My Creatively Random Life

The idea of Hell is one of those things that varies it's mythology from religion to religion.  In most cases it is a place of torment, punishment for the sins we commit in this world.   To me as a relatively non-religious person, looking at the world around me I find it a lot easier to believe in Hell than in Heaven. Linear religions often depict Hell as being endless whereas in cyclic religions it is a stopping place between incarnations.  Other traditions merely consider Hell as a neutral place, a housing for the dead so to speak.  Regardless I learned some neat things about some of the mythology surrounding Hell and I would like to share them with you: 1) Though the word Hell generally brings to mind visions of fire and brimstone a number of religions including Buddhism and early Christianity also include portrayals of Hell being a cold place. 2) In Ancient Egypt a guilty person was taken by a 'devourer' and would be subjected to terrifying punishment and the...

  As part of my family history France has always held a special place in my heart as far as places I want to write about go.  My great grandparents met and fell in love in France, it was my great grandmother's home and one day I want to travel there and see where my things got started for my family. I had a very hard time even beginning to narrow down all the interesting things there are to say about France because really being that it has so much history, and is a major power center in the world how do you say only a few things?  1) The oldest traces of human life in France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago.  (that's flipping awesome) 2)  France was one of the first countries to have an environment ministry in 1971.   3) There are 47,000 religious buildings in France 94% of which are Roman Catholic.

I have always had a fascination with Antarctica, and not just because it is fun to say.  There's something about this large mass of virtually uninhibited land that just begs to be written about it. So here are the neat things I learned about Antarctica: 1) It is considered a desert with an annual precipitation of only 8 inches along the coast and less inland. 2)  The temperature has reached a bone chilling -89 degrees Celsius (-129 Fahrenheit). 3) There are no permanent human inhabitants but 1,000 to 5,000 people are stationed there doing research depending on the time of year. 4) There is a treaty signed but 49 countries that prohibits military activities, mineral mining, nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal.  This same treaty supports scientific research and protects the continents' ecosystem.    5) Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice and about 70% of the world's fresh water. (crazy!) 6) If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to ...

When I signed up to do the A to Z challenge this year I completely forgot that I was going to be away for almost the entire first week of the challenge....eek!  With that in mind I decided to go with a slightly less research heavy topic than the one I was holding over from last year.  Which makes me a little sad because I really wanted to do it but really excited because instead I am going to talk about something that really presses on my mind all the time. My theme for this year is going to be a person, place or thing list of stuff I have always wanted to write about.  I don't know about you but I have entire notebooks and tons of scraps of paper everywhere with words, phrases and sentences on them of stuff that popped into my head that I thought would make a good story.  Or at least a good jumping point for a story. So I have decided to make an alphabetical list of them and put a little research into them, with the hope that next year's A to Z will feature shor...