CONTENTS

Word of the Month - chromatic

Celebrity Worship - Part 2

Gift Giving

Unleashed - Part 9

The Adventures of Juniper Silverheel - Part 15

Beyond Juniper Silverheel - Part 5

Where do you live?

Nine Letter Words

Riddles

Video - Battery hens or free range chickens?

Word of the Month

chromatic

Relating to colour; mus scale ascending or descending by semitones.

Thanks to the DK Pocket English Dictionary.

Celebrities and Celebrity Worship - Part 2

Septimus

Celebrity Worship Syndrome

In the majority of cases, Celebrity Worship Syndrome manifests in three different stages. The level of these infatuations can vary in their authority over the afflicted individual. The names refer to the separate stages of the syndrome:

Entertainment-Social: The mildest of the variations of CWS, this dimension comprises of the afflicted individual enjoying conversation about their favourite celebrity. Some individuals enjoy listening or watching their favourite celebrity while in a large group of people.

Intense-Personal: This aspect of CWS is more concentrated than the previous stage; often fans will believe that they share a unique bond with their celebrity. They often sport emotions such as extreme empathy to the focus of their attentions. This can go so far that when a misfortune occurs that concerns the celebrity, the fan will feel like it happened to them also.

Borderline-Pathological: This manifestation of CWS is the most potent of them all.  This is when the fan harbours thoughts containing deeds and fantasies revolving around their celebrity. They will often have thoughts concerning their favourite celebrity, even when it is against their wishes to entertain these ideas.

In some cases they will believe that their celebrity would come to help the fan if they required his\her assistance.

To be continued ... 

Gift Giving

Septimus

It has been a restless sleep for these two children and finally their cause for insomnia has been vanquished. As soon as they have properly returned to functioning consciousness, they flaunt their rediscovered skill in their parents’ direction, who are both still blissfully sleeping in. Why shouldn’t they? It is a public holiday. But with the two children proceeding with their mission, they leap upon their sleeping originators with a fury. After several seconds of shouts (from the children) and moans (waking parents) the procession is ready to begin their journey.

It only takes them a few paces to traverse the house and find the glistening tree, covered with the ornaments that reflect this day. With the normal idiosyncrasy of most families, they have a variety of decorations. But throughout most of the world that celebrates this in the traditional fashion, there is one constant; on nearly all the trees, nestled in a precarious manner, lies a golden star.

This scene should be familiar to many and is quite clearly, Christmas Day. And like all Christmas celebrations, there comes the giving of gifts to one another, which is directly where I’d like to take this essay. I’ll give myself one question to answer: why do we give gifts?

It certainly isn’t evolutionarily advantageous to the giver, especially since the gift is usually given freely. So why did it originate and what was its purpose?

Perhaps the statement that the giving of gifts has no “cash-back” is incorrect. If we have been given a gift it shows that we are trusting of that person, and the trust is enough that we would sacrifice our time and resources to give such a gift. In the eras where there was virtually no human life – when “trust” was virtually non-existent – were gifts between animals still given?

One particular species appears to have given the sharing of gifts a try and still uses it today; spiders. The prey that spiders catch in their webs – how they wrap it up into a small ball? That is a “gift” and is only made by male spiders. Within that cocoon the animal is preserved and thus is a “take-away” snack. The male spider will certainly indulge himself when hungry, but they also serve a secondary purpose. While mating, the female spiders of this species are very aggressive, to the point they will prevent any form of copulation occurring unless they are given something to occupy them. The male spiders give the females the “take-away” snack and in return get to pass their genes to the next generation.

Spiders are not the only animals that do this. A species of dragonfly also takes part, and more or less, so do we.

The male human proposes to the female, and to seal the deal, generally a gift will be given. Without the gift there certainly seems to be something missing, don’t you think? While we have our differences with the spider and the other creatures that also perform this spousal agreement, the basic concept is certainly the same.

The Adventures of Juniper Silverheel - Part 15

Star (14) & Nova (13)

Click here to read part fifteen of this story.

Beyond Juniper - Part 5

Star (14) & Nova (13)

Click here to read chapter 8 of this story.