Friday 16 March 2018

I am not an Alien aka Why I will Never be Slim




Recently, I was talking to an annoying perky slim person.  It was four in the afternoon.  Here’s what she said:


“I’m really hungry because I forgot to have lunch today.”


Eh, what?  Are you kidding me?  Is this person human? Who forgets to have lunch?


No, really.  Have you ever worked in an office?  It goes something like this:


Any sane person I know who works for a living starts clock-watching at 11:30, at the latest.  Only half an hour…only twenty minutes…I’ll go to the bathroom.  Talk to Rachel in accounting.  Is it noon yet?  WILL THAT CLOCK EVER MOVE?


Things aren’t much different if you are an author writing from home.  It is currently 11:06 am.  I have decided to write this humour column to distract myself from the lure of the last-night leftovers.  Because I know from experience that if I eat lunch at 11, then dinner somehow gets downed by 3:30.  And even the Hobbits don’t indulge in second dinner.


To set the record straight, I have never missed a meal in my life.  Okay, I’ve been toilet-bowl-sick and passed on solid food, but only because I knew it wouldn’t stay down in its current form.  I didn’t *forget* to eat.


The 3 o-clock meeting has some of the same attributes.  I’m willing to bet that the annoyingly slim person above hasn’t even thought about the fact that the main virtue of morning or afternoon meetings is the plate of muffins in the table center.  Lose your muffins, lose your allies. And wait for the grumbling.  Not just stomachs.


Speaking of stomachs, more annoyingly slim person dialogue I have been witness to:


 “Ooh.  I ate a whole egg.  I bet you can see the bulge in my stomach now.”


“I’m starving.  Do you feel like soup?  I could really down a whole cup of fat-free chicken broth with nothing in it.  Yum.”


“Salad.  Let’s have a salad.  We can use lemon juice instead of salad dressing, if you’re worried about the calories.”  <eyes drop to my waist>


Okay, the clock is getting closer to 12:00, so I'll wrap this up quickly by circling back to the post title:

What kind of planet are these people from, who forget to eat?


My take on people who forget to eat is that they are probably from some place like Mars or Jupiter where they don’t have carbs growing conveniently out of the ground.  Which makes them aliens. 


I always knew slim people were aliens.


Final joke I sold to a standup comedian back in the day:

“I had the flu once.  It was awful.  I couldn’t eat a thing for three hours.”










Wednesday 14 March 2018

4/4 stars - Industry review of The B-Team! CM magazine, University of Manitoba

CM . . . . Volume XXIV Number 26. . . . March 9, 2018
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The B-Team: The Case of the Angry First Wife. (Rapid Reads).
Melodie Campbell.
Victoria, BC: Orca, 2018.
130 pp., pbk., pdf & epub., $9.95 (hc.).
ISBN 978-1-4598-1807-1 (pbk.), ISBN 978-1-4598-1808-8 (pdf), ISBN 978-1-4598-1809-5 (epub).
Grades 11 and up / Ages 16 and up.

Review by Thomas F. Chambers.

**** /4

Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.


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excerpt:
Of course, those infamous burglaries were all long before. Kitty retired a few years ago after breaking an ankle in a bad fall while leaving a second story window. Now she divides her time between her little house in the forest and the Holy Cannoli Retirement Home, visiting my elderly relatives who reside there. Many of them are dotty. Not Kitty. Her brain cells are in for the long haul.

The B-Team is about scamming, but not the usual type so common in today’s society where people are scammed for their money on the Internet. It is about outright theft where the victim loses a diamond necklace worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those trying to find the jewellery are the ones who are scammed.
     The B-Team, a modern version of the A Team so popular on 1980’s TV, try to solve the crime. The team members are young Canadian Italian adults, well-versed in crime, who should have no trouble doing so. Instead, they are completely fooled.
     The necklace belongs to a recently divorced woman who believes that it was stolen by her former husband and is now being worn by his new wife. In a surprise twist, it turns out that the woman is not the divorced wife. The B-Team has no reason to doubt her and plan to get the necklace back. Instead, they are totally fooled by the woman, but, with the help of other members of the Italian community, they retrieve the necklace and return it to its rightful owner. The B-Team is well written, attention grabbing and fun. Once started, most readers will be hooked and have a hard time putting the book down.
Recommended.
Thomas F. Chambers, a retired college teacher and author, lives in North Bay, ON.
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Friday 9 March 2018

First photos from The B-TEAM launch!

Feeling very under-made-up at the moment...with winners of the BEST COSTUME PRIZE!

Many thanks to all who turned out to the Launch of THE B-TEAM last night!  $500 was raised for the Hamilton Literacy Council.