Days One Hundred Seventeen to One Hundred Twenty Three: The British Are Coming

Day 117: The night before this, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Ben Folds, and Damian Kulash (from OK Go) locked themselves in a studio for eight hours and attempted to write eight songs as part of a creative experiment in their own. Thus, they called their band "8in8." What actually ended up happening was that they wrote six songs in twelve hours, but still... they were some pretty rad songs. You can hear/buy them all HERE. They put out a call for fan-made music videos for each of the songs, and I made one for "The Problem With Saints." I filmed it all two hours before I had to leave for work, then edited it together that night when I got back, but despite the haste it still came out fairly well.

ALSO, Neil Gaiman saw it and mentioned it on his twitter feed... which made me very happy!



So anyway, here's that video:



(Also, can I just add how weird it felt decapitating the Queen the night before a royal wedding?)

Day 118: This morning was indeed the royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. I woke up super early to watch it, then went to work (a long shift... I was covering for somebody that day). I was in such a royal-wedding-y mood that I made this while at work:



Day 119: While cleaning the church I started humming and came up with a song that, for lack of a better title, I'm currently calling the "Fairy Tale song." I can't find the notebook I wrote it in right now, and the chorus is the only thing I can remember, so I'll just explain what the song is about. The first verse tells the story of the Green Children, which were these two green-skinned children that appeared to come up out of the earth in Woolpit, England in the early Middle Ages. They told a story about how they lived in a land underground where everyone was green-skinned like them and where bells rang and strange lights gleamed. People assumed they were faeries. The boy became sick right away and died, but the girl survived and eventually lost the greenish tint of her skin. The second verse talks about the Cottingley Fairies case, two little girls who claimed to have managed to take pictures of fairies, though it later turned out to be a hoax. The third verse talks about a couple's relationship, with the idea that things aren't working out between the two but that the singer wants to pretend that everything is okay. The chorus hopefully ties all these ideas together: Just because we made it up / Doesn't mean it isn't true. / I've found such joy and wonder / In my time with you. / So come my friend / and pretend with me again / because I'd much rather live in a fairy tale. / Come with me / there's so much that's left to be / For I'd much rather live in a dream.

Day 120: I made a birthday card for Dad's 60th birthday celebration!

Day 121: I created an example of Rangoli, an Indian art form we're using as a craft for Summer Reading this year:



Day 122: I tried and tried to write a story I came up with for 13 Days of Halloween, but nothing good came of it. Seriously, after an hour and a half of working on this, I think I have one usable paragraph, and even that is weak. (So weak I really don't want to share it here!) But I will share this interesting tidbit... I'm not hugely superstitious, but today (day 122) just happened to be May 3. I have a file on my computer of interesting quotes I save, and every in a once in a while I'll go through it looking for something to reference somewhere else. I happened to be glancing through it yesterday and found this quote that mentions May the 3rd:

"... the third of May, when the Devil and his angels were cast out of heaven (and therefore 3rd May is a day on which no important undertaking should be begun and on which it is unpardonable to commit a crime)..."
~The Inner-Hebride and Their Legends, by Otta F. Swire

So I'm just going to go with that and say I was doomed anyway. Or the other alternative: that it was just a bad day.

Day 123: I wrote a poem/nursery rhyme.

Your eyelids are so heavy that the giants in the North
would stagger and would falter at their weight.
Your yawn gapes open oh so wide a Hippogriff could fly inside
So close that drawbridge and shut fast the gate!

You're grumpy as an ogre when you grumble and you yell
You could shame a banshee with your shrieks and cries.
You're as dazed as king or commoner under a fairy's spell
Any wise old crone could see through you're disguise... ("But I'm not tired!")

So like a clumsy baby dragon, let your eyelids flutter and fall
Set swords aside, no need for you to fight.
Rest your head and dream until the dawning of the day
I love you, so sleep tight. Good night, dear knight.