Thursday's Twisted Links

Since we're in the season of holidays, I thought a holiday linking might be fun. So here we go. Right off the top of my head:

Halloween.     The Economy.     Dogs.

Wow. That's weird. Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it!

I babble on about Halloween being my favorite holiday all the time. I can't help it, I just feel like there's magic in the air during this particular season. I suspect that it has something to do with the change in weather ( I love cooler weather) and the focus on things like witches and goblins and all the things I love to write about. Even more than Halloween, I LOVE all things fantastic in fiction. Give me a good paranormal or fantasy story any day.

Which of course begs the question, why do I love fantasy? In a recent blog entitled, Why do we read what we read?, I admitted that, for me, it's because there are no rules. It's pure escapism. Escapism is the key for most of us. There's no point beating around the bush, things are very unsettling right now in the real world. People are suffering, money is tight, and we're all a little scared about the future. That's probably why, despite a tough economy, romance fiction in all genres is still selling well. People will give some things up when money's tight, but books are an indulgence many feel they can't give up...on an emotional level.

It's important to find ways to de-stress at times like this. The fun, candy-drenched Halloween season and reading are both great ways to escape real life worries. Another great de-stresser is...you guessed it...dogs.

Now, if you know me at all, you know I'm a dog-aholic. No? Oh yeah. I only have 11 of them, not really enough to, say, field a football team or anything, but it's a couple more than most people have. #:0) For me, dogs are the ultimate de-stresser. They're pure entertainment. And by watching them I learn a lot about human nature. Yeah, we've evolved well beyond dogs, but they're us, boiled down to our most basic needs. Love, food, play, rest. Then start all over again. It's a perfect cycle. If we could sweep all of the outside stuff away like they do and just focus on those 4 things, we'd all be happy. Can you imagine? Amazingly, that's where this linking completes. Full circle. Celebrating holidays and reading a good book allow us, for just a brief moment in time, to sweep all the worrisome outside stuff away and become dog-like. Holidays allow us to be together, enjoying the moment, eating great food, playing and laughing, and when we're alone again, we can relax with a great story, cuddling up to a loyal, furred companion.

Life doesn't get much better than that.

Happy Reading everybody!

Thursday's Twisted Links

This week's links are:

Getting Older.  Free will.  Fruitcake.

Hoo boy. This should be interesting. Okay, here I go.

I'm not old. Not in an age when people regularly live well into their nineties. But I recently underwent a life-changing event when my youngest daughter got married. This was an emotional time for me for a lot of reasons. I suffered all the usual emotions of course, but the wedding also hit me on another level, one that I never expected. It made me feel old. That sucked. I can't explain why it hit me like this, it just did. Maybe it's because as a daughter, wife, and mother, I've spent my life doing things for others that I didn't always want to do. That's not a complaint, I've had a blessed life and I know that. What I did, I did out of love. No regrets. But I always thought that, one day, I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, and I guess I've become a little selfish now that I'm so much closer to realizing that goal. Absolute truth.

Now here's where the event comes in. If you don't know me personally, you probably don't know that I'm not one for emotional displays or celebrations. I'm a pretty low key, under the radar kind of person. When we got married, my husband and I did a simple ceremony with just ourselves, a pastor, and our witnesses. Simple and quick. It was perfect for me. So I wasn't thrilled with the idea of a full-blown wedding. Long story, very short...It turned out fine, my daughter was gorgeous, and a good time was had by all. I'm so glad it's over. #:0) However, the event made me indulge in some internal examination...always fun right? I tried to figure out why I hate going to parties so much, why I abhor the spotlight being turned on me, and why these events that others cherish tend to just make me grumpy. I boiled it down to this, basically, I'm in my "do what I want to do when I want to do it phase", a.k.a. I've reached the age that I always thought was still out there a ways... Apparently it's here. Now.

I never saw it coming.

On a deeper level, if I go to an event it's almost always because someone is pressuring me to do it. I would never choose to go to, for example a school reunion (blech!) or a party unless I felt pressure to go. That's where free will comes in. Especially as you get older, you resist more and more the loss of your free will. Some extremely old people take this phenomenon way too far, assuming they have the right to do anything to anybody without repercussions simply because they managed to attain a ripe old age. But when you're in your fifties like I am, this desire to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want is merely a desire rather than an avocation. #:0)

So...you might be wondering...where does fruitcake come in? Most people would exclaim that fruitcake should NEVER come in...EVER. LOL

ADD Moment: I've always wondered why fruitcake survived as a food when almost nobody likes it. I've even heard of families who repackage the same thirty year old fruitcake each year and regift it to somebody in the family just for giggles. As traditions go it's a little odd, but sounds like tons of fun. Like turkey and dressing, fruitcake has become a holiday tradition. The only difference is, people actually eat the turkey and dressing. On a positive note, fruitcake actually makes a pretty good doorstop. #:0)

Back to the links: So anyway, enough of my ramblings. What? Oh, how does fruitcake link you ask? Well, the other day I saw a recipe using fruitcake that actually sounded good to me. I might even buy a fruitcake and make it this year. Why? Because I'm getting older...and my tastes are changing...and besides, it was my idea (a.k.a. free will).

Link closed.

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

It's that time again! Last week's linking just about did me in, but here I am, battle scarred and dizzy, to take another shot at linking. This week's links are:

Motherhood.     Aliens.     Tall shoes.

Oh. My. God. What have I done? I may not survive this one. Okay, here goes.

I'm short. Vertically challenged. Diminutive. Five foot not much tall. You get the picture. And, in my youth, I tried to offset this shortness by wearing taller shoes. With long pants and a pair of three inch tall shoes I was a goddess. But in the way of all things, as I got older I got tired of slogging around in shoes that felt like ship anchors. The dang things were heavy, unwieldy, and downright dangerous. Cracks in a sidewalk were treacherous, soft grass a sucking quagmire, and I could almost feel my tendons and ligaments shortening. So I gradually changed my fashion focus to one that was less glam and more comfort. The culmination of this change happened after I had my first child. There's something about waddling around for nine months with somebody's head in your ribs, their cute little feet tap-dancing on your bladder, that makes comfort seem more desirable, nay, nothing short of an imperative.

Besides, you can't carry a baby around while toddling along in dangerous shoes. One sinister crack on the sidewalk and your delicate offspring could find herself soaring through the air, headed for a bruise.

So I eschewed my tall shoes and opted, instead, for sneakers and flip flops. Ahhhh. My legs thanked me. My feet thanked me. And my back did a happy dance. Life was beautiful.

Then I started to think. Where did tall shoes come from? Where was the first platform shoe worn? Are there drawings of tall shoes on the cave walls in ancient Egypt? Is there evidence of tall shoes in the ground at Stonehenge? Have scientists recovered tall shoes near Roswell? You see where I'm going with this, right?

Did aliens bring us tall shoes like they brought us pyramids and big, seemingly useless pointed rocks in a circle? Crazy, you say? Ludicrous, you shout? Why? First of all, aliens are short. They might wear tall shoes too. You never hear about tall green men, right? It's always little green men. How are they going to intimidate other planets and peoples with that rap? They need to be tall right? The quickest way to do that is tall shoes.

And really, what better test of a civilization than to give them incredibly uncomfortable footwear and see if they can conquer it, even bend it to their will. I mean, have you seen today's tall shoes? They're the width of my pinkie finger at the toes and so tall your entire spine is contorted in order to wear them. The creatures who could dominate that kind of torture device are seriously manly, right? I mean, the human female is tough. We're resilient. We're rubber women! Who cares if our tendons are short? We singlehandedly scared off aliens with our shoes! And motherhood? It's the handing off of tradition to those who are stronger and more adaptable to the newest shoe styles.

Link closed.

The only fly in the ointment to my theory would be the sixties, when much of the target population wore no shoes at all or settled for wide, flat, comfortable shoes with a strange name. But fortunately the aliens didn't notice or we'd have been overrun and conquered by little green men wearing platform shoes during that decade.

Phew! That was close. #:0) We knew the sixties in America were scary, but we didn't know just how scary they could have been!

Happy reading everybody!