Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

PasturesNew

tomterm8 wrote: »

Alright. I've got it written in 1st draft, and will come back to it after a month. At the moment I am writing short stories. I've written 15,000 words of them this month, around other things (hasn't been a productive month so far. Should be around 25,000 words at this point. I lost a week due to life).

I don't think Locke is necessarily an example I intend to follow. He is pretty exceptional. He sells books at $1. So, his 20 novels selling 1 million copies are worth $300,000. Compare that to a bog standard traditional bestseller, who will make more than that with one novel.

It doesn't seem likely at the moment I could match either strategy

I'm not a writer.... I was booted out of O Level Literature with a 14% in mock exams. The paper in question, you had to write a short story - and I think you got 4 titles to choose from I chose to write one about a house fire, went through the whole lot, then in the last line revealed that the 'author' had died in it. 14% "Dead people can't write stories".

tomterm8

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm not a writer.... I was booted out of O Level Literature with a 14% in mock exams. The paper in question, you had to write a short story - and I think you got 4 titles to choose from I chose to write one about a house fire, went through the whole lot, then in the last line revealed that the 'author' had died in it. 14% "Dead people can't write stories".

Er... that doesn't sound like the kind of thing that comes under 'not a writer'. Being unable to write other peoples stories probably just makes you normal.

I know very few bestselling writers who actually did well in English at school.

And, to be fair, your English Teacher was a complete numptywit.

PasturesNew

Never be bored again. Well, probably. But here's the latest "Toy for Idle Hands", just for the nice people.

http://tagger.thepcf.org.uk/

lemonjelly

Hi all,

a quick pop in owing to lots of other stuff I have going on at the mo.

I wanted to share a little something with you. I'm a fan of the artist Patrick Hughes (his art is some amazing stuff.). I was unaware that he was also the author of a book I searched for which I became interested in whilst doing my degree. Anyhows, he released a new book called Paradoxymoron.

I ordered it, & when it came, there was a little note from Patrick asking me to let him know what I thought. I didn't read it straight away, however after a few weeks I started it. During the reading, I recieved a postcard reminding me Patrick wished to know what I thiought, so when I finished, I wrote him a letter.

For the purposes of brevity, it is a phenomenal book. I really enjoyed it, & it definitely exposes tru-isms in life. It has given me a new perspective on many things, so I said as much in my letter.

Anyways, Patrick was kind enough to respond in detail to the letter I sent, including commenting on the thoughts/parallels I had drawn with Shakespeare (having seen loads of oxymorons in Merchant of Venice) & updating me to let me know he was going to see Richard 3rd at the old Vic (lucky devil!)

I just thought it was lovely of him to take the time to reply, & the content of the letter was clear in that he had definitely read the letter I sent him. Which was nice...

tomterm8

lemonjelly wrote: »

I wanted to share a little something with you. I'm a fan of the artist Patrick Hughes (his art is some amazing stuff.). .

Hadn't heard of him, so I googled. His art is really interesting. Not the kind of thing I usually like, but I liked it anyway. Thoughtful.

silvercar

Is he the only one that does art like that? Friends have two pieces of art that look like they could be his.

John_Pierpoint

PasturesNew wrote: »

You can probably find some software nowadays that enables you to 'see' what's on their PC/laptop screen. If not - it should be made as it wouldn't be rocket science.

I remember about 10 years ago, the IT department fitted some software that did a screenie of everybody's screens every 10 minutes.... and a temp was pulled into the boss' office and was shown his rolling video of screen shots, showing he was surfing the net most of the day and not working.

BP was reputed to have software that recognised "skin tones".

PasturesNew wrote: »

One thing I do is look "right now" at income - and then compare that to driving 20 miles for NMW.

Right now, if I had got up at Crack O'Clock, showered, dressed in the right clothes, driven to work I'd have spent about £2.50 in fuel and earnt £21 basic, so £18.50 would be "mine" at this point. Right now in my account I see £14. And I figure I'd rather be £4.50 down than having to get up at Crack O'Clock, sit in uncomfy clothes, in an uncomfy office, surrounded by noisy people... and not being allowed to leave until at least 5pm no matter how loud I wanted to scream.

Yesterday's income worked out as the same as £8/hour for 7 hours (£20k/year) ... and that's just the "easily visible income" - there's other bits and bobs I don't know unless I literally sit and log on to over 100 accounts to check (which of course would be madness). And I get paid in 5 currencies.... so it'd be a full-time job just logging into them and converting. I wait until I randomly get an email that says "You've received funds".

Have you factored the tax man's "take" into these calculations - he won't allow wage slaves to charge the cost of going to work against his share that he gets for doing nothing..

Davesnave wrote: »

We also palmed-off quite a lot of scrap metal to a farmer friend who collects it. We still have around 70 old tyres to shift.

It was lucky that we made the removal of their ten tonne lorry a condition of exchanging contracts.:rotfl:

I got a satisfactory price for the scrap metal at my place and the old lorry just disappeared one day - I told Mrs P they would be back for it as it was worth money. (Technically I did not own the bit of land on which it was left - I do now!)

I managed to sell some of the tyres left at my place and the rest vanished one bonfire night, except for those used to make planters.
Growing things in tyres has not killed me yet - you can make a tower of potatoes, if you want to grow a lot of food in a small space.

PasturesNew

lemonjelly wrote: »

Hi all,

a quick pop in owing to lots of other stuff I have going on at the mo.

I wanted to share a little something with you. I'm a fan of the artist Patrick Hughes (his art is some amazing stuff.). I was unaware that he was also the author of a book I searched for which I became interested in whilst doing my degree. Anyhows, he released a new book called Paradoxymoron.

I ordered it, & when it came, there was a little note from Patrick asking me to let him know what I thought. I didn't read it straight away, however after a few weeks I started it. During the reading, I recieved a postcard reminding me Patrick wished to know what I thiought, so when I finished, I wrote him a letter.

For the purposes of brevity, it is a phenomenal book. I really enjoyed it, & it definitely exposes tru-isms in life. It has given me a new perspective on many things, so I said as much in my letter.

Anyways, Patrick was kind enough to respond in detail to the letter I sent, including commenting on the thoughts/parallels I had drawn with Shakespeare (having seen loads of oxymorons in Merchant of Venice) & updating me to let me know he was going to see Richard 3rd at the old Vic (lucky devil!)

I just thought it was lovely of him to take the time to reply, & the content of the letter was clear in that he had definitely read the letter I sent him. Which was nice...

WHOOSH.

I could understand as much of that as I could the investments thread.

But I do understand: Bought a book I wanted years ago. Author wrote to me. I wrote him a nice long letter. He's written back.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

The bigger health issue will be LIR's week away from the Nice People! Her mental health will deteriorate without our babbliings to bob along through the day to!

Too bloody true.

Combined with extreme lack of sleep thanks to dog-dog. (who should be called Manipulative but who now has a fan club both at our vets -she'd not been before- and at the referring vets. Both vets enquired if she might be having pups in the future ). The break was worse than the first x ray suggested, and she had to have three little screws in it. She refused to eat or go to the loo without me there (silly dog, she never used to be so clingy). Weekly visits to get dressing changes and a new set of x rays in 8 weeks. Ironically, its a very common injury in racing greyhounds, but never in the leg she did it in....NEVER, because of the way they run round the track! So its quite ridiculous my dog is one of the very few to have this injury on the wrong leg.

Tip: if you decided to sleep underneath a dog-dog don't pick a two seater sofa to sleep on.

lostinrates

[QUOTE=PasturesNew;44618544And_I_want_to_run_away_to_the_circus_:)[/QUOTE]


did you know that you'll have to muck out the animals and learn to juggle?


I went through a phase of wanting to join the amazing westcountry/oxfordshire?? based circus run by a woman whose :oname I have forgotten right this moment . I think this year they are doing an interpretation of War and Peace