Writer's Volleyball 2009 - Guidelines & Commentary

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:26 am

Oh, yes, I missed that. I thought I remembered that the Gay Deceiver took Murdock away from his (dead) wife (called Wendi) to a gas station in the middle of nowhere.

Brad wrote:(...)
Gay: â€œBoss ! Those are random coordinates !
(...)

I missed the fact that the random coordinates brought the polygamist Rupert just where his other wife Dee was discussing with her friend....

Brad wrote: (...)Word of The Day phpBB forum thread. Temporal time coordinate destination: Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:48 am (EST)
(...)

That's the beauty of Volleyball

(It didn't help that the real-time loss of data happened just then...
Clong retrieved the Volleyball posts that would have been lost otherwise, but some of the WotD posts, in particular the one of Friday Feb 06, were lost...

Oh, my poor head. Where is my Aricept?)

Post by **Darb** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:08 am

I thought I remembered that the Gay Deceiver took Murdock away from his (dead) wife (called Wendi) to a gas station in the middle of nowhere

Not nowhere from his perspective ... the first random jump was to get away from the temporal 'blackhats' (which you'd have to read Heinlein's "Number of the Beast" to learn more about), and the second jump was to grab one of his other wives, Dee in this instance, and ostensibly take her somewhere safe - only in his haste he apparently slightly botched one of the settings and intersected the outhouse. Blammo ! In any case, the post illustrated, among other things, that Rupert is, in addition to his many other character failings, a multidimensional defalcating polygamist, with wives and girlfriends in multiple planes and timelines.

Post by **Darb** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:19 am

BTW, the "Bluebook of Westmarch" reference is a subtle pun ...

'The Redbook of Westmarch' was bilbo baggin's travel memoir, which his nephew, Frodo, later expanded into what became "The Lord of the Rings". I was running with clong's football on that.

Kelly Blue Book is a used car valuation guide, and the post was about a white 69 mustang as a real world metaphor for shadowfax in lord of the rings.

Combine the two and you get the bluebook of westmarch. I was going to make it eastmarch, but that would have made the punnish reference even less obvious, and the road trip hasnt got underway yet, much less picked a direction.

Post by **Darb** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:31 am

Another subtle gag was the carb system ... I figured Clong, as a philharmonic director, would enjoy my playing with a horn section.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:10 am

Impressive!

Once started in this Tolkien context, and with Rupert's ring to be destroyed, I am wondering whether the 1969 Ford Mach 1, with the 428 Super Cobra Jet Ram Air V-8 (even though the trunk is already full) could not take a party all the way to The News, in Adelaide (is the gas station in Australia?). Elroy has to stay to keep an eye on the station, but Freddo could go with Cangolf of course, and Borrowmore. Kate won her place for the welding work. That would bring together the two lines that develop there.
And for extra muscle, if needed, well, the trio Gaby/Mike/Rafe, now reconforted by Magda's roborant food, wielding bows, swords, spears (axes?) could join the party, in disguise (i.e. sans wings)?
If there is not enough room in the Ford, maybe they can be convinved to stand on the tip of the antenna (though that would blow their incognito

)?

Looks like a tall order. I don't see myself writing this in any "genre"....

Post by **Darb** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:15 am

Ah, but the point is not to resolve the entire storyline in a single post, but to build the proverbial wall of the tale, one brick (post) at a time, each time changing the genre. We have many months ahead of us yet to tell the tale.

Also, remember that the powers of heaven and hell are unlikely to get directly involved ... they're just indirect behind the scenes forces.

Post by **Darb** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:49 pm

Ok, I gave the ball a little kick. I've never done the children's genre before, so I apologize for the extremely mediocre offering. Heck, with only two exceptions, I havent read a children's story since I was a child.

Somebody kick the ball.

Post by **laurie** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:23 pm

Brad wrote:Somebody kick the ball.

Why do you keep saying that? This is volleyball, not soccer (or football).

Hands and arms only.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:25 pm

Elroy himself went on the ride?
Leaving the station to Borrowmore to keep an eye on?

Post by **Ghost** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:04 am

My Dad used to race circle track and his friend who at the time did not have any sponsors (pure white car) decaled Shadowfax on the side of his car.

Post by **Darb** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:26 pm

laurie wrote:
Brad wrote:Somebody kick the ball.

Why do you keep saying that? This is volleyball, not soccer (or football).

Hands and arms only.

I think we should ammend the rules to allow feet, in order to explain the long lapses between posts ... the schtick just sounds better by asking someone to kick it, rather than serve it.

voralfred wrote:Elroy himself went on the ride?
Leaving the station to Borrowmore to keep an eye on?

Oooh, that's a good point, Voralfred. In lord of the rings, Elrond wasnt in the fellowship of the ring.

EDIT: Ok, fixed ... Freddo's driving, and Cangalf and Kate are the passengers.

Somebody serve.

Post by **Darb** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:42 pm

The current Volleyball 2009 postcount tally is (as of "Shadowfax") ...

Brad - 11
Clong - 3
Kiltannen - 1
rip8fan1 - 1
Voralfred - 1

Note: this is NOT a scoring system, just a post count for all participants.

Post by **Darb** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:19 pm

Ok, did a short post ("Zagat Guide").

Post Count Tally:
Brad - 12
Clong - 3
Kiltannen - 1
rip8fan1 - 1
Voralfred - 1

In order to help keep things moving, I tweaked rule 4.b to reduce the no-self-reply waiting period from 3 days to just 2.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:18 am

Shouldn't your zagat post be rated PG-13?

Not being so used to baseball, it took me some time to fill in Freddo's sentence

But the dish would have been more ..explicit with just Dos Webos, no? Looks like the chorizo is a bit... bizarre....

That reminds me of a book I once saw in an english bookstore in Paris. It was called "Just Food", and it was not so much a cookbook (thogu, in some sense, it was) but a photography book. The recipes were just excuses for the picture of the completed dish. There were some creative realisations based on asparagus and mato....

I resisted the impulse to buy it right then and there.. and deeply regret I did not yield to it...
Ever heard of it?

Post by **Darb** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 2:06 pm

Ok, fixed ... I marked the the VB entry, and the explanation below, as PG-13.

{Note - explanation below is rated PG-13}

Italian would have been too easy for the usual polyglotic culinary innuendos, to the point of being trite, so I went with Authentic Mexican instead. It was fairly straight forward: lengua (tongue), webos (aka balls, testicles, or 'prarie oysters' in american mid-west lingo), chorizo (spicy sausage, metaphor for male genitalia), creamed corn in a split tamale (if you're unsure of the metaphor, google 'all internal' ... extremely NSFW), and cuitlacoche (edible corn fungus ... aka 'the clap', if you extend the prior metaphor). In any case, there's no law against suggestive restaurant names or menus in the USA, so I can easily picture such a restaurant existing, and offering such a suggestive dish.

BTW, I've had lengua soft tacos ... it's one of my favorite authentic mexican dishes. I have a photo somewhere in my culinary archives that I could post, if anyone was seriously interested, and I can describe an approximate recipe. I've never had 'prarie oysters', but it's not uncommon to find it served in some mid-western state where cattle farming is big business ... easy enough to google the reference.

As for the strikes/balls crack ... that was loosely based on an old (and barely remembered) comedy routine by Soupy Sales.

Post by **Darb** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 10:32 pm

Ok, there was nothing on TV that interested me, so I cranked out another post instead (re: "Inanimorph" ... a bit of a neologism of inanimate + animorph, in which I played up the presence of inanimate and semi-animate objects a bit).

It'll be interesting to see how close, or divergent, people are going to follow the LOTR motif we somehow wound up with. If the former, it'll be fun to see if, how and when barrowmore and/or the nazgul make a reappearance. If the latter, well then who knows where the plot will go.

Someone serve.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:54 am

Well, I just thought I could support Brad a little.

Not very original, most ideas were in Brad's previous post, the ring trying to save himself by killing those who want to destroy it, and the reverse red lettering.
And I got the idea for the genre in a different thread....

Look, if I can do it, you english-speakers can, too!

Not fair to leave the entire burden on Brad's back, especially when he still has post-operative pain (That's really too bad, Brad! I do hope you get better soon)

Hey!
Wasn't it a rule previous years that it is recommended to use the WotD in a Vollyball post?

Once I even made a post using many of them... but forgot to use the current one. I just edited my post. I uesd two WotD, one rather old, but the other, if not today's WotD, is at least the latest one posted on that thread as of now.

Post Count Tally:
Brad - 13
Clong - 3
Voralfred - 2
Kiltannen - 1
rip8fan1 - 1

Post by **Darb** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:41 am

Voralfred: It's shadowfax, not silverfax.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:57 am

I just corrected my post.

Probably an interference with the Sir A. C. Doyle's "Silver Blaze"

Post by **Darb** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:54 pm

I'm working on a post called "Thunder Road" ... should be ready in a bit. Need to give it a spit shine before putting it up. Definite plot thickener.

Ok, done.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:26 am

Great story, Brad!

Hard job to tzke it from there..

I do hope some others move in, I can only contribute a few little things now and then

BTW, since your post is still in the deep of the night, I changed my previous post when Cangolf saw the cliff in the dawn light. SO I just assumed that he understood it because there was no reflection of the light of the headlights.

Post by **Darb** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:26 am

Thank you.

Clong mentioned he might post soon. Anyway, if this were LOTR, I suppose we'd be somewhere around mt. caradhras. I was tempted to put that on the sign instead of thunder road, but I didn't want to be so derivative, or plot-bound to LOTR.

Post by **clong** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:31 am

ok, I've got an idea...but I can't get to it right now

Post by **Darb** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 10:42 pm

I have a few ideas.

If nobody goes, I could do a campfire yarn (ghost story genre), in which cangolf tells the history of rupert and the rings of power. Or, I could hash out an action genre post ala mines of moria, replete with toll tunnels and a chasm overpass.

Still, it'd be more fun if someone else went first.

Post by **Darb** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 12:03 am

I've worked out the names of several of the nine.

For the benefit of tolkien/volleyball buffs present, I picture someone analagous to Millard Fuller as having been one of the weilders of the three liberal rings ... he'd have given it to cangolf sometime in the recent past.