Another Story

I want to write a new story. I have no idea what I want it to be about, but I want it to be new. I don't know why. I have about a million stories already started that I could be working on, plus a folder full of vague story ideas that I could start, but something inside of me is going: No, it has to be new. It's kinda strange.

I've also been in a drawing mood lately. I think it has something to do with the winter; I'm cooped up in the house (especially since I'm still gimping around - although I'm not using my crutches much anymore) with nothing to do. I need a job. Actually, I need my writing to pay. That would be better.

I think that's it for this post. I'm going to go read some other people's stories on Fictionpress and then listen to some music to get the ideas flowing.

I Want a Guy in Heels

Not necessarily this guy (although...), and not necessarily in heels. But I want a guy who would wear heels, if he wanted to, and not be worried about what anyone else would think of him. I want a guy who would have his nails done for a special occasion - or put on makeup or a dress or whatever.

Ooh, and eyeliner. I love a guy in eyeliner.

It's funny, though, 'cause I don't think I could cope with a guy who was prettier than me. As pretty, certainly, but not prettier.

If you're wondering, I have absolutely no idea what brought on this bout of insane randomness, other than that I was looking for pictures of men in heels for a painting I'm working on, and got thinking, yeah, I could go for that. I'm weird; sue me.

The Best Laid Plans

My plan for today was to get up fairly early, do some laundry, go rollerblading, tidy up some of my junk, work on my website, and be generally productive. Instead, I did this:

I got up at about one thirty pm, after having gone to bed at four am. I then folded up my chair-bed, breaking my hot water bottle in the process, and covering the living room floor, my bedsheets and a bunch of my books with water. That took about fifteen minutes to clean up. Then I spent another fifteen or twenty minutes looking for my work out clothes. Then I did the laundry that I needed to do, plus the clothes that I'd gotten wet, and then I got ready to go rollerblading.

I decided to take the dog, as that means less work for me and a lot of fun for him. First thing out of the door, he started running at full speed, and I had to grab onto a fence to stop myself. Bad idea. The fence in question is a spiky wrought iron thing with tall posts every few feet, and balls on top of the posts. I grabbed on such post, and somehow managed to a) nearly skewer my throat on one of the spikes, b) fall with all of my weight on one knee and c) impale both of my shirts on the spike, so that I was stuck with one arm kind of over my head. I had enough time to hook the dog's leash on another spike before I passed out.

When I woke up, there was a man coming to see if I was okay. My dog tried to attack him when he tried to help get me unstuck from the fence, so I held onto the dog and sent him to my house (two or three houses from where I was). Then I had a seizure. I woke up probably three seconds before the guy came back with Rhiannon, and then he stayed while Rhiannon went back to find me some shoes. He was very nice and I really should have asked his name, just to be polite, but it really didn't occur to me.

Rhiannon helped me home, pulled out my chair bed for me, and then she and David went nuts to find me an extension cord so I could use my laptop in the living room. Rhiannon also filled up my non-broken hot water bottle and headed my shoulder pad, and brought me some Dr. Pepper. David took Loki for the rest of his walk. Complain I might, but when I'm injured, there's no family I'd rather have taking care of me than mine.

Then I watched a bunch of Nanny reruns on YouTube, and now I'm bored out of my skull.
Hooray for productivity.

It's Official...

I am on the nominees list for the Fiction Press Supernatural Stories Awards! Aigaion Girl was nominated for the Most Memorable Characters and Best Written categories. I'm super excited. I'd be trolling for votes, but the judging process doesn't work like that, so :( But, it gets me more readers, and is overall pretty darn cool.

And Other Bits of Random

Admittedly, this peacock has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I'm actually just a little addicted to the way this blog looks with pictures, and I thought he was pretty.

So, the news of the day (not this day, in fact, but the 11th of February): I've moved back in with my parents. Not in any permenant way - I'll probably only be here for a few weeks. The reason, mainly, is money, or rather, an extreme lack thereof. Essentially, I had the option of paying a lot of money and staying in my apartment, or paying a little bit less money, and moving out, and since I plan to go to Costa Rica in March, and to leave for parts unknown in May, and since I have no job, it struck me as kind of silly to pay a lot of money for anything.

There probably would have been a post about this a lot sooner, except I've spent the past few days organizing my crap so as to minimize its impact on my parents' house. I have a lot of crap. Right now I'm set up in the living room on an excruciating chair-bed torture device. I get the feeling my back will always be stiff.

Other than moving stuff and organizing stuff, I've been kind of lazy over the past few days, not writing when I need to, working out when I need to or digging through the four industrial-size garbage bags of my dirty laundry that I need to. I'm giving myself the rest of today to be lazy, and then I'm kicking my butt into gear.

I think that's it for right now. More posts to follow, I'm very sure.

Valentine's Day & Some Other Stuff

I hate Valentine's Day. Not just because it was designed by Hallmark as a deliberate cash-grab, but more because people actually fall for it.

Basically, if you're not single on Valentine's Day, you're supposed to make sure that that special someone gets as fat and unhealthy as possible - or buy him/her jewelry. If (God forbid!) you are single on Valentine's Day, you're supposed to sit at home alone and be miserable.

Actually, until a few minutes ago, I had completely forgotten that today was Valentine's Day. I was far more interested in yesterday being Friday the 13th, and spent absolutely none of today feeling sorry for myself because I'm single. Actually, I'm kind of glad to be single right now; the land of men has been a vastly disappointing one of late. It's kind of pathetic.

(somewhat off topic)
Also, it has been brought to my attention that my blog needs still more tweaking. Apparently, for people with certain resolutions, my background gets tiled. I knew this was the case, but thought I had made the image wide enough that that wouldn't matter, regardless of resolution settings. I know how to fix it, but sadly, neither my touch pad nor my mouse are good enough to do proper graphic design work with, which means I'll have to go into my mum's office to fix it. At least I finally got rid of those horrid blue boxes that kept showing up around the edges of my images.

Anyway, today actually wasn't a bad day, as random Saturdays go. I got nominated for an award on FictionPress, posted another chapter of Aigaion Girl, wrote a bit and watched Criminal Minds with my family. Now I'm going to have some hot chocolate and probably turn in for the night. Mmm, mm, sleep.

(Additional)
I'm tacking this on to the bottom of this post because I think posting on your blog more than twice a day is unhealthy. Actually, I just like the way the heart picture looks with my flowers, so I want it to stay there another day.

Anywho, I decided to check my traffic on FictionPress, and was extremely glad to find a spike. Go me.If it's a little unclear, the graph goes in date order right to left, so the far left is today.

Fiction Press Supernatural Stories Awards

One of my readers emailed me yesterday and asked if they could nominate Aigaion Girl for an award on FictionPress. I am unbelievably flattered. Also, I'm doing a bit of a happy dance.

Nominations start today, so I'll post links to the various pertinent websites and stuff a little later on. Right now I have to post another chapter.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I've read the play a couple of times, never seen it live and until yesterday, never seen the movie. Now I've seen it twice. I actually had a huge crush on Rupert Everett when the movie came out, ten years ago. In 1999 I had no idea who Christian Bale or Dominic West were, although I was a fan of Calista Flockhart and Michelle Pfeiffer.

I can't believe I waited ten years to see this movie. Well, for the first five of that, I think I suggested it every time we went to a video store, but no one else wanted to watch it. Then, I guess it just got pulled off the shelves to make way for newer things. Too bad; it's really quite excellent.

I like Shakespeare's comedies quite a lot more than his tragedies*; they're just so much - well, cheerier. More than that, though, they have more of a logic to them, even if it is convoluted. His tragedies all seem to be about bad things happening to bad people. Not really that interesting.

Anyway, I love A Midsummer Night's Dream, both play and movie. Even though I'm about ten years past due with this post, the movie was well worth the wait.

*I don't mind Hamlet

Feb 4th: V:10H:10
Today: V5H:15

FAIL

Due to a number of factors (including one very annoying person's insistence on posting about a million of her own stories and poems so that everyone else's got bumped to the end of the 'just in' list), I didn't beat yesterday's numbers on FictionPress.
Unless something drastically changes in the next six minutes, today's numbers are: V:13H:16. Boo Urns.

Emo Notes

So, I redid my blog again. I think it looks a lot nicer - hopefully it will load faster as well. It didn't take me all that long and I think if I could code worth a damn, I would probably be able to make it in the website design business.

I have no idea what to do to boost my FictionPress readership from yesterday. None. I suppose I could go to my hosue, dig up some old stuff and post it, but that feels kinda like cheating. I'm going to have to do something, though, 'cause I've only had eight hits today, which is less than I had on the first.

If you're wondering (and I know you are), the adorable little thing on the trike in the corner is a water drop. It's from some spanish spam my mum got. I made her send it to me. He'll probably show up again, one day when I've forgotten that I've used him already. Because he's that cute.

Well, I've kinda run out of stuff to say. Maybe I shouldn't try to blog every day; it's way too much work.

Beware the Savage Jaw

Welcome to my very first book review of 2009. Today I will be reviewing the first 10 pages (or 35%) of George Orwell's 1984 Adapted for Children by Kade Johnston.

First, I would like to say that I am utterly astounded - and I mean that honestly. I have never read anything like this. I'm somewhat ambivalent on the question of whether or not I want to read anything like this again, because on the one hand, it provided me with a good deal of entertainment, and on the other, there is something to be said for the uniqueness of the experience of reading (even part of) this book.

I guess I can't really call this a book review, because I honestly cannot find the words to say everything I want to about this book. Instead, I'm going to post my favourite chapters (clicking on them should make them big enough to read) and let you all read it for yourselves. Trust me, it will make your head spin.

Really, you have to marvel at the sheer gutsiness of adapting a book like 1984 for children. It's just such an unusual concept. I wonder if, based on how well 1984 turned out, the author will adapt any other books for kids. The Handmaid's Tale, for example, or Who Has Seen the Wind. You could do a whole series.

(I love that Johnston includes little explanatory aids, like pyramid charts.)

I think chapter six is my favourite, but explaining why is far beyond my capabilities. I've included it, so you can read it (and love it) for yourselves.

I wish I could say more, but, again, I'm at a loss for words. I hope you have enjoyed my review of George Orwell's 1984 Adapted for Children as thoroughly as I enjoyed reading what I could of the book itself.

PS, V:18 H:20

Remembering Code

It turns out that my mad html skills are only mildly irritated. Actually, the html bit is working fine, but my image files are too big, and they take forever to load. Not sure how to fix this without seriously reducing the dpi - they're already saved as .pngs. Also, the background image isn't physically big enough, but if I put it back to its original size, people will be done reading my blog before the page is done loading. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I love my old paper background, but I might have to change it to something a little easier to load.

What else? Oh, right. My memory (I'm not being funny, I actually forgot). I honestly don't know what's wrong with my brain, but it worries me. I'm at the point where if I have two simple tasks in front of me, I try to prioratize because there is a good chance that I will forget to do whichever one I plan to do second. For example, while I was getting ready to leave my apartment the other day, I found myself stuck between brushing my teeth and cleaning my earrings. I brushed my teeth. Then I made it halfway down the stairs before I remembered that I still needed to clean my earrings. I actually forgot in about it in the course of two minutes - which wouldn't be all that bad if I hadn't been actively trying to remember. Ah well. What can you do?

There was one other thing, and now I've forgotten again. Right. My FictionPress stats. At the moment, I think I'm sitting at one reader, one hit for today, but I have another six hours to beat yesterday's numbers (which actually went up from when I posted), so (assuming I remember), there should be another post around midnight.

A Random Fact

FictionPress has this neat little function that lets you see what your readership has been for every day of the month. As of yesterday, I had hundreds of readers spread over many, many countries, but, of course, today being the first day of a new month, I am down to one country and only three readers. My goal for this month is for every day to have more readers than the last. Let's see how I do. Today I have 3 visitors, 6 hits, which means that between three people, six of my posts have been read.

Generally, I like to have more hits than visitors; it means that some of them like my stuff enough to keep reading.

V:7 H:10