Saturday, March 9, 2013

An Unrestrained Ramble on the Forging of Words

Well well well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? As is becoming an embarrassing trend with this blog, I seem to have gone a fair period of time without updating it. I’m sure my readers would be very disappointed in my long absence were it not for the fact that I talk to all of them like every other day. My hefty hiatus has been horribly heinous, but fear not, more content is on its way. But beyond that, my good reader, I must say I had a really good and not at all fictitious reason for not updating, which I will now describe to you in excruciating detail.

Our story begins several days after my last update about impressive organs. It was a dull, average afternoon of me practicing my chainsaw juggling routine. I was right in the middle of doing the tricky bit with the behind-the-back on-a-unicycle portion when suddenly I stopped, causing only minor property damage in the process. For you see, my Blog Sense was going off like something that was going off with an unprecedented amount of vigor! Focusing my Hyper Sensitive Blog Alignment Temporal Determinant Sensor know to some as “knowing about the passage of time”, I realized that it had been too many days without updates for the world to handle without resorting to cannibalism or whatever it is you people do when you go too long without hearing a random individual make jokes about butts in between talking about decades old video games.

Of course I immediately leapt into action, forgoing my trusty dual chainsaws named Sally and Suzy and initiating my usual complicated chain of events I go through to get an update posted. However, in the middle of whatever ridiculous lies unassailably true activities I told you about in that last post, I realized something. It turned out that I totally did have time to write a blog post for once, I just had to cease playing unhealthy amounts of Ni No Kuni for a few hours. I thought about it a bit, but concluded that obviously this was unacceptable. But then I remembered the apocalyptic circumstances that ancient wizards had prophesized would occur if I went too long without updating! (I’ll talk about it some other day). Countless lives could hang in the balance!

I thought about it a bit more.

After a fair amount of grumbling, I begrudgingly accepted that it was probably for the best that I updated. So I got to work weaving the surrounding naturally occurring spirits of creative energy into a verbosity matrix as I usually do when I start writing (talk about it some other day). However, I came across a problem. I was having trouble ascertaining the best word choice for a particular passage (probably a metaphor about butts or something, it’s not really important). Now normally, I would have literally all the time I needed to find the right word. But this time, unlike my usual writing approach this one involved no tampering with the essence of time itself. (I don’t know how everyone else does it, the writing process is so boring without eliminating paradox clones). This being the case, I had a set amount of time to find the right word, and I didn’t know if I could make the deadline. I had no choice. I had to consult…the Word Forgers.

Preparing myself for the journey, I packed a day’s rations, fireproof clothing, climbing gear, and a single golden tipped quill (cockatrice feather, of course). I also slipped a miniature, precision laser gun inside my pocket for no particular reason whatsoever. I then proceeded to the base of the nearby volcano, Mount Deathkill. Did I mention my private island has an active volcano on it? My private island has an active volcano on it. A volcano I would now have to climb myself in order to find what I was seeking. As if the perilous climb and deadly lava flows weren’t enough, the volcano was populated with no less than 37 unique brands of otherwise extinct vicious, predatory beasts not found anywhere on the earth, which had all ended up on the same volcano due to a mix up on one of my time travel adventures (some other day).

The adventure was long and arduous and fraught with danger. I was scarred physically and mentally multiple times each, and almost faced death even more often. It was an incredibly tense, lengthy and dense, deadly to cross, filled with love and loss, magically fantastic, explosively bombastic, and all around seriously astoundingly really quite crazy adventure. So obviously I don’t have time to tell it here. Let’s skip ahead a bit, shall we?

So right after I solved the ancient riddle of Kar’thaad Baathuag I encountered a giant crystalline door, made of purest Ambersteel. It was locked, but luckily exactly fit the puzzle key I had earlier extracted from that Stalactite Wyrm’s belly. The key inserted, I recited the ancient incantation along the ancient door frame in the ancient tongue of the ancients. Funnily enough, they also spoke English so it wasn’t a problem.

Knowing what to expect, I stepped into the next room, a huge semicircular amphitheater carved in obsidian, surrounded on all sides by glowing lava waterfalls, which I knew from my extensive experience in video games couldn’t harm me as long as I didn’t directly touch them. As I walked into the center of the amphitheater, the Ambersteel doors slammed shut behind me. Hulking, crouched shadows with glowing yellow eyes appeared behind the crashing flows of lava. The shapes grew clearer and vaguely humanoid as they came closer, passing directly through the cascading wall of magma. As they stood upon the steps of the amphitheater, molten drops cascading off their enormous, shadowy, steaming bodies, the one in the center looked down at me. As his bright glowing eyes focused on me, he proclaimed in a booming tone, large as the mountain and deep as the earth’s core, “WHO DARES TO LOOK UPON THE LAIR OF THE WORD FORGERS?!”

“Oh hey Bill, it’s me” I said, giving a little wave in case the light was bad or something.

The Supremely Ancient Verbiage Master of the Exceedingly Venerable Order of Word Forgers, or Bill as I like to call him, seemed to deflate at this somewhat. At least as much as you could expect a twenty foot tall obsidian-skinned behemoth dressed in flowing robes of shimmering shadowcloth to deflate.

“OKAY, I KNEW IT WAS YOU, ALRIGHT?” he said.

“Well if you knew then why would you bother asking?” I responded.

“OH COME NOW, THIS ISN’T VERY-“

“It’s not like anyone else even knows you’re here.”

“LOOK THAT’S NOT EVEN THE POINT OF-“

“I mean I don’t even think anyone else can get here, I own the island.”

“WOULD YOU BE QUIET A MINUTE?! YES, THANK YOU? ALRIGHT. IT’S NOT ABOUT ACTUALLY IDENTIFYING YOU. WE ALL KNEW IT WAS YOU. IT’S JUST ABOUT THE LOOK OF THE THING, ALRIGHT? I DON’T TELL YOU HOW TO MAKE YOUR CRUDE BUTT METAPHORS-“

“I prefer to call them buttaphors.”

“-WHATEVER. I DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT THOSE AND YOU DON’T TELL MY HOW TO DO MY JOB, ALRIGHT? WHAT WOULD WE SAY TO OUR FELLOW WORD CREATION BASED ANCIENT ORDERS IF WE WEREN’T ABLE TO SIMPLY FOLLOW PROCEEDURE, HM?”
“There are other word creation based ancient orders?”

“HELL IF I KNOW, BUT IF THERE ARE WE AREN’T BLOODY WELL GOING TO LOOK BAD WHEN WE DISCOVER THEIR EXISTENCE, NOW ARE WE?”
“Okay okay. Look, I’m kind of in a hurry here. Tell you what: how about you help me out with my word choice problem now, and if we ever encounter other ancient societies involved with word creation I’ll tell them we went through all that boring old procedure and you did a stellar job of it? I’ll even throw in some flattering metaphors about the stature of your butts.”

There was a silence after this, presumably as the Order contemplated what an excellent friend I was being.

“LOOK, IF WE GET THIS OVER WITH, WILL YOU LEAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?”

“Possibly faster.”

“OKAY BOYS, WE’RE DOING THIS THING. LET THE FORGING OF WORDS COMMENCE!”

At this, he clapped his hands, and I stepped back as a circular panel in the center of the amphitheater slowly parted. From underneath it a giant crystal forge arose in the center of the room. I had strange proportions, like the most eccentric of alchemy alembics had an unintended child with an anvil and a printing press. Legends say that the original Word Forgers back near the dawn of time had used forges such as these to actually bring the words of the world into being long ago. I had once asked Bill if this was supposed to be literal or a metaphor, but he just got all grumpy for me “messing up the script” again.

The Order all took up positions at different sides of the…device, and began to prep it for the forging. Sadly, I can’t remember the actual process of forging the words very well. I suspect that this may be because the forge could very well have more dimensions than I’m used to dealing with, and certainly more than I could visually perceive. All I knew is that I would present the Order with the context of the word I needed and what I wanted from the word, some complex and headache inducing extra-dimensional process would occur, and out would pop the perfect word for the situation, straight into my hands and then, after the image quickly evaporated, into my head.

After I had retrieved all the words I needed, I waved goodbye to the still sulking Bill and went on my way. I repeated all the steps I needed to get there, but in reverse. Well, at least until I tripped off a small cliff while trying to moonwalk my way out of there. After that I convinced myself it would be easier to get out going forwards. The point is that I managed to eventually make it back to my original abode and start writing up the blog post. Soon said post was finished and ready to post on the internet.

What’s that? You want to know what that all had to do with me actually posting this later than it should’ve been? Oh. Well you see you’ll have to find that out on the next episode of Unrestrained Rambles!

…is what I would say were this a television show, and not something entirely less stupid. Let’s proceed to what happened next:

After I was just about ready to post the…post on the blog, I heard a knock on my door. “Who is it?” I asked, wondering who it was because that was what I had just asked, god are you even paying attention?

“It is, uh, not a trap” intoned the voice on the other side of the door.

“Hmm…something doesn’t seem quite right here”, thought my keen analytical mind. “Something seems off about this whole situation, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is”. I stroked my beard thoughtfully, pondering this complicated conundrum. “Ah, I know!” I thought, “Maybe that guy on the other side of the door knows what’s strange about all this!” Astounded at my own lightning quick deductive reasoning, I walked over and opened the door.

It was at this point that my whole world went dark. Not literally of course. If the whole world went dark you’d probably hear about it. Well, not actually hear about it per se, not in the immediate sense anyway. You’d probably see it first instead. Or the opposite of that. You wouldn’t see it, on account of it being darkness. Which is notorious for making things hard to see. I feel like I’ve gotten off track somewhat.

Anyway, when I next awoke, I was in some strange location I had never seen before. It seemed that I was tied up by large amounts of rope, which I was also hanging from, as I was upside down. Now, this in and of itself wasn’t entirely cause for alarm. I wake up in such a situation more times than I care to admit for reasons that are nobody’s god damn business. However, I usually didn’t do so above a bubbling vat of acid. This was an important fact to point out, as this particular time I was hanging above a bubbling vat of acid. Slightly less standard, that.

I was at this moment that my keen analytical mind realized that something might be wrong here. The first subtle clue my ace detective brain picked up on was the vat of acid below me, which I had previously mentioned seemed a tad off. The next clue was that I was in an imposingly blank steel room with a big computer monitor on the other end, which had a bunch of big flashing lights with no discernible purpose other than window dressing, or in this case, Windows dressing (sorry about that). In front of this monitor was a big imposing swivel chair with its back to me.

“So,” said the swivel chair, in a surprisingly humanoid voice for a piece of furniture, “we meet again for the first time, at last…”

There was a second odd thing about the swivel chair, as its voice sounded strangely familiar to a man I once knew. A man who I will describe by name at the end of this next sentence. A man by the name of…

“That’s right!” said the swivel chair, rudely interrupting my self-narration, “It is I, Dr. Acidmeltskull!”

It was at this point that the talking swivel chair swiveled around to reveal that Dr. Acidmeltskull had been sitting in it the whole time! My hideous-faced nemesis was certainly going up in the world if he could afford fancy technology like sentient chairs. He grinned at me with his horrible acid melted face, and my astonishing logical mind realized what was going on here.

“That was you at the door who said it wasn’t a trap!” I shouted.

“Mwahaha, yes indeed, Video Game Blogger!” the nefarious doctor replied.

“But it really was a trap!” I yelled. “You lied to me about that! Does your treachery know no bounds, duplicitous fiend?!”

“Probably not,” the evil man gleefully replied, “as I am an evil man who commits evil deeds in an evil fashion, and doesn’t even feel sorry about it! And soon I shall commit yet another evil deed and rid the world of you via the inconvenient pit of acid beneath you!”

“You unrepentant scoundrel!” I shouted. “What diabolical scheme have you planned this time?!”

“I am going to drop you into it!” the scheming villain responded in a not-very-nice-tone.

“No!” I cried. “A bubbling pit of acid, my one weakness, apart from all those others I may mention at a later date as they become relevant!”

“Indeed” sneered the doctor. “I brought you here using trickery and my Make-Things-Unconscious-Without-Concussive-Damage Ray, and I shall soon finally have my vengeance on you! But before I do, I shall, for no particular reason, reveal to you my next dastardly scheme of evil and badness!”

It was at this point that Acidmeltskull pointed dramatically to a large curtained off area I hadn’t thought important enough to mention until now in the corner of the room, and pressed a button on his terminal. The curtains drew back to reveal a cage filled with a writing mass of adorable puppies and kittens. Above them was a gigantic, mechanized, steel boot with spiked cleats. Though a super-intelligent thought engine such as my own was not the sort to jump to conclusions, the combination of these two elements seemed not to be a very good thing.

“My incredibly intricate and devious plan is as follows” said Dr. Acidmeltskull. “When I press a button on this terminal, it will activate my most ingenious invention, the Abnormally Large Spiked Boot of Generally Unpleasant Consequence! This will fill out its intended purpose by stomping sharply downward, unto this unsuspecting cage filled with hundreds of adorable kittens and puppies! This will probably kill them, or at least cause them a significant amount of harm, for this is generally the result of giant metal spikes exerting great force!”

I gasped at his fiendishly evil plan, which was quite bad. “But why destroy these innocent puppies and kitties?” I asked. “Why end their delightfully fluffy little lives?”

“Why?” the doctor responded. “You dare to ask me why?!” he continued, shaking his fist. “Why? Why?! WHYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!” he screamed as he fell to his knees.

“…that was the question I asked, yes.” I responded helpfully.

The doctor suddenly dramatically turned away from me, his head taking a slightly downward tilt. “I remember it like it was yesterday…yesterday…yesterday…” he said a seemingly unnecessary amount of times. I groaned as my vision turned white and started to refocus with a fuzzy white border. It looked like the doctor was dragging me into a flashback sequence.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” the deceitful doctor’s voice intoned yet again, but now in echo-y thought noises. “I was but a young lad of 29 when that fateful day occurred. My dearest mother decided to take us on a whimsical tour of the local Skull-Melting Acid factory.” The appropriate imagery appeared to me as the dastardly deviant continued his narration. “It was to be an innocent day of fun with absolutely no potential for unforeseen consequences such as but not limited to horrible facial scarring. Or so I thought.”

As the past doctor and his mother proceeded through the building, they met their tour guide, who led them out into the main vat area. “So as you can see,” the tour guide intoned in a bored voice, “’dis is the main vat area. It is here where we’s make da’ acid what melts skulls.”

“Ooh, fascinating,” said the mother, “isn’t that fascinating, dear?”

“I…guess?” replied the former doctor. “How do you actually make the acid in question?”

The tour guide gave the doctor a dull stare, and then looked over at the vats. “You’s see ‘dose vats?” he said.

“Er…yes I see the vats” said the doctor.

“We put stuff what melts skulls in ‘dem” said the tour guide. “’Den, we mix up what be in ‘dose vats, and we’s get’s da’ acid.”

“Ooh, fascinating,” said the mother, “isn’t that fascinating, dear?”

“…yeah, sure” said the future villain. “Can I ask one more question?”

The tour guide stared straight ahead for a second. Then he yawned and glanced at the doctor. “Uh, yeah, sure or whateva’” he said.

“What are all these puppies and kittens doing here?” asked the doctor.

There did indeed seem to be a larger amount of tiny puppies and kittens strewn about the facility than normal. I mean, I don’t know that for certain, I’ve never been to a Skull-Melting Acid factory. But my super sharp calculating think organ would hazard a guess that most Skull-Melting Acid factories didn’t have dozens of kittens and puppies hanging around; sometimes literally, in the case of some adorably swinging from the beams above the vats. Something seemed slightly off-standard about that.

“Oh,” said the tour guide, looking down at a kitten nuzzling his feet. “well ‘stake your pet ‘ta work day, right?”

The doctor blinked. “Isn’t this, y’know, a kind of a dangerous place for a bunch of puppies and kitties to be? Because of the acid?”

“Ah,” responded the tour guide, tapping his head with one finger and reaching down to grab the kitten at his feet. “We’s thought ‘a ‘dat, right? Gave ‘em all cute tiny hard hats ‘n stuff.” He presented the kitten he was holding, which was indeed wearing a precious little miniaturized hard hat.

“Oh, okay then” said the doctor, apparently satisfied. “…sooo, what else is there to do here?”

“Well,” said the tour guide, “you could always take a look in one ‘a ‘da acid vats.”

“Oh, how exciting” said the doctor. “That sounds like an interesting and not at all potentially horribly dangerous activity! I shall commence with this posthaste!”

“But it was not meant to be” narrated the reverberating voice of my nemesis. “For rather than the interesting day of observing acid in vats I had anticipated, an accident most heinous and terrible occurred!”

The memory of the doctor walked over to the nearest acid vat, but as he approached he tripped over a passing kitten and started to fall into the vat! “Argh, what a most unexpectedly heinous and terrible accident!” he cried as he fell head first into the vat. His foot snagged on the lip of the vat and thus only his head was submerged. At this, he immediately started screaming.

Meanwhile, the doctor’s mother had been distracted by a passing puppy. As her son was tripping she picked it up in her hands and started talking to it. “D’awwww, you are so, cute, aren’t you? Who’s so cute? It’s you, isn’t it? Yes it is! Yeees it is!”

“AARARAAARRGH!!!” screamed the doctor as he flailed his arms about. “MY SKULL IS EXPERIENCING EXTREMELY LARGE AMOUNTS OF PAIN AT THIS PRESENT TIME! PROBABLY BECAUSE OF THE ACID, YOU SEE! BECAUSE MY SKULL IS CURRENTLY SUBMERGED IN ACIIIIIIIIIIID!”

“Look at your widdle nose!” his mother continued, oblivious to her son’s plight. “And your tiny widdle fwoppy ears! You are just so cute.

“PLEASE, DEAR GOD, SOMEONE ASSIST ME WITH THE ACID!” yelled the struggling doctor. “THE ACID THAT IS CURRENTLY CAUSING GREAT AMOUNTS OF HARM TO MY SKULL DUE TO ITS SKULL-MELTING PROPERTIIIIES!!!”

“Who’s a widdle fuzzy wuzzy?” said the mother. The dog yipped at this. “That’s right! You are! Yes you are! Yeees you are!”

"In an unexpected twist, my skull was horribly disfigured from this incident", my nemesis narrated as the tour guide disinterestedly started to fish him out and the flashback faded back to white. "And in an even crueler twist of fate, my mother soon suffered the exact same accident, and died in a vat of acid that she fell into! This was definitely what occurred that day, as opposed to her kicking me out of the house years later for not paying rent because that didn’t happen!"

“Arrrrgh and such!” screamed the voice of his mother which sounded suspiciously similar to her sons for a minute there. “How unfortunate that I am now falling to my death in a vat of acid because this is a real thing that happeeeeeeened!”

At this, my normal vision finally faded back into view as Dr. Acidmeltskull turned dramatically back to face me. “And now,” said the doctor, “you know my horribly tragic backstory! And you see why I must not get vengeance on these arrogant puppies and kittens as well as yourself! And I shall do so as soon as I’m done with this-“

“Wait!” I cried. “I have one last question for you, doctor!”

“Oh really?” sneered the doctor. “And what would that be?”

“Why exactly did we become nemeses (nemesii?)?” I asked. “I don’t actually remember how that happened!”

We stood there in silence for a moment. Well, the doctor stood, I was still hanging upside down, but you get the idea.



The silence stretched a while longer.



The doctor coughed.



The silence was getting increasingly awkward.



“Prepare to die, nemesis!” the doctor cried as he leveled his Make-Things-Dead-Without-Particular-Consideration-To-Damage Ray at me. I was anticipating this however and used my latent telekinesis powers (I won’t talk about it some other day) to swing my ropes to the side. His dastardly ray hit the ropes instead, destroying them and freeing me to fall safely to the side of the deadly acid vat!

“Curses!” screamed the doctor as he fired off a few more shots that I deftly dodged. “If I cannot destroy you, accursed Video Game Blogger, then I will have to make do with these adorable animals!” He slammed his fist down on a big red button that was labeled “A.L.S.B.o.G.U.C. activation” before I could stop him, and the giant boot began to stir! Thinking quickly, I drew the miniature laser gun I had in my pocket and I fired it directly at a crucial joint of the boot’s mechanism, melting through it. As the boot tried to stamp down, it spun out of control, flipping upside down! The top of the boot bounced harmlessly of the exterior of the animal cage and directly onto Dr. Acidmeltskull, who was crushed by the blunt end of the device!

“A pox on you, Video Game Blogger!” the doctor yelled from beneath the device, shaking his fist at me as I opened the cage and freed the multitude of puppies and kittens. “I shall get you next tiiiiiiiiiiiime!” We rushed to the escape helicopter and I piled them all on board. We got away just in time, as the villains base was exploding for no discernible reason as we flew off into the sunset.

I air dropped a container full of the kittens and puppies to a very surprised animal shelter on my way back home. As I sat down back in front of my computer, I breathed a sigh of relief. But that sigh quickly caught in my throat as I looked at the time! It had been over 2 weeks since the doctor had kidnapped me! All that work and I would still end up looking like I had actually just been busy with school and playing an inordinate amount of video games!

Ah well, I thought as I finally formatted my next post to put up on the blog. Somehow I knew they would understand.

2 comments:

  1. I'm assuming that through some trick of causality, buttaphors was in fact crafted for you by the word forgers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have a secret order of Word Forgers to aid you too? I should have known!

    ReplyDelete