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| Walking in De Light 20 most recent entries |
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This is SO cute and SO "out there" -- just PERFECT for the ultimate Star Wars fan who has a tiny wittle kid this winter!!!!
I've always considered my sense of humor to be simultaneously quite amusing and quite inferior to that of a true comedian. I just don't think I'm a funny person -- and yet I constantly amuse myself. Today I remembered all the goofy things my dad used to say and do, and realized that much of my sense of humor comes from him -- either by genetics or observation. Even the types of movies I enjoy is much due to his tastes. Sci-if and humorous spoofy stuff. I've always had a special place in my heart for movies or TV series that could be serious and yet also don't take themselves too seriously. That's my dad to a "T". Whenever he would joke with us kids, there was a twinkle in his eyes. He would say his joke or act funny, and we would say, "Awww, Dad!" because his jokes were a little lame or he was acting too goofy in front of our friends. But we would still laugh. And he would always grin and laugh at himself, like he knew he was "too goofy". We all loved it, though. Thus, I have greatly enjoyed shows like "Xena: Warrior Princess", "Stargate SG-1", even "Hercules" and "Andromeda". Movies like "The Princess Bride" and "Tremors" and "Evolution" and "Galaxy Quest". So today, this is both my personal mantra and my advice to the world:
That about sums it up. post a comment
I really don't like McDonald's and try not to eat there... but I thought the difference in the cultural approach here was hilarious!
A big THANK YOU to It's a Grind for inventing the Aztec Mocha, which inspires me to try putting CAYENNE PEPPER in my own coffee at home.
Do you ever start a day with a LONG to do list?
Here's a movie I haven't thought of for a long time! A blast from the past...
Well, I guess it's too late for Intuit. This happened a few months ago, but it's been this long since I did my electronic finance update.
An artist I follow with my RSS reader has some entries in his moleskin sketchbook in the style of Indiana Jones' diaries (actual topics from the diaries and such, sounds like perhaps even copied from freeze-frames of the movie props).
D: "He's the king of all kings! He's the strong of all strongs!"
Have I ever mentioned how much I like Dakota Fanning? What a delightful little girl. And she's growing up. Fifteen years old already!
Here's an excerpt I found a fascinating glimpse of collaborative writing of days gone by -- in this case, Alexandre Dumas and a writing buddy in 19th century France: 'Prolific' is an adjective too insipid to apply to Dumas, for not even he could keep track of everything he wrote. Over a period of fifty years he published a dozen travel books and founded as many newspapers. His journalism and general works fill perhaps twenty large tomes, and there are a score of multi-volume histories, biographies, and memoirs. He was the author of over fifty plays and about ninety novels, many of them very long indeed: the three installments of the Musketeer saga alone run to about a million and a quarter words. During his lifetime, his authorship of the books he signed was questioned and sometimes contested, most notoriously by a journalist named Jacquot who in 1845 accused him of running a 'fiction factory' staffed by paid drudges. Dumas took Jacquot to court and refuted the charges of shameless plagiarism and 'literary mercantilism', though he cheerfully admitted to using the services of 'collaborators' whose contribution, however, he always acknowledged. -- From the introduction to The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, published by Oxford University Press, editorial material copyright 1991 David Coward.
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Some were no more than secretaries who recopied his rapidly written pages, adding punctuation and correcting minor inconsistencies. Yet from the outset, Dumas had been in the habit of working with other writers, discussing plots and character and sometimes rewriting plays by other hands rejected by theatre managements. During the 1830s he acquired a reputation not only as a playwright but also, in Nerval's words, 'as a surgeon skilled in straightening the limbs of plays born crooked'. But he was always more than a fixer, for his reworkings were highly imaginative and unfailingly marked by the Dumas touch: simple but strong characters, melodramatic situations, and highly charged dialogue. Dumas's association with Auguste Maquet (1813-88), whom he met in 1838, was the most productive of his collaborations. A history teacher with literary ambitions, Maquet worked closely with Dumas in ways which are still not entirely clear. At the start, Dumas simply rewrote Maquet. Thus, immediately after their first meeting, he revised a Maquet play which was performed in 1839 as Bathilde under Maquet's name. But he totally transformed a short novel which Maquet had set in the early eighteenth century, and turned it into the four-volume Chevalier d'Harmental (1843) which he acknowledged as his own. Subsequently, Maquet's role was to write first drafts, faithfully following detailed plans and firm directives supplied by Dumas who, however, occasionally adopted suggestions from his collaborator. These drafts were changed beyond recognition as Dumas's imagination worked on them. The ninety-nine surviving pages of Maquet's manuscript outline for The Three Musketeers reveal that he not only supplied specific historical detail but also furnished a substantial but agreed 'treatment' which Dumas followed in parts but radically altered in others. The earlier sections of the outline have disappeared, but Maquet's version of the major episodes -- the conversation heard through the stovepipe between Richelieu and Milady, the breakfast on the Bastion de Saint-Gervais, the seduction of Felton, the murder of Buckingham, and the execution of Milady -- are pale reflections of what was to come. Dumas expanded Marquet's material into hundreds of pages, changing the order of events, inventing new twists, and injecting excitement, humour, and high drama into his collaborator's basic template. In 1857 Maquet successfully sued Dumas not for literary theft, which he did not claim, but for non-payment of agreed royalties. Even so, the judgment has been used to castigate Dumas for professional malpractice, a charge which is contradicted by his open acknowledgement of the help he received. Of course, Dumas was a shameless literary plunderer, for he had the same nonchalant attitude to literary property as he did to money. He borrowed and stole whatever he needed to start his imaginative juices flowing, but what he took he made his own. There is no doubt that Dumas stood in Maquet's debt, but no more so than Racine was indebted to the authors of antiquity. His unerring instinct for action and excitement, his ability to create forceful characters, and the sustained exuberance of his imagination were quite unborrowable: from these alone comes the lasting glamour of the Musketeers.
Always fun to see what comes to mind first on a given day. Here's the 15 books that came to mind as favorites, the details of which still stand out clearly in my mind and which, I think, have helped to shape my writing. There are a couple non-fiction books mixed in, but mostly a list of some fiction books that have impacted my storytelling. As you can see, I like series instead of individual books. Gives me time to immerse in the world.
How about you? post a comment
This is a fresh twist on the typical stuff people say about creatives. If you've ever experienced the manic-depressive cycle of creativity, ever wondered where ideas come from, ever wondered if you'd EVER go anywhere with your art or writing... You may very well be inspired by this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert.
I totally didn't recognize my favorite Goonie's voice on these two shows:
I thought this was a creative way to present the issue. Although it doesn't address what you could do to overcome these issues, it's still pretty funny. Kinda hits on a gut (or funny bone) level. (Disclaimer: I don't endorse not sharing your faith for these reasons... I just thought this was humorous. lol.)
LOL! I always enjoy Nerf Now, but this one was especially timely! (even though I didn't read it until a couple weeks after Easter)
For those that enjoy Gmail for their mail service (but perhaps didn't log in or didn't notice the link in the upper right corner for this new service), please enjoy the following page:
I'm not hard-core for any particular party, but I thought this was cute. It seems to me that we'd be better off if we did things that mostly made sense even to kids. (Although I suppose I can already think of several examples for my own beliefs that might not pass that test... hmmm... depends on the child, I suppose...) I recently asked my friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"1 comment | post a comment
If you know me, you know I like to cook. Well, cooking is optional, but I enjoy making good food.
*sniffle* Yeah, saw Fireproof tonight. Ahhh, it sure hits close to home. |
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cheerful
bouncy
accomplished
disappointed
optimistic
calm