Topeka Me

This was one of the best April Fool's gags in a long time. heh

That Thing You Write - Bildungsroman

6. Bildungsroman - "A bildungsroman is a novel that traces the development of a character from childhood to adulthood, through a quest for identity that leads him or her to maturity. The term bildungsroman comes from the German for formation novel, or education novel." (Ginny Wiehardt)

Within the gist of a story and its many plots, the peeling away of a character's many onion layers to get to his or her soul is the most tantalizing part of all. And often the most difficult thing for many writers to grasp hold of. Without the glimpses into history, without the circumstantial molding and shaping into specific flaws or graces, it is almost impossible for an audience to connect to the character's humanity. We're just nosy creatures by nature. And in storytelling, it is essential for the writer to sate the nosy needs of an audience.

I think perhaps the most compelling example for a bildungsroman is "Sybil," the 1973 book by Flora Rheta Schreiber. And while it doesn't exactly follow the chronology of passing from childhood into adulthood, it does indeed paint a vivid, circumstantial portrait detailing all the reasons behind the main character's bizarre behavior. I was eleven when I read that book, and to this day I distinctly remember a choking sensation over this woman's harrowing childhood experiences. It has stayed with me and left enough of a lasting impression that I don't think I could read the book again.

What else is the bildungsroman for, if not to draw an audience into the heart and soul of a character, and leave a lasting impression?

In a Flash - Gone

So after a couple of days wondering how in the hell someone just presses the delete button without any warning or provocation, and shoves several thousand posted submissions into the irretrievable waste basket of electronic purging, I've finally just taken a deep breath and let it go. I thought it impossible to rationalize such a thing, that someone could possibly have that little respect for the work of others.. or that little respect for the medium, period. It baffled me two days ago.. to the point that I lost sleep over it. (Eh, but I lose sleep over just about everything. Welcome to the world of a chronic insomniac). And it still baffles me.

But it isn't like I've never lost precious pieces of myself to the electronic void over the last thirteen years. I have. I've even lost countless works of mine in hard copy format over the years during my many cross country moves. I was born with a wander lust. I have always traveled lightly, picking up at the drop of a hat, and leaving anything behind that I could not carry. I have also been guilty of pushing that delete button on numerous of my own manuscripts, flushing things away into ozone of cyber space. Things that, sadly, I can never reclaim.

It hurts. I'm attached at the hip to my own writing, and in a very personal and intimate way. It is almost narcissistic.

I'm wondering if I even want to sign on to the internet anymore; if there are not countless better things to do with my time. There's a chair over there in the corner with my name on it, collecting dust. It's a chair that faces an archived stack of scattered notes, big and small, written on anything and everything from sticky post-its to matchbook covers, to cash register receipts. It's a composite of the past when a package of disposable pens, (Papermate Write Bros. medium point, because Bic pens with their faceted edges sucked), a bookshelf filled with dictionaries and reference volumes, and a library that stayed open late were all you needed.

That chair over there in the corner is looking better and better to me with each passing day. And believe me when I say this: If I go over there and dust it off, I will get lost.. just like I did in the good old days. And I won't be coming back again.

That Thing You Write - Avant-garde

5. Avant-garde - from a French term originally referring to the vanguard of the army.

The term was extended beginning in the late 19th century to describe movements in art and literature that call for experimentation and revolt against tradition.

"Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the Situationists, to postmodern artists such as the Language poets." Wikipedia

While I don't often think of literature in terms of avant-garde, I will say this in deference to one extraordinary beat poet: His poem Howl left me breathless, and for very personal reasons that struck a deep chord inside of me when a college literary professor of mine had noted on the margin of one of my essays that it was "written in the spirit of Ginsberg's Howl."

Certainly I am no Allen Ginsberg. But when I finally read this poem many, many years after leaving college, I was spellbound. Spellbound that anyone would compare my work to his.


So, here is my one shining example of literary avant-garde, courtesy of Allen Ginsberg's Howl:



I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and thingy and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills of Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be f*u*c*ked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom.
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate thingy and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, thingysman and Adonis of Denver--joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to the each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts
who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and
who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 a.m. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination--
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time--
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

Anton

The Marquis De Merteuil is just over six feet tall. He has dark brown hair and dark eyes, a light smattering of facial hair, and a small cleft in his chin. Most would simply describe the man's appearance as intimidating. And they are probably very accurate.

His personality may be summed up in a nutshell as intense and multi-faceted. The Marquis Anton Guillaume de Merteuil is a nobleman by birth, and of high rank in the royal courts. Despite a life of ease and wealth, he is driven to push himself and everyone around him far beyond the mark of excellence. He never forgets a trespass, and never forgives a debt. His arrogance precedes him. His enemies fear him. And his own countrymen are glad that he has traveled far from home, taking his iron fist rigidity with him. Unknown to most, including his wife and immediate family -- Anton is quite the hedonist, sporting a sadistic streak a mile wide. There is a fine line betwixt love and hate. The Marquis Anton Guillaume de Merteuil completely obliterates it.

He is fond of torturing the masses in his public life, while harrowing the more desperate souls in private. Ironically, he is a wonderful husband and father.. though quite strict.

He likes: Power. Inflicting pain, both physical and mental. Strict order and routine. Absolute control.

He dislikes: Chaos. Boredom. Hunger. People whose spirits break too easily. The word "No."

Anton has a wife and four young children. He lives a double life, keeping countless liaisons discretely in the shadows -- some of which are lovers, and some of which who simply crave discipline at the hands of an exacting nobleman. More than two-thirds of the sovereign province of Angoulême's peasantry wishes he were dead. Needless to say, he will not be back home for quite awhile.

The Marquis Anton Guillaume de Merteuil left his father's home once he reached the age of consent, seeking out his own entitlements and prestige through hard work and tenacity. Within a year he married a young noble lady from the House of Créquy, fathering four children as well as securing his own rank within the royal courts. He successfully led a political faction for several years that only recently threatened to topple the delicate balance between wealthy land owners and the local peasantry by decreeing unusually stiff tax levies upon the poor. Needless to say, the insurgent peasants revolted.. leading to one of the bloodiest civil wars in all of Angoulême's thousand year history, and the hanging deaths of more than five hundred serfs believed to have instigated the riots.

Exactly one year after the dust and peace resettled over the the sovereign province of Angoulême, the Marquis Anton Guillaume de Merteuil grew restless with little else to conquer and subject to his iron-fisted political despotism. He journeys far from home, leaving behind his wife and family.. seeking out new exploits and conquests. He has heard rumors of the kingdom he journeys to. Wicked rumors.

He comes to see whether or not there is any truth in them.

---------------

A horse-drawn coach pulled away, heading back to the nearby village, and in its wake two men were left standing there by the roadside. They exchanged something between them from hand to hand, before one turned and led the way toward the castle. The other, obviously a subordinate, followed behind, keeping up with the brisk pace. 'Twas only when they reached the grand doors, that the lesser fellow was allowed to step ahead and announce the name of his superior to a doorman.

"The Marquis de Merteuil," was the name called above the din of noise within. It was crowded, as if the Queen and her son, the Prince were hosting some sort of lavish event, replete with live party favors on display for all to see and admire. Anton did not know the Queen, and neither did he know her son. Nor had any formal invitation been extended to him all the way to the sovereign province of Angoulême. Yet on a self-imposed exile from his homeland, coming here had been the most obvious and logical choice due to the dark and wicked rumors whispered amongst those of his own debauched inner circles.

Once inside, Anton gave over his coat and hat to the other fellow with whom he'd arrived, only to lean aside and whisper into the man's ear.

"Stay close, Lothair."

"Oui, Chevalier," the other fellow whispered back, giving a slight nod of his head in deference to his superior. Lothair was neither slave nor servant, but merely subordinate to such a high ranking dignitary of Angoulême's royal courts, and least likely to look any of them directly in the eye when conducting business. Insomuch as Lothair was paid handsomely to accompany Anton to a distant kingdom, he would as soon prefer to return home again to his own wife and family. For unlike the Marquis Anton Guillaume de Merteuil, Lothair actually missed his family.

Soon enough they would be mingling in the pleasant crowd of folks with Anton leading the way and his hired gentleman following close at his heel, bearing the man's coat and hat upon his arm. Anton exchanged several cordial glances of acknowledgment with various souls, though rarely ever to any of the eye-candy upon display. No.. it was the Queen herself he'd be keeping an eye out for. Why start at the bottom, when the top would suffice, after all? And yes.. he was just that arrogant.

---------------

After quite some time it seemed the queen was either being fashionably late, or simply not showing up to the party at all. Pity that. But as Anton continued to mingle for appearances' sake, he eventually came across a red haired woman standing near her chair with a slave kneeling nearby. Lothair held back more than an arm's distance with his eyes down, so that none would suspect the two men were friends.. or even peers. Their classes were miles apart.

Anton tipped his head slightly and offered a brief, cordial smile to the woman.. whom he'd not readily suspected as somewhat blind. Her eyes didn't do that strange, random uncontrollable roaming that the eyes of someone born blind did.

"Pardonnez-moi," the Marquis spoke rather discretely to her. "But I wonder if you could point the way to the privy."

He held a white handkerchief right up to his mouth and coughed into it before tucking it away again. The trip had been a rather long and arduous one, and it seemed to him suddenly stifling in the grand hall with so many people crowding. Everything soon began to take its toll. The Marquis decided, too, that he and Lothair might not be staying too long.. for he was anxious to head back into the small, provençial town where he'd already rented a fine room in one of several inns. The downside was, he'd arranged for his coach to return at a specific hour of the night. And now his plans seemed to be changing.

Lothair stuffed a hand down into his coat pocket after following his superior's conversation, where he fingered a small paper packet containing a powdered mixture that had been prepared by an apothecary back in the sovereign province of Angoulême. It was only one of several identical packets.. though the medicinal value of each was somewhat questionable.

Anton never looked back at his subordinate, but merely snapped his fingers off to the side as he prepared to follow the woman's directions. Or better yet.. maybe she would simply lead the way. She wasn't the least bit unpleasant to look upon, afterall. And he'd run out of idle chit chat for Lothair, already bored to tears by the fellow's presence. But then again, The Marquis Anton Guillaume de Merteuil was easily bored by a lot of things, and Lothair never took it personally. There was a name for people like Anton. And not a very nice one at that.


Patrick S. © 2010

Crawling Into O Space

"Love has its excremental component, and this, along with the more wholesome diet, has to be consumed." Thomas Moore


Not as a journal or a diary, but as a love letter to the one from whom the author drew both challenge and inspiration comes Histoire d'O. He admired the Marquis de Sade, stating that a woman could not be capable of writing literature of such a genre. She capitulated to the challenge. And with relish. Sharing in both the same criticisms and accolades as the Marquis did more than one hundred, fifty years prior.

On a more subtle note however, I was, after reading literature from both authors, persuaded by Anne Desclos, also known as Pauline Réage.. that she was by far the better writer of the two. Her tale transcended the vulgarities of degradation and humiliation with something the Marquis de Sade's published works lacked -- the ability to suck the reading audience into the heart and soul of the protagonist and move them to feel something for her.

From a textbook standpoint, neither writer out-shined the other with more elaborately constructed sentences. Neither delved between the pages of a thesaurus more than the other to dish out little Purple obscurities. Add to the slush pile of authors trying their hands at sado-masochistic smut, A. N. Roquelaure -- better known as Anne Rice -- with her Sleeping Beauty series. From a textbook standpoint, she too, fared neither better nor worse.

Anyone can compose grammatically correct sentences straight out of a textbook, and whip out a thesaurus to find really obscure synonyms to make them extra Purple. Anyone can write smut.
A n y o n e. But only the pen stroke of brilliance can evoke an emotional response from a reading audience, smut notwithstanding. This is my challenge to you: Give me passion. Make me feel what you write. And I will reciprocate. I will write anything with anyone daring enough to accept.

& n b s p ; - The Doomsday Tag

It's hard to believe how quickly and thoroughly the "Information Superhighway" and the World-Wide-Web have become integrated into the daily lives of the general public. Two decades ago, few people outside of universities and the information technology industry had even heard of the Internet, but today people depend on it for everything from news, weather, and entertainment to doing their homework, filing their tax returns, and buying the basic necessities of life.

Depending on anything to that extent is dangerous, and the failure or collapse of the Internet and the World Wide Web would be catastrophic for the entire civilized world.

Couldn't happen, you say? Think I'm just another fear-mongering, nutcase net-kook? Well, before you click that [back] button and revel in your false sense of security, take a look at this graph:

If that's not enough to convince you by itself, let me point out that it's a graph of the increasing volume of traffic on the internet, now dominated almost entirely by the transmission of web-based information.

So far, technological advances have been able to keep pace with this ever-increasing need for information flow. But this could change--even as we speak, there's another, as yet unexplained fellow-traveler that's taking up an ever greater proportion of this bandwidth. Its purpose remains unknown, but it does not appear to be of human origin and its content is not information that is of use to or meaningful to humans.

And yet, every single day, it devours an even larger share of the total internet bandwidth.

As recently as ten years ago, no reported observances of the strange code & n b s p ; appeared in the traffic on the "information superhighway." Today it is already taking up a substantial portion of the total internet bandwidth and it appears to propagate by "infecting" webpages in a virus-like or cancer-like manner, spreading throughout its victim, crowding out or replacing the readable text content that had originally occupied the formerly healthy page.

In the most advanced cases, infected pages may have had nearly all their text replaced by the & n b s p ; virus, leaving nothing but a vestigial "under construction" or "coming soon" sign.

A survey of randomly selected webpages showed that those infected by the virus typically had 10% to 30% of their total bytes consisting of multiple & n b s p ; tags. Web browsers will not normally display these tags, so when an unsuspecting reader loads up an infected page, he or she will probably notice nothing more than what appears to be a slower internet connection--hardly an unusual experience in this day and age.

& n b s p ;'s exact method for infecting pages has not yet been discovered. Whether it is transmitted through a network connection, between pages sharing the same host, or through unprotected cybersex is uncertain. What is certain is that it is spreading rapidly throughout the World Wide Web. If current trends continue (see graph below), within six years, over 99% of network traffic will consist entirely of & n b s p ;s and surfers on the information superhighway will find themselves waiting as long for pages to load as real-life surfers have to wait for a decent whitecap to come rolling up I-85.





The virus-like manner in which & n b s p ;s replicate and spread looks threatening enough, and for now they appear to do nothing more than take up space on the information superhighway while they freely use our precious communications infrastructure to travel around the world for their own, as yet unknown, ends.

Can we really count on them always remaining silent, though? As described above, they typically make up 10-30% of infected pages; that means that regardless of how widespread they may be, they're still in the minority. What happens when they become the majority? Will they then "activate" like a human virus that first establishes a foothold in its victim and only then starts causing symptoms? Could & n b s p ; turn out to be Ebola for computers?

What is the real purpose behind this & n b s p ; invasion? We already know that it's dangerous, quite likely the single greatest threat to our technological society.

Frighteningly, we simply don't know. Whether it's part of some long-reaching terrorist scheme to disrupt global communications, or the beginnings of an all-out invasion by a hostile alien race, the odds are that by the time we do figure it out, it will already be too late.

As a concerned citizen, what can you do to prevent the destruction of the internet? Regularly check your own web pages and those you visit to see if they've become infected; most browsers include a "view source" option that lets you do this easily.

Write letters to your local paper and your congressman demanding that this crisis be dealt with immediately, and watch carefully for any changes in your computer's operation and performance that might be caused by & n b s p ; infection. Check the computers of family members and friends to make sure that they have not become unwitting dupes of the & n b s p ; invasion. If you observe any signs that they might be under & n b s p ; control, take no chances; get to a phone as quickly as possible without arousing their suspicions and report them and their computers to the authorities immediately.

& n b s p ;'s ever-tightening grip on our precious information superhighway means that immediate action is vital. It is only by working together to fight this menace that we have any hope of saving our technological way of life.

& n b s p ; - The Doomsday Tag's Ten Year Anniversary
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED.
The Unnatural Enquirer, © 2000 by Trygve Lode (trygve@trygve.com)

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar

Hmm.. you get the picture?

Leave the personal stuff out of the stories. Nothing ruins them faster.

Morning After A Second Wake

A church, centuries old in its rugged architecture and grey, gothic spires, stands atop a hillside overlooking a quaint little town below all nestled in the surrounding horseshoe foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Behind the cathedral's spires, the first rays of morning light bloom in a myriad of pastel colors.. bringing the first of yawns to the wintry, frozen town below.

Just past the open sanctuary was a small door, so small that a priest must bend over to pass its threshold, that stood ajar. Beyond it, one of the clergy leaned over a small basin stand and washed his hands of the dirt that clung to them. He was getting on in years, soon to reach his retirement from officiating services.. as nights like the last only served to remind him. One of the fold had been lost to the darkness, following her shock and abject trajectory from an opened grave site.

A common ritual that marked the fifth anniversary of one deceased.. the grave was dug up, the coffin pried open from rusted nails that had kept it shut.. and the corpse examined by several of the town's council and at least one officiating priest.

Father Aleksei turned and dried his hands on a small clean towel before kissing the white satin mantel he would soon don as part of his ritual morning dressing. And afterward he bent over to emerge through the rectory door again and into the large sanctuary where already the sun's morning rays splintered into colorful fragments by the stained glass windows. The first psalter of incense was lit and swung three times, back and forth before the altar.. then rehung from it's nearby iron sconce. Like every morning at sunrise, he prepared for the first mass of the day.. for those most faithful Orthodox parishioners of the town below. Unlike the Catholics though, communion was not feasted upon with each mass.. but rather reserved for the Christian equivalent of the Pesach holiday. Neither did they believe in the transfiguration of wafer and wine into the body and blood of their Lord.. for such was an affront to all that was holy.
It smacked of vampirism to those of the Orthodox Church.

Father Aleksei crossed himself and whispered the final rite of prayer before he turned to await his early morning flock.

In all his seventy-five years he had never once officiated over the exhumation of a corpse and found a fattened, blood sucking monstrosity laying in its place. Many times over the decades he had wondered whether such myths even held any truth in them. But there were always the whispers and the beliefs.. a friend of a friend who'd heard tale of unearthing a fetid vampire suspected of terrorizing the folk of any given town. But not here. Not in this peaceful little provinçial town all nestled in the heart of Carpathian Mountain foothills. Last night proved no exception either.. on the fifth anniversary of Gavriil Kinski's untimely death.

Just as he had expected, the corpse.. was just a corpse. The skeletal remains of bone and dust, withered away beneath shreds of disintegrated clothing. Nothing more. Nothing upon which any ghastly abominations need be performed. There was no smashing of the skull with a sledgehammer. No pounding of stakes through its center to pin it to the ground. And no incineration of its blood-filled vital parts, so that its ashes might be mixed into flour cakes and consumed by the living to ward off the vampire. He was simply reburied with quiet dignity.

"God be with you," he said quietly to the young lady who had entered and seated herself in a pew.

That Thing You Write - Antagonist

3. Antagonist - sometimes referred to as the villain, the bad guy, or nemesis, this is the character who opposes the protagonist or hero. The antagonist is the necessary element which provides a story's conflict.

The Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert for example, in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, is an evil nemesis from beginning to end, while Cedric the Saxon's character plays only minor antagonism to the hero, Wilfred of Ivanhoe.

Sometimes the antagonist is not always so clear cut, such as when the perceived villain turns out to be other than what the writer originally made you believe about him. The Harry Potter novels are filled with delightful, shady flip flops between character tendencies toward hero and villain, designed to keep an audience guessing and always surprised.

Also, the antagonist does not always have to be an actual character, but is sometimes just a force which works against the hero in the tale, such as a rash of bad luck, a severe storm, etc.

That Thing You Write - Allusion

2. Allusion - Within one literary work, it is the practice of making reference to another work, such as a film, a work of art, a book or novel, or even a real event. While allusions may be used to draw upon the collective understanding between writer and audience, they do occasionally run the risk of alienating those in an audience who have no familiarity with what has been alluded to.


One of my favorite allusions is a reference from To Kill A Mockingbird, which comes from the movie Benny & Joon. After Benny discloses to Sam that Joon suffers from chronic schizophrenia, Sam sneaks down to the kitchen, staring at Joon from the stairwell. After spying him from the corner of her eye, Joon asks him: "Having a Boo Radley moment, are we?"

Of course, for someone who has never seen or read To Kill A Mockingbird, this line would not be obvious in drawing reference between Sam's blank stares and Boo Radley's blank stares.

That Thing You Write - Alliteration

Coming up:
A list of fifty-three commonly used terms used by writers of fiction.


1. Alliteration - the use of repetitious consonant sounds in a verse or sentence, more commonly used in poetry, but many fiction writers sometimes make use of it (sometimes without even realizing it) to convey rhythmic styles in narrative or dialogue, place emphasis on certain mental imagery -- or for humorous effects.

Most often the use of alliteration will strike a chord in the flow of speech and literature, giving it a comforting sound or rhythm. Such as in Shakespeare's Sonnet XXX:
"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought...."

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream:
"Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
He bravely breach'd his boiling bloody breast."

Robert Browning's A Grammarian's Funeral:
"No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning?"


And of course some extreme and rather humorous examples of repetitive consonants for example:
A big black bug bit a big black bear and made the big black bear bleed blood.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
She sells seashells by the seashore.

Drop Dead Fred

Yeah, it gets the watermark every few minutes. Came out kind of cool, though. I spliced the entire movie up into nine equal 10-minute segments and one 7-minute segment.

Not going to post the rest of them here, though. Sorry.

A New Look For Eddie

I wanted to go for something that would adequately show the truer age of this character, and fortunately the fellow I chose is no longer the twenty-five year old bass player for Guns -n- Roses.

Worked out rather nice. And once again I found this marvy photo with TONS of red shit in the background that had to come out. Not an easy chore when the photo's subject is blonde.

Just like the previous image set, large chunks of his hair had to be literally cut from the image and redrawn with paintbrushes.

A little work there, but I was pleased with the colorful neon motion that the new background image supplied. It transformed the whole feel of the photo from tired looking.. to almost amphetamine rave.

Visually Enhancing PBs

About a year and a half ago when I created this character of Eddie with his notorious sunny disposition and moral righteousness, he was also the proud recipient of one of my first attempts at creating a Photoshop graphic that animated paintbrushes, rather than a series of movie stills.

So the first chore, (and I seem to have a habit of always finding images with a ton of bright red crap that needs to be fixed!), was to remove the big red text splattered right over the main part of the picture. No cropping on this one, since it was already badly cropped on the right side to begin with!

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So the second image wound up on Eddie's profile page for about a year until the story was moved over to The Storyteller's TriQuetra. Back then I had not yet discovered the value of saving my psd files after the finished product, and when the little space on the graphic for a scrollbox was no longer a necessary component of the character's profile, it was not a matter of simply going into Photoshop and removing that layer with the click of a button. It was more like.. starting all over from scratch.

And there you have the last, final result from this particular animated graphic on the third image. There are still a ton of flaws, and I'm definitely not a Photoshop professional. So, please.. keep the chuckles down under your breath.

The Death Of A Whore

Search yourselves cunningly, I pray you, analysing your inmost thoughts. And first you shall discard all those gross obvious hindrances to your Will: idleness, foolish friendships, waste employments or enjoyments, I will not enumerate the conspirators against the welfare of your State.
(Aleister Crowley)

It is an insignificant town that sits at the foothills of the Heroesbane Range, so insignificant that I do not recall its name. Nevertheless it brims with an age-old profession wherein painted women lurk about the Inns in search of lonely travelers with whom they might grant a sexual favor in exchange for a bit of bread.. or perhaps a coin. And while the town remains nameless in my mind, the whore does not.

I was accosted by more than a few before I relented and allowed one to capture my eyes and my attention. Evelyn. I suspected that at one time, she must have been very pretty. Long before the ravages and usury of time had caught up to her. For now, her smile is sad and her eyes filled with a hollowness. And I pity this woman, who for a piece of bread was willing to spread open wide and bare her very soul to me.. a stranger.

As for me, I cannot defile her. Not like that.

Yet she assured me she was quite willing to succumb to any secret proclivity, no matter how vile.. for the right price. And I am sure she has seen more than her share in her lifetime.

But I shall not take what is precious from her. I shall not know her in such a carnal manner. Though I doubt she was aware of this before she breathed her last and fell backward upon me, bathing me in the warm succor of her sacrifice.

And for this, I kissed her upon her cold brow as a father might. And I left her several coins for her passage into the next life. May she fare better than she did in this one.

A chapter from The Necromancer's Handbook
as played out in an excerpt from the story Vale Of The Enclave:





Find many more great stories on The TriQuetra dot Net,
and either join one today, or...
bring YOUR OWN story to our fabulous collection!

Sleeping With Eddie

(Selection from Ugly Vegas)

Eddie's voice cut to the quick and with a hushed gasp, the Baroness looks to its source. The doorway.. So he'd either been watching all along or he came moseying by at the end to show good 'ole Rudy the door. Like the delivery man, Lara feels guilty, kneeling there, her lips shiny with another man's ejaculate. Guilty that she'd crumbled so easily to the will of not the lesser man but of Eddie. She licks slowly at the sore spots on her mouth but doesn't get up from her kneel.

"Is it because I've been with so many men.. that you don't want me?" No blow jobs because her mouth is a dumping ground. No sex for the same reason. Maybe that's why Quist is as stand-offish as he is.. and why he prefers to merely watch her take on man after man.

Gone in Sixty Seconds. Rudy dashed from the penthouse suite without ever looking back, leaving the blonde foreign bitch and the Vegas Snowman to their lonesome once again. Eddie remained there in the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest as he stared down at Lara on the bedroom floor as she seemed once again to beg something from him. The girl wanted.. to be wanted. Wanted by him, no less. And yet he remained there, staring down at her with the same stony, passionless expression all the while. Gone were the shits and grins from his previous egging of Rudy the clothing delivery guy. And what seemed a fun game, was now quite over.

It was amusing the way a broad concluded her worthlessness if she got rejected the least little bit. And here this bitch, Lara Mortonmere could have any dick she wanted. Any dick at all. Eddie didn't answer her. His mood seemed to have changed a bit in the past half hour or so.

Lara doesn't do well to be stared at. Her hopeful expression falters as her eyes seek solace in a stare to the carpet, down and away from Eddie. She's a vision. Honey skin, long blonde hair, features that make a man's mouth water but he makes her feel like soap scum ringing a neglected bath tub. He wasn't going to answer. Or maybe he didn't need to but with a clipped nod, she at last rises from her subservient kneel to look about for something to where. None of her clothes await her in the bed room.. she'd shed them prior to her arrival here so with a barely audible sigh, she tries to edge past Eddie, trying to hug the wall opposite from him so she wouldn't be the added spark to his powder keg. His silences frightened her.

Eddie stuck his leg out there inside the door's frame, refusing to grant her passage to the other side, still garbed in a filthy pair of Levis that he'd never bothered to zip up.. ever since Rudy had entered their suite to deliver clothes. His tip far more generous than the twenty bill Lara had originally intended to give him -- two sips off a spilled beer and a blow job.

"Go to bed, Baby Doll," he finally broke his silence at last.

Blocked from passing, her dark eyes fly to his face.. but seeing no fury edged there in sharp relief, Lara allows herself a shaky breath. All that was in her wanted to slide her hand down the exposed patch of flesh between the flaps of his jeans, to make him happy.. and liking her better but touching Eddie could spell disaster. With a bite to her bottom lip, she brushes her fingertips over denim alone, one of those flaps batted away from his stomach to better the view. She's in love with Quist.. in her own way. In their own way.

"Yes, Eddie.." she whispers, retreating from him to pad back over to one side of the bed. Obediently she slides beneath the covers, turning down his side.. in case he wished to follow.

Eddie kind of liked the broad. Funny that. For the man didn't much like anyone at all. That is not to say he disliked anyone. e was simply indifferent.. to the whole human race. A social pariah who could easily enough turn on the charm and pretense, in order to get what he wanted. Until the scene was over. He'd not endure a close relationship for any other reason, than to gain something for himself. He'd tolerated Rudy just long enough.. not so much to sate his penchant for voyeurism, but perhaps to sate the hungry whore, Lara. Who seemed.. insatiable. Look at her! Still wanting something more.

Eddie remained there, standing in the doorway with both arms folded over his chest for several minutes after the broad turned back and crawled into the big, king-sized bed. It seemed he might have been contemplating leaving.. the way his jaw twitched once or twice.

"Don't go.. stay.." She whispers. No longer reclining with her head on the pillow, Lara lifted up to gently pat the spot beside her, straightening the pillow slightly. He hadn't followed and the Baroness can sense she is about to lose him to beer and the boob tube.

"I could rub your back, Eddie. Or .. we can just sleep. When was the last time we slept?"

Together they'd been awake for more than one day, possibly two. The past hours bled together and she wasn't sure what day it was. And she should be more worried about the American police and that lech, Carlo whatever, but right now, she only wants Eddie Quist to like her. Just a little. Especially after Rudy.. because for some reason or another, Lara is sure that whole episode is all her fault. She'd failed some test. She should have said no.

She ought to be crashing soon enough after her last hit of coke -- especially after the three-day no-sleep marathon. And whether the insatiable little crack whore realized it or not, Edward Quist meant to take care of her needs. Food, sleep, sexual gratification in one way or another, and permission to use the crapper any damn time she needed. The bare essentials for survival. What was odd.. was that he cared at all. Eddie could just as easily crash out on the couch in front of the tv, and seemed to have every intention of doing so. That is until she rose up and gave a pat to the fluffy king-sized pillow in its crisp white linen case.

His arms unfolded and at last he pushed himself from the door frame and right into the bedroom. Near the bed he turned his back to her and tugged his filthy Levis right off. They were stiff enough almost to stand there on their own -- and even walk away. And right afterward, Eddie sat down on the edge of the bed with his back to Lara, and stared out at the glittering neon Vegas panorama out the large bay window. He hadn't slept.. since he met the bitch.

"Been days," he said quietly.

In her own right, Lara plays a little hard ball. The sheet does lovely things to her beautifully full breasts, sliding down their firm, tawny slopes to catch for a breathless moment at her nipples before falling away to her lap. She crosses her long legs when he approaches, turning towards him to ever-so gently run her hand down his back. It is soothing, not sexual for his words bring it home how bloody weather-worn they are. She doesn't say anything more, worried she might topple the precariously balanced apple cart and screw herself out of this tiny concession. She gets to rub his back. First only one handed and tentatively at that.. but finally Lara gathers her legs beneath her to kneel naked behind him. She feels something.. a connection. It stands out from the pleasant buzz in her head. Eddie needs her. He wouldn't hit her.. or get angry if he didn't feel something. She runs her hands over him slowly sometimes going as high as the back of his neck, sometimes as far as the ends of his shoulders.

Eddie didn't writhe or twist the way most would do under such a slow caress of hands. Instead he sat there motionless.. lost in some kind of daze in his own world where none were privy to enter. And for several minutes he simply tolerated the woman's closeness; didn't shove her away. Then after a particular long and silent spell, he asked very quietly:

"Why'd you suck him?"

One would think that question would be a shocker but Lara is either too tired to feel that emotion or she saw it coming. So how to answer it? She stares at his shoulder in thought, making tiny figure eights on his warm warm skin.

"At first.. because you wanted me to, Eddie." His shared wink.. his offering her up like his own little complimentary gift. It had made her feel good to be considered his property, even if that later waned.

Cock sucking seemed such a selfless act; nothing at all in it for the one who knelt and sucked. It was the purest act of giving from bitch to alpha.. and one he'd seen plenty of in all his years behind bars in the Leavenworth federal penitentiary. So why had she chosen the subservient cock-sucking when she could have had herself a nice fuck between the legs, replete with kisses and hugs and shit? When it seemed Lara hadn't gotten the gist of his question, he turned his head aside and glanced back at her with a stretch from the corners of his eyes.

"Why didn't you just let him fuck you, instead?" He laid his hand down right atop the broad's knee.

Lara frowns slightly and when the pretty lady frowns, her lips pooch out in a lovely pout.

"Because.. I wanted someone else."

Women were finicky like that. Even whores could go strange and prefer the man who got them hot and bothered in the first place to sate them. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered and she might've richly enjoyed riding Rudy's thick prong but not when Eddie wasn't her lover too. The fact he hadn't taken the plunge -- but wasn't adverse to doing so with other women, aka that despot bitch, Rebecca -- made Lara feel like she wasn't good enough. And it also made him three thousand times more alluring. Lara wanted what she cannot have.

"Did I do bad by not fucking him? I thought you wanted me to make him happy, Eddie.. I'm sorry.."

Lara was given a glimpse inside. Just a mere glimpse where she was no longer the outsider, but the third wheel Rudy was instead. Rudy had been the set-up, afterall. The one meant to put on a show and perform; the one meant to be useful and butter up a hungry whore's cunt.

"Don't be suckin' dicks no more, Baby Doll." Eddie squeezed her knee, deciding right then and there that he didn't like the broad suckin' the dicks of johns.

"I don't want you doin' that." And that was that. Though interestingly enough, he'd tolerated her sucking his own flaccid cock right before Rudy had arrived with his delivery of clothes. But.. that was different. Lara was his bitch.

Eddie pushed her knee aside and finally laid himself down on the bed, stretching out flat while staring up at the ceiling.

But. .but.. he'd insisted she suck the cabbie's dick! He was going to beat her black and blue if she did not and by his own admission Eddie had richly enjoyed playing voyeur to her oral skills. Lara doesn't argue with him though, she only nods while trying her best to use her tongue as a squee-gee and get rid all the remnants of Rudy's cum out of her mouth. Eddie didn't like what she did, even if the delivery man sure did.

"I promise.. I won't any more," she whispers, moving aside when it appears he wants to stretch down on the soft coverlet. She runs her nails up and down his nearest arm, studying the many tattoos that cover it as well as his shoulder.

The felon could change his mind on a dime, and very often did without a hint of warning, either. Whatever went through his head, his own logic, his own warped perceptions.. he wasn't much for sharing. Though it was a fairly safe assumption that much of his psyche had been shaped from not only the decades of imprisonment.. but being reared at the hands of a non-functioning alcoholic mother and her myriad of abusive, live-in lovers. And for as much as he hated the white-trash cunt.. here he was tangled up with a woman who was probably just like her! Odd that. But then again, people did tend to live out their existence in tail-chasing cycles of repetition.

Eddie reached up with that same arm Lara was fingering, only to curl it around her and drag her right down to lay against him, opening his door just another hair.

She wants desperately to be a good bitch. To please him until he passes out, but Lara's body betrays her once snuggled against his side. She lays her head down beside Quist's shoulder and her hand which had been lightly stroking up and down his arm, makes its passes instead to his chest, yet slower and slower. He was holding her. It made her feel so good she forgot all about her foibles with Rudy and about hunter Blair and the American police. With a happy sigh, Lara closes her eyes to what seems like the first time in centuries since she's allowed her lashes to fully decend.

"You smell so good.." she mumbles and passes out completely.

Sleep doesn't come so easily to Edward Quist. He's been somewhat of an insomniac.. or perhaps just a very light sleeper, for most of his life. It was part and parcel with survival. And he was the quintessential survivor in the kind of a life that would have left most a victimized casualty. Eddie's instincts are damn near bestial in a dog-eat-dog, cut throat world.

And for as many hours as it took while the bitch slept soundly and wrapped in his arm, Eddie drifted in and out of sleep.. blinking his eyes wide awake at least twenty times or more all throughout.. in a good fourteen hour pass.

Getting A Story Hosted on The TriQuetra dot Net

It's easier than you think.

We've tweaked our application process just a wee bit, again. This time we are making it crystal clear that we want YOUR fabulous stories here on our Storytellers section of TQ's forum boards.

Most of our current stories are written out live in our chat rooms. Here is a screen shot of what our Chat Rooms look like, in case you were wondering if they're as gorgeous as the rest of the site. (They are! Go ahead and click on the image.)

But we don't stop there, like many other sites do, which cater to one or the other. On Storyteller's TriQuetra.. we love BOTH in-chat stories and play-by-forum-post stories!


If you've got a GREAT story, we've got a GREAT site to host it on. Fill out our Registration and get started today!

Finding Home

To date, there are a zillion story boards out there that fold up and close just as quickly as they came to life. There are also a good handful of sites offering chat rooms for story-based role play as well.

But in my experience with the chat room based sites, (and I’m narrowing my input down to chat role play only, as that is where my forté rests), they are either entirely un-moderated so that anyone can walk in and disrupt, or they are so overly moderated that they squash creativity. Some just make you download a bunch of software onto your computer to use their chats (ugh!) -- like IRC and AOL.

But what if there was a site that offered nifty little chat rooms, space for colorful character profiles, forum board space, and freedom to create any story you wanted without any kind of harassment or censorship.. or rules regarding the type of character/story you wanted to play?

And yes.. not too long ago I was writing on a particular chat site where I wanted to create a vampire character. Just an ordinary, walking-dead, blood drinking vampire. But I was informed by an administrator via email, before I ever stepped foot into a chat room.. that vampires were not allowed in one of the taverns. Only vampyrs were allowed.

On that same site, my writing partner and I were chewed out by a girl for playing a scene in which part of a forest was set on fire by feuding NPC characters. She got a little hysterical, stating that if we burned down the forest (and she wasn’t even playing in our story to begin with!), no one else on the site would be able to enjoy the room anymore!

It’s laughable now. She needed a little slap to the head to come back to reality, is all. But during the time, we had nowhere else to go to write our story and do our own thing. She was a constant nuisance, many times disrupting our scenes by posting out-of-character chatter into the room at the same time, or bombarding us with private messages plastered all over the screen.. threatening to "tell management" that we were breaking all the rules!

So.. back to finding home. What is it worth to be able to toss up your own story, write it any way you desire, burn a few cyber trees along the way, and say, "I’m a vampyr, but I shall not enter into taverns which openly discriminate against vampires," or vice versa? What is it worth to hang out on a site where people are not only expected to be nice.. they ARE nice? What is it worth to not hear the peanut gallery gasp in the background and threaten to report you to "management" if you brazenly type the F word into your chat room or on your board?

Affecting An Effect, In Fact

Affect and Effect are two English words with fairly similar meanings, and fairly similar pronunciations as well. Yet although they are not true homophones (words which sound alike), there is enough similarity in them to cause a lot of people a bit of confusion. Even folks who use them frequently will very often find themselves stumped over which word is the correct one to use.

The word affect is almost always used as a verb in English. It means to change or alter something. Her death affected the survivors in a profound way. How will my vote affect the outcome of an election?

But the word effect is most often used as a noun in English, and is characterized by something that is produced by an agent or cause. The result or consequence directly related to a sort of catalyst. The effects of her death left the survivors in a daze of disbelief. Cause and effect are necessary to formulate a scientific theory.

Affect may rarely be used as a noun, but its usage is nearly obsolete and a bit pointless to dredge up out of archaic retirement.

Effect also, may occasionally be used as a verb, and is a wee bit more common than the noun uses of affect, but probably best to simply steer clear of adding more yarn to an already tangled web.

Easiest to remember: A for action word -- A for affect. It makes a good effect, overall.

On A Side Note

And this, of course, is completely just for fun.. The Flat Earth Society is a web board I stumbled upon some time ago. Needless to say, it amazes me what people will believe in the twenty-first century.

Under the section header Flat Earth Questions & Clarification, a Curious Guy (bl4ke360) posts the question: "Why do you all think gravity doesn't exist? Is it because it's invisible? Do you know another force that is invisible? The wind. Does anybody think the wind doesn't exist because you can't see it? Don't think so, but you can see its affect (sic) on things, like you can see gravity's affect (sic) on things."

Robosteve (a supporter of Flat Earth Society) responds: "We say that gravity doesn't exist because we accept Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity as valid."

Curious Guy (bl4ke360): "The last time I checked, Einstein believed in gravity. I'm pretty sure he knew what he was talking about more than you think you know what you're talking about."

Robosteve: "Please read the Gravity sticky."

Curious Guy (bl4ke360.. who turns out to be more intelligent than curious) responds: "Please read:" ->

Robosteve (Trying to sound a little smarter now): "Have you read the Gravity sticky yet? On FES, we make a technical distinction between the terms "gravity" and "gravitation" that is not always adhered to in colloquial language, or even normal scientific practice."

Johannes Kepler (Who quickly rallies to Robosteve's and Flat Earth Society's defense by admitting they've never read anything scientific) joins in: "You haven't read that yourself, why should we? Clearly we understand the subject."

DorkDestroyer (Rallies to support Einstein's theory on General Relativity in relation to Gravity, by challenging the Flat Earth Society defenders ..): "Feel free to provide a quote from GR which says gravity doesn't exist."

John Davis sums it all up and the topic is concluded with: "One of the main points of his (Einstein's) work is that gravity is a fictitious force. Its (sic) the cornerstone to much of the text you link. If you read and understood that, this would be obvious."


And there you have it. Gravity is all in your imagination, folks. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?


For better forum reading and entertainment though, don't forget to stop by The TriQuetra dot Net.

Who, Whom, and Who'd-a-Thunk

While a spell checker can easily cover a multitude of sins, grammar flubs are a little trickier to cover up. So for those of you who are interested in knowing how to solve some of the most common grammar riddles, I will give you some simple, easy-to-use rules for the English Language.

To Whom Or Not To Whom?

It's a very simple rule in this one: Who is a subject. Whom is an object. Who does something. Whom has something done to it.

For example: Who does it to whom.
If you're still befuddled, try substituting he for who and him for whom.

Unlike some of the other similar sounding words in the English language, such as Your and You're, Then and Than, etc., Who and Whom mix-ups, for some reason, tend to fall out from under much scrutiny.

However, when in doubt, the Rule is to always default to Who.

A misused Whom will most assuredly ruffle up the Queen of England as well as your junior high school language arts teacher, and a small handful of people like me who have a chronic urge to correct a grammar faux pas with an imaginary red pencil.

Writing should be fun! Never a drudgery. So we at The TriQuetra dot Net offer this and a multitude of other self-help tools for whomever may be interested in improving their craft -- whether writing or graphic design.

Twitterpated

I don't get it either. But follow me on Twitter anyway. Ok? Cool.

Tweet-flash: I'm staying up really late. Again. I'm tired. I should go to bed.

Purple Prose Parody

The term "purple prose" is derived from a reference by the Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BCE) who wrote in his Ars Poetica (lines 14-21):

Inceptis grauibus plerumque et magna professis
purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
adsuitur pannus, cum lucus et ara Dianae
et properantis aquae per amoenos ambitus agros
aut flumen Rhenum aut pluuius describitur arcus;
sed nunc non erat his locus. Et fortasse cupressum
scis simulare; quid hoc, si fractis enatat exspes
nauibus, aere dato qui pingitur

( "Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches; as when describing a sacred grove, or the altar of Diana, or a stream meandering through fields, or the river Rhine, or a rainbow; but this was not the place for them. If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?" )


Purpureus meant lustrous or dazzling in Horace's Latin. Purple dye was rare in the Ancient World, with only the wealthiest able to afford it (this is why purple robes and trim came to be associated with the Emperor and, later, European royalty). During the Roman Republic, social climbers would sew purple cloth onto cheaper clothing to give an appearance of wealth. This was regarded as pretentious and gaudy.


It should now be abundantly clear what Purple Prose is all about.. the overuse of flashy little archaic words and phrases which force a reader to become tangled up in them and easily lose sight of what it is the writer is trying to say. Some of them have been so overused that all of us might even be guilty of a little purple now and then. And while this exercise is meant to be humorous and entertaining -- in the end, I hope it sheds a wee bit of light on the engaging art of Creative Writing. Afterall, it is the goal of a writer make the reader lose himself in the story so completely.. that he forgets he is reading mere words. Rather than make our reader stumble over bizarre words and phrase choices so much that the entire gist of the story seems a blur, at best.


For details on this fun Writing Challenge -- visit and get the full scoop on The TriQuetra dot Net. Register today and submit your entry!



Challenge

Rewrite the following passage taken from Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage in your best Purple Prose.

"The youth fell back in the procession until the tattered soldier was not in sight. Then he started to walk on with the others. But he was amid wounds. The mob of men was bleeding. Because of the tattered soldier's question he now felt that his shame could be viewed. He was continually casting sidelong glances to see if the men were contemplating the letters of guilt he felt burned into his brow. At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage."

Once completed, submit your entries to this forum by hitting the Reply button.. so we can all admire it and Vote for the best!

The City of Pompeii

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I met an Artist the other day while browsing the seedy shops and local flavor of the Marina Road on the waterfront of the Bay of Naples. He introduced himself to me as Svettio. He is, like most of his kind, a pauper, working for handouts and bits of coin. Yet he is unlike the others in that I sense in him a communal flame that burns by the fire of the Muses, and like me, he is driven.

I watched him for many hours, painting at his easel like a madman. Svettio wore no shirt, and his hair and chest were flecked with the multi oil colors of his palette. For a long time he paid me no mind, yet at some point the Artist became aware of me and graced me with a bit of coy flirtation.

Later that night, when I spoke to Marius of the Artist, he tried to dispel some of my notion that the Artist is as infatuated with me, as I am of him. Marius says that all gypsies are hustlers, and that I am just an unwitting mark. It is simply that Svettio assumes because I dress in fine clothing, that I have coin to squander.

But I cannot subscribe into this theory. I admire the intelligence and insight of my Master, but I am sure on this account.. he is wrong.

I've met with Svettio several more times since that first encounter, and he has assured me on each occasion that I am far too beautiful not to be captured on canvas by his hand. The fee is so nominal -- just six sestertii.

On our last meeting he took me to his studio, which was little more than a grotto chisled into the stone support beam beneath one of the piers, and I became for him a welcomed succor wherein he emptied his lust into me between ravaging kisses.

I fear I will do anything to obtain those six measly bronze coins.
I am not a hustler's mark.

I am the possessed lover of a rising star -- Svettio the Artist.
And I believe his name shall be upon the lips of the avant garde, not only in Pompeii, but in every city within Rome's vast empire.

In every house.

And beating with passion in every breast.

Jackpot

Tossing a hand up to the top of the car, he uses the bit of leverage to climb out.. only to slam the door shut. Eddie turns and crouches down between car and motorcycle, shielded from plain view for those brief moments it took him to unbolster the sawed off shotgun he'd kept right above the drive chain. Down upon his haunches still, he turns and reaches up to the door handle, yanking the heavy Impala door open once again as he climbs back inside. The shotgun is shoved under the seat for the time being. Yet the very sight of it causes Becky to blanch a bit.. moreso when he turns to face her. Eddie draws his switchblade out again and the blade magically springs from its sheath. He holds it just under her jaw. He tells the other broad, Lara, "Drive, Baby Doll."

Becky has a sudden Epiphany.. and not the good kind either. "Are you.. are you going to kill me, Eddie?"

"No," he leans close, whispering into Becky's ear. The feel of it makes her close her eyes and simply pray he is telling the truth. But then again, truth is relative. Edward Quist will not outright kill her. Yet Becky will die of natural causes before the night is through. For at some point between Mac's Truckstop World and wherever it is they are headed.. Rebecca Davis will bake under the hot Nevada sun as temperatures soar into the triple digits inside the trunk of her own late model Chevy Impala. It is only after they burn rubber skid marks from parking lot to interstate frontage road.. and well out of view of gawking onlookers peeking out the diner window and perhaps laughing to themselves about what a crazy fucked up world it was when people flaunted their alternate threesome lifestyles right out in public -- only in Las Vegas, of course -- that Eddie deeply kissed the knocked-up bitch.

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For the rest of this story and more exciting threads just like it -- check out the forums in Ugly Vegas!

The Vale of the Enclave -- Join Us!

From an era predating time and recorded history comes the tale of the Enclave -- a distinct phratry among the ordinary folk whose settlements stretched from sea to sea along the continental landmass known as The Vale. Typically those numbered among the Enclave society received their inherent membership by blood, passage rites from parent to child among the tribe's elders -- although it was not unknown for one born completely outside the congregation to find his or herself duly sworn into their ranks.

Consisting of powerful sorcerers, apothecaries, mages, fortune tellers & seers, alchemists, and necromancers, this once powerful council eventually broke apart into two distinct factions after centuries of bitter feuding and disagreements -- those of Warlocks, and those the Druids. They remain to this day inextricably woven together at the core, yet the bitterest of enemies over fundamental precepts regarding the distinction of sexes and the worship of deities. Neither side will give an inch toward truce. Neither will admit to any wrong-doing or treachery. And neither will accept the other as any part of the true Enclave.

Over the centuries, each group has both risen to power and been defeated time and again. The last war saw the entire city of Faltha obliterated under the curse of the Black Plague, and all the remained had been burnt to the ground in offering to the Druid goddess Shalindr'a. More than a thousand souls in this Warlock stronghold perished in less than a week. The result of which shifted the tide of rulership into the hands of Druids.


For more than half a century now, the ordinary citizens of the Vale must comply with Druid precepts and law. They must participate in the bi-annual lottery at each equinox wherein a pilgrimage must be made to the southern regions of the Vale below the barren summits of Wyvern's Spine -- the legendary lair of dragons. It is there, under Druid law, that they must sacrifice a virgin girl from among them, to appease the dragons until the next equinox. Failure to comply results in swift and terrifying punishment.

Prophecy declared that a Warlock would rise, like the mythical phoenix from the burning ashes, bringing with him the defeat of Druid tyranny. In their desire to squash what may well be true, the Druids unleashed a horrifying disease upon the Warlock stronghold, in hope of solidifying their own strength and supremacy throughout the Vale. For decades they have awaited, both Druid and ordinary Citizen alike -- to see whether the prophecy had been true.

The Vale Of The Enclave is accepting fantasy writers!
Interested?

Contact Warrick Erebus for story entry and questions.

Or browse the Vale Of The Enclave website.

AvP Euphoria -- Join Us!

Dtai'k-dte sa-de nav'g-kon dtain'aun bpide.

"The Fight begun would not end until the end." ~Old Yautja saying.

The mining satellite, U-4EA (referred to with no small amount of tongue-in-cheek as Euphoria) is a carbunkle on the butt crack of the universe. A decade ago, when an ore vein hidden deep within the planet's core did not pan out to the magnitude they'd hoped, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation turned the remote satellite into a refuse pile where cast-off employees can go and remain available for future uses, both good and bad.

U-4EA, a loser's last stand will stand as battle ground between the two most deadly species in the universe. Predators & Xenomorphs. AVP -- Euphoria.

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More Tall Tales

In the previous post we did go over the different role playing and writing styles, and the categories that folks often get pigeon-holed into. The intent here is not to knock personal preferences, as most of you have already noticed by now that the vast majority of online role players will fall into Group-A -- preferring the chit-chatty relationship settings over the action/adventure stories. And that's fine if that's the sort of role play that makes you happy. But for the small percentage of folks who've grown a little bored with the chit-chatty relationship settings that turn out to be the same basic scene day after day.. rest assured that there are others like you, and you're not alone.

You want thrills. You want action. You want thickly woven plots that keep you on the edge of your seat. Suspense. You want characters who keep you guessing. Villains and swashbuckling pirates. You want excitement and...

Danger!

It is imperative that you surround yourself with players who want exactly the same. That is NOT to say you want to be involved with power-mongers who try to win in every scene. Affectionately known as the God-moders, these are the ones whose characters will frequently possess mind-reading skills, supersonic hearing, and x-ray vision. They will try to kill off your character in a single sentence, but their characters are always immune to any sort of counter attack.

Instead, you want to look for and surround yourself with one or more players who possess no mental baggage or trust issues. Because in order to have high style, collaborative fiction storytelling, you've got to be able to trust as well as be trusted. It's never about winning afterall. It's about leaving a scene after an hours-long writing session with a smile on your face, knowing you moved the other player(s).

Have you moved anyone with your storytelling lately?

Join us on The Storyteller's TriQuetra!