warghghghghg

Yo, 'sup?

Basically....stuff.

What's happened? What did I even talk about in my last post? Whatever.

Anyhow, I am now Game Mistress Supreme and somehow have to come up with a Shadowrun plot by Saturday (why do I do this? I have no idea). FunFunFun.

I'm on the netball team now, which is awesome.

My new clarinet teacher seems nice enough.

Work experience is pretty good. I had to not go back after lunch today cause I was ill last nigh (vomit at 2am is so not on my list of Awesome Stuff) and then I was kinda of a little sick at work (in Pat's car, she had to pull over on our way back from the Rowans Children's Centre - and there was me being all anti-maternal and not wanting to work with children. Damn smalls keep invading my work experience)

So, I got most of the day off today. I also got a free DVD of Sweeney Todd, as they were selling a bunch off and Simon said just pick one you want, it's all good.

Lawl.

In other news: Simon has teh boytoy now, I believe his name is Finbar. Simon (not the Simon I work for at the library, Simon my age yadda yadda) worked MSN voodoo on him and now he is no longer straight. WIN.

What else? Not much, except I now have two library books to read (Through Violet Eyes and The Spy Who Haunted Me (Simon Green is amazing. What is it with all these Simon's lately?))

all good fun. Still only on episode 7 of .hack. meh, so not in an anime watching mood. Eventually I'll binge again, most likely during NaNo when I'm meant to be working.

See y'all later.

BYE

Sam.

Usernames

Does anyone else have issues with their usernames for stuff or is it just me?

I get so fed up with my screen names on the internet. I'll make one and then after a while I'll hate it. But with most stuff, like DA, YouTube, forums etc, you can't change it once you have it unless you make a new account. Which is a pain in the rear because you have to re add all your subscriber stuff, some favourites, organise your channel or upload deviations and add all the people on your watchlist again....ugh.

But I don't like a lot of my UN's anymore. I'm never very good at sticking to liking one thing. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But I always want a different username. The problem is that I can't think of better ones. Lucidemonica is all I know. I mean, I use Pandemonium on Everything Dragon but I hardly post on there any more. The only things I use frequently are DA, YouTube and Blogger. And my DA name is the one that I dislike the most. Luciferspet. Blegh. Hate it. But I made it when I was about twelve or thirteen or something.

Now of course I'm older and infinitely cooler ;p

meh. I guess I'll just stick with what I've got. Luci is as much a part of my life as myself. She's practically a second self. She's the front I put up so much online because she's everything I want to be; she's smart, dryly humorous, tough, kickass, stunningly gorgeous in the way that only the Demon-kyn can be. She is to me the epitome of what I could be if I simply pushed myself to the limit. I've never understood why I gave her so many brothers though. And made her the youngest sibling. Maybe it's some unconscious desire to not be the eldest and most relied upon. Meh.

PSYCHOANALYSIS FTW

In the meantime, I need video ideas. Music videos, AMV's, fan trailers, random crap, song-slideshows....anything you want that doesn't require footage of me talking and stuff. Cause my camera mic is fucked. Hopefully I'll get an actual video camera for my birthday. Huzzah!

Dewa mata!

Sam.

Hajimemashite. Watashi wa Spicer Sam desu. Yoroshiku onnegai shimasu!

Hooray! I downloaded a podcast for help with my 'noob learning Japanese' task.

Though, according to about.com you don't usually say watashi wa in conversation and on the page about introductions there you say 'douzo yoroshiku' not toroshiku onnnegai shimasu.

But hey. I know what it means and I can say it.

Other words and junk I've learned and remembered in Japanese:

Neko - cat
Kagami - mirror
Kirai - hate
Suki - love
Anata - you
Sayonara - Good bye
Ittekimasu - see you later, said when you leave the house
Konnichiwa - good afternoon
Ohayo/Ohayo gozaimasu - good morning
Ittedakimasu - said before eating/let's eat!
Oishii - delicious
Mama - so so
Kanpai - cheers
Gochisosama - thank you for the fine meal
Sumimasen - excuse me/thank you/I'm sorry/pardon me
Desu - it is/to be/is/are that sort of thing
Baka - idiot, according to anime
Kawaii - cute. well, every anime fangirl knows what kawaii means. In some form or other

So I can introduce myself and eat out in Japan now. Awesome sauce. And call someone an idiot.
I think things are going pretty well. I can write 'desu' in kanji. I should start learning hiragana and katakana now. It's a productive way to procrastinate! Hurrah!

Dewa mata!
(see you later!)

Sam

MAX. Also Hitler&MrSmith

So, I finally got to read MAX today. Thanks to Adam, who lent me his copy. He said it got really global-warming-centric but I couldn't really see it. Overall it was pretty good. It didn't annoy me as much as the fourth book did.

And Megan, you should read it anyway, it's not as bad as we thought it would be.

I can't think of anything that annoyed me too much, other than the fact that most of the book was 'save Dr Martinez' and that it ended on a cliffhanger. The bad guy didn't really make that many appearances and it makes me want to read the others again simply for the Eraser-butt-kicking action scenes. I kinda miss the Erasers. M-Geeks just don't have the same....je nais sai quoi. And I totally spelt that wrong ;^^

Anyhow, yeah, much better than I expected. Though, of course, I am slightly dreading the next book (rather cleverly titled; 'Fang') The summary on wikipedia is ominous, and even more annoying considering the amount of relationship progress and faxness in MAX. All I have to say is: JP, if Fang even comes close to dying, I am going to hunt you down and rip out your spine and beat you with it, as Max would so eloquently say. And then beat you with the book.

Yeah.

I am such a fangirl. But Maximum Ride is the only thing I have consistently been a fan of. I think I first read it in year 7, then got back into it in year 8/9 and ever since then I've been obsessed with it. And I'm pretty sure I'm one of the 'good' fans. The ones who squeal like children at the awesome parts but can also accept that some bits are bad. No book is perfect (but try telling THAT to the Twitards) but I love Maximum Ride, imperfections and all. And I think I will always love it, even if Hardwicke the Evil messes up the movie. At least the script writer is decent and they've got that guy who did Spiderman as well. So she can only fuck up one part of the movie.

In other news, I am totally planning to make a 'vampires don't sparkle' logo/slogan for one of my white tank tops and then wear said top and see how many people try to kill me. Maybe I'll go hang out in the teen fiction section at Waterstones on a busy day. Heh.

I think I've become a 'meh' Twilight fan. I like the books cause they're easy to read. They don't require much of my focus. But I do find it tremendous fun to poke all the holes in it and also to poke the diehards. According to the Twilight Sucks forum, (I may have posted this before) someone once got challenged to a freaking DUEL over Twilight. The person who got challenged won, but not before quoting from the Princess Bride, being asked what they were talking about and then saying 'Good literature.' Which I think is pretty much ownage.

Moving away from that touchy subject, I still have coursework to do and I really like listening to mellow music lately. Oh yes, and I've done a bunch of recordings on SingSnap because the nice people there continually upload whole blocks of songs that you don't have to be a subscriber to record, which is nice. I did a cover of 'Yeah' by Usher for kicks. I'm so gangster, yo'

I also want to be a magical girl. It's an unholy and entirely ridiculous desire but hey. It would be freaking awesome. Also there was a tutorial on YouTube about how to make movable dragons wings. I totally want to make a small set just so that I can wear them on non-uniform day. I would cut slits in my shirt and wear the wings under it and come in in my hoodie. Then I could take off my hoodie and lean forwards on the table and just be like 'sup?'

It would be awesome.

Oh yes! Hitler aka Mr Thomas has teamed up with New Guy Who Does Important Stuff And Is Possibly Deputy Head aka Mr Smith have teamed up in a uniform enforcing duo of death. All of us rebellious nerdy Neo's don't stand a chance. They've even started policing the socks we wear, for Isis' sake! How does wearing coloured socks distract you from learning? For Gods sake. I know we have to look smart and junk but what's wrong with a little individuality? I for one am not going to lie down and take it. It's not that bad at the moment but the second Mr Smith becomes aresholey about the tiniest thing I am totally rebelling. I'll happily do the detentions to be honest. I need some time to sit and plot stuff out without distractions.

I'm not saying that I'm going to come to school in jeans and boots, a choker and goth makeup. Heck, I couldn't even make it past the front door like that! I just mean that....well, it's hard for me to put into words the way I view this. I don't mind the uniform so long as the people inside them are allowed to express themselves in some way. I personally think we should be allowed to wear whatever coats we like. But we're not allowed to wear hoodies and stuff. It has to be a 'sensible coat'. Bah. It's a freaking coat. And your bag is meant to be sensible but hardly anyone gives a stuff about that.

I'm totally bringing my Haruhi headband in next week and wearing it. It's a headband to keep my hair tidy so I can learn better. The ribbons enhance my brain power. They'll probably tell me to take it off cause the colour is too bright or some shit like that.

I refuse to be a sheep.

Bleh. They always say some BS about uniform whenever anyone bitches about us having it. Some crap like 'it gives you a sense of pride' 'it makes the school look good'.

Schools aren't meant to be about who has the smartest set of clones with no individuality. It's about giving the best education to the most students. Uniform....I can see their point but it just annoys me. I work just as well in jeans or shorts or skirts or whatever as I do in crappy, unflattering school trousers. Wearing a tie doesn't give me +10 intelligence and having a jumper with a logo doesn't add to my intellect in any way.

It's always like this the first week back. They're really tough on uniform but then after maybe a month they can't be arsed any more. Too much effort to come round all the classrooms to make sure we've got our ties high enough and that we aren't wearing red socks or whatever.

That'll do I think. I've got a nerdfest tomorrow, which should be fun. I think I'm meant to be a vampire character or something. Although I wish I could keep my character the same as she originally was. A sexy badass demon with a penchant for partying and a talent for torture.

I think I'm developing a thing for alliteration.

See ya

Sam

No longer in Wales

Hurrah, I'm back from Wales. Two weeks in a bed that was two small in a tiny room with my sister in a caravan that creaks next to other caravan which, when people run up and down in them, also creak and thud and it sounds like they are running up and down in your caravan.

Ahem. So.

I bought lots of new books (as always) but not as many as when I went on the boating holiday and had an entire holdall to bring them back with me. No, I just got two more of the dark tower books (new edition) some fantasy, Dracula, Night of the Triffids, The Historian (which I've been wanting to read for ages) some more Stephen King and some others. Y'know, the usual.

BUT HOLY INSERT DEITY HERE WE WENT TO HAY ON WYE! The sign as you enter proudly tells you that it is the 'town of books'. Thirty bookshops in one town. HELL. YES. We didn't go to them all obviously - we were on our way home so we only stayed for the afternoon. I didn't buy that many books. But I did get a copy of The Raw Shark Texts (a book I read once and absoloutely loved but was too lazy to request from the library again.) I also got my dad to pay for books 4 to 12 of the Darren Shan Saga, so now I have all of those. I'd still love to have all of the new edition ones - they're so spiffy!

What else? Oh yeah, I started buying the collection of The Belgariad (in the old covers) and I got books three and five there (The only ones I needed) Four are in the same edition and only one book is in a different one but the colours still sorta match. In a different coloured but faded way. Yes, I like having sets of books in the same edition, okay? Sue me. The only other book I got there was one called The Accidental Sorceror by K E Mills. It sounded good so I got it. That is my criteria for picking books. Plus the little dedication/note/thing at the front was about Doctor Who so, y'know. I couldn't just leave it.

If I could have I would have gotten so much more but I didn't really want a gajillion books at my feet for two or three hours. The boot was full, heheh.

The holiday was okay I guess. We watched too much Dave, seeing how we only had a few channels and most of it was soaps or news or porn. Yes, porn. I saw at least two channel names that had to be prons and there were two gay text chat things. Lovely.

Anyhow, my brother was the stroppiest child ever. I swear, he is so abusive to my mum all the time. I seriously hope its hormones cause otherwise he's going to get in a lot of trouble. The crazy thing is he goes from being sweet and lovely to being this horrible monster. Usually its because he's been told to turn the TV/Computer/DS off or because he's tired or hungry. But he's eleven. I mat not remember rightly but I don't recall actually trying to fight physically with my mum over something when I was eleven or trying to hit her or stuff. I dunno.

Moving on. We went to the beach LOADS. It was great. My mum bought me and my sister inflatable rings and my brother bought a bodyboard thing. The waves were amazing. What you do is you either jump the waves, which is fun, or you sit in your ring and go up and down which is amazing. Or you get in your ring and float and oh wow.....I never used to like the sea. I did go on my brothers bodyboard but I wasn't any good. Surprisingly my sister was the best and she managed to bodyboard from right out where we were back to shore loads of times.

The waves were rough on occasion though and getting smacking in the back of the head with a wave is not fun. It seriously felt like somebody hit me with a two by four. I so totally didn't keep falling out of my ring and drinking the sea. No way.

We built massive sandcastles but mainly kept digging deep holes for fun. Hurrah!

What else? It only really rained a lot in the second week so that was okay. We went to dan yr rogoff (sp?) caves which was great. It had a dinosaur park, I got a plastic T-rex and a cuddly velociraptor. No more needs to be said. We went to the Shire Horse farm that was a part of it and I now have about four minutes of footage of ducklings.

Where else did we go?

We went to Swansea and I got a new hoodie.

I didn't do much of my art homework.

I have some new ideas burning away, one of which isn't a fantasy, oh my goodness.

I keep saying crikey all the time. Explain that one.

I also have two new shirts and a plain black hoodie.

On the way home we had dinner in a Little Chef and when, at dessert, the man bought me my apple pie and hot chocolate he called it cardiac arrest in a cup, which I found hilarious.

I read about four books and all of my manga whilst I was there, which is a record for a holiday since I usually don't read much at all. I'm part way through Salems Lot now and it's pretty good. It's obvious who the vampire is but I don't know if I'm meant to spot it or not. I probably am.

Oh yeah, when we watched Dave they showed an old episode of Lewis and one of the suspects was that guy who plays Arthur in Merlin. I was like ....o.O.

Oh YEAH. My mum bought three boxes of Mikano (they were together, not seperate, otherwise we would have had one box). For those who don't know, Mikano is thin biscuit sticks covered in chocolate except for the bit at the end. They are delicious. me and my brother ate three boxes in about three days. Yum. Essentially it's Pocky but with a different name. I'm glad I like it. I get expectations about food that I've heard of and never tried. For example; Oreos. I had never eaten them but I kept reading about them in Max Ride fanfics (I am a dork. accept meeeeeeeeeeee). But when I tried them....eugh. Not my thing. My brother and sister love them though, so that's all good.

Moving on, what else happened. Don't remember. Oh yeah, we found a crab when we went rockpooling and caugh some shrimp. And my mum found a dead starfish and my sister bought it home for her art homework. It smells of dead fish. Not nice.

I decided to catch up on my webcomics today. Rita's comic hasn't updated at all. It took forever. Almost three hours I think. That's what you get for following a lot of daily webcomics and then not reading them for over a month.

See ya later.

Sam.

Just like that feeling you get when you have a new idea

Konnichiwa~!

How are we all?

Good, good. Awesome.

Anyhow, I was planning to watch more Descendants of Darkness today but AnimeCrazy hates me and won't load the page for episode six. Grrr.

Anyhow, I was working some more on my Haruhi headband and it has failed. I think we're giving up with ribbon and just going to go and buy some material, even though it's kinda expensive.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish it before I go to Wales.

Blah, still have coursework to do. Still learning Japanese. I can count to four! Kinda.

ichi, ni, san, yon/shi...uhm....go!, roku, nana/shichi, hachi, kyuu/ku, juu...

I so totally wasn't looking at my notes for five and onwards. Not at all. heheh ;^-^

Ah well. At least I can say good morning two ways, good afternoon, good evening, and about three of four ways to say thank you. And I can introduce myself when I first meet someone:

Hajimemashite. Sam desu. Dozo yoroshiku.

Yay! I can pronounce stuff pretty well I think. So guys, when I come back to school, expect me to say thank you in Japanese. And to say either 'n' or 'hai' instead of yes. And to say ohayo gozaimasu! or ohayo! in the morning. Heheh. But the language is really fun to learn. The kanji are pretty hard to write but I kind of understand how you construct them and how you write sentences. The way the Japanese talk is really interesting.

I think if I can learn Japanese I might learn other languages as well. I mean, I used to be decent at French but then I stopped having lessons once year ten started so I forgot most of it. Maybe I'll learn an easier language next time, like Spanish or Italian. One that's more similar to English. In sentence structure as well as letters (Subject-verb-object is the order for English whereas Japanese is constructed as subject-object-verb)

Yay language! Learning can be fun, who'd have thought.

Also, my mother just now came in with an awesome looking gold headband! She fixed my mess-up on it! Yes! Admittedly there is some tape on the inside to hold parts down but it looks much neater than what I'd managed. All I have to do it attach the ribbons. The only way I can think of is to use double sided tape like I did for the rest of the headband. But my mother did say that if it looks good and I wear it loads then we'll buy material and make a better one.

Yay cosplay!

Though, I wish I'd managed to make it all myself instead of doing what I could, failing and giving up. I give up to easily with a lot of things :3

Ittekimasu!
(Essentially 'see you later/I'll be back/I'm going now' type phrase in Japanese)

Dubs vs Subs (feat. Vampires)

So, I started watching Descendants of Darkness. I watched a little in dub and a little in sub then watched the first three episodes in dub. I think that both of them are pretty good but in both there are voices that annoy me.

-sigh-

It's hard to decide whether to just watch all my anime in subs or to watch what I can in dub. Some dubs are really good - haruhi was good, lucky star, azumanga daioh....but then, like I said in my previous post, Nanoha was really bad. This is an issue because I want to watch anime and I like it in dub and sub. I can get used to the voices for each character pretty quickly. I guess that's the issue for most people. They watch in either dub or sub and then when they watch the other it sounds all wrong because you have the other version set in your mind. This makes it difficult. It wouldn't be a bad thing if I watched shows in both, but I don't have the time to.

The debate I'm having is whether I should just watch everything in subs from now on. I mean, I have to rewatch Haruhi in subs for certain because whoever uploaded the dubs to JustDubs messed up and there were duplicate episodes listed as different episodes and I never got to watch episode 00. I want to rewatch Lucky Star and Hell Girl as well, though, the dub for Hell Girl I thought was really good, especially Enma Ai's voice. The emotionless but slightly sad and almost whispered tone was perfect.

It's probably good for me to watch in subs as I am trying to learn the language and that might be something that would help.

Ah well, I'm going to watch Descendants of Darkness in a mix of dub and sub for a bit. I'll watch 3 eps in sub and then decide. Hisoka's voice is better in the dub, I think.

If I'm really honest, I'm only really watching it for the bishounen and the promise of boylove that was in the manga and is so hinted at in the anime so far. It's like the lesbian undertones in Nanoha, but with guys.

Heh, yeah I'm a little bit of a fangirl.

Speaking of which, even though I haven't watched Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, the teen book section and the poster section of Asda has left me in despair!

There were two twilight posters and a Robert Pattinson poster. Arghghgh. And the top shelf take-the-majority books for teenagers were supernatural romance, one being twilight, one being Darke Academy, one being something about a guardian angel and some others. Uhm, vampire diaries and I think maybe House of Night.

I am the only one who's starting to get annoyed at the amount of supernatural romance around nowadays? And the amount of 'urban supernatural' novels. I like them, sure, but there are so many and they're all so samey! Out of what I've read, I really like Lilith Saintcrow's work. I have only read on of her books but it's really good. And Jenna Black wrote a really good 'urban supernatural' one. You know the type I'm sure. The very dark, sexy, oh-look-a-demon-let's-make-out type books. The ones where bad things are dangerous but sexy. That type.

Supernatural romance....oh, god, the vampire love story has been done to death in my mind. That's why I like the Vampire Chronicles so much. Anne Rice's vampires are sensual, yet they don't - can't - have sex and so they bite people for that feeling. In the books the act of drinking someones blood is essentially described as the closest thing a vamp can get to orgasm. Yum :p
Anyhow, I like the vamps like that. They are DEAD and DEAD things can't get it up. They're either completely stiff ALL OVER, ALL the TIME or they can't. And you know, Miss Swan, you could be counted as a necrophiliac.

I don't much approve of the 'let's go find a hot DEAD guy and make out' mindset. Demons, yes. They are living. Not our type of living, but they're alive. Werewolves - also alive. Bishounen Shinigami....can gods of death be counted as alive? At any rate, the ones in Descendants of Darkness are human enough to bleed and probably die, so I would count them as living. They become Gods of Death by dying, but, so long as it's Shinigami to Shinigami boylove, I'm not too bothered.

The moral of this post is, I think;

Subs are usually better than dubs, but dubs can be awesome. Watch anime in half and half.

Also:

DONT HAVE SEX WITH VAMPIRES.