Merry Exam Leave!

This year I think most of us are finding the holiday season perhaps a little damped by festive spread of revision that's been laid out before us by our ever loving parents and teachers.  Whatever you celebrate, be it Chanukah (which is most fun to say when you pronounce the 'Ch'), Yuletide nonsense or actual Christmas with Jesus in, you can't escape the feeling that you're incapable of dedicating yourself entirely to festivity and mirth this year.

I'm actually a pretty big fan of Yuletide nonsense myself.  Before we broke up for Christmas I had resolved to resign myself to worldliness this year, reasoning that Easter is the more spiritual period of the calendar and that the birth of Christ has nothing on his death and ressurection, thus allowing me to immerse myself fully in 'Christmas Magic', something I am a firm believer in.

Then Mr.Escort and his rag-tag band of prefects ruined it.  They hosted a Christmas service that went along the lines of 'We know nobody really cares, so let's look at all the morals of the Nativity that have the least to do with Jesus.'  I'm not kidding.  It awoke within me a deep sense of indignation.  A highlight has to be when we took a look at the shepherds and observed that they were working really hard at their job, which is great because they didn't have to do it and people might not have know if they didn't.  ('Now everybody work hard at their exams over Christmas.' was the unspoken whisper that seemed to punctuate the end of every sentence.)

Anyways, I got thinking about how the shepherds were great.  Not so much that they were diligent and worthy, but that they were the dregs of society and God chose to announce one of the most reverent events mankind has ever witnessed to them through a blinding choir of ineffably holy angels.  The whole ordeal brilliantly juxtaposes the glory of God with the meagreness of man and highlights the absurdity of God coalescing the two, desiring man to share his glory whilst humbling himself into the body of a man, achieving our righteousness and his glory through the self -sacrifice of Christ.  Yeah, I was quite ready to just enjoy Christmas on a pretty shallow level, then I remembered that it was actually pretty special that the guy who holds up time and cannot be contained got born, and what's more, all for our sake.  Mental.

Anyways, I took a lengthy interlude during that last paragraph to decorate the Christmas tree and fail at cutting simple festive shapes from biscuit dough.  I don't adopt a policy of complete, or even partial abstinence from Christmas gaiety, I just get (as our beloved friend Miss. Montana would say) the best of both worlds.

Something else you should all care about is my excursion to Chingford Mount.  Sometimes I do things and while I'm doing them I think 'other people should care about this'.  That is what this blog is for.

Last week, or maybe a couple of weeks ago, I went to Chingford Mount to order myself a new one of those magic band cards.  I probably shouldn't write that on my blog, but feel complimented that I naively trust you as part of my entire readership.  Anyways, I went down to yonder Mount and did said task, but then found myself in a commercial district with adequate time and money on my hands.  I am beginning to realise that this story is not very exciting, but it's too late to stop now.  Long story short, I went to the pound shop (I have a shameless love of pound shops) and bought some 'Wheetos vs. Alien Invaders'.  Pound shops are where I get my fix for obscure foods, and I was left well sated by my 'Wheetos vs. Alien Invaders', not so much because they have a mildly toffee-ish flavour or contain different shapes which could represent alien invaders if there was enough money in it, but mostly because I can say that I'm going to have a bowl of 'Wheetos vs. Alien Invaders', which is four words long and can't really be shortened in any way without losing meaning.  It's like I'm eating an entire concept.

I also went to few charity shops, which is where I get my fix for 'industry defining games' or 'games that are old enough to run on my computer.'  It's like reading the classics, only much less impressive.  I left a shop that had something to do with cancer having bagged a copy of the first ever Tomb Raider game.  My mother observed me playing it and remarked that she'd heard 'most men just like chasing that behind'.  Whilst this did help to sell the game when it first came out (and, interestingly enough, was predominantly accidental), Mother Lovell and I have little to worry about in terms of wholesome thinking, because whilst I'm sure she's conceptually 'hot', as you young ruffians would say, the graphics of the time have rendered her hilariously bun.

Great.  I'm off to do a physics paper.

Mostly Driving

I had my fourth driving lesson today, adn I got inot third gear for the first time.  I've been fighting the nagging suspicion that I'm not a fantastic driver, but it seems to be going now that I've started to get the hang of my steering.  Apparently steering is my weakest point, whcih I see as a little amusing because it seems to be the most critical and fundamental pillar of driving.  My driving instructor is a great guy called Dave Harper, he teaches well and says funny things like 'I mean that sinceriously'.  My favourite line of all time was the solid gold that I had the pleasure hearing just an hour or so ago:

'I don't mean this in a bad way, but do you have a problem?'

We were talking about concentration.  I said mine was clincially bad, and he proceeded (in a way that reminds me a little of Mr. Molloy) to change his wording, so that instead of saying 'Look over to the middle of the road', he would say things like 'Put your concentration to the middle of the road.  I would have been patronised, but I think it was actually pretty effective.  Sometimes he explains things to me and I realise that I've just been making minimal responses whilst thinking about something else entirely. 

I'm afraid that driving's about the most interesting thing that's happened to me in a while - it's been a pretty average week.  I've had the odd teacher on my back about work.  Turns out I'm supposed to be doing it at home as well.  Mr Brock spoke in rhyme today.

I'm beggining to realise how terrible this blog post is.  The structure is simplistic and the punctuation unengaging.  Look at this, it's just one simple, two-clause sentence after another. 

The fire is ablaze.  The cat is cute.  I can not stroke him.  He will meow.  He will bite.

Look!  Look at the cat!  The cat is cuddly!

"Meow" says the cat.  Oh, what fun! 

Christmas is nearly here!  Goodbye, everyone!

All the Fun

Generic title, generic times.  I've been having fun lately.  The first bit of the fun starts where we left off last time, at the much anticipated science museum trip.  It was awesome, even though they wouldn't let us into launch pad, and forbade me access to the double good grain mover.  Apparently only under fourteens can access that stuff, which is stupid because they deserve it the least.  I did, however, make an excursion to 'The Future'.  The future, apparently, has a plethora of overhead projectors.  In fact they're not even all over head.  Basically, it would seem that the sun burnt out and humanity was saved at the last minute by a ridiculous excess of projectors, which bathe the entire globe in a multicoloured, interactive ambience.  It's like a featureless, creepy utopia populated entirely by sleek grey tables where the only activity going is voting on issues.  Maybe they're waiting until there's a unanimous decision, but currently (or rather, eventually) inhabit a kind of indecisive purgatory where nobody can agree on whether we want helpful house robots or manbirth.  Man birth is wrong because it is weird enough for the weirdness to have ethical implications.  The house robot thing was a little biased.  Most people ended up saying 'No', after playing a game in which you are a baby avoiding deadly automatons designed to stop you from having fun.  It literally tells you the amount of 'Broken Ankles' you've received (future people have more than two) and then asks you to vote on whether you want to fill your future home with unmanned, child snatching drones.

It was pretty hard to keep everyone together, which was convenient for some people who seemed to get lost together, just the two of them, an uncanny amount.  There was a plenitude of 'banter' (as you young people call it), followed by an abundance of Nandos, which was not only delicious, but also yummy.

On Sunday, me Andy Lovell and David Glover all went to 4Woodford, (The '4' stands for 'for', so it's like a cool word play) in which we partook in some good actual worship and stuff, then spent most of the evening in muffled church-hysteria when we thought that the praying lady said 'Transformers, we pray.' and 'parrot organisations.'  We were particularly giggly during a prayer about people-trafficking, and the taboo of this only served to further fuel the fire of our predicament.  After we left, the silliness culminated in the form of David Glover chasing me with a bike that had its front tyre saturated in Andy Lovell's urine.  He got  me a little bit, but I think it was mostly gone by then.

I'm going to stop now, because for me personally, nothing can top that. 

Half Term Funsies

Hello everyone.  The funsies are yet to begin properly, but it is half term and they are nearly upon us.  It looks like this post'll be a two - parter, I'm leaving in ten minutes for a leaders meeting over at the Bridge.  Fun, early morning times. 

Cid has been super duper cuddly lately.  He came in my room on two separate instances this morning, both within five minutes of each other, and jumped onto my bed for super catsy cuddles time.  All your cats are rubbish compared to mine.  Especially if you don't have any cats.

Five minutes left now.  Yeah, I'm actually a pretty slow writer.

I've been having a right laugh lately fulfilling my newfound role as head of publicity in a super secret special society, and I'm double eager for our first out of school excursion on Thursday.  I can't disclose the location or anything, but let's just say there'll be a lot of wheat being moved in a futile cycle by eager and naive children who can't perceive the ironic foreshadowing in their joy at seeing hours of their clammy labour amount to absolutely nothing due to the obvious meaninglessness of everything they're investing in.  We're not going to that museum from Pilgrim's Progress, but we may as well be.

[Second sitting]

I'm back.  I'm now properly engaged in some half term relaxed funsies, even thought it's still technically only the weekend.  The legend that is Izzie Keane preached up a storm last night at XL, and, in theological terms, murked man.  She's taken up five pages of my precious preaching notes with the exact opposite of claptrap.  Mad stuff like the love we're called to show not being based on emotion or like, but compassion and (for want of a less gay word) heartache.  Also some cheeky convictions splashed in, like not being argumentative with people who think you're stupid, because you're basically just defending your own intellect, pride and discernment whilst telling yourself you're 'witnessing'. Still, at the end of the night the best point was generally agreed to be (and I quote) 'Just take drugs.'  Both a hillariously taboo blunder and a sharp, concise observation that knowing God isn't a constant stream of spiritual euphoria.  Also I'm taking drugs now.

Today's been another mad one, with none other than Peter Butt (I know) delivering an awesome word on the doctrine and practice of impartation and a spirit led, evangelistic lifestyle at some kind of leader's meeting I got roped into somehow.  Challenging stuff, plus awesome brunch consisting entirely of all the best fruit and a selection of tea-time treats.

I think I should be packing now for going to Wales on Monday, because I'm at my lovelly grandma's all day tommorow, but my mother's not here to encourage me, rendering me completely incapable of any organisation whatsoever.  Speaking of Wales (that place I'm headed for my gap year), uni choices and the like are still mad.  I mostly don't want to go, but am lacking the necessary planning / direction to justify this.  Praying time, says I. 

Also, I'm still massive hyped for secret society outing on Thursday, and really love this song (like, in a not cool, I think it's really lovelly kind of way.  I know, double lame.) 

Peace out, avid readers.

Wait, turns out I'm not done.  Me and Claire (read 'I', by myself, while Claire was somewhere in the house) were busting out some moves to aforementioned daft punk, and I was reminded of my recent realisation. 

I don't really like parties.

I know it sounds really lame, but I just don't find drunk people exciting, and I think it would be really awesome to meet up with my friends and dance wildly whilst doing stupid things, but the best thing about parties is that there are loads of awesome people there and alcohol (in my somewhat limited experience of parties, I admit) seems to dilute the personality and behaviour of someone until they're just over excited, uninhibited, and altogether formless and bleak. 

Cid has maintained his cuteness throughout the day, and is currently being cute in a lying down with his tummy in the air sort of way. 

Actually for real now,

GLD.

A scrap with the fuzz.

A lot's happened in the last while, but I can't really remember that far back, so I based the title on very recent and extremely exciting things.

Andy Lovell, David Glover and I were all walking back from Bridge 2 in Buckhurst hill to Andy's own abode in Woodford.  We'd had a pretty live night at XL and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  It actually still seems like it was a good idea now.  I guess it was a good idea. 

We spent the first few minutes of the walk talking about muggers and what we would do if confronted with one.  We all had this wonderful and naive idea that muggers are stupid, and that if you talk to them or just (as Andy Lovell put it) 'completely spazz out', they get really confused and run away.  I like to think that I could talk my way out of getting mugged, and I've heard mad stories of Christians who get mugged and then start shouting in tongues at the knife wielding delinquents threatening to stab them.  Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, you'll probably just back away if the person who's wallet your trying to take starts yelling gibberish at you with disturbing fluency.

Anyways, I started thinking it would be hillarious and ironic if we all got mugged.  What happened next was equally hillarious, and also somewhat ironic.  We walked past Woodford station and then on down the foresty road when a police dog van stalled behind us and then pulled up.  "It's alright lads, I don't think she's pulling us over." Joked Andy. 

She was.  It doesn't even stop there.  She gets out the van, approaches us and says policing things like 'Excuse me boys, can I just ask you where you're going?"
We all tell her we're going to Andy's house and, when questioned further, that we had come from Buckhurst Hill.  It turns out that a crime had happened on a train coming from Buckhurst Hill, and we'd just left the station, which probably made her a bit suspicious when she asked how we'd gotten here and we said we'd walked.

"Yeah sorry," she says "It's just that a suspect's been reported to have been wearing a jumper that looks a lot like yours." 

We're a little bewildered.  She's talking to David Glover, who's wearing a very Glover-esque mulitcolored, stripy, handknitted number.  He pulls it off nicely, but if you saw someone wearing it you would know for a fact that they had never commited any crime in their entire life.  She does a little bit of radioing and, just like in the movies, three police cars all pull up at exactly the same time around us, six constables get out and mill around in a circle.  They look like they kind of already know we aren't criminals, and are probably thinking sexist and unproffesional things about how their female colleage has managed to "apprehend" another "suspect".  Then one of them looks Dave up and down and says, "No, that's not him.  He wouldn't have survived."  Survived?  Seriously?  This is all pretty exciting now.  They let us go, and on the way back we see a low flying police helicopter doing a sweep, and a train stopped on the tracks, with all the lights on and all the doors open.  We're very excited, and I keep wanting to be arrested again for Dave's illegal jumper, but it doesn't happen. 

Anyways, my shortlived scuff with the feds has come to an end and now I back to my first day of proper school. 

****
(More than a month later)

Hello again.  I didn't publish this, so now I will.  I'm back on the blogging hype now.  You've heard it all before.  Anyway, hopefully you'll be getting your regular fix of Dave a little more frequently now.  Also on my list of things to fail at committing to are:
- Resuming my proactive approach to study.
- Understanding / doing UCAS things
- Writing outside of study and blogging.

In recent news, I just handed in a personal statement applying for engineering.  It was computer science a couple of months ago, and I might make the next one English.  Fun, indecisive times.  I'm making a poll as to what I should study at uni.  I don't really care what you think, but it adds user interactivity.  Maybe I should put some of my smaller decisions down to a user vote.  I like that idea. 

Audacious

I'm in the in-between turn around betwixt '!Audacious' [sic] and WEC, two of those happy clappy Christian summer things I do.  Basically, Audacious was phenomenal, and this post is an overview of what madness and antics I've been up to for the last four days, tied in nicely with some lovely things I learnt.

Perhaps the most stupid thing I did was to deliberately lose a competition in order to cram a free haircut into my hectic schedule, only to realise my own foolishness when the Audacious preshow over ran with me still left on a stage in front of over a thousand people, with a professional hairdresser trying her best to finish one side of my head with severely inadequate clippers while a presenter attacked the other side of my scalp with craft scissors.  The resulting style was much better than you might think, but not the extent that I won't be shaving it all off at the next available opportunity.

Audacious is fun, but the best part is undoubtedly what you come home with.  I learnt some great little things, like that I need to change my attitude towards people God has appointed as leaders and understand that they exist solely to serve the people they are leading.  I've also realised that whilst I have the kind of character that makes me fine with dancing in front of complete strangers and having my head shaved on stage, I'm not actually bold.  I'm naturally an extrovert 'popular sanguine', as it were, but that doesn't make me bold.  Boldness isn't about being comfortable with doing things, it's about doing things even though you're uncomfortable with them.  Hopefully that means that if things were ever uncomfortable before, they'll get even less comfortable now that I've been inspired to ditch any shame I might previously have had about the liberating madness that is Christ overcoming death and all that.

I don't mean to wear you down with all this personal revelation stuff, but for me a massive highlight of Audacious was hearing about people who'd sacrificed they're lives to Christ and realising just how nang the gospel is.  I'm aware that saying the word nang is uncool and perhaps a little annoying, as is droning on about God, but it's hard not to come home a little inspired when you've heard gang members talking about how they're praying for wisdom and protection so that their family won't be attacked when they break the news to their gang that they're ditching their no-hope, dead end lifestyle for the tangible and freeing hope that they've found in Christ.

It was my birthday yesterday.  I had a lovely time and got some wonderful things (mostly instruction from God and a free haircut).  A lot of people wished me happy returns on my wall, with varying degrees of sincerity / relevance and I liked the ones that I liked because I see that as a pretty good way to use the like function.  After I'd skimmed through all my birthday messages I scrolled the big 'main wall' thing to see what was going down and saw a photograph of a jet gravestone made of polished marble.  It was that of my cousin, Dawn-Joy, who died aged 22 four years ago today, the day after my birthday.  I remember something a pastor called Rich Wilkerson Jr. (a man who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio and can't stop making jokes about having sex with his wife) was talking about what we're willing to sacrifice for Christ, and how when we die nothing on earth matters in the slightest.  All of a sudden I find myself hit by the previously almost unnoticed juxtaposition of the anniversaries of my birth and my cousin's tragic death and I'm not so much disheartened as I am inspired by the life my cousin led, and the uplifting verse on her grave that reads 'for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.'

 When I read that and remember the life of Dawn-Joy Lovell, I want nothing more than to cast aside every inhibition I have, stop investing worry and doubt into this life, which will be gone in the blink of an eye, and live as a man who recognises the goodness of God above the inferiority of everything this world has to offer.  My cousin lived like someone who was entirely ready to die, and in the suddenness and tragedy of her death I've seen that everything we build up on earth is destined to be destroyed or fall into the hands of some other bozo, and thus the only investment you can make in life of any realness is to exchange all the temporary crap for an everlasting relationship with the God who made you, and the more you commit to it, the better everything is.

Sorry if you didn't like the post being pretty much entirely on revelations from God, but that's all that's really happened for the last four days.  Peace out, haters.

Super Shirtless Summer!

I love being shirtless.  I am shirtless right now, and it is liberating.  It's really nice to be able to feel the air moving round your torso and the like whilst being unchained from our society's gripping regime of shirt wearing. 

I am definitely escaping the clutches of society - I leave for audacious tomorrow, where there's all kinds of that super hippie spiritual Christian breakthrough stuff, acompanied by the usual regime of shouting, praying, generic funsies and all round madness on a 7.30 to 1 am schedule.  After that, it's two weeks of WEC, where I'm going to it, then leading it for small people.  That's more of the old Jesus stuff with the whole 'in a field' twist.  (And during the later week, the wonderful twists that are 'being in charge' and 'attacking children')

Going away for three weeks straight (There's a turnaround between the two events that spans about 10 hours, most of which I will be asleep for.) requires a three week supply of trousers.  I happen to have the wonderful combination of two of the worlds best ailments - being dangerously manly and dyspraxic.  That's not the sort of lifestyle that really supports having trousers and wearing them, but the whole 'regime of society' thing requires that I do this.  What this means is that I have to be constantly replenishing a small supply of trousersat the same rate that they are destroyed by falling out of things, or pavement grating my knees after being thrown off my kickboard.  I don't fall of my kickboard anymore, because it is dead, but the lack of trousers it gifted me have haunted in a way far more real than the painful memories of its passing.

By way of conluding this drawn out and woeful period of my life (represented mimetically by the above nine line paragraph that basically reads 'I don't have trousers.') I went trouser and short shopping today, and came home with everything I left with, only less money and more trousers and shorts.  Through this proccess of money-losing and trouser-gaining, I saw a great many things.  Most of them were trousers (or indeed shorts).  Some of the shorts were orange, and I nearly bought them, but they were for fat people.  Apparently a lot of shorts are for fat people, because there was hardly anything in my size.  If I were a woman I'd feel really good about it, but I'm just tired from looking for shorts.  I am also dissapointed by society, because today I realised that a lot of shorts for men have flowers on, and regardless of what anyone says or thinks, that is not cool.  Flowers, gentlemen, are for girls.

Also my sisters and mum helped a friend of ours move and they found an old gameboy and gave it to us.  When I say old gameboy, I mean first edition 'first handheld videogames console to have ever existed' kind of old.  It's all rather nifty, because it came with Super Mario Land, and Ruth just have me SML 2 for my birthday.  (It's in four days, buy me stuff.)

Anyway, roll on summer.  Have a good one, avid readers!

Live One

Mate.  This post is live.  I've got no idea why you keep coming back here, but a process of logical elimination would point towards it not having anything to do with regular posting.  This means that it must have something to do with the content of these posts, which is good, because this post is going to be good.  Remember our old friend logic from two sentences ago?  Some of you may have used him yet again to deduce that the goodness of the post is directly related to the madness of my current circumstances / experiences, and thus you will have deduced that everything has been lovely of late.

One of the lovely things is that Andy Lovell was in my house a few hours ago.  We did procrastinating and bible reading, as well as some manly 'tactile lethargy'.  In case nobody told you, Andy Lovell is a good guy.

"A lot of the good things happened over this last year or so, but it was all worth it in the end. I'm so happy that I got to meet all you people. You've been the best people ever.

Even when I lost my foot in a plastic dinosaur recycle plant, and the council said they couldn't get it back. I couldn't do anything because I though I was a chicken but you guys, you hounded them like angry bees in a freezer. If it wasn't for you, I would now be in someone else's digestion.I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve, but whatever. Tea and Crumpets and all that".

Ruth Lovell wrote all that while I left my computer up.  It's another time again.  I know you guys are probably getting tired of the posts being written over several confusing sittings, but it means I have more madness fresh in my mind and ready for the transcribing.  

I'm sensing that this post is going to be rather long, but I've still decided to keep the extract from Ruth, because it ties in rather nicely with the subject content, which will take us back in time...

wibble      wobble 

            wibble      wobble

wibble          wobble

It's last weekend.  I'm in Wales.  I'm speaking in engaging present tense.  All these things are happening because I'm at a weekend run by World Horizons (bunch of Christians doing the next level gospel spreading ting.) for people considering gap years.  I've met a lovely chap by the name of John Bamber, and we've spoken complete nonsense for about an hour.  Not just silly, satirical conversation - hardcore nonsense, straight-up mindless drivel, like an enigma which is mostly a joke.  

It was an awesome weekend, and I learnt a lot.  There organisation is so big on the living by faith thing that nobody working for them gets paid, they're all supported by charitable individuals and ultimately God.  They've got this thing down to the extent that if you can't afford your gap year, they just let you do it, knowing the money will turn up.  I've heard enough testimonies from various individuals within W.H to see why that is.   

I also heard some pretty rad missionary stories.  My favourite is this one:

"In September 1866, Rev. Robert Jermain Thomas with his clothes on fire leapt overboard the vessel he was on outside of Pyongyang with his remaining Bibles and wadded to the bank and frantically gave them out. The entire crew were executed. Thomas’ executioner accepted the last red Bible from this martyr, and as Tertullan said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” "

It gets better.  The guy who executed him was one of those new age creative types, so he used the pages of the Bible to wallpaper his house.  (If you've heard accounts like this before, you know the guy's in for it now.)    Tottering round his house, the executioner starts reading the Bible pages, commits his life to Christ and feeds the growing Christian movement of the time, which culminated in the 'Pyongyang Great Revival (1907-1910)'. 

At the time, Korea was pretty much unreached by the gospel, but now there are probably a few thousand Christians there, who are among the most persecuted in the world.

*Side note*
Just read '.  So:-' on a sheet of paper next to me.  That is not punctuation.

Anyways, I'm sure you're dizzy from all this time travel , so I'll throw you back into the present.  I just got back from Southend, where Joe and I came 7th at Time Crisis II.  I also had an icecream, a large bannana milkshake and a new twisty madness thing from McDonalds.  (Those things really are insane - have you tried slurping chocolate syrup through a straw?)

Peace out, famalam.

Writing

I'm in the common room, writing, while Elliot Munroe sits beside me doing the same.  He is doing writing for English, and I am updating my blog, yet I'm pretty sure my writing is more creative (at the present time) than his.  This is not to put down the talent of Mr. Munroe as a writer- he is a creative and talented individual.  It's just that, despite the fact he is technically writing a fictitious piece, the confines he is held by in  his writing have caged his freedom of expression into a tiny, conformist box.  He is doing homework for his English lesson, and upon learning this, one of the first things I found myself asking was 'What's it based on?'.  Upon saying this, I realised how contorted the subject I love had become.  For me, English at A Level teaches you to write the same way that driving theory books teach you to drive.  My love of reading and knowledge has kept me occupied feeding off the tit-bits of other people's creativity, but about a week ago, when Mr. Evans said 'The coursework next year is not dissimilar from the creative writing this year.', I decided that English, at an academic level, might not be for me.  I love writing - I love to express abstract cocepts through an ellaborate array of devices, or simply harness the sheer power of words, but I feel that my Lit/lang course has influenced me no more than a wider reading pattern would have done.  Except all the long words, which help me seem more clever than I really am.  (Big shout out to Dictionary.com flashcards.)

Also, me and Josh got really close to a fox at school and everyone was watching us, awestruck, from the library.

*ATTENTION READER*
The previous post was originally intended to be written in two sittings, but it has been published prematurely in the light of the sheer excellence and exhilaration surrounding the next post, which has entirely displaced it.

No post post.

I want everyone to know that as much as I would like to update my blog now, it is nearly sleepy time, and I have other commitments.  Exciting ones.

I have now lied twice in just over a line - there clearly is a post (but this is it), and you probably wouldn't find the other commitments exciting.  I'm not going to tell you what they are, that way you can pretend they actually are exciting, and speculate them.  Build some hype - something pretty coolish is going to be unleashed in around, say, 28 days.

More winning.

I have more winning to do.  I have to win in the competition with myself to update this beast of a blog more regularly; an I.T project with an unnamed (and probably dissapointing) prize; a whole host of exams to win at and a bunch more Team Fortress 2 to win, because it is free forever now, and Ruth brought it home on her laptop.  (Also if you actually care, check out the new 'Meet the Medic' video.)

Suprisingly, the addition of these new things to win combined with things I already win (such as the hearts of girls everywhere) hasn't really put much of a strain on me.  A few months back, I wasn't updating my blog because I had loads of exams, but now I'm just not updating my blog because I'm uber chillaxed and can't be bothered.  School is a bit of a doss at the moment - physics is this nice self - study thing that isn't too hard, English is literally making posters and all that stuff you do in year eight, I.T is all hands on CS5 tekkers, and maths is still maths, which is alright because I have Mr.Paul.

The kittens in my house are stupidly cute, but they have to go soon.  I'll probably start scrounging off of David. G, because his kittens have only just opened their eyes, and have whole levels of cute to progress through. 
Also, scrolling boxes are gone.  Green borders live on!  Thanks for the feedback, adoring fandom.

Got Chrome

Google Chrome, that is, but it's just as pimpin' as any other homophones of the same word that might have crossed your mind.  It's got a simple interface and feels faster because all the adverts told me it was, but the best part of it is that everyone else is using I.E, and I feel like I'm really technotastic because I've got my own little operating system.  It's like a line it this awesome rap - 'these self proclaimed kings bragging 'cause they own Chrome.'  That's me.

Tell you something crazy awesome - I was sifting through my pockets for change a couple of weeks ago, and I pulled out a ten penny piece.  Only it wasn't a ten penny piece; it was a Franc that had been coined in 1976, and the internet tells me it's actually a Swiss Helvetian Franc, and would be worth a bit of wonga if it was maybe 70 years older.  I also found a Guernsey 20 pence piece, which isn't strictly legal tender but is accepted by most banks.  I've put them both in a little compartment of my sister's semi-precious stones shelf, and I think I'm probably collecting unusual coins now.  I guess I'm so awesome that the universe had to balance itself out by making me a little sadder.  

Tell you another interesting thing.  I've had the pleasure of the company of a one Alex Kasper Du-gal for the last few days, he is a great and long-standing friend of mine.  We were going to make some flapjack, because that's what hard men do, but the shop down the road had no golden syrup.  Upon discovering this, I bought some 'Limited Edition Vanilla Ice Cream' Krusha (that awesome stuff you put in milk to make milkshakes)  This was two days ago, and I finished the Krusha yesterday.  Just to clarify, this stuff's like fruit juice cordial, only you put less of it in, and I don't think there was even enough milk in my house to make enough instant milkshake to deplete a whole bottle of the stuff.  This would be partially explained by the fact that I had a flask-full of straight Krusha, because (at a stretch of imagination and naivety) it loosely resembles whiskey and is kind of strong tasting and bad for you.  So yeah, I'm wondering what the effects of drinking a bottle of milkshake cordial in a day could be.  I'm sure we'll find out soon.

There are still kittens in my house, and they're still adorable.  One was playing with a stick that belonged to my cat yesterday and lost it, so the cat ran into the front room, drove him into the floor and mauled him with his hind legs.  Mostly my cat's a really good mum, and cats are kind of supposed to beat up their kids a bit - it teaches them the harshness of life.  If you're confused by the persons in that last sentence, we call our female cat a 'he' most of the time, because we're too lazy to change our perception of his gender.

My dad has also been teaching kittens about the harshness of life through several educational challenges like 'Escape from this really tall basket I just put you in' and 'Sit inside this closed fireplace for a while'.  I've been helping him out with a good bit of 'Tolerate me rubbing my nose on your tummy while you're trying to sleep.'  

All in all, the kittens have a sweet existence and an enviable lifestyle.  A kitten day is separated into fighting, sleeping, hiding from mummy, following mummy around, being beaten up by mummy, climbing on stuff and finding a new place to defecate every time the litter box is moved to your previous spot.  Cid (who you should know by now is my cat) just meows a lot, and seems quite affectionate but also a trifle bewildered.  

Whelp, today is another banging day, and I'm leaving in about an hour to scoot to Duncan Tarrant's house, where I shall meet with him and David Glover to do man things.  Speaking of man things, I have the next hour to eat breakfast and lunch.  I'd compress the two into brunch, only I'm not some kind of healthy eating pansy.

Also, notice the poll to the right.  It's poorly designed, but possibly the only one of any real consequence the blog has yet seen.  For once, I am seriously appealing to your opinion.  Google Chrome does not know the word 'blog'.

To be honest, my life's been relatively void of excitement or even basic content these last few days.  It's exam leave, which basically means I stay at home whole time and do revision.  I mean, I'm currently thinking of the less inane things that have happened in the last few days and I find myself scratching round my brain for something more exciting than watching the baftas.  I'm not gonna lie, this is more just a post for the sake of keeping up appearances.  I suppose you could ask 'what appearances?'.  But don't you ask it, hater. (There's some moderate / bleeped out language in that link.  Consider it disclaimed.)

You might remember that one time I talked about watching the baftas.  I implied they weren't exciting.  They weren't, but they sort of were.  Graham Norton was annoying and made heavily scripted and awkward jokes, but for the me the highlight was when the people from 'Sherlock' lost the YouTube nomination award to The Only Way is Essex, and didn't even smile politely.  They didn't look angry or anything, and I don't think they particularly wanted to win, they just seemed a little disgusted that such daytime television would be invited to the BAFTAs, let alone win anything. Frankly, I too was disgusted, and I'm glad the rest of the awards are chosen by judges.  Nothing is quite as crude as public preference.

I mostly watched the awards because they showed Doctor Who in the audience at the beginning, but he didn't win anything.  I think they just showed him so that people like me would sit down for an hour and a half in the delusional hope that The Doctor might just say something for half a minute, which would legitimated make the whole thing worth doing.  It's like when I realised I would probably watch 'Chalet Girl' just because there's a picture of Bill Bailey on the adverts.  There are few famous people I really care about, but Bill Bailey and Doctor Who are amongst them.  Incidentally, I've decided that I might like Dr.Song's character, but just really dislike Alex Kingston's acting.  The wiki-leaping I just underwent to bring you the name of said actor has also taught me, via a slight diversion, that Matt Smith originally dreamed of being a professional footballer until he has a back injury.  He was also originally in 'In Bruges', but unfortunately the scenes he was featured in were edited out of the final version of the movie.  Interestingly enough, he also worked with Billy Piper in Secret Diary of a Call Girl (one of my all time favourite T.V shows) shortly after she was The Doctors assistant and, unknown to either of them at the time, shortly before he was the doctor.

 I've decided to continue this tomorrow, when I'm sure something terrific and exciting will happen.  Right now I'm going to try and make the links appear as white instead of black, because I'm classy like that.

Okay, I just realised that the link colours were fine as they are and I had just confused myself, but I found a cool little CSS box and used my limited knowledge of coding to pimp this place out proper like.  I'm talking about several posts on one page, all on that next level 'overflow:auto;'.  You like green borders?  I can type them.

Also decided not to save this post for another day, because I just accidentally published it.

Not really a Post

We all love layout consistency, so I've decided that every time there isn't a lovely interactive poll for you to be getting on with, the space will be filled with what is undoubtedly the most loved gadget on Blogger - a random picture of the Whittelsbach diamond.

Undead

This blog isn't dead.  This blog is cursed.  Through my own laziness, I have brought down upon this blog a fate worse that death - immortality.

Other blogs are dying around it - Yasmin Levi Miller's has officially stopped, but there is no sense of overwhelming victory in seeing it go - it's reached the end of its time and slipped peacefully out of existence.  Yet this blog, fruitless and parched though it is, cannot follow suit.  It goes on, completely un-refreshed and un-updated, abandoned even by its followers, and yet my pride will not allow it to die.  I would rather see it crawl face down and forgotten through a desert of lathargy and sluggardness than grant it the mercy of its own demise. There will never be a time when my own self interest (and the illusion of other's interest in myself) will be so little as to not sustain these pages in their thirsty coma, hardly alive, but by no means dead.  So this is the first update for a long time, and for all we know it could mark the start of a season, or be merely a mirage of hope, followed by the same unceasing silence.

/BLATANT TONE CHANGE/

Hey, the title of this blog is vaguely related to zombies, and I love talking about those.  I don't actually have anything to say about them at the moment, but I'm sure these guys do.  (It's a cool site for people are interested in such things, me and some random bozo joined it.)

Like Minecraft, dying repeatedly and feeling generally inadequate?  Try this.

Now that my undirected linking episode has come to an end, lets talk about something serious:

Mission Slovakia
There's no way I can talk about this in any detail without crashing the internet from words, but it was awesome. Highlights were:

• Visiting a disabled people's home and finding out that 'disabled people's home' is the Slovak word for 'this thing where you play loads of instruments at once; rave to Shakira and coming of age songs about an orange; eat pizza; pour out a vat of tennis balls and then use a baseball bat to hit them into the windows whilst jumping on a trampoline.
• Shooting a pigeon in the head with a nerf gun.  Also spending ages trying to catch pigeons.
• Meeting a guy called Jacub (Ya-kub)
• Yakub commiting his life to god
• Bare other people doing likewise.  (If you don't consider that a highlight, I would open mindedly point out that you are bozo.)

So yeah, Vensko 2010 was awesome beyond compare, and all my work I thought I wouldn't get done because of going got done and everything was fine.  God totes answers the prayer.

Totes...? Totally?  I'm sure that's a really cool way to abbreviate things.

Well, this post is rapidly losing direction and meaning, not to mention my upcoming exams, so I'm going to quite while I'm ahead.  See you whenever, roaring fandom!

Velme Dobre!

Well, I§m in slovakia.  I§m just tzping as I normallz would, so z and y are mixed up, and the apostrophe is a funnz squiggle.  It§s alwazs fun to read stuff with ys and zs swapped around anzwazs.

I can§t blog too long, because it§s important to be all social and teamz, but there is an awful lot to blog about.  Everz night we have highlights from the daz, and there§s never enough time to do them all.  As alwasz, the Slovaks have been incrediblz hospitable, providing us with free piyya, their time and a varied enteurage of food containg creme fresh and poppz seeds.  The food here is interesting, thez seem to see dessert and main course all as one crayz meal, so creme fresh and rasberrz sauce pancakes is a prettz average lunch. 

The Slovakia pit fights got off to a verz quick start this zear.  I§ve set mzself up for two this evening = one against Duncan Tarrant, to settle the rivalrz that has existed between us all daz, and another with Hazden Mclean, who thinks he can beat me.  We were plazing killer the other daz, and we decided that whoever got fouled next would have everzone take a shot at them.  I slzlz deceived him into catching the ball and he ran awaz.  Nobodz chased him, he§s onlz making it worse for himself, and I§m suspicious that when we finish our fight 9i.e I finish him0 that he§s going to get nicelz bundled bz 15 men between the ages of 14 and 30.

There§s a real feeling amongst the team that this zear§s going to see some spiritual and supernatural breakthrough, and we§re expecting healings, which is great because we§re goíng to old people§s homes and and schools for the mentallz handicapped.  Healing people with mental issues can seem a little taboo, even amongst Christians, but God is discerning and able, so we figure he can take charge.  He has so far in praise and prazer times, thez§ve been awesome, but also reallz focused around equipping and readzing the team for what lies ahead. 

I told a church full of people zesterdaz that I had a gun in mz bag, I think it didn§t help that thez didn§t know it was plastic.  It was a little awkward.  Other higlights include talking about wave particle dualitz for ages on the train, which had proper little compartments like in old movies, and an acoustic jam with Dave about 20 minutes ago, which started with two impromptu sketchz jams, and rounded off with a good wholesome bit of §Blessed be the name of the Lord§.

We§ve been plazing plentz of this and mafia and cards and the like.  If zou don§t get the link, read the comments on the video.

Timey Times

Me and Yinka were talking the other about going backwards in time.  I think we agreed that you could go forwards in time, and perhaps adjust the speed at which you do so (I think that travelling faster through distance is also travelling slower through time, becuase it's like the line of the distance/time graph would get steeper, but you can't really say what has increased.)  I think Einstein already cracked this one.  Anyways, you can't cover infinite distance in no time, because you just can't.  It's like this - completely unfathomable.

I've been ill today.  I had to miss church, and I ate three bowls of rice krispies, but I only really ate one of them, if you catch my drift.  I think this could have been caused by David G's reheated bacon cheese and potato peng pie, which was peng, but somewhat suspicious.  His reheated more than mine, so he's probably alright.

I saw 'The Eagle' yesterday.  A lot of people talked without dying or killing anyone, and the whole film was like 'who's really the good guy?', which meant that people only really died at the beginning and end.  It's weird how things that are cool in movies are lame in real life, like people dying and people smoking.

Well, it's been a rather short post today, because nobody really wants to know all the gristly detail of my shortlived suffering. Good eve. 

Selflection

You dig the blending.  I just wrote this out of boredom.  It's not really hugely worth reading, but now I'm only appealing to your curiosity.  This isn't really thought out or double checked, it's just typed out as I think it.  It's mostly the opposite of a philosophy essay.  The more I think about this, the more I realise it's not that good at all.  It shall be reserved for the most hardcore of fans, those people that are wonderful enough to use direct URLs or be subcribed to yonder blog.  It will also help me get into the habit of using the blog to post things other than just stuff.  Anyone else like this song?  (plus hernia-inducing original)I find myself liking the old Crosby, Stills and Nash triple.

*****   <-- I like those

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates




I am not doing any work, because I am writing a write about being elsewhere. A guy on youtube is playing me this song he wrote. It has no words. It is full of guitar and makes you think about things. It loops this same little riff for the most part, and is befitting of this mood of being tired of work.

I sometimes get this thing where I realise I’ve been doing the same thing for days. Everyday I wake up, go to school, spend seven hours ticking a box on an adult literacy demographic and go home. Then I play games on the computer or do whatever evening activity is scheduled, toil at work because seven hours isn’t enough and sleep. Then I wake up and wait for the weekend, all the while carrying out the same five day routine. At the weekend I do something generic, sometimes not actually leaving the house, spend Sunday wishing for more weekend and then spend Monday doing Monday.

I’m not a pessimistic person, I quite like school. The work can be interesting, and I have some cool friends and witty teachers, but it’s always the same. I’d miss it if I left, and I enjoy coming back after the holidays, but I look forward to the holidays during school.

We look forward to whatever isn’t, we chase whatever we don’t have. We love newness, we love nostalgia but we tire of anything in between. I want to pick up this plate and throw it on the ground. It’s the plate of containment. It’s the everyday, eaten off for the last 10 or so years plate that represents how I will spend the first 20 years of my life becoming employable and the next 40 or so becoming and remaining employed. Then I will have a long holiday, then an everlasting one, and that will be it.
I know it’s not all that bleak – there will be adventure, action, romance and at least one near death experience. There will be new friends and old ones, love, loss and stuff. But when I’m sitting in philosophy period five on a Thursday afternoon, and looking forward to the reassuring toll of the klaxon that herds us out of the establishment, I’m not really looking forward to the end of the day. I’m not even looking forward to the weekend, or the holidays. I’m looking forward to something that will never be. I’m looking forward to being elsewhere. I’m looking forward to dancing with docile bears in Northern Alaska, to skanking round a fire with cliché natives and doing something I will never forget. But we live in a system that pumps them out, one after the other, to their respective roles of degree holder or ASBO wielder, to chase money obsessively, be it out of need or genuine desperation, and to live and then die.
Now I have the privilege of seeing the gain that is in death, and I am well assured that it will be worth every meaningless pain and pleasure on this planet. But when I do slip from this pleasant dream into that ineffable reality, I know I won’t spare even a split second of my precious, fading time thinking about my education, my occupation, salary or pension. I’ll be looking around me, smiling at the people around me and thinking about what we did. I’ll be recalling that great time me and this other guy danced for those bears back in ‘38 on the Alaska trip, and reflecting on all those fantastic moments that happened and would still have happened regardless of any qualification I may or may not have had. They might have happened because I learned to work hard or to make friends or something in school, but my long term education itself will be pretty irrelevant, and yet here I am being bound by law in such a way that all I’ve ever really known is to pursue the furthering of my own future in some of the least relevant ways imaginable.

I suppose, then, that awesome things are inescapable, and that whilst education is a fantastic thing, it’s not necessary at all to have a stupendously worthwhile and fulfilling life, let alone necessary to compare to some measure regarding the degree to which you have obtained it. With this in mind, I shall continue to live in the secure knowledge that everything is always awesome, and have used philosophy (of sorts) to not do a philosophy essay.

Liquid honey gold magic.

That's what sunshine is.  It's like everyone's just getting by, doing work and being average, then our part of the planet gets exposed to a little extra electromagnetic radiation and everyone just trips out.  I've been doing some topless galavanting (I love not wearing a shirt) and distracting all the ladies from their study and stuff, then walking to pearls lane to buy peach slices in syrup (Joel Kass kept telling me it was really unhealthy to drink syrup, turns out his Yorkie Bar had like double the calories) and just being happy all the time.  I was sitting in the car listening to some of my dad's weird music today and just thinking about how great everything would always be because there would always be summer and you don't need anything to be happy and shirtless.  If any of you ever feel suicidal in the winter, wait till summer, buy an icecream on a really hot day and try to feel suicidal whilst eating it.  I don't think it's possible. 

CU's mission fortnight is kicking off next week, and that's at least several on the rickter scale of awesome.  Still awesome but on a much more minor scale is that I've recovered my Minecraft save.  Now you can all sleep sound at night in the knowledge that chickens are once again paddling.

I keep thinking that I'll write things, then not writing them.  Sometimes I sit down and try to start writing things, but that's hard so I just keep typing something and undoing it.  That's the sort of thing creative guys do in movies, and they always pull chicks and then write a best selling novel or something, usually because said chick inspires them so much.

I've made a shoddy replica of the Minecraft chicken out of lego, but I think it's rather lovely.  I've been getting more into my creative stuff lately.  In physics I've started making things out of crocodile clips.  I made a statue of Anubis that everyone thought was pretty awesome, and I'm sticking at my fruitless attempts to write some write.  I'm glad I have my blog to write on, the best thing about English at the moment is that it teaches me big words, makes me feel all clever and forces me to read books that I really should be bothered to read because they are awesome.  And also Mr.Evans, who is covering for Miss Davis' lessons as well since she may be off until the end of term.  This, of course, is tragic and makes my every day but a 15 hour period of wallowing in my own grief.   (<-- Sarcasm, bathos, hyperbole, figurative imagery)  I leart this great thing.  If I say: 'That blogger is blogging', then 'blogger' is an agent, 'That blogger' is the subject and 'is blogging' is the predicator.  Also, if the blogger is blogging, then blogging is a verb, but the blogging in itself is a gerrund.

This is being a lot of words.  Chrissy Lamont's blog seems to have died, but who knows, it might come back.  Ruth Lovell is still making lovely post with affectionate titles such as 'everyone was sad', but are awesome to read.  I think my blog, in terms of updates, is like this awesome plant I have.  It's called a ressurection fern, and it can go for like 20 years without water in a psuedo-deceased state of stasis, much like Gordon Freeman, then just wake up whenever you choose to water it.  It's great becuase I don't have to take any kind of responsability for its wellfare and can forget to water it for ages, as I have done for the last few months.  People are like 'what is this dead plant?' and 'That's lame', but I think it's awesome.  I'm going to go and water it now.

*****
Haven't found plant yet.  Evidently I'm worse at plant care than I thought.  I did find the pot the plant used to be in, but now there's just loads of money in it, which is still pretty sweet.

Throwing Stuff at Kittens

That title, coincidentally enough, is also my new hobby.  Admittedly I've done that sly thing where people just hyperbolise their titles in order to draw in an audience, but I have been doing the following lately:
-Throw something small over Cid.  He stops moving.
- Throw something bigger to entirely cover him.
- Continue to throw ever heavier textiles onto the growing pile of stuff.
- Lift up the pile where you approximate his head to be
- Look at two large, round innocent eyes regarding you in kittenish blend of confusion and apathy.

That would suffice as an explanation for the pile on my floor to the -

Cid just ran into the house from the garden 'screaming' as Claire put it, so I ran out across the mud in my bare feet, hissed loudly at the sinister darkness and proceeded to pick up a sizeable piece of tree and strike it reapeatedly on the big pile of logs on the patio at the end of the garden.  I feel pretty manly now, and I suspect that whatever it was that scared Cid so much won't be coming back in a hurry.

anyways, that would suffice as an explanation for the (now kitten-less) heap on my floor consisting of a T-shirt, a school shirt, a dressing down, a blanket and a duvet.

I had a dissapointing sandwich yesterday.  I love my mum, but I also love strong cheddar and apricot stilton.  My loving mother, having had enough to make a sandwich out of each, discerned that the best course of action would be to mix the two cheeses evenly between each sandwich.  I was quite dissapointed.  Still, I ought to be careful what I say, or I might have to start making my own sandwiches like all those competent people.  Then again that might not be a terrible thing.  It would mean the end of butter and honey, or just cold butter in thick slabs dotted around the slice, sometime thicker than the actual filling.

I considered getting twitter this week.  I actuall already had it, but only becuase somebody said I should get it, I made one post and realised it was crap.  It's like a blog for people who can't think of more than one thing to write about at once.  Essentially, it's because if everyone had a blog, nobody would read them.

Speaking of other people and their having blogs, Yasmin subscribed to my blog.  As a tactician, I'm not really sure what to do about this.  I've previously thought that subscribing to hers would be a sign of defeat, and whilst reading it, have never made my readership official.  It's a bit like when Marlowe says witty things to people he doesn't like, and they both dance around the actual subject of the disscusion with clever euphemisms and quick retaliations.  I'm reading some Marlowe.  He's awesome. 

I think I will subscribe to DoaTN (sounds like doting, a word I love despite not being 100% on what it means.  It just reminds me of Shakespeare and being a don for some reason.)  Anyways, she's stopped facebooking her posts over lent, so she could use the views.  (That's not meant to be backhanded at all)

In closing, I was on the bus today, and I smelt a certain aroma.  Let's just say it was a tad 'herbal'.  I realised the source of said smell was quite close to me and began, without really realising, to browse the bus for any likely perpetrators.  I noticed somebody who look pretty eligible - they were glassy eyed, slack jawed and looked a little gaumless.  Then I realised that this was how they looked all the time and that I really had no idea.  I thought that was funny.

Another funny story about drugs - my uncle David was in London with is daughter when a drug dealer started whispering drug names to him (apparently that's what they do).  Being as innocent as he was, he had no idea what the man was doing and was like 'sorry, I can't here you.' Good times.  My dad once thought that my friends had invited me to go to Camden because they were all going to buy drugs, on the grounds that there was nothing else to buy in Camden.  I mean, who wouldn't bring me along on a buying drugs trip?

Kore wa nan desu ka?
Sore wa blog desu.

Watachi wa Dave desu, O yasumi na sai.

Hmmmph

I couldn't think of a funny title because I just found out there's been a massive earthquake in Japan that's caused a massive Tsunami that could sweep over some islands in the Pacific. 

Finding out about natural disasters that have happened never seems that tragic, but because this is happening pretty much now, this morning, in my free, I feel so immersed in the situation that I am experiencing what I can only describe as grief, really.  Not like 'my mum has died' grief, but just a heavy hearted compassion combined with a nauseating feeling of powerlessness. 

From both a scientific and relgious perspective I wonder if there has been a surge in the number of natural disasters in the last few decades, or whether it's just wider media coverage and greater concern that has made it seem like there has.  I mean, it could be down to global warming, but that would still be more natural disasters, which, is attributed scripturally to the second coming.  I mean, I'm not some kind of doomsday prophet, and there's loads of other stuff (red moon, dark sun, that mark thingie, 10 king kingdom thingie from Daniel) that hasn't been fullfilled even a little bit yet. 

Tell you what I love - Compassion.  Both the concept and the charity of the same name, who my youth sponsor three children through.  What I  love about them is their attitude towards giving and charity, as reflected in their adverts.  It's like there's those terrible, macabre adverts that zoom in on a child and tell you their going to die, then (if you're lucky) show you them getting saved by the charity.  Essentially, they're guilt trips, and people hate being guilt tripped.  It also creates this impression of giving as something you're forced to do against your will.  Compassion adverts take a really excited, passionate perspective, look at people who's lives have been changed hugely, and celebrate the impact giving can have on other people's lives, so that you're just left thinking: 'That's awesome, I should give.' 

I am uber looking forward to XL toe naight.

Peace out.

And again!

I'm back on this ting.  2 blog posts in a month is a lot more frequent than we've been seeing in a long while, so I guess the place is back to life official like.

Today is pancake day, which everybody knows is the greatest day in the world ever bar a few.  Despite this, Facebook has provided me with a bounty of haters who, as haters do, are hatin' on pancake day.  Things  like 'Pancakes are crap', 'I hate pancake day' and other silliness is being spilled over the once relatively clean pages of my big old wall thingie, and it made me think:

"Shut up, haters!"

This looks cool.  I've started writing a small (/however big I feel like) stor-ai aboot some badman vigilantes.  It's yet to be fully pimpin, but it has major potential in terms of pimp per second.  Actually, now that I think about it, it could be that only I think it's awesome, but that's ideal in some ways, becuause it theoretically gets me loads of indie cred.  Like liking half-life 2, but with books. 

I lost all my Minecraft save.  Well, it might be recoverable, I'm not sure with this crazy new system.  I'm not as devastated as you might think.  There are more awesome things than M.C. (But perhaps not than chickens paddling).

I feel like I'm making a lot of mistakes.  When I get tired, I make typos and sometimes spelling mistakes, but I more often type malproprisms and homophones, sometimes writing entirely different words that sound similar to the one I had in mind.  Interesting insight into how my mind prossesses(sp?) information when I type.

I have had my pancakes now.  They were as epic as they were crude and tasteless, a beatiful mashup of synthetic syrups with some icecream and stuff, as well as one traditional lemon and sugar one. 

If I were to, hypothetically speaking, have had a callous / blister/ generic lump on my foot that was annoying, would it (again, in the most hypothetical sense)  have been mostly:
-manly
-stupid
-gross
to cut it off with a knife? 
Feel free to answer on that thing people answer on.

Shirtless Scandal!

Yeah, I was trying to think of some kind of alluring and dangerous title, the kind of thing people would click on, and I began to realise that I'd actually been topless quite a lot lately, mostly whilst dancing and mostly in the presence of David Glover.  Me and Dave had a very interesting episode lately which is not really great to put on a blog on the grounds of it being truly badass.  It involved the library, and having to be calmed down whilst I gathered things up frantically and said things like: 'Dave, we have to go, we have to leave now.'  This will probably be one of the funniest things of my year.
Anyway, enough self incrimination for now.  I'd like to bring the issue of consistency to the table.  There is none.  Here at Dave central, we pride ourselves on inconsitency which is inconsistent within itself, much like the mathematical 'd2y by dx squared' thingy, where the exponentiality is like infinite, and you can never find the dy type thing because we're so darn inconsistent.  That's why we're inconsitent over the period of a month, then some months, we don't even bother with that and we upload daily or just not at all.  Last week was one of those months, and blog views hit an all time low.  Still, we're not concerned about views.  Not at all. 

In fact (this is like two days after the above text) if we were concerned about views, we would have given up by now, because there are none.  But now there are views, so you may rejoice!  Today I have time to do this becuase I'm not at the Bridge Church's 'Hot House' as I set my alarm to late.  I'm a bad Christian, but all Christians are so it's pretty neat we have Jesus and all. 

Tell you something awesome.  Paddling pools.  Tell you something better: Paddling pools that are full of happy chickens.  I have constructed such a mechanism on Minecraft, the place where the happiest of dreams become a reality.  And then get blown up by creepers. (The chickens, bless them, are yet to fall prey to such ghastly phenomena)

We had XLerate last weekend.  I don't know if you've heard of Paul Reid, but imagine him and Stuart Elman for 48 and a bit hours.  Essentially, you are imagining one of the most happy, uplifiting and empowering two and then some days in the history of ever.  There was some heavy doctrine, there was some crazy moving, and there was an abundance of Mafia, in which me and Dave took it upon ourselves to kill Izzie Keane whenever there was even the remotest reason to. 

It feels good to be back to blogging it out on the bloggiest of blogs.  Fortunately for us, Lamont (pronounced læmɒnt /Lah-mont, regardless of any claims she makes to the contrary) has also eased up on her blogging.  Yasmin hasn't, but I don't really mind.  Anyways, this blog is clearly the best, and the people that read it are definitely the coolest, so don't stop with your reading and stuff.

Chillaxin' good times.

Whelp, it's as half termy as half term can get, and what's more, it's fashion week.  I'm still waiting for some fashion agents in laminated jackets to whisk me off to Paris and give me loads of money to walk up and down a plastic prominade in whatever I happened to be wearing at the time.

Anyways, the half term is half term tastic, becuase there is no school.  However, there is still work, and work in abundance, because apparently the people who are in charge of A-Levels get money to make sure there is always work, even in the holidays.  Today's plan is to:
- Play Minecraft
- Update Blog
- Do first draft of litlang essay
- Do some ironing for some wonga for XLerate

I'm working through the list in order.  Guess what part of it I've got up to in the last 3 hours.  Yeah, half term time is Minecraft and work time, as well as making sure that I do something constructive and fun as well most days.  My Minecraft feats have reached epic proportion, because a whole chunk dissapeared by my base then came back about 300 feet lower down and completely different.  I've now put a massive roof over said chunk, meaning that I have a little underground indoor forest, as well as plenty of spawn space for the innocent creatures above my caves to stray into the forceful current of my massive deathtrap.  Interesting how I said a lot of 'my' there.  I think Minecraft is really a game about vanity and possesion, as reflected by the fact that a lot of credit is given to those who've built things out of rare materials, or obtained vanity items such as golden apples and records. (I totally have one of those).  Playing Minecraft can make you quite creative and inventive in some ways - I sometimes find myself looking at something and thinking: 'how could I totally pimp that out so that it looked cool and did cool things?'  It also makes you quite cynical of society, yet appreciative of those people who discovered stuff like coal and logic gates.  All in all, it brings home this idea of mans natural impulse to consume resources without any consideration in the desperate hope that someday someone or something will come along and be like: 'wow, that's pretty awesome.'

Anyways, enough of this.  The end of this week marks the start of XLerate, meaning that I have four days to do all this work, but also four days until the epitome of awesome shatters my half term.

In recent news, BBC Radio Four has been undergoing some changes, or at least disscussing whether it would be a good idea to do so.  Frankly, I love radio four - the comedy's great, and even those appaulingly dreary short stories and plays make me think encouraging thoughts about how it can't be that hard to be a semi-succesful writer if all these lame people can do it.

In other more serious news, some serious stuffs going down in the Middle-East, which could either make everything really good or really bad.  Judging by the way politics tends to go, there's no prizes for guessing how that going to turn out.  Suppressing my cynicism, though, it's some heavy stuff, and as little as I understand it, I'm praying that the thing that makes less people die happens. (I.E not exremist religious violence and genocide, and maybe some actual democracy.)

Anyways, if I see you at XLerate, see you there, where good ting will happen, and if I don't, see you in school where more good ting will happen, perhaps becuase of good ting that happened at XLerate.  All in all, expect it to be partly awesome with chance of good peng up ting.

And I'm back in the game!

Not, however, the same game being reffered to by the original speaker of the eponymous quotation, because with that game, some people are playing it; some people are watching it; some are just sitting by themselves and me and all my greatest friends are three houses down the road trying to combine Ludo, Scrabble, Warhammer and Halo Reach to make the greatest game that's ever existed, then hoping that everyone in the other house will come and check it out when they realise how much better it is than their game.  We'd also probably be listening to this song.

Bizzarre imagery aside, I more meant that I was back to blogging.  I've subsided for a few reasons.  Firstly, January saw the largest number of views ever for the entirety of time, and then at the start of Febuary I assumed you all loved it so much that you'd keep coming back for more regardless of any updates.  Evidently, my blogging is still at the stage where I actually have to write things to get hits.  I've also had some Applied I.T coursework, which isn't that hard, but is really hard to focus on work when you are looking at cool things to do with technology, and Ruth Lovell is accidentally introducing you to Slender Man.  Don't look him up.

I had a hugely frutiful valentines day, in which,needless to say, I harvested chicks like wheat.  Check out this fully legitamate and real e-mail that I received in Applied I.T

 
Nothing has ever been the antonym of 'forged' to the same extent as that document.

Frankie Grimmer has set up a supreme Minecraft Server (in other tragic news, I lost an entire chunk of my base, but nothing irreplacable, mostly becase everything is replacable with a bit of elite hacking
|< |\|0\/\/ |-|0\/\/.  Anyways, we're going to (amongst other awesome and secret things) set up some rules mayhaps, like 'Repair creeper damage!'; 'Don't pick flowers in the chunks surrounding spawn'; 'don't dig around spawn!' and 'don't touch that lava!'.  It's a nice map, it's got some cheeky surface lava lakes to the west, and a natural forest fire caused by said lava.  I struck diamond on my first day of being there, which is the first diamond on the server, so we might put on of them in the big old museum / community hub we're planning on building.  Is it a bit sad that I feel so affluent within this virtual world, yet don't actually have any control over my own study?

For anybody interested, Turn-taking tuesday has been declared obsolete and replaced by the much more scintillating 'Tripartite Tuesday'.  And I just remembered that we have in fact replaced the successful 'Tag-question Tuesday', so I'll have to see to it that Tripartite goes on a Thursday. 

Anyways, thanks for being bored enough to read this.
Dave.

It's Time.

Tiiiiiiime for another post!

Well, yesterday when I was writing a post about not writing posts, I was full of ideas, but now that I'm writing this post, they have all promptly dissipated.  One thing I cannot forget is my love of dictionary.com, which helped me to assure myself taht dissipate is a real word, and has never ceased to broaden my volcabulary, especially with it's innovative new flashcard system, something that has kept me entertained for an unspeakable amount of hours.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I've been plagued by work, which has been as faithful as ever in gnawing away at the saplings of all unacademic ambition. 

Incoming!  I just remembered one of the exciting things, and I've a very good feeling it will help me to remember more of them.  This particular exciting thing is a concept which sprung erratically from the colourful recesses of David Glover's mind.  Essentially, we have rewritten history and devised a new calendar, in which each of the seven days of the week has a catchy and alliterative theme that dictates how conversation should be held during that day.  For example, yesterday was the celebation that is malpropism Monday, and you already knew that today was tag-question Tuesday, didn't you?  The rest of the week is as follows  - 'wishy washy' Wednessday, somethingsomething thursday and Future tense Friday.  Who knows - by the end of the year we may actually converse differently on different days instictively.  I have often hypothesised that if you left me and David. G in the same room for a year or two, we would both emerge relatively insane.  There is probably an extent to which being around him for to long is not healthy.

My mother has gotten my old computer up and running, which is fantastic for somebody who's looking for a machine that doesn't have the graphical capacity to handle minecraft, and struggles to maintain Norton Anti-virus without crashing.

If you take nothing else from this post, take this: Cheeki under 18s valentines rave is later this month, and anyone who's anyone who has any money left will be there.  I'm hitting that first category, but struggling with the second.

*****

Well, I just accidentally watched most of Die Hard something or other.  One of these days, I'm gonna take a bullet to the kneecap, shoot myself through the shoulder and pull chicks.  Back in the day I drove a Warthog up a ramp and into a Banshee whilst playing Halo 3, and it was so awesome that the game got confused and gave the kill to a guy who fired his laser at the place where the banshee was about a second later.  Basically, my awesome crashed the game.  While we're on the topic of clinging to all things youthful and unproductive, my MineCraft base is cooler than Joni Blyths, because we've established that his is just a walkway linking to other walkways, all with their own corresponding walkways, whereas mine has bare awesome ting that I would describe, but it wouldn't be very cool or fun to read about.

On top of this, Cid keeps cuddling me and Joni doesn't even have a kitten.

Sadly, Mr. Holladay said that blogs weren't cool.  Overlooking my own creeping suspicion that there may be some truth to this, Mr. Holladay's favourite anime is sailor moon, so as much as I respect him, I'd understand if some of our opinions didn't really compliment each other.

Oh, how could I forget?  I went to the bestest ever Christian leadership conference the other weekend, and it was bodacious.  Get this:  Serving is the highest form of leadership.  That's a doctrine slap right there.  As much as I promised last post not to just replace actual content with religious musings, I'm feeling, to use the appropriate buzz-word, empowered and the like, and there's been a lot of shennanigans going down at people's youths lately, and I've been having a real hard think about faith and all this crazy stuff, so things might be getting pretty awkward pretty soon.  I am fine with this, because I am immune to awkward, and now it's mine for the manipulating.

Anyways, I'm off to get a shower, so's I can remain shower. 

Hmmm.

I'm not sure if I've titled a post as that before, but if I have, then you'll just have to be dissapointed.  Basically, I have no time to update my blog now, haven't remembered in like ages and will do it soon.  So this is just a post to assure you that I've not abandoned this blog, I've just abandoned this blog.  Stay tuned for something better than this!

I am quite tired.  I am aware that this is definitely the worst post on any blog ever.  But that's why you keep coming back - Yasmin's started only updating her blog on Wednessdays and Sundays to save up the creative stuff, but here at this place where you are, we've always been one step ahead of the game, particularly when it comes to sporadic and irregular updates whenever I so choose.  I like it to be quite clear who's in charge here.  I don't think I have the heart to post a link to this on Facebook.  That would be like telling somebody with amnesia it was their birthday, then hitting them in the face.  That is a mean thing, and I have never done it.

Words.

A whole blogfull, none the less. 

Right now I am quite tired, I have just finished having a really good idea sesh with my Dad in which I wrote the plan for my sickest creative writing piece.  My dad often helps me loads with schoolwork, in stark constast to his claims that he isn't that academically talented.  I get the impression that he wasn't satisfied with the amount he stretched himself at school, but that if he went back he could achieve some stupidly good grades and be an accountant.  Frankly, I couldn't care less if my dad was an accountant or not, I love him very much and think that it's cool that he helps save people's lives every day.

On the topic of creative writing, I have resolved to do more of it, whilst realising that being good at expressing a concept in writing is a very different skill from being able to think of plots and stuff.  Henceforth, I shall be commencing the procces of the occasional creative writing piece - their existence will not be brought to light on facebook, nor will they promise (or even attempt) to entertain, engage or enthrall the reader.  They may well be interesting and surreal, but they're more just a way to ammuse and grow myself.

Although I have had great fortune and success in completing Miss Davis' plan, I have had no such luck with my Applied I.T coursework, and I'm not going to do it, becuase it's in for tommorow and it's a lost cause.  Even the extended 'I won't mark this thing' deadline is out of the question, because I'm spending all weekend at some nang Christian leadership conference where there is plenty of awesome, but no free time.  Truth is, I could have done it, but I couldn't be bothered - in the short term, that is.  Of course I planned to do it in all sincerity, but even with hours to go on the day before, somehow desire gets the better of reason once again and all I have to show for two hours is half a Princess Bride (awesome film) cubeecraft that failed to print. 

This gets me back to that tired old topic (or topics) of ours:  Dilligence and Direction (yes, capitals on improper nouns.  It's a colloquial setting - what you gonna do?)

Here's the deal - I am bad at working hard.  I work hard at trying to try, but that doesn't make any sense, and I just end up not doing the work.  Here's the other deal:  What with being one of those 'God follower' types, I see the will of God as the only thing worth persuing in life.  I'm aware that this sounds silly, but so do a lot of the wonderful things that I believe, to the people that don't believe them.  Besides, when you're dead, what will you have to show for anything you did on earth?  And if there's no afterlife, what's the point of doing anything?

Anyways, enough of this philosophy.  The deal is that if I can figure the will of God for my life, or whatever misconception you may perceive that to be, I will be well fulfilled, I guarantee.  Maybe not financially or in terms of the material, but I've seen enough happy Christians who've given everything up for God to believe this idea that true happiness can only come from the 'life to the full' you get from serving God.  Thus, if I pray into God revealing his plans to me, I can start / stop doing anything applicable, and have more good.  Those are my thoughts. 

P.S to any of you peeps out there that are worried this blog's going to deteriorate into some kind of online evangelical thing thingy, I'm not planning on sharing some theology every post, I'm just reflecting my thoughts as they occur to me, as opposed to being some people pleasing post pusher who only writes what seems cool.  However, the history of this blog makes me think that anyone who was here for things that seem cool would have crawled long ago from this psychadelic froth of foam darts, nonsensical musings and video game obsession. 

Also, tommorow is national kazoo day. : D

To drown? Or to die of thirst?

The question put forward is purely symbolical, but if the choice was presented to me in real life, I'd probably take the first option.  Anyways, it's more a morbid metaphor for the realisation that a lot of the things I like are good in small doses, but can be pretty uncool in large ones, yet once I start the chain of desire, there's not quitting.  I'm begining to realise this is sounding like some kind of deep rooted confession of long hidden hypocrasy or something, but don't worry, we're keeping it as lighthearted as ever here on daveisgreat. 

Really, the biggest one of these for me is NERF guns.  I bought a night finder some four or five months ago and mentioned it on one of the first ever posts.  From that moment, I think it wouldn't be hard to see an orange, foamy addiction frothing over the pages of this blog, bringing me to my current state.  I just spent £25 pounds on a foamy gun.  Better (or worse) yet, I still don't regret it:

(Yes, I have literally started uploading pictures because when I do, there are more views.  I guess people (ie. Ruth Lovell) look at it and are like 'hey, there's a thousand words I can actually read.'  (If you want lols, there are several things you can do:

- Do something stupid with David Glover (walking really slowly, replacing vowels with 'O's that have a diagonal line through them, etc.)

- Make fun of people with mild disabilities beggining with 'd' (Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Diabetes, Discalculia, Doing things Claire Lovell does...)

- Put a stupid amount of parenthesis within parenthetical text to confuse people, then use 'parentheses' instead of brackets to make the whole thing really grammatically disorientating))

Anyways, there's something relieving about having no social agenda whatsoever, it enables you to put pictures of yourself wielding a NERF arsenal onto the cyberspace, and we'd all secretly love to do that.

My idiosyncratic deviations have gotten the better of me yet again, (my, I am lexical today) and I have deviated from the subject at  hand.  Nerf:  How far is too far? This far? 

 Feel free to give your opinion on the quizaliz provided. (Thumbs up for Nerf guns with eyes!!!)  You see, looking at these pictures, I'm not unaware of how sad this is, but me and some friends have been getting all excited about these things, so whilst I'm the only person with an actual gun, a good few of us have signed up for the U.K's first (unofficial) NERF tournament, which we are going to win. 

Another thing I have high hopes for is this hypothetical band I'm hypothetically in, which is the least hypothetical of all the hypothetical bands I've ever been in.  Most of the others were jokes - not spiteful ones, people just thought I knew we were joking. : (

Well, I have work to not do, so I should probably find some other way to distract myself now.  Tara.