Ravings of a Textual Deviant

The Turtle Island team reveals a unique form of transport; Our Heroes arrive in Willemstad and realize that they do not speak Dutch; Mr. Carl commits a felony or two.

Team TransAmerica had just boarded the Caterina, a ship chartered by Team Lisboa, when last we met. As the ship pulled out into the stunning, turquoise waters of the Caribbean, Mr. Carl spotted a familiar, notched fin following at a discreet distance. Taking no chances with competition of another sort close at hand, Our Heroes kept a twenty-four-hour watch on their possessions lashed firmly in the ship’s hold. Team Lisboa did likewise, and while the air aboard ship was tense, nothing untoward occurred, other than Mrs. Anderson’s unfortunate seasickness.

The Caterina made good time, thanks to a steady wind, but was still overtaken on its second day of travel by a most extraordinary form of transport. Six enormous birds appeared on the horizon, flying in formation. The birds passed close enough to the ship that those aboard could see that each bird had a passenger, but not so close as to present a target. TransAmerica took it in stride, and Lisboa consoled itself with the knowledge that at least they were still ahead of those pigs, Real Madrid, whose ship was visible as well. However, when the Caterina pulled into port the next morning, they discovered that Real Madrid had overtaken them in the night, as the Spanish ship was already berthed. Furthermore, a familiar, Brazilian-flagged vessel and an English-flagged steamship were also tied up at other piers. Undaunted, Mrs. Atwood, Miss Kingston, and Mr. Carl supervised unloading the team’s considerable cargo, while Mr. Laughton, Dr. Hu, and a wobbly-but-undaunted Mrs. Anderson departed post-haste for the American Consul’s office.

Upon arriving at the Consulate, Mr. Laughton and company were relieved of their weapons and shown to Consul Portman, a relaxed, accommodating gentleman who happily produced the destination papers, as well as recommendation for a reliable ship’s captain, one Captain MacDonald. The next destination turned out to be Brasilia, a city purpose-built to be the capital of the Empire of Brazil. (”How do you get to Brasilia,” Mr. Laughton enquired of the Consul. “I don’t,” he replied, taking a long pull on his odd-smelling cigar. “Never been further than Caracas.”) Although Brasilia is deep in the interior and barely accessible by river, Consul Portman nonetheless recommended against traveling overland through the dense Venezuelan and Brazilian jungles. Consul Portman also volunteered that the French had been and gone the day before. [For those playing at home, the order of arrival in Willemstad is: Republique (France), Brasilia Imperial (Brazil), Mercury (Great Britain), Turtle Island (Native Americans), Real Madrid (Spain), Lisboa (Portugal)/TransAmerica.]

Meanwhile, back at the docks, the other half of the team attempted conversation with an Italian-speaking Argentine who was supervising the unloading of cargo from the ship berthed next to the Caterina. They were moderately successful, learning that the Argentine ship would stay for a week, then return to Buenos Aires by way of Montevideo. However, as none of the present company spoke Italian, they were surprised to learn that messages for ships’ captains could be left “in the harbourmaster’s pants.” Linguistic difficulties continued to plague the group. Their colleagues stopped to buy a newspaper en route back to the docks. (”It’s in Dutch,” my players said accusingly, which was true, sort of. “Where did you find someone who speaks Dutch?” Oh, sure, I tell you, you tell someone else, and before you know it, thousands of people will be speaking Dutch. But I digress.) Diligent application of Dr. Hu’s linguistic genius and lucky guessing revealed that the French team had been and gone; that a local man had died in a jewelry theft, and that Federal troops had been sent into Atlanta by Grover Cleveland.

Mr. Carl volunteered to stay behind and sleep in the rented warehouse space with the team’s equipment (a move the others may soon have cause to regret) while the rest of them checked into the spare-but-clean Palm Court Inn. The transaction was conducted in rudimentary Spanish on both sides, and the team, less Mr. Carl, repaired to a restaurant for supper. As the establishment was entirely and exclusively Dutch-speaking, the team took their chances with the menu, using the time-honored tradition of American tourists everywhere— pointing randomly at menu items and hoping for the best. They even managed to get an assortment of leftovers packed up for Mr. Carl, which they intended to deliver to him.

Upon arriving at the warehouse, the rest of the team found the disguised (nearly unrecognizable, in fact) Mr. Carl, in seaman’s garb. His identity was sorted out in fairly short order, and he asked the rest of the team to wait in the warehouse while he “checked on something,” intending to spend some time at a dockside drinking establishment. Along the way, he was accosted by a drunken mestizo sailor, who offered him an enormous cabochon emerald with a curious engraving at a ridiculously low price. Never one to refuse a bargain, Mr. Carl happily paid the man in American dollars and continued on his way. A couple of hours of productive eavesdropping confirmed what his teammates already knew; viz., traveling overland to Brasilia would be a very bad idea. In fact, he discovered that even going to Brasilia was a questionable move, as the Princess Imperial was known to run it as her private fief and, incidentally, was a sorceress of some repute. Still, faint heart never won fair Ellipse.

Just as the team began to comment upon the lateness of the hour, Mr. Carl returned (omitting mention of his recent purchase), and the rest of them rushed back to the Palm Court Inn, arriving just before the proprietress locked the door at 11:00 PM. Less than an hour later, Mrs. Atwood was briefly awakened by a commotion coming from the general direction of the waterfront, but the rest of the team slept the sleep of the blissfully ignorant. Mr. Carl, on the other hand, knew exactly what was going on, having been responsible for it. Specifically, he took a stroll down the pier at which the Caterina was docked, taking advantage of the dark and feigned drunken urination to liberally spread a flammable substance on the pier. He finished the exercise by tossing a lit cigarette squarely into the flammable liquid, with predictable results. The Caterina pulled out from her berth in time to avoid the fire, and re-berthed a few hours later at another pier.

The next morning, the TransAmerica Team regrouped at the waterfront after breakfast. In addition to the immediately obvious results of Mr. Carl’s late-night excursion, the team also noticed that the Caterina was the only Ellipse vessel still in port, the Spanish, English, and Brazilians having departed at various times throughout the previous day. The Turtle Island Team made its own spectacular, low-flying departure that very morning, as Our Heroes debated whether the Caterina’s hasty withdrawal from her berth constituted “leaving,” for purposes of the promises made to Mr. Salazar when they boarded in Colón.

Quote of the game: “It doesn’t take long to wander down the pier, take a whiz, and set it on fire.”

Whilst playing hooky from work on Friday, I stopped at one of my favorite supermarkets for a few non-refrigerated staples before heading to yoga class. I was stopped dead in the produce section by the smell of fresh strawberries. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d smelled fresh strawberries, let alone eaten them. I hunted through the stack of perforated plastic boxes, looking for the box with the reddest, smallest, most fragrant strawberries. I put the box in the cart’s child seat so that I could occasionally lean over and sniff the berries as I finished the rest of my shopping. When I checked out, I pulled the box out of the grocery bag and took it into the front seat with me. I stopped to smell the berries at every red light between the grocery and the gym. And no sooner had I pulled into a parking spot than that box was open and I was nibbling strawberries in the front seat of my car, heedless of the strange looks from the guy in the car next to me. I suppose it’s not often you see someone having an in-car picnic with the same furtive joy and enthusiasm other people reserve for snorting coke in nightclub restrooms. I had finished my box of strawberries by Saturday afternoon, and went back for another box on Sunday. And as good as the second box is, nothing quite matched the sheer pleasure of sitting in my car in the sun, nibbling on the first strawberries of the season.

“Ed’s the black sheep of his family. I come from a family of black sheep. You have to be an orange sheep in order to stand out…and there are a few.”

You are ‘juggling’. Jugglers, tumblers, and other
street performers were a very popular sort of
entertainment once, before movies and talkies
and online quizzes supplanted them.

You like to put on a show for people, and they like
to watch. You are friendly and well-liked,
particularly for your sense of humor, although
you sometimes play with people’s heads. You
are frequently the center of attention, and you
like it that way. However, you have to realize
that the world does not revolve around you.
Furthermore, you have to learn that your
light-hearted antics are not appropriate to all
situations. Your problem is that juggling has
been obsolete for a long time.

What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Is it fair to tell my supervisor I am taking a mental health day when I have none?

This week, Paul presents us with the Miracle on Ice; to wit:

Our 13th “Unlucky” IRE harkens back a quarter century to one of the most stunning events in Hockey, or any other sports, history. The unheralded, plucky US Hockey team beat the defending Olympic champion Russian team (enroute to eventually beating Finland for the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics). This story of David versus Goliath is the fodder for this outing’s IRE.

I love ice hockey. I love everything about ice hockey. I especially love Olympic ice hockey. But that’s not what I am going to talk about.

No, I am going to continue ripping off other authors and drop my players into the Big Game themselves, per Robert Aspirin’s Myth Directions. If you haven’t read the book, the short version is: the main characters find themselves facing two professional sports teams in a three-way match for the Trophy. The only rule is that players are not allowed to use edged weapons against each other. (My favorite bit in the book is when one character asks about the guy wearing stripes. “Leave him alone, he’s neutral,” the other replies.)

Heck, I’d probably go for a two-for-one ripoff and make it Quidditch for Blood and Revenge. I’d love to watch my crew run riot against the equivalent of, say, Manchester United.

This Last week, Paul asks us to discuss the Kyoto Protocol.

I’m going to be entirely unoriginal and rip off Kim Stanley Robinson for this one. The game is set on a terraformed Mars. Unfortunately, the terraforming doesn’t seem to work as well as it might—or at all, in some cases. The players’ mission is to find out exactly what’s going on with the planet’s climate. Are all the colonies abiding by the rules about recycling, waste disposal, etc.? Or has the newly warm and wet environment brought some Ancient Martian lifeforms out of hibernation?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; my brother has a great sense of humor. He called the other day so we could catch up, and naturally, I had to ask about Scout. Apparently, Scout’s latest trick is to scratch at the door as if she wants to go out, wait for a two-legs to open it, then raise her nose in disdain and wander back into the recesses of the house…just to prove who’s boss. We briefly discussed the possibility of Scout learning to open the door herself. Ari then said that if she’d either learn to open the door or learn to use the litterbox, he’d be happy. And then he said “But who am I to talk? I never use the litterbox.” Of course, I pointed out that he probably doesn’t shit in the corners of his house, either. “You’ve got me there,” he admitted.

Attack of the 50-foot Martha.

Having one of those days when I’m getting on my own nerves. In fact, I am so cranky that I don’t want to be in the room with me. It seems a bit early for PMS, and yet…

Medication time, I think. And frankly, I could do with some sunshine. It’s been so gloomy lately that I cannot help but wonder if the sun is actually still there, or the next moment will be the eighth one.