The One With The Quote
I haven’t updated in quite some time because I’ve been both busy and lazy over the past two weeks. But uh, I’m watching the Oscars right now and there was a joke during the Best Screenplay segment. Tina Fey and Steve Martin were presenting it.
It went something like this.
Tina Fey: A man once wrote that, “To write is to live forever.”
Steve Martin: That man is now dead.
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I laughed and I laughed, and I just had to share it with you guys.
And now, back to the Oscars!
The One With The First Friday the 13th of 2009
Yeap, today is just the first of three Friday the 13th this year which, according to a news article, happens only once around every 11 years. I’m never a believer in this Friday the 13th bad luck thing, and honestly I doubt a lot of people does in this age and time, but maybe the following facts might make you think twice.
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1. The British Navy built a ship named Friday the 13th. On its maiden voyage, the vessel left dock on a Friday the 13th, and was never heard from again.
2. The ill-fated Apollo 13 launched at 13:13 CST on Apr. 11, 1970. The sum of the date’s digits (4-11-70) is 13 (as in 4+1+1+7+0 = 13). And the explosion that crippled the spacecraft occurred on April 13 (not a Friday). The crew did make it back to Earth safely, however.
3. Many hospitals have no room 13, while some tall buildings skip the 13th floor.
4. Fear of Friday the 13th – one of the most popular myths in science – is called paraskavedekatriaphobia as well as friggatriskaidekaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13.
5. Quarterback Dan Marino wore No. 13 throughout his career with the Miami Dolphins. Despite being a superb quarterback (some call him one of the best ever), he got to the Super Bowl just once, in 1985, and was trounced 38-16 by the San Francisco 49ers and Joe Montana (who wore No. 16 and won all four Super Bowls he played in).
6. Butch Cassidy, notorious American train and bank robber, was born on Friday, April 13, 1866.
7. Fidel Castro was born on Friday, Aug. 13, 1926.
8. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not travel on the 13th day of any month and would never host 13 guests at a meal. Napoleon and Herbert Hoover were also triskaidekaphobic, with an abnormal fear of the number 13.
9. Superstitious diners in Paris can hire a quatorzieme, or professional 14th guest.
10. Mark Twain once was the 13th guest at a dinner party. A friend warned him not to go. “It was bad luck,” Twain later told the friend. “They only had food for 12.”
11. Woodrow Wilson considered 13 his lucky number, though his experience didn’t support such faith. He arrived in Normandy, France on Friday, Dec. 13, 1918, for peace talks, only to return with a treaty he couldn’t get Congress to sign. (The ship’s crew wanted to dock the next day due to superstitions, Fernsler said.) He toured the United States to rally support for the treaty, and while traveling, suffered a near-fatal stroke.
12. The number 13 suffers from its position after 12, according to numerologists who consider the latter to be a complete number – 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles of Jesus, 12 days of Christmas and 12 eggs in a dozen.
13. The seals on the back of a dollar bill include 13 steps on the pyramid, 13 stars above the eagle’s head, 13 war arrows in the eagle’s claw and 13 leaves on the olive branch. So far there’s been no evidence tying these long-ago design decisions to the present economic situation.
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Pretty interesting, haha, and here’s the news article where I got those facts from. Go read it if you’re interested in the origins of Friday the 13th.
- Derick
Read, read, read!
Fixing the plot seems to be taking longer than I expected, so I’m going to focus less on writing and more on reading for the next couple of weeks. One of the problems – an old problem – with Specimen One is that the flow and structuring of the sentences aren’t smooth enough. Just grab a book from your shelf, read the first page, then read the prologue of Specimen One, and you’ll understand what I mean.
I have a lot of books that I want to finish, ranging from Chronicles of Narnia to Starcraft novels and even Nora Roberts’ romance flicks.
The next two months will be rather busy for me as well. I’m currently in the last two months of my Year 2 in Temasek Polytechnic, so I have my year end project to work on right now. It’s a 10 minutes short film but trust me when I say that a hell lot of work goes behind a 10 minutes film. So yeah, I guess it’s a good time to start reading again in order to de-stress and improve my writing =)
There should be an emo bit in here about me losing faith in my ability to write, but I’ve agreed at the beginning of this blog that I will not write emo or ranting related stuff in any of my posts, so no emoing here!
I’ll find a solution eventually.
- Derick
The Latest Feedback
Wahaha, a guy named j.s. just wrote me a critical feedback =)
Most of what he mentioned I’ve already heard from someone else, but I found out from his review that Mythias is actually a cliched name. That’s completely new because prior to writing Project M.I.G.H.T. I’ve only heard of the name Mythias like once or twice, and they’re also spelled differently, so yeah, I learn something new!
Regarding the series’s name being corny, I find it just a matter of personal preference.
Oh, I’ve learnt something awesome about dialogue writing from his review, which is to role-play when in doubt of certain dialogues. I think I do role-play a little, but it’s done very vaguely and I do it all in my head. So I think if I were to take the role-playing more seriously, I’ll be able to come up with even stronger and more natural dialogues.
But reading his review makes me feel irritated about being a Singaporean again, haha, because I agree with him that most Singaporean writers have horrific phrasing and grammar. This is mostly due to the diversity of our culture and races I guess. A typical Singaporean can speak at least two languages, while most of us can speak three if you include dialects. So it’s very, very easy to get mixed up and it’s definitely going to be one of my biggest obstacles to overcome as a writer.
Damn you Singlish! =X
Oh and about the plot line, I’ve actually received the same comment from HHHL. But the problem is that I’ve never watched Ghost in the Shell or NGE (I’m going to assume this means Neon Genesis Evangelion) before. NEVER. But yeah, I do feel that the plot could be better when it comes to predictability. Specimen One was really quite predictable at many parts and it just brings down the whole story.
Alright, good stuff, so thank you – if you’re reading - Mr. J.S. for this awesome review.
I’ll update about Specimen Two by the end of this week.
- Derick
