Overload Anticipated! Warning! Warning!

Another very rapid update from me - proper posting will resume next week, honest!

Some very quick things you may like to know about my life:

• On Sunday, I fly back to school again.
• On Wednesday, I take the ELAT - English Literature Aptitude Test - as part of my attempt at gaining a place at Oxford university.
• On Thursday, I will have a practice "interview" with a full-time academic in my area as preparation for the occasion of being called to interview at Oxford (if I am).
• By Friday, I need to have sent off two pieces of marked work, also for Oxford's perusal.
• My History coursework needs to be completed by the end of that week.
• My English coursework needs to be drafted after inspection by the teacher, sometime the week after.
• I need to amalgamate more research for the school debating team, and attend the event as a planted nasty-question-giver.

And that's on top of the 50,000 word novel, ten-tonne-mountains of schoolwork, and heck knows what else might creep up on me in the meantime.

This is going to be fun!

However, to prevent you all from getting bored, I'm going to make my NaNoWriMo updates weekly only - every Thursday, I think, is a good day for that. This is both to save you the mind-numbing experience of being deprived of my regular posts, and so I have more entertaining typos and stories to tell you of during each update.

As I accidentally castrated my narrator with a typo last chapter, I sure there'll be no shortage of those.

Enjoy your weekends everyone! I'm off to try and hit 10,000 words before supper time.

~ Charley R

Not All Who Wander Are Lost . . .

. . . but if they aren't, you're doing it wrong.

I am alive.

No one is more surprised by this than me.

Long story short, I now know what hell looks like. It's all featureless, steep-sided hills, impenetrable mist, paths that lead to nowhere, tufty grass and the leg-swallowing bogs that hide among them. Not to mention the rainstorms that soak you utterly to the bone and reduce you to cowering in your tent in the middle of nowhere while your instructor worries about you and one of your team-mates showing early signs of hypothermia.

My feet hardly remember what it is like to be dry any more.

Not nice. Not nice at all.

But let me tell you, I have never felt more awesome in my entire life. I could have cried with happiness when I saw the mini-bus waiting at the end of our route (not in the least because there were veins of fire running through my shoulders, and my hips felt like they were about to shatter into pieces).

Eat your heart out, Fellowship. Mordor is Disneyland compared to Dartmoor.

However, that said, the sheer mental and physical anguish of the trip did spawn some truly hilarious moments. Such as the classic moments I shall repeat to you below. Call them the rantings of six starving, stinking, semi-hysterical seventeen-year-olds, but at the time they were funnier than anything else in the universe.

Enjoy.

Oh, and the promised video from my last post will be coming soon. It will probably be short, and the pictures may be absolute rubbish, but it will be there. Eventually.

***

Six sodden figures are wobbling along a disused tramline. They are one one of the highest ridges on Dartmoor, but even at this altitude the mist is so thick that they can scarcely see three feet down the path in front of them. All around is a swirling mass of white, forbidding fog.

Then, suddenly, the lead figure halts with a shriek.

"Look! Look, up there!" She points into the sky, almost jumping up and down, though the weight of her rucksack keeps her firmly rooted to the damp ground. "Do you see it?"

A great shriek goes up among the group. One drops to her knees and raises her hands to the sky, shouting, "Good God, save us from this unknown horror! What art thou, strange burning orange ball? Where didst thou come from?"

"I think it's ... the sun," says another team-mate, peeking out from under her sodden hood.

"Sun? What is this fabled "sun" of which you speak?" says the lead figure.

All six stare up at the faint outline in the sky until it is once again swallowed by the mist. They then struggle back to their feet and continue on their way as if nothing had happened.

***

The invigilator leans on his walking stick and laughs as the group wind past him, down the heather-covered hill to their camp site. He chuckles at the grim, stoic expressions on their faces.

"Watch out girls," he says jovially, "it's going to be a pretty foul night according to the weather reports.  Let's hope none of the monsters you learned about at the visitor's centre come and get you, eh? Wouldn't want the Hound of the Baskervilles to make off with anyone!"

The last figure stops and looks into the invigilator's eyes with a blank, dead stare.

"If I see a hound, I will turn it into a hat and gloves without a second thought."

The invigilator watches, utterly bemused, as the girls vanish down the gully. Perhaps the weather is taking more of a toll on them than he thought. . . 

***

It is 5:50 AM, and the still morning air is shattered by a loud, incessant beeping. From underneath a frame of wind-blasted tent poles and mournfully damp canvas, a bestial snarl rises and the sound of dull, wet thudding begins, accompanied by a series of words spat viciously at the source of the noise.

"Silence. Watch. Your. Queen. Commands It!"

***

And finally, a piece of riveting, Dartmoor-inspired songwriting that was sung from the base of Ryder's Hill right down to the valley town of Ivybridge. Feel free to sing along - the tune is very easy, and you get the gist of the lyrics pretty quickly.

100 wooly sheep, standing in the bog.

100 wooly sheep, standing in the bog,

And if one wooly sheep

Should wander into the fog

There'd be 99 wooly sheep, standing in the bog.

~Charley R

Humans. And Why They Are Weird.

I learnt a new word not long ago: idiosyncracy. A little tick, or meaningless gesture or behaviour, often attributed to an individual during some action or process. We all have them - from those of us who always put socks on before trousers, those who arrange all their pencils in ascending order of size on their desk, right through to the little things like banging the top of all the bannisters on the way down stairs. Most of them are very little, un-noticeable, and occasionally rather endearing.

But some ... some of them are just plain weird. Here is my Top Five List of Weird Things that People Do.

1 - Checking their phones for no reason
Don't even try to con me with the excuse that you're checking the time - we wear watches for that. I can never get my head around the reasons why people feel the need to whip out their phones, in the middle of a conversation, to stare at a completely blank screen that has neither bleeped, buzzed or leapt ten feet in the air singing the William Tell overture.



2 - Using text contractions in everyday conversation
While I dislike contracting words in texts, I can see the need to be brief in order to save time and money if the message needs to be send quickly. But when I'm having a conversation with someone, I do not much appreciate being told that my story is "hilare" or that I am "totes over-reacting" to a "prob" that I tell to my "bez" over "sups".  If I wanted to speak to someone who lost half their words, I would dig out my old cassette tapes and play them into my ear on repeat. It's not convenient - it's just plain lazy. And very confusing.



3 - Wearing things "because it looks good"
I have a friend who owns the most evil-looking pair of high heeled shoes I have ever seen in my entire life. They are big, black, and stand taller than the length of my hand (which, in itself, is pretty long). Even the toe part of the shoe is platformed. The gap for toes to fit into is about the width of a penny, and I cannot count the number of times I have had to half carry her down the stairs to keep her from breaking every bone in her body. And let's not mention the blisters. Those things could make injuries from Saw movies look like papercuts. 


Despite this, however, she insists on wearing them to nearly every social function we have, even if it is a good half-hour walk from our boarding house. Why? Because, apparently, she would rather be carted off to A&E and drowned in morphine than dare risk looking out-of-style.


The same goes for any item of clothing that makes a person look like 1- a member of a travelling circus, 2- a confused, drunken backdancer at a Rihanna concert or 3- an oversized six-year-old. It may be fashionable, but that doesn't stop you looking ridiculous.



4- Calorie counting
Not only is it annoying as heck for the person you are eating with, but calorie counting is, actually, a fairly useless sort of weight loss on its own. Evidently being bashed over the head with the doctrine of DO MORE EXERCISE-ology isn't quite getting through to some people. What's more, if you deny yourself food and energy at a mealtime, you are just going to go stealing chips off the plates of your irritated friends two hours later.


Mathematics is not going to help you shift that half-a-turkey you still have hanging over from Christmas. Honest.



5- Wearing glasses as a fashion accessory
I don't mean sunglasses - those things are proven to increase your Awesome Index by at least 20% whenever you put them on. I'm referring to people who buy non-prescription glasses and wear them for the look. Seriously, even people who wear glasses don't want them, what on earth inspired you to think that it's a desirable trait? "Being hipster" only goes so far.


A special mention to those people who wear the frames with the lenses poking out - the award for Sheer What-On-Earth-Ery goes to you.

***

That is all.

~ Charley R

In Which iMovie Makes Me Look Daft

Here be the link to the actual vid, just in case this fails horribly:

http://youtu.be/mzQw7oMcQHM

~ Charley R

Must ... Not ... Procrastinate ...

Two of five exams down.

Having mad urge to write a new story instead of revising.

Reading far more books than I should be instead of revising.

Biscuit cravings.

Big ones.

All will be over as of this time next week.

Two scariest exams tomorrow.

Ought to stop procrastinating.

That's hard.

*

**

***

**

*

Yep.

Still alive.

Ish.

- Charley R (I think...)

Of Drinks and Demigods

Drinking. I don't do it.

I'm not referring to boozing up and going out on the razz here - though, admittedly, I would sooner have a mouthful of dental tools than do that either. I'm talking about drinking fluids in general. I just don't do it. I have, quite literally, very little interest in fuelling myself on that which is vital for my survival.

Tea? Yeuch.

Coffee? Nuh uh.

Coke? Let the plant have it.

Water? Passable only when hiking up the highest hill on Dartmoor, smelling like a vagrant and physically resembling a recovering heroin addict.

Though, admittedly, I'd sooner drink straight river water than boil it. I never knew microbes could be so flavoursome.

It's a problem I've had for a long while - much of my childhood was spent taking reluctant sips of apple juice, and testing a variety of highly unsavoury and suspicously coloured cordials. Thankfully I'm quite fond of fruit juice now - apple juice, blackcurrant cordials, forest fruit mixes, that sort of thing. I've even managed to persuade myself into lemonade, though it takes me a good twenty minutes to get through a glass that should take half a minute. The fizz and my nose do not compute nicely.

So, you can guess what my reaction was when, over easter, I was visiting my hugely energetic young cousins. After two hours of wrestling on the floor, playing sleeping lions and wanting to strangle the designers of a particularly ill-crafted netball hoop, I discovered a rare need for fluids and discovered my options were milk, water and cranberry juice.

I felt scuppered. Since the age of two, I had blatantly refused to drink milk - call it a desire to age fast, or the result of a particularly terrifying incident with a cow. Water, as we have already ascertained, holds no excitement for me. So I was left with the prospect of drinking the suspicious red-purple concoction that my grandmother is so fond of. The fact that my Duke of Edinburgh instructors had recommended it for clearing gut infections was also a teeny bit off putting. I like my internal balance just the way it is, thanks.

But, desperate as I was, I knew it was drink, or die of dehydration. Like a derp.

My reaction was thus:

.... Yup.

I like cranberry juice. This now brings the total of acceptable liquids in my life up to ... about ten. 

Why bother telling you this? Because I'm curious - what sort of dietary idiosyncracies do you guys have. I'm one of those people who believes you can tell a lot about a person from the sort of food / fluid they like. Exactly what, I'm not sure. I guess I just want to see if I'm weird becuase I drink something I previously thought was only a functional cure for cystitis.

Tell away! Free cookies for all who surrender their factoids!

- Charley R

Interactive Post: Let's Play a Game!

Before we begin, I would like to make a few little announcements:
1 - Yes, this game is exceedingly daft.
2 - I am more than aware that it is extremely daft.
3 - I do not care that it is extremely daft
and 4 - Once you start playing, you'll see why statements 2 and 3 are so true.

THE RULES!
1 - Thou shalt awaken thine magical singing device (Ye Olde Ray-dee-oh suffices just as well as the incomprehensible iPod)
2 - Thou shalt read and take careful note of the name that be given to the song thou art hearing.
3 - Thou shalt add the suffix "in my pants" to aforementioned name.
4 - Thou shalt indulge in shameless hysterics at the best results of these rules.


Oh, and a last addition from me:

5 - Thou shalt comment on this post with thine favourite results, and go forth and spread the lol-magics!


Now leading by example, here are some of my Distinctions:

The Plagues in my pants
The Final Countdown in my pants
The Beast of Pirate's Bay in my pants
The Bells of Notre Dame in my pants
Haunted in my pants
By the Sword in my pants


And, last of all, TOP THREE:

3)  No One Mourns the Wicked in my pants
2) Army of Justice in my pants
1) What Have I Done in my pants


Tee hee hee :3

Fear not, my friends, I shall be back to proper posts very soon. I'm just a little whacked out on painkillers and icepacks at the moments. My poor legs are suffering after several days of (relatively) high octane physical activity.

In the meantime, release your inner three year old!

- Charley R

Winter Is Coming

... Or, rather, it's a little later than usual. 

LOOKIT THIS!!!

This is why it pays to live in the attic - you see these things long before everybody else catches on. Though, I must admit, I did have a bit of a heart attack when the slanting overhead window in my room was open and the snow started getting in.

Contrary to the wails of most that they want the snow to slip and bash its face in in the shower, I'm loving this! I remember at about this time two years ago, we had so much snow that we had to cancel our sports periods, and we all went outside and had a great big whole school snowball fight - staff and students both!

The Deputy Head still hasn't forgiven me for getting that snowball in his face.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Literally. *cackles*

Ah, let is snow, let it snow I say! May there be enough snow for another snow day - and to prevent the teachers from getting into school, bwua ha ha ha ha!

... Am I a little too excited about this?

Abracadabra!

I got the piccies back in "Revamping the Tower"!

Took a bit of doing, but there you go. Hope you enjoy them :)

Proper posts coming tomorrow, honest!

In the meantime...

GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT VIDAL!

And Not a Single "Are We There Yet?" Either.

******

Busy Charley is busy.

Proper posts will come over the weekend - promise! Fling me into a flaming chasm of doom if I don't.

In the meantime ... live long and prosper.

Confessions of a Button-Masher

Truth be told, I have never been much of a gamer - the only games console I have ever owned was a GameBoy Advance during some awkward years of Pokemon playing (I was pretty rubbish - never got my lead critters above a Level 70, and the only game I played was the Leaf Green version).  I'll play games for a social occasion - it's a fun way to spend time with friends, and can result in plenty of laffs all round - but I would never be the sort of person who would pick up a console and play just for the sake of improving my skill.

And it shows. When it comes to video games of any sort, I am the Supreme Queen of the Fail.

For example, the first time I played MarioKart was two years ago, when I was invited over to one of the boys' boarding houses by a gang of my male friends. They had a Wii in their common room, so we all sat down for a damp grey afternoon of fun. As a first time player, they gave me the benefit of the doubt and started out on some easier tracks, just until I could find my feet enough to compete somewhere more interesting.

There was no need.

Within seconds I had revealed my true skill with a console - by turning myself into an out-of-control ball of screeching, weapon-shedding, constantly exploding havoc. I fired my banana skins and mushrooms in all directions, I crashed into every human and computerised player on the track (and most of the scenery, for that matter). I even succeeded in doing an entire race ... the wrong way around.

Needless to say, there was much merriment to be had that afternoon.

And I haven't been invited back for another race yet.

Unfortunately, my complete lack of skill cannot just be put down to my unfamiliarity with the bizarre contraption that is the Wii controller. Another popular pastime of the gaming community is the famous Assassin's Creed - a game that depends mostly on skill, stealth and a good deal of practice in order to allow anyone any sort of success.

You can already guess how that went for me. There's a reason I'm always a pirate over a ninja.

If gameplay characters could talk to the players, I reckon Ezio would have been screaming at me to put the controller down and go and drown myself in the bathroom sink. I simply could not get my head around all the commands, even the most basic ones! Climbing walls and synchronising Leap of Faith mode were beyond me - not that I ever used it, because I could never work out how to run away fast enough to avoid the guards who nearly always hunted me down - despite my best efforts to fend them off by slamming my fingers on any button I could reach and cursing copiously in Latin. I was one very very dead assassin. Though, to this day, I protest that so-called "master assassins" should be able to avoid drowning in knee-high water. What's the use of having a hidden hand-cannon and knives up your sleeves if you can drown just by stepping into a particularly deep puddle? Honestly, Ubisoft!

It's the same story with dozens of other first-person games. I simply do not have the patience, calmness, or hand-eye co-ordination to utilise the console in a way that will enable me to get far into a game without help from a friend, or a few cunningly-timed cheats.
* Kingdom Hearts (I played Chain of Memories, and let me tell you the bosses drove me mad. Xigbar, get your arse off the ceiling and fight like a man! And since when is it fair that your opponent can just flash lightning from halfway across the room and turn you into a human shish-kebab before you can even get a blow on her? And don't even say the word "Luxord", or I might just have another dice-induced fit)
* Final Fantasy (Three words: DAMN YOU SEPHIROTH!)
* Legend of Zelda (the ranks of Navi haters gained a new member after about five minutes...)


The list goes on and on and on (and on, and on, and on), but the principle is basically the same. Despite my inherent nerdiness and increasingly geek-like tendencies - I'm fond of a good text-based role-play, and heck knows I'm vocal on any internet forum that talks Tolkein or Star Trek - I never have been, and probably never will be, a gamer.

They say a bad workman blames his tools. Well, a bad gamer blames the console. And I do.

Seriously, how on earth does anyone expect a highly-strung, inexperienced and very malco-ordinated teenage female, surrounded by impending foes intent on sucking out her intestines through her ears, to know which of those bizarre little buttons to click?

.... Scrabble, anyone?

Plot Bunnies Aren't the Only Thing Breeding Over Here...

Family trees are complicated things, and nowhere more so than when it comes to tracing illegitimate children. For near five generations, according to the tree my grandmother was working on, our family consisted almost entirely of bastards (blame John of Gaunt, he started it!)

Imagine the fun I'm having trying to keep track of, not only illegitimate children, but also ones who have a habit of disappearing, reappearing and breeding at really awkward moments. Not to mention one or two of them make a point of stealing other people's identities, changing their names and getting killed off in a multitude of weird and wonderful ways.

Here's what I've got thus far (it's not a tree so much as a diagram, because I can't make a document big enough to keep track of everybody xP)

************************************



VIDAL STORMLORD(marries Arystel Greysong)

|

GALLIRAEL STORMLORD(married an unknown woman of common birth, though the parentage of his children is disputed by some)

|

TALAMORA STORMLORD, KILLIAN STORMLORD and PANSANGER STORMLORD

(Talamora married a respectable merchant and never had anything to do with the family again)

(Pansanger has multiple mistresses...)

|

CIRIDESSA STORMLORD, AELMARA STORMLORD and CHICHIRA STORMLORD(Aelmara died in childbirth, leaving an illegitimate son - see (x))
(Daddy's little girl, Ciridessa had multiple lovers and gave birth to several illegitimate children. Many were taken on by their families, except her sons by Alduous Mistlord...)

|

VERAXES STORMLORD and CARROWAY STORMLORD (X)

(Veraxes dies unmarried) (Carroway marries Elorithryn Fairwind)

|

VAYINDAR STORMLORD

|

ARROVAY STORMLORD and PHILIPIRA STORMLORD
(Arrovay dies unmarried) (Philipira marries Naine Greysong)

|

SABEROND STORMLORD(Saberond has no surviving heirs)

(X) - SEPHIRAX STORMLORD was their cousin, by AELMARA STORMLORD

************************

.... And this doesn't include all their cousins, uncles, aunts, companions, sweethearts and the like. Someone needs to neuter this lot before they break my brain.

Naming Stuff - The Vote Goes to You!

Inspired by the NaNoWriMo "Office of Letters and Light" blog post that I read an hour ago, I began to think about the names I have for various artifacts that I own. Almost all the cuddly animal toys I have at home have names (and they come from all over the world - and no matter what mum says, THEY ARE MINE AND I WILL NOT GET RID OF THEM!)
Sorry. Mini rant there.

But anyway, I was thinking about it, and it suddenly occurred to me how funny some of my names are. Here's the list thus far (it's pathetically short, because I don't actually own that much technology)

Amy Pond, the laptop.
Pippin, the Kindle.
Becks, the SatNav - 'cause she's a Becker, hee hee! And technically she's not mine, but I felt she deserved a place here.

That, and my family have named every car we've ever had: Purple Nasty, Great White, The Green Machine, The Grannymobile, The Sardine Can (which was a revolting little rental car we were given once, only one of the back set doors worked, the boot flew open at regular intervals, the engine was pathetic and it smelt of stale pee)

And those of you who read my written works will know how much fun I have naming my characters - some of them roam around nameless for days before I find one I like, and some of them are bizarre indeed. But I like them to fit, so it's worth getting them right. Besides, making up names is fun *grins*

But there's one sad, lonely little item I own that does not have a name. My much-loved iPod - a silver Classic, with a fair amount of scratching and bashing, but carried everywhere and testament to a thousand slain Writers Blocks and Suck Dragons. The music it contains is bizarre: Blind Guardian, Wicked, Voltaire, Within Temptation, Two Steps from Hell, Skillet, Enya, Clannad, Chris de Burgh, Les Miserables, Lostprophets, Nightwish, Heather Dale, the Lion King, Pirates of the Carribbean ... you get the idea. If it's not on a normal teenager's iPod, it's in there.

So, readers, I hand it over to you! What shall I call this long-suffering companion of mine? It can be the name of a character in a film or a book (one of mine, or one of yours, for all those authorly friends of mine), or just a name that you think fits! I shall pick my favourite and let you know the decision when it is made!

Now, I'd best post this before Amy Pond has another stroppy session on me - she doesn't like being back at school any more than I do.

- Spook

I Think I'm Turning into Ron Weasley...

Dreams are bizarre things, aren't they? Everything that seems illogical, irresponsible and - usually - impossible in the waking world suddenly becomes normal. Talking cereal bowls? No problem. Giant shampoo bottles doing Godzilla imitations? Nope. Riding on the back of a giant snake waving a balloons sword and striking down armies of those freaky troll toys that have their hair all on end? Perfectly normal.
But having a dream about dreaming?
I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

Now, you may think that, compared to some of the examples up there (all of them genuine dreams, by the way) this simple concept of a "double dream" is fairly normal. But it really wasn't. It was like being stuck in a giant sandwich, somewhere between the dribbly tomato innards and the gherkins.
Allow me to elaborate (the first layer of dream will be in purple, and the second layer in red)

I was wandering down a very long corridor, pushing open doors on either side. Members of my family and boarding house were in the rooms, chasing each other around in bedsheets and shouting to one another in some bizarre gobbledegook language. I kept pushing the doors open one by one, and shouting into the room in a similar sort of language (think Sim speak and you get the general idea). I kept going and going and going until I reached a lopsided door at the end, near a long window. The top of the door was triangular, but the rest was regular door shaped - I had to duck to get in. So in I went, and I lay down on a bed with really high wooden sides, like a sandpit. Then I lay down and went to sleep.
I woke up in my bed at home, which is a bunk bed. I looked up, and all around corners of the room were huge cobwebs. And in the middle of those cobwebs? 
Spiders. Enormous, scuttly, multi-legged spiders.
I shot out of the bed like a lightning bolt and ran, seemingly through nothing, and ended up in the utility room. My little brother was standing there with a broom, and I told him (in English this time) that I was looking for the duster. He handed me the duster, only it was a lot longer than the one we have at home, and had dark blue and pink stripes rather than rainbow ones. I then magically appeared back in my room again and pushed the duster along the walls ... and the cobwebs - arachnids and all - magically vanished. I kept scrubbing all over the room, just to make sure they were gone, and I was talking to someone who seemed to be behind me, because I could hear their voice but never see them.
Then, suddenly, I was back in the wonky corridor again. Except this time my roomates were normally clothed, and we were once again talking in our delightfully civilised English. I was sitting next to the head of my boarding house, telling her all about my weird dream. She and I then got involved into a long discussion about spiders ...


And then I woke up.
Okay, so maybe that dream isn't all as strange in words as it was in my head, but let me tell you it put my concept of reality waaaaaay out of wack. When I first sat up and rubbed the grit and freshly-washed fluffy fringe out of my eyes, I wasn't altogether sure where I was. I went down to breakfast in a sort of daze, and nearly asked my housemate if she remembered our conversation from earlier.
Not only that, but I have spent most of this morning scouring the corners of my room for interloping buglets.
Harry Potter connotations anyone?

Psychologically disturbed? Me?
Never.

Poll Results and A New (real world) Adventure!

Hello everyone!
Very very quick one here, just to let you all know some last minute bits. Having looked at your comments, and thought a bit more about the matter myself, I've decided that I'm gonna work on Option Two, simply because I've been planning it the longest and it's a break from my usual type of work. Plus, I had a really weird dream last night that gave me a great idea for a plot twist, hee hee!
Expect me to start griping about this one shortly *grins*

However, the gripage may be a while in coming because, on Monday, I'm off to France! Accompanied by my brother, mum and grandad, I am planning on touring the Dordoigne (sp?) region, eating my bodyweight in yummy food, speaking Spanish where it's not warranted and terrorising the locals. Oh, and experiencing culture, who can forget that ;)

I'll be taking a selection of notebooks along with me, so hopefully I'll have some of the tale at least started by the time I get back!

Toodles!
- Spook

Interactive Post! :D

Okay dudes, let's play a game! Here's a fun challenge for you:

Think of fifteen people (real or fictional, your choice), and make a list with their names beside their number. Then, fit their names into these phrases:

1) Two and Five are destined to overthrow the world together. Can Thirteen stop them?

2) Under what circumstances could Six and Nine fall in love?

3) One and Eight are going out together, and get abducted by aliens. Can they escape?

4) Four has gone to the beach. Would happen if they met Fourteen?

5) Twelve, Three, Seven and Fifteen are in a submarine and are attacked by One's robotic sharks. What do they do?

6) Seven and Fourteen are mortal enemies. Can Eleven reconcile them to one another?

7) Ten has been poisoned! Who did it?

8) Fifteen likes Ten, but Ten likes Twelve. Twelve, however, has the hots for Eight, who hates Twelve and gangs up on them with Seven. Where is One in all this?

Post up your best results in the comments below. Virtual cookies to the person who makes me laugh the most ;)

Blog Alterations and a Writing Update

*wriggles out from beneath ever-mounting pile of textbooks*

Phew, sorry about that! Anyway, after a somewhat hectic day of exams yesterday, I have taken the morning off to make some little changes to this here blog. After all this explosive colour, I felt it was time for something new. You like? You no like? Leave me a comment below and tell me what you think of the new layout! 

However, my primary changes have been to my "Scribblings" tab, in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing, and help you find the links more easily. Now, if you want to read any of the stories, just click on the title of the tale and it'll take you on over to the site where you can read to your heart's content. Neither "Legend" nor the 2010 NaNovel "Defiance" have links yet, but that will hopefully be amended in future.

Ah, and speaking of Legend ... I'm nearly finished! Only a few more scenes to go (including an epic tongue-lashing, a Fiendishly Clever Plan and yet more burning stuffs), and then I'm finished! Then it'll be time for the read through, just to check I haven't left any pretzels lying around, and then ... *cue drum roll* ... it's time for posting! Woohoo!

Anyway, I'd best be off. Got to go and act studious before my Housemistress eats me ...

More Poetic Ramblyness ...

Yes, it's me, back from a largely unproductive half term holiday (on the writing front anyway xP) with another rather bad poem! Enjoy!


Morning
Morning dust
Sitting in windowsills, dancing
Through golden rays, so fleeting,
As fae-folk among cairns
At Samhain.
Languorous sleep, reluctantly, slowly,
Prises dreamy fingers from the eyes of sleepers
And takes her leave.
Doe eyes open.
Little pink tongue pokes out to sniff the morning air
And retreats, nipped and harried by cold.
A foot, a tousled head,
A mewling.
Kitten cries. Outside
Birdsong rising to tell the dozy sun
To shine.

Drunken Muse - a poem!

Hmm, it's been a long while since I've done poetry hasn't it? Anyway, here's my newest creation - not my usual style, but I'm rediscovering the joy of non-rhyming, hardly-structured, slightly demented conceptual poetry. Enjoy!

Drunken Muse

Drunken muse of mine, she’s got her
Bottles in her hand.
Drinkin’
Sinkin’
Deeper into madness,
Deeper into sin.

Slinky damosel, a temptress,
Giggling through a rum-sweet smile.
Wine-eyes.

Oh drunken muse of mine, she rolls,
She flows, she knows whe’er she goes,
On tipsy Fancy’s arm or hanging
Round the neck of highest Wit,
She’ll drink ‘em till they both run dry and
Fall to pieces on the floor,
Like glass.

Another drink, she cries with glee,
She’ll take another shot tonight,
Shoot the rhyme and hang the plot tonight,
In the revelry,
On the high,
In the wine-stained devilry.
Of my drunken poetry.

Only In Australia ...

*facepalm*