Tales from the Shark Tank

Winter storms are very pretty. So are ice fogs.  They are also a pain in the posterior.

/end announcement

A friend of mine just posted an entry on her blog talking about helping one of her teachers extract a jammed ball from a flint-lock rifle, because she had expertise and tools he lacked. It ends well; she not only got the ball out of the barrel, but was able to tell him why it got stuck in the first place.

What it made me think of, though, was of an adventure in muzzle-loading weaponry that ended…differently.

A friend of ours who lived in our apartment complex was an aficionado of most types of historic weaponry. Swords, muzzle-loading firearms, long bows, you name it, he thought it was cool and wanted to get his hands on it. So at some point, he acquired a muzzle-loading pistol. When he first told us about it, he was intending to take it out to a firing range and try it out.

Patience was not his distinguishing characteristic. He couldn’t wait. Disassembling, assembling, cleaning and oiling was only satisfactory for so long. He knew he couldn’t shoot it in the city, but he thought he’d just try loading it.

The problem was that he really hadn’t thought it through. Unlike a modern weaporn, a muzzle-loader can’t be unloaded without special equipment once its been loaded. So he loaded it without a problem, to then find himself with a dilemma. He couldn’t transport the thing safely while loaded because flintlocks don’t have a safety as we know it. He couldn’t unload it, and he couldn’t fire it in the city. What to do, what to do?

Finally he concluded that the only safe thing to do was discharge it in a way that would not allow the ball to travel any distance, feasible because musket balls do not fire with the same force and modern rifle bullets. So he put the muzzle up against the sidewall at the foot of a king-sized mattress and fired.

He and his wife continued to use that mattress – with the hole with slightly charred edges at the foot – until it wore out. She was fairly philosophical about the damage to the mattress. The thing that really annoyed her, though, was that he didn’t take off the sheets before he committed mattresscide.

“You know the rules! You’re not to include yourself in the illusions.” The young woman was clearly set to lecture her opponent. He cut her off. “I have not included myself. I am a dragon. And you, my dear, are a virgin. The scent is quite clear. Now, shall we complete the competition, or go directly to dinner?”

“Dinner, I think. Just let me change my dress.” Her arms swept up, becoming scarlet wings shading into iridescent scales. “You’re right, by the way.” she went on conversationally. “I am a virgin. I’d been told that’s what you were looking for.”

With thanks to my friend K. for the title.

It’s traditional. At a princess’s christening, one offended fairy pronounces a curse instead of a blessing. Fenland was no exception. Stygia appeared with a rumble of thunder, proclaiming “Her name is Ann Phibia.”

It was anticlimactic.

Ann grew as her fairy gifts promised, intelligent, kind and (of course) beautiful. At 16, her ball fell into a pond. A crowned frog returned it, requesting a kiss in exchange. “The spell will break and we can marry.” he said.

She remembered the stories, shrugged, and kissed him.

Ann vanished in a brilliant flash. A second crowned frog appeared.

They croaked their vows.

“I’m not saying it’s hot out, but I ran into Satan in the parking lot and he said he was going home to cool off”

It was just pointed out to me that I haven’t written anything since the end of March. I’m sorry. I simply hadn’t anything to say. I feel like I’m just waking up from hibernation. But since I’m starting to think again, I should start writing again as well.

A friend of mine has an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, which she absolutely adores.  This being only the last in a string of folks I know who have fallen in love with ebook readers of various descriptions, I went to look into them.  I also looked at readers that work on standard laptops, and at netbooks, which look to be about the same size as a dedicated reader.

So here’s my question, for those more clueful in matters techie-toy related:  what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

This is pure curiousity.  At the moment, I don’t know that I need either one.  In fact, I have a more than sneaking suspicion that I need neither, having as I do a perfectly good laptop.   But then again, so do those of my friends who actually have e-readers, so now I’m curious.

I just found this quoted on another blog, and must pass it along.  It’s by Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone.

Service Outage:

Dear World,

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located. Replacement components were ordered Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, and have begun arriving. Early test of the new equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly and we expect it to be fully operational by mid-January. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage and we look forward to resuming full service and hopefully even improving it in years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The USA

There’s a meme out I’ve been avoiding for years.  It requires that one post seven things most people don’t know about you.  So having not been tagged by Dorothea (because she is kind and does not tag people), and feeling lazy enough that this saves me much thinking, here we have my

Seven Things:

1.  I can’t knit.  I can’t seem to learn to knit beyond the very basics of knit and purl.  I’ve tried times beyond number, but the patterns simple enough that they don’t confuse me bore me.  I can, on the other hand, crochet without need of pattern and sew anything I can see, so I don’t find my inability to knit to particularly be a lack.

2.  I learned to bake bread from my grandmother.  She taught herself from her American Jewish Cookbook first, expressly so that she could teach me, so we essentially learned together.  I also learned the attitude that learning goes on forever from that.

3.   When most flustered, I have been known to mix French, Spanish, and Russian into a single sentence.  ( I was lost in Montreal, and the passers-by I stopped to ask directions of wouldn’t speak English to me.  So I started to stumble through my request in my extremely minimal French, got even more flustered, and not only tripped over my tongue, I did it in three languages.  When they stopped laughing, they didn’t just give me directions; they escorted me.)

4.  The only reason scary movies no longer give me nightmares is that I flatly refuse to watch them.

5.  I love maps, especially old maps that let me see how political boundries have changed.

6.  I love chocolate and almond together, but can’t abide chocolate and hazelnut.  (No Nutella for me, thank you.)

7.  Despite the way I sing now, until I was about 13, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

I’m like Dorothea; I don’t tag people.  If you want to play, consider yourself tagged.

I was describing my son’s behavior to my friend with the comment that there didn’t seem to be much “impending” about adolescence.

“Congratulations” said she.  “He’s about to become an appetite, a coma, and an attitude with legs.”

*When I was a teenager, someone (I think my aunt) tried to explain puberty to my then 6 year old cousin.  Somewhat later, she said “Mom says you’re going through pubertory.”  Note that “Purgatory” is a strictly Christian concept, and we aren’t and have never been Christian.