A Pitbull On The Pantleg Of Opportunity

A Pitbull On The Pantleg Of Opportunity

(a new timeline by January First-of-May)

Part 1: The Past Is Over

Prologue: Where Our Wings Take Dream [1]


"When the eighth circles in the correct millenium,
Men among the palm trees would make the wrong holes;
Next to the village will the dimmer son return,
Till East from West to Southern North arrives again."
- A quatrain found on the Internet in February 2001, attributed, almost certainly incorrectly, to Nostradamus; the meaning of the last verse is still disputed even now [2]

"The election of 2000 was probably the most controversial event in American history. Of course, the people of the time had no way to know it..."
- "Become More Few: America on the Border of Millenia" by James Kent, Springfield Flim Publishing, 2017

"Your vote doesn't matter anyway, so you might as well vote 3rd party.
I mean, whoever wins or loses is going to win or lose by millions of votes, who cares if Gore or Dubya wins by 2,304,418 or 2,304,417 votes?"
- Beginning of a post on Everything2, October 11, 2000 [3]


[1] Yeah, all titles are geniune, if sometimes shortened, Bushisms; I hope to follow this pattern later on

[2] Try to guess the meaning of the verses yourself; hint: the last verse makes sense IOTL, but might not (or only in completely another way) ITTL depending on how I decide to continue it. (And BTW, if you wonder, the whole quatrain is fully written by me, with only a part of a single verse adapted from another source. Also, comments and suggestions welcome.)

[3] As weird as it sounds, OTL, and was actually the inspiration for this TL; see link



Comments? Criticisms? Error finds? Guesses at the POD? Suggestions for later TL course? ;)
(Hint: it is a double POD so far, but might well turn out not to be so if explained how.)
Well, this is technically my second TL, and just like the first, it might well be abandoned early on; or it might not. Hopefully Post-1900 is a better place for a new TL than ASB; of course, this TL at least fits in this forum, unlike the other one, which was a little out of place at ASB and would've been horribly out of place here, the implausible humor it was.
Just so you know: I'm not going to write a dystopia; indeed, I'm going to write a TL about a very slightly another world. One that might as well have been collaborative, given that I currently don't plan to continue this TL past January 20, 2001 (even though it certainly needs to - I just don't have enough ideas).




...So what, how? :)
January First-of-May
 
There probably isn't much point of asking for comments or criticisms, considering you really haven't written much. From what I gather, in this timeline Al Gore gets to win the Presidency, but...thats all I can gather.

Hint: look at the title. Reminds you of anything? ;)
Yes, the update was somewhat shortish. However, it's 12:15 AM (or so) currently where I am, and my parents didn't like that I'm still not sleeping (not that I want to), so I haven't had much time to write a decent update. :mad:
Besides, the thing that is due next don't really fit in a prologue, IMHO.
(In fact, there might well be a lot of that sort of very short updates for a while, maybe even shorter than this one was. I'm not very good at writing fiction, it seems; and really, the whole "comments/criticisms" thing is more of a standard cliche here than anything.)
 
You have to worry about your parents when you're posting?

Unsubscribed.

Hey, what the triangular heck is in your America [1] that you don't honor your parents?
I have already mentioned my age on this board, IIRC.
I think it's just a difference in mentalities - you usually have a nuclear family, where the parents don't even live with their children after the children turn 18 or so, while we usually have an extended family, where children, parents and grandparents all or nearly all live together (and so do great-grandparents, if they happen to still be alive).
So, in our family, my parents sometimes ask me to go to bed (especially when I haven't really slept for three days :)), but my grandmother can do the same to my mother in similar cases, and I get to command my younger brother :D

And seriously, under Stalin, there was an attempt to introduce that sort of families by having children move away from their parents at some age (IIRC for working in another region). It didn't end well; but then, East is East, and West is West... ;)


[1] Or Britain. Whatever.
 
And they both love barbeque...

Not as far from the truth as it might seem at first glance - there's barely any difference between European barbecue and Asian kebab (which we call shashlyk in Russia)... mmm, tasty... :)


More on-topic: I might well post another part of this TL today. Note that this is still a very early short draft, and might well become much longer with your additions (hopefully).
(Also, BTW, Sarah Palin, while not appearing in the planned part of this TL, happens to be a major character in the other one (TSoNE), which I also with some probability might continue today.)



...So what, how? ;)
January First-of-May
 
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