the meaning of this particular blog's title, and SHARK WEEK, but mosty the origin story

so

you

you may be wondering

"why am i wasting my precious time reading this awkward and often inarticulate random person's blog?"

or maybe you know me in real life and are doing me a solid by reading. 

in which case: thanks! but you already know i'm awkward. so, there's that.

ok, the origin story of...

(i wish i could do some serious DUM dum DAUM!!!! sounds, but i can't, and it appears i'm terrible at creating sounds... good thing i don't write comics.)

so, speaking of comics, every single one ever written worth it's weight in readers... and there are some hefty comic readers out there, no offense, just saying, it's a fairly common stereotype that i'm using inappropriately to make a terrible pun, of sorts.

an origin story, for non comic readers out there, 

is simply that, the super hero's origin:

how they got their powers

why they decided to don the tights and possible cape

or accept their fate 

or why they chose the life 

basically, how they got to be the super heroes we love to read and watch

(especially if it's jeremy renner playing hawkeye, le sigh.)

renner made a perfect clint barton/hawkeye, and the avengers movie was an epic win. to those of you who think most every comic should never be made into a movie, everyone deciding ahead of time they would hate it, everyone complaining about too many A-listers in one movie, it'll never work!... two words: Joss Whedon. exactly. that's called AHmazing.

 sorry, a bit of drool there. 

back on point

anyway, this writer, who is not, in any way shape or form, a super hero... well i guess i could be "Chronic Pain Woman! taking down attacks one day at a time... and sometimes just falling down on the floor in pain!...  yay?"

(shut it, i didn't say i would be a good super hero... sorry for the small print.

that was meant to be a funny fade out, 

just read it out loud, and then as the words become smaller, 

so should your voice, 

matching the total and utter awkward non-super hero it is.)

right, so the origin, and meaning of 

A Life of Carefully Contained Chaos!!!

well, here it is:

i was sitting at the computer, with my mom insisting i write regularly in addition to writing my book, which has now turned into multiple book projects, the stories are swimming around in my head like great whites on free seal day... i would watch that show. 

 
SPOILER! MAJOR SHARK DIGRESSION AHEAD!!!

(i promise, at the end of fun shark stuff, i actually DO, in fact, and very specifically tell you the reason for this blog's name... think of it as a horror movie, this is the unnecessary and yet obligatory sex scene... only without sex, mostly, and this is not a horror movie, it's a blog post, although i'm sure some of you are wanting to kill yourselves right about now...)

i love shark week... 

so much i will share some interesting things, and some awesome links because hell, i've never been swimming with sharks, but i'd love to! as well as be in a cage with a great white

here we go:

ok, just realized, this may not work, because it's a youtube video...but you should absolutely check out "sharklila" aka a megaladon over 2 million years ago. they discovered, from one dooth of sharkzilla, that this huge eating machine killed a whale roughly 75 millions years ago by ramming it upwards from below and biting it's head clear off. no, i really did not make this up. 

another fun addition to this year's shark week which just so happens to be their 25th year! yes! anyway, it's also a certain famous movie's HD/blu-ray repackaging debut... that's right, the story, then book, that started it all, well, they mostly talked about the movie in 1975: 

quite simply put, one of my mom's least, one of my, personal favorite movies. 

discovery channel did an inspired episode of during Shark Week! (yes, the exclamation point is necessary), and finally brought in the movie that pretty much started it all: Jaws. so the episode, aptly named is, "how jaws changed the world." 

maybe you're thinking that's a wee bit hyperbolic, but think about this: before 1975, very few people actually hunted down sharks with few exceptions here and there not counting cultural traditions. after Jaws, it was shark season, and cousin, business was a booming. so much so that a number of sharks are nearly extinct by this point. on the bright side, the apex predator depicted here is also created, rather, inspired an entire new generation of shark researchers and marine biologists who frankly, wanted the facts, mam. so there ya have it, a bunch of morons followed in the shark hunter's character, Quint. fortunately, to counter balance that, the shark specialist, marine biologist and the first character make science cool, Hooper, inspired people, including the original's book's author as well as his wife, to go off and get their nerd on with sharks. 

one more photo, promise,

almost

that was worth it, right?
so this is a great white shark. they are able to travel enormous amounts of miles of oceans to find their food
not to mention they can propel themselves into the air going as fast as 25mph, and jumping, sometimes as high as 15-20ft. 
this was a decoy seal used to capture... well this. they are apex predators
but i will say it again: they are beautiful. 
to try and kill all sharks off because of fear or playing around in their home? idiot. i'm embarrassed to be associated with the human race. nearly every survivor of a shark attack says, i respect when to go in and when not to, not "i hate that shark he followed me around the world and STILL owes me $80 from vegas!" that would be funny though. a shark asking for $80, seriously, do you actually say  no?

AND NOW I'M DONE WITH MY RANDOM SHORT (ish) BIT ON SHARKS IN HONOR OF SHARK WEEK!!! YAY

but i digress.

so, 

sitting there, 

getting annoyed at my inability to name anything, 

ask my old college roomie ellen, she'll tell you how bad i am at coming up with character names, let alone actual titles for the nonsense i write. no really, ask her, she will tell you. i was told i could not have a real girl with the real name "najeda" play a role with the name "jane" or something equally plain. 

that's when i discovered the brilliance of googling interesting names. worked like a charm. still using it to this day. 

so, i was doing my thing, 

which is to say, 

my lack of thing

(incidentally, my "lack of thing", looks like this:)

which involves a lot of over analyzing

trying to be clever without sounding some pompous, pretentious self-important asshat

trying to make it funny without making it awkward and forced

(i know, right?)

so, i realized

as i was trying to come up with names for this thing

this "blog"

this scary scary thing

of which,
 i didn't even know what in the hell i was going to do with it

does one develop a blog?

help a blog?

save a blog?

yes, in my case, this blog needs saving, 
but that's my problem, not yours.

so, 

unbeknown to me

i was organizing my desk while trying to figure out what to call this scary scary new and scary,

sorry, did i mention scary, yet? 
thing

because writing a blog is scary for a writer who writes long things

things of length, 

things that have never once been called 

"concise"

"to the point"

"direct"

"reticent"

"taciturn"

so

i realized something, 

why not create a blog with an odd title that describes my feelings about it at the same time in an oblique enough way for people to not really know how very confused and scared i was and still am.

so there it is.

"a life of carefully contained chaos" is just that:

the chaos of the internet 

the chaos of the world of non-printed paper words

the chaos of anonymity in a non-tactile world

well, pretty much all this, basically

how does one contain this scary scary, 

(sorry, but again, have i mentioned "scary", yet?)

SCARY world of blogs.

i didn't want to do it

i still don't

i find it, yes, scary

because it's not my thing

i write long narrative prose

i write books now, apparently (who knew?)

i also didn't know i could write a musical, 
until a wonderful, strong, and amazing friend asked me to
and as a direct result of that friend's request to write the musical,
it turned out to bethe most important thing to happen to me as a writer since,  

my high school english teacher, ms. rose told me i had a voice and i could develop characters, and more importantly, my poetry was really just a story trying to get out. i didn't know i could write stories until then but i did. 

and turns out, the first musical i wrote, it didn't... suck

(it was my first time, i had no idea what i was doing, and i was scared out of my mind... much like this blog.)

so, gentle reader, 

that, in a nutshell... a very large 
and loquacious

chatty

voluble

and expansive nutshell 

(see what i mean, that was not concise)

that is how the title came to be. 

the meaning of the title of my blog is simply this:

i am trying to carefully contain 

the chaos of my insides over this scary new thing 

that i've been forced into 

while carefully 

attempting to contain 

my fear of what in the world i'm going to do with, well this!

AHEM

[that's your cue to look around at the laptop, desktop, smart phone, iPadish thingies, etc. you are reading this on and say 

"oh, yeah, the internet, it's big, huh. 

i am in awe of how scary it is 

because i lack any control over where it will take our species 

in terms of evolution 

and the inevitable impact 

on our culture, society, the world, and our individuality."]

or maybe you'll just say "huh, nope, still an odd title. i think hillary's just a weird girl with control issues."

well, you would be not wrong about that, but maybe you'll see where my head was at when i decided to claim this title for a luddite trapped in a world continually changing,

 and technology evolving faster than you can say 

"what, in the name of sanity was this post all about? did she actually answer anything, like, at all?"

well, i'll leave that up to you.

next up: Vladd, the dark lord

big deal at renaissance fairs

he let me take pictures of his motorcycle

more on that tomorrow. 

goodnight and good luck trying to sleep well after that convoluted post. 

one more picture of jeremy renner

one didn't seem even fair. 

AAAAAAAAAAAND 

you're welcome.

:  )