Week Twenty-Eight: Baking Heat, Books and Brains.

I don't know if any of you noticed, but it's BAKING HOT right now.
I've been seeking refuge in libraries, the studio*, and drinking ungodly amounts of water. Now, any excuse to spend more time at a library sounds like a good idea to me.

It's kind of odd that as of just over a week, it will have been a full year since BEDA**. As much as I would LOVE to do BEDA again, I don't think I could manage doing a daily project at this time. I'll keep on with my weekly schedule, but I don't think I could properly do an EVERY DAY thing. Unless something changes, and Rowling knows, that happens all the time.

In reply to you lover-ly commenters, I will NOT give up on Buffy. So many people lohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifve both the show and the character, I can't write it off after just ONE bad episode. (I may take Rachel's suggestion, and just skip to season 2. Nothing wrong with getting all emotionally invested and then going back to see the cringe-worthy stuff after you care about the characters.

I've been trying to get some reading done, nothing huge, nothing like a summer project, but it's just nice to have pages to turn, and things that actually leave some story to the imagination. Don't get me wrong, I'm horribly emotionally attached to the Doctor Who characters, but I really like the action of READING.

There's something to be said for physically picking out a book, leafing through it, making sense in your head from just some back ink on a page, and getting to know characters in a way that I, personally don't think you can when you're watching the drama play out on a screen.

Take the character of Harry Potter, our wizard of page and screen. One of, if not THE most well known book character of today. When I read about him, the Harry I have in my head will be different than the character in your head, who will be different than the Harry that's in your best friend's head, who will be different than the Harry who is in Daniel Radcliffe's head.

And you know what? We can all be right. I don't get to tell you that how you view him is wrong, and you don't get to tell Daniel Radcliffe that how he views Harry is wrong***.

Reading is a very personalized experience, and for that reason and MANY others, I prefer it to anything on a screen. I guess that's why, when I hear that I should watch a certain TV show, I automatically think "Oh, d'you think there's a book I could read instead?" even when I know that the show came first.

If you think about it, reading reveals far more about yourself than it does about the author or book characters. I really like that.


Now I'm going to go find a book, get into my bed and READ.

~Whimsy

P.S.
I'm curious to know your thoughts on a few things, if you managed to get through this whole post (and good on you if you did).
Firstly, what are your thoughts on TV and movies versus books?
Secondly, do you have an e-reader/would you want one/do you like the idea?
Thirdly, how is your summer going? I feel like I haven't spoken to my blogging friends in AGES!

P.P.S. I don't think I ever mentioned this before, but the times you see on my posts are the actual times I finished writing them. I go into the options and change them to reflect the minute I actually manually hit the "PUBLISH POST" button. As you can see, I do a LOT of my writing after 1am.


*The studio, where we do most of the work for the business that we own (plus crafts as well!), is the one room in my house that has A/C. Everyone clusters around the nice cool air, and we all flop around like dying fish.

**Blog Every Day In August, where last year, I met some wonderful people who I am so proud to call my friends.

***To clarify, I still am a staunch supporter of raging at WB for some of their choices with the movies, and I am in NO WAY saying that every acting decision that Dan made as Harry was the right one. That being said, the way he played Harry is just that. The way he played him. It doesn't make YOUR Harry any less valid, just because "that's not how it was in the movies". Since when did the movies dictate the books or what's real in our minds, anyway?

A Really Epic Idea...or so I think...

So, I have an IDEA.

How cool would it be to keep track of your year, and join other people on thier year long journeys?

I want to be able to look back, this time next year and be able to read the story of my life in 2011. Interesting things will happen this year, and I want to remember every step of the way.

This brilliant idea came to me in the shower one morning, (as good ideas are wont to do) and I quickly decided that it shouldn't be JUST ME, that I should see how many other people want to do it.

The idea was spawned from doing @MaureenJohnson's BEDA - Blog Every Day August, (which, if you have read pretty much ANY of my previous posts, you can tell was TOTALLY EPIC).

Blog Once Weekly in 2011, or BOW'11 (or hashtag'd on twitter as #BOW11) will be a project where the goal is to blog at least once a week for an entire year. That's it. Simple as that.

SO, without further ado, I would like to ask you this. Do you want to do BOW'11 with me?

(Thinking about this now, it means that I shall have to write blog posts ON TOP OF NANOWRIMO. What am I thinking?)



Because of all of this whatnot, I've been thinking quite a lot about BOW'11, and I've come to make up some rules (for me at least, if you'd like to follow along, that's fine by me).

Here they are:

One: One post per week AT LEAST.

Two: A week shall be defined as Monday through Sunday.

Three: A post shall be defined as some bit of writing...just a bit.

Four: Anyone who wants to join in is MORE THAN WELCOME.

That's it!
Happy boxing day!

Until next time,
Whimsy

ASL, Party in the USA, and demonic Furbies...just another normal post.

How is everyone? Good, great, crappy?
Obviously, I can't stay away from you all for more than 5 days at a streak.

Lucky you. XD

Today, I start with my first ASL class. It's through Skype video chat, a new medium of "class" as is were, so that will be fun.

I've been practicing, so I can finger-spell my name (W-H-I-M-S-Y), and I know the alphabet by heart, and a few signs that aren't finger-spelling (Examples: meet, girl, world, tired, beautiful, music, pain, help, wish, slow).

I've been watching this youtuber perform songs in ASL on a suggestion from my tutor. This lead to my finding of Jonathon Coulton.

Why, oh why have I not seen this brilliantly hilarious person before?
I have been watching "I Feel Fantastic" and "Re: Your Brains" nearly non-stop.

But mostly, "I Feel Fantastic", or as my sister and I have taken to calling it "that tripping-out-on-drugs song".

Here's the version that I've been playing, so you can be as addicted as I am.

I'm excited to start, because I think it'll be fun to learn a "foreign" language, especially one that's not French, or Spanish like EVERYONE and their brother learns in high school.

I've never been one to do what EVERYONE does, as can be evidenced by my life.

Not to say that I do what I do, and I am who I am just to be contrary to the rest of the world, oh no. Even if it were the "popular" thing to be who I am, I'd still be who I am.

This is not to say that I don't take pride in being as unique as I am, oh no.

When I'm going to a new class, I almost always make sure that I'm wearing all my most Whimsy-est things.
I figure it's better to introduce myself when I look most like me, that way, if someone's not going to like me, they decide that they don't like me from seeing who I am. I'm not going to tone it down for anyone. That's not who I am.

I must admit, though, if something becomes "popular", then I automatically like it less. It's not the best personality trait, I know, because there are plenty of mainstream-ish things that are good/fun/interesting, but the fact that EVERYONE likes it makes me not want to say I like it. I guess I'm afraid that people will think I like something just because EVERYONE likes it.

For example, Party In The U.S.A.
I don't want to like it, but I do.
Almost every time that song has been played around me, it's been in connection with pretty dang awesome stuff.
Infinitus (the Harry Potter convention) True Colors, Queer Prom, a 5ag video, various drag queens...you get the idea.
Not only that, but it's got a catchy beat, and hell, I'll say it. I think it's sweet.
(Also, somewhere, on someone's camera, there is a video of The Whimsy dancing and lip-synching to that song at Infinitus. I can't find it on the internet (yet), but who knows...)

Secretly, I think that more people like that song than will actually admit to it. Why else would it be so popular? Why else would everyone scream with joy and rush the floor EVERY TIME it's played at a dance?

Yeah, thought so.

There have been very few times that I've actually fell into the Pit Of Popular Things That I Must Have.

One of those times was Furby '98. I don't know if you all remember Furbies, but they were animatronic pets that looked like a cross between a bird and a rodent. (Wikipedia says Owl and Hamster, which I understand.)

For my 6th birthday, the one thing I wanted above anything else was a Furby. Every other child also wanted a Furby, as well. I thought they were SO CUTE, and I desperately wanted a cuddly big-eyed pet that I could shut off whenever I wanted. ^_^

Well, I got a Furby.

His name was Oo-chi.

I thought he was the best thing EVER, I adored Oo-chi.

I found out that if I left him in a sunbeam, he'd fall asleep.
...or if I turned him upside down, he'd say "Oo-chi scared, me no like."
...if I stuck my finger in his mouth, he's say "yummy!"
...if I left him alone, he's start to sing.

The Oo-chi infatuation didn't last all that long.

I recall one day, I woke him up again, and again, and all he would say was "Me sleep again." and then start snoring.

On another day, I had left him, alone, turned off, and he turned back on again.
What to do with my newly-possessed Oo-chi? Give him to my little sister, of course.

She tired of him faster than I had, and before I knew it, Oo-chi was wrapped up in newspaper, and put on a table for a gift swap. (To be clear, I was not sad to see him go.)

Oo-chi was switched off and everything, but as people put things on the table, the newspaper started rustling and started to sing. In the dark. To himself.

After that, I decided that the hype surrounding "popular" toys was pretty much bull.

So, questions:

Did you have a Furby/did you want one?
Do you know another language/do you want to?

~Whimsy