Monthly Archives: May 2006

Story #13

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?