May 2006

Story #13

Posted on by Patrick

Quoth the Gen­er­a­tor: The sto­ry’s pro­ta­gan­ist is female and a clerk. A gun plays a sig­nif­i­cant part in the sto­ry. The sto­ry is set in a rain­storm in the far future. The sto­ry is about revenge.

Title: Two Drag­ons
1300 words

Excerpt:

Slow­ly she came into focus, there in my drowsy head­space: blonde hair pulled back in a pony­tail, green eyes like the ocean, a mole to the left of her chin. She was nei­ther short nor tall. Her blood type was B pos­i­tive and she paint­ed her fin­ger­nails and toe­nails a shade of pink that put me in mind of a cave-dwelling species of orchid, frag­ile blooms unfurl­ing in reflect­ed moonlight.

If you want to see the rest, leave a note in the com­ments, with an email address, and I’ll fire a PDF your way.

Thirteen thirteens

Posted on by Patrick

thursday 13

  1. Sep­tem­ber 13th is my anniversary.
  2. 13 Engines -- Perpetual Motion Machine13 Engines’ Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine, alt-rock from 1994, rocks.
  3. Half of the Fri­day the 13ths that fall are pay­days for me.
  4. The oth­er half are not.
  5. But that’s okay because my wife’s pay­day is off­set from mine by a week.
  6. Her­cules, a well-known and easy-to-find con­stel­la­tion in these north­ern lat­i­tudes, con­tains the glob­u­lar clus­ter M13.
  7. There’s at least one hotel in Win­nipeg whose floor num­bers skip from 12 to 14, omit­ting 13.
  8. My most recent address was Apart­ment 31. The apart­ment num­bers on the sec­ond floor went 11, 12, 31, 14. I sus­pect they swapped the dig­its, what do you think?
  9. Before I could move into the apart­ment, work­men had to clean up and touch up the ceil­ing. The whole ceil­ing came down as they worked on it, which meant that they had to re-do the whole shootin’ match. For­tu­nate­ly, I was mov­ing from a one-bed­room apart­ment to a two-BR in the same build­ing, which meant I did­n’t have two land­lords to deal with.
  10. Up until that point, I’d nev­er viewed 13 as par­tic­u­lar­ly unlucky. (I still don’t, real­ly. Peo­ple who let num­bers rule their lives are rather nine­teen.)
  11. My wife’s read­ing Lemo­ny Snick­et’s A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events. Book 12 was titled The Penul­ti­mate Per­il, which leads me to believe that the 13th book will end the series.
  12. The Gob­lin King’s clock in Labyrinth has 13 hours.
  13. And who can for­get Homer, peer­ing at the mis-print­ed cal­en­dar on the 13th hour of the 13th day of the 13th month, and mut­ter­ing “Lousy Smarch weath­er”? Not I, apparently.

[ps] You can tell I’m not an Amer­i­can because it only now, hours lat­er, occurs to me that there’s 13 bars in the old stars ‘n’ bars. (That, and my insis­tence on insert­ing that “extra” u in words like colour and vapour.)

Links to oth­er Thurs­day Thirteens!

  1. Car­men
  2. Day­By­Day4-2Day
  3. Doug’s movie quotes game
  4. Aman­da
  5. Dar­la’s Tow­el Day 13
  6. Jayne miss­es junk food
  7. Urban Mum­my’s list of ideas
  8. Post a note in the com­ments, and I’ll add you here.

Get the Thurs­day Thir­teen code here!

The pur­pose of the meme is to get to know every­one who par­tic­i­pates a lit­tle bit bet­ter every Thurs­day. Vis­it­ing fel­low Thir­teen­ers is encour­aged! If you par­tic­i­pate, leave the link to your Thir­teen in oth­ers com­ments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thir­teen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to every­one who par­tic­i­pates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Track­backs, pings, com­ment links accepted!

This weekend

Posted on by Patrick

This week­end, the May Long Week­end here in Cana­da, eh, was the Senior Nation­al Com­pe­ti­tion for judo. It took place in Win­nipeg, which is just down the road a piece. The head instruc­tor at our club was respon­si­ble for the open­ing cer­e­monies and the medal pre­sen­ta­tions, and so a bunch of us from the club vol­un­teered to assist. It was fun, and I found the match­es to be rather inter­est­ing as well. There was at least one gold medal­list from Man­i­to­ba, and pos­si­bly a sec­ond, as well as a hand­ful of bronzes.

I’ve got pho­tos that I’ll be post­ing before too long, and I’ll be doing a more in-depth post on our judo club’s web­site.

FM Challenge

Posted on by Patrick

After falling a lit­tle behind (I was doing a sto­ry every sec­ond day; it was six days since the pre­vi­ous one) I sat down and did up a new sto­ry last night. The gen­er­a­tor gave me The theme of this sto­ry: trag­ic mys­tery. The main char­ac­ters: con­fused cab dri­ver and pious rogue. The start of the sto­ry: dream. The end of the sto­ry: discovery.

Here’s the start of the story:

“I don’t get it,” said Sam­my. Mist rolled away from him in all direc­tions, pale and formless.

“There’s noth­ing to get,” the woman said. “Please, I need silence.” She knelt, her body tak­ing on a per­fect still­ness, the breath­less wait­ing of a stone being worn away by the sea. The mist climbed her body like a thing alive, ten­drils coil­ing snake­like across her shoul­ders, her back, the tat­tooed nape of her neck. Sam­my felt a scream crawl­ing up his throat, watch­ing the only oth­er per­son in this dream­scape being eat­en by fog, like some­thing out of a hor­ror movie.

He swal­lowed, hard, and looked away, his gaze search­ing for a hori­zon that was­n’t there. Grey sky, grey mist, and it all met at the van­ish­ing point, a roil­ing noth­ing­ness that had over­whelmed sense and knowledge.

This is a dream, he told him­self. This is a dream, and I can wake up any­time I want–

Only he could­n’t. The form­less scream was claw­ing its way back up his throat. With an effort that was enough to put sweat on his brow, he forced it back down.

For more: The com­plete sto­ry (pass­word-pro­tect­ed: the pass­word is abi­gail <– high­light to read.

The Hip

Posted on by Patrick

A raven strains along the line of the road,
car­ry­ing a mud­dy, old skull
the wires whis­tle their approval,
off down the distance

“At the Hun­dredth Merid­i­an”, The Trag­i­cal­ly Hip

So the oth­er day I bought The Trag­i­cal­ly Hip’s “Yer Favourites” dou­ble CD. It makes me hap­py. Like my wife said once: “Of course you like the Hip. You’re a Cana­di­an boy.”

It’s a com­pi­la­tion of fan favourites. If I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, they polled a bunch of ran­dom fans about what their favourite Hip songs were. The result is this two-disc set. There are some great tunes in here, too: “New Orleans is Sink­ing”, “Lit­tle Bones”, “50 Mis­sion Cap”, and almost 40 oth­ers too.

See when it starts to fall apart, it real­ly falls apart
Like boots or hearts, oh when they start they real­ly fall apart
Fin­gers and toes, fin­gers and toes
Forty things we share
Forty one if you include the fact that we don’t care

“Boots or Hearts”

So how’s your music collection?