Photo-Feature: An Engineer and his Friends

The man seen above is an Engineer. (The dead man at his feet, as you should really recognize, is a Spy. They tend to be rather rude to one another. We will discuss this later.)

An Engineer is a grumpy sort. He runs hither and thither, repairing this, building that. He hasn't much time for people. His priorities lie elsewhere - with his friends.

An Engineer takes pride, of course, in building his own friends.

He might start here - with a lovely, adorable, tiny Level One Sentry Gun. A pleasant pet for any up-and-coming Engineer.

He might continue to build something like this, a rather larger, more powerful Level Two Sentry Gun. (This one's in rather poor shape. Pish-posh to the Engineer who built it!)

Eventually - if our Engineer is skilled, dedicated, and lucky - he might own something like this, a large, powerful, and somewhat deadly Sentry Gun Level Three. Admire its twin vulcan guns, its top-mounted quad-firing rocket launcher! Here, an Engineer maintains his sentry, assisted by a friendly Heavy. Certainly a Heavy is no friend like a good Sentry - but he can help! A wise Engineer recognizes this. A wiser Engineer places himself in a situation like this:

For, after all, the only friend better than a Level Three Sentry is two Level Three Sentries. (In this particular position - a cramped tunnel with no back entrances or close approaches - they are remarkably deadly.)

The Engineer - and especially his machines - have many enemies. The Sniper, who can fire from further away than the Sentry can see, whittling away at its delicate internals with high-caliber rounds. The Demo-Man and Soldier, blasting away at the Engineer's machines with powerful explosives. The Heavy and Pyro, both enormously destructive at close ranges. The Spy, of course with his electro-sappers specifically designed to disable and destroy the Engineer's machines. Even the Medic, whose Ubercharges are employed to destroy the Engineer's beloved Sentries more often than they are used for any other purpose. So many people are jealous of the Engineer's craftsmanship!

He calls out - come on! Show me your moves! He is unafraid.

He has friends.

Photo-Feature: Spy!

First, the superficial. The Spy is a master of disguise. A master! Completely flawless in his technique - by use of simple paper masks, placed over the face, he renders himself indistinguishable from any other member of the Enemy. Such skill! So effortless! What more can be said about his prowess in the arts of deception?

Oh! Also, his watch lets him turn invisible.

So there are certain advantages possessed by our master Spy, then. However might he be countered?

Well, firstly, he's quite frail. Frail here is relative - he still can take a magazine of SMG-rounds to the chest without falling over. But, well - he's generally up against a bit more than the SMG. (As seen so dramatically above.)

Look here, for instance: a Spy in perfect position. His enemies, presently invincible though they might be, are looking the other way. A sentry-gun and ammunition-dispenser stand lonely without their Engineer, ready to be disabled and destroyed by the Spy's handy-dandy electrosapper - except that the Spy has forgotten one key thing. His disguise. The sentry will not treat this careless slip kindly.

The most common fate for the spy!

But we have been, I think, too unkind to our spies. They explode, yes. They explode often! But they do many fine things while they live. Mostly, they stab people in the back while pretending to be their team-mates, and destroy equipment that took some time and effort to construct out of little more than spite.
Also, they float!

And become invincible! ("Professional Tip:" While one might expect that a more directly powerful class, such as the pyro or demo-man or heavy, would better benefit from the temporary invulnerability granted by an "uber-charge" (illustrated above), this spy still managed to kill me. That's why I have a picture of any of these spies, or members of other classes - they killed me.)

Ladies and gentlemen - the spy! Give him a warm hand of applause, or he'll knife you in the back. (He'll probably do that anyway, but it's worth a shot.)

Frensh

The League of Desmond Presents Frensh: an Old High Germanic Language Created by the Esteemed Mr. Kessler Ham Hutchinberries, esq.

        Pers.   Nom.    Acc.    Dat.    Gen.    Disj.   Cl.
sing.   1       jaa     méj     meidh   mon     méç     me
        2       dieu    déj     deidh   don     déç     de
        3 m.    hein    haam    haam    son     hein    se
          f.    haun    hendh   hend    son     haun    se
          n.    hom     homum   hour    son     hom     se

WÉRUM
Ind. sing.
Pers.   Present Preterite               Participle
1       im      wir                     jewérdh
2       irdh    wirt
3       erst    wir

HJARDHUM
Ind. sing.
Pers.   Present Preterite               Participle
1       hidh    haart                   jehaart
2       has     haarst
3       haaft   hadh

regular
1       -       -tiit
2       -st     -ardh
3       -dh     -art


noun declentions
m. nom.         obj.
-um             -umin
-udh            -udhan
-uth            -uthan

f. nom.         obj.
-a              -am
-ii             -iim
-iin            -iinim

gen -a

plural
-en
-én

articles
eim
eina
eimun

-eim
-eina
-einn

usage example:
Austoria s Pénisumin
Thjar wir eim Pénisum so heithart Kelsey, wir hein goot aoh klánimin.
Só skilkrödheim hadh eim böd ao hárseim had eimun aeroplán, séjart hárseim :
« Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! Mon aeroplána kan gárum oferállt im pláseina s eiminig Waterplásen ! »
« Eilswa, kan hom gárat mér snápa so eim böd ! »

© Kessler Hutchinberries, 1998-2009. All rights reserved. This work is published under a Creative Commons Public Domain Attribution-No Derivative Works-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license. Comments have been disabled for this video.

The gift of the magi

a strange dream of the nikolas

so like

i was walking to a place

i dunno where

and like i had at least 2 rolling suitcases 

or bags

and beheind me was some girls

there were 2 that were talking to each other

and like gossiping or somthing

and they were both pretty hot

and then one walked up to me 

but didnt say anything 

but she was staring at me

and with an angry face

and i was like

wut

and she was like 

dude do i know you from sumwhere

and i was like

i dant think so

and she was like all staring at me all angsty like

so i was like wat high school did you go to

and she was like homestead or something

and then i was like what middle school did you go to

and i forget what she said

and i asked her if she was in cologe yet and she said no

and then we got to talking

and we like "hit it off"

except i wasnt me

like i was reall confidient

and mean

and i had a british accent

and then we passed by an arcade or something, like a big mall

and she was like ooh lets go in 

and i was thinking to my self,

i should not give in to her demands, because then i would not be

confident and mean anymore, and even though i was afraid i would offonse her

so i was like no, u can go in if u want

and it worked, because she was all like coercing me

and like pullin' on my arm, and i begrudgingly went

except now the arcade was her apartment

or something

and i found her name was the same as this girl i know from cologe

but she did not look like her

also she had a cell-phone

and like we played this video game on the computer

except i was really good at it apparently because i played it before

and then a while later

i was like ok we will be late for the thing

but i dont remember what the thing actually was now

and i saved the game, and walked outside, and i assumed she was following me

downstaris

and then i got downstarirs, but she was not there

and like her friends and my friends were there

except i did not know who any of them were

and there was this guy , and his name was like

percival, or percy or something

and he was like 

She is dead!

oh no

i ran back up the stairs 

and i found her

she was hanged outside the balcony

and i thought she was dead

and i was sad, and i wept

but then she like was help me

and so i leapt out and like broke the rope

with my bear hands

except it was made out of like

paper clips or something

so it was really easy

and then i laide her on the bed and like

i had to recussitate her

with my mouth

and when she was alived, she was like

oh my

and like embarased

and i found some "Evidence" that percy tried to kill

her and like was frame me

and the evidence was like 2 ping pong balls

and some plastic wrappers

(it made sense at the time)

so i went to confront him, and

the polis was there and like 

everything was resolved apparently

and like i was talking to her again, except i knew

that i didnt have to be mean anymore

because she was like "into me"

and i didnt have a brititsh accent anymore

but i was still like confadant or sumthing

and then we were all playing some sort of MMORPG

and like our "Friends" were happy that we joined their guild or something

oh also like apparently after i saved her life the building exploded

because it was evil or something

and i became the "Great Hero"

and there was like a big spaceship hovering around

except it was an organic spaceship, with like

blood vessles

also there was another dream where i stole a car or something

and there was like this crime lord that had mind-control, and like a jet pack

it was really cool

but i dont remember it

also it was weird that i had a vivid dream beacuse as i was about to sleep i said to myself "no puedo soñar" which means i cant dream in spanish

The Tortoise and the Hare

sliek

the tortoise

had a boat

and the hare

had a jetplane

and the hare was like

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"My jetplane can access any place instead of just waterplaces!"

"Additionally, it can move faster than a boat!"

"We should race."

"To a place."

"Of your choosing!"

and the tortoise was like

"into that extinguished volcano"

and the hare was like

"But your boat cannot move across the terrain that leads up to the volcano."

"I accept your challenge!"

"I mean your conditions"

"The race is on!"

And the tortoise went up to his boat

and he popped the pop

and the boat began to deflate

pretty slowly

and the hare went up to his jetplane

and he radioed some air traffic dudes

and was like

"Hey, can I get a permitthing?"

and the air traffic dudes were like

"k, hold on a sec"

and he was like

"I don't have a sec!"

"I have a race to win!"

and he hopped into his plane

wait he was already in his plane

ok he buckled his seatbelt

meanwhile, the tortoise was waiting for the boat to deflate

and it pretty much finished

and he squeezed out the remaining air bubbles

and he unpopped the pop

and he smoothed out the wrinkles

and began to fold the boat

into its storage format

being very careful to fold along the lines

which were reinforced

so that his boat would have a longer lifetime

and he would save money by not having to repair it or buy a new one

and he would be able to give it to his son when his son grew up

so that his son could have the boat that he enjoyed so much in his childhood

while the tortoise was folding, the hare was flipping all those switches that jetplanes have

and making sure that he would have a safe flight

and a clear takeoff path

because he didn't want to take risks for a simple race

and he could afford the time, because boats cannot travel over land

and the tortoise

finished folding the boat, and slowly put it in his backpack

making sure that no sharp objects were near it

to puncture it or something

and he put his backpack on his back

and began to walk toward the extinguished volcano

meanwhile, the hare got a message from the air traffic control guys

they were like

"ok, you can go now"

and the hare was like

"All riiiiiiight!"

and he was happy because he wasn't initially planning on waiting for the directions

but it was good that he got them because that meant that his flight would be that much safer

so he started the jetplane

and the jetplane drove down the runway

and took off

and half a moment later, he realized

"Oh dang, the volcano has a relatively small diameter and a relatively large depth!"

"There's no way to land the jetplane inside from this trajectory."

so he landed his plane next to the volcano

and attached some towropes to the plane

and looked into the volcano

and it had a footpath

wide enough for a tortoise

but not for a boat

nor a jetplane

he contemplated this mutual challenge

and telephoned the tortoise

and shared the mutual challenge

and the tortoise was like

"k"

and the hare was astounded

and appalled

and ambidextrous

but not especially so at that particular moment

and he waited for a while

and the tortoise arrived

with his back-pack

but with no boat

and the hare was especially ambidextrous at that particular moment

but that was not particularly useful

and he watched as the tortoise walked down the volcanosteps

and opened his backpack

and pulled out the boat

and unfolded it

and pulled out an air-pump

because he did not have the lung capacity to inflate it by himself

in any reasonable amount of time

and he inflated the boat

and put the pump back in his backpack

and closed his backpack

and put on his backpack

and climbed into the boat

and looked up at the hare

and smiled like

˘-˘

and the moral of this story

is that inflateable boats are cool

and that helicopters are cool

and that plane travel has been statistically shown to be safer than car travel, in large part because all those with any control over the situation--pilots, air traffic control people, etc.--are highly trained professional

and in part because airline companies have a financial incentive to not be less safe than car travel

~THE END~

Old Mr. Nicholoose

Who wouldn't like the idea of "ftwww" as a sound effect?

Old Mr. Nicholoose

he is a grump

and he bumps

into people

at the mall

people whom he knew during his college years

but whose names he'd forgotten by the time that he was Old

and he gives them nicknames based on the traits of theirs that he remembers

and they are like "wut"

and he says "Oh, you didn't know?

"We always called you that when you weren't around.

"But it was pretty much teasing.

"Not to make fun of you.

"It was ironic!

"Ironic is the word I would use.

"Ah, those were the days...

"Anyway, I should go.

"You should call me sometime!"

and then he would leave

before the person could inform him that the person did not have his telephone-number

but of course he knew that

because he did not have a telephone

because he grew up in a family with fifteen children

and the phone always rang

and it was always for someone else

but he always picked it up anyway

in the hope

that someone would care about him

(and express this care by telephoning him)

(even though he had never told anyone his telephone number in those days either)

(because no-one had ever asked for it)

(and he knew this)

(but he never gave up hope)

Logic

Let us have some Kelsey k. This we know about Kelsey: he is love. Formally, this may be expressed as: k≡L, for L as love.

Let us also have some David d. David, of course, is the opposite of Kelsey; he is the anti-Kelsey. We may express this as d≡~k.

At this point, the power of logic already - with such a small number of propositions - allows us to reach conclusions! The transitive property allows us to equate d as d≡~L; David is the antithesis of love! A valid conclusion, well supported by everyday evidence. What power this has!

Let's try another simple exercise. Let there be some Nikolas n. Now, a Nikolas is of course the opposite of David: n≡~d. Again using the transitive property, we may quickly determine that n≡~~L; or, using the double-negative property, n≡L. Like the Kelsey, the Nikolas is love! What a wonderful thing to discover!

Now let's try something more complex. Assume there is one room being describe. The presence of David in that room may be described as d, to continue our previous convention; the presence of Nikolas in the room is n, and the presence of a Kelsey will be called k. Ryan T. will be described by r, and attractive persons of a female persuasion as w.

Now, a Ryan is followed everywhere he goes by females; therefore, we may say that r→w, or that the presence of a Ryan in the room implies the presence of females also present. A David is terrified by females, and will go nowhere near them; we may thus continue by saying that d→~w, or the presence of a David in the room implies the absence of females. Using the transitive property, we may comment as an aside that r→~d, or d→~r; they cannot be in the same room, at least for long, a fact which (as a further aside) causes the illustrious d no end of jealousy.

Now, we may establish more facts. The Kelsey, as a Kelsey, follows the David wheresoever he may go; thus, d→k. The Nikolas is friends with Kelsey and David, and will be present when- and wheresoever the both of them are; k∧d→n. This last statement, the trained logician will note, is exactly equivalent to replacing the earlier d→k with d→k∧n.

We have learned many things from this! We have learned that wheresoever a David goes, so does a Kelsey and a Nikolas; we have learned that Davids cannot be found in the same room as Ryans. As we add more propositions, we may learn more; for instance, a simple addition of a Devin to the simulation (included in the appendix) immediately creates a sort of "Mormon Invasion" of any room; but even this simple model teaches us so much. Enjoy - the power of logic!

The Fuzzy Walls of Doctor Montgomery

They are pretty thick, but with holes in them.

This is a problem when the elephants come through.

"Stop them, walls!" cries Doctor Montgomery. But his walls do no such thing! They've got too many holes in them!

Doctor Montgomery vows to devise an improvement upon these "fuzzy walls". He labours in his laboratorium for hours on end, hunting for a way. Then he has it -

"Beards!" he cries. "Beards will solve my problems!"

The admirable Doctor has his revelation at last - but with it come new problems. For, you see, clever and wise as he is, the Doctor has no beard.

How can he get one?

Deceit!

So now he roams the campus at night, scissors in hand. He climbs up walls and into windows, and whenever he sees a beard - snip-snip-snip! Slowly, his collection grows - but he's never quite enough beard!

So if you wake up one morning, sans-beard, sans-the-pride-of-your-manhood*, you know just the devil to blame:

Doctor Montgomery - ever in search of beards to fix his fuzzy walls!

(Don't feel angry at him. Remember, he needs those beards to stop the elephants. It's only fair.)

*If you're not a man, then... I don't know. Maybe he takes your hair...? I think this post was really not meant for you, hypothetical female reader.** There are plenty of posts that are fine for persons of any gender! But this one is only for beards.

I mean men.

**Not that this blag doesn't have female readers - it's that I'm not referring to any specific one.

Contagion

We did not know why he came here.

His clothes were yellow, like those of the hazmat teams. He breathed shallowly, and was certain always to keep his face covered. The light was behind him - we could not see even what little of his face he was forced to leave exposed. This, we thought, he fully intended.

For fully twenty minutes, he stood there, watching, as we waited for something - anything - to happen. He responded to nothing we said, nothing we did, save when we tried to get too close to him - then he moved one arm sharply, making a barking noise. We kept our distance.

Another man came.

He, too, covered his face, but was less astute in his use of the light - we could see his eyes, pure black, entirely devoid of pupils. If at the coming of the first man we were afraid, now we were terrified; if the first man's clothing suggested a hazmat-suit, then this man's clothes suggested those of the undertaker.

We were contaminated, the second man told us, his voice dry and devoid of intonation. We had sinned - on this point, he was certain we would know to what he referred - and for our sins, we must be punished.

Then the first man came for us - roaring, screaming, frothing at the mouth. We screamed, fled; he hunted us down. We had no chance against his brutal strength.

We were transformed into elk.

Only as elk, the second man told us, could we be redeemed for our sins. We knew it was true.

So now we roam across the tundra of the arctic North, antlers held high. No more are we plagued by guilt for the sins we committed in our past lives. We are absolved; and we are elk.

This, we know, is life as it should be.

Become an elk today.

First Love

This is the story of a book.

This book.

I ordered it, once.

From the Internet.

Several times, I went to pick up a package which I expected might be it.

The first time, the package I received was all my school-texts except First Love!

The second time, I received a bike-helmet with "Afta" Pre-Electric cream enclosed inside! This was very strange, but it was not my book.

The third time I got a package, I found a poster detailing the Hierarchy of Beards within! It was strange and wonderful. I put it up on my wall at once. But still - it was not my school-book! And I would need to read it by Tuesday.

The Hierarchy of Beards, with bonus Nikolases, above.

So, on the day of the third package, I went again to the mail-room to see if they had my book. This time - miracle of miracles - they did! I rejoiced. I leapt up and down and did a jig. I went to breakfast! Thus was my joy.

The book is on the center-right. Prevailing weather conditions suggest that it may be occluded by muffins.

I ate - actually, I ate a bagel, not pictured - and rode back the very steep hill to my dormitorium. Hooray, thought I! My book is here - and beards too!

Then I looked in my bicycle-basket, where I had stored both book and muffins.

The muffins were there - but the book was not.

The book had been in my possession. I'd put it in the basket just after leaving the restaurant in which I'd breakfasted. It must have fallen out somewhere en route, as small objects have a tendency to, from that basket. For some things, I would forget it, buy another - but not this. I had laboured too hard to possess it! "Not again!" I screamed to the world at large, rending my hair and garments in frustration. "NOT AGAIN!"*

So I retraced my path, imperiling myself by traveling on the wrong side of the road to better match my previous course. I bicycled, bicycled, down and along and up that dreadful hill which brought me such joy on the down-trip; and still there was no sign of the book. It had been several minutes since I passed the other way - perhaps, I thought, it was gone to me. Trucks rolled past, their heavy wheels bringing to mind dreadful images of books crushed and ripped apart.

Then I saw a figure - higher up that abominable hill! - pick up a small object from the side of the road and move it onto the sidewalk. Was that it?, I wondered. It seemed strange, from the angle I saw it - glittering, translucent, like a plastic bag of the right shape and size. I anticipated that it would be a red herring - but I needed to continue in any case, if I still wished to find the book. So I reached the spot where the man had put the object on the sidewalk, a minute or two after I had seen him do so, and I saw -

The book. The book.
I had found it. It was mine.

"Never again!" I cried defiantly, riding downhill again with the book clutched between handlebar and hand. "Never! Again!" I was filled with a wild triumph.

I should probably get around to reading it at some point.

*Any verbalizations mentioned in this narrative are probably uses of dramatic license. Would've been a bit much otherwise, you know. What what.

Photo-Feature: What is the Demo-Man?

The Demoman is not invincible.

So this will probably end poorly.

But what is he?


He is not a stealth-man, I think. Though he might try, his big explosive-gun (and big annoying text-bubble) give him right away.


Nor is he some type of confused rocket-man. Well. He's definitely confused. But I do not think he is going into space without rather more protection than that.


No, the demo-man is none of those. He is a man of action!


And explosives. (Mostly explosives.)


This will not end well.

Photo-Feature: The Pyro Ever Burns

...for JUSTICE!

What kind of justice?

Heck, man.

I don't think even the Pyro knows.

But it's okay.

The pyro...


Loves everyone.

Photo-Feature: The Life of the Heavy

I have a directory filled with these pictures. Thought they might entertain. (Took more work than I expected to prepare them for the Web.)

So: Who is the Heavy?

What does he eat?


Does he have enemies - foes who wish only to consume his delicious sandwiches?

How do they make him feel?

Infuriated?


How does he feel... afterward? In the night, when the bloody killing is done, and the Heavy is alone with his thoughts?

Well, remember - maybe, maybe, you can outsmart the Heavy.

But can you outsmart bullet?

(The correct answer for that last one is "No." For clarity.)

Blargofeld

Commander Blargofeld snarled, his deep voice filled with rich, ample acres of metaphorical hate. "This is enough," he said, at first softly, then louder: "This is ENOUGH!" He swept a crystal goblet onto the floor, breaking it into a thousand glittering shards. "This... so-called 'Colonel Blizzelsharts' has irritated my mucous membranes for entirely too long. Tonight - we strike!"

That night, they struck!

"Aaargh!" screamed Colonel Blizzelsharts, prostrate upon the blood-stained earth, Blagofeld's jack-boot firmly upon his neck. "Aaargh! Aaargh!"

"Do you have anything useful to say before I end your pathetic life?" Blagofeld asked, with a certain degree of condescension.

"Ha-ha!" Blizzelsharts cried, pointing behind Blagofeld. "Look!"

Blagofeld looked - then he felt something hook about his ankles. He fell!

"A trick!" Blagofeld roared. "You'll pay for this, Blizzelsharts! When I catch up to you, you'll rue the day you were ever born! You'll scream and beg and plead for mercy! Blood will run from your every orifice, and your organs will be twisted into pretzels - and then I'll feed you them! Through the wrong orifices! Or both! Yes! At once! AHAHAHAHAHA!"

Then the unicorn cavalry trampled him.

Just as well. What a very rude fellow he was!

(Later, they stole his jackboots.)

Butterflies

There is a tale that once the Prophet came upon a great battle. Two forces of men battled against one another, and much blood was shed, yet no man could say the purpose.

"This must halt," the Prophet decided, and at once caused the eyelids of every man present to fly away upon wings of jewels. "Now!" he cried. "Behold the truth from which you shielded yourself! Look, as you have no choice but to do, and see TRUTH!"

The Prophet saw that the battle had halted; and it was good. But he came upon the men nearest to him, and saw that they wept. He traveled further along the lines of battle, and saw that every man there, small or large, weak or strong, wept continually. "Why do you weep?" asked the Prophet. "Do you mourn for the battle that I have ended?"

"No," the men told him. "We weep that we may not blink, for our eyes water unbearably."

The Prophet saw the wisdom in this. He restored the eyelids of the men present, and the battle soon resumed. Not by force, he realized, would truth be realized among the races of men.

But the old eyelids still fluttered, fleet and free on their bejeweled wings. They spread far and lived long, and men learnt to call them "butterflies". The faces they bore on their wings showed the faces to which they ever longed to return - and it is known that, if you go to sleep with a butterfly on your face, you will wake up with it in place of one eyelid.

For the only way for the expatriate butterfly-eyelids to return to their homes is to eat an eyelid and take its place.

Weep, weep for the butterflies!

The Question of the Zhang

"I must ask - question," the Zhang told his listeners, coughing, dying. "If you run half the time, and walk half the time, how long does it take to get there?"

"...what?" his foremost interrogator asked. But the Zhang was already dead.

One of the torturers swore a foul and most un-Mormonic oath. But the head interrogator, after a moment's thought, was undeterred.

"He never told us the location of the hidden Rebel base," the head interrogator confessed. "But if we can figure out the answer to this question, then we'll know how to get there!"

All the interrogators sat there for a while, sitting in hard wooden chairs arranged about the corpse of a Zhang, musing on the answer to his strange, koan-like query. They broke for prayer, came back, thought some more; and still they could not come up with a reasonable solution.

"42?" one suggested, apropos of nothing.

"WRONG WRONG TOTALLY WRONG,"* the ghost of the Zhang retorted.

"Wait, there's a ghost in here?" the head inquisitor remarked in surprise. "Hey, ghost - give us a hint! Toss us a bone! Something! We're more stumped than the national parks under the Bush administration!*"

"LOOK IT'S LIKE THIS" the Zhang-ghost said, exasperated. "YOU'VE GOT THREE CONSTANTS - DISTANCE, RUNNING SPEED, AND WALKING SPEED - AND YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO RELATE THEM TO TIME - IT'S NOT THAT TRICKY GUYS"

"Oh!" one of the inquisitors remarked. "It's just math!"

The head inquisitor passed out pads of paper and pencils. They set to work.

The problem was not overly difficult; several of them confirmed the same answer. They approached the ghost with their result: "Is it twice distance, divided by the sum of running speed and walking speed?"

"YEP THAT'S IT," the ghost told them. "WELL DONE IT TOOK ME LONGER"

There was a pause.

"How did that help us find the hidden Rebel base?" one of the inquisitors asked.

The Zhang-Ghost just cackled and vanished. Cruel, deceitful Zhang-ghost!

He's worse than Coyote!

*Ghosts are forbidden by the Vatican from using periods and most commas. It's just the latest tragedy of their sorry existences!
**Politico-zing!

Mako in the Mountains

"This is a beautiful planet, Commander," Tali said softly. "The trees, the snow... it reminds me of the photos I have seen of my homeworld, from before the geth rebellion drove us into exile."

"Ha, ha," Wrex snorted derisively. "Bet you wouldn't like to be tossed into it!"

Tali turned her head to look at Wrex; her expression was unreadable beneath the breathing-mask she always wore. Wrex just laughed at her.

"Cut the chatter," Commander Shepard ordered. "We're on a mission, as you seem to have trouble remembering."


The three were together in the Mako, more formally known as the M35 Mako Infantry Fighting Vehicle: a self-sufficient, six-wheeled tank, equipped with quad jump-jets, coaxial machinegun, and 155mm mass-accelerator cannon. A state-of-the-art vehicle, it could move up to 45 mph and was light enough to be airdropped from several meters up without damage; a system of shields and armour plating protected it from anything short of heavy weapons platforms, which would be hard-pressed to hit it due to the aforementioned speed. Upon its side was the name NORMANDY, the ship that housed and serviced it: but in the Normandy this Mako did not rest. Instead, it rolled over the slopes of an alien world, en route to a distant destination.

"What... is our objective for this mission, Commander?" Tali asked politely. "You were rather unclear on the matter when you suggested that we form the away team."

"The Normandy's sensors, when scanning this planet from orbit, discovered a cluster of alloys and radiation-leakage closely resembling the wreckage of a crashed probe," Shepard replied.
"We're going there to recover whatever we can; with reports of geth activity in this sector, there's a good chance that the probe will have useful data on them. And with things as they are, we need all the data we can get."

"So I'm here to deal with the recovery of the probe's electronics," Tali said. "What's Wrex coming along for? He's not exactly a technical expert."

"I'm here to do the shooting," Wrex growled, cradling a shotgun against his huge, armoured frame. The shotgun was nearly engulfed by his bulk.

Both Tali and Shepard responded at once. Shepard barked sharply: "Put that thing away, I don't want it deployed that close to me in a confined space." Tali, speaking over her commander, asked Wrex "What, exactly, are you expecting to shoot out here?"


The Mako crested a small hill, snow spraying from beneath its wheels. The crashed probe was visible less than a quarter-mile away - and significantly closer than that, three hulking figures erupted from beneath the snow, firing flurries of pulse-rounds at the Mako as larger weapons warmed up.

"Ambush!" Shepard cried, throwing the Mako backwards as Tali struggled to ready and aim the main cannon. "Geth Armatures!" Armatures - weapons of war, standing over fifteen feet tall on their four legs, more than a match for most tanks. The Mako was better than most tanks - but, even in hands as skilled as Shepard's, it was taking a beating from the armatures' weapons, as well as those of the geth infantry that had emerged from the surrounding snowbanks. Three sizzling energy-orbs emerged from the armatures' heads, one impacting on the Mako's shields and casting a electric aurora about the vehicle; Shepard returned fire with cannon and machine-gun, and saw one of the armatures fall to the ground, shields broken and chromed limbs mangled. The two remaining armatures fired again; Shepard employed the jump-jets to evade their primary attacks only to collide with a rocket fired by one of the geth foot-soldiers. "Shields at half strength!" Tali reported tensely, trying to monitor vital systems and operate the machinegun at the same time. Wrex watched, tossing his shotgun up and down.

Shepard continued the fight, trying to pull back so as to better exploit the Mako's manueverability; the geth worked to prevent any such move, boxing in the Mako with rockets and energy blasts while constantly worrying it with pulse-rifle rounds. Tali watched the shield indicator creep downwards with no little concern. But to count the Mako out so soon would be a dreadful mistake: the cannon belched relativistic mass once, twice, three times, and sent another armature flying in a hundred directions as its shields failed and its metal body disintegrated. Shepard focused fire on the remaining armature, now closing on it to get a clearer shot; and another unseen rocket caught the Mako from the side, sending it crashing over the ridge and onto its back.

"It flipped?" Shepard asked incredulously, strapped upside-down into the driver's seat, still staring at the display screen. "I didn't think a Mako could flip!"

Wrex slapped the release button on Shepard's restraints, letting her collapse onto the Mako's ceiling. "They'll be here any minute!" he said, gesturing. "If we stay here, we're sitting ducks. Time to move!"


Tali, Wrex, and Shepard spilled out of the overturned Mako, falling into feet-deep snow. The latter two produced weapons - Tali drew a blue pistol from her hip, while Shepard unpacked an silvery assault rifle. Wrex's shotgun, characteristically, had never left his hands. All three looked around, seeing snow, trees, boulders, more snow - and the Geth, coming over the ridge.

"Take cover!" Shepard shouted, and matched words to actions, setting off to the nearest rock structure as swiftly as one can through six-foot-deep-snow. Tali followed, snapping off shots with her pistol at the Geth as their pulse-rifle bolts rained down around them, melting snow and crackling off their personal shields. Tali uttered a constant litany of curses as she slogged towards cover: "Filthy, unclean, vile, treacherous, murdering metal abominations..."

Wrex cast a cruel, recessed eye in the direction of the Geth, and decided not to follow his team-mates just yet. Pressing his back against the Mako, he leaned outwards and lined his shotgun up with a cluster of distant geth. Pulse-fire came his way, but the Mako's still-intact shields absorbed the bulk of it. Wrex took his time, and then slowly, almost tenderly, squeezed the shotgun's trigger.

Immediately, the weapon bucked backwards, emitting a hideous roar. Wrex winced; the geth at which he'd aimed vanished in a cherry-red fireball, their half-melted limbs and weapons cartwheeling away. The volume of fire coming from the geth slackened, given pause both by the demonstrated potency of Wrex's high-explosive rounds and the cloud of steam that they had spread (in the immediate wake of the explosion) across the upper ridge. Wrex snorted, holding his shotgun at arm's length - even in the freezing-cold climate, the air around it shimmered with heat - and hurled it towards the cluster of rocks where Shepard and Tali had found cover. (It landed in a thick snowbank, somewhat lessened by the heat generated by the weapon.) Then Wrex followed his shotgun, removing an assault rifle from his back and firing sporadically as he went. Tali and Shepard covered him with suppressing fire on his lolloping way.


"What now, Commander?" Wrex asked.

"I'm not too worried about these guys," Shepard told him. Pulse-rounds left shimmering lines in the air overhead. "Geth infantry aren't much of a threat, even in these numbers, even on foot. Their armor and shields are too frail. If we just keep whittling down their numbers, we should be fine. I'm just worried about-"

With an unearthly wail, the remaining geth Armature announced that it had finally made its way over the ridge. Blue energy gathered around its head.

"-that," Shepard finished. Pulling at Tali, who had taken the opportunity for a few last-pot shots at a red-armoured geth, Shepard shouted, "Down!"

The Armature fired, and the away team's cover vanished in a brilliant blue explosion. The shockwave tossed them backwards; ten thousand shards of stone flew in each direction, arcing with electric light. A renewed wave of small-arms fire followed.

"If that monstrosity fires again, we're dead," Tali told Shepard. "There's no cover nearly close enough - even assuming that one of the heavy-weapons infantrygeth doesn't get any clever ideas before then. Do you have a plan?"

Shepard grinned fiercely. "As it so happens, I do. Let's try something along the lines of-"

Tali, rising to a kneel from behind the broken rubble that now served the away team for cover, hurled an small, blinking projectile towards the Armature. It shot towards the war-machine as though magnetically attracted, and then vanished in a tiny explosion. Electromagnetic chaos followed; the nearest geth infantry were entirely disabled, and the others (along with the armature) were dazed, disoriented and half-blind.

"Now!" shouted Shepard, and Wrex and Tali together with Shepard each hurled an hand-sized, disc-shaped explosive from the waist. They hit the Armature (save for Wrex's, which fell to the snow nearby) and detonated moments later; the flame did little more than scorch the body of the machine, but annihilated its shields. A small crater was left in the ground where Wrex's ill-aimed grenade had fallen, but enough of its blast had impacted the Armature to do the job.

Even before the grenades had hit, Shepard had turned away. Now holding a sniper rifle, the Commander turned back - took aim, and fired. The first shot missed; the second did not. A relativistic pellet of iron blew a foot-thick hole in the Armature's neck, and slowly the immense machine toppled, paralyzed from the neck down by the shot to its main control cluster. It was finished.

The rest was just mopping up.


An hour and a half later, the Mako disgorged its passengers in front of the crashed probe that had been the object of the mission. "It's of even greater importance now," Shepard told Wrex and Tali. "The geth were here to lay an ambush - there must be something important in this probe for them to guard it with such force."

Tali knelt, examining the control panel on the exterior of the probe. Carefully, she manipulated the ancient electronics, repairing frayed wires and broken logic boards with supplies that she'd brought.

When she seemed to have finished, she paused. "Well?" Shepard asked. "Find out what's inside."

Tali opened the probe - and recoiled.

"What is it?" Shepard and Wrex asked, startled. "Another geth trap-?"

"No," Tali told them, attempting to reassure. "There's nothing dangerous in there - nor anything useful. Just a sea of omni-goo."

Shepard's shoulders slumped. Wrex put a hand on them, saying the only comforting words he could think of: "Well, there's no harm in having more omni-goo."

Wrex, as one might easily surmise, was not very good at comforting.

[Started all the way back in 2008 - this one's ancient!)

Day of Malaise

This is what happened to a Nikolas yesterday!

PROLOGUE:

9:15 PM: Re-entered his suite-haus, meeting three fellows playing "beer pong" in the common room. One of them - "Eric" - remarked with surprise on meeting the Nikolas - "Chronicles of Desmond, right? That stuff's great!" Hm.

11 PM. Attempt to sleep.

YESTERDAY.

1 AM: Wake up. Drink water. Sleep.

4 AM: Wake up. Drink water. Sleep.

5 AM: Wake up. Eat a handful of stale Triscuits to try to curb gnawing hunger. Vomit. Vomit again. Eat Ritz-crackers. Sleep.

8:40 AM: Wake up. (Woken by iPhone alarm.) Go to the bathroom. Find self locked out of room.

9 AM-11 AM: Lie on couch in common room, drink water, shiver with fever and strange aches. (Aforementioned Eric provides invaluable help; medicine, water, french fries.)

11 AM: Let back into room by helpful college-admin-student-person.

11:30 AM through 4:30 PM: Lie in bed, rocking back and forth; occasionally self-administer Tylenol.

4:30 PM: Sleep.

7:30 PM: Wake up. Rush over to visit cafeteria (opened at 5 PM) before it closes. Eat most of a hot dog, then throw it up outside. (Mortifying; no-one saw, thankfully.) The first thing resembling a meal for the Nikolas in more than 24 hours.

8 PM: Purchase supplies at general store: Advil, more Tylenol, sodas, crackers and toaster-pastries. Retire again to bed.

What a lovely day, eh?

Today's been much better!

bus-post

Written on bus, on ipon, courtesy of bus internets

Here is the magic school bus. Where will it take nikolaas&co? This keybaerd sux
first it went to lack-of-hot-womoon-land/bosston
then it drove around ffor a bit
good lord this bus us long as a cat

Diaries of Sir Arthur McKinsey, Pt. VI

Diary Entry on the night of February the Fifth, the year Eighteen Seventy-Five Anno Domini.

Dear Diary,

A brief entry now - after my writings of last night, I have little energy to spare for this journal! Still an occasion occured such as might I well note. Per arrangement made via tele-gram, the lady of whom I have written before made a social call upon this household. To my surprise, she came accompanied by another lady - one largely unknown to me!

The dog greeted them, as is his habit - the lady greeting her as affectionately as always. We spoke briefly, the item which I had lent her finally being returned into my possession. We held somewhat more in the way of conversation, briefly recapitulating our respective vacations. Then, awkwardly, we parted ways, the lady and her companion never setting foot within my town-house. (This was an oversight on my part.)

So, little to say, but I felt it warranted recording nonetheless.

The Roaring Horse-Whale

I'm as brave as the roaring horse-whale; as strong as the aching tide! I'm mightier than a half-eaten piece of brine!

Oh..........

The horse-whale! Fifty feet long! Twenty feet high! Four legs, a head, two flukes and a tail!Oh..........

It'll eat your head! It'll eat your bread! It's nothing like anything else!

HORSE-WHALE!

On one occasion, the horse-whale encountered a group of small people. A woman, a man, a child and a dog. The small people conferred among each-other intensely; but the whale-horse could not tell what they were saying. He leaned closer-but he squished them!

WHALE-HORSE!(Afterward, he ate them. Mm! Delicious!)

Nikolas's Magical Dreamland SUPERSTAR ULTRA

Another strange, vivid dream of mine, held in the grips of budding fever; this author considers that he might do well to share it upon this blagothing, given its narrative nature and perhaps entertaining bizarrity.

The setting: A postapocalyptic wasteland. The protagonist is in a group with several others; they are sent to secure and defend a specific location. They travel there, quickly though not without some fear of ambush. Their destination is a large, ugly office building, surrounded by chain-link and then by empty waste. The other members of the protagonist's group enter the building, taking up positions on the upper stories; the protagonist is left outside as a sentry, in a move that offers him little comfort.

Enemies come. The protagonist spots the first, gives warning, and sees the foe driven away; but more come, faster than the protagonist can warn of them, so he ventures outside the chain-link area surrounding the building. There he ambushes an enemy (just yards away from a group of foes, who would certainly overwhelm the protagonist if they espied him!). With this enemy's throat locked within the protagonist's elbow, he returns to within the building; only to be berated for this foolish move. The protagonist releases the foe, watching him exit only to turn into a dragon (being previously humanoid) and fly away.

This was a mistake, one of the protagonist's companions informs him (they seem to be in some manner of a leadership role?). He instructs the protagonist to look at the enemy dragon, which he does, and notes that, unlike the others (outlined in red), this one is now outlined in black; having entered the building, its defenses would now be weakened/negated against the dragon. For reasons that seem to make sense at the time, the leader now takes off in a jet-plane, with the protagonist in the co-pilot's seat.

The leader is, it proves, not a very good pilot.

They soar over the landscape; the protagonist notes the beauty which is visible in the cities from the air, being sure to remember it. But the leader does increasingly foolish things; through poor piloting, he loses lift and scrapes the plane's nose along the paving-stones of a food court; he weaves and wobbles.

The plane grows increasingly unsteady. Attempting to request the controls be transferred to his side of the board, the protagonist looks to the left, and realizes that the leader-pilot is gone, along with most of the plane. At this point the protagonist engages in desperate manuevers, attempting to save the plane. He pulls up he gives all thrust to engines; and in the end, he hits a wall of windows, bouncing off and fallin forty or fifty feet to the ground.

He lands on his feet, with no injuries more serious than a few aches; overjoyed by this seemingly miraculous landing, the protagonist pulls his iPhone from his pocket to make a note to blag about this incident. (He sees other seeds for blagoposts, higher up in the text document, somehow concerning the monstrous creatures attacking the office buildng - he doesn't remember writing those.)

(The above paragraph is about 50% of the reason I decided to blog this dream. So VERY strange that it would be a crime not to share it.)

The protagonist has landed in a darkened empty mall-courtyard (with a half-dome above, a fountain in the center); he wanders into a nearby doorway. There he finds a group of about five or six cat-people (anthropomorphized cats) in what seems to be a bedroom. They have a pair of toilets in the corner of the room; thy don't seem to care about privacy. In the cold, cruel, postapocalyptic world, the protagonist cannot afford to care about such things, either; he uses the toilet. (This section has been abridged, for the sake of the reader.) The cat-people, quite friendly, offer the use of their shower, which IS separated from the rest of the room by a curtain; the protagonist declines. (Why they have running water at all, much less for flush-toilets which seem to have been plunked down in the middle of a bedroom, is unclear.)

Exiting the bedroom, the protagonist goes to retrieve the jet-pack that is all is left of the aeroplane. (Sort of a platform to stand on, jet-thrusters on the bottom, controls on long levers at one end of the platform...) He gets it, but is now in a brightly-lit area, surrounded by other people clearly of the same tribe as those in the bedroom he entered previously; a native guide leads him through the mall, on some errand which this author has sadly forgotten. En route, the protagonist realizes that the people of the mall are in a socialist commune; this he considers unlikely to be viable elsewhere, but perhaps some characteristic property of the mall-tribe makes it possible.

He comes back from the errand (alas that I forgot its nature!), heading back towards the bedroom; en route, he notes a wall of video-game demos and packaged games, seeming almost as it might have been before the Cataclysm. Surmising that this must be the work of the socialistic society in which he finds himself, the protagonist asks what was within the game-box racks after the Cataclysm (as he calls it), before the socialist commune has time to form and recover what has been taken by thieves and looters. The native guide points, wordlessly, to a single Gamecube controller - a wired one.

(The protagonist also notes a number of Wavebirds, plugged into some strange kind of power-back; he muses for a moment on their virtues contrasted with the original Gamecube controllers.)

The protagonist returns briefly to the bedroom with the bathrooms, wondering how to phrase his question about the relationship between the denizens' cat-person-ness, their ignorance of privacy, and their socialist nature; he realizes immediately, though, that the people inside (the same as before!) are not like cats at all, and wonders how he could have thought so. He leaves.

On his way out of the mall, the protagonist encounters members of another group, people dressed rather like Santa Claus, handing out candy-canes. One, with an ugly yellow mustache, gives the protagonist a short, unintelligible spiel. Suspecting that they know about history, the protagonist asks about the Cataclysm; he learns that there were two cataclysms, one 133 years ago, and another 90 years later. The first was a standard sort of apocalypse, nuclear fire raining from the sky, etc, etc... the second was not. In the Claus-tribesman's words, "Senator [unintelligible] released a meme-virus to make people incapable of thinking about a specific alcoholic beverage [beer]; he overestimated his own constituency, though, and ended up giving the Democrats five points instead, the damn hypocritical..."

The protagonist believes the general outline of the story, but finds it unlikely that a meme-virus erasing people's comprehension of beer would really throw the world into a second apocalypse. He instead thinks it must have been something more serious, and recognizes the idea's debt to Charles Stross's Greenhouse, which had a much more plausible take on the idea of a meme-virus...

At this point, with the protagonist (this author) analyzing the literary references of the dream from within it, the dream ended. It's probably just as well - though I must wonder what tribes might have appeared next.

nikolas-post II: The Epilous

cont.

Suddently our hero Nikoauls awoke up from his terible dream. And to think that he was only 2 metres from the baseline. Oh , well . He said to him self : "After that eximination I must go up to the girl and apologise for my barbaric. " . He went up to her after  school. And he said "hey baby . It looks like my bed is awfel cold at nite  , Let's us come in there toegther and be hot . " She looked at him with a disgusts . She said . "Okay" Just let me get my frock coat. And she trawmbled off in to the distiance. Nikolalaus went to bed very sad that nite , because he thought that he becavied poorly to the girl in question . Howver. Suddently, he heard a knowking song at his door. It turned out to be sher. She said. "I came as fast is I could. " Nikalas said,"that's what she said" But he didnt' say that out aloud. They retired to the bedchambre . Happy end ! ! !

nikolas-post

David Zhang: 1. Two posts a day, every day; just as the ancients might have wished it!

Nicholas Feinberg: It was more of a hope than anything else.

Nicholas Feinberg: I am planning to post some-time tonight.

Nicholas Feinberg: But I did not anticipate achieving that goal _on my own_.

Nicholas Feinberg: You must blag, too!

David Zhang: ok

David Zhang: what should i blog abou

Nicholas Feinberg: love

Nicholas Feinberg: and

Nicholas Feinberg: a nikolaus

Nicholas Feinberg: and

Nicholas Feinberg: msr. ballos

One day there was a nikolas , he lived in a house. a nikolaus-hous . Then he was assaulted 비 비 beard. bears. whoa, there is only a 1-lettre diference , I bet you didn't know that ? 페닛

Who was mrs. ballos ? ? I dont know , I guess he was a a hot womon.  O, maybe she was that girl from the nikolas-school that he always has sex with. or he talks to her a lot , one or the other.  

Ok ok, so one day a nikolaus was in school, in his dormotory. He went to bead extra early because he had an eximanation the next day , of his orifices. So he was in bed at like 5:00 p.m. Suddently he was awake by a terrilbe crash. it was the sound of the door knowcking. He got up and looked to see was who wat the door.  It was that girl that he sometimes talked to , it was a nikolaus victory. ! ! She said to him him, my bed is so cold at nite , Let's us come on into you'rs and be hot  ;) So he said, "Okay" and they did that. Then She said, "Well we are in here already we should have sex." So he "Okay" He licked himself in sordid anticipation. 

He was about to for the 1st time go up to her and have sex with her , he stepped up to the plate, and was 3 metres away from the baseline. Then he was assaulted by bears, beards, and bear-beards. the end

Nikolas Feverpost

Nikolas says: Coming down with a fever. No blagopost of note.

Compensationsong:

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A KELSEY

HIS PLUMAGE WAS A-BRIGHTER THAN THE DAWN

HE LEAPT INTO THE AIR

STRAIGHTENED HIS HAIR

AND HE SANG

AND HE SANG

AND HE SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG

(...saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang...)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Due to contemporaneous internet difficulties, this post has been posted FROM THE FUTURE - the listed date is when it was written, not posted. Thank you for your concern.