Archive
Draliman Through the Ages Part 2 – Dralisaurus
For the second part of our series “Draliman Through the Ages” we visit a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and one dinosaur in particular – the fearsome killer Dralisaurus!
Catch up with “Draliman Through the Ages”!
Part 1 – Dralamoeba
The team at DraliDoodlesTM have raided their piggy banks and bought a cheapo graphics tablet. They still can’t draw, but now they can’t draw more professionally. Enjoy!
Time Twister
RETROCAUSALITY IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ADDRESSING THE QUESTION, “CAN THE FUTURE AFFECT THE PRESENT, AND CAN THE PRESENT AFFECT THE PAST?”. IT IS ANY OF SEVERAL HYPOTHETICAL PHENOMENA OR PROCESSES THAT REVERSE CAUSALITY, ALLOWING AN EFFECT TO OCCUR BEFORE ITS CAUSE. IT OFTEN REFERS TO PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF TIME TRAVEL, THOUGH THE TWO TERMS ARE NOT UNIVERSALLY SYNONYMOUS. (Logo courtesy of Queen Creative.)
Wow. Can the present affect the past? I’m going to say “no”.
I read the Wikipedia entry on the topic. It’s all a bit spurious, physics-wise, although there are theories. There are always theories. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century to be a physicist. I like to see my physics in action.
We’re talking “causality” here – cause and effect. One example of cause and effect is described by the “butterfly effect”, which is also part of chaos theory. Now, I’m happy with chaos theory per se. If you pop a ball on the top of a hill it will eventually roll in some direction or other based on all sorts of starting conditions. But the “butterfly effect”? A butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away weeks later? Really?
Those Chinese butterflies have some serious mojo going on
“The Butterfly Effect” by DraliDoodles
Back to retrocausality. As a thought experiment it’s fun, I guess, especially if you’re with your mates down the pub, or it’s post-university-disco and you’re all sitting in the kitchen, nicely drunk making cheese toasties and talking philosophy.
As a reality, I’m thinking it could not be! I’ve watched a ton of Dr Who and he always actually travels to the past in order to affect the future. If he could affect the past by changing something in the present, he wouldn’t need the TARDIS, now would he?
But whoa there just a minute! How do we know that this retrocausality thing isn’t happening all the time? We don’t! Think about this:
- I don’t like something about my past
- I fire up my RetroCausalitron(TM)
- I change the past from “here”, the present
- The timeline from “that point then” on to “this point now” is rewritten
- Because the timeline has changed I never actually changed the past – that action belonged to a defunct timeline. Nor do I even want to change the past as it is now what I wanted it to be.
Therefore we could have changed the past millions of times from the present and we’d never even know. Now that’s scary. My head hurts.
Please Let Me Go Home
Weekly Writing Challenge – Your earliest memory. Capture every detail. Document the quality of the memory — is it as sharp as HDTV or hazy and ethereal, enveloped in fog? Write for 10 minutes. Go.
I must have been around four years old. We were living at the first house I ever lived in and we left when I was five so that sounds about right.
Mum left my little brother and I with a good friend of hers to play, as she occasionally did. I’m sure we’d been there before, though everything from so long ago is pretty hazy.
I don’t remember anything about that visit apart from the very end – that is etched into my memory as if carved in stone.
My memory tells me that Mum’s friend held a cup of tea – it could have been coffee but I think it was tea – out to each of us. She said “Drink this or you can’t go home.” I was terrified. I wanted to go home to Mum.
I drank the tea. It was foul. I was only a toddler. Toddlers don’t drink tea. Toddlers drink juice or milk (I never drank milk and still don’t – it makes me sick).
We never went back to that house. Not ever.
“Cup of tea, little boy?” by DraliDoodles
It’s a witch’s hat, OK? Shut Up. I don’t do hats.
Is this how it really happened? Probably not. This woman was a kind woman, a friend of the family. More than likely she said “Have some tea to drink before you go home.” I misconstrued.
Only now, as I write this, do I feel terribly guilty for the poor woman. Imagine inadvertently scaring a toddler so much that they refused to see you ever again?
Memories are tricky things. Although I am convinced that “I heard what I heard”, I have been similarly convinced that a film ended this way, or a book ended that way only to watch or read it decades later and discover that my mind has altered the ending. In my mind it ended the way I always wanted it to – now that I’ve rediscovered it I find that the ending is completely different. Disappointingly different.
My mind very probably twisted this innocent encounter into something sinister.
What can we trust if not our own minds?
Stop the clock…
Time to write: 8 minutes.
Proof-reading/editing: 4 minutes.
Draw/scan/format/upload doodle: 5 minutes.
Confession: I didn’t let this sit for a day as per the instructions. I didn’t want to spoil the thoughtless spontaneity.
D I Why
Prompts for the Promptless – Do It Yourself (DIY) is the method of building, modifying or repairing something without the aid or experts or professionals.
I have to be honest – DIY and me don’t mix. I’d love to be one of those chaps who can put up a shelf at a moment’s notice or fix a leaky tap at the drop of a hat, but sadly this is not the case.
If I try anything so much as cutting the tag off a new t-shirt, I always ensure that the first aid box is close at hand. Stick me anywhere near a power tool and I’m likely to have one of those hard-to-believe hilarious yet tragic accidents.
“Cornish man accidentally falls on own chainsaw while hanging picture.”
“Chainsaw Disaster” by DraliDoodles
Draliman Through the Ages Part 1 – Dralamoeba
Today sees the start of our series “Draliman Through the Ages”, which charts “the Draliman” from long, long ago up to the present day.
For Part 1, we travel back (through the magic of DraliDoodlesTM) many millions of years to meet Draliman’s ultimate ancestor – Dralamoeba.
I have spoken to the DraliDoodles team and they are considering buying a ruler in time for the next episode (budget permitting).
Clone Awards!
The lovely aliciabenton over at Imperfectly Perfect has nominated me for an award! Yay! And she was very flattering about DraliDoodles to boot!
It looks kinda familiar – the last time I saw it, it was going under the name “The 3-in-1 Award”, but this time it has a much more romantic name – “The Bouquet of Three Award”. How cool is that?
Here is a picture of the award.
As I’ve had one which looks like this before (and handed it around) I’m going to break the rules (again) just a bit. However, I will attempt to think up some more “interesting things” about myself.
Here are the rules anyway.
1. Proudly display the Award Certificate on your blog page!
2. Announce your win with a post. Be sure to link your post back to me as a “thank you” for the nomination.
3. Present up to 15 awards to fellow deserving bloggers.
4. Let them know you’ve nominated them for this awesome award.
5. Post 7 interesting things about yourself.
Okay, (1) done, (2) yup, (3) um, (4) see (3), (5) here goes:
1) It’s interesting to note that the last time I tried to think up interesting facts about myself I had real trouble.
2) I have no big toenails due to an unfortunate ingrowing toenail episode followed by a chiropodist with a big vial of acid.
3) Number (2) wan’t interesting, it was just gross.
4) I have a PhD in laser physics and I’ve worked in IT for the last 10 years.
5) Number (4) makes me a real hoot at parties. Not.
7) I have a problem with simple maths.
Sorted. So, “Clone Awards”? I reckoned that since this is three awards in one it would need three dralimans (dralimen?) to pick them up. Although it didn’t go so well last time I thought I’d try a bit of cloning again. Here’s the result!
“Clone Awards” by DraliDoodles
That’s me in the middle.
The clone on the left (“#77856-B2/Batch 7”) appears to be eating the trophy. And something’s gone wrong with his legs. Also, upon closer inspection, his head doesn’t appear to be attached to his body.
I don’t know what’s up with the clone on the right (“Frank”). He’s run off.
A Brand to be Proud Of
This week’s Prompts for the Promptless asked us about brands – not the type they use on cattle, the type we use to identify oneself or one’s product.
DraliDoodles.
We’ve all seen them. It’s a brand synonymous with integrity, quality and value for money.
That is how I see DraliDoodles in the coming years. In order to promote this, I have fashioned a logo.
As you can see, I’ve pulled out all the stops on this one, as it has to be as professional as possible! I suppose it could have been in colour, but I have no coloured pens. Once DraliDoodles takes off, I’ll get a small business loan and invest in some. Or maybe I’ll tap my investors.
Can anyone see what’s missing from my logo?
“A graphic designer with actual talent?”
Who said that? No, I need a strapline (that’s “tagline” if you’re in the US).
To that end, I’ve thought up a few to try:
- Quality. Integrity. Professionalism. Cheap.
- You know it makes sense! (Possibly that one’s taken.)
- When there’s no-one else, call us!
- Because one day we’ll be famous
- We doodle because we care
Which do you think I should use? I think you’ll agree, they’re all pretty awesome.
And don’t worry, when I’m rich and famous and living on my own island, I’ll continue to post DraliDoodles here on my blog!
I’ll encrust them with real gold, though. Because I can.
The Best Medicine – Never Happy
Weekly Writing Challenge: The Best Medicine – This week, write about whatever topic you’d like, but go for laughs.
Write about whatever I want? I can do that! No bother. Not a problem.
Wait a sec though – “go for laughs”? Well, there’s the rub. Humour is so subjective, and I’m not the funniest fella at the best of times. Tell you what, I’ll shoot for “mildly witty” and we’ll see where we end up.
The title of this post – “Never Happy” – is perhaps not a promising start. I don’t know about you, but to me that doesn’t scream “side-splittingly riotously hilarious” (try saying that three times fast). It sounds more like I’m going to have a rant, or maybe I’m going to wax lyrical about something that’s really getting me down.
So what, I hear you ask, am I going to complain about? I’ll give you a clue – I’m British.
That’s right! It’s the weather. That’s not what you guessed? Pretend you did! I’ll never know.
I’ve complained about the weather before (British, remember?). It’s too cold. It’s icy. It’s too windy. It won’t stop raining. Here’s a new one for you – it’s too hot!
“Never Happy” by DraliDoodles (TM)
Let’s take a quick Haiku-break.
Hostile sun blazing fire
Melting roads and hearts and minds
Air con broken
Hope you enjoyed it.
As I drove home this evening the thermometer informed me that it was 26 degrees C. I’ve just used the marvel which is Google and it informs me that this equals 78.8 Fahrenheit! I know what some of you are thinking. “That’s not very hot!” Well, it is to me. It appears that “too hot” is as subjective as humour.
My office is eco-friendly. We don’t have that planet-destroying toxic chemical-fuelled air con. Oh no! We have some sort of “comfort cooling” air recycling system. Today it managed to get the temperature to a not-so-comfortable 28 degrees C. Way to go, eco-friendly comfort cooling air con.
I didn’t wear shorts, but I did break out my trousers with the detachable legs. Detachable legs! What’ll they think of next? I was going to post a picture of me wearing the trousers with one leg removed so you could see the flexibility, but I thought that some of you might be reading this while eating dinner. I worried that the sight of my pasty-white leg might cause a case of the “tummy upsets”. So, no picture.
I also looked in my drawers for a light-weight T-shirt. It’s been so long since I’ve needed a light-weight T-shirt that it had mould on it from sitting in the drawer for years.
Mould!
And to add very serious insult to injury, it was my Red Dwarf T-shirt!
My poor mouldy T-shirt – please be OK!
I do hope the washing machine can work its magic.
It looks like I’m Never Happy.
Very sad.
The Beast of Drali Moor
Prompts for the Promptless – Cryptozoology is the search for legendary animals, usually in an attempt to evaluate or confirm the possibility of existence. This includes looking for living examples of animals that are considered extinct, such as dinosaurs; animals whose existence lacks physical evidence but which appear in myths, legends, or are reported, such as Bigfoot and Chupacabra; and wild animals dramatically outside their normal geographic ranges, such as phantom cats. The animals cryptozoologists study are often referred to as cryptids, a term coined by John Wall in 1983.
Drali Moor. A wide expanse of moorland, marshes and woodland stretching from the centre of the land across to the small coastal village of Drali-On-Sea. An area of outstanding natural beauty (if you like that sort of thing), it is home to a scattering of farmers, sheep and, some say, the “Beast of Drali Moor”.
Few have caught a glimpse of the beast; no pictures exist. However, those who claim to have seen it swear it is real.
Artist’s impression of the Beast.
It looked way scarier in my head.
Fool on a Bike
Daily Prompt: Trains, Planes, and Automobiles – You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, or car? (Or something else entirely — bike? Hot air balloon?)
Chad was a dreamer. A dreamer and a fool. Everyone knew it. Chad knew everyone knew it. And he didn’t care.
He’d had ideas for this, ideas for that. He thought they’d make him famous. Some great invention, or a feat of daring. Nothing ever came of any of them. In fact, his biggest claim to fame was that he failed at absolutely everything. People often wondered how that could be – out of all of his thousands of hair-brained schemes, surely he would have accidentally succeeded at least once? Read more…
Click for a random post!
Woohoo!
I totally didn't win!
Share Your World
Friday Fictioneers
draliman on life 