Freedom Fries --- Chapter 1: Lynx News (part 1)

The place looks best at dusk, she thought. The oak trees across the pond outside had already turned dark, casting their black profile across the lawn, but the western sky was still alight in vivid orange. It was very quiet now around Chapel Hill Farm; she could hear the silence. The place looks best at dusk, she thought again, but when do I look best? She turned to the mirror next to the fridge and studied her reflection.

Anyhow, she was finally done with the dishes, so she picked up the tea things---already prepared---and crossed into the living room for a quiet evening with her husband. As always, he had offered to help, but tonight she had gently turned him down. There were days when the silverware disliked him, chinking and clanging in his hands as if there was a problem, and today had been one of those days, and she would not have been able to handle more clanging in her kitchen. In fact, the silverware had become increasingly argumentative lately. Her nerves? His nerves? Her nerves?

 US House of Representatives member Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio),
announcing the renaming of French fries to Freedom Fries in 2003. 

Doubya was already installed in the sateen slouch chair in front of the TV, the shiny cowboy boots resting on the matching pouf, his left hand resting on his crotch. Hussein's gun was lying next to him on the coffee table; he must have played with it while she was in the kitchen. My God, she hated this gun---the gun that Hussein had carried when being apprehended by the American forces while hiding in a hole in the ground. Didn't the piece belong to the American people? Its proper place was in a museum. How could he just take it home? She had actually raised the question with Fredo, the pliable attorney general. The Museum of the War of Choice, she had suggested helpfully, but to no avail.

The caption as punch line

We borrowed this from our sister-blog, but we have an excuse, since it's also about writing techniques (see header).

Here goes:  Pinocchio is fed up with the complaints from his wife --- "every time we make love, I get splinters" --- so he goes to see Gipetto the Carpenter, his maker, for advice.
"Sandpaper," says the carpenter, "sandpaper, that's what you need," and hands Pinocchio some sandpaper.

A few weeks later, they bump into each other. "How are you getting along with the girls now?" Gipetto asks.

"Who needs girls," Pinocchio replies

Les voiles de St. Tropez

Sacha sends an email asking whether we would know a way to get on a boat and watch Les voiles de St. Tropez closeup. We suggest to rent a powerboat, but before anything clicks he has already found somebody else. We sit at home and cry, cry like John Lee always cries when he has lost Alex again. And then, the next morning, Sacha calls and re-iterates the rental idea --- it was so great yesterday, and he really needs to get closer to the tall ships with his professional camera than the sailing millionaires would let him who gave him a sail yesterday (don't worry, just read the sentence a few more times). So there we are, with Sacha's official picture of the event:

Creole, Hamilton

I haven't left my house in days

Bette Midler

I haven't left my house in days,

I watch the news channels incessantly,

All the news stories are about the election,

All the commercials are for Viagra and Cialis,

Election - erection - election - erection,

Either way we're going to get screwed!"

(We wrote the Pamela Woods part in the Freedom Fries for her; sadly, she doesn't know)

I'm a bad boy (re-blogged)

(Hat tip: a site on Tumblr with "Bad Boy" in the name that we failed to retrieve afterwards)

Idempotency (1)

It had to happen, it had to happen. One fine day, John will ask Alex: "What's idempotency?" And since this will be in one of the few chapters in any Green Eyes part where we are doing the explicit thing that readers so crave, Alex won't enter into a longish explanation, he won't say anything, since he's down on John's cock. But since John insists --- because we are writing this post now so we will have John insist -- Alex will briefly interrupt his busy schedule and might say: 'Why don't you look it up on Wikipedia.' But since Alex is so busy, he'll drop the first three words and not just might interrupt his schedule, he will interrupt his schedule. And just say: "Look it up on Wikipedia." But that's cruel, isn't it? Sending people to Wikipedia? While having sex, nota bene? With them?

Photoshop's stained glass filter applied once 

M& Redefinition: S&M: Telling people to look it up on Wikipedia while having sex.

Freedom Fries --- introduction

Freedom Fries, yes, how about the Freedom Fries. The term came into being in the spring of 2003, when President Jaques Chirac of France refused to join George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq (the second Gulf War), and Representative Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, directed the three canteens of the US House of Representatives to rename French fries to "freedom fries."

 US House of Representatives member Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio),
announcing the renaming of French fries to Freedom Fries in 2003. 

When Michael decided to write a script about the aftermath of the Bush years, he used the Freedom Fries reminiscence as a trigger for a change of heart of (or in) the former president---with predictably unpredictable consequences for him and a few other people.

Libra (Jezza Smilez)

(click here for more from Jezza:)

You write like Shakespeare (reposted)

The IHT had a column by Alex Beam about the new website I Write Like, which uses a Bayesian classifier algorithm to compare anyone's prose to that of  famous writers. Thought up by the Russian programmer Dmitry Chestnykh, the site has already generated serious mischief. Somebody submitted transcriptions of Mel Gibson's phone rants, and I Write Like concluded that he "writes" like Margaret Atwood. Atwood own prose was classified as "Stephen King." A former president of Harvard writes like the sci-fi writer Cory Doctorov, and novelist Claire Messud writes like David Foster Wallace (not true, by the way).

You see it coming. We have to find out about ourself. so we first submit Huck Finn's father's rant against the government, which we posted because of its prophetic anticipation of the Tea Party, and, yes, I Write Like returned the answer: "You write like Mark Twain." Cool.

OK, so now a text of our own. Let's take the Donna Pérignon post from March 2010, one of the countless contributions on this blog so heartlessly ignored by pundits and mainstream media. Donna pays us a visit and rekindles our interest in the Giant Wave. Have you read it now? Donna is actually our neighbor Michelle de la Sala, and she really looks like Michelle Pfeiffer.

We now submit this post (its text) to I write like, and the answer is:

I write like
William Shakespeare

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

What can we say? Buy our new book, GREEN EYES, and find out yourself:

What happened to my schlange?

What's your answer? --- a quiz (Jacki)

So you are writing a novel, or a play, about Winston Churchill, say, and somebody just said to him: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." What's your answer? You possibly know the answer to this one, but that's what this quiz is about. (Answers under the read more link at the bottom)

(1) Thomas Reed vs. Henry Clay: Clay: "I would rather be right than be president." What's Clay's reply?
(2) Lady Astor vs. Winston Churchill: Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." What's Churchill's reply?
(3) NYM Ed Koch vs Andrew Kirtzman, after the reporter insisted on pressing a point about an inconsistent statement Koch had made. What was Koch's answer?
(4) Groucho Marx vs. a contestant on You Bet Your Life, after the contestant revealed that he was a father of 10. Groucho: "Why so many children." Guest: "Well, Groucho, I love my wife." What was Groucho's next line?
(5) Abraham Lincoln vs. Stephen Douglas, after Douglas called him two-faced during a debate. How did Lincoln react?
(6) Pierre Trudeau vs. Richard Nixon, upon hearing that Nixon had called him an asshole. What did Trudeau say?
(7) Oscar Wilde vs. Lewis Morris; Morris had just been passed over for the Poet Laureateship, and said to Wilde: "There's a conspiracy against me, a conspiracy of silence buut what can one do? What should I do?" What was Wilde's reply?
(8) Miriam Hopkins vs. an anonymous singer, who had just informed her: "You know, dear, I insured my voice for fifty thousand dollars." What did Hopkins say?
(9) James McNeill Whistler vs. Oscar Wilde, after Whistler had made a particularly witty observation.Wilde: "I wish I had said that." What was Whistler's reply?
(10) Senator Fritz Hollings vs. Henry McMastor, when challenged by his Republican opponent during a televised debate to take a drug test. What did Hollings say?
(11) Reverend Edward Everett Hale vs. the U.S. Senate, when asked if he prayed for the Senators. What was Hale's answer?
(12) Edna Ferber vs. Noel Coward, Coward was remarking upon the fact that Ferber was wearing a tailored suit. Coward: "You look almost like a man." What was Ferber's riposte?
(13) Winston Churchill vs. a Member of Parliament, who said: "Mr. Churchill, must you fall asleep while I'm speaking?" What did Churchill say?
(14) Calvin Coolidge vs. some random lady at a White House dinner. Woman: Mr Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." How did Coolidge reply?

Advanced bureaucratology (Dirk)

Good Morning!

"I'm ticklish."

Why have they stopped wearing white collars? (reposted)

Like everybody else, we're getting these letters from Nigeria. Here's the latest (from .pl, actually, that's Poland, I think, the full email address is: mrzacom@gazeta.pl --- in case you feel the need to reply):

Dear MICHAEL

Please pardon me for not having the liberty of knowing your mindset before writing you this letter without any formal introduction.My name is Mr. Zaco Mohammed I am the present branch Manager in one of the Barclay's Bank here in London I write to solicit for your partnership in claiming of $15.million usd from an account at our Head Office .

The aforementioned fund $15.million usd is my share percentage from a Gold Mining project that i helped financed, influentially.

Furthermore, as a Manager in the bank, I am not allowed to be part of such a deal, because it's against my company's professional practice policy. So I am compelled to ask that you stand on my behalf and receive this fund into

any account that is solely controlled by you. I will compensate you with 35% of the total amount involved as gratification for being my partner in the transfer.

Please contact me immediately you received this mail

Yours Truly,

Mr.Zaco Mohammed

Do we have to point out what's wrong with this letter---besides the ploy? Everything is off, style ("MICHAEL"), spelling (the first person pronoun is not capitalized), interpunction (spaces between the last letter and a dot, for example), grammar ("that i helped financed"), idiomatic usage  ("for not having the liberty of knowing your mindset") etc. And it's always thus.

Who is writing these letters? In my days, we were told with great fanfare of highly intelligent---that was always the qualifier: "highly intelligent"---individuals that were cheating unsuspecting victims out of their money by means of wit, deception, guile, and other nonviolent forms of behavior, all this while the perpetrators were wearing white collars.

Bürchen in Switzerland (reposted)

Milka milk chocolate, with the milk from happy cows---that was the slogan of a chocolate commercial during my youth in Germany. And there we are, in Bürchen, Switzerland, and it's true.

Near Bürchen, Bietschhorn in the background (peak in the clouds)

Bürchen is located on the southern side of the Valais valley, near the side valleys of Zermatt and Saas Fee, at 1600m altitude. The ski lift begins right in front of our settlement, the Chalet zone.

Did you sleep well?

"Why, oh why, have beauty spots gone out of fashion?"

Good Morning!

A brief post on style (Frank L. Visco)

Always avoid alliteration.

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)

Employ the vernacular.

Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

Contractions aren't necessary.

Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

One should never generalize.

Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

Profanity sucks.

Be more or less specific.

Understatement is always best.

Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

One-word sentences? Eliminate.

Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

The passive voice is to be avoided.

Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

Who needs rhetorical questions?

The tragedy of the unfinished bathroom

We also do art, right? So, that's the excuse:

That's not the art, that's just the unfinished bathroom

We're sitting in a friend's chalet and the repair people are supposed to show up and finish the work in the bathroom. Don't let's get into the gritty-nitty details, we've waited all day and I finally send the following email to our friend:

...two boys showed up to install a new radiator...nobody else...so much for earlier assertions made earlier today..we've waited the whole day for them, could not go out...this is now the end of the second week we are without toilet on the floor...

(this is the entire email message, okay, the elliptical dots are very handy, no need any longer to finish sentences).

Here's our friend's reply:

Roy Lichtenstein Alka Seltzer (1966)

Shall I compare thee to a summer day?

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 


...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18: