The Last Thoughts of Ben Kenobi

OBI-WAN: Only a master of evil, Darth.

See, until the prequels I always assumed that Obi-Wan used ‘Darth’ as a name, not a title.  That’s the way the line is delivered.  In Obi-Wan’s mind, Anakin is dead and there is only Vader.  What made him utterly give up hope on his pupil and friend?  He left Anakin on Mustafa because he couldn’t bring himself to finish the job.  He couldn’t be the one to kill him, because he cared so much for Anakin.  What changed in his vigil on Tatooine?

Or is Obi-Wan just being a dick?  It seems to be something Jedi do when they get older.  I mean, witness Qui-Gon’s ‘I’ll take Anakin as my apprentice’ when Obi-Wan is standing right there.  Or Yoda’s, ‘I got my arse kicked so I’m going to a swamp to sulk for the next sixteen years... No, no, I’m not going to help the rebellion, or try and protect the remaining Jedi.  I’m not even going to take anything from the Jedi temple with me--too many bad memories.  I’m going to a swamp to think about what a failure I am.  I’m going to paint my hut black and listen to Morrissey.’

So Obi-Wan comes face-to-face with his failure and acts like a twelve-year-old.  ‘Only a master of evil, Darth’.  ‘You’re just a Darth.  I’m a Jedi Master. Ner-ner-ne-ner-ner.’

OBI-WAN: Strike me down now, and I’ll become more powerful then you can possibly imagine.

VADER:  More powerful then I can possibly imagine?

OBI-WAN:  Yes, far more powerful.

VADER:  I can imagine quite a lot of power.

OBI-WAN:  I’ll be more powerful than that.

VADER:  Will you be able to blow up planets?  This battle station can, so I don’t even have to imagine that.

OBI-WAN:  I don’t mean--

VADER:  Or how about that time I landed that Star Destroyer on Coruscant.  That was pretty pimp.  If I kill you, will you be able to do that?

OBI-WAN:  It’s not like--

VADER:  Are you going to be able to bring Padme back?  Palpatine said he could, but every time I ask him about it, he’s all like, ‘tomorrow, Lord Vader’, ‘we just need to destroy this planet, Lord Vader’.  To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder...

OBI-WAN:  Padme’s dead, Darth.  I was there when it happened.

VADER: Nuh-Uhhh.  She’s being kept alive on Coruscant.  With, like, tubes and robotics and shit.  Palpatine told me.  Only I can’t see her, because my suit has germs on it.  But he’s working on a decontamination thing for me.  He told me.

LUKE: Ben!

VADER:  Huh?  Who’s that?

OBI-WAN:  No one!  He’s no one!  Pay no attention to the boy behind the blast shield!

VADER:  He feels familiar...

OBI-WAN:  Um, yeah, well, that’s because... you see... you know that guy? We met in that bar that one time?  Yeah, well, that’s his son.  Luke Sky... Wanderer.  Luke Skywanderer.


I dunno.  Maybe they’re both as bad as each other.

On My Lunch, I Lay By the Lake and Listened to the Birds

Permanence is the problem.

We want things to last. When we have a good day, we want it to last forever. We want the good things in our life to always be there. That leads us to wanting to expel the bad things. And that leads us to want to control, and believing we can control.

We want the friend we make today to be a friend tomorrow. We want the lover we take today to love us tomorrow.

I had a moment, about three minutes’ worth, when I thought about a world where we didn’t crave permanence. Where we just took what life was offering us right here, right now, and made the most of it.

The lover we take today may be indifferent to us tomorrow. They may be someone else’s lover, and why would we worry about that? I was walking down the road, kicking a pine cone. There were birds singing, and cars passing a street away. The sun was shining, but the wind had a chill. A few spots of rain had fallen on me.

The lover we take today may wake up with us tomorrow, and we can fall in love all over again. The enemy we made yesterday can be the shoulder we cry on today.

And everyone’s okay with this, everyone expects this and everyone understands this, so why should there be any problems?

Then I got back into work, and sat down at my desk. Some days I love work, and some days I hate it. I just put on my work persona and it doesn’t matter.

But maybe, the secret me can discover coffee for the first time. Maybe he can appreciate the kindness of a co-worker without qualms, without history and without suspicion. It’s a big ask, but when I was kicking my pine cone I was quite content. There was me, the cone, the sounds and the sun, we all had our place and it was all good. ‘Content’ is a way station I would very much like to reach.

Sunday Evening and a Fire

My t-shirt arrived on Thursday. As a denizen of Netland, I'm sure you appreciate how import a t-shirt is. It's like a tattoo you can change every day. It's the billboard you use to advertise yourself to the world. You love a band? You know php and think it makes you better than everyone else? You an anarchist? There's a t-shirt out there with your brand on it, and it's imcumbant on you to wear it with pride. How else are we going to know who you are today?

I have one t-shirt from Theardless (community orientated, intelligent and silly, net-based), one Ngaio brought me from London (it has a fox on it), two plain ones (hey, there's days when I want to keep myself to myself), and now this one:


The house is made up of words from stories I've written. Specifically, from Mind Games, Regeneration, and other Myths, Rose Among the Thorns, and One More for the Road (which the last story in Bambi's arc, and is going to need a title change). The t-shirt is light grey.

In other news, we realised on Friday that we hadn't paid this month's rent yet and so are now very poor. Excersions to Tesco when we don't fancy what's in the cupboard are well off the menu. In its place, over-time. Lots and lots of over-time. Whitby (which we're attending in Steampunk finery) is coming out of April's paycheck, so that's done and dusted. May's payslip needs to cover a trip to London--to see the ballet and the sights--and a trip to my brother's engagement party. And June's needs to fund a holiday to the Scottish neverlands. If money is the root of all evil, the next few months are going to mining Satan's arsehole. Still, the pay off is going to be worth it. More than worth it.

And, with my new watch, I can know exactly how many hours of over-time I've done. It's an analogue skeleton watch with gold casing. It's beautiful. I brought a similiar one a few months ago and tortured the department with it. After two days, it taught me that a watch which cost three quid from Hong-Kong probably isn't a good investment. Lesson learned. For now.

So, a lean couple of weeks coming up but plenty to get me throught it. Next week is going to be spent thinking about editing Bambi's stories over the weekend. If I didn't love doing the editing, I'd find a vanity site to publish on. Editing is the difference between a lump of clay and something beautiful.

I'm going to try and remember that. When I can't drink any more coffee because my fingers are already twitching and I've been staring at an unaltered page for two hours, it'll keep me going. Or porn. Porn is good.

The Second Part

Well, this is my attempt at using ScribeFire at home.  A few noteworthy things happened today, actually:  my colleagues gave me a beautiful watch as a belated birthday present (if you're having sex--you know, proper full-on naked sex--are you supposed to take your watch off?);I spent this evening working in the garden; and I typed the <end> tag on the last story in Bambi's arc.  Thinking back over it, it seems really rather messy and is probably going to need some serious work.  I'll do that over Easter weekend, though:  That's 'Bambi Editing Weekend'.  More on that later, though.  I'm just posting while dinner is cooking.

I'm really hoping this works.

~crosses fingers~

(I must remember to change the font from the default to Arial when posting.  With luck, writing it here will remind me.)

EDIT:  success of a kind, I think.  The fonts are going to need some tweaking, but okay for today.

Success?

Wonderful! Let us judge this a tentative success until I can get home and see how things post from Ubuntu.

Hidden Crap

It's amazing the amount of crap Word puts in documents. All that hidden code. It copy pasta'ed into my ScribeFire, which then refused to publish it. Understandable, really. I don't really want it there, either. I pasted it into Notepad, and then into ScribeFire. That solved that problem.

Now, let us see how this comes out when I push, 'Publish'...

A Matter of Consistency

Those of you who know me probably know how nuts I’ve been driving myself over the last two posts. The spacing between the lines is different. The spacing between the paragraphs is different. The more I look at them, the more I’m convinced that the spacing between the letters is different.

I’m looking for a way to make consistent posts both from work, and from home. Normally using the same program would be a problem, as I use Ubuntu at home and Windows at work. I’m trying out ScribeFire. It’s an add-on for Firefox, a browser I use on both platforms, so I may have a solution.

The only trouble is that it doesn’t come with a spell checker. I need a spell checker--I’m a writer with an English degree. I need it like Steven Hawkins needs a calculator.

Scribefire is supposed to use the spell checker in Firefox, and it works fine at home. Not at work, though. So, I’m at work and typing this post in Word. I’m going to copy pasta it into Scribefire, and post it. I’m then going to type a post straight into Scribefire, and see how that turns out.

The reason for the difference in formatting between the first two entries is that the first one was typed in word, and pasted into Blogger’s editor. The second was typed straight into the editor.

Let us see...