Surfin' Saturday

Howdy, all!

On a whim I've decided to share with y'all some funny and/or interesting stuff I found around the internet this week. A lot of people really liked the turtle I posted yesterday so I thought I'd share some other stuff too!

I think I may have mentioned once or twice how much I love Star Wars, so it was a given for me to share Señor Vader!

Do you know about the LHC project? LHC stands for the Large Hadron Collider, and it's one of the most interesting projects out there! The scientists working on the LHC are trying to isolate the particles that are responsible for starting our universe! What's even cooler is that they've found a way to turn the sounds of decaying particles into music! Check it out here.

This is kind of a long entry, so I'll put the rest behind a jump. Click "read more" to see the rest of this week's findings!

X-Ray Specs

So we've reached the last week of Arlee Bird's A to Z blog challenge, and probably the hardest letter in the alphabet. I thought about this all night long, and I kept coming back to these crazy glasses. I always wished I had a pair of these when I was a kid.

Sometimes, I still imagine what it would be like to have some x-ray specs. Imagine what it would be like to... hey, stop being naughty, I didn't even get to finish my sentence!

As writers, we have a kind of built-in x-ray vision, don't we? We see through the top layers of the mundane to the fabulous items underneath. Using the x-ray specs of our imaginations, we have the ability to observe pretty much anything we want. We can see through reality, and use it as fodder for our wild imaginations. We can turn any person, any situation, any object we see into something that isn't quite as it seems.

Now, I want you to imagine you've got a pair of these on your face right now. Look around the room. Can you see the intricate wiring in your computer? What about the energy flowing out of the power socket, up the power cord, and into your PC? What does the inside of your desk look like? Look through your walls. See any mice?

Look at your hand... you can see right through the thin covering of flesh to the bones and tendons beneath. You can do this; you've got a great imagination. Your x-ray specs are built in, remember? Look at the veins in your hand, the way the smooth panels of muscle are knit together. Cross your index and middle fingers. See the X your bones make?

Let's look through the mundane world today and see what we find. How much can we uncover to put into our work? Use your imagination, friend! I give you full permission to pretend you are ten years old today. What will you see with your mental x-ray specs?

Nothing but Silliness

So dear readers, it's Friday. I've been sitting here for the last hour or so going over possible N words for the A to Z Blog Challenge today, and my Lord, it's like my brain is made of Swiss cheese. All the good ideas just disappear in those holes and I'm left with nothing but words like Nepal and Nickelback and Neverland... uh, yeah. SO, since it's FRIDAY, I'm giving myself (and you) permission to just be silly.

Hence Darth Disco. Wouldn't it be cool to have one of these? I'd try to make one if I was crafty. (OK, I'm crafty in other ways, just not like this.) I'd hang it in my living room for parties. Of which I'm having a small one this weekend... at my house, which my roommate likes to call Neverland. (He also calls me Pan, sometimes.) BANGARANG! We'd party under Vader like it's a long time ago in a galaxy far far away... such as, 1999, in Nepal. Dancin' with yaks and Sherpas. OH yeah.

Last night Nickelback came to the Clark Kent job. NOT kidding, folks. The band's playing here in Greenville tonight, and they wanted to do something fun on the night they got into town. So they came bowling! Cool huh? I set this up with our local top 40 radio station. The joys of being a sales and marketing director! The band was a lot of fun, and they brought their road crew too. They ate about a dozen BLT's from the snack bar and went through a BOTTLE AND A HALF of Jager. But they were really fun and loved our center, and we all had a great time.

Nickelback invited us to the concert and to hang with them backstage, but I think I'll pass. It was fun hanging out with rockstars, but I'm not really a fan of their music. Besides, I need to get ready for the party tomorrow night - which means cleaning the house and settling down to write as much as I can, 'cause I'm giving myself tomorrow night off to blow off some steam and socialize.

I'm making a punch for tomorrow. Half a handle of vodka's been hanging out in the house (why can't this be an H day??) for a couple of months now, so it's time to put it to good use. If anyone has a suggestion for a good punch, feel free to share. We're probably going to play some games and listen to music and hang out until the wee hours of the morning. I expect anywhere between fifteen and twenty people, so there will be lots of fun stuff going on.

I have the perfect house for a party too - three stories, with a finished garage/basement and a huge living room and kitchen, plus a deck out back. We're secluded from our neighbors so we won't bother them with too much noise, and I have a fire pit in the side yard we're going to make s'mores with. It's gonna be a blast. Wish I could teleport some of y'all here to SC to hang out with us tomorrow.

And Darth Disco too!

I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend.