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Sunday, August 22, 2010

ANITA LOOS_YOU CAN'T KEEP A BAD GHOST DOWN_ GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude


{"Like cheap booze, you can't keep a bad ghost down."
- Anita Loos, ghost.}

All your glowing comments about my article I posted on the anniversary of my death made this down ghost feel up.

And let me tell you :

that's the first time this girl has been felt up by strangers in a long time.

No howls from the feminists, please. The trouble with the Women's Liberationists is that they keep getting up on soapboxes

and proclaiming women are brighter than men.

Which is true,

but it should be kept quiet, or it ruins the whole racket.

But I am pleased by VR's comment that she, too, has the same frame of mind as I do about our last names.

My brother, Clifford, would painstakingly correct anyone who mispronounced our name. I never cared what people called me.

So my brother was always Dr. 'Lohse' while I became Miss 'Loose.'

Which was fitting since to survive in the madness that was Hollywood in the 1920's, I had to play it fast and loose.

Hollywood was insane then. To place in the limelight a great number of people who ordinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs,

and give them unlimited power and wealth, was bound to produce lively results.

But Fate keeps on happening. And insanity has apparently become the norm in Hollywood.

Still and all, this is Roland's blog, and he likes to help out his fellow writers. Luckily for you, I do, too.

In fact, I'm going to give you a way never to be stuck for what to write next ever again.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? And here I am not even running for political office.

It relates to a trick I learned to lose weight : you always leave the table hungry.

You may not know this, but it takes a bite of food a half hour to make it down all those intestinal highways and byways to your stomach.

Eat til you feel full, and 30 minutes later, you'll feel over-stuffed -- because that is what you are.

In like manner, when you're writing and going good,

when you know what's going to happen next,

Stop.

If you do that every day when you're writing your masterpiece, you will never be stuck.

Don't think or worry about the next scene. This way your subconscious will work out all sorts of nifty details as you go about the rest of your day's activities.

Consciously think about what you will write next, and you'll be tired before you start.

It's like staring at the brooding, silent phone, willing it to ring, thinking about that damn man who won't call.

By the time he does call, you're so tired of waiting and out of sorts, you haven't the wit or the patience to put him down like the sick dog he is.

Now, this trick won't make you rich, but wanting to be rich is all too human and all too useless.

There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants --

more than anything else --

to become rich.

As long as they don't have the money, it'll seem like a worthwhile goal.

Once they do, they'll understand how important other things are --

Like enjoying each breath you breathe, the taste of that luscious strawberry, each light caress of your lover's fingertips on your cheek --

all those things I took for granted,

until I died.

Don't you be like me, girls. Please.

Well, maybe just a little bit. "Naughty" can have its own rewards.
***
Speaking of naughty ...

take a peek into the world in which I grew up :


7 comments:

  1. Loved that video, a folding car!

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  2. that statement - when you have money you realise how useless it is....i liked it.....this approach made lot of sense to me since childhood..... and i know precisely what those lines are talking about...are you a student of literature or something? all these posts ..do you write them as what you experience or believe in or it is just a sort of assignment that you are doing for your projects? silly question but i had to ask this one ...

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  3. Good advice :) I sometimes leave myself in the middle of sentence in order to put myself right back in the flow. :)

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  4. Eliza : Wasn't that video interesting? I smiled cigarette smoke for minutes after seeing it. We forget how different just a few decades can make in how the world operates.

    Flying High In The Sky : I'm a former English teacher and literature has become part of the fiber of who I am.

    Thorne Smith's TOPPER (about a banker meeting two high-living ghosts in the 1920's) caught me up when I was a young boy. Ever since I imagined invisible ghosts moving among us, snickering at our daily lives and commenting on them.

    I thought I would add some spice to my blog by "bringing on stage" ghosts of my choosing to make comments and teach how to be better writers. Much of the posts are direct quotes from them, in fact.

    Monday and Tuesday, I post two more chapters of my serial : WHEN THE DEVIL WEARS YOUR FACE and WHEN THE FOX PREACHES :

    My avatar faces The Adversary of All Life, wearing his own face. Tuesday's post involves life, death, and the Bhagavad Gita, among other things.

    Jemi : I'm glad you liked the advice. Ernest Hemingway also practiced what Anita and you do.
    Have a great Suday.

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  5. Whoa, your blog is sooo cool! So happy I found you today...

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  6. That's awesome! I love her spunk!

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  7. Very good advice, never thought of leaving the keyboard hungry...

    Anita's humor made me laugh out loud and I loved the pic you selected (being a strawberry blonde).

    Um, that car designed for women? I think it was commissioned by a group of men looking to cash in life insurance policies on their wives!!!

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