The world stays the same...or does it?

After teasing us last September with the news that Einstein might have been wrong, scientists reported on Wednesday the face of physics as we know it is not changing. It appears a faulty cable connection created an erroneous reading of tiny neutrino particles traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than light.

I'm a bit disappointed to learn the way we thought the world worked  isn't changing (as in E really does equal MC ² and Einstein had it right all along). Maybe the physicists over at CERN should have done a better job of keeping the lab rats from gnawing on sensitive technical equipment (just kidding)!

Yet just when I thought my imaginings of a new paradigm for the universe was going to be destroyed by such a mundane thing as a bum cable, a report on Friday restored a little of my previous excitement. It seems the faulty wiring could actually have made the original readings wrong in the opposite direction and the particles may have been traveling faster than the faster-than-the-speed-of-light readings.

Say what? So maybe Einstein was wrong and I might still have the pleasure of seeing a major scientific shift in my lifetime. Oh cruel physics...stop toying with my fragile emotions and get some definitive results already!

Magnificent Magnetic Poetry

The poetry has been building up on my fridge. And the poets have really outdone themselves with this round of magnetic verse. Here's the latest musings:

• squirrel breeze                                 
        dream freeze                      
                 conscious can                 
                         gray man  (nice rhyming scheme and use of spacing here...I have no idea what it all means, but I sometimes wonder if that's not the hallmark of good poetry...me not understanding it!)

• the devil relax ed with a cold drink after a long night of trick er y  (I wonder what the devil's drink of choice is...wouldn't it be funny if it was an appletini?)
• explore a prostitute s body with random electric fruit s  (yikes!)
• howl that beautiful morning torso noise  (this person must have had beans the night before)
• dream s create inspiration between cold shadow s and silent thought s  (I wish my dreams did this...mostly they leave me feeling a bit puzzled)
• live for more than a memory  (very deep, very wise)
• spark muse speak music green woman green woman  (the use of repetition here indicates the author has a great understanding of literary techniques...or an unhealthy obsession with the Green Giant's girlfriend!)
• imagine a friend and she will come a live  (kind of cool, but also kind of scary)
• emotion s bleed the heart     wrench the mind    expose our soul     and leave us naked  (my favorite of the bunch, no explanation needed!)

The Hubby came up with the idea of hiding some of the overused words. "Prostitute," "Pickle," "Explore," "Naked," "Skeleton" come to mind (and pretty much anything else that can be manipulated into a dirty phrase). Although as we can see from the above lines, those words still offer thought-provoking options. "Prostitute" still should go...not much you can do with that word that isn't dirty!

WIP Wednesday

I've got quite a few works-in-progress, so I'm instituting a new column about a WIP on the second Wednesday of each month.

Why Wednesday? Because it begins with the same letter as WIP, and you all know how us writers love our alliteration. Why the second one of the month? Because that's when my critique group meets, so it's easy to keep track of. Why once a month? Because it's a good way to make sure I have at least one post a month (which lately is about all I'm managing to do!).

My soon-to-be published novel (oh, it's so satisfying to write that) Elixir Bound is up first. A buddy of mine from my aforementioned critique group share a Wordle of his WIP, which inspired me to create one of my own. I used the entire manuscript of Elixir and Worlde spit back this image.

That big, orange word "Katora" that dominates a huge chunk of the Wordle is the main character's name. I think that's fitting, especially for a YA book, because so much of the preteen/teen experience is focused on the me and discovering who you are as a person.

Many of the other large words are also character names, which I guess means my story really is about the characters. Or I just need to stop using their names so darn much! Another interesting thing I noticed is that there are quite a few body parts listed ("Lips" and "mouth" anyone! You know there's going to be kissing in the book!). Some of my other favorite words: "Elixir," "family," "power," "breath," "fire."

I'd love to see what kind of Wordles you all come up with!