(no subject)
It’s funny, in between bits of the stories that I do write, and the novel cheap paperback mystery that I am not yet giving up on writing, there are bits of scrap material, stuff that doesn’t fit into any proper story, conversations that can’t possibly fit into a canon-compliant anything but just appear, usually when I’m in the shower.
Frex:
The Weir/Simon, then Weir/Atlantis vid to Shakespeare's Sister's Moon Child or ... an offhand comment, really more jargon than actual gambling
…
(Grunt one: “Betcha five bucks McKay comes up with a solution in seven minutes or less.”
Grunt two: Seven minutes? I’ll take that bet”
Scientist: “Five bucks says it’s not McKay but Radek.”
Then Zelenka comes up with the solution, and the scientist grins broadly at the two uniforms rolling their eyes behind her. McKay sees her and shouts at her because Radek’s doing the nose-wrinkly smug smile at him )
…
causes Halling to ask what a dollar is good for.
McKay: About (look up conversion rate) of a real dollar.
Zelenka: or a third of a Euro.
Teyla: What’s a Euro?
Sheppard: An exercise in compromise.
Ronon: Can you eat it?
All: No
Halling: (to Ronon) I was about to ask the same thing.
Which leads to Kate Heightmeyer leading an entirely voluntary discussion on currency as a shared unit of worth to replace a more immediate barter system.
I’ve only got two lines for this, (1) Teyla’s saying that it’s unnecessarily cumbersome, which begs the question of how cumbersome is a herd of camels, anyway? and (2) how can you trade with strangers for bits of paper or, worse, a bank’s word that the paper exists, somewhere, that vow imprinted on a plastic piece of nothing that can be left behind in a rush to flee and …” At least jewelry makes sense. Transportable, if not edible.
And then we have the Radek and Rodney show, finishing one another’s sentences and correcting each other in disdain, explaining the gold standard, with digressions into the tea standard or the salt standard (or the camel standard), backing a country’s currency, a brief foray into inflation, finishing with broad smiles before Halling asks, "why not simply carry gold coins, then", and Heightmeyer, dry as dry can be, saying "No one actually uses the gold standard anymore, but thank you very much, gentlemen, for hopelessly muddying the waters here. Now please go away and do something useful. Involving physics. Or explosives. Something simple."
Which then leads me to thinking of Teyla in a mall, an idea which was painfully underused though I’ll cut them slack since it was essentially a dream sequence and yeah he’s going to dream himself waiting in the plush car rather than trekking through the mall, though quite honestly, I would have expected him to be waiting in a sports bar or at the least in the ubiquitous Mexican restaurant that’s in the malls around here. But I digress. Shocking, I know.
So we have Teyla and Weir in a mall and Teyla is walking past the Gap and the bewildering array of clothing places, saying “but, I have one body. Three shirts, maybe four, I could see, but why on earth would I need…
McKay: Part of it is that most of our clothing is intended only for one season.
Teyla: You have jackets for harsh weather.
McKay: No, I mean intended to last only one season... four months. Keeping a garment for more than five years is considered hopelessly unfashionable. A fact which only matters to a girlfriend or some other female-type sort who might be prowling about one’s wardrobe. An insult, I might say, to a favorite piece of clothing. And given the cyclical nature of fashion, as there really are only so many ways to drape fabric over a human form, quite…
Cadman: Rodney, get over it. I threw your fucking Marvin the Martian boxers away, all right? They were air-conditioned.
McKay: They’d just gotten comfortable.
And so Weir decides to introduce Teyla to the wonders found in a mall that are perishable - commodities intended for consumption - the local lotions and potions place, Bath and Body Works or what have you. But then I think of Teyla in Lush, eyes slitted against the overwhelming barrage of smells, high decibel odors, and she sees a price tag.
Teyla: no wait, that can’t be right, because I used the fizzy bath that you gave me and if a loaf of bread is 1.5 currency units then *eyes wide* distressed flappy hands*
Weir (realizing she’s made a strategic error): Actually, the one I gave you is this one, so that’s only two loaves of bread, really and let’s go over here, shall we?
Teyla: *flappy hands* Feed a family for a week! *flappy hands*
On the other hand, she’d go nuts at a rural feed store, wouldn’t she? Poking the seeds which the scientists wouldn’t allow her to take “Strawberries. Do they taste like straw? Is your hay here red?” and fondling nylon ropes and rubberized boots. “Completely waterproof, you say?”
(The loaf of bread trick is one that our college gaming group used. The guys came up with it, obviously, to explain that any currency system could be broken into “barter units” so once you have the price of a loaf of bread (being the base form of nourishment) or a single serving of beer, you could extrapolate from there a good meal, or a suit of fine clothes, or a wage for day labor. I still use the trick when converting out of our current inflation rate to say, depression era wages and menu prices. It’s a rough estimate, but it’s a hell of a lot better than trying to multiply by .875 on the fly. For current currency conversion, I use a web-based conversion table. If I ever actually go overseas, I’ll be the tourist thrusting my wallet at the waiter and cringing.)
Anyway, I’m not really going anywhere with any of that. Just thought I’d share.
Frex:
The Weir/Simon, then Weir/Atlantis vid to Shakespeare's Sister's Moon Child or ... an offhand comment, really more jargon than actual gambling
…
(Grunt one: “Betcha five bucks McKay comes up with a solution in seven minutes or less.”
Grunt two: Seven minutes? I’ll take that bet”
Scientist: “Five bucks says it’s not McKay but Radek.”
Then Zelenka comes up with the solution, and the scientist grins broadly at the two uniforms rolling their eyes behind her. McKay sees her and shouts at her because Radek’s doing the nose-wrinkly smug smile at him )
…
causes Halling to ask what a dollar is good for.
McKay: About (look up conversion rate) of a real dollar.
Zelenka: or a third of a Euro.
Teyla: What’s a Euro?
Sheppard: An exercise in compromise.
Ronon: Can you eat it?
All: No
Halling: (to Ronon) I was about to ask the same thing.
Which leads to Kate Heightmeyer leading an entirely voluntary discussion on currency as a shared unit of worth to replace a more immediate barter system.
I’ve only got two lines for this, (1) Teyla’s saying that it’s unnecessarily cumbersome, which begs the question of how cumbersome is a herd of camels, anyway? and (2) how can you trade with strangers for bits of paper or, worse, a bank’s word that the paper exists, somewhere, that vow imprinted on a plastic piece of nothing that can be left behind in a rush to flee and …” At least jewelry makes sense. Transportable, if not edible.
And then we have the Radek and Rodney show, finishing one another’s sentences and correcting each other in disdain, explaining the gold standard, with digressions into the tea standard or the salt standard (or the camel standard), backing a country’s currency, a brief foray into inflation, finishing with broad smiles before Halling asks, "why not simply carry gold coins, then", and Heightmeyer, dry as dry can be, saying "No one actually uses the gold standard anymore, but thank you very much, gentlemen, for hopelessly muddying the waters here. Now please go away and do something useful. Involving physics. Or explosives. Something simple."
Which then leads me to thinking of Teyla in a mall, an idea which was painfully underused though I’ll cut them slack since it was essentially a dream sequence and yeah he’s going to dream himself waiting in the plush car rather than trekking through the mall, though quite honestly, I would have expected him to be waiting in a sports bar or at the least in the ubiquitous Mexican restaurant that’s in the malls around here. But I digress. Shocking, I know.
So we have Teyla and Weir in a mall and Teyla is walking past the Gap and the bewildering array of clothing places, saying “but, I have one body. Three shirts, maybe four, I could see, but why on earth would I need…
McKay: Part of it is that most of our clothing is intended only for one season.
Teyla: You have jackets for harsh weather.
McKay: No, I mean intended to last only one season... four months. Keeping a garment for more than five years is considered hopelessly unfashionable. A fact which only matters to a girlfriend or some other female-type sort who might be prowling about one’s wardrobe. An insult, I might say, to a favorite piece of clothing. And given the cyclical nature of fashion, as there really are only so many ways to drape fabric over a human form, quite…
Cadman: Rodney, get over it. I threw your fucking Marvin the Martian boxers away, all right? They were air-conditioned.
McKay: They’d just gotten comfortable.
And so Weir decides to introduce Teyla to the wonders found in a mall that are perishable - commodities intended for consumption - the local lotions and potions place, Bath and Body Works or what have you. But then I think of Teyla in Lush, eyes slitted against the overwhelming barrage of smells, high decibel odors, and she sees a price tag.
Teyla: no wait, that can’t be right, because I used the fizzy bath that you gave me and if a loaf of bread is 1.5 currency units then *eyes wide* distressed flappy hands*
Weir (realizing she’s made a strategic error): Actually, the one I gave you is this one, so that’s only two loaves of bread, really and let’s go over here, shall we?
Teyla: *flappy hands* Feed a family for a week! *flappy hands*
On the other hand, she’d go nuts at a rural feed store, wouldn’t she? Poking the seeds which the scientists wouldn’t allow her to take “Strawberries. Do they taste like straw? Is your hay here red?” and fondling nylon ropes and rubberized boots. “Completely waterproof, you say?”
(The loaf of bread trick is one that our college gaming group used. The guys came up with it, obviously, to explain that any currency system could be broken into “barter units” so once you have the price of a loaf of bread (being the base form of nourishment) or a single serving of beer, you could extrapolate from there a good meal, or a suit of fine clothes, or a wage for day labor. I still use the trick when converting out of our current inflation rate to say, depression era wages and menu prices. It’s a rough estimate, but it’s a hell of a lot better than trying to multiply by .875 on the fly. For current currency conversion, I use a web-based conversion table. If I ever actually go overseas, I’ll be the tourist thrusting my wallet at the waiter and cringing.)
Anyway, I’m not really going anywhere with any of that. Just thought I’d share.