from musesfool and ellen_fremedon, among others

the first lines meme.

your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a drabble with the same first line as one of my stories, and leave it in my comments here.

( some of my first lines follow. )

that's nine. like a supreme court. good number. :-)

bleah

am feeling sinusy today (it never goes away, does it?), and don't believe there's anything dire i'm supposed to be doing, so i have decided to take the day for myself. i didn't even get out of bed until ten minutes ago, and that was because one of my housemates knocked on the door to ask if i knew something i don't. :-) soon i'm thinking of going back to bed.

but i've had weird dreams. i've had strange dreams for a few nights, actually -- including one in which i was, actually, sleeping with kronemab, despite the universally-acknowledged wrongness of such a concept -- but this morning's weird dream was this:

i was back at my high school, and they were doing little shop of horrors again. it was opening this weekend, and they either didn't have or had lost their mrs. luce (a tiny, tiny role of no consequence whatsoever, which i played in high school), so the director -- the same director from when i was in high school -- asked me to step in, and i agreed. the girl who played ophelia when we did hamlet was audrey, and some other people from the few years ahead of mine were there as well. about five minutes before my cue, i realized i had no costume, so i went tearing through the costume room -- which of course bore no earthly resemblance to any costume room i've ever worked in; this thing was spacious and well-organized, for a start -- looking for something. finally someone with a headset told me that the director had said worst case scenario, just go on in my street clothes. i remember looking for a black leather jacket other than my own, since mine is slouchy and baggy. the guy who played renfield when we did dracula offered me his, but his was festooned with zippers and whatnot, like a biker jacket, and also boxy and no more fitting. i was looking for a leather blazer, really, which one or two people had, but i knew they wouldn't fit me.

i also spent a couple of minutes searching in vain for a script, so i could brush up on my lines, which i hadn't seen in twelve or thirteen years. so then i went on, and nailed the scene, which was not a scene from little shop at all. the girl playing audrey was standing and talking to another woman (played by another girl from a year ahead of me, a dancer) as i came onstage, and the scene went like this.

mrs. luce: [entering] miss crewe. we were very impressed by your ... thoroughness.
audrey: thank you.
mrs. luce: you're very talented. i'd like you to think about a position in my organization.
audrey: thank you very much.
mrs. luce: thank you. [exit]

the director said well done, since i hadn't seen the show in years, i picked it right up again, very impressive. and that was one of the last scenes in it, so then it was time for the curtain call. and the house was packed, even though it was only a dress rehearsal.

very strange. would anyone like to offer an interpretation? (i happen to agree with those who say dreams have no meanings themselves, that they're just the central nervous system making sure everything's working properly -- testing, testing -- which, especially when you're the CNS of someone who's been dead asleep for eleven hours, is probably something you want to be extra sure of. but interpretations can be fun. [g])

oh. also, hiked out to the grocery store yesterday, so i have breakfast things in my room. didn't get cereal, because there's no lactose free milk around here, meh. but i got cereal bars. there are three varieties of special K bars, and i am now in a position to call the score:

original: not bad
peach & apricot: icky
apple & pear: yum!

you're all welcome.

a survey from darthrami

( you will not be able to go on without the following information. )

for glasshouseslive

who asked about it months ago, and i've been a lazy bum and not finished it until now:

The Sadness of the Moon, my bonus track for darthhellokitty's Buying Trouble, with DVD commentary.

it's not just us

la_rainette, I'm sorry to make you suffer through this, but I hope you will in order to confirm or refute what I'm concluding. WE LOVE NATIVE SPEAKERS yes we do.

rahalia_cat recommended googling for Jean Cocteau's Amour d'Ete. I'm not sure why, but when I googled "amour d'ete", the first hit I got was this.

It's a site for French poetry, but it seems to be more of a bulletin board than a database -- possibly it has both, for all I know, but the best I can figure is that these kids are posting their own stuff.

This poem is as follows:

( Amour d'ete )

translation:

( Summer love )

I assure you it's as wretched in French as the English translation suggests. It doesn't scan, and a couple of the rhymes are (charitably) approximate. It is also replete with misspellings and, apparently, French netspeak, of both of which I have tried to give a sense in the translation.

The comments left after it are also instructive:

Sk8ergirl says: Très beau poème mais essais de ne pas mettre d’abréviation car ça gâche toute sa beauté. Moi, j,ai bien aimé! Bonne continuation pour toi! ("Very nice poem but try not to put abbreviations because this wrecks all its beauty. Me, I liked it! Good luck to you!")

to which the poet, Krystel, says: merciii bicou et pr les abreviation ok je v chanG sa...

As best I can render it into English netspeak, this says: "thanxx alot and 4 the abreviationz ok ill chanj em"

merciii = merci 'thank you'
I can't figure where the extra i's come from.

bicou = beaucoup 'much'
I had to look at this for whole minutes to figure out what it was supposed to be. It seems to be a phonetic spelling, but it strikes me as a strange one. (But what do I know -- I'm no native speaker.)

pr = pour 'for'
Which I rendered as "4", in netspeak style.

abreviation = abréviation 'abbreviation'
With les, Krystel should have used the plural abréviations, I think, and in any event she needed the acute accent on the e.

v = vais 'go'
chanG = changer 'to change'
je vais changer 'I will change' or 'I am going to change'; spelling vais as v and changer as chanG is phonetic, since the names of the letters are pronounced the same as the words or syllables they're being used to replace. It's the precise French equivalent of spelling "you" as "U".

sa = ça 'that'
THIS IS WHY NETSPEAK AND ILLITERACY (deliberate or otherwise) ARE TEH EBIL. :-) sa is a different word in French. it means 'his, her, its' when the object is of the feminine-gender noun class. It would not be unreasonable for a French speaker to see this sentence -- je v chanG sa -- and ask, changer sa quoi? -- change its what? Using sa for ça seems to be a similar problem to the English issue of where to put the blasted apostrophes.

( The abbreviations Sk8ergirl referred to do, in fact, wreck the poem's 'beauty': )

And the last comment is from joiedevivre66: ben abréviation ou pas tres beau poème ("hey abbreviation or not very nice poem")

In every language, there's always someone who's Not Helping.