If you’ve seen the original “Solar Freakin’ Roadways” video on Youtube should watch this, especially if you’re considering donating to the cause. It’s a reality check. Thanks to Misha for pointing it out.
Okay. So the Solar Freakin’ Roadway video has been making the rounds for a while now, on Facebook and Twitter and such. I watched it and I got a good chuckle out of it. It’s in the style of videos by Cracked.Com and CollegeHumor.com, and I assumed that it was a parody of “green technology”.
Honestly, it never occurred to me that it wasn’t a joke, since the technology involved doesn’t exist, would cost more money than there is in the world if it did exist, and would make driving insanely dangerous if someone was actually crazy enough to do it.
Today I found out that those jokers have raised nearly two million dollars.
I’m stunned. It’s like finding out that someone was using clips from Ghostbusters to create a company to build proton packs and had raised two million dollars. I mean, okay, I can understand seeing a…
I really can’t say enough good things about Mr. Burnett’s style. Cannibal Hearts is every bit as thrilling as its predecessor, Catskinner’s Book. Once again, the author’s original concepts impress and delight as the horrors abound. His attention to detail and the depth of his characters–James and his mostly non-human friends as they exist undetected for what they are in the real world–continue to ensure a read that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on every time I had a spare moment to myself.
Hands down, this is one of the best sci-fi series I’ve ever read. I can’t wait for the next installment!
On Traces Of The Soul, Oliana wrote: This week the topic will be about negativity and how you react to pessimism. Perhaps you are thinking how you recently managed to get away from the throngs of a negative person in your life, i.e. relationship, friendship, family, work…OR, how you succeeded in turning your own self-destructive side…that inner critic to someone more positive and accepting.
Write a poem, story (real or fiction) about this topic…negative thinking and how it can impact on your life.
The prompt got me thinking about negative people and how I grew up, and most importantly what I’ve learned in the intervening years. First, a little background:
I was a quiet child with no siblings and few friends. My world consisted of my parents and the couple that were their best friends. When I wasn’t quiet – when I got into trouble – my parents spanked me. It was the ‘thing to do’ back then. When I yelled, they yelled back. The point was, they always reacted. Unless I was being good. Then they left me alone.
Fast forward to when I had children of my own. I believed in my parent’s method of raising a child, though not with the hitting part. I admit, I had my moments, but most of the time I refrained from smacking if not from the yelling. There was plenty of yelling – I, like my parents, reacted in kind to my children’s tantrums.
Then, about three years ago I learned something that would change not only my life, but those of my children and the people around me: Applied Behavioural Analysis, or ABA. ABA is widely used to help with negative behaviours in Autistic individuals. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that it can be applied to anyone – even myself.
One of the most important lessons I learned was that everything we do and say when communicating for attention can be considered a ‘behaviour.’ For instance, we smile and say hello to a stranger which is a positive behaviour. The attention we receive back is our reward – it is a reward because we elicited our behaviour for the purpose of getting attention. In the case of my children, I found that when I rewarded their good behaviour with attention and ignored the bad, they quickly came to the realization that if they wanted my attention (or for me to react to them in any way at all) they had to be calm. Yelling and screaming to get a reaction out of me became a thing of the past – and it changed my reaction also. No longer was I screaming at them, because they began to come to me with a reasonable tone of voice in the first place.
As I said, this doesn’t only apply to childish behaviour (though many adults display it on a regular basis). Take internet trolls for instance. They display negative behaviour for what? A reward. Their reward is whatever attention we give them. The whiners of the world? I’ll try once to put a positive light on a comment such as, ‘when will this rain end?’ by saying something like, ‘the grass needs it.’ But when they keep on complaining, I change the subject to something more positive, or walk away. Many of us do this without really thinking about it. But it’s different when you’re talking to someone in a casual setting rather than someone you’re with day in and day out. Politeness goes by the wayside after a while, and you either react to it or give in to it and become, basically, the same negative person you’re with.
I’ve always been a ‘cup half full’ sort of person. There have been times in my life when I’ve lost sight of that, I’ll admit. But learning not to react at all to unnecessary negative behaviour (which is not to say that I don’t empathize with people who are genuinely struggling) has made me a more patient, calm and positive person.
Be patient. Good things come to those who wait. ~ Fortune cookie.
Really? How long do I have to wait?
I wonder about this saying. Is it really enough to wait for something good to happen? Surely something good will happen eventually.
I have to disagree. If I want something good to happen I need to take action to make sure it happens. If I want to finish my novel, it’s not enough just to wait. If I want a job one day, I’m not going to sit around and wait for one to drop into my lap. So where does this fortune cookie get off telling me to wait?
I suppose there are some things we simply have to wait for, however. Love, for instance. It seems the more I’ve looked for it in my life, the more elusive it is. Giving up looking for it, in my experience, has been the only way it’s found me.
Give it up, get it all. Have you heard that one? Maybe I made it up, because I can’t seem to find it anywhere on Google. It makes a lot of sense to me though. When I give up striving for one thing, other things present themselves as opportunities to get what I wanted in the first place. Tunnel vision doesn’t do anyone any good.
I still doubt patience has anything to do with it. Thoughts? Have you ever given up on something and then got it anyway?
Humanity has been driven into the wilderness by the ‘Invaders’. They have been forced to live as colonies in the wilderness where survival is a daily struggle. Hope becomes harder and harder to hold onto as the years pass.
Then one day, a young man tells a story to an injured friend and the Hopeteller is born. Unsure of the power of his words, he finds himself moving the colony with his fairy tales. He will see his people through death and fear as they continue to fight for survival.
Enjoy this novella that is half post-apocalyptic journal and half fairy tales.
When my son Christopher came home with it from school, I asked him if it was Mr. Potato Head. He looked at me as if I was crazy and said, “It’s a clown!”
I’ve had this … head sitting on my kitchen counter for about three months now. It goes from making me sad, to creeping me out and back again, sometimes within the space of minutes. This disembodied head is my companion when I cook, when I wash dishes, and whenever I go looking for a snack. Unfortunately it’s never distracted me enough from a midnight snack however, to prevent me from getting one.
So where am I going with this post?
It makes me think about the lives our kids lead when they’re not at home. They have this whole other world when they go to school where they probably never think of us, except in terms perhaps of whether or not we’re going to make their favourite dinner that night, or did we go pick up the thing they wanted at the store. The way they slowly separate themselves from us as the years go on is both scary and comforting. To know that they may just have enough interests that have nothing to do with us, enough to one day have lives of their own secures in my mind at least that they’ll be okay when we’re gone.
Even if their lives away from us consist of creepy disembodied heads. As long as they’re ceramic, I’m happy.
Spring has sprung,
the grass is ris’,
I wonder where Stream of Consciousness Saturday is?
Oh look, it’s almost here! Today is Friday however, and time for your SoCS prompt.
This week your prompt will be “object.” Choose an object, or write about something you object to. Nouns and verbs don’t matter here at Stream of Consciousness Saturday. If you do go with the noun, try to include a picture.
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Don’t be afraid to join in – it’s fun! Heck, bring a friend!
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people will come and read your post! The way to ping back, is to just copy and paste the URL of my post somewhere on your post. Then your URL will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. For example, in your post you can copy and paste the following: This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-3114/ The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
