Tales from the Raven

10 - The ’vote for me’ pamphlets they gave you last election. 
9 - A diaper with unwrapped chocolates inside. 
8 - The hairball your cat threw-up.
7 - All the margarine lids in your tupperware drawer.
6 - The dead (pet) fish you’re keeping frozen in the freezer.
5 - All your unmatched socks.
4 - Your rattiest and ugliest old text book.
3 - Your old kickboxing videos.
2 - Your soup cans that expired last [...]

Since this has been on my mind lately, here’s a guide to the difference between a cold and allergies, as put out by the Mayo clinic.
Best of sniffle season to you! 

I’ve been spending some time thinking about the impetus for change which often kicks a story off the ground and gets it rolling.  Some change is essential to adventure or character driven stories in which action will play a key role, but a balance must be reached between catching the reader’s attention with a wild new thing, and [...]

Some pretty cool pictures of critters in the zen mode–scientists in China are playing with levitation.  I haven’t figured out how to stick a picture in my blog, so you’ll have to follow the link.  Sorry.

An article on Yahoo News is reporting NASA plans to build a lunar outpost on one of the moon’s poles, so that astronauts could be staying on the moon for stints of six months by 2024.
There is some noise of commercial interests, but what they really need (if they’re going to fund the Mars expedition) is a [...]

One of my fish likes to play dead.  He’s an algae eater, and occasionally sits at the bottom, his body swaying and his eyes glazed over, for all the world like a fish that’s beginning to rot.
As a strategy, playing dead can have life-saving advantages.  Just look at a few aggression triggers:

Competition for resources — dead things [...]

Ailurophile >n. a cat lover. 
Dacha >n. a country house or cottage in Russia, typically used as a second or vacation home.
–origin mid 19th cent.: Russian, originally ‘grant (of land).’ 
Inexorable >adj. impossible to stop or prevent: the seemingly inexorable march of new technology.
– (of a person) impossible to persuade by request or entreaty: the doctors were [...]

Every year in households with children a clamor goes up around Nov. 30th, or Dec. 1st or 2nd.
“Can we open it?!  Can we?!  I should be first–  No, it’s my turn!”
Parents dig out the advent calenders and begin the countdown from 1 to 25.  For them the time will fly . . . the To Do list [...]

10 - You’ve always wanted tap-happy feet.
9 - You’re craving frozen fish sticks.
8 - Your old boy/girlfriend moved to Greenland and you need a little more space.
7 - Your snowman melted last week and you want to build another.
6 - You went to Australia, but they threw you out.
5 - Your favorite song is ‘White Christmas’.
4 - The last time you went you bought the [...]