Concerning Two Thoughts

     I'm supposed to be studying. I even have a hot, sweet, comforting cup of tea nearby to give me strength. However, I made the mistake of choosing a Star Wars mug, and as I stare at the faces of the characters, my textbook metaphorically screaming at me in the background, the thought(s) attack my mind and refuse to leave:

     Did Kylo Ren throw temper tantrums over chemistry homework?
     And what sort of chemistry did they teach a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away??

     The answers are yes, and I'm not certain. And yet the questions still scamper about the ol' cranium, wreaking havoc on intellectual productivity.

     And thus dies my sanity. Again.

In Which I...Lack Words?

     Words. I'm supposed to excel in finding the right ones and putting them in the right order. I'm a writer; it's what I do when I'm not researching what sort of weapon causes what sort of wound and when the refrigerator was invented.

     I'm also not supposed to have emotions. I'm an INTP; it's what I do. Well, what I do when I'm not acting like this:

Image probably found on Pinterest.
If you don't know which comic I'm referencing, you shall be thrown out the window in a most undignified manner. 

     Lately I've been reminded that words are actually quite hard to find, and emotions are something I posses. (Wow, look at the passive voice in that sentence; my judgmental Shakespeare finger puppet is glaring at me in utmost disapproval.) That to say, I don't really have much to say this Thursday. Perhaps I'll give an update on what things I'm doing.

     ...

     I'm taking the ACT soon.

     ...

     I've been listening to a lot of Twenty One Pilots lately?

     Alright, I'll admit. My life is currently horrifically boring to blog about. Well, actually some of it isn't, but that portion is the portion I'd rather not paste all over the Internet.

     ...here, have a horribly timed picture of Watson yawning.

Concerning the Sudden Outpouring of White Death

     We tend to have wacky weather in Tennessee. By wacky I mean it can be comfortably in the 60s one week, and snowing the next. Sometimes the aforementioned variation takes place in the span of a few days, rather than weeks. One would think, with all our wacky weather, snow wouldn't phase us in the least. We'd merely attach makeshift snowplows to our cars, rev up the engine, and go about our business as usual.

     Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, or even a hypothetical world. (Or do we? Would we know if our world was hypothetical?) More unfortunately, snow days don't apply to homeschoolers. 

     Ah yes. Snow days. Such a magical blessing of the weather provides the setting for many classic movies; at least, that's what I've been told. Being a homeschooler, I wouldn't know from experience. 

     ...are two homeschooler jokes too much for one blog post? Perhaps. 'Tis a question that could inspire a whole unit study, or, at the very least, an essay. I blame my education for my tendency for accidentally write the said essays.

     *ahem* Anyway. Even though I experience the blessing of being able to do schoolwork in my pajamas (though the fact that I can doesn't mean I do it), I don't think I'm too badly set in the ways of awkwardness that seem to follow homeschoolers around like an evil snow cloud. I have friends...I think. I think I quote BBC Sherlock far too much for this to seem like a reasonable assumption.

GIF found on Tumblr

     I also like to think I'm somewhat of a rebel. I drank tea on national coffee day, I didn't go sledding when it snowed (instead, I took ominous pictures in black and white), and I still haven't seen the new Star Wars (though hopefully that shall be corrected tomorrow). Also, I forgot to build a snowman, possibly because an animated Disney princess didn't ask me to via song. Pity....especially if in doing so, I could have fashioned minions like these:

Image found on http://tardis.wikia.com/

     ...Doctor Who creates nightmare fuel like nothing else does. It also does a decent job of tearing one's heart to pieces and stealing one's sanity, though Sherlock is better at both. 

     Speaking of BBC Sherlock....

     ...no. This post has too many tangents already. Besides, even though we've had a new Sherlock episode for nearly a month now, I doubt I could express my opinions on it in any way other than punching the keyboard randomly and uncontrollably. Like so: aslkjkljlkjJASLDKFJASLJK;L. Quite expressive, hmm? Impossible to pronounce and beyond the feeblest clutches of logic, but expressive nonetheless. 

     Well... this was supposed to be about snow. Instead, it became a long ramble about nothing in particular, without even the title of "novel" to paint a thin excuse of sanity on the nonsense. It might be about homeschooling. It might also, more subtlely, be a study in the mind of a cabin fever-ridden INTP. Or merely.....lack of tea and warmth.

     I think I need socialization. 

Concerning Accidental Hiatuses

     Well. I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I know I did. The holiday itself was rather quiet, which was nice, especially after all the pandemonium in the weeks (and months) leading up to it. It felt a bit odd, though, for it to be over so quickly. Months of anticipation, weeks of preparation (or procrastinating on preparing), days and days and days of listening to Christmas music... and it's over in two days. Then one is left to wander around in shock, searching for one's life (and the meaning to it), until New Year's, when things finally begin to settle back to hectic normality. Anticlimatic much?

     Obviously, Christmas comes and goes every year. I've had sixteen long years to come to terms with this fact of life, and usually I don't pay much heed to it. But this year it hit me a bit harder than most. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I was immersed in the physical manifestation of the metaphorical Christmas spirit (aka, being forced to hear and/or sing the same few Christmas songs over and over) since the beginning of November. Late October, if one counts auditions. Or maybe it was due to the 70°F weather we had. In either case, I was rather busy, and missed a beautiful opportunity to use yet another Sherlock Christmas gif on this blog:

GIF found on Pinterest

     But, at last, I think I've regained the scattered pieces of my soul, dusted them off, and proceeded on with my life in a completely disorganized relatively orderly fashion.

     ....oh. There was supposed to be a point to this post, wasn't there? Twould be a pity to leave my painstakingly crafted graphic design to lie forgotten in an abandoned folder... I'm not an Ebenezer Scrooge, am I?

I've forgotten where I found this image. But it is intended to be humorous in that
I insist on using it as a profile picture throughout the year. Don't judge me.

...who am I kidding.

The Logic of Defenestration

     No, it's not Thursday. Do you know what it is instead?

(GIF found on Tumblr)

     Well, not quite Christmas, I suppose. (Actually,  for me it’s felt like Christmas since October, but that’s beside the point. Perks of being in a Christmas play.) But it’s Christmas in that last week I finished a literature class (for this semester, at least). Which means, mostly, I don’t have to write any more speeches until January. *mass celebration*

     So, while I have this massive amount of time on my hands (forgive the blatant lie; it’s December and I’m a musician and an actor. We don't get Christmas breaks), I thought, why not write about it instead of, you know, studying other things? Hey, before you yell at me, realize I don’t have finals to worry about. Which… well, I almost wish I did have them. I’d have something to blame my weird state of mind on, then. Just theater life. Theater life isn’t all glitter, you know (though there’s quite a lot of the said substance scattered about the stage). It involves a lot of exhaustion and vacuuming up fake snow and accidentally dropping the snow machine on the Peanuts gang. Whoops.

     Defenestration. What a lovely word. Vaguely ominous, and it sounds important. Sort of like the picture, I believe.

     I’ve heard (and thought of) quite a few dramatic ways to die, but getting thrown out a window rather takes the cake. That's one reason I killed a character that way, for a class assignment. I disposed of a character based on a mythical student, and in his method of death I included the punishment threatened by our teacher if we forgot our homework. When I preformed it, the class laughed, I didn’t mess up terribly badly, and I got a good grade on the tragedy. All was well and I was happy.

     Until I found out the mythical student wasn’t mythical at all.

     You see, last year someone had signed up for the class at the beginning of the semester but never showed up. As he had a name which made for a rather interesting pun, we all assumed it wasn’t a joke.

     But it wasn’t.

     The non-mythical student is indeed real and alive and attends other classes. Why he didn’t attend this class in particular remains a mystery. But now, if I ever meet him, I’ll have to explain how I killed him in my tragedy by tossing him out a window.

(GIF found on Tumblr)

Communist Bacon

     Did the title catch your attention? I'm rather proud of it. I spent long hours thinking it over, mulling it over in my mind, honing it, polishing it, until it reached perfection...

     Actually, I thought it up during a late night writing session. By late night I mean anywhere between midnight and two in the morning, and by writing I mean spewing whatever comes to mind onto a blank page, hoping for the sake of retaining my image of sanity that what I'm writing is funny. In other words, NaNoWriMo.

     I didn't write much on the Wandering Typewriter about NaNo this time around; last time I tried to do that, I failed the contest miserably. Best not to brag about something until you've actually completed it, no? And so, I kept quiet. I think it helped; I completed the contest, mostly by losing a lot of sleep on the last night. Actually, I failed and won at the same time; I didn't do the "official" version (50k words); instead, I did the Young Writer's Program version (c. 30k words). Sylvester already came to call, I think; half of the story is from his POV. The other half is from Anastasia's. It was extraordinarily helpful to have them both as narrators, as far as my wordcount was concerned; my wordcount skyrocketed every time they had a snark-off. Which was quite often, I'm afraid.

     Explanation over, we return to the title. Odd things tend to happen whilst writing during the month of November. Most of the time, they're merely hilarious typos. Other times, one gets very strange portion of writing, especially if you have an odd (and snarky) narrator. In my case, Sylvester rambled for about a page and a half about a communist bacon utopia. Actually, I'm not even sure if he got the definition of communism right, but for a 1 a.m. piece of writing, I think it's close enough.

     Behold. The beauty of bacon.

     "Bacon is overrated. Yes, the Americans violently disagree; I wouldn’t be surprised if some future conflict would go down in history as the First Great Bacon War. (The word “first” most certainly implies that there would be a second. Most likely a third, too.) But bacon is far from as wonderful as everyone seems to think it is. One has a few moments where it’s piping hot and delightfully crisp; a few precious moments where one has to ignore whatever other food may be tempting your palate and give your whole, undivided attention to the grease-slathered delicacy before one. Once that golden window of time passes, one is left with a sad, limp, greasy shadow of what once was. It’s only good for dog treats or feeding to those you dislike. Not your enemies, mind, unless you poison the bacon first.

     Guild bacon, though, somehow managed to stay hot and crisp long enough for one to properly enjoy it. And they didn’t try to squeeze a few extra slices out of the meat when they cut it up; if they were slow in the paperwork respect, at least they weren’t skimpy in the bacon one. They weren’t skimpy on the price they charged us for it, either.

     You see, marketing people are brilliant. In writing this tale, I’ve come to realize that they’re probably more like villains than I ever was. They sit in their offices, twirling their mustaches and snickering, as they plot how to exploit the poor bacon-hungry workers of what they haven’t rightfully earned. The smells taunted us; we wondered yet again why money wasn’t free and why we had forgotten about Bacon Wednesdays again. Even the free (but tiny) slice they’d give us only whetted our appetite for that which we could not afford. We’d stare at those ones in the possession of that mystical thing called Cold Hard Cash, who had traded it for the delicacy of fried swine’s flesh. We stared at them with the cold fire of the revolution in our eyes as they chattered about such trivial things as Life and Goals and Going to Work, letting the precious bacon cool on their plates. Every Wednesday the sight was the same. But repetition only ground the firebrand deeper into our souls.

When they at last rose, cold, uneaten bacon lying wasted on their plates like fallen warriors, we’d look at each and strengthen the mute pact. Someday we would rise. Someday the revolution would come. Someday we wouldn’t have to be lucky enough to possess Cold Hard Cash in order to purchase a delicacy. Someday we would force the greedy, lucky ones to give us the bacon we hadn’t earned and never intend on earning. Someday we would take and eat and take and eat and take and… And then we’d all realize we were late for First Tasks and rush out of the cafeteria, knocking over chairs, tables, and innocent bystanders, and forgot all about our dream of a socialist bacon utopia. I think I suggested once that we call it the Bacontopia, but instead of being lauded for my brilliance I got a lukewarm pot of coffee launched at my head. I suppose that’s why revolutions nearly always fail; the true geniuses get their ideas crushed (physically and metaphorically) and assorted items tossed at them. Maybe that’s why they say it’s difficult to be a genius.

Of course, when we stopped daydreaming about getting all the bacon we wanted and actually starting working hard enough to afford all the bacon we wanted, the dreams of revolution faded bacon back into the darkest part of our minds; the part we kept drowned in caffeine at all possible hours. These sorts of things tend to balance themselves out; the lazy ones would devour their utopia almost as soon as they got it, but the hard workers subconsciously realize that it’s a really stupid idea to start a revolution over bacon. That’s probably why the ones who fire the first shots in the First Great Bacon War will be Americans."

     Anyway. There you go. I hoped you enjoyed my character's rant critique of communist vs capitalistic bacon. And do forgive his snide remark about Americans; he's British, after all. Well...sort of British. The novel kept switching genres (steampunk to comedy to fantasy to fantasy steampunk comedy), so I'm not entirely sure where the setting is anymore. Oh well; that's what second drafts are for, are they not? 

     (Fine print: novel excerpt copyright Elizabeth Dykes. Please don't repost it anywhere without my permission. Though I'm sure the quality of it makes it an unlikely candidate for plagiarism.)

On Turkey (Or The Lack Thereof)

      Happy Thanksgiving, my fellow Americans. 'Tis the day where food in is abundance: especially turkey. Except....I am an odd exception. My family celebrated the majority of our Thanksgiving yesterday, in which...no turkey was consumed. And I have doubts about whether or not we will have any today.

     Yes, I know. Bring forth the pitchforks, the tar and feathers.

     Now that we have dealt with my un-American-ness, now comes the question of deciding what on earth I should write about. I should probably share some Thanksgiving trivia. For instance, did you know that the women most responsible for getting Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday also wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb? Perhaps instead it should be Mary Had a Little Turkey. Now that would be amusing. And nearly everyone knows that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national animal instead of the bald eagle. That would have made the national seal a bit ridiculous, would it not? And the turkey hardly has the hair-raising, epic screech the eagle has. 

     Wikipedia likely has quite a few interesting facts about the odd holiday. However, it is most unreliable and I shan't copy and paste. 

      I suppose I ought to give a cliche speech about what I'm thankful for. But instead I find myself asking, why is it cliche? Have we slipped so far into taking things for granted that these things have become trivial and annoying? Take the line, "thankful that we're all here together"; probably the most cliche of all the lines associated with the holidays. I know I've heard it many times without giving it so much as a first thought, much less a second. But think about it for a moment. We are blessed to live in a time and country of relative peace and safety. There are always tragedies, but for the most part we aren't in immediate danger most of the time. I don't think many of us realize what a supreme blessing that is. There have been so many times in history where an empty place at the table was a hollow reality. Where being together was just a fantastical wish. Where there wasn't enough food to stave off starvation, much less put together a feast. These aren't only in the distant past. In some places these are still 

      Amid all the Black Friday hype, Christmas preparation, and good food, it's hard to remember how many blessings we really have. They're not things to feel guilty over, but take a moment today--before the Black Friday adrenaline rush or the inevitable turkey-induced sleepiness kicks in--and just take a moment to remember all the things we take for granted. A home. A family. Friends. Warmth.

       Well, that waxed sappier than I intended it to. Have a Doctor Who GIF. 

(GIFs found on doctorwho.tumblr.com) 

     ....perhaps it's for the best, then, that we didn't eat any turkey yesterday