The Untitled Matt Colville Project

The fact that sometimes I connect to wireless networks without even realizing it, and other times I can’t connect for no obvious reason means opening the Network Connections thingy on my laptop is always an adventure. Never the same twice. In this case, having connected in this spot previously, I wasn’t even aware I wasn’t online until I tried to look up a word.

That’s the main reason I’m online when I write, because I need to look up words. Not, I want to make clear, to check Facebook.

Being a writer in the fantasy genre means I am faced with problems I suspect other authors do not wot of. Rare is the time when I need to look up a word for something I know nothing about. If I knew nothing about it, how would I know there was a word for it? And I have a modestly large vocabulary to begin with. So, by definition, looking up a word is a frustrating process. Because the only words I ever need to look up are words for things I know exist, but do not know the name of. For instance…

I wanted to describe a knight in the mostly knightly manner possible because, in this new draft of The Book (the last before I put it online, I totes promise) I wanted to emphasize the knightly nature of the knights. So I imagine an extremely knighty knight in my mind. I entreat you to do the same.

He is certainly wearing armor, this knight you and I are imagining, and it’s probably gleaming plate. The plate armor has all sorts of bits on it, including a little concave metal disk, hung off the right shoulder (the left shoulder is protected by the shield) by a chain, designed to catch an enemy’s lance and deflect it, so the questing knight doesn’t have his shoulder dislocated or his arm ripped off by an enemy lance. That bit is called a besague. This I need not look up, I just know this stuff.

I know the central piece of torso armor covering the chest is formally called a cuirass. I know this because I watch a lot of Gilbert & Sullivan. So mostly I’m covered when it comes to this stuff.

But this knight we’re imagining, he’s probably on a horse and that horse has…some kind of…cloth…thing. He’s covered in white cloth with green trim. The cloth hangs down all the way to the ground like…drapes. Like…horse drapes.

Horse Drapes. You try looking up fucking Horse Drapes on Google and see what you get. You’re not going to get whatever it is I’m talking about, I’ll tell you that for nothing. No, “Horse Curtains” doesn’t work either, don’t bother.

So I need to look up the word and this is not going to be a short trip, this is going to be a long goddamned expedition and I’m probably going to end up in Google Books for 3 hours reading out-of-print books written in the 1880s on jousting in the 14th century. That’s how I found out what you called a prostitute in Medieval times. Trull, by the way.

Seeking dictionary.com, I minimize Word and launch Chrome.

“Sorry,” the laptop says. “No internets.”

“What?”

“There’s no internet here.”

“There was internet here yesterday!”

“Well, whatever with yesterday,” the laptop says. “There’s no internet today.”

“Huh. Is there any network at all?”

“Nope. I can’t see any networks.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah it is.”

“Sounds like there’s something wrong.”

“I think there is something wrong.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What…what do you think is wrong?”

“I dunno. Seems like maybe you turned networking off.”

“I turned it off?”

“Maybe!”

“I didn’t even know you COULD turn it off!”

“Well you can!”

“Ok. So…can you turn it back on?”

“I dunno, lemme see….

…nope.”

“Shit.”

“Maybe you can turn it on!”

“Ok, what do I do?”

“Well, sometimes there’s like a button on the front of the laptop. Check that.”

“Ok, hang on. I’m checking…I’m looking…

…nope. No buttons of any kind.”

“Well, ok. Um…sometimes there’s a key? On the keyboard?”

“Ok, I’m looking…hey! There’s a little button here with, like, a radio tower and little transmission waves coming off it!”

“Press that!”

“OMG Internets!!”

“Yay!”

“Yay!”

*hifive*

Now I can update my Facebook page! I mean…look up Horse Drapes!

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It’s called a “caparison,” by the way.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.