Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_FormTag::offsetExists($offset) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetExists(mixed $offset): bool, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/form-tag.php on line 396

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_FormTag::offsetGet($offset) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetGet(mixed $offset): mixed, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/form-tag.php on line 388

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_FormTag::offsetSet($offset, $value) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetSet(mixed $offset, mixed $value): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/form-tag.php on line 382

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_FormTag::offsetUnset($offset) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetUnset(mixed $offset): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/form-tag.php on line 400

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_Validation::offsetExists($offset) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetExists(mixed $offset): bool, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/validation.php on line 78

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_Validation::offsetGet($offset) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetGet(mixed $offset): mixed, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/validation.php on line 72

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_Validation::offsetSet($offset, $value) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetSet(mixed $offset, mixed $value): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/validation.php on line 59

Deprecated: Return type of WPCF7_Validation::offsetUnset($offset) should either be compatible with ArrayAccess::offsetUnset(mixed $offset): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/validation.php on line 82

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/form-tag.php:3) in /home2/michafe9/public_html/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php on line 8
Iceland – Welcome To The Magical Friendship Squad! http://michaelmurray.ca Michael Murray Writes Things Fri, 27 Feb 2015 22:33:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.3 Doug Ford Applies to Writer’s Retreat http://michaelmurray.ca/doug-ford-applies-to-writers-retreat http://michaelmurray.ca/doug-ford-applies-to-writers-retreat#respond Fri, 06 Feb 2015 18:15:42 +0000 http://michaelmurray.ca/?p=5114 Toronto hasn’t seen much of failed mayoral candidate and swaggering tough guy Doug Ford since the election.

Ford tough guy

He’s receded from public life and many have been wondering what he’s been doing. As it turns out, one of the things he’s been doing is applying to attend an Icelandic Writer’s Retreat in April. The application required that you write a short story or essay based on the following photograph of the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center:

tumblr_inline_ngeiozxGgA1sqqwhs

This is Doug Ford’s entry:

Sometimes a guy can go to a pretty black place. That can happen after you lose an election. When your whole life has been about winning, and winning hard, losing feels like a sucker punch to the gut. Not even football or pornography or yelling at people can fill the hole. Sometimes a guy has to go to therapy.

Therapy is for the weak, and Ron Ice, a very successful businessman and philanthropist, was not a weak man. He was a powerful man, a man who was a shot put champion at his high school.

Doug shot put

Girls used to gather around to watch him throw the shot put. Ron was like a Nordic god and he did very well with the ladies, thank you very much. Those were good times for Ron, but now, with all the critics and small people yammering away at him after the election, all the people who don’t understand how to run a business, he realized he needed to clear his head, even if it was the weak thing to do.

Ron looked deep into his soul and realized that he wanted to broaden his horizons.

Iceland.

Iceland was the territory that Ron always started in when he was playing Risk.

iceland risk

It had access to markets in both the east and west, had plenty of challenging terrain to hide in and there was little pollution. Ron would move to Iceland and start his empire there!

People loved Doug Ford in Iceland. He stood a good six inches taller than the rest of the population, and as he still looked like a Nordic god, people began to worship him, “Look!” the villagers would cry, “The prophecy is true and the Ice King now walks amongst us! Ron Ice took the country by goddamn storm.

One day ISIS terrorists took over the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center where they planned to burn Christians in cages. Ron Ice would have none of that. Ron drove down there in his jeep, got out and just walked into the place. People were in awe of what big balls he had. When the terrorists saw him they all started yelling and getting excited in that language of theirs. They waved machine guns around, but Ron was as cool as ice.

nordic god

He just stared at them, a penetrating hate stare, and then he began to yell, his mighty eyes bulging, and when he did they all put down their weapons like subservient kittens and were arrested.

Ford yelling

Ron Ice walked out of there, got back in his jeep and drove up to the misty green hills of Norðurland vestra, where he had some property and a condo, and from where he would soon launch his internationally successful printing business Ice King Labels and Tags.

]]>
http://michaelmurray.ca/doug-ford-applies-to-writers-retreat/feed 0
Leo http://michaelmurray.ca/leo http://michaelmurray.ca/leo#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2015 18:46:11 +0000 http://michaelmurray.ca/?p=5034 Leonardo DiCaprio will be attending the Iceland Writer’s Retreat this year in April. This is the letter that he personally wrote requesting admission to the event:

 

Dear Iceland:

You know who I am.

leo sexy

I am Leonardo DiCaprio.

My resume speaks for itself. I am arguably the greatest actor of my generation (sorry Christian Bale), wealthier and more powerful than many small nations and have a Klout score of 88.2. I can make it rain.

You should know that I am a HUGE fan of your work as a weird island nation and am really impressed with your buzz. You’re punching above your weight, little guy, and you’ve got some great PR people in your corner!

I think that the two of us could do some great work together and with that in mind I’d like to attend the Iceland Writer’s Retreat this year in order to research a role for a film I hope to shoot in Iceland in 2016.

What is Leo DiCaprio’s project you ask?

It is to be the blockbuster of 2017. It’s to be called Written in the Ice, and I will star as an ex-CIA operative who has made a break from the dark world of Black-Ops he mastered in his past. Having been given a new identity, Leonhard Jónsson, now a fisherman and aspiring writer, is living a humble village life in Iceland.

writers-retreat

He is crazy talented and charismatic, but he’s suffering a form of PTSD and has writer’s block. However, this lifts when he attends the Iceland Writer’s Conference and meets a quirky, hipster Icelandic woman (hotter and younger than Bjork, but suggesting Bjork) who believes she communicates with elves. They have sex.

like her

Through one of her nocturnal communications with the elves, (she falls into an automatic writing trance but must be naked for it to work) she is given a secret for renewable energy that will save the world from global warming, but before Leonhard and her can get the secret out and save the world, evil government forces and big oil seek to kill them and destroy the information.

It will be the best movie ever, sweep all the awards and be a “Titanic” success for the Iceland tourism, but for me to properly play all the dimensions of Leonhard Jónsson, I will have to attend the Iceland Writer’s Conference, free of all expenses for myself and my staff of 28.

A few other requests:

For the process to properly work, I need to be in the presence of lots of beauty. Please ensure that the class is populated with beautiful women. I cannot stress the importance of this enough.

leo and models2

I will require a beach, and if it is off-season, then I will require that it is artificially heated so it simulates the tropics.

leo and models

I will need a helicopter and a yacht.

I will only attend 45 minutes of the conference each day and will not be required to “turn in” any work for grading.

Legal immunity from the laws that govern Iceland will also be required.

Nobody is permitted to look directly at my man bun.

man bun

Looking forward to working with you, and my lawyers will be in touch shortly!

Regards,

Leo

]]>
http://michaelmurray.ca/leo/feed 1
Train http://michaelmurray.ca/train http://michaelmurray.ca/train#respond Mon, 05 Jan 2015 18:13:03 +0000 http://michaelmurray.ca/?p=5007 The two Japanese university students sitting opposite from us on the train were from a different world. Neither girls nor exactly young women, they spoke no English and had shown up for their trip on the wrong day. No matter, beneficent forces were at work, and although the students had no idea that anything was wrong, they were allowed to take the train, and so they settled in, dreamy and innocent, on a misunderstood trip over which they had little knowledge or authority.

When one of them reached up to the overhead compartment she modestly held her top down so as not to expose any flesh above her waist. She looked so very young, almost like a doll. She passed the time by watching videos, her face a shifting map of unfiltered responses, each one blossoming and becoming a kind of sunlight that illuminated her face.

Jap girls

The other one had short hair and the fleshy round face of a Buddha. She asked her friend to put some drops in her eyes, and one of them missed the mark, forming a tear just below her eye where it stayed unattended, as if a moment of sorrow now suspended in time. She was perfectly impassive, and as she sat there staring out the window her eyes grew heavier and heavier. Dazed and almost given to sleep, she seemed in a dimensional fog, just flickering in the limbo of this world, and capable at any moment of becoming more spirit than person and simply floating away.

I was listening to Sigur Ros on my headphones and it all felt like a movie, everything holy and beautiful, as if present only for my attention. Outside, as snow fell, farmlands, retreating forests and tiny homes sped past, more like memories than the architecture of the world. It felt profound, somehow, and then out of the camouflage and dull wash of scrub, a deer stepped from invisibility, so suddenly and magnificently manifest that it could only have been an angel.

deer2-on-the-rail-trail-by-art-munger

]]>
http://michaelmurray.ca/train/feed 0