News update: How to win when you already lost. Charges dropped. Court case avoided. A victory for freedom of speech and political satirist cartoonist Jonathon Shapiro. But! - Jacob Zuma... tut tut. He and the ANC - we shouldn't be surprised - sees it as a victory for the them... Why?
-- In other words; a typical political response! in some way, one kind of has to admire them, sort of, in a weird way... only a little And now for the weather: Hurricane Sandy image from nydailynews.com (projection) Making landfall later this evening (USA eastern time) 90 mile/140 km an hr winds, 1600 km diameter... My friends say they're safe... I'm keeping y'all in prayer!
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An unconscious truth Is the past scary? It seems so because many of the peoples of today want to leave the past in the past… It’s all about the here and now, and of course what comes tomorrow. We live in equally depressing and exciting times; the technological age mixed in with global warming, mixed with the Olympics (yes that happened this year) and the recession BLAH BLAH… it all becomes noise after a while, the same ol’ stories, very much a la comedian Tommy Tiernan’s (@tomedian) classic take on the current debt crisis: Okay calm down, take a breath. What my current utterances actually refer to is “heritage” --- OH NO you di’nt --- yes I did, I said it, the “H” word. It’s one the youths of today scoff at, with a wave of the hand, squinting at you “you mean like, Nelson Mandela? - Or tribesman, right? The bush people… no boet, isn’t that something for Heritage day?” – That one public holiday in the year, and most don’t know what it actually means, it’s true significance anyway. And yet we practice it everyday, heritage that is. I suppose most would have expected me to post this closer to that day (24 Sep – for those keeping score) but that would contradict what I’ve just mentioned. Anyway… imagine this; cast your mind to a world minus all that came before us. Imagine each generation went about tearing down whatever the generations before them had created. Where would we be? – most pertinent to that though is; who would we be? The concept of culture would be dead. The word would be foreign to our ears, and since language itself is something we carry from generations past, would we not be communicating in strange, rudimentary and different ways: clicks and sign language, each person with his own take on it… --- Quote: --- The History Boys (2006, IMDB) "Tom Irwin: Um, Rudge... Mrs. Lintott: Now. How do you define history Mr. Rudge? Rudge: Can I speak freely, Miss? Without being hit? Mrs. Lintott: I will protect you. Rudge: How do I define history? It's just one f****n' thing after another. [raucous laughter from the other students, but the interview board is appalled]" I imagine quite a confusing world. Or perhaps just a basic one. And so, we need what came before, because without it, we’d be nowhere nice, transported back to mumbling cavemen – Neanderthals. And yet, even in our evolution and progression, we never cease to find ways to complicate our lives more and more… what a strange bunch we are. However, stepping away from your generic and immediate associations with the term heritage, let’s take a quick look at heritage on a grand human scale; Globalization, which could very well be counterproductive in the quest to preserve our heritage, has yielded UNESCO – and thence… world heritage sites. Here, take a look; can you imagine a world without them? And yes, though many are natural wonders, provided by mother earth herself, we humans do just so happen to have an uncanny knack for destroying things, don’t we? This: just to make you think a little harder, especially on a Monday… We forged new ways, continue to invent new things, because we are pioneers, searchers, adventurers... it's part of who we are - but so is our past, even if we're not always aware of it. All photos from National Geographic. Visit the site to see all the other interesting and beautiful World Heritage sites!
Probably the final part of this particular short fiction series on my blog. It does become something of a schlep for those seeing this for the first time, wanting to catch up and having to search through old posts (so just click in the sub menu of the "Short fiction" Tab in the menu above - Short fiction "Awakening" - I'll be posting all updates in there. Going home... and then home again. Short Fiction by Steven Benjamin (2012) The wheels squealed as he turned the car around. Linda stared at every one of his precise movements. He’d grabbed her arm and ushered her to the car. “Where are we going?” She turned as she heard her children rousing. When she calmed them down she turned back to Jeremy. “Well…” “Taking them to your parents. Tell them I need hospitalization and we need some time. Tell them it’s not an emergency, but we need to sort it out now. Like an insect bite or something; it could even be infected.” Linda glanced at the road. Her eyes then fell toward the foot well. She swallowed, tasting only dryness. “Where are we really going?” She whispered. They drove in silence for a while. Eventually he spoke, “Home. We’re going home.” The rest of the drive was in silence. Linda followed her gut, and simply did as she was told… even when it came to dropping off the kids. This man she knew as Jeremy, had sat in the car the whole time, only acknowledging her parents with a glance and a slight but distant wave. It was a strange silence as they made their way home. He seemed to be deep in thought, and not just thought but summations, plans, calculations; as if he was remembering things and cataloging them as he drove. He didn’t say a thing, even as he waited for her to unlock the front door, even while he rifled through his lock box which he’d retrieved from the bottom of his closet. In that box were plenty of papers, a couple of passports, a set of keys and a few trinkets Linda had never seen before. He unpacked them all systematically on their bed until eventually he stopped. He knelt down at the side of the bed, cupping his face in his hands. She heard him taking deep breaths. Linda walked over and sat on the foot of the bed, watching. Eventually his face emerged from behind his hands, his eyes scrutinizing the empty box one more time. For a moment Linda recognized him again and for the first time in what felt like an age, she felt compelled to voice her thoughts. “What is it?” “I’m looking.” His hand then reached toward the underside of the lid. He pulled on a small satin strap embedded in its inner rim. The small strap was like those strips used for book-markers, the type seen in many Bibles. The underside of the lid released from some unseen clip. The only thing in there was a medium sized envelope. He closed his eyes as he opened it. “I need you to look at this. I believe it will all make sense then. For both of us…” He pulled out a simple Polaroid photograph and offered it to her. Linda looked at him briefly before accepting the picture. Before she looked at it she gave him one more glance, as if for reassurance. This glance, that subtle look, would prove to be the last time she saw the man she knew as her husband, for the next three years. Jeremy watched her intently, anticipating something, even though he didn’t know what. She seemed not to recognize the image at first, but then she started pulling it slowly toward her face. Her eyes blinked profusely, and then she shut them tight, clenching the bridge of her nose. When Linda’s eyes opened eventually, they were staring at the wall ahead of her. Her head turned to him, and then her gaze followed. “I have always cherished this time between us Eli; these moments before you leave. You can go now. It is safe.” She nodded to him and smiled. He nodded several times, though it seemed involuntary. He leaned back and stood up in one continuous motion. He took the image from her and repacked the lock-box in the reverse order of how he’d unpacked it. Moments later, he closed the closet, turned and left the room. She heard the front door close. He backed out of the driveway slowly. Just as he put the car in gear, he looked up and paused, catching sight of the house he’d lived in for the past five years, now receding in familiarity. TBC "Happy reading - enjoy your weekend!"
Consider yourself a Writer? Since I am one I decided to give you ten tips on the very subject. Well, actually I'll be giving you someone else's tips - Elmore Leonard in fact, a somewhat more accomplished voice in the industry... only somewhat though (he's the guy who brought us the stories behind films like Be Cool, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, 3:10 to Yuma and the current, brilliant TV series starring Timothy Olyphant as 'modern-day-cowboy' US marshal Raylan Givens, in Justified... FIY, this series and Olyphant's rendition of the main protagonist also inspired Leonard's latest novel entitled "RAYLAN". The series as a whole, for the uninformed, was inspired by Leonard's short story 'Fire in the hole'. So there, my fellow writer/author Elmore Leonard - now you know, he's that guy). Anyhow, so he came up with a quick fire list for those fancy themselves skilled with pen and parchment, in particular, for those looking to spew out a novel. It has been said, by someone, don't know who exactly so lets just say ME, that 'everyone can write, but only a gifted few are good storytellers'... This was originally posted by the guardian.co.uk (for the expanded article with more tips from more of my esteemed counterparts, just click the link) a while back (2010), but with all good writing, such things are always relevant. So, enough already, to the 10 then...
Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks." 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs". 5 Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with ex-claimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful. 6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points. 7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range. 8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants", what do the "American and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story. 9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill. 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Another picture post. Those who are regulars here will notice my trend of posting a series of picture infused posts followed by richly inspired wordy content, full of educational and entertaining titbits... its a veritable goldmine for you to get your fix, I know, you just cant live without it. I do have some more pieces in the works; current affairs has put a lot on everyone's plate.
So, while I refine those works, let me leave you with this string of motivational/inspirational images. Although, as I got up this morning (it was raining quite heavily) I made my way to the balcony - I was 'supervising' a friends Bed & Breakfast in Gordon's Bay - with a cup of coffee in hand, the clouds cleared and the sun poked through at the perfect moment... my eyes fell upon the stunning view of the beach, surrounding mountains and the vineyards in the distance -- suffice is to say, it was all the inspiration I needed, though I was a little too sleepy to take pictures to show you - will do so next week when I return there for more 'supervising'. These I'm bringing to you from a site called addicted2success.com - specifically their 56 Inspirational Picture Quotes that will motivate your mind, body & soul enjoy! The Hollywood stamp Staying on the pulse of world/current events, sort of, I thought I'd take a gander at an upcoming film about the assassination of Bin Laden by SEAL Team 6 - titled Zero Dark Thirty, from SonyPictures. As we've come to expect; from every major event that occurs in American history, Hollywood needs to throw its version or two cents at us (although they have taken certain other worldly events and cast their own generic spell on them). So basically I'm not holding my breath. It looks like they applied the ol' action/suspense formula to the event, not doubting Kathryn Bigelow's talents, nor those of her cast, but it just seems like this film lacks imagination - here's hoping I'm wrong... then again does anyone really care either way. Bottom line is, it will put bums on seats, so the coffers will, as always, be happy. (interestingly though, even this trailer has received its fair share of "thumbs down".) A quick shift in content, away from humans - because sometimes we do get kind of boring or tiresome. For all those animal lovers (and fans of photography), I do prescribe some much needed fuzz therapy - always a great distraction. These pics are from the website/blog "beautiful-animals.com" brought to me by Stumbleupon! Enjoy.
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[Banner illustration by Joel Kanar]
WRITING
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