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!
Saturday, 27 December 2008
12th December: Major time lapse!
I just realised how long it is since I actually put anything up on my blog. This is the tenth entry I've written since I last updated and it really just isn't good enough. I'm sure that all of my readers are devastated by the lack of a blog, but I'm also fairly sure that there's not loads of them. I'm pessimistic, if you haven't guessed.
I got a metaphorical smack on the wrist for it the other day. I was told that negativity never got anyone anywhere. I nearly pointed to my school grades and the rest of the stuff that trails along behind me and told them that they were wrong. My lowest predicted grade for any subject which I care about is an A. My average predicted grade for all subjects is A* (negligible mention of one B and one A out of something like 16 GCSEs) and I'm soaring in with my music.
Music, however, is causing problems. With my grade 8 planned for easter next year I should be doing practise. I'm not, I have lots of other music things to do. I have, basically, things to do with my time that I've volunteered for. Therefore, according to my dad and piano teacher, I'm doing too much. It's ridiculous. It's christmas... of COURSE I'm doing lots. I'm a musician, and any semi-decent musician is up to his eyebrows in things to do during that period. Admittedly I probably do more than some, as I'm always available, but that doesn't mean that I'm doing too much.
The instant that any email gets sent to my music teacher saying that I'm doing too much is the instant in which I start advertising myself more blatantly. I'm not going to let anyone tell me what I can or can't do musicwise. If anyone even thinks I'm doing too much and says as much to my music teacher - who is also musical director - then my response shall be drastically simple.
Free time shall become a myth. Literally. There's always work for a pianist, organist or singer. Mondays could become devoted to choir, Fridays similiarly. Sunday mornings would be spent singing at church or playing the organ somewhere. Wednesdays would be pantomine and organ lesson and maybe evensong. Sunday evenings would be evensong every other week. Saturdays would get filled with random accompanying and everything else that needs doing. Thursdays shall become a rehearsal night for anything I plan to learn myself, maybe even getting in a little organ practise now and then.
I may do lots, but I deliberately play up to the role of irreplaceable pianist. I also deliberately play down my availability. That way I become something more than just an accomapnist. I become THE accompanist, and I get as much or as little as I want to do. GCSE exams, music exams, concerts, rehearsals, performances. Everything, in fact, apart from what I should be doing. Yes, it's rebellion. I'm sure that some people would view it as chidish, but it's a much better way of making my point than just throwing a temper tantrum and being moody.
I'm sure that it'll be stressful and hectic and whatnot but that's not anything new.
The problem with trying to deliver ultimatums to intelligent people is that they will often step around the ultimatum.
'Stop mucking around or find yourself another teacher' is one of the things that I would love for my maths teacher to tell me. It'd take me about 5 minutes to pack my bag and walk out of his classroom to go and do something vaguely interesting. I can teach myself maths if need be. It's not as if it's particulary difficult. 'Stop doing that or else' simply leads to the stoppage of whatever the original thing was and the continuation in a slightly more annoying way. Ultimatums are a bad thing because more often and not they are bluffs.
How would a teacher react to a student walking out his classroom to find themselves another teacher? How would anyone react to someone basically ignoring them? I don't know. It's part of the fun of doing it. You have no idea what the consequences are, and even so I doubt that I would care what they are. Principals are more important.
Principal is a powerful thing.
I'll explain whenever I next write.
I got a metaphorical smack on the wrist for it the other day. I was told that negativity never got anyone anywhere. I nearly pointed to my school grades and the rest of the stuff that trails along behind me and told them that they were wrong. My lowest predicted grade for any subject which I care about is an A. My average predicted grade for all subjects is A* (negligible mention of one B and one A out of something like 16 GCSEs) and I'm soaring in with my music.
Music, however, is causing problems. With my grade 8 planned for easter next year I should be doing practise. I'm not, I have lots of other music things to do. I have, basically, things to do with my time that I've volunteered for. Therefore, according to my dad and piano teacher, I'm doing too much. It's ridiculous. It's christmas... of COURSE I'm doing lots. I'm a musician, and any semi-decent musician is up to his eyebrows in things to do during that period. Admittedly I probably do more than some, as I'm always available, but that doesn't mean that I'm doing too much.
The instant that any email gets sent to my music teacher saying that I'm doing too much is the instant in which I start advertising myself more blatantly. I'm not going to let anyone tell me what I can or can't do musicwise. If anyone even thinks I'm doing too much and says as much to my music teacher - who is also musical director - then my response shall be drastically simple.
Free time shall become a myth. Literally. There's always work for a pianist, organist or singer. Mondays could become devoted to choir, Fridays similiarly. Sunday mornings would be spent singing at church or playing the organ somewhere. Wednesdays would be pantomine and organ lesson and maybe evensong. Sunday evenings would be evensong every other week. Saturdays would get filled with random accompanying and everything else that needs doing. Thursdays shall become a rehearsal night for anything I plan to learn myself, maybe even getting in a little organ practise now and then.
I may do lots, but I deliberately play up to the role of irreplaceable pianist. I also deliberately play down my availability. That way I become something more than just an accomapnist. I become THE accompanist, and I get as much or as little as I want to do. GCSE exams, music exams, concerts, rehearsals, performances. Everything, in fact, apart from what I should be doing. Yes, it's rebellion. I'm sure that some people would view it as chidish, but it's a much better way of making my point than just throwing a temper tantrum and being moody.
I'm sure that it'll be stressful and hectic and whatnot but that's not anything new.
The problem with trying to deliver ultimatums to intelligent people is that they will often step around the ultimatum.
'Stop mucking around or find yourself another teacher' is one of the things that I would love for my maths teacher to tell me. It'd take me about 5 minutes to pack my bag and walk out of his classroom to go and do something vaguely interesting. I can teach myself maths if need be. It's not as if it's particulary difficult. 'Stop doing that or else' simply leads to the stoppage of whatever the original thing was and the continuation in a slightly more annoying way. Ultimatums are a bad thing because more often and not they are bluffs.
How would a teacher react to a student walking out his classroom to find themselves another teacher? How would anyone react to someone basically ignoring them? I don't know. It's part of the fun of doing it. You have no idea what the consequences are, and even so I doubt that I would care what they are. Principals are more important.
Principal is a powerful thing.
I'll explain whenever I next write.
10th December: Pantomine
Do I dare to deliver the ultimatum of 'pay me or sack her if you want to see my come back next year' to the director of the pantomine? I think that they wouldn't take me seriously. It'd seem a little ridiculous for a fifteen year old to say something like that at a voluntary amateur theatrics company. This doesn't, however, prevent me from actually then saying and doing as promised. Given a choice between an accompanist and a musical director I think that they'd go for the MD, if only because the director created the position and wouldn't want to admit that it was a mistake.
I think that they've forgotten a few things about me and about the pantomine in general.
Firstly, none of us get paid. The actors do it out of their own goodwill, the accompanists are generally volunteered for it (as in.. told that they are doing it. We are all minors afterall) and I do it because it'll go on my CV. Years of accompanying a pantomine from age 12 upwards? That's got to look good. Shows dedication, commitment, teamwork and all other sorts of 'transferable skills.' If I ever apply for a musical thing then it'll become even more useful I suppose, as it'll demonstrate musical ability. However, none of us get paid to do it.
Secondly, it's our time. The time I spend at pantomine (which can be anywhere up to 100 hours, although 80 might be more realistic) and which the rest of the cast spend at pantomine (the chorus/extras spend maybe 20-30 hours less at rehearsals) isn't paid for, like I said. Therefore it's done out of our freewill, in our time when we could be doing other things. Time is valuable in this world and place. I could be doing homework or catching up on piano practise (as I've done practically none ths week, due to one thingor another) or all other sorts of things that need doing.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we do this for fun. We don't get paid, it's in our time. We do it because we enjoy it. And if we don't enjoy it we can go and do something more important that is fun and/or that we get paid for.
The relevance of all of this comes in one simple thing. The MD is a bossy so-and-so that is insisting on doing things her way. Here are a couple of examples of how she's rubbing me up the wrong way.
I've been playing for this pantomine group for the last 3 years. I've been accompanying people for the last 4 or 5 years. Accompanists do NOT rule over choirs and singers and other instruments. Accompanying is about fitting your part around whatever else is going on. In this case, the piano plays to the voices. Now then, along comes the MD (Musical Director, if you were wondering) and changes it all. They now learn how to sing it as per my piano part. Obviously, as I have no time on my hands, I couldn't have practiced or played the piano parts beforehand. So they were learning it off of an accompanist who had turned up and expected to be accompanying voices and not have them accompanying him. Great news isn't it? Accompanying doesn't work like that. According to the MD she's experienced in this sort of stuff. I doubt it. Or if she is 'experienced' in this kind of stuff it was as a member of a choir not as an accompanist. She doesn't get how it works.
She also patronizes everyone, whilst remaining bossy. It's one thing to treat the 9 year olds like 3 year olds. It's another thing to treat the older ones - those like me, who are well above the teenage mark - and the more mature ones - like Will, who I keep on classing as one of 'the older ones' in my head - like 3 year olds. We KNOW if we made a mistake. That's what we have to learn how to do. We don't need to be shown something time after time. We aren't some little toddler that pisses themselves every few seconds because they can't control their bladder! I mean, seriously, the MD needs to learn that she can talk to us like adults, not like children. Talking down at us will only make me hate her more. She isn't superior at all. Her problem is that she demands respect that she isn't going to get until she earns it. This isn't the way to earn my respect and I don't think that she can realistically be taking any credit for how good the music this year is.
That's due to one simple thing. She's changed the entire way that we rehearse these things. She's a big fan of getting it perfect. I hate to be pedantic, but perfection isn't in the name of pantomine. Pantomines are supposed to be fun. Nice, clean family fun. Rehearsals should reflect this. Yes, we're there to put on a pantomine but we're not there to do an opening time and time again, or to stop and start a song ten times because she doesn't like how it's going. Previous to this year we've gone through a song and then gone back and corrected the mistakes. What we've not done is stopped the song every time it's gone wrong and then spent 10 minutes on trying to improve a percieved mistake that would have taken about 2 minutes if you'd let them get on with singing it instead of trying to demonstrate it.
The last thing that gets me all irritated about her is her total disregard for what I'm there for, why I'm there, what I've done previous to this and basically her entire disregard and seeming lack of respect for me. Yes, I play the piano there. Yes, it'll go down on my CV and counts as work. Yes, I'm there to put on a show. Maybe music wasn't so good last year, or the year before, but it's improving. Maybe my piano playing isn't perfect. But who gives a damn?
I play piano there because it's a good place to talk. I'm there for 3 hours every wednesday. I play piano for about 30 minutes of that. That makes two and a half hours of sitting backstage and talking. It's fun, it's amusing and it certainly gives me something to write about in my blog. Maybe this contributes to her lack of respect for me, but I'm not going to sit in some chair for three hours being bored out of my mind by her butting in on the actual director's comments on whatever is happening on stage.
Does the fact that this is going to appear on my CV affect my attitude? Of course it does. I'll listen, I'll take it in, I'll adapt my music. I can be professional. But there's a line between professionalism and boredom and she seems to have drawn that line in an entirely different place to mine. Hell, I even bother to learn some of the music for pantomine - which for me is major effort. By the time performance nights come round I can forget my music on all the performances and still play to an acceptable standard. Naturally, it'll miss a few additional trills and glissandos and general jumping around the keyboard that I do, but they change all the time anyway. Which she can't cope with. OCD for getting it mechanical!
I'm there to help put on a show... not to sit around and do nothing. I've gone and run around plugging in wires for the light and sound crew. I've rewritten the script to include personal ad libs. I've written in ad libs for other people. I've added in (and written) additional bits of music. I've helped people to learn their lines. I've memorised music, script and have been able to act just about every part in the play flawlessly. Do I NEED to do any of this? Don't be stupid. I could do what she does and sit around doing exactly what I've been asked to do. It gets the show on, but it doesn't help in anyway. What's the point of coming if you're not going to help? Oh yes, I'm sure that her 'job' as 'musical director' is heping us tremendously. I just don't quite see how doing the barest minimum is useful.
Music wasn't so good last year. No one knew what they were doing with total certainty. The year before was probably about the same (if not slightly worse). They could sing the songs, and do the actions. Just that they had problems putting them together sometimes. Songs were fine though. Mostly because I turned up early or stayed late at rehearsals to run through the songs to GET them fine. I have standards too. I know that my piano playing isn't perfect. But it doesn't have to be does it? The best pianists in the world don't get everything note perfect. You wouldn't notice it unless you were also a world-class pianist, and it'll probably be something like one note in ten million that they get wrong. They cover up that one note exceedingly well. I'm not world-class, but I'm an accompanist. THIS IS MY JOB! This is how I earn my money, buy computers and games, finance travel around the place, buy christmas presents. It's my job to cover up. So I do.
And her lack of respect for me? I may not be perfect. I may not always be at my keyboard when I'm needed, although I'm always just a shout away if I AM needed. I may not be everything she expects but the least she can do is respect what I am, why I'm there and begin to realise that we're not professionals. We don't get paid. What we have become is extremely good amateurs, with at least me being semi-professional (if not professional.)
That ultimatum that I mentioned at the beginning might get mentioned or not. If it does, it'l be on the last performance night so that Tracy (our wonderful, patronizing director that can carry off patronisation without offending all children in the room and that I genuinely like. She played drums two years ago, but was assisstant director last year so got Laura to do it instead.)
If the musical director decides that she needs to come and bang out time on the floor next to me on performance night or to metaphorically hold my hand or to do anything but get out of my way and let me get on with my job I will seriously tell her to fuck off and go and find something useful to do. I need to concentrate on what I'm doing, not get irritated by having four people in a space that's barely big enough for the three of us that are already there. I'll probably even use the phrase 'fuck off and find something useful to do' if I get stressed enough.
She's not useful. She has earnt no respect and demands all of my respect. She will take any credit for the music and blame us for anything not right. She's rude, bossy and a complete change. It's more than disliking change this. It's instantly disliking a person because they can't operate in the same way.
On the plus side of things, I have the hankering suspicion that should I deliver that ultimatum within earshot of the right people then they will simply say the same thing. I'm not alone in disliking her. I'm not alone in hating her. I might be alone in leaving, but at least I won't have to put up with her stupid ideas and her unrealistic demands.
Respect is not given out. Respect is earnt.
Respect cannot be demanded, that will only lose it.
Respect is lost easily, earned only with difficulty.
Respect is valuable. I don't give out gold rings. I won't just hand out my respect.
I respect everyone as a fellow human being. But there is a difference between that and actual respect. It's the same difference between seeing a dying dog and thinking, 'awww, isn't that a pity,' and putting it out of it's misery. One of them means squat all. The other one starts to have some meaning, but isn't always good for you.
Besides, who would have respect for a dying dog? It's an animal. A dying PET however is a different story.
There's a subtle difference. The nuances of it might escape you.
Who know? You might surprise me!
Or yet again.. maybe not.
I think that they've forgotten a few things about me and about the pantomine in general.
Firstly, none of us get paid. The actors do it out of their own goodwill, the accompanists are generally volunteered for it (as in.. told that they are doing it. We are all minors afterall) and I do it because it'll go on my CV. Years of accompanying a pantomine from age 12 upwards? That's got to look good. Shows dedication, commitment, teamwork and all other sorts of 'transferable skills.' If I ever apply for a musical thing then it'll become even more useful I suppose, as it'll demonstrate musical ability. However, none of us get paid to do it.
Secondly, it's our time. The time I spend at pantomine (which can be anywhere up to 100 hours, although 80 might be more realistic) and which the rest of the cast spend at pantomine (the chorus/extras spend maybe 20-30 hours less at rehearsals) isn't paid for, like I said. Therefore it's done out of our freewill, in our time when we could be doing other things. Time is valuable in this world and place. I could be doing homework or catching up on piano practise (as I've done practically none ths week, due to one thingor another) or all other sorts of things that need doing.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we do this for fun. We don't get paid, it's in our time. We do it because we enjoy it. And if we don't enjoy it we can go and do something more important that is fun and/or that we get paid for.
The relevance of all of this comes in one simple thing. The MD is a bossy so-and-so that is insisting on doing things her way. Here are a couple of examples of how she's rubbing me up the wrong way.
I've been playing for this pantomine group for the last 3 years. I've been accompanying people for the last 4 or 5 years. Accompanists do NOT rule over choirs and singers and other instruments. Accompanying is about fitting your part around whatever else is going on. In this case, the piano plays to the voices. Now then, along comes the MD (Musical Director, if you were wondering) and changes it all. They now learn how to sing it as per my piano part. Obviously, as I have no time on my hands, I couldn't have practiced or played the piano parts beforehand. So they were learning it off of an accompanist who had turned up and expected to be accompanying voices and not have them accompanying him. Great news isn't it? Accompanying doesn't work like that. According to the MD she's experienced in this sort of stuff. I doubt it. Or if she is 'experienced' in this kind of stuff it was as a member of a choir not as an accompanist. She doesn't get how it works.
She also patronizes everyone, whilst remaining bossy. It's one thing to treat the 9 year olds like 3 year olds. It's another thing to treat the older ones - those like me, who are well above the teenage mark - and the more mature ones - like Will, who I keep on classing as one of 'the older ones' in my head - like 3 year olds. We KNOW if we made a mistake. That's what we have to learn how to do. We don't need to be shown something time after time. We aren't some little toddler that pisses themselves every few seconds because they can't control their bladder! I mean, seriously, the MD needs to learn that she can talk to us like adults, not like children. Talking down at us will only make me hate her more. She isn't superior at all. Her problem is that she demands respect that she isn't going to get until she earns it. This isn't the way to earn my respect and I don't think that she can realistically be taking any credit for how good the music this year is.
That's due to one simple thing. She's changed the entire way that we rehearse these things. She's a big fan of getting it perfect. I hate to be pedantic, but perfection isn't in the name of pantomine. Pantomines are supposed to be fun. Nice, clean family fun. Rehearsals should reflect this. Yes, we're there to put on a pantomine but we're not there to do an opening time and time again, or to stop and start a song ten times because she doesn't like how it's going. Previous to this year we've gone through a song and then gone back and corrected the mistakes. What we've not done is stopped the song every time it's gone wrong and then spent 10 minutes on trying to improve a percieved mistake that would have taken about 2 minutes if you'd let them get on with singing it instead of trying to demonstrate it.
The last thing that gets me all irritated about her is her total disregard for what I'm there for, why I'm there, what I've done previous to this and basically her entire disregard and seeming lack of respect for me. Yes, I play the piano there. Yes, it'll go down on my CV and counts as work. Yes, I'm there to put on a show. Maybe music wasn't so good last year, or the year before, but it's improving. Maybe my piano playing isn't perfect. But who gives a damn?
I play piano there because it's a good place to talk. I'm there for 3 hours every wednesday. I play piano for about 30 minutes of that. That makes two and a half hours of sitting backstage and talking. It's fun, it's amusing and it certainly gives me something to write about in my blog. Maybe this contributes to her lack of respect for me, but I'm not going to sit in some chair for three hours being bored out of my mind by her butting in on the actual director's comments on whatever is happening on stage.
Does the fact that this is going to appear on my CV affect my attitude? Of course it does. I'll listen, I'll take it in, I'll adapt my music. I can be professional. But there's a line between professionalism and boredom and she seems to have drawn that line in an entirely different place to mine. Hell, I even bother to learn some of the music for pantomine - which for me is major effort. By the time performance nights come round I can forget my music on all the performances and still play to an acceptable standard. Naturally, it'll miss a few additional trills and glissandos and general jumping around the keyboard that I do, but they change all the time anyway. Which she can't cope with. OCD for getting it mechanical!
I'm there to help put on a show... not to sit around and do nothing. I've gone and run around plugging in wires for the light and sound crew. I've rewritten the script to include personal ad libs. I've written in ad libs for other people. I've added in (and written) additional bits of music. I've helped people to learn their lines. I've memorised music, script and have been able to act just about every part in the play flawlessly. Do I NEED to do any of this? Don't be stupid. I could do what she does and sit around doing exactly what I've been asked to do. It gets the show on, but it doesn't help in anyway. What's the point of coming if you're not going to help? Oh yes, I'm sure that her 'job' as 'musical director' is heping us tremendously. I just don't quite see how doing the barest minimum is useful.
Music wasn't so good last year. No one knew what they were doing with total certainty. The year before was probably about the same (if not slightly worse). They could sing the songs, and do the actions. Just that they had problems putting them together sometimes. Songs were fine though. Mostly because I turned up early or stayed late at rehearsals to run through the songs to GET them fine. I have standards too. I know that my piano playing isn't perfect. But it doesn't have to be does it? The best pianists in the world don't get everything note perfect. You wouldn't notice it unless you were also a world-class pianist, and it'll probably be something like one note in ten million that they get wrong. They cover up that one note exceedingly well. I'm not world-class, but I'm an accompanist. THIS IS MY JOB! This is how I earn my money, buy computers and games, finance travel around the place, buy christmas presents. It's my job to cover up. So I do.
And her lack of respect for me? I may not be perfect. I may not always be at my keyboard when I'm needed, although I'm always just a shout away if I AM needed. I may not be everything she expects but the least she can do is respect what I am, why I'm there and begin to realise that we're not professionals. We don't get paid. What we have become is extremely good amateurs, with at least me being semi-professional (if not professional.)
That ultimatum that I mentioned at the beginning might get mentioned or not. If it does, it'l be on the last performance night so that Tracy (our wonderful, patronizing director that can carry off patronisation without offending all children in the room and that I genuinely like. She played drums two years ago, but was assisstant director last year so got Laura to do it instead.)
If the musical director decides that she needs to come and bang out time on the floor next to me on performance night or to metaphorically hold my hand or to do anything but get out of my way and let me get on with my job I will seriously tell her to fuck off and go and find something useful to do. I need to concentrate on what I'm doing, not get irritated by having four people in a space that's barely big enough for the three of us that are already there. I'll probably even use the phrase 'fuck off and find something useful to do' if I get stressed enough.
She's not useful. She has earnt no respect and demands all of my respect. She will take any credit for the music and blame us for anything not right. She's rude, bossy and a complete change. It's more than disliking change this. It's instantly disliking a person because they can't operate in the same way.
On the plus side of things, I have the hankering suspicion that should I deliver that ultimatum within earshot of the right people then they will simply say the same thing. I'm not alone in disliking her. I'm not alone in hating her. I might be alone in leaving, but at least I won't have to put up with her stupid ideas and her unrealistic demands.
Respect is not given out. Respect is earnt.
Respect cannot be demanded, that will only lose it.
Respect is lost easily, earned only with difficulty.
Respect is valuable. I don't give out gold rings. I won't just hand out my respect.
I respect everyone as a fellow human being. But there is a difference between that and actual respect. It's the same difference between seeing a dying dog and thinking, 'awww, isn't that a pity,' and putting it out of it's misery. One of them means squat all. The other one starts to have some meaning, but isn't always good for you.
Besides, who would have respect for a dying dog? It's an animal. A dying PET however is a different story.
There's a subtle difference. The nuances of it might escape you.
Who know? You might surprise me!
Or yet again.. maybe not.
9th December: The totally imaginative title.
I've just sorted out what I'm going to be wearing for pantomine performances. Or at least, what I hope I'm going to be wearing. I'll run it past Tracy (the director) and possibly Ros (or maybe Ross... but I think that it's Ros - who's the music director) and ensure that it's alright. It's that sort of thing. I'm expecting them to give me the go ahead, I mean.. it fits in perfectly. Admittedly, I might light up the stage with green light as a result of the millions of sequins that cover the waistcoat, but hey.. what's life if it isn't illuminated by green light? Other than normal that is. That'd be the boring answer.
You're probably wondering what the hell I'm on about. The answer is simple. I got given about sixty waistcoats and bow ties from my grandma a few weeks back (okay.. not sixty. Call it ten) and on last saturday, after my grandma's birthday party, I got given a black shirt. Black shirts are cool. Well, okay, that isn't quite so true scientifically, but in terms of performing they are cool.
They strike the balance between black and white (white shirt, black trousers) and casual (jeans, tracksuit bottoms, etc.). You can wear them to most things and most people don't glance twice at you. Unless everyone else is in white, at which point you start attracting attention.
The other cool thing about black shirts is that they go well with just about everything. Wheras my white shirt and my red shirt struggled to find anything nice to fit with (I never wore the red shirt with anything but a red tie for example. And I only ever wore the red shirt twice because I didn't really like it) and my blue shirt was worse than that (what goes with faded blue? I could just about manage to pull off a semi-reasonable tidiness with a grey tie, but that's besides the point. It didn't look good.) People tend to forget that the performers on stage wearing their colour-schemed clothes don't just do it by accident. They don't just pick up a set of clothes and hope it looks alright.
Unless they're like the old me, who simply chose a white shirt, picked a tie at random and then threw a jacket on top of it. It worked before. The new me is slightly more self-conscious. Hence the black shirt, hence the waistcoats. I might actually use them for once!
So where does green light and sequins come into it I hear you ask. The answer is even simpler. I got a bright green waistcoat (with matching bowtie, naturally) which has green sequins covering it totally. It's awesome! That's the children's matinee sorted out. Saturday morning performance sorted! Saturday evening is the more serious one (and final one), so I'll probably either wear a jacket or go for no waistcoat and a tie instead of a bowtie. Friday evening is the first performance so I might wear a red waistcoat and my new black shirt.
I tell you.. black shirts own! If you don't have one.. get one.
I must remember, however, to ask my grandma if she has matching clothes for girl/woman. Drummer person is female, although I'm guessing that playing the drums in a dress is impossible. As would be getting the drummer person to wear green sequins, a dress, or anything but jeans and dark top. Each to their own I guess. Someone has to show them up, and that means me. I'm always the smartest person at this sort of thing. I have to be the smartest at something!
Clotheswise that is. I don't particulary care academically. If people can keep up with me then they deserve to be able to understand quantam physics by the age of 18 and then develop a time machine before they hit 30 to allow them to go into early retirement from sheer richness. There's not that many people who can consistently keep up with (or overtake) me academically so I don't worry about it. Like I said. Each to their own.
It always irritates me when other people develop an overly-competitive spirit. I know that I'm probably one of the many competitive people out there (never challenge me to do something. Seriously. You might get me to do it) but you can take a good thing too far. I mean... racing to complete a game, a piece of work, a better game, a series of games, to watch a film, to do 100 metre sprint. It's fine. Serious competitivness is just a drag though. Always competing? Always trying to be the best? Just carry on trying to be the best at everything and for once I won't be the best at becoming the person that everyone hates.
Wait a second! No, you can't do that! That's not allowed! I'll have to do something drastic to get back my position. Do I still have that picture of Charlotte? The one I got last night? That might regain me my position!
Anyway, immaturity aside, I'm a fairly mature person. I cope, I deal, I've grown up. Situations have called for it, and I decided that it might be fun to be mature once in a while. I didn't realise I was signing up to maturity for life! My problem with acting maturely comes when I get bored. There's no worse state for someone to exist in. When there's absolutely nothing with which to occupy your time. When everything is either completed or too boring to complete without falling asleep or becoming suicidal. Everyone has their own way of coping. Mine is probably more drastic than others.
I go from being Mr.Mature to completely-insane-raving-lunatic-in-the-corner-on-drugs-with-serious-mental-problems type person. Or something like that. I occupy myself with really really small things. Used to mucking around with astrophysics in the confines of my own head (as unforntunately I haven't yet worked out how to create two stable black holes and throw them towards each other at light speed in anything but my head. The speed is irrelevant by the way, but I threw it in for the fun of it) I resort to childish behaviour to conquer boredom.
Jumping up and down, randomly shaking parts of my body, talking on and on about nothing (although is perfectly normal for me anyway. See pages 1-300 of this blog for more details and a good example), poking people, pulling hair, opening and closing doors, speculating on the best way to kill yourself and on whether or not it's possible to text someone on the drop from the top of the Empire State Building to the ground (It is. Just don't expect any particulary massive texts and don't reply to it. In the time it takes for the message to leave their phone and bounce itself into your phone through statregically placed radar towers they've hit the ground and are now resembling strawberry jelly) and on other totally random things.
I don't always pull people's hair though. Don't get me wrong. I'm not some vindictive victimising bastard. It's only ponytails, and only when I really can't resist. I swear that it's an OCD of some kind. I really cannot stand ponytails. Not because they look ugly, or because they're particulary nasty, but because they're so inviting to pull. It's like those doorbells which you pull and pull and pull for the hell of it. It's fun and it stays fun and it stays fun until it becomes boring. I resist temptation frequently, but I do get stressed when hairstyles change to anything which ties the hair into strands or bunches or anything that sticks out from their head. Pony tails, pig tails, plaits and lots of other undoubtably wonderful hairstyles. Resisting that temptation requires conscious thought, and all that thought hurts my head.
Now I've got the hard stuff out of the way I guess that I can go back to working out tachyon speeds as expressed as a multiple of the speed of sound in standard form. Not that tachyons are even proved to exist mind, but I guess that's the fun of scientific theorys.
The one situation that always amused me was the idea that all these people in any house searching for a secret passageway. The purpose of a secret passageway is to remain secret. Is it really going to be as simple as to pull a candlestick or to fall onto a cunningly placed chair? Of course not. It'll require standing on a certain point, or being able to press two things at once that are arms length apart. That way the idea of coincidentally finding something becomes even more ridiculous. The other thing that amused me is that in any situation where a secret passageway is not found they immediately claim that it's just that they can't find the entrance.
Does the thought that this aforesaid passageway simply does not exist never occur to these fictional characters? Logic, as a whole, sucks majorly. We should all rely on teenage logic.
You fancy me don't you? You're reading my blog! Argh! You fancy me! You must! You read my blog.
Just nod and agree and realise that this is what a lot of people do to me. Admittedly not about reading blogs, but the same principal applies elsewhere. Giving out sweets for instance. Not that they're wrong mind, but they don't know that. And I'm planning to keep it that way.
The slightly older thing that amused me the other day was a book named 'Coping with Boys' that came back to back with 'Coping with Girls.' It was priceless. If I can find it from wherever I threw it in my tired stupour I'll type up some quotes for your amusement. I might give it out as a christmas present to someone. I haven't decided yet. Don't know if they already have it or not.
You're probably wondering what the hell I'm on about. The answer is simple. I got given about sixty waistcoats and bow ties from my grandma a few weeks back (okay.. not sixty. Call it ten) and on last saturday, after my grandma's birthday party, I got given a black shirt. Black shirts are cool. Well, okay, that isn't quite so true scientifically, but in terms of performing they are cool.
They strike the balance between black and white (white shirt, black trousers) and casual (jeans, tracksuit bottoms, etc.). You can wear them to most things and most people don't glance twice at you. Unless everyone else is in white, at which point you start attracting attention.
The other cool thing about black shirts is that they go well with just about everything. Wheras my white shirt and my red shirt struggled to find anything nice to fit with (I never wore the red shirt with anything but a red tie for example. And I only ever wore the red shirt twice because I didn't really like it) and my blue shirt was worse than that (what goes with faded blue? I could just about manage to pull off a semi-reasonable tidiness with a grey tie, but that's besides the point. It didn't look good.) People tend to forget that the performers on stage wearing their colour-schemed clothes don't just do it by accident. They don't just pick up a set of clothes and hope it looks alright.
Unless they're like the old me, who simply chose a white shirt, picked a tie at random and then threw a jacket on top of it. It worked before. The new me is slightly more self-conscious. Hence the black shirt, hence the waistcoats. I might actually use them for once!
So where does green light and sequins come into it I hear you ask. The answer is even simpler. I got a bright green waistcoat (with matching bowtie, naturally) which has green sequins covering it totally. It's awesome! That's the children's matinee sorted out. Saturday morning performance sorted! Saturday evening is the more serious one (and final one), so I'll probably either wear a jacket or go for no waistcoat and a tie instead of a bowtie. Friday evening is the first performance so I might wear a red waistcoat and my new black shirt.
I tell you.. black shirts own! If you don't have one.. get one.
I must remember, however, to ask my grandma if she has matching clothes for girl/woman. Drummer person is female, although I'm guessing that playing the drums in a dress is impossible. As would be getting the drummer person to wear green sequins, a dress, or anything but jeans and dark top. Each to their own I guess. Someone has to show them up, and that means me. I'm always the smartest person at this sort of thing. I have to be the smartest at something!
Clotheswise that is. I don't particulary care academically. If people can keep up with me then they deserve to be able to understand quantam physics by the age of 18 and then develop a time machine before they hit 30 to allow them to go into early retirement from sheer richness. There's not that many people who can consistently keep up with (or overtake) me academically so I don't worry about it. Like I said. Each to their own.
It always irritates me when other people develop an overly-competitive spirit. I know that I'm probably one of the many competitive people out there (never challenge me to do something. Seriously. You might get me to do it) but you can take a good thing too far. I mean... racing to complete a game, a piece of work, a better game, a series of games, to watch a film, to do 100 metre sprint. It's fine. Serious competitivness is just a drag though. Always competing? Always trying to be the best? Just carry on trying to be the best at everything and for once I won't be the best at becoming the person that everyone hates.
Wait a second! No, you can't do that! That's not allowed! I'll have to do something drastic to get back my position. Do I still have that picture of Charlotte? The one I got last night? That might regain me my position!
Anyway, immaturity aside, I'm a fairly mature person. I cope, I deal, I've grown up. Situations have called for it, and I decided that it might be fun to be mature once in a while. I didn't realise I was signing up to maturity for life! My problem with acting maturely comes when I get bored. There's no worse state for someone to exist in. When there's absolutely nothing with which to occupy your time. When everything is either completed or too boring to complete without falling asleep or becoming suicidal. Everyone has their own way of coping. Mine is probably more drastic than others.
I go from being Mr.Mature to completely-insane-raving-lunatic-in-the-corner-on-drugs-with-serious-mental-problems type person. Or something like that. I occupy myself with really really small things. Used to mucking around with astrophysics in the confines of my own head (as unforntunately I haven't yet worked out how to create two stable black holes and throw them towards each other at light speed in anything but my head. The speed is irrelevant by the way, but I threw it in for the fun of it) I resort to childish behaviour to conquer boredom.
Jumping up and down, randomly shaking parts of my body, talking on and on about nothing (although is perfectly normal for me anyway. See pages 1-300 of this blog for more details and a good example), poking people, pulling hair, opening and closing doors, speculating on the best way to kill yourself and on whether or not it's possible to text someone on the drop from the top of the Empire State Building to the ground (It is. Just don't expect any particulary massive texts and don't reply to it. In the time it takes for the message to leave their phone and bounce itself into your phone through statregically placed radar towers they've hit the ground and are now resembling strawberry jelly) and on other totally random things.
I don't always pull people's hair though. Don't get me wrong. I'm not some vindictive victimising bastard. It's only ponytails, and only when I really can't resist. I swear that it's an OCD of some kind. I really cannot stand ponytails. Not because they look ugly, or because they're particulary nasty, but because they're so inviting to pull. It's like those doorbells which you pull and pull and pull for the hell of it. It's fun and it stays fun and it stays fun until it becomes boring. I resist temptation frequently, but I do get stressed when hairstyles change to anything which ties the hair into strands or bunches or anything that sticks out from their head. Pony tails, pig tails, plaits and lots of other undoubtably wonderful hairstyles. Resisting that temptation requires conscious thought, and all that thought hurts my head.
Now I've got the hard stuff out of the way I guess that I can go back to working out tachyon speeds as expressed as a multiple of the speed of sound in standard form. Not that tachyons are even proved to exist mind, but I guess that's the fun of scientific theorys.
The one situation that always amused me was the idea that all these people in any house searching for a secret passageway. The purpose of a secret passageway is to remain secret. Is it really going to be as simple as to pull a candlestick or to fall onto a cunningly placed chair? Of course not. It'll require standing on a certain point, or being able to press two things at once that are arms length apart. That way the idea of coincidentally finding something becomes even more ridiculous. The other thing that amused me is that in any situation where a secret passageway is not found they immediately claim that it's just that they can't find the entrance.
Does the thought that this aforesaid passageway simply does not exist never occur to these fictional characters? Logic, as a whole, sucks majorly. We should all rely on teenage logic.
You fancy me don't you? You're reading my blog! Argh! You fancy me! You must! You read my blog.
Just nod and agree and realise that this is what a lot of people do to me. Admittedly not about reading blogs, but the same principal applies elsewhere. Giving out sweets for instance. Not that they're wrong mind, but they don't know that. And I'm planning to keep it that way.
The slightly older thing that amused me the other day was a book named 'Coping with Boys' that came back to back with 'Coping with Girls.' It was priceless. If I can find it from wherever I threw it in my tired stupour I'll type up some quotes for your amusement. I might give it out as a christmas present to someone. I haven't decided yet. Don't know if they already have it or not.
4th December: Logic
Are you much of a philsopher? Do you ponder on the wider mysteries and secrets of the world that are hidden from definite science and that are only explicable through the application of careful logic? Probably not. Most people don't. I don't. Normally. Unless I'm really bored, in which case you can expect all sorts of philosophical statements that make absolutely no sense to everyone else. I'm very good at stealing other people's philosophical statements as well. Even if they aren't supposed to be philosophical.
One that I've recently stolen is "Light travels faster than sound. That's why lots of people appear bright." It's a very clever, and a very subtle, insult. It just goes 'whoosh' over most of the heads in the world. So let me explain it for you! It's basically saying that lots of people are stupid but look really clever. I'd have to change this slightly, if I was ever going to use it, to somehow include reputation in it.
Reputations for being good at something somehow spread across into other things. Good mathematicians are supposed to be good physicists. Good artists are supposed to be good writers. I'm not entirely sure in the last one though. I'm not too bad a writer - although I tend to drivel on about nothing - but I don't do anything in painting and drawing. Unless talking about computer games counts - which it most probably doesn't.
I reckon that there should be some very quick revisions made to the ICT GCSE. Teach us something useful like internet protocol so that there's less people out there that spend their life trying to find the 'l' and the 'o' key on their keyboard to say something like 'lolololololololololol' on forums to bump their post count. Or people that swear and shout in chat rooms. TYPING ALL IN CAPS MEANS THAT NO ONE BOTHERS TO READ IT. WE'RE NOT INTERESTED. Teaching people how to type might be a good start.
I'm digressing however. I'll stop it now.
In the same way, belief that someone is good at something somehow magically transforms whatever they do into something good. Footballers reputed to be good will muck up and cover it up and everyone will presume that they were just showing off or something. A violinist I once listened to (on my 14th birthday incidentally. I only had 6 teenage girls staying round at my house that year....) made up a Mazurka because she forgot the prepared one. Afterwards she got someone coming up to her and telling her that that was the best rendition of that particular Mazurka that they'd ever heard. Because she was believed to be doing that, whatever she played was that. Until she corrected them or it sounded wrong.
I love being a musician. It's great. I don't love musicians though. That'd just be freaky!
I except my family in the above statement. And anyone that is inadvertently offended. Like I'm sure that someone will be. Everyone misunderstands what a musician is.
A musician is not someone that plays music. A musician is someone that doesn't have a life. They have music instead. They don't have a home.. they rove from concert to concert, music piled into a bag (or several bags) and never stop playing music. They also have to think of themselves as musicians and be recognised as musicians by other musicians. The only question that begs the mind is how low you have to stoop to try and start thinking of rappers as musicians. Rap is not music. Rap is talking out of time with a back beat that only just stays in time.
Yes, I'm prejudiced against Rap. Who cares? It's not as if it's music or something!
Reminds me actually.. I have something like 3 midnight mass services on christmas eve. I'm not in three places at once, don't fret. I've not suddenly worked out time travel - I'm still working on it - but I've managed to make midnight last about 12 hours. I have my first 'midnight' mass at about 3pm. Then another at 6 and one at 9. There was one at half eleven, but it got cancelled unforntunatley. It was the one that would earn me as much as the other three put together. Ah well.. that's life.
Philosophical statements - going back to the original topic - are not just something you spout off of the top of your head. They have to explain everything and yet be inexplicable. Philsophy.. just my life complicated a little. It's not even as if I particulary like it. Love of Wisdom... like I care about that! I'm here to learn and to absorb and to observe, not to fall in love with wisdom. Unless someone decides to change their name to Sophie, which isn't going to happen. They aren't that stupid.
I sometimes wonder if I actually want people to guess who I fancy. I mean.. I drop hints that seem blatantly obvious to me all the time. I'll mention it in this blog and pass it off as a joke, I'll pass it off as a joke to those who don't see the joke (excepting a few, who have the right to blah blah blah. See earlier in my blog. I'm not typing it out again. Try looking at the very beginning. It'll help) and then I'll carry on dropping hints.
Self-analysation always makes me wonder how obvious I am to other people. I like to think myself of one of those people who doesn't analyse that much in the wrong way if they stop to think. Maybe not with emotions and whatnot. I'm not some sort of mastermind who can start predicting emotions. I can, however, predict reaction to action and the reaction to the proceeding reaction to the original reaction that was reacting to the first action. You didn't follow that did you?
Cold logic. Heartless logic. Someone accused me of being heartless the other day. They're wrong. I do have emotions. I do have feelings. Just that I don't let them rule over me. Head over heart is always better than head over heels. Apologising for the bad pun of course.
Girls - yes, this means you... - drive me crazy. Not through any particular fault of theirs, but rather a slight OCD in me. You know ponytails? Those things that hang down behind their head? Hair tied back that is. Not some sort of crazy thing hanging off of their head. Anyway, I can't resist wanting to pull them. They're like those doorbells which you have to pull, or the lightswitches. I can't stop playing with them. Small things and small minds, I know. But I really want to pull the ponytails. I don't due to rigorous self-control it's just that I really wish that I'd stop wishing to pull ponytails.
Something less violent such as mindlessly stabbing a table with a pair of scissors ought to be more fun right? Or do you think that I should stab other people? Myself? Gods.. you are a sick lot you know! I'm not going to do that. Not with a pair of scissors!
Nah - only kidding. I'm not an emo. It's just that world is so boring! I want to liven it up!
Skittles ought to do it... Anyone know where I can get some?
Charlotte ought to get that reference.. as should Dani. The rest of you - be grateful. Be very grateful. You don't know what I'm talking about. Just hope you never get to find out firsthand...............
One that I've recently stolen is "Light travels faster than sound. That's why lots of people appear bright." It's a very clever, and a very subtle, insult. It just goes 'whoosh' over most of the heads in the world. So let me explain it for you! It's basically saying that lots of people are stupid but look really clever. I'd have to change this slightly, if I was ever going to use it, to somehow include reputation in it.
Reputations for being good at something somehow spread across into other things. Good mathematicians are supposed to be good physicists. Good artists are supposed to be good writers. I'm not entirely sure in the last one though. I'm not too bad a writer - although I tend to drivel on about nothing - but I don't do anything in painting and drawing. Unless talking about computer games counts - which it most probably doesn't.
I reckon that there should be some very quick revisions made to the ICT GCSE. Teach us something useful like internet protocol so that there's less people out there that spend their life trying to find the 'l' and the 'o' key on their keyboard to say something like 'lolololololololololol' on forums to bump their post count. Or people that swear and shout in chat rooms. TYPING ALL IN CAPS MEANS THAT NO ONE BOTHERS TO READ IT. WE'RE NOT INTERESTED. Teaching people how to type might be a good start.
I'm digressing however. I'll stop it now.
In the same way, belief that someone is good at something somehow magically transforms whatever they do into something good. Footballers reputed to be good will muck up and cover it up and everyone will presume that they were just showing off or something. A violinist I once listened to (on my 14th birthday incidentally. I only had 6 teenage girls staying round at my house that year....) made up a Mazurka because she forgot the prepared one. Afterwards she got someone coming up to her and telling her that that was the best rendition of that particular Mazurka that they'd ever heard. Because she was believed to be doing that, whatever she played was that. Until she corrected them or it sounded wrong.
I love being a musician. It's great. I don't love musicians though. That'd just be freaky!
I except my family in the above statement. And anyone that is inadvertently offended. Like I'm sure that someone will be. Everyone misunderstands what a musician is.
A musician is not someone that plays music. A musician is someone that doesn't have a life. They have music instead. They don't have a home.. they rove from concert to concert, music piled into a bag (or several bags) and never stop playing music. They also have to think of themselves as musicians and be recognised as musicians by other musicians. The only question that begs the mind is how low you have to stoop to try and start thinking of rappers as musicians. Rap is not music. Rap is talking out of time with a back beat that only just stays in time.
Yes, I'm prejudiced against Rap. Who cares? It's not as if it's music or something!
Reminds me actually.. I have something like 3 midnight mass services on christmas eve. I'm not in three places at once, don't fret. I've not suddenly worked out time travel - I'm still working on it - but I've managed to make midnight last about 12 hours. I have my first 'midnight' mass at about 3pm. Then another at 6 and one at 9. There was one at half eleven, but it got cancelled unforntunatley. It was the one that would earn me as much as the other three put together. Ah well.. that's life.
Philosophical statements - going back to the original topic - are not just something you spout off of the top of your head. They have to explain everything and yet be inexplicable. Philsophy.. just my life complicated a little. It's not even as if I particulary like it. Love of Wisdom... like I care about that! I'm here to learn and to absorb and to observe, not to fall in love with wisdom. Unless someone decides to change their name to Sophie, which isn't going to happen. They aren't that stupid.
I sometimes wonder if I actually want people to guess who I fancy. I mean.. I drop hints that seem blatantly obvious to me all the time. I'll mention it in this blog and pass it off as a joke, I'll pass it off as a joke to those who don't see the joke (excepting a few, who have the right to blah blah blah. See earlier in my blog. I'm not typing it out again. Try looking at the very beginning. It'll help) and then I'll carry on dropping hints.
Self-analysation always makes me wonder how obvious I am to other people. I like to think myself of one of those people who doesn't analyse that much in the wrong way if they stop to think. Maybe not with emotions and whatnot. I'm not some sort of mastermind who can start predicting emotions. I can, however, predict reaction to action and the reaction to the proceeding reaction to the original reaction that was reacting to the first action. You didn't follow that did you?
Cold logic. Heartless logic. Someone accused me of being heartless the other day. They're wrong. I do have emotions. I do have feelings. Just that I don't let them rule over me. Head over heart is always better than head over heels. Apologising for the bad pun of course.
Girls - yes, this means you... - drive me crazy. Not through any particular fault of theirs, but rather a slight OCD in me. You know ponytails? Those things that hang down behind their head? Hair tied back that is. Not some sort of crazy thing hanging off of their head. Anyway, I can't resist wanting to pull them. They're like those doorbells which you have to pull, or the lightswitches. I can't stop playing with them. Small things and small minds, I know. But I really want to pull the ponytails. I don't due to rigorous self-control it's just that I really wish that I'd stop wishing to pull ponytails.
Something less violent such as mindlessly stabbing a table with a pair of scissors ought to be more fun right? Or do you think that I should stab other people? Myself? Gods.. you are a sick lot you know! I'm not going to do that. Not with a pair of scissors!
Nah - only kidding. I'm not an emo. It's just that world is so boring! I want to liven it up!
Skittles ought to do it... Anyone know where I can get some?
Charlotte ought to get that reference.. as should Dani. The rest of you - be grateful. Be very grateful. You don't know what I'm talking about. Just hope you never get to find out firsthand...............
1st December: Pinch Punch First of the Month!
I hate that rhyme. Anyway, in other news, I've started thinking about physics.
It's always a scary thing to start thinking about physics, especially astrophysics. Which is harder and on a much larger scale than just rolling a few balls down a ramp or swinging a pendulum. Would you care to guess what sort of physics I've been thinking about? No, it's not astrophysics. It's just physics relating to relativity whilst in space. And what if scenarios.
Take, for example, what would happen if gravity ceased to have any effect on anything. Gravity - aclaimed by some to be a fourth dimension - is very important. It keeps us on a million ton rock that hurtles through space at speeds where something like a speck of dust hitting you in the eye would probably knock it off. You may think, "Oh right.. well.. we'll float off." In actuality, it's a little scarier than that.
Our momentum would be slowed down by things such as hitting things on the surface. Without gravity, we no longer stick to the earth. Jumping would make us float, and the earth would carry on spinning beneath us. At another tremendous velocity. Admittedly, this would mean - in theory - that you would be spinning at a great velocity as you jumped and therefore would go reeling off into space as the sideways spin threw you off of the planet. With no gravity there's precious litte to stop you. Unless you happen to near to a conveniently placed skyscraper. However, this minor detail aside, if you were to stand still whilst the earth spun round, you'd then end up being whacked by a hill or something. And that'd hurt, and probably squash you flat.
Newton's laws say that any object that hits another object conveys it's momentum into the object that is hit. Or something like that. It's how balls work. You know those metal executive toy thingys that never stop clicking against each other? Same sort of principle. It may not have been Newton, but it's one of the laws of physics. Energy is only ever transfered, and never lost. That sort of conservation idea. And so you've just had who knows how many tons of earth hit you at some tremendous velocity. You're not a pancake, that'd be a little too thick. You're a cloud of red mist floating in the air wondering what the hell just happened.
In theory. No one is willing to test this. For some reason. Can't imagine why.
Our momentum aside, at least we have air resistance to slow us down. Now imagine the earth, spinning through space like a giant bowling ball. Apart from the occasional planet - and lets face it, they aren't exactly jammed close together - what is going to stop the earth? There's no air resistance. So the earth won't slow down, but we will. We'll get left behind, or killed by the various things that hit us.
I'm sure there's a few other factors, and it's all theoretical as gravity can't just be stopped, but it's besides the point. Maybe once we've worked out how to artificially create gravity someone will test it all for me and I'll be right. Even if I'm forgotten.
I could go into a few other what-ifs, but playing with physics bores everyone but me. Bit like maths really. Maths pisses me off. Quite a lot to be totally honest. I mean.. everyone sits around wondering how to do the obvious. I like maths in itself. Playing with numbers - or letters if I'm mucking around with proofs and theses - is something I do automatically. The worst thing you can do whilst near me is reel off a list of numbers. Irrelevant of their order - although if they aren't in the right order I'll get irritated at you - I'll immediately start playing with those numbers until something more interesting crops up. Depending on the numbers this could be anything from 10 minutes to 15 minutes or maybe even the rest of the day..
I just had to consciously stop myself from thinking about the numbers then and working out what 10/15 is as a decimal (0.66) and what 15/10 is (1.5) and what they are in Base 3 (0.2, 1.11) or whatever other base you want me to work in. Okay, looking back at that, I didn't stop myself. I wrote in the answers without thinking. Gods, I hate my brain sometimes. I could work out what percentage of my life I've spent doing maths, but that'd just be freaky and worry even me. It's not natural is it?
I used to sit down and whilst waiting for something to do I'd work out how long I'd been on this planet (including approximate pregnancy) in seconds. Or if I got really bored, the amount of 20 second portions of time inbetween the time of my birth and the time at which I worked it out. I didn't need a pen, or paper. I'd just do it all mentally. My mental maths is very good, if you haven't guessed.
I don't like writing stuff down all that much. A few multiplications, a few notes here and there. I'm sure it helps me think it through, and I'll write stuff down if I can, but I prefer to work without. If that makes any sense at all. Rephrasing that: I'll write things down when I can because it's occasionally useful, but given the choice and the vast majority of sums where exact answers are not a necessity straight away, I'll prefer to work without paper.
I can tell you, within a few seconds of thinking about it, that 124 goes into four 31 times. I can tell you that 3125 is 5 to the power 4 and that if you take nine to the power 3 and divide it by 3 to the power 4 you get 9. Without too much effort as well. Test me if you want. Send me a list of sums or something to do. I'll manage most of them hopefully. Unless some of you are secretly nuclear physcists with nasty equations to work out. I'd have to go and dig out a few textbooks to help me with those!
Someone expressed surprise at the diversity of my books earlier today. They, for some bizzarre reason, cannot comprehend having a reference book for just about everything. I have books on everything from drawing to computing to eating to cooking to brewing to geography to science to life skills and anything else you can think of. And probably a book or two on how to increase what you think of as well. It's great. The internet is better though. It's much easier to search the internet than it is to search through the 10 or 11 full bookcases in my house looking for a few books that may possibly contain what you're looking for.
My English teacher has once again agreed to proofread some of my writings. As per the last time, I'll post up what I sent - as this is previously unreleased material being released for copyediting first - and what her reply was. She's suggested I do a rotary club writing thing, which I'll enter one of my coursework pieces and a piece of creative writing into. 2 pieces/contestant I think. Bit like the musical equivalent, which I'll probably end up doing as well.
I don't have a life at the moment. I have music. Isn't it great? All my spare time is taken up with music or writing. Relaxation happens to other people! Unless you're a proficient musician yourself you probably don't quite realise what I mean by this. Around certain times of year - most noticeably, near christmas - everyone needs musicians. So the entirity of social calenders are based around when the local prodigies and the rest of us can get round to popping over to their event and playing something for an hour or two.
Christmas couldn't have come at a worse time musically this year. My practise has gone all over the place and I have next to no concert pieces. And I have a concert to perform in at some point. It's great! I guess I'll blag my way through with some total rubbish that I've not played in ages but that I should be able to play confidentally or whatnot.
It's what I normally do.
Act with confidence and no one disbelieves you. Trust me! I know what I'm talking about.
Sort of.
It's always a scary thing to start thinking about physics, especially astrophysics. Which is harder and on a much larger scale than just rolling a few balls down a ramp or swinging a pendulum. Would you care to guess what sort of physics I've been thinking about? No, it's not astrophysics. It's just physics relating to relativity whilst in space. And what if scenarios.
Take, for example, what would happen if gravity ceased to have any effect on anything. Gravity - aclaimed by some to be a fourth dimension - is very important. It keeps us on a million ton rock that hurtles through space at speeds where something like a speck of dust hitting you in the eye would probably knock it off. You may think, "Oh right.. well.. we'll float off." In actuality, it's a little scarier than that.
Our momentum would be slowed down by things such as hitting things on the surface. Without gravity, we no longer stick to the earth. Jumping would make us float, and the earth would carry on spinning beneath us. At another tremendous velocity. Admittedly, this would mean - in theory - that you would be spinning at a great velocity as you jumped and therefore would go reeling off into space as the sideways spin threw you off of the planet. With no gravity there's precious litte to stop you. Unless you happen to near to a conveniently placed skyscraper. However, this minor detail aside, if you were to stand still whilst the earth spun round, you'd then end up being whacked by a hill or something. And that'd hurt, and probably squash you flat.
Newton's laws say that any object that hits another object conveys it's momentum into the object that is hit. Or something like that. It's how balls work. You know those metal executive toy thingys that never stop clicking against each other? Same sort of principle. It may not have been Newton, but it's one of the laws of physics. Energy is only ever transfered, and never lost. That sort of conservation idea. And so you've just had who knows how many tons of earth hit you at some tremendous velocity. You're not a pancake, that'd be a little too thick. You're a cloud of red mist floating in the air wondering what the hell just happened.
In theory. No one is willing to test this. For some reason. Can't imagine why.
Our momentum aside, at least we have air resistance to slow us down. Now imagine the earth, spinning through space like a giant bowling ball. Apart from the occasional planet - and lets face it, they aren't exactly jammed close together - what is going to stop the earth? There's no air resistance. So the earth won't slow down, but we will. We'll get left behind, or killed by the various things that hit us.
I'm sure there's a few other factors, and it's all theoretical as gravity can't just be stopped, but it's besides the point. Maybe once we've worked out how to artificially create gravity someone will test it all for me and I'll be right. Even if I'm forgotten.
I could go into a few other what-ifs, but playing with physics bores everyone but me. Bit like maths really. Maths pisses me off. Quite a lot to be totally honest. I mean.. everyone sits around wondering how to do the obvious. I like maths in itself. Playing with numbers - or letters if I'm mucking around with proofs and theses - is something I do automatically. The worst thing you can do whilst near me is reel off a list of numbers. Irrelevant of their order - although if they aren't in the right order I'll get irritated at you - I'll immediately start playing with those numbers until something more interesting crops up. Depending on the numbers this could be anything from 10 minutes to 15 minutes or maybe even the rest of the day..
I just had to consciously stop myself from thinking about the numbers then and working out what 10/15 is as a decimal (0.66) and what 15/10 is (1.5) and what they are in Base 3 (0.2, 1.11) or whatever other base you want me to work in. Okay, looking back at that, I didn't stop myself. I wrote in the answers without thinking. Gods, I hate my brain sometimes. I could work out what percentage of my life I've spent doing maths, but that'd just be freaky and worry even me. It's not natural is it?
I used to sit down and whilst waiting for something to do I'd work out how long I'd been on this planet (including approximate pregnancy) in seconds. Or if I got really bored, the amount of 20 second portions of time inbetween the time of my birth and the time at which I worked it out. I didn't need a pen, or paper. I'd just do it all mentally. My mental maths is very good, if you haven't guessed.
I don't like writing stuff down all that much. A few multiplications, a few notes here and there. I'm sure it helps me think it through, and I'll write stuff down if I can, but I prefer to work without. If that makes any sense at all. Rephrasing that: I'll write things down when I can because it's occasionally useful, but given the choice and the vast majority of sums where exact answers are not a necessity straight away, I'll prefer to work without paper.
I can tell you, within a few seconds of thinking about it, that 124 goes into four 31 times. I can tell you that 3125 is 5 to the power 4 and that if you take nine to the power 3 and divide it by 3 to the power 4 you get 9. Without too much effort as well. Test me if you want. Send me a list of sums or something to do. I'll manage most of them hopefully. Unless some of you are secretly nuclear physcists with nasty equations to work out. I'd have to go and dig out a few textbooks to help me with those!
Someone expressed surprise at the diversity of my books earlier today. They, for some bizzarre reason, cannot comprehend having a reference book for just about everything. I have books on everything from drawing to computing to eating to cooking to brewing to geography to science to life skills and anything else you can think of. And probably a book or two on how to increase what you think of as well. It's great. The internet is better though. It's much easier to search the internet than it is to search through the 10 or 11 full bookcases in my house looking for a few books that may possibly contain what you're looking for.
My English teacher has once again agreed to proofread some of my writings. As per the last time, I'll post up what I sent - as this is previously unreleased material being released for copyediting first - and what her reply was. She's suggested I do a rotary club writing thing, which I'll enter one of my coursework pieces and a piece of creative writing into. 2 pieces/contestant I think. Bit like the musical equivalent, which I'll probably end up doing as well.
I don't have a life at the moment. I have music. Isn't it great? All my spare time is taken up with music or writing. Relaxation happens to other people! Unless you're a proficient musician yourself you probably don't quite realise what I mean by this. Around certain times of year - most noticeably, near christmas - everyone needs musicians. So the entirity of social calenders are based around when the local prodigies and the rest of us can get round to popping over to their event and playing something for an hour or two.
Christmas couldn't have come at a worse time musically this year. My practise has gone all over the place and I have next to no concert pieces. And I have a concert to perform in at some point. It's great! I guess I'll blag my way through with some total rubbish that I've not played in ages but that I should be able to play confidentally or whatnot.
It's what I normally do.
Act with confidence and no one disbelieves you. Trust me! I know what I'm talking about.
Sort of.
29th November: Blackout!
There was a power cut this morning. Followed by me playing the piano for 15 minutes until the power stopped being nasty to me and decided to play nicely for once. It was great... it got my little sister off of the computer, and as we do first come first served and I made sure I would know when the power came back on by some igenious means (that involved making sure a very bright light was waiting for power) and then got there first.
I did have some problems getting her to log it on for me, but with promises of letting her know when 'Hugsy' (or Dani to most of the normal world) came online. I'm not entirey sure where that name came from actually. It was about a month ago when it started. Early November prehaps. My little sister was chaperoning me, again, whilst I was talking to various people and Dani logged on. The first thing that dropped out of my sister's mouth was "IT'S HUGSY!" down my earhole and into the places which give you a headache.
I can only presume that as Dani insists on encouraging my very cold sister to hug me (and I'm generally enjoying my little spot of warmth) and she sends hugs over MSN to my little sister and vice versa (they actually were doing hi fives to each other down a network cable the other day... I got slightly worried) my sister connects Dani with hugging. And Hugsy must be some sort of description of hugging. However, the name has now stuck in my head forever, until Dani does something slightly more amusing to tease her about instead of calling her a pet name that my sister made up.
I've found a slightly more original way of saying hello to people now. Wheras before I claimed it was always morning, I now simply scream people's name at them. In case they forgot and needed reminding. I only use the 'good morning' greeting when talking to adults, as screaming adults' names at themselves would most probably prompt retribution of some form. I don't want to know what form it comes in. My curiousity doesn't extend that far.
Nor does my curiousity extend towards anything illegal. I refuse to know anything whatsoever about the teenage drug dealer, the gang of them that smoke and do drugs at lunchtime, the ones that keep a pint of beer tucked away in their locker. It's safer for me. I have a conscience you see. People call it 'snitching' to go and tell authorities, but it's a duty. A responsibility. On the downside of all of this, snitching relies on being able to remain anonymous or protect yourself. I fail miserably at both, normally, unless you count running away as protection. Temporary protection that is. It takes a special kind of person to escape just by running away.
Olympic speed sprinter might be able to do it. If all of the people he was running away from were behind him. Or her. And lets face it. Even chavs are clever enough to spread out and surround a target. Mob intelligence can just about amount to that.
I always wondered why the Mob call themselves the Mob. The intelligence of a Mob is the intelligence of the stupidest person divided by the amount of people in the Mob. Either the pyscologists are all wrong - it wouldn't be a first - or the Mob is full of intelligent people that want the world to think that a very clever criminal organisation is in fact some sort of dozos place to hide. I'll leave it up to you. Some of you might even class the Mob as idiots!
I wish you great luck in running away.
I recently went to one of these workshops that I get offered occasionally. This was for fantasy writing, and we were talked at for about 3 hours by Juliet E Mckenna. I'd never heard of her. Apparently she's a very good author, and from the 5 minutes or so I spent reading the first 3 chapters of her first book, she doesn't sound too stodgy or boring. Yet again, the beginnings of books are always good. It's how authors make sales.
Anyway, at the end of this fantasy writing workshop thingy, we were given this sheet of paper. I'll type it out, as I have it next to me.
"Short Story Competition
[place name] Library Service invites you to enter a story in our Fantasy Fiction Short Story Competition.
Dragons, wizards, elves, dwarves, faeries.... what do YOU want to write about today?
All you have to do is write your story of up to 500 words in the space below.
Entries are open to 11-17 year olds.
Entries close on Wednesday 31st December 2008."
Obviously the place name is the actual place where I was, but I omitted it. Just to make it a bit more of a pain in the arse for potential stalkers. Not that I suspect anyone but all of you of it. I don't honestly think any of you can be bothered to do it though. You either know it already, or you don't care enough about me to waste your time tracking me down so I can say hello to another random stranger who knows me.
I never know any of these random strangers that walk up to me on the street and say hello. The word 'stranger' sort of gives it away really...
Anyway, I'm seriously considering spending a few hours of my time to knock together two (maximum of two entries per entrant) 500 word stories that vaguely make a little sense and sound alright. However, the main problem comes from the 500 words bit. Since I started writing this blog, about 20 minutes ago, I've written nearly 1000 words. Or thereabouts. Most of it is total and utter junk, but it's besides the point. It's over 500 words.
So I could quickly knock together two fantasy stories and there I'd have it. 20 minutes work for something that they'd take one look at and then use it to fuel the fire to keep themselves warm a little longer. That's not worth it really.
What IS worth it is spending a few hours to plan and research a fantasy story, with a world that I don't make up (explaing my worlds, as in.. those I make from scratch... always takes more than 500 words) such as Tolkein's universe, or the Harry Potter reality, or the Terry Brooks world. I already have a character in mind. His name is (at the moment) Ylith. Only I don't like it. I might change it to something based on German or French - if I can find the French-English dictionary kicking around.
Taking other languages and using words from that language to make names for English stories is great. I get pronoucable names that look vaguely like a english or german word (as I change the word slightly, so as to not be too obvious, and german is fairly similar to english. Same Latin descent) instead of garbled rubbish that everyone pronounces wrong and sounds more like a sound you'd make when you found something stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
In the past, I've used some great names. These are a mixture of ones I've made up off the top of my head and ones I've derived from German or English or whatnot.
My first ever character that I made up was a particulary dark creature named Kadix. He and his brother - creatively named after the suicidal bird who burns itself to heat up the egg of the next generation - were counterpoints. Kadix was, at the beginning of the story, overlooking a research compound which he'd just broken out of. You overheard a brief conversation between two scientists where they're going crazy after discovering he's broken out, before you actually begin to explore his various skills. If I remember correctly - and this is going back a fair few years now - he visits a school, where one of the teachers just happens to be his not-so-evil twin brother whose metamorphed into a human shape to keep an eye into what is going on. Boy sees Kadix and brother fight, brother beats Kadix off with help of boy, boy rides brother to stonehenge where brother is killed by Kadix, brother tells Boy that he is actually Kadix and it's all back to front and book ends. Is great.
Then I had a boy named Zed (I never had a female character in any of my books. I could never write plausible dialogs for them... can't get inside women's heads. I'm going to try again with one of my various scribblings though) who wandered around inside of a school looking for some secret thing. It was probably the worst thing I can ever remember and it sticks because of that.
I had an unnamed character who crashlanded on a desert island and had to escape. I think he scrapes through about 6 feet of solid metal using a pair of scissors, finds an aeroplane engine with a manual start button and uses this to power a raft to escape the island along with vast quantities of food stored in some undefined manner on an incredibly small raft. I didn't really understand it myself at the time. It was the most copyedited piece of writing I ever wrote.
I rewrote the twelve tasks of Hercules into the Seven Tasks of Jason. I ran out of time and had to hand it in seven-twelths complete. It was fairly boring. Second most copyedited. Spears, shields, swords, big battle with gods and creatures at the end. Fairly typical bad book to be totally honest.
At my last school we only ever did one piece of creative writing. I used a character I'd been developing for sometime. His name was Karabis. I never gave a description of him twice in the same way. I think the only facts which stayed the same was the use of two swords - which is something that I've carried across into Ylith - and a military background which anyone would be proud of. His normally amazing use of the two swords is also typical. I think I have him fight with someone as skilled as him once, in an arena with spinning chains and whatnot.
It was quite imaginative I thought. Here's this arena. Okay, it's just these two men trying to hack each other with swords. Yeah, it's sort of interesting. But it's been done a million times before. So lets add in this giant wooden pole that is somehow attached to a thing that makes it spin at tremendous speeds, whistling chains around horizontally at varying heights and speeds, allowing the two combatants to not only fight each other on the ground, but also make them jump and dodge and use these chains - which are sturdy enough to stand on and run along - whilst fighting each other.
I think Karabis eventually got the bright idea of simply chopping the pole down with the unrealisticly sharp edge of his sword. And then watching his opponent go flying off into a wall as momentum stopped in an instant. Or something like that. It made sense at the time, but now - thinking about the science of it - it doesn't really work.
In my latest piece of writing I've started developing a small cast.
Firstly, and the main character, is the guy named Ylith. He's a Hunter. His job, believe it or not, is to hunt stuff down. People, creatures, the undead, whatever he gets paid for. He carries two sets of twin swords (One of them normal, one of them 'full of holy fire' for the abnormal things he has to kill in the course of his job), wears a cloak with a hood (generally up, excepting in a few circumstances - such as in one tavern where he takes it down and has a quick drink) to conceal them, a chain long enough to act as a whip and is quite tall.
He's amazingly quick. In the tavern scene I mentioned, four soldiers follow him in - having chased him, as he's a wanted man in 'more countries than officially exist' - and he simply walks up to their leader, talking to them. Then he kills them, before any of them even begin to strike out at him. He's also fairly strong, jumping into the second floor window of a house in the pursuit of a Stalker - a particulary nasty kind of monster that hunts children at night time. My version of a Boogeyman I suppose - and he is also confident.
He is a little racist, and isn't perfect. He walks right past the Stalker at one point, failing to see it in the dark and the rain. By the way one of his peers acts towards him after the Stalker has fled, you can tell it isn't the first time and that he should have spotted the Stalker. He manages to drop out of a third storey window though, at the end of the little bit I've written, so he does have some talents.
The second character you meet is another Hunter. It's a female, believe it or not. Her name is Hildreth ('Little Miss Hildreth and this one were most irritated by Ylith's rapid departure') She seems to tag along with Ylith. I've not really developed her yet. She and Ylith seem to normally work together, referring to past contracts and irritation at his running off and leaving her.
The third character is a peculiar human. I've not yet named him. He's a Belkrutian. He never refers to himself, instead referring to 'this one' (he says the quote in the above paragraph.) I do like him. He's the party's quartermaster. He ensures that they have supplies. He also seems to mention the rules a lot, although he never actually acts as the rules say claiming he 'has no time.' He serves as a reminder of how they should act, and what they should do. He apologises for his actions in killing other Hunters at one point, saying that it was the council's wishes and that he was simply following orders. He also refers to the 'councils wishes in regards to the Master' (the Master being Fieros.. see below) without saying what they are. Tagged on the end of having admitted to killing the rest, it could be presumed that he has been ordered to ensure Fieros' death, but hasn't yet got to it.
The final character I've decided on is an arrogant Hunter Assassin named Fieros. Like I said above, the Belkrutian has killed off all but one of the Hunter Assassins, and it's possible that there's a standing order to kill the last one as well. He seems to lack honour. When Hildreth says, ""But stabbing people in the back isn't honorable! That's what sneakthieves and assassins do!"" Fieros simply replies that he is a sneakthief and an assassin. He is also the only one that is able to sneak up on Ylith, as Ylith didn't detect him - despite him being closer than the Belkrutian, who Ylith did detect.
The world that they're in? This may take some time, but I'll try to make it as small as possible.
In their world - unnamed for the moment, as I've not got round to digging out the ancient Greek translator and naming the world in Greek, or some other equally outdated language - there is a problem. The undead - zombies, skeletons, the normal things - run rampant in the streets of the world. They used to be controlled by a group called 'The Hunters' but Hunters are slowly being wiped out by the immense pressure of their job. Most of the civilized world - in the daytime when the dead are mostly resting - is ruled by one empire, who periodically extend their borders further out into the world. There are some smaller 'states' and 'countries' around that aren't assimilated into the larger empire, but they will all be gone soonish. The empire doesn't extend overwater however, and this applies similarly with the authoriry of the empire government.
The Hunters, those dedicated to at least attempting to kill some of the undead problem, are a large group of people that travel in parties. I have a party of four in the above section, which is about as large as they will go. They are ruled by a Council, who occasionally order the Hunters what to do. The rest of the time, Hunters are left to their own devices and may go about their buisness of cleansing the world in anyway they see fit. Their authority extends across the whole of the civilized world, as they are not controlled by any government but are - in essence - normal people.
To become a Hunter requires next to no training. You just turn up at the gates of anyone of their recruitment centres and ask to become a Hunter. To remain a Hunter - and to be allowed to call yourself one - requires acceptance by the council, or by suitable authorities if the council are not easily available. To achieve this normally requires much greater training, which is supplied by the Hunters - at some cost - or may be self-taught. Obviously, the cost is minimal to allow people of any social class to join the percieved elite, but in reality - as the Council provides no equipment or training beyond the minimal for most Hunters - only the sons of noblemen and rich merchants can reliably expect to get a position as a Hunter. There are some sponsered training placements available. Ylith - my main character - was positioned in one of these.
Once you're out of training as a Hunter, you are expected to finance any further training and any equipment you need. Contracts are available from just about everyone - whether it be putting their deceased to a final rest to prevent them from wandering the streets at night as some semi-decomposed corpse or just wiping out a horde of Ghouls (carnivores that prey on humans, and on the dead) that are having feasts down at the local cemetary every night - and these provide a source of income. Some contracts are available to the most trusted of Hunters from the Council or from the more experienced Hunters to the newer ones, but these are infrequent and not relied upon.
Hunters, due to their expectations of recruits and what recruits must provide for themselves and due to the natural hazards of trying to kill those that, for the most part, are already dead, are slowly dying out. There are not enough being trained to replace those dying in the line of duty.
The dead are not organised in any particular way. They are normally out at night, whether it just be a few zombies stumbling around the streets (as even in the smallest village there's normally a resident zombie who they cannot get rid of, for one reason or another. Sentimentalism included) or something more serious such as a Lich in the sewers, or a Stalker in the rooftops or a haunting. They are strongest in the hour before midnight, from the eleventh toll of the eleventh hour to the twelth toll of the twelth hour. This is also the only period in which many of the undead can hunt, such as Stalkers who require that elevated power to kill innocents - who are their chosen prey, although they themselves can be killed at anytime and anything that isn't innocent (ie. anything that isn't relatively newborn) can be killed by them.
I'll stop boring you with my world. I'll try to write a fireside conversation or something with all my main characters in it where they talk about the world and each other so that you get some idea.
Y'know how I am. It'll either get done, or it'll get forgotten about.
Bit like the English homework I'm supposed to have done tonight...
I did have some problems getting her to log it on for me, but with promises of letting her know when 'Hugsy' (or Dani to most of the normal world) came online. I'm not entirey sure where that name came from actually. It was about a month ago when it started. Early November prehaps. My little sister was chaperoning me, again, whilst I was talking to various people and Dani logged on. The first thing that dropped out of my sister's mouth was "IT'S HUGSY!" down my earhole and into the places which give you a headache.
I can only presume that as Dani insists on encouraging my very cold sister to hug me (and I'm generally enjoying my little spot of warmth) and she sends hugs over MSN to my little sister and vice versa (they actually were doing hi fives to each other down a network cable the other day... I got slightly worried) my sister connects Dani with hugging. And Hugsy must be some sort of description of hugging. However, the name has now stuck in my head forever, until Dani does something slightly more amusing to tease her about instead of calling her a pet name that my sister made up.
I've found a slightly more original way of saying hello to people now. Wheras before I claimed it was always morning, I now simply scream people's name at them. In case they forgot and needed reminding. I only use the 'good morning' greeting when talking to adults, as screaming adults' names at themselves would most probably prompt retribution of some form. I don't want to know what form it comes in. My curiousity doesn't extend that far.
Nor does my curiousity extend towards anything illegal. I refuse to know anything whatsoever about the teenage drug dealer, the gang of them that smoke and do drugs at lunchtime, the ones that keep a pint of beer tucked away in their locker. It's safer for me. I have a conscience you see. People call it 'snitching' to go and tell authorities, but it's a duty. A responsibility. On the downside of all of this, snitching relies on being able to remain anonymous or protect yourself. I fail miserably at both, normally, unless you count running away as protection. Temporary protection that is. It takes a special kind of person to escape just by running away.
Olympic speed sprinter might be able to do it. If all of the people he was running away from were behind him. Or her. And lets face it. Even chavs are clever enough to spread out and surround a target. Mob intelligence can just about amount to that.
I always wondered why the Mob call themselves the Mob. The intelligence of a Mob is the intelligence of the stupidest person divided by the amount of people in the Mob. Either the pyscologists are all wrong - it wouldn't be a first - or the Mob is full of intelligent people that want the world to think that a very clever criminal organisation is in fact some sort of dozos place to hide. I'll leave it up to you. Some of you might even class the Mob as idiots!
I wish you great luck in running away.
I recently went to one of these workshops that I get offered occasionally. This was for fantasy writing, and we were talked at for about 3 hours by Juliet E Mckenna. I'd never heard of her. Apparently she's a very good author, and from the 5 minutes or so I spent reading the first 3 chapters of her first book, she doesn't sound too stodgy or boring. Yet again, the beginnings of books are always good. It's how authors make sales.
Anyway, at the end of this fantasy writing workshop thingy, we were given this sheet of paper. I'll type it out, as I have it next to me.
"Short Story Competition
[place name] Library Service invites you to enter a story in our Fantasy Fiction Short Story Competition.
Dragons, wizards, elves, dwarves, faeries.... what do YOU want to write about today?
All you have to do is write your story of up to 500 words in the space below.
Entries are open to 11-17 year olds.
Entries close on Wednesday 31st December 2008."
Obviously the place name is the actual place where I was, but I omitted it. Just to make it a bit more of a pain in the arse for potential stalkers. Not that I suspect anyone but all of you of it. I don't honestly think any of you can be bothered to do it though. You either know it already, or you don't care enough about me to waste your time tracking me down so I can say hello to another random stranger who knows me.
I never know any of these random strangers that walk up to me on the street and say hello. The word 'stranger' sort of gives it away really...
Anyway, I'm seriously considering spending a few hours of my time to knock together two (maximum of two entries per entrant) 500 word stories that vaguely make a little sense and sound alright. However, the main problem comes from the 500 words bit. Since I started writing this blog, about 20 minutes ago, I've written nearly 1000 words. Or thereabouts. Most of it is total and utter junk, but it's besides the point. It's over 500 words.
So I could quickly knock together two fantasy stories and there I'd have it. 20 minutes work for something that they'd take one look at and then use it to fuel the fire to keep themselves warm a little longer. That's not worth it really.
What IS worth it is spending a few hours to plan and research a fantasy story, with a world that I don't make up (explaing my worlds, as in.. those I make from scratch... always takes more than 500 words) such as Tolkein's universe, or the Harry Potter reality, or the Terry Brooks world. I already have a character in mind. His name is (at the moment) Ylith. Only I don't like it. I might change it to something based on German or French - if I can find the French-English dictionary kicking around.
Taking other languages and using words from that language to make names for English stories is great. I get pronoucable names that look vaguely like a english or german word (as I change the word slightly, so as to not be too obvious, and german is fairly similar to english. Same Latin descent) instead of garbled rubbish that everyone pronounces wrong and sounds more like a sound you'd make when you found something stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
In the past, I've used some great names. These are a mixture of ones I've made up off the top of my head and ones I've derived from German or English or whatnot.
My first ever character that I made up was a particulary dark creature named Kadix. He and his brother - creatively named after the suicidal bird who burns itself to heat up the egg of the next generation - were counterpoints. Kadix was, at the beginning of the story, overlooking a research compound which he'd just broken out of. You overheard a brief conversation between two scientists where they're going crazy after discovering he's broken out, before you actually begin to explore his various skills. If I remember correctly - and this is going back a fair few years now - he visits a school, where one of the teachers just happens to be his not-so-evil twin brother whose metamorphed into a human shape to keep an eye into what is going on. Boy sees Kadix and brother fight, brother beats Kadix off with help of boy, boy rides brother to stonehenge where brother is killed by Kadix, brother tells Boy that he is actually Kadix and it's all back to front and book ends. Is great.
Then I had a boy named Zed (I never had a female character in any of my books. I could never write plausible dialogs for them... can't get inside women's heads. I'm going to try again with one of my various scribblings though) who wandered around inside of a school looking for some secret thing. It was probably the worst thing I can ever remember and it sticks because of that.
I had an unnamed character who crashlanded on a desert island and had to escape. I think he scrapes through about 6 feet of solid metal using a pair of scissors, finds an aeroplane engine with a manual start button and uses this to power a raft to escape the island along with vast quantities of food stored in some undefined manner on an incredibly small raft. I didn't really understand it myself at the time. It was the most copyedited piece of writing I ever wrote.
I rewrote the twelve tasks of Hercules into the Seven Tasks of Jason. I ran out of time and had to hand it in seven-twelths complete. It was fairly boring. Second most copyedited. Spears, shields, swords, big battle with gods and creatures at the end. Fairly typical bad book to be totally honest.
At my last school we only ever did one piece of creative writing. I used a character I'd been developing for sometime. His name was Karabis. I never gave a description of him twice in the same way. I think the only facts which stayed the same was the use of two swords - which is something that I've carried across into Ylith - and a military background which anyone would be proud of. His normally amazing use of the two swords is also typical. I think I have him fight with someone as skilled as him once, in an arena with spinning chains and whatnot.
It was quite imaginative I thought. Here's this arena. Okay, it's just these two men trying to hack each other with swords. Yeah, it's sort of interesting. But it's been done a million times before. So lets add in this giant wooden pole that is somehow attached to a thing that makes it spin at tremendous speeds, whistling chains around horizontally at varying heights and speeds, allowing the two combatants to not only fight each other on the ground, but also make them jump and dodge and use these chains - which are sturdy enough to stand on and run along - whilst fighting each other.
I think Karabis eventually got the bright idea of simply chopping the pole down with the unrealisticly sharp edge of his sword. And then watching his opponent go flying off into a wall as momentum stopped in an instant. Or something like that. It made sense at the time, but now - thinking about the science of it - it doesn't really work.
In my latest piece of writing I've started developing a small cast.
Firstly, and the main character, is the guy named Ylith. He's a Hunter. His job, believe it or not, is to hunt stuff down. People, creatures, the undead, whatever he gets paid for. He carries two sets of twin swords (One of them normal, one of them 'full of holy fire' for the abnormal things he has to kill in the course of his job), wears a cloak with a hood (generally up, excepting in a few circumstances - such as in one tavern where he takes it down and has a quick drink) to conceal them, a chain long enough to act as a whip and is quite tall.
He's amazingly quick. In the tavern scene I mentioned, four soldiers follow him in - having chased him, as he's a wanted man in 'more countries than officially exist' - and he simply walks up to their leader, talking to them. Then he kills them, before any of them even begin to strike out at him. He's also fairly strong, jumping into the second floor window of a house in the pursuit of a Stalker - a particulary nasty kind of monster that hunts children at night time. My version of a Boogeyman I suppose - and he is also confident.
He is a little racist, and isn't perfect. He walks right past the Stalker at one point, failing to see it in the dark and the rain. By the way one of his peers acts towards him after the Stalker has fled, you can tell it isn't the first time and that he should have spotted the Stalker. He manages to drop out of a third storey window though, at the end of the little bit I've written, so he does have some talents.
The second character you meet is another Hunter. It's a female, believe it or not. Her name is Hildreth ('Little Miss Hildreth and this one were most irritated by Ylith's rapid departure') She seems to tag along with Ylith. I've not really developed her yet. She and Ylith seem to normally work together, referring to past contracts and irritation at his running off and leaving her.
The third character is a peculiar human. I've not yet named him. He's a Belkrutian. He never refers to himself, instead referring to 'this one' (he says the quote in the above paragraph.) I do like him. He's the party's quartermaster. He ensures that they have supplies. He also seems to mention the rules a lot, although he never actually acts as the rules say claiming he 'has no time.' He serves as a reminder of how they should act, and what they should do. He apologises for his actions in killing other Hunters at one point, saying that it was the council's wishes and that he was simply following orders. He also refers to the 'councils wishes in regards to the Master' (the Master being Fieros.. see below) without saying what they are. Tagged on the end of having admitted to killing the rest, it could be presumed that he has been ordered to ensure Fieros' death, but hasn't yet got to it.
The final character I've decided on is an arrogant Hunter Assassin named Fieros. Like I said above, the Belkrutian has killed off all but one of the Hunter Assassins, and it's possible that there's a standing order to kill the last one as well. He seems to lack honour. When Hildreth says, ""But stabbing people in the back isn't honorable! That's what sneakthieves and assassins do!"" Fieros simply replies that he is a sneakthief and an assassin. He is also the only one that is able to sneak up on Ylith, as Ylith didn't detect him - despite him being closer than the Belkrutian, who Ylith did detect.
The world that they're in? This may take some time, but I'll try to make it as small as possible.
In their world - unnamed for the moment, as I've not got round to digging out the ancient Greek translator and naming the world in Greek, or some other equally outdated language - there is a problem. The undead - zombies, skeletons, the normal things - run rampant in the streets of the world. They used to be controlled by a group called 'The Hunters' but Hunters are slowly being wiped out by the immense pressure of their job. Most of the civilized world - in the daytime when the dead are mostly resting - is ruled by one empire, who periodically extend their borders further out into the world. There are some smaller 'states' and 'countries' around that aren't assimilated into the larger empire, but they will all be gone soonish. The empire doesn't extend overwater however, and this applies similarly with the authoriry of the empire government.
The Hunters, those dedicated to at least attempting to kill some of the undead problem, are a large group of people that travel in parties. I have a party of four in the above section, which is about as large as they will go. They are ruled by a Council, who occasionally order the Hunters what to do. The rest of the time, Hunters are left to their own devices and may go about their buisness of cleansing the world in anyway they see fit. Their authority extends across the whole of the civilized world, as they are not controlled by any government but are - in essence - normal people.
To become a Hunter requires next to no training. You just turn up at the gates of anyone of their recruitment centres and ask to become a Hunter. To remain a Hunter - and to be allowed to call yourself one - requires acceptance by the council, or by suitable authorities if the council are not easily available. To achieve this normally requires much greater training, which is supplied by the Hunters - at some cost - or may be self-taught. Obviously, the cost is minimal to allow people of any social class to join the percieved elite, but in reality - as the Council provides no equipment or training beyond the minimal for most Hunters - only the sons of noblemen and rich merchants can reliably expect to get a position as a Hunter. There are some sponsered training placements available. Ylith - my main character - was positioned in one of these.
Once you're out of training as a Hunter, you are expected to finance any further training and any equipment you need. Contracts are available from just about everyone - whether it be putting their deceased to a final rest to prevent them from wandering the streets at night as some semi-decomposed corpse or just wiping out a horde of Ghouls (carnivores that prey on humans, and on the dead) that are having feasts down at the local cemetary every night - and these provide a source of income. Some contracts are available to the most trusted of Hunters from the Council or from the more experienced Hunters to the newer ones, but these are infrequent and not relied upon.
Hunters, due to their expectations of recruits and what recruits must provide for themselves and due to the natural hazards of trying to kill those that, for the most part, are already dead, are slowly dying out. There are not enough being trained to replace those dying in the line of duty.
The dead are not organised in any particular way. They are normally out at night, whether it just be a few zombies stumbling around the streets (as even in the smallest village there's normally a resident zombie who they cannot get rid of, for one reason or another. Sentimentalism included) or something more serious such as a Lich in the sewers, or a Stalker in the rooftops or a haunting. They are strongest in the hour before midnight, from the eleventh toll of the eleventh hour to the twelth toll of the twelth hour. This is also the only period in which many of the undead can hunt, such as Stalkers who require that elevated power to kill innocents - who are their chosen prey, although they themselves can be killed at anytime and anything that isn't innocent (ie. anything that isn't relatively newborn) can be killed by them.
I'll stop boring you with my world. I'll try to write a fireside conversation or something with all my main characters in it where they talk about the world and each other so that you get some idea.
Y'know how I am. It'll either get done, or it'll get forgotten about.
Bit like the English homework I'm supposed to have done tonight...
25th November: Where's my snow?
I got all excited recently. I was told that there was going to be snow. I was looking forward to the customary snow-down-neck treatment that seems specially designed to be used on me. I was looking forward to freezing the part of my anatomy that is partly responsible for the continuance of the human race. I was looking forward to, in general, having absolutely no fun whatsoever. Snow is, normally, quite good fun. Except when I try to have fun on a larger scale. Then it just gets boring, or stupid, or unpleasant.
But this snow seems to have evaporated. The sunlight must have melted it or something. You know... the really hot days at a mere minus three degrees meaning that all of this mystical snow has just decided to run off and form puddles a few miles down the road. It's typical. The only time there's any chance whatsoever of it not raining, the skies mystically clears and we end up with sunlight so cold we'd be better off with a little cloud cover to trap some heat in. Like the roof on a house. Only slightly bigger.
I reckon that this time of year proves all these scientists that go on about global warming wrong. I mean.. when I'm beginning to feel absolutely nothing because it's all frozen (some days I swear that instead of icecubes in a drink I could just stick my fingers in and watch the glass freeze. Not that I have icecubes when the weather is as cold as this. Woud be suicidal) then I begin to wonder just what they're going on about. I mean.. surely if global warming was actually happening then my internal organs wouldn't be slowly freezing over in an early ice age.
Not that early mind, if you believe the statistics. Apparently, we've gone past the point of no return recently. For the fourth time. I can't decide if the government are being clever and using panic tactics, or whether they're being stupid and can't realise that you can't go past more than one point of no return when once you've gone past it you've doomed the world due to a deficiet in the cycle that slowly winds life to a halt.
I could go into detail, with diagrams and numbers, but I can't draw on WordPad and if I use numbers then Charlotte will kill me. Peacefully, of course, but I'll still end up dead. Probably wouldn't hurt, but y'know. It might.
I think that the first point of no return was in something like 1997, then 1999, 2004 and 2008. It's almost every four years, looking at that list of dates. Maybe the scientists responsible for interpreting statistics get paid on a four-year basis... so they have to be clever once every four years or so, and after that they can just relax for another few years until they get told to play with more numbers to make twenty trillion disappear and to make a tax cut raise the income gained by the government.
If you don't get the first reference I'd love to know what drugs you've been on for the last few months. Something that could wipe out memories of the economical equivalent of an anti-matter explosive device being dropped in the midlde of europe sounds like good fun. Not that I would buy it mind. I don't do drugs. They might have a negative effect on my personality and make me comprehensive, logical, sensible, mature and all those other things that everyone thinks I am. They might even make me intelligent!
But the second reference is a little more abstract. It relies on the wonderful thing called VAT dropping. You know about this? Value Added Tax is being dropped by two and a half percent to boost the economy. What the government didn't mention is that instead of this making prices drop - so you can all buy more - the reverse will happen. You're probably looking slightly confused. Tax cut means lower prices right?
Sure.. it does. Presuming that at no point along that particular products delivery system is it delivered by roads, planes, train or any other form of transport developed after about 1850. The reason why? People that do deliveries can claim back VAT on their fuel costs. So when VAT drops, they get less money back. So to make the same amount of money, they charge more. This means that you get a knock-on effect. VAT goes down, drivers charge more, goods cost more in shops so that they make the same profit.
Add onto this, of course, that road tax is increasing to reduce the impact that dropping VAT will have on the budget. And that sometime in the next four years VAT will be lifted up to one percent above it's original value. And that income tax is being increased. And that, in fact, apart from VAT, there's not really much good news in this years budget.
Unless you're a teacher, nurse, doctor or otherwise employed by the government. Then any budget is good news. That's what you get paid with!
I had a brief philosophical discussion with a friend earlier today. He said that only proper companies could have the '.co.uk' website as it actually meant 'company in uk.' I was fine with this, I knew this. I agree with it. It's a fine idea in principal.However, he then went on to say that things such as Facebook and Bebo and Myspace and gamesites and other wonderful things like that shouldn't have .co.uk web addresses. Don't ask me why. He's a little stupid. Everyone knows that Facebook is a company. That's probably going to go bust.
Then I don't know what I'll do with my spare time. Maybe I'll even have to get a life!
For those that don't know - those that stumbled across this blog by accident and got caught by the first line and are now wondering why the hell they are reading through this and just what sort of person I am - I'm a member of an online forum named 'HEXUS.' I learnt a valuable lesson yesterday. Don't post after 11pm when you're pissed off having had a fairly bad day, are depressed in general and are basically not enjoying life at all. You'll only take it out on other people and it'll only backfire.
Lesson learnt. Now then.. time to go and post. Stupid people.
They do, however, have some very good emoticons which I would steal, as soon as I work out what the best way of stealing them is. They have this one of a smiley face hitting another smiley face over their head (face prehaps?) with a metal board of some description. It's awesome! How often have I wanted to hit someone over the head with a hefty chunk of metal? Quite a lot actually. For varying reasons, but I'm not going to bore you with details.
I'm sure that you all have lives to lead and whatnot.
If you've read this right from the beginning, when I started this, then I'm worried about your mental state. Why do you care about what goes through my head at about midnight on varying days of the week? Do you have serious mental disorders that lead you to believe that this is actually something of interest? Do you have not so serious mental disorders that lead you to believe the same thing, but with less effect? Or, even worse, do you know me?
I'm not really sure what'd be worse. Finding out that a friend is mentally unstable or finding out that they take an unhealthy interest in what I do. I mean.. one of them is worriyng for the obvious reason that finding out that someone I know, and have known for a fair amount of time, is a lunatic would show just how little I actually know about how normal people act. But finding out I have a stalker? That'd be worrying.
Anyway, musing aside, this thing is nearing three hundred pages now. The edited version is about one thirtieth of that. About 10 pages, I think, which is practically nothing as compared to the largest one. It proves just how much drivel I write. How much off-topic, of no-interest and whatever other derogatory comment you wish to make about it writing I can type in the hours so large that they're nearly small.
I thought that, for once, I'd end on a thought for the day. But before that... I got some stuff in a chainmail e-mail. Surprisingly enough. This one as actually quite good junkmail. It listed a bunch of points on how to lead your life, and chainmail bit aside there's a few things it said:
'Only ever say 'I love you' or 'I hate you' when you really mean it.'
Well, obviously. You know how much confusion and agonisation it'd save? I'd quit worrying and go and find something slightly more interesting to do. No more details though. Someone might piece the clues together. Not like I haven't already told y'all, but y'all a little too clever to see it. In the nicest way possible.
There's a few others as well. I'll give them to you next time I remember to read the email today.
So, a few thoughts for the day.
Hope leads only to disappointment. Idleness only to evil. Wisdom is the beginnings of power.
I'll leave it up to you to interpret them, unless you're really dense and need hope. Charlotte.. you've got my email address. Use it when you get stuck.
I'll explain it using numbers if you want?
But this snow seems to have evaporated. The sunlight must have melted it or something. You know... the really hot days at a mere minus three degrees meaning that all of this mystical snow has just decided to run off and form puddles a few miles down the road. It's typical. The only time there's any chance whatsoever of it not raining, the skies mystically clears and we end up with sunlight so cold we'd be better off with a little cloud cover to trap some heat in. Like the roof on a house. Only slightly bigger.
I reckon that this time of year proves all these scientists that go on about global warming wrong. I mean.. when I'm beginning to feel absolutely nothing because it's all frozen (some days I swear that instead of icecubes in a drink I could just stick my fingers in and watch the glass freeze. Not that I have icecubes when the weather is as cold as this. Woud be suicidal) then I begin to wonder just what they're going on about. I mean.. surely if global warming was actually happening then my internal organs wouldn't be slowly freezing over in an early ice age.
Not that early mind, if you believe the statistics. Apparently, we've gone past the point of no return recently. For the fourth time. I can't decide if the government are being clever and using panic tactics, or whether they're being stupid and can't realise that you can't go past more than one point of no return when once you've gone past it you've doomed the world due to a deficiet in the cycle that slowly winds life to a halt.
I could go into detail, with diagrams and numbers, but I can't draw on WordPad and if I use numbers then Charlotte will kill me. Peacefully, of course, but I'll still end up dead. Probably wouldn't hurt, but y'know. It might.
I think that the first point of no return was in something like 1997, then 1999, 2004 and 2008. It's almost every four years, looking at that list of dates. Maybe the scientists responsible for interpreting statistics get paid on a four-year basis... so they have to be clever once every four years or so, and after that they can just relax for another few years until they get told to play with more numbers to make twenty trillion disappear and to make a tax cut raise the income gained by the government.
If you don't get the first reference I'd love to know what drugs you've been on for the last few months. Something that could wipe out memories of the economical equivalent of an anti-matter explosive device being dropped in the midlde of europe sounds like good fun. Not that I would buy it mind. I don't do drugs. They might have a negative effect on my personality and make me comprehensive, logical, sensible, mature and all those other things that everyone thinks I am. They might even make me intelligent!
But the second reference is a little more abstract. It relies on the wonderful thing called VAT dropping. You know about this? Value Added Tax is being dropped by two and a half percent to boost the economy. What the government didn't mention is that instead of this making prices drop - so you can all buy more - the reverse will happen. You're probably looking slightly confused. Tax cut means lower prices right?
Sure.. it does. Presuming that at no point along that particular products delivery system is it delivered by roads, planes, train or any other form of transport developed after about 1850. The reason why? People that do deliveries can claim back VAT on their fuel costs. So when VAT drops, they get less money back. So to make the same amount of money, they charge more. This means that you get a knock-on effect. VAT goes down, drivers charge more, goods cost more in shops so that they make the same profit.
Add onto this, of course, that road tax is increasing to reduce the impact that dropping VAT will have on the budget. And that sometime in the next four years VAT will be lifted up to one percent above it's original value. And that income tax is being increased. And that, in fact, apart from VAT, there's not really much good news in this years budget.
Unless you're a teacher, nurse, doctor or otherwise employed by the government. Then any budget is good news. That's what you get paid with!
I had a brief philosophical discussion with a friend earlier today. He said that only proper companies could have the '.co.uk' website as it actually meant 'company in uk.' I was fine with this, I knew this. I agree with it. It's a fine idea in principal.However, he then went on to say that things such as Facebook and Bebo and Myspace and gamesites and other wonderful things like that shouldn't have .co.uk web addresses. Don't ask me why. He's a little stupid. Everyone knows that Facebook is a company. That's probably going to go bust.
Then I don't know what I'll do with my spare time. Maybe I'll even have to get a life!
For those that don't know - those that stumbled across this blog by accident and got caught by the first line and are now wondering why the hell they are reading through this and just what sort of person I am - I'm a member of an online forum named 'HEXUS.' I learnt a valuable lesson yesterday. Don't post after 11pm when you're pissed off having had a fairly bad day, are depressed in general and are basically not enjoying life at all. You'll only take it out on other people and it'll only backfire.
Lesson learnt. Now then.. time to go and post. Stupid people.
They do, however, have some very good emoticons which I would steal, as soon as I work out what the best way of stealing them is. They have this one of a smiley face hitting another smiley face over their head (face prehaps?) with a metal board of some description. It's awesome! How often have I wanted to hit someone over the head with a hefty chunk of metal? Quite a lot actually. For varying reasons, but I'm not going to bore you with details.
I'm sure that you all have lives to lead and whatnot.
If you've read this right from the beginning, when I started this, then I'm worried about your mental state. Why do you care about what goes through my head at about midnight on varying days of the week? Do you have serious mental disorders that lead you to believe that this is actually something of interest? Do you have not so serious mental disorders that lead you to believe the same thing, but with less effect? Or, even worse, do you know me?
I'm not really sure what'd be worse. Finding out that a friend is mentally unstable or finding out that they take an unhealthy interest in what I do. I mean.. one of them is worriyng for the obvious reason that finding out that someone I know, and have known for a fair amount of time, is a lunatic would show just how little I actually know about how normal people act. But finding out I have a stalker? That'd be worrying.
Anyway, musing aside, this thing is nearing three hundred pages now. The edited version is about one thirtieth of that. About 10 pages, I think, which is practically nothing as compared to the largest one. It proves just how much drivel I write. How much off-topic, of no-interest and whatever other derogatory comment you wish to make about it writing I can type in the hours so large that they're nearly small.
I thought that, for once, I'd end on a thought for the day. But before that... I got some stuff in a chainmail e-mail. Surprisingly enough. This one as actually quite good junkmail. It listed a bunch of points on how to lead your life, and chainmail bit aside there's a few things it said:
'Only ever say 'I love you' or 'I hate you' when you really mean it.'
Well, obviously. You know how much confusion and agonisation it'd save? I'd quit worrying and go and find something slightly more interesting to do. No more details though. Someone might piece the clues together. Not like I haven't already told y'all, but y'all a little too clever to see it. In the nicest way possible.
There's a few others as well. I'll give them to you next time I remember to read the email today.
So, a few thoughts for the day.
Hope leads only to disappointment. Idleness only to evil. Wisdom is the beginnings of power.
I'll leave it up to you to interpret them, unless you're really dense and need hope. Charlotte.. you've got my email address. Use it when you get stuck.
I'll explain it using numbers if you want?
24th November: Loneliness
I'm lonely. It's not that I'm alone, or that I don't have friends or whatnot, but I feel alone. It probably dates back a month or so. I'm beginning to wonder, however, just what the world really has come to. I talked yesterday about Smoke and Mirrors - hiding things from other people, hiding things from other things. What I didn't mention is that it's not conscious effort that plays a major role in it. It's just me being me. I sometimes wonder about myself.
Do I do it deliberately somewhere in my subconscious... making myself different from everyone else? Is it a way of attention-seeking prehaps? My own personal brand of the 'muck-around-in-class' syndrome that is all too common in the normal teenager. Do I do what I do because I'm scared of people judging me for what I really am? Am I just pretending that I'm pretending to be something other than what I am?
I'm losing personal identity, I'm losing personal integrity and I'm losing confidence.
I'm no longer sure that I want to be the piano man, the person that does music everywhere for anyone anytime. I'm no longer sure I want to be in the top few percent of the country in academic achievement (NAGTY members were reputed to be the top 2% of the countries children in terms of academic achievement. I was exceptional even there. At least in terms of strangeness, if nothing else) or simply to be the best at subjects. I'm no longer sure I want to be the consumate gamer that spends every spare minute trying to find some way of illictly gaining internet access to show my alpha domination by killing virtual representations of people I don't know.
Blatant Destructoid reference. Not that anyone will know who that is mind. Just ask me on MSN if you need an explanation. Or ask me in comments. I'll reply to either.
I'm beginning to doubt my own personal set of morals. I sit and I think and I realise just how many of my actions would most probably be looked down upon if done by anyone but me or in anyway but the way I did them. Or looked down upon anyway. Respect for myself? You have to be kidding. Even I'm beginning to think I'm a sad loner-geek that doesn't have a life but who substitutes music instead. I wonder how the hell I manage to enjoy doing so much yet at the same time regret doing so much when I'm not doing it. I wonder if that statement is true or whether it's that I regret not doing things when I'm not doing them and think I should be doing things.
As for confidence, I'm nearing rock bottom. You wouldn't notice, unless you know me very well and can tell, but my confidence is mostly gone. The facade I had is becoming more and more fragile as it begins to be used more and more. Not so much getting nervous or frightened, but beginning to doubt myself. It's like personal integrity, only it's not. I wonder just why I say things, I wonder at my motives, I wonder if I actually did things which I did. It's an alltime low.
Yes, I've spent too much time on my own at train stations with nothing to do for half an hour whilst the train doesn't turn up. Self-Reflection, despite having really good PR and propaganda, isn't actually useful, constructive or do anything whatsoever for me but make me worse. Seriously.. it nearly makes me break out in tears, and that's normally reserved for when I lose control momentarily and have an outburst or when I'm under emotional stress.
Stress. That great thing that is suposed to make us all perform better. I'm sure it does.. in small amounts. I'm equally sure it doesn't in large amounts, and I know I'm stressed. I'm not eating properly, I'm not sleeping properly, I'm tired, I'm incomphrensible - although some would argue that that is normal - and more besides. It's something that wil have to change.
Maybe more sleep?
Who knows?
After depressing myself I will actually get some sleep now. If I can.
If my sleeping habits will let me.... 'tis only midnight afterall.
Do I do it deliberately somewhere in my subconscious... making myself different from everyone else? Is it a way of attention-seeking prehaps? My own personal brand of the 'muck-around-in-class' syndrome that is all too common in the normal teenager. Do I do what I do because I'm scared of people judging me for what I really am? Am I just pretending that I'm pretending to be something other than what I am?
I'm losing personal identity, I'm losing personal integrity and I'm losing confidence.
I'm no longer sure that I want to be the piano man, the person that does music everywhere for anyone anytime. I'm no longer sure I want to be in the top few percent of the country in academic achievement (NAGTY members were reputed to be the top 2% of the countries children in terms of academic achievement. I was exceptional even there. At least in terms of strangeness, if nothing else) or simply to be the best at subjects. I'm no longer sure I want to be the consumate gamer that spends every spare minute trying to find some way of illictly gaining internet access to show my alpha domination by killing virtual representations of people I don't know.
Blatant Destructoid reference. Not that anyone will know who that is mind. Just ask me on MSN if you need an explanation. Or ask me in comments. I'll reply to either.
I'm beginning to doubt my own personal set of morals. I sit and I think and I realise just how many of my actions would most probably be looked down upon if done by anyone but me or in anyway but the way I did them. Or looked down upon anyway. Respect for myself? You have to be kidding. Even I'm beginning to think I'm a sad loner-geek that doesn't have a life but who substitutes music instead. I wonder how the hell I manage to enjoy doing so much yet at the same time regret doing so much when I'm not doing it. I wonder if that statement is true or whether it's that I regret not doing things when I'm not doing them and think I should be doing things.
As for confidence, I'm nearing rock bottom. You wouldn't notice, unless you know me very well and can tell, but my confidence is mostly gone. The facade I had is becoming more and more fragile as it begins to be used more and more. Not so much getting nervous or frightened, but beginning to doubt myself. It's like personal integrity, only it's not. I wonder just why I say things, I wonder at my motives, I wonder if I actually did things which I did. It's an alltime low.
Yes, I've spent too much time on my own at train stations with nothing to do for half an hour whilst the train doesn't turn up. Self-Reflection, despite having really good PR and propaganda, isn't actually useful, constructive or do anything whatsoever for me but make me worse. Seriously.. it nearly makes me break out in tears, and that's normally reserved for when I lose control momentarily and have an outburst or when I'm under emotional stress.
Stress. That great thing that is suposed to make us all perform better. I'm sure it does.. in small amounts. I'm equally sure it doesn't in large amounts, and I know I'm stressed. I'm not eating properly, I'm not sleeping properly, I'm tired, I'm incomphrensible - although some would argue that that is normal - and more besides. It's something that wil have to change.
Maybe more sleep?
Who knows?
After depressing myself I will actually get some sleep now. If I can.
If my sleeping habits will let me.... 'tis only midnight afterall.
23rd November: Smoke and Mirrors
I've touched on this before. I know I have. But I'm going back to it for the simple reason that I can't get it out of my head.
I'm not what I seem to be. People have me down as confident, intelligent, hard-working, punctual, musical, irritating, weird and all other sorts of strange and wonderful things that people's imagination can sum up. Putting it frankly, I'm not anywhere near as good as I seem. It's all an act.
Everything. From the music to the intelligence to the confidence to just about everything else. I have just enough knowledge of certain things to pass myself off as the person that knows stuff, with the exception of maths where I do actually know most of what's being taught with the occasional bit and piece where I have to spend a minute or two learning something. It's a very good act, given how many people wonder what drugs I'm on when I talk like this, but it's still an act.
The sligtly ironic thing is that you tell people it's an act and they laugh in your face. They don't believe that they're that wrong - which is how the act actually works. Once people have formed an opinion of what you're like and how you'll act, there's not really any problem in sustaining that idea. Breaking that mindset, however is more difficult. I mean... people see all this confidence oozing out of me, but in all honesty it's not really confidence.
Inside I'm scared. I'm petrified that someone will actually take the time to put together 2 and 2 and come up with 4 instead of 3, 5 or any other of the 10 wrong answers. I'm worried that I'll fluff up music I'm playing, or GCSEs that I should be passing with A*. Sure, I'm bright. But it doesn't mean that I can laze around and come out with the highest marks.
Demands made of me border on the impossible. Demands made of me by myself are even worse than that. Some of them are impossible and then the body rules the head instead of vice versa. Control over what you do is an amazing habit to pick up.
I'm doing more and smoke and mirrors even with all of that. It's confusing. Confusion is vital to getting anywhere with deception and acting. To believe in something that someone else is saying they have to think one of two things. One, they have to agree with the other person already. Then it's relatively simple, nothing changes. On the other hand, they can be made to believe that what they originally thought is wrong. Then they look for alternatives that look vaguely believable. Provide that and you've got a bunch of people believing in what you're saying.
Digression is also part of this. Being able to rapidly get off of the topic without seeming to, or talk about something else whilst remaining within the bounds of a topic. It's impossible to get information out of me unless I decide to play ball. It's like pulling teeth.
Anyway, I'm a little bored of writing.. having finished off the second part of my comprehensible writings tonight.. and I've written a more personal blog entry that removes smoke and mirrors. FMEO I'm afriad (For My Eyes Only) so don't ask to see it. Unless you're really sure that you'll get to see it or you're definite that rejection won't permamently damage your mental state.
Rejection can be harsh can't it?
Nighty Night everyone!
I'm not what I seem to be. People have me down as confident, intelligent, hard-working, punctual, musical, irritating, weird and all other sorts of strange and wonderful things that people's imagination can sum up. Putting it frankly, I'm not anywhere near as good as I seem. It's all an act.
Everything. From the music to the intelligence to the confidence to just about everything else. I have just enough knowledge of certain things to pass myself off as the person that knows stuff, with the exception of maths where I do actually know most of what's being taught with the occasional bit and piece where I have to spend a minute or two learning something. It's a very good act, given how many people wonder what drugs I'm on when I talk like this, but it's still an act.
The sligtly ironic thing is that you tell people it's an act and they laugh in your face. They don't believe that they're that wrong - which is how the act actually works. Once people have formed an opinion of what you're like and how you'll act, there's not really any problem in sustaining that idea. Breaking that mindset, however is more difficult. I mean... people see all this confidence oozing out of me, but in all honesty it's not really confidence.
Inside I'm scared. I'm petrified that someone will actually take the time to put together 2 and 2 and come up with 4 instead of 3, 5 or any other of the 10 wrong answers. I'm worried that I'll fluff up music I'm playing, or GCSEs that I should be passing with A*. Sure, I'm bright. But it doesn't mean that I can laze around and come out with the highest marks.
Demands made of me border on the impossible. Demands made of me by myself are even worse than that. Some of them are impossible and then the body rules the head instead of vice versa. Control over what you do is an amazing habit to pick up.
I'm doing more and smoke and mirrors even with all of that. It's confusing. Confusion is vital to getting anywhere with deception and acting. To believe in something that someone else is saying they have to think one of two things. One, they have to agree with the other person already. Then it's relatively simple, nothing changes. On the other hand, they can be made to believe that what they originally thought is wrong. Then they look for alternatives that look vaguely believable. Provide that and you've got a bunch of people believing in what you're saying.
Digression is also part of this. Being able to rapidly get off of the topic without seeming to, or talk about something else whilst remaining within the bounds of a topic. It's impossible to get information out of me unless I decide to play ball. It's like pulling teeth.
Anyway, I'm a little bored of writing.. having finished off the second part of my comprehensible writings tonight.. and I've written a more personal blog entry that removes smoke and mirrors. FMEO I'm afriad (For My Eyes Only) so don't ask to see it. Unless you're really sure that you'll get to see it or you're definite that rejection won't permamently damage your mental state.
Rejection can be harsh can't it?
Nighty Night everyone!
22nd November: Not Really A Blog
Well I thought I'd share a few things with you today. Tonight. Whenever it is.
Having done 'pet hates' around this time last month, I thought that maybe you'd appreciate knowing a few more totally and utterly irrelevant things that pertain in practically no way whatsoever to how I act. What I think and how I act are, luckily enough, mostly disconnected. Anyway, I'm procrastinating. Again. Here are some sets of things. Most of them are more pet hate and whatnot, but you might find them amusing. Or agree with me. Which would be amazingly annoying.
Sayings that you should just avoid around me.
'It's not morning'
People have this thing where they absolutely must 'correct' me if I say good morning in the afternoon, evening or the hours so small that they're massive. That's around midnight for those that can't quite work that out. It IS morning. Always. Somewhere in the world it is morning. Time as we percieve it is not the same as time. Time just is... therefore it doesn't matter what we say to describe the time. It is still the time. Or something like that.
Naturally, you can't say 'Good Night' as a greeting, as it's commonly seen to be synonymous to 'Goodbye.' Good Afternoon and Good Evening are, however, both applicable greetings with the prefix of 'Good.' To be totally ridiculous you could say 'Good Dawn' or 'Good 6pm' or whatever other strange thing you say, but then I'll correct you and be pedantic and generally make you irritated. I'm good at that.
'Typical male'
Someone used this is connection with me the other day. I've never been more offended in my life. Putting this aside for the moment, I hate anyone saying this. What is a 'typical' male? Everyone is supposed to be unique, so how can anyone be typical? It's stupid. Using it as an insult is even worse. Isn't being male - if you ARE male of course - a good thing not a bad thing? Unless, like me, you aren't what you believe most people percieve to be the typical male. And if you understood that I want to know what drugs you are on. I want them.
'lol'
Not so much on chatsites and whatnot, as it's acceptable there, but what kind of idiot says 'lol'? It stands for 'laugh out loud' and denotes an action. The abbreviation is for conveniance as much as anything, so why the hell are you using it as a proper word? It's like people saying 'wtf' or 'cba' or any other form of chatspeak whilst talking. In the same way, I feel that if you're not on a chat site you should be using proper grammar.
WRITING IN CAPS LIKE THIS is just asking to be blacklisted, as is typing messages like 'plzplzplzplz hlp me, sme H4XX0R has stln my psswrd' or anything else into a private messaging service on a game or something. I mean... if you're going to take the effort to write to me you can at least do it legibly and neatly and with some sort of grammatic sentence structure. Full stops exist, as do paragraphing, and blocks of text aren't user friendly. Break it up a bit. That's what paragraphs are for!
What to avoid in emails to me
'If you don't send this to 20 people in the next 10 minutes you will..'
or 'If you send this to 20 people in the next 10 minutes you will...'
These two are as bad as each other and most of the time are coupled together. The number of people and the timespan changes from chainmail to chainmail (presuming it is chainmail and not something such as forum posts, or private messages or whatever) and I have to wonder at just how many gullible idiots there are in the world.
Firstly, the promise made is generally unlikely. Looking through the rubbish bin of my email (I no longer even bother to open anything that looks like chainmail) I clicked the top couple of them and found 'Send this to 10 people in the next 20 minutes and be kissed by the love of your life on friday or you will be killed by someone in the next two years' and 'Send this to another 20 people and you will recieve a good phone call this weekend otherwise no one will talk to you for the next week.' So let's take these one at a time.
Send this to 10 people in 20 minutes and I'll get kissed by the love of my life? Well that'll be interesting. Please tell me just who this is. Do you mean the old one? The new one? The previous one? The really old one? The one I'll have on Friday when someone kisses me - if anyone does? Naturally, I'm not including family... and who can deny that I love my family dearly. My family, however, don't go for kisses. We never stop hugging each other, but that's a different story. Oh yes.. and if I don't someone is going to kill me in the next 700 days or so. Is that a threat? Should I report it to the police as a death threat?
I mean.. come on. Be realistic about this. It's not going to happen.
As for the next one... Sending something to 20 people will ensure I get a phonecall at some point this weekend? Since when do any of my friends know which end of a phone is for talking into? We're into something called the DIGITAL age now. We use complicated technology such as emails and msn and other chat sites to talk to our friends and family. Face to Face conversation? What's that? Do you mean a webcam? And I'd love to know how they're going to stop people from talking to me all week. In all honesty, if I send it to 20 people I'm more likely to be ignored. Most people don't like chainmail....
'Try out this product and we'll give you a free....'
Or, in fact, anything else that offers me something for free. I'm hardly ever going to take it. I don't care if it's sex, viagra, porn, sweets, computer games, a laptop or anything else that you might entice me with. Excepting haribos, and even then I might decline unless I know you well. I don't like taking free things. It makes me feel dependent. Parasitic. Offering me something is horrible. If I ask for something it's a different story, but if I get offered something I don't like it. Not that I ask for sex, viagra or porn mind. I'm not that desperate to go around asking random people for sex. It's not as if I know most of you that read this thing anyway!
'You have won...'
I'm sorry.. did I miss entering a competition somewhere? Please tell me when I entered it, my unique entry code, who the idiot that managed to put my email address as there's is and their address please. I'm going to go and ram this email down their throat and spam up their email box with some stuff. This is like the people that say that I've somehow managed to gain an impossible amount of tax rebate on money I never paid anyway. Apparently 1 in 10000000 of those emails promising money in return for your bank details gets replied to honestly. And that one in ten million allows them to make a profit. What is the world coming to really?
Things to not do around me
Always agree with me
People just bowing down and letting me trample all over them is sort of fun. But after a while it gets boring and repetitive. I'll get stupider and stupider just to try and edict some sort of argumentary response from you, even if it's only something such as claiming the sky is really green and that everyone else is colour blind. Or that we don't exist. Or some other unprovable logical statement.
Always agreeing with me - without adding something to my arguments for or against whatever the case is - makes me think you're just tagging along. Tagger-alongers are parasites. I don't particulary like it. I have an autistic friend who can manage to think up something to further back up my arguments in most cases - unless it's so esteoric that no one else can even begin to follow the chains of logic, in which case everyone gets left behind. If he can do it why can't you? In most cases it's not too hard. Just rephrase what I said, without seeming too blatant or using the cut and paste facilities. Paraphrasing what I say is normal useful as well... Most people get lost in the middle of complex one-sentence paragraphs.
Ignore me
Although it's occasionally nice to have some quiet time, it's equally nice to actually be involved in whatever is going on. I don't mind not being the centre of attention, but I do mind people blanking me. Ask Steph. She tried blanking me so I resorted to pulling out her hair one strand at a time to get her to stop blanking me. She punched me, in the end, but she then stopped blanking me. Lesson learnt... make sure to block sideways instead of upwards when pulling out Steph's hair. That way the punch misses instead of being forced upwards and crashing into chin, mouth or other head part.
The reverse, however, also applies. Yes it's nice to have attention paid to me, but having attention paid to me all the time just freaks me out. That is... pestering attention. I don't mind talking, I quite like talking, but you can take a good thing too far. You have to find the midpoint between ignoring me and pestering me. Most people manage it without conscious effort. It's just the small minority that don't.
Count in anything but a logical manner
OCD moment I'm afraid. Counting without logic or pattern is one of the most irritating things you can do. Especially counting numbers that could be in a pattern but which you are deliberately not putting into one. Take, for example, the number 1379. If you say those numbers 9371 or 3719 or 1973 or any other way but 1379 or 9731 then it irritates me. Immensely.
I think it's because I automatically carry on patterns to the nth term in my head. I once worked out what 73 squared was in my head and got it right. Someone was counting up in square numbers and I just carried on when they stopped. It was a fairly constructive maths lesson. I actually learnt something. If you are sad enough to carry on patterns that people start you will end up knowing usless information. 73 squared is 5329 by the way. If you didn't already know that.
Irritating habits that other people have
Illogical conversationalist
Sure, it may seem a little hypocritical but generally most of the jumps in topic that I force and/or accept in conversations are fairly logical. Or come at an appropiate time to change the topic. It means that a conversation flows instead of jumping and jolting. Changing topic in the middle of a sentence, or at any other time but the logical one, is like the sound of someone sharpening a knife. I hate it. It grates against me.
The logical time? Don't ask me to explain that. I can't.. it's just when it's the right time to change the topic of a conversation so that it flows.
Lack of awareness/tact
Okay, I admit that missing some of the subtler signs of emotion may be fine, but when someone is sobbing their eyes out it's not an appropiate time to try and start a cheerful conversation with them. It's a mix of not noticing things and showing an inproportionate amount of tact. I do have a certain amount of tact. If I miss something, and then I start having a conversation with someone and realise that something is wrong I'll stop my conversation, wherever it was, and try to find out just what the matter is. And if they're feeling gloomy and don't particulary want to dwell on whatever it is I'll distract them.
I'm good at distracting people. I've been doing it to myself for the least couple of years, so doing it to other people is easy. They don't seem to be able to do one thing and think of another at the same time. Multitasking.. thinking one thing and doing another. Or having three conversations simultaneously. One on the phone, one to someone in real life and one on a computer over the internet. That's fun! It's a digression again though. Isn't that great?
I'll leave it here for tonight. There's a few others that I was going to add on, but I might just carry this on tommorrow... as it seems to be sort of fun.
Night night all! Mustn't be up late tonight.. have to catch bus tommorrow (well.. today as it's past midnight) as if I miss it dad isn't around to give me lift. Isn't that good?
Having done 'pet hates' around this time last month, I thought that maybe you'd appreciate knowing a few more totally and utterly irrelevant things that pertain in practically no way whatsoever to how I act. What I think and how I act are, luckily enough, mostly disconnected. Anyway, I'm procrastinating. Again. Here are some sets of things. Most of them are more pet hate and whatnot, but you might find them amusing. Or agree with me. Which would be amazingly annoying.
Sayings that you should just avoid around me.
'It's not morning'
People have this thing where they absolutely must 'correct' me if I say good morning in the afternoon, evening or the hours so small that they're massive. That's around midnight for those that can't quite work that out. It IS morning. Always. Somewhere in the world it is morning. Time as we percieve it is not the same as time. Time just is... therefore it doesn't matter what we say to describe the time. It is still the time. Or something like that.
Naturally, you can't say 'Good Night' as a greeting, as it's commonly seen to be synonymous to 'Goodbye.' Good Afternoon and Good Evening are, however, both applicable greetings with the prefix of 'Good.' To be totally ridiculous you could say 'Good Dawn' or 'Good 6pm' or whatever other strange thing you say, but then I'll correct you and be pedantic and generally make you irritated. I'm good at that.
'Typical male'
Someone used this is connection with me the other day. I've never been more offended in my life. Putting this aside for the moment, I hate anyone saying this. What is a 'typical' male? Everyone is supposed to be unique, so how can anyone be typical? It's stupid. Using it as an insult is even worse. Isn't being male - if you ARE male of course - a good thing not a bad thing? Unless, like me, you aren't what you believe most people percieve to be the typical male. And if you understood that I want to know what drugs you are on. I want them.
'lol'
Not so much on chatsites and whatnot, as it's acceptable there, but what kind of idiot says 'lol'? It stands for 'laugh out loud' and denotes an action. The abbreviation is for conveniance as much as anything, so why the hell are you using it as a proper word? It's like people saying 'wtf' or 'cba' or any other form of chatspeak whilst talking. In the same way, I feel that if you're not on a chat site you should be using proper grammar.
WRITING IN CAPS LIKE THIS is just asking to be blacklisted, as is typing messages like 'plzplzplzplz hlp me, sme H4XX0R has stln my psswrd' or anything else into a private messaging service on a game or something. I mean... if you're going to take the effort to write to me you can at least do it legibly and neatly and with some sort of grammatic sentence structure. Full stops exist, as do paragraphing, and blocks of text aren't user friendly. Break it up a bit. That's what paragraphs are for!
What to avoid in emails to me
'If you don't send this to 20 people in the next 10 minutes you will..'
or 'If you send this to 20 people in the next 10 minutes you will...'
These two are as bad as each other and most of the time are coupled together. The number of people and the timespan changes from chainmail to chainmail (presuming it is chainmail and not something such as forum posts, or private messages or whatever) and I have to wonder at just how many gullible idiots there are in the world.
Firstly, the promise made is generally unlikely. Looking through the rubbish bin of my email (I no longer even bother to open anything that looks like chainmail) I clicked the top couple of them and found 'Send this to 10 people in the next 20 minutes and be kissed by the love of your life on friday or you will be killed by someone in the next two years' and 'Send this to another 20 people and you will recieve a good phone call this weekend otherwise no one will talk to you for the next week.' So let's take these one at a time.
Send this to 10 people in 20 minutes and I'll get kissed by the love of my life? Well that'll be interesting. Please tell me just who this is. Do you mean the old one? The new one? The previous one? The really old one? The one I'll have on Friday when someone kisses me - if anyone does? Naturally, I'm not including family... and who can deny that I love my family dearly. My family, however, don't go for kisses. We never stop hugging each other, but that's a different story. Oh yes.. and if I don't someone is going to kill me in the next 700 days or so. Is that a threat? Should I report it to the police as a death threat?
I mean.. come on. Be realistic about this. It's not going to happen.
As for the next one... Sending something to 20 people will ensure I get a phonecall at some point this weekend? Since when do any of my friends know which end of a phone is for talking into? We're into something called the DIGITAL age now. We use complicated technology such as emails and msn and other chat sites to talk to our friends and family. Face to Face conversation? What's that? Do you mean a webcam? And I'd love to know how they're going to stop people from talking to me all week. In all honesty, if I send it to 20 people I'm more likely to be ignored. Most people don't like chainmail....
'Try out this product and we'll give you a free....'
Or, in fact, anything else that offers me something for free. I'm hardly ever going to take it. I don't care if it's sex, viagra, porn, sweets, computer games, a laptop or anything else that you might entice me with. Excepting haribos, and even then I might decline unless I know you well. I don't like taking free things. It makes me feel dependent. Parasitic. Offering me something is horrible. If I ask for something it's a different story, but if I get offered something I don't like it. Not that I ask for sex, viagra or porn mind. I'm not that desperate to go around asking random people for sex. It's not as if I know most of you that read this thing anyway!
'You have won...'
I'm sorry.. did I miss entering a competition somewhere? Please tell me when I entered it, my unique entry code, who the idiot that managed to put my email address as there's is and their address please. I'm going to go and ram this email down their throat and spam up their email box with some stuff. This is like the people that say that I've somehow managed to gain an impossible amount of tax rebate on money I never paid anyway. Apparently 1 in 10000000 of those emails promising money in return for your bank details gets replied to honestly. And that one in ten million allows them to make a profit. What is the world coming to really?
Things to not do around me
Always agree with me
People just bowing down and letting me trample all over them is sort of fun. But after a while it gets boring and repetitive. I'll get stupider and stupider just to try and edict some sort of argumentary response from you, even if it's only something such as claiming the sky is really green and that everyone else is colour blind. Or that we don't exist. Or some other unprovable logical statement.
Always agreeing with me - without adding something to my arguments for or against whatever the case is - makes me think you're just tagging along. Tagger-alongers are parasites. I don't particulary like it. I have an autistic friend who can manage to think up something to further back up my arguments in most cases - unless it's so esteoric that no one else can even begin to follow the chains of logic, in which case everyone gets left behind. If he can do it why can't you? In most cases it's not too hard. Just rephrase what I said, without seeming too blatant or using the cut and paste facilities. Paraphrasing what I say is normal useful as well... Most people get lost in the middle of complex one-sentence paragraphs.
Ignore me
Although it's occasionally nice to have some quiet time, it's equally nice to actually be involved in whatever is going on. I don't mind not being the centre of attention, but I do mind people blanking me. Ask Steph. She tried blanking me so I resorted to pulling out her hair one strand at a time to get her to stop blanking me. She punched me, in the end, but she then stopped blanking me. Lesson learnt... make sure to block sideways instead of upwards when pulling out Steph's hair. That way the punch misses instead of being forced upwards and crashing into chin, mouth or other head part.
The reverse, however, also applies. Yes it's nice to have attention paid to me, but having attention paid to me all the time just freaks me out. That is... pestering attention. I don't mind talking, I quite like talking, but you can take a good thing too far. You have to find the midpoint between ignoring me and pestering me. Most people manage it without conscious effort. It's just the small minority that don't.
Count in anything but a logical manner
OCD moment I'm afraid. Counting without logic or pattern is one of the most irritating things you can do. Especially counting numbers that could be in a pattern but which you are deliberately not putting into one. Take, for example, the number 1379. If you say those numbers 9371 or 3719 or 1973 or any other way but 1379 or 9731 then it irritates me. Immensely.
I think it's because I automatically carry on patterns to the nth term in my head. I once worked out what 73 squared was in my head and got it right. Someone was counting up in square numbers and I just carried on when they stopped. It was a fairly constructive maths lesson. I actually learnt something. If you are sad enough to carry on patterns that people start you will end up knowing usless information. 73 squared is 5329 by the way. If you didn't already know that.
Irritating habits that other people have
Illogical conversationalist
Sure, it may seem a little hypocritical but generally most of the jumps in topic that I force and/or accept in conversations are fairly logical. Or come at an appropiate time to change the topic. It means that a conversation flows instead of jumping and jolting. Changing topic in the middle of a sentence, or at any other time but the logical one, is like the sound of someone sharpening a knife. I hate it. It grates against me.
The logical time? Don't ask me to explain that. I can't.. it's just when it's the right time to change the topic of a conversation so that it flows.
Lack of awareness/tact
Okay, I admit that missing some of the subtler signs of emotion may be fine, but when someone is sobbing their eyes out it's not an appropiate time to try and start a cheerful conversation with them. It's a mix of not noticing things and showing an inproportionate amount of tact. I do have a certain amount of tact. If I miss something, and then I start having a conversation with someone and realise that something is wrong I'll stop my conversation, wherever it was, and try to find out just what the matter is. And if they're feeling gloomy and don't particulary want to dwell on whatever it is I'll distract them.
I'm good at distracting people. I've been doing it to myself for the least couple of years, so doing it to other people is easy. They don't seem to be able to do one thing and think of another at the same time. Multitasking.. thinking one thing and doing another. Or having three conversations simultaneously. One on the phone, one to someone in real life and one on a computer over the internet. That's fun! It's a digression again though. Isn't that great?
I'll leave it here for tonight. There's a few others that I was going to add on, but I might just carry this on tommorrow... as it seems to be sort of fun.
Night night all! Mustn't be up late tonight.. have to catch bus tommorrow (well.. today as it's past midnight) as if I miss it dad isn't around to give me lift. Isn't that good?
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