Jason and Shadow gave out some bizarre and entertaining gifts. I feel obliged to share mine here, and so I shall.



I was barely awake and sick as a dog when this photo was taken, which lends itself to the attitude I was apparently copping at the time.

So, as some of you may recall, I entered that contest where I get to write a story with 140 characters. There was some voting and stuff to see if I made it to the finals.

This thing is really poorly organized. I received an email today at 5:35 saying I'd made it into the finals. In that same email it told me the finals started at 7, that I would receive the word then and would have until midnight to finish. So, yeah, nice timing.

I, of course, didn't get either of these emails until 10. So I write the stuff and submit. The judges will post the top 25 stories on Thursday, in theory. They're almost uniformly late with these. They're all chosen by judge this time, and I think the audience gets to vote as well. The audience winner and #1 from judges get money. I have little confidence in either of these, but I'll live. I made it to the finals again.

Anyway, as promised so long ago, here is my stuff for this one.

Word: below


1) Far below the intellect lies the animal mind, waiting to make brutal sense of every choice. It says you're too fat and ugly. Sorry, lady.

2) She led me below the surface of the water, where I discovered the wonder of drowning firsthand. For that, I shall always love her.

3) Look, velociraptor. I promise you that the nutrients I contain fall well below the recommended daily allowance. Maybe you should try Jimmy.

It's that time again. The time when you look at a list of one line "stories" and vote for the ones I wrote so I can go to the finals. :)

http://www.nycmidnight.com/2010/Tweet/firstround/4.htm

As mentioned previously, the short, short, short story contest started tonight, and I said I'd share my work, so here it is.

The word for the day was... reality.

1) Jason placed his head in his hands as the reality sank in. She was gone, and she had taken his dog with her. He smiled. That dog has fleas.

2) Reality warps and folds in on itself around the disabled starliner. I watch in awe from the observation deck as the black hole consumes us.

3) "What do you do when you can no longer tell reality from fantasy?" The pixie eyed me incredulously, and moved to a farther seat on the bus.

As is tradition for WoW patch day, I try and come up with something to do while I wait for it to actually work.

The timing is funny. I figure it'll be fixed by 7, which is when I might have something to do. As many of you may recall, there's this "writing" contest I was in some time ago, called "Tweet Me a Story" in which I am given a word and try to make a "story" of less than or equal to 140 words, the size of one Twitter entry.

Well, I made it to the finals last time, and that was fun and easy. I figured I'd do it again, since it's free and all, and also might get free entry into their Short Story contest. At 7:00, I get the word for this particular exercise. At which time I'll likely be in WoW enjoying something unrelated.

I'll keep you posted on the contest, though, including the entries for tonight's round.

So, I was pondering something while listening to the Barenaked Ladies regale me with holiday music, and found my own bizarre theory about how Hannukah works. I shall share it here for you.

So, the miracle of Hannukah is the one day of oil burning for a full eight days. Every year people gather and light their menorah and say their blessings over the candle. So my new story of the miracle is that the yearly blessing and lighting of the menorahs in subsequent years after the original miracle is what actually causes the miracle.

In essence, because they remember it by lighting their candles, by saying the blessing, the power of their faith and remembrance passes through the veil of years, empowering the original miracle.

Or God looked down and said "I'll keep your candles burning, but you'd better remember this" and so they do. Every year. And one day they won't and God will turn it around on them somehow.

So there was an Eclipse event this weekend. It was, for me, interesting, and more than a little game changing.

I tend to write characters to be open-ended, but with solid options for the obvious power-gamer wishes to never occur. In this case, I created a character who was a bastard son of a noble, from a house that never, ever, legitimized bastards. Thus, son of noble without even the remotest possibility of getting a noble title. And then the personality of the character would then be someone who clearly had no interest or ambition in that direction. With all of the various aspects of his personality, he's fascinating to play.

So plot did the impossible to me this weekend. Now this Fanatic Thug archetype character has been shuffled into the position of a noble, head of a small noble house, and while my experience with King's Gate makes this less difficult to wrap my brain around, I feel like my Eclipse game just changed to a wholly different game, and I'm still playing the same character. It's bizarre.

I'm enjoying the whole thing, though the character is clearly not. It's exciting and fascinating, and I have no clue where it can go from here. Luckily my character is so solid that I don't have to worry too much, as his bizarre mentality takes over whenever I have to make decisions, so he'll clearly be running the show.

But man, this is screwed up.

It is time again to defy the laws of karma that state that I must suffer and whenever I share my hopes, they are dashed. Last time, this helped, and I felt really good about it, even if it didn't work. So here I go again.

I have an interview tomorrow. If, between 11AM and noon (EDT) you were to send mojo my way, that I might kick ass and wow them that are considering me for a job, I would be grateful.

Details to follow as the day progresses.

The massive slew of Libra birthdays has begun, starting today. Happy birthday to loresinger and my mom! More to come as the weeks progress.

So, the results came in today and I have made it into the third round. From here it actually gets tricky.

I found this part easy and annoying because I could have made it on without even submitting a story last time. I know this because someone in my group did. I came in 4th in my group by points and that's what determines who moves on.

Next time is more of an actual test, as they split us into new groups and of the 20 people in each group, the top 3 stories and then the top 2 by points make it to the final round. I have no clue how that will work out. My points are not massively defeating everyone (34 out of 50) but they're solid. I came in third for this round, so I got the judges attention with the last story. It could happen.

But, so far so good. Apparently the judges weren't baffled by my story so that's something. Next round is this weekend. Should be interesting.