Friday December 21st, 2012

The exercise:

We continue to mark the steady approach of Christmas with: Scrooged.

I'll admit mine is only tenuously tied to the prompt, but I figure it comes close enough to describing my mood while writing it that it works. Not that there'd be any stopping me, I'm just saying. 

We went up to Kat's parents place for dinner tonight and the TV was set to nothing but news coverage, so I ended up feeling rather grumpy.

This could have gotten a lot longer - and remarkably more colourful - but I think the four line limit did us all a favour this week.

Mine:

Those of you who have been following along with this little blog over the years have by now noticed that I tend to keep my writing pretty PG. This is entirely intentional, as I want to keep the prompts and blog as accessible as possible.

But there are times when swearing simply cannot and should not be avoided, and this to my mind is absolutely one of them.

So, in light of this morning's news conference, I would just like to say: the NRA can go fuck themselves.

4 comments:

Greg said...

Hmm, I can see why more talk of that would have annoyed you, especially if it was on during dinner. The article is interesting (not least for using lapse where was meant lax!) but for it's reasonably neutral-toned discussion that still makes the NRA sound like idiots. That kind of suggests that they are – if a foreign newspaper can't make them sound like they're offering a reasoned point of view!
I also agree with your sentiment at the end!

Scrooged
She was tall, had high cheekbones you could cut cheese with, a penetrating gaze from steely-grey eyes, and an attitude like a wet cat in a violin factory. That it was Christmas made her happy, but only because it increased the extent to which she could make other people sad. As she strode down the icy street she trampled the busker's hat, sending small change skittering everywhere; she contrived to bump the roast-chestnut vendor's cart so that it rolled into the carollers, setting fire to their songsheets and burning hands and fingers; and when she walked past the municipal Christmas tree it spontaneously shed all its needles.
"Morning Miss Scrooge!" said the doorman at the entrance to the tallest skyscraper in the city, "How's the world of internatioal finance today?"

Marc said...

Greg - honestly it was just the repeated recountings of the press conference that got to me. That 'the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun' line is just... mind bogglingly infuriating.

'... an attitude like a wet cat in a violin factory', on the other hand, is a fantastic line :D

Also particularly enjoyed the description of her walk down the street.

Anonymous said...

i feel like i've been scrooged today...my version of the xmas theme from my own blog, adapted here...


Shopping Blues

Xmas time is an insane time of year and is never a good time to go shopping because everyone else is, thereby reflecting the materialism that humans allow to plague this strange, ritualistic belief. It’s a good time to stay away from the malls and the freeways that lead there.
Normally, we would stay in the safety of our own home at this time of year but when you are charged with completing a favour you initiated for someone long ago (i.e. getting a warranty refund on a gift you once bought them) and the biggest mall in the State is the only place nearby with the required store, off you go.

So, armed with iPad, Google Maps and mall information, off we went.
First, we had to negotiate the carpark. After being nearly backed into by a ?blind driver, we found a spot outside near a “family restaurant”. It’s one time we were grateful to see their iconic arch and luckily it was too early for lunch. Would-be diners were still shopping, perhaps. 
Then we got out, locked the car and launched forward across a grassy knoll in readiness to cross the road. One should stay away from grassy knolls, they’re invariably dangerous - I fell down flat, having tripped up on an invisible hole in the grass just large enough to trap my gangly, oversized feet. Luckily my bones are strong and I carry Arnica bruise cream wherever I go.
Having found our way through the car pack so big that you need a packed lunch and a bus to take you from the car to the shops, we found our way inside and navigated towards the required shop on Level 3. Now they say things come in threes but nobody could’ve predicted this one - a glass Coke bottle exploded on the floor about a metre in front of us, casting glass shards everywhere. Luckily I wasn’t close enough to be cut because I left my Calendula bleeding cream at home. The bottle can’t have been dropped from above as there was no above, and I doubt it just popped into the third dimension from nowhere, so I suspect it might have fallen out of a girl’s bag and exploded on contact with the floor. Said girl looked around, as puzzled as everyone else, but didn’t own up to having had such a drink in her bag. The moral to Number Three here would be: don’t carry soft drinks or zip up your bag if you do.

We completed our business and fled back to the car, carefully negotiating careless traffic and skirting the grassy knoll. We headed for home. It sure felt like we weren’t meant to be in the very place we actually both hate anyway.
Will we go out again before xmas?
No. We can eat what I stocked up on last week and then live out of the pantry. 
Oh, and another moral of this story is: think very, very hard before doing favours for people.


Marc said...

Writebite - yes, this is definitely the time of year to stay the heck away from malls. Glad you managed to survive your experience, if only just!