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"Complete History of the United States [abridged]" at Center Stage Theater
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Sep. 5th, 2008 @ 10:34 am
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Greetings, all and sundry,
Many of you are familiar with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, who wrote and performed "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged]," in which three actors run through every single Shakespeare play (plus sonnets!) in an hour and a half. The RSC have written a bunch more plays in a similar vein, and the amatuer theater company at Merkaz HaMagshimim is putting on one of them this week.
So, Ladies and Gentlemen - The Complete History of The United States, abridged. From what I've heard, it's a funny, funny show, with great actors, and I'm really looking forward to it. Rachel and I are going with friends this Monday (currently a party of 9, and counting), and we'd love to see you there too. Or, if Monday's no good for you, there are shows Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday as well. I highly recommend.
Shows are at 8pm; tickets are 50 shekel apiece, and can be reserved in advance and paid for at the show. Let me know if you want to come on Monday; I'll reserve you a ticket :D
--z |
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Comic for September 5, 2008
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Sep. 5th, 2008 @ 12:00 am
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Confessions of a Book Junkie
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Sep. 5th, 2008 @ 11:03 am
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Story sale
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Sep. 5th, 2008 @ 10:42 am
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"Shangri-La", to Strange Horizons. To run in two instalments early 2009, I believe. |
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ואתם תהיתם על ציד מכשפות
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Sep. 5th, 2008 @ 12:57 am
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מהעיתון "...האב נעצר בחשד כי ידע על דכאונה של האם ולא דיווח על כך לרשויות" אני רק יכול לדמיין את התגובות ל"שלום משטרה, אישתי נראית עצובה השבוע".
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For One Thing, He is Ugly
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 04:49 pm
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Originally published at Nedroid Picture Diary. You can comment here or there.
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The Book You Wished You Wrote
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 11:47 am
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As I'm working my way through my current project, I keep thinking about the book it might be, if I have the skill and vision to do it, and that makes me think of the books I've read that I think really nailed it.
The two books that I love most from a writerly standpoint, and that I wish that I was good enough to have written are Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood and Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford. For my taste, they're both perfect in their own ways.
 The Holdstock book is fairly well known, or at least it should be. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1988. If I had time here I'd go into its multiple charms, but for right now I'll just mention that I've never felt like the ending of a book was set up as well as this one was. He managed to make the ending perfect as a place for the plot to wrap up, but he also made the ending perfect in its tone, which I don't see very often. He pulled together the book's threads and ended in . . . well . . . a mythic place. It was amazing.
The other one, Bradford's Red Sky at Morning may not be as well known, but it's a book I return to over and over for its pitch-perfect characterizations, its mix of humor and pathos, and the powerful emotion that builds through its last thirty pages.
Interestingly enough, I just realized, they're both written in 1st person. Hmmm.
I wish that I'd written either of them. Since I can't go back, I'll just have to try to write a book that measures up to them.
What are your books that you wish you had written, or that you wish you could write as well as?Current Mood:  chipper Current Music: "Everyday," Buddy Holly |
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אבחנה
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 08:09 pm
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אחד החסרונות בנהיגה ברכב ישן הוא שכל מיני דברים מתקלקלים במקומות לא צפויים.
למשל, הגה. נניח, באמצע כביש ראשי.
זה לא ממש כיף.
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589: Entrance Qualifications
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 03:38 pm
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Featured Writers for September 2008:
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 11:00 am
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Please welcome this month's featured writers:
Tina Connolly has published in Strange Horizons, Asimov's, Heliotrope and other magazines. Her stories are characterized by delicate prose and a keen insight into human nature.
J Alan Erwine J Alan Erwine is an author and editor who has sold more than forty short stories to various markets. His work deals with a variety of themes ranging from eugenics to colonialism.
David W. Goldman is an extraordinarily inventive and perceptive author with a knack for making the reader view the world through new eyes. His work has appeared in Writers of the Future and in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, among others.
Merrie Haskell has sold fiction to Asimov's, Strange Horizons and Escape Pod. She has a beautiful prose style, a lively sense of humor, and a penchant for fairy tale retellings.
Floris M. Kleijne has been featured in two Writers of the Future volumes, and has also appeared in other venues. His stories are both energetic and thought-provoking.
Billy Wong is an avid fan of heroic fantasy, with a special love for hardcore warriors of the fairer sex. His stories feature dragons, assassins, superhuman warriors, and everything else you might expect from classic Sword and Sorcery.
Anthologies containing stories by these authors will be sold at a discount during the month of September. |
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Comic for September 4, 2008
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 12:00 am
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פאשלות העברית שמוציאות אותי מהכלים
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Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 09:43 am
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אתחיל, כראוי, בהצהרה שייתכן מאוד שאני טועה בחלק מהביטויים להלן, במיוחד אלה שהם עברית מלפני ולפנים (ואשמח אם יתקנו אותי). אוסיף שגם אני חוטאת באינגלישיזמים לרוב (רבאק, אני חושבת באנגלית), ועם זאת יש כמה ביטויים שמוציאים אותי מהכלים. קדימה.
1. "לפרוס" לעומת "לפרושׂ". הראשון כולל פרוסות, כלומר מה שעושים ללחם. אתה לא "פורס" שמיכה ואתה לא "פורס" כוחות בשטח, כי זה יערב סכינים ממש גדולות ויהיה מגעיל. אתה פורשׂ את הקורסים שלך על יותר סמסטרים, פורשׂ מפה על הדשא ופורס עליה את הלחמניות. לא בכדי זו השגיאה הראשונה ברשימה, כיוון שהיא משגעת אותי יותר מכולן.
2. לאכל - לעכל - לעקל. הרבה עיתונאים וכותבי טורים מחליפים בין שלושת אלה, ונראה שגם למגיהים לא ממש אכפת. אני מודה שלשניים הראשונים משמעות דומה, אבל הראשון מתאר כליה והשני מתאר עיבוד, פירוק. השלישי, לצערי, הוא האיות החביב על כותבי הדור הנוכחי לתיאור כל אחת מהמשמעויות לעיל.
3. "אני לא יכול לחכות". יענו, I can't wait. מה קרה? אין "מצפה בכליון עיניים"? בכלל, עצם העובדה שאנשים לא טורחים לחשוב שמא יש בעברית ביטוי שיעביר את אותה משמעות ומסתפקים - בנוחות - בתרגום מילולי עילג, פשוט משגעת אותי. אני חוטאת ב"זה מריח / מרגיש טוב" לעתים קרובות, אבל זה איכשהוא צורם לי פחות (והצעות תתקבלנה בברכה). אם מישהו נזכר בעוד ביטויים לועזיים שהשתרשו בשפת היום יום בתרגומית צחה, אשמח לשמוע ולרטון בצוותא.
4. "איזה בגדים מגניבים". ל"איזה" יש צורה לשימוש ברבים: "אילו". היא נשכחה, והצמדת צורת היחיד לכל דבר צורמת לי כמו מחט שורטת על עצם. זה דומה ל"המון תודה". אין כזה דבר, המון תודה. יש, כנראה, "המון תודות" (ותודה למתי כספי, שקיטר זאת ב"מאחורי הצלילים" לפני כמה שנים).
בטח יש עוד. אוסיף אם אזכר, ואשמח לשמוע מה צורם למי שאתרע מזלו לקרוא את הרשומה.
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Easter...
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
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Phil and I are planning to spend next Easter in his brother's cottage in the Cotswolds.
Easter.
Of next year.
No one has EVER planned to do stuff with me that far ahead, not even out of a relationship lol
The scary thing is that I see us still being together in Easter of next year. I've been avoiding planning things too far in advance in case I freaked him out. Our birthdays, for example, are two days apart from one another in November and I've been wanting to ask about doing something for them but November seems like far away (when your previous longest relationship was a month) so I hadn't said anything.
Easter was his idea.
I'm scared at being optimistic about us. I mean, how many people stay with their second ever proper boyfriend? Okay, so my best friend married her second ever boyfriend, but that's hardly the norm.
What's kinda good is that he's never had a relationship last past a couple of months either, so it's not like we're wildly dissimilar with that. And both of us see this lasting...
Scary lolCurrent Mood:  hopeful |
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דרוש: פלייליסט אירובי.
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 10:24 pm
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כזה של "מוסיקה". כלומר, לא אלקטרוני. ולא פחות חשוב, בעברית. |
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דרוש: פלייליסט נוארי
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 08:16 pm
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כשהיא נכנסה למשרד שלי, ידעתי שמהיום הזה כבר לא ייצא שום דבר טוב. כמו בעשרות פעמים קודמות שבהן נכנסה למשרד שלי עם בקשות מופרכות, גם הפעם ידעתי שאני בצרות. עמוק בצרות. והצרות לא איחרו לבוא. "אני רוצה שירים נואריים", היא אמרה. הסתכלתי בה מציתה סיגריה, שואפת ממנה, נושפת את העשן לחלל החדר ומניחה את הקופסה על השולחן. רגליה היו שלובות זו על זו, מאתגרות את החצאית שלה כמו שתי רכבות שמנסות לעבור באותה מנהרה. "אני לא בטוח שאני מבין מה את רוצה, בובה", אמרתי לה. היא הביטה בי מזווית עיניה ושאפה שוב מהסיגריה שלה, לאט. אז רכנה לעברי ולחשה. "שירים נואריים. אתה יודע, אפלוליים. שמתאימים לתפאורה..." היא הביטה על פני המשרד שלי, עיקמה את אפה והחזירה את מבטה אלי, "הזאת". העשן שפלטה התפזר באניצים סביב פניה. "קצת ג'ז. קצת בי-בופ. קצת סולו-סקסופון. קצת... תחשוב בעצמך. אתה הבלש". הרגשתי את גלגלי השיניים חורקים במוחי. היה לי ברור שזאת אישה שאני לא רוצה לאכזב. ואיזשהו רעיון התחיל לבצבץ במחשבות שלי, בין תמונות שניסיתי בכל כוחי לבלום. הייתה לה השפעה כזאת עלי. "בסדר", אמרתי לה ויישרתי את העניבה. "אני אמצא לך את השירים הנואריים שלך. אני יודע בדיוק איפה להתחיל". והנה, אני כאן. כי אם יש מקום לחפש בו דברים כאלה, זה המקום. הביב שאליו מתנקזת כל חלאת המין האנושי, נזיד מעופש של שיכורים בסוף דרכם שיעשו כל דבר בשביל חופן ירוקים, של נשות חברה שמסתובבות בחברה הגרועה ביותר, של - אהמ. נדמה לי שנסחפתי קצת. בכל אופן, את הבקשה הבנתם, לא? יש המלצות? ( פוסטים קודמים בסדרה לאחר הקאט )Current Mood: Noir Current Music: Nina Simone - I'm feelin' good |
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Too Bad. This Bread is DELICIOUS.
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 11:33 am
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Originally published at Nedroid Picture Diary. You can comment here or there.
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החצבים נראו נראו בארץ.
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 06:15 pm
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Work?
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 03:50 pm
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OK, I think I've reached a level of laziness at work which has never been reached before. This week I have accomplished SO little that really they've been paying me to sit here and look pretty lol
I'm hoping my motivation will return once my move is over. All I can think about at the moment is stuff to do with moving into my flat and doing things at lunch time xD It's not that I'm not liking the work or that any of it is exceptionally tedious, and I don't hate coming here every day, it's just that my mind simply isn't on the job at hand.
It is, in fact, on everything BUT the job in hand.
The one point in the day that I did start to knuckle down and do some work Phil and I ended up alone in our office (Phil G had gone somewhere and Chris was in a meeting) and somehow Phil's hand ended up on my left boob, which really wasn't conducive to coding a website. Not helpful lol
Of course then it was lunch time and we went for a walk... and ever since I've got back I haven't really managed to get stuck into anything substantial. Been flitting about between stuff and really accomplishing nothing. I spent half an hour on the phone to a broker discussing his site, which was useful but didn't really get me anywhere coz the muppet doesn't know what he wants. I've set him some homework to decide what he wants out of his site. Apparently I should just know what pages he needs to have, what logo he should use and what layout he wants without him thinking about any of it himself.
Sigh.
Phil's helping me move some boxes of crap to my flat tonight. He's gonna have dinner at mine with me and my parents (which will be interesting lol) and then we're going over. Mum may or not be coming with us to help hang curtains but we shall see.
Work... hmm... somehow it's nearly 4pm and I've managed to coast through the afternoon. Shouldn't be too hard to coast another hour and a half but I should reeeeeeeeeally actually do something :P
*uses this icon just because it HAS started happening to me in elevators ;)*Current Mood:  busy |
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No Matter How Long I Teach, I'm an Idiot
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 08:36 am
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So, the kids wrote sonnets last week, e-mailed them to me, and then I put them into packets (with the names pulled off). Today's lesson involved breaking them into 4 or 5 member editing groups to choose 3 poems from the packet to publish.
The lesson is supposed to generate a discussion of poetic excellence and the aesthetics of choice.
So, I get the kids in groups, hand out the poems, and the first thing that happens is that a girl in one of the groups starts a diatribe about how she hates poets who write about writing (3 of the sonnets, as it turns out, were about the difficulties of writing sonnets).
I had to stop everything and tell the group what I should have before we started: the poets are IN the room. Comments about why things work or don't work are perfectly appropriate, but personal comments about the character, skill, motivations, etc. of the poets are not appropriate.
The poet is in the room!
Sigh.Current Mood:  aggravated Current Music: "The Boxer," Simon & Garfunkel |
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The Long Walk
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Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 06:43 am
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Writing a novel is an awful lot like a long walk. For me, it's a walk in mountainous woods on a curvy path. I hardly ever know what is more than twenty feet in front of me, and I have to walk to the next turn to see what's coming up. Oh, I can see distant landmarks, and I have a general idea of the direction, but I also know there are adventures in front of me that I don't know anything about yet.
How's that for an extended simile?
 Right now the novel has three points of view. I like the pleasant juggling of the story lines. So far, when I reach a dramatic pause on one, I switch to the other. I can see the possibilities too of the times when the point of view characters are together. I get to choose who gets the point of view in the scene.
Since the bulk of my writing experience is in short stories, most of the time I practice ferocious adherence to a single point of view, although I have written a couple of stories where point of view switches. In the book, though, POV becomes a pacing device and a way to build suspense.
It's possible that I'm channeling my inner Edgar Rice Burroughs. All of the Tarzan books (which I read numerous times from 5th to 9th grade) followed the same narrative pattern: a chapter with Tarzan until he got in trouble, and then a chapter of some other character until she/he got in trouble. Eventually the two stories met up. I'm not doing that, exactly, but I feel the ghost of ERB at my shoulder.
The key is to make all the points of view interesting in their own right. They have to serve the overall story, naturally, but they need to have an independent attraction of their own. Since POV invites sympathy, I need to make sure that as I handle each character that I make them the hero of their own story.
No problem, right?
I'm in the write-not-edit phase of the drafting, but already I'm thinking about how long individual sections should be. I've put asterisks between sections six times now, each break representing a point of view shift. I may decide later that that chops things up too much. What I don't want is for the novel to develop a mechanical rhythm (each section the same length and following the same pattern).
At any rate, since the 18th I've put down 10,961 words of rough draft, about 685 words a day. Monday racked up 1,600 words, but I've also had a day where I just made a 200 word minimum. Those darned life events can interfere! But I'm way ahead of finishing by May 22 .Current Mood:  busy Current Music: "A hazy Shade of Winter," Simon & Garfunkel |
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