Word count is 6,162 over target. :o)
Total.......56,162
Will start all over again with a new practice word-count month tomorrow...........
K.x :o)
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Laugh-out-loud books........... and one in particular. :o)
Hi Y’all,
I’ve been reading a rare book, ….. One that really made me laugh right out loud.
A lot of books have reviews by people who describe how a book had them ‘laughing out aloud’, and quite often by People Of Note, sometimes on behalf of Publications Of Note,. Sometimes the book was so funny, evidently, that such an open display of humour was unavoidable in public.
Well, that’s as may be, and far from it for me to doubt the truth of the reviewer, but quite honestly I find few books really are that funny. Most are quite funny, but those that really make you do more than chortle, smile, or interrupt the natural breathing rhythm to shove out a reverse sniff from the nostrils are quite rare. Maybe it’s just me who finds that, but I suspect not.
The book which has had me laughing aloud, and to the point of moist eyes a few times, is Rich Hall’s ‘I Blame Society’
To some extent I think it was helped by my having his ‘voice’ in my head pretty much all the time I was reading it. Made all the easier because it’s written in a dialect which kinda makes it hard not to ‘hear’ him in your mind, and that dry way he has of telling a yarn, assuming you’ve seen his stand-up performances, and/or other appearances on TV. I’ve recently seen him on our British comedy quiz show, ‘QI’, hosted by the amazing Stephen Fry, so that may well have been the reason his voice was speaking to me.
It didn’t have me laughing all the time by any means, and certainly not aloud every time I did laugh, but I couldn’t go very far without something funny hitting home. The other day, (the pebble collecting day), I sat on the beach and absolutely howled with laughter a good few times. I rocked back and lay there laughing for a minute, dried my eyes and sat up to read the same bit again, only to burst out laughing and repeat the performance.
It was a pretty empty beach. Just as well. Undignified behaviour for an Old Greaser.
Now, before you get the impression that I’m claiming this to be a great work of literature, I’m not. Partly because it isn’t in ‘classic’ terms, but also because I wouldn’t exactly be qualified to make such a judgement. To be honest, I hold a personal view that a great work of literature could be anything that intensely amuses the reader, is especially fluid and easy to read, and fills your head with what was intended by the author. Still, that’s not the point………. I’m not qualified to judge, that being generally the preserve of the finely educated.
Anyway…….. to quote Amazon’s synopsis:-
‘Married six times, all to women named Brenda, Otis Lee Crenshaw's bourbon-fuelled odyssey takes him from the high mountains of East Tennessee to the bottom of the music charts. A man not above faking his own death to sell more records, this is his not quite true story of romance, recidivism, country music, and an unshakable belief in Marriage at First Sight.’
Ok, so that’s generally the gist of the book, but in amongst it all are some wisdoms, and here is where I wished I’d noted the page numbers where I read them, but I didn’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. You will probably have to be the sort of person who ‘thinks’ a lot about life, has been hammered by it at times (and who hasn’t, bar the very fortunate?….. Or perhaps less fortunate, I guess.), and can think a bit sideways at times too.
There was one morsel that tickled me, and I had been dying to try it out on someone since I read it……….. I was at work yesterday, and got my chance. Someone (We’ll call her Cheryl, shall we?) was going on about something or another, bless her. Some detail of out working day that was to be set in concrete as it tends to be these days. There were a few staff around to be amused by my great wit, and so I took a risk……….
“So, I’ve moved all the furniture around and it should be better for you all now”
“Cheryl, do you hear that?”
“What, I don’t hear anything?”
“Exactly, Cheryl, because that’s the sound of nobody giving a shit”
Everybody laughed, mainly because I was laughing my head off, and I JUST got away with it. It was a real close thing, because ‘Cheryl’ is Quite an Important Person, and knew she shouldn’t really be seen to see the funny side of it. It was ok because she knew it wasn’t meant spitefully, and I was just getting a laugh out of it.
Getting away with it. My biggest kick since I was born. :o)
Not so great when I come a cropper though, but isn’t that the measure of how good something feels………….. how bad the downside is. How dark the flip-side of the coin.
Sorry, rambling away.
Maybe I’ve read this at just the right time, in just the right mood, and so it floated my boat, I dunno. I read another of his books, called ‘Things Snowball’ a while ago, and can’t remember clearly, but don’t think it had me laughing as much as this one did. I must have a look for it, and read it again. Different things ‘fit’ us at different stages of our lives.
I’ve actually gone and rummaged around for ‘Things Snowball’, found it after ages wandering around my books, muttering, “I bleddy KNOW it’s here somewhere”, but not being able to see it anywhere. You know when you can ‘see’ where it is in your mind’s eye, but when you look there, it’s ‘gone’.
I suddenly found inspiration, and went delving into The Big Box, so called because it’s a real big box, yanking all the books out, finding it wasn’t there, and then and not being able to pack the same number of books back in again. There’s a lesson to be learnt there, and one I’ve learnt and seemingly repeatedly forgotten; never be too efficient in your box-packing/storing/tidying, because if you don’t leave some slack, you’ll never do such a good job when you go and take something out, and so The Untidiness will start all over again.
Always leave some slack in your efficiency!
In the end, after looking absolutely EVERYWHERE, I found it two books down from the top of the stack on the floor by the bedside cabinet. I KNEW I’d see the bleddy thing recently!
You know what it’s like when you find a book, especially one you’ve driven yourself to the edge of what sanity you have left, and believe me I can scarce afford to go anywhere near that precipice; you just have to start skimming though, and reading at least bits of it, don’t you? I ended up reading a few chapters ……… and, sure enough, ………… nope, nothing like as funny.
Funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny, as the reviewer on the back cover from The Scotsman claimed. Still we all find different humour funny, and so maybe these reviews, including my opinion here, aren’t worth reading. You just have to suck it and see. (Stop it!)
So, as per the usual, I guess I’m wasting everybody’s time here today.
Sorry (sigh) :oI
Ok, that’s enough…….. it was just going to be a few lines.
Y'all know how it is.........
K.x :o)
I’ve been reading a rare book, ….. One that really made me laugh right out loud.
A lot of books have reviews by people who describe how a book had them ‘laughing out aloud’, and quite often by People Of Note, sometimes on behalf of Publications Of Note,. Sometimes the book was so funny, evidently, that such an open display of humour was unavoidable in public.
Well, that’s as may be, and far from it for me to doubt the truth of the reviewer, but quite honestly I find few books really are that funny. Most are quite funny, but those that really make you do more than chortle, smile, or interrupt the natural breathing rhythm to shove out a reverse sniff from the nostrils are quite rare. Maybe it’s just me who finds that, but I suspect not.
The book which has had me laughing aloud, and to the point of moist eyes a few times, is Rich Hall’s ‘I Blame Society’
To some extent I think it was helped by my having his ‘voice’ in my head pretty much all the time I was reading it. Made all the easier because it’s written in a dialect which kinda makes it hard not to ‘hear’ him in your mind, and that dry way he has of telling a yarn, assuming you’ve seen his stand-up performances, and/or other appearances on TV. I’ve recently seen him on our British comedy quiz show, ‘QI’, hosted by the amazing Stephen Fry, so that may well have been the reason his voice was speaking to me.
It didn’t have me laughing all the time by any means, and certainly not aloud every time I did laugh, but I couldn’t go very far without something funny hitting home. The other day, (the pebble collecting day), I sat on the beach and absolutely howled with laughter a good few times. I rocked back and lay there laughing for a minute, dried my eyes and sat up to read the same bit again, only to burst out laughing and repeat the performance.
It was a pretty empty beach. Just as well. Undignified behaviour for an Old Greaser.
Now, before you get the impression that I’m claiming this to be a great work of literature, I’m not. Partly because it isn’t in ‘classic’ terms, but also because I wouldn’t exactly be qualified to make such a judgement. To be honest, I hold a personal view that a great work of literature could be anything that intensely amuses the reader, is especially fluid and easy to read, and fills your head with what was intended by the author. Still, that’s not the point………. I’m not qualified to judge, that being generally the preserve of the finely educated.
Anyway…….. to quote Amazon’s synopsis:-
‘Married six times, all to women named Brenda, Otis Lee Crenshaw's bourbon-fuelled odyssey takes him from the high mountains of East Tennessee to the bottom of the music charts. A man not above faking his own death to sell more records, this is his not quite true story of romance, recidivism, country music, and an unshakable belief in Marriage at First Sight.’
Ok, so that’s generally the gist of the book, but in amongst it all are some wisdoms, and here is where I wished I’d noted the page numbers where I read them, but I didn’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. You will probably have to be the sort of person who ‘thinks’ a lot about life, has been hammered by it at times (and who hasn’t, bar the very fortunate?….. Or perhaps less fortunate, I guess.), and can think a bit sideways at times too.
There was one morsel that tickled me, and I had been dying to try it out on someone since I read it……….. I was at work yesterday, and got my chance. Someone (We’ll call her Cheryl, shall we?) was going on about something or another, bless her. Some detail of out working day that was to be set in concrete as it tends to be these days. There were a few staff around to be amused by my great wit, and so I took a risk……….
“So, I’ve moved all the furniture around and it should be better for you all now”
“Cheryl, do you hear that?”
“What, I don’t hear anything?”
“Exactly, Cheryl, because that’s the sound of nobody giving a shit”
Everybody laughed, mainly because I was laughing my head off, and I JUST got away with it. It was a real close thing, because ‘Cheryl’ is Quite an Important Person, and knew she shouldn’t really be seen to see the funny side of it. It was ok because she knew it wasn’t meant spitefully, and I was just getting a laugh out of it.
Getting away with it. My biggest kick since I was born. :o)
Not so great when I come a cropper though, but isn’t that the measure of how good something feels………….. how bad the downside is. How dark the flip-side of the coin.
Sorry, rambling away.
Maybe I’ve read this at just the right time, in just the right mood, and so it floated my boat, I dunno. I read another of his books, called ‘Things Snowball’ a while ago, and can’t remember clearly, but don’t think it had me laughing as much as this one did. I must have a look for it, and read it again. Different things ‘fit’ us at different stages of our lives.
I’ve actually gone and rummaged around for ‘Things Snowball’, found it after ages wandering around my books, muttering, “I bleddy KNOW it’s here somewhere”, but not being able to see it anywhere. You know when you can ‘see’ where it is in your mind’s eye, but when you look there, it’s ‘gone’.
I suddenly found inspiration, and went delving into The Big Box, so called because it’s a real big box, yanking all the books out, finding it wasn’t there, and then and not being able to pack the same number of books back in again. There’s a lesson to be learnt there, and one I’ve learnt and seemingly repeatedly forgotten; never be too efficient in your box-packing/storing/tidying, because if you don’t leave some slack, you’ll never do such a good job when you go and take something out, and so The Untidiness will start all over again.
Always leave some slack in your efficiency!
In the end, after looking absolutely EVERYWHERE, I found it two books down from the top of the stack on the floor by the bedside cabinet. I KNEW I’d see the bleddy thing recently!
You know what it’s like when you find a book, especially one you’ve driven yourself to the edge of what sanity you have left, and believe me I can scarce afford to go anywhere near that precipice; you just have to start skimming though, and reading at least bits of it, don’t you? I ended up reading a few chapters ……… and, sure enough, ………… nope, nothing like as funny.
Funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny, as the reviewer on the back cover from The Scotsman claimed. Still we all find different humour funny, and so maybe these reviews, including my opinion here, aren’t worth reading. You just have to suck it and see. (Stop it!)
So, as per the usual, I guess I’m wasting everybody’s time here today.
Sorry (sigh) :oI
Ok, that’s enough…….. it was just going to be a few lines.
Y'all know how it is.........
K.x :o)
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Finally....... an entry, and about the NaNoWriMo
Hi y’all….. not that anyone’s reading this now, I guess, especially since I seem to have pretty much abandoned any hint of regular entries here lately. No excuse, ……..just the usual lethargic apathy, and fuck-it-I’ll-do-it-tomorrow lifestyle I’ve turned into something of an art-form. :o)
I can’t even blame the long sunny summer we haven’t had again this year. Nope, no excuse, …………especially since I often describe myself as a Wannabe Writer.
Which brings me to the latest obsession that has consumed me for pretty much all of August, and has passed the time whilst looking at the rain from the Sun Room here at Fortress Wheelrest.
I’ve been spending an absolute FORTUNE at the Alter of Amazon, buying pretty well all the well-recommended books on writing, both on the technical aspects and the inspirational and emotional side of the craft. The stuff that makes you want to sit like a saddo and type away for hours, sometimes about bugger-all. At least as far as those who don’t write, or maybe even read, would see someone like me as I guess.
What has sparked this off then?
Well, it’s a thing called The NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), or Nanowrimo thing
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
You basically start on the first of November, and by the 30th will have sent off at least the minimum 50,000 word draft of a novel, script, or whatever. everyone who manages to get at least those 50,000 words out is a winner.......... there are no prizes, no awards, though, just the satisfaction of achieving those 50,000 words in the month of November, and so being eligible to wear the t-shirts, badges etc, if you wanted to buy and wear them that is. I think I might lash out a few quid for one. :o) 
OK, that's definitely it.
I can’t even blame the long sunny summer we haven’t had again this year. Nope, no excuse, …………especially since I often describe myself as a Wannabe Writer.
Which brings me to the latest obsession that has consumed me for pretty much all of August, and has passed the time whilst looking at the rain from the Sun Room here at Fortress Wheelrest.
I’ve been spending an absolute FORTUNE at the Alter of Amazon, buying pretty well all the well-recommended books on writing, both on the technical aspects and the inspirational and emotional side of the craft. The stuff that makes you want to sit like a saddo and type away for hours, sometimes about bugger-all. At least as far as those who don’t write, or maybe even read, would see someone like me as I guess.
What has sparked this off then?
Well, it’s a thing called The NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), or Nanowrimo thing
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
You basically start on the first of November, and by the 30th will have sent off at least the minimum 50,000 word draft of a novel, script, or whatever. everyone who manages to get at least those 50,000 words out is a winner.......... there are no prizes, no awards, though, just the satisfaction of achieving those 50,000 words in the month of November, and so being eligible to wear the t-shirts, badges etc, if you wanted to buy and wear them that is. I think I might lash out a few quid for one. :o)
The website is just kept ticking over for most of the year, but freshens up and really kicks in, in October in time to encourage everyone to gear up for the 50,000 word-writing marathon for the month of November.
Just imagine if you could do that, eh? Write 50,000 words in a month! It doesn't matter what you write about, or how good it is; the important thing is to write every day for that month, and get those 50,000 words out. At least fifty thousand of the little blighters. One word at a time. Writing something like 1,667 words a day, every day, for a month.
I'm going to aim for at least 2,000 words a day. Absolute minimum. That'll be 60,000 words, and, hell, maybe even more. the big trouble I can see, is no ideas on what to write whatsoever, and if there's no ideas, maybe I won't be able to 'flow' well enough to get those words out every day. Hmmmnnnn I guess I'll have to rely on my ability to ramble about bugger-all, but that will mean 50,000 words about nothing.
Still, all the advice I read from authors has one common thread, and that is to write, even if you don't know what to write. just get the words out, and more often than not, something appears out of all those words and thoughts solidify into some idea, or direction, and the writing takes off on it's own. I know it happens, because I find it happening all the time when I email, write on this blog, or whatever i find myself writing about.
So, I'm optimistic in that I'll succeed in this. it will be good to succeed in something these days.
Writing is very therapeutic in any case, if you need any therapy that is, and even if you don't think you do, it still will have a good effect of one sort or another. Why don't you have a go at it too? It sure would at least give you some focus in that dead November time, when winter weather is starting to really settle in, and Christmas looms just too far ahead to be within grasp.......... for those lucky sods in good enough shape to want to grasp it, that is.
Anyway, read through the blogs............. some are very good, and illustrate how life changing doing something like this can be. It's on the drop-down list under the 'fun Stuff' tag, ...............NaNoWriMo Blog................ but here's the direct link to the blog page anyway........ http://blog.nanowrimo.org/
On the right side, are various peoples blog entries, and some are quite inspiring to read if you take the time to scroll through to those which catch your interest.
Anyway, read through the blogs............. some are very good, and illustrate how life changing doing something like this can be. It's on the drop-down list under the 'fun Stuff' tag, ...............NaNoWriMo Blog................ but here's the direct link to the blog page anyway........ http://blog.nanowrimo.org/
On the right side, are various peoples blog entries, and some are quite inspiring to read if you take the time to scroll through to those which catch your interest.
I'm telling everyone who may be the slightest bit interested, and a good few who couldn't give a shit, all about my commitment to this, and that's to kinda make it all the harder for me to abandon it as soon as it gets to be a struggle. I have to say, it's pretty demoralising to find I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm going to write about, so any suggestions will be welcomed.
OK, that’s me for today. I guess if I aim for shorter blogs, I might write in here more often. mind you, November's gonna be a real lean month for this blog, and for emailing too. I guess I'll leave the web-dating alone too, which will give my ego and self-esteem the world of good for a start.
OK, that’s me for today. I guess if I aim for shorter blogs, I might write in here more often. mind you, November's gonna be a real lean month for this blog, and for emailing too. I guess I'll leave the web-dating alone too, which will give my ego and self-esteem the world of good for a start.
Women, I mean, who needs them anyway? (Sigh)
OK, that's definitely it.
Y’all keep happy. :o)
I need the encouragement, y'see.
K.x :o)
K.x :o)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)