Ambrosia Software Web Board: I'd like to propose a toast... - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Ah, the ever popular "blue question mark comeback". Yes, Sponge Tom, you have been quite thoroughly owned.

I don't get it.

What else is new?

Either I'm a genius or this web board hates me.

It's done it twice now...

...

I don't get it.

You know the vital rule of thinking before you post really has eluded you hasn't it.


Twice i've quick replied to topics in like the last week and its blanked my post...


Is that clear enough for you?

What? No! Surely not!

Not really.

What do you mean by blanked your post?

Look under that post at my blank reply...


This also happened in another topic where you even commented how you couldn't quote it...


I'm going to go break things now.

Ah. I didn't know you had started on a different subject.

Anyway, I think I'll join ya. It's fun to destroy things. Did you have any people in mind, or were you just going to break inanimate objects?

How very Christian of you.

Well, what else would I do if I didn't destroy stuff?

A young man like you should be able to come up with loads of good, wholesome stuff with which to while away his dreary life. For instance, you could flagellate yourself for being an unworthy sinner, sell corn pone down by the creek, or volunteer to provide conjugal visits to the ladies at the local lunatic asylum.

-Pufer

...or I could make HK-47 my role model?

I don't know about you, Pufer, but I'd rather not hang out around a bunch of women when they're being all insane all over the place.

I guess you never like to spend any time with women at all, then.

Bitter much?


The fun is the driving them insane.

Usually a short trip.

-Pufer

Just be careful they don't end up driving you up the wall.

You let your women drive?

There's nothing more exhilarating.

I'm in the process of putting my finance on my car insurance. There is something very weird about the idea to me. Purely because the thought of someone else driving my car seems really strange. In the nearly 5 years I've had the car, I don't think I've been in it with anyone other than me driving it...

The first time I allowed someone else to drive my car, I felt really uncomfortable, like I was in the wrong place or something. Just a really alien feeling.

This would seem like a really appropriate time to bring up that time when someone stole my car when I just happened to be in the passenger seat...


Sadly it isn't my story...


Pufer...?

That doesn't matter. How many books aren't in the first person? A good enough story, told the right way, can definitely be about your compadre, dear old dad, lovely female companion, or damn hell vicious cat.

A few weeks ago, my lovely female companion was sitting on the end of a pier staring at various cetaceans up in Victoria, BC. This being May on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, she was somewhat chilly despite the generally sunny weather and the colorfulness of the hanging flower baskets hung along the pier. As she stared up at one of the happy baskets (the cetaceans were disappointing, in that there weren't any - thus, I suppose she was attempting to stare at various dolphins and such, only there weren't any. Only puffins.), a group of Brazilian college-aged tourists showed up around her and sat down in a semicircle around her. They weren't especially close and didn't seem particularly harmful, so - while she thought it a bit strange - she wasn't the only one sitting on the pier trying to figure out how she could take a picture of a puffin in such a way that it looked like a whale, so she figured she'd let it be.

Soon enough, however, the Brazilians pulled a bunch of balls of yarn out of their bags and began making a web between themselves with it. My lovely female companion decided that this was of more interest than the puffins, so she turned around to watch. The web slowly got larger and more colorful as she watched them work in silence. After a bit, they started to recite poetry to one another in Portuguese, one line at a time.

Time passed and the web grew towards her on the ground. She couldn't stand it any longer, so she asked the guy who seemed most likely to be the leader of the little group - an asian-looking fellow wearing a knit cap - about what it was they were doing. He looked at her and smiled warmly, and then abruptly tore a strip of the shirt he was wearing off and offered it to her.

The guy's smile tempered the shock of the sudden tearing sound over the sound of the waves slowly crashing into the pier, but she still felt that she shouldn't interfere with whatever was going down, so she smiled back and waved off the scrap of cloth. He - still smiling - shrugged and integrated the scrap of cloth into the web. Soon, one of his companions tore a strip of her shirt off and tied it into the web, followed by another guy doing the same thing.

This went on for a while. The Brazilians continued weaving their colorful web, pausing only to hand balls of yarn to one another and occasionally tear another piece of their clothing off to add to the web. Passerby would occasionally stop and watch for a couple minutes, then walk off again, nowhere near as mesmerized as the girl in the middle of the web was. She was no longer cold.

The Brazilians were all working unhurriedly, but one of them - a young lady with a now tattered red blouse and kind blue eyes - was nevertheless more adept than her companions. She made a woven border about a foot away from my lovely female companion's leg, smiled at her, and then stood up and silently walked away. Her turn in the poetry round was replaced by a period of silence. The others slowly finished up their own work about the same distance from where she was sitting and similarly walked calmly away until there was merely the "leader" of the group facing the girl in the middle of the web carrying on his part of the poem in a strange language, answered only by silence. He finished up and beamed another smile at her before calmly walking down the same way his companions went.

My lovely female companion sat and examined the web built around her for a while. It couldn't really be said that it was beautiful - indeed, with the scraps of cloth integrated therein, it seemed a bit crude - however, it seemed finished. Complete. And something more...

Peaceful.

She thought about taking a photograph. She had her camera with her, it would be quite simple. But it didn't feel right. The web was created with a sense of place - organized around her, constrained by the edge of the pier - and time. It was an exercise in pure creation; in impermanence. It was given to her to experience, but it was something she couldn't take with her in the same way that it existed on the pier.

After a few minutes of contemplation, ignoring the passerby who looked at her inquisitively, she stood and walked on her way down the pier. She considered that some of the other would-be whale watchers might sit in the web and have their spouse or parent take a picture of them in it. They would have an actual record of the circle - something to look at years from now on their computer screens while remembering their trip to the strait. They could pull it up in full color and see themselves in it. But they wouldn't be in it - that experience was hers, just as much as the experience of giving it to her was the property of some anonymous group of traveling artists. She needed no record, it was her web. She didn't look back.



That's actually my story; it happened to me here in Colorado under a tree, not in Canada on a pier. However, if my girlfriend had told me such a story, that's how I would relate it. If you don't have all the facts as you would if it were your own story, make them up within the realm of reasonableness. I set the stage at a real place where I've been up on Vancouver Island. I can picture it, so I can describe it, not that any great level of description is necessary. Nobody is going to call you for absolute accuracy on someone else's story, just make sure that it's an accurate depiction of something, and that the story is worth reading. If anybody gives a s### about the story, they're not going to worry about whether you described a street different, in fact, from the one where your friend's car was stolen from with him in it.

-Pufer