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.

A to Z Challnge - W is for Where?

As in, "where is my computer?"

My PC started making a lot of noise yesterday,  right when I was about to get started on my 1000 words for the day on my new book. Isn't that always the way? The noise, as I explained to my son who is a computer techie, not a theatre techie, sounded like the engine of a jet plane revving up for take off. "Not good," my techie son responded. "That could be a fan getting ready to shut down, and bad, bad things happen to a computer if a fan goes out."

Since my son lives too far away to come a fix my computer at a moment's notice, it is in a local computer fix-it shop, hopefully getting fixed.  That also means all my files and pictures are also at the shop, and I have nothing on my little back-up notebook with which to do my regular blog post for the Challenge.

This has nothing to do with the topic. Just a pretty wildflower that blooms in my yard.

So, I will just share with you a couple of things from the newspaper. First, a few weeks ago I read an item in the Dallas Morning News about the city's response to a homeowners attemt to save water. Burton Knight lives in the Junius Heights Historic District of the city, and the city's Landmark Commission has ruled that his yard is not "historically appropriate."

Knight, who has a horticulture degree from Texas A &M, planted his yard in cactus and native plants that thrive in heat and drought. That was his contribution to water conservation that is vital in Texas, but the Commission  After several years of drought, we need to be looking at ways to ensure that we do not face a serious water crisis. Replacing the lush lawns of so many homes and businesses with landscaping that does not require millions of gallons of water to thrive seems like a good place to start. And what could be more historically accurate than the native plants that have grown in Texas for hundreds of years?
 So that's my rant for the day. Now, here is some fun from the comics:

This is from Pearls Before Swine. Rat is telling Goat, "I've concluded that the key to living an ethical life is to always pause before I do anything and ask myself that key moral question."

"Which is what;"

"Can I get away with it?"

"I don't think that's moral."

"Well, not if you get caught."

Friday's Odds and Ends

Here's some recent news regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline. Twenty-eight Vermont towns added their voices this week to the chorus of national and international; opposition to tar sands expansion by passing “tar sands free” and related tar sands resolutions in the past two days. This recent batch of local resolutions brings the total number to 33 in the region, and 49 when including resolutions in Québec. The U.S. resolutions state concerns about the environmental and public health hazards of tar sands or explicitly oppose sending tar sands through ExxonMobil’s Portland-Montreal Pipeline.

Tar sands oil is a particularly dirty form of oil that utilizes a carbon-intensive process to transform the tar into usable oil. The State Department just reported that the tar sands in Keystone XL will release up to 19 percent more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. Tar sands spills are particularly risky and difficult to clean-up given the oil’s unique properties that cause the oil to sink in water.

If you are interested in adding your voice to the opposition, you can sign a pledge with CREDO Action. The oil companies have their voices in Washington, we have to add ours. 

Protect the Earth

Now just for fun, some comics:

This one is from B. C. - one of Wiley's proverbs - "Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll drink beer and pass out with a pole in his hand."

Another from Pearls Before Swine last Sunday. Pig is complaining to goat about his sister who is always borrowing something every time she comes over.  Goat tells pig to just tell her how he feels, and pig says he has tried but she doesn't listen.

So goat tells pig to draw it out for her. "Say, look sis, we're like planets, ech moving in our own ellipse, but sometimes outr orbits intersect and during that time you always want things."

Goat draws the intersecting planets and then Pig's sister walks in, asking to borrow a tack. Pig says no, and the sister pushes until Pig says, "Read my ellipse, no new tacks, sis."

In the last panel, goat goes to Stephen Pastis and says, "You ruin my entire Sunday."

This has been an exciting week, celebrating Read An E-Book Week. I have run two specials and am so happy that people were able to get my stories free for a few days. My historical mystery,  Boxes For Beds will still be free through Saturday, so grab a copy if you have not already. And if you are so inclined, leave a review on Amazon. That is always so helpful to other readers who may be considering the book for purchase later.

Pardon me while I experiment with embedding a Tweet. I am trying to learn how to embed videos and other things.

Boxes For Beds now #3 in mystery/historical for #Kindle. Thanks to all who got a copy. tiny.cc/pdxktw
— Maryann Miller (@maryannwrites) March 8, 2013

 Hey! It worked. What do you know. (smile)

Just for Fun

You know how much I enjoy reading the comic strips in the newspaper. Part of the reason is just the pure fun, but there is always a bit of truth in them, too.

This one from One Big Happy resonated with me and my hubby. Ruthie is watching TV with her grandfather and he says, "This is the reality show where the nasty rich housewives fuss with one another."

Then Grandpa changes the channel. "And  this is the reality show where the fishermen risk their lives in the freezing Arctic Ocean."

Ruthie thinks for a moment then asks, "Isn't there a show where the rich and nasty housewives fall off a boat into some freezing ocean?"

"I wish."

(Me, too.)

This is from Pearls Before Swine. Rat says to Goat, "Why do we allow people to bribe congressmen?"

"We don't. It's illegal."

"What are you talking about? Rich corporations are always giving these idiots money to vote in a certain way."

"Yeah, but those aren't bribes. They're campaign contributions."

To which Rat responds, "For the smart guy in this strip, you're pretty moronic."