The Red King's Philosophical Question

So I've been home sick with a stomach bug for the last two days, that has lead to major philosophical discussion time with the Red King. Doesn't it always when he's involved? This time the discussion came to Superheros. That also seems to be a common topic in our house. Anyway here's his question:

• If you could pick a superhero to be, who would you pick? Why? Are you a Marvel or a DC hero? Are you something completely different?

Now for those of you playing along at home, there are some rules you must follow.

• You need to pick a hero that you think you are like, not just one you think has cool powers.
• It must be a hero you think represents your true "secret" identity.
• For those players who have joined me in the COH realm, DO NOT pick your "hero". We need a well known hero to really psychoanalyze you! LOL.

An example I can use to show you is the March Hare. (Yes, darling I am outing your secret identity.) The March Hare is often referred to by our coworkers as Batgirl. This is appropriate on many levels.

1. Batgirl has a utility belt. As a real life supermom I am sure the March Hare has one.
2. Batgirl was really Barbra Gordon, librarian by day. March Hare is a middle school Media Specialist, aka a Librarian.
3. Batgirl was witty, sweet, and kicked butt. All things March Hare is known for.

See this works. So I am posting this out to my readers - a challenge posed by the Red King.

• Pick a known superhero as your alternate self and let us know why this is the hero most represented of you.

You've been challenged by the Red King and I am really curious about the results. I need to think about mine but promise to post it here. Oh, and in case you were curious, the Red King picked Dead Pool.

The Enemy of the Red King

So the New Year's bells have rung and not much has changed. There are a few things here and there but the biggest thing to hit our home has occurred to the Red King.

For years, 24 of them to be exact, my family has dealt with the Red King's illnesses in stride. He has never been what you would call healthy. Poor little brother has always been plagued by skin irritations, fevers, and stomach problems. He was sick so often, many family members accused him of being a hypochondriac. As 2006 came to a close we found out it wasn't in his head. The Red King has a severe allergy to soy. Now, many people who have heard about this have taken the stance that it should be easy to avoid these products. After all, just don't drink soy milk. Well after these last few weeks, these people can bite me. Soy is in everything! Take a look next time your in the store at the ingredients in your favorite foods. Crackers, breads, ketchup, even peanutbutter contain soy oil. Apparently 20% of the population has this allergy, which in many cases can be as serious as peanut or shellfish allergies. Yet, and here is the part that drives me nuts, NYC and many of the neighboring areas have passed a law to make restaurants stop using oils that contain transfats. So no more transfats in your fast food restaurants or you little romantic cafe. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that we are acknowledging that there are more healthy ways to prepare our foods. The bad thing is that soy oil is cheap and is the oil of choice for many of these restaurants. What this means for our household is that we can no longer eat out if we wish to eat with the Red King. So what am I telling you? All restaurants are using soy in their food? No, not all restaurants are using soy, some assure us they are using vegetable oil. Read the label - contains soy. Worse yet, is that you can't be sure because even the restaurants aren't sure if their cooking oils, margarine, or breads contain soy. So we are assured it is safe to find out that it is not. One such item that lulled us into a false sense of security was ketchup. The red king has always loved his ketchup. Heck, as a kid, there would be night when all he ate was ketchup sandwiches. We figured ketchup was okay. Never said soy on the bottle so we good, right? Afraid not. At the bottom of the label was a sentence that said "contains natural flavoring". After some research we found out this sentence normally refers to some form of soy. I just never realized the extent of this problem. From talking with others, neither did they. It is not an extremely common allergy so people without it don't know or don't care. The "it doesn't affect me or mine" syndrome. Still 20% of the population is a fairly large group and studies show, that due to our over exposure to soy, that number is on the rise.

Don't worry. The Red King isn't starving. We have gone soy free in our house as much as we can and health food stores are a major help. K even found him a ranch dressing that doesn't contain soy, which is amazing. As for much of what is in a regular supermarket. . .Well there is Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and SPAM. Neither contain soy. SPAM?! Who knew?

When You Fall Off the Earth Make Sure You Have A Parachute

Oh where to start? The summer started out so nice and relaxing too. Well, isn't that always the way before reality come crashing down on you?

July 15th, 2006 - The Red King, Minotaur God, and Ralph came up to Connecticut to attend a Renaissance Festival with us. It was much smaller than the one we usually go to in Sterling Forest, NY but we had a lot of fun. Follow up ye olde dork fest with some loud karoke and you've got yourself a winner weekend. Arguments about online games ensued - Yes, Minotaur God. I agree your game is cool but I'm telling you that mine is better! If we wanted reality, to quote K, than we'd go into the park and beat people with bats. We don't, so we save the world. You can't beat us so you might as well join us! We finally found a way to get Ralph off the couch but we have a new problem. How do we get him off the porno? Then, when they finally go to leave, K wiggles her nose and breaks a car! Damn girl, I know you love the Red King but he has to go home sometime. Doesn't he?

July 17th, 2006 - Apparently the answer to my last question is NO. The Red King will NEVER go home again because, according to him, K is trying to kill him with her love. In an attempt to wake the Red King, an accomplishment Lewis Carroll was never able to succeed in, K made the Red King swallow his own teeth. That's right. I said swallow, as in consume or choke down. Now I may have had a hand in this but I am denying it as passionately as I denied biting his forehead 20 years ago. Anyway, after rushing him to the emergency room, K had to call me in as next of kin. Oh that was fun! The Red King had to stay in the hospital as they attempted to remove his dental bridge from where it had lodged in his throat. There are so many more details I could go into but let us leave it as he was released - missing his four front teeth and owing his soul to the hospital. Welcome to the wonderful world of debt little bro!

July 24th, 2006 - Back to the hospital with the Red King. Man K, you really wanna keep him huh? While going into details would be rude, let's just say there were complications from the week before that Burger King couldn't fix. Let's not talk about it.

July 25th, 2006 - Our one year anniversary of bring Holly home to live with us. What a good puppy she has been! It also means my one year anniversary of this blog has come around. One year of words and fur. . .so much fun.

July 29th, 2006 - J purchased a speed boat from my step-brother. He was cranking to get it into the water!

July 30th, 2006 - L, otherwise known as the Catapiller, had her first bridal meeting. It went very well, although parts were intense. I know her, and Bridezilla isn't really her chosen projection as a bride but I fear some people may cause her to fill that role. K wanted to give her a dead horse and a stick to beat it with! L had to repeat herself so many times that maybe the horse wouldn't be such a bad idea. She might get further with it.

August 1st, 2006 - A group of us went into NY city to Radio City Music Hall for An Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp. This was an awesome event any true nerd would have enjoyed! Live readings done by Stephen King, John Irving, and J.K. Rowling. These three never do readings and it was amazing. I think my favorite was Stephen King, because as much as that man scares the Hell out of me - He is an entertaining reader, hysterical. J was a little cranky but what you gonna do?

August 2nd, 2006 - J is upset his boat not working. . .Something about a water pump?

August 4th, 2006 - Boat suppose to be ready. See above for why it's not.

August 5th, 2006 - J drives all over Connecticut to get said water pump. Boat repaired and he launches her for a three hour tour. Red King plays Gilligan to J's Skipper while K and I go along for the ride.

August 6th, 2006 - J's brother, sister-in-law, and their young son, (let's call them the Walrus, the Carpenter and an oyster shall we) join J and I on a boat trip. They show us a cove called the Sand Hole located in Port Jeff, NY. It's an inlet people, come on and call it what it is. Fancy names! It's still an inlet!

Summary: Boat $5,000 - Red King's Connecticut Vacation $18,000 - Saving the world (City of Heros) $29.99 for game $15.00 per month - Water pump for afore mentioned boat $300 - An evening of watching people read $ 92.80 per person - Tickets to pretend to be a Merry Man $15.00 per person - Books to keep me occupied $150 - Cost of feeding Red King after Hospital (Pudding, Jello, and Appelsauce. Poor boy!) $130 - Cost to fuel boat's 75 gallon tank $300 - Cost to fuel a car in Connecticut $3.20 per gallon - Cost of trial of World of Warcraft that Minotaur King insisted we try FREE for 10 days $49.99 for game $15.00 per month after that. As you can see by this list I can not afford another MMORPG! - Getting Ralph off our couch PRICELESS.

Dead Muses?

"What is the use of a book,'" thought Alice,

"without pictures or conversation?"

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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Ever since the loss of my database of writing, I have felt like a ship set adrift without sails. I'm not sure if it's because so much was lost and I am hesitant to try to rebuild, or if I have truly come to the end of my creativity. Now I am sure part of this lack of interest rests solely on the boredom I have been feeling, "ennui" according to my best friend L.

In her own blog entry, L reminds me that there is always the seed of creativity if we bother to just put pen to paper. This may be true for some writers, it may be true of all writers. At this time I can not say for sure. I hearken back to the conversation I had with my brother JT, there are only so many ideas. I also look back on my own displeasure with the new books soon to be published. I am suffering from a set disinterest as both a writer and a reader. It may seem as if I'm just whining but the truth is I have never felt this large a disinterest in all my years.

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Books have always been important to me, which does not surprise many considering my choice of careers as a middle school librarian. Books were my long time friends, my secret worlds of escape, and my greatest addiction. Writing gave me inky children of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Within the realm of my own imagination, whole worlds blossomed and it was people with the many characters that whispered their lives to me while I dreamed. Now the people have grown quiet and the worlds are dark.

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What do we do as writers when the inspiration leaves us? Where do we find it again? It may be that my own disinterest and fears may be what is killing off my muse, then again it seems to be rampant in the writers I've spoken to. L seems to have found her slippery muse, and I wish her all the luck in the world. Her talent in writing is obvious. Her creativity is fluid. Yet, she seems to suffer from the blocks and boredom that strike so many writers - just as it has stuck down myself. She may overcome it. Then again, it may never return to torment her. This is always something that amazes me. Yes, the books coming out may hold little interest for me but these books authors' have finished their works. They have overcome what seems to affect so many writers. How do they do it? How do you hold on to the story?

Heart to Heart with the Red King.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass

So my younger brother, JT, is visiting again. This evening we conducted another one of our deep conversations. I was lamenting the lost storylines and missing plots that I have been suffering through. JT was as always. . .Well, um, helpful. . .At the very least he was philosophical.

He said that maybe I can't write anything and am plagued by boredom because there are no more stories to write. He said maybe they were all used up. Then he started saying what if we were all just characters in someone else's unfinished novel. This would explain our boredom, after all - if the writer just stopped and left us halfway through the action, what would we be left to do? We wouldn't know what to do because the writer has to tell us what to do. We would be left to some tortuous form of life where we would only be able to perform the last action we were written to do. Not such a bad analogy for most of our daily lives, the tedium and repetitive cycles of modern times. Not even a bad analogy for God, for a writer is sort of a god to the small fictional world they created.

Of course all this enlightened thinking drove me to almost roll my eyes but some of what he said may have a valid point. There do seem to be only so many plots and I, myself, have complained about the lack of exciting new books coming out in the next few months.

So what do other writers think? Are we running out of fresh ideas? Where do we get our ideas from, if they are all gone?

Got Blog? Why?

JT, my younger brother, and I were just hanging out this afternoon. We do this every once in a while, get together to just catch up on the bit of fluff that make up our lives. Near as I can tell, we are really the only siblings in our group of friends that have this kind of relationship. I love this fact about us, but there are times we don't agree. Today was one of them. The subject? Blogging.

Now, as I've mentioned before, JT and I grew up in the home that estrogen built and technology forgot. The poor boy was surrounded by women and permanently stuck in 1979. The most high tech thing we had was a color television and cable. We still had a rotary phone in 1997 until J came along, asked me to marry him, and dragged my entire family into the 20th century by giving my mom a push-button telephone. Anyway, I digress. The point is that JT and I missed out on the whole early life of the internet and computers. While I had college friends and J to drag me kicking and screaming into the 21st century, JT has adapted more slowly. . .He bought a cellphone recently. For the life of him, he doesn't understand the purpose of blogging. He thinks it's stupid; a bunch of people whining about their everyday life. His major point is that most blogs are virtual diaries and diaries are suppose to be personal, not available to be read by the entire world-wide-web. After he said this, a lighting bolt hit me with understanding. As much as I wanted to disagree. He is sort of right. Not all blogs are diaries, some like my best friend's, deal with weird news or cool gadgets. However, many are journals, including my own.

So why do we blog? Why do we read them? I started blogging to talk about raising Holly and the difficulties I encountered training her. Then I went back to work and realized how insane a work place a school can be. I found myself wanting to write about books I liked or stresses I encountered. I think I just wanted to know I wasn't alone. This is what blogging has brought to me. I got tips from others about puppy training and honest opinions of my stresses. I'm sure other people have their own reasons.

But is he right? Is it a declaration of the way our world is going? Is it the same motivation that makes itself known through bad reality shows and gossip shows? Why do we blog? Why do we read? What keeps us coming back? Do we want to shout to the world that we are here, living and learning? Is it vanity or social? According to JT, blogging seems to be a sign of the final apocalypse. Do we dare to type another word. . .Yes?