04 March 2013

Notes - no satire, only irony


         Carol got you up at eight-thirty in need of an email address correction. You were groggy for about thirty minutes; breakfast, paper, then a hot bath and your exercises followed. Now the clock hand is moving up towards noon and Carol is also finished with her exercises on the treadmill. You have a special errand to run today, tax forms to your accountant. Carol worries that everything is not in order. You don't worry about it nearly so much.  

         I don't have anything to say other than I am feeling like a nap. Carol has to take a shower and get ready; we might eat at Potbelly's since we will already be in that way. It's early yet anyway.

         Today we focus first on Pouch 13. - Amorella

         Carol just reminded me of a dentist appointment at ten tomorrow. I have to have a crown replaced. Lucky me. I am so very much excited at the prospects. I need to rest my eyes, Amorella. (1148)

         1502 hours. We are at the post office after a late lunch at Pot Belly's. We saw Katie, who used to be the manager. Now she's the regional manager and in to the Kenwood Belly for the day. We haven't seen her for about a year. She still remembered that I got a wreck sandwich and talked about Pot Belly putting a store in the Westchester area (she still lives in Mason and used to work at the Pot Belly in Polaris where we stop on our way to Cleveland). She likes her new job. It was good to see her and chat for a few minutes. --- Now at Target at VOA mall for Carol.

         You have one more errand, according to Carol, Graeter's; then you will go to the park for RanR. Ship is certainly sentient and more. We will begin with his perspective and measurement of his three new 'wards' as it were. - Amorella

         I am surprised you used "wards" -- the Oxford-American:

** **
ward  noun

3 a person, usually a minor, under the care and control of a guardian appointed by their parents or a court.
• archaic guardianship or the state of being subject to a guardian: the ward and care of the Crown.
Oxford-American
** **

         I did not expect you would need clarification. You are the English major not me. - Amorella

         1524 hours. I was thinking of the "usually a minor" and you are looking at the archaic "subject to a guardian".

         1611 hours. We are at Pine Hill Lakes Park. Carol is beginning the 1998 Lee Child's  Jack Reacher novel. Die Trying. (I think we saw the movie.)

         1628 hours. Okay, I have to stop here because I don't think this could possibly be coming into the fingertips correctly.

** **
Pouch 13 introduction

         Ship analyzed all personal and public information recently gathered on Pyl, Justin and Blake as well as their fine lined DNA substructures and ongoing vital signs many degrees beyond those presently possible or even known on Earth. With what Ship has presently he can create a female and/or a male twin of each individual earthling for non-rejecting full mature and transplantable whole body or body parts within twenty-four hours.

** **

         What do you have a problem with, orndorff? - Amorella

         I don't think such a thing would be possible; and in twenty four hours? Where did Ship gather the DNA?

         Handshakes. He used each marsupial humanoid as a bio-chemical lab tool. - Amorella

         Unbelievable. I could never make this up. Too far out.

         Just stating the fictional facts, boy. Get used to it. - Amorella

         Well, this is a different approach. I learn the fictional facts as we go along.

         Just like the characters. Twenty thousand years ahead is a long time. Ship is very efficient. And, before you ask, no, Friendly, Hartolite and Yermey didn't notice a thing. All communication is unconscious, just like our communication, only far superior because after the data is collected Ship's machinery does the work. Ship is just a more sophisticated humanoid built robot than the one on Mars. - Amorella

         It is not really believable.

         Real aliens such as described here would have a realization of this probable outcome, don't you think? - Amorella

         How will I ever remember this stuff?

         That's what your notes are for, boy. - Amorella

         This is hard to be ready for.

         You are just a wee bit ahead of the learning curve considering that Pyl, Justin and Blake. This is the way it will be from now on. Doug is important here because if he cannot accept these science plausibility's for Homo sapiens in a twenty-thousand year time period from the present then I'll change it to where he does or I'll drop the subject and find something else more easily clarified by yourself and John Douglas Goss, PhD. Physics.

         The general reader is not going to accept this any better than Doug or I am.

         Don't answer for Doug here. You like fiction with aliens in it though so that's what you get. This is not your father's science fiction boy. - Amorella

         It will never sell to an audience.

         Never is a long time. What do you care? Amorella

         Actually, I don't.

         Moot point then. - Amorella

         This is rather exciting to think on. I will have to ask Doug what he thinks of this proposition.

         By all means. Presently there is nothing else in this but for the fun of being human and theoretical reasoning on scientific plausibility. If he agrees, then if you or he has a question it can be asked and responded to in these notes until the concepts are acceptable or well beyond human reasoning so therefore dropped. - Amorella

         If a concept is beyond human reasoning it would appear as gibberish. I think of Ionesco’s theatre, "The Chairs".

** **
The Chairs

Les Chaises () is an absurdist "tragic farce" by Eugene Ionesco. It was written in 1952 and debuted the same year.
Plot

The play concerns two characters, known as Old Man and Old Woman, frantically preparing chairs for a series of invisible guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery, which is implied as being the meaning of life (it is never actually said). The guests supposedly include "everyone", implying everyone in the world; there are other implications that this is a post-apocalyptic world. The Old Man, for example, speaks of the destruction of Paris. The invisibility of the guests implies that the Old Man and Old Woman are the last two people on the planet. As the “guests” arrive, the two characters speak to them, and reminisce cryptically about their lives. A high point in the happiness of the couple is reached when the invisible emperor arrives. Finally, the orator arrives to deliver his speech to the assembled crowd. Played by a real actor, the orator's physical presence contradicts the expectations set up by the action earlier in the play.
The old couple then throw themselves out of the window into the ocean; they commit suicide because they claim at this point, when the whole world is going to hear the Old Man's astounding revelation, life couldn't get any better. As the orator begins to speak, the invisible crowd assembled in the room and the real audience in the theatre discover that the orator is a deaf-mute.
At the end of the play, the sound of an audience fades in. Ionesco claimed this sound of the audience at the end was the most significant moment in the play. He wrote in a letter to the first director, “The last decisive moment of the play should be the expression of ... absence,” He said that after the Orator leaves, "At this moment the audience would have in front of them ... empty chairs on an empty stage decorated with streamers, littered with useless confetti, which would give an impression of sadness, emptiness and disenchantment such as one finds in a ballroom after a dance; and it would be after this that the chairs, the scenery, the void, would inexplicably come to life (that is the effect, an effect beyond reason, true in its improbability, that we are looking for and that we must obtain), upsetting logic and raising fresh doubts."

From Wikipedia Offline - The Chairs

** **           

         We read and discussed and were essay tested on this play in Dr. John Coulter's World Literature class; two semesters, two volumes of World Literature. Most awesome. I loved it, so did my friend, Bob Pringle.

         Dr. Coulter was a catalyst for both of you. This is one of the reasons that if you didn't want me around I was going to Thomas Robert Pringle. He agreed, remember? - Amorella

         Yes, he did. I remember asking him when Carol and I were at their farm. In those days he was teaching British literature at Westerville South, raising goats as well as other farm animals and learning the art of blacksmithing. Those were wonderful days. It was awkward to ask him but if I remember correctly he asked me to ask you a few questions and I did while he witnessed both the writing of the questions and the writing of the responses. Then he looked at me with "this is an only Bob look" and said, "I'll do it, if something happens to you." And, that was that. We were satisfied and so were you.

         Bob is not that far away with that memory refreshed in your mind is he? - Amorella

         No, he isn't. I can remember the place, the space, and Bob not more than an arm's length in front of me. (1714)

         Carol just stopped reading at page 41, the beginning of Chapter Eight. Later, dude. - Amorella

         When you arrived home the phone rang and Alta and Craig were calling from Tucson. Alta asked, "Are you ready for the snow?" Which you were not. Then, a delightful surprise, they are flying to Chicago for a week and next weekend they are driving over and staying at  Craig's sister's (Kim) in upper Warren County where they have a horse farm. Next Tuesday they are driving to Mason to have lunch and the afternoon with you and Carol before Kim and her husband come home from work. They will leave for Chicago on Wednesday from his sister and her husband's place. Presently you have returned to Kroger's with the 'hoards' gathering food for tomorrow and the next day. You may have up to five inches of snow by Wednesday morning. - Amorella

         As I wrote your name the rain begins. Good timing. Hopefully it will stay rain the whole time but the weather people have their doubts. Earlier today I saw our neighbor put the snow blower to the front of the garage before putting the door down. Now I know what that was about.

         You had chicken soup for supper, watched the national news, last night's "The Mentalist" and an old BBC "Ripper Street" mystery. A new 'Car and Driver' arrived for a reading and you have the dentist to go to in the morning. Some relaxation is in order. Post what you have, enough for today in any case. - Amorella

         But I only wrote a paragraph, Amorella.

         You gleaned much more from it than you expected. If you want to work then reread that paragraph and think on your earthling friends involved. How go the next few hours with the marsupial humanoids in these earthlings' relatively sheltered and naive lives? Twenty thousand years is a long time, boy. Look how long Homo sapiens have been around so far. How long has it taken them to accomplish what you have today? - Amorella

         I think this is going to hurt my head, Amorella.

         I think it is going to hurt the reasonable heads of your three earthly friends, that's what I think. -- Amorella

         This would be a much easier story dream of Merlyn's if the aliens were monsters as usual and we put an end to them.

         Such an ironic thought, don't you think? - Amorella

         Such a dark, dark humor. (I love the concept even more.) Wicked satire.

         No satire, boy. Only irony. We don't need satire, boy. Post. - Amorella


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