Thursday Twisted Links

Ha! I must be crazy. But here goes.

Stretchy pants.    Edits.    Chicken and noodles.

God I love stretchy pants. Don't you? When I think of all the years, when I was young and stupid, that I wore tight clothes that threatened to dissect me in several places, I wonder I even survived it. But those days are over. As I get older I've learned to appreciate the wonder of soft, comfortable clothes that don't make me want to put my jammies back on by two in the afternoon.

Stretchy clothes are one of mankind's best inventions. Forget light bulbs and smart phones. It's stretchy pants all the way.

Which brings me to chicken and noodles. God's food. Okay, the connection here is easy. If you eat too many bowls of chicken and noodles you're definitely gonna need those stretchy pants. And since you now have all that extra room in your clothes, you should definitely add some mashed potatoes to your chicken and noodles, and top it all off with a slice of sugar cream pie. Yum!

What's that? You're shocked at the idea of topping a starch with a starch? You didn't grow up in Indiana did you? Really, it's the only way to go. God handed the residents of Indiana the recipe himself. Or maybe he carved it onto some rocks or something...but I assure you it came right from heaven.

So here's the hard part. How do you link something as god-awful as edits to something as wonderful as  stretchy pants or chicken and noodles. It ain't easy, let me tell you. But I'm gonna give it a go.

Think of edits as the tight waistband on your smallest jeans. Yeah, that sux. Now think of them as the salad without dressing you should eat instead of those noodles and 'tators. At first glance edits would seem to be the thing that doesn't go with the others they always talked about on Sesame Street. But that's lazy thinking. Actually edits are so much more. They're the glaze on your writing that makes it taste better. They're the plump where your writing is flat, the zing where your story yawns. They're painful, it's true, but they give you comfort in the end. Because, when you finally let that little birdie leap from its nest, you'll know it will soar through the sky rather than plunge toward the ground like a rock. Then, once your little birdie finds its wings, you can pull on your stretchy pants and fix yourself a big bowl of chicken and noodles to eat while you read the rave reviews that result. 5 Stars - with wings!

Snap! Link closed. #:0)

Happy reading everybody!

Thursday's Twisted Links

Do. Not. Try. This. At. Home!  This week's Twisted Links are:

Aliens.       Shapeshifters.       Cell Phones.

On the surface, these three things might seem wildly divergent. If you think in terms of speculative fiction, you might easily connect the first two. But the third...well... But I'm not going to make the obvious connection here. That would be way too easy.

The secondary possibility is also too obvious. And, let's face it we don't actually know if aliens and shapeshifters use cell phones. In real life, aliens probably communicate via some kind of three dimensional, thought-initiated device, and everybody knows shifters communicate telepathically. Yeesh!

Don't insult my intelligence.

So let's investigate another angle. Is it possible shapeshifters could be aliens, aka Declan Sands' Blood-Hound series? Maybe. Again, we might never really know for sure. Either way, however, unless cell phones came from Mars or were invented by a mad, wild-eyed, tangle haired shifter scientist, there's no connection there.

Hmmm. On the surface, this would seem to be an impossible linkage. But fear not. You're dealing with a professional here. I can do this.

I think.

How about this. Believe it or not, if you started talking about the existence of aliens some people would look at you like you're crazy. I know...weird right? I mean, have they not seen the pyramids? Or observed pictures of crop circles? Did they not watch the movie ET twelve times? "ET phone home..." God I loved that movie. Anywho...

Similarly, there are actually some people who don't believe in shifters. It sucketh to be them. It really duth.

Point is, with imagination all things are possible right? Do you think the first users of Alexander Graham Bell's invention called the telephone could have ever envisioned today's smarter than the average bear cell phones? God no. If you went back in time and told Bell himself about your iPhone he'd probably laugh in your face and then have you fitted for a tight, tangly white jacket.  When Martin Cooper imagined the first cell phone in the seventies, I'm guessing his peers at Motorola probably thought he'd lost his mind. Despite the fact that it was bigger than my head, that first mobile phone was an incredible accomplishment, one which could never have been realized without someone having the guts and imagination to "go there" against the tide.

In the same way, aliens and shapeshifters are sometimes considered merely concepts derived from the imaginations of writers and film-makers. Maybe they are. But maybe, like Martin Cooper we're just visionaries who are way ahead of our time. I think most writers would prefer being called visionaries to drooling psychopaths wearing tangly white jackets, so I'm going with that.

I mean, at the very least we're entertaining right?

Happy Reading!

Thursday's Twisted Links

Okay, I'm gonna try this again. It's dangerous, it's kludgy, and you should never try it at home. Leave it to us professional linkers. #:0) This week's links are:

Bumble Bees.          Arsenic.          Corsets.

Women have done lots of crazy things throughout history to gain and hold beauty. Many beauty secrets have been deadly. Ancient Egyptian women used lead-based kohl to enhance their eyes. Similarly, in Greece, women used a mixture of lead and olive oil to whiten their skin, despite the slow poisoning effects. Japanese Geishas removed their makeup with nightingale poop. Bleurgh! But the worst era has to be Elizabethan England, where paleness was so valued the women ate arsenic and used leeches to make themselves white. Even worse, they ate tapeworms to stay slim. Blech! (very tempting, however. LOL)

So the link today between these three odd things is primarily beauty, but secondarily it's the tortures involved in making yourself beautiful!

Women praise the rosy fullness of bee stung lips and use honey for skin products. We replace sugar with honey in the hopes it will keep us slimmer. Believe it or not, arsenic still exists in some makeup, in amounts small enough to keep it from being listed as an ingredient. And corsets. Alas, the old whale bone contraption that took at least two people to wrench it closed is gone. Thank gawd! But we still have modern day versions of the corset. Can you say Spanx? #:0)

All women are linked by our search for beauty. It is the rare woman who doesn't care how she looks, or if there are things she can do to improve her natural gifts. And thank goodness we live in times enlightened enough about what can harm us that we can create that beauty without killing ourselves in the process. But more importantly, today's woman is too savvy and confident to fall for the "beauty at all costs" mentality. We can be strong and attractive and still understand there is more that makes us valuable human beings than our looks. But the history of beauty is important to understand, ensuring that we don't fall into the same traps our sisters from the past did. And our story, decades from now, can be used to similarly train our future sisters. I wonder what they'll think about Spanx? Hmmm

Here's to being the best we can be, without becoming slaves to others' expectations!