(it needed the font, scariest i had), all ready to go!
(pause for applause and general frivolity and/or excitement :)
i will give you a sneak peak...
let's set the scene (since hallween was a bit of a bummer for most of us, especially me since it's my birthday and we had no electricity, BUT everyone is safe and ok, which is what matters the most.)
i was staying in the backwoods of Virginia with my mother and grandmother.
there are no houses for miles
the only sounds you hear are the sounds of animals
and the occasional bear looking for food
this night,
however,
was a night to remember
because it was the night that i found out
my sweet 80 year old grandmother
is in fact
the biggest badass this side of the pond.
also, i met my first werewolf.
no, not taylor lautner.
a real one.
it a was a night that none of us will ever forget
and i signed a waiver saying i wouldn't mention it...
ever!
but i'm not mentioning
i'm blogging.
it's called a loophole for a reason.
check in next week when i get accustomed to electricity
blogging
and all things not related to pioneer days.
on a related note:
dear warm shower:
i love you. and ours is a love that shall never die
unless the power does
but distance only makes the heart grow fonder.
in conclusion:
tune in next week for the story to end all werewolf stories!
new plan for this fun and not at all scary site... nope, not scary... at all. especially when i saw the pilot of "revolution"... which, as an archer, is pretty incredible. seriously though, watch that, doctor who, and arrow (when it comes out... although doctor who generally has nothing to do with archers, time and space, definitely, and yet, shockingly, not as many archers as there should be, either way it is streaming on netflix, as is firefly and the follow up movie, serenity, and dollhouse, WATCH THEM!)
ok. so instead of single posts... "one offs", if you will,
i'm going in a different direction.
from now on, i'm doing a mini-series.
SO, first up: not sure yet. but the deal is, you have to check the site to see what happens next.
so, before you read anymore of this, do this:
SAVE THIS SITE TO YOUR BROWSER
i'll wait.
y'all good? saved? a life of carefully contained chaos?
you have it?
yes you.
no, not you doug or ellen,
the rest of you,
saved it yet?
yeah?
you do?
i will wait all day if i have to.
ok.
that should have been enough time.
it's really a matter of dragging and dropping.
easy stuff.
cool.
alright. back to the point. (which is now on the left side... keep up!)
they will all be short trilogies.
the catch?
drum roll please? no? oh right. internet. you can't hear me...
fine. no drum roll. stupid interweb.
here we go: a different genre each time.
here's a "for example": the first trilogy might be horror,
next one might be romance,
followed by a thriller,
romance,
action,
mystery,
and maybe something steampunk,
or who knows...
(no, seriously, your guess is literally as good as mine. no, totally not kidding.)
maybe i'll do a fan fiction bit... like doctor who. an Egyptian goddess let loose on the orient express (which they alluded to, but never did!)
maybe i'll do a vampire story, zombie story,
something of that nature since i'm writing my murder mystery right now.
it's beginning to have an impact on my sanity, so bear with me, please.
so
there you have it
a new reason to keep me in your browser and definitely check in.
it'll be worth your while...
i promise :)
alright, since i used a smiley face while writing... that means it's time to hit the proverbial hay (which is a terrible bed, speaking hygiene alone... i mean, seriously...)
so,
come on back.
i never break a promise, unless i'm in the hospital or something (those of you who know me, know what i mean...)
alright ladies and gents
tell your friends!
believe me, it'll be a fun ride.
hopefully for both of us.
also
tell them to follow me,
it's silly,
but it helps.
think of it as a trial run for my book
also, all of this is in fact copywrited...steal it and i will send a team of armed monkeys to TAKE YOU DOWN!!! and monkeys mean business, who do you think came up with the term "monkey business"? clearly they are an entrepreneurial species.
in all seriousness, lawyers are real... and if you steal my stuff, i will send them after you.
but mostly, it's just not nice!
later all!
pass on some happiness to the next person you see
it's just good karma,
plus! you'll feel better afterwards
unless you're a sociopath, psychopath, or dead inside,
ok, so as you may remember, i did a blog about dylan, the super hero, how we took down bad guys (sorry underdog, i did, in reality love that cartoon, along with mighty mouse and scooby doo, still do, as a matter of fact...)
anyway, let me remind you of the "wonder dog"
so to recap: this is a wonder dog... yeah... well, i come running down the stairs after hearing this howling...
now, i've already lost a dog/best friend this past december, so i was on full alarm when i heard dylan wailing like he was near death. i was two flights up when i heard the sound no animal owner/lover ever wants to hear... so despite my chronic pain, i ran and pretty much fell down all two flights to get to my baby .... to find him spinning in the desk chair in the kitchen. no, he was not stuck...
i'm going to go on as if i could speak to dylan... which would have actually been very helpful so i could explain to him exactly what i would like to have done to him after falling down two flights of stairs...
dylan: the evil chair of spinning doom won't let me go!
me: dylan, get off the chair.
dylan: can't. don't have my cape, therefore, i don't have my super powers. the evil chair of spinning doom won't let me go!
me: dylan, get off the chair... NOW!
dylan: i CAN'T!!! i'm stuck on the.... what part of this dire situation are you not getting?!?! EVIL CHAIR OF SPINNING DOOM! IT WON'T LET ME GO!!!! what the hell? why aren't you taking this seriously... THE CHAIR OF SPINNING DOOM HAS ME TRAPPED! THIS IS SERIOUS!
me: dylan, get off the chair, it isn't an evil chair of spinning doom, and you do not need your cape to get down... also, you ate most of your "super power" cape. seriously, get down.
dylan: the cape knows what it did...
me: fine, whatever, just get down.
dylan: i WOULD, but because i may or may not have eaten my cape (there is no evidence to prove that, by the way), I CAN'T GET DOWN!!!
me: right, because out of me, mom, dad, and you... the dog, the evidence doesn't point to you at all...
dylan: we're getting off track here... I AM TRAPPED IN A SPINNING CHAIR OF DOOM! HELP!!!!
me: oh for the love of... fine.
so yeah, i had to "save" wonder dog from a chair. when we can't walk him because of the rain, he tends to feel all cooped up, or if it's just a regular day, or the afternoon, he'll have these fits of running around like the cartoon tasmanian devil, only with more reckless abandon.
the general routine is this: he'll run and jump from anywhere that can be used to sit... chair to bay window, to ottoman, to couch, only this time... he jumped into the desk chair in the kitchen, which spins... apparently that was too much for him, so you know, he freaked out and howled... making me think that he was dying. i suppose in his mind he was... but when i said i fell down two flights of chairs... i really wasn't exaggerating. i have the bruises to prove it. so after all that... i had to pick up dylan, who is no longer a cute and tiny puppy... he's still growing... which is frightening.
so there it is... dylan the "wonder dog" : the real story.
i'd worry about a defamation of character lawsuit.... but since dylan is a dog, i feel fairly confident i'm good to go.
in conclusion: sometimes dylan is an asshole.
also, a cool picture that my buddy, doug, made special for this site:
yup, pretty darn cool. for more awesome drawings, that are actually very cool and not just propaganda for this site, check him out at:
i've been working very hard on my murder mystery, a concept for a teen fiction story, and more children stories... hence my absence from my duties as a blogger.
"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 downon 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.
