Monthly Archives: December 2012

Elephants?

Posted by Piscis on

Lacking the state of mind required to do a thoughtful post, I shall now write a stupid poem about elephants.

 

It's an elephant

 

Elephants are big, they say.
They’re bigger than your face.
They’re smaller than a planet, though,
And can’t survive in space.

Elephants are grey, they say.
They’re whiter than the night.
Yet blacker than the falling snow,
And nowhere near as bright.

Elephants are tough, they say.
They’re tougher than a fly.
Unless that fly is huge, you know,
And equally as sly.

Elephants are shrewd, they say.
They never do forget.
If that is true, then I should go
Before these words upset.

 

Have a happy new year, everyone!

 

Bene scribete.

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I Hate You, The Slog

Posted by Piscis on
The slog hates you

I hate you, the slog.

 

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

I hate you, the slog.

 

You are not very nice
and now I’ve said it twenty-twice.

 

Bene scribete.

Novella Excerpt

Posted by Piscis on

The first draft of The Amber Ring is completed, and at 98 pages, I find myself with an intended short story that became a novelette that’s now closer to a novella.

It keeps getting bigger.

Oops?

 

As I work on putting together a presentable second draft for test reading, I thought I would share a short little scene to give a brief glimpse at its protagonist, twelve-year-old Maya Corona.

 

       As Maya half-attentively filled out the answers to her math test, she found her eyes drifting toward the clock above Ms. Patch’s desk, subconsciously counting down the minutes, as she often did, until the tedium of the school day was over.
       Her wandering eyes also noticed Braden Thomas, who sat at the desk to her right, surreptitiously sneaking a glance at her paper in regular intervals. She contemplated calling him out, or even writing down the wrong answers on purpose, but then decided to just let him cheat. If he could get through school without bothering to learn anything for himself, he would be one less person to pose any real competition for an eventual job, which people were always saying was hard to get these days.
       As she shifted to give him a better view of her exam, she felt something grind against her leg. It was Sofia’s ring; she had left it in her pocket.
       Her mind went unwillingly to the previous night. It had been strange to see Cam again. To think of him without Sofia. His charismatic pluck replaced with that crestfallen timidity. Maya wanted to leave the Fairwoods behind her, and had expected them not to not think twice about returning the favor. Her involvement had been limited to the occasional tag-along with her sister, and she had never done anything of importance there. She had been clear on where she stood, though, hadn’t she? Would they leave her alone, now?
       “Two minutes,” Ms. Patch droned.
       At the edge of her vision Maya saw Braden gripping his pencil tightly, throwing nervous glances her way. Quickly, to his obvious relief, she scribbled down the remaining answers to the test.

 

Bene scribete.

The Amber Ring

Posted by Piscis on

Gold Amber Ring

At the age of ten, Sofia Corona saved the Fairwoods from the malevolent grasp of the Cedar Witch and her goblin army.

Two years later, she drowned unceremoniously in the lake behind her Oregon home.

In the months following the Heroine’s death, when the Fairwoods face a resurgence of goblin attacks, they are forced to turn to Sofia’s cynical twin sister, Maya, for help. But despite an earnest plea from her sister’s faithful gryphon companion, Maya wants nothing more to do with the enchanted land. The request continues to plague her mind, however, and she can’t help but wonder if doing this one last favor will give her the closure she needs to accept her sister’s death and move on with her life.


 

Such is the premise to my side-project novelette, The Amber Ring, a sort of semi-satirical dark fairytale. I’m just about done with the first draft, and was curious if the concept would appeal to anyone reading this. So – interest piqued? Let me know!

 

Bene scribete.

SoundCloud

Posted by Piscis on
SoundCloud Logo

Hear the…cloud.

 

In contemplating a better way to show off music in the e-land, for some reason it only recently occurred to me to try out SoundCloud.  Turns out it’s a fairly nifty little service.

The premise is simple – users upload sound and music, and others can then stream it to their computers and devices, more or less like a sans-video YouTube (strange that these two things didn’t happen the other way around, but…whatever).  A free account will let you upload two hours’ worth of audio (assuming reasonable compression, that’s likely less than 200MB – small in comparison to most of today’s big free hosting services, but hey, free is still free, and there don’t appear to be any ads).  You’re also capped at 100 downloads per track, assuming you enable direct downloads (which it’s cool that you can).  There are also some arbitrary limitations, such as only being able to create three different sets/groups/organizational what-have-yous to put your tracks in, but overall, it’s plenty sufficient for sharing out a few dozen songs or so.

Perhaps handiest of all, you can neatly embed a player for a track or entire setlist just about anywhere, even here in WordPress!

 

 

These are some old synthesizer compositions I did ten or more years ago and figured I’d stick on there for fun. Now that I have much better equipment, I might see about redoing some of them…

So, am I late to the party?  Do any of you out there use SoundCloud?  Or have you found any other good audio sharing services?

 

Also, I just noticed that Dictionary.com‘s word of the day is empurple – to make or become purple.  I…kind of find it fantastic that that’s a thing.

 

Bene scribete.