Clever Puns Crack Me Up

Here’s a small collection, culled from a long list posted on Facebook.

• The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
• I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
• A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
• No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
• Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
• Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
• The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
• A backward poet writes inverse.
• In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

Affliction Z: Patient Zero (L.T. Ryan)

Air Force PJs (pararescumen jumpers) Sean Ryder and his partner/best friend Jules Hoover join up with a Navy SEAL team for a high altitude night jump into Nigeria.

They encounter something strange — a humanoid that wouldn’t stay down after bring shot eleven times. There are more, and it turns out they’d been seen before by a special forces unit that’s now missing. SEAL team leader Turk, his men and the PJs have been sent in to rescue them.

Exploring an underground facility, they meet an old, white-haired man — Dr. Richard Knapp, a researcher who developed a super virus against his will for use in biological warfare. But the virus mutated; 90% of those exposed would die. The remaining 10% become ... zombies.

Jules is bitten, and Sean is forced to end his life, then takes it out on Dr. Knapp, shooting him in the head. Then, all hell breaks loose. But not before they find some of the Delta Force soldiers. The situation gets worse, so bad that their superiors order a carpet bombing of the area.

There is a twist, one that turns out NOT to really be a twist.

Affliction Z: Patient Zero is like a typical war story, except the war is with zombies. It’s not very compelling, I think I’ve read too many zombie apocalypse books.

From the moment I opened the book, I felt a sense of unease. Not because of the anticipated zombie theme, but because there, on the title page no less, were the words: “AFFLICTION Z BOK ONE.” BOK? What the FOK! Now acutely aware that pre-publication editing was a bugaboo, I had that in the back of my mind throughout.

Affliction Z: Patient Zero is the first of four books in Ryan’s Affliction series. The others are Abandoned Hope,Descended in Blood, and Fractured. I have to think about whether or not I want to continue the series.

Grade: B-

Affliction Z: Patient Zero

Author L.T. Ryan

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Survival

Liquid Mind Media (2013)

Writing Technology: Then and Now

I’ve always been a writer. Writing saw me through high school and my ability helped me succeed in college. We’re talking nearly 60 years since I graduated from high school in 1962.

Recently, I heard a line (see the above meme) in a movie (or maybe it was a TV show) about technology. I was reminded of how technology continuously advances, and how it constantly changes us and our ways of life — writing in particular.

Then

No, I don’t plan to go way back and talk about stone carving or quill-writing on parchment. Instead, let’s talk about how what I wrote appeared in print when I first started doing it professionally, working on a newspaper in Los Angeles.

Back in the late ‘60s, we typed our stories on a manual typewriter and gave it to the editor who pencil-edited it, extensively at first, until my writing skills improved. He sent it down a pneumatic tube; the next time I saw it was when the newspaper came out.

A few years later, when I became an editor at a neighborhood weekly, I got more involved in the process — still used a manual typewriter, did my own editing, and sent it to our print shop. I got to see the words transformed into lead type on a Linotype machine, arranged in a frame (a “chase”), then rolled around the shop on a “turtle.”

Later

Manual typewriters were prevalent, until I opened my own public relations/advertising business in 1972. I bought an IBM Selectric, the one with changeable font balls and correctable ribbons. I used it for years until I relocated and added a personal computer (PC) that used 8-inch floppy discs. That PC was retired when I joined a start-up PR agency and graduated to one with an internal hard disc.

We were bought by the largest ad agency in town, and I had to convert to an Apple Macintosh. I then became a professor at the University of Hawai’i. Our department used PCs, but my class writing labs used Macs. That was fun.

I returned to the PR/Ad agency (they made an offer I couldn’t refuse), then after a few years opened my one-man public relations strategic counseling business from home. I bought a desktop PC and a laptop to take with me on business trips.

Now

Retiring in 2006, I’m now an Apple iPad Pro user, a one-finger word-processing writer on the screen’s keyboard. If I have a lot of writing, which is rare since I retired, I have a Kensington keyboard that is compatible with my older iPad Air.

About the only writing I do is here on my Left Field Wander blog. I used to have 9 (NINE!) blogs, but lost my mojo for keeping up with constant updating.

I’ve kept up with writing technology, and have realized that my “Now” period is missing one thing — human interaction. I used to be able to talk through my creativity with my editors, and later with office colleagues. That hasn’t happened since I’ve been independent.

But you know what? We learn to accept and adapt, and it all works out eventually.

Hilo Days: A Humiliating Day in the Park

When I was young, I could always managed to find experiences that tempered any arrogance and self-confidence I might have felt at the time. Like the time I fancied myself quite the fisherman. Boy, did I learn another lesson in life, so much so that I wrote about it in my now-defunct website, Hilo Days.

Fishing  Derby White-Wash

A bunch of us entered a fishing derby at Liliuokalani Park, which was newly opened after the [1960] tidal wave took it apart.

The county parks and recreation department had announced that a fishing derby was going to be held at the park, and anyone who wanted to enter could do so by showing up on the designated Saturday.

Artie Kimura, Ron Takata, Gary Sato and I (there may have been others) got our gear in shape, buying new bamboo rods, tsuji [what we called fishing line], floats, hooks, buckets to keep our fish in, and frozen prawns to use as bait. I was actually quite excited and had dreams about the huge mullet that I was going to bring home for dinner.

So we show up, and there are about a million people there, all jostling for space and the hot fishing spots. After registering, we picked a likely looking area and waited for the starter's whistle. When the shrill blast filled the air, a million lines hit the water, floats started bobbing, and suddenly the water boiled with hungry fish.

To the right of me, a kid pulled out a big tilapia. To the left of me, another kid pulled out a large mullet. Across the pond, dozens of fish were being hauled out of the water. At the pond behind me, the anglers were going crazy.

And I stood there with my line in the water. I dabbed my bait on the surface, pulled it in, threw it back out, moved it from left to right, pulled it in again and threw it back out again.

Nothing.

What? Did I have bad breath, or something?

How embarrassing. Kids who had no idea what they were doing were catching fish, and there I was, my line in the water. Artie caught a few, Ron and Gary did okay too. Me, I was the only one with nothing but warm, stink bait to show for my day's efforts.

Plus, I got a sunburn — the back of my neck, my forehead, nose and cheeks were red and irritable for a week. Serves me right for thinking I knew how to fish.

Here to Stay (Mark Edwards)

London science teacher Elliot Foster first meets veterinary nurse Gemma when she tours his Cuckoo Lane garden during a local Open Gardens Day. Two months later, they marry.

Everything is great, until one day, her parents and 28-year-old sister — Jeff and Lizzy Robinson, and Chloe — return from France and move in with them for a couple of weeks. Right from the start, they establish a mutually irritating and complicated relationship.

The Robinsons are sloppy and overbearing. They’re authoritative, rude and impolite. They are boorish, curt and cunningly insulting. Their clothes are often on the floor and they don’t flush the toilet. Lizzy has allergies and has problems with his cat Charlie. It doesn’t help that their granddaughter Katie shies away from them.

And Chloe. Something’s terribly wrong with her, despite her parents’ protestations. She’s always submissive, secretive, reclusive and terrified.

The Robinsons have secrets, slowly revealed through intermittent flashbacks. Elliot has reason to suspect them of child abuse and the brutal murders of his neighbors — a retired doctor and his wife. A short visit to the town where Gemma grew up reveals quite a bit, thanks to a chat with two fishermen in the local pub.

It becomes intolerable when they refuse to move out and take over the house. Things get ugly. Very ugly. Gemma, it turns out, had plans of her own all along.

There are a few story transitions that could be improved, but this is not too bad a read. Well, except that the first third of the book was rather irritating as the Robinsons’ characters were established. Their behavior reminded me of spoiled bratty kids that bully others. But I guess in this case, it’s a good thing, huh?

Grade: C+

Here to Stay

Author: Mark Edwards

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Thomas & Mercer (2009)