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January 19, 2011 in Articles
Melanie Thompson, once Bible student, once mother of five, and now sorceress, and dimension traveller and prophetess, announced her presence by a big yawn, a stretch that popped vertebrae in her back, and a groan louder than the campfire her three male compatriots sat around.
“Nobody ever says immortality includes a forever bad back.” She announced as she stepped into the firelight.
“Any orcs?” The man sitting to her right, Jack had introduced himself as ‘Just Jack’ when he joined the group three days ago. Since then Mickey the Nurse/EMT and Darryl the Computer Nerd ‘I’m not just a nerd, but a god among nerds’ had taken to calling him J.J. It did not seem to bother him as he continued to run the stone up his short sword.
“Any orcs? Just dead ones.” Twenty miles to the north of them a city of Elves, wondrous and noble creatures, were frantically preparing for an invasion. And the only thing slowing down the orcs were her friends, no companions of the day.
“I’ll try some chiropractery later, if you don’t mind, Melanie.” Mickey said.
“I thought you didn’t know about that.” Protested Darryl. And Melanie grinned slightly to herself. She was surrounded by three guys, all of them reasonably attractive, and so was she. This caused some tensions.
(Insert Jewel about how all male groups can be more effective than mixed groups)….Melanie had heard in passing.
“Well, I’ve been reading my books at night. Happily the orcs are a superstitious lot and think Morgrul the Night Demon will carry them off if they die at night.” Mickey cleared his throat and began to (Insert Jewel about basic chiropractery).
“You just think we’re all superstitious. Melanie and me are Christians and JJ is an Asatru.”
“I’m an Odinite.”
“I looked it up on my computer files, JJ, the more common term is Asatru. It means (insert explanation for meaning and why it was chosen).”
“Thank you.” JJ was a follower of Odin, so he could not be impolite at this helpful bit of information about his god, but at the same time he revealed his complete and utter lack of interest.
“That stuff is just like Kwanzaa. (Insert Mark’s with a rant about the FBI and so on…although mark doesn’t really rant about it…but this should be a rant.)”
There was a bit of silence, and Melanie turned to JJ ‘even they got me doing it, she thought in exasperation’, and asked him why he sharpened his sword like he did.
“It gets dull after you smack it through the bones of a dozen or so orcs. Takes the edge off.”
She held out her hand, and requested.
“May I?”
He handed her his short sword, and she stepped back to take a few practise swings. Then she examined the cutting edge.
“I had knives back home with a sharper edge than this.” She spoke almost accusatorily.
“I imagine you did, but again, chopping orc bone is tough on a blade. Too sharp, and it breaks easily. Too dull, and you got a metal club.”
“Oh.” Melanie had not thought about that. She had imagined you just tried to sharpen up a blade to super-keeness.
She handed it back, and he slipped it in to the sheath at his waste with a practised economy of movement.
“What type of sword is it?” She asked. He shrugged, and she did not press him further, not wanting to embarrass him. But he saw that, and found himself wanting to impress her. Maybe after the next battle, he could talk to that Darryl guy, see if the fellow could dig up something on the computer?
Seeking to draw her attention back from the face to face conversation with the Odinite, Mickey spoke up.
“Kwanzaa is just like your beliefs.”
“Listen you…” Mickey held his hands up, aware that if the Odinite’s sword came out, there was no way Mickey was going to get to his pistol in time.
“I’ve felt Thor’s power.” JJ said with a snap to his voice.
“But have, or could you show it to me?” Mickey said with a relieved smile. Evidently the debate was going to stay non-physical.
“I….maybe.” JJ looked thoughtful which was unusual for him. Clearly he wondered if he could show this skeptic a miracle or two.
“Mickey, not to be rude, but your position is illogical in the extreme. (Insert Kalam or Cosmological Arguement).”
“There’s too much we don’t know about the universe, or multiverse. It is too complicated….”
“False modesty, Mickey. My arguement is crystal clear. Even JJ can get it.”
“Hey!” JJ said as Darryl burst out laughing, followed by Mickey, and last by JJ.
“But do you know your texts are the right thing? Translations of translations, my dear.”
“That’s weak.” She replied, but troubled she sat down. It was only later, that she went to talk to Darryl.
Did he by chance have a copy of ancient Greek texts on his computer? And perhaps a beginner’s manual on ‘how to speak Greek?’
Why yes, he did, and he was most glad to spend some private time with Melanie explaining it. (Insert Jewel about learning languages….possibly the one about phonemes gets in here too.)
Too early, dawn came. And with dawn, also arose the blatting trumpets of the orken song leaders.
(Insert bit about song structure and or giant animal horn trumpets).
The orc army awoke, and war began anew. The prophetess called fire from the sky, actually thunderbolts in the ancient Hebrew, which seemed to mean flaming meteorites. Darryl served as gopher, and bait. JJ went forth and slew orcs by the dozens. And Mickey tried to keep everyone healthy enough to survive another day.
M. J. Young said on January 20, 2011
Hmmm–don’t I already do a lot of that?
I wish I could remember the “jewel about phonemes”. That is, I don’t know whether you’re talking about minimal pairs, or about the fact that all babies make all sounds and then unlearn the ones that people around them don’t use, or about something else entirely.
That’s probably part of the problem. I’ve often said “I have a mind like a sponge–it soaks up everything, and you never know what will come out when you squeeze it.”
Of course, one aspect of what you’re suggesting is that aspect of digression.
*****
“I’ll try some chiropractery later, if you don’t mind, Melanie.” Mickey said.
“I thought you didn’t know about that.” Protested Darryl. And Melanie grinned slightly to herself. She was surrounded by three guys, all of them reasonably attractive, and so was she. This caused some tensions.
(Insert Jewel about how all male groups can be more effective than mixed groups)….Melanie had heard in passing.
“Well, I’ve been reading my books at night.
*****
Becomes something like
*****
“I’ll try some chiropractery later, if you don’t mind, Melanie.” Mickey said.
“I thought you didn’t know about that.” Protested Darryl. And Melanie grinned slightly to herself. She was surrounded by three guys, all of them reasonably attractive, and so was she. This caused some tensions. There was some logic to the tradition of single-sex military units. If you stick one girl in with a bunch of guys, you make the guys all protective, many of them also taking risks to impress, and unit cohesion falls apart into rivalry expressed in one-upmanship. Put one guy with a bunch of girls, and not only do they all start flirting with him, they can be very vicious in undermining each other, unit cohesion collapsing into bitter rivalry expressed in catfights. But even when you balance the ratio of men and women, you still get jealousies and competitions. Sure, incoming fire usually causes a unit to pull together; but when rivalries get strong, the guys tend to put themselves on the line to win the attentions of the girls, and the girls tend to put each other on the line to eliminate the competition. So all male and all female units are a lot more functional; members of the same sex will pull together when they aren’t in competition for the attentions of members of the opposite sex.
Of course, it all changes when you introduce homosexual inclinations to the mix. If guys are competing for the affections of other guys, or girls for the affections of other girls, there’s no real possibility of a cohesive unit. At least, that was how it seemed to Melanie, and to those she’d met who had been in such situations.
“Well, I’ve been reading my books at night.”
*****
You digress too much, you’ve lost the flow of the story.
Probably, too, my “jewels” are the result of that “squeezing”. In writing the stories, I tend to be more linear–sure, I discuss trinary computers and biocomputers when they are relevant in TerraNova, but I come to them as part of the ongoing story, not asides about alternative systems which never existed in, say, Gamma World.
Incidentally, just as English has three distinct languages of that name (what we call Old, Middle, and Modern), Greek has five. Melanie is probably interested in Koine, Greek for “Common”, the middle one which was in use throughout the Roman Empire, and students are not really taught how to “speak” it so much as how to “pronounce” it.
Is that one of those “jewels”?
–M. J. Young
Tadeusz said on January 20, 2011
I think it may be minimal pairs, but the babies bit could be cool too….say someone has a psiburn botch that makes it so they can’t speak English (actually the sounds from it)….so our hero teaches the sufferer Chinese so that the fellow can talk.
And that’s another way of putting in interesting information…incorporating it in the story action. Although you could also use this as an excuse to do your babies’ digression.
With digressions, you’re right.
You need…
Brevity.
Sweetness of words (beautiful language can overcome a lot).
A simple, but unusual point…You almost have three points in your digression…hmmm
A jewel is glittery, bright, unexpected, and small, and wonderful. Making digressions like so would be very good.
Your later bit about Koine is better.
Hope this helps.
Oh, JJ is Bob Slade, Mickey is your army medic guy, and Darryl is Derek….notice how I used sexual desire to motivate JJ to learn something. He’s naturally inclined to not give a rip, but when the pretty girl asks a question about what he should know, well, he doesn’t want to look like a dork in front of her.