To mash or not to mash

Last week, GalleyCat posted a thought-provoking article (for me, at least) about literary mash-ups. You've likely heard of music mash-ups, combos of songs that, blended together, are sometimes interesting, sometimes just a mess. (If you’d like, you can even make your own). I’ll be interested to see which this will be: Quirk Books, a small Philadelphia press, seems to have gained a viral following online, culminating in requests at Comic-Con that led to an advanced publication date of April 1. Check out the video for the full scoop.
Mashups are a jump beyond fan fiction. I haven’t read any fan fiction, I admit. I will say that, as an author, I would not be in favor of someone else writing stories for my characters. Imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. Buying that author’s work is. As to quality, I suppose it will be as with any story – only as good as the writer.
The movie to be produced by Rocket Pictures, Elton John’s production company, seems a bit too close for comfort to Quirk Books’ notion. Hope it’s not a blatant rip-off. Then Sir Elton would be in Jane Austen’s class – ripe for ripping apart.

Testing 1 2 3

This week the bookbabie blog displayed the Spinning Dancer graphic that fascinated me, although apparently it’s been around for years now, and under heavy debate about its validity. (Sorry, I could not get her to display in animated form but you can see her here.)
Out of curiosity, I took the Intelliscript brain quiz, and scored a 4 for left and 13 for right. No surprise there. Except I couldn’t help but notice that 4 and 13 add up to a pretty random number. 17? Do other people score higher or lower, I wonder? Not that it matters. I yam what I yam, as Popeye always said. (I never truly appreciated Popeye’s Zenlike philosophies until recently.)
When I first looked at the graphic, I could only see her spinning counter clockwise, no matter how much I tried to imagine her spinning the opposite direction.
This morning, though, she surprised me by spinning clockwise for a few moments, then reversing. Does this mean I’m at my most sensible first thing in the morning, then it’s all random from there? Am I most rational while pre-caffeinated? This goes against the laws of nature, and coffee intake. Or maybe it illustrates that, in life, there really are no rules, which is more believable to me. And does the fact that I confuse my left and right (if, while driving, I'm instructed to turn right, I more often than not steer left) play into the Spinning Dancer's direction at all? Or is my brain simply dyslexic?
And now I'm wondering: should I write today? Will it be awful, boring, rational, textbooklike junk? Or will I be able to summon up from my treasured right grey matter the wild ideas in creative language I so love?
While it may not be a huge leap to the following, I haven’t heard a good Elton John song in awhile (probably because his early stuff was his best, but we won’t go there).
Have a totally random Wednesday. Just go with it.