Thursday, October 8, 2009

01. Sayings Nov 01 Wed

(6:10 an Nov 01, 2006)

"Hard Head Bird Don't Make Good Soup." (CB drew Roberts : DT Godfrey Roberts)

Ah, yes. Hard head. An affliction suffered by many a young Bahamian boy. And, truth be told, the occasional young Bahamian girl as well. No need to discuss the attempted remedies or their efficacy. No, really. No need at all.

(7:02 am Nov 01, 2006)

Well, hard head, or no hard head, with speed like this, tings don't look too good.

I mean, "No Plot? No Problem!" is one thing, but no plot, no theme, no characters? Could be a problem. We shall see.

Where were we? Oh right. Hard head bird don't make good soup. With encouragement like this to straighten up and fly right, is it any wonder that some Bahamian children suffer from chronic hard head? I don't think so!


(7:22 am Nov 01, 2006)

(9:01 am Nov 01, 2006)

Petrosephas was a young Bahamian man who had suffered from
chronic hard head during his younger days. Some thought it was on account of his name but he never gave that theory much credence. That said, he did not have a viable theory of his own so it was a bit difficult to refute those who held that or any other theory.

Petrosephas had grown up being called pumpkin eater and people who knew him from his younger days still occasionally called him that. He was OK with that, but he did not really like it as sometimes when people who did not know him heard a friend call him by the old nickname, they thought he was another pumpkin eater know around town. He wasn't that pumpkin eater. Not at all.

(9:16 am Nov 01, 2006)

Petrosephas had a problem. His future wife would not talk to him. Now we are not talking a few days of not talking after a spat of some sort. No. His problem was much larger than that. You see, Charendaloquat had never said a single word to him in his whole life. That was some problem. He was getting near the end of his rope. He didn't know what else to try. She just would not speak to him.

Oh, she had sucked her teeth at him a few times when he had first started courting her and, initially, he had taken that as an encouraging sign. But these days, he could find little in their relationship from which to draw comfort or encouragement. Little was probably overstating things by miles. How was she ever going to become the future Mrs. Stone if she wouldn't even say hello to him when he greeted her?

(9:58 am Nov 01, 2006)

(5:40 pm Nov 01, 2006)

How indeed. Yes, Petrosephas had a problem. The thing is, it was a bit of an odd problem. Other girls around town liked him well enough. If he wanted a date for the weekend, there was never a problem. He seemed to be more than tolerated. He seemed to be somewhat sought after even. But not when it came to Charendaloquat. That girl would speak to him. Not a word.

"Ya head aint only for growin hair " (CB Tony Kelly : DT Bert Kelly)

Now that was a saying that Petrosephas decided he should take to heart. A little thinking might just serve him well. How could he get Charendaloquat to speak to him? What could he do?

(6:13 pm Nov 01, 2006)

He decided that he would take the Bo Hengy up to Briland for the weekend and spend his time on the beach devising a plan. In the meantime, he would just do some brainstorming and mind mapping as preparation.

(6:21 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Now, gentle reader, I am afraid I must digress here for a little bit. You see, I am sick. The writing is not going well. I am running low on contributed sayings for this little NaNo Novel. I can't find the energy to persue more sayings as I should. I came home today after visiting the doctor to my first No Voltage Blues for the month. Honestly! The first day of November 2006 and already BEC has struck my efforts with the No Voltage Blues.

And that's not all. There's more. Well, I was going to complain how there was no one watching this great IRC novel writing experiment, but I see that is not so. Welcome gentle online reader. Still, there is more. My little perl script that is supposed to take the logs of this and give me a text file decided it did not want to work properly this morning and so I had to spend precious writing time debugging a perl script. I managed to get it behaving halfway reasonably, but it is still not right. It is splitting words which results in inflated word counts. After I reach 2,000 tonight, if I have any energy, I will have to try and fix it up some more.

(6:33 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Charendaloquat was thinking a lot these days. Thinking about her future. Thinking about moving away from the over crowding in Nassau. Should she move to an Out Island, or should she consider another country? Were there any other countries that she might like living in? Bahamians often ended up in the States, but she did not see that for herself. It wasn't that she had anything against the States. She went there regularly and enjoyed herself well enough on her trips, but she did not see herself living there for any length of time. Perhaps one of the islands to the south or somewhere in Central or South America? She thought there might be possibilities there. She would have to think some more about them. Of course, there was always Europe... Nnnn, probably not.

(6:46 pm Nov 01, 2006)

(7:10 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Well, it looks like that old temporal black hole has moved into the vicinity once again. The thing is, he seems to have brought his friend, writer's block, along with him as well.

Gentle reader, how can I break free? How can I release the creativity within? How can I get to 2,000 words quickly so that I can go to bed and get the rest that the doctor ordered?

I don't know. And you can't tell me. There are two reasons why you can't tell me.

1. You are most likely reading this long after I have written it. If you are in this position it should be fairly obvious to you why you cannot tell me.

2. If you happen to be watching me write this in ##zotz you would be able to tell me if you happened to know, but the channel is moderated and watchers are not voiced. So, you can't tell me either. Well, not easily.

"Beas' take blow!" (CB lester Albury : DT ??)

(7:21 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Well, gentle reader, I certainly feel like I have been taking blows for a few days now. Let's hope Petrosephas finds himself doing better.

Gentle reader, I get the feeling that I could use some more characters about now. The thing is, I don't have any in reserve. I wonder if I should go looking for some NaNo Dares?

Well... That seems to be a no go. The NaNoWriMo site is seriously sluggish tonight. I guess what THEY say is right. When it rains, it pours.

(8:54 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Yes, well, here we go again. Perhaps we can reach the daily goal in this sprint.

I see someone in the dares wants us to use the line:

"I like you. You smell responsible."

Somewhere in our novels. And you know, that is such a strange coincidence.

Lately, Petro had been wondering if his opening line to Charendaloquat was the problem. He had fallen for that dare some time ago when first meeting her. Only at the last minute he chickened out and his line ended up being:

"I like you. You smell salty, like the ocean."

He regretted it as soon as the words escaped his lips, but what could he do?

Sometimes, you say something and, as much as you want to, you just can't un-say it. Petro whished he could un-say that line. He wished he had never heard of NaNo Dares.

He wished. Oh how he wished. But wishing was not going to make this come true. Wishing was not going to make that line unsaid. No, it was said, and that was that.

(9:40 pm Nov 01, 2006)

It seems that there is just no sprinting today. There is no flow. This block is
strong. Seriously strong. Have I made a big mistake in trying to write this novel in an IRC channel?

Petro got a call on his phone from a friend telling him that, while passing by Green Cay today, he noticed seven goats sitting on the beach. They talked for a while about possibly going up that way on the weekend to try and catch them. Petro said that if they were going to go they should go before the weekend as he might be going up to Briland. They decided to try going up on Thursday after noon and Petro rang off.

(9:50 pm Nov 01, 2006)

(10:33 pm Nov 01, 2006)

See what I mean about no sprinting? I mean, honestly!

"It is better to humour a fool than to be plagued by him." (CB Thomas Roberts : DT Ma Annie)

Yes, yes it is. And I remember that white plastic belt.

Get used to it. It has been a bad day. I have about five hundred more words to go and it is getting late. I want to go to sleep. Time to enter NaNo ramble mode.

Petro grew up in Coral Harbour. He supposedly lived with a cousin of his in a house on one of the canals but, in fact, he spent most of his days and nights, when not in school, in a thatch hut he had made for himself on an empty lot on the beach.

He loved to fish. This tended to keep him well fed but also to get him into a fair amount of trouble from time to time. You see, he often cut school to spend the day fishing. This didn't sit too well with his aunt and uncle.

Still, all things considered, it was worth the trouble. He would fish for passing jacks from the beach with a rod and yellow feathers. He would fish for sharks at night with a rope and chain and big hook tied to a tree. He would borrow a tin dingy from a friend and hand line fish the small heads off the shore.

(10:47 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Ramble on.

This script is really causing trouble now. My perl-fu is weak these days. I hope I can fix it up quickly tonight or early in the morning.

One of the issues it is having right now is that it is leaving (causing) breaks
in the middle of words at the end of lines. What this results in is an incorrect word count.

For instance:

wc -w nanoclean.txt

gives:

1802 nanoclean.txt

which says I only have about two hundred more words to write before I can hit the sack. But! After fixing the broken word issues in AbiWord, AbiWord's word count feature tells me I have only one thousand seven hundred and thirty nine words.

This will get out of had fast as days pass. I must find a fix soon!

(Cue dramatic music!)

(10:57 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Ramble on.

Many a night would find Petro sitting by a fire on the beach with a freshly caught and cleaned fish roasting on a grill and a shark line snaking out into the water. With a nice big jack head on the hook to tempt passing killers.

Sometimes still, Petro would go out to his old stomping grounds and spend a night on the beach fishing for sharks.

Well, gentle reader, whereas I once had miles to go before I sleep, no I only have in the area of half a hundred words and I am done for the day. And none too soon I might add. None too soon at all.

(11:06 pm Nov 01, 2006)

Stick a fork in him, he's done! Goodnight.

(11:08 pm Nov 01, 2006)

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