Saturday, August 30, 2008

Forewarmed forearms.

By now all three of you will have noticed that Kath of Blurb from the 'Burbs has been working on the blogging equivalent of a full-length marathon and is nearing completion. With barely a stumble and never a missed beat, she has been taking us on a heroic personal journey: Appreciative August. One post for every day of August aimed at appreciating the things in her life which deserve the high accolade of a full-length blog about them written by her of the words and cocoa. From family members to geographic locations, the good times, the hard and the silver linings she swiped from the bad like a tread-mill tramping thief in the night, Kath has conquered them all. And these were no Ninja-style concentrated blogettes, every day found us with a new in-depth essay on the massive and the mundane. By my ummahhstimation there's at least 30,000 words there - all focused toward a single goal: the improvement of writing via the difficult route of not making snide remarks about things she's seen in the media.
Kath, I take my hat off to you. Well done.

You have inspired me.

Kind of.

In the opposite direction.

This isn't a piss-take, but next month on Writing has been declared Single Sentence September. I will be posting every day, Kath-style. One sentence. And one sentence only. Per day. If you're a regular reader, you'll know that my sentences can turn into paragraphs, so there will no lack of content, but I'm also aiming for "interesting".
How? Wait and see.
What? I said: wait and see.
Why? Will you just shut up already?
Where? Over there, behind those sheds. Count to a hundred and we'll come and get you. But no peeking!

You have been warmed.

Update: Please go and read the final post for Appreciative August. It all makes sense.

***
GTH - Adam Y takes the points and the smiles for merely referencing that racist little WB frog doin' the dance that ruined the unknown building worker. 10 points to The Other other Sam if he starts his own blog - it breaks my little heart to see all those carefully hotlinked names going to waste every post. I had never even heard of 'Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden' until Moify showed it to me during a Youtube nostalgia binge.

5 comments:

  1. I am very much looking forward to this, Franzy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Single Sentence September? Sound smore like SLACK September to me!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Squib - You're spot on. Points to you.

    TOoS - You could trump me from the start with Sentence Fragment September Blog

    River and Kath - I'm wondering just how interesting it could ever get...

    Oh well, let's see!

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32