Letter to 30 Year Old Me

Dear 30 year old retard.

I hope you are still a retard. You'd better not have grown up too much. That would be disappointing. Also, I hope you're not dead. It's not the best thing to suggest, but hey-ho, it's a distinct possibility, considering how ridiculously clumsy you are, or I am, or I was... I don't know. TENSES ARE CONFUSING FOR THE SENSES! That very well might just me my new motto. You'd better use it. Or else. NO, wait, don't. It's really bad.

I hope you still have Claude. If you don't know who Claude is, I shall definitely shoot you. Definition: of 'A Claude' : Really terrible phone, bought from ADSA in 2010, cost £30. Irritatingly basic but reliable and lovable. Named in November 2011 by Samm, by text on the bus to school one morning, on the decision that the sound of it vibrating sounded likie a duck, and all ducks should have names, hence, Claude. If, at some point, Claude dies or you just replace him, do not bin him. He has been too good of a friend to just throw away, and just like all ducks need names, all retired ducks deserve a place on the shelf of the duck collection. I mean, it might creep the other ducks out a little, but yeah, it's still cool. They're rubber, they'll bounce back.

So I'm guessing that by the time you're 30, it's highly likely that you're in a relationship, or at least have been in a long term relationship, unless you were right all along and no guy is willing to take on a complete "posh genius retard" as I was called the other day. I prefer the term 'nerd'. I hope you find a nerd guy, it'd be so cool. Nerds are the best. Which brings me nicely onto: NERDFIGHTERS! I don't know if the Vlogbrothers are still making videos, but even if they're not, you should still be watching them. Be a dedicated Nerdfighter until the day you die. That's al I have to say on that matter...

Tip: stay in touch with people! Dev and Samm and Charli and Lauren and George and Becca and Dom and Alex and Jamie... Never let them go. Oh, and if you haven't already, go looking for all of your old teachers on Facebook  I'm assuming Facebook is still running. If not, Twitter must have taken over. Please don't let Google+ have taken over, that would just be embarrassing.

If you ever did get the drum-kit for Christmas (which I bloody well hope you did), go and dig it out. That is, if you ever stopped playing. For all I know yet, the band could have taken off. I could be world famous! But I doubt it. Still, it's a nice thought.

Learn all of the words to Hank Green's Song About an Anglerfish. If you don't, I shall be disappointed.

Did you ever start vlogging? Do you still look like Ed Byrne? Do you still sound like David Mitchell? Do you still hear weird voices in your head? I hope so...

Goodbye, 30 year old me. Or, probably because of my disorganisation and strange memory, 31 or 32 year old me.

Sincerely, 15.5 year old nerdy person.

Epic Conversations.

Discussing assembly...

I can't remember who we were talking about, but lol.

Again, I can't remember the context. But still, the randomness.

Look closely.Yes. We are that strange.

Of course I wasn't watching storm chasers, and Doc Martin rules all.

Technically this isn't a conversation (okay, it's definitely not a conversation) but it emerged from a typo, and c'est tres epic.

ANGER BLOG! SERIES OF INTERROBANGS! Warning: contains explicit language.

I want to have a productive day today but I really can't be arsed, my fucking mind is being fucking retarded. I want to go and watch the Jason Manford DVD in mum's room but I can't be arsed to move. I'm losing my fucking temper with blogger because I can't bloody type without making a million mistakes in every fucking sentence and I can't even fucking text right. I want to go and get some fanfiction writing done but my shitty little wrist isn't gonna last that long. I can't even sleep! GAAAAHHHHHHH. I'm so angry, I just want to fucking call everything that irritates me gay and break it, but I never use that word, not in that context. I'm glad that I've managed to maintain enough of my sanity to refrain from using that word as an insult. Not that insulting an object isn't insane as it is, but... Well I don't want to go on a rant about that now. Let's just say that it wouldn't be very Nerdfighter-ish to use insults that aren't really insults on objects that can't be insulted. Ahh, see I'm getting my sanity back.

Sundays

I'm not even going to bother today. Not with the "I hate Sundays because" or the "I love Sundays because". To be perfectly honest I just don't care. That, and I'm a bit pissed. I had a Bacardi Breezer on friday night, a large Baileys last night and a sparkling white wine about half an hour ago. I was up, I got up to give mum her birthday presents and to greet all of the family who came to do the same, but now I'm so tired, I just came back to bed. I'm so very incredibly grateful for my iPod app right now. To be perfectly honest, I think this may be a hang over. It doesn't take a lot to get me pissed so it wouldn't surprise me. I don't really want to go to school tomorrow. The busses, the everything else. There's a person I'm really dreading seeing because I've gone back down a path I never wanted to revisit. Ughhhhhh kill me now.

Oh Look, It's Another Last-Minute Blog. Here's One I Made Earlier.

"We need sufferring, because if we do not suffer, how would we know when we feel joy?"

I'm not sure how much I agree with this statement, afterall, the existance of sprouts doesn't make chocolate taste any better, but I guess it's still kind of true.

Emergency blog.

Damn. I was getting good at being on time.

My Life, In All it's Shit and Glory.

Life just isn't fair. I got the results from my French reading and listening mocks; I got a B in reading and an A in my listening, which I'm really pretty amazed about. I'm really loving French at the minute but unfortunately I'm missing lesson this week because of an all-day drama exam. Plus I have to have a week off school in December, but I may not get back in time to do my French speaking exam, so my grade is probably going to be lower than it could have been otherwise. I hate speaking exams. I'd rather be stuck in a tank of snakes for half an hour than do another speaking exam, but I really really want to pass French with a decent grade, if not an actual good grade. I have the opertunity. I have the ability, I'm sure. I finally have a positive mental attitude and a belief that I can do it thanks to the restults from my mocks, and I have a teacher who both motivates us into working hard and who will actually probably give me any extra help I might need to pass. Unfortunately an opertunity to raise my grade is possibly being thrown away because the operation and the recovery week clashes with the exam and preparation. There's always the time in February to catch up, but I wanted to use that to improve my writing. I might have to ask for catch up sessions in order to get it all done. I think that would be a good idea for me anyway. It seems like a good way to make me learn, and I can't really complain about the teacher, comsidering he's one of the best teachers in school. To be perfectly honest, he seems to be putting so much effort into helping us to pass, I really really don't want to let him down. Even if he doesn't really care as much as he appears to, I'd still feel like I was failing him.
Okay, I admit, me actually failing isn't too likely, but although I'm getting A and B in listening and reading, my speaking and writing grades could bring me down a lot, mostly my speaking. It's nerves, as I'm sure the post entitled "The Truth About the French Speaking Exam" highlighted. I just can't do speaking exams. I mispronounce everything and I can't form coherent sentences. That's what I'm afraid will bring my grade down to something that barely scrapes a pass. What us the point in knowing the french (to a basic extent) if I'm not able to put it to any use? The best I can hope for is that I improve my ability to speak before the catch up exam, which I'm now going to have to use for speaking. I'd rather get the speaking over with, although if I did do the speaking next month and did terribly, I would of course use the catch up exam for speaking as well.

I know this might have seen like a bit of an over-reaction post, but this seems like a huge issue to me. I know that I don't have my priorities wrong, because despite what I do wrong in other subjects, I'm less likely to pass French than any other subject unless I do some serious work on it because it is without a doubt the most dificult subject I've taken. Speaking of which, I have an all-day drama exam tomorrow. Mostly writing and evaluation, so not fun.

Social Awkwardness

I guess everybody has some form of social awkwardness; maybe they can't talk to strangers or dance in front of crowds. I never really thought anything of my little social issues, but I'm starting to pick up on them now and try to correct them, but I suspect it's not working. Like on the buses, I see people I know and my natural instinct is to say hello, and most of the time I do but sometimes it just doesn't come out at all even though I intended to say something, or if I do make a sound it isn't actual words. Other times if I pass someone I know in the corridor in school, I look at them, but instead of smiling being the natural reaction, I have to tell myself to smile, and instead they get some weird glare and the person behind them that I probably don't know get smiled at by a complete weirdo. Then sometimes if I walk into form in the morning, I mean to smile at my form tutor and say good morning, but around fifty percent of the time, the words don't come out but the smile does, so again I just look weird and creepy. Sometimes it's just like there are gaps between realising I should be doing something, telling myself to do it and doing it. It's like I'm drink driving, but instead of driving, I'm talking.

Occasionally, it gets worse than that, and it delves into my actual day to day speech, although this usually only happens when I'm talking to a superior, like a teacher or something, but lately it's been happening when I'm talking to my friends as well. What happens is that I'm talking normally, usually when I'm trying to explain something like an opinion, and then my brain runs out of words. There are a lot of words in storage but none of them are right, and it takes me a while to search through them to find the right one. Sometimes I know the word is there, I know exactly what I need to say, but it won't come out. Like a stutter, someone said to me. A hesitating stutter, a stutter of hesitance. It's not all the time, but it gets a lot worse when I'm nervous, which makes speaking exams hell for me. 

There are other things I do, too. I shake a lot. I'm constantly being asked "are you okay? You're shaking!" but I'm usually fine! It makes everything so awkward, and I have nothing near a steady hand, which is a huge inconvenience as most of the time it means that my handwriting is atrocious. I'm always cold which doesn't help the shaking, but that might just be because I have really low body fat percentage on my limbs, so I have no insulation. Also, sometimes, usually when I'm nervous or even vaguely excited, all of my words jumble together into one indistinguishable mess, and when I try to slow it down, my mouth just works faster. It's ridiculous and irritating. I hate formal phone conversations, too. With my friends I'm fine, as long as I'm not in public. That makes me feel a bit sick. And then I can do any amount of ridiculous things on stage or in front of a crowd, but put me on the spot in front of one or two people and BOOM, all of the above. 

I don't know what the point to this post was, I think it might have been more for my benefit than for anyone else's. I hope you found it slightly entertaining. 

Preview: The Love Affair of Claude and Marvin

When you first meet someone, you never know what kind of impact they're going to have on your life. You could forget them in days, or not at all. You could fall in and out of love with them like a yo-yo, or hate each other until your final breath. But when Claude met Marvin, they both knew what would happen...

Oh look, it's a preview! Nice preview. Shiny preview. Because oh yes, I'm writing it.

Rock On.

Sitting in a rock concert, with the music blaring and the singer screaming, I came to several odd conclusions. 1) By the end, I was watching the crowd more than I was watching the band. 2) I plan blogs in my head whenever I get an idea and I can't write it down, and 3) I am really bad at starting posts. However, moving back to point one,I'm not sure if it is normal to watch a crowd in a concert. Obviously when my friends are onstage I'm concentrating on not cutting their heads off with the camera and how well they were playing (well done Sammie :D ) but particularly after the interval, during instrumental songs, as interesting as the band was, I found myself focusing on the crowd, or really how they were recieving the music. Every band that played was brilliant, there's no doubt about that. There was a huge group of people stood at the back of the hall, cheering and clapping, dancing and singing along, but then there were the parents, sat watching as their kids rocked. Little kids either covered their ears or sat there terrified, and a few were bouncing along to the beat. The man in front of me with the unfortunate shaped head seemed to be getting more and more bored every minute, and the child directly in front had a tendancy to run off without being noticed and then come running back, and move the chair that I had my feet resting on. All in all, only the teens at the back seemed to be having much fun at all, which I really don't understand. It was a great night, and I'd do it again every week. It did make my ears go weird for a while afterwards though.
My blogging in my head is slightly disturbing, but it works, and my inability to start posts isn't bothering me all that much. I'll survive.

SHUT UP, CLAUDE!

My phone makes a quacking noise whenever it's on "silent" because it vibrates so much, and I wanted to name the duck part of it so I'd have something to shout at, so a friend suggested many names for me to shout at it. Really out of about 10 names, the only one that seemed to suit it was Claude, so now... It's called Claude. Of course it's only Claude when I'm getting a text or a call, every other time it's still Jeff, just like everything else. Or maybe I should just have Claude the phone and Jeff the (everything else).

Shiny

Ooooh, looky here. It's all new and shiny and different! Oooooh. I didn't really want the titles to be in colour, but the design settings are awkward so I settled on the blue over anything else, mostly because without the set background, the Random Quotes app at the side insists on being blue, so I figured the titles should match at least. Not bad, though. At least it matches the fish.

This isn't my only post for today, I've got another one brewing in my mind, but we'll see.

Vintage

Over the past couple of days, I've been playing PlayStation (one) games pretty religiously, and it's gotten me thinking why those games stopped being popular. I mean obviously technology got better and people wanted the new and improved, all around better versions of what they already had, but the old versions are still pretty damn good! Take the PlayStation One for example. In my room, I currently have the PlayStation One, a PlayStation Two Slim Edition, a GameBoy Colour, a nintemdo DS (original) and a Wii, and although I enjoy the Wii when I have friends round, I find that it's not the sort of thing I can easily play on my own. I can't find any of my DS games other than an R4 card with no enjoyable games on it, I own no decent games for my PS2 because my brother sold them all before he decided to give me the PS2, and the GameBoy just isn't cooperating with it's batteries at the minute, but I will not give up on it. However, this leaves me with the PS1 games. I don't actually use the body of the PS1 because 1) it's currently buried at the bottom of my wardrobe, 2) I don't want to break it by having it out when it can be stepped on/thrown/punched, and 3) I already have too many wires around my TV to add more to the pile, but PS1 games work on the PS2 which also plays DVD's so really it's very convenient. However, I still get that really good feeling from playing PS1 games. Now I don't know if it's the pixels or just that it's something that I've dug up from when I was really little, but I get so excited about playing them, whether it's Spyro, Tony Hawk ProSkater 4, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (the first PS1 game I ever bought and played), or Abe's Oddesey. They're all from the very depths of my childhood and they were old back then, so much so that they seem almost vintage now. Now I know they're not really vintage, I mean it's hardly a Nintendo 64 (which although is not a thing from my past, is something I really want to own) but sort of like the 64, I wonder why it ever went out of fashion. The obvious answer is that they went out of production so they eventually stopped circulating, but vintage clothes are coming back into fashion now, so why aren't there masses of people demanding a reproduction of PS1s and Nintendo 64s? Why are people still obsessing over COD? Mario seems to have done pretty well for himself since the 70's, I'll admit, but everything else just died when technology moved on, and that just saddens me.
Vintage clothes are coming back, will technology make a return trip as well? Will iPhones and Blackberries go out of fashion, to be overtaken by bricks again? No. It's not going to happen, because when it comes to technology, people are always going to go for the newest, most high-tech gadgets they can get their hands on. Of course there will always be vintage gamers, but the term vintage is eventually going to evolve. It'll have to, because one day the Wii will become old enough to be classified as vintage. Now I don't know what the classification of the expiration dates on fashion and technology is, but I do know that we're making such an evolutionary leap in technology so fast in the past 100 years, that it could get scarily more advanced in a scarily short period of time. And then what'll happen? Computer appocalypse! Forget zombies, be afraid of the computers! Sure, zombies'll kill you and eat your brains and then recruit you into their undead army, but computers are smarter than that. When a zombie appocalypse happens, you know about it, but when a computer appocalypse happens, you don't even know what's going on until it's too late, and then BAM. You're dead, killed by the microchip in your 52" LED plasma screen TV. See, Spyro would never do that to you.

Damn.

I'm feeling pretty shit right now; what started as a runny nose last night is turning into a sinus headache, and it's really painful. Mum's offered me the day off tomorrow, but I said no, because I really don't want to. However, I really don't think I'll have the will to get out of bed in the morning, so I may not be going after all.

Oh, damn, I've got an exam tomorrow, and I can't really miss it, even if it is only a mock French listening. So I'm going to have to go into school. Uuuuuuggghhhhhhhhhhh :( I never use emoticons in blogs, but there just aren't any words today, so D: :( >_< DX

:( I've got to go and get ready, there's a thing at school I've got to go to. Damn.

Determination

I am determined not to fail on by blogging challenge, but whether determination alone will get me there or not, I really don't know. I hope so.
Tomorrow's trek into school should be interesting... I've been promised that we will be singing about bananas. In French. Cos we're just that cool.

Happy, Duck-Billed Monotreme (2)

Okay, so I've been wearing this watch for roughly a week now, with the swirly shiny patterned strap and the face with Harry Potter's cartooned face on the face on it, and I've just realised this  morning that I've hardly been looking at this really awesome watch at all (except for today. I looked at it like a billion times today. It was just so very THERE), which suggests that I've not been wearing it for practicality, but more for the comments that I get whenever people notice it, because that's always fun... Anyway, my point is, what is to say that the comments I receive aren't making it practical? I mean if people are going to form opinions on me based on my watch, I'd rather that they voiced those opinions to my face rather than hide them away in a little safe in their head, locked with a key that they eat and only regurgitate when they're playing truth or dare and they need to divulge into the awkward information they can use instead of actually speaking the truth. So maybe the watch is practical, even if I don't really use it as a watch? It serves a purpose, just perhaps not the purpose it was intended for when the manufacturers decided "hey, let's make a Harry Potter watch with a shiny strap that only tiny children and odd teenagers will wear", but why should that mean that it doesn't serve this new purpose in a slightly odd and unconventional way? For example, the comments I get not only entertain me, but they are people's voiced opinions. People have opinions on everything, from the best type of pea to how irritating that person on the street is who keeps losing his dog every ten minutes. People have opinions on people, and we can't really change them once they're there, but we can influence them, especially if it is an opinion of you. Opinions are developed by what we see of other people, be that the way they express their personality, the way we speak or what we wear. This means that although I wear this watch to make me feel awesome because I think it's cool, even though it's probably not, people might see me wearing it and think me a freak, which raises mixed emotions in me, but mostly I guess it raises issues on how we allow people's opinions to influence our actions and the way we treat people, and also how the average person (I hate that term, but it seemed necessary) reacts to what they know people's opinions of them are.
The most obvious and vocalised, and yet least taken point is that we shouldn't care what people think and that we should all try to be individual, and to an extent I agree, but that idea is never going to catch on. Perhaps in theory or with a few people, but not with the entire population of the world. I mean, we are supposed to be individualised by our names, but now think how many Johns and Hanks there must be in the world, it's ridiculous. Awesome, in retrospect, but still ridiculous.
I follow the idea of individuality by trying to be my own person and not following the trends of fashion any more than I have to if I want to avoid being ridiculed, which I'm fairly sure I am anyway. I've already come to the conclusion that an aversion to being laughed at is a natural human reaction from caveman days or whatever, but I'm not going to go on a whole rant about that now. Maybe tomorrow. I'm still trying to decide whether trying to fit in is a good thing or not. I know that for me it doesn't work, but why should I assume that the same applies to the rest of the world? That's just not right in any way, and it's definitely not the point I'm trying to convey.  On the one hand, there's a difference between fitting in and allowing the clothes you wear to change the way people perceive you, and we really don't have much control over it. Personally I don't want someone to assume something about me from what I wear; I don't want to be judged that way, because I really don't care about following the crowd, but I don't want to be grouped as a follower or a rebel against the flow, because I don't see myself as either. I wear what I want to wear, whether that's because I'm in an expressive mood or just because I feel like it or because it's practical for what I have to do that day. Examples: Harry Potter watch, because it's cool. I have a t-shirt that I drew a platypus on because platypuses are like a running joke with my friends (I don't know how it started and I'm fine not knowing, but I like it), and also because one of my teachers didn't know what a platypus was, so I even added a helpful note to it that says "I am a platypus" and wore the shirt to non-uniform day, because I'm just THAT cool. I got several weird looks and to be perfectly honest I felt a little insecure at first, but after a while I was fine. I got over the urges to zip up my jacket on that incredibly warm day and happily paraded around school, my chest apparently declaring me to be a happy, duck-billed monotreme.
So is my strange yet brilliant watch something that I should be judged on? I doubt that. I don't really care either way.

That Strange Part of YouTube...

Yeah, you've been there. that really weird part of YouTube where men dance with bananas, naked on the beach, not flagged only by the wonders of silhouetting... Yeah, I'm serious. That exists, and it's epic.
I had a really good day today, and I don't know why that's surprising me. Mondays are generally good days for me. I didn't miss my bus even though I thought I was going to, I GOT A HAT WITH A WALRUS ON IT! which I am unbelievably happy about, and just everything that happens is hilarious.
...
Okay.
Nice try.
Pull the other one.
Don't try to pull one over on me.

Where's the catch? I mean there's going to be one; it's fairly obvious. Is tomorrow going to be pure shit on a stick? Has today not been as good as I thought, did people hate on me behind my back? I really wouldn't be surprised.
Okay, so maybe today wasn't as wonderful as I first made it out to be. I got on the wrong bus on the way home so I had to get off at the closest train station to me and walk home from there. Dinner was entertaining, I'll say that much. Basically now I'm a little pissed off because my webcam started being awkward and now I'm in a bad mood.
Yeah, when my mood changes dramatically halfway through a blog post, you know I took a break in writing there.
So I have to go to school tomorrow which I can tell already isn't going to be a good day. I don't really want to talk about it. I have to go shower and do biology homework and shit. Night.

Messed Up News

This story is really quite disgusting, and I mean really really bad.

Congratulations! At some point in time, through no effort of your own, you were born.

Interesting prospect, isn't it? Celebrating birthdays doesn't really make sense, and yet that's what we do. We've always done it, and we'll probably continue to do it for the rest of human existence. All that a birthday is is a celebration that a person was born, and that they've survived another year on the planet, which I guess is an achievement due to global warming, and with people over the age of 80 it's an achievement too, but before that, the only reason we really need to keep track of birthdays is to be aware of how old we are. Otherwise, it's just a constant source of money for card making companies.

Why do I think about these things?

Epic Quote:

"Ah. Thinking ahead."
"Of course I was thinking ahead. The other option would be thinking backwards, and that's just called remembering."

It's funny because it's true.

I Did Not Fail. Oh, and Nerd is Not a Bad Word.

I didn't. I really didn't. Unfortunately though, I had to remove the post from Thursday because it just seemed a bit awkward. More to the point, it was terrible, so yeah, that's gone. I did blog every day of November so far, and I plan on continuing that pattern from now on.

I'm openly branding myself as a nerd now. I've been a Nerdfighter for nearly a year or something, and I've never denied that I am a nerd, but because of the usual school-age alienation of nerds in general, I've never publicly branded myself as one. However, in this past week, I've called myself a nerd to other people more times than I can remember and drawn several Tetris-Nerd t-shirt designs to tide me over until my actual t-shirt gets here from DFTBA.com, although I think it all started with the Wil Wheaton video where he read John Green's speech. That speech is now my background on many school computers. NERDFIGHTERS! 

Hey

I was gonna sleep, but then I realised that I had 8 minutes left to blog. So here I am. It's not an interesting post, it's not creative, but I've got a lot on my mjnd right now. I need to sleep. Night. 6 minutes. Night. I hope we all survive the appocalypse. :) xx

Advice: Dealing With People Obsessions

You don't want to think of it as an obsession, I understand that, but it is, or at least it will be. There is no way I can think of to make this not happen, so the best advice I can give you is to allow it to run its course. It's going to be awkward. You keep trying to make everything perfect again but it's just not going to happen like that, so STOP TRYING. You're in a hard situation and you've got to work through it. The subconscious part of you  mind is telling you to think about him like that for reasons that you won't understand, because you don't really have contact with that part, it doesn't like you so it's ignoring you because it wants something and you won't let it have it, so you need to train the habit out of it.Training that part of your mind not to think about him is going to be like training a badly behaved dog not to pull on it's leash. Let's call the dog Rover. Rover wants one thing; to pull on his leash. You (the owner of the dog) are your conscious mind, and won't let it pull on the leash. It's going to take strict discipline to train Rover, but it's doable. I was in your situation not too long ago, and now my version of Rover is almost perfect. I mean, every dog slips up now and again, especially when other people encourage it, but I'm at the stage now where Rover is getting old, and eventually Rover is going to die. You should look forward to that day, but for now, my Rover is more like a companion than ever.

Your aim: To stop Rover pulling on his leash. (to stop thinking about him in any way other than a friend)

My Tip: From my experience, the best way to rein Rover in is to give him a sharp correction whenever he slips up, but to do that, you need to think of it first. Personally I'm a visual learner, so I'll just demonstrate the way I learned. First, picture it. Picture the thing that is disturbing you the most about it, the thing that you don't really want to happen, even if Rover tells you he does want it. Second, make a bad association with that image by using a worse but completely unrelated image to block the first image out. For example, think of the most unpleasant image you can muster up, although it sometimes helps if this image makes you laugh a little. Your mind will start to associate the first image with the second image and eventually you'll teach yourself not to think of the first at all. This technique can work with words and sounds too, but I find the picture method easier.

Things to avoid:

• Cutting the leash. (Don't ignore him! You don't want to lose your friendship) 
• Ignoring the problem. Face it, you have one, and it's not going to go away overnight.
• Talking about it too much. Try your best not to bring it up in conversation unless you have an actual issue you want to discuss, and/or I ask for a progress report.

Top Tips:

• The first image has to represent the whole of the situation.
• This is not an instant thing. Because you're starting the detour quite early on in the obsession, it will probably work faster with you than it did for me. 
• When you're blocking the first with the second, scream it in your head. focus on nothing but that. It helps if there are no distractions around you but obviously sometimes you can't help that. 
• When you're talking to that person, try denying yourself access to them over and over in your mind. 
• Convince yourself that nothing is ever going to happen with them. It is forbidden. That thought really helped me a lot.
• Don't initiate contact with them. You want don't want Rover getting the wrong idea and taking off.  

This is going to be hard for a few weeks at least, and you can't sugar coat it. Just power through it. It's going to hurt. Breathe through it. It still hurts me sometimes, but it's manageable now and I'm able to have a conversation with them quite happily, and I do so daily. You'll see that eventually it gets easier. 

Bad = Good in Disguise

I thought there'd never be a blog post today, but here it is, and today, I start with a paraphrase, because I can't be aresd to quote directly. It's Maureen Johnson, she's awesome, she won't mind.

"Whenever something bad happens, it's not really bad, it's just something good happening in an unexpected way. Your boiler stopped working? Now you have a greater understanding of those who always live without hot water. You splashed coffee in your eye? Now that eye is super awake and can see through walls."

Yes, she did say all of that. In several different tweets.

I like the idea that all bad things are just unexpected good things, and I guess it's right. Even the most devastating things are good in at least one aspect. They have to be, otherwise we just wouldn't survive any of it.
That's it for now. I'm half way through writing another post that I may or may not post tonight. Either way, DFTBA.

The Power of Suggestion

It's strange how one person's simple comment can inspire so much in a person. One simple quote from my day today inspired me to make this post, and the logic behind it is so complex and yet simultaneously simple. It made me think. That one thing that was aid made me stop and think, and now I'm thinking and I can't stop thinking about so many different aspects of it and what inspired me to think about it so much.

Suggestion is brilliant. Before today, I had never considered travel in the way it was suggested to me this evening. It was said in such a jokey way, a way that I'm unsure of the intentions behind it other than to entertain or be ironically jokey whilst still giving sound advice, but those words were "run. Run while you can." Out of context, I'll admit it sounds rather creepy, but in the context of leaving home and living far away, it struck a chord with me. I can't even begin to explain the path of the conversation that led to this topic, and I'm unwilling to share with friends, never mind online, the details of even the few sentences before that quote, for fear of spreading details about that person that they would not otherwise share, but it made me think. Maybe it was part of what I'd just been listening to that stuck in the forefront of my mind, but now I can't stop considering the idea of moving away from my family. I could do it easily and I know that I could manage the separation with hardly any difficulty, after all, we all have a natural instinct to fly the nest, and yet that desire to stick within our comfort zone is often what holds people back, and it's in breaking that barrier that we enable ourselves to truly be free. However, even what we call complete freedom is never 100% free. We all have boundaries, whether they were set in place by our families, our culture, our government or our own personal fears and restrictions, and it is that prospect that makes me consider whether it would be worth it to move away. Moving away from home can't change who you are. It can change almost anything about you, from your phone number to your appearance and the way your life plays out, but it can't change who you are on the inside, not really. No matter what, you'll always have memories of where you've been and the people you've met, the things you've seen and the people who influenced you, the things that make you who you are. So yes, if you move away, you'll meet more people, your life will be different, and you may turn out with a different view on life, but at the end of it all, you really need to ask yourself where home was in the first place.

Why I';m Proud To Be A Nerd

I watched a video earlier today, featuring Wil Wheaton doing some form of Q&A session. If you don't know who Wil Wheaton is, well, I know he was in Star Trek, but other than that... Before he said answered any questions, Wil Wheaton made a speech, in which he quoted John Green pretty much for the entirety. It's so incredibly genius, and it the last comment that Wil made is something that I too would like to say, and so I share with you today, the speech, originally made by John Green, re-announced by Wil Wheaton, and now added to in several places by me.

Saying "I notice you're a nerd" is like saying, "hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than stupid. That you'd rather be thoughtful than vapid. That you believe that there are more important things in life than the arrest records of Charlie Sheen.
Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-on-your-seat, can't-control-yourself LOVE IT. When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is "hey... You like stuff," which really isn't a good insult at all. Like, you're too enthusiatic about the miracle of human consciousness.

Thank you John Green, for telling me exactly why I am proud to be a nerd.

As humans, we have this thing where we don't get insulted for what we do, we get insulted for who we are, which really doesn't make any sense at all. When you insult someone, the initial idea of what you're trying to do is to make them feel bad about themselves by comparing them or calling them something that it is not a good thing to be, so the so called insults like nerd and gay are not really insults at all, because it is okay to be those things, or even it is good to openly be those things.
If you want to insult somebody, try using Shakespeare. Shakespeare knew how to insult people. I can only think of a few off the top of my head, but he used phrases like: "You carcass fit for hounds!" "You undigested lump!" These are good insults because they really are bad things to be. A carcass fit for hounds, basically what you're saying is that they're dead to you, and you'd just throw their carcass to the dogs to eat, without the dignity of a proper burial. That is how much they are worth to you. THAT is a good insult. An undigested lump? They're just a lump of something, Shakespeare didn't even specify what exactly they used to be, but now they're just some lump of some unidentified thing, which is disgusting as it is, but add the undigested part to that, and now that already disgusting image is now floating around in somebody's stomach, where it will stay for an undetermined period of time. That is most definitely an insult. And that is, once again, why I am proud to be a nerd. DFTBA

BEDN

(B)log (E)very (D)ay in (N)ovember.

I know I can't do NaNoWriMo this year due to exams, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop blogging. In fact, as I'm sure you can tell from the title of this post, I'm going to increase my blogging schedule. A blog, guarenteed, every day in November. Isn't that fun? We're going to be spending a lot more time together, Internet. *Grins manically.* Have fun with this. I know I will.

A REVELation.

My god that was a terrible pun, but it had to be done. Ooh, rhyming is fun.

So yeah, we did the revel experiment a few weeks ago, I just couldn't be bothered to make a post. All we did was take a bite out of every Revel from 8 different packets of family share bags, separate them, and then count up all of the different flavours. After several hours of half-eating chocolates, several breaks due to sugar induced nausea and me throwing Revels into the air and catching them in my mouth (which I can do nine times out of ten), we came to the conclusion that there aren't enough coffee flavoured Revels per bag, and that too much chocolate can even make the stomach of steel sick. Yes, that's right, I'm not a huge fan of chocolate. So shoot me, I'm one of the only Remus Lupin superfans who doesn't share his love for chocolate. Ah well.

Yeah, I'm back on werewolves. The full moon should be on the 10th this month.

The New Da Vinci? Pfffffffft :')

  NO. But I quite like how these turned out... Click on the image to see it in a better and clearer view.

This looks so much better on the computer than it did on paper. 

This one needs colour adding, and you can barely tell who it is, but I still quite like it. 

This is by far NOT FINISHED! Plus it looks so much better in full screen HD. You'll see when it's done, but it's supposed to be Remus Lupin's puppy werewolf form, but it does just look like a regular dog, so I don't really care what you thought it was.

Ignoring the fact that this is impossible to rotate because my computer keeps arguing with me, this is still pretty damn good for me.

Again, it's sideways, but it's still pretty good. It's supposed to be the puppy of Sirius Black's animagus form, but y'know, if you just saw a regular black dog, that's cool too.

 I'm aware that this isn't very good, but it completes the sequence. Remus, Sirius, and now James Potter's animagus form, a stag, but in baby form because it was easier to cartoonise.

The left eye on Peter Facinelli has failed dramatically in the scanning process, not that it was too good to begin with, but, it got worse anyway. I'm still rather proud of it though. I even left the little pic on there for comparison. How nice. also, it actually looks better upside down than when it's sideways or the right way round.

It's a shame this is also impossible to rotate, because I really like this. Like many of the others above, it's going to be edited, and I do believe it might turn out quite well.

Finally, to finish, it's Pikachu. 'Nuff said.