Youthful Young Yawners ( #AtoZChallenge )

 

     You've done this I'm sure.  You see someone else yawning and it makes you want to yawn too. You try to stifle your yawn, but anyone looking at you can tell what's going on.  Or maybe you just let go and yawn real big.  Maybe you set off an epidemic of full and suppressed yawns.  Ho-hum...

 

      Yawning comes natural to infants and even fetuses according to a story I recently read.  However, there seems to be no evidence that babies are stimulated to yawn by seeing others yawn.  Contagious yawning doesn't develop until around age five.  Is it a learned behavior perhaps?

      I can be a sucker for a yawn.  I enjoy yawning.  It is a relaxing exercise that can help bring me sleep or it can be a reviving action that energizes me with more oxygen.  And when I see someone else yawning whether it be in person or on television, I too will often be given that inspiration to yawn. 

       Picture a baby stretching its arms and legs as it writhes a big yawn.  When I imagine that it makes me want to yawn.  But maybe I'm boring you.  Maybe you don't care about youthful young yawners.

       Do you sleep like a baby?  Do you ever do yawning or breathing exercises to help you relax?  Are you sensitive to contagious yawning? 

Xeroxing Xanthophobic Xenomorphs ( #AtoZChallenge )

 

     Xanthophobia is a fear of the color yellow or anything that might involve the concept of  yellow.  I can't say that yellow is my favorite color, but it's very nice for certain things.  But a fear?  Seems silly to me, but the world is filled with a lot of silly seeming things...

        Xenomorphs are not something that might ring a bell with a lot of us from the term, but if you've seen those films in the Alien franchise or similar types of films then that big ugly creature is what I'm talking about. In the original Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott, the creature was imagined by artist H.R. Giger, a sci-fi surrealistic artist from Switzerland. Giger has designed creatures for many films as well as doing the artwork for many album covers.  He has done some wild imaginative work, but those creatures have been terrifying.

        Looking at one of those dark fearsome xenomorphs I can imagine that they don't like bright things and that probably especially goes for bright colors like yellow.  I might venture to guess that a xenomorph might even have something like a fear of the color yellow.  If anyone or anything might display indications of xanthophobia it might be a xenomorph.

       And in this age of reproducing things and cloning, what if we were to start duplicating xenomorphs?  It would in essence be like xeroxing xanthophobic xenomorphs.

       Are you a fan of the Alien movie franchise?   Do xenomorphs frighten you?   Is yellow a color that you like a lot or not so much?

World War Why? ( #AtoZChallenge )

      Why do people and nations have to keep on fighting?  I can't recall a day of my life when war wasn't raging somewhere or on the horizon of beginning,  In the past thousands of years, has there ever been a time without war?

       Wars are generally rather useless affairs.  They might solve some problems, but they often leave bigger ones in their wake.  They've been with us throughout human history and yet we have not found a way to stop them.  We may hinder them, minimize them, or postpone them, but the wars just keep on coming.  Why, oh, why?

        We've had World War One and World War Two.  Maybe the next one we can name World War Why.  I don't think there will be any more wars after a next world war.  Why would we want to destroy our world with war when so many efforts are being made to save our environment in order to save the world. Why, oh why? 

        Is war the natural state of humankind?  What are the practical solutions to ending war?  Have you ever had to fight in or endure a war situation?