Friday, July 17, 2009

No, I'm NOT Driving

I woke this morning to a phone call. It normally wouldn't strike as so odd if it weren't for the fact that nobody really calls me. Especially not at six-fifty in the morning. I'm blinking at my clock while rays of sunlight slash through the blinds before turning my head at the offensive noise. I hop, literally, from bed and bound up to the phone with a kind of perverse curiosity. I don't really register what the call display says and instead just answer it.

"Hello?" I ask. Surprisingly lucid, awake.

"Hey, do you have today off?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Want to drive to Canmore?"

Wait, what? Canmore? That's a four hours drive away at best, and there's nothing out there, really. Just a resort town in Alberta. Why in the hell would I want to drive there? Turns out it's my mom calling. She wants to know if I'd drive a woman's vehicle to Canmore because she doesn't want to drive through the Rockies. Too scary for her, what with all the winding roads. Woman is from Saskatchewan, where there aren't any corners... I tell my mom that that is crazy. And that even though it's my day off, it is my ONLY day off. It's back to work tomorrow. I want to get errands done, nevermind seeing the latest Harry Potter movie tonight (more on that in a moment). The plan proposed was that I drive the woman's truck, the woman in question takes the bus, and my sister follows behind me in the truck so that we can make a quick turn-around after it's all said and done. Best estimates of time is eight hours there and back. Like I said before, crazy. And definitely not happening. My sister, on the other hand, took up the offer. It paid two hundred dollars. Can't fault her for wanting the money -- unlike me, she's broke. But still, not something I'd do.

As for the Harry Potter movie. It was good. At least, the parts I wasn't making fun of and nearly getting kicked out of the theater for were good.

The Irony

I work at a coffee shop. I'm allergic to caffeine. No, the irony isn't lost on me.

Friday, July 03, 2009

The Art of the Internal

Internal monologue is something used in writing to convey the feelings, impressions, and mental state of a character we're reading about. It lets us know more intimately those characters, what their emotional context is given a specific situation, and why they are acting in a given way to that situation. However, in dueling, while internal monologue is a good tool for fleshing out your character, it is a poor tool in a duel. And like any tool, while some are good for specific jobs, this one is not meant truly for the arena of forum dueling. It doesn't convey the action, does not give a sense of what is happening, only what is happening internally in the mind of one character.

Dueling has and always will be a battle of wills. It is both an internal and an external struggle between two fictitious characters. But when internal monologue overshadows the action and combat and the necessary components to describe that, then it has gone too far. While I understand some people's need to constantly reference their own characters, those character's feelings and mental state, it should not interfere with the action itself. Attacks suffer when too little effort is spent to properly flesh them out; the same goes for defenses or even counters to incoming attacks. No attention to detail in regards to the core of dueling, the action, and the duel as a whole suffers for it.

While attention does need to be paid toward the setting, in relation to the area, locale, and local flavor, it should be enough that all persons involved understand just where they are, what is going on, and if there are extra naunces they should be made aware of. The same goes for attacks, defenses and counters; enough information described clearly and concisely to get the point across without seeming redundant. Singular sentences of what is happening can sometimes do it, such as "threw a punch for the face," but not always if the series of actions is far more complex. A complete list of the chain of events needs to take place instead of a Deus Ex Machina-mentality where internal thoughts take precedence followed by a Mormanistic "and then it happened."

Thursday, July 02, 2009

It's a Zombie Rush!

So, I've equated working in the service industry to being like a zombie movie. Instead of saying "brains" it's "coffee." And, when there's a lull, it's like that point in the movie where the person says it's "too quiet," then a zombie comes around and kills them. Time to reload, boys! The hordes just around the corner ready to come again.