Month: May 2015

Jamie Fraser Farts (…or Why the Best Books Have B.O.)

/ Teresa Schulz / Leave a comment

As I am a writer, I found this particularly relevant, not to mention about my favourite series. Good blog, thanks for sharing with us.

The Word Peddler

For me, the best fictional worlds feel just real enough to draw me into them.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the fantastical because, well, Outlander…and Harry Potter…and Lord of the Rings…and Game of Thrones…

Well, you get the idea.

But what really draws me into a story are those little touches with which I can identify.  The sounds, and smells, those “been there done that” bits woven into the tapestry of the story.  Those moments when I see my own imperfections in the characters I love.

Once of my favorite, snort-laugh-worthy moments in the Outlander series occurs in Dragonfly in Amber.  Claire had just returned from getting her legs waxed. Jamie was not amused because, well, God Himself put the hair there.  No, seriously, Jamie had seen it there just the day before.  Where the heck did it go?! (and, for the love of all that is holy, WHY…

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Jack and the Magic Beans (also known as the Tale of the Trojan TPPA)

/ Teresa Schulz / Leave a comment

I was thinking this morning of how to simplify this TPPA thing so more people would make an effort to:

a) CARE about it and,

b) actually GET what it means…

So far I can liken it to Jack and the Beanstalk.

How? You may ask.89H

Jack was supposed to take his cow to the market to sell so he and his mother could buy food to eat. Along the way some shifty dude in a long trench coat gave him some ‘magic’ beans in exchange for the cow. Now, being a lazy teenager, Jack thought WOW, magic beans and I don’t have to walk this smelly cow all the way to market, its a win-win situation, right?
Wrong!
Now if Jack hadn’t been so lazy and impatient to offload that cow, he may have dug deeper and interrogated that shifty dude in the trench coat … and learned that the beans would lead to a long climb with an angry giant waiting at the top to crush him and that golden goose he was after… well, it wasn’t going to be as easy to get his hot little hands on as Jack thought.
The KEY point I’m making here (and I use that word deliberately) is that if you all think of the TPPA as THOSE MAGIC BEANS, our darling NZ PM as that shifty dude in the trench coat, and the bloody scary giant waiting at the top to gobble us up… as the good old MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS  … then maybe, just maybe, this fairy tale, might have a happier ending this time?