'A' is for Apple - 'F' is for Frank ...

I am a firm believer that birthdays, no matter what age you're turning, are special and should be celebrated and acknowledged as that's the one day out of the year that you can call your very own - well, unless you're a twin or a triplet or one of those other multiple birth babies as then you have to share your special day with your brothers and/or sisters! Still, birthdays only come once a year and everyone deserves a happy one.

This past Monday was the birthday of Frank, a fella I've mentioned here in my blog a time or two. He's a fire inspector (more like a fire god) down at the Mohegan Sun Casino (where I have been finding it darn hard to get in my hours for training) as well as a part-time dispatcher at American where he once was quite the god there, too, if stories from the past are to be believed! Knowing that he was going to be working dispatch with us on Wednesday evening I thought it would be nice to bake an apple pie to bring for him as a belated celebration of the anniversary of his birth.

Here's the story of the creation of Frank's birthday pie ... Warning! You may find yourself beset with cravings for apple pie after watching this video!

Who says you have to have birthday cake in order to celebrate? Birthday pie is just as good! Now ... about that diet I've been meaning to go on ...

House vs Boston Legal vs LA Ink

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I have a scheduling conflict of major proportions tonight! Normally there is just about zip, zero, and zilch that I care to watch on TV and if there is something I think I'm going to want to see, I program the DVR to record it so I can watch it later sans commercials. Well, leave it to Fox, ABC, and TLC to go and totally screw things up for me!

"Is this an intervention? You're a little late, since I'm not using drugs anymore.
I am, however, still hooked on phonics."

Tonight is the long-anticipated season opener of "House MD" on Fox. Those of you who watch the irascible Dr. House will remember that he lost his entire staff at the end of the last season - Foreman, Chase, Cameron, all of 'em gone - leaving our favorite physician with no team at all. What's a curmudgeonly curer to do? Well, I could find out at 9:00 tonight except that the show overlaps with one of my other favorite shows ...

... "Boston Legal" which is on ABC with its season opener from 9:30 to 11:00 - damn the luck! I have watched this show since its very first episode and I will be darned if I'm going to miss out on the antics of Denny, Alan, Denise, Paul, Shirley, and the rest of the gang at Crane, Poole, and Schmidt! The big problem, though, is that my DVR isn't the type where I can record one show while watching another so I'm probably going to have to record one while watching the other on the small TV upstairs. The question is, which one?

I rather like to think that Alan Shore and I have much in common as we're both slightly irrational, are masters of deadpan humor, are hilarious, and yet are still kind though people tend to think otherwise! Granted, James Spader, who plays Alan Shore, just won an Emmy and I can't seem to even win Employee of the Month at work as I must be truly awful despite having been the Employee of the Year in 2004 but still ... I think we are very much alike!

Alan Shore: ...I'm bored.
Paul Lewiston: I beg your pardon.
Alan Shore: You people keep assigning me these boring cases. At my old firm, I got murderers.
I had clients who would touch themselves in public restrooms. These were people you could root for,
not to mention relate to.
Paul Lewiston: Is there some other place you'd rather be, Mr. Shore?
Alan Shore: Yes, I want to be on cable. That's where all the best work is being done.

If all of that wasn't bad enough, TLC has managed to throw yet another monkey wrench into the mix by airing the episode of "LA Ink" featuring rhythm guitarist Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance that Amanda has been waiting all summer to see and it runs from 10:00 to 11:00 tonight! The TV gods are surely mocking me this evening, are they not??

Luckily, TLC likes to "chew their cabbage twice" as my Dad used to say and are running the same episode back to back so we'll simply set the DVR to record "LA Ink" from 11:00 to 12:00 and Amanda is just going to have to wait one more day to see it as she's got school tomorrow and is NOT staying up until midnight! I think she'll live, though I'm sure she'd beg to differ!

"If you don't listen, you're never gonna learn."

How about you folks? What are you watching tonight??

"It was a dark and stormy ..." Meme

Frank at Foxxfyrre's Honk'n'Holl'r assigned all of us who are members of the Unofficial Gale Martin Novel Writing Cheering Squad a meme project back on September 11th called -


Even though I had close to two weeks to work on this ... I didn't. Ah, procrastination thou art a good friend of mine! Maybe, though, my thinking was that I would work better under pressure (hmm, isn't that a David Bowie song??) and waiting until the day before would require my muse to put in a little extra effort and not be such a slacker. That was the plan at any rate! So, let's see how I did, shall we?

First, I should tell you what this meme is all about and post the rules should anyone else choose to play. From Frank's keyboard to your eyes this is how it goes:

Meme Description:

You have just finished writing the greatest novel ever written. It is getting rave reviews. War and Peace is mere pulp fiction when compared to your novel. Nobel Officials created a new category to award your work for they felt it would far overshadow previous works awarded for fiction if yours was awarded in the same category. Accolades and reviews for your novel pour in along with one unanimous criticism -- your novel has the worst opening sentence in an equally atrocious first paragraph, ever.

Rules:

1. Choose two genres from the ones listed below in #4
2. Come up with a suitable title for a different novel for each of your genre choices.
3. Write a different opening 'atrocious' paragraph of your 'highly praised novel' in context to each genre you chose, paying particular attention to the "Dark and stormy" quality of your first sentence of your paragraph. Don't just rewrite the "Dark and stormy" sentence for your paragraph. Come up with something new and fresh, but 'atrocious' too. The sentence and paragraph should follow good English grammar rules. Don't just write a grammatical mess of a sentence. Remember, you are a Nobel Prize worthy author.
4. Choose two of the following genres for each of your "Prized Novels": Western, Science Fiction, Romance, Historical Fiction, Modern Contemporary Fiction, Mystery, Comedy, Horror.
5. Post the meme description and rules.
6. Post your first genre choice, title and paragraph, followed by your second genre choice, title and paragraph.
7. Prepare yourself for accolades of laughter and ridicule for your "Highly Praised Novels" atrocious openings.
8. Contact the Nobel Prize officials for you may just continue and write that award winning novel.
9. Tag people, lottsa people.

Bad writing shouldn't be all that difficult for me to accomplish as I've had years and years of practice starting when I managed to win a writing contest in 7th-grade with a story that I was sure had to be one of the worst ever in the history of the Dr. Helen Baldwin School of Canterbury. I think I only won because I had the nerve to not only write about but submit a story about a boy and his beloved dog while using, as the main character, the guy I had a hideous crush on for two years. I'm sure I only won so that the story could be published in the school newspaper and cause acute embarrassment not only to myself but to the guy I wrote it about because if I remember correctly, the story itself wasn't very good at all!

Anyway, I digress and this post wasn't supposed to be a painful walk down memory lane but an attempt at some good bad writing! As my two genres for this meme I have chosen Western and Romance and I hope that I have done justice to the meme. When I'm done here I shall go work on my acceptance speech for my Nobel prize. I'm thinking I'm going to need a new outfit for the awards ceremony, too ...

Entry Number One

Three Oxen for Father Santiago at Whiplash Pass

"It was a pitch-black night on the desert mesa brightened only by the occasional jagged bolt of lightning which was accompanied by an unrelenting curtain of water and wind that howled louder than the wolves that slunk their fur-soaked bodies back into their rocky caves as the prairie dogs took refuge in their dark underground homes (as prairie dogs are wont to do) while the cacti merely stood stiffly, like large needle-covered silent sentries, weathering the storm in sullen succulent silence as their prickly bodies were rooted firmly to the ground and they were unable to escape the fury of the storm that lashed the desert landscape with its wind-blown anger."

Entry Number Two

Tenderness in Tallahassee

"The sky outside was as black as ink and as unsettled as a creaky wooden vessel upon a storm-tossed sea while Vanessa stood at the window of her opulent and, despite all of its grandeur, empty bedroom; a solitary and forlorn figure who wrapped her arms around her not-ungenerous breasts as she looked out upon a magnificently rain-tossed landscape that no longer held any appeal for her since the love of her life, the dark-haired gallant and dashing Jerome, had ridden off on his magnificent specimen of a stallion leaving her bereft in her heart and aching from unfulfilled needs in other parts of her lush woman's body; unfulfilled needs that threatened to bring her to her knees in their unrelenting desire to be quenched and sated by a man who no longer held her tenderly in his arms due to a misplaced allegiance to the man whose seed had fathered him and then chosen to abandon him when he was just a mere boy."

And there you have it, my attempt at literary greatness! I hope that I have made my favorite soon-to-be-best-selling author and blog buddy Gale proud. Let me just say that even though I stink on ice when it comes to this stuff that she is writing one heck of a fantastic novel. Go Gale Go!!! Go Gale Go!!!

If you'd like to try your hand at this particular meme go for it and do let me know; it really was a lot of fun doing this despite the procrastination!

"Things You Shouldn't Say Around _____"

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I was tagged by Bud who got tagged by Frank for a new meme of sorts that Frank concocted on his own. It's actually pretty fun and can be quite humorous as witnessed by Frank's Zombie post here and Bud's Bride post here. Now it's my turn - let's see if I'm up for the challenge! But first - the formalities! ...

Things You Shouldn't Say Around [Blank]

The Official Honk 'n' Hollr Rules:

Okay, it's a meme too. But it's a short and fun one to let your creative juices out and poke fun at your favorite [blank] thing.Rules are simply fill in the [blank] in "Foxxfyrre's: Things you shouldn't say around [Blank]", and write at least eight phrases you shouldn't say around your [blank]. To make it interesting, when you tag someone, go to their memes and add a phrase using their [blank] topic. Send your list of 5 tags back to the person that tagged you so they can follow and play with their [blank] topics also.

Things You Shouldn't Say Around a Police Officer

1. Do I know why you pulled me over? What? You don't?
   
2. I bet you'd look really cute in a pair of shorts like Lt. Dangle on Reno 911!
   
3. Can you hold this bottle while I get my license out for you?
4. I'm a taxpayer and I pay your salary.
   
5. Don't you have a donut shop to go protect?

   

6. Go ahead and arrest me, I've got a "Get Out of Jail Free" card somewhere in my wallet.
7. No, I'm not going to drop my weapon! What are you going to do about it?
8. This is great! Can I get your autograph? I've always wanted to meet one of The Village People!
   
9. How many times do you really think a warning is necessary? This is my third one this month.
   
10. Go ahead, big man, I bet that Taser doesn't hurt at all.

Hopefully no police officers ever read my blog but if they do I hope they know I'm just joking, I have the utmost respect for you guys! Seriously!

It is now my sworn duty to tag a few other bloggers that I think might want to have a go at this most funny meme so I award summons to:

Amazing Gracie
Crazy Working Mom
Comedy Plus
The Curmudgeon
Us Danes & Our Family