"Imaginaaaation" by LustyReader

in a world without becky, we will all cry. oh noes, don't cry because it's guest pee time! it's guest pee time, it's guest pee time! NOT where guests will be peeing on you! where guests are coming here to POST things. from their heads on my blog because they love me, they really love me (i assume)! i warned you it would happen.

my pal lusty, from lustyreader, is next. her and i? we go waaaay back. she gave me my first award. sniff. she was the first person i guest peed on for. i know her real name!!!! I KNOW! be jealous, it's pretty good. it's beatrice. naw, kidding, BUT you can cross that off the list of potential names, thus narrowing your search! she talks about naughty books. oooooooo! and she talks about other funny, everyday life conundrums that we all face.

she makes my day with her comments and tweets back and forth. for your optical pleasure, i present, lusteeeeeee!

Howdy partners! Time for y’all to saddle up with me, the Lusty Reader at my first ever guest post! I use those phrases right, since this blog belongs to a Texan? It’s ok I gave that away because I hear it’s a pretty big state, the one time I went there it sure seemed huge! (twss) So as much as we heart, and lurrve, and bow down to Becky, we cannot easily stalk her.

I am here to say: Imagination is a terrible thing to waste. You faithful mylittlebecky readers know all about fabulous imaginations, how else could she conjure up such amazing words/phrases as: further aujou, copypaste finger, chuck + story = chory, bewbs, and schanimals ™.

So yes, imagination is important! Not because of inventions and ideas about stuff like steam-engines and democracy…but for pure entertainment value!!! I mean imagining how to make a light bulb or that E=mc2 is all well and good, but what about Charlotte’s Web? or The Count of Monte Cristo? Imaginative thinking with talking animals, decades long revenge plans, and true love happy endings is clearly wayyy more important!

I say this as a true Lusty Reader, I love reading books because I get to picture how the scenes unravel, what the characters look like, and can even close the book and keep on imagining the best part of any story…the “what if factor” and it’s all how I want it in my head. That’s why I don’t like my book covers to have drawings or photos of the characters because it messes with my imagination. And as much as I enjoy watching movies, my imagination gets lazy, every conversation and action is already SHOWN to you. Movies are a brain vacation; books are exercise!

Sometimes my imagination gets me a little distracted and next thing you know I’m burning books, on accident I swear! But definitely a hazard of the imagination getting carried away.

Maybe my perception is skewed because I have an OVER-reactive imagination. Case in point, recent conversation one morning while getting ready for work at my house:

Me: I thought we had more bags of chips left for lunch?

Hubby: I took that last one earlier this week to keep in my drawer at work, just in case.

Me: Good idea, just in case The Day After Tomorrow happens and you’re stuck on the 11th floor of your office building and need rations, right?

Hubby: *looking at me oddly, but not really that shocked* No. Just in case I work late and want a snack.

Me: Oh. Well that reminds me we should get some emergency rations just in case DC does freeze over.

Hubby: *leaves for work without a backwards glance*

Me: *calling after him* Wait! We also never created our Family Emergency Plan!

After I saw that movie (and stopped drooling over Jake Gyllenhaal, yummm) I immediately looked at every building in DC with new eyes, eyes that were measuring them as potential hiding places if/when The Day After Tomorrow happens (not literally! The day after tomorrow always happens, it’s called two days from now). I found the perfect place only 4 blocks from our house! It is a Scottish Rite of Free Masonry building and is suitably high off the ground, suitably secure, with suitably strong doors. It is très suitable.

(courtesy of Flikr user Izanami_bs)

Next stop, crazy town! No seriously, next stop was actually kicking my imagination into overdrive and thinking about all those apocalypse, dystopian society, and disaster storylines. Some of my favorites are Gone, by Michael Grant (just read that one!), Waterworld (don’t judge, I heart it so bad), Gattaca (hellooo Ethan Hawke), Tomorrow When the War Began, by John Marsden (one of my fave books as a teen), and The Stand, by Stephen King.

Now these are just the ones I liked, even though most of them scared me SILLY (over reactive imagination again, keeping me up at night thinking about how all this could happen to me!) of course there are more classic ones like Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and V for Vendetta (no you don’t get links to those, lazybones, look em up!)

And even as much as reading is a sort of exercise for the brain, I still love me some brain candy, like a solid historical romance novel full of waltzes, ball gowns, breeches, and carriage rides in Hyde Park.

Or blog brain candy, if I need to relax I just fire up good ol’ RFM’s blog-aroo here and laughter abounds! So merci buckets mylittlebecky for hosting my deadline-hating butt over here so I can share my lusty reading habits with your corner of the interwebs.