What on earth is going on in Hungary? Just reading snippets of news it sounds like a revisit of Nazi Germany. This from Reuters today:
Hungarian police halted a train packed with migrants bound for the Austrian border and tried to force them to disembark in a town with a detention camp on Thursday, a confrontation that has become a focus of Europe’s migration crisis.
We might ask the same question about what is happening in parts of India. This from Daily Kos:
An unelected all-male village council in India has ordered that 23-year-old Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister be raped and paraded naked. The ‘sentence’ was handed down as punishment after their brother eloped with a married woman. Unelected village councils such as this are widespread in parts of India. More often than not they are made up of older men from dominant castes, who prescribe rules for social behaviour in villages. The supreme court of India has branded their decrees illegal, yet in some states they continue to operate – and their punishments are carried out.
Couple those news reports with recent incidents of violence here in the States, and one wonders what is happening with humanity. Are we spiraling down to disappear into one great sinkhole?
So, enough of that. I think it’s time for a bit of levity.
Friday’s Funnies
I stole, er, borrowed this joke from my friend LD Masterson. She took the summer off from blogging, but she does a weekly Hump Day Funnies feature on Wednesdays that is quite good. I do hope she resumes the blog soon. Hint, hint, LD.
Okay, here’s the joke:
Two little old ladies, Connie & Evelyn, were sitting on a park bench outside the town hall where a flower show was in progress.
Connie leaned over and said, “Life is so boring. We never have any fun anymore. For ten dollars I’d take my clothes off and streak through that stupid flower show.”
“You’re on,” said Evelyn, holding up a ten dollar bill.
So Connie slowly fumbled her way out of her clothes. She grabbed a dried flower from a nearby display and held it between her teeth. Then, completely naked, she streaked (as fast as an old lady could) through the front door of the flower show.
Waiting outside, Evelyn heard a huge commotion, followed by loud applause and whistling. Finally, the smiling Connie came through the exit door surrounded by a cheering, clapping crowd.
“What happened?” asked Evelyn.
“I won $1,000! First prize for ‘Best Dried Arrangement!”‘
Since I am now of a certain age, and so are many of my friends, they keep me supplied with a few good jokes:
The day the world runs out of wine is just too terrible to think about.
Even duct tape can’t fix stupid, but it can muffle the sound!
Wouldn’t it be great if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes; come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller.
If God wanted me to touch my toes, he would’ve put them on my knees.
When the kids text me “plz” which is shorter than please. I text back “no” which is shorter than “yes.”
At my age “Getting lucky” means walking into a room and remembering what I came in there for.
Writing Wisdom
Kristan Hoffman wrote a wonderful blog post at Writer Unboxed titled Getting Over the Hump, in which she offered these bits of advice, among others.
Set small goals to build positive momentum. 25 min is better than 2 hours, and 250 words is better than 2000. If you have a good little writing session, you can always try for another. But if you bust on a big one, you’ll probably end up feeling guilty about it, and that’s not exactly motivating for the next time.
Give yourself permission to write poorly. Because you can’t make gold out of nothing, but you can make a diamond out of carbon buried deep in the dirt. That’s what revision is for.
Do not beat yourself up about bad days. Just let them go. It’s tempting to carry-over quotas. “I only wrote for 10 minutes today, so I have to do 40 tomorrow.” But 40 might become 60 might add up to 100 might snowball into 300 and suddenly you’ve set yourself an impossible and unappealing task. My advice? Take writing seriously, but don’t turn it into a burden.
Sometimes we writers forget that we can’t measure our productivity the same way we do how quickly we could turn out tortilla warmers on an assembly line. What we, and all other artists, do cannot be measured in daily quotas. I do like to keep track of my word count each day, but don’t despair when there is only 200 new words today. That is better than no new words today, and tomorrow I may get 1000 new words.
Maryann, I can’t even keep up with the horror I read in the news headlines. It’s overwhelming and sad and frightening…and most of us have no idea how to make things better. Some good old-fashioned humor may be what keeps us sane…so thanks for those jokes and the photos.
I agree, Pat. I hate to even listen to the news or read the newspapers, except for the comics. LOL Have a great weekend.
As always a wonderful bit of blog! When I was young & was determined that adults before me simply hadn’t done anything right I was going to make things right & change the world. Now I’m as of today 69 years old & while I continue to read the news online I no longer anything can be made right, especially not by me! 🙂 I do love doing what I can in my little corner of the world to help people. The thought of any country using Nazi tactics as Hungary is doing is very frightening. India is still on my list of places to never, ever visit. Such male stupidity & domination is ridiculous. Thanks for sharing the jokes, Maryann.
Glad you liked the jokes, Linda. I do think that as we age we lose that fire of idealism that had us be a lot more proactive about things, with the belief that it would all get better in time. That idealism turns quickly to cynicism all too soon. But, like you, I have not totally given up the ghost. I still speak out for injustice of any kind and challenge when I can.