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by Richard Timothy | Apr 3, 2010 | Gratefully Grateful, Nearly News, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Pratchett Perspective, Reviewed and Recommended
Friday morning was a good morning. Not because it was Friday, although it did help, but because of a fabulous little message that a new, yet dear, friend from Australia posted on my Facebook page. One of my Terry Pratchett inspired Smirks was posted in the April issue of Discworld Monthly, a free monthly on-line newsletter about Terry and his novels. It’s a very groovy yet surreal moment to discover you’ve had something published, but more than that is not to know you’ve been published until one of your friends has read the piece that was published in the work that published your piece and then tells you about it. I hope that made sense.
The article was made up of excerpts from the Smirk I wrote back in January entitled The Disc… A World of Literary Cameos (click here to read the original Smirk). I sent a copy of it to the editor a few days after I posted it, you know, just in case, and that was that. A few months later… hey! That’s me!
The Discworld Monthly has been around since 1997. In fact next month will be its 13th anniversary. A big, yet early, congrats and well done to them. It was created with the goal of keeping fans informed about the latest happenings in the Discworld and Terry Pratchett Fan Communities. I happened across it about a year ago. Then about five to six months ago I took the plunge and just subscribed to have the newsletter e-mailed to me every month instead of having to remind myself to check out the site each month or so.
My recommendation… if you are a Pratchett fan, and I know a number of you are, definitely check out the Discworld Monthly, and sign up for the newsletter. It’s a great treat for me each month receive an e-mail newsletter devoted to all things Pratchett.
There is also a Discworld Monthly Facebook group. So by all means check it out and join the group. And for those thinking about checking it out, there’s even a link to the new Going Postal trailer, which looks grand.
Thanks again to Heather for letting me know I was in this month’s issue. It’s a lovely way to start one’s day.
To those that checked out the newsletter, what did you think?
Image Sources:
Google Images, key word: Discworld.
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by Richard Timothy | Mar 20, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, Nearly News, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Public Service Announcement
One thing about the news and its loss of ethics and inability to report any actual news is that you occasionally get a story that puts the fu back in funny… no, that’s not right. It puts the ew back in news… no, that’s not it either. Regardless of whatever gets put wherever, there are some headlines that just put a smile on your face. Case and point:
Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck
Now for those of you who may not know, Glenn Beck is a pundit, which one would hope means someone who is good at puns. Turns out it just mean he’s a news opinionist, or simply put, he’s someone who attempts to pass off personal opinion as solid news facts. It’s amazing how misguided people can become when they rely on something they randomly hear and fail to do any personal research of their own to verify or dismiss something as news or fact.
According to the article Glenn told Christians to leave their churches if they heard any preaching about social or economic justice because, he claimed, those were slogans affiliated with Nazism and Communism.
The article goes on to explain that Glenn is a convert to the LDS faith (a Mormon) and that, “Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck’s own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in interviews that Mr. Beck seemed ignorant of just how central social justice teaching was to Mormonism.”
First off, this is not a jab at anyone’s faith or religion. No, this is a jab at a stupid man that apparently has no idea about some of the key teachings of his faith and religion. At least that’s my opinion on the matter. Now I’ll admit I’m not a fan of Glenn. He is the Snidely Whiplash to my Dudley Do-Right, the Audrey II to my Seymour, or the Smokey to my Bandit. And I admit that I do get a little smile on my face when I see a man like Glenn open his mouth and insert his fist… foot… elbow… whatever really, or all at the same time. I’m not that picky. I figure as long as you can’t understand what he’s saying it’s a win for everyone.
For a radio personality turned Fox News poster child, he is good at what he does. He works at it too. He rehearses both dialogue and emotion so that he can give a more powerful presentation to his viewers. He even makes sure that he can cry on queue. That is a man who is dedicated to giving people their money’s worth.
In fact when Glenn first started crying on the news there was another pundit that took up the slack and addresses the whole situation in the only way he knows how, by mocking it. Mr. Stephen Colbert shared his opinion on this whole topic on his very own made up news show. I couldn’t find the video by itself so you’ll need to use this link to go to the article that has the video in it. It thought it was pretty funny. If you enjoy Colbert, it’s definitely worth the viewing.
I’m sure I could keep going off on the subject, but the simple fact that I’ve devoted even one Smirk talking about this man has may me feel all dirty inside… and not in the good way. I’d like to close with one main soapboxed item, and that is… help others.
Contrary to Mr. Beck’s perspective on the matter, helping others and feeding the poor and hungry does not make you a Communist or a Nazi. Also, I think it equally important to point out that helping others and feeding the poor and hungry doesn’t define you as a Pagan, Buddhist, Christian, Pastafarian, or any other belief structure label. What it does define you as is a good and decent person.
Well, thanks for humoring me. I’m getting off my soapbox now. Although, I’d like to go on record with Christian leaders around the US and recommend to all of you to boycott Glenn Beck. I do think the world’s quality of life will improve if we do.
Any thoughts on the topic?
Image Sources:
Google Images, key words: news and soapbox.
by Richard Timothy | Nov 9, 2009 | Nearly News
When I was little, my brother, who was just a year older than I, and I would get into constant fisticuffs over everything. Even if we were getting along for a while, we always seemed to turn into a whirlwind of inevitable terror reeking havoc on each other and our surroundings. Being the younger and smaller of the two, I was consistently the one, when all the smoke cleared, sitting on the floor… crying, or running to one of my parents… crying, or hiding under a blanket… crying. Hey, I’m a realist, when someone beats me up and it hurts, I’m going to cry until I feel better.
These wars were always a result of immensely important issues, like Legos. 
We would try to split things up so one week he got the cool space Legos and got to build first and then the next week it was suppose to be my turn. Some weeks worked out just fine, and then other weeks maybe some pieces would go missing and magically appear on the other ones spaceship when it was clearly obvious that it was the other brothers turn to use them.
Sure there were other battles, but if I had to guess I’d say a good 75% of all fights we’ve ever had were a result of fighting over Legos. So you can imagine our surprise when one day in the middle of one of our louder fights, our mom appeared in the room and started throwing all of our Lego’s in a box. She told us we had lost the right to play with them for one week. She also said that if we learned to behave and play nice together they would be returned in one week.
I imagine most of us, as long as you are not an only child, remember this type of parental negotiation from their youth. So you can imagine what I thought was when read the headline, “Court orders problem child to forfeit Wii, will return it if he behaves.” Apparently my mother had become a judge somewhere.
Turns out it was in Winnipeg, but it wasn’t my mom. Apparently it was some bloke named Marvin Garfinkle who was the judge in Winnipeg. Well, I’m guessing it was Winnipeg since The Winnipeg Sun was the original source of the story.
As the story goes, from the bits I actually read, a 12 year old boy, who may have quite possibly sprouted from loins of one Mr. Hyde of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame, allegedly hit another boy over the head with a pool cue in August. Then on Oct. 16 He was arrested for allegedly attacking a male student and female teacher at his new school after a game of dodge ball.
Based on that bit of news alone I say more important than taking away the kids Wii is to take away all of the kids Grand Theft Auto games and give them to charity… you know for kids that can actually tell the difference between a video game and real life. Ok, so I have no idea if the kid played Grand Theft Auto, but doesn’t hitting someone over the head with a pool cue sound very Grand Theft Autoish? Yeah, I thought so too.
Do I think the kid will get his Wii back? Well, I’ll put it like this… when my brother and I lost our Legos we did actually get better, but it was only because we spent the next week working together to try to find where they had been hidden. It took us four days to find them. We made a great team too. One would search while the other kept watch. The one keeping watch would run diversions if mom started heading for the room we were searching in to make sure the searcher had enough time to either hide, or get out of the room.
Once found we had three days to play with them, but only when mom wasn’t home. We even put them back when she did get home to keep up the facade. After the week was up we got our Legos back, and about two or three days latter we were fighting over them again. It took us a few more years to figure out that we had a lot more fun when we actually shared as opposed to pretending to share, and trying to kill each other when we learned the other wasn’t sharing.
So back to the kid, yeah he will probably get his Wii back. Either that or he’ll knock over a gas station to get the money to buy a new one. I wonder though, in the end is this going to help change the kids bad behavior? I have no idea, but probably not. I will say this, as an adult who does not have any children of his own, I feel perfectly qualified bad mouthing something I really have no experience in and saying, smack that kid on the butt. Oh, and it’s obviously the parent’s fault, or parent depending on the situation. Well that and quite possibly the kid’s demon blood running though his veins.
All that being said, it does make me smile to know that there is a judge out there that is following my mom’s brand of toy confiscating motivation and justice to help the little ones learn to play nice, and hopefully become better people.
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by Richard Timothy | Oct 22, 2009 | Nearly News, Something I Know Nothing About
There are some days that I spend a little extra time letting my mind play with possible topics of what I am going to be writing about that day, and then…ahh, and then there are days like today when the gift is wrapped up in a nice little package and placed in front of me just begging to be written about. Today was such a day.
It all started when a friend emailed me a link that sent me to the following headline:
Large Hadron Collider ‘Being Sabotaged from the Future’
I don’t know why, but every time I read that headline I just start laughing. Yes, much like the wizard in Oz, the “great and powerful” Large Hadron Collider (LHC) carries with it much mystery and power, and who knows maybe there are flying monkeys circling the LHC with instructions to pounce on it in the even that a small girls with a black dog and three sidekicks that refuse to believe Halloween is over show up and start asking questions. But unlike Oz, the LHC obtained a lot of its fame as a result of being one of the main characters in Dan Brown’s novel Angels and Demons.
But according to this news article, which I didn’t read…, for two reasons, and if I could figure out how to insert footnotes in a blog I would have don’t so right here, but since I can’t, I’m going to have to ask for a side bar and hope that all of you join me while I explain my two reasons.
Reasons for not Reading the News Article
- Reason 1: The news source is Fox News, which, in my opinion, is the leading manufacturer of fake news on the planet. When I want fake news, no other news network “pretends” to be a real news source quite as proficiently as Fox News. When it comes to made up stories, Fox is at the top of their game, with The Daily Show as a close second. The key reason The Daily Show comes in second is because it does occasionally report actual news.
- Reason 2: The headline. Why would I read “Large Hadron Collider ‘Being Sabotaged from the Future’” as a legitimate news story? It would be like using the National Enquirer as a factual source for a two headed bat-faced Michael Jackson lovechild that a panda at the San Diego Zoo gave birth too. Granted, if I did want to smirk a smidge, I might actually read past the first sentence. But I don’t, so I won’t and I didn’t.
Ok, so apparently, as my version of the article goes, cyborg alien human clones materialized in the tubes of the LHC with screw drivers and began attempting to take apart the collider. After the first half hour 90% of them became tired and returned to the future. The remaining 10% asked for a turkey on rye, promising, “If our demands are met, we will leave peacefully and promise to do our best to keep from time traveling to your time again… if we can help it.”
Scooby and Shaggy met with some of the remaining cyborg alien human clones and after intense peace talks and about 5 bags of whatever it was that they put in the peace pipe they learned that all the cyborg alien human clones that initially appeared have the time travel gene, meaning they can travel through time using only their thoughts. Apparently, though in the future all of the cyborg alien human clones suffer from ADD, and because they get side tracked easily they rarely stay in the time they have traveled to.
They went on to explain, “Bill and Ted, stepped out of a phone booth with a copy of the novel Angels and Demons and convinced everyone at the Denny’s that they had to stop the LCH before it destroyed the universe.” adding, “I made sense at the time.”
After all of the remaining time travels were fed, they returned to their time to, “Enjoy nap time.” as one traveler put it.
It appears the LHC had to be shut down so that all of the screwdrivers could be removed from the tubes. The LHC is scheduled to start up again just in time for Christmas.
Whew, with this disaster averted, I know I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that our Large Hadron Collider is safe and sound and that the saboteurs from the future have promised to try to remember to never do it again.
Friday morning was a good morning. Not because it was Friday, although it did help, but because of a fabulous little message that a new, yet dear, friend from Australia posted on my Facebook page. One of my Terry Pratchett inspired Smirks was posted in the April issue of Discworld Monthly, a free monthly on-line newsletter about Terry and his novels. It’s a very groovy yet surreal moment to discover you’ve had something published, but more than that is not to know you’ve been published until one of your friends has read the piece that was published in the work that published your piece and then tells you about it. I hope that made sense.
