Post Olympic Toss
So I'm reading about preparations for potential protestors in Denver and this sentence sort of leaps off the page at me (Thomas MacCharles, Aug 25 '08):
"The city of Denver also has spent $2.1 million on protective gear for police and passed bylawns to ban the hurling of feces or urine."
You mean to tell me neither the city of Denver nor the state of Colorado has any law on the books that would make it at least a high misdemeanour to fling feces or urine at a prominent citizen or a candidate standing for election to the throne of high office? And nobody's noticed this loophole and acted on it in the past?
"Nyaah! nyaah!
Can't jail me.
I only tossed a
Bucket o'pee.
Nyaah! nyaah!
You can't do squat.
That was shit I
Threw not snot."
If nobody's taken advantage of a law as seriously disabled as that, it shows a seriously disappointing lack of enterprise and initiative among Colorado's miscreant population. Let me tell you, we had a loophole like that in Toronto, we'd be all over it like flies on. . . well. Never mind. They've plugged the hole now, unless . . . I wonder. Does the new bylaw say anything that specifically excludes airplane flyover delivery? There must be a rock band in the vicinity with a Lear Jet currently not in use as they're between tours. Get your asses in gear, boys and girls of the great midwest--you may be in business yet. You just have to think ahead.
C 2008 Martin Heavisides
August 25, 2008
August 13, 2008
Not Twice This Play
{This is the introduction I wrote to accompany my play, Empty Bowl, now published online at Linnet's Wings [www.thelinnetswings.net] Take a look any of you that care to, and if you like what you see and care to spread the word, I'd be very much appreciative. }
Not Twice This Play
Empty Bowl is rewritten, rethought and considerably expanded from a one act play I wrote in 1973, inch foot time gem, which for a one act play intended to run an hour had far too many irreducible flaws. Whole scenes intended to capture the enigmatic character of the Zen koan came out obscurantist and befuddling rather; those I excised. In Act III of Empty Bowl I re-used about two pages of Eshun's long speech from the earlier play, though most of Eshun's dialogue's original to this version. None of the other characters already featured--Nobunaga, Nobushige, Hakuin, Peasant in Blue Kimono (renamed Ainu in Empty Bowl)--spoke in their real voices yet, so their dialogue here is totally fresh. (I tell a lie. I did retain two lines from the earlier, much shorter version of the fairground shell game scene:
NOBUNAGA
It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
AINU
I dunno. Six of one, half dozen of the other if you ask me.
Well, would you have cut that?)
The prologue, 'inch foot', and the epilogue, 'not twice this day', considerably reworked, still frame the action of Empty Bowl. Quite a few images I thought effective have been retained, such as Ainu, back from numerous campaigns, a one-eyed double amputee. Narrative threads originally independent of each other have been integrated into one continuous story line.
Wabi, Tamago, Minaki, Taka and various secondary characters are entirely new to this version. inch foot time gem was missing them.
It often takes a long time for the true form of a play to be disclosed, even to its author.
Not Twice This Play
Empty Bowl is rewritten, rethought and considerably expanded from a one act play I wrote in 1973, inch foot time gem, which for a one act play intended to run an hour had far too many irreducible flaws. Whole scenes intended to capture the enigmatic character of the Zen koan came out obscurantist and befuddling rather; those I excised. In Act III of Empty Bowl I re-used about two pages of Eshun's long speech from the earlier play, though most of Eshun's dialogue's original to this version. None of the other characters already featured--Nobunaga, Nobushige, Hakuin, Peasant in Blue Kimono (renamed Ainu in Empty Bowl)--spoke in their real voices yet, so their dialogue here is totally fresh. (I tell a lie. I did retain two lines from the earlier, much shorter version of the fairground shell game scene:
NOBUNAGA
It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
AINU
I dunno. Six of one, half dozen of the other if you ask me.
Well, would you have cut that?)
The prologue, 'inch foot', and the epilogue, 'not twice this day', considerably reworked, still frame the action of Empty Bowl. Quite a few images I thought effective have been retained, such as Ainu, back from numerous campaigns, a one-eyed double amputee. Narrative threads originally independent of each other have been integrated into one continuous story line.
Wabi, Tamago, Minaki, Taka and various secondary characters are entirely new to this version. inch foot time gem was missing them.
It often takes a long time for the true form of a play to be disclosed, even to its author.
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