Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion
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Haiku
You’re doing better than I am, Kat. It seems that for every twenty poems I write, one has possibilities and the other nineteen are beyond saving and go in the garbage can. I keep the one that has possibilities, to work on. Then I end up pulling the other ones out of the garbage can when I need something to post in contests.I had a story in mind for this week’s topic, but never got around to writing it. I may write it anyway and post it next week.
Alex, you’re too kind! If the wadded-up poems in my garbage can ever get wind that somebody likes them, they’ll agitate for recognition, and I’ll have discontent and rebellion on my hands.Here’s my reply to Ajay’s #1942:
One too many dry
martinis, too easily
removed bikinis
that hold up sun-bronzed,
luscious melons, left Bond bored
with chasing felons.
Aw, M. Your poetry is fantastic. Some of the best I've ever read.XD
Kat, you’re funny! Thank God you’re wearing that moustache, or I’d think you were serious. I’d have to have a stern talk with your English teachers.
That cracks me up. I’m sitting here laughing when I should be doing chores. Thank you, Kat!
*pouty face* Stop laughing. I'm very serious. I love your poetry.
:) That was indeed naughty, M! But definitely in line with Bond's image and persona. Thanks for sharing 'In Memoriam' by Tennyson. I share a mutual liking for his polished verse. The most memorable one was ofcourse,'The Charge Of The Light Brigade'.
Sorry for taking quite a while to respond, I was enacting a live demonstration of 'A Day's Wait' by Ernest Hemingway! But finally, the flu has subsided and I am smiling again.
Oh, my, Kat! That’s very sweet. You realize, of course, that encouraging me is just going to make me inclined to write more, and the Poetry group will send a lynch mob after you.
The flu is no fun, Ajay! I had it about six years ago, and there was nothing to do for a couple of days but stay home and watch Buffy.
Good! I can't wait to see your new stuff. And I can fend off the mob. I am a pirate ninja, for goodness sake! Haha.
Was it Buffy the vampire slayer, M? I survived with a few torn out comic strips of Tintin. I believe Captain Haddock's curses cured me of the flu!
'billions of blue blistering barnacles' (that was epic)
:)
Oh, yes. I don’t watch television, so I would never have heard of Buffy the Vampire Slayer if it hadn’t been for my sister. That’s a long story. What really got me through that bout with the flu, as I remember, was a copy of James Lincoln Collier’s biography of Louis Armstrong. Very well researched and written, I thought. I haven’t read Tintin since I was a kid. I had no idea it was still around!
I'll definitely try to read the biography, M. Tintin is still around in selective book stores in India. I bought a few comics from a book sale recently. I guess the recent movie adaptation might have rekindled the franchise up a bit.
Follow up to M's post #1952: felons spill the
beans which rips up
a slew of spleens.
Bond's summoned: Aston
Martins roar on the icy
floor, to settle a score.
Tintin! I may have read just about every episode 4 or 5 times when I was a kid. But even better were the Asterix comics! The French humour in them had me laughing throughout. Ajay! That is so funny!
Twice a year? Al, sounds like you might want to try some acupuncture to boost your immune system. I haven't had a flu in several years. Actually I don't remember the last time. I used to get a cold at least once a year, but now that has gone down to one small one every two or three years.
Melons spill their seeds,Martins kill flying insects
And James bonds with M.
While Bond watched, in therearview mirror, the burning
Ford, he didn’t blanch,
or when the femme fa-
tale drew nearer, from SPECTRE’S
Execution Branch.
She roared by without
torching him. Her glance left him
tingling at every nerve,
her smoldering eyes
scorching him, till she lost him
on a mountain curve.
While Bond watched the wrecked,exploding Ford, M was count-
ing syllables, bored,
dreaming of women
smart and skinny. That ruled out
Miss Moneypenny.
Nice haiku, Guy. Glad to know that you like Tintin and Asterix. I worshipped them!
Glad you enjoyed it, Ajay. Yes, I was completely besotted by Asterix. Tintin was just a bit below that. Wow, on hindsight that was quite likely my misspending my youth. Of course, a lot of that reading was when I lived in the cold north, with not much else to do during the long cold nights of winter.M, as always, so funny and so hard to follow.
Wow, Guy. That seems like a wonderful, cozy setting for reading. I love to read when it's cold and raining outside. I cuddle up in my worn-out quilt,I arm myself with a flask full of tea and read on and on and on...
Yes, it was cozy. But no rain during the winter. Just lots and lots of snow. One year we celebrated Hallowen during a snow storm. Another year there was so much snow that came off the roof of the house that we couldn't see out the windows. The snow came very close to touching the eaves.
Kat, I should be ashamed of myself! Guy lives in Canada, I think just above Washington State.
Ahh. That's really cool :D I used to live in Alaska, so I can relate to having a little nook in which to read on cold nights :D
Yes, that is indeed where I live. Kat, I live in Canada. The description I gave was of my childhood home in rural Quesnel. I currently reside in the temperate rainforest of south western British Columbia, where we get far FAR less snow and far FAR more rain. Forty days and forty nights of rain, while unusual, are not unheard of. And we are not the wettest place in the area. The west coast of Vancouver Island and Washington State are generally wetter.
My wife's father was the owner of one of the companies that built the Alaska highway in the 1950s. She has photos of herself in Dawson Creek and an old time-lapse photo of the sun not quite setting.
M, as usual, yours was very difficult to follow. Here's my best shot:'Penny for your thoughts,'
Moneypenny quipped with Bond,
'and where's the skinny?'
'In Al and M's looks,'
Bond answered, 'lost in the gleam
of their gold fingers.'
Her fingers spin threadsShimmering with gold
In the dim moonlight.
Michelle, this is excellent! Nicely done. And it is a so-called 'real' Haiku. Okay, now to come up with something. Hmmmm. Okay, how about:Hanging by a thread
he dances to her fingers
gilding the pale moon.
Kat, how long did you live in Alaska and where? Why did you leave?
I lived there for 8 years, in Anchorage.
How was it? How old were you when you left?My leaving Quesnel to live in metropolitan Vancouver was the best thing that ever happened to me. 'Quesnel? A great place to be from.'
Quesnel, the place tobe from. Jamaica, the place
to go, for the rum.
Nice haiku's Guy, Michelle, M! :) Snow scares me, Guy. My first encounter with snow was one that I'l never forget. I stayed in the UK for a couple of years and the tempatures dropped below zero every now and then. It was the toughest weather I've lived in. One fine day, it started snowing heavily. My landlord asked me to stay indoors since she'd heard in the news that a hail storm is coming our way. But I had to go out to meet a few friends and I had on the worst pair of shoes on, with no real grip on it.
I had just walked a few yards from the house, when I slipped and fell on the pavement with a thud. To add to the embarassment, they were a couple of girls standing closeby. That hurt more. It was one of those ouch moments. A double whammy of an embarassment!
But ever since, I've warmed up to the idea of snow and I am fine now. It was in the UK that my reading peaked, mainly due to the weather. All I used to do was to sit in the lounge which had a beautiful fireplace and read away to sleep. That is the reason I am obsessed with the idea of a fireplace and I use it very often in many of my writings. I've fallen in love with the fireplace.
Why do there always have to be a couple of girls standing by when something like that happens? I love fireplaces, too! What kind of place were you staying in, that had a lounge?I remember helping Dad launch the sailboat one beautiful weekend. The boat has a keel and draws a lot of water, and the tandem trailer has a telescoping tongue. The ramp is steep. I was holding the bow line so that when the boat was launched, I could keep it from drifting out into the lake. Stupidly, I had the line wrapped around my wrist. There were a couple of good-looking girls watching. They smiled at me. It turned out that Dad had absentmindedly put the wrong ball on the hitch. The next thing I knew, the trailer had come loose. It headed for the water, and in the next instant I was skiing down the ramp after it. Miraculously, the trailer didn’t swerve, but went straight down the ramp and into the lake. The boat slid easily off the trailer, which went underwater and off the end of the ramp, and the next thing I knew, I was out in the harbor. I’ll bet those girls got a laugh out of that!
*Guy wrote: "How was it? How old were you when you left?"
I loved it up there. It was so pretty, and wonderful. I was nine when we moved down to Idaho. I absolutely hate it here. But, I'm moving farther north for college, and they said it snows a lot there. So I'll be content.
Al, that sounds horrible! I'm so sorry. And fireplaces are so romantic.
M. That sounds hilarious and horrifying at the same time. The question is, did YOU get a laugh out of it?
No. I merely got soaked and was left with a story to tell. Why don’t you like Idaho? (Maybe I shouldn’t ask.)
Haha, I still fail to understand why such things happen exactly when they're not supposed to, M! Wow, that was hilarious indeed. I hope you were not injured in the process, I came out with a temporary back spasm. I mustered the weakest smile in front of the girls, who were kind enough to ask if I am ok. Am sure they must have had a blast laughing about it when I was gone :)
I stayed in a private university accomodation, M. It had 6 bedrooms, a common kitchen, a common lounge (with the fireplace), a small garden and a basement. People from five different nationalities shared the house and we had the best fun ever! We had an Englishman (the owner), an Irishman, an Iranian, a Chinese girl and myself.
The lounge had the biggest t.v there and was the warmest room of the house. So we used to gather there to catch a late night movie and to play poker all through the night! That was fun.
Thanks, Kat. I guess you were addressing me! Yes, fireplaces are romantic indeed.
*M, Idaho is okay. I just don't want to live here XD It gets really hot (This July was the hottest month in history for Idaho) And in the winter we barely get any snow. Also, absolutely NO ONE comes here for concerts except for country musicians. Don't get me wrong, I love country, but I like other bands too, and they never come here, and we don't have enough to travel to see them. Nothing happens, and it's really hard to find a job in the city I live in. It's also not the nicest city either. And, I absolutely hate BSU, the University that's 45 mins away. Living here is monotonous, and almost everything gets on my nerves. The schools here suck too. They put way to much emphasis on sports, and all the art programs are slowly tanking. I remember my sophmore year, I was going to sign up for the creative writing class, but they cancelled it, along with they Myths and Legends class I was going to take. People aren't very nice, and the teachers all hate teaching, so they do the bare minimum. Idaho is one of the least educated states, ranking at about 47 or 48. /rant
Ajay, that sounds like it was a blast! Did you like the United Kingdom, other than the weather it seems to be notorious for?Wow, Kat! I’m glad you’re getting out of there. I hope you enjoy college as much as I did. I went to a small, liberal arts college, and was homesick for it for years after I graduated. I still have dreams about it.
Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company!
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Urg. I think my writing might be on the decline. I feel like, out of, let's say, ten poems that I write, only one of them is really good. With short stories, it's only one good story out of eight.
(and I'm not even going to mention how I'm faring with my book XP)