Mood:  mischievious

In a cradle, diapers, pull-ups or big kid pants, they can all get hitched in Arkansas.

Frankly, I'm shocked! I am stunned into abject speechlessness!...

Not by the fact that kiddies of any age can now marry anyone else in Arkansas, mind you, but by the fact that this wasn't already the law over there in the first place. 

...now, I don't wanna be considered Anti-Arkansas, but... well... yeah...

Nemo me impune lacessit, motherf***er, and don't mess with Texas.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:13 PM ADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

Ardashir gripped Kairos by the neck, like a mother cat would her kitten, and lowered him back into the chair.

     “I mention Basincrest, dear boy, because it represents progress.  Progress keeps us alive, and progress keeps us one step ahead of the desert wastes that surround us: the scorched earth that is just waiting to claim our civilization among its many, many casualties.”  He leaned close.  “Now,” he whispered, “we have the opportunity for progress aplenty, and all that stands in the way is one silly boy’s silly little story.” Ardashir drew a purposeful breath: “What did you see beneath the fault line, young Kairos?”

     He didn’t want the truth, Kairos reasoned.  He was looking for some other answer, something to justify his expedition into the fault, but Kairos knew that nobody should go near that place, not ever. What he had seen was as horrible as it was deadly. He couldn’t give the Elder the answer he wanted, so he repeated his assertion:

     “My original words are true, Elder. I swear it.”

     Ardashir’s countenance changed from warmth to iciness in an instant. He removed his hands from Kairos’ shoulders and snapped his fingers. A militiaman sprinted up the steps to the deck in short order.

     “Away with this naughty louse.” The Elder demanded, waving a hand at Kairos. “For his disobedience in unauthorized spelunking he is under house confinement until further notice.”

     The militiaman literally dragged Kairos down the stairs while the Elder gazed out across the town at Basincrest, with his back to the steps.

     “And, my good militiaman, for the boy’s desertion of the Ogsand family this morning he has earned twelve lashes, vertiginous oils included, if you’d be so kind...”

... 

--- "The Reign of Eden" draft, pages 25-26.

Proving once again that cruelty towards orphans can be FUN!...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:15 AM ADT

Updated: Friday, 17 August 2007 12:23 AM ADT

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Mood:  amorous

Methuselah's Children...

Admit it: that's a friggin' fantastic title, ain't it? It's irresistably good, huh?

I've been trying to manage my vast accumulation of crap in storage recently, and I was hitting some soggy cardboard boxes when I came across a box with this li'l Heinlein gem peekin' out of it (along with about a half-dozen others that I've no idea how I came into possession of...)

World's greatest sci-fi author? Debatable, and most likely no. But damn terrific writer? Absolutely. This guy's stories GLIDE: what losses he accumulates in description, detail and characterization he quite makes up for with a fairly credible scientific worldview (even today a lot of his stuff is quite worthy of 'suspension-of-disbelief'... and then lots isn't, of course...) and the narrative flow he wields is fairly killer.

Some of his ideas (including the incest issue...) are questionable, but one can't question the fact that Heinlein knocks out a lean, mean little story with plenty of narrative clout in only a hundred-plus pages. Contrast that with current sci-fi authors who go on for several hundred pages (.......or those like me, who prattle on in what we try to call 'epic'-length stories....).

There's also the current state of fantasy to consider. What's the average page-length of those babies, huh? 700 pages? 800? 

Love him or hate him, the guy proves that excessive wordiness is no substitute for knowing what the hell you wanna actually say and getting it down well...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 11:20 PM ADT

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Mood:  not sure

Another one bites the dust...

Now, I'm not really big on TV programs at all (but I'm also not the kind of pretentious blowhard that claims to only watch 'Nova' on PBS and National Geographic... while I mostly watch cable news and Discovery Channel (HD THEATER, BABY!) I also have a select number of mindless entertainment programs that I absolutely love...)

And, interestingly, my two favorite fictional TV personalities are both named Jack / Jack...

Anyway, I just wanted to comment on the death of this 'John from Cin' thing because I caught an entire episode of it, and lord if it wasn't the most unlikeable thing I've seen in a long time (TV has its share of ridiculously idiotic TV shows and pathetically bad TV characters, of course, but this particular show seemed to be in a race to try and lose as much viewer interest as possible...)

A misfire of epic proportions, I suppose. Eh, at least the outlets are trying 'new' things, but they appear to need 'good' new, and John was 'bad' new.

A good rule of thumb for TV execs is that people generally like new stuff, as long as it doesn't suck.

'John from Cincinnati' broke that rule, I suppose.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 11:11 PM ADT

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Mood:  celebratory

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

But, on a more serious note, this just goes to prove the sentiments in my previous post about this idiotic flag-planting venture...

...I think it's both, Mister President... 

  On a more personal note, I'm f*****g pissed to report that the first dozen or so pages of the other story  I've been working on were erased due to my idiocy (some advice: never put your docs on a computer's 'Shared Folder' just so you can easily access it from multiple computers on your home network: if it gets blown up, Word DOESN'T help with an auto-recovery...)

It was a good start to the book, too. If anything, though, the loss has motivated me to kick out the rest of my draft... I'm gonna come back to the beginning later on (a loss like this doesn't seem HALF as bad when you've gotten through a hundred more pages, or so).

Make no mistake: 'Eden' will reign... 

On YET ANOTHER note: I don't mind if someone wants to use the poorly-made Photoshop images on this site (it's flattering if someone wants them, if not disturbing...) just so long as I get some kinda credit. Precious time goes into making these; sometimes I spend several hundred seconds on a single image, so gimme props, homey...

...Lord, I'm gonna slap myself around for that one. Right after I kick back my last Grolsch, here... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 9:34 PM ADT

Updated: Monday, 13 August 2007 10:01 PM ADT

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Mood:  hungry

People should always remember that sea-critters are our friends, especially when it comes to the dinner table ...

But that ain't always the case, I suppose...

Personally I loooove oysters, and not just any oyster: RAW oysters, wriggling and squishy, juicy and salty. Melt-in-your-intestinal-tract good! The uber-rich have their caviar (which, thankfully, I can't stomach, and so I don't have to covet their largess...) and the rest of us are allowed this DELICIOUS seaborne delicacy...

It doesn't take a genius to know that there are risks involved in eating a slimy ocean-dwelling creature straight out of the drink, and alive (despite what trial lawyers want to say, I agree that the culinary raw oyster is an exercise in Russian-roulette, albeit an EXTRAORDINARILY TASTY one...). 

Look: we don't push for legal damages from a restaurant that raises our cholesterol to dangerously high levels through buttery cooking (though some idiot nanny-state wankers are working on it...) nor do we sue the makers of gun ammunition when there's a shooting death (though, again, wankers are at work...) so I say that when you load up that raw oyster with lemon and tabasco sauce you should consider yourself to be in Vegas, and your dinner table dealt with cards: only the odds are substantially in your favor.

But, again: if you're not willing to play the possible stakes, then put that oyster fork down, 'kay?

...(I suppose that, in my analogy, the toilet seat would act as a roulette wheel, or something)...

Uh, let's just get off the whole gambling analogy, huh? 

Lord, I'm hungry...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:01 AM ADT

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Mood:  quizzical

Global warming got ya' down? Not a problem! Why bother messing with the Earth when we can, instead, mess with the amount of energy imparted to us from that lovely spherical life-giver above?

"Solar sails"?... right...

the idea's more than a little half-baked (and not because of logistics, mind you... unless we're talking about the real world and not the same one occupied by my sci-fi series...)

Okay: besides the MASSIVE damage this would deal to agriculture worldwide (not to mention the rest of nature at large; you think we've left a big footprint before? Hoo-boy...) BLOCKING sunlight, or even merely altering the frequency of the light that passes to Earth, would have unforseen consequences that would extend to realms beyond our imagination.

Even the less outlandish plots are suspect, like the 'Sulphur shield'...

Quote:

"Such a barrier, Crutzen predicted, would reflect approximately one percent of the sun's heat back out into space, sufficient to counter the effects of current atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide."

a ONE PERCENT REDUCTION in solar radiation to the Earth, caused by clogging the atmosphere with sulphur? This guy's either insane, or just lookin' for a massive grant (to his credit, he doesn't currently advocate this project...).

By the way: there ARE planets out there with thick, tough-to-penetrate atmopheres. You wouldn't want to live there, I don't think: it doesn't do much for 'em in the long run...

The overall ideology is suspect, too: instead of trapping all of our pollutants and cleaning-up our messes (of which even I agree there are a few) we're basically talking about cutting the Earth's life-support back by a factor of lumens. Ecosystems don't tolerate the idea of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul', they live on Chaos Theory (that might not be the correct way of explaining it, but you get my point...). The Earth thrives on the light it currently HAS with the ATMOSPHERE it currently has, and altering one to fix a deficit in the other is a disaster waiting to happen. These aren't two variables: they're two SETS of variables containing a few thousand factors apiece.

Of course, changing your life isn't the end-all, be-all either (which explains why 'Mister Tubbs' is always hanging around his mansion or driving in a limo and never seen talking a walk a-la Subway's Jared: Al Gore is not a hippocrite, he's a visionary!)

Seriously: the planet's woes need people with genuine solutions (and not wankers who live like kings and break their own rules, all the while bribing other to keep quiet about their largess). We DO need real solutions and real ideas on the table...

but sheltering the Earth from the sun in any way, shape or form is NOT one of them.

Frankly, we're nowhere NEAR ready to be weaned, yet...

But please note that I do say 'not yet'... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:01 AM ADT

Updated: Friday, 10 August 2007 1:51 AM ADT

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Mood:  on fire

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:01 AM ADT

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Mood:  silly

Jabba the Hutt was a two-ton pile of flab and gas who prattled on in the language of 'Huttese'. My cat is different...

He thinks in English:

I was told that these Ragdoll Cats get 'large', but I didn't know that all the added weight goes straight to the belly (I guess you could say that I'm ignorant of 'ragdoll physics'. Hahahaha!)

...sigh. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:01 AM ADT

Updated: Wednesday, 8 August 2007 12:09 AM ADT

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Mood:  cheeky

Here we are: a nonlethal weapon (and a flashlight, no less) that automatically makes one hurl upon exposure to the retinas.

Vomiting, as any gradeschool child knows, is the result of the chemoreceptor trigger zone being stimulated in the lateral medullary reticular formation of the brainstem (I'll avoid the obvious pun about the overall mechanism of action being a real 'pain in the postrema', hehehe)...

(hmmmm... as nerd puns go, that actually wasn't too bad) 

...but it got me to thinking: there must be an easier way to trigger the vomit center of the brain through visual stimulation, right? But what kind of stimulus could we use?

hmmm...what indeed?...

Scientific progress goes stumbling for the nearest toilet.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:57 AM ADT

Updated: Tuesday, 7 August 2007 2:03 AM ADT

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