Short Story Saturdays - An Audacious Australian Adolescent

Welcome to Inkweb! I have slacked off extremely over the past months, but I plan to make it up to any of my readers still out there by coming out with much more new, regular content according to my planned schedule. Procrastination is definitely my strong suit, but I will try to combat its inertia.

Now, for Short Story Saturdays, I have taken a writing prompt given to me by a friend and have written a (very) short story. I hope you enjoy! I will post again on Mad Monday!

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1: One Big Mac

2: A library's roof

3: And a marsupial

George sighed as he looked out over the landscape of Australia. He gently swung his dangling feet, sitting on the library rooftop as he stared into the sunset. The silhouetted lifeforms, trees and kangaroos alike, provided a wonderful foreground to the keen light of the evening sun.

“Hey! You! Get down off the roof!”

George peered down at the tremendous drop before him and saw a thick-set security officer staring back up at him, chewing pensively on the biggest Big Mac George had ever seen.

George scrambled to his feet and darted away across the rooftop. He made the daring jump over to the next building, some sort of office complex, and took a ladder down to the ground. He ran off before the security officer could find him.

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Leave a comment if you enjoyed, have a question, etc., or if you want to suggest an idea for future posts of any sort. I hope you liked it!

-JW

(Almost) A NaNoWriMo Kickoff!

I'm here at midnight to bring you an exclusive NaNoWriMo kickoff post! I've got my stockpile of candy and YouTube videos while I wait. This post is going to be a journal post. As I begin typing, it's 10:05 p.m. Central Standard Time. I've just eaten a piece of candy, and now I'll go surf the web for thirty minutes.

...

10:32 p.m. CST. Getting tired, actually. Do I still want to stay up until midnight? Gonna watch some more videos.

...

10:51 p.m. CST. Ugh, I want to go to sleep! I shouldn't have stayed up last night, then I'd be refreshed for NaNoWriMo. Oh well. But I'm only an hour away...

Okay, I'm going to bed. November is almost here, 'tis the season for writing like crazy. Night.
-JW

Poetry Thursdays - The Hunter

Greetings, readers! I come bringing poetry, and very bad poetry at that. Please try to enjoy my rhythmic fumblings below:

Deep in shadows of the nightly glade,

Where crawl the creatures of the night,

A silent hunter lone is laid,

Awaiting prey in his eyesight.

The hunter's arrow notched and primed,

His eyes do see the sudden shape

Of silhouetted doe well timed;

He crouches lower in his cape.

The string drawn back, he fires aloft,

And strikes the deer straight on at once;

The hunter springs, with feet so soft

And follows after the bleeding prey.

He finds her in a field afar,

And takes what's useful from her hide;

He sets off under nightly star,

To home, where he'll prepare the side.

Wednesdays: 25 Facts About the Human Brain

Welcome to Inkweb! Today, I have a compiled list of 25 facts about the human brain.

Concerning the schedule: tomorrow I will be posting a short poem I have composed, and then on Friday will be Cat Monologue #6! On Saturday, I will post HyperLinkzer's suggested short story.

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1. The human brain weighs about 3 lbs.
2. The human brain starts growing at birth and stops growing at approximately eighteen years old.
3. The human brain uses about 20% of the total oxygen in the body.
4. The reason that it doesn't tickle if you touch yourself is that the brain recognizes the difference between your own touch and unexpected external touch.
5. Memories triggered by scent have stronger emotional connections in the brain.
6. Einstein's brain is at a museum in Philadelphia.
7. Most people dream about 1-2 hours a night and have 4-7 dreams during that time period. Just because you can't remember dreams doesn't mean you don't have them.
8. Laughing requires activity in five different areas of the brain.
9. The human brain is 75% water.
10. The brain can feel no pain, in the rain, falling gently on the plain in Spain. :) The brain actually has no pain receptors.
11. Reading aloud and talking often with young children promotes their brain development.
12. While awake, the human brain generates enough power to turn on a lightbulb.
13. Physical illness is highly tied to psychological illness. 50-70% of visits to the doctor for physical ailments are estimated to be related to psychological factors.
14. Every time you recall a memory or have a new thought, you are creating a new pathway in your brain.
15. Brain waves are actually more active when you're dreaming that when you're awake. "When we're asleep, our mind can do almost anything...Now in a dream...we create and perceive our world simultaneously, and our mind does this so well that we don't even know what's happening. That allows us to get right in the middle of that process...by taking over the creating part." Haha, sorry for the Inception quote. It's my favorite movie, and I couldn't resist.
16. Harvard has a "brain bank" where human brains are stored for study.
17. Humans are estimated to think an average of 70,000 thoughts per day.
18. The word "brain" appears 66 times in the plays of William Shakespeare.
19. The hippocampus of a London taxi driver is much larger than the hippocampus of an average person, because London taxi drivers know the city streets by heart, and their brains have grown to accomodate this memorization.
20. 85% of the brain is the cerebrum.
21. Music increases brain organization (both playing and listening).
22. There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the human brain.
23. The hearing range the average young adult's brain can interpret ranges from 20 to 20,000 hertz.
24. The average human brain is 167 mm long, 140 mm wide, and 93 mm high.
25. Hmmm...don't have any more facts. Oh well.

Happy end of October and beginning of November! I would try to start growing a mustache for Movember, but I haven't got any facial hair yet. I'll just have to settle for endless noveling...ah, well...
-JW

Announcement: November Noveling

Okay, readers of Inkweb, I have, on the spur of the moment, at the flip of a coin, at the roll of a die, decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month is quite fun, and although I do not have the faintest inkling of an idea what to write, it will still be fun to try. I've completed it once before, and also Camp NaNoWriMo, which was the more successful time of the two.

However, readership, I will not abandon you! My schedule will remain largely the same, except for one small detail:

DURING THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER, I WILL NOT BE POSTING SHORT STORIES.

Well, that's the major change for the month. I will still post HyperLinkzer's suggested story this Saturday, November 2nd. I will still be posting cat monologues and fact lists and poems, and, of course, mad things (maybe even novel excerpts) on Mondays. But I will not be posting on Saturdays this month.

Toodles!

-JW

Poetry Tuesdays: "On A Play Twice Seen" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

So, I've decided to make a change to the poetry schedule here on the blog. Thursdays, I will still post my own compositions, but on Tuesdays, I will post other poems that I think noteworthy. This week I am posting one by a great author of the 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald, called "On a Play Twice Seen":

On A Play Twice Seen

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Here in the figured dark I watch once more;

There with the curtain rolls a year away,

A year of years--there was an idle day

Of ours, when happy endings didn't bore

Our unfermented souls, and rocks held ore:

Your little face beside me, wide-eyed, gay,

Smiled its own repertoire, while the poor play

Reached me as a faint ripple reaches shore.

Yawning and wondering an evening through

I watch alone--and chatterings of course

Spoil the one scene which somehow did have charms;

You wept a bit, and I grew sad for you

Right there, where Mr. X defends divorce

And What's-Her-Name falls fainting in her arms.

Mad Mondays: Where's the Postman?

Welcome, readers of Inkweb, to Mad Monday! Today I have a little scavenger hunt challenge for you guys. Basically, it is as follows:

1. I've hidden a small image of a postman somewhere on the blog.

2. It looks like this:


3. Whoever finds it first gets to give me a premise for a short story. It can be about anything of your choosing (within reason). Man goes diving and gets attacked by an octopus? Aliens attack a cheeseburger? Whatever you suggest.

Now, a disclaimer: this scavenger hunt won't require any serious slogging through every single post of the blog. It should be relatively simple, if you've got your wits about you. And no, the postman in this post does not count.

Have a good day, folks! Thanks for reading!

-JW

P.S. Whoever finds the postman also gets to name him, in case I do this again in the future.