The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

I have been discussing Twilight with a friend of mine. When we got to the subject of Bella's 'freesia-scented blood', he got rather confused and asked why Edward didn't just eat freesias instead, since surely that would be more cricket than tearing Bella's throat out at some point and easier than restraining himself from doing so. "It would take the edge off the cravings, at least" he said.

I love my friends.


Also, yay political fail! (I love the one about Nazi Germany and the Olympics)

...or can we just point and laugh our heads off?

Not to mention the best Children In Need single ever.



I don't seem to have done much besides video posts lately, do I? Have another one, then, while I'm at it:

...at least, I'm aware that I am never going to get it done by the end of this month. I'll still work on it, since I quite like where it's going, but still. To try and up my word count a bit, I've also started a Death Note/Captain Scarlet crossover with L as a Mysteron clone. Funny thing is, the more I write it, the more it makes sense: the paleness, the insomnia, the constant sugar consumption... seriously. (If you have no idea what on Earth I'm on about, never mind. If you'd like to know, the old series and the remake are both on Veoh.)

Anyhoo, I'm really looking forward to Children In Need tonight. Merlin getting splattered by rotten vegetables is always good in my book. ^^ And mithrigil updated No Such Place too, so I am very happy.

How are all you lovely people today?

But first, this. Because it made me smile. And for the Hetalia fans among you, this, because I'm rather proud of it.

Onto the videos!





(I'm sorry, I had to...)

I know it's only 6 in the evening, but this tiredness is getting ridiculous...

Music meme

Rules:
1. Make a list of 10 songs that you've been obsessed with lately. They can be old songs, new songs, songs you've only just discovered... anything is game as long as you can't stop listening to it.
2. Find a YouTube clip to go with the song (the original video, if possible).
3. Post the song titles along with the clips, starting with #10 (least obsessed), moving on to #1 (most obsessed - literally eating at your brain). These? Are unrankable, and to be perfectly honest, will probably be replaced this time next month. But still.
4. Comment on why you find each song so irresistible.
5. Tag. Don't tag. Do what you will. Just spread the music love ^_^

( And here I realise just how few of my favourite songs have embeddable videos... )

Speaking of music, I thought the female voice in 'Whatcha Say' sounded like Imogen Heap...

I've just seen the trailer for the Children in Need thing on Saturday. Merlin gets hit by tomatoes at some point in the proceedings, so I'm assuming it'll be good. xD

Still sick, and actually feeling a good deal worse than I was yesterday, but I'd like to think that watching 'Lost In Translation' is a good use of my resulting sofa-crashing time. Any film that opens with a random shot of a Scarlett Johansson's (admittedly clothed) rear has got to be a good one, unless it's a porno. And it didn't disappoint- the cuts between scenes seemed slightly random, and several scenes unneccessary, but I loved the way that the Western characters were forced to interact with Japanese culture and technology, down to the automatically-opening curtains and too-short showers. There was a mundanity to the whole thing that was really nice, and being absolutely in love with the sound of Japanese, I was ever so happy even when I couldn't understand a word they were saying. The cinematography was beautiful too- the lushness of Harris' scenes contrasting nicely with the almost cold sense I got from Charlotte's, and... yeah. I really, really liked Charlotte too, but I'm going to shut up now before I go on forever.

Tl;dr: if you haven't seen 'Lost In Translation' yet, do so. Also, Bill Murray does a surprisingly good karaoke, and Scarlett Johansson looks pretty good in a pink wig.

And yeah... I'm going to go back to sleep now. Flu is doing nothing for my mental capabilities. :(

I love the fact that I've got an advert here telling me that a 'Haringey mom' has saved herself 'hundreds of dollars in medical fees' by trying out this new technique they're offering- which I'm thinking I'll pass on. Don't you just love automatically-generated ads?

Anyhoo, I am at home with flu, which is actually not as bad as it sounds. I'm certainly a lot better than I was yesterday afternoon, when even the most unobservent of my teachers noticed something was wrong, complete strangers asked me if I was okay and on being sent to the medical room, I fell asleep in a matter of minutes. (Speaking of illness- you feeling any better yet serria?) I've got an extra day or so to photograph my passport for a ski trip, and to finish off an essay for English, so things are looking up. I'm also stuffing my Sims game full of CC once more, so that I can have as much fun as I was before the PC crashed last month. It was probably that which did for it, but still. Also singing along to Newton Faulkner's rendition of 'Foundations' soprano-style, and surprising myself by how high I'm managing to get. I'm not good at holding notes, but I'm hitting them well enough.

And now that I have my thoughts on Waters of Mars sorted out, ( here you go! )

I hope that shed some light on my post-episode mood. ^^ Paradox looks good too. Quite looking forward to that.

What did you guys think of it? (Doctor Who, I mean- Paranormal's not out for a week or so yet)

Finally, this. For. the. win.

/brb rendered utterly incoherent by the awesome

(if slightly less so by the science fail)

(how do you all like the new mood theme btw?)

...and it didn't work. So he put the old one in, didn't reinstall it, and I booted it up earlier to see this message:

Laptop: New internet connectivity product yay! Would you like to connect to teh internetz to install it? :D

*click No*

Laptop: Oh noez! You canz not have internetz until this is installed! Are you suuure you don't want to check on teh internetz to find a way of installing it?

And so on. On the other hand, the resulting switch to one of the family PCs (my Dad's an IT consultant- we get a whole load of old models) means that I found rechter_sims' version of a huge load of Hetalia characters, so I'm quite happy to mess around with them for a while, although I'm hoping my Dad will manage to reinstall the stuff by tomorrow or else my NaNo's going nowhere.

In other news, after the mystery MLIA postage in the sixth form area, my friend Joe and I decided that we should share the love (and lulz). We thus spent our lunchtime going round taping individual MLIA stories to random places and, given that we caught more than a few people (including my politics teacher) staring at the walls and giggling, I'd say that was time well spent.

And irish_injun, you are one awesome NaNo prize too. Have a great time in Florida!

( Today, my half-blind grandmother told me the princess on my t-shirt was very beautiful, and that I look just like her. My shirt had Wolverine on it. Bless her heart. MLIA )

And lastly, does anyone have any ideas for satire? My teacher dislikes my last two, so I'm a bit stuck. The only rule is that it would have to fit in a 750-word creative writing piece, so... yeah. Help, please?

I had a random girl from my sister's year come up to me in the Art Block just before lunchtime registration today and say "You're Anna's sister? Cool! Should I do Art for GCSE?' And so we went along to our respective form rooms together, having a lovely chat about the benefits and drawbacks of Art GCSE, at the end of which she grinned up at me, said I'd helped her a lot and said goodbye. It wasn't until just now that I realised I didn't have a clue what her name was.

Yeah, I fail, but still. I feel like a role model, you guys. xD

And then my English Lit. teacher said she'd give us all an extension to Monday for the essay that was due in Friday, which is a relief because I now have only three deadlines coming up in the next two days rather than four. And that evening, the boringness of orchestra rehearsals (we're playing backing for a piano sonata... ugh. Not that I don't like the sonata itself, but I'd prefer to have more than a note every other bar to play, thankyou very much.) was cancelled out by my Dad making pancakes for dinner.

I love days like this. And I just noticed that my new iPod NaNo is ridiculously shiny, which pleases me more than it probably should.

First things first: sabriel75- your parcel arrived! Thankyou so, so much for it! I am in love with the stickers, especially the Blues' Clues ones (which you're right about- everyone needs them). And Death Note! D'you know that they're the first piece of non-book merchandise I've got for that fandom so far?

*gives you HUGE GREAT INTERNET HUGS because you are amazing and wonderful and a total mind reader*

Has your card arrived yet?

In other news, my art project just did an about turn on me. I had my entire project planned out, and then I had a five-minute meeting with my teacher in which she explained exactly why that wasn't going to work as a result of the prompt we'd been given (which, really, it wasn't- I'd just been ignoring the glaringly obvious), and set me on a completely different track that is actually going to require me to work. The word itself is anathema to me; especially since I'm already trying to juggle being part of two orchestras, a choir, multiple coursework deadlines and NaNo 2009.

My free time life, it is gone.

On the upside, though, we're starting the carol season in Senior Choir, and we're playing ( this bit of gorgeousness in Symphony Orchestra. )

And you know I've been spending too much time on LJ when 'in a land of myth' conjures up images of a country made up of Hetalia fangirls, full of fascism/imperialism and seriously-wrong-but-that's-why-we-love-it kinks.

( Like lycoris before me, I've built this episode up to a ridiculous importance in my head. I know I will therefore be disappointed, but still. )

I was just listening to 'Gay or European?' (from Legally Blonde), and the sort-of extended Twilight trailer began on TV. It was all going normally until the point where the shots switch between Edward and various other vampires. The next few moments went a bit like this:

[Shot of Edward]
Legally Blonde Chorus: Gay! Officially gay!
[Shot of random vampire, the vampire leader, then back to Edward]
LBC: Officially gay, gay, gay, gay...
[Shot of Edward being jumped by female vampire]
LBC: Dammit!

And now I have Ribena all over my laptop keyboard, and my sister is giving me the oddest look ever. Seriously, the timing could not have been better if someone planned it.

Interests, yes. The only two people I've ever liked romantically were both a lot like me in what they did and enjoyed- the second practically introduced me to most of my interests at the time. They were both gorgeous too, I'll grant you, but that was a major factor. As to experiences, I usually tend to relate best to people who've had a relatively similar life to mine (middle class background, academic success, bit of a loner/outsider etc), but religious backgrounds I tend to ignore. Going back to the two people I fancied, the first was agnostic, the second a staunch atheist. We'd discuss religion quite objectively, despite the fact that I've pretty much been a Christian my whole life, and in a way it brought us closer because those discussions were something we'd really enjoy. So to the questions overall- yes, to a point. The only time I'll ever be turned off by someone's political/religious beliefs is if they're either pushy about them, or if said beliefs are absolutely ridiculous according to my admittedly limited worldview.

Oh, and since hervictory asked so nicely, ( this is the dolphin from my bedroom wall. )

We were studying Dancing at Lughnasa today, and one scene in particular in which a love interest of one of the main characters is the catalyst for her family falling apart. We were meant to make notes on it, but since someone ran off with my copy of the play, I had to ad-lib a bit. Which of course meant that I was the first to be picked on. I gave the scene a quick readthrough, decided that the love interest was being manipulative, and said so. My teacher asked me why that was, then, when I failed to give her any concrete evidence (I do a lot of my English based on gut feelings- it usually works), told me she didn't agree.

Trouble was, the only real evidence I had was that the love interest reminded me so much of The Ex it was almost ridiculous. His way of getting the girl to fall for him again was just like the way The Ex used to try and get me to do things when we were 'together'- but I wasn't going to say any of that in public, surrounded by people who know both of us but don't know we were going out.

Ugh. It's bad enough that he's constantly pouting whenever he sees me, but does he really have to get into my English Lit classes too?

Still, felt a bit happier at lunch, when the teacher randomly came up to me, grinned and told me the essay I handed in a few days back was 'brilliant'. I also have a fairly solid idea for my art project (about time!) and I've started Symphony Orchestra properly now. Not used to actually having to work as a double bass player before, and while I embarrassed myself once or twice with a couple of really basic sight-reading mistakes, it's a nice challenge. NaNo is also slowly but surely coming along (emphasis on the 'slowly'), and because it was my sister's birthday yesterday, chocolate cake abounds in our house!

To share this admittedly fairly personal happiness, I give you this:



Like I said to icequeenrex , I take absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for any time you might spend staring at/singing along with/acting out parts from the above. ;)


ETA: The major bad guy in my NaNo has taken it upon himself to fancy one of the major good guys. I... did not see that coming. Don't even like the pairing normally, but if I don't write it in then neither of them will be written properly. *grumbles*

Actually, scratch the above. All the bad guys bar two are getting the hots for various good guys. And their kinks are wrong. I blame re-reads of all_he_ever for this (yep, it's a Hetalia fanfic. A crossover, actually, and right now I don't think I'll ever look at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the same way again.)