I'm a fictional character
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:03 AM
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
About Me
- Name: Peter Rozovsky
- Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly. Click here to find an independent bookstore near you.
Previous Posts
- Noir at the Bar VI: Sandra Ruttan (and a chance to...
- Why we fight
- My dumb city: Philadelphia nicknames
- Carnival of the Criminal Minds No. 27: Buy more books
- From a whisper to a meme
- Letter from South Africa, Part III
- Prose style and a South African pro's style
- Noir at the Bar VI: Sandra Ruttan
- The Vampire of Ropraz
- Hyland flings
50 Comments:
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.
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!!!
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.)
Bet you're sorry now the beard's come off.
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?
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
hahaha, Peter! Would love to know more about the "almost" in "almost none of it happened"! Great attention grabbing post! Petra :))
The beard was just a disguise so I could infiltrate the Burke-McFetridge gang.
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.
I always suspected it.
"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?
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.
Petra: Which is the "almost," you ask?
I don't know if the snake was really flicking its tongue toward the owner's scapula.
"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.
Brian, I'd always be wondering if I could upgraded to a higher version of whatever software I was part of.
Peter,
Corporate mafiosi, perchance? Eh, and I was writing prior to coffee, which is always dangerous. Anyway, forget details! We want guns a-blazing!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
All I know is that Adrian has better cheat codes for obtaining beers.
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.
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.
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.
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?
OK, my sim has me hacking into Marco's code so you need a tutor after all.
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?
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?
If the Italian tutor is Marisa Tomei, I'd be quite pleased.
"sycliess" -- M.E. form of sycophancy
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.
Peter, that's actually good news, as it gives me plenty of time to get caught up on the serial.
I dunno, Linkmeister. I thought maybe a sycliess was an evergreen, something like a cypress.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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")?
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.
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.
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