comedy

Voice and Tense

I realized today something that I’ve realized many times before, something which gets me more excited about college than ever – I need to learn how to write. What I mean is that I need to really study and practice in an orderly fashion, with someone to read my work and tell me that “this is good” and “this is bad” and “this needs some more work.” I love this blog, and I’m proud of myself for keeping it up – my track record on keeping organized blogs is disastrous, to say the least. The fact that I’m keeping this one up is due to my true devotion and love of practicing my writing.

But, as I was saying, I need to study and learn methods for it. The reason I realized this today was because I was spending my time at work, as I usually do, with trying to plan a new story. This new story is a sort of young-adult type thing, something that I decided to try after remember how much I love Sarah Dessen’s books. I started writing about my character from the third-person point of view, but after a page or so I realized that it sounded wrong. It wasn’t what I’d pictured in my head.

So I changed the voice, and tried writing her from the first person point of view: her speaking about herself. Once again, it sounded wrong because I was using past tense, and it sounded like any second she would be lapsing into current events. I realized that I don’t know how to write past tense but make it sound like the present, and not like the retelling of a story.

And so, whether or not I major in creative writing, I’m definitely going to take some writing courses when I go to college. I can’t wait!

On a completely unrelated subject – I find it highly amusing that WordPress, a blogging website, highlights the word “blog” as a misspell in its spell-checker program. WordPress is another word that is listed as misspelled.

A [Stupid] Tale of Two Cats

Once upon a time, there were two cats. The two cats were great friends, and knew each other from the time they were both kittens and were rescued from the street by a nice woman named Debbie. The cats, though generally very friendly, had a recurring argument that they could never resolve: they couldn’t agree which of them had the sillier name.

The one called Shraga would often say “listen to the way my name sounds – it’s so dumb! Shra-ga. SHRA-GA. Just dumb!”

The one called Spartacus would answer “you think that’s dumb? Listen to my nicknames – Sparty, Sparticle, Particle, Spartoosh. All so silly!”

Despite their argument, they usually managed to play well together and enjoy the life they led in the small apartment with the two girly-girls they lived with. The two girly-girls, one older and one younger, both doted on them and spent many hours of the day using odd sounding high-pitched voices when they spoke to them. They would squeal and sigh, but the two cats were content as long as those sounds were followed by the rattle of the box of especially yummy food-treats.

And so the two cats lived in harmony, with only one or two scartchy fights a day, and they were always sure to act very cute around their two girly-girl humans so that they would never need to live hungry on the street again.

Exhaustion… Taken Over… Brain…

There are those wonderful times when you’re truly too tired to think. Your brain is full of this low, not unpleasant, fuzzy sound. For some reason, as I think of this sound now – it’s creeping up on me even as I write – I imagine that it is the snores of the little mouse that runs all day on it’s little wheel to keep our brains going. Or perhaps it is a hamster. No, mice are cuter than hamsters.

The feeling of being this exhausted, both mentally and physically, is wonderful in my opinion. This feeling holds memories for me, all of them precious: the long drive home from Disneyland that year when there was so much traffic on the way home that I fell asleep and slept through the three hour ride and was carried into my grandparents’ house awake, but pretending to still be asleep because it was so much more comfortable; the memory of every horrid migraine I’ve had and the way I’ve fallen into an exhausted, relieved sleep at the end of the long period of sleeplessness due to the pain; the memories of falling into an exhausted sleep after a particularly enjoyable, but quite long, school trip.

As I’ve confessed, my brain is approaching levels of chronic fuzzyness at the moment, and so I shall have to postpone the writing exercises that I was planning on beginning tonight. Procrastination – it is indeed a devilish instinct, is it not?

Miracle Baking

The sky was iron grey all day long, and the wind was sandy and much too warm for a January afternoon. The air was strangely silent as well, as if all the voices in the world were stifled, waiting for something to happen, something to erupt. If this were hurricane or tornado country, or even commonly quaky, I’d say that it was as if everyone was waiting for one of those natural disasters to occur.

And yet, it seemed that the air began to thaw, the sky literally brightened and became blue for a few moments before the sun set and it turned a brilliant pink and red. The reason seemed to be an oven, in an apartment, on the fourth floor of a building. In that oven sat a trey of chocolate chip cookies, baking slowly, spreading warmth and a smell so mouth watering that you could stand a mile away and salivate.

Never underestimate the power of a cookie to make everything seem better – even the weather.

Peanuts

Growing up in Israel, I had to endure children who only knew who Snoopy was. Nobody here knows of Linus’s blanket, Lucy’s mean spirit or Violet’s vanity. No one here knows anything more about this wonderful comic-world than Snoopy’s dance steps. They don’t know of the ice that nearly crushed his house [he was lured out with a pizza] and they don’t know that he has a Van Gogh in his doghouse and they surely don’t know that he fell in love with a girl beagle with long ears but that her father didn’t let them marry because he’s an “obedience-school dropout.”

Why do I know these things? In a generation where Peanuts was still in the Sunday comics for a few years but no more than that? Well, I know because I still have all my mom’s, dad’s and aunt’s Peanut books. They all cost ninety-nine cents back then, it says so right on the cover. I’m super careful with all these books because I love them, I adore them, I know half the comics in them by heart. At least half. I know of the dandelions on Charlie Brown’s pitcher’s mound, I know of Linus’s crush for his teacher – which was weird because at first he just found her odd and kept telling about the changes she wanted in her salary. I know about the Great Pumpkin and how Linus ruined his chances at being school president because he told everyone how on Halloween night the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch.

Can you tell that I have a bit of an obsessive love for the Peanutes gang?

The Dos and Don’ts of Airport Terminals

DO:

-Get to the airport in plenty of time and stay positive and cheerful even if there’s such a long line that you think it must be leading to Timbucktoo and not to the check-in desks.

-Buy a bad cup of coffee, even if you’re not going to finish it because it’s too hot/cold/icky, because it’s traditional and social.

-Get something chocolaty to bring on the plane with you. You never know when you’ll get a sweet tooth.

-Make eye contact with security people. They like it when you smile as well.

DO NOT:

-Think about how much time you still have left to travel. Breaking down and crying in the middle of airport terminals in dispair is not a socially acceptable thing to do.

-Talk and joke loudly about the bombs in your luggage. You’ll end up missing you flight due to sitting in a cold room with a lamp shining in your eyes while tiny security people try to get you to confess what you’ve done.

-Sleep before a flight. You’ll want to fall asleep on the plane, not be wide-eyed, jittery and full of adrenaline.

-Begin conversations with people in the lines. You’ll end up needing to sit with them and hear all about their Uncle Morty’s social problems at his job and how many kidney stones they’re having taken out the day after tomorrow.

-Lose all hope for ever reaching your destination. Once again, public-meltdowns are not socially acceptable.

What People See in George Clooney

I never get it. I really don’t. I don’t think he’s that good looking, his facial hair looks like it’s painted on, and he has odd hair that looks naturally gelled up. I’ve never seen him in General Hospital, but I don’t understand how he became the heart-throb he is considered.

There is, however, one thing I love about George Clooney. He is absolutely amazing at being sarcastic. He drips with sarcasm, insincerity and dry humor when he wants to, and I find THAT, of all things, to be the coolest, most awesome thing about him as an actor.

He’s a good actor, no doubt about that, but still – heart-throb? Hardly

[Can you tell this is a spur of the moment post because my mother is flying tonight and I have no time to spend on the computer?]

The Authentic Self Book

I was having trouble with what I should write about tonight. I sat at my computer, with my wonderful-and-still-exciting screen, and I stared and stared and discarded idea after idea. I am ashamed to say, I caved. I opened a new tab, and typed in “writing prompts” in Google. I then chose the first two websites that came up and started browsing the prompts, thinking how fun it would be to write about some of those things. And yet, it felt like cheating. Little did I know that I would still find my subject on one of these websites.

As I looked randomly at the advertisement sitting smugly above the prompts in one of the sites, I found my subject. A giggle escaped my lips, and I proceeded back to WordPress and typed in the title of this post. Yes, the ad was for something called “The Authentic Self Book.” Written underneath the name and the website, it says this: “Are you living an authentic life? Unearth your authentic self. Start journaling your joys, griefs, and all the other life themes in between, and you’ll discover who you really are.” [Random aside – WordPress spellchecker says “journaling” is not a real word.]

I’m all for keeping journals. I’m all for living authentic lives. I’m all for finding out as much as you can about yourself and being honest about your life, your feelings, your virtues and weaknesses. However, and this is a big however, I find it incredibly hard to believe anyone who wants to be so-called authentic would buy a book like this.

Teehee, I love the randomness of the interwebs.

Horoscope

Your guardian angel may appear to you as another human today, maybe even a close friend. There’s no need for complex analysis when someone brings you good news, unexpected cash or an invitation to a very special night. Just make certain that you have the intelligence to say “yes” before the opportunity fades.

Hm. Interesting. Let’s go over this piece by piece. There was no guardian angel whatsoever that came to me today. Not another human, not a close friend. The closest thing to a guardian angel was the piece of dark chocolate I had after dinner. That was heavenly indeed.

Next part. The good news thing is interesting, mostly because I didn’t get any news today from anyone, not good, nor bad. Cash was not recieved either, and an invitation to anything more exciting than my evenings sitting at home and writing essays would have been incredible. But I didn’t get one. Meaning I also didn’t have an oppertunity, or the intelligence for that matter, to say “yes” to anything from anyone.

I suppose the stars don’t have all that much effect on me… me and at least half the other people who got this same horoscope today as I did.

Big Brother

Will someone please explain to me the fascination people seem to find with watching other people lead absolutely boring lives inside a house? I will never understand it. I see the allure of certain so-called “reality shows” – so called because I know for a fact they’re all freaking scripted – like Project Runway, which is actually about exposure and talent, or even America’s Next Top Model, which is entertaining, if not particularly intelligent.

But what’s with this new [old] genre of Big Brother shows? What’s with people wanting to watch some normal people like themselves stuck inside a house for months with nowhere to go and nothing to do? What is so damn interesting about that?! Every day when I go to work I hear people talking about the damn show – heck, now they can watch it twenty-four seven cause they’ve made a whole freaking channel dedicated to it!

Oh yeah, by the way, did you know that those shows are scripted as well? Meaning you’re not even watching the real goings-on in the house, you’re watching planned and scripted dramas! So why not just turn on a soap-opera? At least then you KNOW it’s scripted and you’re not believing some lame lie!

Argh. I hate this new reality-tv-based society. I like writers who write scripts and tell everyone in no uncertain terms that that’s what they’re doing. Seems more creative and interesting that way. Then again, maybe it’s just me.