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This evening's episode of Gilligan's Island featured an impostor pretending to be Mr. Howell back on Wall Street. He promised that after resuming his position as CEO of Howell Industries he would sell his Amalgamated stock. Upon hearing this on the radio, the real Mr. Howell runs into the lagoon and attempts to swim to Hawaii. Gilligan and the Skipper stop him. Mr. Howell offers one million dollars to whichever castaway can devise a scheme to get him of the island. Gilligan makes a pair of wings and leaps off the top of the hut. It actually works until the Skipper tells him it's impossible, followed by a Wyle E. Coyote-like crash. They settle on a pontoon boat powered by peddling on a bicycle-like contraption from a previous episode. The professor gives Mr. Howell a flare gun and tells him to fire off a flare if he gets in trouble. I should note that they used up the last of their flares in an episode in season one. They push the pontoon boat into the lagoon and it promptly sinks, taking Mr. Howell with it. A hand reaches out of the lagoon and fires the flare gun. Eventually the impostor falls overboard from a yacht and washes up on the island. He knocks out the real Mr. Howell, switches clothes, and pretends to be the real Thurston. After being discovered as the impostor, the fake Howell takes off and swims to Hawaii, where he is rescued. He refuses to say who he is because the police are looking for him for impersonating the real Mr. Howell. This episode begs the question why he never offered a million before now and why they didn't try building a pontoon boat sooner. After all, they've been on the island for two years. I like the choice of Amalgamated for the stock. They previously used Consolidated Acme, also good.

Andrew is going to have a blast when Joseph can't respond.

I'll have to scan through the chapters to see if there are any places where Joseph or Apollo must use mind speech. There probably are, which sucks because I really want the ghosts to be fully realized beings. Perhaps I can change the conversations so that the ghosts speak through their mouths, but Joseph/Apollo respond by their actions, pretending to think out loud, or actual verbal responses to the ghosts when no one else is listening. I can use accidental verbal responses to cause people around Joseph/Apollo to wonder about their sanity. That's primarily dangerous for Apollo. Joseph is technically free to admit he has Archangel Syndrome. It's a common enough occurrence among the elite and it's not dangerous as long as you ignore the archangels, which Joseph doesn't do. He's convinced the archangel is real.

Only six more chapters to edit! I need to buy two bottles of apricot brandy. One to get me through the final six and another to get blitzed after I'm done. I started hiding chapters to avoid any more unintended reviews, although I must admit Stephen Carter's review of the prologue was damn good. He found all kinds of unnecessary words and suboptimal phrases. I incorporated his feedback into the Strongest Start chapters I posted last week.

Light/heavy novas doesn't work well. Unless someone has a better suggestion, I'll go with novas and meganovas (and mininovas for the cars).

He's the Professor of our little island.

I published my first three chapters of Galaxy Tales for the Strongest Start competition. It includes minor changes from recent reviews. Not worth rereading, unless you want the points. Although Queen Aussie will not appear as a serial killer in my future draft, I decided to leaver her in the prologue. I like the resulting humor.

Amy, I've included a hint in the Galactipedia entry (chapter two) that Dr. Ess was actually set up by Dr. Jorge Francis, the scholar/historian from the year 7329 AD, who sent the flawed vaccine back in time. I'm not sure yet how I'll use Francis's interference with the past, but it's a key element of book three. Joseph and Apollo will probably travel through time to get there.

This week's episode of Gilligan's Island involved an active volcano. While Gilligan builds a pipe system out of bamboo poles to carry the steam to the huts for hot water, the professor used a stethoscope made out of a half coconut and rubber tubes to listen to rumblings from the ground, and a giant thermometer to measure the crust's temperature by sticking it into the sand at his feet. All the while, lava spewed from the top of the volcano, which looked suspiciously like the famous one in Hawaii. The professor decides to detonate a bomb near the volcano to snuff it out like blowing out a candle. He rushed to build it because, according to his calculations, they only had minutes left to blow it up. To think, episodes like that inspired kids to go into science. It's a wonder we made it to the moon.

Yes! Converting the Single Gospel into a table of fifty key events in Jesus's life is done. In turn, the Single Gospel cross-references the original Gospels in case I want to see the original wording, which I probably only need for occasional Bible quotes. I've created a second table of the exact same events that I'll use to cross-reference the modern pilgrimage/travel guides, three of which I have yet to read. Unfortunately, one of those is 500 pages, twice the length of the Single Gospel. Since I'm totally sick of research, I'm going to start on the outlines for the novels while simultaneously slogging through the second table. I have a pretty good idea of how book one will unfold, and I know the climax for each book and the ending for book three. Somewhere, I also have to find time to read my Catholicism book (another 400 pages), which I'll use as a reference guide. Fortunately, I bought a printed version, which comes with an index.

I need a bigger desk...

K a j o is a distant relative. He's also relatively distant.

I'm afraid to ask. Who on Babylon 5?