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NASA is at it again. Just days after their questionable logic surrounding the Mars rover Opportunity, they are now reporting that there may be an ice volcano on Saturn’s moon Titan. Slow down there, NASA! This isn’t an episode of Star Trek, this is a little thing we call reality. You can’t just make up words like “cryovolcanic” and expect us to accept it. You can’t have an ice volcano, either. The word “volcano” derives from the Roman god of fire Vulcan. Hey, it’s another Star Trek connection! Imagine that! And besides, we already have a name for molten ice. It’s called “water.” Look scientists, we know that you’re smart. You don’t have to come up with crazy discoveries every week to keep us interested in space. Now, don’t get back to us until you find moon whales swimming in the “molten ice” under Titan’s surface.

Ice volcano: suprisingly similar to a normal volcano tinted blue.

I am once again just barely staying ahead of the dreaded red bar. I’ve written almost 3,000 words since I last posted, and if I had been on schedule before that would mean something. As it is, I may have hit a special point where I can finally write the required 1667 words a day. Except now I have to write 2030 words a day to keep up. ALACK. Here is a picture of kittens to help me feel better.

The collective writing forces of all NaNoWriMo particpants have hammered out 92,014,712 words as of right now, an ever increasing number. So then, what’s my problem? Probably posting things here or playing GTA: San Andreas instead of writing. I’ll get to work now.

Apparently, Opportunity received an unexepected power boost recently:

Overnight, Opportunity’s solar panels produced between 2% and 5% additional power, perhaps due to Martian dust that had settled on them being removed.

I think I’ll skip this Opportunity for a joke.

Suuure, NASA, whatever you say. Dust magically fell off of the rover’s solar panels. Wind? Where do you think the rover is, Earth? And somehow the power increase happened overnight? You know, night? As in no sunlight for the solar panels to collect? Explain that one, o mighty scientists. You couldn’t hypothesize your way out of paper bag. I could come up with a better theory in my sleep. More plausible scenarios include:

• Opportunity had the power all along but it was stored in the metric system
• Opportunity stole the power from Spirit
• Friendly Martians gave the rover extra power
• Unfriendly Martians accidentally gave the rover power
• Dinosaurs gave the rover extra power
• NASA made up the whole mission
• There’s no such thing as Mars

Put that in a rocket and smoke it, NASA.

I enjoy being over 3000 words behind. No really, it’s quite fun. You should try it.

Today, instead of doing something predictable like posting another excerpt or butchering the conventions of the English language, I will post some quick character bios. This will actually be a mini-writing exercise, which is sort of like a mini-game, but less annoying.

• Roger Plotnik – The main character by virtue that he is mentioned first. He is a middle-aged man who spent his life squandering his genius learning skills he’d never use. Without a clear goal, his life spiraled downward until he found that he was not that bad at taking over planets. The planets he took over were generally terrible and no one would have wanted them anyway, which led to the near breakdown and sudden epiphany he has at the beginning of the novel.
• Victor Segue – A master of planetary domination, Segue has become so adept at his job that he is able to take over planets via telepresence. He is a ruthless and cruel ruler, when he can be bothered to show up. The rest of the time he delegates control of his worlds to his top lieutenants. Segue is slightly older than Plotnik, and these two will cross paths in a big way later on.
• Samantha Bates – Captain Bates is part of the Anti-domination Task Force and commands her own vessel yet-to-be named. She and her crew have taken down more global dictators than any other, and she maintains a somewhat special position in the Centauran Space Fleet because of it. I’m currently writing her chapter and don’t know much more about her yet. Longtime fans should note that Samantha is an early member of the Bates line, and began the family’s trend of pursuing justice and truth.

There are also some minor characters like the planet destroying Dr Eiger and Segue’s right hand man Nelson, but they’re hardly worth mentioning at this juncture.

We’re already three days and I’m only, what, 3135 words behind? Stellar! I’m actually not that far behind, but I’m too lazy to plug in my thumb drive, open the novel, check the word count, and update the site. I have added a plot excerpt to my NaNo profile which I will duplicate here because you have no idea how much I love putting things in quoted boxes. Is that weird?

Roger Plotnik opened his eyes to the unpleasant yet expected fact that he had a hangover.

“Auggh,” he groaned.

The hangover was a direct result of a party the previous night, as many hangovers are. An unfortunate point about this party was that Plotnik had been alone, making it less of a party and more of a solitary drinking binge. It was supposed to have been an amazing event, celebrating the successful takeover of the entire planet on which he now stood, or more accurately, laid in pain. The entire population of Plotnikant (former designation HD 61248 IV) had been invited to pay homage to their new supreme ruler. It didn’t help that the party was held on such short notice any more than it helped that Plotnikant had no inhabitants, which further fueled his drinking.

He got up from the bed and walked over to the window, realizing once he got there that this had merely been a nice idea and that he was still laying in bed. He glanced at a nearby clock which far-too-brightly informed him that it was eleventy-six in the morning. A moment passed during which he tried to comprehend this information, swore unintelligibly at the clock to make sense, then decided that he wouldn’t get up until the clock showed a proper time just to spite it.

I didn’t get a chance to work on all of the writing exercises from No Plot? No Problem! before today, which is unfortunate. I still want to do them, but it’s now or never. If I wait too long, they will become more distracting than helpful, as I fall ever behind in the word count. I’m already about 600 words behind (as the yellow chunk on the word counter to the right shows) but the day’s not over yet! In fact, I still have almost four hours! I’d better get back to it. I’ll start posting excerpts and such tomorrow. Until then, here’s a quick recap of my novel synopsis:

After the advent of superluminal travel, the quest to colonize the stars was quickly followed by the quest to dominate them with an iron fist. Those so taken realized that with infinite worlds came the prospect of infinite world domination! The rich, smart and generally evil found that little resistance awaited their attempts to take over the world- any world! From tropical planets to terraformed moons, nothing was safe from the complex machinations of the evil geniuses that desired them.