Andrew Moore's Blog, page 37
October 8, 2024
Novel Formatting
How about we put the main narrative on every other page and then fill the other one with a chorus commenting on the action? That's hard to do digitally, which means physical books can have a point again.
October 6, 2024
The Cursed Voyage of the Ancient King
"Preserve our heritage!" "Save our king!"
Protestors stuffed the streets, they stuffed the waterfront and the piers. The supervisors and bureaucrats in charge of moving the mummy to the ship and away shook their heads and said they would try again later, knowing the futility of it. The protestors did not disperse before the sun's rays did. Even then they left sentinels.
Every protestor who went home fell promptly into a satisfied sleep, and every one had that sleep disturbed. They dreamed together of an empty chamber, bare but for a terrible presence too noble for eyes belonging to people of their sort to resolve into a person. "A curse," the figure proclaimed. "A curse on all who interrupt my vacation. An unyielding curse!"
* * * * *
"Preserve our leisure!" "Save our king's plans!"
Protestors stuffed the side of the streets, they formed lines to the pier. The supervisors and bureaucrats acquiesced to their demands to move the mummy posthaste, wholly mystified.
Finis
Protestors stuffed the streets, they stuffed the waterfront and the piers. The supervisors and bureaucrats in charge of moving the mummy to the ship and away shook their heads and said they would try again later, knowing the futility of it. The protestors did not disperse before the sun's rays did. Even then they left sentinels.
Every protestor who went home fell promptly into a satisfied sleep, and every one had that sleep disturbed. They dreamed together of an empty chamber, bare but for a terrible presence too noble for eyes belonging to people of their sort to resolve into a person. "A curse," the figure proclaimed. "A curse on all who interrupt my vacation. An unyielding curse!"
* * * * *
"Preserve our leisure!" "Save our king's plans!"
Protestors stuffed the side of the streets, they formed lines to the pier. The supervisors and bureaucrats acquiesced to their demands to move the mummy posthaste, wholly mystified.
Finis
Proper Halloween Titles
Sure you want to have skeleton kings and vampire kings, but is king a scary title? How about kaiser, doge, pharaoh, or potentate? Really it's just kaiser, but I wanted to see how the others look in print. Very plain. My goosebumps are gooseflat.
October 4, 2024
Addendum
The reason is that clowns are far too scary. It was crippling the economy because nobody wanted to come out from under the bed.
Halloween Roundup
Is anyone still trying to pretend clowns are scary? I think that died out, and for good reason.
October 3, 2024
Halloween Sorting
Let's examing the categories of how people celebrate Halloween in particular and October generally.
Halloween Horror Type: These people watch well-reviewed horror movies and play Alien: Isolation.
Halloween Irony Type: These people watch Friday the 13th movies after the first one and play Unity asset flips.
Halloween Spooky Type: These people carve jack o'lanterns, put skeletons in their yard, and play Castlevania and Disgaea.
There is a group which does nothing at all, but it's better not to say anything about that. The important thing is to find your faction and coordinate to win the Splatoon Splatfest which will have this as its theme any day now. Spooky Type is clearly the most popular, but Irony Type probably has better players.
Halloween Horror Type: These people watch well-reviewed horror movies and play Alien: Isolation.
Halloween Irony Type: These people watch Friday the 13th movies after the first one and play Unity asset flips.
Halloween Spooky Type: These people carve jack o'lanterns, put skeletons in their yard, and play Castlevania and Disgaea.
There is a group which does nothing at all, but it's better not to say anything about that. The important thing is to find your faction and coordinate to win the Splatoon Splatfest which will have this as its theme any day now. Spooky Type is clearly the most popular, but Irony Type probably has better players.
October 2, 2024
Addendum
They don't have to be captive, but what you trust them otherwise?
October 1, 2024
Pre-Modern Solutions
You can still have a conveyor belt in olden times. It just needs to be powered by mules or captive genies.
September 29, 2024
The Manufacture of Legacy
A philosopher, in need of a new project to entertain his intellect, decided to create a new humanity, reasoning he could hardly make something worse than the existing kind. He gathered together clay and iron, a lot of water and a little fire, the essential ingredients in his perception, and began to sculpt.
For years he worked at it, not exclusively but with dedication. He refined the features ("They lack even such beauty as the coarser type possesses"), adjusted the proportions ("To think I ran out of water"), and developed screens to keep away insects, an invention which earned him the praise of society.
After dozens of attempts he came up with something he thought serviceable, enough that he made it the model for several variations in order to start them out with a community, something necessary for the new humans just as much as for the old.
That accomplished, he went about his usual business and waited for his humans to come to life, which they did. They died the next day.
Saddened but encouraged, the philosopher made more, and more, and more, gradually perfecting them till at last he had produced the new humanity. Full of pride, he asked his peers whether they had ever seen anything so amazing.
"Sure. My kids."
"Yeah, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you'd just had kids, but I guess that isn't the philosopher way."
"This isn't the same thing at all!" The philosopher's objections went ignored, and later, he did wonder.
Finis
For years he worked at it, not exclusively but with dedication. He refined the features ("They lack even such beauty as the coarser type possesses"), adjusted the proportions ("To think I ran out of water"), and developed screens to keep away insects, an invention which earned him the praise of society.
After dozens of attempts he came up with something he thought serviceable, enough that he made it the model for several variations in order to start them out with a community, something necessary for the new humans just as much as for the old.
That accomplished, he went about his usual business and waited for his humans to come to life, which they did. They died the next day.
Saddened but encouraged, the philosopher made more, and more, and more, gradually perfecting them till at last he had produced the new humanity. Full of pride, he asked his peers whether they had ever seen anything so amazing.
"Sure. My kids."
"Yeah, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you'd just had kids, but I guess that isn't the philosopher way."
"This isn't the same thing at all!" The philosopher's objections went ignored, and later, he did wonder.
Finis
The Union of Past and Present
There's no reason mummies couldn't use guns. Just saying.
