Blog Every Day April

So I've decided to participate in BEDA (Blog Every Day April), which was invented by esteemed author Maureen Johnson a friend of John Green of the vlogbrothers and also an esteemed author himself. Collectively they are so esteemed that Australia bookshops fail to stock over ten of their books at one time. We just can't handle that awesome.... apparently - and would rather have THREE to FOUR seperate displays of Twilight related merchandise including but not nessacarily exclusive of the entire book series, t-shirts, posters and a biography of Robert Pattinson (!) in ONE Borders store that really isn't that big in relation to the universe which is um, yeah - a pretty big thing.

I'm not sure if I can actually blog everyday because of having to go to uni and studying etc but I will try. I missed blogging yesterday, but will make up for that with a blog post about Prosh (with pictures!).

Because everyone likes pictures.... =D

Oh will you look at that... it's been over a month!

Indeed it has. It's been a month and two days since I last posted a blog. One reason is that for two weeks I was in Melbourne/Hobart and another reason is that I can't think on what to blog about.

"We're at the end of the Universe. Right at the edge of knowledge itself. And you're busy blogging!"
~the Doctor from Dr Who series 3 episode 11 "Utopia"

Unfortunately that sentence is completely contradictory to what I've been doing; unlike Captain Jack and Martha I don't have anything interesting to blog about and also, unlike Captain Jack and Martha I'm not at the end of the Universe and/or at the edge of knowledge itself (or at least not to my knowledge). What I have been doing, though, is watching a lot of Doctor Who series one and series three on DVD plus they are repeating series two on the TV at the moment. So I suppose, once again, unlike Captain Jack and Martha I'm watching a lot of Dr Who TV. Which of course they couldn't because it would be some sort of weird paradox thing if they were watching an episode of themselves (being fictional beings) on TV in real life because they are actually fictional characters. And in order to watch themselves on TV it would mean they'd cease to be fictional characters and become real and therefore can no longer be on TV as fictional characters....

That makes sense.....

What? Oh right, blogging time; I just ranted about Doctor Who way longer than I intended.

So, I went to the beach yesterday and got sunburn on my face, arms and legs. I put sunscreen on and I also reapplied twice! It's not fair. Well really the only thing that's fair is me. Pardon the pun; if your groaning at how bad that joke was don't worry, so am I. *rolls eyes* If you've never come across the phrase "fair skinned" before you might be confused but perhaps that's just as well. I'm white and I don't tan. Which is fine in cloudy Britain but not in Australia; especially Perth in summer. It means I have to cover myself in sunscreen or I'll burn. I don't mind too much, I like being pale but that just means when I get burned it's really annoying because it makes my skin red and blotchy. And it's bad for you. I'd rather not get skin cancer thank you very much. Or age prematurely or both. Although sometimes those two things are mutually exclusive.

I can't think of anything else to say. Hmmm, I've always thought it would be awesome if my blogs had some underlying theme in them which would be strengthened by situations from real life - unfortunately that's not the case, in this blog at least. Bye bye! <3

~Gerarda

I uploaded a video to YouTube!! Oh... and it's 2009

Yesterday I made a little stop motion film using play-doh. Its my first finished video ever that I've done by myself and I uploaded it to YouTube to my Youtube channel ---> http://youtube.com/user/fallingjuiceboxes
I can pick about ten things wrong with it, but I still like it. And now I want to make more videos. =) That it's down there... Please feel free and go and comment and rate.

Where did all the blog ideas go?

So I haven't blogged in quite a few days. Mainly because I can't think of anything to blog about. I had an idea and then completely forgot about it. One thing though; I don't understand why there is so much space between paragraphs in my last post. I just pressed enter once and then suddenly there is three lines difference between paragraphs! I don't get it. Hopefully it wont do that again because it makes the blog look stupid.

I recently wrote a poem (haha those words together seem a little odd to me but moving on..) about writer's block, well more specifically what happens when I try to write anything (usually some sort of fiction but it happens on assignments and other things such as blog posts...). What usually happens is that I start off with (what I think is) a good idea and I write rapidly for about a page but then suddenly I get to point where I can't think of anything else to write or where to go with the story/assorted writing exercise. So I thought I may as well post it here. The format of the poem is not quite right... the punctuation is probably all wrong but I just wrote it like I thought it sounded good in my head, hopefully it sounds good in yours too. Here it is:


Unfinished

Words flow across a page, rushing forth - water across rocks smoothed by the sheer force of it.
A guided traveller, moves down the river of water, of words; determined, captivated by gushes from the vivid images of the mind; from mountain stem.
But the force becomes the undoing. Slippery, fast, too fast and we fall through the words, through water. No pain is felt, just a glaring white, a white light which blinds us and we see no other path, nothing further but white… blankness, drowning in an abyss of our own making…
Worse than nothingness, just pure

Un-imagination

And instead, as we stare at the white light, the blankness transferred to our mind, and we get the urge to pollute it’s obscene blandness with the esoteric… a non-sense word… like

Google

Or maybe

Horse

I might explain the symbolism and all that a bit more if anyone gets confused or is interested... but it's better if you read the poem without knowing all the details first. If you liked/disliked/thought it was stupid/like bananas/read it please comment. =)

~Gerarda

The Life and Language of Messageboards and Forums [Part One]

This happened a few days ago but I thought I might blog about it in order to expand into a nostalgic rant about my life thus far on internet messageboards.


Which also leads me to warn who ever may stumble across this and read my blog but I have a habit of drawing often random connections between events and then ramble about them. However I am resigned to leave the rambling to a minimum on this blog. Hopefully.


So, getting back to what I was talking about in the first sentence, recently the British band known as Muse, who I am a [huge] fan of, had on their messageboard a question and answer thing where members of the muse.mu messageboards submitted questions for the band's threesome and messageboard members would vote on them, from which the top 30 would be picked and the band would answer them in the form of posts on the forum when they felt like it.

So, one day I happened to be checking these forums, just browsing through the questions and seeing which ones had been answered when I realised one of the threads was unlocked (each question had it's own thread which was locked until one of the Muse boys answered the question) but the messageboard still only displayed the initial post of the question in the menu. So wait...

That must mean...

That one of the Muse trio was on their computer at the SAME TIME on the SAME FORUM as ME!

I refreshed the page and sure enough the user Muse Answers (the screen name all three Muse members, used to post their answers under) had posted something on a particular question (the number which I have now forgotten but I do remember that it was Matt who answered the question because the answer ended with "... Matt." Haha obviously. I'd also like to point out it was around 11:30am GMT time so make of that what you will...)

At this point I had a bit of a fangirl moment. Or perhaps to use the "proper" notation:

*fangirls*

And then, naturally, proceeded to laugh at myself for being a fangirl.

This happened a few times in the space of about five minutes with the other two members (Dom and Chris) posting a few answers to a couple of questions.

Looking back; if I had to liken this situation to a real life one; I would say that it was kind of like being in the same shopping complex as Muse without really knowing if they were there or not; and I was in the frozen food section, while they were on a different floor looking at novelty beach towels. If such a product even exists; I don't know, I just wanted to use the word novelty and 'beach towels' was the only thing that I could think of that vaguely make sense.

However, my conclusion is that it is fun to be a fangirl once in awhile. It makes me (at least) happy. I suppose I'll talk more about fangirls later because I am part of huge fandom (Harry Potter! woo!) and fandoms don't come without fangirls (or fanboys)....

So there is my story. It actually took longer than I thought to explain; so perhaps my blog about my life on various messageboards/forums should be expanded into a series of blogging. Haha serial blogging. Oh and I'm not a member of the muse.mu boards.....yet - I have way to many other outlets that I check and post at regularly (and other's I don't which makes me a little sad but there's only so much time one can spend typing things about various books/movies/music/random things).

Thanks for reading, I hope I'm not boring.



~Gerarda

Harry, A History

Today I finished reading Harry, A History by The Leaky Cauldron's (http://leakynews.com) webmistress Melissa Anelli. And it was awesome.

The book is about, as the tag-line describes it - "The true story of a boy wizard, his fans, and life inside the Harry Potter phenomenon". It combines Melissa's personal experience of discovering the books, Leaky and the fandom in general; with other people's stories that relate to discovering Harry Potter, how it and how the fandom has effected them in their lives.

It was quite amazing (well I thought so) the way Melissa managed to weave in significant events that have happened over the past decade inluding the Columbine High School Shootings and the 9/11 attacks. Also parts of the fandom like the birth of wizard rock and the intensity of the shipping wars were explained in detail that you probably wouldn't find on the internet which just shows how thoroughly researched the book is. But the best part was that Melissa managed to get Jo involved in the making of the book, by conducting a lengthy interview with her about the books, the fandom and Jo's life writing the books.

I've always enjoyed reading Melissa's blog and couldn't wait for her book to come out, which I heard about probably about a year ago? Especially since I was part of the fandom she was writing about, and hopefully this book proves, at least to some people, that Harry Potter and the Harry Potter fandom is something special. Hmmm I think that last sentence sounded corny; but whatever....

Go buy Harry, A History, right... NOW. Only 12.95 at Kmart. And practically not in stores anywhere else in WA.

http://harryahistory.com

~Gerarda

The First Blog of Freedom

Hello! This is my first blog after finishing high school exams ONCE AND FOR ALL. Yay!



I'm not really sure who I'm saying hello to; after all no one except me and my sister knows this blog exists yet, however I'm sure to link to it somewhere on the world wide web of which

I'm a proficient user. So hello to those people who bothered to click on it!

EDIT: I'm still posting this despite writing it a while a go.

~Gerarda