Three Paragraph Thursdays: If It Isn't The Dogs, It's The People

Here's a three paragraph story to get you to the end of your week. Enjoy

If It Isn't The Dogs, It's The People

Margaret screamed for her life as she slammed the steel fence door behind and clutched her mailbag. Cold rain splashed onto her face as she sucked at the moist air, trying to slow her heartbeat. She lowered herself onto the wet cement and rested her back against the fence. The dog pounced onto the other side of the feeble wire wall and snarled loudly at her, trying to bite through the fence at Margaret's large neck. Puffs of heated breath pushed Margaret's sloppy hair onto her red face. As the dog continued to chew and bark, Margaret lowered her face into her hands and wept.
Everyday was like this. If it wasn't the dogs, it was the people. The teenagers would yip about how Margaret was huffing up and down the hilly neighborhood. The adults would look down at Margaret from their second stories, watching her cautiously as she placed their grocery coupons in the mail boxes. Then they'd close their curtains and howl menacingly about how she was losing her ankles. The old people would stand at their porches in the shade and snap and spit at Margaret for not lifting up her "chubby cheeks" to give them a smile. Margaret was the product of a country ashamed and embarrassed by its size so it had to make fun of others. And as the dog pounded its head into the fence, Margaret felt it. The anger and anguish, always from the other side of the fence. She kept crying.
But the sound of rhythmic splashing slowly crept into Margaret's ears. She looked up at a toddler in bright yellow boots making his way down the grey sidewalk. It took him a few minutes but he got to Margaret and looked down. The child was young and fresh looking aside from a small river running from his nose to his mouth, which pooled at a large chocolate chip cookie. He smiled and waved at Margaret who wiped the tears from her eyes and found herself smiling back. He pulled out another cookie from his pocket and held it out to Margaret. She laughed slightly and graciously accepted the gift. Then the name "Timothy" bellowed out from a nearby house and the boy continued to skip down the cement for a few feet until he arrived home. He turned back, waved goodbye to Margaret and disappeared. Margaret pocketed the cookie and pulled herself up. The clouds began to part as Margaret adjusted her mailbag. She looked at the dog just as it was about to bark at her once more and she barked back "DOWN!". It cowered against the grass and Margaret went on her way, humming to herself.

(a late) Poetic Waste Wednesday: Other Poets

Sorry for the delay, we promise it was worth the wait.

Other Poets

Other poets use words and rhyme
And rhythm and meter
All the time
As if the page was their theatre
They utilize words
To make them sound grand
To give them wings like birds
Well give them a hand
Well I'm not like other scribes
I'm quite unique


Because I end my stanzas half way through a rhyme scheme

Terribly Told Video Competition

There's no better time than today to announce the Terribly Told Video Competition!

If you're interested in digital video shorts, listen up:

Every month we will be hosting a video competition that asks you to take one aspect of movie making and do it badly. For example, if one month the topic is "special effects", you could use a painted watermelon as a head that explodes.

The best bad use of this aspect wins a special prize. Here are this month's rules:

1- the video must start with the line "There you are"
2- it must be 2 minutes or less
3- it has to have bad acting

Bad acting means that the actors make terrible emotional choices and must have inappropriate reactions as well as bad timing

To submit your video, upload it to youtube and email the link to Omar.Najam@gmail.com by January 30th. All posts will be uploaded on the 31st and the winner will be announced on the same day.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us. Best of luck with your Terribly Told video!

Terribly Told Stories: Mah Day

Here's a little Terribly Told throwback.

Movie Mondays: Operation

Lion’s Gate Plays More Mind Games


Yesterday, Lion’s Gate announced that they are reviving an old classic, the board game Operation. But this film is by no means child friendly.

Operation is set to shoot in June but the production company is already releasing information regarding the script. Screenwriter Leigh Whinnel seemed to take great joy in dashing out the grim details.

“We, and by we, I mean me, wanted to keep the feel of the original game,” explained Whinnel. “When Lion’s Gate came to us with the idea, and by us, I mean me, I called up [James] Wan and was like ‘hey, wanna make another [explicit]-ed up movie?’ And he was like ‘[explicit] yeah!’”

Director James Wan, infamous for initating the Saw series, was also at yesterday’s panel.

“Leigh and I got thinking and we decided to go all out. We want to surprised you,” smiled Wan. “This film is going to be messed up. It’s going to be three levels above that! And then more!”

Both Leigh and Wan cut the build up and let the information bleed out onto the press. The film is to star Leigh Whinnel and Cary Elwes, the stars from the original Saw film, as they wake in an abandoned room with a board game between them. As their eyes settle, they realize the board game is, you guessed it, Operation. A mysterious voice appears in the room and instructs them to operate on the board game, but as they operate, all of their surgical mistakes will happen onto real people in other rooms.

“We want to return to the philosophy of the first Saw movie,” spoke Wan. “Watching people get killed so someone else can live is difficult for our characters. Now its our audience’s turn, it’s going to be dramatic irony to the max!”

Our two protagonists continue to remove buckets and horseshoes from the board game until Elwes’ character just cant take it anymore. He refuses to remove any more body parts from real people and the mysterious voice conducts a montage of torture scenes, warning of what happened to those that did not play.

“It’s gonna be big,” laughed Whinnel, “uh… spines exploding and legs flying off and acid and we’ve even, and by we I mean myself, thought of one scene where a guy drinks a ton of milk in a hot room and it curdles and he dies as a big piece of cheese.”

Lion’s Gate made the big surprise by beating the bloggers to the big reveal.

“You find out at the end,” grins Wan, “that they have been operating on themselves this whole time! Oh god, it’s gonna be soo good!”

Operation is scheduled to shoot this summer and will be released Thanksgiving, 2010.

Sunday Funnies: Peron on Patron

Happy Sunday everyone! If you're in California, it's most likely pretty rainy. If you're not in California, well... we hope you enjoy today's comic. Starting next week, we will be only scanning images rather than photographing them and touching them up afterward so look forward to some fancy jpeg-ness.

As for this week:

















Have a great week, everyone