A week or two ago I discovered the blog How To Write Badly Well. Anyone can write badly badly, but it takes real skill to write badly well, and that is what the blog tries to explore. (The blog only has twenty entries so far, so it’s possible to read from the start if you’re so inclined. Some of my favorite entries are here, here, and here.)

One post asked for badly-well-written 300-word stories, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I made an attempt to ham-fistedly combine fantasy and sci-fi, while also abusing the character map. I wasn’t the winner, so I figured I’d post it here. Enjoy.

Aõgÿne could do this. He knew the dragon had a weak point near her upper rectum, if only he could trick her into exposing it. He tossed an antimatter grenade to the dragon’s left. The implosion would tear a tiny rift though the space-time continuum, which he hoped would frighten the beast. When the grenade detonated the dragon turned with a screeching hiss. At once he activated a laser-tipped spear and hurled it with all his might. It was a direct hit, and the creature cried out in pain as the laser burned through her bowels. Aõgÿne now unsheathed his sword, approached the writhing dragon from behind, and slit her throat in one swift motion. This Wævian moon would be terrorized no more.

But he knew the victory was bittersweet.

After six months on Fa£aña, he would now have to leave. It was all part of the job for an intergalactic dragon slayer like Aõgÿne, and leaving had never been a problem before. But falling in love was never part of the plan. His heart ached as he thought of leaving Eröå behind.

He paused before entering the building to watch her through the window. The sight of her beautiful elvish features was too much for his heart to bear. He scribbled a message on an electronic tablet and placed it in front of her door.  With a heavy heart, he flew away from the moon at three hundred times the speed of light. But he knew there was no speed so fast that the memory of Eröå wouldn’t catch up to him.

Today I ran across what might possibly be the only cool Facebook app I’ve ever seen. It takes random Facebook status messages from 2009 and makes a collage of them. I thought mine was very interesting:

I got a fancy new DSLR camera for Christmas, and got a chance to try it out while spending Christmas at Myrtle Beach with Stephanie’s family. I got a ton of pictures, but I have only put up 113 of them.

The camera also records video in HD (720p 30fps or 1080p 20fps). The video below is one I recorded at 720p, though here it’s displayed at only 360p (which I think is equivalent to YouTube’s “HQ” setting). I would have trimmed the video more, but my recent upgrade to Windows 7 left me very surprised to find that Windows Movie Maker has been removed. Supposedly it has been replaced by Windows Live Movie Maker, a completely different program that lacks a lot of features that were in the Vista version of Movie Maker. I guess I need to install Premiere or something. I haven’t needed it in the past for what little video editing I do for this site, and I’ve been doing pretty well at using only legally-acquired software for a while. Oh well.