making up words that have to do with being stuck in the past. As I usually but not always am.
Occasionally I have to wonder what the point of this is. Am I writing this for someone other than myself? As far as that goes, I don't have any real answer. Even if people read this they rarely leave indication by way of comments. So I may just continue to treat this as something to turn to every once in a while, adding thoughts as they occur so that, a few years down the road, I can look back at what a sanctimonious, hypocritical idiot I was. Hey, I already do that when I consider the way I was in high school, so why would the future be any different?
Well, it probably wouldn't, if we weren't already living in the future. Hello 2005. All we've got left to look forward to is the scraps of some post-future that doesn't have any flying cards or balloon-powered cities or the rest of the interesting stuff. The future can be a real disappointment sometimes.
I will probably make another post tonight, once I've ordered my thoughts some more and have something more legitimate to say. Viz, the current events in London. I was going to write about them here, but the sentences I tried seemed far too cavalier and I was sneezing. Instead, I think I'll wait until my roommate gets home from work, after which we will likely bitch and complain about the world like we usually do.
The joys of apartment life.
Events here have been pretty uneventful. Went to the Festival of Lights last night - that's a free outdoor concert that the City of Peterborough holds every year from June to August - and saw the Arrogant Worms perform, the first time I've ever seen them. They're a musical comedy group that's been going around Canada for ten or fifteen years now, and this was only their second appearance in the P-dot. I had a chance earlier this year, but I didn't remember it until it was too late to book the day off of work. Aside from classic crowd-pleasers such as "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate," "The Mounted Animal Nature Trail," and numerous jokes dealing with the subject of sheet metal, they performed a bunch of songs I hadn't heard before. I particularly liked one of them from their new CD, called "New Car Smell," a love song in their typical style ("our love is like a surgical procedure, it's painful and invasive, your insurance won't cover, and when it's done you walk funny forever"), in addition to the times they heckled the audience.
It was excellent. The fact that it was free made it even better. |
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| I got a new hat. |
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| 12:11am 03/01/2005 |
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music: Red Army Choir - Gimn Sovetskogo Soyuza
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It's funny, really. But I like it very much and it will be my editorial and writing hat. Todd had his fedora-type thing with the little feather in it, and now I have my... Youth Borovichi Soviet hat.
(image removed for sanity reasons)
If the picture would larger you'd be able to see the hammer and sickle in the red star on the front of it. I wear this hat as something of a historical statement. Based on the colors and the writing inside, I have surmised that the hat formerly belonged to a member of the Soviet equivalent of the Sea Cadets in the city of Borovichi. I could be wrong on that count. But the point is that the Soviet Union fell so hard and so badly that its memorabilia can be purchased for Christmas, that most commercial of holidays, in army surplus stores the world over.
Plus, it is incongruous with my personality. And now I have a commissar hat if I need one.
On other note, writing progresses well. The first scene of part 8 is done with 1,400+ words. Only a few more weeks, hopefully, and I can put this series behind me and focus on shorts. My research into the air defense command center below CFB North Bay has been promising and creative-inspiring. |
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| University pre-busywork! No, couldn't be! |
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| 11:18am 19/10/2004 |
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music: Star Control 2 - Turning Purple (Melnorme)
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Yeah. It's not until the NEXT assignment that we move firmly into the busywork sphere. I thought I'd left that shit behind in high school. I've got thirteen thousand words of essay to write for December. I'm busy enough as it is. Feh.
I finished an assignment to deal with All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm hoping that, since it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 words, I managed to fulfill the objectives of the assignment, even if I did so accidentally or unconsciously. I tend to do that sometimes. |
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| It has been too long since I've written anything. |
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| 01:31am 15/10/2004 |
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Goddammit. Seven months. Well, I guess I should take it as a compliment that nothing worthy of note has happened since April. Other than job, school starting again, and all that other fun stuff. It doesn't really matter.
This is a time of confliction. Part of me can't wait to get the hell out of university. I mean, I've been in some form of school for seventeen years and three cities (Milton, Barrie, Peterborough). I'm just starting to get tired of it all, I guess. Also, the fact that I live more-or-less independently now has abated a lot of the grumblings I used to get about going to work. My desire to stay at home and play video games have been overruled by my love of teh money that keeps me from starving on the streets.
Well, it's not that cut and dry. But whatever. Too many of my assignments this year just look like pointless busy work. I wonder why for my Tuesday class, I can't just have a normal prof that grades on two research essays and the final exam. I'd much prefer to that to what we've got going now. Besides, there's no way in hell I'm spending $120 on a goddamn reprotext. I would get just as much value for my money by making a donation to the Natural Law Party. At least then I get to be entertained by their antics about yogic fliers sending out Super Mind Beams that prevent the birth of future dictators.
This day is redeemed by my having written 892 words today. After a bout of indecision on whether or not I should abandon Vanguard for the time being, I've decided to strike ahead as best as I can, and after it's all done and I've had time to step back I intend to rework it into a Director's Cut version where I improve it and get rid of hanging plot threads. I guess the advantage of posting the chapters multiple months apart is that nobody remembers most of the threads, though.
So there goes Phoebe down into the subterrane depths.
In addition, the term "contra-terrene" as a synonym for antimatter is really starting to grow on me. I don't know why. |
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| A Pontificating Post |
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| 12:45am 23/04/2004 |
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I think it's about time I finally gave voice to something I've been thinking about expressing for a while, but never saw a reason to. Something's unlocked in my mind tonight.
For reasons unknown - but potentially due to, I don't know, Batman, but mainly because it wasn't bloody well raining - I just returned from a midnight bike ride around Peterborough. It was nice, and just a little eerie, with all the quiet and essential emptiness of the streets. But the main thing I want to discuss happened at the end, while I was tracing my completely unplanned route through the city, and I came to the war memorial in front of City Hall.
Every city I've been do has a war memorial, but something about Peterborough's is touching in its own way. In places like Barrie or Toronto, the memorials consist of comparatively massive granite towers with the names of the fallen inscribed upon them. In contrast, Peterborough's is relatively small - not surprising, given the area's historically small population - and is arranged more like an altar, I think, than anything else. I'll probably take a picture later, as I came to the conclusion that it would be a fitting cover photograph for the Remembrance Day issue of Absynthe. But that's just a sideline.
As I was standing there, reading the names of all the fallen soldiers - of the five plaques, World War I fills three - I remembered something I hadn't thought about recently, from two months ago when I was on vacation in the United Kingdom. You might remember that picture I posted a while back, of me standing in front of a Soviet T-34. That was a good picture.
What I don't have pictures of are the other, interior exhibits of the War Museum, the ones that fill a mazelike set of corridors and cover the modern history of war. The first one was, not surprisingly, World War I.
The exhibits were interesting, especially given my status as a history major. World War I has always been an interest of mine - not so much as World War II, given its greater historical distance from the present day, but even so - and it was fascinating to see all this regalia of the conflict preserved behind glass. Letters, crazy spiked pickelhaubes, old uniforms, everything.
Then we rounded a corner and saw the machine gun.
Modern scholarship of World War I is, not surprisingly, focused on the incredible toll in blood that got spilled in the trenches of France, and the general wastefulness of the war - that 'Splendid Adventure' bogged down in the mud and spared no one. What complicated the war was the tactical retardation of British High Command, with their penchant of sending waves after waves of soldiers over the top through no man's land only to get mowed down by German machine gun fire.
And there was one of those guns sitting right in front of me, polished like it'd just left the factory floor.
I can't remember if it was a Maxim gun or a more recent model, but that was immaterial. The second I saw that gun, some wall in my head crumbled into nothing, and I could feel its presence, its terrible history. World War I, for me, had always been numbers I'd looked at in a detached manner. Seriously, how easy is it to wrap your mind around the totality of the deaths in a war like that and really understand it?
In that moment I understood, probably as much as I can understand without having experienced any of the horrors of war. I saw that machine gun and I saw those trenches, saw the hundreds of thousands of soldiers that lay dead and dying in the muck of France and Belgium, perforated by a dozen of Maxim's fast-flying fists and left to die alone. I could feel the folly of that war, how some damn anarchist's shot started a conflagration that decimated a generation and devastated a continent. Things like the Newfoundland Regiment on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, losing 720 out of 1000 men on that 1st of July in 1916, the four waves of Australians mowed down on the hills above Gallipoli, and a hundred other engagements that did nothing but end too many lives.
For quite a while, it was all I could do to hold back tears.
Peterborough's war memorial must have three hundred names on it if it has a dozen. One thing that struck me about the names was their implacable regularity. In World War I, there were four Andersons, three Callaghans, and an entire column of Smiths lined up in a row. The names of World War II, when I got to them, were not unfamiliar. How many sons had grown up with a father they'd never known, dead at the Somme or Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge or Verdun, and twenty years later marched off to fight the Nazis and died themselves in the liberation of Europe?
I came home after that. But I don't think I'll be able to forget that machine gun any time soon. Frankly, I don't want to. |
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| 01:05pm 21/04/2004 |
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Still not sure what's going to go down. I went down to Radio Shack for the interview thinger - took the bus, didn't want to get rained on or anything - and ended up talking about job-worky stuff with the manager of the store in the back. Apparently the district manager's in town and so my application stuff will be passed on to him, and I'll hear back in a couple of days.
Couple of days, good. Gives me time to catch up on my laundry. That hamper's been nearly overflowing for months. |
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| HUZZAH! |
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| 04:36pm 20/04/2004 |
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I return triumphant, having distributed something like twenty-two resumes along Lansdowne Street this afternoon, and am filled with fnorditude at having actually ACCOMPLISHED something, now that I can't use impending essays or exams as an excuse.
Beyond that, though, I got in touch with the Radio Shack in the mall, and surprisingly enough I've got an interview lined up for 10 AM tomorrow. It was rather unexpected, sure, but money is... money, and interviews have a tendency of leading TO money.
Hopefully this one will be like all the other ones wherein the interview resulted in me getting a job. I'll probably spout more about this tomorrow.
In addition, I also obtained Victoria, now that EB's selling it for only $35.99.
My brain-meats are happy. |
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| All right, I'm game. |
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| 05:39pm 09/04/2004 |
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1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
"48 Glitter Boys, SAMAS prototypes and their schematics, vari-"
Blame Slacker. |
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| Victoria Station is a Comedy Centerpiece |
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| 07:47pm 25/02/2004 |
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I'm not sure about the general accuracy of that statement, but it seems a valid fade-in to what I'm going to be talking about today. Though in all likelihood I'm the only one reading this so I'm just talking to myself... but that doesn't really matter all that much. I think.
Anyway.
Just the other day I got back from my vacation over in the British Isles. Was nice, even though I'm still feeling slightly jet-lagged. My time sense is hovering somewhere over the North Atlantic watching 747s go by. The highlight of the trip - one of them, at least, but it certainly ranked up there - was a chance discovery we made at Victoria Station in London.
It's open-air, see, as many establishments are in London - something that surprised me a bit, seeing bookstores and clothing stores and whole malls without any doors separating them from the elements. Must be the lack of a truly ass-kicking winter, I guess. But anyway. The fact that Victoria Station is open-air, mainly so trains can get in and out without having to resort to airlocks, means that there is a substantial pigeon population inside. Mostly, I think, they survive off of food left on the floor with their only predators being Transport for London workers who chase after them with brooms, after which they take flight and roost on top of the Knicker Box, a store right next to the rails which sells women's underwear.
Obviously.
Anyway, Erik - the guy with whom I was travelling - and I bought some inexpensive boxed sammiches and sat down near the rails to eat, as we were wanting to get some sort of crazy breakfast/lunch fusion done before seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Unsurprisingly, a couple of pigeons showed up, as they have little fear of humans and are always looking to scam food off of unsuspecting eaters.
What I didn't expect was one particular pigeon that showed up.
This was the single fattest pigeon I have ever seen.
Morbidly obese, even.
In order that I would not forget it, I took a photo.
At first I thought its legs were broken, or something, because when it moved I couldn't see them. Nor could I see any feet. All that were in evidence were white stumps that resembled pseudopods more than anything else. That quickly became irrelevant, though, as I discovered the massive comic potential of an incredibly fat pigeon.
It was fat and pathetic and a horrible, horrible person.
It had obviously taken up permanent residence in the station, as there's no conceivable way it could survive if it had to deal with predators on the outside.
Its loss was my gain, though, as for the next ten minutes I was paralyzed with laughter.
I don't know. I guess there's just something unbelievably funny about an obese pigeon.
And, to change the subject rapidly...
This is me next to an ex-Soviet T-34 tank. Now in the Imperial War Museum. |
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