Waffle
The other day I had a customer who asked of me what the difference between LPG and the older, now effectively unused, CNG was. And the person that I am curses the person that he was, being as he left me with a curiosity to know for myself and a lethargy to not actually attempt to find it out. Happily, beloved, this is where you come in.
Does anyone know what the difference is?
I told him I figured they were basically the same sort of stuff. He said, "No, because the old stuff was compressed into the tanks, that's what the C sands for in the name, right? Compressed Natural Gas. Whereas this new stuff is Liquid, right? That's the L, Liquid Petroleum Gas."
He may be correct but all I could do was turn to him in my ridiculous protective goggles, standing effectively astride a small bomb and say, "Yes, that's how you turn gas into a liquid, you compress it..."
--
I had a $30 gift voucher for Borders and a $30 gift voucher for JB HiFi left over from Christmas. Yesterday I went up to the mall in Albany to use them. I bought Neil Gaiman's short story collection Fragile Things, Ratatouille in a simple version with almost no special features which I feel mildly irked about and the first season of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which is the coolest kids cartoon I've seen in ages seriously awesome wow Blooregard Q. Kazoo is brilliant and the animation is so freakin' classy whoo.
It took me an hour and a half to choose those meagre items.
I wandered those stores like a fat kid denied party cake. I will never own all the DVDs, CDs, books, graphic novels and games that I want to. Its impossible. And that, my friends, is the tragedy of the human consumer condition. So I am lead to believe.
--
I was thinking about writing a long and non narrative description of the walk I took around the beach today. Instead, I decided to burble about the story I'm writing. Very much for my own benefit, don't feel you have to peek at all.
Been doing a decent whack of writing this week (should do another few pages before I go get Martin for our regular Friday afternoon beer) but the end is definately approaching. I'm beginning to be unsure about the plot as I knew it. A great violence is going to occur and I don't know that I can let my boys get away with simply running away. It would undermine the theme of their adventure for one thing, but also I'm not sure if the violence will be bad enough to warrent a major consequence or not. If so the story suddenly becomes much heavier, if not then what is the point? We'll see how bad it is once it happens I suppose and try to figure out the consequences after.
Because I'm nearing the end of this draft (93 pages! Hoorah!) I'm also beginning to consider what will happen to the story in the second draft. The military theme will be emphasised and probably discussed by the boys themselves. After all, the working title of the book is "The Summer War" and the boys are playing shoot-em-up video games at the beginning and they rest in a small park with an ANZAC memorial after their first fight (which I had no idea was even there! But once they had the coke bottles in their hands I knew there was nowhere else they could sit to drink them) and now there's going to be a much bigger one. Something about growing up and being men has to come out of that surely?
Which leads me onto the tentative youthful 'we know girls exist but don't know what to do with them' sexuality that the boys have. They're young. They know there's something forbidden about naked women. It's not an adult novel so I can't exactly just talk about sex. But what with the antics on the beach and the near disastrous attempt to see the adult section of the video store, there must be something about the sexuality of becoming grown ups in there too.
And that's the final thing I noticed. There's not one female character in this book. Not one. I think I mention one of the boys mother at one point. But it grew from a memory I had of my youth and, while there were girls on the periphery, this memory was more about me and the lads. Of course, the story now resembles less a memory framed narratively than a fictional that echoes the past fainter than a butterfly's sneeze. So perhaps one of the lads could be a sister. Or a mate who's a tad of a tomboy. Just to try and bring a little balance in. Of course, then in the second draft I'll have to see how having a girl present could change things. I'm sure it would affect those sexuality moments in interesting ways!
So all those things are going to be on my mind during the second draft, considering who says what and how and where and what events could show about these things and the characters. Oh yes, the characters. I have a definate arc in mind for them now! At first they just did things but now I know what it is that they are each supposed to go through and discover and become. Not all of them grow up in good ways or learn how to be good people. Some of them stagnate and others go bad. But now I need to go through and make sure the arc exists instead of suddenly tumbling out of them at the end. I know there's thing in a few places where someone else needs to say a line, instead of the person I thought said it.
And finally there's the dressing of it, the setting and the voice. I want to try and distinguish the voices of the boys a bit more, so you could guess which one was speaking without attribution perhaps. And I know that my physical description leaves too much ot the imagination. I need to go out and really picture the places these boys go so I can conjure them in words properly.
Does anyone know what the difference is?
I told him I figured they were basically the same sort of stuff. He said, "No, because the old stuff was compressed into the tanks, that's what the C sands for in the name, right? Compressed Natural Gas. Whereas this new stuff is Liquid, right? That's the L, Liquid Petroleum Gas."
He may be correct but all I could do was turn to him in my ridiculous protective goggles, standing effectively astride a small bomb and say, "Yes, that's how you turn gas into a liquid, you compress it..."
--
I had a $30 gift voucher for Borders and a $30 gift voucher for JB HiFi left over from Christmas. Yesterday I went up to the mall in Albany to use them. I bought Neil Gaiman's short story collection Fragile Things, Ratatouille in a simple version with almost no special features which I feel mildly irked about and the first season of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which is the coolest kids cartoon I've seen in ages seriously awesome wow Blooregard Q. Kazoo is brilliant and the animation is so freakin' classy whoo.
It took me an hour and a half to choose those meagre items.
I wandered those stores like a fat kid denied party cake. I will never own all the DVDs, CDs, books, graphic novels and games that I want to. Its impossible. And that, my friends, is the tragedy of the human consumer condition. So I am lead to believe.
--
I was thinking about writing a long and non narrative description of the walk I took around the beach today. Instead, I decided to burble about the story I'm writing. Very much for my own benefit, don't feel you have to peek at all.
Been doing a decent whack of writing this week (should do another few pages before I go get Martin for our regular Friday afternoon beer) but the end is definately approaching. I'm beginning to be unsure about the plot as I knew it. A great violence is going to occur and I don't know that I can let my boys get away with simply running away. It would undermine the theme of their adventure for one thing, but also I'm not sure if the violence will be bad enough to warrent a major consequence or not. If so the story suddenly becomes much heavier, if not then what is the point? We'll see how bad it is once it happens I suppose and try to figure out the consequences after.
Because I'm nearing the end of this draft (93 pages! Hoorah!) I'm also beginning to consider what will happen to the story in the second draft. The military theme will be emphasised and probably discussed by the boys themselves. After all, the working title of the book is "The Summer War" and the boys are playing shoot-em-up video games at the beginning and they rest in a small park with an ANZAC memorial after their first fight (which I had no idea was even there! But once they had the coke bottles in their hands I knew there was nowhere else they could sit to drink them) and now there's going to be a much bigger one. Something about growing up and being men has to come out of that surely?
Which leads me onto the tentative youthful 'we know girls exist but don't know what to do with them' sexuality that the boys have. They're young. They know there's something forbidden about naked women. It's not an adult novel so I can't exactly just talk about sex. But what with the antics on the beach and the near disastrous attempt to see the adult section of the video store, there must be something about the sexuality of becoming grown ups in there too.
And that's the final thing I noticed. There's not one female character in this book. Not one. I think I mention one of the boys mother at one point. But it grew from a memory I had of my youth and, while there were girls on the periphery, this memory was more about me and the lads. Of course, the story now resembles less a memory framed narratively than a fictional that echoes the past fainter than a butterfly's sneeze. So perhaps one of the lads could be a sister. Or a mate who's a tad of a tomboy. Just to try and bring a little balance in. Of course, then in the second draft I'll have to see how having a girl present could change things. I'm sure it would affect those sexuality moments in interesting ways!
So all those things are going to be on my mind during the second draft, considering who says what and how and where and what events could show about these things and the characters. Oh yes, the characters. I have a definate arc in mind for them now! At first they just did things but now I know what it is that they are each supposed to go through and discover and become. Not all of them grow up in good ways or learn how to be good people. Some of them stagnate and others go bad. But now I need to go through and make sure the arc exists instead of suddenly tumbling out of them at the end. I know there's thing in a few places where someone else needs to say a line, instead of the person I thought said it.
And finally there's the dressing of it, the setting and the voice. I want to try and distinguish the voices of the boys a bit more, so you could guess which one was speaking without attribution perhaps. And I know that my physical description leaves too much ot the imagination. I need to go out and really picture the places these boys go so I can conjure them in words properly.