Monthly Archives: October 2005

Episode 17: Ambush

Posted on by
2

Note: To read the entire story from the beginning click here.

“If you use the phone, you will die.”

She paced in the close quarters of the cabin. “I need to reach my people.”

“You don’t have any people. You thinks it’s a coincidence they hit your warehouse when they did?”

“Some of my people must still be loyal.”

“Probably, but you don’t know which.” I was telling the truth, but not the whole truth. I didn’t want her on the squawk box because she was using me and I was using her and the less contact she had with her dangerous friends the safer I was. The nearest phone was a couple of miles down the road, but I had no doubt about her resourcefulness. Lola Fanutti didn’t get where she was on good looks alone. But the dame had the looks, and she was trying to use them on me.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a shy little smile that complimented her newly-blonde hair, “I’m not used to having a man look out for me the way you do.” She took a step closer and I smelled the wildflowers, the first thing I had ever known about her a hundred years—or two days, depending on how you counted it—ago at Jake’s.

“I’m looking out for me,” I said.

She faltered. She turned slightly away from me and looked down at the floor. She spoke in a tiny voice, all Meredith, the simple girl from Kentucky. “I thought you liked me.” She was beautiful when she was hurt.

“I do like you. That’s why I don’t want you doing anything stupid. It would be a shame to see that pretty neck of yours get broken.”

She turned back to me, flashing her pearly whites. “You do like me?”

“Doll, you’re a piece of work. I’d probably fall in love with you if you weren’t so dangerous.”

“Don’t say that where Alice can hear you. She’s more dangerous than I am.”

I was tired of sparring with her. I was just plain tired. “I’ve got to get some sleep.” There was only one bed in the room; the place was supposed to be for newlyweds.
She looked tired as well, but she was just going to have to wait. “You can take your turn after I head back into town.” I laid down, on top of the covers, still in the same clothes I had put on two days ago. I was asleep in moments.

I dreamt, I think. I remember running, something dark and oppressive behind me, something else brittle and jagged in front of me, and pacing me on one side a lioness, on the other a wolf. That may not have been a dream, however. We ran, and even high in the mountains it was hot, and the air was filled with the smell of wildflowers. I came awake abruptly and she was next to me, asleep, one arm draped across my chest, the other curled against her head, her blonde hair spilling across the pillow, her lips slightly parted, a thin trail of saliva running down her cheek, creating an expanding dark area on the bedspread.

I watched her for a few minutes. She was peaceful, somehow smaller, in her sleep perhaps honest for the first time since I met her. Her arm on my chest was delicate and graceful, the delicate fuzz that covered it glowing in the light. Her knee was pulled up and rested on my thigh. The smell of wildflowers teased me. She was still dangerous.

She opened her eyes and caught me looking straight at her. She took a moment to come back from wherever she had been, then smiled. “Caught you,” she said, then blushed when she discovered the drool running down her face. She wiped it away with the hand that was not resting against my chest, and laughed, almost timidly. Almost. There was something else in the laugh as well. An offer. A promise.

I wanted to sit up, but her arm weighed a thousand pounds, and held me to the bed. I had dozed off for a few minutes and just like that I was ambushed. She moved her face closer to mine. I prepared myself to resist. Ambushed, cornered, but not lost yet. She was going to throw her best line at me and I was not going to fall for it.

She pulled closer yet; her eyelashes brushed my cheek, moist with tears, as I looked at the ceiling. “I’m frightened,” she said.

I never stood a chance. I turned to look at her and our noses bumped and out lips touched and I don’t remember much about what happened next, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.

Tune in next time for: Message from the Grave!

Thanks!

My favorite feature in Tiger

Posted on by
1

Apple made a big fuss over Tiger, saying it was their biggest upgrade in years. From a developer’s standpoint, there is really is some big stuff – if all your users have Tiger as well. I can’t use any of those cool things, but I’m looking forward to them in the future.

As a user, there are new features that are supposed to be very exciting, but for the most part I just end up unimpressed. Maybe if dashboard came with widgets that didn’t suck, I’d be more impressed.

There is one feature, however, that well and truly rocks. The dictionary. It is a true dictionary, not just a list of words for the spelling checker (in fact, sometimes the two do not agree). It is a full-on dictionary with alternatives, common phrases using the word (under “wolf” you can read about crying wolf and throwing someone to the wolves, among other things), and usage notes. Who’s or whose? Affect or effect? It is filled with concise and well-written guidance for an excitingly complex language. Connected is a thesaurus. Double-click any word in any definition and you jump to its definition. I spent a couple hours the other day, starting with moor, passing through Scotch, and ending somewhere around horse. High was a good read.

I do occasionally use it for spelling help, but much more I use it to learn more about particular words. Knowing the dictionary is there has increased my curiosity about the ins and outs of some words and has allowed me to use others with confidence.

There are probably other online dictionaries that are as good – I’ve never done a survey of the field – but man am I glad I have this one. I realize now I should have been using a dictionary more my whole life, but now any word in any document is just a right-click away, and I’ve learned tons. I’ve gotten much closer to words I thought I knew intimately.

As a bonus, no one is bugging me to put a thesaurus in Jer’s Novel Writer any more.

Thanks!

Team Bowling

Posted on by
4

Tonight I was recalling speed bowling. When you rent a lane by the hour and the hour is running out, the nature of bowling changes. The ideal is to have the ball on the way down the lane before the sweeper lifts. Speed bowling requires timing and finesse. You must know your alley. Every once in a while, not often, mind, the sweeper would not lift as quickly as it should have. Then you have to throw extra balls down the alley to knock the rejected ball down into the return mechanism, hoping all the while that the management is not watching.

But all that’s old hat. Tonight I was pondering how to make bowling a team game, and I harkened back to the speed-bowling days, and the accompanying hijinks, and I remembered other sweeper-damaging games. One of them is the foundation for team bowling.

As we all know, there are already bowling teams, but they don’t work as a team. It’s just a bunch of individual bowlers combining their stores. Not in my game. In my game team members must work together, and all that putting-a-spin-on-the-ball-so-it-hits-the-pocket-at-the-best-angle crap is out the window. The concept is simple. The team bowls. At the same time.

You could get pretty fancy with this. You could have one person lead with a lighter ball on one side of the pocket, so the ball deflects and reliably takes out one side of the rack, while another, hotter ball comes in on the other side, to bring kinetic energy and the resulting mayhem. Sweeper balls down the right and left to pick up the rabbit ears and you’re golden.

Of course, once one ball goes through, the sweeper drops. Here we bring in the artistry, the ballet that is team bowling. All the balls have to arrive down there within two seconds or so. Any ball hitting the sweeper is a scratch. So you have four bowlers, all trying to bowl on the same lane at the same time. This is where the teamwork comes in. Left-handed bowlers will be tremendously valuable – every team will want one, and would prefer to have two.

I picture the four gathered at the top of the alley. the first releases a slow but dead-on granny shot which slowly trundles down the lane. The rest of the team sets up, and when the ball reaches a certain point the crasher releases his ball, to be followed moments later by the cleanup team, who are just sending in some extra kinetic energy to make sure that anything that might fall down, will fall down.

The way I see it, a strike is one point. Knocking down all but the head pin is two points. Knocking down all but the five pin, buried in the center of the mayhem, is five points.

May the best team win.

2

Thanks!

I Like Potted Meat

Posted on by
22

For lunch today I went the simple route – fresh czech bread, cheese, and a little tub of something that, according to the label, had once been associated with chickens in some way or another. I pulled back the heavy foil lid and there it was, pink and homogenous. Mmm… potted meat.

This stuff was on the pink side. I looked at it for a moment and wondered if there was any difference between this stuff and cat food, besides the label. Some cat food claims to have extra vitamins and provide a more balanced diet, so, ignoring issues of quality and health inspections in the factories, cat food may well be healthier.

Still, it doesn’t matter what other mammals like this stuff, it’s mighty tasty, and the Czech Republic is the place to go for potted meat. They devote more space in their stores to potted meat than they do for ketchup, and that’s a lot of space. Beer, of course, has more space on the shelves than any other product. And what better for washing the old chicken goo down than a nice cold one?

Thanks!