jdskeleven

Wow, it's been a while since I updated this! Insert the usual excuses of exam 'stress', the infinitely reuasable 'Get out of Jail free card' on the internet. Seriously though, leaving cert coming up and all that. For the first time ever, I've been forced to prioritize.

I'm trying to save up for some form of Apple laptop, whether it be a 'so cheap it must be crap oh wait this isn't Dell we're talking about' iBook or a 'good God I want one of those' Powerbook G4. I recently discovered eBay, where I found laptop on sale that are four times as good as what I've got now for the same price as what I paid for my new one. I'm gonna take the plunge and buy a Mac because they just last so long - my old iMac 350Mhz can apparenty still run the latest version of Mac OS X, which is pretty damn impressive. Try running Windows XP on some crappy Pentium 2 and see what happens!

To get money, I've started trying to sell stuff on eBay (tinyurl.com/2j7jmj). Feel free to initiate a desperate bid war on one of my items, making me rich beyond my wildest dreams (or alternatively just buy the books for 3.50. That's a bargain right there!).

Writing - the next chapter of CWG will be done sometime before the exams start, most likely. I've also started to write the down the beginnings of short sci-fi stories, with the aim of trying to get them published. Fingers crossed!

EDIT: Oh, and I should probably mention my joy at the fact that Marvel decided to kill off Captain America. I don't particularly like American comics (excpept for Fables, which is great), and I've always hated Captain America. How can you take a character seriously when he's dressed in an outfit like that? I'm hoping Marvel will make my dream come true and kill off Thor and the entire Fantastic Four as well. Actually, just get rid of all of them except Wolverine, who gets to live on account of the fact that he doesn't wear a Power Ragners-esque costume any more (mostly).

I got a digital camera for Christmas, so I've been losing myself in the confusing world of F numbers and ISO values. As well as 'portrait', 'scenery' and 'night', the camera also has a 'children' setting. I can't possibly imagine what the difference is between that and 'portrait' (do children reflect light differently from everyone else or something?), but so far that's the only thing about it that's actually bewildered me. I even took some photos with it, two of which can be found in my gallery. They suck, but I couldn't figure out how to put them in scraps.

Thanks to my laptop crashing spectacularly (the screen actually flashed various colors) last night I lost four pages of writing because I hadn't hit 'cmd-s' in half an hour. Now that might sound bad, but for some reason every time this happens I end up rewriting  it all much better than it was before, which is exactly what happened last night.

New Year's Resolution: write one short story every week. Well, maybe every two weeks. Once a month for sure, anyway.

Happy New Year!

We're nearing the end of December (4 days 'til Christmas!) and it's finally starting to get properly cold over here. And by that I mean we're moving into 'hey my face is going numb' territory. This is both good and bad for me. Good, because I love the trappings of Winter, frost in particular (we don't get snow over here very often). And bad because I have a tendency to go for rambling, fifteen kilometre long walks that are a lot more pleasant when the weather is warmer. For this week's excursion I'll probably have to wear my 'super coat', which is unbelievably good at keeping you warm and also has the interesting side effect of making me look a bit like a hobo.

I got a €40 gift voucher for Forbidden Planet from on of my mom's friends. Forbidden Planet, for those of you who don't live near Dublin, is Ireland's premier nerd store, specilizing in comic books, manga and all things science fiction. This being Ireland, everything in there is ridiculously overpriced, so €40 is quite a substantial sum of money to be able to spend there. Who knows, I might even delve into the mysrerious world of American comis!

So, Christmas is only ten days away. According to longstanding internet tradition, this is where I bitch about how much I hate Christmas in order to appear more cynical and edgy. But I don't, I love Christmas! At what other time of year does Dublin become a semi-attractive place to walk around, festooned with lights and decorations? How often does one get to gorge oneself on ridiculous amounts of delicious food? And who can honestly tell me that they don't like getting free gifts?

Yes, I love everything about Christmas: the trees, the decorations, the food, the reckless orgy of consumerism. Actually, scratch that last one. See, I think the people who say they don't like Christmas fall into two categories: the people who say it because, I don't know, they want to look cool, and the people who honestly can't stand the ridiculousness of the season. The second type I can sympathise with. It is pretty disheartening to see every business in the country milking Christmas for all it's worth, starting well before halloween. Every time I walk past a radio for the next week and a half I'm almost guaranteed to hear something along the lines of 'Have you always thought about getting better life insurance? Why not do it at Christmas?' I especially hate how it's pretty much a given that you're supposed to drive yourself into obscene debt during the month of December. What better way to celebrate the end of this year then by ruining the next one for yourself. I'm told the situation is even worse in America.

So, it is pretty annoying that Christmas has become a holiday to worship the new God of Ireland, namely money. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people here who actually have competitons to see how much of their disposable income they can squander on stupid bullshit. I imagine the person who comes closest to bankruptcy wins, their prize being a credit card with an even bigger limit so they can do it all again next year, presumably after selling several of their organs to the black market.

Anyway, that's my ranting done for the week. I invite anyone reading this to join me in fighting back against the rampant consumerism in our society by not wasting vast sums of money this holiday season. It will be easy for me since I don't have any money (unless you count the spare change sitting on my windowsill), but I'm sure the more financially-endowed among you will be able to rise to the challenge as well.


FEATURED

=apocathary</b>

Pistol
This is the first of apocathary's deviations that I ever read, and I still really like it. Go and read it now if you're in a sci-fi mood.

Playground

Short and to the point, and also quite good.

Craig's Teeth

Last but certainly not least, 'Craig's Teeth' is creepy, interesting, and damn good. Hopefully he'll turn it into a longer story at some point (Hint, hint). In my opinion, this is the most well-written of all of apocathary's works.

Penguin-factory</i>

Apfel

It's an apple.

sassyeggs

Lillypads

I like lillypads

Chemistry

Not the kind with chemicals, the love kind.

Natural Bridge Caverns

And finally, a cool foresty-type place.

So, I got a Wii today. It's great. I imagine it'll be sucking up all of my spare time until Christmas, but hopefully I'll manage to squeeze some writing in between Zelda and Wii Sports (and whatever other games I buy...I'm thinking Rayman). After all that waiting, it's kind of weird to actually be playing the damn thing!

I'm going to be buying 'alienhead's book when it comes out. You should too.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to keep this up:

FEATURED

=apocathary</b>

Pistol
This is the first of apocathary's deviations that I ever read, and I still really like it. Go and read it now if you're in a sci-fi mood.

Playground

Short and to the point, and also quite good.

Craig's Teeth

Last but certainly not least, 'Craig's Teeth' is creepy, interesting, and damn good. Hopefully he'll turn it into a longer story at some point (Hint, hint). In my opinion, this is the most well-written of all of apocathary's works.

Penguin-factory</i>

Apfel

It's an apple.

sassyeggs

Lillypads

I like lillypads

Chemistry

Not the kind with chemicals, the love kind.

Natural Bridge Caverns

And finally, a cool foresty-type place.