Moon People, Part II: Putting a Sexy Smile on My Face
Hello! *Looks at calender* Uh, sorry for the long delay in posting. I now emerge from my finals cocoon, ready to completely forget everything I just spent all semester learning. And what better way to do that than read some more of my new favorite book, Moon People?
In the last installment of Moon People, we started our dive into author Dale M. Courtney's incoherent ramblings and inability to understand what a paragraph is. He also seems to think that an introduction is supposed to explain the entire plot, which makes no sense.
Well, one of the things we didn't get to touch on last time is that sweet, sweet dialogue. Now I've made fun of Houck's dialogue in the Tiger's Curse series, and I'm not exactly the best at writing dialogue myself, but at least Houck and I know how quotation marks work.
Before I get started with the book itself, I did some sleuthing about who the hell Dale M. Courtney is, and I stumbled across his Facebook page. One of the pictures he's posted is, um...
The accompanying caption is: Here's one of Moon People's biggest fans, Professor Steven Hawkings. We are behind you all the way Professor. We Love Science!
This is interesting because this is a picture of Stephen Hawking, not "Steven Hawkings." It's also criminally obvious that the picture has been Photoshopped, because 1) Moon People is only sold in paperback, while this is a picture of a hard-cover book; 2) Moon People is a small book, while this is a picture of a book that's like a foot tall, and 3) IT'S SO FAKE, ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
It's a worse attempt of doctoring a photo than Robert Stanek's!
Oh, and the Facebook page clearly isn't fake or a troll account. It's full of that cancerous Boomer-type political ranting that is nearly impossible to fake, so that's fun.
Without further ado: Moon People, Part II. I'll try to preserve the formatting as much as physically possible because it is so brain-breakingly awful I just need to share it with people. Needless to say, there's a blanket [sic] over this entire thing.
The Beginning of the End
Ooh, nice and dramatic.
Chapter 1
This Story Begins on a
beautiful sunny day in Daytona Beach Florida with a man by the name of David Braymer. A 45-year-old single man that works at the local high school as a science teacher. He also teaches astronomy in the 12-grade level. Now he has been at this school for about 5 years.
So we're already off to a good start, with some weird formatting errors and improper capitalization. We're introduced to our protagonist, David Braymer, and apparently one of the most important things about him is that he's single. He also teaches astronomy, which I don't think is generally taught in high school. Granted, this story takes place in the future during a period of space exploration, so I guess it's possible that this would be a core high school subject.
I am really not a fan of how the book starts, with the narrator literally saying, "Our story begins on a sunny day..." in present tense. This works well for, like, children's books and fairy tales, but this is supposed to be Super Serious Sci-Fi (it's Steven Hawkings's favorite book!) and it just sounds wrong.
David has become somewhat partial to a young lady by the name of Cheral Baskel, a local restaurant owner in Daytona Beach Florida.
Now, Courtney's real-life wife is named Cheral, so this would be kind of cute if it didn't waste about three chapters of this already tiny book. We'll get to the marathon sex session in a bit.
Yeah, this series has sex scenes. Cut-to-black sex scenes, but sex scenes nonetheless.
Cheral is busy getting her restaurant ready to watch a scheduled space shuttle launch at "the Cape," which I assume is Cape Canaveral. It's never actually specified which Cape it is. You can see the launch "real good" there, so that's nice.
Courtney misspells Cheral's name as "cheral" as he tells us that David goes to Cheral's restaurant every morning for breakfast because it's on his way to school. Then the narration launches into some exposition about what David did before working at the high school--he was a UFO researcher for the government.
That...sure is random.
Anyway, he'd apparently always wanted to teach, so he quit that sweet, sweet government job with a sweet, sweet government pension to go teach a bunch of teenagers about astronomy.
Today is also Oct.27 in the year 2048.
Wait, so this does take place in the future. This is important information! Much more important than about how he eats breakfast at Cheral's restaurant every morning! Ugh.
The next shuttle launch at the Cape is on Halloween. There has been some unusual events the last 2 shuttle launches though. They would get right up to the launch sequence and then stop the launch for some kind of weird problem. Now everyone is very suspicious about the next launch on the 31 because of it being Halloween.
Note: these weird problems are never referred to again and have no impact on the story. Also, is Halloween really that superstitious of a date? Friday the 13th is associated with bad things happening than Halloween is.
This passage is directly contradicted by the next sentence, which says that the government (maybe?) has been launching three shuttles a week. I guess it's possible that there have only been problems with the last two, and the normal schedule has been three times a week, but it doesn't read that way. Also, if they're launching three times a week, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why the general public is still amazed at watching shuttle launches.
Apparently, all the shuttle launches have been to get workers to and from those Lunar Bases that Courtney mentioned in theintroduction plot summary.
They [again, it's never mentioned who "they" are, so I assume it's the government] have also been trying to get David to join the crew on the U.S.S. Lunar Base 1 for about 2 years. WHich is one of the base stations that is almost completed?
Don't ask me, you're the author!
Why would they want David, anyway? He's a high school teacher! He worked for the government as a UFO researcher for an unspecified, likely short amount of time over five years ago! He has literally zero qualifications that we know about, so it's not like he's the top astrophysicist in the country or anything.
However, he declines gracefully because he's a little scared of the launch process, Plus he likes the school he's at.
Okay, but that answers none of my questions, and also the launch process is routine enough to happen three times a week, so it's not like it's an untested thing.
Everybody laugh's about the way the base stations look. They look like a giant empty toilet paper holder from Earth. With one huge engine on the back of it.
I have absolutely no idea what that would even look like. What's the "back" of a toilet paper holder?
From in front of the engine on the inside to the front of the base station on the inside are all docking bays. There's ten stories' from top to bottom and all three base stations are a sixteenth of mile in diameter and about a eighth of a mile long. They constantly rotate for gravity when they are in operation.
This is neat and all, but how does David know what the inside of the station looks like when he's never been there? Why is this relevant information now, when it would make more sense for this to be revealed when David actually goes up to Lunar Base 1?
Also, how would these even be visible from Earth? An eighth of a mile is only 660 feet long. That's tiny!
Courtney then decides to talk about why "they" want to hire David is that he knows the stars (which is not a unique skill) and because he worked in UFO research, even though UFO research has literally nothing to do with working on a space ship.
Apparently, he'd be hired on as an officer. None of this information is presented in a logical order.
First [Lunar Base 1] starts on its mission to Mars for 6 months. Then off to Saturn's moon Titan.
It takes a minimum of six months to get to Mars in the first place, so unless they can somehow go twice as fast and then immediately turn around, I don't think they'll get much done there.
The U.S.S. Lunar Base 2 will first go to Venus for a year. Then it will head to Pluto and its moon's.
Pluto's moon's what?
U.S.S. Lunar Base 3 will go first to Jupiter for a year and then go to the outer parts of our solar system and beyond.
Never to return, I guess, since from what I understand they wouldn't be able to haul enough fuel with them to return to the solar system once they leave.
Now...we get dialogue.
Now on this day David is on his way to the restaurant like always listening to his radio. His favorite song is playing when there's a interruption in the broadcast on the Emergency Broadcast System this is K92 FM we take you live to NASA with a special report.
Yeah. It literally transitions to dialogue without quotation marks, a comma, or even a capital letter to let us know what's happening. I wish I was making this up.
Ladies and gentlemen today NASA observatory has spotted a huge meteor headed toward Earth at a high rate of speed. Coming very close. However, NASA officials believe that it will not hit Earth. It appears to be the size of a small moon. They are also concerned about it hitting the Sun or our moon.
It would be pretty devastating if it hits Earth's moon, but why would it even be an issue if it hit the sun? The sun is M A S S I V E. Also, it's very hot, so the meteor would burn up before it made impact. I'm pretty sure, anyway.
NASA urges everyone not to panic and that they're running calculations to figure the situation out.
What we do know is, it's coming from the direction of the constellation of Scorpio at the tail area
Hold on. Are they seriously using constellations to say which direction the meteor is coming from? Like zero scientists would ever do?
What we do know is, it's coming from the direction of the constellation of Scorpio at the tail area, heading this way going approximately 60'000 miles an hour and it is a planet killer! We repeat, do not panic, now we resume to your regular programming.
60'000
60'000
HOW DO YOU EVEN MESS THAT UP
Also, isn't the point of this announcement to not cause panic? But the news is hyping this thing up as a "planet killer"! They just said that it's not on a collision course with Earth!
David reacts in a wonderful way.
Oh my God, this is unbelievable. I can't believe this!
Holy redundancy, Batman!
He pulls into cheral's (note: not Cheral's) restaurant and notices that the people inside don't look like they're panicking. Cheral greets him and sees that he looks worried. If you thought dialogue from one person was confusing, you'll have a great time with this conversation between two people!
Hi stranger as she looks at David's face she realizes something is wrong. Then Cheral says, you look like you've just seen a ghost. What's wrong? David took the worried look off of his face and answered, nothing really, have you heard the news of the day yet? No Cheral replied, I just got done in the kitchen and came out and seen you.
It continues in this vein for some time. No quotation marks, no paragraph breaks.
David then repeats, almost word-for-word, what he heard on the radio on the way there. Cheral thinks he's joking, so she turns the news on. Steve Slader apparently has a second job as a news anchor, in addition to his gig on the radio. Steve says that the meteor is increasing in speed and introduces an astronomer from NASA who will make a statement about the meteor.
I take you live to NASA observatory to talk to Herbert Larson head astronomer. (Herbert Larson) At approximately 3:55am this morning we spotted a giant meteor in the constellation of Scorpio coming in our direction.
Scorpio count: 3
Herbert Larson gets a...script direction for a "dialogue" tag, I guess to make it less confusing as to who is talking. Hey, Courtney. You know there's a way to make it not confusing about who's speaking? It's called using quotation marks and paragraph breaks.
Herbert Larson says that the meteor will reach Earth in 178 days and that it'll miss them by 25,000 miles, which is "real close." This is about the distance between the Earth and the moon, if you're curious.
Lady's and gentlemen hopefully with Gods help, nothing will go wrong and we will see the most spectacular event the world has ever seen since the beginning of time. [Snip] Please its very important not to panic, it won't help at all.
"Now, it's important not to panic. Only through the grace of God will we be spared a horrible fate. Panicking won't help."
NASA has a horrible PR strategy.
Courtney then goes back in time to describe the noise in the restaurant before the news broadcast, because puny mortal ideas of linear time are for losers.
Now when David came in before everyone knew, it sounded like a regular restaurant with regular restaurant noises.
HAHAHAHA
That's maybe the best description I've ever read in my life.
As the reporter started telling everyone what was going on you could here a mouse burp.
I...what?
Shockingly, Herbert Lambert's interview did not help people to not panic, and half of the restaurant's patrons leave. The other half decide not to panic and just stay there. Neat. David says he's not going to panic, and then people recognize who he is and decide not to panic. Even though Courtney just said that they had already decided not to panic. What?
David turned to Cheral with a smile and Cheral said 222? David said you know me, yes maam. Coming right up Cheral replied.
What?
I guess that's his regular order, but...what?
[Cheral] had a sexy smile on her face and went to the kitchen.
oh god
David wolfs down his breakfast and compliments her on the food. David tries to flirt.
You know what? I've been coming here for a long time and you know we never really got to know each other all that well. Do you think maybe that, David seemed to be a little nervous?
Don't ask me, you're the author! Use your words! There's nothing about that statement that makes him sound nervous at all!
David asks Cheral out.
Cheral put a sexy smile on her face and said, you know I would really like that a lot. David put a big smile on his face.
There's something about the action of "putting" a smile on your face that seems really false and sinister, like a bunch of aliens are trying to replicate human behavior.
David says he'll see her on Friday night, but also tomorrow morning for breakfast. Comedy?
He heads to school and sees "everyone...running around panicking." You know, normal human behavior. When I hear that the sky is falling, I immediately start running in circles like a headless chicken.
Two of David's students ask if he heard (er, sorry, "did you here") the news, and he says that he'll hook up his new telescope so they can check it out in class as it gets close to Earth. Even though, uh, it won't get close for another 178 days.
Um. We get a weird transition here. It's not exactly a tense change--it's more like a POV change, which I've never ever seen happen before.
This is a special telescope that can see during the day. It is one of the latest telescopes out. Their expensive but they work well. You can hook it up to your computer and watch it on your monitor. With our new chalkboard size class computer monitor. We can watch it real good in the classroom, and its high definition too. All you need is the correct coordinates laid in.
Second person POV for no reason. Unless this is just David talking to his students, but it is literally impossible to tell. QUOTATION MARKS. PLEASE.
The students both say that the telescope is amazing, and David goes to see the principal. The principal lets David know that NASA called to speak to him. The principal theorizes that it's probably related to the meteor, which makes no sense, because a meteor isn't related to astronomy or UFOs, so David has zero experience with it. He gives David a number to call back, and David goes to teach class.
Well, he doesn't actually end up teaching class because he tells everyone to study for a test later that week and goes out to call NASA back. So...wouldn't it have been easier for NASA to just call David directly rather than go through the principal? I guess they're trying to nail him down to actually respond to them, but it's pretty needlessly complicated.
David went to the teachers break room and called the number. Hello this NASA operations, Bud Walker speaking. Yes how are you doing, my name is David Braymer, I am a 12th grade teacher at New Smyrna Beach high school.
Wait, isn't this story set at Daytona Beach? Where's New Smyrna Beach coming from?
David says that he heard someone wanted to talk about something important with him. With that, the chapter ends.
Closing Thoughts
I feel like it's very important to tell you that everything that just happened was part of one massive block of text. The entire chapter, which is nine and a half pages long, is one paragraph.
It's nearly impossible to tell who's speaking at any given time, what they have to say isn't particularly interesting, and trying to follow Courtney's train of thought while explaining exposition is in serious danger of breaking my brain.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and see if I can here a mouse burp.
In the last installment of Moon People, we started our dive into author Dale M. Courtney's incoherent ramblings and inability to understand what a paragraph is. He also seems to think that an introduction is supposed to explain the entire plot, which makes no sense.
Well, one of the things we didn't get to touch on last time is that sweet, sweet dialogue. Now I've made fun of Houck's dialogue in the Tiger's Curse series, and I'm not exactly the best at writing dialogue myself, but at least Houck and I know how quotation marks work.
Before I get started with the book itself, I did some sleuthing about who the hell Dale M. Courtney is, and I stumbled across his Facebook page. One of the pictures he's posted is, um...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The accompanying caption is: Here's one of Moon People's biggest fans, Professor Steven Hawkings. We are behind you all the way Professor. We Love Science!
This is interesting because this is a picture of Stephen Hawking, not "Steven Hawkings." It's also criminally obvious that the picture has been Photoshopped, because 1) Moon People is only sold in paperback, while this is a picture of a hard-cover book; 2) Moon People is a small book, while this is a picture of a book that's like a foot tall, and 3) IT'S SO FAKE, ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
It's a worse attempt of doctoring a photo than Robert Stanek's!
Oh, and the Facebook page clearly isn't fake or a troll account. It's full of that cancerous Boomer-type political ranting that is nearly impossible to fake, so that's fun.
Without further ado: Moon People, Part II. I'll try to preserve the formatting as much as physically possible because it is so brain-breakingly awful I just need to share it with people. Needless to say, there's a blanket [sic] over this entire thing.
The Beginning of the End
Ooh, nice and dramatic.
Chapter 1
This Story Begins on a
beautiful sunny day in Daytona Beach Florida with a man by the name of David Braymer. A 45-year-old single man that works at the local high school as a science teacher. He also teaches astronomy in the 12-grade level. Now he has been at this school for about 5 years.
So we're already off to a good start, with some weird formatting errors and improper capitalization. We're introduced to our protagonist, David Braymer, and apparently one of the most important things about him is that he's single. He also teaches astronomy, which I don't think is generally taught in high school. Granted, this story takes place in the future during a period of space exploration, so I guess it's possible that this would be a core high school subject.
I am really not a fan of how the book starts, with the narrator literally saying, "Our story begins on a sunny day..." in present tense. This works well for, like, children's books and fairy tales, but this is supposed to be Super Serious Sci-Fi (it's Steven Hawkings's favorite book!) and it just sounds wrong.
David has become somewhat partial to a young lady by the name of Cheral Baskel, a local restaurant owner in Daytona Beach Florida.
Now, Courtney's real-life wife is named Cheral, so this would be kind of cute if it didn't waste about three chapters of this already tiny book. We'll get to the marathon sex session in a bit.
Yeah, this series has sex scenes. Cut-to-black sex scenes, but sex scenes nonetheless.
Cheral is busy getting her restaurant ready to watch a scheduled space shuttle launch at "the Cape," which I assume is Cape Canaveral. It's never actually specified which Cape it is. You can see the launch "real good" there, so that's nice.
Courtney misspells Cheral's name as "cheral" as he tells us that David goes to Cheral's restaurant every morning for breakfast because it's on his way to school. Then the narration launches into some exposition about what David did before working at the high school--he was a UFO researcher for the government.
That...sure is random.
Anyway, he'd apparently always wanted to teach, so he quit that sweet, sweet government job with a sweet, sweet government pension to go teach a bunch of teenagers about astronomy.
Today is also Oct.27 in the year 2048.
Wait, so this does take place in the future. This is important information! Much more important than about how he eats breakfast at Cheral's restaurant every morning! Ugh.
The next shuttle launch at the Cape is on Halloween. There has been some unusual events the last 2 shuttle launches though. They would get right up to the launch sequence and then stop the launch for some kind of weird problem. Now everyone is very suspicious about the next launch on the 31 because of it being Halloween.
Note: these weird problems are never referred to again and have no impact on the story. Also, is Halloween really that superstitious of a date? Friday the 13th is associated with bad things happening than Halloween is.
This passage is directly contradicted by the next sentence, which says that the government (maybe?) has been launching three shuttles a week. I guess it's possible that there have only been problems with the last two, and the normal schedule has been three times a week, but it doesn't read that way. Also, if they're launching three times a week, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why the general public is still amazed at watching shuttle launches.
Apparently, all the shuttle launches have been to get workers to and from those Lunar Bases that Courtney mentioned in the
They [again, it's never mentioned who "they" are, so I assume it's the government] have also been trying to get David to join the crew on the U.S.S. Lunar Base 1 for about 2 years. WHich is one of the base stations that is almost completed?
Don't ask me, you're the author!
Why would they want David, anyway? He's a high school teacher! He worked for the government as a UFO researcher for an unspecified, likely short amount of time over five years ago! He has literally zero qualifications that we know about, so it's not like he's the top astrophysicist in the country or anything.
However, he declines gracefully because he's a little scared of the launch process, Plus he likes the school he's at.
Okay, but that answers none of my questions, and also the launch process is routine enough to happen three times a week, so it's not like it's an untested thing.
Everybody laugh's about the way the base stations look. They look like a giant empty toilet paper holder from Earth. With one huge engine on the back of it.
I have absolutely no idea what that would even look like. What's the "back" of a toilet paper holder?
From in front of the engine on the inside to the front of the base station on the inside are all docking bays. There's ten stories' from top to bottom and all three base stations are a sixteenth of mile in diameter and about a eighth of a mile long. They constantly rotate for gravity when they are in operation.
This is neat and all, but how does David know what the inside of the station looks like when he's never been there? Why is this relevant information now, when it would make more sense for this to be revealed when David actually goes up to Lunar Base 1?
Also, how would these even be visible from Earth? An eighth of a mile is only 660 feet long. That's tiny!
Courtney then decides to talk about why "they" want to hire David is that he knows the stars (which is not a unique skill) and because he worked in UFO research, even though UFO research has literally nothing to do with working on a space ship.
Apparently, he'd be hired on as an officer. None of this information is presented in a logical order.
First [Lunar Base 1] starts on its mission to Mars for 6 months. Then off to Saturn's moon Titan.
It takes a minimum of six months to get to Mars in the first place, so unless they can somehow go twice as fast and then immediately turn around, I don't think they'll get much done there.
The U.S.S. Lunar Base 2 will first go to Venus for a year. Then it will head to Pluto and its moon's.
Pluto's moon's what?
U.S.S. Lunar Base 3 will go first to Jupiter for a year and then go to the outer parts of our solar system and beyond.
Never to return, I guess, since from what I understand they wouldn't be able to haul enough fuel with them to return to the solar system once they leave.
Now...we get dialogue.
Now on this day David is on his way to the restaurant like always listening to his radio. His favorite song is playing when there's a interruption in the broadcast on the Emergency Broadcast System this is K92 FM we take you live to NASA with a special report.
Yeah. It literally transitions to dialogue without quotation marks, a comma, or even a capital letter to let us know what's happening. I wish I was making this up.
Ladies and gentlemen today NASA observatory has spotted a huge meteor headed toward Earth at a high rate of speed. Coming very close. However, NASA officials believe that it will not hit Earth. It appears to be the size of a small moon. They are also concerned about it hitting the Sun or our moon.
It would be pretty devastating if it hits Earth's moon, but why would it even be an issue if it hit the sun? The sun is M A S S I V E. Also, it's very hot, so the meteor would burn up before it made impact. I'm pretty sure, anyway.
NASA urges everyone not to panic and that they're running calculations to figure the situation out.
What we do know is, it's coming from the direction of the constellation of Scorpio at the tail area
Hold on. Are they seriously using constellations to say which direction the meteor is coming from? Like zero scientists would ever do?
What we do know is, it's coming from the direction of the constellation of Scorpio at the tail area, heading this way going approximately 60'000 miles an hour and it is a planet killer! We repeat, do not panic, now we resume to your regular programming.
60'000
60'000
HOW DO YOU EVEN MESS THAT UP
Also, isn't the point of this announcement to not cause panic? But the news is hyping this thing up as a "planet killer"! They just said that it's not on a collision course with Earth!
David reacts in a wonderful way.
Oh my God, this is unbelievable. I can't believe this!
Holy redundancy, Batman!
He pulls into cheral's (note: not Cheral's) restaurant and notices that the people inside don't look like they're panicking. Cheral greets him and sees that he looks worried. If you thought dialogue from one person was confusing, you'll have a great time with this conversation between two people!
Hi stranger as she looks at David's face she realizes something is wrong. Then Cheral says, you look like you've just seen a ghost. What's wrong? David took the worried look off of his face and answered, nothing really, have you heard the news of the day yet? No Cheral replied, I just got done in the kitchen and came out and seen you.
It continues in this vein for some time. No quotation marks, no paragraph breaks.
David then repeats, almost word-for-word, what he heard on the radio on the way there. Cheral thinks he's joking, so she turns the news on. Steve Slader apparently has a second job as a news anchor, in addition to his gig on the radio. Steve says that the meteor is increasing in speed and introduces an astronomer from NASA who will make a statement about the meteor.
I take you live to NASA observatory to talk to Herbert Larson head astronomer. (Herbert Larson) At approximately 3:55am this morning we spotted a giant meteor in the constellation of Scorpio coming in our direction.
Scorpio count: 3
Herbert Larson gets a...script direction for a "dialogue" tag, I guess to make it less confusing as to who is talking. Hey, Courtney. You know there's a way to make it not confusing about who's speaking? It's called using quotation marks and paragraph breaks.
Herbert Larson says that the meteor will reach Earth in 178 days and that it'll miss them by 25,000 miles, which is "real close." This is about the distance between the Earth and the moon, if you're curious.
Lady's and gentlemen hopefully with Gods help, nothing will go wrong and we will see the most spectacular event the world has ever seen since the beginning of time. [Snip] Please its very important not to panic, it won't help at all.
"Now, it's important not to panic. Only through the grace of God will we be spared a horrible fate. Panicking won't help."
NASA has a horrible PR strategy.
Courtney then goes back in time to describe the noise in the restaurant before the news broadcast, because puny mortal ideas of linear time are for losers.
Now when David came in before everyone knew, it sounded like a regular restaurant with regular restaurant noises.
HAHAHAHA
That's maybe the best description I've ever read in my life.
As the reporter started telling everyone what was going on you could here a mouse burp.
I...what?
Shockingly, Herbert Lambert's interview did not help people to not panic, and half of the restaurant's patrons leave. The other half decide not to panic and just stay there. Neat. David says he's not going to panic, and then people recognize who he is and decide not to panic. Even though Courtney just said that they had already decided not to panic. What?
David turned to Cheral with a smile and Cheral said 222? David said you know me, yes maam. Coming right up Cheral replied.
What?
I guess that's his regular order, but...what?
[Cheral] had a sexy smile on her face and went to the kitchen.
oh god
David wolfs down his breakfast and compliments her on the food. David tries to flirt.
You know what? I've been coming here for a long time and you know we never really got to know each other all that well. Do you think maybe that, David seemed to be a little nervous?
Don't ask me, you're the author! Use your words! There's nothing about that statement that makes him sound nervous at all!
David asks Cheral out.
Cheral put a sexy smile on her face and said, you know I would really like that a lot. David put a big smile on his face.
There's something about the action of "putting" a smile on your face that seems really false and sinister, like a bunch of aliens are trying to replicate human behavior.
David says he'll see her on Friday night, but also tomorrow morning for breakfast. Comedy?
He heads to school and sees "everyone...running around panicking." You know, normal human behavior. When I hear that the sky is falling, I immediately start running in circles like a headless chicken.
Two of David's students ask if he heard (er, sorry, "did you here") the news, and he says that he'll hook up his new telescope so they can check it out in class as it gets close to Earth. Even though, uh, it won't get close for another 178 days.
Um. We get a weird transition here. It's not exactly a tense change--it's more like a POV change, which I've never ever seen happen before.
This is a special telescope that can see during the day. It is one of the latest telescopes out. Their expensive but they work well. You can hook it up to your computer and watch it on your monitor. With our new chalkboard size class computer monitor. We can watch it real good in the classroom, and its high definition too. All you need is the correct coordinates laid in.
Second person POV for no reason. Unless this is just David talking to his students, but it is literally impossible to tell. QUOTATION MARKS. PLEASE.
The students both say that the telescope is amazing, and David goes to see the principal. The principal lets David know that NASA called to speak to him. The principal theorizes that it's probably related to the meteor, which makes no sense, because a meteor isn't related to astronomy or UFOs, so David has zero experience with it. He gives David a number to call back, and David goes to teach class.
Well, he doesn't actually end up teaching class because he tells everyone to study for a test later that week and goes out to call NASA back. So...wouldn't it have been easier for NASA to just call David directly rather than go through the principal? I guess they're trying to nail him down to actually respond to them, but it's pretty needlessly complicated.
David went to the teachers break room and called the number. Hello this NASA operations, Bud Walker speaking. Yes how are you doing, my name is David Braymer, I am a 12th grade teacher at New Smyrna Beach high school.
Wait, isn't this story set at Daytona Beach? Where's New Smyrna Beach coming from?
David says that he heard someone wanted to talk about something important with him. With that, the chapter ends.
Closing Thoughts
I feel like it's very important to tell you that everything that just happened was part of one massive block of text. The entire chapter, which is nine and a half pages long, is one paragraph.
It's nearly impossible to tell who's speaking at any given time, what they have to say isn't particularly interesting, and trying to follow Courtney's train of thought while explaining exposition is in serious danger of breaking my brain.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and see if I can here a mouse burp.
That is absolutely amazing. Thank you for suffering through this to report about it. This makes Maradonia look like a masterpiece.
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