"the pillowman..."
when i was a kid, i went through this phase where i wrote really morbid stories...
my first story, which i thought was the best written, was about a young boy... i don't remember any of the details leading up to the craziness, but this boy falls into a river, and to his horror, finds a grinder at the end of the river... you know those machines at the end of a dam, that chop up anything that can possibly cause a blockage...? well, this boy swam as hard as he possibly could, to try to escape from a certain death, but amidst the effort, the current was too strong, and the boy ended up dying, getting chopped into a million pieces...
yes, i wrote a story like that, when i was roughly 10 or 11... and no, i wasn't disturbed...
jason connects it with our childhood interest in "are you afraid of the dark," or creating our own midnight society and telling our own tales of horror...
anyways, i totally forgot that part of my life, until it came to my attention recently... and because of that, pamela felt she had to share a playwright called "The Pillowman," by Martin McDonagh...
i stayed over at the gonzales' last night, and she gave me the short play to read... i zipped through the 108 pages of the play...
and my gosh, i couldn't be any more creeped out by the short stories the main character would write...
short synopsis: "The Pillowman" is about a man named Katurian Katurian Katurian (yes, his initials are KKK), who spent his time writing short stories... almost every story of his all dealt with the same theme: some sort of child meeting a certain unfortunate fate, usually death or some sort of unbelievable pain... he was arrested, then questioned by two police officers--Ariel and Tupolski--in their totalitarian government... it turns out that there have been two deaths of children, all meeting the same fate of two of his most gruesome stories... a third child had gone missing, and they wanted to search for this missing child, who could possibly endure another form of Katurian's story tortures... Katurian also has a mentally challenged brother, Michal, who they take as hostage to try to get Katurian to confess...
what makes the playwright freaky is that they reveal three of the stories... the first two, as gruesome as they were, were nothing compared to the third... i actually had to put the playwright down, and give myself time to breathe, and suck up the moistness that started to form around my eyes, b/c i could not believe McDonagh could write such a horrific short story...
and the ending was intense... i had to sit there, in silence, for a good five minutes, before i could even tell pamela my reaction... thank heavens for a little green pig, and a melancholy pillowman...
amidst its craziness, that playwright is probably one of the best pieces of literature i have read, and i'm going to buy it...
it's worth a read, and i would highly recommend it...
- - - - - - -
beat final fantasy XII on wednesday... pretty good ending, although predictable... game overall was amazing... storyline sorta hard to follow, but everything about that game was perfect...
jon came over for guy's night at our house on wendesday... we played two games of settlers and one game of phase ten... i finally broke my settlers losing streak! i haven't won a game in almost ten games, so it was a good feeling... we also planned our new year's outing, and watched rodger's and hammerstein's cinderella...
im gray, as always... had the longest road, 12 segments, with three cities and two settlements...
had an intense round of catch phrase today... jason/ben/me vs valerie/pamela/alyssa... the guys won all three rounds, but we were tied 6/6 for the last game... we were all on the edge of our seats, screaming clues, and the moment the pod buzzed in valerie's hands, ben, jason, and i shot up in the air, cheering and giving each other victory high-fives... alyssa whooped pamela, ben, and my butt in phase ten, with the wilds always seeming to find themselves in her hands; five wilds in one turn... also enjoyed CPK with pamela and alyssa, and talking at the tordecilla's house when we dropped alyssa off...
well, i have to play two praise songs by ear for church tomorrow... i'd really wish they'd stop asking us last minute to do anything music-related... it's starting to get a little old...
my first story, which i thought was the best written, was about a young boy... i don't remember any of the details leading up to the craziness, but this boy falls into a river, and to his horror, finds a grinder at the end of the river... you know those machines at the end of a dam, that chop up anything that can possibly cause a blockage...? well, this boy swam as hard as he possibly could, to try to escape from a certain death, but amidst the effort, the current was too strong, and the boy ended up dying, getting chopped into a million pieces...
yes, i wrote a story like that, when i was roughly 10 or 11... and no, i wasn't disturbed...
jason connects it with our childhood interest in "are you afraid of the dark," or creating our own midnight society and telling our own tales of horror...
anyways, i totally forgot that part of my life, until it came to my attention recently... and because of that, pamela felt she had to share a playwright called "The Pillowman," by Martin McDonagh...
i stayed over at the gonzales' last night, and she gave me the short play to read... i zipped through the 108 pages of the play...
and my gosh, i couldn't be any more creeped out by the short stories the main character would write...
short synopsis: "The Pillowman" is about a man named Katurian Katurian Katurian (yes, his initials are KKK), who spent his time writing short stories... almost every story of his all dealt with the same theme: some sort of child meeting a certain unfortunate fate, usually death or some sort of unbelievable pain... he was arrested, then questioned by two police officers--Ariel and Tupolski--in their totalitarian government... it turns out that there have been two deaths of children, all meeting the same fate of two of his most gruesome stories... a third child had gone missing, and they wanted to search for this missing child, who could possibly endure another form of Katurian's story tortures... Katurian also has a mentally challenged brother, Michal, who they take as hostage to try to get Katurian to confess...
what makes the playwright freaky is that they reveal three of the stories... the first two, as gruesome as they were, were nothing compared to the third... i actually had to put the playwright down, and give myself time to breathe, and suck up the moistness that started to form around my eyes, b/c i could not believe McDonagh could write such a horrific short story...
and the ending was intense... i had to sit there, in silence, for a good five minutes, before i could even tell pamela my reaction... thank heavens for a little green pig, and a melancholy pillowman...
amidst its craziness, that playwright is probably one of the best pieces of literature i have read, and i'm going to buy it...
it's worth a read, and i would highly recommend it...
- - - - - - -
beat final fantasy XII on wednesday... pretty good ending, although predictable... game overall was amazing... storyline sorta hard to follow, but everything about that game was perfect...
jon came over for guy's night at our house on wendesday... we played two games of settlers and one game of phase ten... i finally broke my settlers losing streak! i haven't won a game in almost ten games, so it was a good feeling... we also planned our new year's outing, and watched rodger's and hammerstein's cinderella...
im gray, as always... had the longest road, 12 segments, with three cities and two settlements...
had an intense round of catch phrase today... jason/ben/me vs valerie/pamela/alyssa... the guys won all three rounds, but we were tied 6/6 for the last game... we were all on the edge of our seats, screaming clues, and the moment the pod buzzed in valerie's hands, ben, jason, and i shot up in the air, cheering and giving each other victory high-fives... alyssa whooped pamela, ben, and my butt in phase ten, with the wilds always seeming to find themselves in her hands; five wilds in one turn... also enjoyed CPK with pamela and alyssa, and talking at the tordecilla's house when we dropped alyssa off...
well, i have to play two praise songs by ear for church tomorrow... i'd really wish they'd stop asking us last minute to do anything music-related... it's starting to get a little old...