Toy Story 4?

So my wife and daughter were playing Nintendo Wii today, and they had an interesting idea for an upcoming Toy Story installment:

They suggested that they need to update the toys in Toy Story to include some of the new virtual toys...like the "Mii" characters you create on the Wii. Of course those characters would only appear on a TV screen, but they would be able to interact with Woody and the gang.

I took the concept a step further by suggesting it could be a hybrid of Toy Story and Tron, where some of the Toy Story gang end up having an adventure inside the game?

Come on guys...what do you think? Disney owns both properties. It's perfect!

Here's the pitch:
The film opens with Woody and Buzz playing a Wii (or similar) version of Star Command. They create their 'Mii" avatars, which (because this is Toy Story), come to life inside the game!

Cut to: INSIDE THE GAME. Woody and buzz discover that Emperor Zurg is about to hatch his latest diabolical plan: if your Mii dies...you die! Can this be true? Can Woody and Buzz somehow manage to get a message out to their their real world counterparts...before it's too late!?!?

Come on on guys, who's with me?

Oh, and just in case any of the good folks at Pixar are interested in this idea, it's for sale! Unless of course they're already doing it.

A Funny Video from Indonesia, The Story of Udin Sedunia.

 A funny video from Indonesia coming up again. This time, its a narcist video from one Indonesian "alay-er". His name is Udin, and he sing a song about Udin Names that a popular name in Indonesia.

I think his video so really funny for watching. With funny lyric and mimic and also stupidity of narcism. The song from Udin Sedunia will become popular in Youtbe. Here is the video, enjoy and dont forget to feel sick to seeing Udin's face.

The division between the literary story and the action one

I think I understand why Otto Penzler went with "The Devil in Iron" when composing The Big Book of Adventure Stories: because it's just that, an adventure story.  It doesn't have the special something which puts it among the ranks of Howard's greatest works, or even the greatest of Howard's fantasy, or even the greatest of Howard's Conans, or even the greatest of Howard's eastern Conan stories - but it is what is, in the ol' vernacular, a Ripping Yarn.

It's one of my favourites, and to say that it doesn't have the cosmic tragedy of "The Tower of the Elephant" or the dystopian degeneracy of "Red Nails" doesn't necessarily make it a bad story, just not an exceptional one. Howard wrote dozens of these sorts of tales that are great fun to read, but there isn't much else lurking beneath the surface - at least, nothing that we haven't seen better executed in previous Howard tales. With this in mind, Penzler's choice actually seems fairly good for the sort of book he was trying to compile - rough-and-tumble, boy's own adventure tales.

Unfortunately, such an approach can sometimes lead to reviews like this.

The day is long past when any but a handful of writers could make a living from short stories, but hundreds, even thousands, of hard-working and prolific authors used to do so. There is still a market for the literary short story, though that too is shrinking and usually pays poorly. But the mass-market magazines that published several stories an issue are almost all gone. They appealed to readers who now watch movies and television or play computer games full of simulated violence. Adventure stories were their day's version of the modern action movie—even if some were written with a literary flair not always recognized at the time.

The division between the literary story and the action one has long been with us. In 1882, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in "A Gossip on Romance" (dreadful title, splendid essay) that many "are apt, I know not why, to look somewhat down on incident, and reserve their admiration for the clink of teaspoons and the accents of the curate." Literary stories offer great pleasures—the discriminating delineation of character, drama (what Stevenson called "the poetry of conduct"), the examination of moral questions, the evocation of mood. Such fine shades have no place in the "Big Book of Adventure Stories." Here we have only Romance, as Stevenson used the word: "the poetry of circumstance," stories in which incident is all, in which, to quote him one last time, "adventure, on the most naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment."

All that matters is storytelling. Characters may be thin as paper, heroic stereotypes incapable of development—it is of no importance if the story moves as fast as a river in spate. Adventure stories take us back to our earliest youth, as a species and as individuals: Once upon a time a traveler rode over the crest of a hill and saw a valley lying below him.

There's that blasted insistence on some hazy, pointless, stupid division between "literary fiction" and "non-literary fiction." Stop it. Please. Be a sport and come up with some other term than "literary fiction." Actually, wait, don't, because it already exists: drama.  Historical fiction. Romance.

Let's look at those things which  Mr Massie considers the domain of this mysterious "literary fiction":

• the discriminating delineation of character
• drama (what Stevenson called "the poetry of conduct")
• the examination of moral questions
• the evocation of mood

Pray tell, Mr Massie: how on earth do these factors separate "literary fiction" from any other genre?  How can one empathise with a character if he/she is not discriminatingly delineated?  How can a story successfully convey action, adventure, blood-and-thunder without a deft handling of drama?  How can a tale of good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, and choices between what is right and what is easy be told without an examination of moral questions? Most profoundly at all, how on earth can one be even slightly interested in reading and finishing a story if it does not successfully evoke mood?

It is divided into 11 sections: Sword & Sorcery; Megalomania Rules; Man vs. Nature; Island Paradise; Sand and Sun; Something Feels Funny; Go West, Young Man; Future Shock; I Spy; Yellow Peril; In Darkest Africa. Much of it is, as Mr. Penzler happily warns readers, politically most incorrect. Almost all the authors are more than comfortable with the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority, and lesser breeds are treated with disdain and contempt—even when there is reason to fear their vile schemes and vindictive nature. There is the rare exception, such as the Japanese master of ju-jitsu and other martial arts who finds himself in the French Foreign Legion in P.C. Wren's "A Gentleman of Color" (1929). But then the bullying lout whom he outwits and humiliates is a German, so that's all right.

I guess Mr Massie doesn't seem to realise, or indeed acknowledge, that this sort of "comfort with the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority" wasn't just the hallmark of the non-literati, but the sort of people who wrote his precious "literary fiction" of the time period.  With that in mind, perhaps I should be thankful he doesn't share his thoughts on "The Devil in Iron."

This entire review reminds me of this astonishing statement in the New York Times' obituary for J.G. Ballard:

The prescience of Mr. Ballard’s work and its harsh conflation of the present and the future often resulted in comparisons to writers like Huxley and Orwell. “His fabulistic style led people to review his work as science fiction,” said Robert Weil, Mr. Ballard’s American editor at Norton. “But that’s like calling ‘Brave New World’ science fiction, or ‘1984.’ ”

Because apparently dystopian fiction involving pleausible but currently unavailable technologies, new social orders, genetic engineering and other hallmarks of science fiction simply aren't enough to just call something science fiction.

It isn't all bad, though: Massie give Fritz Leiber props for his opening sentences of "The Seven Black Priests," and he speaks well of Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" (which is a good thing, since if he didn't, I'm afraid there may have been blood).  He seems to have really liked Harold Lamb's "The Mighty Manslayer."  Though infuriatingly condescending and patronizing, he does genuinely seem to enjoy reading most of the stories. It seems damned unfair of me to chide Massie so for what is, essentially, intended to be a favourable and cheerful review.

Still, he offers an interesting quotation that I almost wish he had taken more to heart:

Much that was published in the pulp magazines and in novels that appeared in cheap editions with lurid covers was the work of such hacks. Yet it is apparent from this collection that hacks, too, had literary antecedents, and one can hear echoes in their work of Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, of Dumas and Pierre Loti, of Conrad and even Tolstoy. Reading them, I recalled Somerset Maugham's wise observation: "The writer seldom does what he wants to; he does the best he can."

And Maugham, in "A Writer's Notebook" (1949), offered a spirited defense of the sort of stories that make up much of this book. "Their authors have little honor among men, and yet they are benefactors of their kind." You read them for enjoyment and relaxation. "The hours race by. You have defeated time," Maugham wrote. "And then you have the ingratitude to throw aside the book with a sneer and look down upon its author. It is graceless."

Perhaps I can offer a bastardization of Maugham's words: "The critic seldom perceives as insightfully as he wants to; he thinks he does the best he can."

A children short story: Going Picnic

Ben and Amy were going to the park today. They had decided to make a picnic. First they needed to get a basket to put the food in, Ben wanted to make the sandwitches, and Amy wanted to make the drinks.After Ben and Amy put all the food in the basket they decided that they also wanted to play some games at the park too. So Amy grabbed a ball and Ben grabbed a net so that they could play soccer.

After they had gotten all the items for there day at the park they grabbed there jakets, and began to walk. When they got there they were very hungy, so they wanted to set up the picnic first. Amy layed down the blanket and started to set up the meal, while Ben was setting up the net.

They were both very happy to eat in the park and enjoy the sounds of the birds. When they finished with their meal they played a nice game of soccer, but then it started to rain. So they packed up and went home.

Written by: Kana Foutch

 

Thank you very much to allow me put your writing. 

Note to reader: Here is my first English speaking test that written by my friend, Kana.