Tag: life

Writin’ Out Loud. By Jack Grenard.

Writin’ Out Loud. By Jack Grenard.
Writin’ out loud 
a column for certain friends
and not uncertain ones,
from Jack Grenard…
 
…while waiting for our phone line to get
repaired so I can send this to you by email
 
…The house has been strangely silent since the phone went away. But how lovely for a change. No unwanted inputs. No need to turn anything off, to wonder who is calling and why and for how much.
 
…So why not just call the phone company’s repair service? I’d have to go to a pay phone but there aren’t any in this area. Even our grocery market’s former phone booth turned into a drinking fountain years ago.
 
…A friend who winters in Florida complained after my last sending that the type was too small, even though it left this computer as 18-point. In a non-typographic world, 18-point is equivalent to one-quarter inch; there are 72 points to an inch. Learned that in printing class in Jackson Junior High in Detroit and have been abusing it ever since. This column is in 24-point for the visually impaired like me and maybe you.
 
…Remember when you could reach phone repair by dialing three digits—or punching them into the phone’s keypad? Not with Century Link, our supplier. It’s now a ten-digit number from a company headquartered in Louisiana. Hoo-ray for globalization. With all of the progress in technology, why do we need to supply the last four digits of Jane’s social security number? Why not a thumbprint and retinal scan? And haven’t you been warned about giving out your social security number? Maybe our little phone company wants to check up on Jane, in at least her fifth year of Alzheimer’s disease. She has not used a phone in at least two years.
 
…More from the trenches: Walking part way around our “block” yesterday (Thursday, 7 March), I came upon shreds and long pieces of telephone wire on the road in front of our home. The appearance was that of what would happen if an angry shark had shaken and bitten its way out of a fish net. On the ground lay three clumps of colorful wires, the right size for use with telephones. A moment of truth, a combined ah-ha! and oh-oh moment, for our phone had not been working all that day. I recalled that a road scraper from the town of Cave Creek had smoothed our unpaved street the day before. Either the scraper’s blade was set too deep or the road’s surface lay too close to the sky. This would be no easy, quick fix for someone.
       History is so important in figuring out things. It was about five years ago that the same event happened. Then, our little old phone company hired a contractor to replace the wires. I know: Everyone else uses a cellphone (now one word) to get on the wire from almost anywhere, no immediate metal involved. One hitch: Our town hall staff does not work on Fridays. Meanwhile, we’re enjoying a quiet weekend at home. (Oh, I forgot. After about age 80 we geezers don’t have weekends. If weekends are there at all, they blend unnoticed into our working week.)
 
…Hope to read cheery notes from you soon. If you want to call by phone*, I suggest you wait a day or two. In this modern rushing world, that should prove to be no problem. The fact that you are reading this message at all means our missing phone line has been replaced and is working. (“The Wichita Wineman is high on the vine.”)
 
*What IS our phone number? It has been so long… Oh, yes: 1.***-***-****. Don’t dial the periods, okay?

Books Don’t Die. Books live on, quietly waiting to be discovered.

Books Don’t Die. Books live on, quietly waiting to be discovered.

As a writer, I’ve got that box in the basement that contains all of the short stories that I’ve written over the years. I came to a decision. I’m going to die someday and either that box is either going to be sitting in my basement or it’s going to grow legs and be out in the world. Thanks to Kindle self-publishing, it’s simply a matter of time and effort. Some short stories are new enough that all I have to do is change the format, copy and paste. The older short stories were actually written on *gasp* my old typewriter, which takes a bit longer to drag kicking and screaming into the new century.

A sneak peek into the soon-to-be-published ‘Pig-Eye Poem & Other Stories’ by C. Mack Lewis:

‘Pig-Eye Poem’ is the story about the time I worked in a Silk-City Diner and Nate-Nate-the-Queer-Bait wrote me a poem which he read at the Lower Alloway’s Creek while shaking a box containing a pig-eye.

‘Lair’ is the story of a Vietnam soldier who has his first kill under the command of a sadistic Sargeant.

‘Dead’ about the first autopsy I witnessed as a medical student where I can’t help but wonder if serial killers dream of being doctors – so they can have access to all those helpless organs under their blades?

The story of ‘Boots’ is about a woman who buys a pair of vintage thrift-store boots that, when worn, gives her the power to ‘fix’ things in her life – even if that means committing murder.

‘What She Bought’ is a story of a man who is cleaning out the closet of his recently deceased wife – and learns that his wife was not the woman he thought she was.

‘Tick Tock’ is a story written on the typewriter and I don’t even remember what it is about. I wrote it long ago in a land far, far away that goes by the name of ‘My First Marriage.’ I must have blocked it out and God only knows what that story contains!

‘The Toad King’ is flash fiction about an unhappy Toad Wife and exactly what she is willing to do to wrest the crown from her husband.

‘The Fix’ is hardboiled crime-noir about a down-on-his-luck journalist who gets a once in a lifetime scoop from his ex-lover who does not have his best interests at heart. What can you expect from a woman with eyes that shine like freshly minted cash, which our hero knows perfectly matches the color of her heart?

“She Got The Money’ is an unusual love story about the guy who never gets the girl and the girl who — well, I’ll let you discover that for yourself.

‘The Christmas Tree’ is about a bug-exterminator who falls for the Christmas tree of his dreams and plans the perfect burglary. Seriously folks, what could go wrong?

A writer friend of mine once said to me, “You certainly have no problem throwing your main characters under the bus.”

I don’t just NOT have a problem throwing my characters in harm’s way — I relish it!  

What are you waiting for?

Unless you think that you are going to live forever, download a copy of a Kindle book format (for free) and start the process of putting your book, poems, short stories out into the world today!

http://www.kayfranklin.com/kindle/free-kindle-publishing-book-template/

Please send me a link after it is published because I would love to feature you on my blog as a guest blogger.

 

 

   

 

 

A Review of the movie ‘Life’ — aka ‘falling in love with someone who can’t give you an orgasm.’

A Review of the movie ‘Life’ — aka ‘falling in love with someone who can’t give you an orgasm.’

Frustrating!

You meet the man of your dreams! He’s gorgeous, he’s successful, he knows exactly what to say to make your nether regions careen drunkenly South to Rio De Janeiro to do the samba all night long on some sultry Balneario beach. You want him so bad that you’d climb over your dead mother’s carcass to get to his goods. We’ve all been there — don’t deny it! As time goes by, it gets even better. You gaze wonderingly into his eyes, you share your dreams, your fears, your most intimate fantasies, but – finally, when that moment cums — I mean arrives — it’s Dudsville.

Welcome to the movie ‘Life.’ 

The performance of the actors is stellar. The set design is a nerd’s wet dream. The monster is exceptional, but…

*sigh*

The scientists are muttonheads.

I’m going to old-school it now – by referring to my personal gold standard of all alien movies – the ‘Alien’ franchise, written by the genius Alan D. Foster (series 1-3).

A (paraphrased) example:

Anyone in the Aliens movies (1-3): Oh my god! We have to save our friend from these horrible monsters!

Ripley: It’s too late. Let him die.

Then Ripley goes on to save herself and humankind.

Result: Respect. 

In the movie Life:

Anyone of the so-called Scientists in Life: Oh, my god! We have to save our friend from this horrible monster!

The other so-called Scientist: Yes, let’s save our friend! So what if the alien is attached to our friend’s leg and he is sure to die – let’s risk the survival of all of humankind and try to save our doomed friend!

Result: WTF!

Frustrating!

Oh, did I mention that already?

For future reference, here’s the three-part recipe to this type of movie: 

  1. There is always one character who has the ability to cut through all the bullshit and see the TRUTH. Ripley and, to some degree, the Jake Gyllenhaal character, understands that the individual must be sacrificed to save humankind from extinction at the hands of the monster.
  2. One character is secretly working against the group. In the Alien franchise, it was Ash, Burke, Golic, and Dr. Wren. In Life, it was maybe Ariyon Bakare.
  3. And, most importantly, you must have an ALIEN “whose perfection is only matched by it’s hostility.”

The problem with Life is that:

  • The scientists each have a critical moment when they can save everyone (and humankind!) by sacrificing themselves or a friend, but they don’t.

In the words of Crazy Horse before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, “Hokahey, today is a good day to die!”

‘Life’ could have been a classic! If only the writers had given the scientist characters their own Crazy Horse moment! If the writers had given each scientist a moment where they at least tried to sacrifice their own life to save the group — and humankind — this movie would have been a contender.

In the meantime, to keep frustration at bay —

there is always the Alien series —

and vibrators.