A Post About Nothing In Particular

Well, I can't really think of anything special to blog about, and I promised another segment of the story, so here it is:
[Synopsis so far for our new readers: Spammy, a seven-foot-tall, forest-dwelling woodwose in northern Dazzlerbaijanini, is visited by three warriors from a southern village, seeking for his help. Apparently their god has forgotten to put the moon in it's proper phase, so they cannot perform a vital sacrifice which will allow them to survive through the winter. Spammy and the three warriors go into the mountains to find the god, and that leaves us where we are now. You can read the other parts of the story under the label 'Dazzlerbaijanini.' Enjoy!]
Spammy and the three warriors peeked over the ridge, at the small, mountain town before them.

The snow drifted down on the silent village as the sun climbed behind the easternmost mountain. A few wagtails tweeted in the trees, typing with their talons on their cell phones faster than any man could ever hope to achieve.

The rays of the sun shot through the forest as the sun burst over the horizon like an indignant father who knows he told his child to come down for breakfast ten minutes ago, and yet no children have shown.

The wagtails scattered as the loud, confused cry of a child rang through the village.

Spammy heard loud whipping sounds and shouts of elderly people who sounded like they were having a little too much fun. A door burst open and a ten-year old child ran out of it, in nothing but his undergarments. An older woman ran out after him, swatting him on the back with a branch and shouting "Apaļš kā pūpols!" at him.

More shouts of "Apaļš kā pūpols!" rang throughout the village and more whipping sounds ensued.

"Hmmm." Spammy said, "So people celebrate Pussy Willow Sunday up here too?" (AUTHOR'S NOTE: No! It's not what you think it is! There's actually a Latvian holiday called Pussy Willow Sunday on which the parents awaken their children by whipping them with pussy willows) A little early for that, isn't it Or very, very late? It's a spring holiday."

The lead warrior scratched his chin. "They must be very confused people."

Spammy hoisted himself onto the ledge whereon the village sat. "We might as well ask them for directions, mightn't we?"

"I suppose."

The three warriors followed Spammy as he stepped into the snowy town.

"Erm, excuse me, sir?" Spammy said to a militant mother with a willow wand.

"Yes, would you like me to whip you with my willow?" the woman raised an eyebrow and her branch.

"Um, no, thank you. We were just wondering if you knew they way to heaven?" Spammy plucked at his beard. "I heard it's on top of one of these mountains. And...ummm, we can't exactly find it."

"No I don't know where it is. Would you like me to whip you with my willow?"

"Um, no, thank you very much. Err, I guess we'll just be on our way then--but, could you tell me why you're celebrating Pussy Willow Sunday--a spring holiday--at the beginning of winter?"

"Well, our God hasn't even told us it's summer yet. So we're just assuming it's still spring. Would you like me to whip you with my willow now?"

Spammy turned to give a confused glance to the lead warrior. "Methinks you aren't the only ones with god-problems."

"I'll take that as a yes, then." The woman said, and gave Spammy a swat across the back of the head.

"Ack! No! I don't want a whipping!" Spammy tried to shield his head with his arms as the woman delivered more blows with the willow wand. She wouldn't listen.

Ferocious blows swiped across his arms and loosed catkins created a cloud around the willow-berserker woman.

"Run!" Spammy turned from the woman and took off up the mountain side, with her chasing him and whipping his fleeing back.

"Apaļš kā pūpols!"

7 Things Tag

Now I'm not sure if this counts at all, but the Blogger Police aren't watching, and it's something to blog about, so...

Kevin got tagged twice, apparently. The second time she tagged me.

And...so I have to list...seven things...that are...um...my favorite fictional characters. Kind of confusing, but cool!

1. Cthulhu. I mean, come on. Who wouldn't list him as numbah one, mmm?

2. Sir Kato from Mio, My Son. He was cool. 'Specially since Christopher Lee played him in the film (I mean, Christopher Lee = stone-hearted, evil knight, right?)

3. Rincewind from the Discworld series. Cowardly, but cool (And David Jason, who played him in The Color of Magic [the film], is awesome!)

4. The Shrike from the Hyperion Cantos. Okay, so I've never actually read the Hyperion Cantos. But so what? The Shrike is awesome.

5. Beorn, from the Hobbit. Who couldn't like the huge, hairy werebear that slew Bolg, son of Azog?

6. Conina the Barbarian Hairdresser from the Discworld series. She was BA, in a silly sort of sense.

7...I can't think of another. Can I list one of my favorite fictional characters from my works of fiction? Okay, I'll do that. Wight, from my novella Captive of Immortality. He was pretty BA (or so I thought, anyway).

Okay, so now I tag four people, I guess (And if you've already been tagged, then...disregard this, I guess--but I will extensively research whether or not you've been tagged, so if I do tag you, rest assured I sincerely believe you have not been tagged yet)
Aly at Seriously Unserious Thoughts of a Seriously Unserious Person
Zella at Zella Kate (and at Grammatically Motivated)
Jean at Discarded Darlings
Martha at Skyewriting and Musings
(Yeesh, where are all the guys on blogspot?)

All you tagged peoples, list seven things you've read/read about in any book (fictional or non-fictional) that are REALLY AWESOME! And then tag four other people (who have not been tagged--or at least that you sincerely believe have not been tagged)

[Story segment on monday!]

The Avocado Capital of the World

Did you know I live in the (self acclaimed) Avocado Capital of the World? That's right. Fallbrook, California is (self acclaimedly) the Avocado Capital of the World. It's an Avocado town. There are people with twenty-five acre groves of avocados. There's a festival for them. It was yesterday. People come from all over (well, all over the county, anyway).
People go around dressed as avocados, they eat gallons and gallons of guacamole, sell avocados, sell avocado skin-made clothing, airplanes fly over and dump avocados on other people.
Okay, so I was embellishing a little. But this town is crazy for avocados. They petitioned for a national avocado day, but then someone told them that avocados don't grow all over the united states. There was a town-wide day of mourning when they heard that.
What's that? Still embellishing? Okay, well, a little. But who cares? That's what the blog's about! I would call it 'Embellishments' if that didn't sound (and look) so much like 'Embezzlements.'
Anyway, I just thought I would share with you that I LOOOOOOVE AVOCADOS! Even though I have never actually gone to the festival (it's too crowded, and I prefer to eat avocados in the safety of my own home).

[No story segment this time, but I'm working on it]

A Post from Afar

If this was posted less than three hours ago, and you're reading it (I'm assuming that you are reading it, seeing as how you couldn't very well know what I'm saying here without reading it) then it could very well be that I'm not in my normal SoCal abode, but up in Big Bear, skiing as we speak! Well...skiing as you read, and I ski. So...skiing while we are doing separate things which are not at all similar. I guess. Whatever.

But that doesn't stop me from blogging! I'd like to say I used my psychic powers to post this while skiing, but I can't. I have internet up here so I wrote this on Thursday (and it's weird typing this out, saying "I wrote this on Thursday" when it is Thursday) and scheduled it to come up today.

Spammy and the three warriors trudged up the mountainside, the wind nearly blowing their furs off.

Spammy wrapped his long beard around his neck like a scarf. "Are we there yet?"

"You asked that five minutes ago!" the lead warrior said, "And the answer is still the same! Another few days!"

A twenty-five foot tall man wearing nothing but a loincloth stepped out of the trees, with a horse-sized, winged lizard on a leash. 

"Come on, my little Puky-poo, come on. Who's daddy's boy, mmm? Who's daddy's boy?" the giant-sized loincloth wearer walked on with his dragon.

"So..."Spammy said, "Is that the god we're looking for?"

"No." the lead warrior said, "He's bigger than that."

Lunchtime!

And...you may or may have not noticed...but I forgot to blog on Friday. And I blame...myself! Because it was my antidea (the antithesis of an idea) to not blog on Friday. As you probably didn't know, I was skiing on Friday. And on Saturday I was at a film festival (not Sundance or anything, just our local film festival) and on Sunday...well, on Sunday I was mourning the loss of an opportunity to blog. And right now all I can think about is having lunch. So...with that in mind, I shall blog about lunches.
Lunchtime is more than just an intangible period in the middle of the day. It is a moving space, traveling across the globe as noon strikes in different time-zones and people say 'Gee...I'm hungry. I wonder what time it is--hey! It's time for lunch.'
This reminds me of the song 'Girls Just Want to Have Lunch' by "Weird Al" Yankovic (one of my favorite artists). Love Weird Al. Great songwriter.
[Breaks for Lunch]
Hmmm...now I can't really think about lunch any more...now I'm thinking about dinner. But it's too early to blog about dinner. So what to blog about?
It's raining...Naw. The rain is cool--awesome, in fact--but I can hardly blog about it (not as good as Alygirlrockz16 can, anyway, as is demonstrated in this post).
Hmmmm...what to blog about...
The wide, flat, gray clouds covered the land of Dazzlerbaijanini, its vast pine forests sinking further into their own shadows. A deep, thin, steep-walled canyon cut through one of the larger pine forests, with few entrances and a shallow, gravelly stream running through it's middle.
A small, thatch hut leaned against one of the cliff-like walls at the northern end of the canyon, where it dispersed between two mountains. A thin trail of smoke rose from the top of the hut.
Three men crept toward the hut, wearing thick furs and carrying wooden shields.
It started to rain as the men stepped into the ten or fifteen foot circle around the hut that was barren of even the sparsest bushes. They could see why it was barren; a cow was grazing on a thick bush near them.
"Be aware, they say the man in the hut can hear the thoughts in a man's head," whispered one of the men, "And the mildest disrespect, but it thought or said, will trigger his rage."
They needed no man to tell them to be respectful, for that moment the man stepped out of the hut.
He was seven feet tall, with a huge, fuzzy brown beard and a walking stick as thick as a man's arm. He wore a plethora of dark furs, secured to his tall frame by long strips of leather. An owl settled itself on his shoulder.
The three men bowed. "Great sage of the forest, protector of the wild--"
"Enough of that." The gigantic woodwose stretched his fur-coated arms. "You can just call me Spammy."
"Umm, Spammy, then. G--great spammy."
"Just Spammy."
"Oh! Oh yes! Wise and just lord of the trees--"
"No, Spammy. Without anything else." Spammy turned, and motioned for the men to come inside the hut. "It is lunch time. Would you like some yogurt?"
"Yogurt from your mighty cow would be an honor of great dimensions, O Spammy." The leader of the group sat down at the table, a little hesitant. The other two men sat as well.
Spammy set three wooden bowls of yogurt in front of the men, giving them each a spoon as well. "Why have you come here, as warriors to a peaceful man's house?"
"We come as warriors, O Spammy, but we bring no swords. Only shields, to signify that we are ready to defend, should we find an enemy, not attack." The leader of the group took a bite of yogurt. It was tart and thick, just like the woodwose himself.
"I see." Spammy swallowed a triple-sized spoonful of his own yogurt. "And why have you come here at all?"
"Winter is coming on, as you undoubtedly know," the leader of the men said, "And every winter, we sacrifice to our god when the at the fourth moon blackness after the spring sacrifice. This ensures that our god will give us fire for the duration of the winter, so that we will survive."
"Makes sense." Spammy took another swallow of the yogurt. "So what?"
"So, Spammy," The leader leaned forward. "We haven't sacrificed yet."
"Well that seems like your problem. Isn't it? Did you miss the new moon?"
"No, Spammy. There are snows in the mountains, and the storms are getting much colder and more frequent. The moon has not been black for a long time. It has been almost twice the time it usually takes. And the moon is still in the same phase it three weeks ago."

Gee. That was fun. I'll have to finish that. Maybe I'll rip Scott off and start something...like...'Micro Fiction Mondays.' Except that isn't really a microfiction (for one thing, it's over five hundred words, and it's not done yet) Anyway, that about fills up the post! Happy trails, all!

A New Facet...

...to my nerdiness. I don't know if I ever really qualified as a real nerd until today...because today I played my first game of Sudoku. It was quite fun (but probably only to the nerdy at heart).

I've never really been a numbers person before, but this is pretty basic, so I enjoyed it.

I imagine there are secret Sudoku cults hiding in dark catacombs and scratching occult glyphs on their altars and performing certain amounts of sacrifices (in relation to how many other sacrifices they've done that day).

I think life works like a big huge game of Sudoku...in relation to everything that's happened and will happen, you do something accordingly. Either that or...the world is a box and we're all numbers.

So...who here plays Sudoku? Are you a casual Sudoku nerd or a cryptic Sudoku cultist?

Easter Madness

Easter is practically here! And besides being the largest sugar-holiday the year round, it also features a rabbit who lays eggs! It takes one heckuva a race to take a holiday and do that with it. At least there's no decorations involved.
I do like some of the celebratory aspects of the holiday, though. For instance I get a lot of fulfillment out of easter-egging houses (which is throwing plastic easter eggs at people's homes) and I can't get enough of going out into the woods with a shotgun and hunting easter eggs (the easter egg season is so short, though! with the huge closed season they get, you'd think there'd be billions of them).
Anyway, happy easter, and may all your rabbits lay chocolate eggs for you! (Check to make sure they are chocolate eggs before eating them, mind)