Things Mr Bunches Is Excited About, 1

Mr Bunches has the best attitude. In the world.  Seriously.  I bet in the 7 1/2 years he's been alive, he's been sad for a total of, say, 13 minutes.  Cumulative.

He finds a way to be excited about everything, from the really exciting (like when he got to go on a plane ride for his 7th birthday) to the ... not so exciting. Like almost everything else, at least to us.

Sweetie and I have gotten so used to (and charmed by) his attitude that it's winning us over, and that's why from here on out, I will share the things Mr Bunches gets excited about.  THEY ARE NOT ALWAYS THINGS WE THINK ARE EXCITING.

So today, he got to take a field trip to the Overture Center to see the Madison Symphony Orchestra play. This is a big deal, because Mr Bunches loves orchestras.  (Mr Bunches loves everything, and orchestras are part of everything).  So that was good enough, but when he got off the bus and saw a construction site nearby, he excitedly pointed out to his teacher and Sweetie, saying:

"LOOK! A SKID STEER!"

That was not the end of the excitement for the day.  When I got home, Mr Bunches was on the couch with Sweetie, who had a Q-tip and was cleaning his ears.  As I walked into the room, he said:

"HEY, DADDY, GUESS WHAT? EAR WAX!"

Call For Story Submissions!

Announcing the first ever

COMING ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, it's the first-ever anthology of stories by indie writers to bear the INDIE WRITERS MONTHLY stamp of approval*, and we want YOU to be a part of it.

The anthology is going to be a collection of stories about Time Travel, and here is HOW YOU CAN GET IN ON THIS:

A. Have a story about time travel, or write one.

2.  Submit that story to us, by June 15, 2014.  (send submissions to litaplaceforstories[at]gmail.com** and label them "IWM TIME TRAVEL ANNUAL" or something like that.)

THIS IS IMPORTANT: paste the story directly into the of the email.  

I'M NOT OPENING ATTACHMENTS.  

III. Make sure you have the rights to the stories and it'd be nice if it hadn't been published somewhere else.  

Word limits? Who do you think you're talking to, here? Because there'll only be a few weeks to read them, shoot for somewhere between 1 and 1,000 words, but if you go longer, by all means, go longer.

Still reading?  Good.  Here is WHY you want to get in on this!

8(a)2.: The stories we like the best will get put into the anthology and you'll be a published writer! 

and

C: There are prizes! Specifically, the story picked as best by the IWM gang will win a $15 Amazon Gift Card and the Runner Up will get a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

So there you have it!  I look forward to getting those stories.

PSST? Want to read some of my own time-travel stories? Check out 

"the natural order of things is largely determined by what direction we are headed and how fast," or 

HEADLINE: “Time Travel Is Only Possible In One Direction, Scientists Say.” Subhead: “Balderdash,” Tim says.

And here's a link to five 250-word time travel stories (and an essay on another one) 

_____________________________________________________________________________

*no actual stamp will be created.  It is a metaphor.

**while this is an IWM and not a lit venture I need to keep my regular gmail unclogged up and I assume there will be 100,000s of stories coming in.  

Sexy Alien Ryan Gosling (Me, Annotated)

A little under a year ago -- last July -- Daniella Robin did a post about...

well, about something but I can't remember what it was about, as this link no longer leads to that post, so if you were thinking somehow things on the Internet were forever, well, they're not, except for that one photo of you at the afterparty.  That will NEVER go away.

Anyway, I have gathered that the post maybe had something to do with her writing a story, maybe, as judging from the comment I left there, which was this:

I heard this podcast thing where a scientist misunderstood the nature of infinity and said that in an infinite universe it becomes finitely likely that every single combination of atoms that CAN occur, HAS occurred, which means that in our own universe -- not even an alternate reality! -- there is (supposedly) a version of you that has already written that story, and in fact there is a version of you that wrote that story, got it published, had it optioned by George Clooney's production company, got it made into a movie, it won an Oscar, redefining along the way the very act of writing/moviemaking/Oscar winning, then STARTED A CIVIL WAR AMONG PEOPLE WHO LIKED/DIDN'T LIKE THE MOVIE, with that civil war being fought by four-armed men wielding lasers while riding dragons, and all the four-armed men looked like Ryan Gosling while all the women were bustier versions of Xena, and ultimately the civil war was won by the people who liked your story, resulting in you winning the First Inaugural Decimation Of Civilization Award For Writers, which is quite an honor.

In short: take the day off.

Also: I think that aptly demonstrates how "random" doesn't equal "probable" or even "possible." But scientists are prone to being dumb, because science is HARD.

The real point of that comment was that obviously, at the time, I was (and still am now, re-reading it) that a scientist confused possible with probable or likely or actually, and the absurdity of that scientist's position (infinite possibilities means infinite things-that-have-already-happened) is demonstrated by the example given.

If there's one thing that ticks me off, it's people misunderstanding stuff like that.  And people making a left turn in front of me.  But mostly misunderstanding (and then misstating for the general public) things like the way infinite possibility actually plays out in a universe with, you know, laws of physics and stuff like that.