Quote
“When you cease to dream you cease to live.”
Malcolm Forbes
Joke
I've been bored recently so I've decided to take up fencing. The neighbors said they will call the police unless I put it back.
Fun Fact
Marmite was one of most confiscated items at airports from the U.K. – to overcome this issue, Marmite made smaller ones for traveling.
Reading Fact
Truman Capote considered himself a “completely horizontal author” because he couldn’t think and write unless he was lying down.
Some writers find lying down in bed the best way to get their creativity going. Successful authors who are known to have practiced this technique are Mark Twain, George Orwell, and Woody Allen.
In contrast, writers like Hemingway, Dickens and Woolf wrote their works at standing desks.
History Fact
The world’s most successful pirate in history was a lady.
Named Ching Shih, she was a prostitute in China. This was until the Commander of the Red Flag Fleet bought and married her.
But rather than just viewing her as a wife, her husband considered her his equal and she became an active pirate commander in the fleet.
Ching Shih soon earned the respect of her fellow pirates. So much so that after her husband’s death she became the captain of the fleet.
Under Shih’s leadership, the Red Flag Fleet consisted of over 300 warships, with a possible 1,200 more support ships. She even had a possible 40,000 – 80,000 men, women and children.
They terrorized the waters around China. The Red Flag Fleet were such a fearsome band of raiders, that the Chinese government eventually pardoned Ching Shih and her entire fleet – just to get them off the high seas!
Movie/TV Trivia
Buzz Lightyear's original name was Lunar Larry.
Movie/TV Quote
"I know that babies taste the best."
Snowpiercer (2013)
This one requires a spoiler alert. When Chris Evans, face dirtied, utters this line in Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer, a thriller about a class uprising on a train containing the last of civilization circling the globe, it's a total shock. Evans' hero, Curtis, has fought his way through most of the train before he makes the confession that, in the early days of this apocalypse, the poorest citizens were deprived of food and resorted to eating one another. Curtis is a tortured soul because he knows what people taste like, and, by extension, he knows that "babies taste best." The admission is dramatic and absurdist all at once, perfectly capturing the bizarre tone of Bong's film, which is both gritty and features Tilda Swinton in fake teeth.
Conversation Starter
Where is the most awe inspiring place you have been?
Writing Prompt