In Summary

     I don't have time to write the full post now, or rather, I have time but I should resume writing something more important as soon as possible, so I'll just sum up what I want to say and write a more complete post later for your consumption, The possums will be doing summersaults out of their consuming anticipation, I presume. Assuming of course you tell them about it. You will tell them, won't you? 

      In summary: life can be summed as a long list of summaries.

Think about it.

Understanding Infinity

  
 

 Infinity is a concept that infinitely irritates me. Well, the misunderstanding of infinity is actually the problem. Obviously we all have puny little human minds so totally comprehending a crazy concept like that is impossible, but there are some basics I think we all can and should understand. I'm no scientist or mathematician or anything like that, so feel free to make fun of and correct me if I am totally wrong.

I'm going to assume you already know what infinity is and stuff and just discuss the one aspect of it that really irks me that people don't understand. If you don't know what infinity is, use google. If you don't know what google is, then I can't help you.
 
So yah. Here we go.

Infinity is not the same as infinite variety

People tend to think that if something goes on forever, it contains every possible combination of things. Like, the idea that within the infinite numbers of Pi you'll find the works of Shakespeare (if you use a number to letter cipher of some kind). But it's possible that there is no perfect copy of any Shakespeare play within those random numbers. At some point, Pi could become a meaningless repetition of 987349987349987349987349987349987349987349 over and over again.

 Here's a Vihart video discussing Pi and Shakespeare:

Sounds pretty obvious, but a lot of people don't think about that. A lot of smart people.
    

     Here's Charlie discussing his thoughts on infinity. In the video, he talks about how he thinks there are infinite versions of himself with only minor changes on infinite planets very similar to earth.
The problem is that even though the universe is infinite, there may not be a single planet that's even habitable like earth. There could be infinite desert planets. There could be infinite planets with poisonous gases smothering them. There could be infinite parts of space without any planets at all. I honestly think that there is no Charlie copy regardless of the infinite size of the universe.

I'm sure other people have discussed this and explained it better than I have, but I've been wanting to write this for a long time, and no one reads this anyways (except parents, obv.) so I figured I might as well.


Ladeedadeeda. Have an infinitely great day.

Musical Adventures

So I've had an interesting time trying to discover some cool indie bands. It's kind of like shopping in a thrift store. Sometimes I find nothing and it's frustrating. Other times I find something truly gorgeous and unique and it's super cool. Soooo I decided I'm going to start doing some short posts on what I've found and such. I hope that's okay with you all. Though I'm pretty certain only my parents read this ;P Hi parents!

 So today I went on a Freegal shopping spree. Except not really a shopping spree. Because it's free. And I can only get three songs a week. For those of you that don't know what Freegal is, either google it or wait for me explain it. Which I will do. Now.

Freegal is a site libraries subscribe to, so then everyone with a card for that library can go on the site and download three songs a week. For free. And they get to keep them. Forever. Definitely indefinitely.

They have some big names. Adele, 1D, Miley Cyrus, Pink, etc. But they also have a massive collection of indie bands. A lot of it is pretty lame, but I've found some awesome stuff on there. So that's where I've been browsing today.

Of course some other great sites for discovering music: Noisetrade, Pandora, Grooveshark, Youtube. But today we're in Freegal :)

I started out going through the Indie Rock section. The first few bands I tried were some kind of murderous screamo. Then I saw a band called "Niceland". I thought that sounded pleasant and comfort. They turned out to be some interesting band from Denmark. I can only listen to short previews on Freegal, but they seem good so far. I looked them up on wikipedia and it came up with a band from 1982 of the same name from Iceland that only recorded three songs and broke up, without ever actually releasing any songs, lol. Someone must have been very bored if they decided it was a good idea to write an article about an 80s band that never actually did anything.

I found three more bands in my search today: See Venus,  Mandeng Eletrik,  PK14. Not quite sure if I'm totally crazy about them each yet, but possibly promising. See Venus is a kind of sugary pop sound, female singer. Mandeng Eletrik is an african electronic band. It's a strange combination but I sort of like it. PK14 is a chinese rock band. Has a bit of a unique sound.

Yups yups. That's all for now.

Novel Ideas

     So NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up again. Cue dramatic music.

    I've been planning out a book for months, since June at least. It's a pretty cool book idea in my opinion and I was going to write it for Nano this year. Unfortunately, the plot is pretty complicated so I haven't worked out all the kinks in it yet and I've been too busy with school and work to spend a lot of time figuring it out. So I decided that story will have to wait another year. However, never fear, I still intend to do NaNo!

     I've been debating between two different story ideas. They are both more relaxed simple stories. The first is to just write the Billie the Blimp story and make it into a novella. I think it'd be really easy to drag out into a crazy zombie adventure. It occurred to me last night that is really has a Hitchhiker's Guide sort of vibe to it. Which isn't surprising since I read the first couple books soon before I wrote that, I think. Thinking I might just roll with that and rename it like "The Reporter's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse" of something silly like that.

     The second idea I thought would be fun is to have a story solely based on songs. Like,  have one main character and each of his friends are people out of songs. A few songs/characters I had in mind were Julia from Thousand Foot Krutch's song "Broken Wing", Anberlin's "Adelaide",  Bastille's "Laura Palmer", Capital Light's "Caroline" and Seabird's Michael from their song "Finally Done Right" etc.

So yep. If you have an opinion on which I should do, or have an even better idea, let me know!

Just an Update

I've been away for a while. Is there a way to make all my posts start with that sentence? Like a signature, but at the beginning. It would sure be convenient if there was a way...

I've been busy with college-y stuff. The most interesting of the classes I'm taking would be the ceramics class. I made a duck shaped pot, which is pretty fun. We started throwing pots last thursday. By that I mean using the pottery wheel, not actually launching our pots at a wall or something ridiculous like that ;)

Yups. So that's been cool. All the school year activities have started back up again at the library. We had a ninja party yesterday. The turnout was impressive, somewhere around thirty kids came, some were even waiting to be let in 20 minutes before the party started. We played ninja themed games, had japanese snacks and prizes, a ninja star craft and watched an anime. We weren't able to get Naruto to fit with the ninja theme, unfortunately, so we ended up watching Fairy Tail. Everyone seemed to enjoy it anyways.
Teen Advisory Group also went well, or so I hear. I messed up when I planned out my schedule for this semester, so my ceramics class is during TAG meetings, so I can't go. But 11 teens came to the first meeting, and all of them had great input, so that was really great!

I'd like to start Gusty Guest Wednesdays back up soon. No promises, but it'd be nice.

I've been too busy to do much blog post brain storming, thus this lame all-about-me post.
Storm's brain storming, hahaha. That's kind of a pun. Ish. Thing. Sorry. lol.
Okay, goodbye now.

How to Get Better Photos On Le Cheap

     Ello poppets! Today I'm going to do something a bit different, a TURTLERIAL.
*Dramatic music*
     Yes, I know it's actually called a "Tutorial" but that kind of sounds like Turtle-rial. So from now on everyone must call it "TURTLERIAL" It's required by international law. On. Pluto.

     So I've always been talented at art, but the one medium I wasn't talented in was always photography. However, I've gotten a ton better, and I'd like to help you get better too so I'm going to give you some easy tips :)
     If you're anything like me, you probably are pretty parsimonious. I hate having to spend money to up the quality of my photos or art. I'm also just too plain lazy to go out to stores to actually buy stuff. So all these tips will improve your photos without you spending a cent. So whether you have a fancy Canon or just a cellphone camera, here's how to make the best of what you got.


1. Simplify! Everyone knows a clean house looks better than a cluttered one. Same goes with photos. I know, I know, it's such a pain to move all your curling irons, blow dryers, straighteners, make up, toothbrushes, lotions, towels, soap, and unidentifiable substances off the bathroom counter just to take an instagram selfie, but do it FOR THE SAKE OF ART. I believe in you.

2. Get close! I'm sure the sign you took a photo of was hilarious, but I don't get the joke since the words are two small to read. :( Things are generally more interesting up close, so we can see all the details and stuff. It also helps with tip #1, because if your subject is filling most of the photograph, that doesn't leave a lot of room for clutter to show up. Also, please, if you can physically get closer instead of using zoom, please do. It really ups the quality of the photo you take.

3. Don't center it! Photos tend to be more interesting if you don't center your main subject.

4. Make sure you have enough light! If you can, take your photos during the day and outside or near a window. Natural daylight will help you get better quality photos with a cheaper camera. The biggest differences you'll see between photos taken with cheap cameras and expensive ones is in low light situations, such as artificial indoor light or night time outdoor photos. Also, the most flattering light to take outdoor selfies or besties happens in the early morning, on cloudy days, or just before sunset.

5. Learn how to edit photos well. Photo editing programs can be really expensive, but there are actually some amazing free programs to edit photos. Editing can't make a horrible photo amazing, but it sure can make a difference. If you take photos on an ipod touch or iphone, there are tons of great free photo apps you can get, just try searching for some :) For general editing on my ipod, I use PhotoPower, which is pretty cool. For fun creative stuff, I really love FilterMania 2. It's a bit more digital-art-y, but it's really fun. On my laptop, I use GIMP all the time. It has almost everything that Photoshop has that I've ever needed, and it's totally free. It's a little hard to figure out if you've never done photo editing before, so I may write up some turtlerials on that someday, but there's probably already a ton out there, so if you are confured, look some up :)
I'm sure there are a ton of other great programs out there that I didn't mention, so you can try searching for some yourself, but be sure to check for viruses and such before you download anything :)
Also, if you get GIMP, I would suggest you download the version of it from http://www.partha.com/ because then you get it with some really cool plug-ins preinstalled, which you'll be grateful for when you need them and don't have to figure out how to manually install plug ins!

Billie the Blimp

 Well, here's the serial thing I've been promising you. Part one. Will be continued, most likely.

Billie the Blimp 

      My name is Author. That's not a typo. Let me repeat that. My name is Author.  My name is not Arthur. Do you understand? No? If you can't even comprehend my weird name, then stop reading right now, because you certainly won't believe anything else I say if you can't even believe I know my own name.

     I hate writing. Unfortunately it's one of the things I hate least and am least bad at. My parents always thought it'd be "crazy sweet" if their kid named Author was an author. So they got me to do all sorts of writing workshops. I didn't like it, of course, but you have to make money somehow. So here I am.

     I would say I'm your typical British man, excluding my name of course, and the fact that I'm barely British at all. I was born in England, but I've lived in America since I was two. I maintain a mostly fake British accent and attitude because it makes me popular with all the ladies, and I'd have gotten nowhere in life without that. I still didn't get very far. I write articles for the newspaper. Not any particularly interesting stories, I pick up the mundane things no one else wants to write about.

      So when the local eccentric decided she had to have her dear cat buried in a real graveyard, I was called upon to write about it.
    I interviewed the mourners after the burial and even toned down my constant sarcasm to prevent offending any of them too severely. Everything was going great. At nine that night I was nearly finished, when I wrote the closing sentence which required the cat's birth date. I remembered seeing it on the gravestone, but I couldn't recall for the life of me what it was. Not even remotely. I spent an hour searching the Internet for the answer and wondered why the newspaper didn't have anything about the cat, when I finally remembered there was no article because I hadn't finished writing the article yet.
      There was only one thing to do. I had to go to the cemetery and check the gravestone. I cursed myself for not thinking to write it down when I was there earlier. I am an undying sluggard, loath to go anywhere not entirely essential. However, there was nothing I could do except call the eccentric herself and ask, or go to the cemetery and look on the gravestone, with calling the lady being completely out of the question.  So I put on my overcoat and flipped up the collar and wished I could pull off the dramatic Sherlock Holmes thing. I shrugged and headed out.

     The cemetery really wasn't very far away, a bit over a mile, but I am far too lazy to walk, as you probably already guessed. Besides, I'd look like some creep if I walked there this late at night, I consoled myself.
     I parked near where I thought the cat was buried. Have I mentioned that whenever I ever guess anything I am invariably wrong? I'll take a guess that I have told you that already. Oh, blarney, I'm wrong, aren't I? Most people would consider this a curse, but my parents always told me it was a good thing, got rid of the temptation to waste my money gambling.
My parents became millionaires by playing the lottery. I'll wait a moment so you can let that sink in. You understand the irony of that, good job. I'll move on now.

     So I looked around for the cat's grave and I realized I parked by the old section of the graveyard with civil war era graves. At least I guessed they were civil war era, which means they weren't. I was never good with American history. Which is fine, because I'm British, right?
     I walked towards the newer section, I wasn't just guessing, because there was really only one direction to go, and the graves became gradually newer as I strolled along. I spied a tiny fresh grave a little ways off.
     I heard a strange sound. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly, because I'm a failure of a writer, but it sounded like something shifting beneath me. Kind of a crack, but softer and mushier. I looked around, thinking someone else must be there, then when I saw nothing, I just shrugged and walked on. If you haven't noticed yet, I shrug quite a lot. I also tend to ignore things a lot when I shouldn't.
Such as the huge gaping hole in the ground right in front of me.
To be fair, I didn't exactly ignore the huge hole, it just didn't fully register in my mind until I fell head first into it.
     "Blimey, hello!" I exclaimed as I got over the shock of falling onto something quite hard and found myself face to face with a man. Something didn't seem right about him. Something seemed a little off about everything around me actually. I heard a car motor running. Then I realized that I was on the hood of a car, staring through the windshield at the driver's face. The car was in the hole in the ground. And it was running. I wondered why the car was in the ground. Then I decided I should probably think about holding on tight because it was moving. At first it just moved slowly and jerkily as it tried to gain traction in the dirt. I thought about trying to jump off before it sped up, but the sides of the ditch were too steep except in the direction the car was driving, and if lying on a moving car is madness, jumping in front of it is pure insanity.
     So I just stayed there and kept staring at the man. He looked familiar but it took me a moment to place him. I'll blame it on the fact that I got a minor concussion from literally diving into the car head first, but you can believe that I'm just bad at remember people, and you'd be quite right.
     For whatever reason, it took me a while, but I did remember him. I wrote his obituary about a year or so ago. His name was "Billie the Blimp" It was an unusual burial because his parents opted to bury him in his favourite car. Which means I was lying on a car coffin being driven by a dead man. A zombie actually, I suppose. Which seemed highly improbably, but I didn't need to pinch myself because the bruised feeling all over my body made it quite obviously not just a dream, and as Sherlock would say, "When you've eliminated the impossible-"
     I didn't have a chance to finish reciting that to myself because I was interrupted by a girl screaming. Then I realized it wasn't a girl, it was me, screaming quite shrilly, and with good reason because I was flying through the air as the zombie driven coffin car finally escaped the ditch. It went so fast it flew off the ground, but miracle of all miracles, I managed to hang on by grabbing the roof racks, which I have no idea how I manged to do, because I'm not a very fast or clever thinker, but it happened, and the zombie driver went speeding out of the graveyard into town. My hands and arms burned with the effort of holding on, and my face felt like it must have frozen off from the wind. I guessed that any moment I would lose my grip and get flung to my death by the crazy zombie.
     We were going at least ninety miles per hour, I guessed. I tried to look down into the car to see if I could get at least one guess right before I died. It took some doing, but I did manage to look. We were going eighty-five. Suddenly we went around a sharp turn I hadn't anticipated and I lost my grip and flew off the car. This is what I get for wishing for one right guess, I thought to myself, though I don't know how I managed to think such silly things while flying through the air. I even thought about how I should have been a better person, I should have been productive with my life, I should have sent my mother flowers randomly and told her how wonderful she was even though she took me away from England, and I should have thanked my father for paying for my education and taking care of me . . .
     Then I realized I'd stopped flying through the air. I stayed still for a few moments. It wasn't exactly how I pictured heaven. Just dull fluffy whiteness everywhere. That was it and nothing more. It almost looked like a mass of pillows.
     "Ello, these are pillow!" I exclaimed to myself.
     "Course they are, what did you expect to find when you jumped in the window of the pillow factory?" a gruff southern accent said. Usually I hated southern accents, but when you thought you were dead, any human voice is welcome, I think.
     I tumbled out of the pillow pile and landed on the floor. I groaned, I had never been more bruised in my life, I was sure. I looked up to see a crowd of factory workers staring at me.
     "What happened to you?" a woman asked. I shook my head and answered with my heavy sarcasm.
     "If I tell you, you'll think I'm drunk."

Vegetable People?

 

So on my last post Anonymous commented this:

      "An interesting post with many valid points. However I must ask how many people you have met that are completely made of vegetables?" 

I got a laugh out of that, so thanks for commenting :) I would have replied with a comment as well, but then I couldn't have posted the lovely vegetable man picture shown above.

Now, you may argue that he is made of fruits and flowers as well as vegetables and so he doesn't count, but really, be fair. I found a freakin vegetable man for you. Appreciate it. 

It's a wonderful painting, by the way, it's by the super cool surrealist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. And yes, I spelled that without looking it up and I got it right. Boo-yah. 

Points for Anonymous: 1 for witty comment

Points for Storm Marie White: 2 for remembering a vegetable man portrait off the top of my head and knowing how to spell the artist's crazy foreign name.

Yep. I win.

Bye!

 

Why I'm Vegetarian

     Hey guys,
Today, the post title actually makes sense (cheer!) because I'm going to talk about why I'm vegetarian.
     I get asked about that a TON. And I get why, it's sort of unusual, I know a lot of other vegetarians, but I sure know way more non-veggies!

     I've been a vegetarian a couples times, but until the summer of last year, I hadn't stuck to it for more than a few days at a time. Partially because my family likes meat and I used to cook dinner for them every night, and I wouldn't cook them meat when I was vegetarian, so they didn't get meat. So they got mad at me and I stopped. :P

     Now, when I originally started thinking about becoming a vegetarian this particular time, it was because I was going on a mission trip to Peru, and I was told that I'd be expected to try anything I was served, unless I had a "valid excuse:. Which, they said, could possibly include guinea pigs, llamas, and alpacas.
     I could not be responsible for the deaths of such adorable creatures, and I definitely could not eat them. Uh-uh. Llamas are one of my favorite animals ever. I like to hug them, not eat them.
     So to avoid eating them, I considered becoming vegetarian again, because that was considered a "valid excuse." I decided I should look into it a bit more before I went for it, so I did a bit of research on why people become vegetarian. And some of the reasons seemed pretty valid, and along with my own reasons, it was enough to convince me to become and stay vegetarian.

     I've always loved animals, which is the main reason I tried to be vegetarian the first couple times, but I don't think it's wrong to eat meat. I often joke that I think you"Carnivores" are disgusting, but I don't really mean it at all.

     However, I think we have a duty to treat the animals well while they live and kill them as painlessly as possible. I don't think the world is succeeding in doing that quite yet. I mean, electrocuting chickens and waving them around upside down, then killing them? I sure wouldn't like that. They also spend their entire lives cooped up in the tiniest spaces, perhaps never knowing the pleasure of running around in the grass. That sounds pretty sad to me, and though me avoiding meat won't stop it, I don't want to help it continue either.

     I also don't really trust meat companies either. Who knows what weird stuff they're feeding the animals to make them grow bigger faster. D: And what if the meat isn't what it says it is? I don't know how anyone can trust meat companies after the whole horse meat thing.

     Meat also isn't especially healthy for you and it's kind of expensive as well. I also really hate the taste of seafood, and ham, and love most animals too much to eat them. So being vegetarian has been a good option for me, really.

     But I do occasionally miss eating meat a bit, not super often, but sometimes. And if I got meat from a local farmer that I knew treated his animals well and they were killed humanely, I would eat it.

     Another good reason to not eat meat, or eat less, is that to some degree, it might be contributing to world hunger. Which is explained in this SciShow video. Sorry, it's a pretty long video, but it's pretty interesting as well.

So yes, I hope I covered everything.. I may have forgotten something but those were the key points at least :)

Oh, and I'm only vegetarian, not vegan, by the way.  :P

Thanks for reading, bye bye!

Just Be Yourself

That's what they always tell us nowadays. Be yourself and you'll be fine! Follow your heart!

Sounds great and lovely, right?

But for crying out loud, what does that even mean? To "be yourself"? Maybe it's just me, but it seems to just be a feel good "do what makes you happy" saying.
I mean, you really can't be anyone else except you. And what inherent value does "being yourself" really have?

I mean you're going to be you. You can try to be someone else but in the end you'll still be you just with some surface appearance of them.

And "follow your heart"?
The heart is deceitful above all things. If you don't believe that, just think how many times your friends have "fallen in love" with their boyfriends or girlfriends, only to break up a couple weeks later and date somebody else. Their excuse for this, honestly, extremely shallow behavior, is that they're following their hearts.

Good job, Hearts.

There are a ton of other similar phrases. "Do what feels right" for example.

I think all those sorts of advice are confusing and unhelpful at best. Maybe even harmful and deceptive.

Maybe next time you advise your friend to be herself, think twice. Maybe instead you should advise her to try to be the person she wants to be. Have her think of how the nicest and most awesome girl she can make up would act.

Maybe don't advise your friends to follow their hearts and do what feels right and makes them happy.
Some times doing the best thing is horrendously hard and you feel freakin horrible afterwards. But you'll look back some day and realize it was worth it.
So tell them to do what they think is right.

That's what I think. Maybe I explained what I think very badly. Ask me to clarify! Maybe you disagree. Tell me why! Maybe you'd like to add to what I said, mention some similar phrases. Let me know! Comment below :)

Or, if you're on twitter, tweet #justbeyourself and I'll check it out. (My twitter username is @stormmariewhite... creative, I know)
Or post on my new facebook page.. 
Or email me.. storm.marie.white@gmail.com
Or google+ me.. just search "Storm White" and I should come up.

Yes, I'm pretty much everywhere. Have fun stalking me, guys. ;P

And here's a lovely song by Mree that partially inspired this post :)

X-cuses to the Nth

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”
― Abraham Lincoln

Now that I've insulted you all, if you complain about the previous unfulfilled promise about that spontaneous fiction thing, I can claim that you're really just bitter because I insulted you to your face. No wait, I mean, I insulted your face.

Boardwalk Amblers Anonymous, improving people's self-image every day!

Yes, so I actually did start writing that thing, but then I realized that I had to take the ACT soon and that I should probably be studying, not writing a story for the internet to read. So I studied. Some. Yah... but I took the ACT this morning, so now if I don't post it soon, I give you full permission to yell at me.

You won't make me regret saying that, will you? Nawwww, you guys are too nice for dat :)

So today, since I'm done with the ACT (For now) I have been messing around with HDR photography. Which is pretty stinking cool by the way. I'm not incredible at it yet, but it's fun.See photo above for one of my attempts with it.

Ello, it just occurred to me that it wasn't actually me who insulted you, it was Abraham Lincoln. Bahaha.

I have no idea what else I was planning to say, so goodbye.

Things

     Hi.

Because I'm a cool and random person, I'm going to start a spontaneous fiction serial in the near future.
Because I'm a cool and random person, I'm ending this post here. Dang, that was exciting.
     Bye!

Ello Poppet

    The title has nothing to do with the post. Just thinking of that awesome scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where what's-his-name not the one with the fake eye, but the other on with the long disgusting hair, finds Elizabeth and says "Ello poppet"       Fun stuff. Anyways, thought I should post a link to my deviantArt, The username is a little odd, it's from years ago. Has to be three years at least. That's a long time for someone my age.

     Linky-link

Ladeedadeedaaaa.

     I'm at home today which is amazing and unusual. I should be doing more important things than what I'm doing (which is posting on this blog, if you didn't know) (Oh, that's obvious. Perhaps I should mention that I'm also balancing a yellow mouse vase on my head as well. No, really.)
     I should be cooking dinner, which is supposed to be a healthy mexican pizza. Which has no cheese and a billion ingredients. Looks too complicated and I really want to make veggie lasagna but nooo, we MUST make the pizza!
     I also should be finishing the flag for the robotics competition, which I have sewn together but it currently just red and black stripes and nothing else.
     I should be studying and doing homework. BLAHHHHH. Life requires too much work sometimes. Bother.

     However, before I get to those things, I must brag about my geeky accomplishments of late. (I say "of late" instead of "lately" because "Of late" sounds classier. "Classy" being an alternative to "Epic-er" or "Awesome-r")
     I have watched the entirety of the 5th season of Doctor Who, which I thought was very good and a tad shorter than I expected. I have also read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Which, if I owned the book instead of borrowing it from the library, I would Share an Enjoy it. HAHA. AHAHAHA. THAT WAS REALLY FUNNY. Not really but okay. There's some saying about laughing at yourself, and it's probably a pretty nice saying too.

     Okay, bye.

Oh yah. Exterminate, annihilate, pretty much the same thing, right?

Reviewing, Please Wait

 

     Ello. I haven't done book reviews on here before but I do work at a library. So it seems reasonable and suitable and uncharacteristically in character. I like saying things like that just so I can use the word "Oxymoron" which I like to say very much. Though come to think of it, it kind of sounds like an oxygen breathing stupid person. Or stupid oxygen? Because all stupid people breathe oxygen, and smart people do too.
Upon further investigation I discovered that "oxymoron" literally means "sharp-dull" and is derived from Greek. A similar Greek derived term, "sophomore" literally means "wise-fool". I'm not sure how to take that. Is that offensive? Complementary? Someone tell me how I should feel because I'm going to be overrun in confusion presently.

Well that sure stayed on topic.

Okay so I recently read the book Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi. Companion to Ship Breaker by the same unpronounceable author.

I'm a failure to summarize books. So I'll leave it to the professionals and I'll give you the summary off the book itself.

"In a dark future America where violence, terror and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man, a bioengineered war beast named Tool, who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible."

I thought this was a pretty darn good book. For older teens. The violence was pretty intense at times and the cussing was pretty heavy too. I didn't feel like it was really gratuitous though. It made sense in context, but surely it could have been toned down a bit. Especially since Ship Breaker was so much milder, it was unexpected.

Drowned Cities is definitely not a light read. The story was depressing and pretty much stayed that way. However, I was impressed with how it surprised me with the plot twists a couple of times. Partially because I misread the summary before I read it the book, haha. Other things surprised me too though.

This book raises a lot of moral questions. With bio-engineered creatures that have some human DNA, sometimes seem entirely human, and with humans who are callous and act more like animals than humans after years of war, you have to wonder what defines being "human". Where is the line between humanity and animal? Interesting.

Some of the characters were surprisingly deep and the world, I thought was very detailed and well built. I found it very believable and I really was sucked into the story.

However, I personally preferred Bacigalupi's first YA book, Ship Breaker. It was still dark and realistic without making me feel like all humanity is doomed and it had less profanity. So yes, read that book. It was amazing.

Duh duh duh. Look, I actually stayed kind of focused for like four paragraphs in a row. I think that's a record for me.

Goodbye :)

This Is No Banana

    

Oh, what a to do to die today at a minute or two to two,

A thing distinctly hard to say and harder still to do,

We'll beat a tattoo at twenty to two,

With a ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-too,

And the dragon will come when he hears the drum,

At a minute or two to two today,

At a minute or two to two.

That's always been my favorite tongue twister. I love how in so few lines it builds such great suspense, I love the rhythm and the way it just feel so awesome to say, and it has a dragon which makes anything better, obviously.

Now I'm picturing an ice cream cone with a dragon on top. So maybe they make everything better -except- ice cream. Yahhh. There always has to be an exception. I think that's in the constitution somewhere. Or maybe Einstein's rules of physics, or the laws of thermodynamics. It's somewhere in something important. 

Like this blog. It's on this blog. That's an extremely prestigious place.

So I was skipping around town today looking for a yellow umbrella, I heard that we're supposed to get freezing rain within the next couple days and thought it'd be totally sweet if I could go out in the freezing rain with my umbrella, and the rain would freeze on the umbrella and I'd have an ice-brella! However, I could not find a yellow umbrella of the appropriate strength.

Then someone asked me if the mum eating toes were cute and I completely forgot what I was thinking. Oh well. So now I must leave you.

Goodbye. Oh, and by the way. Lollipops.

.

Today someone was telling me about how caffeine has a calming affect on ADHD people. 

Too much caffeine puts me to sleep. Hah. Hahaha. Ha. Squirrel.

Darker, darker. Darker?

     They're always talking about it, aren't they? How our society is descending into darkness. How it's just getting worse, how we live in horrible times. Poor us, living in these times. Haha. Haha. Ha. Ha.
     I guess yah, we do live in hard times, but I feel like everyone has. It's just a messed up world and maybe we just need to get over that and deal with it. Sure, let's try to make the world a better place, that's great, but we're really just doing damage control, the world is never going to be good, no matter how much you and I work to make it good.
     I remember learning something in chemistry about how disorder only increases, never decreases as a whole. I feel like the bad in the world is like that.
     However, before you write me off as some depressed pessimist. I do believe there is still good in this world (hallelujah!).
     I just wish people would stop complaining about the bad stuff so much and take time to appreciate the good while we still have it. Everyone has their own problems but not everyone has, say.. the amazing mom you have, or adorable puppy, the beautiful wildflowers that grow in your yard, or that crazy musical talent you're blessed with.
     Deal with the bad things that happen, you don't need to ignore them, but don't let them take over your life. Please. For my sake and your own.
     Admit it, we all hate whiny facebook statuses. ;P
 
     On another note. ARTISTIC UPDATE, OH MY GOODNESS. I recently submitted a couple pieces to the governor's art exhibition or whatever they call that. I don't expect to win or anything, I just picked out a couple pieces I'd already done and submitted them very last minute. Next year I WILL remember to actually make something for that show. Maybe.
     I've been working on the robotics website a lot, it's coming along well, check it out here.
     I've also been doing a lot of photography. The photo at the top is one of mine. Black food coloring dropped into a glass of water. Fun stuff. I also did a photo for the theme "natural beauty". It's a picture of a friend of mine with her hair sculpted (by me) into a tree shape. That was fun and required a ton of hairspray. :P I'd post it on here but I'm not sure if she would feel comfortable with a portrait of her being available to the public on here, haha. Or well, you'll just have to use your imagination ;P
     I think I mentioned trying out for my school's forum show, unfortunately we didn't make it in. We had some guitar malfunctions, so I don't think it was our fault we didn't get in ;P I'm thinking of buying some recording equipment and recording it, not sure yet, that stuff is pricy and I'm clueless soooo... yah. But if I do, I'll upload the recording to youtube or something so you can hear it.
     The viking jewelry craft I did at the library went really well, had nine people show up and they all did very well and seemed satisfied with their creations before when they left, so that was good :)

     I originally didn't include this in this post, but am adding it for a couple reasons. A: it's one of my favorite songs. B: it kind of goes with the post. C: I really like adding songs to posts. ;P
     This song makes me think of the sense of entitlement we all tend to have. "They said we'd live forvever" seems like a cry of "You promised!" to me. And maybe we don't all expect to (literally on earth) live forever. But we feel entitled to things. A lot of things. When really we deserve a big fat nada. Worse than that, we deserve punishment for being sick sinful creatures.
     We've sure got off easy, huh? Just a little simple faith and we really do get to live forever. And here we are complaining about the hard times we live in. Hmph. Shoot that sense of entitlement in the heart and let it die.  Give up everything and serve other people, serve them because it's what God wants and He sure deserves whatever He wants out of you.

Be glad when your sun comes up tomorrow and make the most of what you're given. Because building those airplanes isn't going to save you.

Since Bold Sophia Has Crossed the Sea

"Fear is a sign of humanity. Only fools are not afraid."

That's a quote from somewhere, and, so atypical of me, obviously, I don't remember where its from. But I thought it was cool.
Heh. It's true too. I mean, what kind of person falls off a cliff by accident? Not the one that's too scared to get within ten feet of the edge. It's the brave fellow who wants to show off how cool and daring he is to his friends or to himself, or maybe he's just foolish. Or she. Not necessarily just guys who are stupid. Well actually... HAHAHAHAHA.. Ignore me. Well. But don't really ignore me. Just ignore anything stupid I say. Pay attention to all my good aspects, of which I have many, like my humbleness.

But yah, maybe fear isn't always such a bad thing. It's always looked on as a negative thing, but even though it's not fun to feel afraid, it sometimes prevents things happening that are worse than that feeling of fear.

Lord Bateman wouldn't have been captured and put in prison and he wouldn't have nearly died if he had some fear and stayed home. But he was brave and went sailing around for the heck of it. If it weren't for a disobedient daughter, he'd have been a goner. What a beautiful rhyme I made this time.

On the flip-side.  Living in fear is a sucky life too. Especially when we've got all those promises from God that He'll take care of us. And besides, what happens to our earthly bodies doesn't matter, we'll be whole in heaven, man can't take away the most important part of us.

OH THE DEEP PHILOSOPHICALNESS. Is that a word? My spellcheck says no, but my spellcheck also says spellcheck isn't a word. Do you deny your own self, spellcheck??!!

Anyways, if Sophia was too afraid, she'd never have crossed the sea and gotten to marry her Lord Bateman, and there wouldn't have been such a pretty song written about them.
Of course, come to think of it, she might have sailed away across the sea because of fear of her father who was probably pretty darn mad at her.
Now, some general updates. I HAVE NEGLECTED YOU, MY DEAR BELOVED PROBABLY NO ONE, BUT HOPEFULLY NOT NO ONE, BUT A WONDERFUL PERSON WHO READS MY BLOG!!!

I use caps lock too much. Actually I just hold down shift and don't literally use caps lock. I believe in complete honestly, if you haven't noticed. But I use capital letters very much, which is ironic because it tics me off when other people use capitol letters too much.

I meant to spell tic that way. Because I like the onomatopoeic word relating to clocks far better than blood-sucking Ixodes scapularis. Random fact, I have a huge fear of ticks. If I think I might have one on my head, I am likely to pull all my hair out and scratch my scalp off. That is really disgusting. MOVING ON.

Okay, I was supposed to be giving you some general updates. Okay. So yes, I haven't posted much lately. I'm prepping for forum show at my school, in which I'll hopefully be performing a song by Dou Wei, called Shangdi Baoyou, or God Bless. I'll put the music video in this post somewhere.

I've also been busy doing stuff with the Red Plague robotics team. Hopefully redesigning their website. I'd link it but it isn't very impressive YET. But it will be. I'm working on it. Kind of. And I've been working on their open house prep and such as well.

I'm taking a photography class right now so I haven't done much of my typical art. But I'm finally learning to use photoshop. Which is good and bad because now I really want it and it's so expensive.

At the library, I've scheduled a craft club day. Made some samples and bought the materials. We're doing this really awesome viking knit jewellery thing with norse rune charms to go with the mythology theme we have right now. I'll get a pic on here... maybe... yes... alrighty. So I think they're cool, and not really bragging about myself here, because viking knit is an ancient technique (check this blog out for some of the history of it) which I never would have thought of myself. It looks pretty high end, but it's easy and cheap to make. Which is ridiculous. And awesome.

So yah. Thinking I might add some extra pages on my blog here to put some photography, maybe a poetry page, might even start posting some of my book I'm writing . . . anyone interested in seeing any of that stuff? Lemme know. If you'd like to have some of YOUR stuff on here... maybe I could do a gallery of stuff by readers.. that might be pretty sweet :) Anyways, just brainstorming right now. 

Thanks for reading, Imma heading to bed. Night!

Happy New Year's Eve's Eve!

      Today is the day before the day before the first day of the next year! Oh my gosh, that's just so incredible.
     Lessee, we have some news . . . Boardwalk Amblers Anonymous now has an official facebook page! Next maybe we'll add a Twitter, a google +, a pinterest, a myspace, a sina weibo, a . . . never mind. Just facebook for now.
    
     I think that's about all I have to say right now. Goodbye! Oh wait, what did you say? Oh? You were wondering how I survived the rest of the end of the world? I guess I did sort of stop explaining it. Where was I? Ah yes, I was buying cheese from the Wisconsin cheese man.
     He was an interesting fellow. A green hoodie with the hood up, big sunglasses with round lenses, and a heavy southern accent (southern as in south of Canada, obviously). He did seem a little shady, but he was actually really friendly and the cheese was good.
     Oh, I was farther than that? So sorry? Was I on the beach? Nope? Ohhhh, the volcano! Sorry, okay, so I was surrounded on all sides and about to be dumped into the lava, when suddenly, it erupted. Which would have been a problem, but I carried an emergency lava proof umbrella  in my pocket, so I just opened it up and everything was fine. Well, not for the punk squid squadron, or the  spat! onomatopoeia society, or the living rocks of personification, just for me and my umbrella.
      When the eruption was over I took out my cell phone and called the angry flying pigs, and they came over with their giant cannons and shot themselves at the volcano until they broke everyone out of the lava, and we took them to the hospital. I hear there were no casualties, except one worm, which was given a very touching funeral. We all wore our best brown clothes for it and wept threw mud around. He would have been proud to see it.
     Finally I got back to ohio, and since it was getting so late I decided to go straight home and meet my mom there. When I got home, our house was in quite a disarray, twenty two and a half hares were having a tea party, or so the flamingotunaman explained when I asked him what was going on.
     "Twenty two and a half hares? Did you kill one?" I began to panic.
     "Of course not, idiotic human, I'm pescetarian, I would never kill a hare! Besides, everyone knows a rabbit is half a hare," he rolled his eyes and glamorously spun around on his heels and took a proffered cup of tea from a crying hare. I looked around and realized all the hares were weeping and everyone was wearing a tuxedo, even flamingotunaman, but he didn't look even a tad upset.
     I went up to the first hare and ask him what was wrong. He just shook his head and sobbed harder. I went to the hare that was lounging sleepily on the couch and crying softer than the rest of them an ask him what the problem was.
     "Mister hare, whatever is the problem?" I asked. He jumped to his feet at the sound of my voice.
     "Well, don't be asking me miss, I'm just crying because they are, I never know what's going on so I just do what they do mostly," he explained then plopped back down on the couch. I found another hare and asked him, hoping the third time would be the charm. It wasn't, it took seven tries, for various reasons, then one pulled himself together and explained.
     "Today's my birthday. So it's not my unbirthday, and we were all born on the same day, so it's nobody's unbirthday, so we can't have an unbirthday celebration! It's the first day in hundreds of days that this has happened, we just don't know what to do!" he sobbed and sobbed.
     "Well, today is my unbirthday," I said and patted him soothingly. He immediately stopped crying and shouted with joy and announced it to all the others. They served me cake, sang the unbirthday song and gave me presents, but then the last one came up to me in the gift presentation line.
     "I don't have any gifts suitable for a girl," he said, "I ran out . . . I'm so very sorry," he began to cry.
     "Oh don't be sorry, it's fine! If you want to give me a marvelous present, you could pick up some of the mess in here, that would be amazing," I said, hoping he could maybe wipe the mud off the floor or something. He brightened up at the suggestion, and cleaned my house totally and completely and repaired everything, then all of a sudden, everybody disappeared. Then my mom came home.
     "How was your day?" she asked me.
     "Interesting," I replied. Nothing else unusual happened that day.

Okey dokes, there you go! Hope you enjoyed reading it, have a happy New Year's Eve tomorrow!

Repentance or Regret?

     I regret not posting in so long, I repent my negligence.

     Those terms, they seem like synonyms at first, but I don't think they are. Hmm. Repentance and regret.
     I saw a movie a week or so ago. There was a man who gambled, and lost, a lot. His wife obviously wasn't happy about it. She was complaining about it to this older wiser man, telling him how awful her husband was for gambling. She expected him to agree and sympathize with her. His reply was a short question.
     "Is it the gambling you mind, or the losing?"
     I thought that was a really cool thought. When we sin, and face the consequences of it, what exactly are we upset about? Are we repenting our sin, wishing we didn't do it because it was wrong, or only regretting it because we had to pay for it?
      Would we regret it if we got away with it scotch-free?
      What does scotch-free mean anyways? Is it a term referring to scotch tape being residue free? Or is it Scott-free? Or did I just make up the term just now? What are the answers to these deep philosophical questions? The answer is . . . 42.
      BAHHHH. How many roads must a man walk down?
     Seven. It must be seven. I like seven. Have I told you that seven is my favorite number? I like it a lot. You know why I like sevens? Because I can cross them like a backwards F! I told a friend that one time, and she wasn't really listening and just knew I was talking about sevens, and she said, "I hate people who cross their sevens." I didn't repeat my reasons for loving seven.
      How in Tobago did I get talking about sevens? Who could that be at this hour?

     Oh, by the way, did you enjoy the end of the world? I've been hearing some incredible tales of triumph from the survivors. Did you survive? If you did, there's this comment box thingy below. Feel free to post your survival story, it will be put in our archives and you will be named in our hallowed list of survivors of the horrific apocalypse.


     My experience was more mild than I anticipated. The day started out with a tuna fish knocking on my door. Apparently he'd read this blog and gathered that I'm vegetarian and came to me for shelter.
      "I'm being chased," he said, "I may bring you grave danger, but if you protect me, and we survive, there will be great rewards for you." I ushered him inside from the rain and took his bowler cap and scarf and purple leather trench coat and hung them up. They were so heavy with water that they tore the coat rack off the wall and hit the ground with a great splat. I shrugged and turned back to him.
     "I'll get you a towel to dry off. I'd let you sit on the coach soaked like that, but my mom would kill us both. Or worse, just kill you and cook you for dinner and make me eat you," I explained. He gasped in horror.
     "No! No! Please no!" He yelled, backing towards the door.
     "Don't worry, dear sir, I will not let her cook you," I insisted, trying to comfort him.
     "Anything but the couch! I'm fearfully afraid of couches!" Tears streamed down his face. There was an awkward pause. Then I thought of the perfect thing to say.
      "Oh." Then another pause and another moment of inspiration and enlightenment. "There's the bathtub.. Or the pond."
    "Ah a pond, perfect! Do you have any salt? I'm dreadfully craving some salt."
      I considered whether allowing him to take salt into the pond would kill the other fish or not. I debated inwardly for an hour with he stood there twiddling his fins. However, five minutes before I reached my decision, a blue bus crashed through our house, it crashed through one wall and out the other without slowing down, while the people aboard screamed,
     "The yellow jackets are coming, the yellow jackets are coming!" Soon after they left, a swarm of flying jackets burst through the hole the bus had made. The jackets' sleeves were tied around curved swords which they flung about with deadly abandon. They each had shining gold buttons and were made out of the finest of the finest green polyester.
     My head itched I scratched it and discovered the itch was caused by a miniature sized live chimpanzee. Thankfully I didn't kill it. I went to the kitchen and peeled a banana and set the chimpanzee next to the banana on the counter. Then I made a list of what I needed, packed the knives and packed the bread and prayed for holy things. I was careful what I wished for, and I was sure to crawl through the open door.
     I didn't crawl because I was too tall for the opening, absolutely not. The bus expanded the door to record heights. No, I thought it would sound more epic to tell people that I crawled out of the rubble of my home. Then I started walking.
      I made it half way down our half mile long driveway, when I half remembered I had needed to do something. But since I only half remembered, I half mindedly continued walking, though now at only half speed. I made it half way down the second half of our half mile drive ways, when I remembered the second half of how to remembered what I'd needed to do.
     "The fish!" I exclaimed. I ran back to the house and looked for the fish. I saw some squishy goop under the door that was smacked down on our floor by the bus.
     "Oh Mr. Fish! I'm so sorry," tears streamed down my face. "I promise, I cry because you died, not because I won't get my reward now. I wouldn't have accepted the reward anyways, I would have gotten my reward in heaven for my good deeds. But now you're gone!" I sobbed.
     "Oh good," I heard a voice say. I looked up. There was Mr. Fish, slurping salt up a straw and looking increasingly like a flamingo, "I was lying about the reward and such anyways." He crossed his legs and leaned on the balcony railing. I could tell he thought this position made him look cute. It made me want to throw a pineapple at his feathery scaly flamingotunaman face. "Oh, I accidentally dropped this weird iridescent triangle collection and some eggs and red paint. I mopped it all under the door. I don't think your parents will notice it now."
     "Gahhhhhh youuuuu!!" I raged and bounded up the stairs to attack him when I heard the far off tune of an ice cream truck approaching. I made a run for it, to the ice cream, not the tuna fish.
     Unfortunately the ice cream truck did not surface from its underground path to sell ice cream at our house. But since I was already at the end of the driveway, I decided to walk to my mothers workplace and ask her for the number to call the insurance company to have them come inspect the damage done to our floors from the stupid flamingotunaman's mess. Idiotic fish. If anything could make me want to eat fish, it was him. I was seriously considering stopping by McDonalds to get a fish fillet just to spite him, but decided it was unfair to eat a fish for the sins of the flamingotunaman. So I kept walking.
     Unfortunately I lost track of time and walked too far and ended up in Wisconsin instead and had to back track, which was annoying but I stopped and bought some cheese so it was alright. The journey back was a bit harder because all bodies of water simultaneously turned into volcanos. (Millions of fish died, proving the theory of evolution wrong as they failed to adapt enough to survive in lava instead of water)
     And just as I reached the peak of the tallest volcano and was walking precariously around the edge of the hike that cascaded down into a lava pit, the punk squid squadron of inconveniently inconsistently emphatically employed alliteration burst down from the sky and pointed their noodle guns at me.
      "This is the tuned tuna we are looking for!" They exclaimed exponentially in unison.
Then the spat! onomatopoeia society boomed through the surface of the lava and with a click, each member shot their grappling hooks with clanged against the rock and with grunts and groans, they climbed towards me with hungry growls coming from their stomachs.
     Then the living rocks of personification grew legs and the stones knew it was their time. They took sips of their brave water and clambered towards the volcano where they must go into the angry lava and melt with their happy ancestors. The crowds of living rocks threatened to push me off the sad edge into the furious lava myself.

This is getting long and it's rather late so I'll tell you more about it later. Vale!

Books Are Dusty and Muddy Things

To put it nicely.

See, as you may know, I work at the local library here as an assistant to the teen librarian. Today I was working on picking out books for next month's book display. I'm doing books with red and/or green covers to kind of go with the Christmas season coming up. It seemed like it'd be super easy. I could just pick out a few books from the teen section that sounded interesting and had covers with red or green on them.
Well it wasn't that simple. I'd grab a book that looked interesting and look up some reviews on it, only to discover it was full of rather disgusting content. Since that wasn't going so well, I compiled a list of all the books in the teen section with red or green covers (that took a while, there were many more than I'd expected) then proceeded to go down the list looking up reviews. Book after book I discovered to have horrible content. This was the TEEN section. My younger brother is supposed to be old enough for this stuff, and I, four years older than him, was horrified just reading reviews of these books.
Look, this blog is directed mainly at 15-18 year olds, though I try to keep it rated PG for any younger friends or siblings of friends or just plain any younger kids who read some of it. I don't even feel I could uphold my obligation to appropriateness for my audience if I even alluded to what these books graphically describe. Wow. And guess what, only a year or so ago, the library didn't allow anyone under 18 to check out any movies that weren't rated G, seventeen year-olds couldn't get Tangled, but 12 year old kid could check out a book that makes me want to throw up just reading reviews of on the Common Sense Media site. Why is it that books are so different?
I think parents often think that if a kid is reading a book, any book, its a good thing. Because it's educational and all that. It isn't so quick and easy to read a book first before giving it to their kids, so they don't. Sure, they could search through reviews, but it's a lot easier to pre-watch a movie. So they don't check as much as they should. And maybe it doesn't occur to them. Books don't come with ratings like movies and video games do. I think they probably should. That would hurt the YA book industry though.
See, that kind of trashy book sells, doesn't it? Sad to say, but it does. And the YA book industry knows that. It's not some crazy accident that there's all these horrible things in books written for teens. It's not even a decision that the author made by themselves. Books go through agents, then are read and marked up all over by and editor. Then the author gets it back and makes changes. Then the editor reads through again and makes some more suggestions, then the author, then the editor, then the author... It might even be a number of different editors. They know this is going to be marketed to teens, and I bet they know it's wrong too.
Sure, make the excuses. They're just writing realistically. They're writing what the world is really like and what teens really do today. WELL GUESS WHAT GUYS??!! Where do these teens get their ideas to do these things? From your flippin dirty novels!
And that stuff is totally unnecessary. Unless you're writing a historical fiction novel about the holocaust. And even then you don't have to swim in the details. And if you're going to do that, you have every right to, but market it to adults, please.
You can write a romance novel without getting super physical, and you can write a great adventure without dumping blood and gore on us. Tanith Lee for example. She's a adult horror novelist. And that's fine. But when she wrote the Claidi Journals for young adults (one of my favorite series ever, I might add, I can't get over how amazing the books are), there was no extreme violence, the worst language was a few occurances of D*** and the physical romance reached its height at.. like five extremely brief kisses over four books.  Let me repeat that. She's a adult horror novelist.
Write horrible graphic stuff to your heart's content if you want but please, market it to adults!
 I hate how I can't just pick whatever sounds interesting from teen sections in libraries and book stores. I hate being afraid to read because of unnecessary bad content in books. I love reading, but I read a lot less because of that.
I think I'll be praying for the YA book publishing industry. Join me?