Sixteen: Quote Dump 2

If you didn't see the first Quote Dump, maybe look at it here? This is basically more of that.

No offense is intended by any of the following.


Canada: Someone bumped into my chair and I said sorry.
America: Someone bumped into my chair and I punched them in the face.
Japan: Someone bumped into my chair and I surrendered.
Germany: Someone bumped into my chair and I invaded their country.


Dang this is such a good song. Let me play it 86 times an hour until I hate it.

I'm actually laughing so hard because all the girls are about to cry and there's this one guy in the middle that is just so done with all of them.
Are we gonna ignore the guy on the far right's impressive... lady-like chest thing?
And the one girl trying to eat her phone.
There is also a displeased woman in the bottom left corner.
And a hairy armpit above the displeased woman.


On a scale of one to invade Russia in the winter, how bad is your idea?


"Do you ever get up from your computer to walk aimlessly around your house, only to sit back down in front of your computer again?"
"I pointlessly open the fridge too."
"Sometimes I just stand in the middle of the living room and look lost."
"Why am I in the bathroom?"


If you had a room with absolutely nothing in it and the walls, ceiling, and floor were made of mirror, what would it look like in the mirrors?

omg Barbie, you left the seat up.
What the heck, Barbie. Having shelves over your bathtub is a hazard! You could sit up andh it your head off them!
Seriously Barbie, what was you thinking?
It's so dangerous to leave knives on the floor, Barbie! You should get them out of harm's way before you cut your toes.
BARBIEE!!! That mirror isn't even properly held to the wall. You don't want 7 years of bad luck, do you??
Hey... I didn't notice... you don't have any curtains, Barbie!! What if one of the neighbors peeks through the window?
And you can't keep a fish in a fishbowl just like that! It's too small; the fish need water and oxygen exchange – that's animal torture!
omg Barbie pink and brown. Really? You are supposed to be a fashion icon.
Barbie you should keep that medicine in a locked cabinet. A child could take it and DIE.
Barbie, at least you keep your toilet water blue.
Is no one going to acknowledge that she's preparing food in her bathroom?


"My ears. They are ringing."
"Are you gonna answer em?"


STAND
I


If I ever met a genie, I wouldn't wish for a million dollars; I'd wish that whenever I bought something, I'd always have the right amount of money to pay for it in my pocket.


The headline: DOCTOR WHO AIDED BIN LADED RAID IN JAIL


Are you the Sun? Because you need to stay 93,000,000 miles away from me.

Look at the majestic flag of the USA, billowing in the wind. The other flag with the stars on it is nice too.

Do you think prison guards use proactive to prevent breakouts?


Which country has the most birds?
Portugeese
No wait. That's a language.
...
Portugull
Nice recovery.


Be careful making wishes in the
[aggressively slams hand on the table twice]
DARK DARK.


Names child Butter.
Accidentally brings home wrong child.
I can't believe it's not Butter.


What are you doing to stop global warming right now?
"Turning my AC all the way up to cool off the earth around my house."


Hey there Delilah
What's it like in New York City
I'm a thousand miles away but girl
Tonight you look so pretty
Yes you do.
I installed a camera in your room.
I'm watching you.
wat


Friend: "What stays in a corner but goes around the world?"
Me: "..."
Friend: "A stamp."
Me: "You just changed my life."
Friend: "Are you ok?"
Me: "no"


Remember this?

You think it's funny.
Except that in Greek, "I am retired" is literally "Eimai suntaxiouchos," which is two words.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...
Disney.


I can't wait until I get that job at Starbucks because I'm going to spell everyone's name wrong so they can't instagram their cups.


Madonna is 55 and her boyfriend is 22.
Jennifer Lopez is 43 and her boyfriend is 26.
Mariah Carey is 44 and her husband is 32.
if you're not dating anyone, don't worry about it. Maybe he hasn't been born yet.


Apparently the plural, gender-neutral form for nieces and nephews is "niblings."
This is the only way by which I shall refer to my siblings' future kids.


wow what a bold statement


I as born at an incredibly young age.


Me: I knew you were trouble when you walked in

Now I'm lion on the cold hard ground.

Friend: That is so lame. Who do you think you are?
Me: Running round leaving Scars.

Fifteen: I'm on Bandcamp! =^.^=

Huh? What? Bandcamp? What's that and why do I expect you to care?

I can't answer the Huh and What, but Bandcamp I can explain.

Basically it's like Twitter for musicians. Except that instead of text posts, you make music posts. People can download or buy your music, like or follow you as an artist, or search for what they want to see.

So yeah. I put two old songs up on my new page (which is still being designed), and you can check it out HERE!

One cool thing about Bandcamp is their "Name your price" feature. You (yes you) can use it to download my music for free, or if you feel so inclined to give me random money, you can enter in an amount.
If you want it for free (which I assume you do), just type a zero (0) in the box and then download it for free.

You can find all my songs listed on the sidebar on the right.

Background art and banners and stuff are in the works so the place looks a little less generic. But there you go.

That song that I demoed a few posts ago? Will go up on the page on August 4 or 5, so keep your eyes open.

And that's all. Just some shameless self promotion. Enjoy the tunes!

Thirteen: Nicholas Flamel, Alchymist

Have you read The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott? 

You should! 

My English teacher Mrs. Maupin, whose opinion I respect greatly, called it one of her favorite book series – creative, engaging, and highly original. 

I thought it was a lot of crap (with just a bit of bacon bits on top).

This will not be a single blog. It will carry on as more thoughts come to mind. In the process, I will attempt to avoid spoilers as much as possible. All potential spoilers will be marked. Read at your own risk.

Book 1, The Alchymist

The story starts off strong, in very Rick Riordan style. Stuff is happening and we don't know what it is, but we can tell it's cool.

The first thing that caught my attention is questionable. I felt that as the twins question Flamel about the basics of who he is, what the Codex is, what Golems are, who John Dee is, etc., there's something stiff about it. 

Compared to Riordan's "Percy Jackson" series, the dialogue seems very unnatural. As if the twins are asking questions just so that the writer can tell us readers things about the world he has envisioned in his mind, rather than because they genuinely have questions.

But maybe that's just me.

Then there's Perenelle. Ooooh Perenelle. 

Lemme explain something to you that I reference a lot – deus ex machina. Literally means, "god from the machine". It's a writing flaw in which characters do things or have abilities beyond their control, rather than developing or using their resources to find the solution. An example is in the simple story where Jim gets lost in the woods. 

A good way to write the story would be that Jim realizes his potential danger, scavenges for firewood, builds himself a suitable shelter, wards off the night, and uses the direction of the Sun to hike to safety.  

The deus ex machina way to write the story would be that Jim just happens to find a walkie talkie in his pocket and calls for help.

-- Spoilers exist beyond this point! Skip if you plan on reading the series for yourself! --

So Pernelle gets captured by Dee, who puts restraining seals on her hands. But a Golem just happens to splash a little on her, washing away the seal. Not so bad, right? Except that she blows up the car as a result. The story is driven by something that just happens to happen.

Oh no, Pernelle is being held prisoner by Dee! Then it sure is a good thing that she has a power to talk to ghosts who can give vital messages back and forth between her and her husband.

Sophie is in trouble, along with the rest of the crew! The Morrigan, Bastet, and Dee are attacking the tree. If only Pernelle could help. Well, why doesn't she control Sophie then from her prison? How? How about through the conveniently-placed GOSH DARN (imagine stronger British language here) oil spill on the floor?!?

--End of spoilers--

AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH! The entire flipping story is driven by deus ex machine baloney sandwiches.

My point is, if I have to explain a story by saying, "it just happens that...", then it's a bad story. I absolutely hate deus ex machina stories, especially ones that drive the plot. They are bad stories. Period.

More deus ex machina unfortunately exists elsewhere in the story. And you know what? To make matters worse, I have to mark all these as potential spoilers. Why is that bad? Because. It's one thing to have deus ex machinas that aren't major story elements. But these are all major story elements. Bad. Writing.

-- Spoilers exist beyond this point! Skip if you plan on reading the series for yourself! --

(Although I imagine you'll probably guess what'll happen before it does – I did, and I'll talk about that a little bit further down.)

Oh look, Josh (the story character) saved two of the most important pages in the Codex from Dee. What a lucky coincidence!!(?!?)

The crows are about to destroy the car that has our heroes in it! But fortunately for us, Flamel just happens (those words again) to have a collectable favor from an all powerful being who can send a convenient wind to blow away the crows. Greeeeat.

An epic battle is being fought for Heckate's tree. Sophie is being super cool, Flamel is using his magic, and the Morrigan and Bastet are on the hesitant run. It seems that the bad guys are about to lose. Oh wait. Dee has a super ice sword that takes 10 seconds to STAB AND COMPLETELY FREEZE A GOSH DARN ANCIENT TREE AND KILL SOMEONE WHO IS BASICALLY A GODDESS OF LEGEND.

Sophie is talking to the Witch of Endor. Unfortunately, Josh must leave. Upset, he goes outside. How emotional (no not really. I'll talk about character development or the lack thereof in a bit). How convenient that it just so happens that Dee is arriving there to talk to Josh and make him question Flamel. This isn't a big deal you say? No, it's a huge deal, because it leads to all of Book 2 with Dee, Josh, and Mars Ultor (remember?).

Josh is about to die at the hands of a zombie bear! Good thing Sohpie's screams are both good for breaking twins out of semi-conscious states as well as obliterating the incoming zombie threat, huh?

The Witch of Ojai. The only one who can help Sophie. But now everyone is in danger. Dee is closing in on them. Suddenly, the Witch's decision to have her shop at the intersection of three ley lines seems like such a good thing, doesn't it?

--End of spoilers--

Again, the point is that this book is absolutely riddled with plot-moving deus ex machina (DExM) moments. I'd compare it to the old Disney movie The Emperor's New Groove. Think about it and let me know how many DExM's you find there. I'll give you as many as I can think of later.

Alright, this is getting pretty long. And I'm not even done ranting about this first book. So we'll put it off till next time.

On the next installment of "All that's wrong with this book series":

Lacking character development.

Cliche lines for lifeeee!

Too much being done with too little.

Twelve: God > The Avengers (and proof)

This is a repost of something from six months ago. Although the Avengers hype has died down significantly, I believe a revival and reminder is always a good thing.

For my purposes, the Avengers are the ones who got movies about themselves: The Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man.

Paul called it out before it even started. 

1 Thesselonians 4:3-6 says:

For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you.

Now, let's throw some names in there.

The same verse again, with brackets added to indicate names:

For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality [Iron Man]; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel [Hulk] in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God [Captain America]; and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter [Thor] because the LORD is the AVENGER in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you.


As I said, God > Avengers.

Eleven: Locked Out

My computer tries to limit questionable websites, and one of the ways it does that is by blocking every website requiring a log in. 

So I've been locked out of blogging for the last two weeks. That's where I've been, if you must know.

But we're back. Just as a teaser, here's some of the stuff that's in the works. I will be pushing these just as soon as they're ready (and in no particular order).

• Short exposition on God and the Avengers.
• More "Mnemosyne".
• Lessons learned from BIO@TECH.
• A talk on my music, some of which is now published.
• To me what makes a good story.
• A review on "The Secrets of the immortal Nicholas Flamel" book series.

--

For now though, let's talk about computer parental controls. 

The Negatives

The negatives come first because there seem to be more of them.

When I'm working and my computer tells me, "5 more minutes till 10 PM", that can get kind of annoying. If I'm in an online conversation or working on music or art or even a blog, there's nothing I can do except try to time a good ending point with the hard stop the computer gives me at 10 PM. After that time, my account logs out and doesn't reactivate till the morning.

I've had to interrupt some serious activities because of the log out timer before. Was in a game and on a Skype call with a friend when all of a sudden, the computer without warning tells me I have two minutes left. All of a sudden, it's a mad rush to make an excuse to go and quit the game and make sure nothing will break in 120 seconds or less. Stuff like that has happened in various forms on multiple occasions, namely conversations with friends (which I consider serious – more so than playing a game).

Moreover, stuff like popups saying, "You can't access this website," can be very annoying. Especially when they keep me from blogging about how annoying they are.

One time I was podcasting. We use a Google Doc for our outline. I went to open the link and the site became blocked for no apparent reason. It wouldn't open for the length of the podcast, putting me at a serious disadvantage. It's hard to deal with stuff like that when we're streaming live for 15 people around the world.

The Positives

On the other hand, I get to bed at a decent time. This is huge, cause it wouldn't happen otherwise.

I get to do my quiet times in the Bible without my distraction before my computer reactivates in the morning.

I get to practice asking for help (usually to unlock websites), which is not something I'm terribly good at. The asking, not the unlocking.

The Conclusion

Would I remove the limits on my computer if I had the choice? I'd be hard pressed to say yes. Sometimes I would REALLY REALLY REALLY like to keep working past 10PM. Sometimes I would REALLY REALLY REALLY like to work without interrupting popups or log on earlier in the morning.

But the small benefits for me outweigh the downsides enough that I'd have to say no more times than yes. 

It's a tough position to be in – deciding such a thing – because there are reasons to support both sides. I'm not going to say, "I'm glad I have those limits" because I'm not. Removing them would not be an offense to me whatsoever. But while they're still there, I enjoy the benefits of a computer that forces me to exercise self-control as well.

--

More coming down the pipe soon. Stay tuned.