Vermont Cheddar, how could anything be terrible about that? The terroir and tang of regional cheeses with a great bottle of wine sound delightful. I’m in, who knows maybe too much wine will help with this month’s Terrible Poetry Contest! About that, Chel asks us to write a terrible limerick about this regional cheese. Two months ago I said let them eat cake, now I say let them eat cheese!!! on to the terribleness again…
From Vermont came a cheddar, behold Legend has it, one heck of a mold Big cheese curd not forstall The coming Woodchuck brawl. For a chance to taste Green Mountain gold.
And I’m off to make some nachos with melted cheese (and maybe chili!)
Welcome to another edition of T-Shirt Wisdom Wednesday for May 24th, 2023. This hump day feature is exactly what it sounds like. Every other Wednesday (bi-weekly) I will post a graphic that is funny, poignant, witty, honest, crude, toothsome, with bite, or just plain old ridiculous. Some I’ll have plagiarized directly from a chest near you. Others may not have been spotted in the wild but they probably should be out there.
My wife thinks I made this one specifically for her!
Suggestions are always welcome. If you come across something you think is worthy of being pasted across someone’s chest and paraded around publicly jot it down and send me a message. If it makes the cut I will whip up a graphic design template and use it in a future post. Any suggestions used will include a shout-out and link to your blog on the week it posts.
Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Tuesday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.
This week’s Image comes from King Charles III’s coronation. It is a sea of military officers marching from top left to bottom right all wearing the red tunic and bearskin helmets best known in popular culture as the uniform worn by the Royal (or alternatively King’s) Guard outside Buckingham Palace.
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading the tales you spin. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their masterpieces.
Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, I will post five random words to Greg’s Blog at 5:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the word prompts. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece, a series of stand-alone projects, or an epic serial. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.
Here are your prompt words for the week of May 22nd, 2023:
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.
As a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, I have been watching the drama at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) unfold. Kyle Dubas the General Manager is out it what appears to be an ill-advised and poorly executed grab at power gone awry.
If you believe the story as masterfully woven by team President and former player Brendan Shanahan it might have been the worst play, much like the team’s feeble on-ice powerplay during the playoffs. With a newly negotiated contract all but done, except for the signatures, Dubas held his year-end press conference against Shanny’s better advice. During that presser, Dubas whose contract was set to expire July 1st revealed that he might not be interested in returning to Toronto (or anywhere else) for family reasons. It was a real tear-jerker where he outlined how it had been a difficult year and the pressures of the Leaf’s GM job were weighing heavily on his family’s shoulders. That would turn out to be his first mistake, publicly sowing the seed of doubt as to his commitment to the job and organization. It certainly had Shanny raising a Spockian eyebrow from his perch in the President’s office.
Strike two came after two days of radio silence when Dubas’ agent delivered a new proposal that significantly altered the all-but-finalized deal Shanny and the Leaf brass believed was in place. More power, more money, or both – nothing has been fully confirmed but there is no doubt it was some combination of the two that clearly made the Monday press conference look like a powerplay where Dubas used his family as pawns in his high-stakes plan. Shanny and the MLSE board of directors would certainly have some decisions to make.
In the mids of that process, Dubas once again reached out to the Leafs, presumably realizing the gaff he and his agent had made and sent Shanahan an email saying he was ready to sign the original deal and get back to work as the Leafs GM. Later that morning Shanny drove out to Dubas’ office at the Leafs training center in Etobicoke and informed Dubas the MLSE had decided to move in a different direction.
And just like that the Dubas era was over in Toronto. Shanahan feeling as though the unknown guy from the Soo Greyhounds he took a flyer on nine years earlier had knifed him in the back. The fans who wanted blood were partially appeased after an embarrassing second-round exit from the quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup. Still, the structural problem Dubas leaves behind because of the dollars being spent on the “Core 4” (Matthews, Marner, Tavares and Nylander) will be an albatross for anyone new stepping into the position.
My week has been spent in training at work. It has left me sore and aching all over. This out-of-shape guy is getting too old for that kind of physical stuff. I did certify for another three years so that part is good. And I did get a couple of new posts up as well. Woohoo!
This week wasn’t a music week. I spent most of my listening credits catching up on my favourite podcasts including Ologies, Startalk, The Bob McCown Podcast, The Gibby Show and Hidden Brain. As for music, I heard Louis and Ella singing Dream A Little Dream at Starbucks the other day. What a dynamic duo they made.
The week in review…
A Mother’s Fortune A touching story of the joy our children bring us by Susan at Sillyfrog’s Blog.
Simply A poem of reflection written by ve poem written by Rebecca at Is It Real or Fantasy.
Took Us Long Enough A continued exploration of love in Rockstar Girl’s Love Part 2 series posted at Where Stories Can Spark Their Magic.
He’s My Brother The family you are stuck with as demonstrated by Fandango at This, That and the Other
Buzzkill The silence of missing bees creates quite a buzz in Paula at Light Motifs II story.
Five Word Weekly, Four Line Fiction and T-Shirt Wisdom are on tap plus hopefully some new original content.
In other news, I am considering launching a new monthly challenge in June or July. Something to allow the writer freedom to explore and develop longer stories. Stay tuned.
Every week Fandango over at This, That and the Other posts a provocative question. This week’s question is…
“Do you think that the metrics the Academy Awards will start applying in 2024 regarding the composition of at least 30% of the cast and crew by under-represented groups in order for a film to even qualify for the Best Picture Oscar nomination is appropriate? Or, do you share Richard Dreyfuss’ opinion that because filmmaking is an art form, imposing such criteria in order for a film to even be considered for an Oscar is inappropriate?“
It is as ridiculous as the publishing world rewriting books to conform to today’s politically correct woke-driven standards. It is a form of censorship that we cannot allow to happen. I believe the best people applying for the position should be employed. I’m not naive, I fully understand that there are bigoted factions in society and sometimes affirmative action initiatives are appropriate. There are other ways to ensure a representative workforce. Stifling art is not the place it should be applied.
Art must be judged on its merit, not on a headcount of arbitrarily delineated categories of people. Salman Rushdie said it best of the literary world at the 2023 British Book Awards when he was talking about publishers re-writing works by authors such as Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl. “Books have to come to us from their time and be of their time, and if that’s difficult to take, don’t read them. Read another book, but don’t try and remake yesterday’s work in the light of today’s attitudes.”
While Hollywood may not be re-editing or updating older works there is a push to rewrite the screenplays of the stories Rushdie talks about to conform to today’s rules. I point to the example of The Aeronauts, a fictional film based on the true history of scientists James Glaisher and Henry Tracy Coxwell. When the screenplay was being written and the cast chosen there was a conscious effort to replace Henry Tracy Coxwell with the fictional Amelia Wren (the name of the character, no doubt chosen to mimic that of female heroine Amelia Earheart, only serving to further muddle the true history) to make the film more inclusive. Essentially rewriting the past for public consumption and to an audience that will take it as a fact and never consider looking up the real history.
While I believe that all people who are qualified should be able to apply and work in the film industry (or any industry) I suspect the new rules the Academy will impose only encourage more bowdlerizing of art and history and that is a form of censorship that cannot be tolerated.
Thomas sat at the table with his head in his hands, years of hard work and dedication hung in the balance.
He was still the highest-grossing salesperson in the organization, his stature legendary after 35 years of service.
They called him Easter Sunday because no one could resurrect a lost deal like he could, bringing opportunity back from the dead as if it were Jesus on the third day.
Sure, he’d been handsomely compensated for his efforts, but he’d made more money for this Corporation than anyone could count; single-handedly lifting it from its Mom and Pop beginnings to a giant of the industry.
Defunct of any reason the Director of Human Resources stared at him with shame and disgust, they no longer saw him as a giant but an out-of-touch dinosaur.
He tried to explain that it was a simple misunderstanding, the word gay had once meant happy, but it was too late, the damage was done; guilty in the court of public opinion he watched as his life swirled about the room before being flushed down the elevator and out the back door – left holding nothing but a single box of his belonging.
Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Tuesday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.
This week’s Image is of the Statue of Liberty washing away on the crest of a large wave rolling across a swollen Hudson River/Atlantic Ocean while a flooded New York City looms in the background.
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Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading the tales you spin. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their masterpieces.
Driving into work on this Sunday, Mother’s Day I find myself listening to Levar Burton, yes that LeVar Burton of Star Trek and Roots fame. I have dipped into the show’s archive and found “The Paper Menagerie”, one of my favourite short stories from the LeVar Burton Reads podcast.
The Paper Menagerie is a gut-wrenching story of a boy born to an American father and his mail-order bride from Hong Kong. Although I can not relate to the struggles of being a “half-breed” in white America and all the negative connotations that come with that in late 20th-century America, I can understand the struggle between generations. The animosity between a child and a parent. Ken Liu crafts an emotionally charged world of sorrow and struggle offset by the magic of his Mother’s origami animals. This Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards winner seemed a perfect fit for Mother’s Day.
Speaking of Mother’s Day, in one of the more politically correct, woke, NO – just plain moronic twists one of the local school boards has ordered the removal of a Mother’s Day sign that Grade Six students had come up with.
Some including Gad Saad a Canadian professor and author who suggested “Mother’s Day is too exclusionary. Please be sensitive for community cohesion.”
To appease the few at the expense of the many, the sign was replaced with a less offensive message.
Make this month count. Accomplish your goals. You can do this.
The school’s first attempt at posting the new message contained a blatantly misspelled Acomplish / Accommplish / Acommplish. Perhaps more time on reading and writing and less time on social engineering should be the order of the day!
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.
School boards across this country have cancelled Mother’s and Father’s Day over concerns of inclusivity. Corporations have opted to forgo advertising campaigns or allow subscribers to opt out of receiving such materials and governmental agencies, universities, and mainstream publications now frequently refer to “pregnant people” or even “birthing people” instead of mothers.
“As we continue to learn and recognize the importance of celebrating all people in our community, we have moved away from isolated observances of specific traditions like Mother’s and Father’s Day,” the vice principal of Kildonan East Collegiate, a public high school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, wrote in a memo.
Of course, this is all ridiculous. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I am sorry that the generations since yours have messed this world up so bad that we can’t even show our appreciation for the person who brought us into this world.
I won’t trouble you with any Maple Leafs talk this week although I heard that Auston and Mitch (Marner) scored a combined three-under at Glen Abbey. That’s three more birdies than goals scored by Matthews against the Florida Panthers.
The Sam Roberts Band out of Montreal released some new music recently that I heard for the first time this week. The new single Picture of Love is a great listen.
Five Word Weekly, Four Line Fiction and at least one original piece. Consider that last one a challenge to myself since it’s been pretty barren at the blog lately.
In other news, I am considering launching a new monthly challenge in June or July. Something to allow the writer freedom to explore and develop longer stories. Stay tuned.
Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, I will post five random words to Greg’s Blog at 5:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the word prompts. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece, a series of stand-alone projects, or an epic serial. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.
Here are your prompt words for the week of May 15th, 2023:
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.
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