I is for ideogenous itinerarian(mental traveller):

“I have ze solution, mon ami,” I said in my best French accent.
“For one day and one day only you veel not be known as Sir Laughalot but as ze explorer Sir Ideogenous Itinerarian. You veel travel ze confines of ze author’s brain and see ze weird and wonderful catastrophy of eet.”
“She has totally lost it now,” said the Muse a frown marring her features and her hands twisting worriedly.
“No, I haven’t! It’s the perfect solution. He gets to travel and do something different for the day and I still have him near me to prevent the inevitable ‘du-uh-huh-what’. Perfect,” I said rather proud of myself.
Thus Sir Laughalot, pardon me, Sir Ideogenous Itinerarian, set off on the Great Expedition to the Interior of the Author’s Mind, with a pith helmet and a bindle, filled with peanuts, dried fruit and a flask of cold water. We waved him off with a big hurrah and I could see, by the set of his shoulders, that he was excited by the adventure.
He met the various depression spiders and had to battle his way through their vast webs, had tea with the Lexicon Dragon and helped her search for a few lost words, swam the chocolate river filled with diabetic crocodiles, climbed the tree of knowledge and escorted novel ideas to a more permanent home. They were wandering around in Short Term Memory and screeching for attention. Sir Laughalot took pity on them and found them a large empty nest in Long Term Memory. All in all a fun day was had by all.
A fellow blogger’s view on armchair travel, weirdly enough, her name is also Vanessa.
http://atravelersmind.blogspot.com/2011/06/day-of-armchair-travel.html

H is for, you guessed it, hamster:

“Stop whining,” grumbled Sir Laughalot from his perch on the giant purple, plastic wheel.
“At least you don’t have to run for a living. I am a haemathermal hamster who is extremely habile, but hamshackled to a wheel. Fortunately for you, I do not suffer from halitosis. Enough h-words for you, or should I throw in horometry, hoyden or hortatory for good measure?”
“What are you so upset about? Have you eaten all the h-pages from the dictionary again, they are not strawberries you know?” I asked, dreading the answer. Lately everyone seemed to be having horrescent days.
“How would you feel after 46 years of running on the same wheel to keep your owner’s mind turning over and all this without a word of thanks I might add and so what if I did eat the pages,” he said; his mouth turning upside down and sliding off his face to land in a sad looking puddle in the wood shavings. I leant forward to dust it off and place it back where it belonged.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly, “would you like a vacation, somewhere warm, like Honolulu?”
“No, I don’t want to miss out on all the fun and besides which, who is going to keep you from becoming a Neanderthal?”
He was right of course; I would never be able to part with his pudgy little body and his comical whiskers. Sir Laughalot kept me sane and happy. He was a humorous little fellow and kept the dark at bay with the sharp electrical sparks that spat angrily from his wheel.
Watch these hamsters spinning around. LOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BdwEpiSMAw

 

C is for Cachalot or Chocolate:

Cachalot is a also a science fiction novel written by Alan Dean Foster and a six ship class mine-laying submarine of the Royal Navy.

My resident hamster was running for his life as the smoke signals escaped in wispy tendrils from my overheated brain.
“Cachalot or sperm whale,” I said studiously, wiping the lenses of my new pink spectacles. My nostrils flared at the sudden sweet smell that lingered in the room. I could hear a wrapper being rolled up into a ball and tossed into the wastebasket.
“C is for chocolate, rich, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth-chocolate,” whispered the Muse. I drooled on my keyboard and watched helplessly as she bit into the Aero. I knew the bubbles would pop ever so slightly in her mouth.
I licked my lips and said: “Dark Chocolate, who is usually a solitary creature, swims in the White Chocolate Ocean and looks for Caramel Chocolate, they mate and a tiny Cadbury Flake is born. They live on Fererro Rocher.” This was what came out of my mouth, but my brain was saying; “Male sperm whales, usually solitary creatures, swim the oceans looking for female sperm whales. They mate and a single baby is born. They live on squid.”
The Muse winked slyly at Sir Laughalot who was overjoyed to take a well deserved break from the monotonous wheel. The mere mention of chocolate and my brain stood still, whether he was running or not. I admit to being a recovering chocaholic, another c-word.
I have pictured myself many times standing in front of a group, saying:
“Hi, my name is Vanessa and I am a certified chocaholic.” To which everyone would respond with a resounding: “Hi, Vanessa.” The inevitable question would be asked- when last have you had any chocolate to which the timid reply would be: “Uhmmm, yesterday…sorry and I feel sick about it!”
“Isn’t messing with her more fun than listening to her pedantic research?” she asked Sir Laughalot who nodded gleefully.
They had pulled the wool over my eyes again- I was a vulnerable idiot.
“Can we please stop having scientific lessons?” she asked, but I had to be towed away from Charlie’s Chocolate Factory which was, at least in my mind open 24/7 all the days of the year.
For boring information on the Sperm whale and nothing on chocolates, click the link- it’s easy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale

 

 

The flamingo (continued)

 

“What?” she asked peering at me intently. For a moment I feared that I had voiced my opinion regarding the flamingo out loud.

“No, nothing,” I replied, trying to hide the huge grin on my face, which would later result in laugh lines, which I would have to remedy with a strange mixture of alligator pear (an avocado for those of you in the know), honey and water. I would liberally apply the sticky paste to my face and lie back with cool cucumber slices on my eyes. Sir Laughalot, my resident hamster, would have a fit and be unable to run on his little wheel which would leave me only slightly more intelligent than a dust bunny. Anything to prevent wrinkles; I already had a turkey neck and breasts which I could throw over my shoulder and kill any ninja assassins standing behind me. Yes, this was why push up bras were invented, they kept everything perky and exactly where they were when I was sixteen and not falling to my knees in wild abandon. Hmm, perhaps some nice scarves would hide the gobble and wobble in the neck area….perhaps…

“Drifting,” she said sarcastically.

“I don’t know why I even bother to appear, when all you do is ignore me and daydream. Really, how on earth do you get any writing done? You keep staring into the distance with several variations of dumb on your face? Would you like to know what I have learned lately?” she asked, changing direction so fast that my head spun and I looked like a bobble headed dog in the back window of someone’s awful yellow station wagon.

“Yes,” I sighed, “do enlighten me.”

“I learned how to do that hip and happening dance thingy,” she said. Just the fact that she knew the phrase ‘hip and happening’ surprised me, but dancing? Somehow I could not picture her body gyrating to any beat. It would keep on moving ad infinitum as she jiggled and bopped; her body had laws of its own.

“Which dance would that be,” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

“That gangbang style, you know: off da gangbang style, walk, walk, crawl,” she sang lustily. She immediately threw her hip to the side and moved to a beat that only she could hear. Psy, the original artist and dancer, would have had a heart attack if he could have been privy to the muse’s rendition or rather destruction of his unique moves. She looked and moved like a male flamingo, desperate to attract the attention of the unwilling female. She spread her arms to the side and strutted, lifting her dimply knees as high as they could go and looking sharply left and right. She dipped her neck inelegantly and stumbled into a faltering moonwalk. It was a rather weird and unusual mating dance and no Opan Gangnam style was present at all.

I could no longer contain the laughter that was bubbling like a volcano in my throat. I giggled hysterically, fell off my chair and rolled around on the tile floor in hysterics, spewing hot lava onto the brittle porcelain. Okay, so it was only a little spittle, but I am a writer after all.

She stopped, glared at me and sniffed.

“You never appreciate me,” she said in a teary voice and stormed off to her special corner of my brain, where she slammed the door pointedly. I could hear the echoes of her theatrical sobs for several hours afterwards. Needless to say she hasn’t shown her face since and I am left to my own devices and my stories are the worse for it. I needed her; she made life interesting, quirky and insane. If you find her wandering on the street somewhere, please return her as soon as possible to the right hemisphere, third quadrant, to the left of the Corpus Callosum and directly in front of the Thalamus of my brain. Thank you in advance…

The hilarious flamingo mating dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW8GX2n4qbY

 

 

 

 

Watch out Bermuda the Muse is on her way!

 

 

“There you go,” the Muse said shaking her buttocks which, I was sure, could be seen from outer space. The Vogons probably use it as a navigational landmark when visiting Earth.

“Huh?” I was back to being a grunting Neanderthal again due to no fault of Sir Laughalot. He was still running.

“Your brain is back to doing what it does best, dear. You are being wonderfully imaginative. I really am good at this, aren’t I?” We both realised it was a rhetorical question.

“Well, I’m off to Bermuda for a cocktail or two,” she said rattling her bracelets.

‘Please, don’t ask Sir Laughalot if I pushed him. He is a habitual liar and would do anything to discredit me. Be a dear and start writing, you still have 7000 words to go before you can proclaim yourself a winner, you know. No time like the present and all that. See you later!”

She disappeared, leaving the image of her in a bikini seared onto my retinas. I could hear Sir Laughalot giggling uncontrollably as she sailed past him. He was barely holding onto the wheel.

I hoped Bermuda knew what was coming their way and had battened down the hatches; she was a force to be reckoned with. I sat down, applied ample butt to chair and started in on the remaining 7000 words, so far so good. Wish me luck and throw me a towel in case I panic!

Read about a normal brain here, please note that mine has never worked this way. http://www.wisebrain.org/articles/neurodharma/WonderfulBrain.pdf

Brain pain and a bikini:

“Slap it silly and deep fry it.”

“Huh?” I said eloquently. Being a writer I have a large vocabulary at my disposal, yet this was the example thereof.

‘Your brain, dear,” said the Muse.

“You have lost me,” I said the look of confusion on my face a sure sign that the hamster in my head had fallen off the wheel and was lying on the ground hyperventilating. We all have a hamster in our heads whether we acknowledge it or not. The hamster, mine is called Sir Laughalot, is in charge of the firing of neurons which in turn sends neurotransmitters across the synapses. Tadaa you have brain function! If you are a visual creature like me this consists of comic book pictures which flash before your eyes. Sir Laughalot is usually filled to the brim with energy drinks and can run ad infinitum. Sometimes, as now, he falls off and brain function deteriorates and I become a monosyllabic Neanderthal, which explains why I felt the need to grunt.

She sighed, exasperated by the sudden onset of idiocy on my part.

“Weren’t you just staring at the computer screen wondering what to do with your brain that seemed stuck?”

“Well…yes,” I said as the hamster rose from the ground, shook his head until his whiskers vibrated and got back on the wheel.

“Slap it silly and deep fry it,” the Muse reiterated.

‘Let me see if I understand this correctly.” The hamster had been walking on the wheel for a few seconds now and the images were becoming clearer.

“You want me to slap and deep fry my BRAIN? Is that the gist of it?” I asked feeling nauseated by the idea. I imagined a jelly like mound being slapped around until it was bluer than an overcooked egg and then deep fried until blue-brown. Not entirely my idea of appetising.

‘Yes, but only to wake it up out of its slumber. I don’t think a kiss from a prince would suffice, dear and you tend to turn into a frog yourself when accosted by one,” she said looking at me over huge polka dotted sun glasses.

This will truly fry your brain   http://www.news.com.au/technology/mindbending-science-photos-that-will-fry-your-brain/story-e6frfrnr-1226709833389