Friday's Odds and Ends

Another week has whizzed by. I was busy all week preparing for the big garage sale at the Winnsboro Center For the Arts, which didn't leave much time for writing, but I did get a few thousand words done on my current work in progress. How was your week? I hope it was productive and, most of all, fun.
 

This is Sammy. He likes to take over my office chair.

 I was dismayed to read about a bridal shop in Akron Ohio that closed because of the fear of Ebola. Apparently, Amber Benson, the Dallas nurse who had Ebola, had been a customer at that store and when news of that was revealed, customer stopped going to the store. The owner, Anna Younker, was quoted as saying, "It's like our store had cooties."

How sad.

The attack on the newspaper in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, was still big news for another week, raising a continuous flurry of news reports and commentary on the Muslim religion and its penchant for violence. Too often the reporting insinuated that all Muslims are terrorists, and it is only the Islam religion that promotes violence. That is simply not true. Throughout history other religions including Christianity have been twisted to support the right to kill in the name of that religion. Just think about the Holocaust. Just think about the battles between Protestants and Catholics that went on for so many years in Ireland. The truth is that none of these religions promote violence. They all teach about love and peace and tolerance. It is people who take those religious beliefs and tenets and twist them to serve their own purposes.

Friday's Funnies starts with this from Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis. In the first panel Goat is talking on cell phone and says, "Hey dad, did you get the Ken Burns Civil War D.V.D. I sent you for your birthday?"

"Yeah what do I do with it?"

"You put it in the D.V.D. player I got you."

"Where?"

"In the little tray."

"What tray?"

"The little tray in the D.V.D. player."

"Which one is the D.V.D. player?"

"On top of the TV set."

Dad says, "Okay okay gimme a minute will ya.....? There okay I got it in and now I'm watching an explosion."

"Good. You're watching the Civil War?"

"No. No. The TV exploded."

Goat walks over to Pig and says, "Never by your parents anything invented in the last 30 years."

(I think my kids say that about me, too.)

This one is from Dustin by Steve Kelly and Jeff Parker. Dustin and his friend, Fitch, are in a convenience store. Fitch is holding a lottery ticket and says, "This is it Dustin. This is the one."

Dustin says, "Seriously Fitch? A lottery ticket?"

"Absolutely, Dude. I've got a feeling about this one."

"Fitch, why do you keep throwing away money on those things?"

"You can't win if you don't play, man."  Then Fitch scratches off the ticket, looks up and says, "Lost again. Man, I wish I had a dollar for every time that happened."
  
Today's Writing Wisdom comes from Xander Bennet from his blog post, How Not to Write a Screenplay that was first posted last spring. Xander is a a screenwriter and author and his blog is all about writing and film. In this post he has an extensive list of things not to do, and amidst the humor are some points we all could take to heart as we write, no matter what form our writing takes. Here are just a few of the things we should not do:

Agonize over your script’s title.
Start a pointless argument on Twitter.
Decide you need to do more research. Fall down a Wikipedia hole and forget what you were doing.
Change your screenwriting software.
Wait for your manager/agent/friend/reader to email you back.
Make more coffee; you need it.
Eat more snacks; you earned them.

Monday Morning Musings

Today I thought we'd just have some fun here on the blog. I did not watch the news at all over the weekend, although I did buy a newspaper on Sunday, but I only read the comics. Usually I read the editorials as well, but never got past the funny papers yesterday. Several of the strips had me nodding and chuckling, so I thought I would share them.

First we have this from Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelley:

Senator Batson D. Belfry is holding a press conference, telling Shoe and Cosmo, "I was on an important trade mission to Pango Tango in the Pacific. And of course, I needed assistance from my staff,  so naturally my executive assistant, Miss Starlight, had to accompany me. And those, um, incidences at the resort pool and Tiki bar were misreported by the press. So a clarification of the subsequent arrest by the Pango Tango police is in order."

Cosmo sighs and says, "Here he goes again burning the scandal at both ends."

Next up is this from Non Sequitur by Wiley:

A future President of the United States is sitting in an easy chair in a cave being interviewed by a reporter, and the reporter says, "Okay... so it turned out there wasn't an advanced army of alien roaches hiding inside the moon preparing to invade earth right?"

The president says, "So?
 
"So? You blew up the moon for nothing, resulting in disastrous consequences on a planetary scale."
 
The president sips a martini. "I fundamentally disagree with that."

The reporter stops writing in his notebook, "Wait... you disagree about the actual results of your actions?"

The president nods, "Facts are debatable"
 
"Blowing up the moon puts us back to living in caves and on the verge of extinction."

The president waves one hand. "Like dwelling on the past is going to change that? So let's stay focused on what we should do now."
 
"Like trying to blame all of it on the current administration for not putting the moon back together? Right?"
 
"Oh, like that's so much to ask?"

Finally one from Dustin by Steve Kelly and Jeff Parker:

Dustin's parents are at a restaurant for dinner, and the waiter steps up to the table. He says, "We have a sumptuous dessert special this evening. It's seven sheets of flourless chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, in between glazed and rich chocolate ganache dusted with cocoa powder and topped with dark chocolate shavings.

"The chef calls it 'Death by Chocolate.'"

Dustin's father says, "Actually were trying to watch our diets. Could you just bring enough to put us in critical condition?"

Did any of these make you laugh? I didn't laugh at the one from Non Sequitur. That one was too much like reality to be funny. And I do wish that waiter would come to my house and offer me that dessert.