yourwords

I have a very good reason for being worn out and therefore not vigilant on the blog and writing front: School is wearing me out more than normal. There’s now 24 people in our class of pharmacy techs. That’s not a lot by my highschool/university terms, but by vocational school terms, it’s a bad thing. That means the teacher only has time to teach the new students the things that we already know, while we veterans have to do the learning of our new drugs on our own, as well as filling prescriptions. This is tiring work, and stressful. I’ve been looking at drug lists so long that I hear them echoeing in my head. (that’s partially my own fault. I use rhymes to remember generic/brand name. It works, but the resulting memory fixation depresses me.)

The result of all the previous blather is that Pharmacy school is eating my soul. there’s not enough left when I get free time to do any writing. I would blog while at school, because we get computer lab time, but blog sites are blocked. Something about not wanting us to waste our study time on non-study related activities. Nonsense! I get more out of blogging anyway! :)

Now that I’m done poorly excusing myself, I want to talk about Vampire folklore. Kind of. Yesterday I was visiting my mom’s book club. She requested my presence because she was having them read Dracula, in light of the upcoming spooky day. She doesn’t have a lot of time on her hands, and has the same soul death problem that I do. Which meant she relied heavilly on my random knowledge of vampire folklore to answer the questions that popped up. I tried not to turn it into a lecture, but at times I felt like a know-it-all, and no one likes a Hermione. 

Anyways, at the end of the night, I got a question from one of the women there, and it was a very interesting question. She wanted to know why I thought superstitions of vampires ever came about.

Prompt:

Why do you think myths of the undead ever surfaced?

Some believe there has to be a basis in reality. Lots of books are obbsessed with debunking the supposed ‘proof’ that the dead came back to haunt the living, like the appearance of finger nail and hair growth is explained by skin receeding. There’s probably some psychological aspects of being afraid of death and therefore the dead. That’s a very summarized version of my answer- a mixture of lack of knowledge about decay, some basis in reality, and the need to blame someone. I could go on and on. Maybe in another post.

My, look at those teeth! They’re unfathomable! Two rows?? No wonder pythons are infamous.

I found this picture after I typed in, “python teeth” to google. This sweet little fella killed himself by biting an electrified fence. The lesson I take from this is it’s not so smart to be allways on the defensive. Constatly attacking can get you into trouble. For me, it’s very easy to jump into defensive mode. If I feel the least bit threatened, I sink my teeth in, so to speak. It’s a pride issue, and I have the hardest time letting go of it. Right now, when I’m calm and in a stable environment, sure I can admit that my emotions rule me and that it’s not healthy. But in that moment, when I’m being told off for something, I’m too busy getting offended to consider whether or not their comment has any standing.

So far there hasn’t been any drawbacks from it that I can’t handle, but one day I might find myself hanging off an electric fence, just like that poor devil up there. Today, google images was like my Ghost of Christmas Future. I might have time to change my ways. :)

Prompt:

Write about a time when something you felt was completely useless proved to be useful.

Here’s my example: 

Why was I looking up python teeth?

Because I’m writing about a fight between a snake and a woman. I wanted to be a good little writer and do my research on how a python bite might look when it’s wrapped around one’s forearm. I got my answer.

But, no, this snake fight isn’t part of my normal book. It’s in my ‘book break’ that I’m choosing to write about snakes. Researching for a story can teach me so much about things I’d normally not give a second thought to. The broad spectrum of random trivia that I’ve collected adds up to a seemingly worthless pile. Most of the things I’ve researched have been in stories that I never planned to publish. Like this snake excercise. It’s actualy a fan fiction, so it can’t go anywhere. But learning about pythons for this story gives me a tool for future books. I have, afterall, the brewings of a story about the avatar of a goddess and her immortal snake companion. So there we have it. Sometimes useless things prove useful.

Happy oncoming Halloween!

Now is the time that we need to come together and figure out who we’re going to be on the night that we’re not ourselves. I’ve been looking since August, and you’d think I’d have my costume primped and pressed, hanging in my closet, ready for the 31st. But no. So far all I know is what I want to be, and what I want to dress as is a gothic lolita. :)

That’s the basic of the costume. Now why is this all important? Because the type of costume someone picks for themselves says a lot about a person. Want to be a candy corn witch? Or Batman? One is frilly, the other is flavor of the week. I could get very technical into what I think different costumes mean as a window into someone’s personality, I could get into specific examples of people i’ve known, but costumes are meant for the purpose of changing who you are. Even if what you want to be shows a lot about who you are, I don’t want to kill the fun of masks. I’ll let you do it! ;)

Prompt:

What were you for halloween last year? Look at all your past halloween costumes, and try to find a pattern.

I have a rule about halloween costumes; only scary themes need apply. You wont catch me in a cutsey lil bo’ peep dress, unless it’s the gothic version. Another of my patterns is romantic ideal, like vampire, lady death, or corpse bride. In the past couple years, I’ve been going all out with expensive, lavish accessories. Last year I got white out contacts. :) What all this says about me? It probably explains why I don’t want to analyze costumes too much- because I have too much fun being someone else. That’s kind of the mark of a writer, though. Who’s up for a bit of escape now and then??

This is my own picture taken from my front yard.

Nimrod was a king in the bible who worshipped heavenly bodies. These he mistook for dieties, sun moon stars, which actually many people of the day were into. Abraham saw the wrong in worshipping things in the sky that were merely created by the one god. Now there’s a whole big fuss about how Abraham lectured both King Nimrod and his own father- both didn’t intend to give up their worship of idols and heavenly bodies. To start his monotheistic religion (the first on earth if I’m not mistaken??) Abraham sets of on his own- wherein we get ’Abraham’s adventures in Monotheism.’ One rebellious nut who would rather worship something invisible rather than follow the crowd gives the world the three major and most clashing religions. Abraham told Nimrod that there’s only one way to worship, and his children have been spreading that story ever since. That’s not cool.

I’m not saying that good things haven’t come from abandoning paganism, because Abraham also aboloshed things like human sacrifice; however, sometimes I watch a beautiful sunset with brilliant colors streaking across a pastel sky, and I wonder if it’s so bad to revere that kind of natural majesty.  

Prompt:

After hearing that certain phrase so often, people widely accept that everyone percieves beauty for themselves, and all this percieved beauty is equal. The wide view of belief is not so open minded. Yet belief can be a beautiful thing- if it is allowed to be through concentrating on positive faith rather than guilt and discontent.

For yourself, why do you believe in what you believe in rather than what someone else believes in? Were you raised to believe it? Did you stumble across your own answers? And, most importantly, if someone with opposing beliefs were to confront you, how would you respind to that? Tolerance? Or counterattack?

I admit it, I’ve been studying monotheism for my own purposes. Can you tell?