A little nod to Monty Python for the day

I think I need to watch Holy Grail again soon...


see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Birds on a wire

I'm a sucker for birds on a wire and sunsets, so I had to shoot this as I was leaving work yesterday. I love the little loopdey-loop in the middle. :)

How to Spot a Writer at a Party

This post over at Not Your Usual Suspects made me chuckle. From the looks of the comments, I'm not the only anti-social one out there. Phew!

How to Spot a Writer at a Party

Sigh...

http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2011/11/01

This is Halloween! [Video]

Halloween preparations are in full swing at our house. I spent last evening gluing labels on little vials of poison and some bigger jars of sundry witchy/mad scientist/wizard-y things. The night before was filled with debate of what, exactly, ogre snot looks like (and then reconciling that with what I had on hand to create said snot). Strangely, none of our costumes are ready yet - they're all in various stages of "not done yet."

Besides being just plain awesome, this video reminds me that I forgot to decorate much outside! I guess I'll have to work on that tonight...

How are you preparing for Halloween?

This is me :(

I keep telling LilGirl I'm an example of what NOT to do when it comes to math. Thankfully, Hubby is a math whiz, so there's some hope for her.

Math Homework

I love Savage Chickens. It's one of my favorite web comics. Check out the site.

Great class on creating conflict in your writing

I recently took this class and I learned a lot. Cheryl is offering the class again in November. She's a great teacher!

CONFLICT MAKES THE STORY

DATES:  NOVEMBER 1 – 30, 2011

INSTRUCTOR: CHERYL ST.JOHN

REDUCED ENROLLMENT FEE: $20.

(a savings of $10.)

REGISTRATION VIA PAYPAL: http://cheryl-stjohn-workshop.blogspot.com/

REGISTRATION OPEN NOW

 

Only a little over two months left of 2011! Did you accomplish everything you wanted to over the year? Writing improvement challenges? A new story proposal? A finished project? Here’s an opportunity to sharpen your skills and be prepared for those new goals, which are right around the corner.

 

CLASS DESCRIPTION:

No matter what writing topic Cheryl addresses, she hangs the most importance on characters. Conflict is drawn from characters. It’s based on their goals, their backstory and their motivation. It is opposing forces that come from within the characters themselves.

 

Webster’s Dictionary defines conflict as “the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction.” This definition is the essence of fiction, and we need to keep it in mind as we develop characters and plots. If there’s no conflict, there’s no story.

 

Conflict, of course, can be either light or heavy. In a humorous story, the problem may not be life threatening, but it still must be important to the characters. The characters’ motivations must be equally important to them. In suspense, the conflict is often life-threatening. All well-developed plots stem from creative use of conflict, and conflict is what keeps the reader turning pages.

 

In order to understand conflict and how to develop it, we must first understand what conflict is, what conflict is not, and what conflict can be. The elements that make up a story are so closely meshed that at times it becomes difficult to dissect and make a firm delineation between them. In a masterfully developed story, characterization, plotting, and conflict are all intricately entwined.

 

Cheryl will explain opposing goals and how to create conflict that will sustain a story. She’ll give practical advice on:

• Motivating characters
• Creating characters with built-in conflict
• Revealing emotion through conflict
• Internal and external conflict
• Simple and complex conflict

 

More info here.

One of my favorite Halloween books

Or, really, one of my favorite books, period.

I don't know what happened to my copy of Popcorn by Frank Asch (I hope one of my brothers has it) but while I was searching for a replacement copy recently, I came across Frank Asch's site, where he will read the book to you (and your little ones):

Popcorn by Frank Asch

Wait, I need to read this...

"Cultivating a regular daily practice of actually showing up and creating is the only way you will ever progress your talents, your ideas and you ambitions in creating."

From Theorist To Artist: Why You Need A Lot Less “How To” And More “Just Do” | A Big Creative Yes

Yes, this is me. Just one more article...one more grid to fill out...one more sticky note to put on the board...one more...Hey, where'd my time go???

via @thecreativepenn

The Stanford speech + LilGirl's tribute to Steve Jobs

Of course, this will be played over and over in the next few days, but it's a great speech and you'll only hear snippets on the TV news. Here's the whole thing:

 

Last night, when we first heard the news (via Twitter) we then turned to TWiT and watched their Tribute And Remembrance Of Steve Jobs, which was sort of a techie wake. It's worth watching - more heartfelt and in-depth than mainstream media's coverage, I think.

LilGirl didn't act interested and disappeared into my office where she seemed to be digging through the craft drawers whenever I checked on her. But after she had gone to bed, I found this on the kitchen table:

From Random

Sometimes she finds the best way to express her emotions is by creating things. In this case, that's superbly fitting.

Talk like a pirate, walk like a pirate...rap like a pirate?

I heard these guys for the first time on this week's NSFW (which isn't really "Not Suitable for Work" except that you might get in trouble for laughing too hard).

Cluck! Er, I mean, Arrr!!!

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day and the Savage Chickens never let me down:

Lots more here: Pirate Cartoons | Savage Chickens - Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage

(Yes, I had to sneak Star Wars in)

Awww, isn't that sweet...wait...what?

When I look at photographer Trey Ratcliff's blog, I usually skip to the photo at the bottom, then go back up and read the stuff at the top which explains the photo, thus my initial reaction to this photo was "Ooooh, that's just the most perfect old French cottage!"

Click through for full size

Then I read the photo description. Of course it's "the most perfect old French cottage," that's what it was painstakingly designed to be: It's part of the “Hameau de la Reine," Marie Antoinette's own sort of Disney-fied version of a French hamlet. I'd heard of it, but had never seen a picture before.

Anyway, it's still a nice photo, so here ya go.

Tiny House in France

Ghostbusters is coming back to theaters

I'm actually kind of excited about this. It's not a reboot, and as far as I know it's not having 3D added, it's THE MOVIE in all its unadulterated unaltered-ness (yes, I'm looking at you, George Lucas). WooHoo! (So maybe "kind of excited" is an understatement. Sosueme.)

‘Ghostbusters’ to Get Theatrical Rerelease (via /Flim)

Movie Night: Your Highness

We watched Your Highness last weekend. I had pretty low expectations for this movie, and even those weren't met. I love screwball comedy, but when it seems to have been written by a bunch of horny 14-year-old boys, that just doesn't cut it. Done right, this could have been something like the Spaceballs of the sword-and-sorcery genre, but it was just a bunch of  bad accents, puerile jokes and sexism hung on a flimsy plot.

Normally, if I don't like a movie, I can still see where someone would enjoy if they were "into that sort of thing" like war movies, horror movies, or whatever other genre I don't usually go for. I can usually pull some redeeming value from even the worst movies, or at least come away with a "well, they tried, it just didn't work" sort of attitude. But with Your Highness, I really just want those 102 minutes of my life back. I really can't recommend that anyone rent it.

I wrote this review on Sunday, but let it sit for a few days to see if I still felt this way before publishing it. Yep, still do, even though I think said review has a "You kids get off my lawn" feeling. Maybe I'm just getting old, but man, I was really disappointed in this movie.

Following weather events with a Twitter list

Hurricane Irene, August 26, 2011
by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

I've been curating a list on Twitter for weather events for some time, but it just occurred to me today that I should make it public (I usually make my lists private by default) and let others know it's there. It's been great for following the progress of Hurricane Irene without having to be glued to the TV (or even the computer, since I can check the list using my smartphone).

The list is by no means exhaustive and it's constantly growing. I've tried to throw in nationally known meteorologists (from the networks, for example), some government agencies, and some storm chasers. I add more as I come across accounts which are relevant.

The few locally-based accounts I included are mostly focused on eastern Nebraska. This is really all the list was when I began, but I started adding accounts with broader coverage after the tornado in Joplin, MO this summer.

I've also added some earthquake-related accounts. I didn't feel like making a separate list when I only had a couple accounts for those and there's quite a bit of overlap in reportage. (On a side note, did you know that you can Google "earthquake" and Google will put a list of the most recent earthquakes at the top of the search results? It's handy.)

The great thing about Twitter lists is that you don't have to be following the accounts you put in there, so if you don't want a lot of extra noise in your main Twitter stream, but you want to be able to check on what's going on with a certain subject, you can throw the relevant accounts in a list and then check it from time to time. You also don't have to have a Twitter account at all to view the list, just follow the link.

Announcing: Mary's Ramble Annex

I've been a bit frustrated lately. I've had this mental argument with myself going on for some time about what to do with links I want to share, but don't necessarily want to write an entire post about. I sometimes share those on Twitter, sometimes on Facebook, sometimes I just hit "Share" in Google Reader which puts them on a public page at my Google Profile, as well as posting them to Google Buzz (where I never seem to go anymore, sadly) and the list of those ends up on the "Recently Read" page here (which will probably go away soon). None of these options are very satisfying, though. I'm basically just handing the links off to someone else to handle. They are shared in someone else's format, difficult-to-impossible to edit, and difficult to find again later. 

I've often thought about just sharing the links on Mary's Ramble, but there are nights I want to share EVERYTHING I see, and I really don't want to fill up someone's RSS feed, Twitter stream, or Facebook wall with a ton of trivial stuff. That's not what I feel like people have signed up for when they follow this blog. I'd like to keep MR, as much as possible, for the times when I have something of my own to share.

I've often thought about starting a Tumblr blog (or something from a similar service), but every time I almost set one up, I decided it really wasn't what I wanted. 

At last, I decided to create Mary's Ramble Annex. That way, if you're not interested in the five things I read when I couldn't sleep last night, you don't have to be annoyed by it in the feed from the main blog. But if you are interested, you can click through once in awhile, or subscribe, or whatever, knowing that it's likely to be high-volume and low-commentary.

We'll see how it works, or if it works. 

Yep, it's been one of those weeks

Click through for the larger version: The Brads - Twitter Week in Review

Meanwhile, I've been buried in a hurricane of paperwork since school started. I don't think I filled out this many forms for college, and LilGirl is only in 6th grade! I've had more homework this week than she has...

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Bike For Me!

If only I could afford this...

If only I knew how to ride...

When we stopped in Deadwood, we checked out the old slime plant - doesn't that sound like a great spot for a Scooby Doo mystery? It used to even look like a quintessential Scooby Doo bad guy hideout, but now it's been renovated and just opened as the Deadwood Mountain Grand. When we were wandering around inside, we found the artists' colony, and in true Black Hills fashion, much of the art had to do with motorcycles. In fact, some of the art was on motorcycles. This one made me squeal like a little girl:

The Pirateglide by True Kustom

If you have any trouble viewing the slideshow here, click through to see it on Flickr.

It wasn't until I was editing these photos that the irony struck me of finding a bike in Deadwood with Ian McShane on it...or is that more dorky than I want to sound?

(Just in case you're confused now: Ian McShane, who played Blackbeard in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, also played Al Swearengen in the HBO series Deadwood)

Even the gnomes are bikers this time of year

We just had a great vacation in the Black Hills, visiting family (cuddling the new nephew!), playing tourists, and checking out the motorcycles which were EVERYWHERE for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. I've got lots of fun stuff to post about, but I'm crawling into bed early so I thought I'd just post this little teaser for now.

From Random

I saw this pair in the window at Prairie Edge, one of my favorite stores in Rapid City. I'm not usually a big fan of gnomes, and these were on the large side (3-feet plus, I think) but I'd definitely love to put this pair in my yard.