Balancing Blog Chains

Another blog chain ends. This one is about the topic 'balance'. Themes range from writing, to motherhood to chocolate. I've lovingly described all the posts. The descriptions might be accurate too.

As I wrote this post, I further pondered balance. However balanced I think I am, I'm really just a slave to my animals. I brought a multipack of breakfast cereal today. Why? So my cockroach could have the cornflakes. The illusion of balance is just to stop me realising I'm a slave and rebelling. After all, it's hard to buy your own cornflakes when you're a cockroach.

• February Blog Chain Entry: On Balance - Balancing time between work, family and hobbies... also a pink fish. The fish isn't mentioned in this blog post, but I'm reading between the lines.
• Sweet Dreams - The things you can learn from dating a 45-year-old dentist.
• Blade off the Feather - The tale of a high school writing competition.
• February Blog Chain: Balance - The balance of life and a few crabby horoscopes.
• Finding Balance In An Off Kilter World - Curve balls being thrown at writers and how they deal with it.
• Balancing - The love of balancing and seeing movies in pyjamas.
• Balance in the face of a Saint - A thought on balancing the stuffing of chocolate during Valentine's Day.
• Balance - Balance in life and the inspiration it brings for stories.
• Balancing - the latest blogchain and me - How reproductions of eighteenth century fabrics can balance you.
• Balance in the Wrong Situation Could Cause Brain Damage - It isn't always a good idea to balance when you're dancing.
• February Blog Chain - Taking leaps of faith and hopefully not dying.
• Through The Looking Glass Darkly - Why broken windows are like babies.
• Balance - Heather discusses keeping her identity during motherhood.
• The Death of the Horses - The nothing keeps eating my playparks.

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The Death of the Horses

'Tis the season for blog chains. This chain is all about balance, of any sort people want to write about. The previous post is about being a mother. I don't know what it's like to be a parent, so I'll talk about children instead. Or more specifically, balancing the needs of children to play and be safe.

I live on a council estate (cheap rented homes) built in the '80s. There was a lot of idealism in the design of the estate. Green spaces and playparks were scattered everywhere. One of the local playparks was called The Horses by the local kids. It had a wooden horse, donkey and pig. I wanted to call it The Donkeys, but that never caught on. Once the council got round to finishing it, a wooden castle with slides also appeared. The playpark was renamed The Castle. Children are a hotbed of imagination when it comes to naming playparks.

The Castle survived for years, but the same wasn't true of many of the other playparks. The balance started to shift away from providing play equipment with the rise of everyone suing everyone else. Anytime a child had an accident, the toy was blamed and was removed from all the playparks. Swings, round-abouts, sew-saws, climbing frames and slides were deemed to be too dangerous. There wasn't much left after that.

Stranger danger was also becoming a big thing when I was a child. The first thing they did was to run awareness campaigns in schools and put signs up at the playparks warning children. Just like the worries about the safety of play equipment, this escalated. Most of the playparks were removed completely, so that nasty strangers couldn't wait there for the kids. There's nothing but a patch of concrete marking where they were (which ballgames are banned from, because balls are dangerous).

Eventually The Castle was replaced by a preschool playpark. Everything was soft and safe. It's like the scene in 'Finding Nemo', where Marlin thinks Nemo should play on the sponges with the little kids. This year, the playpark finally lost the battle. It was removed and turfed.

This is the replacement for the playpark. The iron fence doesn't look arty to me, but maybe it's a modern art exhibit? Who knows. Since this picture they added a few trees (they haven't removed the arty fencing). Now old folk can sit and watch the trees.

So where do the kids play? In the road and the local woodland. There aren't any rules banning ballgames from the road and trees make an impromptu toy. A child is more likely to die from a speeding car than a fall from a slide, but the council doesn't have the money to keep paying out compensation every time a child breaks an arm at a playpark. They don't get sued if a car kills a child. It doesn't take a genius to see this isn't the way to balance child safety with child entertainment.

The solution? Anytime you meet a parent wanting to sue over a minor playpark injury, cover them with sparklies and call them stupid.

I'm the end of the chain, but you can circle back around to the start at The Unfocused Life.

Or visit the other chainers: The Unfocused Life * Auria Cortes * Spontaneous Derivation * Organized Chaos * The Writer's Round-About * Spynotes * Williebee * My Path to Publication * Even in a Little Thing * Spittin' (out words) Like a Llama * A Thoughtful Life * Life in Scribbletown * For the First Time * Polenth's Quill

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In the Style of Cassie Edwards

Dynamic bloggy stuff will come another day. I currently have an illness that makes all my muscles hurt. Those little guys that make your fingers move are easy to forget, till the day that they feel like pixies have been punching them all night. And you realise you need them to hold onto a knife and fork, mugs of tea, chocolate bars... all those essentials of life.

So for now, something less dynamic and more silly. Evil Editor ran a 'write like Cassie Edwards' exercise. Cassie is a romance writer who allegedly (I don't want to be sued) plagiarising non-fiction by inserting non-fiction passages into her books. The exercise was to un-skillfully insert a (not plagiarised) non-fiction passage into a scene. Mine is up here for Evil Editor minion comments. And my copy for posterity is below.


Educational Tennis

Being a sports commentator was the easiest job I'd ever had. Nothing much happened in tennis. They hit the ball back and forth. That's all there was to it.

"And Bruce hits the ball. John hits it back. Bruce misses! Shame."

A child dropped a teddy over the railings and started crying. A linesman handed it back. That was the excitement over for this game.

"John's there in his traditional white shorts as he serves the ball. Bruce has gone for this year's craze, the pink shorts. Have you noticed how all the guys have them? And he hits the ball."

A seagull swooped over the court, lured in by the doughnuts on the umpire's chair.

"The Herring Gull is more formally known as Larus argentatus. It is a flocking bird with a complex range of vocalisations. Adults are mainly white, with pink legs, yellow beaks and dark feathers on their back and wings. Its breeding range includes Europe, Asia and North America. Though primarily a sea bird, many colonies have moved inland to take advantage of food scraps in urban areas. Herring Gulls are able to see ultraviolet light, which is a form of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than violet light."

It dawned on me that the crowd was staring in my direction.

"And Bruce hits the ball!"

LOLfantasy

I've been playing around with the lolcats account system. It seems pretty nifty so far, as you can favourite useful lols and keep track of your own. It's part of the blog writing code to include the occasional lolcat, so anything that makes it easier to sort them is handy.

The secret master plan will be to make some LOLcockroachz, if I manage to get any funny pictures of Sparkle. It has to be said that cockroaches don't go out of their way to do funny things. They lack the eyestalk advantage of snails. This might take me awhile.

Me: Do something funny, Sparkle!
Him: *hiss*
Me: ...I take that as a no?

While I wait for Sparkle's moment of weakness, I shamelessly used photos that other people uploaded to make some lols. How cute is this bunny? Plus, I gave it a fantasy caption to go with my blog. So I have an excuse for writing a whole blog post about captioning cute animal photos. It's fantasy.

You can rate the lol by clicking the bunny, and then on the lolcats site clicking the cheese burgers. I see a new checking-for-my-votes obsession coming on.

P.S. My cheezburger account is here, if you want to be friends: Be My Cheezfriend!

Cats and Lolsnails

There are variations of the law about having cats on blogs. I figured I'd better cover all bases, before the blog overlords come looking for cats.


1. A Photograph of Your Own Cat

I don't have a cat, but I do have a garden. This cat is in my garden. The cat takes this to mean that he owns my garden. I take it to mean that my garden owns this cat.

2. A Photograph of Your Non-Cat Pet

Sparkle the cockroach meets his evil twin.

3. A Lolsomething of Your Pet

I round off the offering to the blog overlords with a lolsomething to match my pet choice. There weren't any lolcockroachz, so it has to be a lolsnail.

Hunting the Gruffalo

Today was Gruffalo hunting day. The local Waterstones claimed that the Gruffalo would be there all day for storytime and activities. Armed with a camera, my brother and I set off to hunt the Gruffalo....

Unfortunately, the claim was wrong. He might have been there at the start time, but he wasn't there later on.

We came up with some reasons why the Gruffalo might not be there:

• Monsters have a great union, which ensures that all monsters get a four hour lunchbreak.
• Gruffalos are invisible.
• The mouse turned up and scared him.

Oddly, the bookshop still had the sign up saying he'd be there.

We did get to see real mice though, as we stopped at the petshop to get cuttlefish bone for my snails. This usually involves going into the section where the cute animals are and peering at them. A mother and daughter were also in the cute animals section. The child wanted a hamster, which led to this discussion:

Mother: I don't want anything in a cage. How'd you like to be in a cage?
Child: Yeah, but... we're all in cages really.

The philosophy of this statement went over the mother's head. I don't think the child got her hamster. It was certainly a level of argument worthy of a hamster.

Maybe the Gruffalo was out-philosophised by the children and decided to go home.

Child: You're not real.
Gruffalo: Yes I am.
Child: No, you're just an existentialist manifestation of my inner fears. I can banish you at any time.
Gruffalo: So, that's no to storytime?

Random Rambles: Contests and Leaf Monsters

Random bits and pieces...

Are You Here?

I started up a poll on blogger awhile back to test out the poll widget. It's now over. I know most of the people who read the blogger version didn't vote. They don't post comments either. But I know you're there. I'm watching you, I can see you sitting there with your coffee...

Anyway, those that read the blog on MySpace can be smug, because MySpacers do comment.

As for the results of the poll, the question was 'Are you Here?'. No one answered with yes, no or maybe. Out of the four answers, one was anti-reality (answer: I laugh at consensual reality!'), one was confused (answer: unsure) and two were surrealists (answer: apricots). I'll leave other people to decide what this means about the readers of this blog.

Feedburner

Should you enjoy the giddy heights of feedburner for your feed subscriptions, there's now one for this blog:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/polenth

Should you not know what feedburner is, imagine a large purple monster that burns corn with its flamebreath. My first impression wasn't entirely correct, but I think it's more entertaining than what feedburner really is.

Leaf Monsters

Check out the video 'A & E' by Goldfrapp for dancing leaf monsters!

Goal Progression

I got my first rejection today, so that makes me officially a writer! Something like that. I'd print it out to treasure forever if I had any printer ink.

First Page Contest Aftermath

This is about the contest I mentioned here, and finalists can be found on Nathan's blog here.

I was right about the tears before bedtime. Some got very sensitive about others discussing their pages. Some got very sensitive about not winning, especially when their first page came from a previously published work. One was throwing around terms like transom and thought people should have to pay to submit novels. Being clueless, I looked transom up on Wikipedia and found it was:

"In naval architecture, a transom is the surface that forms the stern of a vessel."

Then I realised in publishing it just means something is sent to a publisher unsolicited. I think. Don't say that I don't build the vocabulary of my readers! One obscure word at a time. But the point is, if you're about to whine after losing a fun blog contest, second thoughts are a really good idea. You'll look like a lemon. Or a feedburner monster.

I didn't get a chance to read all the entries, but a few I liked (that didn't win) are linked to below. They're bias to the genres I like. I didn't find any wacky science fiction robot stories, so that was a disappointment. There is a sci fi among the finalists, which I voted for.

• Untitled (Fantasy/Sci Fi) by MadTheodore - It's a story about sentient grubs. You've gotta love stories about sentient grubs.
• Demonhead (Urban Fantasy) by calendula - It seems deceptively normal if you don't read it carefully. I like the idea of magical means to get around disability.
• Ravishing Ravenna (Fantasy Comedy) by Loretta Ross - An opening that makes fun of fairytale princesses.

Blog Chain: The Revenge of the Rust

The January blog chain I was taking part in is over. It trickled over into February, but given the tendency of people on the 'net to procrastinate that's not too bad. This is a final list of the posts that made up the chain. They're all about writing. The authors range from people making a career at it to wannabes like me. My blog had the most snails though, so I take comfort in that.

• Random Thought: Find Your Voice As a Writer - All about voices.
• Sticking Out Like a Sore Thumb: Writing and the Mysterious, Nebulous, Fickle Audience - Noted for finding me a picture of a GIANT paperclip. I want it. It won't fit in my house. *sniffs*
• What's Your Path? - Paths in the career sense, not the deep, dark paths into the scary woods sense (though metaphorically it might work).
• The Writer's Path - Laurie discusses her path, which includes moving to Sri Lanka.
• From One Failure to Another! - One writer's failure is another writer's success story.
• On Failure, Success and the Writing Life - What success requires and other ponderings.
• The Snail Within the Writer - Polenth. Her blog.
• On Writing, Finding my Style and Voice - How the wicked flower girl would like to write.
• Some of My Characters Don't Even Like Cereal - Knowing your character's favourite cereal can be useful. I still don't know what a fruity pebble is.
• AW Blog Chain - A bit about book endings.
• Writing the Ending - More on endings and whether it matters if they're predictable.
• January AW Blog Chain - The journey of the story.
• Does All Writing Teach? - Reading for fun or learning... you decide.
• Optimism? I think not - The dark and light of subject matter.
• Optimism, Pessimism, or Realism? - Perfect and imperfect endings.
• The Whys and Wherefores of World-Building - The reasons behind choosing a setting.
• No Respect - Life doesn't respect writing.

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Abducted by Google

I found this xkcd comic about dangers inspirational. Everyone is fixated with the idea of being kidnapped these days, so I decided to search for "abducted by _______" (the quotes being part of the search, to get the exact phrase).

Who are you most at risk of being abducted by, as far as Google is concerned?

Abduction According to Google

1. Aliens: 328,000
2. Terrorists: 11,300
3. Family: 8,870
4. Strangers: 6,350
5. Parents: 4,150
6. Fairies: 864
7. Angels: 632
8. Elvis: 347
9. Trolls: 339
10. Pixies: 106
11. Cows: 7
12. Dragons: 7
13. Children: 6
14. Microsoft: 4
15. Vulcans: 4
16. Pigeons: 3
17. Crazy People: 2
18. Hamsters: 2
19. Apples: 1
20. Cats: 1

Completely Unstatistical Analysis

You're more at risk from your parents than crazy people. In fact, you're more at risk from most people. The fact crazy people are as dangerous as hamsters should tell you something (like assuming non-neurotypicality equals criminal behaviour isn't sensible, rather than people being the size of hamsters). Even Vulcans are more dangerous, and they're from Star Trek.

Fairies are still making a go for it. They have traditional standards to live up to. Angels are cutting in on their game though.

I never thought of apples and cats as equally dangerous. Apples just sit there after all. Then again, so do cats a lot of the time.

And if anyone tells you that Microsoft is evil, just remember, children are worse.

The Winner

Aliens win hands (or miscellaneous tentacles) down. If you're a visual person, it might not be clear just how far ahead the aliens are from the numbers alone. I made a sparklie graph to demonstrate this. Aliens didn't win by a little bit. They're streets ahead of other kidnappers. Next time you go out, watch the skies.

Aliens Love Underpants - Book Review

This book was being promoted in Waterstones due to being a Richard and Judy's Children's Book Winner (age 5+). This is a breakfast show in the UK. Other books were also being promoted, but this one had a picture of aliens wearing underpants. That's how to make your book stand out! The sparklie title also helped.

'Aliens Love Underpants' is written by Claire Freedman and illustrated by Ben Cort.


Story: The story is told in verse. Aliens on their home planet admire Earthling underpants. They read underpant magazines and look at underpant statues. Soon they decide to climb into their flying saucers and come to Earth to find some underpants. Alien hijinks ensue.

Art: The paintings are colourful and funny. I like the fact the aliens are so diverse. Some have trunks, some have eyestalks. They come in all shapes and sizes. As do the underpants.

Education Stuff: Your child will learn how important it is to keep an eye on the washing when you hang it out to dry. The language is aimed at the older end of picture book readers. There are some invented or unusual words (such as pants-tastic).

Overall: I found some of the lines of verse a bit awkward, but in places where the meaning was unclear the pictures clarified it. I don't think that's enough to stop a child enjoying the book, as it's a quirky concept and the basic storyline is simple. Don't be surprised if your children refuse to put on their underwear without checking it first. I'll certainly be checking mine a bit more carefully...