The Blue Candle Society

“I am a fine dirigitatator,” Enzo announced, staggering unsteadily to his feet. “I have diriged dirigibles all over the world.”

“Oh…thank…goodness,” the stewardess replied, looking over Enzo’s head with expression that mixed hopefulness and desperation. No one else claimed ability as a pilot, however, and after a moment she led us to the pilothouse, or whatever the name was for the place where the dirigible was piloted. I was tempted to stay in my seat, but I felt a certain amount of responsibility, given that Enzo and I shared a fraternity in our clandestine organization.

“How is that you find yourself without a pilot?” I asked as we made our way forward. Enzo’s lurching, staggering gait seemed to be making the stewardess nervous, and distracting her seemed a kind thing to do. “I would have thought you’d have two pilots, against the eventuality of one of them becoming incapacitated.”

“Yes, well…” the stewardess said as she opened the ornate brass-bound door.  Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Nightmare Engine of Doom Part 4 – Enzo’s Piloting Skills Are Tested’

Posted in Serials

It’s been a week alternately stressful and just plain busy, so I’m copping out with another Language Log Link (or a triple-L, as well call it in the blogging game).

I think you can look at the graphs they’ve put together, showing the trends in “sneaked” versus “snuck” from various sources and determine whether you are a descriptivist or prescripitivist.  If you say “Huh.  I guess I can say ‘snuck’ now, and you know, why not indeed?” – descriptivist.  If you recoil in horror and begin composing a letter to the Gaurdian – prescriptivist.

Posted in Grammar Gripery

Enzo tried to convince me that he’d had us board the wrong airship because of some sort of premonition, but I wasn’t particularly interested in his rationalizations. I was more concerned about whether the explosion of the Spirit of Ontario had had something to do with us. It would have been an extreme act, of course, for someone to sabotage a whole dirigible, killing who knows how many innocent bystanders, but our enemies had done worse. It would seem to imply that someone had not only sent a harpoon-wielding assassin, but blown up our conveyance as some sort of backup plan. Of course, the airship explosion could have been an accident, but more worrisome was the possibility that we’d been the target of two assassination attempts from separate enemies. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Nightmare Engine of Doom Part 3 – A Discussion of Serials’

Posted in Serials

Arcane magazine is going to become a yearly anthology rather than a quarterly magazine, and it looks like the old Arcane #1 will be re-issued as Arcane Sampler.  Naturally, this means that copies of the old version (with my pen name prominently displayed on the cover) will presumably end up being worth, I don’t know, let’s say hundreds of dollars each.  So I recommend grabbing a copy while you can still find them outside of ebay,

Posted in General writing things

This is pretty old, but I had to link to it eventually, given the convergence of HP Lovecraft and P Oswalt.  This is a busy week, so it seemed like a good time:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/av-club-taste-test-special-the-bowl-at-the-howling,2130/

Posted in Uncategorized

It wasn’t difficult to spot Enzo’s would-be assassin as he stood at the doorway of the lounge, steam hissing from the exhaust chambers of his personal harness recoiless harpoon launcher. There was a great deal of shouting from other patrons as they rushed for cover and the man in the doorway groped behind him where several more harpoons were strapped to his back.

Enzo, for all his braggadocio, did prove to be very quick, darting behind me in a flash even as he drew a pistol. He was also quite strong, I found, as one of his arms encircled my waist like a band of iron.

“Stop squirming,” he said, trying to draw a bead while peering past me.

“That harpoon will go right through both of us, you fool!” I shouted as I struggled to draw my own pistol and the harpooner worked a new missile into his launcher.

“Damn,” Enzo muttered. He evidently saw the futility of using me as a shield, however, releasing his hold so that we could scatter. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Nightmare Engine of Doom Part 2 – Mistakes Are Made’

Posted in Serials

This now famous incident is why I need an army of followers.  Also so I can just send Wil Wheaton an email and get a picture of him collating, should I want that.

Posted in Uncategorized

What is the deal with corporate mascot accents?  The Geiko Gecko thing was weird, when he went from a rather posh British accent (or maybe a sort of “Mid-Atlantic” accent at the very beginning when Kelsey Grammer voiced it) to sounding like he was plotting a heist in a Guy Ritchie movie.  I guess that is a warmer, more easy to relate to accent, but it was kind of jarring when the little bugger suddenly switched gears.  That was nothing compared to the Travelocity roaming gnome, though.  I get the rationale for using a garden gnome because of the whole “steal a garden gnome and send the owner pictures of it from all over the place” thing, but it was always a bit odd to have it speaking in what sounded like a parody of a plummy upper-class twit British accent.  The gnome in question is clearly one of the Huygen/Poortvliet Scandinavian variety, so if it is speaking with a stereotypical accent it should being saying “yumpin’ yimmeny” and so on.

The Classic "Gnomes"

Travelocity Gnome - See What I Mean?

But now, it too has gone to a Cockney accent, but in keeping with its original lack of subtly it has veered off into over the top music-hall style.  He doesn’t ever say “Gor blimey!” in the last commercial, but I’m sure it is only a matter of time.  I’m really hoping someone can explain all this to me.  The only potential upside that I can see is the possibility of these spokescreatures using rhyming slang at some point.  It would hardly make the commercials more incomprehensible, and it would make them more entertaining.

Posted in Uncategorized

I had been told than Enzo was a man who knew his business, but not that he was a stubby, vicious, ill-tempered sociopath, although I was to find this out soon enough. But perhaps I get ahead of myself.

I met him at the Boston’s new airship station, and my first sight of the short, bearded man was as he berated a bartender over the quality of a gin and tonic in the pre-flight lounge.

I waited nearby until his tirade had trailed off and the shaken bartender had left.

“Enzo?” I asked politely.

He whirled in his barstool, producing a massive knife from under his jacket, and only by dancing back a few steps did I avoid having my throat opened by a vicious cut. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Nightmare Engine of Doom Part 1 – A Meeting With Enzo’

Posted in Serials

This cartoon is a very concise explanation for why one has to be careful about grammar strictures.

Continue reading ‘Writing Concisely’

Posted in Grammar Gripery