524

I finally saw the movie Julie & Julia. I know! My Netflix account is as neglected as the moon in daylight (~Jonathan Swift). The tag line of the movie said something about how Julie Powell embarked on this 365 day/524 recipes challenge to "enliven her uneventful life." Mostly, I'm thinking she feared her blog well would runneth dry.

When I started this blog almost four years and seventy-some followers ago, I worried my well would runneth dry, too. So I did what any self-respecting organizational freak would do: I made a list. A list filled with nuggets of inspiration. A list brimming with narrow, exclusively time-travel-themed post ideas. A serious list filled with serious topics and serious philosophical explorations of time travel. Nowhere on this list, I assure you, would you find Fabio, Elvis or appropriate homage to The Hoff.

And then one day, my head hurt. Wasn't physics the one thing I hated, really hated, about high school? Sure, the teacher was a Michael Vartan-esque hottie, but the stupid jumping-up-and-down-on-an-elevator essay question single-handedly bludgeoned my GPA. Why was I trying to explain wormholes? If blog readers want wormholes, they'll go to forevergeek or discovery. I only had to know enough to be a dangerously awesome force in time travel romantic fiction. So things like quantum holograms became quavering Holloway and alpha brain rhythms became alpha male-isms. I had pop culture fish to fry.

Did I lose direction? Not really. Did I loosen up? Holy hell to the yes. But there are still days when I come to the keyboard without a plan. And that is where five hundred and twenty four of anything is tempting.

So in the spirit of Julie & Julia, I give you a list of what 524 might look like at The Vortex:

524 Elvis songs, complete with annotations on the lyrics where his barely-contained studio gyrations caused a hiccup in his voice.

524 WTH moments in LOST, the series

524 absurd fictional methods of time travel

524 romantic faces of Fabio

524 Macgyverisms to Win a Girl's Heart

524 Pretentious Coffee shop Patron Profiles

524 Lines of Dialogue I Would Have Written Had I Not Been Writing a Daily Blog

524 Writing Rules I Stopped Following

524 Plot Notes Mined from My Vacuum Bag

524 Inventions to Torture the Nub Who Unleashed the Bamital Virus on My Hard Drive

524 Sentences in Fiction That Make Me Realize I Have Much Left to Learn

524 Never-Before-Used Physiological Character Responses To Convey Emotion. Okay, that well would dry up in, oh, a week. These are my biggest hurdle when writing.

524 Things a Romance Novel Hero Would Never Say

524 Ways to Romance a Physicist

Speaking of Physicists, time is running out to nominate your favorite hottie in ZapperZ's Most Attractive Physicist Contest. I, for one, am hoping for a photo gallery at voting time. It's just the kind of superficial-meets-science we love here at The Vortex.

What would your 524 look like?

My Rock Stars Are Not Your Rock Stars

Have you seen in the Intel commercial where Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of the USB port, is given the rock star treatment? I love it, and it made me think how my rock stars would be perceived by others. Aside from the fangirl in me who thinks Geoff Tate's operatic voice is, and always has been, inspired and basically any non-Extreme band on Hair Nation could make me choke on a pastry in their vicinity (like the guy in the Intel commercial), my rock stars are probably not your rock stars:

Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist and bestselling author who specializes in string theory. He is the son of Japanese immigrants who rose to recognition after his entry at a national science fair in the 1960s gained the attention of leading physicists at the time. While his professional theories remain inaccessible to the majority of us, his rock star comes from being able to translate physics and the intricacies of our world into language we can all understand. Last week when he appeared on Fox News to discuss how NASA cut funding to track asteroids that could potentially be on a collision course with Earth, one might have thought Keith Urban had appeared in my living room and called me "doll" for all the excitement I displayed. Or maybe Kaku channels my long-ago infatuation with my high school physics teacher, who single-handedly plummeted my geek-perfect GPA. How could I transfer out of his class when he looked like this? I wasn't stupid, you know. At any rate, Michio Kaku is a rock star in my book.

Texas Ranger's Second Baseman Ian Kinsler is a rock star, not only for his prowess on the field, but for ignoring throngs of single women hitting on him at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo to sit with a young fan for a full hour discussing the game. For helping to restore baseball's heart, he's a favorite in my book.

Lastly, every person on the Reader's Digest heroes archive and those who never reach the limelight. When I can't clear my pallet of that sour taste that so often accompanies negative news media, I read through a story here and get my Pollyanna-groove back on.

Who are your rock stars?

Jimmy Choos and Fast Food

I've actually entertained the thought of writing a story based on quantum entanglement. Wait...before your eyes glaze over with the same physics that used to give you hives in twelfth grade...picture this:

QE is basically the reverse arrow of time. If a woman picks up a glass vase and throws it at the wall, say, because she ruined her new Jimmy Choos, she has sent the initial wave of energy from the impact out into the universe. But physics states that everything has an equal and opposite reaction. Scientists call this an "echo wave," a measure of energy that comes backward through time. The reality we experience is where these two waves meet.

Translation into fiction? Maybe not. But think of the possibilities for characters. Perhaps they experience a "reversibility" where they see the vase particles coming together, reassembling as if they never happened, trapped in the echo wave. Maybe in this unseen place is a reality only the hero and heroine can see.

I can almost hear the nagging critic who's said to me before, "Why do you have to write things so complicated?" Maybe that's why the idea remains scrawled across the same notebook I use to spy on mall-goers wolfing down plates of lo mein for character studies. I'm not sure why my ideas don't come packaged up in neat fast-food containers, fit for quick consumption. Maybe I believe readers love to learn about life through fictional worlds. I love historical fiction because I come away with more knowledge of the time period than when I started. Maybe readers want to be taken on a journey and come to a greater understanding of their physical world at the same time.

This week :: The "what day is this?" revision stretch to the end.