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  Noyoki's Blog. This is where I'll keep my responses to Blogging challenges, and stuff. |
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| “Cinderella never asked for a Prince. She asked for a night off and a dress.” - Kiera Cass Blog City Prompt: What do you feel is the greatest love story in literature? How did the author hook you into the story? If you aren’t into love stories, pick your genre and answer. I’m not a big fan of romance, so I’m going to go with a genre nearer and dearer to my dark little heart: horror. Perhaps one of the greatest tales of horror of all time would be Stephen King’s IT. The movie is misleading. Sure, the clown is terrifying, and all that, but a lot is lost in translation, as is often the fact with Stephen King’s books when translated into movies. For those of you who haven’t read the book, it mingles two different things that while completely different, are still strangely entwined. In the story, we go back and forth through time and follow a group of friends through their childhoods, and their adulthood as they come back together to finish off the monster. The two things this story twines together is nostalgia and horror. Not just any horror though, it’s the horror of children. King’s story captures the shivery fear of the monster under the bed, and the unquestionable belief that a plush blanket is a shield that could keep back the sharpest of claws or fangs. I believe the reason this story is so successful is because it allows us as adults to remember that childhood sense of certain terror. Voyage of the Magical Ship – Day 5 Prompt: As we were about ready to head for home on our final day of travelling on the magic ship, we suddenly lost all power throughout the entire ship. There’s a battery back-up to run the lights and internet connection, but nothing else. (The doors require power to open and close). Home office has dispatched a repair person, who will arrive on Sunday. Looks like we’ll be stuck on the ship until at least Monday. To make matters worse, ElaineElaine   is missing!It’s just you and your blog for now. What will you do on board to pass the time? You could invite people to come to the ship to join you, or you could find out what the other passengers are doing. Might as well make the best of it – Throw a party! The dream clung like a haze in the forefront of my mind when I woke. Excitement jerked me out of bed, and was dressed and headed towards the dining area before I realized something was wrong. It was the lights. They weren’t the steady white they usually were. Instead, the main lights had cut out, leaving only emergency lighting in their wake. “Oh, no,” I hissed under my breath, already knowing what the lighting meant, but hoping I was wrong. The blank computer screens mocked me as I tried to access the system. Our power was out. The backup system was enough to keep us alive until help came, but we wouldn’t be able to venture outside the ship or continue our exploration until then. “Damn!” My dream started to fade, tattering around the edges. What were the odds of intelligent life hiding in caves anyway? It would have showed up in the scans, I knew. We gathered for breakfast, and it was only as we dished out the meal that I noticed ElaineElaine was missing. Fear spiked through all of us. We knew she liked to get up before everyone to go out and get early morning photographs without all of us tramping around and scaring the wildlife. What if she was trapped outside the ship?“Come on, we have to search the ship for her.” |
| “A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing, it can change your life.” – Tobias Wolff Voyage of the Magic Ship – Day 4 Prompt: The Magical Ship is very powerful. It can create both group and individual scenarios. It can go anywhere on Earth and across the universe. It even has the ability to present what most of us consider fictional places. It keeps its travelers safe from injury, diseases, famine, and detection from any earthly technology. It always allows the travelers to sightsee while blending completely into the local scene so as to avoid alarming the locals. What you may not have figured out is that the Ship is sentient. After all the powerful and dangerous places we visited on Wednesday, while we were resting or sleeping, the ship chose to visit each of us. Tell me, what voice for form did it take for you and what did it (he? She?) say to you? We’d all returned to the ship after another long day of exploration, sample gathering, and endless learning. The days on Planet 320-X were roughly 38 Earth hours due to the twin suns. On top of that, the ‘nights’ were more like nights in Alaska in the summer, where one sun sets, but the other skims low on the horizon, casting the world in low twilight, but never quite reaching full dark. Due to the odd hours, we decided to maintain a standard Earth day/night sequence, and programmed the ship to darken the windows so that we could create a false sense of night as we slept. I moaned with pleasure as I stripped out of the space suit and took a long hot shower. Even though the new design was infinitely more comfortable than the old ones, they were still entirely sealed to protect us from the alien atmosphere, and no matter how hard you scratched, you could never quite satisfy an itch. The warm liquid helped relieve all the day’s itches and washed away the accumulated sweat. Finally clean, I climbed into bed for a well deserved rest. Sleep jerked me under before I knew it was stalking me, and I vanished into the land of Nod. Dreams instantly flooded my sleeping mind, sharper than dreams normally were for me. On some level, I understood that this wasn’t coming from my subconscious, but from somewhere outside myself. Hovering above the path we used every morning, I floated like on of the strange fish/birds we had yet to name. Before long, the hatch to the ship opened, and I watched myself exit, leading the rest of the team down the path. I took us in a direction we hadn’t explored yet, and we found the opening to a cave. Down, down, down into the dark I led. Something leapt onto the path in front of me, and I saw wide eyes, more than one, and a body that was clothed in something more than skin or fur before I woke with a gasp. My eyes stared wide up at the ceiling I couldn’t see, and the strange face hung in the forefront of my mind. “Intelligent life. There’s intelligent life on Planet 320-X,” I breathed, stunned. None of the previous probes of the planet hinted at such a thing. I knew were we’d be headed tomorrow. Blog City Prompt: A baby bunny in a basket appears on your doorstep. It changes your life for the good plus you get a new pet. How does your life change? It didn’t take me long to realize that the little black bunny I’d found trembling in a basket at my front door two days ago was odd. He was a tiny little thing, black all over, with brilliant blue eyes. I’d never considered a rabbit as a pet before because I’d heard how scared they were, and the fact that they pooped all over the place. Either way, they sounded like unpleasant pets to have. This little rabbit was different, or people were spreading mean rumors about rabbits. He wasn’t afraid of me. Instead, he would cuddle with me, pushing his little nose against my neck. If he was a cat, he’d purr. When he had to do his business, he’d hop primly back to his cage. Seeing this, I’d gotten him a litter box, and he took to it amazingly well. After that, I started keeping the cage door open. Somehow, I knew the little creature wouldn’t get into trouble. I awoke to a strange noise that night, and when I went into the kitchen, a tiny boy with jet black hair and ice blue eyes stood on the counter, reaching up into the cabinet to snatch a box of cookies off the shelf. My heart melted on the spot. I could never have children, so one special magical child was sent to me. Without fear, the little boy held his arms up to be picked up, and I went to him, embracing him as the child I’d always desperately wanted. |
| “The sign of the amateur is over glorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.” – Steven Pressfield, The War of Art Blog City Prompt: Is there something you like and love but not what comes with it? Like I love tea pots and tea cups but I don’t drink tea. Got the idea? Write about it. I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV, but there are shows I enjoy. Mostly they fall into the ‘completive cooking’ genera. Shows like Top Chef, Hells Kitchen, and Chopped just to name a few. I don’t care so much for regular cooking shows, the ones where they’re showing you how to make a meal or trying out new techniques. It has to have that element of competition to catch my attention. I love it when people are forced to make an amazing meal out of the most random food ever. So here’s where the hate comes in. I am a horribly picky eater. When it comes to food, I have zero adventurousness. I eat with my eyes, and if I think the type of food is icky, it doesn’t matter how good it tastes, I’m not going to eat it. Bugs would fall into this category. People can tell me that they are the most amazing flavor ever, I’m not eating bugs. Nope. Not going to do it. While I love watching these shows about cooking, I know that I would hate having to eat about 80% of everything they make. Voyage of the Magic Ship – Day 3 Prompt: One cool thing about Voyaging on the Magical Ship is how physically safe it keeps all of us travelers. Take advantage of this feature and have us travel to a country or place you couldn’t normally visit. Well, since my little skit has been going that direction from the start – on with the show! Captain Fivesixer  pulled a small view finder cube out of his utility belt and tapped in a command. The object hovered above his hand for a second before a beam of light shot up into the sky. It took roughly thirty seconds for the data to be collected. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Captain Fivesixer sputtered as the tiny green image resolved into the impossible. We all huddled around the cube, staring in wonder at the tiny 3D image hovering in the air. There, clear as mud splattered across the windshield, was the top of a mountain. The tiny drops of liquid we’d all assumed were some sort of reverse rain gathered at the bottom of the tip, shifted to that weird grey color, and become part of the slowly growing mountain. “It would appear Mountains in this word grow from the top down, instead of bottom up,” Apondia  observed. |
| “You hope to fight an opponent whose strength is so great it terrifies you. If you are doing this because you have a heart, then a heart does nothing but injure humans. You will die because of your heart.” – Ulquiorra Cifer Voyage of the Magic Ship – Day 2 Prompt: Monday was all about flowers and foliage – and someplace warmer! Tuesday is about water. Rain even counts as water. Let’s see where we can go that has plenty of water. If you like, you can repeat Monday’s prompt and take us someplace with plenty of colorful flowers. Not wanting to cause any more damage, I re-boarded the ship. “Captain Fivesixer , it seems our landing place is more on the alive side than we thought. Let’s look for an area that’s a little less . . . wiggly.” Norb laughed but gave into my request and lifted off again. A small spike of sadness filled me when I saw the burned patch. We hadn’t known the grass was alive, well, more alive than the plants of Earth anyway. We searched until we found a clear spot made of grey stone. “Do you think we should chance it?” I bit my lip. “It’s not like we can stay up here forever.” With that, Norb nodded decisively and brought us into another clean landing. The ground sank down just a little under the weight of the ship, and we all held our breath. Nothing else happened so I opened the hatch and tried the whole thing again. Whatever we’d landed on, it wasn’t rock. It had the sort of rubbery yield that the ground under playground equipment had. Thankfully, aside from that oddity, it didn’t appear to be moving or to be more alive than proper ground should be. “Okay, everyone, I think it’s safe. Let’s start exploring.” Behind me, they began piling out of the ship while carrying their gear. I kept a weathered eye out, making sure they were safe while they began their explorations. ElaineElaine brought out her camera and began photographing everything. Squatting, she zoomed in on the little pink grass. “Noyoki  can you come here a sec?” I did as she asked. “Reach down and touch them again.” Kneeling just outside the pink field, I reached out a hand and let the little tendrils twist and poke around my gloved fingers. Space suits had come a long way since the first treks into the great unknown. Now they were thin, comfortable, and air tight. Several photos later, I detangled myself from the beings. What were they anyway? Not quite plants but not animals either. Perhaps something in-between, or some classification we hadn’t conceived of yet. Not too far away from us, Prosperous Snow celebrating  gently dug up a small sample, careful not to harm the little plant more than needed as she transferred it into a sample jar with enough of the strange yellowish dirt to support it. The little tendrils pawed at the glass, if the thing had eyes, she would have had to let it go. “Fascinating,” Apondia said as she observed one of the strange creatures our first landing spooked. They were about the size of dinner plates, and just as flat. She couldn’t find a discernable head, and if she had to classify it, it reminded her of sting rays back home. Somehow, the creature floated, using its flat body to undulate through the air. It hovered over the pink tendrils, and she observed small dark thread descend from the bottom of the animal. When it touched the grass, there was a spark of energy that leapt up from the grass. Instead of being hurt or frightened off, the flying creature continued to float above the grass. More sparks were delivered. “Absolutely amazing,” she said, taking notes without having to look down at the paper. “It appears that instead of gaining energy through consumption, the lifeforms of this world have a more direct method.” Alexi  ’s eyes followed a red flash as something moved on the other side of the grassy clearing. Curious, she followed, watching her step to make sure she didn’t squish any of the plants. The red teased her, leading her farther away from the group. Rounding a tumble of the strange grey stones that weren’t, her jaw dropped. There was a pool of silvery liquid. It wasn’t the pond that made her stare in shock, it was the fact that the water, if that’s what it was, flowed in drops upward into the sky in a reverse rain. “Uh, guys?” she shouted into her headset. We all came running. Princess Megan Rose GOT Fox   stared in awe at the strange phenomenon. Through the shimmering liquid, she thought she saw the dark flapping sails of a ship. Her hand came up to rub her eyes but ended up banging against her faceplate instead. Grumbling, she looked again and saw nothing. Well, nothing aside from the weird water flowing up into the sky that was. Blog City Prompt: What are the examples of inner conflict in a main character that you can come up with? List them. 1. Sexuality – Being attracted to someone you or society thinks you shouldn’t be. 2. Parental expectations vs. personal dreams. 3. Failure. 4. Irrational fears. 5. Rational fears. 6. Emotions (love, hate, anger, jealousy, lust). 7. Wants vs. Needs. 8. Self-sabotage. 9. Low self-esteem. 10. Accepting themselves. |
| “The mind can calculate, but the sprite yearns, and the heart wants what the heart wants.” - Stephen King Blog City Prompt: It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.” Robert M. Pirsig. Interpret this quote in any form or style you wish. Perhaps it’s centered on the idea of food production. You can grow crops along the side of mountains though it isn’t easy. Steps have to be cut out of the mountain to do it well. It could also explore the idea that the higher up a mountain goes, the less vegetation grows. That means the wildlife or herd animals can’t live as well at the peaks of mountains as they can along the lusher sides. It doesn’t matter how wily or sure footed a goat you are, you can’t live off rock alone, so you still have to venture down from the top to graze, and expose yourself to the predators who lurk there also looking for a bite to eat. Voyage of the Magical Ship – Day 1 Prompt: Welcome back to another voyage on the magical ship – it can go anywhere and anytime in complete safety for the voyagers. Don’t know about my fellow travelers, but I am heartily tired of winter whites and browns and cold weather. Let’s take this ship on a trip to where flowers and foliage are. Let’s go! Tell us where we are and how the place feels, looks, tastes, smells, and sounds. Stardust danced around the ship’s portal-like windows. They sparkled, glittering the same color I imagined fairy dust would, and the thought makes me grin. As a child, I’d been deeply in love with Peter Pan, and Neverland. While I still couldn’t fly all by myself, and my adult mind knew that there was no way to survive deep space without the aid of a ship, I still couldn’t smother the delighted giggle that escaped as we breached the atmosphere of the alien planet. This place, (Planet 320-X) would always be known in my heart as Neverland and my feet would be the first of humanity to touch its surface. The ship landed in a clear plane, scattering strange lifeforms every which way. A flock of . . . they weren’t birds, not even close, but I my brain couldn’t quite capture any other word for them, exploded upward, flowing around us like a school of brightly colored fish. Sparks danced around the flying things, sparks that held hues I had no words for. Maybe some mystery color between green and blue, or purple and orange. Light bathed the face of the world and came on from two different angles. In the sky, twin suns one twice the size of the other, soaked us in their glow. Taking that last step onto ground covered in what looked like pink Easter basket grass, I almost sang with joy. Something tugged at my space boot, and my jaw dropped when I noticed the grass moving. Little tentacles of life tugged at me, upset that I was crushing their companions. Wonder gave way to awkwardness as I began a curious shuffle attempting not to squish anymore, yet not able to find a safe spot to stand. |
| “People with love you. People will hate you. And none of it will have anything to do with you.” – Abraham Hicks None of the two whole groups I blog with have prompts for today, so I find myself adrift and promptless. I dove into the sea of writing prompts the internet offers and found myself drowning in choices. Since I’m technically supposed to be writing for Camp NaNoWriMo during this time, I decided to give up, climb out of the internet ocean, and just ramble for a while. Yes, I am doing camp NaNo for the first time ever. It isn’t as well attended in my area as normal NaNo was, but I’m not entirely alone, so huzzah for that. The first two write-ins were in downtown Lincoln Nebraska, which I can officially say I hate. HATE, HATE, HATE. I know this town was built in the time before cars. I get that, I really do. However, we aren’t the only town who has this little glitch, and every other town seems to have figured out how to incorporate parking into their existing township once cars became all the fad. Not downtown Lincoln. Oh no, we can’t make things easy for the poor souls who have to drive here. Ugh, so much hate. Aside from that minor glitch, the places we write are quite nice, and I’ve already gotten 4,616 words written on my project. For camp, instead of going back to my other NaNo project, I’ve decided to delve back into my fanfiction. It’s my goal in life to finish something, so I’m going to get this fanfiction done if it’s the last thing I do. And the two one shots after that…and the sequel. Then it will be done! So, there’s my day so far, and if anyone is reading this, sorry for the day of random randomness. Have a nice Sunday! |
| “In the beginning, God created man, but seeing him so feeble, He gave him the cat.” – Warren Eckstein Blog City Prompt: What have you done recently to grow your imagination? If the answer is “nothing,” when did you stop trying to grow your imagination? I’ve decided to take a walk into the past to grow my imagination. Several years ago, I was part of a writing/roleplaying site where you create characters based off of the Harry Potter universe, and they interact with other peoples’ characters in a fictitious school for magic. http://sonora.terragenaonline.net/ If anyone wants to put their imagination through its paces, give it a try, there’s still time to submit students. Anyway, one of the reasons this grows my imagination is because there’s no predicting where a story line will grow. You have no control over what the other characters will do, so you’re forced to react to their actions. It teaches you a lot about your characters and puts them into positions your own imagination may never have gone. Also, it’s got a bit of a true to life feel to it. As writers, we spend a lot of time playing God. A scene not working? Kill someone off. Don’t like how that twist went? Delete, delete, delete, and it never happened. On this site, once something is posted, that’s it, its set. Your characters have to live and die by the choices they make, and there are no do-overs. It’s been a few years since I played in this interactive sandbox, so I’m going to grow my imagination by planting a new student, and watching him grow through his experiences. If you do want to play, or just want to follow along on my adventures, I’m Killian Everett, and I hope to see some of your shiny new faces on the first day of school! |
| “If you don’t build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs.” Tony Gaskins Blog City Prompt: Last will and punishment says what to you on this first day of April. Take it in any direction you want. Clarity and calm filled Charles eyes as the reckoning continued. Five arbiters scanned through the book of his life. Each of the sexless beings took notes, some tisked, others offered fanged grins, but they shared not a word between each other. That would come later after the reckoning was complete. His death would occur three days from now though he still had no notion what form it would take. No one did, not really. They got the message in their inbox a week before the end, so they’d have enough time to get their affairs in order. He’d taken care of his last will, all the end of life tasks were complete. All but this. At the end of every life, all the deeds both good and bad were tallied, read from the book of Life that came into creation in the Records whenever a new soul attached to a child at the moment of birth. Every deed the soul committed in that incarnation was recorded in their book. The scratching of quills came to an end. Now the alien silver eyes of the arbiters fell heavy on him. “The scales have been filled, both good and evil, and we find punishment is in order.” He didn’t argue. No one did. No one dared. “We are in agreement. You will serve your next five incantations on Earth.” Charles swallowed hard. Earth? That was a little harsh in his opinion. |
| “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee Blog City Prompt: Doorknobs. Write anything you want about these. A low chuckle grew in the darkness. It bounced off the rough stone walls, growing, rebounding, redoubling into a mad cackle. “I did it, I finally did it. They’ll never forget my name. Never!” All around him, glinting in the torch light, doorknobs glittered. Some made of glass, others of brass. Here and there were the long handled knobs. Knobs of every make, shape, and style filled the cave in drifts. And all around the world, people were shouting in fury, banging on doors whose knobs had vanished without a trace. |
| “Sometimes the curiosity can kill the soul but leave the pain.” Alice, Alice in wonderland Blog Central Prompt: Why are we conditioned into the strawberry and cream, Mother Goose world, Alice in Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life? Sylvia Plath. What is your take on this? Such is life. As children, our imaginations are boundless. It’s much better to give those young minds strawberry and cream because as children, they’re still able to bring those things to life in their own minds. Far better for them to dream and believe in Alice, instead of dreaming and believing in all the dark they’ll have to face as adults. For better or worse, most peoples imaginations dull as they age. Nightmares become less real, and adult problems take their place. Instead of worrying about the monster under the bed, we worry about how much money we have in the bank. A transfer of fears in the end. But it’s better to at least start life with grinning cats who lead us astray, than mundane fears that will plague us unto death. 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: Describe a moment in your life you laughed so hard you cried, had a drink come out your nose, or peed in your pants. When I was little, I was so ticklish all you had to do was wiggle your fingers in front of me, miming tickling and I’d laugh. On top of that, I have two older brothers. I’m sure you can imagine things got out of hand more than once. I think I was eight or nine when one of my brothers pinned me between the wall and the bed and proceeded to tickle me. I don’t remember what I’d done, but he was super pissed at me, and this was his revenge. He wouldn’t stop even after I started crying and could hardly breathe. He finally stopped after I wet myself. Even though I’m still ticklish, that was the day I learned how to hold it in. They were never able to attack tickle me again after that. |
| “There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” – George Carlin 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: Give me three possible prompts you’d like to see in a future 30DBC. You don’t even have to explain them if you don’t want to. 1. Make a list of alphabetical advice. Example: Accept differences. Before you leap, look. Consider the lobster. Don’t think you’re better than others. 2. Pretend you’re in your 70s or 80s. Complain about kids these days. 3. Induce fear – Make me scared of the Easter Bunny. Blog City Prompt: What if the moon suddenly ceased to exist? What do you think would happen and how would you react to it? Answer in any form or style you wish. Before reading this prompt, I knew the moon was involved in the tides of the planet, but I wondered what other problems would arise without the moon. So I looked it up and found this article: http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/blog-what-if-the-moon-dis... First off, the tides would continue to happen, but they’d follow the cycle of the sun instead of the moon. High tide would be around noon, everywhere, everyday. That would make living near the ocean scary for a time while people learned the new high tide lines and places that never had much tide would learn all about it. When the moon disappears, there will also be an initial increase in earthquakes, and possibly volcanos because the Earth also shifts with the tides. Bigger problems would arise as time passed because the moon acts as a stabling force for Earth’s wobble. The danger is that the wobble might become so extreme that Earth would no longer be hospitable to life. But that’s not something we’d have to worry much about since it would take a few million years to deteriorate to that degree. For humans it wouldn’t be too bad, but it would mess up a lot of the natural world that relies on the moon for their natural cycles. |
| “We’re not destroying the world because we’re clumsy. We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.” Daniel Quin, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit Blog City Prompt: When you analyze a poem, what are the main areas you focus on or the questions you ask? I don’t have a great deal of knowledge on the structure of the various types of poetry. Because of this, when I read and analyze a poem, I’m not looking at the mechanics of structure. What I look for in a good poem is two fold: Imagery and feeling. Does the poem invoke specific imagery? When I read it, can I envision what the author is talking about? Can I see the depth of the poem? Does it go beyond the central image? These are all questions that play in my mind when I think about the imagery of poetry. As for emotion, I believe poetry should play on the strings of our emotions the way a pianist taps the keys. Poetry that doesn’t touch on my emotions tends to come across as flat for me. 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: “You have to be unique, and different, and shine in your own way.” – Lady Gaga, born on this day in 1986. What’s your shine consist of? Snark. I’m going to have to go with snark for this prompt. Though there are plenty of other people in the world who rely on snark to get through the day, I think it fits. Once upon a time, a friend of mine told me that I look at the hole in the donut and what I needed to do was look at the whole donut. I thought on that for a minute before replying: “No, I’m looking at the ants carrying my donut away. Damned ants, they ruin picnics.” I don’t have it in me to rely on the power of positivity, so I fall back on snark to keep from pulling my hair and screaming. It’s better to find the dark humor in a situation than to try and find the silver lining, or stare broodingly at the horizon full of dark clouds. Instead I’ll wonder how big the cats and dogs will be when they fall, and who the poor sop is who’ll have to clean up all those exploded pets. |
| “We are all like fireworks. We climb, shine and always go our separate ways and become further apart. But even if that time comes, let’s not disappear like a firework, and continue to shine…forever.” – Toshiro Hitsuguya, Bleach 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: It’s Easter Sunday! Share a fun story from you neck of the woods. If you’re not celebrating Easter, share an interesting news happening. It’s kind of an “open prompt” today. In Lincoln Nebraska, we have a bit of an interesting tradition. At Holms Lake Park, there’s a helicopter that drops over 6,000 eggs onto the park. Pretty epic, if you ask me. Alas, I’ve only seen it once. We went when Shay was 2, and it’s a great deal of fun. They mark off areas for different age groups, and in the areas, they hide a bunch of eggs for each group. Then, after all, the areas are egg free, out comes the helicopter where they dump tons of eggs out onto the grass for the joy of all. For the past three years, we’ve gone out into the country to my husband’s step-sister’s house. Their yard is huge, and we hid over 100 plastic eggs for the gaggle of kidlets to find. They also have a beautiful white horse with the most amazing blue eyes there. She’s one of the most friendly horses I’ve ever seen and acts more like a dog than a horse. All in all, it was a fun day.   |
| “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.” – Eckhart Tolle 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: Plot a takeover…of a company, a country, your neighbor’s lawn, anything. Have some fun with it. “This is crazy,” Bob whispered, but I could see the glint of excitement in his faded blue eyes. Crazy or not, it was perhaps the most entertaining thing either of us experienced at work for the past twenty years. My eyes stayed glued on the closed door, waiting. “You know we’re going to get fired for this, don’t you?” “So?” I whispered back. The black bag over my shoulder made me feel lopsided, but I didn’t set it down. We’d have a small window to act in, and I wasn’t about to lose it fumbling with the bag. “It’s not like we aren’t getting fired anyway.” Sure, we wouldn’t get the payout at the end, but whatever. Why not live it up a little before the end? Before he could offer another complaint, the wooden door opened. Marcus, dressed in his power suit, hair combed so vigorously it looked like nothing would knock a hair out of place, stepped out. Like every day since I started working here, he made his way to the executive restroom for his morning commune with the commode. The moment he was out of sight, we acted. “Hey, you can’t-” Margarete started, but we rushed past her before she managed to get out of her seat, let alone around the desk to stop us. My aging heart pounded in my chest like back when I was a kid as we stormed the boss’s office. In seconds, we had the door shut and locked. For good measure, we moved his massive hardwood desk in front. Then it was time to party. I got the boom box out of my bag and plugged it in. Rebel Without a Cause blared from the speakers as we each cracked open a bottle of Corona. Was it childish of us? Perhaps. Then again, they were firing the whole department in three months, and we were too old to find new jobs, yet too young to retire. Might as well go out with a bang. Blog City Prompt: Do you think published authors should participate in writing workshops to help other writers accomplish their writing goals? (Kind of like paying it forward) Have you ever attended a writing workshop with a published author? Would you go to one if it was available near you? I recently went to a workshop hosted by the Nebraska Writers Guild entitled Perfect Proposal. It wasn’t given by a writer, instead, it was hosted by a literary agent who explained the ends and outs of book proposals and what agents are looking for. The agent’s name was Chip MacGregor, President of MacGregor Literary and it was amazing. I think I learned more about the business end of writing from him than I have from any book. But, of course, the question was about writers, not agents. I think it’s a bit of a tricky question. During the writer’s workshop I went to, Chip pointed out something – Writers are excellent at writing, but often suck at talking. So it comes down to skill sets. If the writer is someone who can talk to large groups of people and give information without getting lost in telling stories, and they enjoy it, then they would make good teachers for future generations of writers. I would absolutely go to a workshop hosted by a published writer. |
| “Baseline and Vaseline sound nothing alike, but pony and bologna rhyme. This is why I have trust issues.” – Summer Heacock (Tweet) Blog City Prompt: Write a poem or a story, based on one of the following themes: Fearful Love --- Whispers I haven’t tried my hand at poetry in a while, so let’s give it a shot. Eyes of feline green bounce, From shoes up to his face, Down again, escaping. But like small mice, They creep up, up, up, Only to scurry away, When the gaze is spied. She aches to speak, To smile, To laugh. She longs to say, I love you. 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: On this day in 1954, RCA manufactured its first color TV set and began mass production. Had this never happened, do you think we would still enjoy what television has to offer? I don’t see why not. Before there was color TV, there was black and white. I missed the black and white age by a few years, but from what I’ve heard, people were just as enamored with it as they are of color. Before black and white, people were enchanted with the radio, and they’d all gather in the living room to listen together. Still further back, they were in love with books. Once print became wide spread, books swept the world, offering a new form of entertainment. In the time before mass print, people gathered at the knees of mothers, grandmothers, and favorite aunts begging for stories. Color TV is part of a long line, the unending tradition of story. Today we watch TV for the same reason everyone gathered around grandma as she sat in the rocker by the open fire place and told of goblins, changelings, and all the lore that made up their lives. We all hunger for a good story. |
| “Your excuses are just the lies your fears have sold you.” – Robin Sharma 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: “Old habits die hard.” Do you believe this statement? Absolutely. Even when you manage to beat a habit, it sneak up on you years later without you even noticing until you slide back down the hole of bad habits. We try our best to replace bad habits with good ones, and how many times do we end up giving up? I sleep in too late, and I don’t exercise. For a while I tried to get up early, exercise, and write in the morning. I was able to keep it up for over 50 days before I crashed and burned, and now I’m back to sleeping in as late as humanly possible. Thankfully, I don’t smoke or drink, but I know both habits are a nightmare to try and overcome. There are endless stories of people who quit drinking and don’t take a drink for 30 years, but all it takes is one cup to throw them off the wagon even after all that time. Slaying our bad habits is a difficult venture, and we always have to be on the watch for them to rise again. Blog City Prompt: What did you love about Easter as a child? How do you feel about Easter now that you’re older? My favorite part of Easter always came the night before when we colored the eggs. Every year, we’d go to different stores to find different types of egg coloring kits. One of my favorites was paint with straws. We’d put a dot of paint on the egg, and use a straw to blow the paint into long spatters. Those ones turned out awesome. I still feel nostalgic when I smell warm vinegar. As an adult, I still enjoy the egg coloring process, but now I enjoy playing the bunny. I love hiding the eggs, and then watching my son and the other kids find them. |
| “The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” – Tom Bodett Blog City Prompt: “Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which one fits me and is most becoming?” Sylvia Platy. Do you ever feel like this? Write about it. The little girl frowned down at her pink dress. Her hair, done up in a riot of curls, kept falling in her face and tickling her button nose, but when she tried to push it away, her mom’s hand would catch her little wrist. “Stop messing with it dear, you’re going to frizz.” Her wide blue eyes continued to turn towards the lawn, where boys tumbled together. No one told them not to touch their hair. No one made them stand primly at their mother’s side listening to old women gossip and desperately wanting itch, but knowing better. On and on the talking went, and with every word, the little girl wished she was a boy. 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: What product, that used to be on the market but is no longer sold, do you think you should be brought back? Tell us why. I miss drive-in theaters. While I’m not 100% sure they’re gone everywhere, I know that the few in my town have been long shut down. There was something fascinating about the whole drive-in experience, and I’m kind of sad that it went out of vogue before I was old enough to be taken on a date to one. As a little girl, I remember hiding, with a blanket tucked around me, in the foot well of the back seat so that I could get in for free. A whole pack of kids would bounce together on the seat, waiting eagerly for the show to begin, and around us all were the cars of everyone else, together, yet separate. If there’s one thing I’d love to see make a comeback, it’s drive-in theaters. |
| “It’s ‘Before’, not ‘b4’ – speak English, not Bingo.” – Unknown 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: Tell us what you like about WDS. Make some recommendations, gut us more involved, and maybe find out a few things or meet some people you haven’t already! These are a few of my favorite things: 1. "Give It 100!"  – If you ever want help and cheer leading for building a new habit, check this activity out. You set a goal of doing something for 100 days, and it adds a layer of external accountability to help keep you going. 2. "Invalid Item" - Not sure about all those grammarly rules? Unable to figure out how to create convincing characters? Want feedback on your work? I suggest you take a look at the class catalog. 3. "The Challenge" – The Challenge is an amazing way to learn about WDC. Every day, you’ll be sent to a new place or experience some new aspect of the site. 4. "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge" – Flashfiction is both a challenge and a learning experience. If you want to learn the value of every word, I suggest you give it a try. These are a few of my favorite places. I hope you enjoy them. Blog City Prompt: Rabindranath Tagore said in Sadhana, “When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself.” How much do you think literature, with fiction or poetry, should stick to the rules of grammar? Or should it, at all? Consider the following: I love cooking my family and my pets. I love cooking, my family, and my pets. These two sentences are exactly the same, sans a pair of commas. Yet those two little squiggly dot looking things make all the difference in what these two sentences mean. In the first, you’re probably some sort of serial killer, in the second you are a nice person who loves to cook, and loves their family, and loves their pets. Grammar plays a vital role in our communication because it provides all the sign posts for how we read and understand what’s written. Without a basic grasp of how to construct a sentence, the meaning of what you write gets lost. In fiction, writers can bend the rules, at times even break them, but they must always consider clarity while doing so. Poetry is a different beast all together. Perhaps it’s because poetry as a million rules and structure all its own, or because a lot of people don’t understand it to begin with, but when it comes to poetry, grammar rules are thrown out the window. On the flip side, this lack of grammatical structure makes the risk of not being understood increase dramatically. Have you ever read a poem and wondered if maybe the author tore up another book, threw the word confetti into the air, and wrote down in order what fell on their desk? Yeah, me too. Strive for clarity, or at least make sure that the words you write make sense when read in order. |
| “If you fall, I’ll be there.” The Floor Blog City Prompt: Imagine yourself loving one person very much, any person, like a parent, a sibling, a child, a mentor, a lover, or a friend. Think of that love as a feeling. Can you apply that same love to your community, to everyone you know, to your nation, to the billions of people of the world, no matter what? Can this be possible, ever? When it comes to humanity as a whole, I feel ambivalent towards it when I’m not thoroughly disgusted by the whole mess. So could I ever feel the sort of love I feel for my son for all of humanity. No, sorry but it’s not in me. I’m pretty sure the world would be a lot better off without people. However, do I think it’s at all possible for someone else? Yes. I think that there are a number of people who feel that unbearable wellspring of love for all their fellow humanoid beings. Mother Teresa immediately comes to mind when I read the prompt, and I’m sure there are others who reached her level of selfless devotion to her fellow humans. While rare, I don’t think it’s impossible. 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: Actor Matthew Broderick was born on March 21st, 1962, and one of his most famous roles is in the movie Ferris Beuller’s Day off. After faking being sick to his parents so he can skip school, he turns to the camera and says, “Incredible. One of the words performances of my career and they never doubted it for a second.” Have you ever accomplished anything of significance (even just something for fun) by sneaking your way out of something else? Actually, now that you bring it up, yes. I achieved my two college degrees as a result of trying to get out of working for an hour and a moment of epic impulsiveness. One day, we got an e-mail at work saying they’d set up a job/education fair in my building’s lunch room. I wasn’t interested in furthering my education or getting a different job, but they were giving us a free hour from work to check it out. While looking over the booths, I stumbled across one set up for the online college, Phoenix University. I chatted with the fellow for a while, and he gave me a card, telling me to call if I wanted to get more information. Later that night, I called the number and it turns out that it was the registration office, and not just ‘extra information.’ Before I knew what happened, I was signed up for criminal justice classes. 45,000 dollars later, I now have my associate and bachelor’s degrees, and have not yet managed to get a job in the field. *Sigh* So I suppose my accomplishment was spending an exceptional amount of money for two pieces of mostly useless paper. |
| “Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, and something to love, and something to hope for.” – Joseph Addison 30 Day Blogging Challenge Prompt: This week during a performance in Australia, pop singer Madonna pulled a fan onstage and tugged at her shirt, inadvertently exposing her breast (after making a few tawdry remarks about their girl’s appearance.) The girl in question is only 17 years old. Many are outraged by this, and believe that if it were a man doing something like this, he would be ostracized and labeled a pedophile. Should Madonna face some kind of criminal charges or other repercussions from this incident? “Only I get to decide if I’m humiliated or not. Why would people assume I’d be humiliated by my own breast, nipple, or body? I didn’t realize my boob was such a big deal. It was nothing to me.” – The Girl Well, the first thing I did after I read the article was go to youtube to see what happened. Yes, Madonna exposed the girl, but if you watch the video, she was shocked when the shirt came down like that, and her objective obviously wasn’t to pull her shirt all the way down. Just looking at it, it looks like a black leather corset type shirt that you could tug on all day and not have it move. I was surprised when it came down so easily. On top of that, when asked about it, she had no problem with what happened and was shocked by how much attention it was getting from the media. Labeling her a pedophile seems pretty extreme to me. It’s not like she jerked her shirt down and started groping her on stage. She clearly hadn’t planned on doing it, and when it happened she was a shocked as everyone else. Throwing around terms like pedophile lightly always rubs me the wrong way. It’s like how rape gets used for everything. I’m sorry but it feels insulting to real victims who are attacked when you say a man is ‘raping you with his eyes,’ or you try to label someone a pedophile because they bump into you in the subway. Sometimes in live performances, things go wrong. That’s life. It’s hardly a reason to arrest someone and try to hang such a damaging label on them. |
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