My Exploding Cat

Archive for the ‘My Stuff, of course’ Category

Oh dear.

Oh dear yes. Is he related to Weird Al?

To the tune of “A Modern Major General”

Well, Ke$ha must be drinking and Adele is too repetitive

Might listen to Nirvana, but they sound like they’re on sedative

And Bieber, who’s so popular, still needs to go through puberty

While Taylor Swift might benefit from a grip on reality

 

That Nickelback should pack his bags and just go home to Canada

Apologies for brain cell loss are due now from Rihanna

Willow Smith must have been whipping back and forth from infancy

And Brittany Spears’s track record involves too much psychiatry

 

Sure, maybe they can sing and all, but if the lyrics make me sick

I’m more prone just to leave them be and go and find another pick

Or if their singing’s more like screaming, I’m not gonna hold my breath

‘Cause there are other songwriters who also will not make me deaf.

 

Alicia Keys has issues with spontaneous combustion and

Ol’ Bruno Mars should run away and change his name to Ferdinand

Jason Mraz’s music would have made Freud have a field day

Somebody should take One Direction’s hair gel bottles all away

 

Katy Perry isn’t quite as guilty as the rest of these

But adolescent boys who sing her songs are not a teenage dream

Lady Gaga’s really eye-catching and she’s just so original

She’s like this guy I know who thinks that he’s a Roman admiral

 

It’s all so strange how these guys always end up on the radio

When all their songs are probably our sanity’s last great deathblow

In the end, I guess I’m really not a big pop music fan

But taking these guys seriously? I’m just not quite sure I can.

This is so awesome. Serious.

http://namesakecomic.com/

Just start reading. It gets really good. Especially if you like the Bone series.

Dude! Check this guy out!

He built that.

Blog, 1/25/2013. On the matter of school dances…

So, I don’t know how much I’ve ranted about it, but dances at my school are mostly the same unless you have a date. If you do have a date, or you’re going with friends you don’t feel totally awkward around (those are acquaintances, frenemies, and “it’s complicated”s, for the record), then more power to you. But I am, as usual, kind of short on both fronts. I’ve gone to two dances at this school, but believe me, it’s been a large enough sample due to the exact accuracy with which they were replicated. The only thing that changed was the color of the stuff on the tables. I couldn’t tell the music apart except for that “don’t stop believing” song. Though, since it’s me and I don’t usually recognize anything that isn’t wildly obscure, it doesn’t make much of a difference… yet it still would have been nice to be able to know when one song ended and another began. I think they were distinct because people kept doing different stuff…

Oh, and speaking of dates: I don’t remember whether I blogged about my hilariously disastrous sophomore Homecoming date. That was… terrible. Mostly it was me dancing, my date not… really… dancing…, then my date standing around blathering on dumbly about how lucky he felt, and then my date doing the Worm (repeatedly) and then me, sitting outside the gym trying to stuff candy in his face to avoid the awkward silence (which was being made a lot more awkward since he had an unrequited friend-crush on me that I only found out about after agreeing to go with him). Whoops.

Anyway. I suppose I should say these dances are only worth it if you have a good date or friends you don’t feel awkward around. Even so, I think he and I came out about even on that one. I bought him a lot of candy, but he must endure many no-names-mentioned retellings of this story to various people not in any way connected to him. …I guess I’m not mean enough. Oh, well.

The dance that’s going on soon is Spree. I went to Spree last year; the theme was Black Tie. My dress was stylish, but it was formal. Let’s just say that this year’s theme is Masquerade, and if the group of theme-followers is about the same turnout as last year’s, there will be about three people wearing masks. So, yep. Otherwise, identical “music,” identical ridiculous “sexy” dancing, identical girl wearing that dress that looks like a fairy princess costume I had when I was about seven. Seriously–it was mostly a pastel tulle tutu and looked really, really dumb.

There have been some cute proposals so far. One gal asked a guy by way of knock-knock joke with all her friends, which got many cheers from the lunch room. It was really sweet.

But I will not be going. I always come home from these things with a migraine. In any case, a better date for Spree might go something like this:

Friend at dance: Where’s Rebekah? I thought she said she had a date for Spree. Isn’t she coming?

Other friend: I don’t know. Call her.

Friend 1: Yeah, okay.

*ring*

Me: Hey. What’s up?

Friend: I thought you said you had a date. Where are you?

Me: On my date. You’re at the dance?

Friend: No duh. It’s been going for an hour now!

*crashing noise*

Friend: What was that?

Me: Nothing…

Friend: Are you on the computer?

Me: I’m on my date.

Friend: That sounds like a video game.

Date: Feel the power of the Holy Hand Grenade!

Me: No, use the exploding sheep, he’s in a perfect position!

Date: No, this will drown the other one over there. The Grenade makes a bigger blast area.

Me: True. Um, yeah, you were saying?

Friend: Are you playing Worms Reloaded with a dude instead of coming to the dance?

Me: … Do I have to answer that?

Friend: Yes!

Me: Truthfully?

Friend: Yes!

Me: All of it?

Friend: For the love of kittens, yes!

Me: Well, no. First we played Mario Kart, argued about which drivers were faster, and then played the old Starfox on my brother’s SuperNintendo, and then tried to beat each other’s times on the Hell levels in Cave Story, took turns on the intensity that is Portal, and now we’re playing Worms Reloaded on multiplayer mode.

Friend: Every one of those games seems either ridiculously violent, has a lot of explosions, or ends in an argument.

Me: And how is this different from what you’re doing?

Friend: I’m hanging up now.

Me: Good luck. I mean, have fun. *evil cackle as she destroys more screaming worms*

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…

 

Or possibly “Better Date” might mean renting the entire original Star Wars trilogy, sitting around, and consuming copious amounts of popcorn. Or watching through half the Strong Bad collection, making a dent in rereading the xkcd comics, and then proceeding to consume Hark! A Vagrant and Jefbot and Nedroid like candy. Or poring over each other’s writing and artwork and sitting around drawing stuff and listening to really good music nobody recognizes. Or reading Ender’s Game aloud. Or cosplaying with a few friends and their dates.

I think that sounds like a lot more fun than standing in a sweaty mass of horny teenagers, listening to migraine-inducing music and hoping your date starts dancing like a normal person. Maybe I’m just a sad geek.

But if I am, I’m probably still a lot saner than the people who choose the writhing mass of sweaty bodies, buying expensive heels just to kick them off two minutes after getting into the building, and sulking over the fact that someone else bought and wore the same dress as you or someone else smiled at your guy. (Seriously.)

So the next time one of my friends asks me why I’m not going to Spree, they’re going to be redirected to this post. And, later, next year’s Homecoming and Spree dances as well. I have to save my energy for the socially obligatory junior and senior prom… hopefully, they will not be identical to Spree and Homecoming as I’ve known them, and/or maybe I can snag a date with a cute fellow geek.

Blog, 1/23/2013

I’m writing this from inside the school library. The keyboard really sucks–it’s greasy and clacky–but at least I get to avoid lunch, which is annoyingly noisy.

I’ve been working on Mirrorworld Remastered lately, even though I haven’t posted any of it. I’ve gotten to about 36,000 words so far–hopefully, it won’t get to be too long. It’s getting kind of convoluted, though, now. I’m not sure it’s the kids’ book I intended it to be when I first wrote it, and I’m wondering if Daniel, Mark and Sophie should be maybe 14 instead of 12, and bump Molly’s age to 17 and Erif’s to 16, and Natalina’s to at least 12. They act too mature, know too much stuff even for erudite tweens (hehe… erudite tweens… I like that phrase) and are kind of unfazed when someone tries to kill them. Um.

I’m going to have to put up something for you guys to read, since I’m being Selfish and keeping Mirrorworld Remastered to myself in case I want to publish it, since I’m liking how it’s going. I need to get around to posting the Sages stuff. It’s kind of bad, but sometimes I like to read stuff that’s kind of bad. Sometimes I go for the overdose and go on Quizilla, just to see how bad things can get. I swear, it’s like half the people on there are twelve and immature. And the list of stories now is dominated mainly by poorly-disguised Jack Frost ripoffs. Part of the reason that dude was a good character is that he had the potential to be a REALLY BAD character, and didn’t… at least in the movie. That restraint is not present in the Realm of Quizilla.

Anyway, insane Sparklepoo-esque* stories aside, my current fascination is drawing. I’ve got a whole bunch of MR character drawings done–both portraits and a whole giant “together” one. Also, I’m getting requests to draw other people’s characters. It’s kinda fun. I sort of wish there was a better way to color them, though–I don’t have a flesh-tone pencil, for one, and a lot of these characters are white, so I have to do little tricks with pink and brown and erasers. Whoopee. Not to mention trying to find a way to get blonde hair color. I have no idea how I’m going to do that. I’ll try, though.

I think I need to go now.

 

 

*If you’re not familiar with Sparklepoo, look up Pirate Monkeys Inc.’s Sparklepoo comic. It’s about all the terrible original characters that get fanfic’d into Hogwarts and it’s absolutely hilarious. Um… avoid that site if you’re not okay with PG-13. Beware any warnings otherwise, too.

Blog, 10/17/2012

You might not be seeing a whole lot of updates from me for the next…

…I don’t know.

I have AP French and Physics and a programming class all at once. On a block schedule, which means four really long classes each day. I won’t have a lot of time for much else.

That being said, I have some free time right now, and I’m going to try a new page: geek girl fashion. Which, from me, sounds ironic since I don’t put a whole lot of special effort into my clothes… yet is appropriate, since I don’t put a whole lot of special effort into my clothes. And nobody else needs to, really. I’m probably going to get bored with it and go back to writing, though.

Anyway. I have some Mirrorworld material, and some more Scrap Box stuff. I must post it.

Blog, 10/7/2012

There comes a point where I always get stuck.

It’s the end-of-novel recovery sequence, which goes something like this:

1) Finish writing a book.

2) Flounder for about three weeks while trying to edit the book. Get all the corrections done on hard copy and insert maybe two-thirds of them before giving up.

3) Think about trying to get the last third done for another two weeks. Don’t do it.

4) Come up with an idea. Have a place for it to go, but several issues with the idea that you can spot almost immediately.

5) Start writing it anyway.

6) Get stuck.

7) Repeat #4, 5, and 6. Several times.

8) Come up with something else.

9) Run with it. Forget the last book you wrote almost entirely.

 

And here’s the list of ideas I tried, though I probably don’t remember them all:

- That thing with the girl I named Fenna and the different tribes… it was about some political struggles and the plot was pretty weak

- That idea that looked way too much like Eragon

- The whole Sages thing, which has some potential but I’m stuck on it at the point where Celiade meets Etaren and Enidren (the sister dragons). I might publish what I started here in The Scrap Box later.

- An unusual idea about two kids age 12 or so called Jason and Emily. Emily’s gotten Jason into the habit of running around the giant swampy area behind her house, and there are a bunch of weird aluminum buildings back there, and it turns out Jason’s a moon person, and there are a bunch of other moon people trying to transport a nuclear generator and a whole bunch of other stuff to the moon, where they plan to make a bunch of weapons so they can take over the world. Emily is lovably weird, plays the flute badly, and is kind of a daredevil. This whole thing was kind of far-fetched though.

I know I made at least 3 attempts to explain where the Agency came from, and I like the “Sages” explanation (especially because all that happened in a different dimension and doesn’t interfere inconveniently with Earth history).

But right now, I’m not doing any of these. What I’m doing right now feels right, and I think it’s going to be pretty easy to continue.

I’m rewriting Mirrorworld.

I know I said I was gonna do that a while back. I’ve tried it several times, and now that I reread what I tried, it’s pretty funny and pretty bad. But I feel like I’ve gotten ideas in advance… picked up toys before I knew how to play with them. Like a musician who is given pieces of music that are far too difficult for his skill level, but by playing the pieces badly, he can learn enough to go back to the first pieces he was given and play them correctly. Maybe I still don’t have the skill to write Mirrorworld. But I’m sure as heck going to try.

Even if it’s only until I get another idea.

 

BUT since I’m more skilled now than I was when I was twelve (three years ago), I’m making a few crucial changes.

- Daniel and Sophie are becoming human. Daniel won’t be a pussy and Sophie won’t be a snippy, antagonistic little brat.

- Rather than collecting magical books, Daniel and Sophie are going to the Mirrorworld to protect someone. This means they’ll be on one focused quest rather than wandering around trying to find magical books.

- I’m keeping Daniel, Sophie and Hannah (although Hannah’s going to be changed up quite a bit). Molly, too–Molly has to stay, but she’ll come back different also.

- I might keep Angel, except that she would be drastically changed–starting with her name, which I know would become Madison. Also, I know that she would be an Epselan (rather than being an unexplained maybe-faerie-halfling-thing). And she would get a real personality, unlike the original.

- Gavin is definitely staying. Messenger, I think, too, although Daniel’s going to name her that and she’s definitely going to show up in a different way. Otherwise, Messy’s going to disappear from Phoenix as well as from Mirrorworld.

- The meaningless villains will be gone. In their place will be other factions sent by the Agency (turns out the librarian who handed Daniel and Sophie their books was acting on her own initiative) who think that Daniel and Sophie are either trying to take credit for what they’re going to do, or are trying to stop them, or would get in the way.

- No more RPG-style “classes”–no more “mage,” “enchantress,” “wizard,” “spy mage” nonsense. They’re mages. Just mages. Also referred to as “magic users” or “magic wielders” sometimes. But they’re all the same breed of duck.

- Half the characters, who weren’t essential to the plot (I think I had maybe eight to ten of them in the, well, party by the end of the book), will be leaving. Let’s see: Ryder, Cat, Khorabelle, Keith, and that weird vampire with the pimples who was nothing more than a rebellion against Twilight (I actually looked for his name in the book for about an hour. I can’t find it). And I know they weren’t the only ones.

- Mark will be making an appearance! Yes, this is the adventure I kept referring to in Phoenix, and one of the reasons I was so keen to rewrite Mirrorworld: so I could stick Mark in.

- The resolution will be much different. The ending of the version that’s on MEC is very, very dumb.

Anyway, I can’t list all the stuff I’m going to do, since I’m rewriting the whole story. I’m gonna go work on it right now.

Blog, 8/28/2012

Well, I think I’d better give a little update. This is really just a blog post, so if you’re not interested in hearing me ramble about my life, you might prefer to check out the Books tab.

The new novel is going slowly… more slowly than any other novel I’ve kept writing after any length of time. But I have ideas for it. Writing them correctly is a trick, though. It’s intensely detailed, and even still, this is a slow read. I’m not sure I have a decent hook on this one or if it’s just draggy. I have a reason to keep writing, but does my reader have a reason to keep reading? I don’t know. I started the plot quickly enough, but it’s not a very energetic book. It’s a third-person story by nature; I’m wondering if it’s too impersonal.

But I’m going to have more time to write now, because I’ve just dropped my gym and creative writing class in school (High school, if you’re new–I’m not paying for these or anything) and I’m doing a dual-enrollment thing where I’m half homeschooled for a while. This is because the stress was getting to me… I hate public school with every fiber of my being; I learn so much more efficiently on my own that it’s rather stupid to stay in a class where some slacker is having the information shoved down his/her throat while I have to sit around and do busywork.

Busywork is what gets me… and I’m starting to realize that I abhor assigned writing. I’m naturally a more private person than most, and having to put together a photo memoir of life-changing experiences is kind of ridiculous. I’m 15! How many life-changing experiences can I possibly have? Okay, most people in the class are a year or two older than me, but that doesn’t really make much difference apart from the fact that they’ve mostly started to drive and I haven’t even bothered to try getting my permit, although I should soon…

I’m starting to ramble. Where was I?

Oh, yeah.

Busywork stresses me out much more than difficult work where I’m trying to learn something new. I don’t mind difficulty. I can’t stand monotony. I don’t learn by repetition, it just makes me hate what I’m working with.

So I don’t have to take my gym class–hooray for the unathletic nerd girl who can’t run!–and I don’t have to take my stupid Writer’s Studio class and put together some gushy photo memoir where I try to find meaning in the fact that I own a cat, nor do I have to try to draw pictures of vocabulary words. There’s a certain irony that comes from trying to draw a picture of the word “abstract.” I had to do this for an English class last year, too. In the end, I used to just start making a lot of Harry Potter and xkcd references, and leave it at that. It seemed to work.

Now the only classes I have are Physics and Psychology, which are the ones that normal people would have dropped to avoid stress, but for me, they’re actually the most entertaining.

I’m actually quite relieved to be able to do this. Frankly, I have enough to deal with; my mom’s breast cancer has come back (fortunately, they caught it quickly and she likely doesn’t need radiation, just surgery) and I’m not sleeping well because my mattress is maybe one step up from an unpadded dorm mattress. I’m not kidding you. I have tried sleeping on a dorm mattress. If I took the pad off of my bed, mine would just be a creakier version. The springs go clunk! when I lay down. But we’re trying to get me a new bed as well… I hope that goes quickly. Not to mention the whole teenage-hormone thing. Blehh.

Anyway.

My mom and I will finally have time to get on to that cookbook we were thinking about writing. I’ll have to find a book to figure out how to do it if we want to try and get it published, which I imagine would be easier than trying to get a fiction novel published. I wouldn’t know, though, because I’ve never thought my work was anything worth publishing–it has its good points, but at most places it’s still really crummy. Even the recent stuff.

I think that’s all for now. Oh, and I don’t remember if I mentioned this on here: my brother’s getting married! To an awesome lady! I’m a bridesmaid.

Now that’s all.

This is the captain, signing off. -RAY

Blog, 8/9/2012

Working on a new… thingy. I have more maps for this story than I have of the actual written story. Still, that’s probably not a bad thing since there’s a lot of travelling going on with it. Anyway, the Internet is being slow, so I will leave you with a music recommendation.

 

Artist: Of Monsters And Men

Album: My Head is an Animal

Rating: Totally Flipping Awesome