Out of Order The members of the adventuring party start singing. It's a very pretty song. I like it a lot. But I can't remember why they're doing it, so I flip to a different part of the book to try and figure it out. That doesn't answer many questions, so I flip around again. Now, before all of this, I'd been near the end of the book. But by the time I'm done, I've found a chapter back in the first third of the book that I don't remember reading at all. Oh, dear. I guess I must have skipped these chapters accidentally, when I was trying to find my place after setting down the book for a while. LMMS I open a new project in Linux MultiMedia Studio and start composing. The idea I have in my head uses the string section, so it would be nice to have some good samples for that. I remember that I configured a couple for a previous project [IRL: true], so I open that project and try to copy over the instruments. It works pretty well! Now I guess I should start thinking about how to use percussion. Should I use it to reinforce the string accents, or do they stand well enough on their own?
Old-Time Riddles I'm reading a set of six or seven old Garfield comic strips. But it turns out they're actually riddles. An old man comes up to me and explains them, one by one. The last one is about balloons: A man buys a balloon in the early 1900s. Then he sets it down and picks it up again, or something. Anyway, the trick to the riddle is to realize that back in those days, people didn't know how to use helium, so balloons didn't float. They weren't held with ribbons; they were held using a sturdy plastic stick. I think this is rather clever, and the old man and I part on good terms.
[Drat! I got the month wrong. Also, sorry about my absence, there. I've been trying to install Linux on my laptop. . . .] Crash Landing I'm in an episode of Doctor Who! I'm in a flying craft when I hear some team members calling for help. I expect someone else to help them, but no one does, so after a minute I go over there myself. The two team members, a man and a woman, are sitting side by side, flying the craft from a sort of detachable pod on the side. There's also a giant, black grasshopper in the pod with them. It's not moving, but it looks dangerous, and I assume that's what's worrying them. I get in the pod to help them, but it looks like we're going to have to crash land. We're going too fast; there's no way anyone should be able to survive this. But somehow, with myself at the wheel, we just glide to a halt on the ground. No one's even bruised. I look over at the two other people and say, with a wry smile, "I have no idea how that just happened." But there's no time to think about that. Everyone gets out of the craft. The man who was next to me takes out a small model of the grasshopper and disparagingly throws it on the ground. Wow, was that all he needed to do to deal with it? Suddenly I remember that the only reason we needed the grasshopper was because it powered the craft, somehow. I'm glad to be rid of it. But then, from the place the model grasshopper landed, bugs begin to rise from the ground--one by one, but quickly, so that soon there'll be an entire swarm of them. And they don't look benign. The Doctor runs in and meaningfully taps his watch. Yep, it's time to get out of here. I try to run on ledges around the side of the cavern, swatting bugs away from my face. Eventually I get away. Later, it comes to light that the structure in which we now find ourselves is a remnant of an ancestral civilization, forced to escape from its homeland. Grammar Game The point of the game is to take regular English sentences and "translate" them into an amusing American dialect. Something about switching from present tense to present progressive. One variant of the game involving the word "grandma" turns out to be pretty hilarious.
Updated 09-18-2012 at 06:18 PM by 57256 (got the month wrong)