25th December: Merry Christmas!

I'm insane. I must be. It's what... over a month since I last updated anything and I'm still writing these blogs with the vague intention of uploading them at some point in the near future. Well.. y'know.. I have to do something with my spare time other than just mope about illogical possibilities. There are downsides to being intelligent you know.. you can use logic to get to whatever conclusion you want to get to and then use the same logic to beat down the arguments which you just built up.

I'd give an example, but that'd rather defeat the entire purpose of everything.

Anyway, if all goes to plan - and I find my memory stick - I have every intention of actually uploading this blog. And the 6 or 7 others I've written since the 20th November. And the 7 or 8 entries for teen writings. I'm a little behind on how much I've updated, if you haven't guessed.

Okay, presuming I've updated my blog, the following should be included on Teen Ramblings:

14th November: Music, music and not more music.
16th November: Is that the time?
17th November: More Reasons
22nd November: Not really a blog
23rd November: Smoke and Mirrors
24th November: Loneliness
25th November: Where's my Snow?
29th November: Blackout
1st December: Pinch Punch First of the Month
4th December: Logic
9th December: The Totally Imaginitive Title
10th December: Pantomine
12th December: Major Time Lag
25th December: Merry Christmas!

However, we're not to forget about Teen Writings... Uploaded there will include:

Teenagers: A Little About Us
Teenagers: Teenage Love
Short Stories: The World Doesn't Want to Know
Panto: Yoghurt
Annotations: 8th September
Annotations: 9th September
Annotations: 10th September, Part One.

In grand total I make that over twenty blog entries to update. It's a little disgraceful. It might even reach twenty-five by the end of tonight, if I decide to stay up till the not-so-small hours and get some stuff completed. The reasoning behind it being updated so infrequently is that so few people read it. I don't have the sense of urgency and deadlines that having more than about two readers would instill. Advertising it would be a start I suppose, which is why - starting as of the next game I start playing - I'm going to start including a link to these (Ramblings AND Writings) in any profile on any game or website I join. That way I might get some readers.

It would help if you could start converting the masses to reading this. That'd be awesome! Let's see how many randomers we can get to read this.

Maybe I should have a 'Short Teen Ramblings' that's a 'tl;dr' version ('Too Long; Didn't Read' for those exceptional few who don't know their chat slang.) Alternatively I could tell you all to just read it and then get on with writing how I want to write instead of how others want me to write.

Anyway, having decided to get up to date by the end of this year, it's about time for me to tell you just what those things running up on Teen Writings are.

'Teenagers: A Little About Us' is the first chapter of a book I started drafting out. It's basically my complaints about everyone else, phrased in language that no one will understand. Aimed at a slightly older audience, although anyone is free to read it, I also used it as my entry for a writing competition... which I haven't yet got results back for. This chapter aims to create the stereotypical image of a teenager, along with some side notes - as always. I will then spend the rest of the book ripping that image apart. Isn't life great?

'Teenagers: Teenage Love' is some musings on the lovelife of teenagers. The phrase 'Teenage Love' is one that I unashamedly stole from Dani's older sister, who is reputed to have said 'Ah - teenage love!' upon learning that me and Dani were going out. I have no proof of this, but I don't need it. It's not like I said that it's derived from that at all. Anyway, I include a few stories including ones from people such as Grace and mention the incredible symbolism which teenagers attach to each other's actions. Teenage Logic gets mentioned once or twice I think.

'Short Stores: The World Doesn't Want To Know' is a not very good short story that I wrote. It's about 20 lines long, so not long at all. It's a little abstract, and is really a work in progress. It'll get finished at some point, and redrafted to make sure it makes sense. Then it might possibly be acceptable.

'Panto: Yoghurt' is something I discovered on my laptop after I left it lying around one day at Panto. Luckily enough, I suppose, I had the foresight to log off of my main account (which has some files with the potential to cause me some embarresment should certain people read them and realise certain things). However, I thought it might merit an entry on my blog. It's unannotated, unusually enough. That will be rectified if I remember to correct it tonight. So probably not.

All of the 'Annotations: ....' are blog entries from months back, with annotations to help the slow of understanding get what I mean. It's a work in progress, obviously. I've spent the last week or so annotating three days entries. It's harder work than it sounds, to annotate your own work. You have to remember what you meant by it and then try to express it in a new way that will make it clearer whilst still keeping it abstract. Or something like that.

I nearly made a new blog for them.


With the buisness end of this blog out of the way (finally) I can get round to talking about something slightly more fun.

Would anyone care to hazard a guess at how many church services I did on Christmas Eve? Anyone? I did three.. at fifteen quid apiece. With forty-five quid netted, I've got enough to buy myself a monitor, which will go quite nicely with the new sound system I got for christmas (2.1! Subwoofer is awesome. Bass booms around my bedroom now. I need to find some organ music however... that has really good bass apparently.) Anyway, that aside, I netted lots of lovely things this year.

Like I've already said, I got a new sound system, which I spent a good thirty minutes setting up. Most useful it will be, as it means that I now can begin to build up a semi-decent set of speakers around my bedroom and end up with some obscenely large amount of speakers as a surround sound system. It'll be great! This 2.1 system takes up 1 of my 6 available slots.... so I've got another 3 to fill up. 6.3 system prehaps? That'd be awesome.. if deafening, as all that bass would hurt your insides.

Now I'm sure that some mathematicians would have noticed that I said I had 6 slots.. and that I only had 3 to fill up after using one for my 2.1 surround sound. The reasoning is that Dani (Thank you very much by the way... they'll come in useful) found out that I wanted a set of headphones and provided them. Good things come to those who wait, and I got myself a nice set of headphones, with a microphone. Now to investigate this rumour of an internet connection that you can purchase without being 18 and investigate the cost of a webcam and set myself up a vlog. That'll be fun won't it?

Grace and Charlotte also felt the need to buy me a present this year, and so I got a massive slab of chocolate and a box of Haribo from them respectively. Edibles! So not only can I listen to music until the minute hours without someone coming and yelling at me, I can pig out whilst doing it. Isn't life great?

I got a pile of books - as could be expected - which I've just about finished reading now. I've now got the complete Artemis Fowl series (books one to six), a few more Andy McNabbs and a couple more Chris Ryans. Incidentally, I need a new bookcase. My current two are full....

I didn't get any music, probably because no one has the slightest idea what type of music to buy me, but I did get 4 DVDs. Which, once again, I've seen most of. But there's nothing wrong with rewatching these! Spiderman 3 - which is an alright film, if a little static by the end - came with a collecter's edition case. Then I got a triple pack of 'battlefield films.' Namely 'The Last Samuri' (which I have only ever watched once), 'Troy' (which I've had a hankering to watch for ages) and 'Alexander: The Director's Cut' (Which I've never seen, but will have within the next 24 hours or so.)

I also got 'Lego Racers 2' which seems like a fun little game to have and 'Myst' which is probably the hardest computer game which I've ever played, and therefore is great fun.. if fustrating. Lego Racers will be kept as a game to play with two players... Myst will be something to do when I want to get away from the world and concentrate on gaming for a bit. It's so hard though... maybe a few years of experience since I last played it will help me along a little.\

I'm sure there's something I've forgotten, but as I've forgotten it I don't know.

In terms of what other people got given by me, it ranges from a pig (Dani got a pig that rolls over and over and over. Apparently. I didn't get to see it in action though.. I couldn't find some batteries with which to test it worked before I gave it to her.) to a set of zips (My sister got two zips as a set of earings. Just the slidy bit, not the actual zip bit. She knew what she was getting, and therefore had to pretend to be surprised.... I'm guessing that that will become more and more typical over the years.) My dad was the only person to get edibles this year, meaning that I wasted money on lots of totally pointless things. As always I suppose.. isn't life great?

I've also been watching Star Wars recently. Episodes 1 to 6. In that order.

Having started watching them on youtube, I then got told of for using bandwith up so much and so had to ring up a friend of mine and steal them over the christmas period. He'll get them back as soon as my little sister has watched the last one though. I have to say... I never quite realised how stupid the Jedi Council were.

Here is this Anakin Skywalker person. Here to 'bring balance to the force' right? So let's do a quick headcount. We had Darth Sidius (aka. Palpatine) and his one apprentice (whether it be Darth Maul or Count Dooku) against the masses of Jedi (there are 8 Jedi Masters, for example, and hundreds of Jedi at the Jedi Temple.) So I fail to see why Yoda ever thought that his side was the weak one. I mean... Surely two vs a few hundred means that to bring balance to the force, that one person has to be worth all of those hundreds? Or at least, get rid of them.

On the plus side, the prophecy turned out to be true, so Obi Won Kenobi was right about something. Anakin did bring balance to the force, firstly by eradicating the Jedi and turning to the Dark Side, but only turning after he had fathered Luke and Leia, who would then rise to become the the last Jedi and one of the leaders of the rebellion that stands against the Sith and in the end turns out to be powerful enough to depose the Emporer, if only because Darth Vader still has part of Anakin in him, which allows him to break out of Palpatine's control and kill him.

I have to say.. Star Wars is complicated.

Maybe I should stick to nice simple films that don't deal with a character that tells three different groups of people three different things to get them to work towards three percievedly different goals that actually equate to the same goal from different directions whilst acting as two different people. Full marks to Palpatine for complexity.

I now want to play battlefront.

Anyone feel like beating me at it? It's like.. a game which I never got the hang of. Aayla was fun to play as though. Two lightsabers are awesome! Nearly as good as Grevious... who has four. Throw two of them whilst still taking on Luke Skywalker and Obi Won Kenobi at the same time!

That being the only fight which I ever won. I accidentally killed the Emporer whilst throwing my lightsabers around the screen though, so it wasn't quite all good. He's a nice chap though.. even if he does accidentally electrocute people somehow.

Anyway... I want to know why Mace Windu's lightsaber is purple. What's up with it? It's sort of a cross between the Jedi colour and the Sith colour... is he turning to the dark side? Or something else?

Anyone know? Come on.. someone has to know!