Apparently, I need to dust as spider’s meal seems a tad linty
Tiny circle of life
Getting past my past
Live live – my new motto
New trend in grad gifts has parents going for bust
Frightened fathers of the world unite (or invite me to your daughter’s graduation ceremony)
After reading about how the parents of LuLu Diaz gave their daughter $6,000 breast implants for her high school graduation gift, I couldn’t help but be shocked by the idea of a father agreeing to anything that would make his teenaged daughter more enticing to teenaged boys. As luck would have it, I actually spent several years in my teens. Because of this I can tell you there are many teenaged boys who still haven’t made it past the “breast” portion of this column. Sadly, some may never finish reading it because, in order to break them out of their current hypnotic spell, it will become necessary for a close friend or family member to light them on fire.
Let’s face it: This is the nature of most men until the aging process inspires a level of physical maturity that dethrones sex as the main motivator. While there is no…
View original post 544 more words
The Race: A Celtic Legend (sort of)
Two great chieftains stand at odds, menacingly snarling at each other, mighty armies at their backs. The only thing separating them is a simple Celtic druid.
“I am the first son of Glamorgan, who was first son of Dafydd, who was first son of Griffold, so the kingdom is mine to rule,” bellows Dafydd of the Mountain, raising his might sword above his head in challenge.
Llewellyn of the Glen merely spits at Dafydd’s feet in disgust.
“Dogs, every one of you,” he snarls. “I am the first son of Blundewey, who was first son of Varus, who was first son of Glendoch. I am the rightful ruler!”
Dafydd drops into a fighting stance, causing Llewellyn to swing his axe.
“Enough,” cries the druid, slowly rising to his feet. “We cannot have our lands torn apart by yet another war.”
The two chieftains slowly lower their weapons as the druid passes between them and walks to the edge of a cliff. With great ceremony, he points across the waters toward a small island on which stands a great castle.
“The sea brings us great wealth, but it also makes us vulnerable to attacks from across the waves,” the druid intones. “The great ruler of this land must therefore not only be a mighty warrior on land, but also a true master of the seas.”
“That is I,” spouts Dafydd.
“I am the master of the sea,” scoffs Llewellyn.
“The sea shall decide who is best,” replies the druid. “The succession shall be decided with a race. The first to touch the shores of that island shall rule over all.”
The two chieftains grunt their ascent and turn their armies in opposite directions toward the pebbled beach at the base of the cliff.
Resting against the shore, two great ships swallow up the dwindling sunlight. One ship is jet black and sports a great dragon that snarls at the waves. The other is blood red with a horse that flails its anxious hooves into the surf.
The clansmen climb into their great ships, taking up their oars, brethren at their sterns ready to push them into the raging waters.
All noise stops, even the breeze, as the druid takes up his position and raises his arms to the sky.
“Let the gods of sea and air bless your efforts and deliver this land its rightful king,” the druid declares before violently dropping his arms to his sides.
With a mighty grunt and the hiss of resistant pebbles, the two teams push against the ships, forcing them into and over the arguing waves.
In each ship, the warriors pull mightily at the oars, the whine of the oar locks providing counter stroke to the rhythmic grunts of the rowers. The sea fights back, but the dragon and horse cannot be denied and slice their way through the offending currents.
At first, the race is even, both armies in deadly earnest to claim the crown for their sovereign, but bit by bit, Llewellyn’s boat begins to pull ahead.
“Harder, you demons,” Dafydd cries to his men. “Pull harder or suffer the fires that Llewellyn has planned for your wives and children.”
Dafydd’s men strain harder against the oars, but the dragon continues to press onward, seeming to clip the tops of the waves sent against it.
“Give me your sword,” Dafydd orders one of his warriors.
“You cannot reach him with a sword,” the warrior cries, handing over his weapon.
“I don’t have to reach Llewellyn,” Dafydd bellows, raising the sword above his head. “I have to reach the island.”
With that, he brings the sword crashing down onto the railing next to him, where but moments ago, his hand rested. CHOP!
Dafydd roars as his life blood spews across the deck and his severed hand cartwheels around his feet.
Stabbing the sword into the floor between him and his warrior, Dafydd quickly snatches up his hand and cocks his arm for a mighty throw.
“The druid said it,” he yells into the wind. “The first to touch the shores of that island shall rule over all.”
With all of his might, Dafydd throws his severed hand forward, watching it arc over Llewellyn’s boat on which it rains blood, toward the island. Everyone behind him rises to their feet to see the fleshy ballista arc…arc…arc…and…
SPLASH! Into the water a good 30 feet from shore.
Everyone on Dafydd’s boat is crest-fallen, as blood gushes from his open wrist onto the deck. Clenching his remaining fist in anger, Dafydd turns to his warrior.
“The other hand!”
“What?” the warrior cocks his head.
“Cut off my other hand and throw it,” Dafydd commands.
“I’m not going to cut off your other hand,” the warrior complains. “How will you hold a sword or feed yourself?”
“When I am king, others will defend and feed me.”
“I don’t know,” the warrior whines. “Should we put it to a vote? Everybody raise a hand-”
Dafydd grasps at the warrior’s vest but really only knocks him to one side.
“Cut off my other hand or I will cut you in half right here!”
The warrior looks at him as if asking “really”. Dafydd just holds his fist against the railing and nods at the sword.
The warrior raises the sword above his head and…
“Nothing will stop me,” Dafydd declares through gritted teeth.
CHOP!
Dafydd screams into the night as the warrior grabs the hand and throws it for all he’s worth.
SPLASH! It doesn’t even travel 30 feet from the boat.
Dafydd stares at the warrior, eyes unbelieving what has just happened.
“Nothing will stop me,” he repeats, “except a warrior that throws like a girl!”
Resigned to his fate and starting to feel the effects of the blood loss, Dafydd slumps against the deck.
“I guess that’s it then,” he sighs to no one. “Llewellyn will be-“
“You could touch the island with your foot,” the warrior thinks out loud, slowly reaching for the sword.
“I am not giving up my-“
CHOP!
“Aaaaaaaah!”
SPLASH! The foot quickly sinks and resurfaces to float against the nearby hand.
Through a haze of agony, Dafydd looks up to find the warrior approaching with the sword. With his arm stumps and one good leg, he backs toward the rowers.
“No, no, no!”
CHOP!
“Aaaaaah!”
SPLASH! Another foot.
The night is filled with the cacophony of CHOP! Screams! SPLASH! as shins, legs, forearms take flight one after another, only to fall short.
In the distance, Llewellyn’s men puke over the side of their boat as it slowly fills up with blood and human tissue, their puke coursing streams between the severed body parts.
A soldier on the battlements of the castle, however, sees a fuzzy round ballista finally strike the shore, rolling up the beach and coming to rest against a bolder.
Face contorted in perpetual agony, a small rivulet of blood makes its way from the hairline of Dafydd’s decapitated head. As the blood reaches his right eye, the eyes suddenly fling open and look around.
“I did it!” Dafydd cries into the night. “I won! I won! I am the king of-“
He is suddenly distracted.
“Oh, shit.”
A raccoon grabs Dafydd’s head and drags it down the beach.
And thus began the reign of Llewellyn the Fully Assembled.
(Images are property of owners and are used here without permission because the druid said it was okay.)
Reading carefully: Tantrum Sex
So, it would appear that I misread the poster at the community center a couple of weeks ago.
Where I thought I was going attend a couples retreat on Eastern philosophies and practices, I had actually signed up for a weekend workshop on:
Introduction to Tantrum Sex
Itinerary
09:00 – 10:00: Blow your own stack!
10:15 – 11:15: Snappy come backs and other hard-to-reach stains
11:15 – 12:30: Spermicidal foaming at the mouth
12:30 – 02:00: Lunch (everybody eats out)
02:00 – 03:00: Tears as a lubricant…for pretty much everything
03:00 – 04:15: Tearing a strip off while riding a brass pole
04:30 – 05:30: Fits…and what to do if it doesn’t
(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission…does that make you angry?)
Dear Toronto Marlies…
Memories of the 2013-14 hockey season
(It took 4 days, but I was finally able to pull my depressed head out of my @$$ and write a final address to the players of the Toronto Marlies hockey club, who lost the AHL Western Conference Final earlier this week.)
Well, gentlemen, it has been a hell of a ride this season—one full of soaring highs and crushing lows—but throughout it, please know that your fans have been immensely proud of you and all that you have achieved.
We cheered when you soared. We hurt when you hurt. Our hearts broke at exactly the same moments yours did. And we did all this because you are a second family to each of us.
My friends are probably sick of hearing about you guys. My Facebook and Twitter connections will get a brief respite from the near-daily onslaught of things Marlies-related. But all of them know, I will be back to crow about my boys and the wonderful organization soon enough.
While I continue with the preoccupations of summer and hope you do the same, know that I am counting the days until I hear the first reports of training camp, the sewing of names onto jerseys, the irritated rumble of the Zamboni prepping that first sheet, the spine-chilling slice of metal blades into perfect ice.
For as much as I will enjoy the sun, sand and water of The Beaches, I cannot wait for the sweet embrace of the Ricoh’s front doors and the buzz of another Marlies season opener. When I peer once again into the South end of the ice and watch my boys start the dream yet again.
All the best, gentlemen. Be well. Rest up. And for God’s sake, stay hungry.
Memories of the 2013-14 hockey season
Emptiness
Choreographed exhalations
Oscillating laryngeal folds
Traversing wavelets of air
Vibrating tympanum
Impulsive electricity
So much effort
For words of so little import.
(Image is property of owners and is used here without permission, not a sound decision.)
charACTer
Anyone writing stories NEEDS to read the blog post by Chuck Wendig listed below!
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/06/03/just-what-the-humping-heck-is-character-agency-anyway/
Seriously. Please read this!
His pivotal point: “The story exists because of the character. The character does not exist because of the story.”
Too often, I read screenplays where the protagonist is merely swept along like a bobbing cork on a sea of conflict. They merely REACT to the injustice around them rather than ACT to change it. They are the victim of the story.
To my mind, a much more interesting character is one who takes action when presented with conflict and then deals with the repercussions of that action. In some stories (the best ones to my mind), the protagonist is his or her own worst enemy, bringing conflict upon him or herself.
It is not enough to chase your hero up a tree and then throw rocks at him. He can also catch some of the rocks and throw them back, perhaps hitting innocent bystanders who then turn on him as well.
As a reader and viewer, it is through the actions of your characters that we learn their perspectives, their world views, and thus, their flaws. And if your story has a redemptive angle, it is through the complete failure of this world view and the character’s re-evaluation of it that he or she is reborn.
Just like giving the same premise to 12 writers results in 12 different stories, placing any of 12 different characters into the identical situation with identical opponents will result in 12 different outcomes if the characters are real.
Honour that in your writing and honour your characters.
They are called char-ACT-ers, after all, not char-REACT-ers.
Wendig is on Twitter:
Our story so far…
It’s been roughly two years since I stepped off the ledge of the normal world and into the free fall of who I am…and perhaps it is not surprising that I am still discovering who that is.
For the uninitiated, a brief recap:
After spending the better part of my adult life as a scientist, magazine writer, communications manager and ad copywriter/creative director, I realized I wasn’t happy. Adding fuel to that fire was the death of my beloved grandmother and of my marriage (thankfully not an acrimonious separation). But where I might have let these events take me to darker depths, I realized that I had never been freer in my life…and the freedom felt good.
Thus, with nothing to hold onto and therefore nothing to lose, I stepped into the abyss of uncertainty and am pursuing my life as a storyteller. And nicely, two years in, I am starting to see dividends.
After taking screenwriting classes for a while, I now feel confident that I know what I am doing and have no problem trusting my instincts when it comes to storytelling. I’m good at this.
My latest and possibly most commercial screenplay to date, The Naughty List, awaits external validation in 4 different screenplay competitions. (I may be good at this, but my name is hardly renown at this point.)
My first screenplay Tank’s has slowly climbed its way up the “charts” of screenplay competitions over the past year, and after being a Second Rounder at the Austin Film Festival, it took top prize in the Nashville Film Festival as Best Animated Feature Screenplay.
SomeTV!, the sketch comedy show that I co-wrote, is in front of cameras, and I am told by our Producer/God-head that the initial cuts look amazing. You’ll see the footage as soon as I can send you to it.
Eye of the Beholder, the novel I am co-writing with Agah Bahari—based on the real events of his life in Iran—is starting to write itself (a wonderful moment for a writer) and already has anticipatory buzz in New York entertainment circles.
I wrote a short children’s book, Butch Goes To Work, that teaches children about working dogs and the abilities of people with disabilities. It is currently seeking a publisher.
Really, really slowly (sorry Kevin Scott), I am co-writing a comedy album in the understanding that what doesn’t lend itself to YouTube is perfect fodder for iTunes!
I almost signed an agreement to develop a screenplay treatment of a mystery novel, and even though this project didn’t come to fruition, I will continue to work with the novelist on future projects.
And I am in the process of taking my new life to the next level by moving to Los Angeles. When the move will take place is still a question.
I am grateful to the folks involved in the magazine and advertising work that continues to pay my bills. And I am over-the-top grateful to all of my friends, family and other supporters who applaud my journey at every turn.
I am a storyteller. I tell stories. And I have never been happier.
PS I don’t know if Bradbury actually said the quote at the front of this piece, but he or whomever was right.
createdbyrcw 