New Year, New Challange

I started writing at this blog site because my friend gave me a challenge.

We were going to write both sides of the story, sadly life got in our way and we stopped that challenge before we even got started. When either one of us remembered to try to write something we couldn't link up... so now I propose another challenge.
This one is to myself and to anyone else who would like to join in.
Take a fairytale, give it a twist and create a short story with it.
I will be posting what I have written here and hopefully by the end of the year I will have something completed and entertaining.
I have had many people tell me that I am a natural storyteller, so this is my way of seeing if what they say is true.

Should I tell you the story that I am twisting or should I let you guess... Maybe I will let you guess....
and so I will begin with only an idea and a very rough outline.

Gauntlet Dropped... who will take up the challenge?

Saving a soul.

Today when I stepped out of my car at worked, a person asking for spare change approached me. He just needs $2.00 to get a cup of coffee.
During my dinner break; I quickly drove down to the nearest shopping center to pick up a few supplies and lunch. As I stepped out of my car, a person who was looking for $25.00 approached me.

“My car has broken down and I have locked my baby in it.” She said.
“ OH My. Let me call 911 and get the police to come help you. That is horrible.” I said.
“ No it’s okay, my baby is sleeping, and I just need the money to pay get the door unlocked.” She replied.
“ NO really, let me get the police and we will go to your car. This is horrible”. I countered.
Then next words out of her mouth I cannot repeat as she walked away quickly to try her story on another person.
Homeless, panhandlers, liars and thieves. That is what runs through my mind when I see them.
Why is it that I can go out and find a job that pays my bills, puts a roof over my head and food in my stomach? I am not anything special. I do not have any degrees, so why can’t they find work?
And they are everywhere. On street corners, shopping centers, outside video stores. Some holding signs, some with stories and some just begging.
I remember another time, when I was heading up to Dawson Creek, BC. (Mile zero on the Alaska Highway). I drove past a young man holding a sign saying.” Please help. Have job in Alaska, need to get there by Monday.” I pulled up beside him and rolled down my window. He ran towards my car.
“ HI, I am going up to Dawson creek today. I can drive you that far; from there you could get a ride to wherever you need to go in Alaska with one of the truck drivers. We could have you there in 24 hours. However I need to stop at the grocery store first. I will be back in 10 minutes to get you.” (I was feeling generous that day.)
Ten minutes later the young man was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t want to go to Alaska after all.
I have seen them holding signs saying. ‘Hungry’ and then after a few hours they walk away leaving behind on the curb, bags of food that someone so generously gave them.
Why do we, as a society, let them co-exist with us? I think we should take a page from Vancouver’s city council and round them up and bus them off to some other city. Or better yet, lets do what Britain did and send them and all the criminals charged with a life sentence to an uninhabited island. Think about it.
Would you risk doing anything criminal if you ended up living on an island in the artic ocean? Put them on a ship, drop them off on the island and let them fend for themselves.
Why should we as a society have to pay for their laziness?

I read in a magazine today, that scientists are playing with DNA from dinosaurs. There is another thought. Take all the undesirables and let them work in Jurassic park. If a few people go missing as dino food every once in a while, what harm would there be. It would certainly scare me into never doing anything wrong.
“ Excuse me, would you happen to have.” Swoops in the round -up squad, and suddenly I am left with a quiet and friendly environment.



These plans would certainly clean up the neighbourhoods, cut down on my taxes and make space in our over crowded jails and hospitals, not to mention less stress on our emotions.
It would certainly save my soul, since every time they approach I want to reach for my baseball bat and just start swinging.
Seriously. Think about it.



(This blog was written as the negative view to the reality of homelessness. It was written with my tongue in my cheek. Actually my opinion is similar to what is being done in Portland Oregon… check it out. )

Technology

Everyone today takes technology for granted.
It’s easy to do because we have been told that it is to make our lives easier.
But does it really?
I remember a time when having 2 television sets in your house was a Big deal.
You were lucky if it was a color TV and that you had 3 channels to watch. Now we have these Flat screen TV’s light enough to hand on a wall, surround sound and hundreds of channels to watch… which still is only showing the same shows over and over again.
I can sit down in the evening and watch the same show 5 times on different stations at different times… how does this make my life any easier?
With more technology the world has become smaller.
Instead of curling up with a good book and using my imagination, I plunk myself down in front of the set and watch the latest episode of reality T.V. Or I spend hours on the Internet chatting with my friends, twittering what I am doing and checking out the latest video on Youtube. I email now and get upset when I don’t get a reply back in an hour.
When before you took the time to find nice writing paper to make writing a letter a special time. Now we text a few letters to a person using shorthand to say R U OK? I M gr8. (Translation, for those of you who are older: are you okay? I am great)


I have a cell phone, which allows anyone to reach me everywhere I go. Which means I am now “on call” for work or help 24 hours a day.
More and more I see people with less imagination because they have never been taught to use it. Look at the film industry as an example. How many movies are remakes in the last 3 years alone? Are there no more original plots to be imagined? Have we lost that ability?

With technology, we have become lazy. Cartoons for children where on Saturday mornings and then you went outside to play for the rest of the day. Our backyard was always filled with kids from the neighbourhood. We would play tag, hide and go seek. Road hockey, ride bicycles everywhere and run races. We would event games, create mud pies, and spend hours in am imaginary land. We were never bored unless we were visiting our relatives that lived in an apartment and we had to sit quietly with the adults.
Now I hear children complain that they are bored because they can’t play there video games, cant watch a DVD or TV and cant play on the computer. When you suggest that they read a book, they look horrified. They don’t do book reports anymore, reading take too much time, now the watch movies and type a report on the computer about it. Spelling doesn’t really matter because you have spell-check.
No, Technology hasn’t really made my life easier; it has made it busier, noisier and more stressful. Time to turn off the computer and go relax with a good book. Want to join me?

Top 10 part two

Everyone has a top ten list they can think of, Top 10 movies, top 10 songs, and top 10 games, whatever your interests are.

Here is my question for the day.

Can you list 10 things you like about yourself? Be Honest. Can you? I dare you.

There are so many things about people that are likable: their eyes, their smiles, their haircuts, their personality, their laughter, their sense of humour, the ability to forgive, the ability to love, the fact that most everyone is kind hearted and when faced with something terrible that happened will get involved. The question should be why is it easier to list the top ten things I hate about myself?

Why do we feel that by feeling confident about what we do make us a bad person? If I am talented at something special why shouldn't I be proud of it? I am proud of my brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews and friends who dare to try something new. To me it doesn’t matter if they succeed at it, I am proud that they tried.

Why is it that the media has such a control over us that people will ruin their lives just to look like the model in the fashion magazines? We all know that the pictures are airbrushed and touched up to make them look thinner, taller, prefect skinned and yet we still look at ourselves in the mirror and say ”Ugh I need to lose more weight.”
There are diet pills, diet books, exercise programs all designed on the lie that you have to fit the cookie cutter image. Well I broke the cookie cutter long ago. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be healthy and physically fit, but we should be ourselves and be proud of how we are made.
Why do we feel the need to belittle others to make us feel better about ourselves? Why do we tease and torment our peers just because they are different from us. We know when we are children that we do not see color, race or differentiate between us. You are only someone I could play and have fun with. It is only as we get older that we are taught there are differences.
Why does the colour of our skin, the religion that we practice, the choice of who we love, the people we befriend, make us think that we are right and they are wrong?

Why are the most popular video games sold in the markets today filled with violence? Why is it that society has forgotten how to forgive and instead reaches for a gun when it feels threatened or afraid?
Why have we become a society of “ Me” minded people. When asked to do something why is the first thought always” what will I get out of this?”
Why are we selfish?
When we do things that help others we feel good about ourselves and yet we always seem to choose to take instead of give.

I could go on ranting but I think I have taken enough of your time.

So the question I dare you to answer is this.

Why is it easier for us to list the top ten things I hate about myself and what am I going to do to change it?

It's a start

Wow okay so I'm new to blogging. Not to reading blogs because I do that all the time, but writing a blog. I know that is something that everyone does now, and it’s incredible to think that people out there are interested in my opinion of things. But I think I am getting ahead of myself.

Last night I was talking to a friend about careers. I told her that if I could do anything I would like to write books for a living. She also likes writing and we started talking about writing blogs.
As she mentioned, during our conversation, that there are two sides of a story. I jokingly said, " then what we should do, is write both sides of the story." We continued to talk about taking creative writing courses but we both came to the same conclusion. The problem with a creative writing course is that it takes what you write and dissects it into tiny pieces of things you did wrong, so that you can learn from it. At the end of the course you may have a diploma but you have no self-esteem.

I grew up with a very supportive family that would tell me that I could do anything I put my mind too. That whatever I decided to do I would succeed. However the reality of life showed me otherwise. I was never pretty enough, smart enough, talented enough, tall enough, etc. Again and again life would knock me down whenever I dared to dream too big.

Someone once told me that everyone has a story to tell. I believe that everyday there is a different story to tell. I have always been creating stories for myself. I don’t remember a time that I didn’t.
In grade 2 or 3 we had a creative writing program. There were these cards that started a story for you and you continued it. I found a card that started with “ You were walking down the street and saw before you a door in the wall… you walk through the door and…” By the end of the year I had written 20 stories about this door. It became a magic door where I was transported to different places and just when I was about to get into trouble I would find it and make it home for dinner. The teacher kept my stories to show the parents and then any of the classes she taught years later.

So I grew to love writing. However, reality may show that I love writing, but it doesn’t make me a great writer. Anything I write ends up in a box somewhere hidden away.

My conversation sparked an interest and a challenge in my friend. We are going to do it. There are two of us and our blogs are going to be a conversation between us. We are going to pick a topic, any topic and are going to blog about it. Each one of us writing a different side of the story.

So now you know a little about me, and you will learn a little about her when you read the linking blog. http://kelsey82.blogspot.com

If you are following us. I hope you enjoy our blogs.