Smell the tulips.

The marriage of wiki and weblog. In my opinion, the next logical step in weblog evolution. It allows the weblog to become even more interconnected and relevant over time.

The problem with normal weblogs is that content quickly dies when it falls off the main page. With some help from Mr. Wiki, it’s easy to create nodes that collect information and make it easily referenced in the future.

I haven’t really used any more than that philosophical concept of wikis here, since I created my own markup language, but the spirit is here.

For more sites that are exploring this concept, check out the wiki node.

Introduce yourself here.

I added two more chapters to The Most Beautiful One.

Francie, Skip, & Tom on a walk

Francie led Skip and Tom down across the street and into the Market. The Market ran parallel to the street they lived on, filled with booths and small open-walled stores that sold vegetables, flowers, fish, fresh paintings, trinkets, fruit, and something else every time you looked. The store owners were always nearby, if not chatting with current customers, then reaching out and grabbing newcomers, forcing heavily handled goods into their hands, ringing them up with a ding, a slide of printed paper, falling change, and a firm handshake. During the walk, Francie and Tom agreed on the details of the deal, money for story. Francie was pleasantly surprised at her own lack of spite or dislike towards Tom, and she saw that Tom himself was glad for it as well. It made sense, though, she reassured herself. It could benefit her more than it did others.

Francie had a map drawn in her head of the market, divided with dotted lines where food could be bought, flowers could be bought, miscellaneous junk could be bought, x’s over the stores that she distrusted (for their smell, or the person working there, or the disorder they kept), and stars of various color over stores that had offered her free food, or that were organized neatly, or that had tasteful music playing. She was a believer in atmosphere. Today she drew a sharp path through the top level, and down the stairs to the second level, where stores had walls, and sold a larger percentage of miscellaneous junk, and walked into a red star store (the highest mark) that sold cheap art supplies and was run by one of the only two professional sitar players in Seattle, Larry Larrick.

“I need five large dry erase boards, Larry, please. I can give you two dollars!” She looked with serpent-like narrow eyes at her two followers. “Yah!” She slapped the two dollars on the counter.

“Oh, I cannot sell them for two dollars, Francie, you know how this city is ruining me. Just this morning the man comes down stairs and says, ‘Larry, you must pay for the lights and the water and the space for your shop. You have not paid me in five months.’ And I tell him, ‘I do not know what to do, I have abandoned my wife, I have sold my home, I have played the sitar every night, I have put on the good music, and yet the gods do not like me. The customers refuse to pay me, and I do not know what to do! Please, one more month.’ And now I do not know what I will tell him next month, because of people like you, Francie, people like you. Fairness is all I ask. Respect. And who are these,” pointing at Skip and Tom, shuffling like shoplifters near the back of the store, “shall I throw them out for you, Francie?”

“Okay, three dollars.” She motioned for Skip to come over, to help with the deal. She walked out of there with five dry erase boards at five dollars a piece, out of Skip’s pocket. The dimensions of the whiteboards were awkward, too wide to hold under one’s arm and too wide to hold in front of yourself, so they had to be held over one’s head, and her hands could only get around two of them, so Skip and Tom also had two and one whiteboards over their heads, respectively, and the three of them walked in single file, bending and ducking back up the stairs, wavering through the Market, and wobbling down the street. They yelled between one another, Francie fairly certain that Tom in the back wouldn’t be able to hear what she was saying. “Are you still thinking Albert Einstein, Skip?”

“For number one, yeah.”

“What?”

“Maybe. I’m not going to tell you now, am I.”

“For number one!”

“You’ll find out. You just worry about your own list.”

Francie looked back at them, and she saw Skip, smiling under strain, and Tom several paces behind him, mostly obscured by Skip’s body, slightly blurry in her near-sighted eyes, but still, looking less like he was having a good time. A low southern gospel acappella, to her right, exploded into song. She stepped off the sidewalk unknowingly and fell forward, launching the boards into the street, arms pushing one board’s corner away from her face as she was propelled into them, and fell on top of them, screaming girlishly.