Pete's Ancient and rarely updated
D-land Journal

A Small ~~Tail~~ Tale

Journal Entry entered: 2001-09-03 - 1:04 p.m.

A little tale that came to me this morning. This is a rough draft type thing, just sort of getting it down for later consideration... if you want to tell me what you think, knock yourself out.

The Race

He had been training. Training for as long as he could remember. There was never a time when he could remember not swimming, swimming, swimming. All of those around him were in training, too. They would swim around each other, do laps with each other, and cheer each other on.

There was to be a race, you see. And not just any race... THE race. It was all that they lived for. For countless generations his forefathers had prepared and trained, as he did now and as those that came after would do.

When it was time for the race, they would all rush eagerly down the passage and surge into the course in which they would all have to swim. None of them had any idea what lie beyond the aperture that led to the passage, they had never been permitted past it. Yet, when the time came, they would all race until one of them won the prize.

They did not know, exactly, what the prize was. It was rumoured that it was huge, that it would change the life of the winner. They didn't know and they didn't care. They did know that their lives were spent preparing for a mad race in which uncounted would compete and only one would win.

He had to be the best... there was no prize for second place. In fact, rumour had it that if one did not win, one would die. No one knew for sure... none had ever returned to the training area once having left for the race.

As he swam, practicing a tailstroke, he noticed a change ripple through those around him. Something was happening... he felt it too. A surge of ... something. He suddely knew that the race was upon them! He knew that his best chance for an early lead was to be near the exit when it opened and he swam, writhing his way around the bodies of his fellows to be near ...

It opened!

They all surged forward, down an unlit passage, swimming as hard and fast as they could, yet also propelled by... they knew not what. The passage twisted and turned, shooting past another closed doorway, and another that was open and looked recently vacated.

He knew the end of the passage was upon him, he was at the lead! He had a chance! A chance to become something more than he was!

He catapulted out of the passage and suddenly found himself crushed against a yeilding, but unbreaking barrier by the bodies of his fellows smashing into him from behind. He realized that that was it, his dreams of victory had been dashed The race had been forcibly cancelled by the immoveable (and until now thought legendary) power of latex.

Yeah, it's rough, needs a lot of fine tuning, but it certainly struck me as amusing.

More later.

Ciao!

- Warren

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Warren's list of words that monkeys use to annoy him by misspelling, misusing, or mispronouncing them (the list will most assuredly grow)

Misspellings

COMING (typically mispelled "comming")
TONGUE (typically mispelled "tounge")

Confused spellings

HERE vs. HEAR (the former is a place word; the latter is what you do when a sound hits your ear)
IT'S vs. ITS (the former is a contracted form of IT IS; the latter is a possessive form of the impersonal pronoun IT)
LOSING vs. LOOSING (the former is what you are doing if you are not winning; the latter is what you are doing when you let the lions out of the lion pen at the zoo, you are "loosing them" or "setting them loose").
POUR vs. PORE vs. POOR (the first is what you do to get milk from the carton into the glass; the second is a small opening in a surface, such as those in your skin that sweat comes out of (... don't write poetry if you don't know your English, you just look sad). The third, a state of having little or no money, is rarely confused with the other two).
ROGUE vs. ROUGE (The former is a person who might also be described as a rascal, scoundrel or cad; the latter is make-up that one uses to add a bit of a blush to one's cheeks.)
THEY'RE vs. THEIR vs. THERE (the first is a contraction of THEY ARE; the next is a possessive form of THEY; the last denotes place or location)
TO vs. TOO vs. TWO (the first is a function word indicating movement, direction, proximity, intention, addition: "I'm going to the store" or "Add this to the pile" or "How close is the house to the road"; the second one sort of adds quantity, often of the excessive sort, to a concept: "Too many reptiles" or "I'm coming, too"; the last represents the number 2.)
WHERE vs. WEAR vs. -WARE vs. WERE- (the first references place or location; the second is either a verb, noun, or suffix relating to clothing or other adornments [example: wearing footwear] OR a noun or verb relating to the effect of exposure or useage or corrosion [wear and tear]; the third is a suffix that indicates that something is a class of some sort [hardware, software, flatware, wetware]; the fourth is a prefix used to attach the disease of Lycanthropy to a person or animal, i.e: werewolf, wererat, weretiger. Finally, although pronounced differently, "WERE" is also a past tense of are or to be.)
YOU'RE vs. YOUR vs. YORE (the former is a contraction of YOU ARE, the middle is a possessive form of YOU, and the latter is a reference to another, undefined era in the past: "Days of yore.)

Mispronunciations

ASK [ask'] ("axe" is something used for chopping wood or the action of chopping something with an axe).
CAN [kahn] (it should not be pronounced as [kehn]). Thanks, Ken.
CAVALRY [kah'-val-ree] ("Calvary" is a mountain that is prominant {pun intended} in the Bible, not a military unit that rides on horses... or these days on tanks and Hum-Vees).
DONDER [don'-der] ("Donner" was the name of a party of travellers that got stuck in the mountains and ate each other, not the name of one of Santa's eight little reindeer).
ESCAPE [es-kayp'] ("excape" simply sounds dumb).
ESPRESSO [es-pres'-oh] (it is NOT "eXpresso," pinheads. Thanks, Mischief.
HUNDRED [hun'-dred] (it's not "hun'-erd" nor "hun'-red"). Thanks, Rachel.
INSURANCE [in-sure'-ense] (it is NOT "in'-sure-ense"! In English, the second to last syllable is the one that gets the emphasis except when asking a question, when the LAST syllable is accented... never the third to last!!!)
JEWELRY [jew'-el-ree] (it's not "joo-lah-ree" or "joo-luh-ree", stoner!) Thanks, again Rachel.
LIBRARY [lie-brayr'-ee] (there's no such thing as a "lie-berry", people!)
NUCLEAR [new-klee'-er] ("nuke-yuh-ler" is incorrect, Homer! Same goes for you, Dubya!!!)
OFTEN [aw'-fen] (the pretentious will insist on saying "awf'-Ten" but that is an archaic form and no more appropriate than saying "thee" and "thou" in colloquial English)
RIPON [rih'-pin] (so very many people pronounce this "rih-pon' " or "ripe'-on" that it gets on the nerves of anyone who has ever lived or gone to school there! Thanks Rachel K.
VIOLA [vi-o'-la] (the musical instrument is pronounced "vee-ola" but the flower and the woman's name is pronounced with an "eye", not an "ee")Thanks, Viola.

Pete's Ancient and rarely updatedD-land Journal

Pete's Ancient and rarely updated
D-land Journal