Daniel Handler's Birthday 2015 - officially recognised.
Jan 25, 2015 15:52:06 GMT -5
Linda Rhaldeen likes this
Post by Dante on Jan 25, 2015 15:52:06 GMT -5
Edit: All done! The finished product can be read here:
Daniel Handler's Birthday 2015
Or below:
>~-
Dear Sir,
Congratulations on your fortunate event! To specify, at the cost of this no longer potentially serving as a multi-purpose congratulatory letter for the man with a respectable number of fortunate events in his life, congratulations on your birthday. We hope that your blessings, like candles on the birthday cake of anyone older than thirteen, are more than enough to meet your needs.
Like school reunions, public holidays, and highly-anticipated sequels, birthdays are a time of reflection on what has come before and anticipation of what is yet to occur. Reflecting on what came before this sentence, it occurred to us that we could show our respect for your achievements by looking forward to their highly-anticipated sequel, to be published in the forthcoming months. How better to show our attention and commitment as fans and readers than to anticipate your own upcoming work in a work of non-disturbing fanfiction – to compile our ideas, theories and hopes in a collaborative, fan-produced fourth volume of four? What could possibly go wrong?
As it transpired, writing a book was harder than we thought, especially with over thirteen different authors. Instead of thirteen chapters, what we were left with by the deadline was some significant number of sentences, where the right plot was wholly lost and gone. If the secret of all the wrong questions lies in all the wrong sentences, it is as lost to us as if we had written in invisible ink. Perhaps you can make sense of it all, the complete mystery. Our breath is held.
With all due respect,
Anka Anwhistle, Antenora, Bandit, Brunch, BSam, Dante, fragilethings, gliquey, Hermes, Lemona Snicket, Marinus, Mister M, Pen, Sherry Ann, Sophie, Teleram, Terry Craig, Willis,
and all the members of
667 Dark Avenue
-~<
1. For Beatrice – no wait, wrong series. -gliquey
2. There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a statue, and there was a librarian, and there was a theft, and there was a person who had been kidnapped, and there was a fire, and I’m pretty sure there was a kitchen sink in there as well. -Dante
3. I should have asked the question, “Shouldn’t you have seen her last in school at this hour?” -gliquey
4. Like all good stories, there is a hero. I have no idea where she is. -Marinus
5. “No wonder she ran away so quickly,” he constantly said, and yet he did wonder. -Pen
6. Having almost run out of suitable tips for Pip and Squeak, I recommended a book about three orphans who suffer constant misfortune, become victims of evil ploys and occasionally make pasta. -gliquey
7. A lighthouse without an ocean is like high-cocoa chocolate: Dark, dry, and not very popular. -Dante
8.
-Sherry Ann
9. Everyone there looked slightly sinister; they came across an old lady with beautiful long grey hair, and wide eyes like she had just lost an argument with herself. -Pen
10. “Who would have tea at this hour?” -Dante
11. When I had said to Qwerty “the world is quiet here,” I certainly hadn't expected the reply, “it's actually quite loud aboard this train”. -gliquey
12. “I am currently in the middle of reading a book you might enjoy—it’s called How to Prevent Delayed Ignitions after Triggering a Gun,” Qwerty told me. -gliquey
13. “I thought of a book a former fencing partner had made me read, about a kid who had an unusual name because he was named by dead people, and this, in turn, made me think of the book it was based on, about a kid who had an unusual name because he was named by animals.” -fragilethings
14. I thought dragons only showed up in tedious stories that begin with “Once upon a time...”, but this story begins with “There was a town…” -Antenora
15. “Look, I won't make you any promises,” he promised. -Pen
16. “Go on,” she said with an authoritative tone, which meant “Proceed with caution.” -Pen
17. A friend with a temper is like a nail sticking out of the floor: You have to tread very carefully around them, or else. -Dante
18. “The name of Killdeer Fields has nothing to do with killing deer; it's named after a bird-- and I'm pretty sure the bird doesn't kill any deer either.” -Dante & Antenora
19. I thought of a book my sister had meant to read, in which the heroine receives a warning from her friend, who makes her walk barefoot in the snow. -Lemona Snicket
20.
-Sherry Ann
21. And I do not understand why the Stain'd Playhouse once allowed the audience to bring live newts into the theatre, but only on Monday nights, or how the effects in The Man Who Looked Somewhat Like Winston Churchill managed to fail every show. -Lemona Snicket
22. “When did you three work last?” -Dante
23. “Middle-aged” is a word which here means “a person who has lived through sixty percent of their life, but convinces themselves they're only at fifty percent.” -Sherry Ann
24. “Old Hal Hairdryer caught Stew stealing from his emporium a couple of years back; he's half-blind, but Stew didn't reckon on the other half.” -Dante
25. Calling someone a “ray of sunshine” is usually intended as a compliment; however, an acquaintance of mine was once so blinded and agitated by the sun that he shot a man five times in the chest, and consequently I am now hesitant to comment on the radiant qualities of even the kindest strangers. -Sophie
26. “I remember the last book I read, years ago, about someone else who learned something and there was a bit of a fuss - what a waste of time!” -Dante
27. There's a German book with a difficult title ending in “Peter” about children like Stew... who get what they deserve. -Dante & Antenora
28. I had originally thought the bell ringing might signal Sebald code, and spent hours wondering what “it less gangbusters” could possibly mean. -gliquey
29. “Shouldn't you be uncool?” -Antenora
30. I didn't say anything, because I remembered a similar conversation with my sister, and I didn't want any of us to end up in a similar situation as her. -Anka
31. My chaperone thought that guessing her first name would be a challenge, a word which here means “an activity one cannot see the point of.” -Hermes
32. That may be so, I thought grimly, but she's no longer in Stain'd-by-the-Sea. -Lemona Snicket
33. I should have asked the question, “If there’s nothing out there, why did I distinctly hear Theodora stomping around in boots?” -gliquey
34. “It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel,” she said, a phrase which here means “like taking candy from a baby” (which here means “with unfair and vile advantage”). -Pen
35. Taking off my shoes to avoid making any sounds, I was reminded of a book which had recently been recommended to me in a letter, in which a young boy attempts to escape a library by reading large, dull books and eating pastries, but unlike the young boy in that story, I was unlikely to be magically saved by my pet starling. -fragilethings
36. The tinkling music coming from the gramophone seemed to put me in a sentimental mood. -Terry Craig
37. I expected her to tell me it was the wrong question, but she merely shrugged and said “don't even ask”. -Lemona Snicket
38. “It's time for me to tell you my greatest secret, Mr. Snicket; the truth is... my eyes aren't really green, I'm just wearing contact lenses.” -Dante
39. Victory is like a sugar bowl: It only tastes sweet to the person who gets there first. -Dante
40. “Is this a rhetorical question?” I asked Hangfire. -gliquey
41. He was versatile, translucent, dangerous, like poisonous fog seeping up from the underworld through earthly cracks. -Sherry Ann
42. In his dying breath, Hangfire choked out his final words: “Lemony… I am your father.” -Brunch
43.
-Sherry Ann
44. “Why would you ask all these questions?” -fragilethings
45. It was my birthday, and for now, at least, I was all right. -Dante
#o#
Dear 667ers,
As is his annual tradition, Mr. Handler will age a year on February 28th, 2015 to become forty-five years old, and as is our annual tradition, we will be celebrating with him, by delivering a collaborative, commemorative project to mark his birthday and grant him our best wishes for the year ahead, as well as expressing our appreciation for the year behind. For those not familiar with projects of previous years, text and art based around a theme somewhat tenuously related to Mr. Handler's birthday is assembled and delivered to him electronically in time for said birthday at the close of February, and you can view the past three years' examples here:
42nd Birthday, 2012
43rd Birthday, 2013
44th Birthday, 2014
Former opening post material here:
We're starting a little later than usual this year, and as such I propose that we take only up to a week - which is to say, up until the end of January and the start of February - to talk over what we want this year's project to be, and that will leave us the entirety of February to get whatever idea that may be done. I'll list all posted ideas in this thread opener, and by the end of the week hopefully we'll all have agreed on what we want to do.
Here's a suggestion to start with, but perhaps you have one you prefer:
Snickety Sentences
This year is not just the year of Mr. Handler's forty-fifth birthday, it's also the year that All the Wrong Questions concludes, and as such it's not inappropriate to theme our project around it. This project tasks people to create a sentence (or illustration!), amusing, dramatic, and not necessarily either serious or probable, that you think might (or might not) appear in the upcoming ?4, with the aim of assembling forty-five lines/pictures. Putting these in order implies the story that they might have been taken from, and just like in any exquisite corpse game, the result is likely to be pretty absurd - which is the main part of the fun! What to write? Think of it like a caption contest, but for a scene that only exists in your imagination. Maybe Snicket is defining a word, maybe one of his friends or enemies has a snappy or silly thing to say, maybe he's asking a very wrong question, or maybe you just want Jake Hix to have cooked something unlikely - these are the sorts of things we're looking for, lines to entertain and surprise. One of the advantages of this idea is that it's easy for anyone to enter, but people interested in making something relatively ambitious have the space to do so.
Post your ideas and thoughts on Mr. Handler's birthday here. We start work on February 1st!
We have now decided on a project, and it is the following: Snickety Sentences. As this is the final year of All The Wrong Questions, we'll be trying our own hands at writing a line that might appear in the final volume of the series, but being fans and individuals rather than an author who knows what he's doing, the results are likely to be pretty strange, and probably funny - or intriguing... The idea is to come up with a sentence that only you can write - fun spin on an oft-repeated phrase in the series, an interesting or amusingly wrong question of your own, a witticism or aphorism, an unlikely line of dialogue, an unflattering description, a parodic event, even a birthday present Snicket could receive in the story - anything that pays homage to ATWQ in our own unique and irreverent style, or is completely off the wall and doesn't pay homage at all. There's plenty of room for manoeuvre, but what matters most is you, and what ATWQ would look like if some terrible accident left us in control of the story. In case that's not very clear, here are some suggestions me and Antenora whipped up:
Optionally, you could do a Snickety Stencilling, which is to say an illustration along similar lines:
We'll need 45 sentences in total - because it's a forty-fifth birthday, and that's our running theme. (We can reconsider on Mr. Handler's centenary.) Illustrations do, of course, count among that forty-five, unless you were to choose to illustrate somebody else's line, in which case it would merely be very cool. Once we have that many, preferably from a diverse range of people and preferably all good, they'll be arranged in a semi-logical order and, as usual, accompanied by a congratulatory letter I'll write. These last two items can be completed fairly quickly, so let's say last submissions are on Thursday 26th February, two days before Mr. Handler's birthday on Saturday 28th February. That gives us just under four weeks. Take some time to mull over a few ideas, get your metaphorical creative juices flowing, consider whether you have the time to draw something, and I hope everyone will turn in a good idea or several. You may begin.
Daniel Handler's Birthday 2015
Or below:
>~-
Dear Sir,
Congratulations on your fortunate event! To specify, at the cost of this no longer potentially serving as a multi-purpose congratulatory letter for the man with a respectable number of fortunate events in his life, congratulations on your birthday. We hope that your blessings, like candles on the birthday cake of anyone older than thirteen, are more than enough to meet your needs.
Like school reunions, public holidays, and highly-anticipated sequels, birthdays are a time of reflection on what has come before and anticipation of what is yet to occur. Reflecting on what came before this sentence, it occurred to us that we could show our respect for your achievements by looking forward to their highly-anticipated sequel, to be published in the forthcoming months. How better to show our attention and commitment as fans and readers than to anticipate your own upcoming work in a work of non-disturbing fanfiction – to compile our ideas, theories and hopes in a collaborative, fan-produced fourth volume of four? What could possibly go wrong?
As it transpired, writing a book was harder than we thought, especially with over thirteen different authors. Instead of thirteen chapters, what we were left with by the deadline was some significant number of sentences, where the right plot was wholly lost and gone. If the secret of all the wrong questions lies in all the wrong sentences, it is as lost to us as if we had written in invisible ink. Perhaps you can make sense of it all, the complete mystery. Our breath is held.
With all due respect,
Anka Anwhistle, Antenora, Bandit, Brunch, BSam, Dante, fragilethings, gliquey, Hermes, Lemona Snicket, Marinus, Mister M, Pen, Sherry Ann, Sophie, Teleram, Terry Craig, Willis,
and all the members of
667 Dark Avenue
-~<
1. For Beatrice – no wait, wrong series. -gliquey
2. There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a statue, and there was a librarian, and there was a theft, and there was a person who had been kidnapped, and there was a fire, and I’m pretty sure there was a kitchen sink in there as well. -Dante
3. I should have asked the question, “Shouldn’t you have seen her last in school at this hour?” -gliquey
4. Like all good stories, there is a hero. I have no idea where she is. -Marinus
5. “No wonder she ran away so quickly,” he constantly said, and yet he did wonder. -Pen
6. Having almost run out of suitable tips for Pip and Squeak, I recommended a book about three orphans who suffer constant misfortune, become victims of evil ploys and occasionally make pasta. -gliquey
7. A lighthouse without an ocean is like high-cocoa chocolate: Dark, dry, and not very popular. -Dante
8.
-Sherry Ann
9. Everyone there looked slightly sinister; they came across an old lady with beautiful long grey hair, and wide eyes like she had just lost an argument with herself. -Pen
10. “Who would have tea at this hour?” -Dante
11. When I had said to Qwerty “the world is quiet here,” I certainly hadn't expected the reply, “it's actually quite loud aboard this train”. -gliquey
12. “I am currently in the middle of reading a book you might enjoy—it’s called How to Prevent Delayed Ignitions after Triggering a Gun,” Qwerty told me. -gliquey
13. “I thought of a book a former fencing partner had made me read, about a kid who had an unusual name because he was named by dead people, and this, in turn, made me think of the book it was based on, about a kid who had an unusual name because he was named by animals.” -fragilethings
14. I thought dragons only showed up in tedious stories that begin with “Once upon a time...”, but this story begins with “There was a town…” -Antenora
15. “Look, I won't make you any promises,” he promised. -Pen
16. “Go on,” she said with an authoritative tone, which meant “Proceed with caution.” -Pen
17. A friend with a temper is like a nail sticking out of the floor: You have to tread very carefully around them, or else. -Dante
18. “The name of Killdeer Fields has nothing to do with killing deer; it's named after a bird-- and I'm pretty sure the bird doesn't kill any deer either.” -Dante & Antenora
19. I thought of a book my sister had meant to read, in which the heroine receives a warning from her friend, who makes her walk barefoot in the snow. -Lemona Snicket
20.
-Sherry Ann
21. And I do not understand why the Stain'd Playhouse once allowed the audience to bring live newts into the theatre, but only on Monday nights, or how the effects in The Man Who Looked Somewhat Like Winston Churchill managed to fail every show. -Lemona Snicket
22. “When did you three work last?” -Dante
23. “Middle-aged” is a word which here means “a person who has lived through sixty percent of their life, but convinces themselves they're only at fifty percent.” -Sherry Ann
24. “Old Hal Hairdryer caught Stew stealing from his emporium a couple of years back; he's half-blind, but Stew didn't reckon on the other half.” -Dante
25. Calling someone a “ray of sunshine” is usually intended as a compliment; however, an acquaintance of mine was once so blinded and agitated by the sun that he shot a man five times in the chest, and consequently I am now hesitant to comment on the radiant qualities of even the kindest strangers. -Sophie
26. “I remember the last book I read, years ago, about someone else who learned something and there was a bit of a fuss - what a waste of time!” -Dante
27. There's a German book with a difficult title ending in “Peter” about children like Stew... who get what they deserve. -Dante & Antenora
28. I had originally thought the bell ringing might signal Sebald code, and spent hours wondering what “it less gangbusters” could possibly mean. -gliquey
29. “Shouldn't you be uncool?” -Antenora
30. I didn't say anything, because I remembered a similar conversation with my sister, and I didn't want any of us to end up in a similar situation as her. -Anka
31. My chaperone thought that guessing her first name would be a challenge, a word which here means “an activity one cannot see the point of.” -Hermes
32. That may be so, I thought grimly, but she's no longer in Stain'd-by-the-Sea. -Lemona Snicket
33. I should have asked the question, “If there’s nothing out there, why did I distinctly hear Theodora stomping around in boots?” -gliquey
34. “It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel,” she said, a phrase which here means “like taking candy from a baby” (which here means “with unfair and vile advantage”). -Pen
35. Taking off my shoes to avoid making any sounds, I was reminded of a book which had recently been recommended to me in a letter, in which a young boy attempts to escape a library by reading large, dull books and eating pastries, but unlike the young boy in that story, I was unlikely to be magically saved by my pet starling. -fragilethings
36. The tinkling music coming from the gramophone seemed to put me in a sentimental mood. -Terry Craig
37. I expected her to tell me it was the wrong question, but she merely shrugged and said “don't even ask”. -Lemona Snicket
38. “It's time for me to tell you my greatest secret, Mr. Snicket; the truth is... my eyes aren't really green, I'm just wearing contact lenses.” -Dante
39. Victory is like a sugar bowl: It only tastes sweet to the person who gets there first. -Dante
40. “Is this a rhetorical question?” I asked Hangfire. -gliquey
41. He was versatile, translucent, dangerous, like poisonous fog seeping up from the underworld through earthly cracks. -Sherry Ann
42. In his dying breath, Hangfire choked out his final words: “Lemony… I am your father.” -Brunch
43.
-Sherry Ann
44. “Why would you ask all these questions?” -fragilethings
45. It was my birthday, and for now, at least, I was all right. -Dante
#o#
Dear 667ers,
As is his annual tradition, Mr. Handler will age a year on February 28th, 2015 to become forty-five years old, and as is our annual tradition, we will be celebrating with him, by delivering a collaborative, commemorative project to mark his birthday and grant him our best wishes for the year ahead, as well as expressing our appreciation for the year behind. For those not familiar with projects of previous years, text and art based around a theme somewhat tenuously related to Mr. Handler's birthday is assembled and delivered to him electronically in time for said birthday at the close of February, and you can view the past three years' examples here:
42nd Birthday, 2012
43rd Birthday, 2013
44th Birthday, 2014
Former opening post material here:
We're starting a little later than usual this year, and as such I propose that we take only up to a week - which is to say, up until the end of January and the start of February - to talk over what we want this year's project to be, and that will leave us the entirety of February to get whatever idea that may be done. I'll list all posted ideas in this thread opener, and by the end of the week hopefully we'll all have agreed on what we want to do.
Here's a suggestion to start with, but perhaps you have one you prefer:
Snickety Sentences
This year is not just the year of Mr. Handler's forty-fifth birthday, it's also the year that All the Wrong Questions concludes, and as such it's not inappropriate to theme our project around it. This project tasks people to create a sentence (or illustration!), amusing, dramatic, and not necessarily either serious or probable, that you think might (or might not) appear in the upcoming ?4, with the aim of assembling forty-five lines/pictures. Putting these in order implies the story that they might have been taken from, and just like in any exquisite corpse game, the result is likely to be pretty absurd - which is the main part of the fun! What to write? Think of it like a caption contest, but for a scene that only exists in your imagination. Maybe Snicket is defining a word, maybe one of his friends or enemies has a snappy or silly thing to say, maybe he's asking a very wrong question, or maybe you just want Jake Hix to have cooked something unlikely - these are the sorts of things we're looking for, lines to entertain and surprise. One of the advantages of this idea is that it's easy for anyone to enter, but people interested in making something relatively ambitious have the space to do so.
Post your ideas and thoughts on Mr. Handler's birthday here. We start work on February 1st!
We have now decided on a project, and it is the following: Snickety Sentences. As this is the final year of All The Wrong Questions, we'll be trying our own hands at writing a line that might appear in the final volume of the series, but being fans and individuals rather than an author who knows what he's doing, the results are likely to be pretty strange, and probably funny - or intriguing... The idea is to come up with a sentence that only you can write - fun spin on an oft-repeated phrase in the series, an interesting or amusingly wrong question of your own, a witticism or aphorism, an unlikely line of dialogue, an unflattering description, a parodic event, even a birthday present Snicket could receive in the story - anything that pays homage to ATWQ in our own unique and irreverent style, or is completely off the wall and doesn't pay homage at all. There's plenty of room for manoeuvre, but what matters most is you, and what ATWQ would look like if some terrible accident left us in control of the story. In case that's not very clear, here are some suggestions me and Antenora whipped up:
- There was a town, and there was a girl, and more importantly, there was me.
- There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a statue, and there was a librarian, and there was a theft, and there was a person who had been kidnapped, and there was a fire, and I’m pretty sure there was a kitchen sink in there as well.
- I thought dragons only showed up in tedious stories that begin with 'Once upon a time...', but this story begins with 'There was a town...'
- A lighthouse without an ocean is like high-cocoa chocolate: Dark, dry, and not very popular.
- A friend with a temper is like a nail sticking out of the floor: You have to tread very carefully around them, or else.
- Victory is like a sugar bowl: It only tastes sweet to the person who gets there first.
- "Who would have tea at this hour?"
- "When did you three work last?"
- "Shouldn't you be uncool?"
- “It's time for me to tell you my greatest secret, Mr. Snicket; the truth is... my eyes aren't really green, I'm just wearing contact lenses.”
- “Also, my hair is dyed; it's actually so brown it makes the woods look like white chocolate.”
- “Your chaperone was right; actually, my name really is Eleanor...a Poe.”
Optionally, you could do a Snickety Stencilling, which is to say an illustration along similar lines:
- An illustration of Snicket with an octopus on his head.
- The Stain’d Lighthouse, or the Ink Inc. building, with the Bombinating Beast coiled around it.
- Other fanart of Stain'd-by-the-Sea, preferably from an angle we haven't seen before. What makes the Clusterous Forest so frightening? How are Ellington and Qwerty passing their days in a jail cell?
We'll need 45 sentences in total - because it's a forty-fifth birthday, and that's our running theme. (We can reconsider on Mr. Handler's centenary.) Illustrations do, of course, count among that forty-five, unless you were to choose to illustrate somebody else's line, in which case it would merely be very cool. Once we have that many, preferably from a diverse range of people and preferably all good, they'll be arranged in a semi-logical order and, as usual, accompanied by a congratulatory letter I'll write. These last two items can be completed fairly quickly, so let's say last submissions are on Thursday 26th February, two days before Mr. Handler's birthday on Saturday 28th February. That gives us just under four weeks. Take some time to mull over a few ideas, get your metaphorical creative juices flowing, consider whether you have the time to draw something, and I hope everyone will turn in a good idea or several. You may begin.
