Uh, I’ll be back in half an hour, hopefully having accomplished what I set out to have accomplished by now.
If you need me, I’ll be… er, right here. Just, busy. And stuff.
(This meme thing I’m in the process of doing is either going to be high-larry-us, or it’s going to be the dumbest thing I’ve posted here yet. I’m not sure which, though.)
Here we go again with the random creative-writing vignettes… this one’s not quite as dark as the last, though.
“That? You must be joking.”
“I assure you, Sir Andrew, what you see here is a wholly faithful representation of the beast that has plagued our lands for the better part of two months now.”
The country squire didn’t know I wasn’t really a proper knight and thus didn’t really rate the Sir, but if you’re going to put on armor and go playing in someone else’s medieval back yard, you have to expect certain things and learn to just roll with them.
This doesn’t mean I trusted the sketchy… er, sketch that this portly gentleman had laid out on the table before me. “What is it supposed to be? A dragon? A hydra? Some sort of mutant griffon?”
“Mutant, Sir?”
“Nevermind. Where did you say I could find this… thing?”
Clad in armor not precisely made of steel, armed with a sword, a set of directions and some supposedly terrifying anecdotes, and unsure what I would discover, I trekked into the outlying farmlands in search of danger. This is the sort of activity you engage in when you’re between assignments and not yet bored of silly exercises in derring-do.
Eventually, of course, I found my quarry. I think it safe to say that “it” found me, of course. In a world not wholly devoid of what is often called magic, I wasn’t hard to miss if you happened to be sensitive to such things. Mind you, I was deliberately radiating energy in an effort to get the beast’s attention. And what a creature! Thirty feet tall at the shoulder, three heads on long writhing necks, a leathery mane where the necks met, a long spiked tail, wings of dubious utility and spikes everywhere made the poor thing look like a melange of bad ideas.
Of course it wasn’t real. I mean, even by the standards of non-reality you usually have to deal with in these situations, this critter wasn’t particularly grounded in sense, fact, or the physical plane for that matter.
The damned thing was a big, ugly, silly, noisy illusion. No fun at all.
“Alright, now you’ve gone and ruined my vacation. Come out, whoever you are, wherever you are.”
In reply, one of the creature’s heads tried to sideswipe me out of the saddle. I didn’t even dignify the proceedings by drawing my sword. I just shielded and watched as the head bounced away. Whoever was behind the illusion was moderately talented; the creature did appear to impact solidly. My horse, of course, didn’t so much as flinch. I paid top credits for the AI in its electronic brain, after all.
“Yes, yes, that’s very nice. I’m quite impressed. Now cut it out.”
Have you ever seen a three-headed beast breathe fire? It’s a neat effect, I suppose, but even for a man like myself for whom the word “overkill” has little meaning, I thought it a trifle overdone. It was real fire, which actually is harder to create out of thin air than you might expect without giving yourself away.
That is why I was able to pinpoint my true opponent’s location. What I discovered was, at first, terribly disappointing.
“Xian? What in the name of the Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo are you doing here? And… what in the hell is this supposed to be?”
“You,” she replied as the illusory beast vanished from around her, “never call anymore. A girl must resort to extraordinary means, at times.”
“Er. Hmm. Oh.” For the record, I’m not always the most glib and fluent human to travel the universe. “Can I offer you dinner, perhaps?”
“That will suffice. For a start.”
“Ah.” What more could I say?
Here are some bits that aren’t big enough for a full entry on their own:
See you in half an hour! (You, of course, can see me all day long.)
The mandatory webring code that’s supposed to let us Blogathonners easily visit our fellow lunatics and is, we were told, mandatory for participation… seems to be missing from a few sites. That makes it a bit difficult to follow the ring all the way ‘round, doesn’t it?
Gah. C’mon, people.
In other news, I have tea brewing right this very minute. I still don’t know what my next “big” entry will entail, but I’ll have something tasty to drink while I think about it. (Thank you, Dawn, for the copious amounts of yummy tea!)
Correction: Turns out that the “missing links” are LiveJournal bloggers, who (apparently) have to put their webring code on their profile/about page. Oops. Sorry ‘bout that. I’m still finding LJ’ers who aren’t compliant, but… yeah.
While I debate my next Serious Project For The Day, I think I’ll brew up some iced tea and gather the snack foods. It’s definitely time to have iced beverages in ready supply.
All things considered, I think I’m keeping a fairly high content-to-filler ratio. Wouldn’t you agree?
As an aside for the anime fans out there: Can you imagine a better song choice for a Fushigi Yuugi music video than Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”? I certainly can’t. (This geeky aside brought to you by my recent viewing of ErMaC’s last video, “Extraordinary World.” It’s a shame the video has enough cartoon nudity to prevent me from showing it to the kids, one of whom would otherwise get a big kick out of it. Le sigh. The video itself is… okay, overall. Highly experimental.)
I bought this album because of a music video. A creator of AMVs whose work I admired greatly, Justin Emerson (aka the now-retired ErMaC), used a track from BT’s “Movement In Still Life” album for a video that I didn’t enjoy as much as some of his other work but I kept watching it anyway… so I could listen to the song.
The album is very much in the party-mix category, with a variety of dance beats, barnburners (“Never Gonna Come Back Down”) and hip-hop influences (“Smartbomb” and “Mic-Chekka”), but there are also beautiful bits like “Satellite” (used in the music video) and the dancier “Dreaming” (which, oddly enough, I want to use in my next AMV).
For the promo, I pulled “Satellite,” “Dreaming,” “Smartbomb” and “Running Down The Way Up.” I don’t think this one works quite as smoothly as the Dada promo, but it’s not really all that shabby either.
Oh, and in order to get “Sam” to speak his part correctly, I had to tell him the artist’s name is “Bee Tea.” Heh.
