(Lack of Title Skillz)

Apparently staring at an inbox devoid of Pottermore emails does not make them show up any faster.

Also, asking Pottermore why it doesn't love you makes you socially abnormal.

These are things I learned today.

It's utterly gorgeous outside, and I am looking wistfully into the last vestiges of summer because my school starts up on Wednesday morning.

This was a good summer, really. It treated me well, and I am not ready for it to be over. My coping mechanism, as school inches closer, is insane denial and not packing up my school stuff because I believe that will fix something. Like maybe school won't start until I'm fully prepared.

That is a crazy idea, but one that I wish would come true.

This is another thing I learned today.

Some of the media I've absorbed recently:
--The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty. It is 400-some pages long and I finished it the day I got it. It is really super good and I plan on reading everything Jaclyn Moriarty has written ever.
--K cajoled me into seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes with him and my dad yesterday, and... and....
Um.
It was honestly the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in my life.
Not horrifyingly bad, mind you, it was actually fantastic and well-made and I liked watching it, but the way the story ran was terrifying, with the apes taking over and the Golden Gate Bridge and the ALZ-113...
I suggest you watch it, but I think I am done with the Planet of the Apes movies after that one. Oh.
--Primary Faction, which is the prequel to a television-show-hopeful called Chronicles of Syntax. I first read about it here, where it is explained thoroughly. There are twelve episodes of Primary Faction, and the first one is up here, in playlist form. I tried listening to it without bias (the bias being the fact that Liam Dryden is in it and is to be a main character), and it is excellent. I hope it does get picked up as a TV show, and that I can find a way to watch this show from America.
--Sketches from Catherine Tate (a former companion on Doctor Who), which are hilarious, like this one.

Quote for Sunday, August 21, 2011:

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment."

-Mr. Darcy

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice)

Muse for Today:

Should people be allowed to choose the way they die?

Frets of AAAAH

Perfectionism is something that I strive for. I have always aimed to be better than everyone else at everything, and while I rarely accomplish that, I am usually pretty proud of what I have done. "Practice makes perfect" was an adage lodged into my brain at five, and I have never been able to shake it off completely.

But.

One downside to my quest for spotless, holy glory is that whenever I can't get something after practicing, I begin to lose it. I begin to doubt everything I've ever stood for. I fail at things I used to be good at before, like writing or standing up.

Like now.

I recently started learning how to play the guitar, like every teenager who thinks they're cool because they know how to play guitar (only I am hopefully not that annoying, because I hate people who can play three chords on the guitar and suddenly they think they're Paul fricking McCartney, and one of my fears when I started this was that I would become one of those).

And I can't get it.

I can play a bunch of chords, and I have good hands for guitar (because they're man hands, according to Ginger... *shakes head bitterly*) but I can't...you know...actually play guitar. I can play chords individually, but when I put them together, they sound like Death is skinning a drugged hyena. My fingers can't move fast enough.

And the thing is, even with all of the practicing, I can't get it. I can't get it! And I'm beginning to wonder if I am just being too hard on myself because I started a short while ago, or if I just suck at instruments and should give up now before somebody dies due to my atrocious playing, or if it just takes longer for some people to stop wanting to lie on the floor and die every time I they mess up a chord change.

Muse for Today:

This is wonderful. He's obviously making up for his stupid name.

(Source: http://thecountercurseisunjellify.tumblr.com)

Gooey Funk

Recently, I've been in a funk.
The kind of funk where you are just angry at everything, and feel completely purposeless, and want to finish everything but simply don't have that kind of motivation, and all you want to do is lie face-down on the floor, not moving, and wonder why you even exist at all.
I am a lazy person in an astounding number of ways, but I am rarely lethargic, and I hate being this way. It's frustrating.
Most people (the kind of people who still say 'funk') would describe this kind of a mood as a blue funk, but I think my funk is more a squishy, lurid purple kind of funk that is horrible to be trapped in, and a sad sight for those who aren't in any sort of funk at all.
(Funk is starting to be a semantic satiation in this post, isn't it? No. Wait. Don't answer. Yes, it is.) (You're so endearingly charming, FRAS! Talking to yourself like someone cares!) (*blushes in the most endearingly charming way possible* Oh, stop it!)
It's times like this where I forget to do stuff that I love, like bake food or talk to my friends or work on my stories or read books that I've read fifty thousand times. I just end up focusing on how much my life sucks and looking up sucky bands on purpose (which is a deviation from my normally much more impressive pursuit of good music) and abandoning books in the middle because I hate everything and watching (I'm not even kidding) five hours of Glee in a row because I want to indulge in an activity where my legs and mind don't move.
Skip the parenthetical sentences if you'd like to see me reach the point! *attempts dashing grin that just comes off as creepy*
(I had a Season One box set because I decided to start watching the show finally after two years. The plot line has a lot of holes and it's a little stereotypical and, quite frankly, the show doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes, but it's a good show to watch when you are doing an excellent impersonation of someone in a screen-induced coma. Also, they can sing. Sometimes, I wish they would leave certain songs alone [I don't care if you're Vocal Adrenaline, you do not TOUCH Bohemian Rhapsody], but they all have stunning voices, and Quinn's and Rachel's make me especially jealous.)
(I'm so sorry for all of you who don't watch Glee. Here. I hope this makes you forgive me. It is soap that looks like food.)
It's so easy to fall into this kind of anti-creative funk. Unbelievably easy to just give up, especially when it's summer vacation and you live in the kind of town where I live. And I think that hoisting yourself out of a funk is completely dependent on you, and how you work. In my case, I just need to stop doing all of the things that are detracting from my creativity and focus purely on one thing before I can even begin to work on anything else.
But sometimes that is so, so hard to remember, and even harder to attempt.
In even more FRAS-related news, I am going on vacation! So, posts will be infrequent/nonexistent until July 4. I only say this because I've been better about posting lately, and this hiatus is NOT me slipping into my ways of yore, just me being in Orlando. At the Harry Potter theme park. Yeah.
Also, since I probably won't be blogging on the day, a happy early birthday to my cousin Questa, whose birthday is on Friday!
And also a happy birthday to Sonic the Hedgehog, who is twenty whole years old today! I never played your games, Sonic, and I probably wouldn't even know it was your birthday if it wasn't for Alex Day putting up a video about it.