Sunday, July 14, 2013
MUST READ! SEVEN KEYS to Prosperity, Wealth, and Happiness!
MUST READ: Seven Keys to Lifelong Properity (Read
right now this minute or your nose will fall off)
Hey! Do you like to read those catchy lists you’re seeing everywhere these days, listing ten or seven or nineteen Best Ofs or Worst Ofs or Craziest or Sanest or Most Gross and Disgusting? YOU DO? Then, hey - this is your lucky day! So let's read it right now this minute: WHY WE SHOULD READ LISTS!
1. Lists are the hot thing now! They really are! That means they're good! Lists catch everybody’s attention! That means they want to read them, RIGHT NOW! That means they SHOULD read them, right now! That means they DO read them, RIGHT NOW!
2. It doesn’t matter if the lists have any content or not because that’s not the point! In fact, the less content the lists have, the better!
3. Lists make us think the person who made the list KNOWS SOMETHING! It means he looks SMART and isn't just somebody with the intelligence of an orangutan!
4. Not only that! Because the items are NUMBERED, the list makes us think that this person knew how to PUT THESE THINGS IN ORDER! Really! They’re not just slammed up here randomly to fill space (even if they are).
5. These lists are almost always accompanied by pop-up ads that pop up (maybe that’s why they’re called pop-up ads!), like popcorn or gophers or some other thing that pops up (maybe Pop Tarts?). Nobody knows why that is! But nobody cares, either!
6. Lists kind of boil everything down to a few words of one syllable so you don’t have to do any actual reading or thinking, which is a real time-saver in today’s stress-filled world!
7. Seven things is too many things to come up with right now so we’ll just say seven things even though it’s really six, because “six things” just sounds totally lame, you know? (And who's counting anyway?) But SEVEN things just seems magical, special, and something you JUST HAVE TO READ. And DON'T say I made a mistake in the title cuz I speled it in Tweetspeak where shorter is always better!
What your mother never told you about writing
If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.
Poppy Z. Brite
Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?
Bennett Cerf
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
William Faulkner
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
Gustave Flaubert
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Robert A. Heinlein
It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in January.
Richard Krzemien
Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.
Rosemary Mahoney
A person who publishes a book wilfully appears before the populace with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.
Paul Valery
Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
Jessamyn West
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.William Zinsser
Easy reading is damned hard writing.
Anonymous
William Faulkner
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
Gustave Flaubert
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Robert A. Heinlein
It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in January.
Richard Krzemien
Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.
Rosemary Mahoney
A person who publishes a book wilfully appears before the populace with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.
Paul Valery
Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
Jessamyn West
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.William Zinsser
Easy reading is damned hard writing.
Anonymous
Sex and cigarettes
How is it that when certain movies come on TV, you drop what you're doing and watch them even if you don't like them very much? Or, at least, when said movies are seriously flawed.
This happens with Now, Voyager - EVERY time. Though I know it's nothing more than a semi-intelligent soaper with pretensions of a Heroic Journey (circa 1942), there's just something about Miz Charlotte and her travail (tra-Vale?) that sucks me in every time.
Speaking of suck. From the beginning of this thing, even before Charlotte Vale the sad little rich girl metamorphoses into Charlotte Vale the sad little rich WOMAN (having been screwed in the tropics by Gerry, the biggest asshole to come down the turnpike since Jimmy Cagney shoved the grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face), there is smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. Charlotte the repressed spinster smokes in her room, and it's a wonder she doesn't set the whole place on fire by being so secretive with her butts.
Suck, suck, suck. Just picture all those cancer cells forming deep down in the lungs. Yet in that era, sex and seduction were all intertwined with cigarettes. In this movie, smoking is more ritualized than in any other I can think of. Gerry (a carnivorous bastard happily juggling two women, neither of which can actually have him) has a charming habit of shoving two cigarettes in his face, lighting them both in a great livid explosion, then handing one of them to Charlotte like she's being granted her last wish before being executed.
Ah, those smoldering looks. He can afford to smolder because he has no goddamn responsibilities whatsoever. This is one of several things that bother the hell out me about this movie - that, and the way he is portrayed as some sort of saint when he's really just busy cattin' around from woman to woman and blowing lots of smoke. The other thing that sets my teeth on edge is that daughter of his, Tina, a whiny, clingy sort of lamprey whom Charlotte fastens on to as a DEVICE (no less) to force Gerry to stay in her life and not chase the next piece of tail that comes down the turnpike.
Ahhhh! Gerry in that tent or wherever-the-fuck they are! Out somewhere. Anyway, they're all bundled up talking (smoking, too, I think) and there's this big fire in the fireplace, and then the fire burns down real low and the camera pans back to them and it looks like she's wearing his pajamas. This means they must have had sex. Charlotte keeps referring to it over and over again in the most coy manner possible, i. e. telling her fiance (whom she rejects, maybe because he's too nice or doesn't smoke enough) that she "must sound depraved", which she does. But when you think about it, screwing around with a married man IS a form of moral turpitude and can't really be defended, even if Charlotte takes on the noble, selfless role of Tina's quasi-mother to save Gerry's family/keep him on the string.
But ya gotta wonder. . . are these guys smokin', or tokin'?