Kalbzayn’s World

I have managed to read two news items recently that are just begging to be the focal point of stories you are going to write.

First, a guy calls the police because he is worried about his girlfriend isn’t doing well in the bathroom…after two years. Her legs had actually fused to the toilet seat. Crazy. Speaking of crazy, she apparently has some emotional problems that made her unwilling to leave the bathroom but the boyfriend who let her stay in the bathroom for all that time without doing anything about it probably has his own issues to sort through.

Second, a couple of older ladies (62 and 63) were stopped at the Munich airport by the authorities after their bags were scanned. The women were traveling from Brazil to Italy. The contents of the bag in question were a human skull and some bones that belonged to one of the lady’s brother. He died in Brazil 11 years ago and had wanted to be buried back home in Italy. Here is the part that I find even slightly more interesting than that. The woman showed the “appropriate papers from Brazilian authorities” and were allowed to continue on their trip, bones and all. I didn’t know that there were “appropriate papers” that would allow you to fly with your siblings bones in your luggage.

There you go. Story ideas for you fresh from the news.

I bought The Ice Harvest a few years back. It was one of those books that was sitting in my never decreasing To Be Read pile that I have recently started plowing through.

The Ice Harvest is Scott Phillips first novel. It was the finalist for a few different awards and was eventually made into a movie starring John Cusak and Billy Bob Thornton which will be added to my Netflix queue shortly.

The book is one of those plots about people trying to pull off the perfect swindle and then everything falls apart and people start getting roughed up and/or killed. Phillips writing style creates the mood in the book awesomely. Lots of short sentences. Very little fluff. Lots of darkness and dark humor. Not for the faint of heart.

Pros Of The Ice Harvest

• Short. Not every book needs to be short, but this one does not have anything unnecessary in it. The books gets to the point and gets out which keeps the pace flowing.
• Dark. People are roughed up. People are killed. Marriages and families are destroyed at the drop of a hat. And it all fits the plot perfectly.
• Strippers. You can’t go wrong by putting a bunch of the setting of a drug, money scam type of plot in a strip club. The strippers are pouty. The bosses are grumpy. The customers are short tempered and the police are always a phone call away.

Cons Of The Ice Harvest

• Hard to believe some of the characters could survive the pain that gets inflicted upon them or the amount of alcohol/drugs they consume as well as they do.
• Very short. As much as I respect the book for not going on too long for no reason, I really wish the book would have went on longer for some reason because of how much I enjoyed the book.

While I won’t spoil the ending, there is also a last second stunning plot twist that made me laugh out loud. Normally I don’t like hokey plot twists that come out of left field, but this one was well done and definitely improves the book.

If you are interested:

Buy a copy of The Ice Harvest at Amazon.com.

Buy a copy of The Ice Harvest on eBay

I’ve been reading a bunch of books (for me anyway) recently and since I haven’t been writing much else over hear, I figured I should do some book reviews. I’ll try to keep them short and sweet since I know nothing about reviewing books.

I’m planning on having a brief overview, a section on things I like, a section on things I didn’t, maybe some kind of wrapup and some links to where you can buy the book if you are interested.

I’ll start off a little later today, but just wanted to warn you in advance.

Read on!

Seriously. Can you even imagine the other candidates considering doing this for our country?

Obama 2008.

Bonnie tagged me to tell about some of the more unimportant things about me.

I could go on for days talking about all of the things about me that are unimportant but I have to stick with 6.

Here are the rest of the rules:

Rules:
1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your blog entry.
5. Let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs.

Even though this won’t count as one of the unimportant things about me, it is in fact true and unimportant that a rarely follow all of the rules to these meme things. I’ll be following the first 3.

Six Staggeringly Unimportant Things About Me

1) I am adamant that everybody wears a seat belt in my car. I’m just not that good of a driver. However, I have a habit of not putting on my own seat belt until I start pulling out of my parking spot. It must be the daredevil in me.

2) I want to get rid of daylight savings. I just can’t be bothered running around changing the time on all of the clocks in the house twice a year.

3) I don’t understand how people spend so much time on their cell phones. I use probably an hour of cell phone minutes a month on a busy month. I prefer to sing loudly and off key or yell profanities at my fellow drivers instead of gluing the cell phone to my head.

4) I prefer cookies over ice cream. But if given the chance, I am perfectly happy eating both.

5) I have wanted my own personal laptop for years but am entirely too cheap to have actually purchased one yet. I’m going to change that in a month or so when I buy an Asus Eee PC thingamajiggy.

6) I am so in tune with my children that when I hear my son say, “Uh oh. Floor’s wet,” I know exactly what really happened and know to grab a clean change of pants and underwear if I see them on the way to the scene.

Wow. I’m worn out…no wait, bored with myself, after filtering through all of the unimportant things that are me and choosing the 6 winners.