Is Hippos Dead?

I am about 90% sure they JB are now going to replace my laptop. And with that, the Saga of the Malfunctioning Death Machine is hopefully brought to a calm close, and the Tale of the Eternally Perfectly Working Hardware of Luuuurve can begin. In a couple of weeks when I get it.
Splendid! Splended! Splendead. 'S Plen Dead? Is Plen DEAD?
No. No he's not.

I know I am meant to have posted the Hunger Hippos by now, but it's really hard to write something. I'm finding especially difficult because I'm trying to view it solely as a movie, and having read the books a couple of times, that's really hard.

As much as I am a fan of reading the book first, it does kind of ruin your objectivity about the movie. But for every book I've read after a seeing the movie (admittedly not many) neither have been ruined.
Maybe we've got this whole read it first thing wrong? Maybe it should be Read It Second But Definitely Still Read It, You Lazy Boat Hook (is an insult I am now apparently using, of course.)

The Hunger Hippos is actually is significantly better name for The Hunger Games than 'The Hunger Games' is for The Hunger Games.  Especially considering the high hippo incidence rate. It really should be "Cool story bro, needs more hippos."
Or "... needs more dragon hippos."
Or "... needs more dragon hips."
Or "... needs more hip dragons."
Which are like normal dragons, but they wear Ray Bans and listened to Gotye before Making Mirrors and own 3 different coloured pairs of Docs.

I'm tired and I'm reading this AMAZING book (Divergent by Veronica Roth) so I'm OUTTA HEREEEE.
Bon nuit to you all.

Today was a GREAT food day

I know taking you through my eating habits for today may not seem like a super fun thing, but shut up and it's my internet and I don't even care about your sexual personal preferences and just read the stupid words.

Breakfast:
2 hot cross buns, fresh coffee.
Morning tea:
1 hot cross buns, tea (also fresh).
Lunch:
Turkey roast, amazing potatoes I potatoed by which I mean I prepared. Like a boss. And salad.
Lunch dessert (yes!):
Black and white raspberry brownie. Dark chocolate brownie, white chocolate bits swirled through, with raspberries spread all through. Goooooooosh. It's about 47 times better than it sounds.
Afternoon tea:
Chips, more brownie, and 3 hours of playing 500.
Dinner:
Fish, bacon and salad.
Dinner dessert: (You read that right! TWO DESSERTS. IN THE ONE DAY [just capitals wasn't enough; italics were required {there too}])
This thing I made in home science in year I'm going to go with 9. Puff pastry, sweetened cream, fresh strawberries, puff pastry, sweetened cream, fresh strawberries, puff pastry, icing sugar, strawberry garnish.
I should totally have photographed the two desserts because a) I made them both, and b) they were both SO FRAKKING AWESOME.

If you come to my house in like, the next day? Maybe two? There might be some brownie left.
Hey, the offer's there.

Actually one of the best food days of my life. Easter weekend CANNOT get better, food-wise. And Chocolate Sunday hasn't even come yet! I mean Easter Sunday. Easter. Chocolate.

I don't even like chocolate that much ...

So, in closing, if anyone ever wants any delicious desserts made for them, I am so your lady woman girl bitch.
And you can reimburse me with hugs.
Also money.
(no but srsly I want to cook for you) (all of you) (it is fun) (parentheses)

Hey! All the letters!

Yes, all your favourite characters are back in their beautiful correctly-placed glory.
I'm writing this on my weeny teeny notebook, which is totally fine, since I wrote a whole novel on here.

Actually, let me tell you about that god awful piece of prose.

So at 6pm on the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) I had no idea what to write about. IN THE SLIGHTEST AT ALL.
Bear in mind that the daily word count, in order to reach 50,000 words on the 30th November is 1,667. And basically, you want to get as much as you can early in the month, because at the end of the month, you want never to have even seen any of the letters in 'NaNoWriMo' (hey, if you're writing it on my other computer, you may not have!).
So I know for me at least, I have to get ahead at the start of the month. I think the first day last year I wrote nearly 4000 words, the second day another 3(thousand), the third day 3 and so on.
But at 6 on the day of, I had not even the faintest idea. I'd just got back from travelling, hadn't even really committed to doing it (my get-out-of-jail-free card for if I failed) and sat down to write hoping something would come out.
It didn't, really, for like an hour? And when it did, I almost wished it hadn't.

It started as like, some weird romance story. There was a girl in the normal world, with a huge bitch of a mum and a boring life, and this guy in this fantasy dragon world (I'd just been reading the Song of Ice and Fire books ...) and each would get their own chapter, swapping over et cetera.
I started off thinking it would be kind of the story of their whole lives, and their weird awareness of the other, sometimes getting flashes of what their experiencing, but eventually (obviously) living their whole lives without meeting.
Also known as a shit idea.
But I started writing it anyway, and I quickly found that it took me about 12 BILLION (but realistically like 4) times longer to write the stupid boring girl than it did to write the guy. So after the second chapter, which was the guy's, I wrote another of the girl's chapters, and then had her and a friend teleport or whatever into the fantasy world. Didn't bother explaining it or anything. Pfffft.
She then lived with the oldish couple who had a farm and they helped out and it was STILL BORING, because I couldn't think of a way to get them to leave this place. If you've ever written anything (particularly something long) you'll know that sometimes, the characters just don't want to do what you want them to.

I never really understood that idea before my 2010 NaNo, but golly gumdrops do I get it now. You characters develop into these creatures that you feel like you have no control over, and this STUPID GIRL and her STUPID FRIEND were determined to live quiet, boring lives with this oldish couple and just BLAH.

So after a few more chapters of both of them, with the guy becoming the apprentice to a dragon rider (yes, it's basically Eragon) I just stopped writing the girl. I just never went back to her. So she's still with her friend at this little old house, helping out, sewing and cooking and fixing. When I left her, she and the friend were making plans to go into town, just to sell some pots they'd been decorating at the house to buy some clothes. So I left them to it. Far be it from me to make them life an interesting life, and have at least one of them meet the boy of her dreams. And yeah, that meant I ignored her for the rest of the novel, and didn't even acknowledge her departure from my plot.

Meanwhile the boy of her dreams had gone and fallen in love with another rider's apprentice, and they have long training montages, and pretty much both the boy and the girl are awesome.

The way it works in this world, because there are a limited number of dragon egss. Like, they only come out every few years. So when a new one is 'announced', which basically means it's nearly ready for hatching, all the dragon riders pick an apprentice, and train them up until they're summoned to the capital. Then each apprentice goes through some tests, and each one touches the dragon egg and yada yada yada, the dragon picks the rider from the apprentices.

In this instance though, quite anomalously, TWO dragon eggs have been announced, so TWO apprentices will be chosen. And the guy's rider, and the girl he likes (not the boring girl) 's rider work together (a never-before-seen tactic in this world, for these never-before-seen, or at the very least, rarely-before-seen events) to get both THEIR apprentices chosen.

Then some stuff happens and drama and yeah.

So that's my novel, in a very large, very heavy, very rotten nutshell.
Now no-one need ask me to read it ever again, because you've just seen what a spectacular waste of your time it would be.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Definitel a dwnwardsprial.

Now t mouse i scrwingup to. OD. TS is stupid.
Als why ts is oly going o beth obligatory shrt post today,because I d't hav my other lapop nd it's lte d so  ca't use anyoe ele's.
I wil try d eiher get y oth laptopfor tomrow, or writeit at ui.

I hink it' geting wos.

'll leae you ith a poem:

when iwri ths it wll beillegib
lke the writing of sometng poeic ica't thin of rightnow,
b when ths probl, is disese s fixe
one agan he s wil shin and this biliant,
brillain macne will in wih it.


I feel like th wring could be the iane ramblis o an institutionale psychopth.
Eve I d't realy knowht its meat to say anyme.

But I eel ke there is so strage bauty in it. In th disjonted messy noteven-wordss tha aresprawling hemslves l ovr my age.
Also, touc typi isuseles in tis setting, becaue if i look at he screen,  wanto correc all he mstaks. So  almost ve t focuson nt looing, whi meas my tping bing iuitiv again.
All rig, all right I'm done nw.

 hofullnorma bl pot wil be awaiti you omorrw evening!

I AM SO ANGRY.

I am ging to lave this pot exactly as my computer types i witout correcting ay errors, except or ones ii make myself. Do you see hw hard writnig aything is for me righ now?! because i's that hard. Maybe even harder. GOD.
It's especialy unfair becaue this computer was a ggift for my birthday last year. 8th of may 2011 I got a computer and it was so goo! It was so good until one ay when I was in Calgary airpot waiting fr my plane, and I turned it on, and it worked fine for about 3 minutes, andthen it crashed. Died. Dead. Over. black. It didn' shhut down or do an of the normal things. Just as if the battery had been pulled out. ut it hadn't.
From then on it wuold turn on, stay on fo 3-7 minutes, and do he saame ting. Tried a bunch of stuff an nothng worked.
Bearin in mind that this was week 3 of the trrip (a month and a half after I got it),  I carriedd this huge lum of essentially un-usable hardware for the next 2 moths, util I saw my mum in Englannd an she took it home wth her.
I got home from my trip, too i to JB a week or two later to send off, which they di. I then waited until mid-January (I go back in ctober) to et it back. 'Fied' Well, th same thng didn' hapen again, but this time, three das after  got it bacck,  turned it on and th electrics just shorted out or something and it wouldn't tun o at all o do ayting. Took it BACK to JB, struggled to convince thm to send it off again (God knows why) and finally they  agreed. This is en of Janury this ear.
I got it back last eek. i've used it  yesterday and today. And thisis hat I'm dealin wit..
I' like to  take this moent to point out that I have never had ny keyboard isues wih it AT ALL before this. ad now this.
THIS S NOT IDAL.

I am  so mad. I IS  BEATIFUL COMPUTERAD I JST WNO't DOITS JO.
I actually think it might beb getng worse, which will be goo if and when I take it back to JB. I was worried that it wwouldn't do i and he JB peole would think I'm a liar, which I AM CLEARLY NOT.

I wish you all the best of luck trying to read this. (I corrected mistakes in both this and the previous sentence.)
On th othr hnd, Game of Thrones.

Lazy Day

Real questions for real nerdfighters. That's me!
1. Since April 2010
2. Aw, crap. Any Thoughts From Places or Question Tuesday videos and specifically either This Video Brought to you by Nyquil or Giraffe Sex: A Terrifying Introduction to Nature at Work (and Play), a video from which I learnt facts I have too often had cause to spout on everyday conversation. If you're an unVlogbrothers Watcher, just watch the second one.
3. water.org, This Star Won't Go Out, World Vision
4. "I told you I'd be fine!"
5. Instant friending with e'rybody. Who is also a nerdfighter.
Also:
“…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.” 
― John Green
6. 15 Hours in Target!
7. Strange Charm, The Deep Sea Anglerfish (of Angerflish), and Accio Deathly Hallows
8. What does Batman and 16 sodium particles have in common?
Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na (Batmaaaaaaan)
9. The Fault in Our Stars. Previously it was An Abundance of Katherines, because I liked that fact that it didn't have a manic pixie dream girl character, and everyone was quite likeable (except the people who weren't meant to be ...). But TFiOS. Just. AHHH. IT MAKES ME FEEL ALL THE THINGS.
10. Don't fear the Baron's apprentice. Is the first thing I thought of.

Sorry for all of you out there who I have completely alienated with this post. But I'm doing this for a month, and creativity and whatever is hard so there are these things which make MY LIFE BETTER. And I've just given you two delightful videos to watch and some good songs and so shut up.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx :)

BEDA ...

seems a bit optimistic at the moment, considering how slow the internet was to get to this point of writing (at least, though very quite a lot likely more, half an hour) and that's not even including trying to post it. So Vati, if you're reading this, MOAR INTERNETZ.
So this will hopefully (and also hopegully, which is what I almost wrote) this will be Blog Every Day in April, but otherwise, it'll be Blog Every Day That I Can in April, Where 'Can' Refers to the Availability of My Internet and Not If I Can Be Bothered Or Not. BEDTICAW'C'RVMINIICBBON. I think we'll still with BEDTICA for short. Agreed? Agreed.

So there's that.
Cross your fingers (and fringes) for a good, solid BEDA and not a lousy, ol' tica ridden bed. Bed ridden tica. Something ridden something. Is what she said.  Allegedly.

Also I have my GOOD laptop BACK, so cross your fringey fingers that it doesn't break for the third time, and excuse any and all typos because I am still getting used to the keyboard.
Though I think to be able to read this blog you would have to get used to ignoring the typos, because there are MILLIONS and BILLIONS and HUNDREDS which considering that I can touch type (as I am now, boo yeah) is stupid.

Anywaiz, this month you can expect to see from me such wonders AS:
my review of The Hunger Games
some other things
probably a lot of lists (the blogger's LAST RESORT)
at least one poorly constructed and executed rant
lots of Maureen Johnson Twitter-esque capitalisation, one will hope
a number (range: -12 to 79) of unnecessarily and awkwardly long posts in an effort to school work
probs some other stuff and whatever.

AND WITH THAT, I BID YOU, MY FRIENDS, good night.

Behhh...dahhh

Beh...dah

Beh-dah BE-DA BEDA.

Travel FAQs

WHAT?! Last post on the 13th September?! Madness.

This is the beginning of a blog. Technically, ^^^^ that was. But this is the Real Beginning of the Blog. Le Snak Deli Tomato and Basil dipper things are gross. Don’t buy them.

That is all.

But not really!

I am humbly returning. Slowly. And humblyly. But it is happenin’. Don’t wet yourself. We’re all excited, but there’s no need to publically shame yourself.

Again.

Begin the bloggering!

…

…

…

NOW, as you all know, I have been overseas and yada yada yada.

One thing of which you will be quite aware, young readers, if you have travelled in your days, is that upon your happy return, there are a few questions that you will be asked.

By everyone.

You have ever or will ever meet.

*pops out of bowl of cookies* FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I am now going to answer some of these, giving both my answers, and general rules and advice for people approaching this topic - either as an asker or an askee.

We'll start with the question I was asked by my younger step-brother upon my return.

"So ... what did you do?"

Well, Sunny Sunny Sunny Bear. A freaking darn lot. A lot. I was away for a while, and I didn't spend it sittin' around doin' nothin'. A'ight? Apostrophe.

If you ask this, you've not travelled enough. Travel stories are not the kind of things that just pop out on demand *keeps away from the potentially awesome 'That's what she said'*. They are the kind of thing that pop up while someone is talking about something that happened in their life, which will inevitably be kind of boring, and something they say reminds you of the hilarious and undeniably fascinating time that blah did blah blah on the top of the blah, whereupon you'll rudely interrupt your fellow conversationalist and delight them in the wonders of your fantastic story. That is how travel stories work.

Always.

If you ask me for a story, don't get pissy when I interrupt you half an hour later. You're boring and you asked for it. :D

"Where did you go?"

Obviously there's no unequivocal  answer for this for everybody, unless you just want to stick with "Somewhere much better than standing here talking to you." If you're considering saying this, I might suggest staying away from the additional statement of "Of course, falling into the sun or existing for the rest of my life in a pig's trough would be preferable than standing here talking to you." People tend to take it badly.

Someone may stick a 'kick me' sign on your back; or worse, a 'throw me off a cliff onto some particularly dangerous looking rocks' sign. If you're superbly offensive (say, if you manage to insult their mother at the same time) KEEP AN EYE out for the horror of horrors - the 'lock me in a room playing nothing but a Justin Bieber/Rebecca Black/Nyan Cat remix for the rest of my life' sign.

Aaaaaanyway the places I went will be listed below:

*

**

***

****

*****

******

-- Just kidding. I'm not a bebo page.

USA:
San Francisco
Boise
Orlando
New Orleans
LA
New York
Washington DC

Canada:
Vancouver
Calgary
Toronto

UK:
Wigan (Woooo!)
Liverpool
OxfordLondon
Belfast
Edinburgh

Europe:
Republic of Ireland
Dublin

Italy
Rome
Florence
Verona
Venice
Pisa

Vatican City

Germany
Munich
Dresden
Berlin

France
Nice
Paris

Spain
Barcelona

Switzerland
Lucerne/Mt Rigi

Monaco

Norway
Oslo/Fredrikstad

The Netherlands
Amsterdam

Czech Republic
Prague

Austria
Vienna

OK. I think that's everywhere. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!

What I lucky ducky mucky Kentucky I am, amirite?

Don’t do that. Don’t bring your amirites here. Because you know what? Urnotrite. You might be right, but you are sure as heckfire notrite.

“How long were you away for?”

Again, vary this answer to fit you. Unless you just want to outright lie because you were dodging a job or a psychopathic fish or something. If you’re a pathological liar, see how long you can get away with saying you were away for, before people start asking their party-pooping questions like “But … if you were away for 23 years, why have you not aged? Why have I not aged? What is this miracle wrinkle cream I have been unknowingly using on myself and everyone in my whole life to prevent the cruel passage of time?”

Pour moi, I was away for nearly 5 months. 4 months and three weekaloonies. Or summat like that.

“Wow, that’s not a long time considering how many places you went! You must have been really exhausted by the end!” says enthusiastic conversation partner enthusiastically and conversationally. And partnerly (oo-er).

“Oh really? I hadn’t realised that. I especially didn’t realise when, in the last three weekaloonies, my body sort of started dying and I was almost unceasingly sick for the rest of the trip. That was when I really didn’t notice.”

“What was your favourite place?”

Ah, this. The most frustrating of all travel questions. This is fine if you go to Fiji for a week. You can come back and say “Yes. On my Fiji trip, I’d probably have to place Figi as the number on place I went, just topping out above Sydney airport and a right sight higher than the car ride to the airport.”

This is not. At all. A simple question. When you have been travelling constantly for (nearly) 5 months.

My advice to travellers faced with this question would just be to either

aa)      Randomly pick one place, even if it wasn’t actually your favourite, and tell everyone that one. At least you don’t have to think about. But make sure you also make up a reason why, because that’s always the equally annoying follow up question (THERE IS NO REASON WHY IT WAS JUST COOL SHUT UP)

bb)      Tell everyone who asks a different place. When you run out of places either go back to the start, or just start making up new places. Who are they to know? If they wanted to know, they should have COME ON YOUR trip. Dickheads.

Edinburgh

New Orleans

Washington DC

Barcelona

Lucerne

Venice

Prague

were mine. In no particularly order. Edinburgh had the Fringe, N’awlins was just a mad fun vibe, DC was beautiful, Barcelona was fun and exciting, Lucerne was slice-my-eyes-out-and-serve-them-for-tea-because-they’ll-never-again-see-anything-this-beautiful beautiful, Venice was intricate and fascinating and Prague was just really good and stuff. That clock, right?

Everywhere else was good, except Rome. I am not a Rome fan. Rome is bad. I plan on not going back to Rome. Stupid Rome. 

The “If you could live anywhere you went, where would it be?” question is tied in with this, and I’d have to say Edinburgh number one, because beautiful and English-speaking, and close to all the other European places. But I’d live in any of them. Fo’ realz, shiznit.

And there you go. Adrienne’s polite, over-whelmingly kind, tolerant and patient answers to YOUR questions.

That’s the end of the blog. It’s over. Go home.

*waves you away*

Chk

Chk-chk-ahh.

Controversial Opinions - You've been warned, don't hate

I don't know if it's just because I'm Australian, and wholly unaffected (directly) by it, but while I feel that September 11 2001 was a terribly sad thing that happened, I don't really understand it.
It seems to me that most of the reasons it gets so much publicity every single year is for reasons that don't really have a great deal to do with the actual event of people dying. Primarily, it was what started the war on terror (during which, I feel obliged to point out, tens of thousands of Afghan people have died, and over a million Iraqis have estimates to have died, most of them completely innocent of anything), and secondarily, it happened to Americans.

This is something that was said to me at Black Stump one year:
If you had known before the attacks on the Twin Towers, what was going to happen, what would you have done? It's obvious. You would have done everything you could to let as many people know, in an attempt to stop it. Come on, you'd be saving the lives of nearly 3000 people. You would have done whatever it took.
Do you what this web site says? And this one? Or even this (that one has a game - play!)?
They all give approximate figures of how many people die every day from poverty all over the world. And that number is estimated to be over 10 times as many as died on September 11 2001. Every day.

I'm not saying that you should feel bad about the fact that this is happening (though you probably should feel something) - I'm just trying to illustrate the point that all of us would have gone to huge efforts to save this group of people, who received so much media attention after their death, and who were American, and lived in a country that could afford to go to war. A war that has since resulted in the deaths of many, many more people. Americans, Australians, Germans, Somalians, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Afghan people, as well as many more. And of those, who are the ones you hear about? Do you hear about the innocent people who die in the countries that are the enemies of America? Yes, but do you hear about it on the scale that you hear about the people 'on our side'? Not even close.

I just don't understand. I'm not offering another solution, and I'm not offering my opinions on war in general. Just all the hype about September 11 always reminds me of those questions I got asked that Black Stump, and wonder why I never see any "R.I.P. people who died from hunger today."

I'd also just like to say that I have a million more issues with this whole thing, such as people's validations for the war, and the fact that a 'War on Terror' is not a thing (watch me!) as well as a bunch of other things, but I'm trying to present this in a inoffensively as I can, and only deal with a part of it, because once I start thinking of things like this, I think of more and it all ends up in a blur.

I really just feel like this is something that is predominant mostly because it happened to Americans, Americans had the ability and tenacity to carry out retaliation, and the retaliation has since caused so much to change in the world.

I'll finish with this. Yesterday in the newspaper I read a short section, where someone was simply asking how the world would be different, if America hadn't reacted with war. Not speculating on whether it would be better or worse. Just thinking about it.
Think about it.

tl;dr I say things some people will agree with, some people won't, and will cause some people to hate on me.