Ant's An Author: Invasion of the Brain Beast

I’ve know that Ant’s been working on a story for the past two weeks, but beyond that, I knew little. The boys (K was supervising and helping when Ant got stuck) kept the story line close to their chest. It was a surprise, especially for me.

Then, I received an email this afternoon, during lunch time. I laughed so hard I snorted Dr. Pepper through my nose, and then promptly emailed it to all of my co-workers. 

The email said:

Here you go.

That was Ant’s voice in writing right there.

Any similarities between any fictional characters or Brain Beasts to that of real life people or Brain Beasts is merely coincidental.

And that was certainly K.

The following story was attached to the email, proudly (yet slowly) typed out by Ant in Word, after writing and editing a first draft version by hand in his journal. He proudly told me about learning how to copy and paste when I got home on Friday evening. I just thought you might like a little taste of what it's like to be the mother of these two boys... Plus, I promised Ant I would share it here.

I'll admit, I thought the main character a fantastic imagination until
I realized he was in a cartoon prohibited in our household...

Invasion of the Brain Beast

            In 3030 an alien of unimaginable brainatude was created. The brain beast was created to destroy all humans. The alien scientist created it for a mission. The mission was to be completed in 24 hours or else he would be turned in to a human.

The alien was getting ready to be launched.  His destination was Earth.  He was conflicted about his mission because he liked humans, because they had ninjas and good food.  He would have a difficult time erasing humans because he didn’t know there exact characteristics.

When he gets off at Earth after his trip, he knows he was in the rainforest of South America, because he smelled flowers, fresh air, and rain. “Gnarly ride, mate” said the tourist from Australia when he saw the alien’s ride. “Gracias, Como te llamas?” the alien said. The Australian replied; “Vladmir”. The Australian led the alien back to his house for somewhere to sleep, and then they became friends. 

Because the alien had found a friend, and he had already liked humans before his new friend; he decided to not destroy humans. The alien was going to live out his life with the Australian dude by windsurfing. However, the alien was worried about his mission because he did not want to be turned into a human. Luckily the alien was never turned into a human, because he was never found by his creators.

                                                EL FIN 

Weekend Wrap Up: Missed Callings & Twitterisms

I’m getting the wrap up done early. There are things to be done! The sky is clear for the first damn time in a week (literally, it has rained—poured—every day for the past week) and I plan to do something with that, even it is to stand outside and remind myself that the sky is blue and marvel at the lake in our backyard. Also, there’s this movie to go and watch and the farmer’s market to attend and a bridal shower tomorrow. And- Oh. My. God. Mad Men.

Yeah, that’s right. I actually have weekend plans that do not revolve around laundry. Which is a miracle, since the dryer broke on Monday, and it took until Thursday for us to get it fixed. So let me start with what didn’t hit the blog this week:

The dryer decided that it didn’t want to heat up any more. While I was angry with this inanimate object, I also felt bad for the dryer, because it’s been a good sport for twelve years now. A Google search told J and I that it could be one of four things—all easy to fix—but when J decided to start messing with it and forgot to unplug the damn thing from the wall (thereby electrocuting himself when he accidentally touched the fuses) I threw a red card and said that I would pay for someone else to come out here for thirty minutes and fix it. With the plug safely on the ground.

J can fix a multitude of things around a house, but anything electrical is his kryptonite.

R—the dryer fixing guy—was a riot. In 30 minutes he fixed my dryer, made Super-Sophie fall in love with him, and made me belly-laugh no less than five times. This man had missed his calling as a stand-up comedian. Or perhaps a psychic. He walked in our door, and had all five of us (including the dog) pegged. Which was quite a feat, given that J was at work, and Ant was at school. He had a whole repertoire of dryer related jokes and puns. And my dryer (for the first time in years) actually dries a load of laundry in one turn of the timer.

Which R told me it was supposed to be doing this whole time. I guess I forgot about that after twelve years. I tried to take a picture of him, but he wasn’t too keen about being on my blog. Sorry R. You’re too awesome not to share!

What I did when I wasn’t here:

Sprocket Ink is on Spring Break hiatus, (but I’ll be posting again there next week, once again), so let me tell you about #wineparty.

I know that many of you don’t get Twitter. Some of you may have tried it, and didn’t see the point of this seemingly random conversation facilitator.  Some of you are like me; you love the randomness of the conversation, and you enjoy being the first to hear about something, and you find the challenge of 140 characters or less to be a personal call to action. #Wineparty (that’s a hashtag, a way to track convos, if you are unaware) happens every Friday night (8pm central) and is hosted by @blogdangerously (that’s a handle, or username, for you newbies) and I have met my Twitter tribe. Every Friday night that I can, I get on there, and the conversation usually ends two hours later with all of us saying something along the lines of “I love you people!”

And the actual conversations? Well, it’s like a damn cocktail party (hence the hashtag #wineparty) and the conversation flows along weird and unexpected channels. Last night’s went like this:

NO talking about Hunger Games (for people like me who haven’t seen it yet)!

Spring weather!

What happened to winter?

Oh my God, the bugs! And spiders, and prehistoric mosquito flocks

And the other vermin…

Like weasels, raccoons, possums, and chipmunks.

You shouldn’t try to hug a chipmunk.

Chipmunk hug rape is wrong; respect the woodland creatures’ personal space.

Why aren’t the spam bots picking up on this yet?

Hooray! We’ve confused the promoted ad people and the sexy time spam bots and saved the Twitter!

It looks a bit like this:

Those "creepy little bastards?" Was a mention of the spider who shared our bed.

 Twitter fun makes me realize that all Facebook does these days is give me the chance to play Words With Friends and comment on my friends’ cute babies. Twitter is where the talking goes on.

Other awesome things on the interwebs:

Alex from Late Enough brought this letter to our attention. It’s the most awesome kid letter ever.

This list of the top ten reasons the Walking Dead should kill off Carl made me snort coffee out of my nose. At work.

Mama Pop writer Molly made us realize that Mad Men characters have some badass* parenting skills that we should all start using.

*This is called sarcasm.

And what was I nattering on about this week last year?

Ant debuted as a featured writer on this blog with his post on Plants Vs. Zombies.

Before I wish you a wonderful weekend (damn it, I just did) I want to ask you to comment about your first Twitter experience, if you have one-- for the newbies. What did you first think about the Twitter, fellow Tweeters, and what do you think of it now?

Ant's an Author: Haunted House

This, my friends, is Ant’s scary Halloween story. Besides editing for spelling and the brainstorming (especially upon which mythical creature has not been overdone for Halloween), the words are his own. I did type it this time, because J interrupted us with surprise ice cream.

Just this once, J… Just this once.

I do want to point out that, at first, I was slightly concerned about K’s and my apparent demise in the story. I asked And to elaborate, and he pointed out that K and I would likely be the ones in charge of holding down the fort during trick or treating, and apparently Ant has grandiose plans to place this story on our front door, have K and I dress up as ghosts… well, you get the idea. That made me feel slightly better. Not wearing a sheet for Halloween, mind you. That Ant had a reason for killing us off in his story.

This is the child who is planning my demise...

Rumors have been passed around about this house. Some say a mom and a teen son met their tragic end here. On one Halloween night, a griffin swooped into their house. They were never seen again. Were they attacked and eaten by the part lion part eagle beast? Do their ghosts remain in this house? Or did they simply fly away with the griffin? Are you brave enough to knock on the door and find out? 

In case you were uncertain how I would look as a ghost...

 

Plants vs. Zombies

This is the first of a series of blog posts from Ant. Let me just preface this by stating a few things:

1)     Ant would prefer that you not let any kids under five years of age read this. It deals with zombies, just in case you missed the title.

2)     I did not write  or type the post, but I did edit for spelling. I also took out excessive use of the word 'too'. Man, he loves that word.

3)     No judgment here, people! Yes, I know that this is not exactly an age appropriate game, and it has absolutely no educational value. I mean, come on—the only way you are go to have pea plants equipped with Gatling guns AND zombies is if zombies are, in fact, created by radioactive fallout. So, my children will not be prepared for the zombie apocalypse by playing this game. Yes, I know that it would be better to make the kids go outside and play instead of playing computer games. But you know what? Plants vs. Zombies tends to culminate in this:

That’s right. Family bonding time. And that makes me a GOOD parent! 

Let me tell you about my favorite game. It is called Plants vs. Zombies. Plants destroy zombies. Zombies come from graves. Big plants and small plants have bombs and more kinds of weapons. There is a guy named Crazy Dave and he sells you lots of powers and more stuff. He even sells more plants! The plants have all kinds of names.

There are all kinds of zombies and they are creepy! Like I said before, the zombies come out of the graves. They limp and their legs are creepy. Their tongues even flop out of their mouths! Some of them have shields and there are dancing ones and running zombies, too. They are different from each other.

If you do a good job playing the game, then the plants save you and your house. If the zombies get past your plants, they get into your house and they eat your brains!

There are lots more things I want to talk about, so make sure to read my next blog post!