Monday 17 January 2000

Pic of the day: "... how small and unimportant I am on the grand scale of things..."

[Notice how I have slyly edited away my actual feet, in order to try to impress Katie, just in case she might be curious enough to trace this link. Pathetic, isn't it?]

OK, so my subconscious fooled me after all. I did not notice until I had uploaded yesterday's entry, and while testing that it worked online I clicked on the "year ago" link. And found that I had had a similar conversation with my subconscious exactly one year ago. I had forgotten, but it had obviously remembered and took the opportunity to bait me and make me look stupid. Aargh!

I wrote an essay-like entry today. Originally I meant to write about the "junk" DNA in our chromosomes, and the transfer of genes between species, and convergent evolution. It did not turn out that way. It turned out to be a pretty convincing argument that earth is virtually carpeted with robots from outer space, and some pretty heavy theological implications of same. Scary stuff. So I decided to start from scratch and give you some fluff again instead.

This is a personal journal, after all. You don't come here to learn about how small and unimportant humanity is on the grand scale of things. You come to learn how small and unimportant I am on the grand scale of things.

Take McDonalds, for instance, where I was sitting and slowly sipping my medium strawberry milk shake while looking at a woman. Just looking, mind you. It's not like I was undressing her in my mind or whatever. Not at all. I just quietly reflected on her rich, full hair, her graceful back, the feminine curve of her hip and thigh, and the slim unadorned fingers of her left hand which rested on her right arm as she was reading something on her table.

And while I unhurriedly tasted the rich strawberry flavor and rested my eyes and my mind on the beauty of this small piece of creation, I thought to myself: "Just how desperate can people be, to walk over and introduce themselves to a complete stranger while eating out?"

That's a good question, isn't it? I hope I never find out.

Bethesda Softworks and their owners have been quite benign towards the many fans of their roleplaying game Daggerfall. There are many sites that use elements of graphic from the game, and fan fiction abounds. Yet Bethsoft has not only tolerated it, but even helped some of the sites to get a webhost. (My own Daggerfall Crossroads is not among these, though.) I have personally only written very small pieces of fanfic, mostly posted to the newsgroup alt.games.daggerfall, to illustrate some of the bugs and features in the game. (With Daggerfall, it is often hard to say where the features end and the bugs begin, and this has made for some really original fanfic!)

I've read quite a bit of the online Daggerfanfic and there's lots of sword and sorcery and comradeship. But there's a distinct lack of romance. Come on, nobody wants to read about a main character who never falls in love! The whole point of a person who never falls in love is that in the end he'll fall hoplessly in love and suffer terribly because he has a deep dark secret that he thinks will keep him from ever experiencing True Love. Ideally the reader should be in some doubt too, until the very end of the story.

(Which makes me wonder why you people are reading my journal in the first place. Ahem. I guess I should just shut up and enjoy it while it lasts... :)

So anyway [cringe] I'm writing Daggerfall romance fan fiction. Ouch. There, it is out. This is going to come back and haunt me if I outlive it. I can just feel it. I'm doing my best to avoid any undue infringement on Bethsoft's copyrigths, and it's totally non profit ... even so, I just dare not put it on the web. I hope I get over this before I come so far. It usually only lasts a few days...