Spartan Bard

Just a writer, fighting the forces of stagnation and trying to help others do the same.

[spartanbard]

This is My Dream . . . I'll decide where it goes from here.

Here's my response every time someone tells me some idea I'm writing with has been done already or how the story should go to avoid pitfalls other writers have blithely stumbled into, or when they tell me that a fictional creature is defined a certain way:

Alice: From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I've been told what I must do and who I must be. I've been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot. I've been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice but this is my dream. I'll decide where it goes from here.

Bayard: If you diverge from the path...

Alice: I make the path!

No two people tell a story in precisely the same way even if they witness it. Ask any lawyer or think about all the movies covering the same events or all the adaptations of the same story. 

"That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." Walt Whitman

So tell the story you need to tell and don't worry about what anyone else is doing. If the story works for you and you enjoy it, you've already won. And love is contagious. If you love it, really love it, chances are someone else will too, even if there are a million other stories out there about dragons or vampires or love or death or war or pain or magic. 

(Serendipity) Dean: You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died:  

Image credit: Martijnvreugde

Write with passion and leave it all out there on the page.

[spartanbard]

The Rules of Shenanigans and Blarney

If ye break one of the sacred rules of St Patrick's Day, there must be penance to appease the fae or they'll take you away to their fairy raft ne're to return. Most folk know that if you are not wearing green on St Patrick’s Day, you may be pinched. However, if you are pinched by someone who is also not wearing green, you may call Shenanigans. If the pinchee calls Shenanigans, the pincher must pay a penalty to the pinchee of either seven spankings or a purchased shot at the pinchee’s discretion. However, if Shenanigans is called falsely and the pincher is in fact wearing green, the pincher may call Blarney. If Blarney is called, the pinchee must pay the penalty of either seven spankings or a purchased shot at the pincher’s discretion.

If you can make up an exception rule on the spot under the influence of at least two drinks of Irish origin, you may escape penalty.

For example: If you are wearing undergarments of a golden spangled nature, you may fall under the same protections as those wearing green out of respect for the Leprechauns and may therefore call Blarney at your leisure. Or if the person breaking the sacred rules of St Patrick’s Day questions the appropriateness of penalty and loses the challenge you may call Double Blarney or Double Shenanigans as appropriate and the penalty is both a shot and seven spankings any unreasonable delay in paying the penalty, and the penalty doubles.

So good luck, and pinch with care whether your goal is to be penalized or to dish out penalties.

[galgadotssss-deactivated2016071]

[spartanbard]

How I feel about taking my comp time at work.

[dudeinpublishing-blog]

HAPPY FRIDAY BUT FOR REAL HOW THE FUCK IS THIS WEEK STILL HAPPENING

[spartanbard]

This was me, working until 9 just to have a hard-won three f-ing day weekend. Superpower I want: cloning.

[spartanbard]

#Mayan Coffee : Papua New Guinea coffee, cinnamon, raw honey #abbyarete

[silberpfeil]

Willow (1988)

You are my sun, my moon, my starlit sky. Without you, I dwell in darkness.

I love you.

[spartanbard]

This is me (Madmartigan) and Coffee (Sorcha) this week after a weekend apart (so I could get unfettered unconsciousness). I could tell Coffee missed me, he just wanted to play hard to get after being ignored for 48 hours. 

[clarysrunes-blog]

Things that make life worth living → Our Galaxy

[itscolossal]

A Maldives Beach Awash in Bioluminescent Phytoplankton Looks Like an Ocean of Stars

[spartanbard]

Enchanting.

[spartanbard]

This was me last week at work in a nutshell or as a nut in a human shell. Take your pick really.

[spartanbard]

So I've been hanging things up in passing and this happened. It looks like I'm hunting the wicked for Santa. #naughtynicelistavenger2013 #elvishmischief

[whatshouldwecallme]

When someone suggests whiskey shots

In college:

Now:

[spartanbard]

Yeah . . . for me it's more the other way around . . . either my job needs to calm down or I'm having a case of Benjamin Button

[dudeinpublishing-blog]

What a year. So many pages turned, emails skimmed, lunches choked down at your desk, office drama, bad dates, flat-out amazing books, brainstem-chokingly bad books (seriously, what mass hysteria led to this getting printed by the thousand?!), promotions, firings, and 525,600 refreshings of Tumblr,...

[spartanbard]

And this is how I respond when people who barely frequent my place of work essentially tell me they don't think I work hard enough after my third month of working 60+ hours a week.

Dramatic? Hey, whenever something is wrong at work someone is acting like it's the end of the world . . .

(Thank you to nightsong97, disneydeviants, the-good-bad-and-unemployed, whedonverse, and alice-curious-labyrinth13 for gifs)

[spartanbard]

Giles:  (comes back in) Truthfully, I'm even less anxious to be around computers than I used to be.

Ms. Calendar:  Well, it was your book that started all the trouble, nota computer.

Giles is at a loss.

Ms. Calendar:  Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?

Giles:  The smell.

Ms. Calendar:  Computer's don't smell, Rupert.

Giles:  I know! Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a, a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences...long forgotten. Books smell. Musty and, and, and, and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, is, uh, it... it has no, no texture, no, no context. It's, it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then, then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um... smelly.

(Buffy the vampire Slayer, Season 1, Episode 8, I Robot, You Jane)

This is one of my favorite explanations why, no matter how I risk daily dying under a mountain of books, I can't abandon the real thing. For me, digital is a convenience when I need to travel light in weight and heavy in knowledge, but it is a stopgap for satisfying my passion, not an viable alternative for my greatest love. I love reading digitally published works, but if I truly love them, I must print them so I can touch the text with my fingertips and absorb the stories with my skin.

[pixieplague]

[spartanbard]

This is how I feel every time it snows.

[spartanbard]

'Nuff said. Goodnight Monday. 

[dudeinpublishing-blog]

When you’re in charge of your own nutrition and subsistence, there’s a lot that becomes second nature. Because we’re alive and we’re animals, we have to fuel ourselves with nutrients from outside our body. It’s boilerplate daily existence; eat, digest, excrete, repeat. It should be simple…

[spartanbard]

What do I eat if I'm depressed…It depends on the level.

Last time I was facing demons, it was bacon, tequila, and chocolate chip cookies. For some reason, people kept giving them to me. I’m not sure what face suggests those dietary selections are the solution, but I’m guessing I looked like I had nothing to lose and was planning on embracing that state of being with reckless abandon.

Depression like it’s an active battle to wear different clothes from day to day: chicken fried rice, spaghetti and meatballs, mac & cheese, beef stroganoff, or hamburger in pilaf.

If I’m trying to also be healthy: scrambled eggs or progresso soup heavily feature. The food can’t take too much effort, or I’ll lose interest in eating. The more depressed I am, the more I fight an ongoing debate about why eating is pointless because in four hours I’ll just have to do it again. I recognize the fallacy in that logic, but when I’m super depressed logic and I aren't speaking either.

I'm not sure really what I ate during my dark days facing down a variety of life ending options. It was a while back. I took a lot of long baths and every time I came back out unscathed felt like a step forward. I perfected my happy-perky mask, and I don't think I was very aware of eating. I was aware of feeling like I was being swallowed by crude oil. I ate so no one would question me. I ate so logic and I could continue our debate about my existence. (We speak again when the issue of survival actively comes into play) Ultimately, bleeding out or some other incarnation felt too much like losing a fight to people and forces that didn't deserve to win. That was just enough for my scrappy nature to kick in and get me back on track. It took a long time for that to happen, and longer before I weeded out all the life things that kept putting me back in that tub. I will say that I determined that the more crisis my life is in, the more traits I share with a lynx or a dragon or another loner animal that should be approached with caution and respect.