Monday, December 10, 2007

Speaking of ice...


I just finished reading "The Terror" by Dan Simmons.

It is his novelization of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expidition in command of the H.M.S. Terror and the H.M.S. Erebus to force the northwest passage.


This meant sending a bunch of English sailors dressed in layers of wool aboard reinforced wooden sailing ships equipped with under-powered rudimentery steam engines and layered oak hulls to try and break their way through the frozen arctic seas to find a northern passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

There were heroic efforts to haul sledges containing boats full of supplies across miles of arctic ice. Hauled by starving, freezing men in leather harnesses.



They spent THREE YEARS frozen in the arctic circle living on moldy and contaminated ship stores and whatever fresh food they could hunt and kill.

THREE YEARS out of contact with civilization.

THREE YEARS of scurvy and hypothermia.

They all died.

Like John Torrington.



And John Hartnell.



They all failed in the mission they were sent to accomplish. and died a slow, horrible, painful death.

There are rumors of cannibalism.

And I'm about to shit my pants because I might lose access to high-speed internet porn and be forced to spend 24 hours at a mall just 5 minutes away until THEY get my power turned back on.

If I actually lose power.

Which I might not.

I hope not.

Probably not.

3 comments:

Trelvix said...

Hey - wait a minute. That's six fingers - or rather - five fingers and a thumb.

I'm against that as a rule.

good luck with the ice by the way. You're all probably going to die but then you knew that.

Mark Smith said...

I hope that if the power does go out I wont be seeing horrid accounts of cannibalism. And the guy in the first portrait looks like bob newhart.

Xavier Onassis said...

midtown - resorting to cannibalism in less than 24 hours would be pretty pathetic. Especially since I live alone. And you're right...he does look like Newhart!