19. Tings Nov 19

(8:31 am Nov 19, 2005)

X ray.

I want to warn you up front that this is unlikely to be a double quota weekend day today so you might want to read a little slower or you may finish your days reading and be bored for the rest of the day. You see, I have to go mow the yard now, then I have lunch and piano lesson runs this afternoon and then a LUG meeting tonight and then to end it all, I have to remember to meet Bruno at The Buzz.

I will do my best for you though gentle reader. I trust it shall be good enough.

(8:34 am Nov 19, 2005)

(9:59 am Nov 19, 2005)

The lawn is shorn, the sweat washed away, and now back to these words today.

X ray. The mighty mighty X Ray. DJ X Ray? MC X Ray? Röntgen ray.

Hard X rays and soft X rays. Gamma rays and Hard X rays have overlapping wavelenghts. The thing is, they are not coming from the same place. There is no tru agreement between them.

Energetic electron processes. Energy, plenty energy.

Geiger counters.

The Geiger spotters field guide. Ma boy, I was out in da bush yesterday, an I spot tree (three) Geiger up in one tree.

Then there were these geeky kids who didn't count padiddles, no, they counted geigers.

They called themselves the Scintillators.

What can you do with such geeky friends?

And let's not get into these new semiconductor diode detectors and the doping issues surrounding them. I tell you if the IOC or the Tour or the congress ever get wind of these doping issues, watch out. Before that probe and that special commission and that special prosecutor are done, we will be lucky to have much of our modern technology left.

Eighteen ninety five to two thousand and five. X ray. Some spell it X-ray. Not that there wasn't fun before then mind you.

Bulla called in during the night. Seems he has drifted back. He wanted to let us know that he is still in pain and is scheduled to go in and have some X rays done today. He assured me that he is still elated and feeling more alive than ever. I wonder greatly about that man.

Most of my characters are still not answering my calls. And the ones who have come back don't seem to want to talk about what they were up to while they were off the job. If you can find out for me, please drop me a line.

I have been calling around all morning seeing if I can get any info or sip sip about their whereabouts, but I keep coming up dry. I have been in a private irc channel with several experts on rumours from Spanish Wells all morning and even they are confounded. Stumped. Flummoxed.

I guess I will just have to wait for them to trickle back like the others if they ever come back at all. At least if they never show for the rest of the book, that will negate any rights they have to the movie money.

Voyage.

Voyage. Discovery. Trip. Ocean. Passage.

(10:24 am Nov 19, 2005)

Voyage. Space. Fantastic. Extended. World. Journey. Trek. Exploration. Sentimental. Rubicon. Back. Home. Rubicon, I say.

(10:34 am Nov 19, 2005)

Voyage. Space. Voyage. Time.

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)
was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and
twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and
passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and
caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that
luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully
free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this
way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as we sat and lazily
admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it)
and his fecundity.

OK, so forgive me if I don't quote the bard, he did a fair bit of writing himself though.

And so you see, interest in voyaging through time has been expressed in writing for over a hundred years at least. Come on, surely you know who wrote that.

And, this is minor, but so are many of my observations, don't you agree, he even spells grey as grey and not gray and abiword complains about each. The funny thing is, abiword also complains about abiword and Abiword and AbiWord as well.

He uses some nice words in that paragraph and he uses them well don't you think?

Now, I bring this up to kill time, to up the word count and to point out to you that this novel too contains at least one time traveler.

I shall give you the skinny on him in case you were thinking he got here by some other plot device.

Cangman is our illustrious time traveler. It's true. He did not reach the present day by being frozen alive and thawing out in this modern age. No, Cang is a bona fide Time Traveller.

(10:49 am Nov 19, 2005)

Teller.

Teller. One who counts. Votes and Money. Funny how those two go together isn't it?

Narrator. Hey, is that me? I know I am the author of this book, I only just discovered in my fore mind that I am the narrator as well. Cool.

A teller of tales. A puller of tails. A yanker of chains. All that and some much more. More or less.

(10:53 am Nov 19, 2005)

Here I have been going along all this time, acting as the narrator and yet only thinking of myself as the author. Could Bruno's claims that I don't exist have had some deeper purpose in perhaps making me focus too much on the authoring and not on the narrating?

(10:55 am Nov 19, 2005)

398,592,516

That's a lot of words. I wonder how many other nanoers are both authors and narrators this year? Perhaps I should go make a forum post. Be back in a bit.

(10:57 am Nov 19, 2005)

(11:11 am Nov 19, 2005)

Well, I am back and I voted.

Cool time hey?

I see that I messed up big time, but instead of trying to fix it before you see it, I shall choose to leave it in and consider it a sort of wabi as it were.

I think this is the first time I have really intermingled and intertwingled my sections in this way.

So, we have voyages and tellers cointertwingled. This might be interesting.

So this teller see, this teller wanted to go on this space voyage see, so he booked a cabin on this space liner see? Little did he know that because of a vortex, he would travel not only through space but also through time. You know, it is trying to be precise that can lead one to a reputation unwanted. You see, this teller? He knew he was to be traveling not only through space, but through time and he even realized that he would be traveling through space-time. (x,y,z,t) Space curved, and time unfolded. What he did not realize as he began his voyage is that he would be traveling back in time as well as through space. You see what I mean? You see how much extra you have to write just to try and be a little more precise? And I bet if we examine things closer, we would need to put in a lot more qualifications and the like.

(10:56 am Nov 19, 2005)

Just kidding.

(11:26 am Nov 19, 2005)

Hey, would you like to buy this new suit woven out of the fabric of space-time? It never needs ironing. I can get you a good price.

Hey, someone give that teller a pen and tell him to get back to authoring.

55 B.C. and 1066 A.D. Just like Bulla, enough said.

Now, one of the important uses for time travel in the future will be to go back in time to a time when history still existed so that you can view history first hand as it were. I mean, we all do know that several important people agree that history has ended don't we? Now, they are not in agreement as to when and why history ended, but they do agree that is has in fact ended. What say you gentle reader.

Hey! Don't give me no lip, or I will make you a character and let you get lost in space. Or worse, lost in time.

(11:36 am Nov 19, 2005)

(11:53 am Nov 19, 2005)

I need some words and I need them quick. Do you think I could find any at a web shop? I could use my credit card and order a bunch of words and get them couriered in overnight. Man, what a slick way to easily up your word count. Are mail order words considered cheating in nano? I haven't seen that covered in the FAQ. I mean, I would guess they would be OK if they came all mixed up in a box and we had to assemble them without instructions. Now, if they came pre-assembled, I could see how that would be an issue.

(11:57 am Nov 19, 2005)

Arcade.

Arcade. Statue. Water. Spray.

Confused? Ha, just a little private free association there.

Arcade. Shopping. (That one for the ladies.)

Arcade. Game. Battlezone. Crazy Climber. Asteriods. Missile Command. Quarter suckers.

Arcade. Pinball. Time and quarter suckers. Twitch makers.

Arcade. Arches, Columns. Piers.

(12:04 pm Nov 19, 2005)

Trouble. hundreds more words to go. now more time to write them.

Nano and Drake, I need you. I need you back from Spanish Wells now.

I need five hundred words and I need them pretty quick.
Cause I've gotta reach my quota and I feeling kinda sick.
I need you for my novel cause you boys are super slick.
If you get them for me now you'll get top billing in the flick.

Get me five hundred words and get them mighty quick!

(12:26 pm Nov 19, 2005)

OK, boys, you know what to do. I want you to find where that underground complex is and I want you to cause trouble between Cang and XXIII. Now, I don't like helping out the soldiers side, especially while they are still off galavanting somewhere, but I need some word production, I need some drama, I need some conflict, I need some action! So! Go to it my tiny friends!

(12:29 pm Nov 19, 2005)

I am gonna say action. And when I say action, I don't want to say cut until we hit the two thousand word mark.

Action!

Nano and Drake head off in the general direction until they our out of the author's and narrator's sight and then they head over to a local arcade to play some video games and cause some fights if possible. Drake especially liked this one game where the object is for this bad guy named video to shoot down these stars from the sky which send out radio signals to control the movements of his opponents.

Insert the movement and bring the elephants over the passes. Didn't I tell you to eradicate that window from there and reestablish it over here?

The rain having cleared up, I can see for miles.

(Yes, that one is a bit obtuse, but all the more fun if you get it. I know, I only put it in the general vicinity.)

Cut! Cut! Cut!

Hey you two! Nano! Drake! What are you doing? It's bad enough I don't have most of my characters to work with, I really don't need for the ones I do have to be wondering off like that.

And look! I had to say cut before two thousand. What a mess.

Hey, hey, HEY! No lip. I know you are not in the original group of characters and were only called on after the problems arose, but I do not consider you inferior to those other characters in any way and I expect the same high standards from you as I do all the others.

OK, that's a wrap. We just passed two thousand. We can call it a day. If things go well with the meeting at The Buzz tonight, I may file a late report if you care to stay up that late to read it.

(12:41 pm Nov 19, 2005)

(12:06 am Nov 20, 2005)

This is still the nineteenth's work.

Long story short:

Bruno showed up. I think we worked something out. He said he will probably show up tomorrow, actually today now, or Monday and that he will talk with Melody for me.

More on the LUG and on The Buzz tomorrow, actually today.

You know what I mean.

(12:08 am Nov 20, 2005)