Revolutionarily Radical Revelations (and hyper-peanuts)

Dear blog,

Well today was a very good day indeed! "Why?" I hear you asking (in my head...I'm not crazy...) Well I'll tell you why! If only you'll listen.

Firstly, you know I've been working on this memoir of mine, with the working title the same as the blog name Life Has No Title. It's been a very challenging effort for me, but some of that difficulty has been alleviated with the help of my friend Nick (his blog is Ultrademus), who I'm sure I've mentioned several times before. He and I try to meet once a week to discuss how our projects are going (he's also writing a memoir) and to talk about all sorts of other things: marketing, publishing, editing, and sometimes just random tangents (I told him about the sodium leeches, he thought it was funny). Today was an especially productive meeting though! I've been having trouble deciding how to finish my book. Do I want to end it on a surgery? On a note I wrote, thinking I wasn't going to survive the surgery mentioned in the previous sentence? Going back to school maybe? Recovery? All sorts of ideas and more floated in my head, and none of them seemed right. Then, I typed into Google "How to end a memoir" and read some of the tips giving by one website. If your book has a theme throughout, try to start and end the book with imagery from that same scene. I mentioned it to Nick and then told him about my prologue, which had a great story in it about how I found the meaning of life in four words. Inspiration struck like lightning from on high! I could break up the prologue into two parts: the new prologue would consist of the first half of the story, and the epilogue could consist of the second half of the original prologue story! At the end of the book I would have my four word meaning of life be the last four words of the book! Several weeks of angst and worry about not knowing how to finish my book were gone! I have an ending now! Huzzah!

Another thing we have discussed, and I have mentioned in brief before, is the use of alliteration to come up with a snappy and memorable term that will really stick in people's mind. Humans are hardwired to appreciate alliteration, it's a pattern, and humans LOVE patterns, our brains can't get enough of them. For those unfamiliar with the term, an alliteration is where a series of words all begin with the same letter or sound. Example: "Alliteration always amazes Andrew." See how the first letter of each word begins with "A?" That's alliteration. The one that has been mentioned before in my blog was "manufactured mortality," a term used to describe Nick's desire to push his body to the absolute limits in his running. It's catchy, sticks with you, and helpful for marketing. Advertisers love using alliteration, as do poets. Perhaps it's not as useful in a non-fiction memoir, but it's fun to use. 

Can you think of a good alliteration? Post your alliterations in the comment section below!

There's a massive star in the Milky Way called HR 5171 A (click the link for a video) that was recently revealed to be 1300 times the size of our sun. That's freakishly massive. To give you an idea, it's 1.1 BILLION miles across. It's one of the ten largest stars ever discovered. However, that's not why I'm writing about it today. It's a peanut. Yes, I know blog, it's not ACTUALLY a peanut, but you'll see. It was recently discovered, along with its true size, that HR 5171 A has a sister star orbiting around it. The two stars are so close that the other star actually TOUCHES HR 5171 A, causing it to resemble a giant peanut...that just so happens to be well over a billion miles wide. 

Artist's Rendition of the HR 5171 system

Yes blog, I know it's incredibly nerdy, but also pretty nifty! (Okay, that sealed my nerddom right there by using the word "nifty," I accept what I am though!) However, I shall make it up to you in a few different ways. Firstly, I would like to announce that I will begin a "Question of the Week" whereupon people will post a question to me, and I will choose one to answer at the start of each week (or the end, if nobody posts a question before then). The questions can be about anything or nothing, but please, feel free to post them in the comment section!

Second, a meme! Okay...TWO memes!

And finally, some beauty to brighten your day! Or night...or whatever time it is when you're reading this.

This is a star cluster at the center of the Rosette Nebula (it looks like a rose when zoomed out), which is a stellar nursery where newborn stars are formed. The colors correspond to different elements. Blue for oxygen, green for hydrogen, and red for sulphur. Wind from the newborn stars sculpts the gas and dust around them and disperses the clouds that helped to form them, blowing away the material around them to create a bubble of space.

I think I've inundated you with enough pictures for today blog, I hope you enjoy them. Take care, your image-happy overlord, Andrew