Katzaniel

Ultimately, umbrellas use us uncertainly. (I wonder what for?)

Totally open. I try to push anyone who enquires toward the Pen... but I don't think very many of them have checked it out. Which reminds me, my grandma wanted me to e-mail her everything I have of Spik so far...

Happy hippos hum hip-hop.

Speaking of which, (lurking), I hear it's International Delurking Week (although I'm not quite certain from when to when, and I may be posting too late). If any lurkers want to take advantage and post a little hello (either the lurkers we know and love like Pillow & Ayshela, or the ones who've yet to make a post) then I'm sure you'll be welcomed or tackle-hugged for your efforts.

I like that idea, Tanny, but would you then be posting and voting for them, too? If the seer goes inactive, you'd have a bit of a responsibility to try to act like the seer might, especially if one of your rolled see-ings indicates a wolf. Except that if we get a baner, it might *not* actually indicate a wolf - but you'd know that it did. I guess we just have to trust you to guess how they might react - or roll for their assumptions Perhaps we could also let dead villagers take up inactive characters, if it became a possibility...?

(is there a rule for when we get to x? Can we skip it?) Many microcontrollers means magic. (*giggle*)

Paradox Judy pushed her glasses up, wiped her brow, and leaned back. "Done," she intoned, giving the word an air of finality. As well she might: if we were correct in our calculations, then Judy's task was the last of many, and we might at long last have reached our goal. Over the course of the last thirty-five years, Judy, Wesley, Liang and I had collaborated on a major project that nearly everyone had at first assumed impossible: a machine that would enable us to travel backward in time. The basis for our belief in this cause was that Liang had already been working on his own for many years, and when he approached us he came with a machine that appeared already to be able to send things forward - not quite as difficult, since it did not require reversing an object's direction of travel, only of speeding it up. Although the demonstration itself was not quite proof - the mouse disappeared for five minutes, as predicted, and then reappeared inside its cage - the science and mathematics that he showed us appeared also to be sound. We became believers. Of course, there were problems even beyond the science of coming up with a way to transcend time, or the mechanics of building a device to let us implement that method, or even the medical concerns of surviving such a thing. We also needed to understand the earth's trajectory and calculate movement in space. That had been my specialty before I dedicated my life and knowledge to this particular application of it. Judy had been an electrical and mechanical engineer, and quite good at it. Wesley was our bio-physicist; he was the only one of us that came fresh out of school into our group, but such was his genius that we knew he was the best fit possible. As for why he joined us, I'm not quite sure - he never seemed convinced that we would succeed - but I suppose he was just curious to watch us at work. Wesley always had an intense curiosity. Liang was a contrast to Wesley's flippant manner; a very serious man, he did a bit of everything, but mostly he hashed out the theory, over and over and over again until he was certain it was perfect. Only then would he conduct experiments - but the method seemed to work out for him, for I had never seen one of his predictions fail. The first time an object - a baseball - appeared without warning inside the machine, it was quite a shock. We had never really concentrated on the question of how we would test the ability to send things back, but it seemed obvious that our future selves had succeeded. We agreed then that we would only ever send something back by one month. Everything after the first item, anyway. What we would do, we decided, was have a bagful of objects, and each time we felt ready to test we would pull one out at random and try to send it back to this date. We didn't know exactly how it work - perhaps our memories would change to accomodate whatever happened - but we suspected that when we pulled out the baseball, we would know we finally had it. Wesley wasn't really satisfied with this. He talked about paradox a lot. Surely this apparent proof of success at some future time was affecting us, he said. Surely we would try harder or work longer or something. Even attempting to not be affected by it would change our actions from what would otherwise have happened... maybe we had forced Time into the shape of a spiral staircase, where we would travel around in a circle but never reach the exact same place that we should have reached, because we had changed things. The rest of us wondered, but figured that we would know soon enough. Why push things? We'd do what we could to avoid paradox, but it couldn't consume us. The rest would probably work itself out. Surely paradox, by its very nature, would not allow itself to be created? It was actually years later before we pulled out the baseball from the bag. We'd been restocking that bag, each test, so as not to force fate. We cheered when it happened. No proof, not really, but we couldn't help but believe that it meant something. Well, three of us anyway. Not more than a few weeks later we found an apple in it when we went in. Apparently we had progressed to plant material. Wesley, before any of us could stop him, took a bite out of it. "Not quite right," he said, spitting it out into his hand. "Guess our future selves will have to remember to work harder." He tossed it in the garbage. We didn't need the bag of items after that. Apples, always apples, because we knew the test one month from then would be the one that had sent the apple back. We received more, at about the pace of once per week, then twice or more per week, and we kept careful note of which days we got them and how, according to Wesley, they tasted. Never quite like an apple, he claimed. He got sick a few times, too, and we wondered if it wasn't because he kept on trying them. Judy confronted me one day, saying we needed to stop him from eating them. But Wesley was his own man. Besides - and I hated to admit to myself that I was influenced by this - but if he stopped, how would we know when we'd gotten it right? Two days later, we were able to stop worrying. "Delicious," he mumbled as he chewed. "Seems to have worked." We threw a party that night. The next morning when I got in, I found that Liang had set up a cage, filled with mice, all along one wall. Judy was fine-tuning the machine, two white mice sitting comfortably in a shoebox on her desk. Every once in a while she would look up and stroke one of them. Of course, we all knew that it would be a month before we were ready for them, but it served as a constant reminder that we soon would be, and I know that I found the sounds of their scurrying around in their cage to be a good motivator. Besides, Liang liked to be prepared well in advance. We changed the standard backward-time to a day, because it was hard not to be impatient working with periods of a month between proof of success and the actual working product. Also, we started to be more and more careful, adopting Liang's way of doing things. Wesley found our studiousness frustrating, I think, but none of the rest of us wanted dead or zombie-like mice appearing, never mind the knowing that it was our own mistakes that had caused it. We went over every calculation carefully. The four of us often stayed late, too, discussing the nature of life, souls, morality. We realized that even if we detected no problem with the mice, there might be some insidious problem that actually changed a person who went through it. Wesley insisted that he wanted to be the first human to use it. After we finally tested it with a mouse - no problems - and a pig - still no apparent issues - and then a chimpanzee, he managed to convince us that we should let him do it. None of us wanted the project taken from us without seeing it through to completion, after all, and we were quite confident in its abilities by this point. Liang made sure to do it properly, though. Judy, the most person-oriented of any of the rest of us, started Wesley on a bunch of personality and IQ tests. She administered them every day, very similar but not exactly the same, hoping to counter-act any issues involved in the familiarity of the test he did afterward to the ones he did before. This way, she would have an established pattern. Finally, there we were. Judy had just finished the last alteration. It was ready. Wesley, who had been lounging back in a chair watching carefully, stood up. "Ten minutes," Liang reminded him. "All four of us, we leave room for ten minutes first. You go back in, quickly as possible, you make journey. Go back in time 8 minutes. Hide in closet. You no look in closet before you travel! Hide, and you no come out until you hear yourself inside the machine and gone. We avoid paradox, now, we run other tests. I know you curious about possibilities, Wesley, but we test other things later." Excited, nervous, scared, we huddled in the hallway waiting. When ten minutes was more than past, Wesley excused himself and went into the lab. We could hear him setting up the machine. The man set the controls almost automatically. Flip the leftmost switch, hit the yellow button, key in the date and time. He'd been through all this before. But in his mind, curiosity was growing and growing. Ever since he'd realized that they probably were going to succeed at this, he had become a man obsessed. What would it really be like to meet yourself? Or to change something that had clearly already happened another way? He knew he might never get another chance. When they knew it worked, the others would hand the project over to the government, and it would be heavily regulated. But even if he knew he would have another opportunity, Wesley couldn't wait. He would do something to invoke a paradox... killing himself was a bit drastic, but maybe preventing himself from ever getting into the machine? Yes, he decided, as he stepped into it, that would do it. We heard Wesley open the door of the machine, and close it again. Then we heard an explosion. We looked at each other; we weren't supposed to enter the room just yet, but clearly something had gone wrong. While I was still hesitating, though, Judy tore open the door and ran in. What we saw was the machine, all in parts all over the floor, and Wesley trembling and injured. Wesley healed quickly enough, and we were able to rebuild the machine from our notes, but we were never able to send anything back in time after that, no matter how hard we tried. It was as if God had suddenly seen what we were doing, or suddenly disapproved, and taken the ability from us.

Personally, I think Drummondo's answer is probably the best one there. But I have a new riddle, so I'm just going to post it. So there What wears a jacket only when it's hot? (PS. I invented this, so I wouldn't be too surprised if there are more answers than the one I expect.)

Methinks I see evidence of Tanny doing some PM or chat invites. Hello to all those I haven't seen for a while! Name? Huh, what? Oh! Um, how 'bouts Karen Zahn?

I am the butcher's daughter. In my early twenties, I grew up helping my father and so got used to blood and bodies - now, I am taking medicine in a university nearby. I am just here to visit before I go back again. (Haven't decided yet what my mother is. Possibly she died when I was young.) Will flesh out more later. Appendum: If anyone wants to be a parent or sibling, go ahead and assume that I'm okay with it. Appendum 2: ie, parent or sibling of mine...

95% basher, in that I rework each and every sentence as it comes, and can't go on (I mean, don't) until I'm satisfied. But even so I'll re-read later and make minor edits. Even then, it doesn't mean I think it's perfect, because the longer the story, the more I second-guess the way I chose to tell it, thinking I should start again a different way. I'm not sure if I agree that it's swooper versus basher and leading to different problems. I think it's more like a matrix, where you are mainly swooper or mainly basher, and then have either the too-little or too-much editting problem. Despite what I said about all those little changes and all the reconsidering, I probably fall more under the category of not enough editting. I can't force my way through a story I've already written: If I see a mistake as I read, I'll fix it, but I can't read it in order to change it. If it needs major changing, I'm more apt to totally restart. I get very bored of writing things I've already written, otherwise.

It occurs to me that you rarely get very much feedback for your stories, Aardvark, and yet you are one of the Pen's best writers. I look forward to your posts; they are always creative, insightful, thought-provoking, strange, often scary, but invariably cool, and very well-written. Just thought you should know that. (PS. Found just one typo, but three times: You want "led", not "lead" as the latter means either the material (ie, "lead pencil") or the present tense of led.)

Hopefully this won't change anyone's vote, but I'm now thinking the much better option for "partial membership" on the minimalist badges is this: Your cheerful fiddler (who's most likely done now), Katz

Okay, I think this will be implemented very soon, whichever way this poll goes. We certainly had enough support overall for the idea. But, I think this minimalist version might be an even better option. So I'll just let you all voice your opinions before we go on. Choice 1 - Minimalist: (full example) (example of partial membership) Choice 2 - Original Size: (full example) (example of partial membership)

Sweetcherrie blinked, but she wasn’t given time to be surprised. A troll about the size of a small truck took a step towards her, and it shut through her head that the monster wouldn’t even need a weapon; the smell of its breath would possibly be enough to knock her out. In her hands she still had the sword that had been hanging in the Portal rooms, and it was now weighing heavier and heavier as her arms had grown tired. With absolutely no idea on how to fight this monster, she planted her feet firmly on the ground, and tried to prepare herself mentally for what would come. While this was happening, Inbi was watching in awe as, one by one, people began appearing. Most of them were adapting to the surprise swiftly - Gyrfalcon had already knocked one down and he had only just gotten there. Inbi cursed inwardly. It appeared she could do nothing but watch her friends fight, maybe watch them get hurt. That's when she noticed Sweetcherrie. She had apparently no idea how to fight, as she was standing all wrong, and holding the sword awkwardly. And she had not noticed the troll behind her, beginning to swing... Without thinking, Inbi rushed to the guildleader's aid, setting herself up inside her head at the same time she mind-shouted, ::Duck, Sweetcherrie!:: She reacted instinctively on the voice inside her head, and felt the swoosh of a troll’s arm just missing her head above her. The fast movement of ducking nearly swiped her of her feet, but she saw the troll in front of her, and it was adrenaline that kept her from tumbling over. ::I have no idea how to do this Inbi, help!:: The sword seemed stuck to the ground, and didn’t want to be lifted. Sweetcherrie mustered all her powers and with a shock the sword let go of the ground, and swung backwards, its speed almost pulling her over. Inbi mentally cringed at her friend's plight. She had not developed the muscles to be using this sword... Inbi herself was more of a dagger person, but perhaps she could offer some advice at least. And, she could see behind Sweetcherrie, which would be of some use with two opponents. ::Okay, well first, - Block that!!:: This was said as the first troll had moved forward and begun to swing his fist. Luckily the weapon was moving in the right direction, as aided by its momentum from being pulled from the ground. With only a little bit of redirection the sword swung straight into the troll’s fist and left a yawning cut in the trolls arm. Sweetcherrie appeared to be lucky once again, the sword was heavy, but it cut through flesh as a warm knife through butter. Her eyes grew big as she saw what had just happened, and almost she had turned around to jump with joy that she had actually managed to hit the troll, when she realized that she might’ve hit the troll, but that he wasn’t dead yet. Inbi wanted to have a short moment to tell Sweetcherrie all the little things that she was doing wrong, but could see that the trolls weren't about to grant her that. So she began to instruct as a constant monologue. ::Don't stand so stiffly. Spread your body weight a bit. Dive left! Now shift your grip a bit. Don't hold it like it's going - left again! - like it's going to escape on you. It's a tool...:: Her body was protesting against what Inbi told her to do, but her mind forced her muscles to react. Diving left and right to avoid being turned into mush by the two trolls, she slowly gained control over the sword instead of it controlling her. Sweetcherrie squeaked as she slid the stomach of one of the trolls open, its intestines came rolling out in a puddle of blood, and still the damn beast wasn’t out. It grabbed for its stomach, and at least Sweetcherrie was given some breathing space. The stench that came from the troll’s lunch made her feel sick, but she had no time to think about it. Inbi was drilling her into diving forward; the troll behind her had apparently attempted to give her a not so welcome hug. Even though with Inbi’s help it was going better than before, she had still received a couple of slashes over her body. Her left leg was bleeding, and started to go numb. And her hands were blistered from handling the heavy sword. ::I don’t know if I can keep up too much longer Inbi..:: Inbi couldn't feel what Sweetcherrie was feeling, but she knew that the woman must be sore and tired. She learned fast, but was moving even slower now than at the start, but it was no longer because of uncertainty. It was because she was quickly becoming worn out. ::You're doing well,:: Inbi insisted, not sure what else to say. They would have to find a way to end this quickly. She glanced over the area, trying to see whether there was anything they could use... and caught of glimpse of Valdar atop his Planar Steed. ::Do you have the strength,:: she mused, ::to force the fight nearer Valdar?:: Sweetcherrie nodded, but wondered silently about how she would be able to dodge one troll to force the other closer to Valdar. At that moment she suddenly heard a whistle and a voice that to her sounded like an angel singing. “Hey, Ugly! Come and get me nananana!” Appy was standing behind the troll, and had just thrown a poolball towards its head. She was holding her hands in front of her nose and while wiggling her fingers she was still chanting ‘nana nanana’, when the troll decided to change targets and go for the little girl instead. As the troll was nearing Appy turned around and ran off towards Bubble, the troll dumbly following her, as if it was playing tag now. With one troll out of the way Sweetcherrie regained some of her hope that she would be able to get out of here alive, and she dived left as a warning of Inbi resounded in her head.

Now this is purely just my own experience/opinions, but... BTW, J/K, and w/, w/o, and thanx were all pre-internet. I got the w/ and w/o habit from my mom, and can point out various VHS cassettes with the abbreviation in our house. BRB, LOL, IMHO, ROTFLMAO, TTYL, GTG, ROX, SUX, CYA, HIYA, TY, and @ were likely not. You'll notice that one wouldn't use things like "gtg" in a letter... it was, I think, born of the internet and chatting age. Others are debatable, but I know I saw the ones I mentioned. The only one I can think of that I use that is post-internet is "brb" because if someone calls you and you are in a rush, you don't have time to type "be right back". But I do think "be right back" when I type it. I generally like to type out most of my words, but things that I use quite commonly, I will abbreviate. (Also, if I'm taking a class that requires lots of notes and repetive words, it will turn into something like "s/w proc are usu used when the prog'rs are doing more than 1 similar proj" quite quickly. ) For some reason, I think "loll" when I see "lol", not "laugh out loud" or "lots of laughs" but that might be because I know so many people who pronounce it in everyday speech. The others I insert the phrase as I read. Anyway, though I am guilty of going partway to the dark side, I doubt that even if you went through old chat logs you would find me using "lol" anywhere; maybe once for every fifty times I instead say *laughs*, heh, hehe, *giggles*, et cetera. So I do have some cause to shudder when I see my entire generation being characterized with, or worse, advertised to via, all this stuff. Note, with respect to your comments on "Hiya" - perhaps what the internet did for many of these terms was not so much create them as spread them worldwide very quickly? Appendum: Though, as someone who grew up at the same time the internet did, some of this (like maybe BTW) could be polluted - I heard it before I ever used the internet, but the internet was still the source of it. However, I was pretty quick to join the internet when it really started growing, and it's not like any of my friends were scientists hacking away at the old BB's.

Okay, I see your point, I totally do. But I want to point out that abbreviations, like "BTW", even "BRB" and maybe even "LOL" are a totally different species from "wat ru doin 2nite?" (shudder). Abbreviations came before us; they are only more dominant now because communications with text and writing are more prevalent. I used J/K and BTW long before I used internet. (I will, by the way, be one of those people who clings to old technology - I can already see it in myself. "Cell phones are the devil!" and "I am not replacing my whole DVD collection with whatever comes after" and "It's called a kangaroo, not a bunnyhug or a - yuck - 'hoodie'." Change can be good, but I don't like change for the pure sake of change. Bleh.)

Gaaah! I do *not* want to be defined by litespeak! I see all those idiotic commercials for text-messaging on cell-phones, and I shudder! It's all horrible, so horrible! Also, BTW, I clearly remember the days of DOS and vinyl records. I remember the first of my friends getting a computer, the start of our CD collections, the end of VHS... I remember when my grandma (the most computer-savvy grandma ever, I bet) first got a mouse and then, later, a scanner. I remember the dawn of the internet and cell-phones both. I saw windows start, grow, boom, wither, and decay. So unless you're going to tell me I've been mistaken about being part of gen. Y, please don't tell me that gen. Y was born into the already-risen digital world....

Jhenrau Tyier was tiredly eating dinner - a vacuum-packaged, all-nutrients banana-flavoured blend - and feeling sorry for himself. He had once been a Captain of a great ship, and now they wouldn't even let him on the ships anymore. He knew that he had to tread carefully, avoid attention, but that was the trouble: he loved attention. He wanted the world to know him... but not as they did, not as a failed man. Still, he must resign himself to the life he'd earned. Suddenly a portal appeared in the wall. Jhenrau was surprised, but not shocked. He had learned about portals in school. They were rare, caused by a mixture of magic with molecular disturbances on the quantum scale, and very dangerous. Of course, this world had no magic, but scientists well knew that other worlds - the worlds that could be reached only through portals like this one - had magic. They hypothesized that a portal could appear only between a magic and a non-magic world, but of course that could not be tested. They didn't even know for sure whether two non-magic worlds could be linked (you'd have to enter the portal, to find out, and then how do you get back to share the results?) but theory suggested they could not. Magic appeared to be a necessary ingredient to the portals. But all this he thought in less than a second, for he also knew that portals were usually short-lived. Jhenrau hated his life, very much, and thought that nearly anything was better than what he had. So it didn't take much consideration for him to choose all those lights, and people, and cameras (these must be relatively science-primitive peoples), and noise - and trees, he saw, with wonder - and leave his dull, earth-bound days behind.

Closed! If anyone missed this and really really wants in, you'll have to form a circle all by yourself.

Okay, I feel we really ought to stop the poll on the above images right here, (especially since I already said I would): Layout Best Second Worst Faded images 1 4 1 Text and Background 1 0 2 Background 1 1 1 Sidebar 2 6 5 Text 5 3 4 Assortment of Items 8 4 2 Pens 1 3 5 What this looks like to me (keep in mind that I am speaking without the backing of the other guildleaders here, so it's just me) is that #6 is the clear winner (that's I made the minimalist badge with #6). I am inclined to automatically take out those with 4 or 5 "worst" votes, and then #6 has far more "best" or "second-best" than any of the remaining (it would probably win even if we didn't discard those other 3). But, due to some postive feedback re: the minimalist badge, (and I kinda like it myself) I will certainly continue experimenting with ones like that (atm, I'm not sure what it would look like for someone in only 1 or 2 guilds) and very possibly start a second poll soon, regarding size. Yes, I am keeping well in mind that reverie might be the minority, but I want to explore this option. In the meantime, feel free to keep commenting in this thread. Oh, and... Oh, but if I've learned anything from the Piazza, it's that we can't count on people to read and follow instructions True... but I like pictures! Me, too. If nothing else, the minimalist badge has already come of it, something which I had not myself considered.

Because you know I'm going to argue for my cause... (but I am glad you are voicing your opinion) This, I believe, would rely on each member doing it themselves. I think a major benefit of these badges would be that they are consistent across all the guildmembers and something to look forward to upon promotion or acceptance, and I don't quite think that would fit with that. For those more technical - how possible is this? But even assuming it's feasible, in my own opinion, pictures are really nice. A quick, easy way to see someone's ranking in the guilds without having to find it in all that text and read it. Too flashy, though? What if they were even smaller, and less coloured? That's a very quick solution (I mean, it would have to worked on further), but it's an idea...

Wow, I must say this poll has been interesting to watch. Also, I am very happy with the number of people who have spent a moment to participate. I had considered forming a second poll with a subset, but it appears that that would be wholly unnecessary. I'll give this another day for anyone who had planned to vote and then forgot, but I think we know what we need to know. Cheers, Katz

... One more day, and though we'll sorta have a circle (though, if you want to be technical, we don't actually have enough members for a real circle) but it's relatively measley as the moment. Anyone on the tip of joining ... consider again, 'k? (It doesn't have to be anything long!)

Wow. This is quite amazing. I wanted to offer just one suggestion: Instead of "at 3", "at 5", et cetera, I would recommend "age 3", "age 5" because it took me a while to realize that you weren't describing times. Unless, of course, you want the reader to remain in doubt for a little bit, leaving the thinking as an exercise to keep them involved in the poem, or for some other reason.