Using the toilet and writing really are strikingly similar. You sit there long enough, and eventually you’re going to crap something out.
On that inspiring note, I give you part 2 of The Constellations here.
Do you know how long it takes to think up a story where your only prompt is an air pump?
Ah, yes- apparently, it’s a little over two weeks. Mea culpa, my lovelies. I know it was a long wait. As recompense, though, I offer you a slightly longer story (approx. 1400 words).
The constellation related to this work is Antlia. Never heard of it before? I had, but only once. It’s a Southern Hemisphere denizen, and looks absolutely nothing like an air pump (Antlia is short for Antlia Pneumatica, Latin for- well, I won’t insult your intelligence).
[shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia, but they say this is public domain anyways]
We have Nicolas-Louis Lacaille to thank for this constellation. In the early 1750s, he went to the Cape of Good Hope, took all the boring stars no one had collected into constellations yet, and arbitrarily named groups of them after modern inventions he thought were cool. We’ll be hearing more about Lacaille as we proceed through the constellations- there are thirteen more groups of reject areas of the southern skies he named.
Now is probably as good a time as any to point out that the modern definition of a constellation is not, in fact, a bunch of stars that look vaguely like a real life object. To the contrary, a constellation is a little region of the night sky with definite boundaries… and you and I and the ancient Greeks will continue to think of constellations as a bunch of stars that look vaguely like a real life object.
I find Antlia superbly frustrating. If it doesn’t look like an air pump, why should I have to write a story about an air pump? However, I make the rules, and I said there had to be an air pump. So there is an air pump, God help us.