The Lost Empires

The last couple months i have been kicking around a short story that i never really finished a few years ago. As mentioned before there is an arch of stories that are all intertwined. the first of these stories deals with the first time travelers to the distant past.

In this distant past is a benevolent empire that learns that many of it's citizen become enslaved in the future. One of the species that makes up this empire become enslaved and are the subjects of various genetic experiments. Among the time travelers is one of these beings that has been experimented on. This all happens when he is a child. He is latter adopted by a Japanese Family, hence the name Hero Yukawa.

Hero eventually does well for himself and takes over the family business empire. Which is one of the things that puts him in the position to get involved with these time travelers in the first place. I have been having a very hard time trying to figure out what the long term damage of such a childhood would be. I know that there are people that have experience unspeakable things as children and go onto do great things.

Hero was created as a soldier and is rather good at killing people. to deal with this he has refused to fight directly. He used his superior intellect to design weapons and eventually defeat those that had once enslaved him.

Still through all of this he never knew where he came from. This adventure when his is much older. He had some idea that his people originated in this mythical Empire. Even so it has been gone so long that there are bearly ruins of it in his time. I do not think I am doing a very good job with him. He should be a very complex character and he is not coming off that way in this story. I have written about him when he was young. It was so much easier when his anguish was fresh. I know that he has never come to terms with his personal demons. He never marries and his only progeny is adopted.

I just don't know where he is supposed to be.

Well thank you for letting me ramble. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Various Randomness

Working on several project at once at the moment. The one that has been consuming a great deal of time is juggling batons. The rub with these things is that it appears that the size of the stick in some way helps or hinders the person that is using it. And our group has people of several different sizes making it hard to pick the right size for each person.

To add to the complication of this we have come up with several styles for the heads. This mean that the size had to be right and then the ends of the thing also have to be right. Juggling balls are a lot simpler. they come in three sizes and you just pick one. Juggling clubs primarily come in one size so you are just stuck with what ever you have.

Today I was making a stick for one of the shorter members of our group. So it a shorted stick with a smaller diameter. the heads on this stick are also smaller. I am a bit worried that we might not have any idea what we are doing. the companies that make these thing make them all at around two feet in length. If you are under four feet tall you spen all of you time hitting yourselvf in the head. This of course turns off most people.

In the end I suppose what we are making is better than what we can buy. The down side is that we are experiimenting on inexperince jugglers. Thus it is hard to tell if it is the skill or the stick.

Well I will let you all know how it is going.

The four armed stick is coming along very slowly. I have had more sucess with rolling trick rather than flipping tricks. The thing that it the most difficult is that my control stick always are in the way. I am simply going to have to be better at this before I know if it is a lost cause or not. As soon as i stop hitting myself in the head I might take some video. If I think about it i will post it.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

The Anti Christ

frequent reader of this blog, both of them. Will know that occasionally a strange experiment started with an odd idea from one of our clowns. this weeks strange idea came from Walt.

there is a juggling implement called a juggling baton, flower stick or devil stick. As best I can figure most of what our Brigade uses falls into the category of flower sticks if you ignore the fact that it is nor made from recycled materials. It is not that we hate the planet. We simply have not found a good source for recycled materials at this time. It is a shame but that is what it is.

Anyway the juggling batons that we use are a shaft with a flowery head on each end made from vinyl. They are good looking and have proven durable for the most part.

For what we are doing they have been working great. This is when the strangeness comes in. Walt suggested that we make and x shaped juggling baton. At one time I recall someone duct taping two devil sticks together. And by Devil sticks I mean that poplar bare sticks that Dube makes that do not have soft plushy heads on the end. I have head some jugglers call these pain sticks. At you might imagine the reason for this is because when they hit you they hurt. Well this experiment went horribly wrong for the people involved. As I recall the person tried and tried and only managed to get a black eye.

Well we have been using PVC pipe and the nice soft heads that i have been talking about. So despite all the evidence it looked as if it might be worth a try. We built one of these things. Thus far it has proven unwieldy and I have not been able to make much of it. I honestly do not know if I am ever going to be able to do something useful with it.

to be honest when we want to learn a new trick with the juggling baton we simply look it us on line or read a book. We have found no evidence that such a thing has been created before. So there is no one out there with saged advice. I will throw up some picture and maybe a video if I can do anything but hit myself with it.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Clock Ramblings

I was waiting around for the bus and felt compelled to purchase a steno pad. It is not a real one with the wire binding. It is one of those that is glues together with the peice of cardstock on the back.

For some reason I forget the composition book that I was working on. It may be a good thing. These stories need a rest one and w hile. We had a good practice and every went well on that front.

My current aparatus bag is falling apart. It was the prototype for the others that we are currently using. So it is not surprising that has not lasted long. What we thought was tough material does not hold up in the wash as well as we would like. It has been very useful in working out the design for this bag. I counted and there are sixteen minor difference. Nine of these have been patched or repaired on my bag.

In Wilson and Thurman's ap bags all of these thing were done differently. So it looks as if the minor changes were a good thing. In a year or so we will know if they are actually improvements.

On otherfronts our one eyes pirate cat Abby has had seven kittens. there are adorable as kittens should be. Six are black and one is tiger striped. If you are looking for kittens they should be ready in a couple months. Her last batch was very freindly and social. As an added bonus Sally the dog is helping to raise the kittens. So they will be very comfortable around dogs. I have not caught her trying to get them to nurse on her. Still, I am sure this is a coming atraction.

I've had a really lousy time with the allergies the last few weeks. I have just not had a desire to do much of anything.

Near where I live is arather large clock on the side of a building. the building was a brewery at one time. Now I think it is some kind of housing for artists. At&t is curretnly leasing the clock for advertising.

The thing that I am wondering is if people still built large clocks.. I wonder if they are a product of a time when personal time peices were lesss acurate. In an age when your iphone can be corrected to the nuclear clock at Annapolis are these relics of a bygone era? Perhapse they are. I sill find them interesting though. There is a reletively new one on the Jewish Community Center n Squirell Hill. It is part of a modern building complete with Hebrew Characters.

i suppose if it was jus about elling time there would be digital clocks everywhere. Tall buildings would have the time in neon numeral ten feet tall. The fact that many new clocks still have hands must mean tere is something belonging to tradition with these time peices.

I am not sure why anyone would think my thoughts are relevant on this subject. Hack this is a world were people have a website dedicated to cats that look like Hitlar. If that is relevant then perhapse these ramblings are as well.

By the way cats that look like Hitlar are called kitlars. If I think about it I will throw in the link.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Facebook

I have broken down and signed up for a facebook acount. It is under the name Zeeppo the-clown.

For a while I have had an account on the myspace. I am only visited by the some insaine clown posse fans who think it is funny to leave me rude messages. I suppose it is only a matter of time before any website become run down and infiltrated by an unsavory element. That is one of the reason that I like the blogger here. If someone leaves a message it never has to appear on my page if I do not want it to.

Well I am just checking in. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.