Story, Part The First

I don't know if I have words for how nervous I am to post a story here.  Hopefully it will keep your attention until the conclusion on Thursday.  Feedback welcome as always (ducking and covering).

            Squire Thad trudged up the slope.  “Riches and glory!” the criers had declared.  “Grateful damsels!  Free training!”  Somehow they left out the suicide missions.  He looked up the mountain at the cave issuing a thin stream of smoke, a gingerbread house for chivalrous meat shields everywhere, and wished he shared their sweet tooth.

Thad had had the bad timing to request a test for his knighthood just before Princess Penelope’s guards ran into the throne room.  They described a vicious dragon swooping down, snatching the Princess off her horse, and carrying her into the mountains.  Duke Tetzel and his court eagerly assigned Thad the rescue as his test, promising to praise his efforts in a ballad.  Or at least a eulogy.

He noticed the smoke had stopped coming out of the cave.  Assuming his presence was known, the squire abandoned stealth and strode in.  Torches burned all around the barn-sized cavern’s walls.  Princess Penelope lay on the ground, in front of the green dragon whose eyes focused on Thad.

“Welcome!” bellowed the dragon.  “Let us hear why I should kill you today instead of a slower, more painful, more amusing demise.  Every second your answer bores me will add a week to your agony.  And hers.”  The dragon rested a claw on the Princess’ neck.  Thad saw her eyes moving frantically, guessing she was paralyzed.

Thad held his sword high and advanced.  The dragon’s eyes widened as it regarded the sword, and it licked its lips.  Was the reptile nervous?  Or just hungry?  Suddenly the dragon’s nostrils spewed blue fire towards him.  The flames enveloped him, but the sword glowed brightly as Thad realized the blaze wasn’t burning him – it didn’t even feel warm.

Encouraged by the sword’s apparent protection, Thad launched himself at the dragon, who snaked its head back away from the glowing blade.  Thad ducked a swinging front paw, but the dragon followed through and its surprisingly sturdy wing bowled Thad over.  Thad rolled to his feet as the dragon turned to deliver the same 1-2 punch from the other side.  This time Thad ducked the punch, then jumped and caught the wing mid-swipe.

As the surprised dragon reared up, Thad jumped from the rising wing onto the head and swung his sword down.  The dragon ducked mostly below the blade, but the still-glowing sword cleanly cut off the tip of its snout.  Thad poised the sword directly above the dragon’s eye to skewer its head when it cried, “The Princess’ life is tied to mine – if you kill me, she also dies!  Let us try to reach a different solution!”

Thad looked down at the Princess, who eyed him even more frantically.  Penelope appeared to be missing the tip of her nose.  “Release her!” he ordered the dragon, and the Princess jumped up, grabbed her nose, and started wailing.  “Magically, too!”

“It is done,” said the dragon, nervously eying the sword.

“Prove it!” ordered Thad. The dragon poked a claw into its forearm until blood welled.  The Princess’ arm remained intact, and she ran out of the cave.

As Thad tensed to drive the sword home, the dragon convulsed its neck, throwing him to the ground.  He quickly arose, brandishing his sword, but the dragon had retreated.  “Let us see if we can find another way to resolve this matter,” hissed the dragon.  “Your Princess is safe, and you obviously have the power to end the truce at any time.”

            Thad held his ground, thinking what to do.


TO BE CONTINUED

Sacrifice

This article challenges the common wisdom that our schools need smaller classes.  Everyone wants them, but there's not much data proving their benefits, and maximum class sizes are killing state budgets (especially California) and having indirect effects like driving more great teachers out of the inner city.  If the article omitted or misstated anything, please leave a comment - I'd love to know more.

It makes sense to me that stretch goals are going to be even more difficult in the current economy, and more so the longer it lasts.  Non-profits are taking a hit, and all levels of government are running out of money.  Education will take a hit unless we pay for it, and, well, we suck at paying for things.  I'm getting depressed at not seeing a way out, so I'll stop here.


Programming note: I'm trying something a little different this week.  I wrote a short story a while back, and I'll throw it out here in 3-4 parts.  The prompt was "dragon, knight, and princess," so you can probably guess the genre.  Feel free to ignore it if it's less bloggy than you want, but I wanted to include it.

This One's For Eric

As you wish (4th comment on this post).  You'll have to trust me that I did this correctly without references.

Learning the order that each state joined the union reminded me why trivia excites me.  50 dates don't matter, but seeing how the slavery dispute required one new Southern state for each Northern one from 1803 to 1837 is a powerful illustration.  Or how the Mexican War required bringing in Florida and Texas in 1845, with the Whigs then admitting only Midwestern or West Coast states until the Civil War.  I didn't understand the cluster of 6 states in 1889-90, so I found out that Benjamin Harrison added them to bring in Republican voters and Congressmen.  That's the kind of information that makes trivia special.  To me, at least.

1787 Delaware Dover
1787 Pennsylvania Harrisburg
1787 New Jersey Trenton
1788 Georgia Atlanta
1788 Connecticut Hartford
1788 Massachusetts Boston
1788 Maryland Annapolis
1788 South Carolina Columbia
1788 New Hampshire Concord
1788 Virginia Richmond
1788 New York Albany
1789 North Carolina Raleigh
1790 Rhode Island Providence
1791 Vermont Montpelier
1792 Kentucky Frankfort
1796 Tennessee Nashville
1803 Ohio Columbus
1812 Louisiana Baton Rouge
1816 Indiana Indianapolis
1817 Mississippi Jackson
1818 Illinois Springfield
1819 Alabama Montgomery
1820 Maine Augusta
1821 Missouri Jefferson City
1836 Arkansas Little Rock
1837 Michigan Lansing
1845 Florida Tallahassee
1845 Texas Austin
1846 Iowa Des Moines
1848 Wisconsin Madison
1850 California Sacramento
1858 Minnesota St. Paul
1859 Oregon Salem
1861 Kansas Topeka
1863 West Virginia Charleston
1864 Nevada Carson City
1867 Nebraska Lincoln
1876 Colorado Denver
1889 North Dakota Bismarck
1889 South Dakota Pierre
1889 Montana Helena
1889 Washington Olympia
1890 Idaho Boise
1890 Wyoming Cheyenne
1896 Utah Salt Lake City
1907 Oklahoma Oklahoma City
1912 New Mexico Santa Fe
1912 Arizona Phoenix
1959 Alaska Juneau
1959 Hawaii Honolulu

Sorry about the formatting - best I can do in Blogger.

Daemon/Freedom(TM)

A friend at work turned me on to Daemon by Daniel Suarez.  In the book an Internet virus impacts the real world by controlling electronics and bribing/forcing/tempting people to act on its behalf.  It was fun with some interesting ideas, and will make a great movie some day, despite fairly flat characters.

The second book, Freedom(TM), pulls an Empire Strikes Back to supercede the original as the virus attracts more participants to its videogame-like real world culture.  The virus incents players in ways I didn't anticipate, and left me wondering what could be incorporated into the real world (and if I would want to).  I love books with ideas that demand further discussion and experimentation, and Daniel Suarez delivers.

P.S. I know my reviews are short - I want to convey lingering big-picture impressions, while not spoiling surprises.  Feedback is welcome, if you would find something different more helpful.

Writerly

This morning a friend sent a link to "all [her] writerly friends," and for some reason included me.  That's the nicest compliment I've gotten in a while.  And it gave me a post for today.  I see no reason to decide which effect was more important.

btw the link was to today's XKCD, which is always a great comic, but today's was especially good.

From the Inside

Driving home from lunch, I hit a very sudden storm - completely dry roads to steady rain instantaneously.  Just as my windshield wipers got into a rhythm and traffic moved steadily again, the rain transitioned to dry road almost as suddenly.  Less than two miles wide, the squall made everyone adapt to rainy weather, and without warning abruptly stopped.

Too much of life is like this: sudden problems arise and disappear before I solve them, but the adaptation is far more stressful than flicking on windshield wipers.  It becomes easy to assume problems will just go away, and not respond until emergencies arise.  There must be a middle ground where I don't wear myself out on two-mile squalls, but also don't find myself unprepared in a hurricane.  From the inside, however, most of these storms look the same.

Get Low

Get Low is an independent movie (although it was playing at a local Tinseltown) set in Depression-era Tennessee.  It features Robert Duvall as a hermit who wants to buy his funeral service, except he wants it while he's still alive.  Duvall is excellent as always, and Bill Murray as the funeral director expresses himself more diversely than I expected, even better than his role in Lost In Translation.  The acting is incredible even beyond those two, and the photography takes advantage of great hill country.  (What can I say?  I like trees.)

Unfortunately the story doesn't shine as strongly.  It makes sense, which probably puts it in the top 10% of movie scripts, but the tension and mystery build to a revelation that doesn't expand the drama, merely sufficing to fill in the gaps.  The ending isn't bad, it's just not what you might think the rest of the story promised.

The acting alone is worth the price of a ticket, but enjoy the ride, because that's all you'll get.