A Quiet Week

My Poster (Photo credit: Tabbymom Jen)

As far as blogging is concerned, that is.  

As far as the rest of me goes, here’s this week’s schedule:

• Monday PM:    A free stressbuster workshop in Stockport.  It’s free!  And a workshop!  Why would you think I wouldn’t go?
• Tuesday PM:    Dentist-mouth search-lots of gagging (she says my breath stinks).
• Wednesday All Day:    A visit to Sheffield University with Spud, to check it out.  Yay!  Trains!  I love trains!
• Thursday AM:    Very AM, 07:50 a.m., to be precise.  Doctor’s appointment-begging-pleading-fix my whinging please, doctor!
• Thursday Middle of the PM:   Seven Brides For Seven Brothers at the Manchester Opera House with generous friend for final fiftieth birthday treat; followed by dinner out.  Singin’-dancin’-sobbin’ wimmin.  Almost as good as travelling on trains!
• Friday Middle of the PM:   Ender’s Game opens in cinemas.  The Hub has already warned me I’m going to hate it because it won’t be like I see it in my head when I read (and re-read and re-read) the book.  I don’t care.  He’s taking me.

You won’t see much of me online so please don’t take it personally.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – Movie CD cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

See you on the other side!

Ender’s Game (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Beginning Of The Enderverse

Regular readers of this blog know, having been told over and over (and assuming that they were paying attention), that Ender’s Game by Scorson Ott card…let me re-type that, I’m so excited!…by Orson Scott Card, is my Desert Island Book. Assuming, that is, that they give you a book on top of the Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare.  If not, I might have to take it as my luxury item instead of the giant vat of Vaseline I had set my heart upon.

Vaseline is fabulous:

• Lubricant: to grease rusted screws from washed-up airplane parts that I can turn into three-storey homes and life rafts
• Skin softener: to protect me from the harsh elements
• Lip salve: Vaseline’s most vital function in my own universe: have you ever tried smiling at strangers when your lips are cracked?  Don’t.  It frightens them
• Frying grease: I’ll need all my fat stores, obviously, because I can’t hunt or grow vegetables.  My best hope will be to eat suicidal sharks.  I’ve eaten shark.  It tastes fishy.  But I don’t do sushi, hence the Vaseline.  Fat stores are the reason I don’t diet – in case of desert island castawaying.  I find a good precaution is never wasted
• Sore sealant: it’s what they put on boxers’ cuts to stop the blood obscuring their vision as they pound each other to pulp.  Which brings me back to Ender’s Game:

My beloved eldest son (this month’s favourite child as a result of what I’m about to tell you) sent me a link yesterday: the film of the book is FINALLY made!

The book was written in 1985 and is beloved around the world, but various attempts to film it were defeated because the Battle Room was just too difficult to turn into hard copy.

Thankfully, CGI is now so sophisticated, the dream has become reality. Imaginary reality, of course, but you get my drift.  Remember – the enemy’s gate is down!

I’m sure it won’t be the only book in the series to be filmed, but I do hope they go the Bean route rather than the Ender route.

You don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t care: I’m happy in my own little world.  Unlike poor Ender, a lonely child soldier.

Dystopian futures – I love ’em.  Ho!

 

 

Prompters, Panic & Sharpened Pencils

I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.

I hope you don’t mind another prompt post.  I had  42 prompts sitting in my inbox, begging to be answered.

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Take the first sentence from your favorite book and make it the first sentence of your post.

I don’t think you thought this through, dear prompter: the first line of this post bears no relation to the rest of the post; shouldn’t you have instructed me to carry on the story?  As it is, all I have is a confused reader and a line from Ender’s Game – being made into a movie at last, at last, at last! 

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What’s the most surreal experience you’ve ever had?

Front garden of the Big Breakfast house (Photo credit: Ben Sutherland)

Meeting a pretend stripper and a pretend gangster on The Big Breakfast.

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Now that you’ve got some blogging experience under your belt, re-write your very first post.

The original post:

[I didn’t know how to use the colour icon back then]

I’ve just had my teenage son sort me out with my own blog; now I have to hope
1. I can think of something interesting to write and
2. I can get some people to read it.

Mission Statement: to be amusing (mission: impossible)

Welcome, new reader;  I hope you enjoy this as much as I expect to.

Now for the official bit: you can’t reproduce anything on this site without my permission; it all belongs to me…nnnhhhaahhhaaahhaaaaa! (Wicked laughter, not a raspberry)

The re-written post:

I swear I’m funny; please like me.

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Tell us about a teacher who had a real impact on your life, either for the better or the worse. How is your life different today because of him or her?

Mr Lever marked down my English essay because I used the word ‘amoral’, which he said did not exist.  I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary.  It did and does exist.  I did not have the courage to prove my point.

I now have a compulsive obsession to make fun of WordPress prompters who make grammar and punctuation errors* and if they dare misspell a word…well, let’s just say it’s not pretty.

*Should that be ‘grammatical and punctuational errors’?  I’ve lost my Cassell Guide To Common Errors In English so I can’t check.

GrammarlyonFB (Photo credit: tengrrl)

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You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.

An angry WordPress prompter with a grammar handbook in one hand and a well-sharpened pencil in the other.  I suspect they suffer from dacnomania, brought on by pedantic bloggers and evil dentists.

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Honestly evaluate the way you respond to crisis situations. Are you happy with the way you react?

•  If it’s a bomb threat, I have no problem speaking quietly to the store manager and calling for an orderly evacuation.
• If the building is on fire when I am seven months’ pregnant, I have no problem ensuring all students have been evacuated from the classrooms before evacuating myself.
• Ahem.  I mean, I have no problem ensuring all students have been evacuated from the classrooms before I leave the building in an orderly if somewhat clumsy fashion.
• If the door is locked and there’s an angry prompter with a sharpened pencil, I have no problem screaming as I scratch at the window in a  futile attempt to avoid being…well, let’s just say it’s not pretty.

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I’m pleased to see you had no trouble spotting yesterday’s word, cunctation (procrastination; delay).  I hope my use of it didn’t put you off.

 

 

 

Catching Up With Prompts

Image by Dunechaser via Flickr

What is your biggest frustration about driving?

That I don’t.  I did once, until a nasty man was mean to me and I lost my nerve.  Not that I had much nerve to start with: three attempts to pass my test, and I bawled my eyes out during each one.

Remember something important you’ve lost.

My nerve (previous prompt refers).  And my mind.  I had one once.  It all goes into the first baby, you know.  The nurse at my ante-natal class told us that babies are parasites.  I wonder if she thought it was an anti-natal class?

Suggest a way for the government to unload foreclosed properties without swamping the already depressed real estate market.

Don’t foreclose in the first place.  Give the people you’ve made unemployed because of your mishandling of the economy a breathing space.

When is it ok to quit something?

When you’ve made everyone unemployed and homeless and you realise you don’t know how to handle the economy.

Write your bucket list.

• Mop
• Plastic
• Metal
• Seat

That’s all I’ve got.

Write a top ten list of your favorite songs.

Dear WordPress: why the sudden preoccupation with lists?  Why do you want me to bore my readers?  Who finds these lists interesting except the person who wrote them?

Dear readers: just remembered I’ve read at least half a dozen of your top ten songs lists.  Sorry.

Dear reader: thanks for staying.

Assemble your dream dinner guest list.

Seriously?  Did you not read my last response?

Sigh.

Okay then:

• any model/actress/WAG.

They’ll be on diets, meaning I get all the roast potatoes.

If you could be part of any fictional universe, what would it be?

I first thought of Harry Potter’s world, but I guarantee I wouldn’t be Hermione or Dumbledore.  At best, I’d be Luna; at worst, I’d be a squib.

I’d join Ender but, let’s face it: saviour of the planet, yes; barrel of laughs, no.

Perhaps Georgette Heyer’s Regency England?  Hmm…what are the chances I’d be the maid who empties the chamber pots (never mentioned, but you just know she’s lurking in the background)?  Or worse: the cook.

I’d join Jean-Luc on the Enterprise because of our shared love of Tea, Earl Grey, hot, and rigid adherence to good manners; but that Dr Beverley Crusher never lets him out of her sight and for all I know she could be well-named.

No, I think I’ll stay in my own universe of happy marriage, perfect kids and successful blog.  They don’t come more fictional than that.

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Related articles

• If you could be part of any fictional universe, what would it be? (greenskyoutside.wordpress.com)
• If you could be part of any fictional universe, what would it be? (iamdustdaughter.wordpress.com)
• A simple post without prompting (laurieanichols.wordpress.com)
• PLINKY: daily writing prompts available (kinklogs.wordpress.com)

Here’s The Post (Eventually)

Image via Wikipedia

It’s drafty in here – 31 draft posts, to be precise.  Trolling through them for tomorrow’s joke, I came across this one that I forgot to publish:

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Do a post about your favorite posts from last month. Go take a look at everything you published in May. Pick the top 5 posts you liked the most, and put them together into a post for today, with commentary on what you’ve learned about those topics since then.

This took a while: May 2011 was my most prolific month – 91 posts.  How do you manage to keep up with the reading?  If you’ve got any sense you’ll just click ‘Like’ and move on.*

*I don’t mean it.  Stay.  Read.  Visit a while.  Comment.  Tell your friends about me.  All of them.

• https://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/joke-51/
• What I’ve learned since then is that the Hub can never win an argument.  Well, not so much learned, as proved.
• https://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/broken-promise/
• I’ve learned that I’m a bore when I talk about my favourite book.  Also that I don’t care: it’s my favourite book; it should be everybody’s favourite book.
• https://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/hes-still-here-hes-still-here-hes-still-here-hes-still-here/
• I’ve learned that a child can leave home, live dangerously, and Mother can survive.  Not like it, but survive it.
• https://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/stockports-finest/
• I didn’t learn anything about our brave soldiers, because I already know they are the finest in the world; but I did learn yesterday that Tévez wants to leave City.  That’s fine; I prefer my footballers pretty, anyway.  I’m not offended at all, even though we made him a football hero and one week of his wages could fund twenty real heroes.
• https://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/dance-like-youre-bonkers/
• I’ve learned nothing about Moldova since this post.  Shame on me.  Is it a country? 

Broken Promise

Image by Myles! via Flickr

Who is the character from a book that has made you feel so close to him/her that you simply can’t stop thinking what’s gonna happen next?

Gonna?  Really?  In what purports to be a serious question?

I’m annoyed: I had taken up Nancy’s challenge not to make fun of the WordPress prompter for a stretch but, really, ‘gonna’?  Now I have to start all over again.

Gonna have to cut&paste an old post for some of my answer because I’m too irritated to write anything new:

Desperate for something to write about, I turned to Plinky Prompts again. It asked me ‘What book would you read over and over again?’

I would have to say, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. It started life as a short story that became a novel and then a series of books, the Ender Saga and the Bean Saga (Bean is a minor character in the first book). I prefer the Bean Saga because they are more like Ender’s Game; the Ender Saga is dreadful, apart from the first book.

Ender’s Game is the story of a child trained to save the world; but also the story of a child who has to survive the world. When my boys came up against bullies, I gave it to them to read. I must confess, however, that putting your enemy’s nose through his skull is not a path I hope they take: it is the philosophical angle I hope they will consider.

Above all, it is the story of negotiating childhood. In space.

Here’s a review from I know not who on Amazon:

Whenever I talk about this book, it’s hard not to make it sound like I am a science fiction junkie. I love and defend sci-fi, but I am not limited to the genre. Neither, I think, is this magnificent book. To label it simply a sci-fi classic would be like labeling “Moby Dick” a great book about boats. All great books, regardless of the genre, say something truly profound about the human condition.

Ender is a good child trying to do the right thing, but circumstances forced upon him make him a killer.  He is sweet and vulnerable and ruthless.  I love him. 

It’s such a shame that the rest of his story is dull dull dull.  He deserves better than OSC gave him.

There are constant rumours that there’s going to be a movie of Ender’s Game.  Now that technology has caught up with Card’s imagination, I’m hopeful that eventually the rumours will prove to be true.  This is probably the only instance, however, where I hope that if they do film it, the sequels don’t follow the book’s sequels. 

Ender deserves better.  Ho!

On T’Ender Books

I love the latest Madam & Eve cartoon:

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There’s not much happening here in TillyBudLand.  The weather is turning colder and Tilly Bud is getting older.  That’s it, really.  Desperate for something to write about, I turned to Plinky Prompts again.  It asked me ‘What book would you read over and over again?’  I would have to say, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card.  It started life as a short story that became a novel and then a series of books, the Ender Saga and the Bean Saga (Bean is a minor character in the first book).  I prefer the Bean Saga because they are more like Ender’s Game; the Ender Saga is dreadful, apart from the first book.

Ender’s Game is the story of a child trained to save the world; but also the story of a child who has to survive the world.  When my boys came up against bullies, I gave it to them to read.  I must confess, however, that putting your enemy’s nose through his skull is not a path I hope they take: it is the philosophical angle I hope they will consider.

Above all, though, it is the story of negotiating childhood.  In space.

What’s your favourite book?