ColetteB….

not exactly work in progress…


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“…general jerk-like behavior”

Apparently that phrase above is acceptable promotional language for the meet things running in UK the last year or two(?) dunno how long really, only noticed info recently. Looking at a couple of examples lately and I don’t feel I’m missing anything for none appearing to be held in my home city.

Of course people usually can be expected to behave in public environments but what we call British sense of humour appears potentially not tolerated too!

I don’t want sitting down in a classroom or a lecture hall for a WP meet with some professional twit enough to volunteer to give a presentation style talk as if it’s the Worker’s Education Association but probably isn’t and I just don’t like the look of the little I’ve seen so far without knowing enough to inform my opinion. Why not marquees on city / town squares on busy shopping days and if you’re around you can just drop in to someone’s table / display board like other UK community events work? Or lay on a creche / family friendly afternoon with free cookies and ice-cream with 99 red balloons being not enough or maybe much too many. Free-writing again. Nothing’s working.

Whatever it is – information to impart/promotion/participation expectation – you often have to TAKE it – to where people happen to be. Not expect them to go all out and attend. Sweeping generalisation there i know. And I’m being a jerk writing back to that prompt. Like that nottingham(shire?)council sponsored CUNT stunt displayed HUGE on slab square in the name of art for art’s sake and protest a few years ago. i did screenshot it so could prove it too. (Public CCTV grazing for art reason of reading in newspaper about artists working with data collection – triggered my screenshot stuff). I’ve not published it of course, the council copyright notice made clear. i’d be free to give it away on pieces of paper but it’s hardly worth trying. How impolite to suggest people need telling they gotta behave proper!

There are problems with setting things up to fail all over the shop. Although a pretty good turn out if you can get even 8 to 10 people in the same fixed place at the same fixed time in this country! So they actually looked successful by UK standards and i’m not knocking the volunteer organisers (who often tend to invite and encourage attendees from their own networking circles to help things look more successful than they really are so you never can be sure and it’s another issue that might or might not put me off) but if you can’t see public info enough on how they operate and there’s no public feedback at what went on at these things, why would you take any more out of your time to try contacting someone somewhere to wait to find out about it.

Unknown online organisations running the things? do they get a monopolised patch on a city/town territory? Or small-fry local, government funded, business organisations running the show? And British University support isn’t really a guarantee of anything these days is it. All our industries have been complaining enough for years about uni turn-outs and lack of skills. No wonder. Even standard school text books have too many incomprehensible moments in trying to read Americanised English and Americanised context so that it’s difficult to see what you need to understand from what should be  a quite simple page. i know. Look who’s talking springs to mind. Does this appear or sound like a text book page? This is not what I was trying to make. Should be obvious?

I’d rather any other non-professional blogging person in the world with the gumption to try doing something just got on with publically declaring, hey, we’re doing this and see how it goes – picnic on the beach on whenever the next Sunny Saturday afternoon is. Y’know, while all the yobbish peeps with kids ie. people/families! mostly are in the arcades and on the tatt markets and so on. (Awful thing to say I know!) Of course i’m as far away from the sea as a person can be living in this city, so that wasn’t a serious suggestion. Local rec. maybe?

Surely that quoted phrase ‘general jerk-like behavior’ is an example of the very thing it suggests is unacceptable (at one of those types of meetings)? Is that why it’s there? dark sarcasm. pink floyd fans maybe then.

It’s both potentially offensive to disabled / impaired people who might have tremors and so jerk about their everyday lives -and is also very offensive to our English language to use an American spelling of our behaviour!

Maybe I’m being pedantic. Maybe it’s contagious. There’s swarms of apparently very nice respectable ladies out there being very undignified and obnoxious twattin’ about as all sorts of professionals oppressing the hell out of humanity appearing to seek advantageous control of the freedoms of others by way of cleverly worded interpretations / misinterpretations. Many of it stemming from the US with their very different culture – the absolute cheek of some man you tubing bullshit about how British people identify more with america and australia than europe. Depends how you asked the leading questions chap if you got those results from survey data.

back to the Word. good. The Word is Good. Good God FFS! Does that pukey service gramarly have anything to do with that ‘behavior’ nonsense in that UK promotional blurb. Maybe. Not everyone realises it’s not English! I think when I checked they don’t actually have an English grammar service. only standardised American. Not all Americans use standardised AmEn grammar either. For most UK technology consumers it’s a foreign language service provider ie. for American language use. This standardised rubbish doing the rounds via software that wants you to put ALL your communications through it. And not even trial the service before signing up? There should be a law against it in this country! Appears shoddy business standard. I do wish my internet streams sucked in more European content. But…

I guess the US dominates the internet for being 20 years ahead of population integration to the web and lacking foundational computing knowledge. So less likely to understand the gubbins of software coding. Probably by design. Dominate the professions on our home soil. First they take over and refuse to leave at least one of our air force bases (a long time ago now) and stupid bloomin’ Brit government let them flood in with whatever dodgy money looking like tourists breaking any law they like maybe blowing stuff up and blaming Libyans cos the style changes of news items and details not presenting in usual ways just give it away – Britain under pressure – Buck.Pal. springs to mind… poisoning defectors from elsewhere (as per the BBC in news quote from an American based Russian scientist/defector clearly stating ‘this country’ about the full cycle of the poison use thing and by that meaning America, unless he was visiting Britain and was here saying Britain are responsible. i can’t be doing fact-checking just now. A lot of dodgy stuff going down. and on this post. I’m not apologising on this one.

And here I am potentially allegedly-able anti-Americanising again, conversationally, as is my right – and I might be wrong on a few things in this post but I’m clearly telling you I don’t know for sure do I! .and I am NOT anti-american until they’re rogue flippin’ I.S. /military hoodwinking and shittin’on our doorsteps. Good Morning Britain! Wake up! Some might say ‘you’re being a jerk!’Or we all are. Some might say all sorts. Whatever.

And it’s very intolerant of people who might appear awkward or disruptive but whom experience difficulties with communication, for example, and frustration with intolerant deliverers of however they do things with whatever bad attitudes a lot of so called professional people might have about the low-life turning up to get in on the action and so on. Obviously i know nothing about nothing. The phrase affrays. a simple phrase. (reminds me of my poem here i think!) Please don’t suggest I stick with poetry. Nor tar and pitch!

I’ll try keeping an open mind but not wasting any more than the few minutes I just distracted with. And you’d expect a WP group to not to expect you to join a facebook group as well as the WP group really wouldn’t you? I.e. a members private access area on an organisers blog for ease of access for WP bloggers is surely better for most people unless they use facebook more than being bloggers and just also happen to have a blog.

Surely they need Fb meets not WP meets if they’re about a different platform for their comms? I’m really not meaning to be this awkward battle-axe of a Brit grandma. i just can’t help myself. My generation’s all getting old but we bring our child-i with us as we age don’t we? and if you reach juvenile stage before adulthood you’re fortunate and retain some enough for when you gotta laff or else you’d cry. Some audience might not like it. And see if I care?

I’m waiting for a notification of a local virtual access version of a WordCamp type thing but I guess they only do these real world things regardless of the number of UK bloggers with accessibility issues for getting to real world venues. You can’t please all the people all the time is true. And unlikely I can get anywhere for ages anyway. Sounds stupid doesn’t it while we don’t need jeeps or guzzling monster trucks to drag ourselves hundreds of miles just to get to a diner and store if we’re lucky. y’know. Leaves on track. Bit of snow. Rainy day no out to play.

But a lecture type presentation is going nowhere fast for most Brit bloggers surely? I can understand why we’re unlikely to have anything as wonderful as the US WordCamps here – unless there’s a tent at Glastonbury or something.

But I’m not bothered about not going there either. Everywhere’s too far to walk! I went once. I’ll probably never go again, cos been there, done that, once is enough. Not exactly missing anything other than overpriced everything and the rain and the mudslides etc.

Music is everywhere. It’s horrible being at a festival with so many stages instead of just one main and maybe one or two smaller alternatives. It’s like being stuck in Disneyland Paris for four days unable to go to the Louvre for three of them (and actually had 0days at Louvre that time in Paris!) and then having had two rides one of them almost giving you a heart attack and not being able to enjoy anymore of the funfair while stuck in plastic toy land. But the animation museum was great and so was the sit back and look at starry skies show thing, can’t remember what you call it now. Doh!

This isn’t really a quote post is it! I just wanted to see what one looks like.

Lav. poem starter drafted in just now recital practise:

If you’re an inky-pinky and i’m an inky-punky / when-e’er the twain shall ne’er meet […tbc]

A.R.R. 2018

[writing201 for imperfect posts so adding to editing/extraction task pile – oh please not another stupidly long post… lol]

0642 BST / 0542 UCT/GMT waiting for breakfast to magic itself UP! [1894-1896 words. count. If it was history i wonder what happened?] 1904 getting off. NOW then. [1908 ‘The Other Side’ springs mind wieder. Again. [1915] [wc]

Must stop counting. [1919]


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Is it time for the hoe? Oh no! (… post JUST 600 words …)

a screenshot of my own photo of a cheap import owl pendant

above: DISTORTED screenshot of my photo (no design infringements contained therein, but if I turned it over…)

It’s cold out there, innit…

Didn’t she make herself look like a silly hoe as if tilling her ground like that’d make good…

please don’t ask… but in case you’re wondering, that hoe pictured above is not staged and just happened to be there, behind my bathroom door. I photographed it during February just as it stood, wondering about a conversation with it, like when i wrote a conversation i had to have with my rake, for a university driven creative writing excercise (moocs! – one of the best writing outputs I ever made actually!) Reminding me I should get back to some creative writing. Seeing and snapping. Objects.

By the way, happy New Year for yesterday! And the one a couple of months ago!! Apols for not getting around to it before…!

YESTERDAY’s news…

Why would anyone ever hire ‘professional services’ from litigation hungry, capitalist cultured people who might turn out to be so inhuman as this bbc news story seems to demonstrate? N.B: I am not seeking work whilst so decrepid and am only trying and failing not to exhaust myself while I practise some skill-building/retention however shit you might think IT.is. Art is meant to be. And Rubbish. So be it.

I read and could have wept for the family who have now become victims of such apparent injustice in the face of what appears to be gross unprofessionalism and the closing quote said it all really:

“I want to prove to people that they have to face any consequences when they say something on the internet.” the human(?) as quoted by the BBC, after an overseas court decided they should be compensated* following the personal expressions by their British client of complaint and dissatisfaction upon personal social media at the service failures and assuming significant emotional distress at the time of posting whatever remarks, understandably.

Makes no sense to me that! *They made a choice to close their business! They’ve now been ‘awarded’ enough money by an overseas court decision for a start-up creative to have enough cashflow to take ten years earning little or no money restarting another one! (If they were in Britain).

I’d hope the TDA prevents them seeking clients as a ‘professional’ in the UK ever again because consumer protection rights are so critical and most families cannot afford such FINE. And while such unprofessionalism exists as shown in this news write-up… The TDA covers a wide-range of things. Taking that court action doesn’t appear professional standard of conflict resolution, it appears as if taking advantage of an opportunity for financial gain+!

It’s as if we may not be human in our interactions anymore! While others might make advantage of a ‘financial win:win’ situation. This is just stringing along varying twists and turns of how to interpret the words of Law.

I admit I am in ignorance of the full-facts so really am sparing my opinion for another day, elsewhere. But the apparent motivations of the litigator/appellant’s legal action being to erode a British** person’s right to personal freedom of speech+! and (a) in any appeal process it should be clear that the judgement issued should be overturned. If only courts could ever be relied on for fairness! and (b) I may profess (as a non-professional) that a lot of people use that word professional not really understanding our British English very well and we mustn’t forget the breadth and scope in the meaning of our words in an ever-complicated world and use them freely!

 

 


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Making the Leap… just for fun

Are you making your Leap Day special?

Something in the air at Jacquies’s blogparty at the weekend had me all fired up and inspired. Seperately, having been issued 14 questions to answer in a challenge from a friend, I decided fourteen is a good number to work with and that there would be fourteen day until this year’s Leap Day and we won’t see another until 2020…

Naturally, what followed was thinking 14days, 14ways? Can I manage a Leap? and I want to make a four year plan – where would I like to be in my life by Leap Day 2020?

Alternatively, or additionally, how might I like my blogging to develop in those four years?

When I made this blog, my first concern was grabbing the url for my name, so that should I recover sufficiently to use it alongside semi-professional practise, I have it. Any hope of recovery enough to work outside of bedrest still appears a long way off. Never mind, it’s not impossible and considering this four year stretch could be a good way forward. Not the steps to get there, just where am I aiming for?

So, in the meantime, I’m of course making myself some fun and trying to extend my range in small ways. As well as continuing my informal blogging at the Wishing Well, I’m reviving my One for Fun Blog by challenging myself to two very quick posting tasks there for each of the next 14 days. The first task is about building an inspiring found image library (pixabay/unsplash etc) – I’ll aim to collect 14 images a day to my media library and select just one of those fourteen to post that day. The second task is to go back through my guest-posts at Snailzpace Daily. From the quotes I posted for my friend there, primarily for his resource, I’m going to select one quote a day that I really like and inspires  me for my Leap – and apply it to the background I’ve chosen, like this first one that I’m reposting below.

leapquota01

So, this is what I’m calling the Leapster Challenge – if you’d like to join in, you don’t have to do something every day for fourteen days although you can if you wish! You don’t have to aim for fourteen ways either – it’s just my way of working out how many different small ways I might increase my posting, writing and creativity while at bed-rest and (believe it or not) trying to avoid burn-out. You could aim to just make one post on Leap day. If you like the number 14 theme you could use it, or split it into two posts of something 7… your leap, if you want to take the challenge. You could just think about it and join for a second wave of the Leapster Challenge springboarding from 29th Feb…

I’m pushing myself quite hard with things I think will take five or ten minutes each but might probably take longer.. as well as those two things at One for Fun, I’ve two things at the Wishing Well – the matchmaker Q&A, answering one question a day and making a psot of it – I’m also doing a reblog a day there from the party guests blogs… Two things to do here? I think I’ll just make a weekend post each of these next two weekends with something of seven things on each… then a Leap Day post on 29th.

Now I  have to make a leap towards self-care and eating well today, so apologies for not applying links yet, I’ll have to save that for an admin task later…

Love to hear what you think of the Leapster idea – and how you might be making your Leap Day special …

 


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Immortal (Limerick)

The prompt for this week’s Limerick Poetry Challenge at Mind and Life Matters is ‘Immortal’. This word or an appropriate synonym must appear in the poem. That gave me a slight problem in realising the need to completely rework my second line. My use of the prompt word ‘immortal’ might not quite have fit the bill as it was – not that I’m after the grand prize myself 🙂 So, I managed to include a synonym just in case my ‘immortal’ was lacking and I ended up with an improved version compared to my original draft. 🙂 Yay!

I found this fitting image (below) on pixabay.com –  my limerick is below the pic 🙂 Enjoy!

old-age-957492_1280

There once wished a happy old couple
endless life but that wish burst their bubble –
He forgot his wife’s T,
left with immoral, she
yelled “to hell with ya and on the double!”

(©Colette Bates 2016)

Now that I managed to write one for the challenge prompt myself, I can get around having a read of everyone else’s entries so far… and look forward to the next challenge prompt out on 14th (tomorrow!)


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BLISS (Limerick)

This was supposed to be one of responses to post for Rashmi’s Limerick Challenge #2, with the prompt BLISS – I also thought it fit the final writing201:poetry theme prompt ‘pleasure’ too. Having drafted this last weekend, I’m very late posting. Writing201 finished last week and the new Limerick prompt will have been announced yesterday. I just can’t keep up with things at the moment. I also wanted to find one of my pics to go with this and haven’t even looked for it yet, anyway, here’s my BLISS limerick:

Before the tide upon sandy swathed shores

Lapping up foaming waves soon procures

Intuitive rhythms and

Subtle life givens

So indelible memory endures

~~~~~~~

I had a thing for Limericks last weekend and wrote quite a lot of verses in Limerick form. To compensate for not writing to all the daily poetry assignments I wrote a Limerick verse for each day’s theme prompt. I’m typing that to a page as it’s so long…


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I believe…

…my future looks…

Image via unsplash.com

Image via unsplash.com

I believe my future looks as rosy as the lens through which I view my life today, tomorrow,

those far distant tomorrows beyond and out of reach. I’d like to plan

my future as if a garden: sow the seeds, nourish and nurture, tend and mow.

Cut back weeds and watch my garden grow. Dig the earth and yield sufficient harvest then

to sustain living once again. I’d like for flowers there to thrive

to bloom and blossom, spring through life, gift nectar for the flutterbies

and through all these days and all these nights live life like song, full harmonised.

A very quick draft, needs some reworking, response to writing 101 day 20 assignment (and with poetry in mind!)


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‘Swishing up for…(w201-poetry)

‘Swishing up, for writing now – pull up a chair and write stuff how…s’why swish-up? s’what? s’why – collaboratively some of us tied and tried, we’ll try again alliteratively p’raps now and then and then and then again – ModPo’s grabbed hold and grabbed my pen – pertained pretends pretense per se per say pursed lips no way…

S’time an’ Stein goes rock and sway and in prose poem does merely say I surely can’t alliterate – s’what! S’why it’s sounding swaggered – s’when I free-write words get staggered stone cold sobre supping tea and in no need of sympathy but simply saying hear see hear say here stay a while and sit and play and play and playful words can make a poem so absurd …

S’what! S’fun s’pose it’s not wrong to muddle words and tag along and drag a song so poetry does start today so still stuck w101 someway with day 19 so slightly stalled takes such long steps to hop and trawl and so day 1 of poetry’s alliterate attend freely…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you can see I need more practise …

In ModPo this week we are reading the likes of Gertrude Stein – I’m quite new to formal study of poetry but  my writing above is a prose poem, attempting to alliterate which is always fun, as per writing201(poetry) day1 assignment.

‘Swishing up is just the url for an online ‘writer’s lounge’ for some us in writing101 to continue with one way or another of collaborating. The Commons will be closing soon, but there’s some way of dropping by, hanging out, grabbing a virtual coffee and having a chat and some fun hopefully. Some will be sharing posts for feedback, setting challenges or leaving a prompt they created. It has like a notice-board or a showcase function and maybe even some writing practise going on. Some of us are working on ideas for collaborative writing in pairs or as a small group – it was primarily built for such use but results of our writing for those projects will be a while in the making…

I’ll get around to writing101’s day20 assignment by the end of this week, hopefully…