By the way, I claim this as my intellectual property

I spend a lot of time thinking of names for things (especially recently, for some reason. Hoo-hah, procrastination!). Books I'm unlikely to write, (containing artfully named characters I'm unlikely to write about. . . I really should try to hone my writing/blogging frequency over the summer. Over the past few months I've had the excuse of being actually busy, but no more. This is going to change.) bands I know for a fact I will never be in, things like that. It's a shame, I think, that all these brilliant titles are put to no use and eventually are forgotten. So for this blog post I'm going to be focusing on the latter.

Decent names for hypothetical bands: (see also this video)

1. Freaky Lemon

Style: Electronic dance-y music, what they play in clubs nowadays.

Additional gimmick: All song titles must include a color. When a song is played in da club, corresponding color strobe lights are flashed.

2. The Pun-ishments

Style: Pun-based musical comedy/parody

Explanation: Por ejemplo, a song called "Bad Hare Day" would be this epic storytelling hard-rock ballad about a rabbit attack. For a converse example of punning, both the title and tune of "Comfortably Numb" would be used, but the lyrics would describe having a tooth pulled.

3. The Electric Collective

Okay, I had originally thought of this just because it sounded cool, and apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so. They're a real band, from Switzerland nonetheless. The Eclectic Collective is even famous enough to have their own Wikipedia page. And here I thought I was clever.

4. Them They Suck

Style: Old-school punk rock

Additional gimmick: The verbal confusion caused by The Who, The The, The Band, etc., plus a hearty sense of self-deprecating humor.

5. Indigo Solitude

Style: Anything moody/indie/suitably hipsterish. The sort of thing that gets put on the soundtrack to a movie featuring Michael Cera. (Note: As with #3, this returned some Google results. It's apparently the title--separated by a slash--of an old Duke Ellington EP.) The words just sound good together.

Thoughts? If any musicianly types are browsing this blog: 1.) Out of curiosity, would you use any of these? 2.) This indicates to me that you are of the Internet nerd/Google-randomly-and-see-where-it-takes-you type, and you identify as musicianly. Marry me now, please and thanks.

The Feasibility of Romance in Mental Institutions

Teen mental hospital romance is kind of becoming a genre. And, as formulaic as they kind of are, I like them. (More than, say, Sarah Dessen's brand of formulaic-ness.) Examples:

It's Kind of a Funny Story--Ned Vizzini (possibly started this whole thing)

Get Well Soon--Julie Halpern

Recovery Road--Blake Nelson

The first and last are arguably more serious, and the second is the funniest ipso facto the best (did I even use that correctly? Dammit Latin, why do you make things sound better without making any logical contextual sense?). It's so good that I'd kind of like to commit myself because it's gotten in my head that I will meet a cute/unstable boy there. This is probably untrue, I'd be too busy trying to get my shit together to notice any attractive Joey Ramone lookalikes. (More bonus awesome points for this book. Anachronistic music nerdiness FTW.) None of it seems realistic to me, but I wouldn't say no to something like this conversation:

A Sample Dialogue Between Teenaged Crazies

"Hey."

"Hey."

"What're you in for?"

"Bipolar. You?"

"OCD."

"Mmm, sexy. You wanna make out?"

"Sure." *commence kissing* *stop kissing* "Wait, now I have to kiss you six more times or my lips will be unbalanced." (Note that this would either be a fantastic excuse to kiss this hypothetical guy more, or a mortifyingly probable situation.)

Sometimes I do honestly think I have a slew of mental illnesses: OCD, Schizotypal personality disorder, dysthymia. . . (I could go on from here and I know this is mostly irrational and ineffective but I'd venture to guess at least the OCD diagnosis via Dr. Internet is correct) *music plays* The More You Know. Thanks, Google! And then some part of my brain goes "It's hormones, bitch. Get over your damn self, the fictional characters are worse off than you."

On a "this is the Internet"-type level, I also like that I managed to find Julie Halpern's blog (and that it's relatively frequently updated) instead of my only recollection of the author as a person being something like this:

Amanda McPseudonym lives in Wyoming with a pack of wolves and a man she claims is her husband. This is her first novel. You can read more about the book by going to the publishing company's website but you're probably going to forget it in a day and a half anyway. You read it already, what are you nosing around the back cover for? Piss off.

Because, you know, most of them *do* sound like that. Who even writes author blurbs? (. . .to Google!)

Popular

Crap, I haven't blogged in more than a month. So, fixing that now. iPod meme, anyone?

MY LIFE IN ITUNES

**NOTE: Format stolen from Libba Bray's Livejournal. All song titles and subsequent comments courtesy of my taste in music/brain.**

1. Put your iTunes/iPod, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
5. Everyone tagged has to do the same thing. (Except only if you want to, adds I.)

(But whatever happened to four?, the inquisitive, observant readers will ask. You'll never know. *sinister*)

IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY? Do You Believe in Magic? (Yeah, I can answer a question with a question, what of it?)

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF? That's Not My Name (Identity crisis. Ask again later.)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? Glass Onion (Hmm.)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY? What a Wonderful World (Yup. Today is awesome. =))

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE? I Can't Decide (You have. No idea. How accurate this is. Lulz.)

WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO? Don't Stop Me Now (Hell yea.)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU? The KKK Took My Baby Away (What are you implying? That I'm a white supremacist, or that I'm likely to be abducted? Either way I take offense. :P)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU? I Will (. . .will what?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN? Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Oh, so true. I'm a teenage girl, what did you expect?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND? Firework (*cough*pyromaniac*cough* This is our sense of humor in a nutshell, really.)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY? I Wanna Be Sedated (XD. Accurate, yes.)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile (Dentistry? *shudder*)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL? I'm Going Home (I'd seriously consider this. Hands down.)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST? A Well Respected Man (Heh. Hehehe. . .)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR? No Children (Meaning, my hypothetical infertility, or the possibility that humanity will be destroyed and there will eventually no children in the world? The latter.)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET? For Good (Wait, what?)

WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW? Maybe (The best non-answer in the world. Maybe I want some unspecified thing, maybe I don't, and you'll never know.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS? Blackbird (I must save your poor broken souls! *heroic music* Nah, this one is complete nonsense.)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS? Popular (Sure.)

Things you know about me from this:

1. I am a huge nerd for music older than I am, and musicals.

2. I am easily bored.

3. I am undecided and apathetic and all manner of other things, sometimes.

4. I might be a closet member of the Klan.

And with that, I bid you adieu. :D

Conversion Successful, Achievement Unlocked!

Remember this charming little anecdote? About that:

I. . .

have created. . .

a fangirl.

"Wait 'til you're eighteen" my ass.

Oh, fun times were had. Will continue to be had. Flinch reflex totally eradicated (Beginning of movie: Shirtless males! Must not see! By the end: Watching with rapt attention). Dancing, line memorization commenced. Also, our own punny/vulgar references to things, declaration of ourselves as Magenta/Columbia respectively.

But, as with anything, the debate of England vs. Japan comes up. Bonded by a mutual love of androgyny/transvestites, parallels were drawn between Dr. Frank and Gackt **for the horribly uninformed: Frank = main character, mad scientist, voice like sex. Gackt = Japanese, pop singer, likes to pretend he's a vampire. I find it disturbing that the icon describes him as "Everybody's playmate". NO JUST NO.** See for yourselves:

The resemblance is uncanny, is it not? Even better examples exist, but they screw with Blogger's formatting.


England wins again, bitches.

To make up for my gloating, I will admit I only know/obsess over aspects of British pop culture, not necessarily geography. I honestly thought Stonehenge was in Chile. (Confused it for Easter Island, which, even so, is not IN CHILE, rather on an island **Hence Easter ISLAND, dumbass** governed by Chile. Whatever. For the recently-neglected video ending segment of this blog, this should be seen by everyone and so I am embedding it here:

"Let's go rub it in a single crippled man's face!" xD

A Definitive Choice and Explanation on What I Will Name My Hypothetical Daughter

**PRE-Footnote: Yes, this is the topic that made me go completely internally rageballs months ago.**

Re: Title-- Joanne.

Why? 1.) My fantastic(ally insane/amazing/witty/sarcastic/kind) grandmother, who deserves to have a hypothetical small relation named after her hypothetically, and the naming convention is charmingly traditional (though thankfully not applied to me, because then my name would most probably be Lourdes. Eeesh).

2.) Check what day it is. Just check. Apply your knowledge (if any--if none, you should expand upon it, and in the process remove the boulder from your living quarters.) of Harry Potter. Deathly Hallows Part 1 ahhhhg must see why the hell can't it be Friday now I'm jealous of all y'all who get to see it today arrrrrrg. Joanne. Kathleen. Rowling, people. Is kind of goddess of my childhood.

3.) I just like the name Joanne. Admittedly I like Joanna more--some kind of phonetic thing--but hey.

.

(Secret number 6.) DEATHLYHALLOWSDEATHLYHALLOWSDEATHLYHALLOWSOHMYGODDEATHLYHALLOWS

It's the most wonderful time of the year. . .

NaNoWriMo, suckers! I'm off to further the process of my going insane. Wish me luck, and I hope your November is awesome.

Embarrassing Story Hiatus-Compensation

Story time! (Because embarrassment always makes up for not blogging in weeks. Also this may be kind of gross. Enjoy?)

So, up until now I've held a pretty good streak of not vomiting (5-6 years). I've also never been sent home from/been sick at school (absent, yes, and there was that time I got my face busted open on school property, but that's different).

Yesterday, this happened.

Beknownst to me, I'd caught a virus that my brother had had the day before. I was determined to get through as much school as possible, then nobly opt out before the actual sickness began. That didn't work. I was going to go to the nurse during Driver's Ed (because it's easy to make up completely useless busywork. . .), BUT there was a presentation being given by a married couple whose son had been killed by a speeding driver. It seemed inconsiderate to leave in the middle of it, and more importantly, I didn't want to draw attention to myself. DAMN MY CRIPPLING CONSIDERATENESS!

At the beginning of next period, I managed to get to the door and mutter, "May I please go to the nuh"--*heave*--"nuh"--*heave*--"nuh"--*guess*, to the teacher I would have least liked to puke in front of. (Not because of some creeptastic hot-for-teacher thing *IMPORTANT DISTRACTING SIDENOTE: Glee fans, click for the best tumblr you have ever seen in your incomplete life.* **OTHER RANDOM TANGENT: I hate when people say "in your entire life", because your life is clearly not over. There could possibly be better X's to Y in the life you have yet to live.**, just a sort of "EVERYTHING YOU SAY MAKES COMPLETE SENSE THANK YOU FOR EXISTING" way.)

And/but/so, that happened. Then I got to be wheelchaired to the nurse. Which would have been fun, but see previous note about not wanting to attract attention. The end, hope you enjoyed this because in some deep corner of your mind you are a sadist (it's okay, I won't tell), and this specifically didn't happen to you.

(You know the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"? It applies to food. Not only is food essential to life and all that jazz, food is also--usually understatedly, mind you--freaking delicious. Thanks for existing too, food.)

Because, why not?

My (since I haven't done this in awhile and am looking at FIRST PLACE in the Mr. Linky thing--a MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT, of course. . .) Six Words for Six Word Saturday:

I

don't

care

if

I

go

crazy

(And yes, that's indeed seven. Nonconformists unite.)

A Series of Unfortunately Deep Thoughts as I Search for the Holy Grail

*FYI: The title is a mishmosh of about 4 different pop-cultural entities. Oh media, how you permeate my consciousness.*

I've started thinking about NaNoWriMo, folks. In order to do it proper seriouslike this time, instead of making a snap desicion on about the 20th of October to just WRITE about WHATEVERTHEHELL because the Internet* was doing it. Granted, it was fun, but not fruitful.

I'm at the library (surprise there. Even when half of my peers in a two-mile radius are cramming themselves into a stadium for some kind of record-breaking-attendance-at-a-high-school-football-game-type thing. OVER NINE AN ESTIMATED TEN THOUSAND!!! No joke.), looking for books**, when this impulse Google (Google is good for impulsive, impatitent people. Options. Answers. Random crap to get distracted by. All at the click of a mouse.***) found its way into the search bar:

"humorous YA fiction books with narrators who have autistic siblings"

Only two books**** were mentioned in the results, both of which I've read and overall kind of disliked. Why I disliked them, I now realize, is because they were not my life on a silver platter (in a silver binding?). Their voices weren't mine. Which isn't any fault of the authors, I'm just particular. So, instead of waiting around for it, I'm setting out to write the fricking Holy Grail of books.

(I.e: A coming-of-age tale very loosely based around my own life, whilst being more interesting/wittier/heartwarming and such. Being issue-oriented but entertaining, and *cough*mostimportantly*cough* being written by me.)

Why not? Write what you know, as they say. And I'll get to write my avatar a love interest plot, the one thing I was decent at in NaNo '09. (Actually, I still have those bits cut-down and stored somewhere. . .it's not plagiarism if you take it from yourself, is it?) Win-win? Yes. I really should hone my narrative skills, 50,000 is 50,000 and other excuses not to be mind-bogglingly creative.

Copious footnote time!

* i.e y'alls, if you found me via the MJ Ning. It's a term of affection. :)

** Currently reading help me, jacques cousteau. Yes, the title is in all lowercase. You know how I feel about these types of things.

*** Call me, Google. My product (service?) placement coupled with my huge audience and clever slogan skills definitely deserves some cash.

**** Rules, and the book that sparked my wrath awhile ago. Though, the latter was more the fault of my English class.

Most Idiotic Question Ever (via me)

"Did dimes exist before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president?"

"Yeah. They just said '10 cents'."

*headdesk* Noob self. Almost as bad as Googling "how to adjust side mirrors". (I bet the instructor thought I was stalling. He'd fail me if he knew I wasn't.) (BUT, on the plus side of social-interactions-among-peers for today, Doctor Who was mentioned twice in random conversation, and I saw a different random person reading An Abundance of Katherines. It's like the Internet IRL.)

(Why is half this post in parentheses? Whenever I ask a question like that I always end it with "The world may never know." in my head.)

The Mosh Pit Experimentation

(Or: My Life Is One Long Gender-Flipped Episode of The Big Bang Theory.)

Condensed version: I have not learned anything academic today. Blasphemous, I know. I HAVE learned, however, that mosh pits are not for me, and that one should never make assumptions regarding. . . well, anything.

Widescreen extended edition-- for people who give a crap:

Even though there was a scheduled half day of school (to fill a meaningless requirement of hours physically in the building), there were no classes. There were 3 "surprise" "presentations", one being basically a pep rally with groups vying to be voted for, to win some ridiculous football-related tradition (it involves a badly reupholstered couch, who knows). Then, a motivational speaker, which was a refreshing change but really. Just really, high school. Then-- mandatory dance partying.

So I did. A mosh pit of sorts (can I even call it that? According to Wikipedia, moshing was generally done violently to rock music, but is now considered a standard form of audience participation--so yes.) formed in the center, with me on the outskirts yet surrounded by friends/people I know and like. Fun timez could now be had, if I wasn't shit at moshing. How can someone be shit at jumping up and down and waving their arms? The only two requirements are a.) a basic grasp on the concept of musical rhythm and b.) enthusiasm.

I rarely possess a.), and in that particular moment I didn't have much of b.). Hence shitiness. So I retreated to the bleachers, and spotted the only person who could have possibly hated this experience more than me, and with whom I could share snarky comments if we were in an area quiet enough for normal human conversation--my best friend, to put it shortly. I've shared little anecdotes involving her on this blog before--and her male counterpart walking towards the exit. Here I foolishly assumed that she was going to the nurse-- for a migraine or something--and he was playing a gentleman and escorting her.

This was not a sufficient occasion to risk personal injury by scrambling down the bleachers again. So I waited. At dismissal, I found the *counterpart* near the door and asked if she was okay. Response (oozing a certain infuriatingly smarmy satisfaction): That she hadn't been to the nurse and they'd been just outside the door talking.

End of story (and oh, so many questions). Editorial time! (Note if you're reading this and may be offended: What's taken you? ;) I read you on DevianTart.)

I'm all conflicted. I'm happy for her being happy even if it's with a guy I can't stand, andbutso I also take it as a personal failure that she has Asperger's and is more relationshippily advanced than I am.

Crap, my life just turned into Big Bang Theory. Big Bang Theory minus the doctorates. And replace references to Marvel Comics with various manga and Star Trek with Doctor Who. THEN my life is EXACTLY pretty much parallel to it. This makes me Leonard (sorry if my pop culture reference is alienating, but I'm kind of currently in love with it.). Sigh. Enjoy whatever I can find to put here:

Reintroduction. (You may just want to skip this one, honestly)

Hello!

Again.

Did you miss me, universe? I MISSED you. I haven't blogged since the last day of August. Which was a long time ago, in blog-years. I am ill.

Transitions, I have none. Carrying on. . .

I don't know why I used the word "ill", other than the fact that it sounds more proper. I don't know why I'm worrying about sounding proper in a blog, but so I am. Being ill is unpleasant, as I am sure I do not need to tell you all. My throat is absolutely raw, meaning, while I do have the next 2 days to squander watching Youtube videos and drinking tea, I cannot laugh at said Youtube videos (or really anything) lest I bring upon myself MOAR PAIN. Pain = Bad. Laughter = Good. (Metaphorical MEDICINE, even.)

Laughter ≠ Pain.

(look, I used a math symbol!)

Blargh, says the apathetic pirate.

. . .

Look, cats!

BEDA

Blog

Every

Day

August

. . .is what I'm planning on doing. Here. Rather than remember to cross-post (on days other than Tuesday and Saturday, when I'd have to cross-post to yet another blog), I'm just going to leave this up here for the month, and anyone who wants to can stalk me over there. Oh, and this also means I'm not going to manically manipulate the layout until September, so there's a plus? I've sufficiently promoted this blog there, so if you're here from there, thanks for coming. :D There's more interesting stuff down below.*

* That's what she said.

FIPOGI:

The picture is pretty, and a pun. Alliteration yay.

New stuff and schizophrenia (back to normal...)

New background! And stuff. In progress. Two-word fragments!

Okay, enough of that. I'm a bit disappointed in the background, because it looks much better full-screen (I'm assuming. Even maximized Safari doesn't show all of it. But it's in the proportion that leads me to the conclusion that there's nothing inherently wrong with it, I just can't see all of it. I was partially right. It looks marginally better. Pun not--you know what, screw it. I'll just let you think the pun was intended even though I had to re-read that sentence to notice that it could be considered punny. I'm leaving it).

Curse you, Alex, for planting this idea in my head! I was going to change it soon anyway, though. The old background was kind of drab and looked like it was from a scrapbook. Not that I have anything against scrapbooking. I didn't really like it to begin with, it just reminded me of pajamas. I don't know why I'm angsting over this, because I'm just going to spend hours tweaking/rearranging the layout anyway. **I WIN, bitch. You said that when you started this and then you spent the whole day obsessed with baking cookies. Hypocrite.** Come back later and it will be perfect, I promise. (Oh, anal-retentive self with hours to squander on the Internet, how I've missed you.

Functional self with a desire for human interaction: **Maybe I didn't miss you, bitch.**

**Must you punctuate your sentences with "bitch"?**

**It's for emphasis, bitch. It's necessary to make my point. Anyway, weren't you enjoying it?**

**Why the hell did you italicize that? It looks suggestive.**

**Because I knew you'd think that.**

**Isn't this a tad schizophrenic?**

**Eh, schizotypal. There is a mild difference, bitch.**

**That's getting old. But, this is just an exaggeration for the benefit of the readers. . .**

**You think anyone read all this, bitch?**

Anyway, that was yesterday. I got ravaged by mosquitoes in the middle of the night--despite sleeping inside and with closed windows, I might add--and today I'm going to read and bake cookies. More accurately, heat cookie dough, but whatever.

Because you've read to the end of this: (Or you've skipped to the end. Or you were going to read my last post and this caught your eye, because it's a picture at the end of a bunch of text, because that's what you're accustomed to looking at by now. . .)

Movie Recommendations

So. I haven't blogged in forever, I am alive, you may or may not have missed me. I've been doing things. Talking endlessly and eating chips and being generally sociable. With a nerdy and who I have also known for a while and who lets me forget his name and he could possibly also even be the love interest in a Sarah Dessen book and even though I think those books are sappy wish fulfillment I like that he is like that guy, even. ('nerdy' here being a requirement, not a detraction) This is good. But I enjoy being a recluse.

Because I have no original ideas, here's (the middle of) a conversation held with the near-exclusive purpose of creating an awkward situation (again). (some parts edited for reading audiences. Guess the film based on the descriptions. Should be easy if you've seen it. If not, the descriptions are the fun of it. Consider this a recommendation.)

*long discussion resulting in the fact that the perceived quality of movies is directly proportional to the number of times you see them*

Rena: "My mom's one of those people who've seen [title] like 50 times..."

N/Conservative mother of T: *disdainful* "That's a cult."

R: *turning to confused T* "It's really just a charming musical-comedy slash parody about a wholesome fifties couple. . .

T: *blank face*

". . . except that almost everyone ends up killed or raped. . ."

*squick face*

". . . by a cross-dressing sex-starved mad-scientist alien. . ."

*WTF?!??-face*

". . . who is in turn killed by his incestuous alien servants. Dancing, yelling and throwing things are encouraged."

T: *laughter* "I have to see this movie."

N: "Not until you're 18."

Is every bit as weird as it sounds. The awesome kind of weird.

Manly Showering Techniques

**VERY IMPORTANT: This entry is nowhere near as wrong as the title makes it sound. It made sense in my head. Having a moderately perverted mind while at the same time being unable to think about things before I say/type them is problematic.**

There's a name for (and a country associated with) the way I shower. And I don't know how to feel about that.

Backstory: I am not a morning person. The only way I've figured out to snap myself into functioning like a human being at six in the morning is to shower most of the way with a reasonable temperature maintained, and then force it to as cold as possible for the last 20 seconds. It is unpleasant. That's the point. There is no way in hell I can think about how it's six in the morning and that sucks and that I'm probably going to go back to bed. Because I would, if I were thinking about that and not an egregiously long string of profanities.

I've been doing this for a while and today I decided to see if I might be slowly killing myself in the process (because DAYUM that's what it feels like). Google knows everything. The second result for "hot to cold shower benefits" is from artofmanliness.com. (It's huge. *Heh, the manliness is huge. Heheheheh...** The WEBSITE, I mean. There are many articles on how to become more manly/subjects of interest to serious manly men. And probably beard grooming. I didn't care to look further, I just found it amusing. Amusing that such a website exists, and that I--of all people--shower like a badass/scotsman/James Bond/man. Irony FTW. Are all the James Bonds Scottish? Annnd, with that statement I have reestablished my girliness. Sean Connery is Scottish, I know that, but there's been like 20 of them. Like the Doctor but without the pseudoscientific reasoning and fictional species-ness. Or James Bond is a Time Lord. Yeaaah...) and there are. Including improved circulation, energy and mood. And sperm. Yeah.

The Tune Is Lovely But The Lyrics Are Disturbing (part 1 in a series)

Ann M. Martin: Killer of Dreams

Hello, interwebs! Long time no blog and all that. . . (The last 5 or so times I tried to start a blog post like that I just abandoned it halfway through. . . I haven't said anything of reasonable note in two weeks, coming back from this little hiatus is going to be awkward regardless of if anyone reading this cares. My skills in expressing coherent/complete/relevant ideas have vanished. I try to be witty/interesting/thoughtful on the Internet if for no other reason than that I frequently lack those abilities in reality, so whenever I write a blog like this that's completely awful and then made worse by the fact that I'm lengthening it only by pointing out its flaws, I see it as a personal failure. . .and dear god that was a run-on. Okay, actual topic commence! Rid this horrible, almost-entirely-in-parentheses paragraph of its awkwardness and self pity! This would be better if you read it in your head with the voice of someone who works at a Renaissance fair with an affected English accent! Huzzah!)

I LOVED The Baby Sitters Club books as a kid--"kid" in this instance meaning "absurdly younger than the target demographic"; they were pure wish-fulfilment for a 9 year old. Here's the lesson I saw in them: "By the time you're 13--i.e in THE DISTANT FUTURE--, small naive child, you will be independent, responsible, and organized. Enough that adults will trust with the lives of their small, naive children! And you will have a super awesome, very large group of friends! And loads of free time in which to supervise children! By choice! There will also be guys! Whom you will use even MORE of your endless free time to date! And it's gonna be TOTALLY AWESOME!

. . .

None of this happened.

At least, not to the extent or in the time period I was expecting. Independent? Responsible? Organized? PAH! The care of other children? I didn't care about them, nor was I particularly capable. Friends? Some. Free time (choosing for it to be spent babysitting, no less)? Hellz naw. Seventh grade is the freaking hardest thing ever when you're still in it. Dating? What are you even talking about? The only girls who dated in middle school were kind of slutty. Or maybe I was just bitter.

In conclusion, I realize most of the books I read were written circa 1989, different times and such, but come ON, Ann M. Martin. You cannot make adolescence sound this cool.

Why in the world is this entertaining?

Anyway, enjoy!

Early Blog (6WS)

Good book makes all-nighter equal conquest.

PS: (Yeah, that was how I spent my Friday night.)

PPS: Booknerd pride.

How Toy Story Scarred My Childhood

Toy Story 3 was awesome. Epic in the traditional, non-overused-on-the-Internet sense. It made my dad (and everyone else in the theater) cry, and it kept Evan's attention. Both difficult things, at least in terms of movies. I'm probably going to see it again, it is That. Good. As it should be, taking 11 years...

The first movie kind of scarred me, though. Not "scared", emotionally scarred. I cannot remember the period of time in my life I had not seen Toy Story. I cannot remember ever owning a humanoid toy. These are related. The eyesss, they watch. Every toy (minus stuffed animals) is alive and has feelings and actions and can, if mistreated, effectively KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP (or, y'know, so I thought. Past tense). I only extended this to dolls/plastic things, because they were the only type of toy in the movie (and if I was forced to either live in fear of or get rid of my massive collection of stuffed animals I would die).

3 fixes this logic. Thank you for that, movie. A film managed to make me feel almost guilty over the treatment of my inanimate possessions. Not exactly guilty, but curious. Knowing that these things have an opinion of me is nervous-making. I think I was a pretty okay (if strange... I didn't even really play with them--or other kids for that matter, probably explaining my aversion to social activities--I slept with a mountain of them... stuffed animals, I mean. And you probably knew that but now I'm just distracting myself in this parenthetical statement...) owner, but it's more just the "having an opinion of me" part.

Aforementioned hoard has dwindled, but I still have ones I've either won or been given as gifts. I don't know why I feel compelled to keep gifts, but I never win things. They (Shalom, Orange, Cupcake, Oliver, and Mei... I still know the exact dates/occasions I won them, too.) are my trophies, dammit. I know "never" is disproved by that list, but consider that I will never win an actual sporting trophy in my life. And that those five are the work of 8 or 9 years of carnivals.

At first I thought that 3 was the darkest/most depressing of the trilogy, but the other two are pretty on par with it. Holy. Crap. But that's what makes these movies compelling, there are things you only notice upon repeating viewing years apart. Other example: I honestly thought the movie Drop Dead Fred was a fever dream until a few months ago. I saw it at my cousin's house (I think), while I was sick and falling asleep sporadically. I was young and impressionable and only aware of the psychotic leprechaun. (Imagine what would happen if Willy Wonka took amphetamines with Mountain Dew, was allowed to swear, and was placed in functioning society. Bwahahaha.) But Google knows everything, so I was able to plug in seemingly random words and come up with an actual movie. Re-watching, fully conscious: Childish (still really funny, I'll admit. :P), yeah, but sad. Not, "Let's pity the obviously mentally ill woman" sad, but sad. My explanation makes no sense.

EDIT: It's being remade. >:P At least Russell Brand is English...

Why I Like Wikipedia

No matter how pointless/informal/random the subject is, it just sounds like Wikipedia. And it provides a blog topic with little research and even less thought, while remaining Wikipedially educational.

Examples: here, here, here, here, and just because I like odd numbers: here.

That is all.