MiSTied: "He Awakens" from a.p.dragons-inn
Wolff Iguana Dobson
this doesn't happen again. And if it does, please, it wasn't my fault!
======
Roll "He awakens", reel two.
[Opening credits]
[SOL. Joel and Crow are welding a large, ungainly box-like machine of some
size. Tom is nowhere to be seen.]
JOEL: Crow, you little rascal, this is your best invention yet! We're going
to have so much fun with this!
CROW: The idea is all mine, you know. Our role-playing sessions will never be
better.
JOEL: [To camera.] Oh, hi folks, welcome to the Satellite of Love. I'm Joel,
and this is my crazed robot inventor---
CROW: [looking up from his welding] Inventor extraordinaire, please! [Pulls
welding mask down.] Here goes! [Begins welding. Since the machine is
actually made out of styrofoam that's only painted to look like metal,
it bursts into flame on contact with the welding torch. There are
several small explosions with smoke billowing up everywhere.]
TOM: [Leaping out from the center of the explosion] Ahh! I'm on fire! Help!
Help! This wasn't part of the skit!
ALL: [General mayhem. The Mads' light turns on as Joel appears with a fire
extinguisher and, inexplicably, a Carmen Miranda fruit hat. Gypsy runs
through screaming; all is chaos.]
[Deep 13.]
DR.F: Joel? Joel?! JOEL, YOU MORON!
Frank: They look really busy.
[SOL. There are still small explosions and shouts of agony from a blackened
Tom who looms out of the clouds of dark smoke.]
JOEL: [Still extinguishing.] Sorry, sirs! We've had sort of a problem!
[Puts out Crow who has come dashing in wearing a flaming beret.]
Could you hold off on this week's USENET posting?
[Deep 13.]
DR.F: Not a chance, Popeye. It's a continuation of "He awakens" from
alt.pub.dragons-inn. Send it to them, Frank.
Frank: I feel bad about wrecking on poor a.p.d-i. Most of them are kinda
cool! [Looks pleadingly at Dr. Forrester.]
DR.F: Arrgh! This post is nightmarishly bad, no matter what the regular
content is! [Tries to hit the button himself, but Frank catches his
hand.]
Frank: No, please! Give them a chance! Maybe Ruig will get better!
DR.F: [Breaks free of Frank's hold, throwing the assistant over his shoulder
in a judo move.] Haha! Ruig will never do it! Never! Now you die,
Joel!
[SOL. Chaos is still rampant, but visible in the foreground are the lights,
and they have USENET sign. The doors open and Cambot trucks through the
blackness.]
[Door sequence]
> Path:
princeton!udel!news.intercon.com!panix!ddsw1!news.kei.com!news.oc.com!news.unt.e
du!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!news.ad
elaide.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!grivel!mihi.une.edu.au!bruig
CROW: [Still smoking.] Jeez Louise! We almost were no more on that one!
TOM: Gone to that big satellite in the sky!
JOEL: Uh, guys, we're already there.
TOM: So you're saying hell is no different than this?
JOEL: Well, it's really the same only the only non-alt group you get is
"rec.arts.startrek.creative."
CROW: That really *is* hell, isn't it.
> From: br...@mihi.une.edu.au (Bronwyn Ruig)
> Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
> Subject: He Awakens
TOM: No! No! Tell me it isn't so!
CROW: Well, Bron obviously doesn't have a significant other, or else she'd be
out doing something else besides producing this drivel.
JOEL: Is that really a she? Bronwyn is such a strange name.
TOM: Gender-neutral time! "Hir" and "se" time!
> Message-ID: <43...@grivel.une.edu.au>
> Date: 19 Apr 94 05:32:35 GMT
> Sender: use...@grivel.une.edu.au
CROW: No, I said "drivel", not grivel.
> Lines: 37
JOEL: Mercifully short. We might be able to put out Gypsy when we get back
before she completely burns up.
>
> ADMIN: I have been out but now, hoping there are
CROW: People who haven't committed hari-kari upon reading the last posting of
this thread. . .
> no more power cutouts
> I m continuing on this thread "The Saving of Anuin [TSOA]"
JOEL: Without sight of punctuation
CROW: For days
TOM: It s really hard to talk this way
JOEL: Looks like we come from america on line or something
TOM: BUT @LEEST WEER NOT B!FF
> The character
> of Mark has gained the interest of
TOM: Absolutely no one.
> some money hungry mercenaries
CROW: You know in our punctuationless mode it s really hard to tell if
that is "money and hungry mercenaries" or "money-hungry mercenaries"
TOM: Shh I m trying not to punctuate You used quotes
> taking them through a portal to his home world.
>
> Mark studied his new recruits with little curiosity. They were the typical
> rough and ready for anything mercenaries, with maybe an ounce of wisdom
> between them.
JOEL: In fact, they're just generic stand-ins. We haven't bothered to
say. . .
TOM: What they look like. . .
CROW: What their names are. . .
TOM: How *many* of them there are. . .
JOEL: Little things like that. No sense giving it any flavor.
TOM: These mercenaries are great-tasting regular flavor.
> They had come to him after he had been spinning his tales
TOM: Around like a top. . .
> of wealth and opportunity for landholdings in his own world. Vast tracts of
> open land,
CROW: [British accent] She's got these HUGE tracts of land!
> good and fertile were ready for settlement, and had had no claim
> of ownership put upon them.
JOEL: You know, to avoid passive voice he could have said, "No one had put
claims upon these---"
CROW: HUGE tracts of land!
TOM: None of that! No singing!
> He would have preferred something more,
TOM: Like characters with names,
> but the
> seven that had been enchanted by his words would be
CROW: Dead by morning.
> enough to protect him
> on the first part of his quest.
TOM: Of course, after that they'd be woefully inadequate.
CROW: "Hey, you mercenaries! Put on these red jerseys and report to
transporter room 5."
> Once again he produced the two amulets. With them he would weave a spell
> to get them back to Anuin. He flicked first one, and then the other into
> the air, where they hung suspended.
TOM: Does this remind you of any scenes? Animated scenes?
JOEL: Animated scenes?
CROW: The cave of wonder?
TOM: [in singing voice] "You ain't never had a friend like me!"
> As he be gan the chant,
[Crow makes rapper's noises.]
JOEL: He be gannin'!
TOM: Yo, yo, yo! Check it out!
> the stones in
> the amulets started to glow. The twirled back and forth on their strings
> and wove patterns through his spell. Gradually their dance grew
TOM: To the height of a small man.
> outrds
> and a hole in the air appeared, the Amulets spinning its circumference.
JOEL: And then its diameter.
TOM: And then it divided the circumference by the diameter. . .
CROW: And squared the circle. Yes, that's right, Indiana *did* try to pass
a law that---ulpf![Joel thwacks him.]
> Quickly Mark ushered the fighters through the hole. To anyone who had
> witnessed the magic, it looked as if they had suddenly turned from solid to
> mist to space in the matter of a footstep. The hole dissappeared.
JOEL: Along with Bron's spellchecker.
> On the other side
TOM: See you on the other side, Ray.
> the party stepped out into a darkened room,
JOEL: Tripped on the roller skate that young Jimmy left on the ground. . .
TOM: And rolled wackily into three crates of watermelons!
ALL: Wahh, wahh, wahh!
> the
> bars on the window, twelve feet above them doing little to clarify the
> nature of it.
TOM: It's really a technical point, but if this is a dark room, how could they
tell there were bars on the window unless there was light coming
through it, in which case it wouldn't be a darkened room?
JOEL: Shh. Movie's starting.
> There was a click click as the amulets fell to the floor
> and their glow died away.
TOM: Oh, and the amulets don't light it up, either.
JOEL: This is a low-budget post. They couldn't afford big lights.
CROW: Nor, apparently, the time to think this through.
> A brief flicker of light and then one of the
> men had a torch lit.
TOM: What, with his Bic?
CROW: No, no, they're using one of those new piezo-electric crystals. Duh.
JOEL: About those sentence fragments.
> They were in a silo. There was some seed scattered
> around the floor. The perfectly round room was little more than ten square
> feet around.
TOM: Another technical point, but. . .
CROW: You mean that there were ten SQUARE feet in a PERFECTLY ROUND room?
JOEL: UNauthorized DISTRIBUTION of this material STRONGly ENcouraged.
CROW: Hey! Riff the post, not me!
JOEL: Fine. He's basically squared the circle here---10 square feet can't
cover a circular area.
TOM: He did say that the round room was "little more" than 10.
JOEL: Well, it's still weird.
CROW: Let's take it one step further. 10 sq. feet, round room. Area of a
circle is pi*radius^2, right?
TOM: Right. Your point?
CROW: Solve it---10/pi is like 3.1831. Square root of 3.1831 is around
1.7841. Yes, 8 people are standing in a room less than 4 feet across.
TOM: If you figure the average person is about two feet shoulder to shoulder
and about 1 foot from front to back---
CROW: I mean, hey, these are burly mercenaries. Even if their braincase isn't
huge, they must have foot-long feet!
TOM: ---that's 2 square feet there. 10 square feet over 2 square feet is 5
people.
CROW: The other three are stacked on top.
TOM: And if they're carrying any equipment---
CROW: Sharp objects like battle-axes, pole-arms, studded loincloths. . .
TOM: ---somebody's getting poked in the eye.
CROW: "Ow! Hey! Al! You're on my foot!"
TOM: "You got your spear in my mercenary!"
CROW: "You got your mercenary on my spear!"
BOTH: "Two great tastes that taste great together!"
JOEL: Amazing. I didn't know I put algebra chips on your circuit boards!
> In the side oposite the window a door, old wooden and worn,
> stood.
JOEL: Whichever side the window was on. . .
TOM: Do round rooms have sides?
CROW: Ones with square feet do.
TOM: I hope the door opens outwards, what with all those people.
JOEL: And what does "old wooden" mean?
TOM: No punctuation you idiot
> It took almost no time to knock the door in
CROW: Actually, with all those people in that tiny silo, I'm sure the door
just burst right open.
TOM: Technically, they knocked the door *out*.
> and when they did they found a
> stairway that led up to the light .
CROW: Which light?
JOEL: The light at the end of the tunnel.
> When they had all gained the top of
> the stair,
JOEL: It was a short staircase; just one stair.
> Mark said, with a wide sweep of his arm,"This is my home...Anuin"
CROW: Thanks, Mark. My name's Anuin. Your home looks very nice.
TOM: That was really weak.
> They had materialized in an abandoned farm, the land had been fallow for
> some years and the house was in a bad state of disrepair.
TOM: And no one had repaired the run-on sentence, either.
> The fighters
> looked increduluosly
CROW: Incredduloose. . .
TOM: Incrodulouus. . .
JOEL: In amazement.
> at the land that was going to waste. "Our citizens
> have moved to the towns and our farms lie unattended because they dare
> not dfend themselves against our enemies. You will help set things right."
> Mark spoke with not so much anger as conviction. They watched him and the
> wasted countryside and did not doubt he was a man full of anger.
>
TOM: Even though he spoke without anger.
CROW: That didn't make any sense.
TOM: Let's get out of here.
JOEL: What, that's it? They went into a hole and came out an incredibly
narrow silo? It took a whole post just to say that?
CROW: It's a tactic to bore the enemy to death, I guess. If you're dull
enough, even the most enterprising world-destroyer will take no
interest in you.
[Reverse door sequence.]
[SOL. The smoke has cleared but the place is a mess. The walls are blackened,
the countertop has been singed, and our three heroes are looking worse for the
wear.]
TOM: I can't believe you didn't think to see if the invention was flammable
before you tried to *weld* it!
CROW: It was going to be so great. It was going to be a transmogrifier that
took in common household appliances and put out cool robots like me and
Tom! He was going to leap out like it really worked, but I've ruined
it all! [Buries his face in Joel's jumpsuit and starts sobbing.]
JOEL: There, there, little guy! Everything will be all right; you'll just
have to build another one.
TOM: In a way, this whole thing has been a metaphor for what we do here;
someone takes a good idea, mangles it, and then we flame it to death.
JOEL: Kind of like that last post. Well, it wasn't THAT bad.
TOM: Aside from the non-existent characterizations, numb dialogue, no
punctuation, poor grammar, cliched ideas stolen from mainstream
successes, and a failure to grasp fundamental geometry, really, it
could have been worse.
CROW: [Pops up, suddenly harsh and together.] It still sucked. [Re-buries face
and continues sobbing.]
TOM: That was what I said.
CROW: [Turns around again.] Oh, OK. [Wanders off. Mads' light flashes.]
JOEL: [Shaking head.] What am I doing here? [Hits button.] What do you
think, sirs?
[Deep 13. Mayhem has ensued here. Frank is wearing an entire fireman's outfit
complete with breathing mask and is battling a raging blaze behind the two
scientists.]
DR.F: That's great, Underdog, but we've got our own problems. Frank started a
flame war by posting "Torgo's Pizza" advertisements to every newsgroup
in creation.
FRANK: Don't you get it? *IT WAS A JOKE!* [Flames engulf him. We hear his
screams.]
DR.F: Our system is so backlogged with hate mail that I can't even hit the
button correctly, so I'll just have to pull the plug on the satellite
link. [Disappears beneath console and the reappears holding extension
cord connection.] Say good-bye, Gracie!
[SOL.]
ALL: Goodbye, Gracie?
[Deep 13. Dr. Forrester yanks on wire as Frank gets caught up in a fire hose.]
\ | /
\|/
o
/|\
/ | \
[roll credits. Instead of regular music, we just hear shouts of Frank saying,
"I didn't mean it!" "Not me!" "Hey, I'll sue you if you---" and so on while
the fire crackles away.]
This spoof contains characters created by Best Brains and whose lives and
souls belong to HBO and Comedy Central. This is in no way meant to bother
them. The spoof's material was written entirely by Wolff Dobson, and you're
welcome to reproduce it as much as you'd like, only if you're planning to
profit from it, call CC first and me second.
The post originally heckled was by Bronwyn Ruig. He/She/Se is in need of a
drama coach, a proofreader and maybe even a muse, but I mean no harm to hir
and hir planet.
---
Wolff Dobson
djdo...@phoenix.princeton.edu
wo...@djdobson.student.princeton.edu
> They were in a silo. There was some seed scattered
> around the floor. The perfectly round room was little more than ten square
> feet around.
Ken Frauwirth
It *is* possible to make a circle with exactly ten square feet of area.
All you need is a radius of length (10/pi)^0.5. Although this would not
be easy, it is not theoretically impossible. Of more concern (to me) was
a room that was ten square feet *around*. How can the length of the
circumference be measured in square feet?
In any case, I loved your geometric analysis of the room and the
likelihood of fitting those mercenaries inside. Keep up the good work!
--
Ken Frauwirth BBB IIIII OO K K EEEEE N N
frau...@mendel.berkeley.edu B B I O O K K E NN N
Dept. of Molec. & Cell Bio. BBB I O O KK EEEE N N N
Immunology Division B B I O O K K E N NN
Univ. of Cal., Berkeley BBB IIIII OO K K EEEEE N N
.sig produced under strict rabbinical supervision