Musings from Mâvarin

Repose

Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:30:12 GMT

Last night at midnight, my friend Kevin and I spent half an hour reading and praying at the altar of Repose in the back of St. Michael's & All Angels Church. The Eucharist lies hidden away there for nearly 24 hours each year, from the end of Maundy Thursday mass until the beginning of the Good Friday service. Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, with its insitution of Holy Communion, otherwise known as Holy Eucharist, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Maundy Thursday also commemorates Gethsemane, with its sleepy apostles and the sweating of blood, and the arrest of Jesus. Good Friday commemorates his death and burial.

Some of the Eucharist consecrated on Thursday is set aside for Friday, which has no Eucharistic Prayer of its own. While it's there at the Altar of Repose, parishoners and clergy keep vigil in half hour shifts, usually two at a time, all night and all day. In effect, we are waiting up with Jesus on the anniversary of the Passion, staying awake as Peter, James and John did not.

All this takes place, at St. Michael's, in an area between the last pew, the ushers' table and the church's heavy wooden doors. The Altar itself is an an alcove on the right. Behind it is a painting of Jesus, attended by angels as he suffers. In front of it are two large candles, which I long to staighten--they both list to the right. To the left is a bank of votive candles, which may be burned for 25 cents each. Accomodatjons for the faithful include a rickety kneeler with attached rail, a couple of folding chairs, and the usual books: the Book of Common Prayer, the Eucharistic Lectionary and the Hymnal, not that we would sing through this. Some years there are laminated printouts of suggested prayers. Not this year. We're on our own.

(to be continued)

When They Were Toros

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 09:50:23 GMT

What do the following baseball players have in common?

Curt Schilling
Kenny Lofton
Craig Biggio
Travis Lee (DL)

They're all former Tucson Toros whose 2004 MLB teams made it to the postseason. Half of them are hurt, but only one is actually on the disabled list. The other injured player threw 99 pitches Tuesday night, with three sutures holding the tendons together over a dislocated, bleeding ankle.

Now try these names:

Bob Abreu, Ron Belliard, Luis Gonzalez, Jason Grimsley, Trent Hubbard, Geoff Jenkins, Todd Jones, Mark McLemore, Tom Martin, Jose Mercedes, Mel Mora, Phil Nevin, Shane Reynolds, Steve Sparks, Kelly Stinnett, Jim Tracy (Dodgers Manager), Fernando Vina and Billy Wagner.

Yup. More ex-Toros in the majors.

One more time:

Mike Brumley
Dave Hajek
Chris Hatcher
Frank Kellner
Joe Mikulik
Ray Montgomery
Scooter Tucker

Never heard of them? Then you weren't in the stands at Hi Corbett in the early 1990s, watching the Tucson Toros take the PCL championship twice before the team morphed into the Tucson Sidewinders in 1998. Joe Mikulik had "never surrender" written on his wristbands, and was the big hero of the 1991 championship. John and I didn't start going to games until 1993, but he was still around then, and for a year after that. Scooter Tucker was the Toros' catcher in summer, a UPS guy in the winter. "Double Dave" Hajek never really got his shot in the majors because he'd been a replacement player during the strike. Chris Hatcher was a big kid with a big bat, who never seemed to get it going until about June. Mike Brumley was a good journeyman player with heart, solid fundamentals, and (eventually) his own line of t-shirts. Kellner was a secord or third generation ballplayer whose father and uncle had played at Hi Corbett in an earlier era. Ray Montgomery couldn't shake the Spiderman nickname he got after a spectacular catch at the outfield wall.

Hi Corbett Field, where the Toros played, was a two minute drive from Worldwide Travel (still is, for all the good it does me). It had been around for many years, refurbished and upgraded several times. It was the spring training home of the Cleveland Indians when the movie Major League was filmed, and later became the spring training home of the Rockies. It had a green monster, an overhang to huddle under while waiting to find out whether the game would be rained out, and relatively easy access to ballplayers and broadcasters. I used to pass notes of trivia up to the radio guys, who would sometimes use the material.

It all came to an end in the late 1990s. First the team lost its Houston Astros affiliation, ending years of continuity. The 1997 Toros were baby Brewers, except for Travis Lee, the Diamondbacks' only AAA player to that point. The 1998 team was the Tucson Sidewinders. They were Baby 'Backs, as a 2002 (2003?) t-shirt called the team. They played at a new, fan-unfriendly ballpark at the edge of town, Tucson Electric Park. TEP originally charged $2 for parking half a mile away on grass or bare dirt. I had a broken ankle that spring, and was NOT amused by the long, expensive hobble on my crutches. The broadcasters were hidden away from public access, and so, for the most part, were the players. Longtime General Manager Mike Feder, who did as much for the Toros over the years as any ten players, lost his job. Tuffy the Toro, the wonderful team mascot for whom I'd named my dog, was replaced by Sandy Sidewinder, an improbable and unconvincing snake with arms. In just two years, the team had jettisoned absolutely everything I liked about the Toros, except the game of baseball itself. I don't go to games any more, not more than once a year or so.

The 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks got us back into baseball, this time at the major league level. Their spring training was in Tucson, but unfortunately at TEP instead of Hi Corbett. We therefore never got anywhere near Curt Schilling or Randy Johnson for an autograph. Still, they did extremely well, and the Diamondbacks had their share of ex-Toros to cheer on. The team fell apart after that, but 2001 was great.

I gave up on baseball again when the Diamondbacks made fire sale transactions, dumping Schilling and Finley and Womack. But this postseason, I've been rooting for Houston, with its one remaining ex-Toro, and for Boston, with Schilling and the whole romance of battling back from 0 and 3 to beat the Curse of the Bambino. So if I watch ESPN a few minutes longer to see whether Schilling gets an interview, can you really blame me?

Go Sox. Go Astros.

Go Toros.

Karen

Tucson Weekly: Toro! Toro! Toro!

SportyReporter's Tucson Toros page

Tuffy Toro, Superstar

All photos by KFB, except for the Karen & dogs one. That's by JBlocher.

Tags: Baseball, Tucson, Tucson Toros

Weekend Assignment #197: Missing Words

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:03:05 GMT

Oops! I forgot to crosspost this!

Ok, we're going to try this. John Scalzi left off with Weekend Assignment #196, so with his permission and encouragement, let's try to keep it going. Here then is Weekend Assignment #197 (numbering corrected Saturday at 4:38 AM):

There's not a lot on tv these days.

Weekend Assignment #197: Now that the WGA strike has had lots of time to affect the prime time television schedules, how is it affecting you as a viewer? What show do you miss most, aside from reruns? Do you miss your weekly appointment with that ill-behaved doctor, or your visits to Wisteria Lane? Does it bother you not to laugh at fresh jokes on your favorite sitcom? Or are you just as happy watching reality shows, or new episodes of shows that have been held back until now? We want to know!

Extra Credit: how are you spending the time instead?

To be honest, I don't watch much broadcast TV myself. Most of the time I watch DVDs instead, if anything. But even I am missing the few shows I normally do watch. Three of them are--or were--on NBC's Monday night sf lineup: Chuck, followed by Heroes, followed by Journeyman. I kind of lost track of Chuck after he fought with his beautiful C.I.A. minder once too often, but I watched the other two every week.

And much as I like Hiro and Peter and Claire, I have to say the show I miss the most that night is Journeyman. I'm a sucker for time travel shows anyway, and this one does it well. Sure, it's essentially a Quantum Leap ripoff, but there are worse things to rip off--much worse. And the character dynamics are interesting, as the wife struggles to cope with her frequently time-lost husband, their young son starts to catch on to what is happening, and the traveler's brother struggles to make sense of what's happening with more mundane explanations. Good stuff!

Then there's Tuesday night. And yes, Julie, I do miss House MD, probably more than Journeyman. I think.

And what do I do on Monday and Tuesday nights? Why, I spend it at the computer, of course, with a DVD running on one laptop and ten tabs of Firefox open on the other!

Your turn: write up what you miss (or don't miss) on tv these days, and come back here (or to the Outpost) and leave a link in comments. If for some reason you have trouble commenting (although it should work for everyone, one way or another), feel free to email your link to mavarin at aol.com. To give time for word to spread and everyone to play, I'll do the roundup of your links in one week, next Thursday night. Got it? Good! Thanks, folks! I know I'm no John Scalzi, but we don't have to lose his legacy, as long as some of us care enough to keep it going!

Edit: I have been taken to task for not explaining what the WGA is and why it matters. I don't want to get into the politics of it (let's just say I'm pro-WGA and leave it at that), but here's what it's about:

WGA is the Writer's Guild of America, the folks who write the TV shows. As has been widely reported over the last few months, they're on strike, so networks and production companies are running out of new episodes of comedies and dramas. Why it matters, aside from inconvenience to the viewer and economic impact on the entertainment industry and the New York and California economies, is that it's a battle over writers being compensated for their work in new media such as Internet downloads. The result will set a precedent in determining the extent to which new tech is made part of the royalty pie.

Karen

*** copying over the first comment from the Outpost:***

John Scalzi said...
Hey! My first time as a participant! And I'm the first to post!

My answer is here.

Thanks for taking these up, Karen. I think you're going to do a great job.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Tags: Weekend Assignment

Your Substitute Monday Photo Shoot: What's New?

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 04:36:41 GMT

Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin: Your Substitute Monday Photo Shoot: What's New?

As you should all know by now, today (Monday, December 31st, 2007) was John Scalzi's last day blogging for AOL on By the Way. A number of people have said they were going to miss John's Monday Photo Shoots, and a few have asked me whether anyone will be picking up the slack, and assigning them in John's stead. MPS addict that I am, I'm willing to give it a shot. How about you?

Here's how this will work: I will post an entry every Monday with that week's subject. (After this week, it will be early Monday AM, not Monday night.) If you want to join in, take your picture, post it to your blog or journal, and leave a link in the comments to the original entry here. On Thursday night, I'll do a follow-up entry just as John did, linking back to everyone who participated. Simple, no? Then let's get started!

Your Substitute Monday Photo Shoot #1: What's New? In honor of the new year, show us something new. It can be a gift you got over the holidays, something you gave yourself, or even something that symbolizes the New Year to you. If it's new, it'll do!

Here's mine:

This is the coolest Christmas present I got this year: the 25th Anniversary Illustrated Collector's Edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It's one of my favorite books of all time. It's also one of my favorite tv shows and spoken word records, several of my favorite audio tapes, my very favorite radio show and my second favorite towel. It's not remotely my favorite film, but one can't have everything.

I have the text of the first Hitchhiker's book in several editions as it is, but this one is pretty special. It's full of visual reproductions of annotated scripts, behind the scenes photos from the various productions, merchandise, flyers and fan memorabilia. Love it! (And yes, I realize the above photo isn't terribly good from a technical standpoint. The glare off glossy paper gets me every time!)

Your turn! Take a picture of something new, post it to your blog, and come back here and leave your link. You have until midnight Thursday night, when I will compile the roundup of links from both Musings and the Outpost. Remember, your participation or lack thereof will determine whether there's still a Monday Photo Shoot in the weeks ahead. And if someone else wants to take it over, please let me know so we can coordinate. Thanks!

Karen

Tags: Monday Photo Shoot, What's New, Scalzi

Celebrate Him Home

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:38:41 GMT

Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin:

As we know, AOL will soon be parting company with John Scalzi, creator of the AOL Journal By the Way, the Weekend Assignments, Monday Photo Shoots, and a handful of nifty Ficlets. This is one of those "by mutual agreement" situations; AOL is contemplating a change in direction, and Scalzi is contemplating how much easier it will be to meet his deadlines for writing books if he's not busy amusing us with news of phosphorescent cats and fun games and pictures out hotel windows.

I already did my main Scalzi tribute entry, so I'm not going to go on and on about him tonight.

That's where you come in.

Are you one of John Scalzi's many fans? Was it because of him that you first learned how to upload a photo or a video, or had at least one thing to write about each weekend? Has By the Way or the Ficlets blog always been a "must read" for you? As time ticks away to the end of the year, when Scalzi's AOL contract runs out, would you like to show your appreciation for his four years of fun and inspiration and community building, and share your favorite Scalzi memes or moments with other readers?

If so, we've got just the journal for you!

It's called

ScalziCelebration

and it just went live Wednesday night. Carly (whose idea this was), Steven and I have put it together on AOL as a centralized place in which we can all thank John Scalzi for all his good work, and leave links to our own tributes, favorite Monday Photo Shoots, Weekend Assignments, Ficlets or other Scalzi-related fun. We've got three entries to get things started, and we'll be adding more over the next three weeks, featuring YOUR links and tributes, plus several surprises. So click on over and see what you think. Let's gather our scattered journaling community one more time, and give our Blogfather a big send-off!

Karen

Tags: AOL-J, blogging, Scalzi

Pointing at the Past

Sun, 27 May 2007 01:15:11 GMT

Because I'm totally insane sometimes in an OCD sort of way, I've spent an hour or two today updating two Musings entries from 2004:

5/21/04

Las Vegas: The Non-Gamblers' Experience

The Sublime and the Ridiculous: LV as a SF/F Destination

Blame John Scalzi and Joe Loong. John Scalzi wrote about people using moblity scooters to get around the Las Vegas Strip, which reminded me how much fun John (Blocher) and I had walking around the place three years ago taking photos. But when I looked at my two postings about it, I saw something Joe warned us about recently: an old AOL You've Got Pictures album was displayed as a Ken Burns style Woohoo slideshow.

I actually hate the old YPG albums (too small and never worked well for me and my dial-up) and love the Ken Burnsy thing. That's not a problem for me at all. I've even put a Ken Burns Woohoo on my church's main web page. But the tiny, grainy photos in that entry, taken three years ago with a Mavica and edited with whatever I had available at the time, are not improved by scrolling lovingly across an extra-large display of the dark, low-res images. So I've deleted one photo that was especially bad, edited full size versions of eight more shots and added them in. And yes, I left it Ken Burns style. Because I don't quite trust you folks to go take a look at the original entry, here is the revised slideshow:

Hmm. It won't display for me in this entry. Stupid dial-up! I'll be interested to know whether it displays for anyone else. It could be a slow connection issue, or it could simply be the way I copied and pasted it in here. (I did get it to display when I loaded the individual entry, so it's probably a connection speed issue. YGP gets impatient with the wait while the Journals product is still loading the other pictures on the page, not to mention the darn ad.)

But all this is a silly thing to do, isn't it? These are extremely obscure journal entries, virtually unknown to the search engines and remembered only by me. When I posted those musings about our Las Vegas trip in May 2004, I only had about two or three readers. Grainy pictures aside, I wrote what I still think is a really good entry about Las Vegas becoming a viable destination for fans of scence fiction and fantasy, but nobody ever saw it or commented. And this entire journal, Musings from Mâvarin, is virtually abandoned now. So why did I bother fixing up a three year old posting in a disused journal? Um, because I could, I think. And three years later, I still hope someone will read it and leave a comment.

Karen

Tags: Las Vegas, Woohoo, photo editing, AOL-J

The Sublime and the Ridiculous: LV as a SF/F Destination

Sat, 29 May 2004 08:36:53 GMT

All pictures by John Blocher, May 16-19th, 2004*

*Update, three years later: a By the Way entry reminded me today of this old AOL-J entry of mine, and I went looking for it. I still like the words, but man-oh-man, the photos look amazingly bad now, especially in the default Ken Burns mode from the recent AOL-J upgrade. So what I've done here is this: I removed the single worst photo and added new edits of eight more. Nothing can completely hide the fact that the photos were taken with a Mavica, and are terribly low-res and grainy by today's standards. After all, these photo files - the originals, mind you - were small enough that twenty of them fit on a single floppy disk. Still, newer photo editing and leaving the result as large a file as possible seems to help a bit. So here you are. Will anyone but me even see this? - Karen

In recent years, Las Vegas has, almost accidentally, transformed itself into a genre destination. Star Trek fans can run from the Borg, horror fans can explore Dracula's castle, and amateur Egyptologists can pose with a Sphinx or gaze upon the tomb of Tutankhamen. Fantasy fans can stay at a camped-up version of King Arthur's home, watch sirens cause trouble, or check up on some talkative members of the Roman pantheon. If you want to gamble, there are I Dream of Jeannie slot machines. Want souvenirs? Buy a tiny dragon, a full-sized sword, or your very own tricorder. Like motion simulator rides? There are at least half a dozen to choose from, more likely a few dozen.

How did all this happen? I have a theory about that.

I think it's partly an accident, partly a matter of market forces, and partly a demographic shift. In the past thirty years or so, the once-marginalized sf/fantasy fan has gone mainstream. Las Vegas, of all places, is well-suited to capitalize on that progression.

Let's approach this from the demographic angle first. My generation, the baby boomers, was born into houses full of bright plastics, watched Glenn and Aldrin on tv as well as Kirk and Spock, and played advent.exe on University mainframes in college. People thought we were weird as we read Lord of the Rings or wrote about Star Trek, but all that started to change with Star Wars, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and eventually the Internet. Science fiction no longer seems far-fetched, because we're living in the future ourselves. Fantasy no longer looks hokey, because ILM and WETA can do things nowadays that would have made Ray Harryhausen weep. People who watched the Enterprise on tv in the 1960s went to work for NASA later, or possibly for Berman and Braga. People who knew how to confuse Eliza ("IS IT BECAUSE YOU'RE A LITTLE TEAPOT THAT YOU CAME TO SEE ME?") later wrote games for Sega or Electronic Arts. And here's the kicker: the most important trade shows that unveil each new crop of tech gadgets, games and killer aps take place in Las Vegas.

Here's a short history of Las Vegas over the same time period. By the 1970s, the Rat Pack was no longer holding court, and organized crime was socially acceptable only in Puzo novels and Coppola movies. Las Vegas had a seedy, adults-only reputation, which was no longer attractive to most Americans. People with kids were far more likely to go to Anaheim or Orlando, or possibly King’s Island. Even that Las Vegas mainstay, gambling, became less of a draw as Indian casinos started to open around the country in the 1980s.

So Las Vegas reinvented itself as a family destination. Circus Circus was the first family resort, soon followed by Excalibur, and Treasure Island. And it worked. Excalibur had zillions of rooms, but they filled up every night. Hotels from the Sinatra era were torn down to make way for ever-more elaborate themed resorts: Luxor, Bellagio, The Venetian, the Mirage, New York New York, Paris, and I'm probably forgetting a few of them. Other hotels, such as Caesar's Palace and the Hilton, were upgraded. Caesar's got an indoor mall with talking gods and a changing sky. The Hilton got Klingons and the Borg. And after all, why not? Las Vegas used to be about the fantasy of show girls and high rollers, but that was a different era. Now it's about different fantasies, ones that appeal to the tech geeks and their families. These days, a chapel on the Strip can throw a Star Trek wedding for you as easily as an Elvis one. Kids can ride roller coasters, mall rats can ride a gondola between shops, and History Channel buffs can hear what a fictionalized Howard Carter has to say about King Tut.

It isn't all good. Those little chapels on the Strip still remind me inevitably of Marty McFly's Chapel-O-Love, and the Excalibur, let's face it, is silly-looking. Disneyland's castle is far more realistic and evocative, and doesn't half-deafen you with hundreds of slot machines. Still, Las Vegas has definitely gotten better at the themed destination business with each new resort or attraction. The Luxor in particular is as amazing as Excalibur is disappointing. Check out the pictures on this post for examples of each.

If you're a fan of sf, fantasy, horror and technology, and you've already seen enough of Disneyland and Universal for this year, Las Vegas is well worth a look. After all, they’ve built these hotels for us: the baby boomer and younger, technophile, genre-watching geeks.

Karen

Tags: Las Vegas, photo editing, Woohoo, Star Trek

Las Vegas: The Non-Gamblers' Experience

Fri, 21 May 2004 07:17:47 GMT

Motion simulator attractions at the Luxor. Photo by John Blocher.

I'm back. When we first pulled into town, John really hated Las Vegas; but the themed hotels won him over. We'll probably go again someday, but not for a while. Gas, food and lodging on this trip were just about all we could afford, especially when you add in the attraction costs and the few souvenirs we bought. We couldn't afford to see Penn & Teller, Blue Man Group or the Tournament of Kings, unfortunately. Mostly, we just walked around looking at the different theme resorts, and John took a slew of digital photos.

The castle architecture and surrounding hype at Excalibur was mostly garish and silly, but at $49 a night we had no complaints. John and I had a friendly discussion about which sword is Excalibur, the one in the stone or the one that came from the Lady of the Lake, or somehow both.

Star Trek: The Experience was very well done and a lot of fun, although John was a little creeped out by one of the sales clerks, who kept trying to sell us LEDs to fool the Borg. Admission included two motion simulator attractions in addition to the museum, gift shops and themed restaurant. The Klingon attraction was based on TNG, with a combination of live actors, real sets and video. I liked it a lot. The Borg one, based on Voyager and set just after the end of that series, was even better, despite the fact that I don't like the Borg much as villians. That show was frenzied and very violent. Another highlight was the meal at Quark's, with its highly original, futuristic presentation of the food.

Luxor, with its Eqypt theme, was absolutely stunning, inside and out. So were New York, New York and the Venetian. We never got to Paris (the hotel, not the city), but it was amazing on the outside. Treasure Island was well done outside, not so great inside. We didn't see the outdoor ship battle at Treasure Island, called "The Sirens of TI," because high winds scuttled the performances. Great ships, though. Mirage was so-so inside and out.

There were several sf/f/horror motion simulator attractions at the different hotels, only one of which, other than the Star Trek ones, we got to do. It was a Doug Trumbull production at the Luxor, about a crystal obelisk in a hidden underground temple. The story was silly, but it was fun anyway. The Luxor also had a Dracula's Castle attraction that we didn't feel we had the time or money to do. Maybe next time!

And in case anyone is wondering, we didn't spend a penny on gambling.

Karen

See also: The Sublime and the Ridiculous: LV as a SF/F Destination - updated 5/26/07

Tags: Las Vegas, travel, Star Trek

Remembrance of Weekend Assignments Past

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:50:21 GMT

Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin because it seems appropriate:

Stories of the Weekend Assignments

Weekend Assignment #156: Repost your favorite Weekend Assignment from the past three years. Or, if you can't choose, post the first Weekend Assignment you ever participated in.

Extra Credit: Should we keep doing the Weekend Assignments? Or after three years, should we give it a rest? Let me know; I'm curious.

When I first saw this assignment this afternoon, I thought it would be quick and easy. All I needed to do was look up Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends, repost it, and I'd been "rolling with puppies," or whatever it is that Willow says in that one Buffy episode. Then I though I ought to actually look and see what else I've written at Scalzi's behest since June 2004. I started with a search for Weekend Assignments on Musings from Mâvarin, and never really got beyond that. After all, between the two blogs, I've written over a hundred of these things. It really wasn't possible for me to read (or even skim) all of them tonight.

But I did read or skim a bunch of them, and I found two contradictory patterns emerging:

Despite the occasional overlap, there really has been a huge variety of subject matter in Scalzi's assignments.

Despite #1, I personally tend to write responses that hook in to my own obsessions. Several times I've worked in some kind of time travel story or premise, relating to The Beatles, Disneyland, Doctor Who and certain early U.S. presidents. I've written about my novels, about books by L'Engle and others, and about friends, teachers and relatives of the past and present. And when the assignment was something that didn't interest me, such as pie, I tended to dispose of it as quickly as possible and find a tangent to carry us someplace more interesting.

That last thing under #2 led to the entry I'll be reposting tonight instead of the picnic with Thomas Jefferson. Oddly enough, it involves the same "Scalzi's clone" photo that Scalzi himself reposted today. I don't like it much, and wasn't terribly interested in captioning it, but that was the assignment that night. So I did it, and then I had an interesting conversation about it with my pirate house guest, Black Rose Katie Specks. Enjoy.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
9:17:00 PM MST
The Clone and the House Guest

John Scalzi is finally forced to admit it was a bad idea to crib
his cloning experiment from a Treehouse of Horror episode of
The Simpsons.

Extra Credit: Would you like to see more "explain what's going on in the picture" sort of assignments?

No. Not as such. There's not enough material here for writing one of my patented long entries. Yet somehow I'll manage anyway, especially with my nosy house guest asking questions!

"Tell me again who John Scalzi is," Black Rose Kate orders.

"He's AOL's designated, professional blogger," I tell her. "He's there to encourage and inspire people to post in their AOL Journals, give tips on how it's done, point the way to interesting or amusing stuff online, and generally entertain us."

"Then by what authority can he assign you to do anything?"

"Oh, it's completely voluntary. But it gives me something to write about that I might not have thought of otherwise."

"Is this something you wanted to write about, now that he's thought of it for you?" she asks pointedly.

"Not really, but I'm proud of the caption I came up with for it."

"I do not understand it. What is a clone?"

"A clone is an exact copy of a person, like a twin, but made by science instead of nature. It's been done with a sheep and other animals. Nobody's ever really cloned a human being yet, as far as we know, and a lot of people say we shouldn't even try it."

"But the monster on the left isn't an exact copy," Kate points out.

I decide not to mention that "monster" would not be a politically correct term for a "cloned American," even a wonky-looking one like Scalzi's. "That's because the premise of the photo is that the cloning experiment didn't quite work out," I explain. "It's supposed to be a joke."

"Well, I fail to see the humour in it," says Kate. "What does your caption mean, about The Simpsons? You have DVDs with that name on them. Are there clones in The Simpsons?"

"Not that I recall," I admit. "But the fake clone in the picture looks a little like the drawings of Homer Simpson in the tv show."

"There are drawings in the tv show?"

"It's nothing but drawings. You can watch some of the DVDs tomorrow if you like."

"And the treehouse of horror? What, pray tell, is that?"

"It's a series of Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, in which horrible things happen. If a cloning experiment went wrong on The Simpsons, it would probably be in a Treehouse of Horror episode."

Black Rose Kate shakes her head. "I think I have done very well so far in understanding your century; but this explanation remains unclear to me."

"It's not important," I tell her. "Nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it."

Kate nods thoughtfully. Then she hits me with a question that I should have expected but didn't. "Am I a clone?"

I look at her. There is no denying that Katie Specks looks enough like me that she could indeed be my clone. It is also true that she still doesn't know how she got here. I can't blame her for wondering whether she might not be who she thinks she is.

"You're not a clone," I tell her.

"Am I a twin?"

"Not of me, you aren't. Perhaps we're related."

"Aye, perhaps. Were your ancesters from England or Ireland?"

"Some of them. I used to jokingly refer to the Irish ones as Viking Irish royalty, the ones who got tired of returning north and became landed gentry instead."

"Aye, I come from the same hardy stock," says Kate. "Mayhap we are relatives. But stay, I have one more question for ye."

"What's that?"

"Am I fictional? You told people that I was a fictional character."

Uh-oh. "How do you know about that?"

"I read the emails you sent to Paul and Gem."

Poor Kate! I'll have to approach my explanation delicately. "I didn't think you would learn to use my computer so quickly," I admit.

"I find your keyboard difficult to operate, especially the keys with the letters missing. But even I can point and click with the mouse. What is your explanation, Karen?"

"What would you have me tell everyone, Kate? If I post the truth, that you're really here but we don't know why or how, people will either assume that I'm lying, or that I'm crazy, or that I'm telling a story. As a fiction writer, I'd rather they think I'm writing fiction than that I'm lying or crazy."

"You think people will not believe the plain truth?"

"That's right. People just don't turn up from centuries past, alive and well and asking questions."

Kate chuckles. "Fair enough. All right, then. We can pretend that you're spinning a yarn, an it helps you preserve your reputation."

"Thank you."

"But you should have asked me, Karen."

I nod. "Yes. Sorry."

"Aye, well, 'tis unimportant now. Tell me more about The Simpsons. Do these drawings you mention move, like the images in Buffy?"

I think I'll spare you the rest of that conversation.

Karen

Some Fictional and/or Time Travel W.A.'s:
Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends
Not Your Usual Subscriptions
With the Beatles

Black Rose Katie Specks
An 18th Century pirate looks at the modern world.

On Halloween and Modern Life

On Technology and Fictional Pirates

On Love and Death...and Life

The Clone and the House Guest

A Pirate Incognito

Kate Weighs In

Absent Friends

The Clone and the House Guest

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:17:07 GMT

Weekend Assignment #84: Take a look at the picture below. Tell us what you think is going on in the picture. You can write as long as you want, or as short as you like -- even a photo caption works. Now, it's a fairly weird picture, but I thought that would just give you more to work with. Ready? Here you go:

John Scalzi is finally forced to admit it was a bad idea to crib
his cloning experiment from a Treehouse of Horror episode of
The Simpsons.

Extra Credit: Would you like to see more "explain what's going on in the picture" sort of assignments?

No. Not as such. There's not enough material here for writing one of my patented long entries. Yet somehow I'll manage anyway, especially with my nosy house guest asking questions!

"Tell me again who John Scalzi is," Black Rose Kate orders.

"He's AOL's designated, professional blogger," I tell her. "He's there to encourage and inspire people to post in their AOL Journals, give tips on how it's done, point the way to interesting or amusing stuff online, and generally entertain us."

"Then by what authority can he assign you to do anything?"

"Oh, it's completely voluntary. But it gives me something to write about that I might not have thought of otherwise."

"Is this something you wanted to write about, now that he's thought of it for you?" she asks pointedly.

"Not really, but I'm proud of the caption I came up with for it."

"I do not understand it. What is a clone?"

"A clone is an exact copy of a person, like a twin, but made by science instead of nature. It's been done with a sheep and other animals. Nobody's ever really cloned a human being yet, as far as we know, and a lot of people say we shouldn't even try it."

"But the monster on the left isn't an exact copy," Kate points out.

I decide not to mention that "monster" would not be a politically correct term for a "cloned American," even a wonky-looking one like Scalzi's. "That's because the premise of the photo is that the cloning experiment didn't quite work out," I explain. "It's supposed to be a joke."

"Well, I fail to see the humour in it," says Kate. "What does your caption mean, about The Simpsons? You have DVDs with that name on them. Are there clones in The Simpsons?"

"Not that I recall," I admit. "But the fake clone in the picture looks a little like the drawings of Homer Simpson in the tv show."

"There are drawings in the tv show?"

"It's nothing but drawings. You can watch some of the DVDs tomorrow if you like."

"And the treehouse of horror? What, pray tell, is that?"

"It's a series of Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, in which horrible things happen. If a cloning experiment went wrong on The Simpsons, it would probably be in a Treehouse of Horror episode."

Black Rose Kate shakes her head. "I think I have done very well so far in understanding your century; but this explanation remains unclear to me."

"It's not important," I tell her. "Nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it."

Kate nods thoughtfully. Then she hits me with a question that I should have expected but didn't. "Am I a clone?"

I look at her. There is no denying that Katie Specks looks enough like me that she could indeed be my clone. It is also true that she still doesn't know how she got here. I can't blame her for wondering whether she might not be who she thinks she is.

"You're not a clone," I tell her.

"Am I a twin?"

"Not of me, you aren't. Perhaps we're related."

"Aye, perhaps. Were your ancesters from England or Ireland?"

"Some of them. I used to jokingly refer to the Irish ones as Viking Irish royalty, the ones who got tired of returning north and became landed gentry instead."

"Aye, I come from the same hardy stock," says Kate. "Mayhap we are relatives. But stay, I have one more question for ye."

"What's that?"

"Am I fictional? You told people that I was a fictional character."

Uh-oh. "How do you know about that?"

"I read the emails you sent to Paul and Gem."

Poor Kate! I'll have to approach my explanation delicately.

"I didn't think you would learn to use my computer so quickly," I admit.

"I find your keyboard difficult to operate, especially the keys with the letters missing. But even I can point and click with the mouse. What is your explanation, Karen?"

"What would you have me tell everyone, Kate? If I post the truth, that you're really here but we don't know why or how, people will either assume that I'm lying, or that I'm crazy, or that I'm telling a story. As a fiction writer, I'd rather they think I'm writing fiction than that I'm lying or crazy."

"You think people will not believe the plain truth?"

"That's right. People just don't turn up from centuries past, alive and well and asking questions."

Kate chuckles. "Fair enough. All right, then. We can pretend that you're spinning a yarn, an it helps you preserve your reputation."

"Thank you."

"But you should have asked me, Karen."

I nod. "Yes. Sorry."

"Aye, well, 'tis unimportant now. Tell me more about The Simpsons. Do these drawings you mention move, like the images in Buffy?"

I think I'll spare you the rest of that conversation.

Karen

*********THIS JUST IN**************

The date, time and format for announcing the winners of the VIVI Awards has been, um, announced! Click below for details!

<---click here for the announcement

Thanks to Gregg (Golden Child NC) for the category nominee graphics!

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Clones, Black Rose Kate, Pirates, Fiction