Posted on 04/03/2007 8:27:29 PM PDT by JamesP81
There is a small bit of business we ought to take care of.
Most people have expressed to me a desire to allow critiquing of each other's work. I think this is a good idea, with one reservation: posting your work to an open forum, such as FR, could leave you open to copyright infringement. Granted, it's not likely to happen, but one never knows. It helps some that FR time stamps its posts, so you can get an exact date for when you created the material, and it would further help to keep a copyright posted in your posts to the forum as well. However, before we decide on that, I wanted to run it by everyone on the list: do we want to post our work to FR for critiquing in a thread, or would we all feel better about exchanging email addresses and distributing work for critiquing in that manner?
On a personal note, I was going to try to have something ready by today (I've shelved my current project and started on something else, which, I think has more potential), but I had to go to a dentist today and the throbbing in my head from repeated injections of local anesthetic has left me feeling a little weird, and thus I haven't had time to get to a point that I have something worth critiquing. My apologies.
In any case, I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on open forum critiquing vs email critiquing.
So give us a short sample. I know I'd like to see it.
But don't use a pen. A monitor is not an input device. :->
I know you have been sitting there hitting refresh over and over just waiting for an update on last weekends extravaganza with the in-laws. For the first time in a long time I hardly have anything to report. Things actually went okay. But there was one thing I learned, old people love to talk about bowels.
This party was causing me some dilemma, because I knew they would have crappy pizza and crappier fried chicken. Frankly, I didn't want to waste the calories. If I am going to splurge on my diet then I want to use those calories on awesome pizza, not the place that sent the best coupons. So finally I decided, screw it, I will just bring my own food and if anyone says anything I will just tell them my irritable bowel syndrome is aggravated by the greasy food (because I knew no one would mention the 40+ pounds I have lost). I figured problem solved, because no one is going to want to talk about diarrhea and constipation at the dinner table. Oh how wrong I was! Granted, I opened myself up to this by bringing my own food and did expect a certain amount of questions, but not the rapid fire non-stop in-depth questioning that I faced.
I explained the situation to my sister in-law. She's dumb, but nice and said she understood. When it was time to eat I brought out my yummy grilled chicken salad. My husband's aunt, we'll call her Hairlipina in homage to the ferret that lives on her upper lip that she think no one notices, asks me why I brought my own food. I quietly say, "All the grease in the pizza and chicken aggravate my IBS." My mother in-law pops up, "AGGRAVATES YOUR WHAT??" Again, quietly I say, "My IBS." I thought that would be the end of it, but Hairlipina had some more questions. "How long have you had it? Doesn't all that roughage go right through you? What other things can't you eat?" Crap! I had to think fast, because I had foolishly assumed when people heard the word "bowel" they would run from the topic like they were on fire. I didn't think they would have actual questions about my problems! I tried to be very softspoken and vague in my answers, so that Hairlipina might get the hint that this is not a subject I wanted to talk about. Then she tried to (loudly) convince me to get on medication.
This went on for about 10 minutes. I don't know if they were on to me or if they just really liked to talk about bowel movements. Knowing my husband's family like I do it was probably the latter. Later on we had to hear in painful detail about my brother in-law's lactose intolerance. Hairlipina and her husband were held in rapt attention. If ever I get to the point where stories about someone elses bowel movements are the highlight of my day, someone please commit me, because I've clearly gone mental.
After being hit with question after question I had really had enough. My jackass brother in-law (not the lactose intolerant one, another one) struts up oozing arrogance. He looks at my food and says, "Oh what's this? Our food isn't good enough for you?" He was not joking. He was trying to put me on the spot and embarrass me. How he even thought that was possible after playing "20 Questions About Kitten's BMs" tells you what an idiot he is. I looked right into his eyes, raised my voice slightly, and said, "I HAVE IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME, OKAY????" This had a couple of fabulous results. 1- He didn't talk to me the whole rest of the party. Which means I didn't have to listen to the benefits of cruising for the millionth time. 2- It shut everyone else up about my bowels. I finally was able to eat my salad in peace.
Going completely off topic, you know how most stores are going to the credit card machines that you swipe yourself and you sign with that special pen thing? Did you ever notice that unless the machine is brand new some person has tried to sign it with an ink pen?? It boggles the mind every time I see it.
RT:
That was really funny. It had a bit of a Seinfeld feel to it. I’ll bet you could easily write comedy based on your own life.
You ever read Erma Bombeck? Make this a little ‘nicer’, and you’d have a pretty funny weekly column in that vein. Try contacting some local little paper and seeing if you could write a weekly like this. You never know, they might say yes.
But don’t make the people you write about your family members, not unless you want to be disinvited from future get-togethers!
But don’t make the people you write about your family members, not unless you want to be disinvited from future get-togethers!
I wish! LOL!!!
I've got tons of material from my coworkers, too. Only carnies would be weirder then this bunch. I'm reluctant to write about them on my blog, because I really like how despite their freakiness I still keep getting a check. ;-)
I laughed out loud in many places.
Comedy is hard. And you did it well.
The only thing I would change is find something funnier than cruising.
PS - Do your relatives read your blog? Or have you changed the names to protect the innocent?
Retrokitten... did you at least get credit for the big salad.
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