Archive for May, 2006»
Fictionlet
“I hate my clients,” Brigid announced. “Every last one of ’em. Idiots, one and all!”
“Oh yes?” said Greg, mentally putting another checkmark in the ‘I hate my clients rant’ column.
“Yes!” she replied. “This idiot today might as well have not bothered to come to us; he wasn’t going to listen to anything we said anyway. He had his cover design all worked out and to hell with anybody else who might have more knowledge, experience, or even just taste than he did.”
“The scum!” Greg said.
“He’s got this book, called Publishing Manual, right?”
“Mmmhmm…”
“Well, the font and layout he insisted on for the cover is so incredibly hard to read, that it looks like his book is called Establishing Weasel.”
“Establishing weasel!” Greg exclaimed in sheer joy. “What a great phrase! I wonder how one goes about establishing weasel!”
Brigid giggled slightly in spite of herself. “I figured that establishing weasel is what you have to do with your divorce lawyer before you take the weasel to court.”
“No, I think I’ve got it,” Greg said, hand to his chin in concentration. “An establishing weasel is a weasel that’s hanging over the fireplace in Act One, that you just know will go off by Act Three.”
Brigid put her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “And how exactly, does a weasel go off?”
“Well that should be obvious to anybody,” Greg said. “You leave it out on the table with the cap off overnight.”
-The Gneech
<-- previous B&G next B&G -->
Fictionlet
“Well yeah, there was that whole war thing,” Alex said. “But I always figured it was more personal than that. I mean, Legolas’s father held Glóin prisoner in The Hobbit until Bilbo smuggled him out; and since Legolas comments that he’s seen an oak tree grow from an acorn to a withered ruin, we can assume he’s at least a few hundred years old, so he was probably there at the time. When Glóin and Gimli showed up at Rivendell and found Legolas there, Glóin probably gave him a lot of choice words and Gimli, being a family-minded dwarf of the respectable kind, just picked up the banner.”
“Heh,” said Greg. “I hadn’t put that together before. But yes, you’re right, Glóin and Legolas probably met ‘off-screen’ during The Hobbit. That would certainly put a more personal spin on why Gimli is always giving him grief. It puts a little more depth into the scene at Balin’s tomb — Legolas probably knew him, too.”
Brigid shook her head. “Geeze, listen to you two. Do you actually care about all this stuff?”
Alex muttered something sheepishly, but Greg was not so easily daunted. “As a matter of fact, we do,” he said. “And I have just five little words for you, young Brigid.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And they are?”
“‘She was a pirate’s woman,'” Greg said, with immense smugness.
“Oh, shut up,” Brigid snarled, and went back to what she was doing.
-The Gneech
<-- previous B&G next B&G-->