Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

LoL! Such a bad pun, Ryan, and so funny!

Paula, I began an extended reply to your comment last night, but it was very late. I'll finish it tonight. But for now, a clue that might help you in our blog ado: Kevin Koe.

Al, why won't you visit Canada? We Canucks of America don't bite, even if we do laugh at the US of America for some of its foibles — even while striving to emulate its better bits. LoL!

Now it is time to work. See you later.

Dawn sang down to what
remained of the once-dashing
Tony Orlando.

Tony, shattered, looked
up, pained. “Dawn, I see you’re
going commando!”

Al, you won't be without money or a passport for too much longer.

M, OMG, how do you come up with such ribald humour?! So funny.

When the Don donned black
at its heart the sun's protons
broke into the dawn.

LoL! Pauline, you are familiar enough with Canada, obviously, to know that NWT is quite far from Vancouver, about a 1000 miles to Yellowknife as the crow flies though the Rockies and miles and miles of difficult country. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know anyone who lives there.

May I comment? Wow, you are competitive! I haven't checked my blogs to that fine a detail, although I was chirping with some glee in December when my blogs clicked over 30,000 page views — combined. I remember when getting just 1 in a week was worth crowing about, but now I am steadily clicking up around 100/day combined. Aren't the statistics you get from the blog viewer world just bizarre?! Week in and week out, my biggest source of page views is Russia. ?? The US is second, and after that it scatters around the world. But I've never tracked it down to provinces or states. I wonder if Blogspot goes into that fine a detail? [I went and checked, and it doesn't appear to.]

I just visited your blog, and I am sorry to tell you that the problem of the Americanization of Canada has been continuing apace. Canadian international sports coverage is moving ever more steadily towards the American model you criticize. And curling is now about the only sport I will make any effort to watch: it is still a game played by amateurs, because there is no money in it. The social aspects of play between rivals is, I believe, no where more vibrant than in curling. Well, one way to get a hit may be to do a piece on Kevin Koe a 'famous' Canadian curler. He once curled out of Yellowknife NWT, and so, a puff piece with some images of Koe might do the trick. You may cite his moving to Alberta as a kind of betrayal to his roots or something.

And I laughed at your nested parentheses, which is something I am prone to do in my writing too.

I enjoyed poking around your blog, and left a comment or two. And it would appear that I have no joined it as a follower. Of course, I only joined it to obligate you to follow my own little bloggish perversity! LoL!

Now I am tired, and so will cut my verbiage off for the night. Good night!

Yes, I saw that - it popped up on my blog roll. But I've not made it to it yet. I will soonish. Well, maybe anon.

When rosy dawn chased
night from the lawn, I saw I’d
left the sprinkers on.

Welcome to the Haiku thread, Belly! Nice.


The puppy dog's tale
wagged after washing down
the dewy dawn's rose.

And escaped its thorns
by back-pedalling from
Dawn's red rose garden.

In Dawn's silent glade
a rose arose, aroused by
rays, arrayed for day.

Ryan, great word play!

Thanks, Guy. It is always a challenge to respond to the wordsmiths in this thread :)

Ryan, I, too, enjoyed your haiku!

Belly and Guy and Ryan, these are excellent!

How many Rays were
aroused by Rose? Only the
house of gray dawn knows.

Thank you both, Jim and M :)

Thank you, Alex!

Alex (Al) wrote: "Because I'm poor and don't have a passport. :P"

You don't have to have a passport to cross the Canadian border. I've been there quite a few times. I never needed one.

Haha, excellent, M!

Seven were the Rays
in Rose's colored glasses.
A rainbow inflamed.

These are very nice! Ellis, the image I get from yours is so clear it reminds me of Andrew Wyeth’s tempera paintings. That will be impossible to follow--in kind, at least.

She’d gone. He knew it
by the crawl of late shadows
on the old brick wall.

Ryan, I love the ambivalence in your Haiku! Is Rose deluded or happy? Is the rainbow bigger than usual or threatening?

Ellis carries on with earth as cold, life as hard and then M. just finishes it. LoL! I thought I'd write something upbeat, and this is what I came up with!? Go figure.

Her crawl to the pub
foreshadows a fruitless night
and guttural dreams.

Please I want to know
When counting from "T" to "O"
Are there two or three?

Syllabically
Tao is either one or two.
If two, line five's wrong.

Apostrophes are
a problem as well, if it's
cheating, lots more's wrong.

One would think I cared
By querying ya'll, so I
will read your comments.

******************************************************

The truth is out folks. Goodreads has created the most mediocre monster (is "most mediocre" oxymoronic?) ever to write or type a word. I wish I was either really, really good at writing, or really, really bad (and I am being careful what I wish for), and the same goes for photography. Question for you all, my pirate friends: Is analyzing one's own work worth a tinker's dam? I have yet to write anything or take a photograph that I feel comes even close to exceeding the line drawn at mediocre. I can make personal judgments about everybody else's work, and some of it makes me ache to be able to write so, or envision and frame a subject in just such a way that takes away my breath. Do the people who actually do those things believe that they have done so? Is that the only difference between lousy, mediocre, good, and/or great? - The artist's own opinion?

Who the hell is the arbiter of good work? What is considered "great" changes so often. Yet still some works survive as "great" despite the changes in times and tastes. Is everything a popularity contest? The work that the most people like makes it the best, or does one have to choose who does the voting; if so, who does the choosing? Is that a popularity contest too? A life in any of the arts has to be one of the most damnable choices anyone could make - IF - you are seeking approval. Because the thing is, there will always be someone(s) who likes what you do, and someone(s) who doesn't, and it is apparently out of the artist's realm whose opinion should be accepted.

Now, will someone please turn on the running lights that will get me out of this tunnel and onto the road that leads to "Just shut up and keep on writing and photographing and quit thinking or caring about what other people thinkville." I understand it's a small town just on the outskirts of "Dream On."

It just occurred to me as I was on my BMC rant that this is supposed to be the ""Having Fun" discussion. Sorry about that. Here, I'll fix it now: Hah! Hah! Hee! Hee! Now, wasn't that fun? :-D

(Just ignore me, my brain is not functioninnnnnnnnnnnng......)

Hello, Paula. For a half sec there I thought you were on your BMX ranting, and an image of you doing aerials in a dress expunged from my mind the gist of your flagellating invective — Huh! Flagellating invective!??! Was that a phrase oxymoronic or onanistic? I guess if depends whether or not you are a fan of Saintly Monastics.

Now, I wrote a fair bit of verbiage to answer your question. I'd originally posted it here, but with his usual wisdom M began a thread in which this kind of discussion more appropriately resides. To see my answer-like thing, go to the thread M created called Writing and Art in General.

I told my wife I had discovered something I was really good at. She asked, “What?” I replied, “Writing bad poetry.” She thought that was funny.

I can’t punctuate.
I can’t spell. But I’m the best
at what I can be.

Those who know me well
will tell you, I excel at
mediocrity.

LoL! As the horse whisperer might have said, you are an example of an 'extreme middle of the road-ist'! RotFL!

A syllable pair
like Tao is not an iamb,
sure of that I am.

The counting of feet
is a pedestrian task,
dull and untoward.

I watched my feet stroll
across Abbey Road. Beatles
walk before flying.

These are very funny, Al! RotFL! Are you studying William Blake, right now?

And that is funny about the horses, because when I wrote that I wasn't consciously thinking of your dreams!

Here's Blake's Holy Thursday.


Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames’ waters flow.

Oh what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

Even funnier is the image of the black cloaked rat because in Holy Thursday Blake was being ironical about the church's behaviour. Once a year some few of the sweeps, all children who were normally covered in the black dust of the flues they cleaned, would be cleaned up and paraded into church as proof of the benevolence of the 'God fearing wealthy'.

Quixotic is definitely a 'good' thing. Haven't you read Don Quixote?

Excellent Haiku!


Dread and hatred? Yikes.
What can be in the iambs
that wax you fearful?

But seriously, what prompted that feeling? And... well I don't want to write what my fingers are telling me to write for fear and dread of how pedantic the words will be. Can I control my fingers? Yikes. Fear and dread! It would seem that I cannot, because I can feel myself writing about how I've learned that while feelings are an important measure of our state of being, just because we are feeling something does not necessarily mean that the feeling is empirically correct.

LoL! '... puss-filled zirk'?!!!? RotFL! I had to look that up, and it is a 'real' word in the urban dictionary.

But now it's time for me to kip. It was a busy day, and tomorrow it's back to work I go, hi-ho, hi-ho.

Again, laughing. So to take a break you need to feel bad? Now that sounds very sad! Good night!

This is a lame reply to the haiku Ryan posted in #3793:


I put an album
on the hi-fi. No rock and
roll came to my ears.

Why was I hearing
babies cry? ’Twas The Beatles:
From Their Early Years.

RotFL!

Excellent, M!

Thanks! I like the Abbey Road haiku and Guy’s remark that counting syllables is pedestrian. Though I’ve heard of the famous Abbey Road album, I’ve never listened to it.

Yesterday troubles
seemed so far away, then M's
mice stole my peanuts.

Today I came to
that conclusion when I heard
"Ballgame tune" in squeak.

RotFL! CJ, very funny!

Haha-well done CJ and Ellis! Both hilarious in different ways. Great start to my day :)

Mrs. Rothenstein
heard a splat and saw something
drip from her beach hat.

Very funny, M :)

Captain Livingstone,
wings tired, reports to base -
target acquired.

Perfect, Ryan!

That seagull one made me laugh so hard Ellis! Good one! :D

Everyone else's are awesome too. And poor Mrs. Rothenstein...

Slip slapping, gently
lapping spilt milk from the floor.
Cat, napping before.

In gentle search cat
moves swift up on the table
She trots down, stealthy.

Ryan, brilliant! Ellis, RotFL/LMAO! Great start to my work day, Ryan, Ellis, M, Belly, and CJ! All delightful.

And I like your new photo Ryan. Now to work I turn.