No witty commentary today, other than to say I like this poem:
FIRE AND ICE
BY: Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain
Not sure I have anything profound to say about this one, other than I generally find that in life, one often meets many people who feel they have to knock others down just to make themselves look good in comparison. Why do people feel the need to do that? I don’t know.
This quote can definitely apply to writing. Show of hands – how many of you have been laughed out of the room after mentioning you’re working on a novel?
It’s ok. The people who haven’t been bitten by the writing bug will never understand. Just hang out and commiserate with other writing bug bite sufferers.
I like to Shakespearize things – movies, TV shows, songs. I love Shakespeare. Maybe it’s trite, but I do feel that the English language’s greatest author walked the earth around 500 years or so ago (give or take a few years here or there).
I hope to turn this into a new feature, and if you have something you’d like to see Shakespearized, let me know.
Without further ado…
DEFLATEGATE SHAKESPEARIZED
By: Bookshelf Q. Battler
A Tale Told in the Tradition of the Bard
PRESS MAN #1 – In fair New England where we begin our tale, a legend of great treachery and sanctimonious chicanery, of gladiators of the gridiron and air dispersion most foul.
RANDOM COLTS PLAYER (staring at and holding up a football as if it were a skull) – Is this a ball I see before me? It’s lack of weight disturbeth me with the passion of the Gods who once clapped in thunderous combat above the skies of Ancient Rome. Fi on thee, Knaves of New England, Mercenaries of the Villainous Cheese Baron! Something is rotten in the State of the NFL.
ENTER KING BELICHIK – Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! Good sirs, rest thine ears upon my voice, and hear me as I say that in my four score years of leading mine knights into carefully manicured grassy fields of battle all across our land, this is the first and only time that anyone hath raised the issue of mine balls! Merry, it surpriseth me greatly to hear men complain of a trivial happenstance, as surely as it would surpriseth me were I to waken on the morrow to find that the sun’s exuberant colors had transferred from yellow to green.
PRESS MAN #2 – Foul! Foul! Scandal most foul! A plague on your house, King Belichik! For thou failest to taketh the fall in this fake story that we hath manufactured out of whole cloth! Thou hast thrown Sir Thomas of Brady under the bus!
TYPICAL COLTS FAN – To inflate or not to inflate? That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to inflate your balls to 12.5 pounds per square inch, or to take air out of your balls until they are 11.5 pounds per square inch, and in doing so, ruin them? To inflate, to deflate, to inflate perchance to dream? Ay, there’s the rub…on our balls!
SIR THOMAS OF BRADY – Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow…inflated balls are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying slow news days…
COLTS FAN #2 – O, I see Queen Mab! Come she does, the Queen of the Fairies! And she telleth me true, she fills my ears with the melodious truth, that had our balls been comprised of more air, we surely would not have had our asses handed to us in a massacre in which we lost by 40 points! Fi! By the beard of God I say had the game ball had one but one more pound of pressure inside of it, we would have fought boldly like the mighty warriors of the coliseum of old!
ENTER FOX AND COMPANIONS – Forsooth and hark, for we are Fox and Companions! Bringeth yon noble viewers news of the death of the Saudi Arabian King? Nay! Bringeth ye news of the resignation of the Yemen Government? Nay! Gather round and hear a tale of balls deflated with vigorous gusto!
PRESS MAN #3 – But soft! What lies through yonder window breaks?! It tis the east, and the underinflated balls are the sun! Arise fair balls, and kill the envious moon, whose maid art sick and pale with grief, that her maid’s balls are far more inflated than yours!
PATRIOTS FAN -(also holding a football like it was a skull) – Alas, poor football, I knew him, Horatio. Twas a football of great jest and most excellent fancy! Once inflated to 12.5 pounds per square inch and then alas, deflated to a paltry 11.5 square pounds per inch by rapscallions of ignominious cunning and unscrupulous alacrity. Our knights, once a great bastion of the game, now reduced to wicked pissah jokes about deflated balls.
“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Do you doubt yourself while you’re writing? I know I do. Is that a good thing? Perhaps some of the junkiest books come from folks who believe that nothing but rainbows comes out of their pen? Perhaps some of the best writing comes from people who have toiled away, questioning and self-debating every single, solitary last word choice?
What say you, readers?
Word of Warning – come Springtime, this blog is going to Stark up the place. I pay the Iron Price, but I always pay my debts, Winter is Coming, and so is Game of Thrones.
As I recall from last year, there are a lot of GOT Nerds in the book blogosphere. So I hope to get these posts rockin’ with lively discussions – what is that wacky imp going to do next? Who is George RR going to bump off next?
And where the heck is Lady Stoneheart?
Is it too early to start talking Game of Thrones? Yeah, probably. But what the hell.
What do you want to see happen on Game of Thrones this season?
Hypotheticals only. No spoilers. I haven’t read the books, so I’m only as far as the series. That is probably a sad admission for a book nerd, but so be it.
And if you have no predictions or comments as to what you hope will happen, then just feel free to discuss anything going on in Westeros. Or its neighbors.
Valar Morghulis. Wait till April? This a man cannot do.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
– George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons
Can the next season of Game of Thrones just start already?
…writes a few lines per day?
True or false?
Bookshelf Battle 