Act 2 Scene 2 Pt 1: Said I, "My friend, I'd like to go to Morow and return..."

Author's Note: This is only the opening excerpt of an update I am taking forever to write, so here it is just for the sake of having SOMETHING posted.

"Pearson, Pepp-"
"Idiot."
'But you don't even-"
"I said she's an idiot, and I don't want her on my staff."
"Lieutenant-Colonel Anaconda, Ang-"
"Angie? She's a sweetie, and a crack shot, but a total air-head. No." Commodore Colby shot Molly a disgruntled look.
"Colonel, all these personnel are highly qualified officers. You need to choose a 2/1c."
"I know that, Colby. But I'm really not comfortable picking someone of this pay grade. I'm not USMC. I'm not Navy, I'm not Army, I'm not even a US officer, and now you're asking them to serve in an untried experiment, to a non-US officer who's fifty years older then they are. Screw chain of command, they're going to be resentful, and I don't want that."
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"Pass me.... hmmm. Funghiguo, it's mostly jungle?"
"You'd think so, but the Italians did a big reforestation project to replace the native foliage with Italian trees. It worked. Sort of." He pointed out the vegetation on a map. Funghiguo was a odd misshapen lump at the bottom of China, right above a large inland lake. Molly and the Commodore had commandeered the office of the personnel officer at Subic Base, and had driven the poor man to distraction by throwing all his files into piles of disarray. The unfortunate fellow had gone to sulk in the corner. Molly addressed him now:
"You don't happen to have any files on... Rangers, and Intelligence and Security officers, do you?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am?"
"Get me people who were Ranger trained, and then made the switch to Intel." the man blinked and then, utilizing some obscure filing system, went about gathering various folders, which ended up in a small pile in front of her. She flipped through them absently, gazing on the unusual faces attached by paper clips or staples. She suddenly paused on one, gave the file a more detailed look through and said:
"That one." Colby reached over and looked it over."
"You can't be serious. He's so young."
"I want him."
"He's only a second lietena-"
"Bump him."
"To Colonel? They'd tear me a new one if I asked for a Fantastic LT to be jumped five pay grades to Colonel, it's un-heard of!"
"But he's the one I want."
"Look, Moliere. The best I can do is a promotion to Captain. Once you're promoted, you could brevet him to Major, but anything past that and they'll eat you alive. They're going to bitch like crazy about the promotion as is, he's only served for three years. The other members of your staff are going to have conniptions, taking orders from a lower-ranking officer."
"Doesn't matter, Colby. They take my orders from me, and if he speaks with my voice, they're going to have to live with it."
"Why the hell do you want this kid? Do you know him or something?"
"I met him, once or twice. Long time ago. Never thought I'd find him again." She glanced at the picture, as a wave of memory crashed over her.
"Long time ago."

Firey the Angels bored.

Every few months, usually after re-watching Blade Runner, I feel driven, nay, inspired to have another go at Milton. Paradise Lost, considered one of the pinnacles of English epic poetry. The fall of Lucifer, the fall of man, rich mythological soil in which to reap masterworks of literature.

And Milton butchers it entirely. Oh, he has the decency to include the occasion good line, and in amongst the turgid verbal discharge that is shat across the page, one can occasionally find true, decent poetry. But ai, ai, ai, his verbage oozes in ink in column after column of the most unreadable rubbish. He cites everything and anything he can, whether it makes any sense to source them or not. Every king and god that worms it's way into Lucifer's fall just sucks all life from the poem. He is the king of the run-on sentence. He lords it over us, dragging out the poor syntax and damning the reading breath to a rarity normally found associated with Vermeers. I would rather read through the entire collected work of Bulwer-Lytton than have to read Paradise Lost.

Ugh. Milton, I shun thee. I consign your work to the undercrofts of ivory towers, to be perused only by the rare lost academician, who might note your oeuvre as a historical curiosity; the last breath of the Round Heads dying in rout and exile.

"Soun is noght but air ybroken,
And every speche that is spoken,
Loud or privee, foul or fair,
In his substaunce is but air;
For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke,
Right so soun is air ybroke."

The Prodigal Lover

On bent knee
My clothes wrent
My body wasted

On knee I return, bowed.

Far, far better

To serve, if nothing else.
Disinherited?

With that I can live,
If I can but serve.
It's enough.

My Love Affair with Diane Duane

I am finding it rather hard to write these days. Torn between a level of grief I have never before exsperienced, and the unimagiable stress of this year's end, I can barely write three snetences in a sitting. I want deeply to tell my story, but right now I am hobbled.

So I have returned to my love affair of Diane Duane, an author who...

Sorry, I'm far too tangental to write coherant sentences right now. Just, I love Diane Duane.

My itunes just shifted from It Seems To Me, a very poignant song of my father's about his divorce from my mother and his attempt to retain the trinity that is parents and child, even though the family has broken apart.... anyways, it just shifted It's A HArd Knock Life, from Annie. My brain is reeling.

I'm to bed, even though the rubber laytex fumes have rendered me sick to my stomach. Bloody props.

In alphabetical order, my top three authors:

Lois McMAster Bujold
Diane Duane
Terry Pratchett

A Paean for Pook

How can we
So superior in our intellect,
So high in our self-awareness
How can we really appreciate
The simple joy
Of a ball of fluff on a string?
A finger scratching on a box?
A paper bag
A Q-tip in the tub

All my words-
A vast collection
(My life's work)-
All these words fall ashen on my lips
When I try to explain the dignity
The nobility
The simple certainty of a humble fool.
No pretensions,
No arrogance.
Content to be himself;
A boy of very little brain,
But loving, caring,
Loved.
My God, how loved.
Grant him rest eternal, Lord,
And may perpetual light shine upon him
A place of warmth.
A place to nap.

If you want a vision of the future,
Imagine a big orange cat,
(His underside all in white).
Imagine a cat,
A foil ball at his side,
Content in the sun,
Forever.


Farewell.

Grr Props

This blog is on a slight hiatus (maybe) until Props is over and done with and bloody Pentheus is finis. Oy vhey....

CFRC

Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre

There is nothing I can say that would make that any less awe inspiring. I now know where I want to work when I grow up.