Wildcats In The House

From a longer creative nonfiction piece:

Wild Cats in the House

Isn’t it strange to think that the little eight-pound creature purring in your lap is related to lions and tigers?

My cat, Rhiannon, was a poster-child for domestication.  She was an animal, of course, as all cats are, but she couldn’t really be called a natural creature.  She was bred for looks, and so was the perfect specimen of a Siamese cat.  The only food she ate was dry kitty-kibble—not even the canned stuff—and occasionally the cooked and seasoned food we ate.  She liked corn and peas; who ever heard of a wildcat munching on a corncob or a pea pod?

Cats have this reputation in the public imagination as mousers; this is probably why wild cats were domesticated to begin with—to keep mice out of the granaries.  Rhiannon, however, never saw a mouse in all the four yours of her existence, and was wary of anything bigger than a spider.  Don’t get me wrong, she did hunt, but it was never a matter of life or death for her; if the bugs got away, she still had a bowl of food in the kitchen, and a warm lap to nap on. 

Rhiannon was a housecat.  She slept in our beds at night, and lay in the sun streaming through the windows during the day.  In the winter, she lived in a five-foot space around the heater.  The furthest outside she ever went was onto the top step of our front porch—and then only when the weather was warm and dry—where she would sit perfectly upright, her feet bunched together, and her tail wrapped around her toes.  I always thought she looked like a statue, then.  She was a pureblood, show-quality Siamese, all angular and bony; when she sat very still, she looked like those statues of Bast on display in natural history museums.  And maybe that’s why she made sure so carefully that she was spoiled.

Siamese cats were supposed to be descended in a straight line from two temple cats brought from Siam—now Thailand.  There, they were looked after very carefully, because the souls of the dead were believed to live on in the bodies of these cats before passing on into the afterlife.  The monks in these temples fed them the best food, decked them in jewels (it’s said that the weight of diamond necklaces gave them their long necks), and made sure that they wanted for nothing.  They were treated like royalty.

7 Healthy No Nonsense Weight Loss Tips

Weight loss is one of those issues that generates a lot of information, leaving the consumer lost as to which are the best weight loss tips and which diets to follow. But if you take a no-nonsense look at it, and remember that losing weight is a slow and steady process, it’s much easier to know when something is worth trying.

Here are seven no nonsense weight loss tips:

Eat More Often

This might sound anti-intuitive, but it’s really very sensible. Eating smaller meals more often, you will eat less overall because that point of starvation that causes overeating never happens. Aim for four to six meals of around 300 calories each, and eat every four or so hours to keep blood sugar steady and stomach full. Three hundred calories may seem like not much, but keep in mind that vegetables have very few calories, and so you can eat a huge salad or bowl of soup for the same number of calories in one candybar.

Include More Fiber

Fiber gives a sense of fullness and keeps you full longer. It keeps the intestines working and takes longer to digest, burning more calories as the body works on it. It helps maintain blood sugar so there’s no late-afternoon crash to contend with. Aim for 20-35 grams a day for adults.

Get Five Colors, Textures and Flavors Into Every Meal

The more varied the colors, textures and flavors on a plate, the more varied the nutrients represented, and the more balanced the meal will be without having to fuss over it. There’s a Japanese saying that says every meal should aim for five of each: five different colors, flavors, and textures, and they should know. The Japanese are generally among the healthiest people in the world.

Eat Seasonally

For one, eating what’s in season encourages creativity and diet diversity. For another, seasonal foods are at the peak of their healthiness and taste their best. Eating foods that are in season right now encourages healthier eating habits just by including more fruits and vegetables. Weight loss follows naturally! Look online for lists of what’s in season by month, or see what’s most abundant at the grocery.

Move Around More

Exercise is exercise, however you get it. Try walking up stairs instead of taking the elevator. Walk to the store if it’s less than a mile. Do jumping jacks during commercial breaks. Join a yoga class. Just find something that you enjoy doing, and do it as often as you can to break up the sitting around that modern life encourages.

Drink More Water

Hydrated bodies are happy bodies, and they’re more able to digest food and wash away wastes, both of which help with healthy weights. Try to get at least eight glasses of water a day.

Use Smaller Plates

The size of the plates people have been eating off of has been growing since the 50s, and the weight of the people eating has grown, too. So go back to basics, and eat from smaller plates. It’s easier to clean your plate without going overboard, and once the adjustment period is past, you’ll feel just as full as before. Just don’t go back for thirds and fourths!

Following these few simple weight loss tips can help anyone start the journey back to a healthy weight. Better yet, it can help anyone maintain those healthy weights once they’ve been reached. These’re simple, straight-forward and easy to do weight loss tips. And best of all, there’s nothing to lose but unhealthy pounds!

How to write a Shakespearean sonnet

How to Write a Shakespearean Sonnet

Sonnets are one of the most recognizable of all the poetic forms, and they may look complicated, but they have a very clear pattern that makes them much easier to write than you might expect. Just follow these steps!

Requirements for a sonnet:

• ·         Must have 14 lines.
• ·         Must be written in iambic pentameter which means that the pattern the words make should be like this: duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH. Something like shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMmers DAY. It’s not far off how people talk, and if you write a lot of sonnets, you’ll start thinking in iambic pentameter! Usually, there are ten syllables in each line, five soft and five hard.
• ·         Must follow a specific rhyme pattern. In this case, the pattern is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. That means the first four lines, the first and third line rhyme and the second and fourth line rhyme, then the next four lines and the four after that have different rhyming words, but also rhyme one and three / two and four, and then the poem ends with two lines that rhyme with each other.
• ·         Must have a turn. That means that the last two lines, the couplet, bring a new meaning to what the previous lines were talking about.

·          

Here’s an example, William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day”, also called “Sonnet #18”, with the rhyme pattern in parentheses:

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? (A)

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (B)

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,(A)

And Summer's lease hath all too short a date: (B)

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,(C)

And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;(D)

And every fair from fair sometime declines,(C)

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd: (D)

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade (E)

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; (F)

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,(E)

When in eternal lines to time thou growest: (F)

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (G)

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (G)

Now, you try! Just fill in the blanks:

A:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

B:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

A:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

B:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

C:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

D:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
C:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

D:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
E:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

F:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

E:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

F:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

G:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

G:___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Quiz / Trivia Questions

Three questions for a horror movie quiz:

Real people aren't usually killed or mauled while filming movies. What was used for the blood in Night of the Living Dead?
a. Real blood
b. Chocolate syrup
c. Food coloring
d. CGI

Horror movies are as old as movies themselves. What is the first notable horror movie ever filmed?
a. Frankenstein
b. The Girl From The Dead Room
c. Nosferatu
d. The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Lots of horror movies are pretty gross, but what was the goriest movie ever made?
a. Friday the Thirteenth
b. House of a Thousand Corpses
c. Jesus Christ, Vampire Killer
d. Dead Alive

How to care for curly hair

Not all hair is created equal. Curly hair is much more fragile than straight, and is more easily damaged by improper care techniques or use of the wrong products, but most people with curly hair don't know this and continue to treat it the same as straight hair. This leads to breakage, split ends, frizziness and dryness.
But it doesn't have to be that way.

Curly hair is curly because it has a flatter shape to the hair shaft, and the extra surface area means it loses moisture faster than straight hair. This, in turn, means that to keep it healthy and soft, moisture needs to be the primary concern in care.

First, use gentle shampoos and conditioners intended for dry or fragile hair. Dove makes a nice line that is meant to leave your natural oils intact, and there are a number of lines available now that have removed the harsh and drying Sodium Laurel Sulphate from their formulas. When finding a new shampoo, buy smaller bottles and try each one for a few weeks to see how your hair adapts to it, then keep the ones that work best for you. Frequently, the shampoo and conditioner that the company has pre-matched won't be ideal, so don't be afraid to mix and match along the way.

Next, don't wash your hair too often. The curlier the hair, the less frequently it needs to be washed. Remember: frequent washing can dry hair as surely as anything else can. Try skipping a wash once a week. If your hair looks better afterward, try skipping another. Use shower caps or tie your hair up out of the water to keep it dry while you shower.

Use the right sort of tools. The curlier your hair, the less you should detangle with a brush--it'll only separate the curls to the point where their only option is to puff and split and fill with static. Try using a comb or a pick. The ones with widely-spaced tines are the best for detangling without tearing. Don't comb or brush your hair when it's wet, because that will  only make it easier to break, which in turn will make it easier to fruzz and split at the ends.

When you do wash your hair, start with a conditioner. Condition from the roots to a few long inches from your scalp, and leave that in. Use small amounts of your gentle shampoo only on the scalp to remove oil, dirt and dead skin, and let that sit for a little while, too. Rinse completely, and then condition your whole head and let that sit while you finish your shower. Rinse right before you get out. Some people find that rinsing this final time in cool or cold water helps to keep their hair smooth and soft.

Let your hair dry naturally, and don't mess with it too much while it does--the more it moves around as it dries, the more it'll tend to frizz. If you have to use a hairdryer, invest on one of the ones that uses ions to help avoid frizz, and keep the heat as low as you can. Flat-iron only sparingly, and always use a heat-protector beforehand and a leave-in conditioner after.

If you follow these suggestions and pay attention to how your hair reacts to them, then keep the ones that work best for you, you'll develop your own individual beauty regime that will keep you looking your best.

Five Articles for Gather News

IBM's New Circuit is only as Thick as an Atom

Google Chromebooks Now Available for Preorder

Microsoft's Windows 8 Aims for Touchscreens

Danish Space Capsule Successfully Blasts Off

Researchers Hope to Use Digital-Ant Antivirus to Protect Grid

The Geek Quotient v1.5

Have you ever been watching a show and realized "Hey, this is a pretty geeky show. I wonder how it stacks up to other geeky shows?" Have you then said "If only there was a formula I could follow that would tell me exactly how geeky a show is!" Even if you haven't, you should have, and now you need look no further than the Geek Quotient Worksheet v1.5!

It's simple. You take your show, and you assign it points based on the criteria that follow, add up all the points, and then compare it to all your other geeky shows. Add up all your numbers to get an overall rating of how awesome a show is to the geek culture.

Let's see how some fan favorites add up.

The Criteria:

Positive:

+5 for each cast member of a really awesome, undisputed icon show (for instance, Firefly will start with a +35 just from here; Star Trek: The Next Generation will start with a +35 also, +40 if you forgive Wil Wheaton for his teen years) (if a show of unknowns becomes an icon, they are all awarded their +5 to take with them to their next project)

+5 for each proven writer, producer or creator (Joss and JJ, of course, but also Rodenberry, Rockne S O'Bannon, Steven Moffatt, Jane Espenson, Kurtz and Orci and so on)

+3 for awesomeness outside of television that guest stars or writes, to be applied to that season / +1 to the show's overall rating (so the recent "The Doctor's Wife" written by Neil Gaiman gets +3 for season 6 and +1 for the show as a whole)

+2 for a reboot, sequel or adaptation, with another +1 in reserve in case it lasts more than one season

+1 for each classic scifi trope: spaceships, aliens with weird foreheads, other worlds, time travel, unexplained phenomena (as a major plot device, not just one episode), wormholes, weird science, neat gadgets, super powers, etc

+1 for clever references to other big geek-culture elements, up to a total of 3 a season (otherwise Big Bang Theory and the like will just blow everyone away), with a reserved +1 for consistent use

+1 for each of the elements of good writing that consistently appear, to reward real, honest, quality (things like consistency, snappy dialog, good plotting, complex storylines, good character arcs)

+1 for getting a defined and planned ending

+1 for each spin-off, another +1 if they last more than a season

Negative:

-1 for too much studio involvement that waters down the show

-1 for poor writing that doesn't turn out to be "so bad it's good"

-1 for 'mainstreaming' to the point of sucking the life out of SF/F tropes (see: No Ordinary Family, Heroes by the end, Defying Gravity, etc)

-1 for a character everyone agrees is terrible (the JarJar Clause)

So, by these criteria, we get the following numbers:

Firefly - at least 55

ST:TNG - at least 92

Doctor Who (reboot) - at least 50 (if you count most actors as geek-unknown until this show, more by far when the series is over and they all get their +5 bonus)

Big Bang Theory - about 20

Castle - about 19

V - 30

As you can see, it shows how even non-SF/F shows like Castle can get their geek on because of carry-over geekiness. And it helps define whether a new show is geeky enough to pick up when the new season starts: How many known geek icons does it have? How many tropes? How many creators and writers with a proven track record? Everything you need to know!

How do your shows line up?

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

One of the best things about having a birthday on Memorial Day Weekend is that I almost always get a big blockbuster movie for my own personal holiday. This year, one of the ones I got was Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Being a geek, I firmly believe that any birthday involving pirates is a good birthday.

The movie, however, didn't quite live up to the hype. Close, but not unequivocal.

This far into a series, it's almost impossible to review a movie without comparing it to it's predecessors. This one is shorter than World's End (movie 3) and less dark as well as less unnecessarily convoluted. But it wasn't as fun as the original movie, or as pure, though there was something of the feeling that they might be trying to recapture a little of that essence. It was definitely entertaining, but not mind-alteringly-awesome like a first viewing of the first one. 

It would have been nice to have a little more sly reference to the fact that three stories have gone beforehand and two of the characters spent some time dead, and really, how that affected them. Other than Barbosa looking really rough throughout the movie without anyone even commenting on it, that is. 

And it lacked the heart that Orlando Bloom / Wil and Kiera Knightley / Elizabeth brought to the first three (when they weren't being annoying or confusingly-motivated), and I think a big part of that was that the preacher was introduced so heavy-handedly: he came across as unpleasantly Bible-thumpy without much reason other than being religious, and he was there for pretty much unexplained reasons. At first, it seemed like he was to be Angelica's love interest, but that fizzled out without any development, and his romance with Sirena was so classic and sincere that it really could have benefited from a little snarking and complication. Maybe some delving into exactly what it means to be in love with something not human. Some stakes other than 'maybe she won't like me back'. 

On the other hand, it was great seeing Jack up against a woman who was his equal enough to impersonate him. Their attraction didn't quite sell itself, but the dynamic was interesting enough to overlook that part a little. Sincere-Jack is strange: it's hard to know what to think of him, and it came just short of dulling the slimy charm of the character, but that was fixed by the resolutely non-sappy ending.

As for the structure, there were far too many elaborate chase scenes, and the villains were not as interesting or as commanding of attention of Norrington. It would have been better to cut the chases down just enough to get a little character development on Barbosa's men and the Spaniards. But you know what? All of these quibbles / failed requirements of a truly good movie are basically after-the-fact. While watching it, it's as entertaining as it should be, and there was just enough growth for Jack that it will be interesting to see where he goes next. He's being pursued by the only woman who almost won him over, and we're pretty clear on the fact that his personality requires an audience and companions to take on his adventures, so anything that comes after this should be more solid, now that the status quo has been reset.

Should be, because if it isn't, us fans will have something to say about it.

How to write Scifi and Fantasy: Worldbuilding

If you read enough of these books and watch enough of these movies, sooner or later, you'll start thinking that you'd like to contribute to the Grand Tradition that has nurtured you all this time. You'll pick up a pen and start writing Science Fiction or Fantasy. And that's great. The SF/F community is still relatively small, and it's unusually open and supportive. Geeks stick together even when they go pro. 

But that doesn't mean you can just start cranking out stories and they'll be perfect right off the bat. Ideas are easy: writing is hard work, and you have to love the whole process, because it is a process. And one of the first steps is worldbuilding.

In the most basic terms, worldbuilding concerns where your story is set. A planet? A ship? A particular town? One room in a house? But it also concerns the world around that specific place. All of that world. Now, you won't be using every single detail in your story (that's called infodumping and it's a no-no because you're not writing a textbook here), but you need to at least have an idea of what you're doing and what you're working with, so you can portray it honestly and consistently as you tell your story. Consistency is the key: specfic fans know when something doesn't make sense, and acting like it does without a damned good reason is insulting to their intelligence. And you don't want to talk down to your audience.

So here's a few things to get you started on the world your characters will live in:

- How is the society different then the one we live in out here outside the book? How is it the same? What justifies the differences? If women are chained to the wall at all times, there has to be a reason--some ancient feminine overlord that was overthrown, a particularly cruel patriarchy with specific and literal rules, a false (or true!) belief that women can fly, something.

- What other societies surround and interact with the one you're concerned with? A rebel ship needs something to rebel against, a king needs other kings to trade with and make war on. And all of it needs to be set up so it makes sense socially, economically, historically, and logically.

- What do they eat, and why? How do they sleep? Are there laws, religious doctrines, scarcity concerns?

- If you're using magic or science, what are the rules? What can these things do and not do? What does their use do to the people who use them? What does it to do the world? Things are always more interesting when they're hard, when they cost your characters something. 

- What is the actual physical world like? What is the weather, the gravity, the plate tectonics, the terrain? If you're inside, what are the building materials, the quality of construction, the artistic flourishes, the requirements and prohibitions that went into making this world? How does any of this affect the people who will populate it? How have they adapted? How have they harnessed it?

As I said, these are just starter questions. General things to ask yourself. As you get into the meat and bones of your new reality, you'll find more specific things you'll have to figure out before you can speak authoritatively about the plants or the animals or the geography or the society. What are the what-ifs that concern you and that you'd like to explore? If a question like "what if we all lived on an asteroid?" bores you, don't write about that. But if it fascinates you and makes you want to figure out how to make it work, that's a great place to start. Then grow your reality from there.