I.
The next day, Michele returned to her hotel room
after her driving tour of Gettysburg. She tossed backpack and camera
onto the bed and went into the bathroom for a long, cold shower. She’d
been spent the day driving hither and yon on the Gettysburg driving
trail of the various locations around the battlefield, and although her
car had excellent air conditioning she’d gotten out on several occasions
to walk around the various sites she’d visited, and overall she was
feeling hot and grubby.
Refreshed after her shower, she
sat on her bed and fired up her laptop. Then she checked her email.
She’d received a response from her friend in Fredericksburg. She opened
it, and found that he was delighted to hear from her, and would be even
more delighted if she made his home her base during her week’s stay in
northern Maryland. And he’d be delighted to act as her guide to the
caverns of northern Virginia.
It had been a couple of
years since she’d visited Fitz (Alex Fitzhugh), and since she’d be
coming to his apartment from a different angle she looked up driving
directions on Mapquest, and printed those out on her portable printer.
She
arrived in Fredericksburg the next day in the late afternoon, and since
he’d specified he wouldn’t be home until after six pm, she spent a
couple of hours at a Barnes & Noble, browsing among the books.
At six, she headed for Fitz’s apartment.
“How was your drive?” he asked, taking her suitcase from her and carrying it into the bedroom.
“Great. But I’m longing for a hot bath.”
“You and your baths,” Fitz laughed. “You should have been a mermaid, you like water so much.”
“I’ve often thought so.”
“May I join you?”
Michele
tapped his hard chest with a smile. “My first bath after a drive is
always all about me. But I’ll be having another bath later on tonight,
as you well know. And if you’d care to join me then…”
“I’d love to.”
“Well, then. I’ll be back in twenty minutes, and we can catch up on old times.”
II.
They ordered in Chinese food, and spent the evening talking about old times.
Then, because he knew she liked it, Fitz said in his best James Mason impersonation, “What’s your pleasure, my dear? North By Northwest or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?”
“Tough choice,” Michele mused. “Cary Grant and James Mason, or Kirk Douglas and James Mason…I’m in the mood for Twenty Thousand Leagues…”
“I
love this movie,” Michele mused, as Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre
attempted to escape onto an island which, unbeknownst to them, was
inhabited by cannibals, “But it also broke my heart.”
“What do mean?”
“Well,
I saw it when I was very young, thirteen or so. Must have been one of
the first full length, live action films I’d ever seen…graduating from
the Disney animation classics, you know? And it ignited a love of oceans
and underwater exploring….” She broke off to yell, “Run, you poor
fools, run!”
After Douglas and Lorre were once more
safely aboard the Nautilus, Michele continued. “And I also got my first
crush, ever. My first crush on an actor and my first crush on a guy,
ever. James Mason.”
Fitz nodded. “I can see it,” he said judiciously.
“I
love his accent and his face and everything,” returned Michele with a
grin. “But, remember, I was thirteen, and I had no idea that movies I
saw on DVD were, you know, fifty years old. So I asked my mom if we
could rent another movie starring James Mason, and the very next day
she came back with one called 11 Harrowhouse.”
“I don’t recognize it.”
“Oh,
it was about a lowly clerk in a diamond merchant company who decides to
steal a million dollars worth of diamonds from his employer. Starred
Candace Bergen and Charles Grodin. James Mason had a supporting role.
And this movie was filmed – as I found out later, of course – in 1974.
20 years after he’d filmed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
“Ah, oh.”
“Exactly. From one day to the next the man I’d intended to marry when I grew up had aged 20 years!”
She joined in with Fitz’s laughter, but she was telling the truth. At age 13, she’d had her eye on Captain Nemo, alright!
“Worse
than that,” she continued, “he’d been 45 when he played Nemo and he was
65 in this movie. I was just…stunned, shattered! But that’s not the
worst of it. I asked my mom how in the world this could happen, you
know, that someone could be 45 one day and 65 the next, and that’s when
she explained that movies lasted forever. And the final irony…Mom had
one of those film encyclopedia books, and she looked him up…Mason had
actually been dead since 1984. He died two years before I was born!”
“Bummer,” said Fitz.
“You
got that right,” sighed Michele, dipping a fried cream-cheese filled
wonton into sweet and sour sauce and then popping it into her mouth. “Of
course after that I’d learned my lesson. Oh, I got crushes on actors…
Cary Grant, Peter Lorre…”
“Peter Lorre?”
“Hey – when he was young he was in pretty good shape! You saw him as Joel Cairo in Maltese Falcon, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“And in his Mr. Moto movies,
he could do ju jitsu like nobody’s business. Though I confess that once
he gained sooo much weight I sort of lost interest…”
“I should hope so.”
“Don’t
be mean. After all, he had some kind of medical problem that played
havoc with his weight. But, anyway, I watched a lot of movies and TV
after that, and had crushes on a lot of actors, but I’d learned to
separate actors from their roles by that time. But James Mason will
always remain my first love. And anyone who can do a James Mason
impersonation….”
Fitz grinned. He leaned toward her, “You may call me…Captain Nemo,” he said, in an exact replica of Mason’s voice.
“Oh, baby,” Michele murmured, running her hand down one of his pecs. “Talk Mason to me.”
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Hall of the Mountain King ch 4
It was 90 degrees in Gettysburg when Michele set out for the
battlefield. She’d checked the weather on her laptop and so wore white
cargo shorts that reached to mid-thigh, and a white Fifinella baseball
cap and T-shirt, which she’d picked up a couple of years ago when she’d
visited the WASP museum in Sweetwater Texas.
The motel offered free shuttle buses to the battlefield, and Michele decided she would take that route, rather than choose the independence of her car, since the main focus of her articles was supposed to be for the traveler on a budget.
The shuttle bus was two-thirds full when it arrived at the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center. Entrance to the battlefield grounds was free, but to go through the museum cost money, and she paid the fee that and then spent several hours wandering through all the exhibits.
She picked up a free Park Map and Guide, but also purchased a copy of David Petruzzi’s Complete Battlefield Guide, and a couple of CDs. One featuring Civil War songs from both sides, the other, dramatized readings for all the speeches made regarding the war.
She also fed several pennies and a couple of dollars into a stretched penny machine to add to her stretched penny collection, a ball cap and a battlefield T-shirt, for her ball cap and T-shirt collections. She stowed her acquisitions into the miniature backpack she’d brought with her, and slung that over her shoulders as she walked.
She’d intended to spend only one day at the battlefield but now realized that was not going to be enough time. To fully grasp the impact of this pivotal battle of the Civil War, she’d have to stay here for at least a couple of days, probably three or four, in order to see everything, absorb everything.
Michele checked battery status and memory free on her Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera, and found them good. She’d taken a lot of photos inside the museum. Now she circled the exterior of the museum, taking shots from various angles. Finally, she set off briskly on the long walk to the Soldier’s National Cemetery. She wanted to see that first of all, before she continued to explore the grounds.
As she walked, she paid a bit of attention to her fellow tourists – lots of family groups. Very young children looking interested, teenagers looking bored. Young men. Old men. More men than women, but she noticed several single women also walking about.
Michele brought out her digital recorder and began to record her thoughts. She’d already made several comments while walking through the Museum, noting down names and events that she’d want to research further. Now she mused about the appearance of the park and the ease of getting from one spot to another, how informative the signs were, and so on.
Just as the museum had put her into a somber mood, so did the National Cemetery. She walked along the white tablets, reading the inscriptions. Sometimes a man’s name, other times just unknown, occasionally a number of unknown soldiers had been laid to rest in the same plot.
Michele checked her watch, and decided it was time to catch the next shuttle bus to return to her motel. She retraced her steps back toward the Museum and Visitor Center.
As she sat on a bench waiting for the shuttle bus, a man in his mid forties sat next to her.
“Your first time at Gettysburg?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes. There’s so much to take in…I…”
But at that exact instant, her bus rolled up. “Well, here’s my bus,” said Michele. “Nice talking to you.”
He looked so disappointed, but he only waved. “Nice talking to you.”
Michele grinned wryly as she took a comfy seat right at the front. If he’d been cute, she probably would have stayed there and talked to him…but he’d been too skinny…
There was an Arby’s next to her motel. Michele purchased a couple of roast beef sandwiches and some French fries, and dined in her room, drinking milk that she’d previously purchased and kept in the room’s mini-fridge. She spent her time downloading photos, shrinking them to size and titling them appropriately. She knew well from past experience that if she fell behind on this project by even a day…she’d never get caught up. So she always made it a practice to get that kind of work out of the way each night.
Work done for the evening, Michele took a long, hot bath, then relaxed in bed, reading through the guide book she’d acquired earlier in the day. She decided she would do the driving tour, using her own car.
Then, depending on her mood, she’d either visit the battlefield sites for another day, or head down into Virginia to begin her quest for the caverns.
Before going to bed, Michele checked her email. Nothing of any interest...mostly spam.
However...Michele pursed her lips. If she was going to Virginia...why not look up an old friend? It had been over a year since she'd seen a friend she'd first in Germany while they'd both been attending high school in Germany, and remained friends - if of the long-distance variety - ever since. If she remembered right, he lived near Fredericksburg. Perhaps he'd have some time to drive over to Luray and go through the caverns with her.
Well, she'd send him an email invitation, and see what he'd have to say.
After sending the invite, Michele switched off her computer, rolled over, and fell asleep.
The Gettysburg Address
The motel offered free shuttle buses to the battlefield, and Michele decided she would take that route, rather than choose the independence of her car, since the main focus of her articles was supposed to be for the traveler on a budget.
The shuttle bus was two-thirds full when it arrived at the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center. Entrance to the battlefield grounds was free, but to go through the museum cost money, and she paid the fee that and then spent several hours wandering through all the exhibits.
She picked up a free Park Map and Guide, but also purchased a copy of David Petruzzi’s Complete Battlefield Guide, and a couple of CDs. One featuring Civil War songs from both sides, the other, dramatized readings for all the speeches made regarding the war.
She also fed several pennies and a couple of dollars into a stretched penny machine to add to her stretched penny collection, a ball cap and a battlefield T-shirt, for her ball cap and T-shirt collections. She stowed her acquisitions into the miniature backpack she’d brought with her, and slung that over her shoulders as she walked.
She’d intended to spend only one day at the battlefield but now realized that was not going to be enough time. To fully grasp the impact of this pivotal battle of the Civil War, she’d have to stay here for at least a couple of days, probably three or four, in order to see everything, absorb everything.
Michele checked battery status and memory free on her Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera, and found them good. She’d taken a lot of photos inside the museum. Now she circled the exterior of the museum, taking shots from various angles. Finally, she set off briskly on the long walk to the Soldier’s National Cemetery. She wanted to see that first of all, before she continued to explore the grounds.
As she walked, she paid a bit of attention to her fellow tourists – lots of family groups. Very young children looking interested, teenagers looking bored. Young men. Old men. More men than women, but she noticed several single women also walking about.
Michele brought out her digital recorder and began to record her thoughts. She’d already made several comments while walking through the Museum, noting down names and events that she’d want to research further. Now she mused about the appearance of the park and the ease of getting from one spot to another, how informative the signs were, and so on.
Just as the museum had put her into a somber mood, so did the National Cemetery. She walked along the white tablets, reading the inscriptions. Sometimes a man’s name, other times just unknown, occasionally a number of unknown soldiers had been laid to rest in the same plot.
Michele checked her watch, and decided it was time to catch the next shuttle bus to return to her motel. She retraced her steps back toward the Museum and Visitor Center.
As she sat on a bench waiting for the shuttle bus, a man in his mid forties sat next to her.
“Your first time at Gettysburg?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes. There’s so much to take in…I…”
But at that exact instant, her bus rolled up. “Well, here’s my bus,” said Michele. “Nice talking to you.”
He looked so disappointed, but he only waved. “Nice talking to you.”
Michele grinned wryly as she took a comfy seat right at the front. If he’d been cute, she probably would have stayed there and talked to him…but he’d been too skinny…
There was an Arby’s next to her motel. Michele purchased a couple of roast beef sandwiches and some French fries, and dined in her room, drinking milk that she’d previously purchased and kept in the room’s mini-fridge. She spent her time downloading photos, shrinking them to size and titling them appropriately. She knew well from past experience that if she fell behind on this project by even a day…she’d never get caught up. So she always made it a practice to get that kind of work out of the way each night.
Work done for the evening, Michele took a long, hot bath, then relaxed in bed, reading through the guide book she’d acquired earlier in the day. She decided she would do the driving tour, using her own car.
Then, depending on her mood, she’d either visit the battlefield sites for another day, or head down into Virginia to begin her quest for the caverns.
Before going to bed, Michele checked her email. Nothing of any interest...mostly spam.
However...Michele pursed her lips. If she was going to Virginia...why not look up an old friend? It had been over a year since she'd seen a friend she'd first in Germany while they'd both been attending high school in Germany, and remained friends - if of the long-distance variety - ever since. If she remembered right, he lived near Fredericksburg. Perhaps he'd have some time to drive over to Luray and go through the caverns with her.
Well, she'd send him an email invitation, and see what he'd have to say.
After sending the invite, Michele switched off her computer, rolled over, and fell asleep.
The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Hall of the Mountain King, Ch 3
Gus Keller sat at his desk in the Special Crimes Investigation Bureau
office building. Keller was the real name of the man who had attempted
to pass himself off as Mr. Largo to Taran Tula. He had been a desk
agent at the Washington office of the Special Crimes Investigation
Bureau for two years, recruited right out of college because of his
knowledge of European language, and had gradually become knowledgeable
in the art theft field, from the missing art from World War II, to the
Entartete Kunst, to the paintings and sculptures stolen on practically a
monthly basis for the last several decades.
When the real Mr. Largo had been captured, with a sheet of paper which had told the SCIB of his plans to meet with the infamous art thief-cum-assassin Taran Tula, he had been the only one with the appropriate knowledge of German and art, and he had been yanked from his desk and sent out into the field…where he had failed.
Oh, his superiors hadn’t said that, but he knew that’s what they thought.
In front of him on his desk lay the fingerprint cards for five women.
There is something called the CSI effect. Because most people believe that the TV shows such as CSI, CSI Miami and CSI New York represent actual police procedure, they think DNA can be identified within minutes, and that a single partial fingerprint can be used to definitely identify a suspect.
Such is not the case.
In any study of fingerprints, there are “points of similarity” that are considered. Anything over six points of similarity are considered a match.
That’s what Keller had, the fingerprint cards of five women who had fingerprints with three points of similarity to the partial print that he had lifted off the spoon that Taran Tula had held while eating her ice cream, a month ago.
He intended to visit them, one by one, and see if he could recognize any of them as Taran Tula.
Their names were as follows, listed alphabetically:
1. Michele Bravo – fingerprinted as a child as a military family member
2. Amanda Cooper – arrested for shoplifting
3. Rita Ellison – an employee of a defunct civilian military contractor. She’d been fingerprinted when she’d applied for a top secret clearance
4. Sophia Sanchez – a sergeant in the US Army
5. Debbie Morgan – an employee of a current civilian contractor to the military
Keller gazed at the five names….where to start….hell, why not alphabetically? He’d start with Michele Bravo.
When the real Mr. Largo had been captured, with a sheet of paper which had told the SCIB of his plans to meet with the infamous art thief-cum-assassin Taran Tula, he had been the only one with the appropriate knowledge of German and art, and he had been yanked from his desk and sent out into the field…where he had failed.
Oh, his superiors hadn’t said that, but he knew that’s what they thought.
In front of him on his desk lay the fingerprint cards for five women.
There is something called the CSI effect. Because most people believe that the TV shows such as CSI, CSI Miami and CSI New York represent actual police procedure, they think DNA can be identified within minutes, and that a single partial fingerprint can be used to definitely identify a suspect.
Such is not the case.
In any study of fingerprints, there are “points of similarity” that are considered. Anything over six points of similarity are considered a match.
That’s what Keller had, the fingerprint cards of five women who had fingerprints with three points of similarity to the partial print that he had lifted off the spoon that Taran Tula had held while eating her ice cream, a month ago.
He intended to visit them, one by one, and see if he could recognize any of them as Taran Tula.
Their names were as follows, listed alphabetically:
1. Michele Bravo – fingerprinted as a child as a military family member
2. Amanda Cooper – arrested for shoplifting
3. Rita Ellison – an employee of a defunct civilian military contractor. She’d been fingerprinted when she’d applied for a top secret clearance
4. Sophia Sanchez – a sergeant in the US Army
5. Debbie Morgan – an employee of a current civilian contractor to the military
Keller gazed at the five names….where to start….hell, why not alphabetically? He’d start with Michele Bravo.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Hall of the Mountain King ch 2
They walked hand-in-hand along the beach. Michele glanced at the man
at her side. He was tall, with silver hair and handsome features, and
wore a white turtle neck sweater under a blue blazer. Banacek. He
glanced at her and smiled his suave smile, and she smiled back.
The moon was full, and its light cast a silver gleam over the rocky beach, and the waves rolling in, pounding on the rocks on shore. Far ahead of them was a lighthouse on a rocky promontory, and every thirty seconds or so its silvery white beam would swing around and illuminate the entire landscape as bright as day.
They continued walking silently and holding hands, enjoying the roar of the ocean, the glorious power of the waves as they crashed against the rocks, the tang of the cool sea air. Far in the distance, Michele could see a galleon, with all sails set, silhouetted against the night sky, dipping into wave troughs and then rising up again.
Then they were at the foot of the cliff, atop which was the lighthouse. They began to climb an iron staircase that was set into the rock, and as they climbed the waves were coming closer and closer, spattering into foam at their feet as they rose higher and higher.
It was a long climb, but their breathing was easy as they went up step after step, side by side, until finally they reached the top of the cliff and stood looking out from that vantage point over the ocean.
Then they turned to look at the light house, which rose up over a hundred stories into the air, with that light as its centerpiece. It was painted white, with a black stripe running like a candy stripe in a circle up to its top.
They entered the lighthouse and in its center was another iron staircase, circular this time. And they began to climb that one as well, going round and round, round and round. At every second landing they stopped, leaning against each other, and gazed out a porthole into the night sky.
At last they reached the light room. Hand in hand, they went out onto the walkway, a six-foot wide parapet that surrounded the light room and allowed the lightkeeper to clean the windows from the outside. They stood there, watching the galleons sailing across the ocean, the occasional twelve-foot wing-spanned albatross soaring in air, and then they turned and looked into each other’s eyes.
They took off their clothes, and lay down on the cool stone parapet and began to make love….
Michele felt the sudden heat flooding into her loins as she woke up. She clenched the muscles in her thighs and felt the exquisite pleasure of an orgasm running through her…again…and again..and again…before it faded out, all too quickly.
Michele sighed as she lay there. Always too quick!
She had had such experiences before. When she hadn’t moved from a single spot for several hours – always when she was asleep, she would begin to have some kind of erotic dream, which would culminate with her waking up to an orgasm which she could bring to a peak of pleasure by tightening her thigh muscles. She had never been sure if the erotic dream brought on the orgasm, or the start of the physical orgasm was enough to influence her dreams…but they were always pleasurable while they were happening.
But making love to Banacek? She had the DVDs of the TV series, which she had discovered some years ago, even though it had been on TV in 1972, when she’d been just a baby. But Banacek, as played by George Peppard, had been so…so cool. So suave and sophisticated. So…uber-competent.
She hadn’t watched a Banacek episode in months, though, so, as she drifted back into a dreamless sleep, she wondered what had brought him to her mind now…
The moon was full, and its light cast a silver gleam over the rocky beach, and the waves rolling in, pounding on the rocks on shore. Far ahead of them was a lighthouse on a rocky promontory, and every thirty seconds or so its silvery white beam would swing around and illuminate the entire landscape as bright as day.
They continued walking silently and holding hands, enjoying the roar of the ocean, the glorious power of the waves as they crashed against the rocks, the tang of the cool sea air. Far in the distance, Michele could see a galleon, with all sails set, silhouetted against the night sky, dipping into wave troughs and then rising up again.
Then they were at the foot of the cliff, atop which was the lighthouse. They began to climb an iron staircase that was set into the rock, and as they climbed the waves were coming closer and closer, spattering into foam at their feet as they rose higher and higher.
It was a long climb, but their breathing was easy as they went up step after step, side by side, until finally they reached the top of the cliff and stood looking out from that vantage point over the ocean.
Then they turned to look at the light house, which rose up over a hundred stories into the air, with that light as its centerpiece. It was painted white, with a black stripe running like a candy stripe in a circle up to its top.
They entered the lighthouse and in its center was another iron staircase, circular this time. And they began to climb that one as well, going round and round, round and round. At every second landing they stopped, leaning against each other, and gazed out a porthole into the night sky.
At last they reached the light room. Hand in hand, they went out onto the walkway, a six-foot wide parapet that surrounded the light room and allowed the lightkeeper to clean the windows from the outside. They stood there, watching the galleons sailing across the ocean, the occasional twelve-foot wing-spanned albatross soaring in air, and then they turned and looked into each other’s eyes.
They took off their clothes, and lay down on the cool stone parapet and began to make love….
Michele felt the sudden heat flooding into her loins as she woke up. She clenched the muscles in her thighs and felt the exquisite pleasure of an orgasm running through her…again…and again..and again…before it faded out, all too quickly.
Michele sighed as she lay there. Always too quick!
She had had such experiences before. When she hadn’t moved from a single spot for several hours – always when she was asleep, she would begin to have some kind of erotic dream, which would culminate with her waking up to an orgasm which she could bring to a peak of pleasure by tightening her thigh muscles. She had never been sure if the erotic dream brought on the orgasm, or the start of the physical orgasm was enough to influence her dreams…but they were always pleasurable while they were happening.
But making love to Banacek? She had the DVDs of the TV series, which she had discovered some years ago, even though it had been on TV in 1972, when she’d been just a baby. But Banacek, as played by George Peppard, had been so…so cool. So suave and sophisticated. So…uber-competent.
She hadn’t watched a Banacek episode in months, though, so, as she drifted back into a dreamless sleep, she wondered what had brought him to her mind now…
Mirror IMage Iterations ch 2
The first chapter in Michele's fan fiction story regarding the Big Bang characters went as follows:
The Mirror Image Iterations Chapter 1
Sheldon Cooper sat in front of his computer, reading an article entitled "Physics at the Air-Sea Interface" from the online webzine: Physical Oceanography Quarterly. Although his field of study in physics was concerned with string theory, he had recently become interested in physics as it related to the oceans. He was going to conduct his own research to discover, once and for all, if global warming were man-made, or simply unstoppable mother nature.
Dimly, as if it were the buzzing of a mosquito, he could hear a shrieking noise. Suddenly he blinked and looked up. Normally nothing could tear his attention away from a physics article or problem, but after three years of living across the hallway from Penny he had learned to leave a little bit of himself open to his surroundings. A hailing frequency, as it were. And shrieks were intruding upon it.
Sheldon jumped up, scurried out of the room and across the hall.
He knocked on the door, simultaneously calling "Penny." Before he could knock again, as was his custom, Penny jerked open the door.
Although tears were streaming down her face, her face was radiant. Before he could utter another word, she had clasped his face between both hands and kissed him on the mouth. Then she let go of his face and hugged him.
"Penny! Have you taken leave of your senses?" asked Sheldon.
She danced away from him. "Oh, Sheldon, Sheldon! I got the part! I got the part! I got the part!"
"You got the part? The part in your hair remains in exactly the same place….oh, you mean you received a part in a play?"
"No, Sheldon, not a play, a TV series. A series!" She raised her hands to grab his face again, but he skittered backwards.
"What kind of a TV series?" he said with stilted curiosity.
"It's going to be really cool! And it's really ironic. It's a situation comedy about four girl physicists. We're really smart, but socially awkward. You know – because we're smarter than every man we meet, and they're attracted to our beauty and scared at the same time."
Sheldon stared at her, his mouth opening and closing. "Penny….I….don't know what to say. Ironic isn't the word."
"I am so happy! Okay, go, go! I have to call my parents."
Penny shooed him out of her apartment and into the hallway. Sheldon stood in the hallway, frozen, feeling like a pillar of salt.
Leonard walked up the stairs at that moment. "Sheldon, what's the matter?"
"I've just been thinking about Lot and Lot's wife," Sheldon said. "Did you know that there's a school of thought that believes that God actually used an atom bomb to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? And that Lot's wife wasn't so much turned into a pillar of salt but a pillar of ash?"
"No, I'd never heard of that."
"Well, said Sheldon, as he followed Leonard into their apartment, "Let me tell you that that is much more plausible than the news I have to tell you about Penny."
(Follow the complete story at Fanfiction.net: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6067580/1/The_Mirror_Image_Iterations
The Mirror Image Iterations Chapter 1
Sheldon Cooper sat in front of his computer, reading an article entitled "Physics at the Air-Sea Interface" from the online webzine: Physical Oceanography Quarterly. Although his field of study in physics was concerned with string theory, he had recently become interested in physics as it related to the oceans. He was going to conduct his own research to discover, once and for all, if global warming were man-made, or simply unstoppable mother nature.
Dimly, as if it were the buzzing of a mosquito, he could hear a shrieking noise. Suddenly he blinked and looked up. Normally nothing could tear his attention away from a physics article or problem, but after three years of living across the hallway from Penny he had learned to leave a little bit of himself open to his surroundings. A hailing frequency, as it were. And shrieks were intruding upon it.
Sheldon jumped up, scurried out of the room and across the hall.
He knocked on the door, simultaneously calling "Penny." Before he could knock again, as was his custom, Penny jerked open the door.
Although tears were streaming down her face, her face was radiant. Before he could utter another word, she had clasped his face between both hands and kissed him on the mouth. Then she let go of his face and hugged him.
"Penny! Have you taken leave of your senses?" asked Sheldon.
She danced away from him. "Oh, Sheldon, Sheldon! I got the part! I got the part! I got the part!"
"You got the part? The part in your hair remains in exactly the same place….oh, you mean you received a part in a play?"
"No, Sheldon, not a play, a TV series. A series!" She raised her hands to grab his face again, but he skittered backwards.
"What kind of a TV series?" he said with stilted curiosity.
"It's going to be really cool! And it's really ironic. It's a situation comedy about four girl physicists. We're really smart, but socially awkward. You know – because we're smarter than every man we meet, and they're attracted to our beauty and scared at the same time."
Sheldon stared at her, his mouth opening and closing. "Penny….I….don't know what to say. Ironic isn't the word."
"I am so happy! Okay, go, go! I have to call my parents."
Penny shooed him out of her apartment and into the hallway. Sheldon stood in the hallway, frozen, feeling like a pillar of salt.
Leonard walked up the stairs at that moment. "Sheldon, what's the matter?"
"I've just been thinking about Lot and Lot's wife," Sheldon said. "Did you know that there's a school of thought that believes that God actually used an atom bomb to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? And that Lot's wife wasn't so much turned into a pillar of salt but a pillar of ash?"
"No, I'd never heard of that."
"Well, said Sheldon, as he followed Leonard into their apartment, "Let me tell you that that is much more plausible than the news I have to tell you about Penny."
(Follow the complete story at Fanfiction.net: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6067580/1/The_Mirror_Image_Iterations
The Mirror IMage Iterations Ch 1
Michele Bravo placed her suitcase on the floor and her laptop onto
the bed, then stood and took stock of her surroundings. She had just
checked into a Super 8 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
When Michele was on a “project,” as she had termed her work as international jewel thief and some-time assassin Taran Tula, she stayed in the most luxurious of hotels. The same held true when she was doing work for her security company – one always had to put up a prosperous appearance when meeting clients in different cities.
But when she was travelling on her own, she much preferred to stay in the least expensive hotels possible – which typically meant motels. As long as the motel was in a good neighborhood, she had no apprehension staying in a room with a door that opened up to the night air rather than to an interior hallway.
The rooms weren’t that luxurious, true, but what did that matter? They were to be used for sleeping, reading or watching TV – as long as the heater or air conditioning worked and the room was clean…
Such it was with this room. Before unpacking, Michele made her usual check. It was summer, and the air conditioner was turned on. The room was nice and cool and the air conditioner hummed, with no knocks or other disturbing news.
Then she went into the bathroom. The tub was disappointing – as with most hotel tubs the rear end had no slope, but rather went straight downward. Michele always suspected that they did this to prevent people who liked to read in the tub from getting comfortable, so they wouldn’t use up too much water. Nevertheless, the drain stopper worked and she had hot, warm and cold water so that was okay.
Returning to the room itself, she turned on the TV with the remote. Picture – crystal clear. There was also a list of channels and channel numbers which was very considerate.
Finally, Michele opened up her laptop and fired that up. She waited the few minutes for the computer to boot up, and then attempted to sign on to the internet. The signal she received was strong and clear, and the log on screen showed up immediately. Yes, it was, as promised, a fast internet connection.
Michele nodded, satisfied. The room would do.
She unpacked shorts and t-shirts and stowed them away. Then she looked around…something was missing. Ah. She went back out to her car – a 1998 silver Toyota Camry – and recovered a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken original recipe all white meat chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and chocolate parfait.
As she dined, Michele watched the final episode of the third season of Big Bang Theory – “The Lunar Interactions”. The episode ended with the asexual, Asperger-syndrome-possessing anti-social genius Sheldon Cooper meeting an asexual woman, Amy Farah Fowler, presumably his intellectual equal. They hit it off and go to the bar have a beverage together. The episode ended with Raj and Howard looking at each other and Howard saying, “What have we done?”
Michele switched off the TV and shook her head. She hoped that the show’s writers were not going to make the mistake of giving Sheldon a regular girlfriend. Or at least, not one whom he’d get interested in sexually. That would ruin the character – Sheldon was complete within himself and to have him mooning and crying over unrequited love would be not only out of character but also completely annoying.
Michele chuckled…she was so in to these characters. And it had all started out so innocuously. She rarely watched first-run TV, and although she considered herself a science fiction geek she had not been the least interested in the Big Bang Theory when it had debuted in 2007….. 4 geeky guys and a dumb girl - so stereotypical, so annoying.
But three weeks ago, when she’d been spending her last evening at Vic Durant’s home, he had insisted on watching the show, and she’d found herself intrigued by the characters. Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons, was clearly the star of the show. He was tall and dark-haired, two of Michele’s prerequisites. But he was a beanpole – like Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and she’d never cared for beanpoles. The other lead, Johnny Galecki’s Leonard Hofstadter, had a physique much more to her liking, for all that he was rather short. Raj, played by Kunal Nayyar, was also not bad looking, either facially or physically. Simon Helberg as Howard Wollowitz – worse than Parsons in the looks department, and an annoying character altogether.
Michele decided to check out fanfiction.net, a website where people published stories they’d written based on their favorite TV series. She had discovered it some years ago, when she’d found fan fiction on The Avengers (John Steed and Emma Peel) and Star Trek by a pretty good writer, who used the pseudonym Gale Force. The author had also turned out some pretty good NCIS alternate universe stories, as well…
“I know they’ll have stories for The Big Bang Theory,” she mused aloud, “and I wonder just what kind of stories they’ll be.”
Smiling with anticipation, she went to the website, and as she expected, found over 700 stories written by fans. And as she suspected, most of them were “Shenny” – romantic relationships between Sheldon and Jenny. There were several “slash” stories as well – featuring Sheldon and Leonard and Howard and Raj.
Michele was not a big fan of slash, although she had read some of it and found it good (the aforementioned Gale Force had contributed a few stories to the genre). But while Sheldon was certainly effete (not to be confused with effeminate), if he were going to break down and have sex, it’d probably be with a woman. Having said that, she didn’t think he would, unless he got really, really drunk.
“And that is such a rip-off,” she IM-ed sister, with whom she shared most (but certainly not all) of her thoughts. “Plus it gives a false and harmful view of getting drunk to the more impressionable kids in the audience. They see someone lose their inhibitions and have fun, and they think that’s how they’ll overcome their shyness as well. So they get drunk, have sex, don’t remember it the next day, and nine months later they’re confronting the result. Not good.”
“You’re such a pessimist,” her sister IM-ed her back. “Most people have more common sense than that, c’mon.”
“Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree,” typed in Michele. “You didn’t spend seven days on a cruise ship with a roommate who got drunk and puked her guts out every….single…. night…”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Never! ; )
“Well, let’s move swiftly on, then. ; ) How are you liking Gettysburg?”
“I haven’t been to see it yet. Got here a few hours ago, and I decided I’d relax with some supper and TV. I’ll go to the battlefield tomorrow.”
“Okay. Thanks a lot for helping me out like this, Michele.”
“No problem. Okay, I’ll let you go. I feel in the mood to do a little writing.”
“Have fun.”
Alice, Michele’s sister, ran a lucrative travel website which she had taken over from her mother. When Michele had written her an email telling her she was taking a month long sabbatical from her security firm (Alice knew nothing of her Taran Tula activities), Alice had suggested that she do some traveling around the US, documenting all the places lost to the traveler thanks to the rotten economy that had the country in its grip for over a year.
Michele, who was always more comfortable when she was traveling then when she was standing still, agreed.
“I’ve been thinking of visiting some Civil War sites,” she had said. “Would you believe I’ve never seen Gettysburg?”
“Start with Gettysburg, then.” Alice agreed.
And here she was in Gettysburg, having driven down from her home (as Michele Bravo) in New York.
Now, Michele signed off with her sister, and then pulled up a Word document.
The vast majority of TV series copyright owners had no objection to fans writing fan fiction, as long as they did not try to sell novels on Amazon, or something of that nature. Practically every TV series you could think of had some kind of presence at Fanfiction.net.
Michele didn’t write fan fiction as a matter of course – she expected to be paid for her writing. But what the hey, she would give a Sheldon – Penny story a try, just for the challenge of it. If it was any good, she’d post it on fanfiction.net.
Now…what should it be about…..?
When Michele was on a “project,” as she had termed her work as international jewel thief and some-time assassin Taran Tula, she stayed in the most luxurious of hotels. The same held true when she was doing work for her security company – one always had to put up a prosperous appearance when meeting clients in different cities.
But when she was travelling on her own, she much preferred to stay in the least expensive hotels possible – which typically meant motels. As long as the motel was in a good neighborhood, she had no apprehension staying in a room with a door that opened up to the night air rather than to an interior hallway.
The rooms weren’t that luxurious, true, but what did that matter? They were to be used for sleeping, reading or watching TV – as long as the heater or air conditioning worked and the room was clean…
Such it was with this room. Before unpacking, Michele made her usual check. It was summer, and the air conditioner was turned on. The room was nice and cool and the air conditioner hummed, with no knocks or other disturbing news.
Then she went into the bathroom. The tub was disappointing – as with most hotel tubs the rear end had no slope, but rather went straight downward. Michele always suspected that they did this to prevent people who liked to read in the tub from getting comfortable, so they wouldn’t use up too much water. Nevertheless, the drain stopper worked and she had hot, warm and cold water so that was okay.
Returning to the room itself, she turned on the TV with the remote. Picture – crystal clear. There was also a list of channels and channel numbers which was very considerate.
Finally, Michele opened up her laptop and fired that up. She waited the few minutes for the computer to boot up, and then attempted to sign on to the internet. The signal she received was strong and clear, and the log on screen showed up immediately. Yes, it was, as promised, a fast internet connection.
Michele nodded, satisfied. The room would do.
She unpacked shorts and t-shirts and stowed them away. Then she looked around…something was missing. Ah. She went back out to her car – a 1998 silver Toyota Camry – and recovered a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken original recipe all white meat chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and chocolate parfait.
As she dined, Michele watched the final episode of the third season of Big Bang Theory – “The Lunar Interactions”. The episode ended with the asexual, Asperger-syndrome-possessing anti-social genius Sheldon Cooper meeting an asexual woman, Amy Farah Fowler, presumably his intellectual equal. They hit it off and go to the bar have a beverage together. The episode ended with Raj and Howard looking at each other and Howard saying, “What have we done?”
Michele switched off the TV and shook her head. She hoped that the show’s writers were not going to make the mistake of giving Sheldon a regular girlfriend. Or at least, not one whom he’d get interested in sexually. That would ruin the character – Sheldon was complete within himself and to have him mooning and crying over unrequited love would be not only out of character but also completely annoying.
Michele chuckled…she was so in to these characters. And it had all started out so innocuously. She rarely watched first-run TV, and although she considered herself a science fiction geek she had not been the least interested in the Big Bang Theory when it had debuted in 2007….. 4 geeky guys and a dumb girl - so stereotypical, so annoying.
But three weeks ago, when she’d been spending her last evening at Vic Durant’s home, he had insisted on watching the show, and she’d found herself intrigued by the characters. Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons, was clearly the star of the show. He was tall and dark-haired, two of Michele’s prerequisites. But he was a beanpole – like Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and she’d never cared for beanpoles. The other lead, Johnny Galecki’s Leonard Hofstadter, had a physique much more to her liking, for all that he was rather short. Raj, played by Kunal Nayyar, was also not bad looking, either facially or physically. Simon Helberg as Howard Wollowitz – worse than Parsons in the looks department, and an annoying character altogether.
Michele decided to check out fanfiction.net, a website where people published stories they’d written based on their favorite TV series. She had discovered it some years ago, when she’d found fan fiction on The Avengers (John Steed and Emma Peel) and Star Trek by a pretty good writer, who used the pseudonym Gale Force. The author had also turned out some pretty good NCIS alternate universe stories, as well…
“I know they’ll have stories for The Big Bang Theory,” she mused aloud, “and I wonder just what kind of stories they’ll be.”
Smiling with anticipation, she went to the website, and as she expected, found over 700 stories written by fans. And as she suspected, most of them were “Shenny” – romantic relationships between Sheldon and Jenny. There were several “slash” stories as well – featuring Sheldon and Leonard and Howard and Raj.
Michele was not a big fan of slash, although she had read some of it and found it good (the aforementioned Gale Force had contributed a few stories to the genre). But while Sheldon was certainly effete (not to be confused with effeminate), if he were going to break down and have sex, it’d probably be with a woman. Having said that, she didn’t think he would, unless he got really, really drunk.
“And that is such a rip-off,” she IM-ed sister, with whom she shared most (but certainly not all) of her thoughts. “Plus it gives a false and harmful view of getting drunk to the more impressionable kids in the audience. They see someone lose their inhibitions and have fun, and they think that’s how they’ll overcome their shyness as well. So they get drunk, have sex, don’t remember it the next day, and nine months later they’re confronting the result. Not good.”
“You’re such a pessimist,” her sister IM-ed her back. “Most people have more common sense than that, c’mon.”
“Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree,” typed in Michele. “You didn’t spend seven days on a cruise ship with a roommate who got drunk and puked her guts out every….single…. night…”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Never! ; )
“Well, let’s move swiftly on, then. ; ) How are you liking Gettysburg?”
“I haven’t been to see it yet. Got here a few hours ago, and I decided I’d relax with some supper and TV. I’ll go to the battlefield tomorrow.”
“Okay. Thanks a lot for helping me out like this, Michele.”
“No problem. Okay, I’ll let you go. I feel in the mood to do a little writing.”
“Have fun.”
Alice, Michele’s sister, ran a lucrative travel website which she had taken over from her mother. When Michele had written her an email telling her she was taking a month long sabbatical from her security firm (Alice knew nothing of her Taran Tula activities), Alice had suggested that she do some traveling around the US, documenting all the places lost to the traveler thanks to the rotten economy that had the country in its grip for over a year.
Michele, who was always more comfortable when she was traveling then when she was standing still, agreed.
“I’ve been thinking of visiting some Civil War sites,” she had said. “Would you believe I’ve never seen Gettysburg?”
“Start with Gettysburg, then.” Alice agreed.
And here she was in Gettysburg, having driven down from her home (as Michele Bravo) in New York.
Now, Michele signed off with her sister, and then pulled up a Word document.
The vast majority of TV series copyright owners had no objection to fans writing fan fiction, as long as they did not try to sell novels on Amazon, or something of that nature. Practically every TV series you could think of had some kind of presence at Fanfiction.net.
Michele didn’t write fan fiction as a matter of course – she expected to be paid for her writing. But what the hey, she would give a Sheldon – Penny story a try, just for the challenge of it. If it was any good, she’d post it on fanfiction.net.
Now…what should it be about…..?
Monday, July 9, 2012
Hall of the Mountain King ch 1
I.
Michele re-read the first chapter of her Big Bang Theory fan fiction and found it good. (Follow the complete story at Fanfiction.net: The Mirror Image Iterations)
The idea had come to her suddenly. Why not have aspiring actress Penny be cast in a sitcom about 4 socially awkward physicists? Only let the physicists be four beautiful women, who scared away all the men because they were so smart. And the actresses would want to spend a few days following around the people on whom they’d been modeled – Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj. Naturally, hilarity would ensue.
Michele had an interested layperson’s knowledge in the sciences, but she couldn’t come close to replicating the complex physics-related dialog that the 4 main characters exchanged at least once per episode, let alone the scientific metaphors and similes with which the uber-smart Sheldon Cooper laced his conservation, but then no one would expect her to. As long as the dialog resembled what the characters would sound like, that was good enough. Where she hoped to succeed was with the plot and the interaction of the characters.
Michele stretched and decided it was time for a hot bath. She took her Kindle with her into the bathroom, and shortly settled down in the hot water for a long soak and read. The Kindle was an electronic reading device which would not react well if dropped in water. But Michele had been reading paperback books while relaxing in the tub for decades without losing one – she saw no reason to think that the Kindle would break that record of success.
After heating the water to the appropriate temperature and filling the tub to the appropriate depth, Michele slipped in, smiled with sybaritic pleasure, and began to read Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent. Although Barr had been writing her mysteries featuring National Park ranger Anna Pigeon for over ten years, Michele had only just discovered the author.
Blind Descent takes place, for the most part, in caverns underneath the earth, part of Carlsbad Caverns called Lechuguilla. In reading the descriptions of the actual getting into the cave – crawling through teeny tiny holes and inching along like a worm – Michele shook her head. She prided herself on her adventurous spirit but spelunking was one activity that she would never, ever try. But the descriptions of the actual caves themselves…the beautiful limestone formations of various kinds – draperies, lily pads, soda straws, cave pearls, stalagmites and stalagtites…she would like to see those.
Michele remembered that when she had checked into this motel, there had been a rack of brochures of various sites in the area, and she was sure she’d seen a brochure for some kind of cavern…. After she finished her bath she’d go take a look.
II.
Michele reclined in bed with a stack of sight-seeing brochures. She’d decided to make off with every single one the motel had to offer, and divide them into topics – sites she’d like to see and write about, and sites she didn’t…but which she’d at least mention so that her readers would at least know about them.
There had actually been a couple of brochures advertising caverns – all of them in northern Virginia. There were the Luray Caverns, which the brochure claimed were the most famous, but there were others within a few miles of each other – the Shenandoah Caverns, the Endless Caverns, the Skyline Caverns, and a few others.
She would go see them all.
Finally, her work for the day done, Michele decided to relax and watch something mindless. The motel had cable with dozens of channels…she didn’t want to watch any crime dramas – too grim, or any sitcoms – no intelligent ones on like the Big Bang Theory were on, only annoying ones with family units featuring precocious and annoying children, a bossy wife and a browbeaten husband…blah. As usual, the only biographies on the Biography channel were that of actors. The NASA channel featured direct video from the space station, but there was no sound, and in any event that wasn’t what she was in the mood for.
Finally she came across the Golf Channel. The 2010 Open at Pebble Beach was being repeated, the one where Irishman Graeme McDowell had won and American Dustin Johnson had had an historic collapse in the first four holes, with the Grand Slam of disasters, triple bogey, double bogey, bogey and par. Michele watched a few holes in aesthetic discontent. 99% of the golfers wore the standard baggy pants that seemed de rigeur on the golf course these days….only Dustin Johnson had worn a well-fitting pair of slacks – and white at that – that fit nicely over his crotch and allowed those who cared for such things to have a bit of eye candy. It was so unfair… the women had to wear the highest of high skirts to show off their legs to the crowd, but the guys, as in practically every other sport, walked around looking like they were in their pajamas. Discrimination, that’s what it was.
Michele sighed, and decided that rather than watch this eye-candy-less sport, she’d go to bed, and get an early start the next morning. She had much to do…and perhaps she’d have some pleasant dreams…
Michele re-read the first chapter of her Big Bang Theory fan fiction and found it good. (Follow the complete story at Fanfiction.net: The Mirror Image Iterations)
The idea had come to her suddenly. Why not have aspiring actress Penny be cast in a sitcom about 4 socially awkward physicists? Only let the physicists be four beautiful women, who scared away all the men because they were so smart. And the actresses would want to spend a few days following around the people on whom they’d been modeled – Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj. Naturally, hilarity would ensue.
Michele had an interested layperson’s knowledge in the sciences, but she couldn’t come close to replicating the complex physics-related dialog that the 4 main characters exchanged at least once per episode, let alone the scientific metaphors and similes with which the uber-smart Sheldon Cooper laced his conservation, but then no one would expect her to. As long as the dialog resembled what the characters would sound like, that was good enough. Where she hoped to succeed was with the plot and the interaction of the characters.
Michele stretched and decided it was time for a hot bath. She took her Kindle with her into the bathroom, and shortly settled down in the hot water for a long soak and read. The Kindle was an electronic reading device which would not react well if dropped in water. But Michele had been reading paperback books while relaxing in the tub for decades without losing one – she saw no reason to think that the Kindle would break that record of success.
After heating the water to the appropriate temperature and filling the tub to the appropriate depth, Michele slipped in, smiled with sybaritic pleasure, and began to read Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent. Although Barr had been writing her mysteries featuring National Park ranger Anna Pigeon for over ten years, Michele had only just discovered the author.
Blind Descent takes place, for the most part, in caverns underneath the earth, part of Carlsbad Caverns called Lechuguilla. In reading the descriptions of the actual getting into the cave – crawling through teeny tiny holes and inching along like a worm – Michele shook her head. She prided herself on her adventurous spirit but spelunking was one activity that she would never, ever try. But the descriptions of the actual caves themselves…the beautiful limestone formations of various kinds – draperies, lily pads, soda straws, cave pearls, stalagmites and stalagtites…she would like to see those.
Michele remembered that when she had checked into this motel, there had been a rack of brochures of various sites in the area, and she was sure she’d seen a brochure for some kind of cavern…. After she finished her bath she’d go take a look.
II.
Michele reclined in bed with a stack of sight-seeing brochures. She’d decided to make off with every single one the motel had to offer, and divide them into topics – sites she’d like to see and write about, and sites she didn’t…but which she’d at least mention so that her readers would at least know about them.
There had actually been a couple of brochures advertising caverns – all of them in northern Virginia. There were the Luray Caverns, which the brochure claimed were the most famous, but there were others within a few miles of each other – the Shenandoah Caverns, the Endless Caverns, the Skyline Caverns, and a few others.
She would go see them all.
Finally, her work for the day done, Michele decided to relax and watch something mindless. The motel had cable with dozens of channels…she didn’t want to watch any crime dramas – too grim, or any sitcoms – no intelligent ones on like the Big Bang Theory were on, only annoying ones with family units featuring precocious and annoying children, a bossy wife and a browbeaten husband…blah. As usual, the only biographies on the Biography channel were that of actors. The NASA channel featured direct video from the space station, but there was no sound, and in any event that wasn’t what she was in the mood for.
Finally she came across the Golf Channel. The 2010 Open at Pebble Beach was being repeated, the one where Irishman Graeme McDowell had won and American Dustin Johnson had had an historic collapse in the first four holes, with the Grand Slam of disasters, triple bogey, double bogey, bogey and par. Michele watched a few holes in aesthetic discontent. 99% of the golfers wore the standard baggy pants that seemed de rigeur on the golf course these days….only Dustin Johnson had worn a well-fitting pair of slacks – and white at that – that fit nicely over his crotch and allowed those who cared for such things to have a bit of eye candy. It was so unfair… the women had to wear the highest of high skirts to show off their legs to the crowd, but the guys, as in practically every other sport, walked around looking like they were in their pajamas. Discrimination, that’s what it was.
Michele sighed, and decided that rather than watch this eye-candy-less sport, she’d go to bed, and get an early start the next morning. She had much to do…and perhaps she’d have some pleasant dreams…
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