Tuesday, December 09, 2008

I'm a fictional character

For real!

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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50 Comments:

Blogger seana graham said...

So how does it feel to be fictional? A little wispy?

Congratulations. I've been meaning to read this adventure since I saw it posted on Declan Burke's blog, and now I suppose I really must.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I'm chuffed to be fictional. The Peter Rozovsky character gets mentioned only at the end of this installment, so I suppose I'm part of a cliff-hanger, too. I can hardly wait to see what I do next!!!

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Maybe I'm shouting to be heard above the seething crowd at a hotel bar in Baltimore, hooting and cheering as a sexy dominatrix lifts her blouse to reveal her tattoos. The crowd gathers in around her, all except two guys heading the other way, toward the door ...

The snake tattoo is flicking its tongue at its owner's scapula, but I've got one eye on the two guys.

One of them shouts: "I said, `I'M AFTER FECKING OUT OF HERE FOR A CIGARETTE, MATE!',"

His friend, a husky, saltish-pepperish dude with a Maple Leafs jacket and a Tim Hortons bag stuffed in his back pocket, shrugs and follows.

Shit, it's the heist artists from Toronto.

(Remember: This is fiction. Almost none of it really happened.)

December 09, 2008  
Blogger adrian mckinty said...

Bet you're sorry now the beard's come off.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Loren Eaton said...

Peter, so when do you get to dive into the conference room filled with conspiring mafiosi, raining death on all who oppose you with the pair of .45's clutched in your sweaty grasp?

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Brian O'Rourke said...

Peter-
Don't fret. We might all be fictional. There's a good chance we're all characters inside a computer program run by some malevolent (or darkly humorous) higher intelligence.
-B

December 09, 2008  
Blogger petra michelle; Whose role is it anyway? said...

hahaha, Peter! Would love to know more about the "almost" in "almost none of it happened"! Great attention grabbing post! Petra :))

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

The beard was just a disguise so I could infiltrate the Burke-McFetridge gang.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Brian, we are all creatures inside a huge computer program run by Adrian McKinty and Marco. We're in big trouble if they ever find out that we even suspect this.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger pattinase (abbott) said...

I always suspected it.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

"Peter, so when do you get to dive into the conference room filled with conspiring mafiosi, raining death on all who oppose you with the pair of .45's clutched in your sweaty grasp?"

Gee, do conspiring Mafiosi conduct their board meeting in conference room these days? What ever happened to small, dark Italian restaurants with pasta, red sauce, and heady Chianti?

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Brian O'Rourke said...

Peter-
I often wonder whether it would be disconcerting to find out that we were inside a computer program...or if it would be oddly comforting.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Petra: Which is the "almost," you ask?

I don't know if the snake was really flicking its tongue toward the owner's scapula.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

"pattinase (abbott) said...
I always suspected it.
"

For the rest of your life you'll be on the run, looking over your shoulder for a couple of guys from "tech support" sent to delete you.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Brian, I'd always be wondering if I could upgraded to a higher version of whatever software I was part of.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Loren Eaton said...

Peter,

Corporate mafiosi, perchance? Eh, and I was writing prior to coffee, which is always dangerous. Anyway, forget details! We want guns a-blazing!

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Brian O'Rourke said...

True, true. I'd wait for others to upgrade first, give the programmers time to fix the bugs, and then request an upgrade.

I'm torn. Great thing because then that'd free us up from some of the more draconian systems of morality. Bad thing because then the whole world would seem kind of pointless.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

In that case, Loren, I should take pen in hand today and find out what "Peter Rozovsky" gets up to, to see if he even knows how to fire a gun.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I don't know if I could maintain a enough of a sense of detachment to request an upgrade. What if my line of coding gets moved to some undesirabe location in the program?

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

I think you may very well be right about the culprits behind this vast game we're in, but I have one question. If Marco is a co-programmer, why don't I speak better Italian? Or, for that matter, any? Of course, it could be that that language is only for the elite players.

My v word is 'premogr', which is surely program scrambled by a mediocre speller. Bad spelling skills may actually lie behind a lot of its mysterious utterances. It may actually be trying to be quite straightforward.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I'll have to ask Marco to update your software.

I'm afraid your v-word is more fraught with implications than that. "Premogr" or, to give its full form, premogrify, is what happens before one transmogrifies.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Oh, hold off on the upgrade, Peter. My v word was obviously a warning. I'm afraid my upgrade might turn me into a rugby- playing cigar-smoking thug, forever stuck in one of the seamier quarters of Marseilles or maybe Harlem. And this is just from the small amount I've gleaned about the interests of the co-authors of this game. Who knows what I might ultimately transmogrify into? Maybe I'd better just stay in my premogr state and learn Italian the hard way.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Hmm, that's just what they want: you to worry about becoming a rugby-playing thug sitting in a dive in Marseilles, chewing a cigarette, flipping through graphic novels and waiting for your Italian tutor to show up.

December 09, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All I know is that Adrian has better cheat codes for obtaining beers.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

He once programmed the McKinty character to drink a half-pint at every licensed establishment in Carrickfergus in a single day.

Wait a minute, that would have happened in the days before sims. I think it was the real McKinty who did all the drinking.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Hmm. Well, I suppose it very much depends on the Italian tutor, now you put it that way. I might be willing to endure a lot of transmogrifying.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Seanag, I've enjoyed your posts and your comments, so I'll cut you a break: in the next simulated universe, Lombard influence was sopervasive that their Germanic language spread throughout the Italian peninsula, with the result that today's Italians speak an Italian that is virtually in distinguishable from English.

There. Think of all that studying I've saved you. Or your sim.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Thanks--though I don't know how Marco's going to take the news. Badly, I expect. Although it will make 'translating' the McKinty oeuvre a bit of a cakewalk.

I'm mainly just glad to be spared all that rugby.

So...no Italian tutor?

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

OK, my sim has me hacking into Marco's code so you need a tutor after all.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Double thanks, then!

I expect we've come too far afield for the common interest here. I wonder how soon John McFetridge will post the next installment of the cliffhanger?

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I don't know. He went a few weeks between parts two and three. Who knows what direction his story and his characters will take?

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Linkmeister said...

If the Italian tutor is Marisa Tomei, I'd be quite pleased.

"sycliess" -- M.E. form of sycophancy

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Whoa! The word verifier is going all medieval on us. Unless it is privy to Marisa's cycling regime.

I'm sorry, Linkmeister, but I'm not sure that being Italian-American by itself qualifies you to be an Italian tutor. Hard luck for you.

I've been trying to think of an Italian movie star that I'd be similarly pleased to see appear in that cafe, but I suspect that what I really need is a very large net to scoop through Mediterranean waters. I expect that would bring in a whole shoal of enthusiastic young men fluent in Italian. And so what if they weren't, come to think of it? And so what if they weren't so young, come to think of it also?

I'm having second thoughts. You give me a big enough net, Linkmeister, and I'll give you Marisa Tomei. Well, maybe not literally.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Peter, that's actually good news, as it gives me plenty of time to get caught up on the serial.

December 09, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I dunno, Linkmeister. I thought maybe a sycliess was an evergreen, something like a cypress.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I don't even know if Marisa Tomei knows Italian, but her sim might.

One might have to cast that net wide to bring in shoals of Italian movie stars. Most of the ones I can think of are well on in years or have gone to their maker: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroiani, etc.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

And finally, I don't know when McFetridge will carry on with his serial, but one never knows what his characters might get up to.

The first installment is especially fun. It begins like an introductory explantion, and, without knowing it, you find yourself smack in the middle of the story.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

We are not looking for shoals of Italian movie stars. That's Linkmaster's version and I think it only applies to Marisa Tomei. We are looking only for ordinary, though very strenuous Italian swimmers who might be willing to sit in a cafe in Marseilles on the off hour and tutor hopeless cases in Italian. Okay, strike willing. And the we is only me, plus whoever might be eager to control/inhabit that sim for a few hours...Okay, make that we again. I had no idea there were so many people wanting to learn Italian.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Ah, if only the late, great Jean-Claude Izzo, French but of Italian descent, were still among us. I don't know if he could have tutored you in Italian, but he certainly could regaled you with tales of Marseille. As it is in this non-sim world, you'll have to content yourself with his Marseille trilogy.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Linkmeister said...

seanag, rather than a net in the Med, why not one across a Formula One course? There are lots of big strapping Italian men there, both drivers and crewmembers.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

Peter,

Thanks to Marco, I am already on to Izzo, though I have two more volumes to go of the Marseilles trilogy, thankfully.

Linkmeister,

Your idea is brilliant, except for a few flaws. One, I think those drivers may be monomaniacal in their quest for the finish line.

Two, what net catches a speeding Formula One car? Without killing the drivers, I mean?

Three, can race car drivers actually talk? Let alone tutor? I know Paul Newman could, but I think he might be an exception. I don't really want to learn the names of all the elements of a race car in Italian. Or I should say, not those alone.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Seanag, I'd say you might be able to snag yourself a Brazilian, too, but I think they've all jumped to NASCAR, which is surely a sign of the apocalypse or, at the very least, a parafign shift.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

a), I am still not sure if I would be snagging a live Brazilian or a dead one.

b), is a parafign shift a sort of paradigm shift with paraffin? Because, yes, that might well be apocalyptic. But not in a good way.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Er, I trust that you saw through the waxy typographical mess and discerned my meaning: "paradigm shift."

Of course, parafign could also be a typo for one of Alfred Hitchcock's less-good movies, The Paradine Case. But it isn't.

December 10, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Most of the ones I can think of are well on in years or have gone to their maker: Sophia Loren, Marcello uMastroiani, etc.

There are a lot of young Italian actors.
For a start ,this guy seems to have many fans.
Seanag,let me know what you think.

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Seanag, looks like the programmer is at work getting you an Italian tutor.

Marco, the woman in the first clip looks pretty well put-together for someone who has fallen asleep in her clothes on a beach. And do people really swim that slowly in Italy?

December 10, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

She only did it to spy on him.She hid in there all night and all day waiting for him.

And do people really swim that slowly in Italy?

It is the subjective slowing of time she experiences while gazing at him.
Very Michelangelo Antonioni,really.

Funnily enough,he was a competitive swimmer before acting (though only as a junior).

December 10, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

A talented woman she must be, to sleep all night in such cramped quarters and still wake up with her makeup perfect.

You mean Antonioni didn't borrow subjective slow motion from the old Breck shampoo commercials ("The closer you get, the better she looks")?

December 10, 2008  
Blogger seana graham said...

There are a lot of young Italian actors.
For a start ,this guy seems to have many fans.
Seanag,let me know what you think.


Uh, yes, great sim master, that'll do.

I realize that there is no proof from the clip that he knows how to tutor Italian, or indeed, speak at all, but I find, like Linkmeister, that qualifications don't trouble me greatly at the moment. Actually, I think I'd be willing to tutor him in Italian, if necessary.

Also, thanks for proving my theory about the big net. These Italian tutors are apparently out there for the catching. Especially if you can manage to sleep under a boat and still look quite presentable in the morning.

December 11, 2008  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

The Big Net -- Didn't Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr star in that movie?

There's a boat leaving tomorrow. Make sure you're under it.

December 11, 2008  

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