no bubbles today!

Aaah, I'm not that tired. I keep feeling like I should say I am, but I'm not. For a while now I've been waking up around 4pm, and the days always feel so short. And so when I actually do wake up early, the day feels amazingly long. I've been staying up later and later every night, and usually when I do that, there comes a day where I stay up until morning and still feel super awake, and so I decide to just stay up all morning until I conk out at night, this time at a really early time. So then everything is reset!

Ugh, I'm also trying to get my voice back. Not my actual voice, but my how-I-speak-differently-from-everyone-else voice. Recently I've been trying to post stuff and I feel so stiff and contained. I think this must be because of all the essay training we've had during the school year for english, and because I've been typing and editing so many e-mails and letters to adults this year, which always takes me unnaturally long. Therefore, when I send regular e-mails to people, I always use "in which" instead of "when" and "where", and I try to keep myself from using smileys and from using exclamation points and from typing super long sentences and from making up words. Right now I am trying to break away from my essay-voice. And ah! I'm still separating my contractions! I recently began using smileys again, but I'm still trying to contain that a bit because I realize that I keep depending on them too much and when I try to keep myself from using one, I realize that I can't find the right words to express what I want to.

I forgot the other thing I was originally going to talk about. Oh well.
Hmm. What's the opposite of brown? Or the complement of it? It feels like all colors have their complements, but I can't think of one for brown.

I'm slouching right now. Normally I can bring myself to unslouch when I realize I am, but it's like the staying up late has this side effect of making me not unslouch. Now I keep switching between slouching and what I call the dancer pose. That sounds a lot better in my head, like most things do for people. Anyway, the dancer pose is basically just when you don't slouch, but more extreme. Every time I think I'm extremely not slouching, it's not extreme enough. It's like your shoulders have to go all the way back and down or else everyone thinks you're not sitting up straight enough. When you actually do accomplish this spine-straightening activity, you kind of look like a dancer, and that's why I call it the dancer pose. I only say this because my school has a dance department, and it is always immediately obvious who is in this department because they are the majority of the people who sit up straight.

For some reason, I can't stand listening to any of the music I normally listen to. I went through all the music I had on my grooveshark account, and I just couldn't stand any of them. So then I watched youtube videos, which I never do. And then I went to the old playlist.com, and listened to everyone else's playlists, which surprisingly worked. It really reminded me of last summer, or maybe even back in 8th grade during the school year, which was nice. I've been listening to the same kind of music all year, and it's like when I listen to the same kinds of songs now, it isn't summer or something. Even The Fray, which I love. Suddenly all the sound in the background of their music really bothers me, like I'm suffocating in too much sound diffusion. It's very strange.

As a result of my music search expedition, I've found a few new songs. I found this apparently well known amazing singer/piano girl on youtube who's name is Christina Grimmie. I'll pick one and link it here in the middle of my post, just to change things up.

Just a Dream by Sam Tsui & Christina Grimmie - So this was a really popular song a few months ago, sung by someone else. Tsui and Grimmie did their own cover to this song, and it sounds really nice, and different enough so that it didn't sound like the stuff I listened to all year. Listen to it!

Do you think there's such a thing as negative babies? As in negatively aged babies? Because we're 9 months or so when born, so before then we were 0, and then is there a before then age? Are all babies fated to happen so that there are baby souls somewhere, each one counting down to their birth? Maybe there's a -102 year old baby someplace right now, so in 102 years and 9 months, it'll be born. I always imagine these beings to be bubbles. Everything I don't know about are bubbles. Dreams too. I think it's because I feel like they should always be floating.

Now that we're on this topic, one of the reasons I oversleep sometimes, other than when I'm doing it to avoid doing inevitable things that day, is because I'm chasing dreams. You know when you have a really good or interesting dream(maybe even nightmares that are too interesting not to continue) and suddenly you wake up either from an alarm or a phone call or other people or your internal clock, and you really want to get back to the dream? Normally if it was your internal clock that woke you up, that's not a problem. Alarms are ok too, if you've gotten so used to slapping it off and stuffing it under your pillow that you can't remember how it got there. But if it's a phone call, just looking at the caller id will bring you too back to your senses, so that it's almost impossible to get back to your dream.

Dreams are like bubbles, I think, and so you have the bubble when you're dreaming. When you wake up, you let go of the dream bubble, and it starts to float away. Usually it's easy to catch if you're half conscious or if you woke up normally, because it's only a few seconds you're asleep again. If you stay awake too long, the dream bubble floats out of your reach, most likely taking other bubbles with it, so you don't have any more dreams that day no matter how many hours you spend hoping it'll come back.

Morning Oranges

I had this dream where I was upset for some reason in the dining room. In a fit of rage/or unhappiness, I walked through the kitchen and picked up four different oranges and carried them to my room. I think the oranges were supposed to be comfort food or something. Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I had pretty much forgotten my dream, and I walked into the kitchen to make some breakfast for myself. I paused at the fruit bowl and remembered part of my dream. I had this urge to pick up four oranges. So I did. Then I didn't know what to do with them, so I just left them on the counter.

Well, the point of that was that I thought it would be an interesting if someone recorded their morning routine with a camcorder. Then, every day for a week, they would try to repeat what they did the first day, and record that. And again and again and again. After a few days of recording, they could overlap the videos somehow, and see how close they were to repeating each day.

Maybe the first day they rinsed a glass before pouring milk into it, and the fourth day they forgot to rinse it and just poured in the milk. Maybe they would find out that each day, they put the milk carton in the exact same spot on the counter every day, or that they always left the cupboard door open after grabbing the peanut butter and remembered to close it while making scrambled eggs.

Yesterday, I finished reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. It's a really good book.

It starts off a little slow until you get to the pranks. I actually read this book a long time ago, and I always see it in the library. For some reason, I could never remember what happened in the book, so last week I decided to read it again. It was so strange because I had random moments of deja vu as I was reading it, but not the really familiar kind, where you know exactly what's going to happen next. I just felt like, "Oh, something bad happens next right?" or "She triumphs over something here, I think." I realized by the end of the book that the reason I didn't remember it too well was because the book didn't really have a happy ending. Not that I dislike all books without happy endings. It's just that I really disliked her boyfriend at the end. I liked Alpha. He seemed to be the only character that could think the same way Frankie could. I like her strategic thinking, even though she may be psychotic, according to some of the other characters in the book. Or misunderstood.

Anyway, I have some book recommendations for you. I also have some books that I want to read, and after reading laurapoet's other blog, The Plebicolar Library, I have decided to make a mini wish list for myself. This list is a list of all the books I want to read.

Book Wish List

1. Zombies vs. Unicorns by Holly Black and Justin Larbalestier - This book is an anthology. The two authors I listed are actually editors of the book. There are 12 short stories inside, written by 12 different, well-known authors. Even I recognize these authors, so they must be really well-known in the YA category, at least. Some of the stories support unicorns, and some support zombies. They are designed so that you can side with one side... For me, I don't really have any thoughts on either. I have a teacher that hates unicorns because they're "cliche", so everyone always gives her unicorn gifts, such as unicorn costumes, wall art, unicorn pottery, plushies, etc. She now has a unicorn shrine. As far as zombies go, I once found a dating site for zombies, and I thought it was funny.

Is plushies a real word? I've been using that word ever since I started playing Neopets, and even when I stopped playing, the word stuck. It's just such a nice substitute for "stuffed animals".

2. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender - Ok. You can just click on the link for the summary, since I don't feel like summarizing all that in my own words. This author has some really interesting ideas. I want to read her other books too.

3. Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue - This book is about 5 year-old Jack and his mom. They live in an 11 by 11 ft white room. Jack has never left this room. Now you can click the link to the summary.

Oh, a while ago, I began a list of all the books I have ever read, and it has about eight books on it so far, some of which are unfinished. Maybe I'll make a list of all the movies I have ever seen, and then all the stories-but-not-books I've ever read. Just for future reference.

Now for my book recommendations:

1. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender - This book has a really interesting concept. There's a girl who can taste emotions from the food that people make. The first time she realizes this is when her mother bakes her a lemon cake for her ninth birthday, and after she eats it, she can taste her mother's unhappiness. She tries to avoid homemade food after that. During dinner, which is unavoidable, she tastes her family's emotions and realizes that not everything is the way she thinks it is. The writing is really amazing. The only problem is that after a while, the book kind of swerves and goes off in another direction, and then it's all about her brother. He's interesting and all but... I wish the book focused on her tasting ability a little bit more. I didn't really like the ending either. Still, you should read it anyway! It made me want to read Aimee Bender's other books too, which have interesting titles.

2. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart - It's been a long time since I've read any of E. Lockhart's other books, but I'm pretty sure that this one is very different from those books. It has a nice cover too(I'm talking about the one with the blue envelope and the red basset wax seal). I already wrote a whole paragraph on this book in the beginning of this post, so I'm just going to skip this part and you can just click on the link to its summary.

Ok... So neither of my book lists are very long, but they will be, eventually, when I think of more.

As for music, I have a ton of music recommendations! Unfortunately, I just sent a long list of them a few days ago, so I don't feel like doing it again. I'm not going to copy it either because my comments on the list make no sense unless you have the same brain as the recipient. It would be so much easier to just write a list of recommendations, rather than a list of recommendations plus my thoughts, but it's hard not to comment on my choices.

Also, I used to use playlist.com, but I discovered Grooveshark a few months ago, and I really like it. The graphics are nice, and there's a giant collection of music. The scrollbar on the bottom is kind of shifty, but I don't use it that much anyway. I have included a link to it in the sidebar. I still visit playlist.com sometimes though, just because my playlist there has a three year span of my music choices. And all my friends use it.

Ooh, a glint of sunlight just shifted into my eye through the blinds. I don't really like glaring sunlight, but I do like those times in which bits of sunlight shine into your eye in a way that probably makes your iris look transparent. It makes everything sparkle, like those circle sun flares that appear on sunny photos. You should try it. It makes you feel like there's glitter on your eyelashes or that your eye is a crystal and it's refracting a rainbow of light on the wall behind you. That would be so cool. If we could actually refract rainbows of light, I would line up a bunch of people in the sun and let them refract rainbows onto my wall until it absorbed the light and glowed at night.

Hmm. I'm going to go get some oranges now.

For the First Time by The Script - Here's a good song.

Sites You Need to Sign Up At

I love these sites. They all have some kind of use. Try them out.

Quizlet - Online flash cards. This site helps you memorize things so quickly. I use it to study for vocabulary sometimes. And it doesn't look yucky either. I hate it when sites have a great idea and use and stuff, but it looks tacky. But this one even has nice animation! Yay! Try out the little sample on the homepage.

Playlist.com - Just compile all your favorite songs here. Each playlist can hold up to 200 songs, I think. I usually have 2. One for all the songs I like, and then one for just replaying a small group so I can just listen to what I feel like listening to at the moment. It's also great because you can use the search bar while listening to music at the same time. So it doesn't stop the music everytime you search up an artist or song.

Remember the Milk - This is an online to-do list. laurapoet introduced me to this one. I just signed up a few days ago. It's easy to use, and has an awesome name. I usually just rattle off everything in the little blank-where-you-type-tasks and press enter after each task. Then all I have to do is just click it off my favorites and then check off what I've done. You can even share to-do lists, if you like.

Flickr - This is a site with photos. Like DeviantArt except with only photography. Like photobucket but without all the tiny icons and animations. And much better photos than the kind you'll find on Google images. I mainly use this for favorite-ing amazing photos. Really, just type in a word and out comes all these gorgeous and cool and amazing and snazzy photos.

Blogger.com - Get a blog! It's really fun to just talk about anything you want, particularly yourself. And the great thing is, no one has to listen if they don't want to! So you don't even have to feel bad for talking too much. And you can add little things to the sidebar!

DeviantArt - A website full of art. And all kinds too. Traditional, digital, jewelry, ceramics, film, literature, flash, and a lot lot more. My personal favorite is the emoticons. Not just :)'s or :('s here. Nope. There's giant 100x100 emoticons, very long emoticons, static emoticons, treecutting emoticons, pirate-ninja emoticons, swinging around the world emoticons, and there's just so many of them! I love them so much that I'll even provide a link to the emoticon section, since it's kinda hard to find.

FutureMe - Send an e-mail to your future self. Maybe in 2020 or something. If you sign up, you can change the e-mail it'll be sent to in case you change e-mails. All the future-emails you send will also be compiled in a little list. The list only shows the title of the e-mail you send though, so you can't cheat and look at your e-mail before you get it. It's fun! I sent one to myself, which is supposed to arrive in 2016, when I'll be in college!

Geni - Well, I just found this. It sounds interesting. Basically, it's an online family tree that you can make. You just add relatives, and you can make profiles and send stuff.

Now just 2 other sites.

1000AwesomeThings - 1000 random, awesome things like "stomping dry crunchy leaves on the sidewalk", "when the hiccups stop", and "typing in your username and password at the speed of light". Not completely up to 1000 yet, but still cool. :D

BookArmy - I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds cool! It says, "Never read a bad book again". Anyway, I'll try it later. You should try too.

And I'm listening to, "Where Do I Go?" by Marie Digby.

That's it!

Somewhere in the Stratosphere

Ok, I'm not going to talk about all my high school homework and stuff because that's what I did last time and I completely forgot what I was going to say so it's saved as a draft.

Well, I guess I do need to talk a little about my homework, because I'm supposed to be doing my art homework, but I have been wanting to blog for 2 weeks and I couldn't because I was bogged down with all that stuff. And I need to do this and then I'll feel better.

So, music playlist songs update.

My current favorites:

Show Me What I'm Looking For by Carolina Liar - I had been trying to find it for so long after I first heard it on tv during a trailer for "The Time Traveler's Wife", but then when I searched it up, the trailer changed songs, and I had to convince myself that I hadn't been imagining another song. And then just today, I recognized it on Lily's playlist! Yay! So, my favorite line: "Save me, I'm lost,", the last one right before they repeat the line 5 times.

Second Chance by Shinedown - My favorite line: "Somewhere in the Stratosphere!". I thought it was funny once I had finally figured out what he was singing. Also, I don't pay attention to the lyrics of a song until I hear it so much I finally start singing along to it and find myself saying something weird. Stratosphere... haha.

Ah! I have more but I need to go sleep. So yeah.

Ok. I am back. I will continue.

Suddenly I See by KT Turnstall - This one is a pretty old song I stole from a friend's playlist. My favorite line would be the chorus.

Also, I recently had to read "Unwind" for summer reading, and there's this one part that really stands out to me. Basically, this is a story set in the future when teenagers under the age of 18 can be unwound for a number of reasons. Unwinding is when the teen's body parts are seperated but still alive, and then are redistributed. These body parts are used in surgery to replace useless limbs and organs, for example.

We have three main characters in this book. One runs away once he finds a form his parents signed for his unwinding. Another is an orphan who is being unwound simply because there is not enough room for her to stay. The last, a tithe, was raised up knowing of his unwinding and feeling great about it because it was in his religion to do so.

At one point, the runaway is trapped in a cargo box with 3 other unwinds, and they discuss their unknown fate. When one of the unwinds is prompted with the question, they say that they don't know. And while another kid says that that isn't an answer, the main character disagrees, because if people would just admit that they didn't know, then maybe the world wouldn't be the way it was. The whole book is filled with small revelations like that.

I just thought that was cool.

Songs

I have 86 songs on my playlist. The first 30 have pretty much gotten old. And 86 isn't really that many. I automatically start with one of the last 6 songs. I started my playlist last year, I think.

Anyway, amazingly, some songs haven't gotten old to me yet. Here's a list.

#11 Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson - I listened to that song repeatedly on YouTube for 3 months. And then I got sick of it. But if I happen to come by it on my playlist, I still like to listen to it. Its also #60 because I couldn't find it once and thought it wasn't on my playlist.

#36 Listen to Your Heart by DHT - I just like it.

#51 Miss Invisible by Marie Digby - It's a pretty song. I love turning it up high because it sort of echoes. :) It's a sad song, but it makes you feel content and almost happy. And not in a sadistic way.

#57 Breathe by Michelle Branch - Awesome song. Totally reminds me of sepia. I like the music video too.

#82 Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie - It's fairly new. I first heard it when laurapoet showed me a stop-motion clip on YouTube with this as the song. It's an awesome video, by the way. Go check it out. (keywords: her morning elegance)

And my favorite and newest song at the moment:

#86 Run, Don't Walk by Hey Monday - The voice is awesome. I stole it from Lily's playlist. :)

I love happy songs. I love sad songs too. Don't your favorite songs just make you feel much better?
Mostly, I find songs is through radio stations, stores, and commercials. So the songs are a little limited...Any suggestions? :/

Guess What?

I'm making a post. :)

Well, two things.

One. I have a list of people who seem interesting, and seem like they would be fun to be friends with. These people aren't really even friends at all. They're just classmates, people that sit with us at lunch sometimes, etc. Ryewanda? - Bam. First letters of their first names. Not all of them are names though. I needed to add some to make it readable. Even the question mark means something! (pretty much someone I don't know the name of?) Of course, people in book and movies are in a separate list of interesting-people. Peter Pan, as one example. Or the characters in the Goose Girl. And Harry Potter, of course. Who doesn't want to meet the quirky people in that book?

Two. My playlist. I always have it on. Usually I repeat new songs that I add over and over again, because the old ones just get old. Anyway, I'm usually doing something when music is playing. So everytime I hear the song, it reminds me of what I was doing when listening to it. Breathe by Michelle Branch reminds me of the green monster guy from Jack Frost that I was making. This other song on Lily's playlist reminds me of Pokemon (of all things) because it was always playing in the car when I was playing pokemon.

Well. That was fun. Now I'm going to go and do more online-reading.

Links

Ok, I am going to go through my links so you can get a good idea of what each of them are. Future links will probably have their own summary in another post. I'd add it to this post...but its long enough as it is.

• DeviantART : A place with tons of art that people make, including literature, emoticons, photography, painting, and much more.
• Dino Run : A cute game in which you (the dino) are running to dino paradise so that you can escape the apocalypse. Balance on meteors, eat lizards, collect power-ups, get rides from other dinos, collect eggs, and even race in multiplayer with other dinos. There are many milestones to use, and the overall retro look to it is just too awesome.
• Emily Short IF : Im a big fan of Interactive Fiction (IF). If you dont know what IF is, you can check this website and it will have a good How-to guide to playing interactive fiction. Emily Short has some really good interactive fiction, so be sure to try them out!
• Flickr : A place where anyone can upload photos and share them with others. If you find a picture you especially like, add it to your favorites! The people on Flickr have some really neat pictures. How do they do it?
• JayIsGames : A collection of casual games. I usually find games here, and they have reviews and ratings on them all, along with some helpful walkthroughs. IF, webtoys, grow games, escape-the-room games(although I suck at those) are among the many many games that they have.
• Laura's Blog : My friend's blog. She created it a few hours before mine and convinced me to make one too. She's a writer and poet and I have a feeling she's going to have many interesting posts...
• MiniCity : A virtual city that grows everytime someone clicks on it. Click this link and you'll help my mini city grow. :)
• Neave : Interesting website I found a few weeks ago. Try the lines one. You wont believe your eyes. o_o
• Nitrome : One of my favorite links ever. Nitrome creates its own pixelized games and everything in it is just so cute and squishable. Especially the little characters in "Mutiny". The only game I've ever beaten completely was "Jack Frost". Although they update frequently and have a fun-to-read blog, its always exciting when they come up with a new game.
• Playlist : Make your own music playlist and listen to others. I usually have my playlist on in the background while browsing the web.
• Powder game : Another one of my favorite links ever. This is a sandbox game, so you can basically do anything you want. There are many elements to choose from. Water, seed, powder, player, fighter, magma, c-4, metal, thunder, superball, wind, ice, and way more. The fun part of the game is how the elements interact with each other. blow the ice away with wind and create snow. Sprinkle some seeds on powder and grow a plant. Then burn it up with fire. Create a fighting arena, a volcano, a waterfall, an obstacle course for the player, the possibilities are really endless. For a really nice experience, change the BG to BG-shade. You can even save these and share them with others. Also, scroll down for information about everything, especially player and BG. :) Have fun and enjoy!
• Quizilla : Make quizzes and stories and post them for people to rate, read, and try. Once thats done, see if it will make it to the Most Popular or Top Rated list.
• Scribbler : Draw a simple design. Then click scribble and watch it work its magic. Voila! Change the color of the scribble and you have more control of how the scribble works. Also check out the website of the person who made this. The only thing it seems to be missing is an eraser, although an imperfect drawing seems to turn out really nice anyway.
• Shannon Hale's Website : This is the website of my favorite author. Read up info on books she's written and info about herself that might be helpful to novel writers-to-be.
• Travian: Make a village. Conquer other villages with your troops. Expand your resources. Survive raids and attacks. Then try to make it to the high scores.
• World-o-Meters : Current statistics on population, economy, environment, education, energy, health, water, and food. The numbers might be surprising.

And that concludes the afternoon announcements. Have a nice day!