Still the best backhanded compliment I’ve ever received:
My best friend John, to me: “It’s nice having you or someone intelligent to talk to once in a while.”
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/why-thank-you/
What’s the best (or rather, worst) backhanded compliment you’ve ever received? If you can’t think of any — when’s the last time someone paid you a compliment you didn’t actually deserve?
The quickest way to a man’s heart really is through his stomach, because then you don’t have to chop through that pesky rib cage.
– J. Jacques
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
“Smile and the world smiles with you.
Fart, and you stand alone.”
~ my best friend John’s t-shirt
______________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who would like to try it out may feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post. If you do, please ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet. It’s a great way to meet new bloggers!
The rules that I’ve made for myself for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
I admit it: sometimes when I want something I’ll play stupid to get it.
Take for instance the laptop battery that I’ve been waiting for since May from Best Buy. They screwed up once and in return promised me a free battery, but it’s taking forever to arrive. I’ve called them countless times on the matter but it never seems to go anywhere. There comes a point when I just get tired of explaining myself to everyone I talk to. Eventually my answer becomes, “I don’t know.”
When did we first order the part? the Geek Squad guy asks.
I don’t know.
I’ll look it up.
This, from my perspective is a good thing because a) it forces them to admit they’ve screwed up somewhere and b) it means they’re actually looking at the problem rather than just listening to me complain while they gaze around the store at the pretty girls looking at iPads and/or pick their noses.
Then there’s my newspaper, which was cut off today because I got a new credit card and didn’t call them to give them an updated expiry date. So I call them to ask why my paper didn’t come.
It looks like all we need is your payment information. Did you not get a notice in the mail?
I didn’t see one. (I’m of course lying.)
Oh, well I’ll update that for you today and get a paper out to you right away. I’m not sure why your carrier didn’t mention it to you.
I don’t see my carrier. (Again, blatant lie. I AM my own carrier. I don’t, however, have a lot of mirrors in my house…)
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Don’t let it happen again. (Okay, I didn’t really say that, but what fun it would have been!)
I’m not a liar when it comes to anything else, but I’m certainly not beyond acting like an idiot when it comes to dealing with company’s bureaucracies. There’s nothing more annoying than being brushed off when you pay good money for a service: you shouldn’t have to fight for it if you’re paying for it!
Am I alone in this practice? Tell me you’ve done something similar. Please.
The people in my town are polite – I’ve written about how dangerously polite they are in the past. But today, on the city bus, I found out how far it really goes.
Take, for instance, the graffiti:
Here’s something a little edgier: It originally said, “All your base are belong to us,” until a handy grammarian came along and corrected it to, “All your bases belong to us.”
I swear it wasn’t me.
When I write short fiction, I like people to have to think about what they’ve read. I tend not to over-explain things – I think of short fiction the way I think of a joke. If you have to explain it, it loses something.
My father had a very dry sense of humour. Think John Cleese, and you’ll have an idea of what my dad was like. For years I didn’t “get” his jokes – say from the ages of 0 to 4. After that I learned to think about what I was being told, and to this day I prefer dry humour over any other kind. So my fiction – at least anything shorter than a novel – leans that way, especially the funny fiction. It’s different with longer works. I know when I don’t understand a novel I usually end up putting it down because it only gets worse.
But I often wonder if I’m being too obscure. Take the little story I wrote yesterday. It makes sense if you can figure out what I’ve done with it… but I have no idea if anyone who read it, did. If you’d like to humour me and give it a read, it’s only about 100 words long. Here it is: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/fishin-pole-blues/
Otherwise, I’d like to hear from you. What do you prefer? Do you like to think about what you read in fiction? Or do you prefer to have it all laid out?
When asked by a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood, “Dear Abby” replied, “You could move.”
― Abigail Van Buren
______________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
In my infinite wisdom borne of never having enough of a challenge in my life, I’ve decided to join Camp NaNoWriMo, which starts July 1st. My goal is to write 25,000 words of the sequel to the novel I started and failed as a NanoWriMo project in November of 2011. That one took me 18 months to finish. I’m not under any delusion that I can get the sequel done in a month, so I won’t even try.
But wait, Linda, I hear you saying. You can’t even reply to the comments on your blog, what makes you think you can take on another project?
To answer that question, I have no idea other than that I need to start being creative again or I will go completely around the bend. I’m halfway there now, and let me tell you, the scenery ’round there is scary-dark and smells ominously like a fart.
Is it worse than getting lost in the woods while at Camp Nano? There’s only one way to find out. I figure I should be okay as long as I don’t come across any bears — ‘coz you know what THEY do in the woods.
I invented “One-Liner Wednesday” mostly as an excuse to post something small – be it an inspirational quote or something humorous – that is equivalent to Facebook blather or a tweet. I often get more out of the comments on these sentence-long posts than other articles which take me minutes, or even hours, to write. It’s you, my amazing followers, who make it happen. Thank you.
And so I’d like to extend an invitation. Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here or on my weekly “One-Liner” post to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
That’s it.
I’d be delighted to make this a “thing,” so to speak. At the very least, I’d love to give back to my lovely audience by connecting you all to each other.
C’mon – give it a try, and find some new, interesting blogs!
What’s stranger than standing in the bug spray aisle at the pharmacy and having to swat away a mosquito?
lindaghill.com 