Life in progress

Tag Archives: humour


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2/16 Yesterday’s News – Don’t Try So Hard

In the pursuit of changing it up once in a while, we are encouraged as writers to search for different words to say the same thing. Using the same ones over and over can distract the reader from the point we are trying to make. But at the same time, if we do a bad job of it, the wrong turn of phrase can be even worse than the repetitive one.

Take the article I found in yesterday’s paper for instance. The piece is well written; it concerns the annual recognition of immigrants, refugees and international students learning English as a Second Language. There is no credit given to the writer of the article – credit is given to the paper’s “Staff,” and I have to wonder if this is the reason why:

Second Tongue

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me this phrase conjures up all kinds of horror.

Is it possible to take the whole “find another way to say it” process too far? Absolutely. You have to appreciate it when someone has the guts to publish it in a font four times the size of the rest of the text… but then again, whoever did, lacked the balls to put his/her name on it.  I know I wouldn’t.

“Yesterday’s News” is a challenge I have set for myself to post a blog entry once a day, every day until Hallowe’en, and possibly beyond.


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Does the Irony Never End?

As you may know by now, I have a seventeen year old son who is severely autistic. Occasionally he has violent outbursts at school. He goes to a regular high school and is, for the most part, integrated into regular classes, though he does have a one-on-one EA with him at all times.

Today, when he had one of his outbursts, the school called to let me know. To their credit, this year (it’s new) they have an “in-school suspension room,” where he goes when he misbehaves. Up until this year, I’ve had to pick him up and bring him home for the remainder of the day. The exception this time was that he had pinched his EA, and apparently they don’t put up with physical contact. So they sent him home.

Apparently there are many things the high schools don’t put up with. The “in-school suspension room” is reserved for special needs students. In the case of infractions carried out by mainstream students, such as skipping school, the usual punishment is a three day “at home” suspension.

Yeah.

Maybe it’s the new method of teaching irony in English class.


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Paralyzing Perfectionism

I’m too hard on myself. I know this. I think it’s a common condition in artists of all disciplines – of course, we want to put our best foot forward. What is the use, after all, of showcasing mediocre work?

Even in blogging – maybe especially here on my blog – I tend to wait until I have the best idea before I post. It has to be not only interesting, but worth at least a hundred words (more if possible, but not so many that no one will open it in their reader), and it has to be something that other people can relate to. The grammar and spelling must be as close to perfect as I can achieve, the wording has to be right and with any luck it will evoke at least one emotional response from my readers.

So many requirements! So many, in fact, that often my posts never see the light of day because I don’t deem them good enough. In essence, I paralyze myself with my self-imposed need for perfection.

What is the alternative? Write articles and blog posts that no one wants to read? Put out such drivel that I lose followers?

I think I need to find a happy medium somewhere. There must be one, right? Maybe I should stop proofreading fifteen times – that would certainly cut down on the hours I spend writing only a few lines. It would also allow me more time to work on my course, edit my novel, and – hey, here’s an idea – do housework! Ha!

Nah!

So here’s a question or two: How many times do you proofread your posts? And are you, like me, a perfectionist? Is it a thing artists do, do you think?

Okay, that’s three questions. Maybe I’m not that much of a perfectionist after all. 😉


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Caution: Distracted Driving Ahead

The following sign is on a route which has little pedestrian traffic and is written to target drivers:

DDM

All two sentences of it.

DDM2

…. Seriously?

Or perhaps they should just save energy and put the target on the bumper of the car you’re tailgating while you’re trying to read the stupid sign!

 

 


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Hoarding and the ‘I Told You So’s

I’m a hoarder. There. I admitted it.

That’s not to say that my house is full of stuff I’m never going to use. In fact I love throwing things away. Keeping my life as simple as possible, by not buying what I don’t need and not keeping what I haven’t used in years is something I strive for.

No, my hoarding is reserved for my technological devices. I keep everything, sent and received. Thank goodness for online resources, because I don’t own enough hard drive space to store everything I keep by a long shot.

Why do I keep everything? Some of it is obvious. Pictures, for example, are not easily replaced when they are of family. And stories – I have some as old as ten years and more. Looking back I can see what I’ve done to hone my skills… or at least I like to think I have.

However, it’s my stash of emails that I find the most useful and fascinating. I’m continually moaning about what modern technology has done to disintegrate social interaction: it has become easier and more efficient to email or text than talk to one another. But that’s where the beauty lies.

I remember having arguments with people about what they said or didn’t say. Sometimes these conflicts would last hours, days, even months, and they could never truly be resolved because it was one person’s word against the other. You see where I’m going with this, right?

Now, not only can we retain proof of what was said, a well organized collection of communication can even make it easy to find what we’re looking for, and at the click of a button, we can obtain a proof-positive record of exactly what went down. Not only that, we can record with ease, pictures of the point we’re trying to prove. Say, for instance, you have a friend who ALWAYS does something – take that funny face they make when they’re concentrating for instance – but they are convinced they don’t do it. With technology at our fingertips, all we have to do is whip out that handy phone, snap a pic, and Voila! Told you so!

You didn’t tell me you were going to meet me at 8pm on Thursday for drinks? HA! Here’s the text that proves it!

So there you have it. The reason I hoard everything; because I never know when I’m going to want to prove a point.

And possibly why I don’t have very many friends. 😉


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Squirrels: This Time It’s Personal (part 13)

This is the next installment from the epic Community Storyboard’s Chain Story Event.

Continued from Part 12 by the lovely and talented Belle, found here: Squirrels: This Time It’s Personal (part 12)

“Put us on speaker-phone!” The whiny chittering voice grated in Gandalf’s ear.

“What for, you mealy-mouthed-flea-infested-nut-breath’d…”

“Not so fast!” came a shout from the door. “Treebeard! There’s something in your hair!”

Gandalf turned to see the luscious-locked Aragorn, standing in the doorway pointing at Treebeard’s upper branches. Gandalf’s gaze followed the finger. “A spy!” he exclaimed.

The twittering giggles emitting from the speaker of the phone were making his head ache anew. He slammed down the telephone but then remembered it was a cell phone, so he picked it up again, turned it off and threw it over his shoulder. Meanwhile, the emerald clad Ent was flailing around his living room, simultaneously bashing at his own head to squash the intruder, and fighting off Aragorn, who was attempting to climb the less-than-limber fellow.

Just as Gandalf decided it might be a good idea to join in the fray (because Aragorn was making it look like so much fun) the sneaky squirrel reached Treebeard’s topmost limb and squeaked in triumph.

“Ah ha!” he taunted, one stubby finger in the air. “We have Darlene and now we know to get her out of Fangorn Forest!” The unscrupulous creature slapped his hand over his mouth with a muffled, “Oops!” Quickly forgetting his faux pas, (for squirrels have the attention span of, well, a squirrel) he held his scrawny finger up again and exclaimed, “You’ll never catch me now!” and with that he scampered out the door.

Aragorn perched his fists jauntily upon both hips and turned to Treebeard. “Don’t you ever comb your hair, Entwhistle? It’s a man’s glory, after all, to be well-groomed!”

“Don’t you think we have something more important at hand, ranger?”

The future king looked stunned. “Like what?”

“Like catching yon rodent,” Treebeard explained slowly, as though talking to a toddler. “Freakin’ showoff,” he mumbled as he ambled out the Ent-sized hole in Gandalf’s front entrance. “I’ll go find the critter!” He didn’t look back.

“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, trying to get him to take care of his looks,” Gandalf said. “Did you see that suit?”

They had a chuckle and sat at Gandalf’s kitchen table.

“Coffee?” the wizard offered. “It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any sleep tonight anyway,” he murmured more to himself.

“Sure, but no sugar. I’m sweet enough.”

Gandalf looked up and winced when he saw a glint shine off Aragorn’s tooth. Damn, but he was handsome.

“It seems we have a problem,” the charming ranger said, flipping his shimmering tresses over his shoulder. “Did you know Gosling and Mc Adams were murdered in cold blood?”

“I heard.”

“Ah, but there’s more of a problem than meets the eye. You see, I anointed Gosling with a mission…”

“What do you mean, ‘anointed’? Did you drop it on his head?” The wizard sat and rested his elbows on the table, across from the man.

“As a matter of fact I did. Don’t interrupt. As I was saying, Gosling was on a mission of my anointment,” he challenged Gandalf with his menacing but well-plucked eyebrows, but Gandalf refused to take up the gauntlet. Aragorn went on. “But now it seems I have forgotten what the mission was. I know it was important.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Gandalf facepalmed.

“But all is not lost!”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, you see, I’m working on resurrecting Gosling. I found his missing kidney and between myself and Legolas I think we can have him up and working on the case within the next few hours.”

“And Mc Adams?”

Aragorn looked sincerely forlorn. “I’m afraid our only hope is to find her missing heels. Those gams…” He stared off into space.

“Ranger!”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I had Smeagol sift through the rubble at the Burgundy Herring Seafood Shack and Pool Hall. That’s where he found the evidence that they’d taken Darlene. But devastatingly, the second heel was nowhere to be found.”

The old man shook his wizened gray head. “What a shame. I suppose we should get out there and search for the waitress. She might have gathered some information on the ‘Goddess’ since she’s been in the slimy paws of those…” He shuddered.

“After coffee.” Aragorn lifted his cup to his full lower lip and Gandalf couldn’t help notice the rippling of well-toned muscles under the man’s tunic.

Get ahold of yourself man! Gandalf thought. Too much time hanging around with Dumbledore.

“…a shower.” Aragorn had been speaking while he was off on his own little fantasy-tangent.

“What?” he asked the glimmering king-to-be.

“I’d like to have a shower before we go, too. Do you have any Pantene?”

This is going to be a long night, Gandalf grumbled to himself.

And that’s my bit. I’m passing the gauntlet to Briana Vedsted. Take it away, Briana!


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Summer Camp

You never know what you’ve got until you lose it. It’s a saying we hear all the time; sometimes in moments of profound loss, sometimes it’s trivial. In my case, in many ways it’s the latter.

There’s no summer camp for my youngest son this week. I used to think it was a luxury to have the time to write. Now, however, my luxuries include sitting for more than two minutes at the table to eat a meal without being interrupted, showering, and going to the washroom.

The latter of these I believe, falls into the profound category.

So if you see a woman walking around the grocery store buying finger foods, with stringy hair and smudges of dirt on her face and with eyes bulging out of her sockets and her legs crossed, try not to point and laugh. It’s probably just a woman who’s missing summer camp.

Oh! Oh! Can I play?

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noughtsandcrosses (1)


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Cows are rarely wrong

Back when I was five years old, I remember being on vacation with my mother in England. On this particular day that so clearly comes to mind, we were driving to the seaside. My uncle, who was driving, told me that it was a good sign that the cows were standing up in the pastures as we drove by.

“Why?” I asked in a perfectly five year old fashion.

“Because when the cows lay down it means it’s going to rain,” he explained.

Since that time I’ve taken predictive cow thing to the next level – to a degree of percentages. So for instance, if three quarters of the cows in a field are standing up, there is a potential for a 25% chance of rain.

So today I was driving to where my son was at camp. It was out in the middle of nowhere and inevitably I passed a field where there were horses and only one cow. It was bright and sunny, but the cow was laying down.

Shit, it’s going to rain, thought I.

When I passed the same cow on my way home, my windshield wipers going as fast as they could, I nodded to the cow.


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Adventures on my Paper Route – Angry Birds and a Plucking

It’s been a while since I last had anything to post about on my paper route. Of late my walk around the block has been lacking in anything adventurous… but now I have two things to report!

First, one of my customers has a robin’s nest tucked into the corner of the overhang above his front door where the mailbox is located. Every day I’m dive-bombed by an anxious male robin when I try to deliver the paper. Who knew male robins could be so aggressive? I would never hurt it, but it flies so close to my head that all I would need to do is raise my hand and I could knock the silly thing out of the air.

In other news, they trimmed Nosehair!

Before

Before

After

After

I’m not sure if Nosehair is pleased with his freshly plucked proboscis… I, on the other hand, am considering a new nickname for my leafy friend. Any suggestions?