Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

Aye, have a great weekend ye self! Better than Phil's at least.

I spy mouse-made plots,
and mean men meandering
towards forty-two*.

*Don't Panic! The significance of this number as it pertains to mice and average men is well told by Douglas Adams in his The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (For a good summary, see the Wikipedia Hitchhiker's Guide.)

Very nicely written, Guy. I hope the nexus isn't too obscure...

Searching for answers,
I started my Ford Prefect
and put my foot down.

But my foot landed
on poor Barney's little tail.
Rita sobbed in pain.

But where the foot went
Bent the tale of Arthur Dent,
Who went Bif Naked.

[LoL! Sorry, bad form but couldn't stop myself from laughing at my own joke! Arthur Dent is the guy in the bathrobe in Hitchhiker's, and Bif Naked is a Canadian rock musician - in the video linked is her song 'Tango Shoes'.]

Thanks, Ryan. I hope so too, but Hitchhiker's is hugely popular in Canada, at least, and makes it hard to know if that is true in the U.S. for the references to work there, too. Cross fingers and sigh, 'Ah well! If not...?' Shrugs shoulders, 'We can but try and be trying.' [Chuckles a little.]

Oh! And your continuation from HGttG is spot on!

Who can say, of names
and luck? Bif wasn’t Naked
till she married Buck.

LoL! So funny. Welcome back, M. Hope the campering was fun.


To be Granted luck
Was worth a Buck 65,
Not a Jenny more.

[Okay, another very bad inside Canadian joke. For some reason I just couldn't resist. Buck 65 is a kind of spoken word rock/rap artist, and Jenn Grant is an amazing alternative rock singer. The link in the Haiku is to their collaboration, Paper Airplane. And the link to Grant is to her song 'Dreamer', which has one of the best opening lines in a song ever, and one that reminds me of M's writing: 'With the faint taste of cigarettes he writes hallelujah songs.']

Who’d have thought our class
would feature a full-blown hal-
lelujah chorus?

We sang one, though, when
our science teacher promised
he wouldn’t bore us.

M, that is one of the most creative and unexpected rhymes I have ever seen. RotFL!

Now what to write — instead of the next book review on my list?

Thank you, Guy! By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed your review of The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow. Thank you for posting a link.

I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the Hardy Boys. They were the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s series for boys that was the equivalent of the syndicate’s Nancy Drew Series for girls. A few years ago, Benjamin Hoff rewrote one of the original volumes, The House on the Cliff, and renamed it The House on the Point. He thought it might be interesting to give the story and characters some depth, though he set it (as I remember) in the 1940’s, whereas the original was published in 1927.

I’m not recommending the book for review. Philosophically, it leaves a lot to be desired. I think Hoff has an introspective and sympathetic mind, however, and I found it interesting to come across something he had turned his energies to after Singing Creek.

Okay, this isn't good, but it will have to do. (And no, no inside Canadian musical humour!)


The 'hallelujah'
The off-key chorus bleated
Was flatter than blah.

The closing 'Ta-Dah'
Went nowhere faster than a
Soggy sis boom bah.

Just the laugh I needed before I go and fold clothes!

This is at best a tenuous connection with “hallelujah”:


After nail biting,
with no books released, he faced
a choice nightmarish:

succeed at writing
or go back and be a priest--
publish or parish.

Hello Al! Where's your picture? And I missed you over the weekend.

Again, M, thank you for the kind comment regarding my review of Singing Creek. And again, the real thanks goes to you for bringing it to my attention. Truly a remarkable book, and one I'd be far poorer off if I'd not read it.

M, I am very familiar with the Hardy Boys, but only as a child reader. I think that I managed to read about 90% of them before I outgrew them. I had managed to collect most of them. However, I haven't looked back at them as an adult to investigate their history. You have provided bits and pieces of history in various threads, along with ND, which I've really enjoyed.

As to Hoff's book, I'll keep my eyes open for it: if it comes into view then I'll take a peek. While doing some research for my book review I visited Hoff's blog. It is very interesting because he's in a pissing match with the publishing house Penguin. For some reason they are not forwarding fan mail to him. The nature of his text and the fight he's picked and how he's chosen to fight is fascinating to me. It rather reminds me of Don Quixote, dreaming of a friendlier time that quite likely did not exist as they had envisioned it.

A book I found interesting, though it’s long out of date (1962) and the writing is dense, is Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-intellectualism in American Life. Beware of the copies that were issued by Vintage. The paper has gone bad. I photocopied mine.

But why be a priest
when he could be so much more?
The written word won.

Sounds interesting. It will be curious to see how it compares with the commentary Morris Berman has made, and Noam Chomsky. I'll go looking for it.

I read the haiku Stephanie posted, and just howled!

Guy, I should probably warn you in advance, that book can be slow going. I’ll add, though, that Hofstadter is one of my favorite academic writers. I have several of his books.

Why'd you howl?

I think it was the part about “why be a priest / when he could be so much more?”

What sense is it to
mope and scowl, when you can throw
your head back and howl?

Oh? Okay.


But to mope and scowl
is not always bad when the
ogres come visit.

In fact, it is an
encouraged feature during
meals and festivals.

When the ogres come
for the holidays, you go
and hide in your room.

Here’s Uncle Horace,
with his warty ways, and his
witch wife, with her broom.

Helga, her warts, and
Uncle Horace scare the whole
town and keep them up.

Their dreams are haunted
and their days are gray and bleak.
The ogres don't come.

Trolls, unlike ogres
are particularly Grimm.
The stuff of nightmares.

The big troll put off
quite an odor, and had brought
a trolling motor.

The troll squashed Helga
and warty Uncle Horace.
Now it rules the land.

He ate Aunt Helga,
Uncle Horace, and cousins
Stigwood and Doris.

Stephanie, I also LMHO @ 2901. It snuck in under the radar, and I didn't see it when I posted 2902.

M, dense stuff is okay with me, as long as it is interesting.

Okay, Ryan, Stephanie, M. Now I'm on the floor, laughing!


It was when trolling
around a skimpy atoll
he had been ogling

That he saw Helga
Making her broom by the shoal.
He cried, 'You go girl!'

She sat back amazed
To see a mole on the troll
Completely unfazed.

He suavely spoke of
kundalini but was on
the wrong bikini.

No sooner had she
sighed aloud, they both went up
in a mushroom cloud.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed it then.

But that was then and
this is now. The land is dark
and the water scarce.

Tortured cries lift up
to the black skies, weaving through
the trees and sharp rocks.

Whips crack and lips smack
for want of food and sweet drink.
The trolls eat all snacks.

M, that was very clever! Seriously, seriously witty!

Thank you, Guy!

Stephanie, you’ve set the stage for an interesting haiku chain. I just love “The trolls eat all snacks.”

Haha. I wanted a rhyme, that came to mind, and it was just the right amount of syllables. Thanks.

It’s dark. We have no
snacks, no water. What’s worse, now
we’re cannon fodder.

Al, no apologies for Haiku! Hard to do, and perfectly fine, too!


The black princess played
with a sensuality
that her muse dreamed of.

Taking a novel
off the shelf, Frank said, “Sit down.
Unbosom yourself.”

“It’s dark, and my muse
just wants to play,” scoffed Alex,
then smiled anyway.

LoL! So funny, M. And, fushigi-like, last week my co-worker came to me puzzled at a crossword having as its answer, unbosom, a word she did not know existed. It's not one you see used very often, so, even funnier to see it here.

The newest fashion,
but which has been seen before,
is bosom freedom.

In a scene in the original movie version of Lost Horizon, Hugh Conway (played by Ronald Colman) says to Chalmers Bryant, “Unbosom yourself, Mr. Hyde.”

Sarge spit out his pie.
Naked, she’d tried to flee.
What was she to do?

She was--none asked why,
for she wore a double D--
beaten black and blue.

Hello Al! How's the studying? How are you doing? (I actually wrote I poem for this week, and thought of a story but won't get it done.)

I'm almost finished the Alias worm dream analysis. Will forward it to you later tonight or sometime tomorrow. It's been a challenge.

Pandemonium
was what reigned in court, in the
fleeing heiress case

when Miss Brent, flushed, tear
stained, stuck her shock absorbers
in the judge’s face.

A tricky case with
many facets. In the end
he seized her assets...

Excellent, Ryan! That one is spectacular.


As the courtroom buzzed
with chatter, jurors kept a-
breast of the matter.

@2930 RotFL excellent, Ryan.
Mine's not good, but it's early.


The stark naked judge
brought her court to a titter
twitter acquit her.

:-)

Now I'm off to a company Christmas lunch. Catch up much later.

Thus they hauled her off
to jail, her feet bare. How the
tears ran from her eyes!

A tangled mess, her
beautiful hair. Then echoes
of her bootless cries.

Why, thank you, Alex!

Thank you, M. Thank you, Guy - it's hard work keeping up with you both!

Ryan, you are doing fine!

And M, nice continuation!

All alone in the
Jailer's lair, she pulled a pick
from her mussed-up hair.

Many said she'd looked
a fright - just part of her plan
to escape at night.

The bra holding her
double D's, now a rope, out
the window she flees.