Ben's Logical Nonsense

2011 in Bullet Points.

2011-12-31T05:05:00.000-08:00

Whoa. Today has come around quickly, don't you think? It only seems like 365 days ago the calendars read 2010! Crazy to think that we're only a few hours away from 2K12.

In retrospect, I've realised that 2011 fucking rocked. It was unbelievable. It has become somewhat fashionable, in my opinion, to hate the year you've lived in for the past 12 months come 31st December nowadays. Tumblr has become ladened with wrist-slashing-worthy posts of falling in love, falling out of love, and a big "fuck you" to 2011. I'm sorry, but I can't live like that, especially when this year has been perfect to me. So, in lieu of an angsty emo-esuqe rant pouring over how much I hated this year, I give you a List of Things I Liked About 2011 and a list of Things I Did Not Like About 2011. Put your feet up, flip on the TV, and let's enter 2012 the way we do best; lazily.

Things I Liked About 2011:

✪ Leaving school
✪ Learning for the first time in a long time not to care what people think of me
✪ The music
✪ The food
✪ Skyping with friends lots
✪ 30 Rock
✪ Getting closure on a few personal things
✪ Getting to know myself
✪ Getting to know people in new ways
✪ Standing up for what I believe in
✪ Cutting ties with people who aren't good for me
✪ Shopping for a new wardrobe
✪ My philosophy and ethics lessons
✪ Parks and Recreation
✪ Losing, as of today, 55lbs (4 stone exactly)
✪ Turning 17
✪ Driving a car for the first time
✪ Refusing to drive ever again
✪ Going back on my word and driving again
✪ My incredibly high bagel consumption
✪ Giving everything I have to one person, and learning what that felt like
✪ Coming out as a pizza hater
✪ Fanfiction
✪ Leaning to knit
✪ Deathly Hallows pt. 2
✪ Awkwardly embarrassing myself in front of everyone at all times always ever
✪ Laughing every single day, all day, with my favourite person in the world
✪ Soup
✪ Friday by Rebecca Black
✪ The Hunger Games trailer
✪ Watching the Royal Wedding and crying genuine, compassionate tears
✪ Getting negative feedback from controversial topics I blogged about/not caring
✪ Reading more books
✪ Writing more
✪ Making new friends
✪ Watching every possible Kardashian show on TV unashamedly and loving it
✪ Tina Fey
✪ Watching Juno every single night for about two months
✪ Understanding that sometimes things aren't your fault, but you will be blamed anyway, and in order to move on and evolve you just have to let it go and focus on what is important
✪ Knowing once and for all that Harry Potter will never leave, ever.

Things I Didn't Like About 2011:

✪ Having to say goodbye to a lot of close friends when I left school
✪ Going from Skyping lots to Syping never
✪ Watching Youtube's demise
✪ Watching how quickly a country can turn to shit in, thanks to the riots in August
✪ Peach and raspberry dessert that gave me food poisoning and made me the most ill I have ever been
✪ Wasting my time on things that were impossible
✪ Giving up on Nanowrimo
✪ Deathly Hallows pt. 2
✪ July 15th
✪ Having no money for the majority of the year
✪ Having a block of about a month when I was depressed
✪ Being told I would make a good Slytherin
✪ Seeing friends go through hell and not being there to hug them
✪ Nicki Minaj
✪ Being cold
✪ Having my new wardrobe suddenly become too big for me
✪ Falling asleep ridiculously early
✪ Taking my GCSEs even though they were easy and don't mean anything
✪ Tumblr a decent amount of the time
✪ Saying goodbye to the fiveawesomegirls
✪ And 5awesomegays
✪ And just about everyone
✪ Not spending enough time with my best friend
✪ Not taking advantage of every single day
✪ Being criticised for watching certain TV programs/reading certain books/liking certain people
✪ People whining about being alone
✪ Gay marriage not being a "thing"
✪ Everything suddenly having vampires in it
✪ World peace not being a "thing"
✪ Having to write this list while I need to pee
✪ Ke$ha.

I sit here on the 31st of December, 2011, feeling utterly content and ready for the new year to hurry up and be here already. My resolutions have been fulfilled--to learn to knit, to write a book by hand, and to read 50 books--and I am pondering what exactly it is I want to do next year. Possible resolutions include: landing a left split, getting my driving licence, being a better BFF, and going on more adventures. Don't ask me how I will measure the latter two, but for now, they look like perfect goals.

Dear reader, I wish you a congratulations on making it through the year. I understand the year couldn't have been as good to everyone as it was to me, but I sincerely hope that it was okay. And, if it wasn't for any reason, I'll be wishing you a better 2012.

May your parties be filled with sparkles and your tummies be filled with food. Have a fantastic night, all, and I will be checking up on you in 2012. I have a surprise for this blog, so check this space. Wink wink.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Writing.

2011-10-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to draw this out. You know why I'm here and you know who I am. This is, for the FIRST TIME EVER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, a preview of my writing. This isn't something I've written specifically for this blog, so it's entirely new and entirely terrifying. This is from a novel I'm writing currently. The basic plot: girl diagnosed with a brain tumour is on a mission to find out why it was her and how she can get the most out of life. What you're going to read now are the first two mini chapter thingies. I've left the prologue out because it would just be too long if I included it. So yeah. It's raw and in the very early stages, so don't hate on it that much. Let me down gently.
___________
October 29th,

A doctor’s office in a dark hospital late on a winter’s evening isn’t where I thought I’d be this morning.

Then again, I never thought I’d be dying any time soon.

I sit cross-legged on a firm sofa—practical, frigid, unwelcoming—that hugs one of the walls in Doctor. Rileman’s office. The opposite wall to me is lined completely in a dark-wooded bookcase.

Ancient spines of cracked books stare at me as I stare at them. The books are so old. They are the homes to long forgotten maladies. They bare poor words of wisdom. They have been hastily annotated by scruffy hands, years and years before I was born. What strange company, I think. I never thought I would be sentenced to death while getting stared at by my best friends.

But, like I said; I never thought I would be dying any time soon.

Doctor. Rileman has long since left his office. He was beeped a few minutes after he broke to news to me. A broken arm, he told me. A child who fell out of a tree too big for them, I’m guessing. Too much to chew.

How careless people were with their health, when I would do anything to have mine back.

Rileman’s water cooler bubbles. A delayed result of when he gave me a cone shaped cup and pleaded me to drink. To move. To speak.

To think.

To exist.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

How could I?

How do you react when a stranger pulls you away from your home, sits you in his office, and tells you you’re about to die?

How do you react when a stranger goes into detail about how you will die?

How do you react when a stranger tells you your life is nearly up, and the only thing you can manage to think is how upsetting it will be because you won’t get to read the last book in one of your favourite series?

No.

No no no no no no no no no no no.

How do you react, I scream in my head. How do you react?

Somewhere, deep down, another voice, possibly the same one, whispers back, What a stupid question.

I have no idea how to react.

_________
October 31st, 9:00am

My pillow loves me.

Or, I love my pillow. One of the two.

I haven’t moved for 39 hours. My tears haven’t fallen for 34 of them, but I still haven’t moved. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to cry. I did. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to move. I did. Something about knowing your time on earth is limited really takes it out of you, you know?

Of course you don’t.

But yeah. I haven’t moved for 39 hours. My pillow—my one true love—has been the shoulder I don’t have. It has been the bosom that I pine so longingly for. It’s been the mop to my river of salt-water seas.

It has been a life-saver.

It is warm. I don’t know why it is warm. I feel cold. My forehead is hot. I think I’m sweating, but I could just be cold. Or maybe the tears actually came back. Maybe they’re escaping from my body in an unconventional way.

I thought that once, when I was a kid. What if you had your tear ducts removed? How would you cry? Could you even have your tear ducts removed? I liked to think that you would cry out of your mouth. Not just a drop, like regular crying. I envisaged waterfalls, gushing from your open mouth while you sobbed and gagged and spluttered through the stream.

How inconvenient that would be, vomiting your tears. How disgustingly salty.

I was always like that as a kid. There was always a why with me. Nothing was ever good enough.
“Oops,” my mum would say, as she dropped a wooden spoon on the kitchen’s tiled floor.
“Why did that happen?” I would ask. Even after mum explained to me about gravity, about Newton, about the apple, about space and time continuums and the sun and Earth, I would always ask why. Why why why why?

That’s how I felt now.

Why?

Anyway, I love my pillow. And my covers.

After I was able to move in Doctor. Rileman’s office, I forced myself, one leg at a time, out of there. There wasn’t anything for me in his office. No book, no condolences... It was empty, cold. The room in which I found out I would die. Nothing could make me stay there.

And so I ran. I picked up my right leg, my left, my right again, and I ran. Slowly to start with. My knees were weak and they felt like jelly, but after one corridor, two corridors, a corner, and the main entrance, they got their feeling back.

The rain whipped at my face like a poisonous sting as I fought my way outside. I was pelted, shard after shard, across my cheek. Scolded. Hadn’t I been through enough that day? And now the rain was in on the sick, sadistic joke?

I didn’t think I would survive the run home. I was fragile as it was. A paper cut-out against a hurricane. Surely I would disintegrate. Dissolve and run down a drain.

Alas, no suck luck.

I think I sprained my ankle, too, but no amount of additional pain could have distracted my mind. I was hurting too much all ready.

I ran home, ran through the door, ran upstairs and threw up straight on the landing. Right in the middle of the hallway. Luckily, Lucinda is in Mallorca with her current boyfriend and his rich family. I didn’t have to clear up after myself.

After my stomach had been emptied, and then emptied some more, I artfully dodged my way around the sick (which I think I deserve a medal for, because frankly, trudging through the contents of my inside didn’t seem like that big of a deal at that moment in time; I had bigger things to worry about), I only just made it to my bed before I collapsed.

The rain, my arch nemesis, woke me up around 4:00 the next day, and I tried to force myself to go through the motions. Go and get a drink of water, I told myself. Go and clean up the hall, I tried to tell my brain.

But I couldn’t.

Surprise, surprise.

And this is how I came to lay in bed for 39 hours. 40, now. 40 hours of doing nothing.

Nothing.

At all.

Ironic, I thought, how I had so little time left, yet I was more than prepared to waste 40 hours of it doing squat. Almost two days. Two whole days. The things I could have done in two days...

And right then, right there, I made a promise with myself.

Start small and work up. Don’t flush any more time away. Get up and do something.

And then I went through to the hall to clean up my lunch from two days ago.

Questionnaire Time!

2011-10-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

One thing I love doing before I embark on a serious writing project is filling out a questionnaire from my character's point of view. I did this with my first Nano novel, and while it turned out to be absolute turd, I feel like I know the protagonist from that novel the best. As the writer, I suppose I should know everything about my characters, but that's rarely the case. I know enough. I know their favourite colour, the length and preferred style of their hair, where their scars are and how they got there... But, nine times out of ten, I just don't know everything about my characters; a lot of stuff comes organically when I write, like certain things that fit into the circumstance. To make sure I know as much about my characters as I possible can, like I said, I like to fill out some questionnaires. There are loads that can be found all over Google, but one I just stumbled upon, the one that is from the Nanowrimo website, sounds like it could be the best and most detailed so far. So, tonight, I will be filling that in. Hopefully, you'll get to know a little bit more about my novel (but not that much, remember), and maybe this will help some of you who aren't that confident? Give it a go. I'd love to hear about your own novels. If you're struggling, have struggled before, or feel like you will struggle, fill this out in the comments, and I promise it will help just a smidge. Okay. Commence!

Protagonist:
1. Name: April. (Last name undetermined at this point in time.)
2. Age: Twenty two years old. Probably nearer the end of twenty two. Nearing twenty three.
3. Height: 5'5.5".
4. Eye color: Dark brown.
5. Physical appearance: Blonde hair, a pretty face, thin but not fit, a too-thin bottom lip.
6. Strange or unique physical appearance: Scar on left ear from when a dog bit her.
7. Hobbies/interests: Collecting coffee stirrers, people watching, books, cats, riding on trains just for the sake of riding on trains, dentistry.
8. Where does he or she live? What is it like there? Some fairly place in the US, though when she was younger she moved back and forward from her home in America to Surrey, UK, due to her English father. I've been feeling San Francisco for her current (lol or is it SPOILERR) place of residence (The England thing is relevant to the story, swearsies.)
9. Special skills/abilities: Lip reading, impersonations, touch her nose with her tongue, recite word for word the first page of all the Harry Potter books.
10. Family (describe): A mother with chin-length brown hair who used to wear odds sock when my protagonist was little, died when my protagonist was seventeen in car crash. An English father who worked in foreign banking, flew from London to America every Saturday, alternating the countries for a week at a time. Also died in car crash. (Again, this is clichéd, but it has to be that way to make the rest of the story work.
11. Description of his or her house: Lives by herself in her parents' home. I really imagine this to be very old-ladyish; one-leveled, painted white, wrap around porch, nice little front garden, plush shaggy colourful rugs inside, yellow kitchen, two bedrooms, chicken coop down the bottom of the back garden. Something small and modest and very warm.
12. Description of his or her bedroom: Pink. Got to be pink. A light pink with yellow curtains and a rocking chair in the corner that houses her jeans. This is her childhood room. She couldn't take her parents' room after they died. She hasn't decorated it since she was 14. An old stack of paperbacks in the corner near her bed. Some kind of paper crane hanging from the ceiling. A half-finished scarf and an unfinished cup of tea on her bedside table.
13. Favorite bands/songs/type of music: Probably Oh No Oh My and Simon and Garfunkel, or something.
14. Favorite movies: The Wizard of Oz, or The Sound of Music.
15. Favorite TV shows: Monty Python (something she picked up from her dad.)
16. Favorite books: Wuthering Heights.
17. Favorite foods: Soups.
18. Favorite sports/sports teams: Ice Skating. Tara Lipinski.
19. Political views: Politics don't concern her, but she does like everyone, so I'm guessing Labour (UK). Sorry, Americans. Your political system confuses me.
20. Any interesting philosophies on life? "Happiness is free. So is sadness, but sadness hurts your face more." Generally, the kind of person who just makes people happy. The kind of person who lights up a room just by being so positive. Think Kenneth Parcell, but female, not a hillbilly, and not so anal about religion.
21. Religion: Atheist. I think. I guess. I dunno.
22. Physical health: Can't run a mile without getting a stitch but can skate for hours.
23. Pet peeves: When people ask her what her pet peeves are, because she can never think of any on the spot.

There you go! That is my character. Or, at least, a little insight to her. I have such a strong feeling about this character. This is the first protagonist--or, actually, the first character in general--that I've based on someone. And this character is based strongly on someone. When the idea for this plot came I smiled like a crazy bastard in front of my bathroom mirror, naked, because I knew that the character would be so fun to write.

I hope this was a permissible post. I'll post some of my writing tomorrow, and Sunday will probably be something non-writing related. I hope this doesn't turn people off.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

P.S- I'm serious about you filling this in, if you want to. I'd love to know a little bit about your novels!

Nanowrimo? More like Nanoreflectiono.

2011-10-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

What's that I hear? Kleenex boxes being attacked violently for tissues? People all around the world blowing their noses and dabbing their eyes to stop the flood of tears? Is that... Is that my name I hear being screamed? Is everyone rejoicing in the fact that I am here, back and good as ever, again on this fine, fine evening? Oh, praise the world! I am here, readers, and you can weep in happiness to your heart's content! I am here! Good has prevailed!

Or, like, hi.

I woke up this morning after my mother brutally fist-smashed my bedroom door in order to wake me up ready to drive to my grandma's house. God knows why she couldn't have knocked lightly, or even called my name out softly, like in movies. But no. She Hulk-ed her way through my door (is Hulked a verb?), and I was left to rouse from a beautiful night's sleep. As soon as I was awake and capable of coherent thoughts, I rolled over in my bed, picked up my phone, and saw I had some texts from Twitter. They were all from Laura (the one you will know to be famous for doingtheastro) calling me out on the fact that I did not blog for two days straight after I said I was doing Blog Every Day This Week. So, of course, because the Queen did calleth me out, I am here, begging for your forgiveness, blogging as though nothing has happened. Forgive meee?

Right. On with the blog. On Monday I thought that it would be pretty cool to take this week and use it just for blogging about Nanowrimo/writing in general. Although I still think, given the time of year, that it would be a pretty good idea, I understand that not everyone is interested in Nanowrimo. Or, if they are, not everyone gives that much of a crap about it. Like, on a scale from one to ten, some people are about a four, and I don't want to piss them off.

Naturally, I immediately decided to screw the fours and take up my plan to spend this week blogging about Nanowrimo, anyway. Or, writing in general, I guess. I was actually going to blog about myself today, in response to something I saw on Tumblr earlier in the day, but realised it would be sappy and uncomfortably sad. So, sorry if you don't care about Nanowrimo, but that's what I'm talking about tonight. I can't just blog straight up about my life after taking a two day break, knowing that people WANT THIS! I have to dip my toe in. So, if you don't care about Nanowrimo, you can just stop reading now. I promise you I won't be offended. (I will most probably be offended.)

OKAY! So. Nanowrimo. I really, really am in hearts with Nanowrimo, you guise, and not just for the writing. I do love the writing, don't get me wrong--and if I didn't, what would be the point in me doing it--but I love the community more. I love knowing that thousands of people around the world are stressed and pained and crying over plot holes. You know why? Because I'm a sadistic fucking bastard and it gives me great thrills in knowing that people are hurting, that's why. Nanowrimo really teaches you a lot about yourself, not necessarily as a writer, but maybe more as an empathetic human being (lack of, in my case?). To me, knowing that I'm not the only one with such a gargantuan task is so much easier than attempting anything similar alone. So, take advantage of the fact that some people you know are probably going through the same thing, and add them as a writing buddy. Also, add me. My username is ItsBenCracknell, because I'm o-rig-i-nal, baby.

This year will be my third year attempting Nanowrimo. I won the last two tries, so I'm hoping that my track record and my stubbornness will be a good thing to bring forward. My first novel was an absolute train wreck. It was so awful that I will never, ever read it again. Which is a shame, because I definitely think I had a gem of an idea there. But I'm put off it, so I don't think I'll visit it again in the near future. I think I finished the first go on the 29th at exactly 50,000 words. Novel numero dos was slightly less of a train wreck. It wasn't absolutely terrible, but it wasn't very readable, either. I smoothed it out for about 7 months afterwards, and I'm about 40% happy with the 5th draft I have now. That said, though, I probably won't pay it much attention ever again. It was a good idea, and there are definitely sequels in my head, but I wrote that a year ago and I am capable of so much more now.

Which brings me neatly to the point you've all been waiting for... My 2011 plot!

I'm not giving much away... At all... Because I hate sharing my work until I am happy enough with it. I also hate giving away plots because plots are often not even skeletons--they're, like, less then a skeleton, what ever that is. They're micro skeletons. There is so much warping and shaping and bone growing to go on behind the scenes that the original plot makes no sense and sounds awful. That said, I am delighted to tell you that my 2011 plot is this:

HAHAHA. You thought I was going to tell you? Yeah, you wish.

No, no. That stays secret, I'm afraid. Possibly I'll tell you soon, but until I know what's going on properly, it stays safely in my head. But I promise I have one. Oh, you don't believe me? Fine. Okay. I'll tell you this. My protagonist is female, and a dental hygienist. Still not good enough? Fine. Hmm. Let's see. Oh! Okay. In the novel, there will be a scene, if you will, in which she watches all of the Harry Potter films back-to-back. There you go.

And that, my friends, is all you're getting tonight. Hush moaning, and go and work on your own novels.

Before I sign off and crawl into my bed like a monster from the sea, a very big thank you to Laura, who got me back here tonight, and an equally big thank you to Lauren, who mentioned me at the end of her blog post yesterday. Girl, makes me happy to know you think I'm a slut. *fist pump chest*

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

P.S- Tomorrow, I'll spice it up a little, promise. Maybe I'll post something I've written before? Any requests? Any questions from virgins? Any questions in general, about writing or otherwise? Hit me up (cringe), and I'll get back to you tomorrow. I promise this time.

Blog Every Day... This Week?

2011-10-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Baby, it's been a while. I know I said I'd be around more, but you just gotta understand me when I say it's been difficult. I promised you all this care and attention, baby, and you deserve it. It's just other things needed to be first for a while. School, homework, eating... I've been up to my neck in work that I'm pretending to do, baby! But that's all changed now. I'm here, and I'm about to give you all the attention you deserve. Now. Why don't you run upstairs, put on that red lace teddy, and we'll make this a night to remember. ;)

I mean... Hi.

Well this is exciting, isn't it?! It's not August or April and I'm here! For a frequent period of time! Consistently! Aren't you all lucky?!

But no, in all seriousness... Nanowrimo is creeping closer and closer with every day (as days scientifically tend to), and I need to get back in the gentle ebb and flow of writing under pressure again. So, naturally, I thought that blogging under a strict scheduled routine would snap me back into Super Human mode. For this week, I'll blog every night, and write during the day. I just hope this is enough to warm up my legs ready for the marathon ahead.

If you haven't guessed by now, I a) am doing Nanowrimo again this year, and b) have the week off school. If you did guess that much... Congratulations. You get a cookie*.

This is the first year that I won't have to do Nanowrimo in addition to exams. Two years ago, I had Science exams, and last year, I had ALL OF MY GCSEs OH MY GOD**. It'll be a blessed change, being able to sail through without having four hundred other things to do, too.

So how has everyone been? Me? Oh, how kind of you to ask! I've been good, blog readers. I've been pretty dandy, if I may say so. Well, except that I hate school again. But what else is new, hey?

As for Nanowrimo... I don't want to talk about it. I have no plot, no general idea of what I'm going to write, and a boding feeling that this will be the year I fail. Of course, I won't let myself fail, unless I die or my hands fall off, because this is the one thing throughout the whole year that I refuse to give up on, but still. The feeling is lingering over me and it's refusing to go away. Hopefully, when I think of a plot, the sun will come out and dry up all the rain, ready to let my thoughts climb up the spout again. (Wasn't that poetic? See, I'm getting in the mood already.)

What else is new in my life? Hmm. Well, my birthday is pretty soon, I guess. I have to admit, I love having my birthday on the last day of Nanowrimo. It's the best present to myself when I know with a sense of extraordinary accomplishment that I wrote 50,000+ words in 30 days. Not that I would give up real presents for that feeling, though. Feelings, shmeelings. Gimme the good stuff!

This blog post will be pretty short because I want to go and see if I can pull any sort of coherent plot out of a couple ideas I've had for a while now. Probably not, or if there is, not a very good one. I'm so stuck at this point that I'm considering writing Fanfiction.

My questions to you, readers, should you choose to accept, are as follow: a) how are you doing, b) are you doing Nanowrimo this year, c) do you have a plot, d) plotter or pantser, e) how is school, f) have you done something new with your hair, because it looks ravishing?

Have a wonderful week at school, suckers!

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

* You will have to provide cookies yourself
** I think I actually had two exams, not all of them. So, yeah. Always one for the melodrama, me.

The Woes And Triumphs Of Being In Sixth Form.

2011-09-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling that if I were to write an autobiography on my days of school, that (^^) would be its title.

Guys... I have turned. (FYI, I have absolutely no idea who I'm addressing whenever I say "guys" on this blog. And let's be honest with ourselves... I do it a lot.) I have always been a Harry Potter in school. I've been fairly bright, bright enough to get through my lessons without really trying, that is. I've been as equally rebellious as I have hardworking. I've been on adventures to Far Off Places (I once ditched a day of school to go to my middle school. #logic.), I've had my fair share of encounters with Professor Snape equivalents (I've been rude and argumentative with likewise rude and argumentative teachers), I've had a detention (for throwing work in the bin. My teacher looked at the cctv tape and saw it was me). My entire life I have been a Harry Potter.

Not this year.

I. Am. Hermione.

I love school! I mean, I looove school. I LOVE SCHOOL!

I love school as much as Lindsay Lohan loves getting drunk off her face and waking up in someone else's vomit. I love school as much as the government loves messing up my country. I love school as much as Liz Lemon loves food. It's that kind of love, guys. Real love.

My lessons are going swimmingly. After I enrolled on the 1st of September, I came home and thought seriously about the lessons I had signed up for. I realised I wasn't happy not taking Philosophy, and as soon as my feet were on holy ground, by which I mean the school's, I marched into the office and switched my schedule around.

And oh. My. God. What a brilliant decision that was. Philosophy is without a doubt my favourite class. It's impossible to write down how much I love it. It's much better if I show people with furious hand gestures, awkward squealing, and as much jumping up and down as possible. Just yesterday, for example, all ten of us and one of my three teachers sat around a group of tables pushed carelessly into a square and had one of the most profound and intelligent conversations I have ever had in school.

It was an ethics lesson (the Philosophy module is split into three sections; philosophy, religion, and ethics), and we must have touched every single topic in the whole wide world. And I'm not exaggerating. At all.

We were talking about amorality, non-moral actions, and moral significance to certain circumstances. We delved into the ocean that is absolutism, came up with our own examples and debated them. We spoke about relativism and why or if it was better than absolutism. We spoke about racism, abortion, rape, love, children, families... Our teacher went into personal detail and told us about her life, her family, and we drew comparisons from our own lives. It was, quite frankly, the best two lessons I have ever had in my life. Ever.

I sat next to a girl who is very pro-life, and two seats down from me, a very good friend, sat a girl who is very pro-choice. The pro-choice girl accidentally said, "I think abortion is always right", which was a poor phrasing on her behalf, I'll admit, but the pro-life girl quickly jumped down her throat in a sassy way, got bitchy, and it was brilliant! I asked the pro-life girl how she felt about rape victims, and she muttered something about how she didn't agree with abortion, even then. I see these two years being entertaining to say the least.

English Language is also marvellous. I am learning new stuff (something that hasn't really happened in English for a few years, what with us preparing for our GCSEs), and I'm able to show off to my new teachers that I'm actually pretty good in the first place. One of my teachers, the head of the English department, is hilarious and kind and engaging; everything I love in a teacher. Sociology is also fun.

However... there is, obviously, one fault. One inevitable fault that drags me down and sucks the life out of me. Well, two if you count me not having my old English teacher--who was and always will be the best English teacher ever--but what I'm referring to is ten times worse. I hate, with a fiery passion, English Literature.

It's awful. It is so, so awful.

One of my teachers is fine. She's lovely, pretty good at what she does, and engaging. We all sit around a big table discussing Aristotle's definition of a tragedy and it's all fine and well. Then there are the other lessons. The ones that, apparently, everyone in my class dreads.

I have a hard time complaining about things. Stupid little things, okay, fine. But big things? I can't. Especially when there is a person behind it. I don't want to upset the person. I don't want to hurt them. But believe me when I say one of my teachers makes me want to shoot myself in the face.

She is a terrible teacher. She isn't interested, she is slow, her pace is disastrously off, she doesn't seem to have any clue what she's doing, she's pretty stupid, she doesn't understand what we are talking about, she is narrow-minded when it comes to analysing texts, she's impossibly boring and downright bad.

Maybe it's just because I was spoilt last year. That's probably why, actually, but something about this woman makes learning not fun. Well, actually, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We don't learn. We don't do work. She is so slow that we don't get through anything in the lesson. There she is blabbing away at the front of the classroom, about how she expects us to keep up because she "moves fast", the whole time I'm sitting by myself doing work for another lesson. I can't comprehend just how bad this teacher is.

But I'm not alone. Thankfully, I spoke to a friend about her and someone else overheard and then someone else and it turned into a five-person-bitching-session. We all think she's awful, half of my friends want to complain, and I'm just trying to do all I can to stop myself working out ways to jump off the building in her lessons. If I didn't need English Literature for the course I want to do in University, I would drop it in an instant. Two years with this clown? No thanks. One of us will end up dead.

So yeah. This is how school is. The lessons are, for the most part, spectacular. I'm excited and ready and working. There are a few minor flaws, like friends and teachers and clothing, but the good outweighs the bad this time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and do some set reading.

Check this Hermione out.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Back 2 Skool

2011-09-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

Big stretch, breathe out. Calm down. Relax. Rewind. Unclench. Loosen. Lay down. Soothed.

These are some things I've been doing to keep calm about having to go to school tomorrow.

I can't believe it's been over three months since I left high school. Three months! Three months of doing absolutely nothing apart from breathing, eating, moving, showering and pooping. I cannot believe that I have spent a blissful three months at absolute peace and it's all about to be stripped away from me.

Of course I'm joking when I say that. I'm going to school this year (I shall still call it "school" for ease, and for the fact that everyone calls it that) in a state of mind that I hope will brainwash me into actually doing well. If I *think* good things, I'll start acting on them, right? Right!

I was fairly upset with my GCSE results. Although they weren't exactly bad... They weren't as good as I could have done. At all. I didn't apply myself to school in the slightest. I hated it, I hated everyone, I hated the lessons, I hated everything about it. The uniform, the rules, how it smelt, my "friends"--frankly, there's only *one* person I want to go through this side of school with, but the likeliness of that happening is slimmer than Kanye West ever making good music--the teachers, my lessons, how I was treated... High school was absolutely awful. Not in a bullying sense, because my statue and height put a damper on the bullying, thankfully, but in the sense that I knew I hated it and because my thoughts were unpleasant my experience was. So basically... My experience was pretty much the same as every other conscious teenager's.

No, I'm going to school this year thinking positively. Ever since I started middle school, my ideal point in life has been the point I'm at now. I can leave everything I hate behind and focus on the things I love. I can wave Maths out of the window and focus on my baby, English. I am finally at a point that I am not only appreciative of, but excited for, too. For the first time ever, I am excited to go back to school.

Although I had planned my ways in which to spend this year with a certain individual meticulously months and months ago, now that that happening is an impossibility, I am re-compromising with myself to some grounds I want to abide by. I have a few things I need to do for myself, like living a more Christian life (generally a goody goody), living a more Gryffindor life (having adventures, being braver), and living a MUCH more Ravenclaw life (working ridiculously hard on my grades, so when A-Level results day comes around I can actually be happy of what I get), and I'm paying no attention to negative thoughts of people. Like I said, I hope that the things I'm changing will be enough to distract me from what I wanted this year to be like.

I just know that as soon as I pull up outside of the same old building tomorrow, no uniform, new clothes, new me, I am going to be so, so ready to get down to work. I finally, finally have that euphoria I've been needing for years now, that feeling of a new beginning. This is my time to be truly happy. The difference between a lower school student and an upper school student is immense. Upper school students are approached in a much more relaxed fashion. There aren't as many stupid rules. I'm finally going to be treated like a human being in school, guys!

I just feel good, y'know. Rejuvenated. I'm now in the process of beautifying myself up for the big day. Inevitably I'm going to buffer and polish every surface of me for the first month or so this year, until I get relaxed and lazy and end up rolling to school with toothpaste on my mouth. Right now I have glue drying on my face ready to peel off, some Vasaline on my lips (that stuff works magic, y'all), and my nail clippers by my side. I'm ready to get pretty before a good night's sleep.

I hope my plans execute well. Fingers crossed! If you're already back at school, I hope it's going well. If you are starting soon, good luck! Remember the wise words of Hayley Hoover, "High school is only as fun as you are rebellious". So, you know, have fun, stand up for what you believe in, and learn some good stuff.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

BEDA 31: This Isn't Au Revoir

2011-08-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

Blogger is new. It's confusing.

I am in a very happy place right now. I am tucked up in a warm blanket on my bed, bedside-lamp on, casting the room in an orangey shadow that I love and that makes me feel like I'm at Hogwarts.

I just finished watching the Jo Rowling biographical film, "Strange Magic", and I'd be lying if I said it didn't put me in the mood that only Jo can do. Whenever I read anything about her, anything about her Potter story or personal life, I just want to sit down and write until my fingers fall off. She is the reason I want to be a writer, and watching anything to do with her dunks me into a state of wholeness.

I went shopping today for a few last minute school related things. I start school in exactly seven days, so just a few more items of clothing and some stationary was all I needed. As I mentioned the last time I went shopping for clothes, I am an extremely poor shopper; I load up my arms with mountains and mountains of items only to be disappointed when I try them on. That puts me in a sour mood and the rest of the trip is ruined. Today, I was actually rather successful. I got three jumpers--all knitted heavy cashmere so I'll be nice and warm in Winter--two t-shirts, two tank tops (don't judge, I wear them under t-shirts and hoodies--and another pair of jeans. My mum is torn between being displeased by the damage done to her bank card and being over the moon that for the first time since I was nine I bought some normal clothing in a real, physical shop. I also bought a notepad. This excited me more than all of the clothes combined.

Now I'm home and I'm watching quite possibly my favourite thing ever. "A Year In The Life", if any of you don't know, is just that, following Jo from a few months before Deathly Hallows is finished, until it's published and the story is neatly tucked away. I wrote an essay on this documentary for my media class and got full marks and praise from my teacher because she could see "how much I connected to the feel of the documentary". Ha. For anyone who loves Harry Potter, I strongly recommend this documentary if you haven't already seen it. It's seldom we get any information from Jo, and this delves into places we never even knew existed. Plus it's a total ego boost, which is why I always watch it when I feel under the weather or like a loser in life. (Those circumstances don't apply today, I am just very happy and very warm and wanted to watch it.)

BEDA was fun this summer. Having three months of doing nothing, while possible, would quite probably have killed me. It was fun to do something productive, if even slightly. HOWEVER. I don't plan on just stopping now that BEDA is over. I still have a week before school starts and many things I'd like to talk about. I might well blog again tomorrow night, so watch this space.

I fully intend on blogging more regularly now. YouTube for me has pretty much stopped, and I want to focus on things that I love and things that I find fun, which means blogging and writing and school and my own life and reading. I don't want to pool any energy into projects I don't enjoy. I don't want to waste my energy on things that I don't feel satisfied with. Writing is what I love most, and so I'm going to focus on that.I'm lucky enough that this year of school will open up a lot of opportunities for my writing. There is a creative writing unit in my English Language class, which will be phenomenal, but there is also my enrichment activity.

Basically, as required by school, next year we have to do an enrichment activity for one hour a week. This can basically include anything. Sports, work experience, learning to argue (this is a genuine class being taught), or, like I have chosen to do, an extended project. This extended project can be anything, like a short film, a dissertation on spaghetti, or a fashion show. I'm going to write something (funny story, when I went for my interview about this enrichment thing, I told a teacher I am going to write and she said, "I don't want to push you or make you write too much, but I think it would be brilliant if you could write, say, 10 word pages or something", and I just looked at her like, "bitch, I got this"), and for an hour a week, I get to sit in a classroom with my laptop in peace and work on something I am very, very happy with. I'm excited and I want to start going now.

Sorry tonight's post hasn't been anything fantastic. I wish I could have signed off with an entry with fireworks and sparklers and balloons. Instead you got mismatched crap that nobody cares about.

Thank you all for following me this August. I appreciate every single comment more than I appreciate anything else online. This blog is my happy place, and I love each and everyone of you who reads it. My audience may be tiny, but my heart is gargantuan for all of you. Aww, wasn't that sweet?

Bye, guys!
Ben<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Flume-- Nikki Malvar (cover).

BEDA 30 Penultimate

2011-08-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Where one earth did August go? Where on earth did the summer go? It seems like just yesterday that May 27th rolled around and I left school. I've had over three months off school, and yet I haven't done anything... Anything... Productive at all. Unless you count a shit tonne of reading as productive, then the majority of my time off has been spent watching TV, browsing Tumblr, and sleeping. I mean, I know I wanted to relax-2-da-max on what could possibly be the longest holiday for the rest of my life, but to the degree I have taken it is just sick. I feel like I should rush something half-heartedly just to feel like I've accomplished something. You can pretty much guarantee that as soon as you go back to school you'll be bombarded with that inevitable essay, "What I Did With My Summer Holidays". There's only so much I can do with, "I re-watched some of my favourite TV shows and invented a peanut butter cookie dough recipe". It doesn't help that I've only seen friends once this holiday. I am, quite frankly, the very definition of pathetic.

Anyway... I actually did something today that I class as productive. Keep in mind that at this point in my life I class walking to my TV productive.

Today is my grandma's birthday so she came up to visit on one of her annual trips to our house. My step-dad being disabled and all, it's fairly hard for him to make a forty minute trip, let alone to sit on a sofa for the whole day, so he rarely sees my grandma, and my sister is always working when me and my mum go to visit, so these days are seldom, and naturally made a big deal of.

We went out to this wonderful little restaurant a couple of minutes away from my house, with absolutely beautiful artwork all over the walls. There was a wait for a table, so we went in the bar, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't freak out. I swear that bar was exactly like the Slytherin common room. The wood was all dark, the seats were intricately carved and cushioned in deep green leather... It was pretty spooky, actually, because I half expected Draco Malfoy to round the corner and call me a Mudblood. But the meal was lovely, and my sister and I stopped off for some of the best ice-cream on the way home. It makes me feel so American to say I casually went to go and get ice-cream. What makes it even better is that it wasn't straight from a tub; it was in a darling little pot with a lid and a plastic spoon and hot brownie and cream and a cherry. I don't even like cream or cherries, but you bet I ate it. I'll now be squatting that off my butt for the next week.

I absolutely love my grandma, as you all know. We got her a little cuddly meerkat as a gag gift because she is obsessed with an advert that is on TV. It was just good to see her, and that in addition to the fact that I went out in public twice today, in my option, makes today both productive and a triumph. You may bequeath me with your congratulatory gifts as to when you see fit.

Today took it out of me (pathetic, I know), so I need to go to sleep reasonably soon, but I just want to apologise for yesterday's post. I detest being a negative nancy, because that just isn't me, but sometimes, the nancy shows in me more than others, and I've just got to let it out. Yes, that was just the perfect set up for a gay joke. Feel free to chortle.

On that mature note, my bed is beckoning me to impregnate it with my body. Too much? Eh. Fuq da police.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Broken-- Seether ft. Amy Lee

BEDA 29: Mood

2011-08-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

I'm in a bad mood. To be exact, it's that kind of, "the world is insufferable and I just wish I lived on a different planet", kind of mood. Everyone and everything is pissing me off and making me upset beyond my understanding, and I just want to go to bed and sleep. Maybe I should just listen to Fall Out Boy to re-live my emo days and ponder the meaning of life and why we're all here and if this is heaven or hell and if living is worth it.

So do you old guys here remember last summer when that weekend festival happened right at the back of my house? Yeah, well, apparently, that's an annual thing, and it's been happening for the last three days. Throughout the day you can go anywhere in my house and hear stupid renditions of 80's ballads and punk-rock shit. I wouldn't mind if the music and the singing was in time, because I actually like quite a lot of the songs, but the signer--or should I say wailer--is about two beats ahead of the music and then the band tries to catch up and then the singer speeds up and it's all one big hot mess. So I've drowned out their crap with my own crap in hopes that it'll bring me a bit of piece. Let me tell you that three whole days of music blaring around your house pisses you off. You know how I feel? I feel like... Like in the Battle of Hogwarts when Voldemort speaks to all of the students (the book version, not the stupid film version). It's like The Summer of 69 is my Voldemort and I can't escape it.

Great. Now the band has started "Doctor, Doctor", for the third time this weekend. Someone shoot me.

So you know who I really hate? Chris Brown. I don't mean "dislike". I mean, "wouldn't give it two thoughts if he dropped dead right at this minute". And I'm not even ashamed to admit it. No, I don't agree with killing people. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not wishing death upon him. I'm just saying that if he happened to fall off of a very tall building... That would be fine with me.

Sometimes I think that the media can cover up enough shit to make society forget things. In fact, I know this. Take Chris Brown. How absolutely stupid do his fans have to be to pay for his music? Are they seriously rewarding him, even after what he did? What he did to Rihanna was inexcusable. No amount of apologises, no amount of music awards, and certainly no amount of, "I'm looking towards the future and not back at the past" mumbo jumbo crap will ever make what he did acceptable. People are so quick to forget what he did because he is famous and when famous people do things we aren't that affected by it. Celebrities do things all the time. It's like watching a murder in a horror movie. We see it so much, we see death so much, that we aren't even affected by it. We treat murder like one big movie on the nightly news because things like film and the media have created this numbing presence around it. The Chris Brown/Rihanna fiasco was treated as that; one big juicy story, instead of something of caution and fragility. The media was so intrusive that the public thought it was okay to interfere, and by default, public domain. And anything that is public domain can't be that serious, right? If what Chris Brown did was so bad, he would have gone to jail and he would have been stayed the hell away from, instead of given this interview and that interview for this website and that website. People were so obsessed with that he had done that they lost all feeling of severity of his actions. And because they didn't care, people were quick to forget. The music industry accepted him back with open arms, he made a few apologises, and now, if you make him out to be the bad guy, people lose their shit and tell you to stop dwelling on the past. Well, Chris Brown fans, some things shouldn't be forgotten, because they shouldn't have happened in the first place. I really don't feel like forgetting him as being a woman beater, because unlike some people, I don't forget what he did and how his crimes are unfixable. He is a douche and I hope his life is worse because of what he did.

You know what else I hate? Reputations. It's true what they say when they say that it takes years to build one, and seconds to destroy it. It is NOT true what they say when they say it's better to have a bad reputation than having none at all. Trust me, I know from personal experience. I hate my reputation. I hate being known for certain things. It's a daily want for me to travel back in time and do school again. I look at what I've done and I am disgusted to the pit of my stomach and wish more than anything that I could rewrite history. Every single summer I have had that, "I'm going to go back to school and be an entirely new person", desire, like so many people. It's the one thing I want, and for the first time, I think I can do that now. I need to learn to just shut up and get on with my work. I need to learn how to say no to people. I need to learn to blend in and work, because that's what I want to be known for. Not what I am now. It's a common rumour on the Internet that I love attention, and if the people who thought that knew how absolutely untrue that was, they would feel absolutely guilty for ever saying it. I hate attention. Trust me, I've lived my whole life getting it. My whole life I have stuck out, been known around school, when all I want is for people to ignore me so I can blend into the background and read a book and write down notes. But people won't let me do that. And it sucks and I hate it. I hate attention, so if you think on the contrary, change your opinions. Okay? Okay.

Well the music has stopped now, hopefully for the night, and I'm going to go and mope somewhere else because it's not good for me to drag you down with me. Sorry that this was such a shitty post and you probably all hate me now. Joseph Birdsong just said, "isn't it enough to be young and free now", to me through my speakers. Oh, Joe, I wish I were free.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Sail-- AWOLNATION

BEDA 28: Questions!

2011-08-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

I have 9% battery left on my laptop, I am currently tensing butt to tone it and make it look wonderful, and it is 8:00pm. All in all, I think it's a wonderful time to start blogging.

I sent out word on Tumblr and Twitter a while ago that I was a hungry hippo for questions that I could answer in tonight's post because, *ahem*, I couldn't think of anything else I could blog about fairly quickly. See, I set my alarm to go running in the morning, and the later I'm up, the more time I have to think, "Actually, I'll just delete it and spend another day being a fat pig". So, logically, the sooner I go to bed and escape this world, the more chance I've got of actually doing something productive tomorrow instead of spending 6 hours building an exact replica of my house on the Sims. I totally didn't do that...

SO. Let us commence!

Questions 1- How tall are you? You say you're tall but I don't think you've ever really specified...
The last time I was measured, I was 6 2, but everyone I've seen this summer has claimed I've gotten taller. If that's true, I'm willing to bet 6 3 ish. (Note: I didn't put the ' or " next to the numbers because I couldn't remember which way around they went and my laptop is running out of juice quickly so no time to Google.)

Question 2- what is your favorite food?
Believe it or not (probably not), I love fruit and vegetables. Doesn't matter what it is, i'll eat it. It's often that I find myself wandering into the kitchen just to get some cucumber to eat. I also love cookies, bread, and anything that is typically bad for me, except pizza and cake. Yuck.

Question 3- if you could have one object from any book what would it be?
I'm going to cheat on this question and name a two things, just because I can. Although I've only read some of the first book, I would absolutely adore having a daemon from the His Dark Materials series. It's a similar concept to that of a patronus, and something about a person having an animal representative of their soul fascinates me; what would mine be, what would yours be? Having a daemon would be pretty amazeballs. Then, naturally, I would choose a wand, because I am selfish and self-centered. If I weren't I would probably pick something that would benefit the world as a whole, like peace or a world free from hunger, but I think having a wand would open so many doors that go untouched by man that I would be a fool to miss the opportunity.

Question 4- What is your all-time-favorite and least-time-favorite song? :D
My absolute all time favourite song is Begin by The Wailin' Jennys. I don't really know if I have a least favourite song... I find it hard to dislike songs. Probably something hip-hoppy like Eminem or Beyonce. (This answer should provide you guys with an idea of how poorly I am educated in the world of modern music.)

What was your first ever concert?
S Club 7. I've lost count how many times I've seen them in concert. I am absolutely convinced that I was, and still am, their biggest fan. I mean, I lived, breathed and slept S Club. I owned every video, every CD, every poster, every book, every sticker, every single piece of merchandise they had. I had a photo album filled with postcards of them and told people they were my real friends and I took the pictures. I cried for weeks when I found out they were splitting up. I even went bowling with Hannah, bro, years after they split up, and it was one of the most magical times of my life. To this day it is a joke in my household to re-play how I reacted when I found out I was going to see them for the first time. Definitely in my top 5 favourite moments of my life ever. Also, one of the times I went to see them in Wembley, I ended up sitting next to a boy I went to school with. The whooole of Wembley and I sat next to him. Typical.

boxers or briefs? ;P
Boxer briefs, you wonderful pervert.

what... do you sleep in?
Okay, who was this? And if you must know... In the summer, underwear, in the Autumn, underwear and a t-shirt, in the winter, every single piece of clothing I own.

walk me through your daily routine!
Weekday: Wake up without the aid on alarm around 7ish, grab clothes from wardrobe, go to bathroom, strip, get in shower, turn shower off, get clothes on, sometimes go to get breakfast, go back to room, tidy, make bed, brush teeth, wash face, get shoes on, leave house to either get in car to go to school or go to bus stop, ride to school, get off bus, do lessons, eat, do more lessons, drive home, get home, change in to pyjamas, turn on laptop, turn off laptop, sleep. Repeat.
Weekends: Wake up without the aid of alarm around 8ish, sometimes get breakfast, brush teeth, fuss around the house all morning, eat some lunch, shower, do some more stuff until tea, eat, do some more stuff, sleep at around 11ish.

Favourite type of [w]eather?
Preferably torrential downpour with as much thunder and lightning as possible. I love love love being inside, all snug and warm, writing and looking out of my windows and seeing a storm. But if that doesn't happen, I love blizzards, hail, and pretty much anything that isn't wind. I hate wind.

Are you a lesbian?
I can indeed confirm that I am not a lesbian, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be proud if I were. I love lesbians. LesbiansR<3. WOO!

Thanks to all who asked questions. You can live the rest of today knowing that you made my life just a bit easier. My laptop now has 2% battery power. Just enough time to reread and publish this.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Stars-- Simply Red

BEDA 27: Remember The Time?

2011-08-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

Remember that time I was jumping on an old car tire in the middle of nowhere and my mum told me to stop it and I carried on anyway, fell off and split my lip open?
Remember that time I ate a whole sleeve of Oreos, was so full I threw up and ate some more five minutes after?
Remember that time I burnt a cobweb in my grandma's garage because my granddad told me to and I nearly burnt the garage down?
Remember that time in middle school when a teacher caught me locking some of my friends outside in a snow storm and threatened to call my mum and I cried?
Remember that time I did a cartwheel and nearly kicked a new born baby straight in the face?
Remember that time I walked half a mile to the local shop with my pet rat on my shoulder?
Remember that time I ditched school to go back to my middle school's sports day?
Remember that time I glided across my hall landing on a wheely desk pretending to be Superman and broke the desk?
Remember that time nearly dropped my phone in Sydney harbour?
Remember that time me and my step-brother got lost in a grave yard in Australia at midnight?
Remember that time I snuck out of the house at 5:00am to go running?
Remember that time I stayed in bed four days and four nights?
Remember that time I obliviously wandered into a notorious gay cruising toilet and wondered why everyone was trying to watch me pee?
Remember that time I cried because I had a nightmare I got a B on an English exam?
Remember that time I was in an empty theatre by myself and nearly dropped dead because I was so terrified of the Phantom of the Opera?
Remember that time I only moved in balletic movements for two days?
Remember that time in middle school I pole danced on a rugby post and put it on YouTube?
Remember that time I got an A* on a piece of coursework I rushed in 30 minutes because I forgot to print the proper piece out earlier that morning?
Remember that time a kitten walked into my house and refused to leave and we kept him?
Remember that time I sprained my ankle in primary school because I was pretending to be a kangaroo but no one believed me so I was forced to run that afternoon in PE?
Remember that time I peed myself at a zoo and I threw my underwear away and spent the rest of the day as normal?
Remember that time my step-dad dislocated my elbow?
Remember that time I opened my curtains in the middle of the night with just a t-shirt on and realised someone was walking past my window?
Remember that time rushed into a shop to complain after a worker said into a microphone, "don't worry, she's just a little retard, we'll put her in the back in a minute"?
Remember that time I threw up over a whole table's food at a school trip in primary school because someone had a runny nose?
Remember that time in primary school when a boy fell over in his own sick and it is still to this day the funniest thing I have ever seen?
Remember that time I burnt the skin off my thumbs because I grabbed a bagel straight out from under the grill?
Remember that time a friend put dog poo on my shirt in middle school so I had to walk around in just my coat and all the teachers told me to take it off?
Remember that time I went four days without showering?
Remember that time I skipped school for Project For Awesome?
Remember that time I used to throw ladybirds at a girl in my school because she was so terrified of them and she grew to be one of my best friends?
Remember that time I ripped my earring out and bled all over the floor?
Remember that time I gave up on using strawberries in a fondue bowl and just drank the chocolate?
Remember that time I didn't eat for two days after drinking the chocolate because I felt so ill?
Remember that time I had no idea what to blog about so I just said, "remember that time", with some things I've done in the hope that it filled enough of a post so I could just publish it and be done with blogging for the day?

BEDA 26: Trapped

2011-08-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

"Repeat that last part, Grace."
What?
"What did you say just now about the woman and the cliff?"
The woman and the cliff. Simple enough. Right?
Wrong.
"I know it's hard, Grace, but anything is better than nothing."
Yeah, right. That's because you aren't in my head.
"I know how you must be feeling right no--"
"No you don't. You have absolutely no idea how I'm feeling."
I lifted my head off the arm of the couch. It was one of those expensive leather kinds. The back of my neck, beaded with sweat, clung to the leather and refused to let go. Like an anchor pulling me down, forcing my mouth shut and my thoughts deep, deep inside.
"Then tell me."
Breathe.
"It's a nightmare I've been having since I was a kid. The details change slightly every time, but the gist is the same. A woman stands on the edge of a cliff, and I push her off."
Dr. Pierce scribbles something down in his notepad as if something I said was important. It wasn't important. It's the same piece of crap I've been telling him for weeks.
"And why do you think this dream replays itself to you? How often would you say you have it?"
Breathe. Again. Breath in, let it out.
"I don't know. Every month or so. I don't know. It changes a lot. There isn't a pattern to it."
Gilbertson writes something else down fervently, as though something I said this time was even more important. What a fucked up system, I think to myself, that I'm here acting more normal than him, and he is the one in charge to make sure I don't charge at a wall to kill myself.
I wonder if there's soup for dinner today.
"Grace, is there anything else you would like to tell me? Your session is almost up, and you don't have me for another two weeks. You know you have Pierce next week, don't you?"
Ah, of course. Pierce. The great doctor incredible. About seven feet tall, skinny as a skeleton and two skin flaps that used to be voluptuous breasts. Her hair is a faded orange colour, damaged from years and years of chain smoking. She somehow thinks that my sessions with her actually benefit me. She is wrong, they do not.
What do I want to tell you, I think. Would I even tell you anything if I could? I want to tell you that your flies are undone. I want to tell you that the back of my knee itches. I want to tell you about Sarah, my roommate, who stays up all night and watches me sleep. I want to tell you a lot of stuff.
But I don't.
"How about this," I say. I peel my ankles and wrists from the leather couch, sit up and face Gilbertson directly. His button up shirt looks like it's suffocating his chubby neck and suddenly I feel short for breath. I am uncomfortable. "Why am I here?"
This question doesn't phase him like I hoped it would. He didn't drop his note pad in realisation and set me free. There wasn't a light bulb above his head just as he figured it out. Instead, he seemed duller. The small part of life he had in him had been sucked out by my question, and he sighed.
"Living with severe schizophrenia is detrimental to your health, Grace, and you are here, by your own admission, to keep you safe and well."
"I know that. That's not what I mean. I mean why am I here?"
He's stumped. Finally.
"Why does my disease make me the crazy one? How do you not know that you're the ill one, and I'm the healthy one? Why am I a burden to society? Are we that obsessed with a perfectly manicured population that we prune the cankers cold-bloodedly? I am ostracised and locked away because I see things. I am a freak. You are normal. Let me tell you something," I say. Something about his body language gives me the impression he feels awkward.
"What I see is beautiful. I would sooner see the devil himself in my mind than see nothing at all. I don't want to be normal, or well, or plain, or boring like you. I wouldn't settle for the model of a model of a life you have. One where you can go home at the end of another shitty day well done to your fat lump of a wife. I could never eat her shitty food and watch shitty TV and kiss your shitty little kids goodnight. I would never fuck your fat lump of a wife with your little pencil dick, roll off of her and sleep until morning brought another day, exactly the same in its disappointment and mundaneness. I might see things, and I might hear voices. I might want to kill myself. But doctor," I say, smiling for the first time in years. "I love it. I love seeing things. I love hearing voices. The voices are my friends. The pictures are artwork. In my head, I might be trapped, but I am trapped with some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I, doctor, am never lonely... But you are."
Breathe.
"You normal people are all lonely, really."
Breathe.
"Which is why you're so scared of us."
In, out. Stand up.
"And I feel sorry for you."
Leave.

BEDA 25: Excitement All Around

2011-08-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

Hello, wonderful specimens of the Internet. Today was a very exciting day.

As I'm sure all of you were aware, because, like, you're all so obsessed with my life, and stuff, today was results day. For those of you who don't speak Britain-ish, but speak Potter-ish, GCSEs are the Muggle equivalent of O.W.Ls. Up and down the kingdom people are either bursting in tears of joy or running away from home in disappointment as we speak. From what I've gathered from my peers and friends, everyone seems to have done pretty brilliantly. My friend Ellis for 9 A*s and 1 A, which is like, unbelievably unbelievable. All in all, people seem rather happy.

As am I. I posted my results on Tumblr, but in case you missed it, I got A*, A*, A, B, B, B, C, C, C, C, D. The D was in art, and I'm not bothered by it at all. I know that my art isn't bad (true), and that the marking system screwed a lot of students over (also true). I reckon Umbridge was behind it, personally. So yeah, I left the house today at 9:30 to pick up Emilie on the way and drove to school for 10:00 to pick up the industrial sized brown envelope. I opened it, read my results, got happy, and then left, because as happy as I was with the results, no amount of celebration could have made me stay with those animals I call peers.

After the brief and some-what anti climactic outing, I came home for a few hours, got presents, rang up my grandma, emailed some extended family and ate some lunch. My mum bought me this rather demented looking owl as a gift for me passing my O.W.Ls. Get it? Eh? Eh? Yeah, that's right.

Then after I had sufficiently covered my moral obligations, I picked Emilie up again and went to get my tattoo. I was originally getting it on the 15th June--Deathly Hallows pt. 2's release date--but my mum wanted me to get it on my results day--she made up some crap about how Harry had "been with me" my "whole school life, and it'll be like a nice way to say goodbye". I didn't buy her bullshit, but agreed nonetheless.

The actual tattoo wasn't painful. Like, at all. It just felt like getting burnt. And afterwards--this sounds kind of sick--but it felt like when I used to cut. *That* kind of wound. Nothing particularly bothering, but something that could be felt.

After I was inked and we had dropped Emilie off, my mum needed to go and house sit for my sister's old boss while my sister was at work. The original plan was for my mum to be there for an hour while my sister finished her shift and joined my mum there so my mum could leave. I, naturally, had to go with my mum, because I was in the car anyway, and she didn't want to drive back to take me home.

If you know anything about me in the slightest, you know that I avoid human interactions at any cost. The house we were sitting is a very big, very popular dog and cat kennel. They live in a huge house (coincidentally, you know I told you a few days back about my step-mum's uncle who builds houses and sells them? The really rich one? He built the kennels and used to live there!) with sweeping grounds and ponds and ducks and orchids. They also have a rather heavily staffed working area to their kennels, for obvious reasons, and because the house needs to be guarded at all times, one of the employees stayed up there until my mum arrived.

Because I live in a small town, you pretty much know everyone, if not very well, at least by their first name. This employee is the mother of someone I've been at school with since I was 3, an old friend of my mum's, and a generally chatty woman. All in all, my worst nightmare. That, in addition to the fact that I was in my pyjamas, made the task of conversing with this woman unbearable.

My mum made a joke as we neared the house that I should get in the boot until the employee was gone and my mum would let me out when the coast was clear. I think she said this jokingly, but I snatched up the chance. Next thing I knew we were in a lay-by, I was contorting myself into the boot of my car while my mum drove away down the road. I was absolutely convinced that a car would crash into ours, and as a result, I would get smashed into tiny little pieces, but it was safe and only lasted about 30 seconds until my mum was parked.

I don't know how long I was in that car afterwards, but it was long enough for me to get bored, make a YouTube video, post it and think of some songs. Then I was busted out and I played with some puppies and all was well again.

That could possibly be the most awesome thing I have ever done, which just shows you how utterly non-awesome my life is as of late. It's a very roguecity-esue adventure. Don't you agree, Sam? ;)

Now I'm home and all warm in a jumper and about to go to bed. It's been a very long day, and I deserve to curl up under my covers and sleep. For once, I think I've actually earned sleep.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Bluebird-- Sara Bareilles

BEDA 24: I'm Not Even Sorry

2011-08-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Results day it tomorrow (boo fuck shit omg I'm dead dying omg omg fuck shit scared poo myself omg shit), I was granted access to Pottermore earlier today (omg yay yay omg omg omg I'm Gryffindor after all omg yay), and I have a splitting head ache (omg omg owe omg). I think it's only fair that I leave blogging for tonight and curl up in a ball and try to sleep. I'll need all the emotional strength I can manage for tomorrow, considering I'll either me bouncing off the walls with happiness or slashing my wrists in the corner with disappointment. Either way, I'm sure you'll find out tomorrow.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

BEDA 23: Honesty

2011-08-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

Ever since I decided to document my life online, I have had a struggle opening up to the Internet. I can truly say that I have never been wholly honest anywhere online. Unlike certain people, I have trouble even knowing what the line is, much less where to draw it. Throughout my whole life I had kept secrets, from my parents, my friends, and now, the Internet. I know it's cliche to say the only person who really knows me is me, but it's true. I've never had a friend to whom I could tell everything. Besides, even if I did, I know for a fact that I would never tell them everything, anyway. Even though I have secrets, and I prefer having them, I think I owe it to myself to open up a little bit more to the Internet. I am trying so hard to be a better person, and the sooner I open up and begin to trust people, the better. So, Internet, I'm going to become honest with you. I'm going to be honest and tell you some things that you probably don't know about me. To make it easier for me, I'm bullet pointing them. I just tried to go into detail, but that proved to much. So, you'll have to suffice. Sorry.

1. I don't see my dad because he didn't care about me. He was uninterested, unmotivated by my presence, and cruel. He called me bitter and twisted when I was 9 years old, as me, him and my step-mum were in the middle of an argument. Then one day, I had enough. I was 12 years old, I was at his house for my weekly visit, and I confronted him about my step-brother who was bullying me at school. He sat there, lounging on his sofa, refused to do anything, so I stormed upstairs, told my step-brother exactly what I thought of him, picked up my few possessions and never saw my dad again. The last words I said to him were, "have a nice life". Truthfully, I wonder sometimes if I did the right thing. I wonder what will happen if he dies and I never get to rectify our relationship. The thought haunts me.

2. I was suicidal at the age of 8. After years and years of bulling, years and years of coming home from school crying my eyes out, projectile vomiting from stress, I wrote in my diary about how I could end it all. If I had too much, all I had to do was take the short walk into the bathroom and take one of my step-dad's pills. Just one of his morphine pills would be more than enough to have killed a child my size. I drew pictures of me hanging from my curtain pole. The bullying became too much, and I considered it relentlessly. My mother found the diary, asked if I wanted to see someone, and left it at that after a crying session for 5 or so minutes. I was so damaged so young, and I have no idea what made me better, but I stopped the thoughts one day, and they haven't come back since.

3. I was obsessed with anorexia and bulimia for most of middle school. I was a member of quite a few pro-ana websites, and to this day, I still get emails from long forgotten accounts on long forgotten websites. I pined to be thin more than anything else. Naturally it was only a matter of time before I put two and two together and shoved my fingers down my throat after every meal. I started listening to pro-ana songs while I escaped to the bathroom after meals. I starved myself for days at a time, until a teacher in middle school noticed I nearly fainted one P.E lesson. He was the absolute best teacher in middle school. He was so funny and brilliant, and he cared about his students more than anything. He called me into his office and talked to me for two whole hours, not turning up to his lessons, while I refused to talk. He spoke to me about what I was doing, and he asked if I wanted to tell him anything. I ended up telling him some other secrets about my personal life, and he understood and consoled with me. Even though his intervention was adorable, it fell upon deaf ears, because I continued until my mum found out one day, told my step-dad, and forced me to stop. They threatened counselling, and I had to "stop", even though I continued for months after. It's worth mentioning that I am all clear of that now.

4. I was psychologically terrified of my mouth for many years. Through my early childhood, I had perfect teeth. My family are lucky enough to have genetically straight teeth, and mine were no exception. Then, one day in primary school, I started using my mouth as a punching bag to take out my sadness. I ended up pulling my teeth out. If I came home upset, I picked a tooth, started toying with it until it became slightly wobbly, and pulled and pushed until it came out. They didn't need to be wobbly on their own. I preferred it if they weren't. I ended up pulling two or so teeth out a week, until they had all come out. Fast forward two years and they ended up growing back in strange positions. Because I pulled my milk teeth out before their time, I had four teeth growing horizontally in the roof of my mouth. They were completely embedded up in there. I went to the hospital, got x-rayed, and was booked in to have them taken out a few months later. The surgeon, I'm told, took the roof of my mouth off. Sliced it off like it was a hunk of meat to take those teeth out, sewed me back up and discharged me 6 5or so hours later. While I was at school recovering, one of the stitches was pulled out and I went home. I had nightmares for a while after that, about my teeth falling out, so I neglected my mouth. I was terrified to the point of tears of brushing my teeth. I tried. I stood in front of the mirror, loaded tooth brush, and just bawled and bawled. I couldn't do it. Eventually I realised what I was doing was stupid and picked up a meticulous hygiene routine, but I had all ready paid the price. My teeth were oddly positioned and discoloured, and now I'm only just getting them sorted. I can't wait until they're back to how they should be, if they ever are.

5. As much as I laugh off her jokes, I think my mum might be catching on to something when she says I have agoraphobia.

6. I did some very, very bad things at a very, very young age that I will never, never tell a soul.

7. I used to slash my arms, wrists, knees, thighs, stomach and face just to feel alive. I was so depressed, to the point of being a living corpse, that I had to slash that razor blade across my thigh to feel something, even though that something was pain. When my feelings came back, the razor blade was put down, and I began to feel things other than the frigid cold edge of a piece of metal.

8. I make excuses to eat. I'm not hungry. I'm rarely hungry. I eat because I get bored, and because I tell myself that it will bring happiness to me, but I know that it won't. I know that the only way I'll ever be happy is if I stop being such a fat ass and try to look good, but I'm so terrified of what people will think when they see me losing weight seriously. I'm terrified of using the, "nobody wants me because I'm fat", excuse, because what if people still don't like me when I'm not fat? I'm so scared that I'm that ugly that even a hot body won't make people want me. At least at the minute, I can use being fat as an excuse. I'm too terrified of being let down that I stay in a position that lulls me into believing it's just one, superficial excuse, when I know it's so much more.

9. I let somebody down who needed me. Depended on me. I looked that person blankly in the face, saw how troubled they were, and turned away. I watched as they spiralled though things I went through. I watched as I saw my own actions repeated. I saw that they weren't getting better, and that they needed someone, and I turned away. I told them they were baggage to my life. I told them I couldn't put up with it. In all truthfulness... I was scarred. I had been there, I knew the options, and I was scared that they would do what I didn't. I turned my back on someone who needed me the most and read about their pain. I scrolled through entry after entry about how much pain I was causing them, and I didn't do anything. My biggest regret is not doing anything. And now I'm terrified that this person will never love me again. Never trust me again. Frankly, I'm scared shitless that this person will never care about me again, because even though I turned my back, I never once stopped caring. I'm scared that they won't want to know. I'm scared of not being forgiven.

10. My biggest regret is not respecting myself or my body. I am most ashamed of that. I did bad things with bad people, and that has terrified me to a point where I don't think I'll ever be able to have a healthy connection with a person again.

I can't know how I feel about this post just yet. It's either the best thing I've done or the worst, so I could well wake up tomorrow and delete it. For now, though, I need to tell you my secrets.

I am so sick of keeping everything in.

BEDA 22: Happy Place

2011-08-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

I am in a happy place right now. A very, very, happy, happy place. I'm in that kind of, blissfully-walking-around-the-house-like-a-Disney-Princess-with-airy-fairy-arms, kind of mood. I'm in that, everything-and-anything-is-like-a-little-ray-of-sunshine, kind of mood. I'm in that, happy-enough-to-make-up-poetic-kind-of-moods, kind of mood. I am happy with a capital Happy.

But, I still haven't received my Pottermore welcome email yet, so, I'm pretty livid about that.

My happiness and anger aside, I'm currently sitting cross legged on one of the dinning room chairs while my mother sits on my stepdad's big leather spinny computer chair browsing through the Urban Outfitters website to fail to find me clothes I might like. I recently fell madly in love with online shopping--dudes, it's, like, shopping... Without having to leave your house! Brilliant!--and now that school looms nearer and nearer, I'm stocking up on some clothes. I'm trying to focus on the Autumn and Winter seasons right now, because, obviously, it's Autumn and Winter next, so it's thick sweatshirts and hoodies for me. I'm also trying to subtly stray away from Harry Potter t-shirts at the moment, because even though I love prancing around town in any one of my 6 t-shirts, they can get a little repetitive, and because they're so quirky, people remember them. The last thing I need is to go back to school and to be remembered as an outfit repeater. I'm NOT a Lizzie McGuire.

My mum just showed me a Krusty The Clown t-shirt. Yeah, mum, like that's going to do me any favours.

Oh, while I remember, a huge thank you to Lauren for filling in for me last night. We swapped blogs for the night, which actually proved to be fun. It was exciting and new writing for someone else, and while I won't be doing it again any time soon (the pressure was just TMTH), it was a nice break.

Oh! Now my mum just suggest a t-shirt with the words, "I'm surrounded by idiots" written on it. To which I politely responded, "I *think* that. I don't exactly strive for a punch in the face". I'm pretty hilarious.

Sorry to cut this short, but I'm going to go and watch some Desperate Housewives. My sister just bought the box set, so I'm taking advantage of her working schedule and kidnapping her DVDs. Also, my mum just whipped out her bank card, and that's my queue to go and drain it for all it's got.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Fuck You/ Gonna Get Over You-- Sara Bareilles

BEDA 21: BloggerFiller-iner-er17

2011-08-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hi guys!

So, I'm not Ben, sorry to disappoint. I'm Lauren, also known as vloggerqueen17 everywhere on the internet. I know, I know, I'm sure you wanted your charming British Ben fill today, so before I begin whatever I'm going to talk about with you all, here's a brief summary of what you would've been reading if Ben were here: books, snakes, Pottermore emails, angst, #gayboyproblems...does that suffice? Also, in case you want to actually read something of this today, we traded blogs, so you can go read that at http://www.vloggerqueen17.blogspot.com. It's only temporary, guys, you won't be stuck with me for long.

Alright, so, today I thought I would talk about why I like Ben, which seems fitting. About one year ago, we became really good friends and starting talking on Skype, and he actually wrote a blog post about me, which is archived somewhere here, but I don't think I've ever really done anything similar. Basically, Ben was my first real "Internet friend", and we have a running joke that he's the Joe (disneykid1) to my Molly, (mememolly) even though he's the one from the UK. He helped me through my first ever NaNoWriMo, and he's always been there to give me advice when I need him. However, we do get quite frustrated with eachother a good amount of the time, and sometimes we go for long periods without talking to each other, but I know that when we do get back to talking, we seem to start off right where we left off the last time. Ben is a good person, and I wish he'd get on Skype more. YOU HEAR THAT, BEN? Get on Skype more often, kay?

But anyway, I actually don't know what else I should write about, because Ben always tackles controversial topics and writes anecdotes and stories of good length on this blog, and on mine I just fill out surveys about makeup and complain about going back to high school. Ben has a different standard here, and I know that's what you all are looking for, so to say I'm a bit self-conscious is kind of an understatement. Should I tell you about the book I'm reading? Talk about my views on abortion? Fill out a survey of his and pass it off as my own? I don't even know, guys! I wish you were all sitting in front of me on a big carpet peering up at me and telling me what you want, like you're kindergarten students and I'm a generally confused teacher with good intentions but no lesson plan.

To continue, my mom just stopped at home to bring me a glass of iced tea, which was very kind of her. The only problem is, my dogs spotted her car and when she drove away they both broke into a fit of hysterics and one has crawled into my lap so blogging is now a bit difficult. That, and the fact that I have to mow the lawn before it rains is worrying me, as the sky is darkening quite quickly and I just heard thunder. Plus, it's about 8 PM Ben's time, so I should wrap this up. I feel so terribly that this post was so short, so terribly written, and so hastened; especially because the post Ben is writing for me will undoubtedly be glorious, long, and profound. Part of me hopes that that's the case for the sake of my readers, but my other half is praying that it won't be exceptionally well done, just so I'm not an embarrassment.

So, I guess this goodbye. If you'd like to send me death threats telling me how poorly I did, please feel free to @reply me on Twitter. I'm vloggerqueen17 there as well, and trust me, I only keep using that username for the sake of continuity, I cringe every time someone says it out loud or I have to write it down. Now the other dog has crawled onto my lap, which is only so big, so I really must be going.

Until next time,
Lauren

Ben does song of the day, so umm...I think the song "Faster" by Matt Nathanson. Okay, requirements done.

BEDA 20: Forever.

2011-08-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry, guys, but I've been reading "Forever" all day, and I don't want to stop now. I fully intend on finishing today, even if it so happens I read the last word at 11:59. I have more than enough time to finish it, and probably more than enough time to have a hot chocolate, too, so I think I'm going to go and do that.

I'll be back tomorrow, just as whiny about not being in Pottermore yet, probably with a controversial blog post. Then again, when have I ever stuck to my guide lines?

If you really must know, this book is pretty fudging spectacular at the minute, and I'll be sad to see the series go. I got the book late, on account of being poor prior to its release, and forgetful after, so I'm finishing up this chapter (no pun intended) of my life a couple of week early. It's funny, because she Shiver series is one of those that is still relatively small. I jumped on the bandwagon in 2009, shortly after the first book in the trilogy came out, so I was around to see it go from about 200 readers to 20,000 readers. It's exciting and fresh and one of my favourite book series, so the closing page will certainly be a blow. Nevertheless, I expect the trilogy to pull a Twilight fairly soon, seeing as a film adaption is in the talking. Then I'll be on of those elitist bitches who say, "oh, I knew about this book five years before you did", and you know what? I won't even feel guilty.

"Oh, Maggie Stiefvater? The author of the book that was turned into a film? Yeah, I emailed her back and forth a few times in 2010. I think you'll find I knew about her before you did."

I can just see it now.

<3

BEDA 19: Pottermore? Potter-less

2011-08-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

At this point in the Pottermore wait, I have the equal wrath to that of a menstruating bear. I am so pissed and so irritated that everything is annoying me and I want to burn my house down and dance around the ashes naked and crying. Like this morning, when my body clock woke me up at 5:00am, I rolled over quicker than I would have thought possible to check my emails on my phone, saw my inbox was empty, slammed the phone back down, went to the bathroom and came back to my room defeated. It was light out, and I considered going for a run, but after opening the curtains to one of my windows I saw a snail, carelessly sleeping like he owned the place, stuck right back on the glass of my window. Words cannot express how pissed off I was with that snail when I saw it. I was livid about not having any news from Pottermore, and all I wanted to do was throw that stupid smug little snail to a bird and watch it eat his stupid little head. But, ever the Gryffindor I am, I let the snail live, climbed back in bed and drifted back into the land of Dreams and Quiet.

My rage isn't extinguished at all by the fact that people I know IRl are now starting to get in. Similarly, people I know who don't even CARE about Harry Potter are in. It really makes me angry. This is one perfect example of when I don't believe in "equal opportunities for all". There should have been a more complex way to get in, a quiz, perhaps, that only a REAL Potter fan could have answered. Not a stupid number that gets shoved on to the end of a URL that people can Google. It was too easy, and now me and a few people are paying the price. Give me my Pottermore. Soon.

Siiiigh. I suppose I can't keep on bitching about this forever. I know that as soon as my email comes, all will be forgotten and forgiven, and I'll be so excited that I won't even remember how annoyed I was. I should just suck it up and act maturely. Breathe. Relax. Aaah, calm.

So to try and feed my Potter addiction, I am distracting myself with practically everything I can. Tumblr, books, online shopping, showering, eating, Tumblr, showering, eating, Tumblr... I even went outside today. Only for an hour, mind you, but at least I got outside this week. Not to mention that I was very brave and went into a shop all by myself.

I went to give my design to the tattoo parlour, and because you have to be eighteen to get a tattoo, I thought it best if I go in myself. The last thing I needed was my mummy by my side. I had everything planned out; my "date of birth" in case the receptionist asked me in a quick fire quiz, my excuse if she asked for ID, my answers for any questions she might have about how I wanted it... Yes, I was as prepared as Hermione before she sits an exam. So, naturally, I went in and completely stumbled over myself.

Ben: *Walks in to the shop, see a bunch of teenagers standing around waiting for piercings, lose my shit and trip to the receptionist's desk*. "Hi I've got a tattoo."
Receptionist: "..."
Ben: "... Appointment and I'm here to drop off this?" *I held out the paper at this point, and she took it.
Receptionist: "Ben?"
Ben: *Thinks in his head, "how the fuck did you guess who I was and when my appointment was just by what I said?* "Yes."
Receptionist: "You sure you want this? This size and everything?
Ben: "Yeah."
Receptionist: "..."

At this point, I literally cannot for the life of me remember what I was saying. You know how people say that their minds weren't connected to their mouths? Yeah, that was me. I didn't even know what I had said as I was saying it. I think I asked her if it would come out the same way, and she said yeah, and then I just kind of was like, "okay, thanks!" and ran out of the shop. I'm sure she thinks I'm an escaped lunatic. No doubt I'll go in there next Thursday and lose my shit again, as she surveys me from her little desk. Ugh.

And that, dear readers, is why I don't go outside. I don't like people, I can't interact with people, and there bugs out there. Yes. I like inside, with the comfort of sandwiches and my laptop, thank you very much.

I don't even know what the point of this post was. Just like this afternoon, my mind wasn't an active part in what I was writing; my fingers took over for my brain. Luckily, this bares some coherence, so I'm just going to stop talking and go and cry about Pottermore.

Farewell, amigos(es?). Be prepared that until my email comes, you will be left with various posts like this one, complaining and whining, until I get the email. And trust me, you will know when I get the email.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Pottermore-- Alex Carpenter

BEDA 18: What Is Wrong With Me

2011-08-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

I feel like yesterday's post was rushed and confusing and seemingly pointless. I read over it again this morning, sighed at the typos, gasped at how rude I sounded when I closed the blog off, and laughed at my anecdotes. However, as funny as I found the stories, and as rude as I sounded when I ended the post, I won't apologise for it, because my Queen was on TV and it was imperative that I give her all of my attention.

To finish up yesterday's post a little more roundly, let me add on a few things. For starters, the was no reasoning behind my post. Nope, none at all. I just love horses, and thought you might like to know. And by "though you might like to know", I mean I "had nothing else to blog about and a ten minute time slot", so I batted out the first thing that came to my head. Secondly, I think, after years and years of toying with the idea, and after must agony, I finalised that my Patronus would be a horse. I thought it would be a stag for a very long time, but that's only because it was the only animal that felt right; I didn't give it much thought. Of course, my favourite animal is a whale, but imagine a 60 ft Patronus. Psh. And, obviously, I loves me some snakes, too, but something about having the Slytherin mascot as something that was supposed to be good and light seemed perverse to me. SO, I conclude, that with my procedure of trial and error and classified elimination, I have decided that my Patronus would be a horse. Yes, big (something I was adamant about), regal, independent and beautiful. I freaking love horses, and I'm 99% certain that a horse is the animal for me.

Now, while we're on the topic of Harry Potter, Wizardry, and Magical things, let's talk about the inevitable. It was a long time coming. It was bound to have happened sooner or later, either basking with glee or sadness. Alas, it is sadness.

Yes. Let's talk about Pottermore.

Let me start by saying that something very unusual came over me as people started getting their emails. I was... Happy for them. Happy! It shocked me more than it should have done. Usually when I don't get my way, or if somebody beats me in competitions or stuff, I am the poorest loser. Ever. Like, eeever. I state my hate those people, demand to be classed as the winner, and whine and whine until somebody listens and tells me to shut it. Admittedly, I calm down after I've slept, with only the faintest taste of bitterness on my tongue, but it's still present.

But for some strange reason, when my friends and, even strangers, popped up on my Twitter feed screaming the odds about how they were in, I was over the moon for them. I was so happy that they could experience it after waiting so long, and even though I wasn't in yet, it didn't matter, because they got to live it and they deserved it just as much as I did. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of Potter. It can make even the sourest of people sweet.

Now, just because I'm happy doesn't mean I won't cut a bitch if I don't get in soon. I really, really, really want to experience it, yo! I'm dying with anticipation. I need to know for sure which house I'm in. I need my wand! I need to experience it all. I want it, I want it, I want it.

I have high hopes that I will get in relatively soon. I know your timing of acceptance isn't directly related to when you get your welcome email, but I definitely registered within the first ten minutes of the very first day, and that's got to count for something, right? Right? Who's with me?!

So, if you are in, I congratulate you. If you're not, I console with you. Us losers will have to stick together until we're in. And when we are, we'll have a party in the great hall, yo.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: King Of Anything -- Sara Bareilles

BEDA 17: Horses.

2011-08-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Something I've never really been vocal about online is my love of horses. Ahah! Did that come as a shock to you? Yeah, well, if you would have bothered to read the first sentence, it's because I've never really *spoken* about it. God. You're so silly. I kid, I kid.

I know where this love sprouted from. My mother is an avid horse lover. All through her childhood and teenage years, she kept horses. I don't know exactly how many she had, but I always hear stories from my grandma when we're driving around the town about how my mum stayed out for fourteen hours one day in a field with a horse, or how that field over there was her favourite to ride in, but she always came home covered in yellow pollen. My grandma, an adamant animal-hater, never cared for my mum's obsession, but nevertheless, it was there and it has been thrust unto me.

I started riding when I was about seven, and quit when at around 13. I quit because I prioritised dancing over riding, and my mum wouldn't pay the hundreds of pounds a term dancing on top of the honey to ride. My sister continued (we both rode at the same place, but because she carried on after I quit, she advanced to jumps), and I went to watch her avidly. Even though I had to give up riding, I still loved watching.

There are a few distinct memories I have of the stables. There was one that features a set of very Mary Kate and Ashley-esuqe twins, me, a hay shed and a twenty foot wall of hay. Let's just say that we made it the funnest game ever to jump off this wall and into a pile of hay on the floor. Another one stars a horse that I hated with a passion, an instructor that my mother constantly corrected/argued with, and a whipping accident. Basically, I was a very stubborn, very tall ten year old, but because of my age, I had been put on a pretty pathetic pony. If you don't know already, I have a particular penchant for danger, and even at my young age I preferred the biggest horses over ponies. Anyway, I was booked to be on a very tiny, very silver pony, and halfway through the lesson, as I was warming up and cantering around the oval-shaped indoor stadium, I whipped the horse on the butt (my place of preference, and frankly, the only place I ever whipped [GENTLY]), and this tiny little dog-sized horse galloped for its sorry little life. I was lurched forward beyond my control, and I all but fell off onto the floor. Luckily I was a stubborn bastard and managed to hold on to the horses neck and mane, and eventually it slowed down and I shimmied myself back on, but then the instructor shouted at me and told me to hit his neck. "Would you rather get hit on the neck of the bum?!" she screamed as I asked her what the hell had happened and, you know me, I turned around and said, "well neither, particularly, but my bum is lot bigger than my neck,". Of course, the instructor went crazy and called me stupid, and my mum told her to shut up, told her she didn't know what she was doing (true), and filed a complaint after the lesson. She never taught there again, which was probably a good thing, because she was about a hundred or something.

And then there was the time that I fell off a horse called Red. Ah, Red. He was, obviously, a ginger stallion, probably 15 hands tall, and beautiful. It was any other lesson, and as I was making my rounds, warming up, Red freaked the hell out, bucked a bit, ran off into the distance and threw me off. It just so happened that he bucked me off near the metal gate to the stadium, and my head smashed down on it as I fell, but the helmet took most of the fall. Of course that didn't stop me from bawling my eyes out, but ever the equestrian bitch she was, my mum told me that, if I didn't get back on that horse as soon as I fell off, I never would, so I climbed my way back on, completed the lesson like the bad-ass I am and rocked that stadium like it was nobody's business. Coincidentally, Red died a few months later, shortly after a lesson with me (I stupidly got back on him), so I was the last person to ride him. I never heard the end of it that I was the cause of his death, but frankly, I was lucky that he wasn't the cause of mine.

Another horse that stands out in my mind, who was my absolute favourite, was called Bonnie. She was the craziest, most powerful, fastest, single-minded horse I have ever known, and everyone hated riding her, because she regularly darted off in the wrong direction and bucked riders off, but I loved riding her, and, as I was told by numerous instructors, she didn't seem to completely hate me. She was easily 16 hands, had longish black hair with white patches, and the most wild white mane. When she cantered, she spazzed her neck and her mane flapped all over the place, and that was truly when I appreciated her the most. If I were to have bought a horse for myself, she would have been the one.

My final story makes me laugh whenever I think about it. The school I went to offered hacks (for you non equestrian folks, a hack is when you take a horse out in public, along roads, to get to either a field or wherever for fun, instead of sticking to a stadium), and as a treat, once every few months, my mum would book me and my sister one. We'd take a horse out, either to the beach or to a field, and ride for a few hours. It was spectacular. This one time, I was booked on a horse called Bertha. Bertha was a horse I always wanted to ride. She was the widest horse in the stable, and only the most experienced riders used her, because she was pretty lethal, but an 11 year old me loved the challenge. Not to mention I was crazy flexible, so doing the splits was no bit deal. Anyway, this horse was galloping pleasantly along the sand, when, of course, this crazy son of a bitch decided, hey, let's go for a swim! So here I was, on this huge-ass horse, riding into the sea, sitting on it as it was bobbing up and down in the water, not knowing either or not I'd appear on a British shore or a French one. It was, quite frankly, brilliant.

Now, Who Do You Think You Are is on, and I'll be damned if I'm going to reread this. I need to see my Queen Rowling, so BYE SORRY THIS IS CUT SHORT!

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

BEDA 16: Anonymous Letters

2011-08-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

"Wake me up from this awful dream/ if he changes you I think I'm gonna scream / can't you see I'm not thinking of me / I'm just trying to save you from yourself"

You heard it here first, folks. I still listen to songs about Twilight. Yup. Before you all stone me to death, the only reason I listen to it is because the band is actually pretty good, and the songs have been so engraved into my mind after years and years of listening to them, that I don't even think to delete them from my iTunes as I browse through. So, for now, they stay, I hum along harmlessly, and you read the chorus when I use it to open my blog. Isn't it lovely?

Today's post comes in the form of Anonymous Letter to People I Know Either In Real Life Or Online, or, as I like to call it, ALPIKERLO (Alp-ik-err-low). You can either a) read along, b) not read along, c) read along and try to guess who the subjects of my angst/adoration/abuse are, or d) read along and leave me your own anonymous letters. To me. Anonymously.

Now that's cleared up, let's get this ball rolling.

1. It is a daily pleasure to read your blog posts throughout BEDany-month-that-begins-with-a. I am constantly blow away by how neatly you write, how comical your insight to the world is, and how brilliant and warm you are as a person. On the slim chance that I manage to sneak in a conversation with you either morning or night, I leave the conversation feeling physically happier, because you will have no doubt spewed out at least 50 killer sentences that made me, metaphorically, spit out my, metaphorical, milk. If I could meet three People I Know Online, I would without a doubt write your name down to my genie in an instant, and not just for the free holiday. If you make me giddy just with knitwear-related blogposts, imagine what you'd do if we were a few feet away from each other? The world would be a happier place if I met you IRL.

2. There is just something about you that makes it impossible for me to fully accept you as a friend. I don't know what it is. You as a person are perfectly fine, and I can appreciate why people would enjoy being in your company--you're humble, probably a laugh... But you irritate me too much when I see your Facebook activity, or more potently, anything else you do online. I just... I don't know. I'm probably overreacting, and being your friend would, probably, be beneficial to me, but there are just certain things that I can't, and you are one of them. Sorry!

3. I don't know what I can say to you, because frankly, it's to you that I have the most to say. I wish I could tell you to make your mind up, but I can't. I wish I could call you up and just talk to you about stuff, but I can't. I wish I could corner you and use the Imperius curse on you, but that wouldn't be right. I am ambivalent to the point of insanity; on one hand, I just want... You, and on the other, I want you to do what you want to do, and if my absence was a request of yours, I would have to somehow abide by it, but... I don't know if I would. I wish, more than anything, that I had a Time-Turner, but I don't, so everything lies with you. I just wish you would enlighten me a little. I also can't listen to a certain line in Days of Summer without losing it.

4. I can't make my mind up if I hate you or love you. A lot of the time, it's both. A lot of the time, I'm indifferent... But seriously, I wish I would be in a position where we could just leave and appreciate each other from afar.

5. Despite your belief, I don't hate you. You piss me off practically every single moment I am conscious, but when you don't act like a stupid little bastard, I thoroughly enjoy your company. I just wish that you could see that people treat you like shit because you let them, and I wish you could grow a backbone. People are talking behind you back, and I know that you know, because I know you best, but I wish you had the power to tell those people where to go and start acting for yourself, on your own terms. Until then... I'll be pleasant to you and you're pleasant to me.

6. I used to think you were hot, and I used to imagine us totes mahgotes getting together, but now I just find you dull and blaaaah.

7. You think you're better than you are.

8. I don't think I've ever properly told you how much I appreciate your online presence, but you should know that I think of you as one of my dearest online friends, and I look forward to your Tweets more than anyone else's.

9. I see you driving 'round town with the girl I looove, and I'm like, you name drop a lot to make people think you're brilliant and fabulous but you're mediocre at best.

10. I think we had the potential to be great friends, strangely, and I thought you were the hottest thing to walk this earth a few months ago, but it seems as though I have slaughtered any chances of ever becoming acquainted with you, outside of Facebook and Skype. Speaking of the devil, you just signed in. Ain't that a coincidence?

Well, wasn't that delightful?! Apparently, after reading those through, I have a lot of wishes. I wish (punny) they would come true! Sigh, it's probably just wishful (incredibly punny) thinking.

Ah, well. One more post down, 15 more to go. Be warned, should I not get my Pottermore email relatively soon, you will be reading posts that become increasingly angst-ridden. As over the moon as I am for people who are experiencing it right now, if I hear much more without being part of it fairly soon, I think my head will explode. So, if you fear for my safety and don't want my head to explore, feel free to send threatening emails to the Pottermore workers, ordering them to put me through. My username is HallowChestnut149, for references.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Days of Summer-- Team Starkid

BEDA 15: Soz.

2011-08-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry, guys. It's too hot and I am too exhausted and too whiny to write anything of importance tonight, so you're stuck with a Myspace survey. Feel free to not read/hurl abuse at me in the comments. Or you can fill it out yourself. That's always fun.

1. Made out for more than 3 minutes? Yes
2. Slept in a different bed? Yes
3. Made out in a movie theatre? No
4. made out with 2 different people in one night? No
5. Thought your cousin was hot? All of my cousins are either a) in Australia, b) under the age of ten, or c) estranged from my family. No.
6. Been in love? No
7. Slept? Duh
8. Taken a shower with the opposite sex? Yes
9. Gone over the speed limit? Yes
10. Painted your room? Yes
11. Drove a car? No
12. Danced in front of your mirror? Yes
13. Gotten a hickey? No
14. Been dumped? No
15. Stole money from a friend? No
16. Gotten in a car with people you just met? Yes
17. Been in a fist fight? Yes
18. Snuck out of your house? Yes
19. Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back? Not unless a cookie counts as a "someone"
20. Been arrested? No
21. Made out with a stranger? No
22. Left your house with out telling your parents? Yes
23. Had a crush on your neighbor? No
24. Ditched school to do something more fun? Yes
25. Slept in a bed with a member of the same or opposite sex ? Yes
26. Seen someone die? No
27. Been on a plane? Yes, of course
28. Kissed a picture? ... Yes
29. Slept in until 3? Ew no
30. Miss someone right now? More than I care to admit/the person ever will know
31. Laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by? Yes
32. Made a snow angel? Yes
33. Played dress up? All the time in nursery. I was always a pretty little lady.
34. Cheated while playing a game? Used to be notorious for it. Not any more, though
35. Been lonely? Hahaha. Hahaha. Yeah. #emo
36. Fallen asleep at work/school Nope
37. Been to a club? Never have been and never plan to
38. Felt an earthquake? No
39. Touched a snake? OMG YES OF COURSE <333333
40. Ran a red light? No
41. Been suspended from school? No!
42. Had detention? One
43. Been in a car? ... What kind of a quiz is this?
44. hated the way you look? Practically every day, several times a day
45. Witnessed a crime? No
46. Been lost? In the literal sense, yes
47. Been to the opposite side of the country? No
48. Felt like dying from embarrassment? Not particularly, no
49. Cried yourself to sleep? Haha no
50. Sang karaoke? More times than I'd like to admit
51. Done something you told yourself you wouldn't do? I hurt someone, yes
52. Laughed till some kind of beverage came out of your nose? Several kinds several times
53. Caught a snowflake on your tongue? And then ate the shit out of it, yeah
54. Kissed in the rain? No
55. Sung in the shower? No, actually. I must remedy this
56. Had a dream that you married someone? Yes
57. played getting married? Yes
58. Got your tongue stuck to a flag pole? Can safely say I never have, no
59. Ever gone to school partially nude? Again, what kind of quiz is this? But actually, if by some miracle I get sexy relatively soon, on one of my schools famous "sixth-form-dress-up-days", I want to wear something brilliant, and that may just have to be something slutty.
60. Been a ? Yes, I have been a question mark
61. Sat on a roof top? Yes
62. Didn't take a shower for a week? *Vomits* The longest I've gone is three days.
63. Ever been too scared to watch scary movies alone? No. I eat fucking rocks and shit razor blades. I'm all man
64. Played chicken? No
65. Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? No
66. Been told you're hot by a complete stranger? Yes
67. Broken a bone? No
68. Been easily amused? Every day of my sad, sad life
69. Laugh so hard you cry? Every day of my sad, sad life
70. Cheated on a test? No. That's not my style
71. Forgotten someone's name? Aaaaall the time
72. Blacked out from drinking? No
73. Played a prank on someone? Yes
74. Gone to a late night movie? No
75. Made love to anything not human? ... Wut?
76. Failed a class? No
77. Choked on something you're not supposed to eat? Yes (not a euphemism, it was a marble)
78. Played an instrument for more than 10 hours? Straight? No. Collectively? Yes
79. Cheated on a girlfriend/boyfriend? Never had either to cheat on
80. Did you celebrate the 4th of July? My dad used to live in Canada, and I am strangely obsessed with America, so I am proud to say I have. I also comprehend that Canada and America are entirely different, so don't give me that shit, but living in Canada is more American-ish than living in Kuwait, right?
81. Thrown strange objects? Yes
82. Felt like someone? I feel like myself a lot, yes
83. Thought about running away? Yes
84. Ran away? No
85. Had detention and not attend it? Mini detentions, yes
86. Made parents cry? Yes, several times (not because I was a little shit, before you think I'm a bad son)
87. Cried over someone? Yes
88. Owned more than 5 sharpies? Yes
89. Dated someone more than once? No
90. Have a dog? Yes
91. Own an instrument? More than I can count on my fingers
92. Been in a band? Yes
93. Drank 25 sodas in a day? No?
94. Broken a cd? And slashed my hand in the process, yes
95. Shot a gun? Yes
96. Been on myspace for more than 5 hours? Ew
98. Have a major crush on someone right now? Not that I can think of
99. Have a religion? Partially. Undetermined
100. Thought about what people would say at your funeral? SO. MUCH.

Sorry guys! I need to go and rub some ice on my body, because damn, it's getting hot in here. I will now proceed to take off all my clothes.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Goodbye To You-- Michelle Branch

BEDA 14: Prepared.

2011-08-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

I... Am not going to lie. I've just spent an hour browsing through university websites, plunging through course and course at university after university... And it brought me back to exactly where I started. The place I've been wanting to go to for ages.

If I've confused you with that vague and somewhat pointless opening paragraph, I am looking at universities. You may well be thinking, "but Ben, you just finished school, you've got another two years of college before you start university!", and you'd be right, but, my friends, I have it all worked out.

See, if you think about it logically, I want to apply for early application in the second year of college, right? And besides, even if I don't make early application... Regular applications in general happen relatively towards the start of the year. So if I want to apply right at the start of the second year, I'll need time to think about, surely? Right. Yes! SO! I calculated (and by "calculated" I actually mean "thought about for roughly five seconds") that, if I want to have enough time to think about it properly, work out student loans, work out what I want to do, how it's going to be possible, and all of that behind the scenes jazz, I'm going to need to start thinking about it seriously half way through the first year of college, so I've got enough time to figure out the ins and outs before applications need to be sent. That makes sense, right?

Right?

Well, it does to me, even if you're scrunching up your face at how in-depth I'm taking this. I can't help it. I like to be prepared.

So back to my original point. I have been browsing through websites trying to find the perfect course for me. And by golly, I think I found it!

It's a four year, American Literature and Creative Writing course, with the third year being a study abroad year. You can either take it all in America, or split it between America and Australia. How fantastic is that?

I'm not going to lie, I would prefer it if it was English literature, but the study abroad program for Eng. Lit and Creative Writing only extends to Europe, and who wants to spend their study abroad in Europe? Not me, certainly. I'll just have to deal with taking a slightly lesser course, thank you very much.

And here's where the shit gets pretty trippy. Are you ready? Okay. They take gap-year students! I'm so excited because a lot of the courses I've been looking at haven't, but this one does! There are so many odds stacked up in my favour that I'm sure I could look past it not being English literature. Imagine if I took a gap year in America after my second year in England, and then spent my third year there, too. That'd be two years abroad! Ugh. I'm so excited at the possibilities that I think I'm about to pee, but that could partially be from the litre of iced tea I just downed.

I realise I'm getting far too excited about something that is over two years away, but being prepared never hurt anyone. And if my calculations plan out, the sooner I start thinking about this seriously, the better. (This is an excuse I'm telling myself so that I don't seem desperate and hopeful.)

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how things work out. If I *do* decide to do that course, I'll be needing some Americans' advice on where to study. There are several schools in New York, and I couldn't turn down a chance to act like Jessica Darling, but perhaps San Francisco will be the place for me? Or Texas? Or DC? Or Seattle? Who knows. For now, I just need to shut the hell up and get my mind on things that are actually within reach, like school starting up again soon.

I won't deny that I'm pretty excited, and by "pretty", I mean "immensely". Every year I go back to school I think, "This is it! A new beginning!", but I'm usually disappointed after the second day when I go back and I'm forced to do PE. This is a completely different situation. I'm doing the things I want to do, with people I thoroughly like, I have my old English teacher for certain next year... Things couldn't be any better. I just wish they would hurry the hell up and get here already.

I hope you guys are well. Every month-that-begins-with-an-A, I feel terrible, because here I a merely typing away about My Life and My Thoughts. I can't help but feel conceited. But I hope you're all well, I hope you're all enjoying your summer, and I hope, more than anything, that you're eating delicious food. That's the main thing in life.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Everything-- Alanis Morrisette

BEDA 13: Almost.

2011-08-13T12:54:00.001-07:00

Whoa. I almost forgot tonight. I have just finished watching Order of the Phoenix (they are showing a Potter film every Saturday night in celebration of the last film), and, you know, it's like a law or something that if a Potter film is on proper TV that you have to watch it. It's like when your favourite film is on TV. You're lawfully bound to watch that film.

I don't know what I'm going to blog about tonight. After I remembered that I was forced to turn my Mac back on to write a blog post, I was tempted to just shove it off with a four sentence apology and climb under the covers and watch bad TV. Before I forgot that I needed to write a post, I was going to do a special on Lady Gaga, and why I don't understand the hype around her, but that is a story for another time, folks. I'm too chillaxed to get riled up that kind of thing now. Maybe tomorrow night... If I remember. #winkface

So I booked a tattoo today, and by "I", I actually mean my stepdad, because I haven't talked to a stranger on the phone for 8 years. We rang up a few weeks ago, but they practically laughed and told us to ring up nearer the time. It's booked for the afternoon of results day, so I will have to go through two lots of pain that day! Woo! I kid, I kid. Hopefully it will only be one lot, and that lot will be the needle plunging into my skin. (If you're concerned at all as to what tattoo I am getting, I am getting a solid black lightning bolt on my right outer ankle. It is not the sticky-out-boney part, rather a little nearer the back. If you feel on your own ankles, there is a little hollow squishy part between two bones. Right there, m'friends.)

While I'm on the topic of results day, that draws nearer at a rapid speed. To think, half of this three month holiday was spent taking the tests and worrying about them, and the other half has been spent worrying about getting the results back. Pfft. And when the teachers told us this will be the longest and most relaxing holiday of our lives. Who were they kidding, right? Bunch o' liars.

I don't know why I'm panicking so much. I know I'll do fine. I know that I will do fine on the subjects I'm panicking about. There is a good chance that I could have failed art (my teacher told me before we broke up for school, which was the lovely segue for an argument), but other than that, I know I will do fine. I hate to make you Ravenclaws cringe, but I am one of those people who has the ability to do exceptionally well in school, but doesn't give it their all. If I put my mind to it and work hard, I come out with brilliant grades. Hell, in my first year of high school I was failing English, now I'm getting top marks, and that was because I actually tried and worked my butt off, but I am one of those pretentiously obnoxious morons who has that, "well, as long as I do well in the things I like, I don't really care about working too hard in other subjects" attitude. It's a known fact that I didn't do maths my entire time at high school. The first year I sat near my best friend and we laughed the whole year, the second year we had a teacher who looked like a pigeon, so by default, I didn't think I had to work, and in my last year, I had a young teacher and I sat at the back next to two of my best friends, so again, I didn't work. I'm sure I'll scrape by, though.

I guess this should upset me, but honestly, it doesn't. With all due respect to the British school system, GCSEs don't mean a great deal. Sure they can go on to be a person's only qualification, but I'm going on to do A Levels, and the only reason you really need GCSEs is to get into your A Level courses. Once you've got A Levels, that's all companies and universities care about. GCSEs are just a superficial stepping stone to take you to your next level, and as long as I do *okay*, I'll be fine.

In other news, I logged on to FanFiction.net for the first time in a long time today and found out that one of my stories had had over 2,400 hits. That shocked me. I'm sure Sam will correct me, but 2,400 seems like a lot of hits for a story that has been up a few months. Of course, I could be deluded, but I like to think that it's a lot. Please remedy me, guys. Soothe me in my moment of need.

Another cool thing that happened today was I made a new friends. Uhuh. Shocking, I know. I logged on and saw I had a private message, and we ended up talking and she asked me if I was a Nerdfighter and we pretty much went from there. It's fun meeting new people.

I think it's best I go before I get all soppy now. It's so mother fudging hot in this room that I think I am going to pass out, so I need to strip and lay on my bed and watch TV to cool down. I might also eat some apple sauce.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Lovers Without Love-- Joshua James (Seriously, if you don't usually listen to the songs at the end of the posts, you MUST listen to this one, and the lyrics. It's one of mah favey faves.)

BEDA 12: Sometimes It Sucks To Be Male

2011-08-12T06:00:00.001-07:00

Hi, I'm about to breach into a territory called Too Much Information. So, if you're afraid of slightly graphic, slightly crude details... It's probably best that you don't read this post.

My dear friend Sam posted a blog a few minutes ago titled "Sometimes It Sucks To Be Female". Sam basically goes on a whitegirlproblem-esque rant on topics like periods and boobs. Well, Sam, with all due respect... STOP MOANING.

Now, if you know me even the slightest, you know that I like women and dislike men (ironically, I *like* guys and *dislike* women). Call it hypocrisy on my behalf, but I am sick to the point of death of men being not ignorant, not stupid, just downright hateful towards women. Sexism isn't ignorance, it's prejudice. So thus why I fight every single day against halfwits who think it's okay to be sexist towards women. But seriously, ladies... You get off pretty easily.

Periods. Ah, periods. Lovely, lovely periods. Or, maybe not lovely, but you catch my drift. Yes. Girls have periods. It's gross, a rollercoaster of emotions, and a hell on the thighs, because from of the women I know, eating too much food is almost an essential. But... If you look past its ickiness, its whirlwind of mood swings and its betrayal to your stomach... Periods have a reason. They aren't pointless gashes in your arm that bleed for no reason. They ensure that you're functioning, allow you to get knocked up and give you an excuse to any prying boys at nightclubs. Doesn't seem so bad now, huh? Also, while I'm on the topic, if you all claim periods to be so dreadful... Why did EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU USE IT AS AN EXCUSE TO GET OUT OF SWIMMING? Yeah. That's right. I went there. #burn

Now. Let's try and search for the male equivalent, shall we? Yes. There is in fact one! A man-period. A meriod, if you will.

Before any of you girls ask, no, there is no bleeding. THAT would be gross. But it has been researched and proven that at different times of the month, males produce more of some hormones than other, creating an imbalance. This imbalance can lead to heightened sexual arousal (giggle), increased moodiness (hallelujah), and over eating (yum). Now. You might ask, "why does this happen, oh Ben?" and I would love to inform you all that it happens for no reason whatsoever. It just does. Doesn't seem fair, does it? Guys go through it, albeit sans bleeding and pain, for no reason, while girls go through it for at least something.

Males, 1, females, 0.

Now. Let's talk about everyone's favourite subject, shall we? Breasts! Boobs, too, have many, many functions. Yes they make a girl look good, and yes they can boost your chances of getting free drinks at your local KFC, but other than that, they feed our babies. That's right. So yes, they hurt, and yes, they get in the way, but think, those hills of fat and muscle and tissue and milk ducts are there for a real reason, not just filling out your tank tops. Complain all you want about boobs. They are important and vital to man kind.

This is where the graphicness reaches its paramount, so if you've read up to this far cringing, you might want to look away now. Ladies (excluding PJ), let's talk about male genitalia.

Now, I will say right here and now that, I, Ben Cracknell, am the owner of a penis. I know, right? It might shock you, but it's true. Now, boobs are important, we have established that, and I am by no means saying penises aren't important (evidently they are) but all I'm saying is that they cause a hell of a lot more troubles for guys than boobs do for girls.

Puberty is the biggest bitch in the history of bitches. We have all lived through it, we have all been its bitch. It was dreadful (I'm kdding, it was pretty easy sailing for me), but I think one thing boys can agree on is that it is ten times worse for them.

This may come as a shock to some of you, especially because you still cling so desperately to your period argument, but let me make myself clear.

A cracking voice--one that will leave everyone in hearing shot in hysterics--, acne--yes, I know, girls get it too, blah blah, but statistically, it is more violent and prominent in males--, awkward hair growth, painfully obvious growth spurts, disgusting skin, completely unnecessary and random boners, boners in general, shaving, comparing to friends, peer pressure to have the biggest shlong... Generally, not a pretty thing at all. Just because I was blessed with never suffering from a cracking voice or acne doesn't mean that most people don't. Girls probably don't give guys much thought, and think that we have nothing to go through, but that isn't the case.

Being a guy can suck a lot of the time. Don't get be wrong, I love it most of the time, but there are certain things, certain aforementioned things, that can really bring a guy's morale down. It can get awkward, sometimes hilarious, but mostly... It's just awkward. Plus, you know, at least being a female you can be a feminist without people not believing you or calling you a fraud. People never believe me when I say I am all for equal rights.

Of course, by dispelling Sam's blog post and making a mockery of females in a thousand or so words, it is probably fair that my title is rebuked. But I don't care, because I stand by what I said.

Sometimes, it sucks just as much having a penis as it does having a vajoojah.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

BEDA 11: Haulin'

2011-08-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

Hello, readers. Look, shiny new people! New readers! This excites me greatly! Truth be told that my audience isn't large... At all... But I thoroughly love each and every person who reads this blog (perhaps [definitely] more than I love the ones who watch my videos), so thank you, thank you, thank you.

I woke up today at a pretty reasonable time, walked bright-eyed into the kitchen to discover no one was home. My sister was at work and my mum and dad were out grocery shopping, so I made some scrambled eggs (the "eggs" were actually singular, because there wasn't another one to be see anywhere) and shovelled it into my mouth as I watched an old episode of Friends.

I ended up reading most of the morning until it was time for me to don clothes that were socially acceptable and brace the outside world. It should be mentioned right here and right now that in almost three months, I have "gone out"--by which I mean with friends, for recreational purposes, stuff like that--exactly two times. Yup. Twice. Every single other time I have left the house this summer has been to either go to school (boo!) or to go to my grandma's (yay!). So, ever-the-agorophobic*, I was dreading going to have my hair cut, just because it was too much effort to get off my bed.

My hairdresser is lovely. She's very, very short, very, very trendy, and very, very plump. Her hair is cut in an absolutely perfect short, sleek black bob, and she always wears some variation of black and white. She wears only platinum jewellery, and I'm pretty sure the phone in the barbers cost more than everything in my room combined. I thoroughly enjoy having my hair cut, if I can get past the whole going out of the house aspect.

But today I just, to coin an infamous Tumblr phrase, couldn't. I just couldn't. I couldn't be bothered, and when she started hacking away at the mushroom-shaped mop on my head, I just wanted her to shave it off and get it over and done with. It doesn't help that when she trimmed my eyebrows today (something she does with all of her customers), the comb slipped and she ended up shaving practically all of my left eyebrow off. Naturally, she proceeded to my left eyebrow and shaved all of that one off, too. As you do.

So eyebrow-less and practically hair-less, I quickly popped home to shove my head under the ice jet from my shower before I ran back to the car to go BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPPPPPINGGGG.

Make no mistake. Yes, I am sixteen, going on seventeen. Yes, I am a six foot three male. Yes, I passionately despise any other form of shopping. But I absolutely love back to school shopping. It's so exciting! Getting new pens, oooh! Look, a new note pad, aaah! I was, what I call, over the moon.**

In addition to new stationary (which I adore) I also needed new clothes. This year is the first year in my entire life I haven't had to wear a uniform. As I mentioned above, I hate shopping, and clothes shopping with a 9 year old me was, as I am regularly told by my parents, a fate no human being should ever have to live through. So, adding together the fact that I used to wear a uniform to school with the fact that I hardly ever leave the house as well as the fact that I hate shopping, I had hardly any clothes whatsoever. A couple of pairs of jeans and about 10 Harry Potter/Nerdfighter t-shirts. That is IT. Needless to say I couldn't last 9 months wearing a total of about 11 outfits. So, I had to do the inevitable and buy new clothes.

I actually came away with more stuff than I was anticipating, but that didn't make the buying any less painful. I don't know if any of you have ever had your head and eyebrows shaved off, but let me tell you, it doesn't make you look like a Princess. This, as well as standing in front of about 5 different mirrors while wearing unfamiliar clothes that has been touched by god knows who in the past, made me want to just slit my throat with a butter knife. I looked absolutely awful. I mean, I looked awful.

Usually, I don't give a flying dog's turd what I look like. I wake up in the morning not feeling like P. Diddy, but rather myself. I don't fix my hair. I just shower, put some clothes on, brush my teeth and I'm done. I am a disappointment to gays all around the world. But that's me. I've never really given a crap about my appearance. But today, it just broke me.

I'm not looking for sympathy, but I truly felt my ugliest today when I was trying clothes on. And it's funny because it's true. I don't need people to tell me, "but you're not!", because when you know it yourself, no amount of coaxing can ever persuade you otherwise. I felt absolutely awful when I went in one shop, tried some stuff on, realised I looked stupid and stared at myself in the mirror. There was so much I would have liked to change, yet so little I could do.

Of course, that could have just been the recently adopted baldness brainwashing me. So I stormed out of that shop (after buying this amazing fabric and leather school bag for next year. Get this... It was supposed to be £30, but it was down to £3. £3! I was amazed) and made my way to another. I ended up getting three pairs of jeans there--jeans are my Worst Enemy, because I have reeeally long legs--so I was more than impressed. It was getting late by this point, and my mum's bank account was starting to feel the weight of what I had bought, so I made one last stop and ended up buying a grey over-the-head hoodie (pretty snazzy) and a coat (also snazzy). I haven't had a coat in 8 or so years, so I'm pretty excited to wear this one. Understandably.

I still haven't finished yet. I need some new shoes, t-shirts, jumpers, probably a few more jeans, some socks, some underwear and some notepads. I want to go to college prepared, yo'.

Oh! One thing I did manage to pick up, though, is an absolutely to die for little journal. I have been looking for one like this for years. It's very Tom Riddle-esque. It's smallish, black leather, with thick, blank parchment paper inside. It's so perfect that I want to cry whenever I look at it. Except not really. Oh, okay. Maybe just a little.

All in all, I don't think today was that bad. I wouldn't live through it again, but at least I got something. If you discard the whole me feeling like shit, it wasn't terrible.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to go read some more Goblet of Fire while I hide in my room for two weeks until my hair and eyebrows grow back to a reasonable length. See you on the flipside!***

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Done All Wrong-- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

*My sister, and thanks to her, now my mother, think I have agoraphobia. I disagree. I just like being inside.
** Ten cool point to you if you understand that reference!
*** Ten trillion cool points if you understand that reference.

BEDA 10: Wizarding Survey

2011-08-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what your Wizarding life would be like? I'm not just talking about on Pottermore, or on a forum in the darkest corner of a fansite. I'm talking, if-you-were-genuinely-a-wizard, went-to-Howarts-School-of-Withcraft-and-Wizardry, graduated-from-school-and-were-of-age-and-you-had-the-rest-of-your-life-to-live. The, not-if-you-were-you-and-YOU-went-to-Hogwarts. I mean being someone else entirely. You know, that kind. Have any of you?

Well, I have. I have spent, quite probably, days in total thinking about my Wizarding life. I have fantasised about how I would react when I got my letter, what my parents would say, how I would feel on the Hogwarts Express. How I would feel crossing the black lake, standing in the Great Hall waiting to be sorted, how my first, second, third year would go. The friends I would make. How I would feel leaving Howarts. What I would do after Hogwarts, who I would remain friends with, how old I would die... You know. The usual.

So, of course, I thought I would tell you all, because I know you're all so concerned about an imaginary life I have made for myself. Obviously. But I would be legitimately interested in hearing back from all of you. Answer the survey in the comments, if you'd like, tell everyone about it, send it to Tumblr... Whatever. I am really, really interested in hearing what kind of lives the rest of you would lead.

1. Pureblood, half-blood, Muggle born?
Hmm. Well, honestly, I think I would be pureblood, because in my imagination, is honest, proper, good Hogwartsian style, and in my life, I have to be pureblood. It needs to be so. I envisage my household to be small, fairly Burrow-ish, my Wizarding mother (who is most certainly not my Muggle mother) is a small, stay-at-home-witch. My father (again, not my Muggle father) runs his own small shop in Diagon Alley. I also have an older brother, but he graduated Hogwarts before I started, and is off gallivanting the world.

2. Which house would you be in?
Gryffindor. It's true, guys. My whole family has been in Gryffindor. Although, I don't see us as the Potter-ish type Gryffindors; extremely well known for being brash and in-your-face. I see our family as more of an Abbott-ish family, or Weasley-ish. Humble, but still fairly recognised by some people.

3. What kind of friends do you make at Hogwarts?
A fair few. I see a circle of us Gryffindors, boys and girls. Our circle isn't the popular crew by any means, and we go fairly unnoticed by the other three houses, but we are noticed in the Gryffindor common room because we always sit around the fire in the same old seats. I see that some of my friends go on to be teachers in their later lives, which remains my connection to the school once I myself have left.

What kind of wand would you have?
Oak. 14 1/4 inches. Oak because it is a quintessentially British tree, big, old and strong, and I'm 6' 3" (that doesn't change in my imaginary world). The wand is that long for the same reasons. Unicorn tail hair core. I see this wand as being solid and firm. It is very powerful, but only once its ways have been figured out. It is a tricky wand, and dangerous to people who don't know how to use it, but its allegiance is strong to me and it works perfectly for me. I see that this wand will be with me until I die at the ripe age of 104.

What is your career life after Hogwarts like?
My life after Hogwarts is humble. I am not a brilliant auror. I am not high up in the ministry. I am a wandmaker. (For as long as I have been conscious of thought and comprehended what witches were, I have been utterly obsessed with wands. This only grew as I read Harry Potter. To this day, wands are the one thing that fascinate me the most in the Wizarding world. I know more about wandlore than anything else.) I learn with Ollivander for a little while, and travel Europe in search of mastering the craft of wandmaking. Eventually I come back to England and set up my own humble wand shop in Diagon Alley (sorry, Ollivander). My shop is small, warm and cosy, and I see myself catering to many people before I die. Strangely, though, I see myself having a stock of wands, yes, but I also see that I meet people and then make the wands (my predictions are always right, yo). I've also been known to make wands years in advanced. If a family comes in to my shop with a ripe 11 ready to get their wand, and they happen to bring their 4 year old daughter along with them, I judge them and their mannerisms and make their wand early for them. Then, when they get their wands they're all like, "Whaaaat is this for meeee?" and I'm like, "Ah, yes, well, I saw you over 7 years ago, and I knew straight away that a 10 1/2 inch elm would work perfectly for you". It should also me mentioned that my wands are pretty fucking fancy, so...

What is your family life like after Hogwarts?
This is where it gets creepy. I see... Myself... Marrying a woman. I KNOW, RIGHT? Yeah. I see myself going to a wedding of one of the old Gryffindor friends I told you about earlier, and there, across the room, is one of the other friends who used to be in the circle (we lost touch once I went to Europe). We end up talking and marry after ten or so years of being in love. We have two twin girls, one of them eventually joins me in the wand shop while the other becomes the new Herbology teacher. After me and my wife die, the twin who learnt from me takes the wand shop over, and continues my way of making wands.

That was fun, right? Tell me that was fun? Well, it was fun for me. Remember what I said at the start; I am seriously, seriously interested in hearing what you guys have to say. Tell me about your Wizarding life.

Okay. This blog post has either been a prime example of my over-active imagination or early signs of schizotypal personality disorder. Considering I have numerous other signs of the latter, I think it's best I go and read Goblet of Fire and leave the blogging world for tonight.

Remember, when life seems dark, when all hope seems lost... Answer my fucking survey because I want to know what you guys have to say.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day-- Re: Stacks-- Bon Iver.

BEDA 9: Family, née awful

2011-08-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

How many people is in your family?
Well, I count it as three, because that is the number of people in my household, but I seriously couldn't even begin to count how many people there actually are. Whenever there is a reason for the family to congress, my grandma (who seems to be the head of the whole family) mutters in my ear who is who so I can have a heads-up if they mention something about how "I probably don't even know who they are".

What is your favorite vacation with your family?
I loved Australia, but that was with my dad's side of the family, and I don't see them anymore. I don't really go on any holidays with my mum or stepdad, because my stepdad is disabled, but I have a few memories of when I was younger.

What is your least favorite memory with your family?
Like any family, mine has more than its fair share of drama. I remember being about six and being out shopping with my mum, when her sister--who she doesn't speak to--came up to her, tried to make small talk, and when my mum walked away, she muttered, "Well aren't you going to talk to me?", and, bare in mind this is in the middle of a shop, my mum turned around and said in the most disgusted tone I have ever heard, "why should I after all the shit I've had off you for years?" And then there was the fighting--VERBAL--my mum told her to piss off and leave the family alone, and me being ever the brilliant child I was stood in front of my mum and shouted at my Auntie, "don't shout at my mum!". I don't really remember what happened after, but people were crowding around to watch us so my mum left and then we drove home. Anticlimax or what? That was more amusing than anything. I suppose I should say walking out on my dad, but that wasn't a bad memory at all.

What’s your family background?
MUM'S: Her dad is Scottish, her mother is English. Lived in a tiny town their whole lives, married for years, granddad died happily. I always consider this to be the "normal" side of the family, but very recently my grandma has been confessing to stranger and stranger occurrences--ones my mum didn't know--and she has been giving me a load of old heirlooms. Very, very, very big family, so many people I've never even heard of. Too many branches to even begin thinking about it.

DAD'S: Very old, very settled, very rich family. Mum and dad divorced after marrying at 19--mum never wanted to get married, she just did. Had me and my sister. The men in my dad's family are unusually tanned and tall. Dad married my stepmum in 2003 in Australia. Stepmum comes from a ridiculously wealthy family. Example, her uncle and aunt build houses and sell them, they have a manor with an outdoor and indoor pool, pool houses, their own caravan park (incase relatives want to come and stay), fountains... Pretty much like Malfoy manor. They also built their own lake on their land. Not just a pond. A lake.. They had half of the water imported from Scotland and let the other half fall straight from the sky. They are bajillionaires. Don't see this side of the family.
Are you close with any of your cousins?

Do you have any brothers and sisters?
One sister, Gemma, stepdad has two children (although I don't know if they are his biological children, I never asked for personal reasons), a daughter and a son, Rebecca and Josh, and my stepmum has a son, Daniel. One blood sister, one step-sister, two step-brothers. Only see the real sister.

Do you have any pets? And do you consider them to be family?

Oh God yeah! We used to have a lot of pets, but they died one by one and my mum refused to get any more. At any given time we seemed to have 13 pets; 4 fish, two cats (one of them exploded, the other one is still alive), two rats, 3 rabbits, two guinea pigs. But over the years there have been: 6 rabbits, 2 cats, 1 dog (Lily, the main pet) 4 gerbils, 3 rats, 4 guinea pigs, 4 fish, and a horse. I'm pretty sure than my mum loves my dog more than me. My pets are most certainly part of the family. My dog has just as much character as any person I've had the misfortune to meet, she has her own ways of doings things and her own quirks--like when it gets dark during the day, usually as result of rain or thunder, she cowers into the tiny bathroom and lays down in the dark. My cat, whose head was slammed in a door (the wind blew it, not a person), only has one eye now. He is, quite possibly, the bitchiest, most handsome, gayest, loveliest cat ever. He has had more than his 9 lives, and I love him. And, you know, my guinea pig is my baby.

Who is your favourite family member?
I can't decide! That's awful. I love my family. Me and my mum get on more than a teenage son and a mother should, me and my stepdad are constantly making fun of each other (actually, it's a standard joke in the house to make fun of my stepdad), and me and my sister DO argue a LOT, but we are extremely close, too. I love my grandma, too. Most people bitch about her, because she is your typical grandma--whines about everything, complains about teenagers, her neighbours, the state of her pansies, is a little bit racist in a way that only old grandmas can pull off--but I absolutely adore her. She is so brilliant, so hilarious, and we get on so well, because we have exactly the same views. We both love to complain about people, and I love listening to her stories, so we make a pretty good pair. Other than that... I guess the only other person worth mentioning is my granddad, who died in 2007. He was perfect.

Ugh. I am too tired to reread this, so it will be laced with typos but I don't care. I am going to read another chapter of Goblet of Fire and then sleep. I could feel writing this post that it is awful and uninteresting, but I have nothing better to do. That is a lie. Expect something brilliant soon.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Lights-- Ellie Goulding.

BEDA 8: Things I Do Not Like

2011-08-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

1. Being hot.
2. Not being hot.
3. Waking up in the night to pee.
4. Loud music.
5. Dark wood.
6. Frogs.
7. Rock music.
8. Facebook.
9. Filling awkward silences.
10. Yoghurt.
11. Smudgy screens.
12. Having nothing to watch on TV.
13. Warm/hot showers.
14. Wet socks.
15. Roadkill.
16. Dead trees.
17. If the moon is in the sky in day time.
18. My eyes.
19. Maths.
20. Getting itches.
21. Noisy cars.
22. T-Shirt labels.
23. Pizza.
24. Cheese.
25. Little snakes.
26. People who whistle.
27. Doors that aren't closed.
28. People who think homophobia is the biggest issue this world has to fight.
29. English accents amongst American people.
30. American accents amongst English people.
31. Not being able to hug URL friends.
32. Not liking IRL friends.
33. My next-doo neighbours.
34. People touching me.
35. When people burp.
36. English beaches.
37. The majority of England.
38. New Years Eve/Day.
39. Hipsters.
40. People who hate hipsters.
41. Hipsters who hate hipsters.
42. Wearing proper clothes when I'm at home.
43. Wearing underwear.
44. Sending a text halfway through writing it.
45. Losing.
46. Sports.
47. Not being able to be a vegetarian.
48. Needing to pee.
49. Being poor.
50. People who are racist.
51. Dumb people.
52. Chapped lips.
53. The fact that I always have chapped lips.
54. English TV.
55. Having my closest Starbucks 8.3 miles away.
56. Knowing I won't be able to afford driving lessons/a car/insurance come November.
57. Parties.
58. Liquid soaps.
59. Folded down pages of books.
60. Thinking late at night.
61. Reading aloud in class.
62. Being bored.
63. Waiting for results day.
64. Knowing that there are very few people I want to see on results day.
65. Knowing that the one I want to talk to won't want to talk to me.
66. Having to talk to people I don't want to.
67. Jam.
68. Stairs.
69. Dirty road signs.
70. Fish.
71. The fact that everyone now momentarily loves Harry Potter because of the last film
72. Pins and needles.
73. Dog's hairs.
74. Knowing that I have not one friend I can just talk to for hours and hours.
75. Radiators.
76. Loud breathers.
77. Pencil sharpeners.
78. Aquagenic pruritus.
79. Concerts.
80. Crunchy toast.
81. That not everyone shares my passion for feminism.
82. That girls don't believe I support feminism because I have a penis.
83. Bananas.
84. Vanilla.
85. Cake.
86. New Pokemon.
87. Love bites on people who think they are cute.
88. That my mum vacuums every other day and wakes me up.
89. The Beatles.
90. The fact that people don't like me for not worshiping The Beatles.
91. Borrowing books.
92. Letting people borrow my books.
93. When earphones fall out of your ear.
94. Pretty boys.
95. People with poor personal hygiene.
96. Spots.
97. Being literally the only person who can pass on a 600+ family name.
98. Warm beds.
99. Shaving.
100. Coughing.

BEDA 7: Things I Like

2011-08-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

1. My rights foot.
2. Avenue Q
3. Ballet dancers
4. Old 5AG videos
5. Lykke Li
6. Big, big snakes.
7. Not liking pizza.
8. My braces (light blue and dark blue).
9. Being an introvert.
10. Never knowing where I stand with certain people.
11. Sitting on the floor.
12. Girl, Interrupted.
13. Whales.
14. Alanis Morissette.
15. Marmite.
16. My grandma's house.
17. Cold showers
18. Ingrid Michaelson.
19. Feminism.
20. Falling asleep early.
21. Being cold.
22. Hoodies.
23. Back to school shopping.
24. Writing short hand.
25. Liz Lemon.
26. Emma Stone.
27. Wandlore.
28. Stationary.
29. Nikki Malvar.
30. The Wailin' Jennys.
31. Pointe shoes.
32. Being flexible.
33. Live performances.
34. Reading laying down.
35. Strong lemon iced tea.
36. Not liking chocolate.
37. Gryffindor.
38. Plants.
39. My grandma.
40. £20 notes.
41. My external hard drive.
42. Leiston.
43. Pokemon.
44. Mystique.
45. Lesbians.
46. Ellis.
47. The fact my sister wants to name her future child Harry.
48. Nagini.
49. Raspberry and green tea flavoured water.
50. The Twilight soundtracks.
51. Feeling nervous.
52. Zac Efron.
53. China.
54. Handsome men.
55. Women.
56. Jon Hamm.
57. Bisexuals.
58. My bed.
59. October.
60. Astronomy.
61. Tumblr asks.
62. Pottermore.
63. Birds.
64. Water Bending.
65. James Franco.
66. Blue tooth brushes.
67. Windy days.
68. Winter.
69. Winter Song.
70. The fact that I giggled as I wrote the last number.
71. College.
72. Cars.
73. Cucumbers
74. Alliteration.
75. Being ambidextrous.
76. Skype.
77. roguecity.net
78. Sara Bareilles.
79. Moles on peoples' necks and faces.
80. Cracking my bones.
81. My mum.
82. My stepdad.
83. My sister.
84. The number 7.
85. The fact that my cat is gay.
86. My English teacher.
87. Fanta.
88. True Blood.
89. Happy trails.
90. Unicorns.
91. Dolphins.
92. Horse riding.
93. Forgetting peoples' names.
94. Hayden Panettiere.
95. Having physical copies of my books.
96. Water.
97. Hardback books.
98. Paperback books.
99. Boxer briefs.
100. The fact that this video freaks everyone out.

BEDA 6: Dear You

2011-08-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

Dear, You

I had never really appreciated the power of words prior to meeting you. True, I had used them, both maliciously and kindly, but I had never really grasped the complexities words could hold--both the malicious kind or the warm kind. True, too, how I exercised both routes on you, and you on me.

I have never been a physical person when it comes to fighting. Sure, there was that one time in middle school when I kicked a boy in the ribs and he punched me in the eye, but that didn't qualify as a fight. My fighting style has always been, and will always be, my ability to use words to inflict damage to other people. Perhaps I shouldn't do this at all, and true, some might say that this is my qualifying trait that earns me to be a Slytherin, but I damn well will not go down without a fight, so you can bet everything you've got that I will use my quick wit and vicious tongue to put any bully straight.

With my fighting style of choice down to a tee, and my kind words not needing any practice at all, I was merely a vessel with these words inside of me looking for a soul to pout them onto. And then you came along.

My whole life I have needed to protect myself. My whole life I have needed to watch my back, which is no doubt at all where my defensive and distrusting persona comes from. I have never had someone to be entirely comfortable around, so when the opportunity arises, I quickly end up pushing people away before they can do it to me. Not to you.

I didn't need to.

For once in my life, I had someone else like me. Someone else who relied on words, but for very different reasons. For the first time in my life, I had an equal, both intellectually and spiritually. People in my life before you had either been mind numbingly stupid, stocked heavily with brains that didn't get put to use, or a strange hybrid of the two, if such a thing is possible. For once, I had someone who I could kick back and discuss profound issues and silly trivialities with in the same conversation. I had, to coin a gag-worthy phrase, found somewhat of a soulmate.

Never while we were an item did I use any malicious words against you. Ever. I didn't even need to try not to use them; it came naturally. The best in me was brought out when we were together, and it wasn't long before I could feel a change. I didn't hate the world so much, and that which I did hate, we hated together. That which I loved, we loved together.

Truly, I believe that, while we were together, I was the purest I have ever been in my life. I felt good. Absolutely good. Clean.

But then things turned bitter and sour. Things darkened. Things turned black and hazy and unnatural and unfair and disturbed and uncomfortable and troubled. Talking to you didn't feel like a haven anymore; it felt how the world felt to me before you. It was the same. There was no more "absolute good" in me anymore. The viciousness came back, and vomited itself all onto you, and yours arose in your throat and coughed all over me.

We were, ironically, after showering each other with promises and adoration, snapping at each other until we were both left raw and bloody. We were both fighting the way we fought best; with words.

The power of words really sunk into me then. Funny, how, after months of kind, loving and warm words, nothing sunk in. I appreciated them, but didn't believe them. After all, it felt too good to be true. Why is it that, as soon as the black words were thrown around, I started to learn? Such a pity. It was only after cruel sentences and painful slurs had been thrown around that I truly, honestly appreciated that words are powerful things, and that the crueler they are, the more powerful they are.

A single word has inflicted a lot of pain. One single, solitary ugly word has affected me far more than thousands upon thousands of beautiful ones have. The one loaded gun among millions of duds.

Which is why malicious words will get us nowhere and absolutely everywhere. I have felt first hand what the words I spew out to people can do, yet they seem to affect me a hundred times more than they have affected any of my other enemies prior to our own battle. Why is it? Is it because I can appreciate what the words actually mean? No. It's not.

It's because I never expected it from you. You never expected it from me.

Malicious words get us everywhere. They have the power to build up and army and to destroy one. For such simple things, they hold more power than any weapon ever will. Words are the source of all pain in one sense or another.

So, not to stray off topic, if I am to stick with the two types of words, I say these two things to you; "fuck you," and "I'm sorry for it all". I mean them both equally.

I mean them both profusely.

I hope you understand.

Sincerely,
Me

P.S. Of course, there is a third type of word. Neutral. To which, I say, "who has any room for indifference? Make your mind up which one you want to believe. Because until you do, neither of us can move on. Decide which path you wish to travel down so we can both rest. Choose, so we can both know".

BEDA 5: Making Up

2011-08-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

I bet you all thought I wouldn't do it. I bet you all rolled your eyes yesterday, with an air or arrogance that you predicted I wouldn't keep my end of the deal. Well, you would have been right to, but you can roll your eyes no more, because I am here, I am queer, and... Oh, wait. I didn't mean that last part. I meant... I meant I am here, and I am making up for my empty words the past few days. I may be bad at keeping promises, but I'm not that bad.

So, if you're just tuning in today after four days of not reading, or if you've entirely forgotten, this post will be about the death penalty, so if you are highly sensitive to controversy, I suggest reading on, because I will get a laugh out of hearing your responses. Prepare to agree entirely, disagree absolutely, or fall somewhere in the middle. Obviously. Because those are your only thee choices. Duh.

Ever since a little over three months ago, I have wanted to do a blog post about the death penalty. As I'm sure everyone of consciousness remembers, three months ago, Bin Laden, notorious terrorism activist, tyrant and, arguably, sadist, was shot dead on command by Obama.

I will not pretend to know even the slightest on American politics, nor will I try to delve into the political arguments on Bin Laden's death. It is not my place to judge how a country is controlled. That's not why I am here. I'm here to talk about something I do know the slightest thing about, because, believe it or not, I am a human; and that, of course, if morality.

Without getting too philosophical, let's just establish some ground rules. Can we all agree on the difference between morality and taught behaviour? Morals are things that are not etched into our brains by parents and authoritative figures, they are there from birth until the day we die, and, a good percentage of the time, they don't change a great deal through our life span. Everyone has different morals, and different executions to those morals, but we can all agree that everyone bar Voldemort has morals, right?

But surely, if everyones' morals are different, when is it that we come together and realise whose morals are the right morals? Some may argue that there is no such thing as a right moral, because we all have different ones, much how our personal options can never be wrong, because they are our own opinions, so we decide what is right for us. Do you agree with this? Because I don't.

I honestly believe that there is such a thing as a right moral, and if that makes me a tyrant just as much as Bin Laden, then shoot me straight in the head, because I won't be changing my opinion any time soon. Anyone with a heart and a conscious, in my opinion, should agree that killing is wrong. It doesn't matter if, by result of killing one, many can be saved. Doing that wouldn't be the "lesser of two evils". It would certainly mean a lesser body count at the end of the day, but I hasten to add that killing, no matter if it is one of one hundred, is wrong.

Bin Laden, as Google so helpfully informed me, was the non-direct result of over 3000 deaths in 2001. 911 was, perhaps, the biggest tragedy this side of the millennium, and I think it will take something colossal to change that fact. Regardless, everyone (well, except Bin Laden, had he not been gunned in the face) can agree that 911 was something so complexly terrible. Dreadful. The result of 911 ruined thousands upon thousands of lives, and affected millions. Billions, probably. Everyone watched the towers fall on TV. Everyone watched as people fell from the burning buildings. So, surely, if one man had given the go-ahead to such an event that caused thousands to die, wouldn't killing him even the score? Wouldn't taking his life avenge the thousands that died?

No. No it didn't.

Think about it logically for a moment. Bin Laden = killer. Killer = bad. General public = wanted to kill Bin Laden. Killing Bin Laden = killing. Killing = killer. Killer = bad.

So. People want to kill someone for killing. People want to take someone's life for taking a life? But surely, the person who took Bin Laden's life needs to be killed, too, because they killed just as surely as Bin Laden did. And if that is the case, shouldn't the person who killed Bin Laden's killer also be killed? It's only fair, right. If one person gets that treatement, everyone deserves it. Now isn't the time to be picky, or a hypocrite. If that is the system people want to use, then an eye for an eye, right? Except, the whole world wouldn't end up blind. The whole world would end up dead.

If you say it out loud, that it when it sounds at its most ridiculous. "Killing someone for killing someone". It is hypocritical. And even if the criminal in question has killed thousands upon thousands of people, what good will another dead body do to the world? What good will stopping one more heart beat do? Is there any good reason what so ever to kill? The answer is no. No there isn't.

And this is where morality comes in. Let's not use Bin Laden for this example. Let's use the man behind the recent Norwegian massacre.

On Facebook the other day, a girl I am friends with made this status...

"How do you go and kill almost a hundred kids? How the fuck could you live with yourself after that? I am absolutely sickened by this whole situation, I think about how many lives this man has ruined, how much pain is resonating throughout the world right now and it takes all of my effort to not fucking vomit. ome people don't deserve to live. I stand by my belief that this bastard is one of those people."

A man that killed one hundred kids. Each of those hundred kids has two parents. That's two hundred. Each of those parents have two parents each, so that's four hundred . Two hundred + four hundred = six hundred. Add on some friends to each kid, some aunts and uncles... Let's make the number a nice, round thousand. A thousand lives have already been affected by the killings. They mourn, they are angry, and they have a right to be, but will taking that one man's life make those people happy? Possibly. For a short while. But then what happens in two weeks, when those thousand people are still without their loved ones? Will that man's death still be as satisfying? No. It won't be.

Killing somebody else doesn't make your loss any less. Killing people won't bring other people back. Just because one person stops breathing doesn't mean somebody else will start again. Killing just makes people dead. Even more people. More murder, more blood, more hate, more violence.

Morally, I think we can all agree that killing is wrong. We know that it is wrong, but I think most of us can at least envisage ourself killing in certain circumstances. It's human instinct. It's natural. But just because we can do it doesn't mean it is right. That is where peoples' morals differ.

I am strongly and potently against the death penalty. I am against killing full stop, but we are talking about the death penalty today. Killing is a story for another day. Some people think that the death penalty is the lesser of two evils. Kill someone before they can get the chance to do it again. And maybe they are right. Maybe it is the less of two evils. But maybe they are wrong. Maybe it is just as equally wrong. Personally, I'm going with the latter.

I will go to my grave believing that people don't deserve to die. Young, old, dangerous or not... No one deserves to die until it is their time. These are my morals and my beliefs, and I don't think I am being too pretentious when I say that I want everyone to believe in this. I think everyone should agree that the death penalty is counter productive, pointless and hypocritical. But, then again, what kind of a world would this be if we all agreed? A boring one, perhaps, but it would be a damn lot safer.

How do you guys feel? I am legitimately concerned to hear what you think. To agree, or to disagree? That is the question. Hit me up in the comments.

As for now, I hope you are well, and... Guys? Let's not kill anyone any time soon, yeah? Lovely.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Beautiful Dawn-- The Wailin' Jennys

BEDA 4: I COULDN'T DO IT!

2011-08-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

I thought I could do it, guys. I thought I would be able to pull out of BEDA tonight and not feel anything at all. I was so prepared to come back tomorrow as though nothing had happened. But I can't. I can't well fail. It isn't in my nature. (It actually is, but that last sentence was needed for morale reasons.)

I know I am supposed to post something in-depth today, but I really don't feel like it. My face is just in paaaain. But that is enough of that. I have sufficiently covered my online spectrum of websites to complain on. It's out of my system now, so I won't need to do it again.

So I had a power cut last night. Yup. For an hour and a half. It was the longest power cut of my life. It was at night, and pitch black. The whole town was completely out, as was a town about an hour away. Something big must have happened, because we usually have power within thirty seconds after it goes out. But it was kind of nice (as well as abnormally HOT and BORING). Me, my stepdad and mum all sat in the front room, with the French doors wide open--like I said, it was hot. The heatwave lingered around for a while--with three candles for light. Like I said, this was the longest power cut of my life, so I had never had to use candles before. It was strange, but an experience, but probably not one I want to have again any time soon.

The power came back on at about 10:20pm, just in time for me to watch TV for a few hours and then to fall asleep. Boy, I wish I hadn't.

I ended up having a dream--and I say that because it wasn't bad enough to qualify as a nightmare--that I got four Es in my GCSE results. I don't even remember what the Es were for, but I was so upset and so scared that I was one big ball of awfulness when I woke up. It took me about ten seconds to realise it was a dream after I woke up, and when I realised, I smiled like an obese kid at McDonald's. I can't tell you how good it felt to realise I had dreamt it all.

I guess any professional dream reader would tell you that I am worried about getting my results, and up until last night, I would have disagreed, but... I guess I had the dream for a reason, huh? The date looms closer and closer--twenty one days today--and we all know how quickly time goes. I get the results that will change my life in twenty one days, and I seriously hope for the sake of my sanity that there are no Es amongst them. I'm sure there won't be.

And, of course, after the results comes college. I have enrolment on September 1st so I can finally sign up for the coursers I want to take, and I start a week after that. It's funny, because I keep on thinking to myself, "Ah, crap, I can't believe I only have six more weeks of not doing maths", but then I realise that I never have to do maths again. Ever! It's such a bizarre feeling, and I don't think I'll ever get used to it. I'm excited to start college, yeah, but... I dunno. It's just so different, and I'm not exactly happy about going back with people I dislike when the people I do like don't particularly talk to me.

I have had visions of going to college with a certain group of friends ever since I was in middle school. Now, four years later, that dream is in reach, yet so far away, because there are... Complications. Hopefully the friendship things get sorted out before we go back, and everyone establishes where they stand quickly, because I really don't fancy spending another two years drifting between friend groups aimlessly when all I want is one solid, good base. You know?

I am the epitome of whitegirlproblems right now. It's pathetic.

So with that, I think it's best I leave. I should drag my sorry self in to bed after heavily medicating and just sleep. I think I'll be doing the world a serious favour if I escape consciousness right about now.

Sorry this was such a narcissistic and pointless post. I promise promise promise I will be back with a profound post tomorrow, no matter how much my teeth hurt. I'm done complaining now. I swear.

Bye, guys. Sorry again!
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: The Writer-- Ellie Goulding.

BEDA 3: Harry Potter Survey

2011-08-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

Haha. I am pathetic. It's three days into August and I am already breaking my Faint Guidelines. I had this really cool in-depth blog post planned about how morally wrong and ridiculous the death penalty is, but frankly, it is far too hot and humid, I feel gross, I need another shower, and the last thing I want to do tonight is have a hot laptop on my lap. Plus, my aquagenic pruritus is playing up pretty bad at the moment, so as soon as I'm showered I will need to spend approximately seven billion zillion hours itching my whole body, so no time to have a quick shower now to cool down and come back to write this.

Wait. Did I just say it's the third day in August? Hmm. Something about today jogs my memory... Oh. Right. Yeah. It's her birthday. So, you know, you can go and wish her a happy birthday here, here and here. And now that she has done stealing my spotlight, the post can continue. Sorry it's really crappy guys (no I'm not at all), but seriously, heat waves suck and so does humidity. Bite me.

HARRY POTTER SURVEY.

Your favourite book:
Probably Deathly Hallows. I know most people don't like the fact that it is out of Hogwarts, but frankly, I kind of like it, because it makes you think, "shit, these kids are actually doing things in the real, Muggle world, and not just their fantasy castle in the middle of Scotland". So to me, it feels more real, and a lot more exciting. So, yeah.

Your favourite movie:
Order of the Phoenix. Love love love it.

Things are you upset about being left out of the film adaptations:
Hermione's potion task in Philosopher's Stone, the Gaunt flashbacks in Halfblood Prince, more of the 19 years later. There are so many things I could put here, but these are the main three.

Least favourite female character and why:
Umbridge, just because she was a bitch and annoying and stupid and squishy and pink.

Favourite male character and why:
Remus Lupin because he is a babe, Dumbledore because... Well, he is Dumbledore, and Mr. Weasley because he is hilarious and brilliant.

House:
GRYFFINDOR. SUCK OOOOON DAT.

Favourite female character and why:
McGonagall, always has been, always will be, because she seems so strict and brilliant and then she turns into this BAMF and is fabulous and sassy and fierce and I love her, Tonks because she is independent, spunk, fiery, Ginny because she starts out as a total spaz and ends up growing in to this fiercely strong witch, Mrs. Weasley because she is the epitome of a mother, so strong and brave and so willing to do anything to protect her family, Luna because she is what every single human should me, Bellatrix because she is so obsessed with Voldemort and so willing and generally fun and crazy, Nagini because she is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world, and Hermione, because she is the rock that keeps the trio in one piece.

What would be your favourite lesson:
I guess I should say charms, but I'm pretty terrible at remembering the right incantations to use at short notice, meaning I often just scream, "OBLIVIATE" if something moves (what good it would do erasing a mouse's memory I do not know), so probably Defence Against The Dark Arts, Transfiguration or Care For Magical Creatures. DADA because fighting evil is, y'know, important, Transfiguration because I love love love the idea of changing certain things in to other things and how utterly precise that transition is, and CFMC because, even if I had to face a Norwegian Ridgeback wandless, I would still like animals more than humans.

Least favourite male character and why:
It's not that I don't like him, but... Okay, Harry, we get it, your parents were killed, the weight of the Wizarding World is literally on your shoulders. It is all up to you. You can save the world. We know. Blah blah blah. But sometimes, it just sounds like one big long passage from a whitegirlproblems Tweet. Sorry.

Horcrux or hallows:
Hallows, although I wouldn't exactly turn down a Philosopher's Stone if one was going.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

BEDA 2: Like a Moth to a Flame

2011-08-02T10:13:00.001-07:00

Oh, you guys. Seriously. You should have seen this coming. Wait, what? No, no! I'm not breaking my Faint Guidelines just yet. Oh, ye of little faith. No. It's not that. But I am doing something different. I told you all I was going to post a Regular Superficial Myspace survey, but god knows I've made it clear I love controversy, so, of course I naturally searched for a controversial survey, which is how I ended up with this one: 14 Controversial Questions. Right. Now that's done, on with the questions!

1. Do you believe in God? What is your religion if not?
This is difficult, man! I can't even make my mind up to tell myself, let along an audience. I will definitely say that, some days, I feel a lot more God-inclined than others, and I regularly look up at the sky and roll my eyes if something hilarious/unfortunate happens to me, like it's a little inside joke between me and the big man/woman, but I cannot say either way certainly, because I see both sides of the spectrum. I am, so to speak, agnostic. Where I do believe things in the bible like not killing people and all that jazz, personally, I think that morality--and so to speak, doing what is right no matter what anyone tells you--is a much better option, but I fully appreciate and understand why religion is better for some people. Like you see so often quoted on the Internet; it is better to go through this life believing than not believing, and to have Him with you by your side. This, again, I can appreciate, but as soon as I think, "Hey, yeah, I'm totally a Christian!", there is a little voice in my head counteracting me that screams, "No, you're not!", and vice versa. I cannot win, even against the voices in my own head. In addition to various beliefs from Christianity, I appreciate and choose to live by a few teaching from Buddhism, so I guess you could say I am one big pot of awesomeness; 50% me, 50% what-ever-the-hell-else-is-in-my-head.

2. Do you believe in the after life? What do you think happens when you die?
Again, I believe many different possibilities. Some days I favour heaven/hell, while the majority of the time I strongly believe in reincarnation. I think it is a terrible shame to say that, once one dies, that is it. A true death. Nothing more. So I would like to believe that, yes, there is an after life of some kind. Whatever that is, I do not know. I guess I'll just have to find out for myself in due time.

3. Are you proud from the country you come from?
I suppose I should be. It is so rich in history, and if you think about it, for its size, it doesn't do that bad for itself in the world, does it? Some days I love the countryside and the historical figures and the things my country has accomplished--mostly, for example, Harry Potter... But honestly... There is so much fault here that I cannot be entirely proud. Yes, we have free health care, yes, we are in a democracy, yes, there are very, very slim chances of any natural disasters happening here... But that isn't enough. It's cramped, dirty, the people are miserable bastards and the weather can't make its mind up. So, yes, so to speak, I am proud of my country, but I am not at all pleased with it, which is why I will be running the hell away as soon as I can, thank you very much.

4. What is your view on gay marriage?
I cannot fathom why it doesn't exist.

5. Do you think premarital sex is okay?
I do. I think waiting until after marriage is an awfully romantic idea, and one that certainly ensures safety both from unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and if that works for people, it works. Fantastic! But I think it is unrealistic in this society to assume people will keep it in their trousers until marriage. I wish they would, but they don't, so to tell people off for doing is ludicrous. Let people do what they want.

6. Do you want to get married and have kids?
Very, very, very, very, very, very, very much so. Yes yes yes!

7. Do you think drugs should be legalised?
No, I don't think they should at all. I can see why some people would think that legalising drugs would deter some people because they would become "common", but frankly, I disagree with the idea of recreational drugs so potently that I think they shouldn't even exist at all. Let's make that happen.

8. Pro-life or pro-choice?
Choice, by which I mean it has nothing what-so-ever to do with me. I do not own a uterus, so therefore I honestly don't think I'm entitled to have an opinion. If a girl wants to get an abortion, that is her choice. If a girl wants to keep it, again, her choice.

9. What do you think about bisexuality?
Haha. Why is this question even in a controversial survey? I think bisexuality is by far the most "normal" thing a person can do. It is as simple as that. Bisexuality is found in many animal species, as is homosexuality, so evidentially, if it is present in the animal kingdom, it is "animalistic", which is to say, natural. I don't understand how people can see it as a bad thing. I literally get confused when I try to think about how people can call it "greedy", or "selfish". It isn't about having a girl's head between your legs at the same time as having a boy's dick in your mouth; it is about love, connection, emotional attachment and opening yourself up to everything, and, between you and me, I think bisexuals rock, because it shows they are open to everything, which normally means they are the most tolerant BAMFs you will ever meet.

10. Do you believe in aliens?
To paraphrase Ke$sha, "I think it is terrible narcissistic for us to think we are the only race in the universe". Space is so incomprehensibly enormous that I think it's stupid for us to assume that out of all the galaxies out there, we are the one planet with life on it. If we can do it, why can't anyone else?

11. What do you want to happen to your body when you die?
Five options: a) to have my organs donated and then my remains burnt, b) to be cremated and placed wherever my burn-ers see fit, c) cryogenically frozen so, should it be possible in the future, I am able to be brought back to life, d) buried in an obnoxiously large and decadent tomb so people can come and mourn me, or e) frozen in a block of ice in the North Pole so in a thousand years someone will dig me up and I will be famous. The new Ice Man, if you will.

12. Have you experienced your first true love yet?
Yes, I have, and I can say that I am extremely happy to tell you all that his name is Bagel and he is doughy and round and holy. Now please respect my personal life enough to hold your questions.

13. Do you think High Schools should give out free contraceptives?
Duh. Of course I do. I thought every school did? Yes yes a million times yes. No, it isn't "encouraging kids to bang-a-lang", because they will do it no matter what. It IS, however, encouraging them to be safe, and that is never, ever a bad thing.

14. What do you think about the death penalty?
Killing someone as a form of punishment for killing someone? Surely that can't just sound crazy to me. Oooh, maybe this will be the topic of tomorrow's post? I've been wanting to talk about it ever since Bin Laden, and a few days ago I saw a girl on Facebook bitch about how the man responsible for the tragedies in Norway should get shot, so this is definitely a priority for me. I'll keep you posted.

I'd be interested to hear what you guys think about the same questions. If you're bored, you should answer them in the comments! If you're not bored... Well, then, I congratulate myself, because that just means I entertained you. *Brushes off shoulder*. Shwing.

Bye, guys!
Ben
<3

Reccomended Song of the Day: Everything-- Alanis Morissette.

BEDA 1: Why I Think I Belong In Gryffindor

2011-08-01T10:00:00.001-07:00

It is currently 10:58am on August the 1st, I am at my grandma’s house—which doesn’t have the Internet, so Microsoft Word is being a babe and allowing me to type this out on her; how sweet—and it is the first day of BEDA! I cannot guarantee that I will in fact finish BEDA, much less successfully, but my persistence and stubbornness, I hope, will at least let me make a valiant effort—even, you know, if half of the days this month I post old Myspace surveys.

Speaking of, I think it’s important to inform you all about my Plan early on. Like Lauren, I have decided that if I want to come out the other side of BEDA with at least the smallest scrap of sanity, it’s best I have a system. Ergo, my Plan. (Nice segue there, Ben.)

My System is as such: One day, I will post a serious, half-decent attempt at a post, the next, a Myspace survey, and this cycle will continue throughout the entirety of August. Should, however, I feel the pressing urge to break one of those days, by which I mean, if, on a “Myspace Day”, I absolutely must tell you all about something super serious happening in my life, I will do so, and vice versa. The rules, so to speak, are not exactly rules. They are faint guidelines like the black outline in a colouring book; there because they make life easier, but occasionally it’s fun to colour outside of the lines.

Now that is out of the way, I introduce you all warmly to my first post, a serious one, called Why I Think I Belong In Gryffindor. (Suuuuch an original title.)

Yesterday, in the midst of the Pottermore Mania, I made a post on Tumblr saying...

“I don’t mean to sound dramatic or anything, but if I get put in Slytherin, I will kill myself.”

I expected this to get a few “likes” from strangers who, like me, are very much anti-Slytherin, and maybe even a few reblogs from those who are anti-Gryffindor, with notes such as “Booo, Gryffindor sucks balls, Slytherin RULES!!!!”. So needless to say, I was surprised when three people commented on it saying various degrees of how they picture me as a Slytherin.

Let me start off by saying that I do, in fact, hold house prejudices. Even though I make it a job for myself to constantly make fun of Hufflepuffs, I have nothing what-so-ever against Hufflepuff house. Loyalty, modesty and a love of food are not bad traits in the slightest to have. Likewise with Ravenclaw; if, by some miracle I was placed in Ravenclaw, I would feel proud and possibly even superior. Both of these houses I can envisage myself in, even if I don’t think it’s likely. They both have traits I value, respect and aspire to have. It is only Slytherin, with an absolute passion, that I would try to avoid with my life.

Now let me continue saying that I am fully aware having prejudices goes against what Jo has taught us—yeah, yeah, I understand that and know it and blah blah blah. But I cannot shake the connotations Slytherin house has been burdened with.
A member of Slytherin may argue and say that, “Slytherin isn’t just about being evil; it’s about being cunning, determined, coy and sharp”, and where they might even be true, these are traits I do not have. I am not one of those people who will do anything to get what they want—on the contrary; I wait and see if everything works out. If it doesn’t, oh well! That, mixed in with the reputation Slytherin has, I don’t think I need to justify why Slytherin isn’t the place for me.

My whole life I have been a Neville Longbottom. I have been the loser, the one who always does things wrong, but the one who tries to do right. I fight for what I believe in, even if most of the time it blows up in my face as surely as Seamus Finnigan’s potion attempts. For as long as I can remember, I have been taunted by people for doing these things, yes, but most of all, just for being me—something I really believe happens to Neville; he is bullied just for the sake of being bullied.

When I was being bullied, it was easier for me to think of these people as inherently evil, even if I knew they weren’t. Even when people made fun of me for being upset after my granddad died, I couldn’t hate them absolutely, because I knew deep down that they were people and they had their own insecurities too. Even when I saw the girl who pushed me in a road get hit my a motor bike herself, I couldn’t take satisfaction in seeing her bleed, because I felt for her and I worried for her as a person. Of course she came to school a few days after with just a tiny cut on her nose, but that’s not the point. My whole life, when I was being bullied, I thought of those people as Slytehrin. It was the only way I could picture them. Slytherin. Bad, evil, spiteful... Slytherin. And I don’t want to be one of those people.

Fast forward a few years when I understood the complexity of the Sorting System, and when I realised that, houses aren’t just about being good, bad, smart or loyal, I started thinking again about people around me.

I act as a bit of a Sorting Hat myself. I Sort people judging by their mannerisms and how they react with me. If someone is brave and stood up for what they believed in, Gryffindor, if someone is better than me at a subject, Ravenclaw, if someone is a good friend no matter what, Hufflepuff, if someone is rude, Slytherin. As superficial as this my Sorting System may sound, it worked for me, and it helped me distinguish between the people I wanted to be friends with and those I didn’t.

For years now, I have automatically associated anyone rude and evil with Slytherin house, so it is like an underlying thought in my head that evil equates to Slytherin, and Slytherin equates to evil. Determination and cunning are certainly in there too, but primarily, it’s evil. And I truly do not believe I am evil.

I am kind, caring, considerate, chivalrous, brave... But most of all, and the thing that really makes me believe I am a Gryffindor... I am not perfect. I am so flawed that I am like a canyon. I have ridges, I have bumps. I am obnoxious, loud, and most of the time, I don’t know when enough is enough. But aren’t these traits that make a Gryffindor? Ron isn’t perfect. He swears, he isn’t brave all of the time, he often does things wrong in class, he is initially mean to Hermione, he walks out on the trio, but he comes back. He redeems himself, and it is his heart that wins out over everything; something I see in myself. When I make mistakes, I don’t make pointless ones. Normally when I do something wrong or offend someone, it is because I am fighting for my opinion, and if I can tell I’ve taken it too far, I take a step back, look at what I have done, and try to make it better. Being a Gryffindor isn’t about being perfect from the start, it is about trying to be as close to perfect by the end.

Now, the only reason I can go in to such depth about myself and Gryffindor house is because, well, I’m me, and I am a Gryffindor, so I know the most about those two things. One thing I think I noticed yesterday, however, was how the two people who said they saw me as a Slytherin were Ravenclaws.

Ravenclaw. Oh, Ravenclaw. Unyieldingly intelligent, thirsty for knowledge, elegant, beautiful... And sometimes, too blinded by what they perceive logically to think about things outside the box.

I cannot speak for either of the people who called me a Slytherin, because it isn’t fair and I cannot possibly get in to their heads, but I truly believe there is a correlation between them seeing me as something else and they themselves being a Ravenclaw. Let me explain.

I truly believe that I am a Gryffindor, with everything inside of me. On the outside, however, in certain lights, the actions I do could definitely be seen as something a Slytherin might do. Are you making the connection yet? Yes. Ravenclaws are intelligent, and as Trelawney says to Hermione, her brain is making her see some things the way she sees her books. Because learning is so strategic and rhythmic, I think that Ravenclaws use their way of learning to judge people; that which can only be seen on a superficial level. Because I have shown Slytherin traits, I believe that these people have seen these and clung to it, because their books don’t lie and neither do their own minds, which, so to speak, is a Ravenclaw’s downfall.

Harry told Albus Severus Potter that the Sorting Hat takes your own choice in to consideration. I do not choose to be a Gryffindor; I know I am. I, and only I, know what is inside of me, and I know how I act and why. Likewise with anyone. The people I Sort in to houses could belong in an entirely different one; who am I to know? We are the only ones who know ourselves inside and out, so we are the only ones who can, really, decide what house we are in, even if we show traits outwardly of other houses.

Which is absolutely why everything I have written above is absolutely crap and should be ignored by everyone but me. These are my opinions and my way of thinking. There is a connection between what the Sorting Hat said and how we envisage the different houses; it is entirely up to us. While I see Slytherin as evil, others see it as noble and superior. While I see Gryffindor as good and whole, others see it as weak and generic. No two people can agree on what their house means to them, because, for the same reasons we choose our own house, they mean absolutely different things to everyone. So what I said about Ravenclaw is true to me, and only me.

So that is why I believe I am a Gryffindor. Not because I am brave, or chivalrous—although I do firmly believe that I am those two things—No. I am a Gryffindor because, for reasons unknown to me, I belong there. And, after all, if the Sorting Hat takes our own choice into consideration, aren’t we the only ones who can decide where we belong? I believe we are.

Join me tomorrow where I should (if I stick to my Faint Guidelines) be posting superficial crap about myself. That should be fun for everyone. I kid, I kid.

Hope you’re all well,
Ben
<3

Recommended Song of the Day: Basket Case—Sara Bareilles.

Thoughts From Deathly Hallows

2011-07-16T03:05:00.000-07:00

To quote my wonderful and goof friend Sam, this blog will contain spoilers--about the film, so don't think you're safe just because you've read the book--so if you haven't seen it yet, either go and hide in the corner and think about what you've done, close your eyes or close this page. I mean it. I will not be holding back on lovely spoilery details, so don't think you can get away with it.

This blog comes to you today in three very and equally special parts. I also assume that it will be looong, so buckle up and get ready to agree, disagree and silently want to hug me or punch me in the face. Part one will consist of what I liked about the film. Part two, what I didn't. Part three, how I feel about it overall, and how it has affected me. Right. Now that's out the way, let's get on with the show!

Part One.--

There are so many things I really, really, really loved about this film. In all honesty, I should have written them all down as soon as I got home last night, but I didn't feel like doing anything.

Even though I felt this film was extremely loyal to the book in the first half, such as when Harry is talking to Griphook, I felt the second half lacked a good percentage of the detail that is in the book, so on the off chance what we actually got the proper material, I was ecstatic.

I was definitely a fan of how the film opened. I hoped that they would do a kind of, "last time on Harry Potter", thing, albeit without the whole cheesy soap opera feel, and they did. We were reminded that Voldemort had the Elder Wand, how he had come by it, and that was a very, very big significance later in the film (more on which in Part Two). To those who hadn't read the books, I can only imagine how confusing it must have all been, so it was considerate and helpful to put that there.

Move on a few minutes and we're in shell cottage. Yes, I was sad that we didn't get to see Harry dig the grave, and I'm also slightly pissed that Dobby was buried in a pile of sand like he was an old sea shell--honestly, sand moves and shifts a hell of a lot easier than dirt does. What if some kid comes along and finds a dead house elf? But even I couldn't pretend not to be so happy and moved at the stone that read, "Here Lies Dobby, A Free Elf". That bit really made me beam.

And then we're on to the bedroom scenes with Griphook and Ollivander. For reasons I can't even begin to know, Griphook pissed me off to no end. I thought his acting was pretty terrible, he seemed far too... How do I put this? Uh. Okay. Chavvy. To those of you who aren't in England, he sounded very... Common. And not at all how he sounds in the book. Griphook in the book was sly, coy and somewhat vicious seeming. This Griphook, in my opinion, tried, and failed, to be those things, and ended up sounding like he had a sassy attitude. Even though that whole scene made me cringe, the dialogue, had it been acted properly, was perfect. Of course it wasn't exact to that in the book, but it was pretty damn close, and I am forever grateful to Steve Kloves for doing it justice. Ollivander's scene was pretty close, too, but again, Ollivander just annoyed the hell out of me and made me feel awkward. Moving on.

Gringotts! Oh, lovely Gringotts! Possibly my absolute favourite chapter in Deathly Hallows. Let's skim over the part where the trio enter the bank and get straight to the part where they're underground. I loved this part. No. I loved loved looooved it. I had never imagined it looking to absolutely brilliant and visually stunning. I was so blown away by how big the place was. Even though we know in the book it is supposed to be huge, I had never quite envisaged it quite like that. I was, to say the least, extremely happy with the cart ride down. I was also very, very happy with the waterfall, the tipping out of the cart, the look of the Lestrange's vault, the dragon and the clangers, the way Hermione said, "that's barbaric", and Griphook (in his redeeming scene) looked like he was thoroughly enjoying the dragon's pain... Suffice to say, I was over the moon with a good majority of Gringotts. Especially as the dragon and the trio escaped. That made me smile so much I thought my cheeks were going to tear. That part in the book always gets me, and honestly, I don't know why, but that dragon becoming free with the help of the trio, and the dragon taking them to safety chokes me up.

And of course, then came the topless Harry and Ron moment. Yeah. I think it's safe to say that I liked that part.

Enter Hogsmeade. Slightly disappointed that there wasn't the Dementor/Patronus/Death Eater/Aberforth scene, but I liked the Ariana and Neville part.

Can I just say right now that I am not a fan of unnecessary humour? Even though I loved the whole reuniting, Room of Requirements scene, I didn't find it beneficial to the storyline to have laughs at that point. And I hated that Luna and Dean were all ready there, and that Ginny just swanned her way in. That wasn't right. It was ten times more powerful to have them all return, to show their allegiance to Harry, the boy who lived, to take down Voldemort once and for all, and I really think that a lot of emotional movement was missed out on there. However, having said that, the scene moved me, and I would be heartless to say it didn't. I knew that this was the end for Harry. This was the beginning of the impending battle, and the atmosphere--when it wasn't being juiced for LOLs--perfected that immensely.

Move on slightly to the rest of the film. I won't list everything here because it will get tedious, but some of the things I loved include: Luna. My dear, wonderful, brave, smart Luna. Professor Flitwick. Snape. The Carrows. Hogwarts. The sheer number of Death Eaters. The Chamber of Secrets. The kiss! The Room of Requirements again. Saving Draco. Goyle's demise. Molly fucking Weasley. The Order. Aberforth. The Students. Pansy Parkinson's scene. Subsequently, when the students protect Harry. The Snatchers. Neville. Narcissa. Hermione's brilliance. Ron. Kings Cross. Dumbledore. Baby Voldemort. All of it.

And I think, completely and utterly deserving of her own paragraph, is Minerva McGonagall. Ever since book one she has been my absolute favourite character. When I read Deathly Hallows, I cried the most tears for her. Her unprecedented love for the students of Hogwarts, her bravery, her determination, her fierce heart, her skill, her brilliance, her love, and her warmth. She was perfect in this film. In my opinion, the star. She way she fought Snape off was BLINDING! I never pictured her moving so fast and so skilfully. But, like she herself said, the teachers are rather good at magic. The spell she used to bring the statues to life. Her loving command to them to protect her school--and yes, I say her school, because it was always hers throughout that whole film, to me--the beauty of her casting the protective charms, her accidental humour ("BOOM!), her legitimate happiness to see Harry again, her tears, her dishevelled hair that showed she had had been fighting to kill and to protect... Maggie Smith, you did my favourite character justice, and I can only love you all the more for that.

Another favourite character of mine being Molly Weasley. Anyone who has read the book was waiting for her scene. We all wanted her to give Bellatrix what was coming to her. We all wanted the overlooked, loving, stubby mother to get her shining moment, and she did that so, so well. She protected Ginny (it should also be mentioned here that I am not bothered by and am indeed a fan of Bonnie Wright's acting, and she was spectacular in this film) with a love only a mother can experience, and she killed out of love, hate, and love again, and once more, I am so grateful that she was done justice.

I actually told my mother a few weeks ago that the effects in this film seem unreal. Please don't think, "yeah, well, they get better every day. The capabilities improve," because it was so much more than that. I can't think of a way to put this eloquently. I just don't see how so much could have been done! I don't mentally understand how Gringotts could have been made, how the Room of Requirements could have been pieced together, how the protection spells that surrounded Hogwarts could have been added in afterwards. I have never stated this before, but I was most looking forward to seeing the teachers put up their protection charms, and that was beyond perfect.

Skip forward a few scenes and the Dark Lord is dead. His and Harry's fight sequence before Voldemort's death made my heart pound like crazy, so much so that I thought I would die before I got to see the end. How unfortunate and somewhat ironic. Even if Voldemort did dissolve in to the air (so, SO much more in Part Two), and he does hold his want stupidly (seriously, guys, if you hold it the way he does, it would FLY OUT OF YOUR HAND), I was extraordinarily happy with what happened after his death. The trio standing on the bridge, the fade in to black, the epilogue... I thought it was the perfect ending. And can I just say here how freakily real Harry Looked as an old man? The others... Eh. But Harry? Whoa. It was strange.

So those are the things I liked. Now, on to the things I didn't like. Are you still here? Blimey. Well, all the power to you, my friends.

Part Two.--

Griphook. But you all ready know that. I was also disappointed that Fleur, a favourite of mine, didn't get more screen time. Shell cottage was beautiful, but I think we could have had a little more, instead of Harry jumping straight in to Gringotts. Bill was also terrible in this, I've got to say, and I wish we could have had the Remus coming to tell them all about Teddy/asking Harry to be godfather. This made it all unclear at the end when Harry spoke about Teddy, because we had never been told about him prior to that.

I'm also going to be really picky and say about the Imperio curse. Like, what the hell? Why was it a fragrance? Why was it visible and why the hell did the goblin go all crazy when he smelt it? Again, that's just me being picky, but whatever. I also didn't like the way the goblin was barbecued alive, and all Ron could say was, "that's unfortunate". Didn't Hermione have anything to say?

I'm going to skip past a few of my other pedantic pickings, because they are petty and will no doubt piss somebody off, and move straight on to the parts that really, really didn't sit well with me.

The Elder Wand. We needed more explanation. I didn't like the way it cracked, and I didn't like the way it wasn't explained in the height Voldemort's and Harry's battle. It would have been a lot more beneficial, for our sakes, to hear it explained to Voldemort. I also think it was critical to the story for Voldemort to know his failure, to know about the protection Harry cast upon the school. To know that he would never understand the magic of love. Voldemort needed to know this, because he was weak, and his ignorance was his final downfall, and that wasn't explained very well. I think the audience was left with more a sense that Harry out skilled Voldemort, and that isn't the case. In terms of cinematic view, I think it would have been a lot more powerful and aesthetically pleasing to have it how it was in the book. So, you know, that disappointed me.

And now, we move on to the two things that made me want to slit my own throat with the Sword of Gryffindor. Why could Harry and Voldemort feel the Horcruxes? It may have made more sense to those who haven't read the book, to see Voldemort attacked and weaken, but that's not how it was supposed to happen. Voldemort was supposed to be unaware of the Horcruxes getting destroyed, which again led to his ignorance that he was invincible, and I was thoroughly disappointed that he seemed to know he was getting weaker, and even more so that he was blabbing away about it in front of his Death Eathers. Also, he pushed Bellatrix. Rude. And now, finally, my biggest problem with the film. The way that the Horecruxes were destroyed.

I understand that the Diadem couldn't have been destroyed in the Fiendfyre. If it had been, the audience wouldn't have understood that it was cursed fire, and one of the only known ways of destroying a Horcrux. That made sense. What didn't make sense was why it seemed to churn out this great plume of black smoke. Likewise with the cup. Why did the water have a field day all over Ron and Hermione? I didn't understand that part.

But now comes the most upsetting of all. My baby. My favourite. The one thing I would have loved to have. My baby Nagini. I understand she is a snake. I understand she is an animal. But it's fair to say she is much more than that. She is capable of fighting, understanding, obeying, communicating and liking, so it's also fair to say that she is, indeed, a character. Her scenes were brilliant. The way she fought was valiant. Then that stupid Longbottom came and cut her like the bitch she was. And I was so pissed off. I understood the Diadem. I could possibly get on board with the cup, but nothing, I repeat nothing, could ever make me like the way Nagini was ended. She was Voldemort's right-hand-woman, even more so than Bellatrix, and I think she at least deserved justice. I think it should have been in front of Voldemort, it should have been more thought out, and she certainly shouldn't have just disintegrated. She may well have been a Horcrux, but she was also a living thing, so it made no sense at all for her to disintegrate.

Don't even get me started on Bellatrix and Voldemort. Bellatrix's scene was my favourite in the whole film. Her and Molly's fight was perfect, exhilarating and so moving, yet she what? Melted, dissolved, evaporated? She exploded, because, according to Harry Potter wiki, "Molly's curse was so strong". Bullshit. It's the visual arts people wanting to change it and make things look better, when it didn't look good at all. It made no sense. No one had ever disintegrated before in any of the other films, and if they had, it would have made Voldemort's job a hell of a lot easier. It was stupid, and it was done solely for effect, and I can't express enough how sublimely pissed off I am that she didn't get a better death scene. It seemed far too rushed. We didn't get the satisfaction of a thud as she hit the floor. We didn't see her crumpled body on the floor, still, lifeless... We got a few ashes that reminded me of burnt paper. Is that all she was worth?

And alas, Voldemort. We all know he was evil, and we all wanted him to die, but that's the thing. We wanted him to die. We didn't want his curse to backfire and hit him gently and for him to crackle and dissolve. In the books, it was made very clear that Harry defended himself, making him, technically, not a killer, because Voldemort was the one who fired the killing curse, yet I thought it was rushed and an anticlimax to the significance of what we were building up to. We're talking about hours and hours of film. Years of anticipation. Millions of words. And it all boiled down to what? A tiny little hit-in-the-chest, and him exploding? No. I'm sorry. If you thought that was in any way shape or form good, then we can no longer be friends. Harry deserved better. The audience needed to know for certain that he was stone cold dead, and all I could think about was how people would be breathing him in for the next few years.

While I'm on the theme of death... It breaks my heart to say that my dead old Severus could have had a lot better, too. I loved the fact that we could see Nagini killing him through the window--seriously, guys, I love Nagini--and I loved the way Voldemort built up his death, but I wanted more. I wanted his memories to pour from every orifice, instead of his eyes, because that confused a lot of people in to thinking they were tears, and we all knew they were memories. And memories they were.

I am ambivalent about the Prince's tale. I know many people loved it, and I can see where they were coming from, but I thought it skipped a lot. I didn't like that Petunia called Lily a freak straight away, because everyone knows that she wanted to go to Hogwarts. That made the audience feel that Petunia was always a bad guy, and she wasn't. She hated Harry because he led to her sister's death. I am upset that young Snape didn't get more screen time, because I was looking forward to him and Lily. I wish we could have had more Hogwarts time. I wish we could have seen that Lily initially hated James, and she liked Snape. Lily's and Snape's relationship wasn't shown that much at all, and it wasn't clear that Snape loved Lily. Although I definitely think that older Snape at Hogwarts with Dumbledore was perfect. It couldn't have been better. Even if Snape did cry in to a dead Lily Potter, and even if all I could think about was how gross it was, it was moving, beautiful and lovely, for the most part, and I just wish Snape could have gotten a little more screen time for all he did for the boy who lived. Everyone knows he was the bravest man Harry ever knew.

Speaking of brave men, uh, I'm not happy about the whole Neville/Luna thing. I didn't think that was right or fair, so sorry to all of you shippers out there who were wishing for this to happen from the get go. I didn't like it one bit. And, oh, oh! I had no idea Lavander Brown died! In the book she fell off the balcony and Hermione stunned Greyback off her, and it is never clarified whether or not she died (on Harry Potter wiki, it says [possibly] next to her "possible" death date). In the film, she was dead! As much as she irritated me, she was a Gryffindor, and she fought, and she didn't deserve to die, and it really upset me to see her dead. I will never forgive the directors for that. AND REMUS AND TONKS! Those were the two faces I couldn't bare to see dead, and it killed me that they didn't get a death scene. If they could add in the Chamber of Secrets scene, they could have at least given them a bit more time or at the very least, a good death scene. No such luck. Strangely, I didn't feel that much towards Fred. Which is peculiar.

All in all, there were more than a few things I didn't like about the film, but they were all reasonably redeemed by the good. Some things I will never forgive, but others I can let slide. And besides, they all led me how I felt after the film, which brings me on to Part Three.

Part Three.--

I was dreading it. I was absolutely, utterly dreading it. I was convinced it would all end. I was convinced I would never have anything else to look forward to in terms of Potter. I was in the car, on the way to the cinema, and I honestly could have thrown up. I cried as I sat in the cinema, waiting for the film to start. I held my wand in hand, looked down at it and thought, "I'll have no use for you after this all ends".

So I completely surprised myself when I was happier than I had ever been when the film was finished.

I don't know what it was. I don't know why on earth I felt the way I did, but I certainly felt... Elated. Born again, for want of a better phrase. I came out of that cinema so over the moon it was unreal.

This wasn't Harry's end.

It was my beginning.

I first loved Harry Potter when I was six years old. Ten years Harry has been with me, and I have always had something to look forward to. The books. The films. The casting. The trailers. There had always been something to keep me going. To make my heart hurt. To make me cry. Even after book 7 came out, I knew I still had the films to make me upset. And I can't tell you how much of a relief it feels to have that lifted from my shoulders. The pain and the suffering of a "next thing" has disintegrated as surely as Bellatrix did. I know that I will never again have to sit through something that will, figuratively, kill me. My experiences with Harry have ended, and now I am ready to make my own journey with the inspirations and the teachings of the boy who lived embedded deep in to me.

I did not cry once through the film. I smiled the whole way through. So, so hard. My smile must have looked manic to anyone else, but I was so proud to be a part of this fandom that I couldn't not. I was so proud to know that all around the world, people everywhere, felt my pain, my relief, my happiness. It was impossible for me not to smile.

I did not cry when I came home. After Deathly Hallows part 1, I sat in my bed and wept. Truly, that felt more like the end than this does, because now, I finally know and can appreciate just to the extent of how this will never end. I was dubious, of course, like any human should be, but I've lived it, and now I know.

This is not the end. This is Harry's closure to the story. We still live with him inside us every single day. I will never forget the boy who lived, the best witch of her age, our king, the bravest man he ever knew, the girl who is just as sane as we are, the boy with the sword, the mother who protected her daughter, the best wizard of our time, the one who couldn't love, the mother who sacrificed herself to save her son. Those people will stay with me forever. I am proud and certain in saying that, this isn't the end. This is the beginning of something else.

We are the start of a new generation.

All was well.

Playing Grown Up.

2011-07-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

I am sixteen years old. I am legally allowed to drink alcohol in restaurants, I am legally allowed to smoke, I am legally allowed to have sex, I am legally allowed to drive a Moped, I am legally allowed to leave home and live by myself. I turn seventeen in November; the same age as Edward Cullen. Even though these and other pointless things legally allow me to feel like an adult, I do not. And that is because I know I am not an adult.

I have never once tried to fight this. I don't sit around screaming, "BUT I'M NOT A LITTLE KID ANY MORE", because I know that technically I am. Even though my brain has been years ahead of my peers for as long as I have been capable of thinking consciously, allowing me to be focused and determined and analytical of everything around me instead of wrapped up in teenage trivialities, both my body and my age hold me back. I have accepted this. I understand fully that I have to wait patiently until my body catches up with my brain, to a point where I am free from the restraints that my age creates.

I am a unique breed of teenager. It's seldom that I come across someone else who feels this way. Not to sound like I have Special Snowflake syndrome, but a good percentage of teenagers I talk to every day are so entirely involved in their own lives that they can't see why no grownups take them seriously. My mature brain, however, sees it all.

People I used to go to school with are suddenly "growing up". I put that in quotation marks because we all know that they aren't, really, but for all intense and purposes, they are doing things that are normally done by adults, thus why they think they are the cat's pyjamas.

Since I left school, these things have happened:

-My old best friend from middle school got herself knocked up. This does not come as much of a shock to me. She was a wonderful girl in middle school, but fell ill with Bipolar during the first year of High School. She got so ill that she dropped out of school and now spends her days slowly destroying herself in her small town, with alcohol, drugs, sex and blatant disregard of society. It was expected of her to become pregnant, and she did.

-A boy in my year bought a house with his boyfriend. As in, bought a house, moved in, left home, bought everything for the house, left school to get a job, all to live with his eighteen year old boyfriend. I think they have been together for a year. Maybe two, at the most.

-A girl I'm not that friendly with is engaged, and hoping to buy a house soon. Again, I think her and her boyfriend have been together for two years. I had the blessing of listening to her gush for two years in art class, about how they are going to save up for two years and buy a house with the money they have. She also said that she wants to start a family straight away.

These people are so wrapped up in their own world, so obsessed by playing grownups that they can't see just how childish they are being. It's ironic, to say the least.

I feel like I am the only one who was in their year who sits down and laughs at how hilarious they all are. They are flooding up Facebook with their happy happy lives, and people are commenting how happy happy they are for them. I sit here like an old man wanting to scream at them for being so stupid. We are sixteen years old. We are not old enough to be parents, homeowners, fiancés...

Which is why I will sit here. I will sit here, patiently awaiting the day I turn eighteen, until I legally an adult. I don't care if people still don't class me as such; I have been mentally ready for this for years. If people still want to brand me as a child, let them. They can't stop me. I will be free to live my life as I want.

I dread the day that these people turn eighteen. They think they are adults now? What the hell are they doing to do in five, ten years time, when they should only truly be feeling like adults then? Will they want to turn grey and have grandchildren? If they are playing grownups this early on, what, if anything, will satisfy them when I start to play grownup?

I let them laugh at me for calling myself a child. I let them do whatever they want, because all the time they think they're better and more mature than me, I laugh right back at them. They are so blinded that they can't see who the real children are.

It will always be them.

Is This The End?

2011-06-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting on my bed, currently with my right leg crossed on top of the left, Macbook out of it's transparent green-tinted shell case, country music playing softly in the background with a freezing wind howling away viscously through my open windows, trying to get my hands back in the process of writing in blog format. So far, so good!

The title of this post may lead some of you to believe I mean something else, so let's clear up some misconceptions you may be having. I don't mean Harry Potter. The fandom, the films, the memories we have. I don't mean Harry. Nor do I mean the world, the oceans' population of cod, the fact that my hair colour is brown or that you have the ability to read this. I'm sure all of those things will continue to continue for an indefinite period of time to come. No, what I mean is the Internet.

Oh, YouTube. YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. How we sucked at your sweet breast for years and bathed in your awesomeness. Oh, how we spent hours watching videos of cute cats, commenting on various different videos when "FIRST!" wasn't a default comment. Oh how we loved to hate the spam of 2 girls 1 cup reactions videos, and likewise, how we hated to love hilarious videos of old ladies falling over. Then you changed.

In my opinion (and I say my opinion with GREAT emphasis), your demise started in late 2010. After projects like fiveawesomegirls had a good spout of productivity for a few years and gradually started to slow down, and mass-produced brainless entirely-not-funny channels like Shane Dawson's started becoming suffocatingly large, I felt my grasp on you loosen to near extinction. When fiveawesomegirls officially finished, I knew that was the end of the road for me. My favourite channel had died, and so had YouTube.

However, after my cooling to the website came, I found that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. People started to slip away shyly and silently, because insulting YouTube was just as bad as burning your country's flag on its day of independence. It was unheard of, unimaginable and... Just non-existent. Then, slowly, YouTubers started to post the occasional Tweet about their failing relationship with YouTube: "Aaah, I remember the good ole days when YouTube was a haven in which to escape the world that now dominates it.", "I miss communitychannel", and "Yo', since when was YouTube all about Gaga and Bieber? Where's my fucking whataboutadam?", and so on and so on, until eventually, these "light-hearted", "joking" Tweets became harsher and more honest to what people were feeling.

Bigger YouTubers jumped on the bandwagon and started making videos that were reminiscent of the old days. People made video responses, sharing their stories before being partnered was just about money. People commented and interacted, but the whole time this happened, I still knew that it had gotten to the point of no return. Even when YouTubers were complaining about this, I sat silently in my room and wanted to scream with fury that those people who, in MY opinion, ruined YouTube, were complaining that it wasn't fun anymore. Again, in MY opinion, you are the ones who made it not fun, and to have the audacity to revel in its boringness was nearing on criminal in my mind.

And so videos stopped. I stopped posting because I couldn't be bothered to post on a website that I didn't care for any more, because frankly, why should I expect people to watch my videos when I only watched my friends' videos? I shouldn't. I stopped watching people who weren't completely necessary to me, and I'm afraid to say that this includes the vlogbrothers.

It's been months since I've watched a video from the vlogbrothers properly. It all started when I moved house in 2009. From the months of December-March, I had no Internet whatsoever, so I couldn't watch them. That killed me initially, then when my Internet showed up, as did their videos in my subscription box, I... Didn't watch them. I scrolled past them and pushed them away. And I still do to this day.

You know what? I didn't even know John Green had a new book coming out. He might not, as far as I'm aware, but I watched one video of his a few days ago, and Laura's response to it, and from what I could tell, he was writing about a girl who took her bra off. That's all I know on that matter.

And as for the rest of YouTube? Unless it's a DK1 video or a Hayleyghoover video or an italktosnakes video, I can't bring myself to watching anything else. Unless, of course, it's one of my friends. Those I always watch. But the premise is the same. YouTube isn't fun anymore. I don't want more original content. I don't want to be a hipster and to have the old days back. I don't want thehill88 to be the Queen of the Tube again. I don't want anything from YouTube, because I know those things won't make it a better place. I think I've reached the point now where no amount of improving will make me fall back in love with YouTube again. It has changed to the point where it's unrecognisable to me. I'm not looking for marriage counselling from this break up. I'm looking for a divorce.

Inevitably, with YouTube comes other various attached websites, like Blogs and Dailybooths and Twitters. I can't be the only one to notice that Blogs have been abandoned and Twitter is mostly now used for promotional purposes? Can I?

Perhaps my stubbornness has turned me sour against the Internet, and I'm seeing what I want to, but if not, I can't ignore that it's slowing down. The once fast-paced heaven where everything could be found has become, dare I say it, slow and cluttered with all the wrong things. For me, the Internet hasn't evolved into peoples' worst fear--something that has the potential to take over someone's life--it's become mine; something that is boring me and turning me away.

So is this the end? Is the Internet ending to me solely, or to other people as well? Has my once most loved possession turned into nothing? Is this the death of the Internet?

If so, what's next?

FOREVER

2011-05-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

I've made no attempt to hide my love for this series, and I think the writer needs to be shared with the world. Not only is Maggie Stiefvater a superb story teller, she is also one of my absolute favourite writers. I do not mean that in terms of her ability to tie things up in the end or her witchcraftery that keeps you under the novel's spell--though both of those things are important to her novels--I mean in raw, true definition of the word "good". She is so clear, and precise, and so literately perfect in everything she writes that it makes me want to both curl up and die because I'll never be as good as her and write by butt off to at least try. For these reasons, Maggie needs to be shared with the world.

Watch the trailer to the final book in her werewolf trilogy here:

Buy the song in the trailer--which Maggie wrote herself. Oooh, clever author who is also a musician--here: http://bit.ly/mPK6mP.

And finally, pre-order the book here: http://www.fountainbookstore.com/autograph-maggie

I will hug all of you who buy the book. Fact.And, come on... Who doesn't want a hug from this hunk o' lovin'?

Anything Other...

2011-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the night to end all nights. Tonight is the biggest night of my school's entire calendar. Tonight is a night where sixteen year old boys will be drinking alcohol in abundance and sixteen year old girls won't be criticised for not wearing underwear. Tonight is a night of pure evil. Tonight. Is. Prom.

The dynamics of prom is different in England. Basically, as you guys are probably aware, we leave school at 16 in England, and instead of a grand graduation ceremony, we get one night in a hotel on the seaside to say our goodbyes. And then that's pretty much it. And taking in to consideration the fact that I hate a good 99% of the people in attendance tonight and the idea is to say goodbye to them, I feel like I don't need to elaborate my excuse for not going.

Call me sour. Call me immature. Call me pathetic. Call me genius. Whatever. All I know is that I don't want to go to an event where people spend far too much money on an outfit they will wear once when I could be sitting in the comfort of my own home watching Buffy. And if that makes me sad, then label me with a red cross, baby.

So that's my reason for not going. There's also the whole, "Blaaah, I don't believe in popular people voting other popular people to be King and Queen because it's a fascist society that we're all salves to", crap, but frankly, I'd be interested to see who was coronated. I have my ideas. But seriously, guys. It's just one evening. Did you know one girl was going to hire a helicopter, but she couldn't get permission from the council to land it on the beach? That is the kind of evening this is. One where people try to outdo each other for the sake of outdoing each other, and I don't want to be in that kind of atmosphere.

So, as a cure to your boredom and for my own pleasure so that I can feel like Jessica Darling, I present to you a list of things I would rather do than to go prom.

1. Swallow a live snake

2. Get root canal

3. Be in a real life version of a Saw trap

4. Cut off each and every single one of my toes

5. Rub my face on burning coals

6. Pour chilli seeds in my eye sockets

7. Drink battery acid

8. Cage fight a pissed off bull

9. Have my ears hacked off by a butter knife

10. Go on a date with Jeffrey Dahmer

11. Re-live High school

12. Run a marathon in 7 inch Louboutins

13. Give birth to triplets

14. Have bamboo splinters shoved under my fingernails

15. Bathe an old person

16. Be torn apart by an Amazonian hybrid crocodile/shark. A shocodile, if you will

17. Listen to a whole Nickelback song

18. Face Voldemort wandless

19. Get dragged across a bed of white hot razor blades front down

20. Watch a Shane Dawson video.

There we go. Twenty things I would sooner do that attend prom. But don't let my resistance fool you. Oh, no, because you better believe that I'll be waking up bright and early tomorrow the hunt through the pictures on Facebook. In fact, my mother and I have a time and a location set. I shall be there, and I certainly shall not be square.

Bye, guys. Enjoy this evening as much as I am!

<3

BEDA 30: Au Revoir, BEDA.

2011-04-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

Ah, April 30th. That time of the year again. May is coming around with the speed of two trucks, buds on the willow tree in my garden are sprouting up again. It's also the last day of BEDA... Blog Every Day in April, that is. Because you can bet your asses that I will be back fresh for August.

Unlike last year, I feel like I've actually learnt something from this year's BEDA. It wasn't so much a trial as last August was. Mostly because I wasn't in the middle of my summer holidays, so the most important thing I had to blog about was the fact that I woke up to the sound of construction near my house. No, this year, I felt like I actually achieved something worthwhile.

Okay, okay. So that fact is debatable. I know for certain that some days I posted crap that really would have been better off not on the Internet, but due to my stubbornness and my need to please myself, I endured those bad days just to I could claim another official winning of BEDA. It's at this point that I would also like to smash the naysayers out there who say I didn't complete BEDA because I had someone to fill in for me one day. The aim of BEDA is to post a blog post every day, and I did that. Maybe the words in one of those posts weren't mine, but my blog has a post on it for 30 consecutive days, no exception, so for all intense and purpose, I call it a triumph.

So yeah. I feel like I've learnt a lot. I learnt that sometimes, the way I act and what I type doesn't take into consideration peoples feelings. I learnt that, sometimes, I should reread what I post to ensure that I don't convey the wrong message. I learnt that comments can hurt. I learnt that I shouldn't apologise for who I am online. I learnt to trust friends. But most of all, I learnt that I can trust this blog with everything.

Good, bad. Ugly, handsome. This blog, the physical, actual site on the Internet, is always hear for me. It's an outlet that I should take full advantage of. I was hiding a lot with the Internet until recently. I remember having a conversation with PJ a while back, about how much I should share online and what I should keep private. PJ is the master of full self-expression online, and I took his wise, wise advice. To share what I'm comfortable with. And I did that. I told you guys things I haven't told anyone outside a therapist's office. I trust you guys, and I hope that you can trust me.

It's taught me to let got of my inhibitions and to relax. Before, I was so uptight because I was so scared of voicing my opinions in fear of offending someone. But now I realise that everyone has opinions. All of us. They may clash sometimes, but that doesn't make ANYONES less important. They are all valid, and they should all be respected and approached respectfully. Unless, y'know, you're trying to tell me that you think Zefron is ugly. Then you can just get the hell off my page.

There were times when I wanted to give up. I couldn't be bothered. I was tired. We're all tired. Those days, you got videos, lists, a freaking crossword puzzle... But the days I could be bothered, and the ones on which I think I posted a high quality blog, I'm proud of. Hayley was right. When you're forced under pressure, your mind can do wonderful things. If it hadn't been for the pressing need to complete the blog posts, some of the entries I'm most fond of on here would never have seen the light of day. I'm glad I stuck with it, and because I stuck with it, I think I've produced some pretty good work.

I have to just thank someone out there for putting up with me on the days I didn't want to do it. She got most of my whining, and she also helped me come up with the topics I blogged about. You had the delight of reading something of hers earlier in the month, and I'm sure you agree that she makes a fine blogger. Ellis, thank you. You know what for. Just... Thank you. And I love ya, gurl. You and your freakishly short frame.

On that note, I think I'm going to head off. I think I've said enough. I've said all I wanted to say. I've been doing art work all day--and I'm still nowhere near where I should be at this point in the year--and I just want to sleep. Luckily I have tomorrow and Monday off, too, so there's plenty of time to stay up late then. Also, I only have 19 days of school left ever. So that's a plus, right?

Okay. Well, bye guys! Thanks for all sticking along for the ride. God knows I love you. Each and every single one of you. Have a good May.

<3

BEDA 29: The Wedding of the Century.

2011-04-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been living under a boulder under the sea under a shipwreck in the middle of nowhere, it's obvious that you know what today is. It's been absolutely everywhere. You cannot go anywhere on the Internet, or even the TV, without seeing it. So, to add to the perpetuity of it, here's a blog post aaaaall about it. If you're pissed off and bored with it all ready, I'd say to close the webpage now.

I want to start off by saying that I love the Royal family. Not just the British Royal family, but the very idea of Royalty. Regardless of the country, I am both enticed and fully appreciative of the Royal family.

Okay, okay. So you're probably thinking, "But what have the done?" And you'd be right in saying that. In regards to earning their money, they actually don't do much. They were born into a family that, centuries and centuries ago, fought and fought hard for a kingdom and people and power, and by that birthright, they inherit millions and millions of pounds. But in terms of philanthropy and work like that, Prince William is actually one of the leading Blue bloods. So he uses the power he has wisely. "With great power comes great responsibility," yada yada yada.

I suppose I never grew out of the idea of being a member of the Royal family, come to think of it. When you're little, it's pretty much inevitable to play Princesses and Princes, to dress up and pretend to be the King and Queen, to play at least one playground game where you're socially higher than everyone else. It's a child passage right. I never stopped wishing for that. I, unlike most people, love the idea of having fine things, being royal. Having responsibilities. Having to be perfect in public. Being someone who people scrutinise. I would willingly jump at any chance to do that, and thus any chance to be any form of Royalty.

My particular penchants aside, I come back to the point when I say I loved the wedding. Unless you're British, It's probably hard to comprehend what it means for a nation. It's not down to ignorance or stupidity, it's just a different cultural thing. Like how having a President is a huge deal, but here, our equivalent is seen as a burden rather than the greatest head in the country. A good majority of the British public look up to or aspire to be like the Royal family.

That said, I know through various social networking sites that that can't be said for all of Britain. A few people were genuinely displeased with the whole craze. (It's funny to note that most of these people are hipsters or p3opl3 who think their own self importance outweighs that of an historical event.) There were comments made about how Kate's dress was ugly--which I disagree with. More on which later. And by later I mean very soon because this is a blog post and not an hour long movie--some people were saying they wish everyone would just STFU and let us get on with the rest of our lives, and some were saying things like they wish someone would blow up Westminister. I can fully appreciate that people may not agree with the family, and I tend to agree on the fact that the world did go absolutely bat shit crazy, but come on. This is majour history!

In one, two three, four... Five hundred years time, this will still be remembered. The Royal family is one of the oldest things we can date back to, and it's stupid to say that this matrimony will just be forgotten away in a few days time. The reason we should be able to get excited about it is because it's going to go down in history, and we watched it. That's why the ordeal was blown up so big.

Of course, though, with the absolute scale of the day comes the money, and I hands down agree that the money could have been spent on better, more important things. I don't think they should have down scaled the wedding by any means, I hasten to add, because I thought it was wonderful and I have no problem whatsoever with lavishness, but I agree that, if they would have decided to elope in Vegas somewhere and spend the money on something else, it would have been an equally good decision.

And oh. My. God. Kate's dress was... Well. Something else. Sarah Burton was the perfect choice. It was elegant and simple but so intricate that it would be effortlessly copied by women of all shapes and sizes for years to come. Kate is an astoundingly beautiful girl. If the country has one thing to agree on, it's that fact. I personally would be proud to have her as a Queen one day.

I guess now we just have to see where it is all going to go from here. No doubt it will wash away slowly like the slush from snow over the next couple of day, and in a month's time, people won't even be able to remember what colour the Queen wore, but for now, it's nice to be wrapped up in something that is just happy. I wish them both well.

It's times like this when I don't mind being British. I would not stretch that fact to say I am proud, because that's a strong statement that I don't agree with, but I would certainly say right here and right now that, sometimes, I am glad I was born into this country and this history. Frankly, it could be a lot worse.

What did you think of the whole thing? Whether you want to comment saying your opinion on the whole thing or just one tiny aspect to the day, I'll be genuinely interested in what you have to say. It'll be good to get people's opinions from different countries. How was it celebrated where you are?

I'm going to bed now, if I can. There's a street party about a mile away from my house, so I can everything from the laughter and screaming from drunk people celebrating the day to rich people on their yachts blearing their music to the sounds of children cheering. Ah, what a day, eh?

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

BEDA 28: HED AKE.

2011-04-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

FOUR DAY WEEKEND FOUR DAY WEEKEND FOUR DAY WEEKEND. I HAVE A FOUR DAY WEEKEND I HAVE A FOUR DAY WEEKEND I HAVE A FOUR DAY WEEKEND. I HAVE A HEADACHE I HAVE A HEADACHE I HAVE A HEADACHE!

Today was my dog's birthday, and when I got home from school, her party was all ready. She unwrapped her presents, she was excited, it was adorable. I ate a delicious dinner that wasn't so much delicious as it was food that I was grateful for. I am currently sitting on my bed without trousers on debating whether or not I should sleep or not.

Tomorrow is the wedding, and you better believe that I'll be up at 8:00am to watch it. I live for that shit. As much as people online are bitching about it, I bed at least half of them will watch it anyway. I'm not ashamed to say that I will watch it and I will love it.

Guys, I have a headache. As in, the kind that makes you want to shut your head in a door to make the pain go away. I currently have one hand on the top of my head pressing down really hard, with the other typing this. I'm pretty decided on the fact that sleep if a good thing for me right now.

I am sorry for making this so quick and short. It's nearing the end of BEDA, so I will ensure I post deep, thought-provoking blogs for the last couple of days. I suck. I know.

Here, take these videos of pure hilarity to make up for the fact that I am rubbish. Go on. Watch them. Laugh!

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

BEDA 27: I Was Born This Way.

2011-04-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm taller than what is classed as average. I weigh more than what is classed as average. My hands, feet, head... Everything of mine is bigger than what is classed as average.

I have blue eyes, dark hair, naturally dark skin, heavy-set eye brows. My nose has been called too big for my face by someone who studies faces as a profession. My ear lobes are twice as big as most peoples. My fingers aren't as long and skinny as they should be. I have scars on my shins from when I was a young child and my skin was so dry it split open. I went through a psychological phase in my life when I was terrified to the point of tears of my mouth, so my teeth aren't the way they should look through negligence.

When I wake up in the morning, I jump in the shower and leave my hair in what ever state it falls. When I was 12, I was considering seriously a rhinoplasty for my 18th birthday. I have spent hours crying that my face looks this way. I used to obsess over getting a facelift when I was 12.

I hated my face and everything about myself when I went through middle school. I used to think that my face was already messed up and disgusting, so why shouldn't I cut it? What else would I be doing to it? The same with my hands, my arms, my stomach... I was ugly as it was. What would a few gashes add to it?

When I went up to high school, I dyed my hair. The blonde streaks lasted a few months while I went through a stage of denial. I starved myself because I hated looking the way I did. Three days went by, I'd be at the point of collapsing. I used to cover up my scars with make-up I stole from a cosmetics shop near my school, because I was too ashamed to buy it.

I joined a few pro-ana websites. I tried bulimia. I was depressed. Cutting continued, as did the starvation. When people started commenting on my weight loss, I wanted to cry. With happiness, with guilt, I didn't know. It seemed like the same thing. If they knew what I had done to achieve it...

And one day, the make-up came off. The hair was cut off. The cutting stopped. I smiled once in a while. I ate again. I smiled more. I looked at the scars on my hand and saw that I had ruined my canvas. A canvas that was beautiful to start with, and I had ruined it. I was angry, but at my past self. The new me wasn't angry.

I found Nerdfigheria. I accepted that I wouldn't ever look like the people on the magazine covers. I threw my issues of Vogue away and realised that what was inside of me was far more important than what I looked like on the outside.

For the first time in years, I was happy. And you know what? The bullying stopped.

When I stopped worrying what I looked like, so did everyone else. My new found respect for myself, the plastered smile on my face, they were enough to make people stop and think otherwise. My insecurities turned in to my greatest assets.

I look at the scar on my lip I got when I was four. I got it jumping on a tyre. My mum told me not to do it because I would hurt myself. I continued, fell, and put my teeth through my lip. That scar reminds me of my persistence.

I look at the scars on my thighs and arms and see the person I was, and I thank myself every day that I am not the same person. I look at my nose and see something that makes my otherwise big-self look proportional. Just because it might be above "average" doesn't mean it's not right for me. It's my nose, and I was born with it.

There is a difference between changing what you're born with and restoring it to its previous state. Just because I am losing the weight now doesn't mean I hate the way I look. I want to have my old self back--the body I was born with. I am restoring my old self. Saying goodbye to the unhealthy me and welcoming the new me with wide arms. This weight is something I have needed to do for a while, and now it's happening.

I am not changing myself. I am not getting a nose job. I am not changing the colour of my eyes. Sure, I'll get my teeth fixed when I'm older, but I'm only restoring them back to what they were because I made a stupid mistake.

I am confident with the Ben I see in the mirror now; I am only restoring me back to what I was.

I was born this way. I embrace the things that make me ugly. Because they make me different. I don't want to go through life being average. I don't want to be like everyone else. I'm not going to live my life being someone else, living up to someone else's idea of what should be. The things that make me ugly to the outside world is what makes me me to me. And what makes me me, as far as I'm aware, makes me beautiful.

Embrace the things you dislike about yourself the most, because they are the things that you'll be sorriest for if they ever leave you. They are what makes you you, and fat, tall, short, black, white, green, lion, handicapped, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, seven legs and four heads... Whatever you are, you are so unbelievably beautiful.

I was born this way. I will die this way.

BEDA 26: Question Time.

2011-04-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

At the end of yesterday's very rushed post, I asked you all to ask me questions. Well, none of you did (thanks, guys*), so I resorted to the likes of Tumblr and Facebook. To my pleasure, I have just enough to make a healthy post. No thanks to any of you. Questions or no questions aside, let the... Questions... commence!

1. What's it like to be so incredibly tall?
For those of you who don't know, I stand between 6'2"/6'3", which, by statistical averages and general human consensus, is pretty tall. For the most part, I genuinely forget that I am of a height taller than most people. When I walk down the corridor, I don't feel tall at all. I feel pretty average, actually. It's only when I see someone else who is tall that I say, "crap, he was tall!" And my friends have the politely inform me that I am even taller than they were. So, the answer... It's okay. It certainly comes in handy when I want to reach something, but that has its downside when my mum asks me to reach something in a cupboard way too high for her but she wanted anyway. Sigh.

2. Why so much coffee?
I am a coffee snob. An absolute snob. I'm sorry, but if you're giving me that instant crap, you might as well be giving me dishwater. It's disgusting. I also consume it at rates that should cause me to explode in a big bitter brown mess. It's just so delicious! Although recently, I have been cutting caffeine out of my diet. I was under the impression that it was bad for you, but after vigorous research, apparently it's not so bad for you. I had my first cup today in over two weeks, and it was a-may-zing.

3. What's your favourite Harry Potter quote?
That's just like asking me what my favourite finger is. Shit. Uh... I guess, if I'm going to pick, It would be, ""Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have." It's not profound, it's not enlightening, but it's certainly hilarious.

4. Explain how it feels to be HEMOsexual?
It feels like I am floating through the wind like a plastic bad. It makes me wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. It makes me feel like a house of cards, one blow from caving in.

5. If you had to choose between a pet unicorn or a pet dragon, which would you choose?
If this is a Harry Potter-esque dragon and I could train it to do all my bidding, then a dragon. If it's one that would be likely to kill me or like that little thing off of Mulan, then a unicorn.

6. Sum up your personality in three words?
Obnoxious, hilarious, obnoxious.

7. 'Don't you want me, baby?'
"I WANT YOU. I DO!"

8. Who is the celebrity would you most like to meet?

That goes without saying. Jo Rowling.

9. Who is the celebrity you would most like to sleep with?
In my mind, this is an orgy, and there will be Zac Efron, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jared Leto, Naya Rivera, Heather Morris, Emma Watson, Darren Criss and Francisco Lachowski in attendance.

10. Naya Rivera or Heather Morris?
Naya Rivera. Hands down. Sorry HeMo.

11. Darren Criss of Chris Colfer?
Darren Criss. Hands down. Sorry Chris Cauliflower.

12. If you had to survive with only one sense, which would you pick?
Probably sight, because I think that would be most useful. However, my sense of hearing is beyond average, so I could deal with that as well.

13. Choose an animal and type the noise it makes. It could be entertaining
Aaaaoooooohhhhhhwwaaaaaahhhooooooooooo. I was a whale.

14. Why are you shaving your hair off when you look supermegafoxyawesomehot with hair?
Because it's been something I have wanted to do for ages. The day I finish my exams, the razor is coming out. It's June 15th, people, mark your calendars!

15. Your favourite item of clothing?
A green-y and white stripy t-shirt I've have for years.

16. If you could meet one fictional character, who would you choose?
In all truthfulness, probably Edward Cullen, because being a vampire would be pretty fucking spectacular.

This was fun. This was a lot of fun, actually. Does it make me conceited to say I like answering questions about myself? Yeah? Oh. That's cool. I can live with that.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

*Kidding! I am 100% kidding. I love each and every single one of you, and if I could buy you all ice-cream... I would. But, y'know, I'm poor, so buy it yourself and I'll reimburse you when I'm famous. Or you could just think of me when you eat ice-cream next**.
** Not in a canabal way.

BEDA 25: WHAT?!

2011-04-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

I have exactly 12 minutes to type out a half-decent blog before Glee is on. I don't care if I've already seen this episode. Santana sings "Trouty Mouth" and you better believe I'll be there when she does it again. Okay, now I have 11 minutes.

Today was spent doing art work. I've been reading various Tweets from people across the globe complaining about school, and I've got to admit, when I first read one I freaked out momentarily and thought, "shit, I have school!" As it turns out, I didn't not have school. It was also 11am by this point, and I would have left for school three hours before, but my mind jumped to the conclusion that I had school today. Needless to say when I remembered I go back on Wednesday all was right with the world. Now I have 9 minutes.

So, as well as art-ing it up, you may have noticed that I caused somewhat or a revolution on Twitter. Yup, that's right. I caused Maureen Johnson to go a mass-Twitter-competition-thingy. However, if my original bio things isn't picked, I will be both upset and pissed, because as it stand, I have no money whatsoever, and I can't afford to buy The Last Little Blue Envelope for a while now. It would be really handy if I won this. Haha. Now I have 8 minutes.

So... Uh... I don't know what else to talk about. I weighed myself today and lost another pound since Saturday. That's 7 pounds in 12 days. That's not *too* bad, guys? Right? Okay. Now I have 7 minutes left.

Now I have 6 minutes left.

I'm pretty sure I'm just going to post this without rereading it, like I did in yesterday's post. There were some huge mistakes but I wanted to get it out there unedited. I didn't want to manufacture it at all, because I wanted the feelings to be my initial thoughts and not some crap I chopped and changed. I'm really happy with the post, so no amount of typos or bad fonts could change that. And hey, on a plus side, at least I blogged about something worthwhile, right?

Aaaand now I have 4 minutes.

So, it's summer. I'm pretty sure those of you who follow any form of English person on Twitter would have realised that by now. The sun is out most days and I am tanning ridiculously well. However, that is still not enough for me. Tomorrow I plan on finishing all pieces of homework in the morning, and tan all afternoon so I can be super sexy for school on wednesday. That sounds like a fetching idea to me.

Now I have 3 minutes left.

I just looked at Twitter to see if MJ had announced a winner. Apparently not. I know my chances of winning are ridiculously low, but I still want to know either way.

AND NOW I AM OUT OF TIME! YES! THAT WAS FUN! I AM RUNNING SERIOUSLY LOW ON THINGS TO BLOG ABOUT, SO IF YOU LOVE ME--OR HATE ME--LEAVE ME QUESTIONS IN THE COMMENTS. THEY CAN BE ABOUT ANYTHING, JUST MAKE SURE THERE ARE LOADS AND LOADS. I WILL ANSWER THEM *ALL* TOMORROW IN A BLOG POST. YOU CAN BE ANONYMOUS IF YOU WANT TO. JUST DO IT DO IT DO IT.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!
<3

BEDA 24: Begin.

2011-04-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

John Green once said " Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting". I have a penchant for little fortune cookie sayings and inspirational messages. I am a connoisseur of quotes from my favourite songs, authors, books and TV shows. Quotes mean more to me than perhaps they should, and because my wonderful friend Ellis did this a few days ago and I thought the idea was amazing, I'm going to talk about my favourite song and what the lyrics mean to me.

"Hey, maybe the time just wasn't right to hang on.
When are you gonna learn things sometimes turn instead of turn out."
I first heard this song at a difficult moment in my life. The song is initially about new beginnings. It's about throwing the past away with two forceful hands and loving what it coming towards us. The first line, to me, just tells me to relax. Things don't happen the way we want them to. Something doesn't turn out right. Things happen. Shit happens. It's beyond our control. It's about seeing past that and just accepting that it's happened and we can't turn back time. The second line confirms this; that even though we always want something to happen our way, it won't. We can't help this. It's inevitable.

"Hey, when are you gonna stand? Stop looking over your shoulder.
Me, with a head full of words, and not one useful expression."
Line one is about letting go. It's not about letting the past dabble away like a light cloth. It's about picking it up and throwing it the hell away. We shouldn't reminisce the bad things in our past, because it's just that; our past. It's happened, and we alter that. We shouldn't want to. We should stand firm and look ahead for what is coming rather than being preoccupied with things that didn't work out well. Line two is having so much you want to be able to do, so much you want to say or change, but you can't. It's about having the means to, but not the adhesive to string them together. Sometimes, we can't do it. We can't put the pieces together when we want to the most.

"We, with holes in our heart,
Were whole at the start,
Our story began."
When things happen and they destroy us, we always think back on how we were before. We all do it. We remember the happiness we felt and wonder if we'll ever feel it again. This half of a verse encapsulates that. When we are broken or damaged, we are pissed. We're angry. We have been taken from a place of stability and wholeness to a place of darkness. But even when this happens, we shouldn't be angry. We are allowed to feel anger, but we shouldn't be angry about being angry. Every day is like a new beginning to a page we write in the novel that is our life, and if you're broken, then start your story broken. See the development you make. We and only we have the power to write out own lives, and we should do it in a way that will create the most happiness.

"We film ourselves 'til the end
Try to suspend our lives in the dark."
We are so obsessed with documenting our lives. We are so scared of forgetting something that we force our brains to remember it religiously. That can't be healthy. If we are so obsessed with remembering every extraneous detail, how will we ever live to see something else? I always think of it like this; when we document our day, be it through a blog or a video, what we're actually doing is reliving it. We're wasting time on something we've already lived through, when we could be out living something else. If we waste time thinking about it, who knows what we could have missed. It's a scary though, but it's true. We should be going it blind, because that way, it's fun and exciting. It's new, and scary, but it's a whole number of experiences we never thought we could have had.

"Hey, when are you gonna stand? Stop looking over you shoulder.
See, there's a sun in the sky, and a moon that'll take us 'til morning."
Even when we're so deeply scared of leaving the past behind--line one--there is always a light, always something to love and look forward to. When we think we're in the darkest of moments, there is always something to keep going for, to live for, be it your God, a friend, a loved one, a feeling you want to regain... Anything. When things are dark and it seems like there is nothing left, there is always that one thing, forever. It's there, and we should love it.

"When are you gonna stand? Just stop and begin this moment."
This second to last line is everything the song it about. The song title. Every word, every sentence. It's about beginning. Beginning what, only we can decide. It's about starting something. Our wildest dreams, a new life. Something that will better us. An event that only we can control... The possibilities are endless. All we can do is make a difference, and just begin. When we dive headfirst into it, we'll know what it is, and maybe we will be diving in blind, but that's the best way. No expectations, no hopes. Just ourselves and our mind. It it turns out back, no problem. Let it go and begin again. It's a cycle. This whole song is about realising that, and realising that we can start it.

"Let go (will we be the ones to understand?)."
And, as if by magic, the last line closes everything up I want to say. Will we be the ones to understand? Will we take our own lives into our own hands, of will we be the ones to push it aside for someone else? Either way, it's up to us. We can either begin, or we can continue on. Who knows what we'll decide to do?

So that's why I decide to begin. I always will. I decide to begin and live my life by these lyrics. They will always by my favourite. If you liked what I did here, you should check out Ellis's blog where she did the same to her favourite song (at the minute). This was lots of fun, and I encourage you to do the same.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

BEDA 23: NEED. SLEEP.

2011-04-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

So, you guys know how valuable sleep is to me, right? Of course you do. It's one of the only things I talk about. So, last night, for one insanity or another, I didn't sleep. I mean, at all. The moment I touched my bed to go to sleep, I had these really deep back pains. It felt... It felt like I needed someone to stand on it and crack it. It felt like I needed to get shipped to the most prestigious spa in London and have it covered in hot rocks. It felt like I would rather rip out my spinal cord than endure another second of it.

So I didn't sleep. I tossed and turned, I tried to find a position that was comfortable, but to no avail. I stretched out my back over my bed. I even visited my old gymnastics training to see if it would stretch it out and help. It did not help. So, pain-ridden and now awake because of my 1am olympic tryout impression, I laid back down on my bed and stared at the ceiling until the sun rose. I kid you not, I must have laid in the same position for four hours. Maybe even more. But the pain wouldn't let me sleep! It wouldn't allow me, guys. It was bullying me into staying awake.

When the run rose and the clock struck a time kind of acceptable to rise, I made my way into the kitchen and grabbed some breakfast.

Yesterday, as it would have been stated if I hadn't copped out and given you all a crossword, I went out with Ellis, and I bought Nori seaweed sheets, sushi rice and a bamboo mat so I could make sushi today. I recorded the whole thing, and the video will be up tomorrow when my eyes will open properly. Let's just say that it was fun, but I think I am scarred and will never be eating sushi again. I can still feel it down my throat...

Other than that, today has just been a day spent rewatching Buffy. I attempted school work, but when I wrote my name illegibly, I decided that it was just best to put off until tomorrow. And honestly, I'm not complaining about that.

Speaking of school, I've just realised that I only have three days until I go back. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday... Wednesday. Where has all the time gone? I haven't done anything of importance this holiday, except edit my NaNo. I haven't done revision, I haven't even *started* the pile of work I've got that's higher than me.

I don't actually know if it's gripped me yet just how little time I have left in school. After the two day week I have next week (I miss Friday due to the Royal Wedding) and the four day week after that (I miss monday due to a bank holiday), I only have three weeks left of school. Ever. That's, due to my excellent mathematic skills, four weeks and one day. That's... Not a lot. At all. I should really start getting my shit together.

On note of the Royal Wedding, I just wanted to state that I, Ben Cracknell, will be watching it and loving it. I don't see why everyone is so against watching it. I love the royal family! The study and the history of the royal family is one of my favourite things! Maybe the shops have gone overboard, and yes, companies are straining everything they can out of this, but really, I can't see any issues with it. It'll be fun, and a moment that is actually substantial in time, rather than catching up with the latest episode of 90210.

Guys, I think I should go. The screen is turning blurry through my watering eyes, and I'm sure that my abundant lack of sleep will permit me to drop off into the land of unconsciousness.

So, I will bid you farewell. I would apologise for the lack of interesting things in this blogpost, but I don't care and like sleep more than I like you guys. And I'm kidding.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

BEDA 22: GAMES!

2011-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

So, I'm tired. Because it's the Easter holidays and I have the liberty to sleep at insane hours, I have decided to present you, dear readers, with a game to complete for today's blog post. See this as a cop out or see this as pure genius, either way, you can chose to do it or chose to close the webpage now and never come back. I personally think you'll all choose the former, because you're all curious and you think I'm genius.

THIS IS A CROSSWORD WITH ALL OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS!

Bye, guys! Hope this was kinda fun! See you all tomorrow with proper, fully-thought-out post.
<3

BEDA 21: Another Response.

2011-04-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

It seems like every time I post a slightly controversial blog post I find myself needing to redeem what I said. Not because I am hurt by what was commented, but more that I want to clear up any misunderstanding. Because there was misunderstanding. Not on your behalves, and not on mine, but sometimes, things get lost in translation. I want to ensure that you all know what I really meant without you thinking ill of me. Or, y'know, do. It's your choice.

To start up with, I still stand by what I said about loving Glee. I do. I love the characters and the songs, and I don't see that changing any time soon. However, what I dislike is people talking disgustingly bad of it.

I should have clarified in yesterday's post. When I said people have "negative" opinions on it, what I meant is repeatedly bashing it, over and over and over again. Picking out stupid little faults. Ridiculing the writers maliciously. Laughing at actors, making up false rumours about it. Tweeting things like, "Lol. Glee is so fucking stupid. I wish it would just stop airing"*. Things like that, as far as I'm aware, aren't necessary. Am I being irrational when I say that? I don't think I am. What is the point in just moaning about it? If you don't like it, don't watch it. Simple as. There's no point in wasting your time watching it if you know you're just going to bitch about it later. It's a win/win. You get an hour of your life back and we don't have to listen to your crap.

Now, what I do not have a problem with in the slightest is people saying they don't like it. Hell, say what you want to. It's a free world and we're blessed enough to be able to speak what we want to. If you hate it, say it! We can talk about it. Discuss what you don't like. That's good! Healthy, even. To dislike something shouldn't be frowned upon. What should is doing the aforementioned. I have things I don't like. I think Rihanna's music is awful, and I'm allowed that opinion and I am allowed to share that opinion on this blog. What I shouldn't do, however, is just dissect it and pick out bits to make fun of, I shouldn't laugh at her as a persona and I certainly shouldn't make Chris Brown related jokes. Those things are insensitive and just plain horrible. Some of the things I've seen online about Glee equals up to that. If you don't like something, fine. Share you opinion. Don't keep on sharing it over and over and over again. Be careful what you say online, because you never know who will come across it and how it will affect them.

Another point that struck the chords of you is my reference to Nerdfighters. Let me start off my saying straight away that I was just going to leave it out. I didn't want it to be about Nerdfighters/Nerdfighter-status. I wanted it to be solely about Glee. But when I faltered for things to draw parallels to, I knew that I needed to go there.

Lauren, you made the point that I shouldn't have questioned someone's status as a Nerdfighter, and I think that was one of the main parts that was taken out of context. I didn't mean you're not a Nerdfighter if you dislike Glee, or anything, for that matter. What I meant is, if you're--again, talking collectively, not just to you--one of the people who bash something/someone nonstop, fiercely, and to the point where it should be considered bullying... Then maybe you should reconsider if being a Nerdfighter is the right role for you. I am not taking anyone's title as a Nerdfighter. John Green said himself "if you want to be a Nerdfighter, you are a Nerdfighter", so don't feel that I would be able to take that away. What I'm saying is that if the lifestyle you live is one of cruel intentions, maybe you should drop the charade and move on to something else.

You also said that Nerdfighters are allowed to not love or accept everything. I get it! I do. There are things I really hate in the world, like Pop Music and Justin Bieber's face, but I wouldn't go to some of the lengths people do just to voice my opinion. I would do it, and allow people to know just how much I disliked them, but I wouldn't sit there for hours a day and bitch about people just with the intention of bringing them down. To me, in my eyes, that's not what a Nerdfighter should do. But, like I otherwise suggested, we are all entitled to our own views on how to be a Nerdfighter. I just try to do my best at being nice. I don't think that's a crime that should be considered rude or stupid.

If you have any other issues with my last post, or even this on, please comment with your questions or opinions and I will answer them. I want to make sure that you all know full well what I was trying to get across. As it happens, I am not the most eloquent writer. I spew a lot out post it without rereading it because I want the world to hear what I've got to say that instant. It's only when I wake up in the morning and see the fiery emails that I think, "shit, what did I do?"

So, yeah. That's that. It's done and there's nothing I can take back. I don't want to take anything back. I want to add and clarify that which was fuzzy, and I hope I've done this. Leave your comments, and if you want to be more... Colourful, then leave them anonymously. It doesn't bother me whatsoever. I just want to know, either way.

<3

*Tweets like these are easy to find. I find it ironic that you're spending such little time to sending such a pointless Tweet, yet you waste an hour of your time for something to bash.

BEDA 20: Glee.

2011-04-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

You know, Nerdfighteria, for a community that is defined by acceptance, there sure is still a lot of abuse hurled around carelessly. It's been taking my notice that even though we are people who fight for happiness, equality and peave, there are still people intent on being bitchy, whiny and downright horrible. One of the main things I've been seeing this hate cast upon is Glee.

I get it. We're literary snobs. Grammar is out finest love in life. We've been spoilt with shows like 30 Rock, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I'm sorry to say, Nerdfighteria, but I think we've become too damn proud of ourselves. We're stuck up.

Glee might not be perfect. You may say that the writing is bad, or the continuity has more issues than Lindsay Lohan facing a drug test, but you know what? It's a hell of a lot better than a lot of the stuff on TV. The writing isn't terrible! Stories continue to be developed, characters explored and people who are able to showcase their talent.

I don't want to appear rude for saying this, but I feel that one of the main reasons people are negative towards it is jealously. The show is dripping with white hot talent. Lea Michele is a phenomenon. Her voice is technically--and generally--better than any popstar's, but because she is part of a show that has negative wrap, her true talent isn't recognised. Likewise with the rest of the cast. I come from a very musical theatre-esque background, so believe me when I say I know what makes a singer and what doesn't. Every sing one of those people can sing like nothing else. You think Katy Perry can match up to half of them? No, she can't. She's adapted to the comfort of vocal correction and auto tune. Those people aren't. (Before you say they auto tune their voices, that isn't technically always true. They are taken into the studio to record multiple version of the song and are layered together, so you can end up having three different tracks on the same harmonic note. I'm well aware that they may auto tone some of the songs, but you listen to them vs. Katy Perry live. They're incomparable.)

You know what really pisses me off? More than people not respecting talent that is in abundance and overflowing out of the show? The fact that people can't keep their negative opinions to themselves. If you don't like Glee, that's fine. I don't like a lot of things, and I'll be sure to state my dislike for it publicly so to clarify and ambiguity, but when you repeatedly bash something, over and over again and tear it to shreds just for your own pleasure? Where is the good in that? Is it satisfactory to ourselves to bitch about something? Are we all merely Decepticons that we try and fight everyday of our lives? Because frankly, sometimes, I can't tell the difference.

I am a fan of Glee. Actually, scratch that. I love Glee. I do. I love it more than a lot of things in the world. It's nothing but an hour a week that makes me smile. It's fun, it's energetic, it's inspiring... It's escapism where I can go and just stop being angry at the world and sing along and delve into drama that isn't mine. Maybe I'm wrong, but last time I checked, having something that made millions of people feel good for an hour a week isn't a bad thing. It's a blessing.

And the fandom... Oh, god. The fandom. I love it. The Harry Potter fandom is my backbone, my heart and brain. I love it more than I love anything. But guys... The Glee fandom is phenomenal. To be with other people who feel the same way I do is so relaxing in a bubble filled with hate. I know for a fact that I can log on to Tumblr on a Wednesday morning and see my dash filled with Glee posts and feel at home. They don't bitch, they don't whine. We joke, we make fun of it, but more than anything else, more than Darren Criss's face, we love it. The fact that it lets us be who we are. To have fun, so smile, to cry. We love it.

There is so much more shit on TV that is seen higher than Glee. Shows such as 90210 and Gossip Girl continue to circulate, and, as an avid 90210 watcher, the only thing I've gotten out of that show is the desire to starve myself and be rich. It depresses me after I watch it that I'm not skinny like they are. I want to be beautiful, and look like they do. Is that right? That a show that does that to a person is seen as normal, and even superior to one like Glee, which taught me to be comfortable with myself? No, it isn't. And you know why? Because people can't think for themselves.

If you see a celebrity make an opinion about the show, or someone you admire, you follow it. I do. Hell, I don't know how much stuff I have said that I don't agree with just because someone else has said it. I don't even think before I say it. I just do, because I've been influenced into doing so. Glee is the one thing I have made my own mind up about. In a world where people are telling me it's stupid or pathetic, I have walked past that with my head high and my heart even higher. I have loved that show since the first ever episode. You know all that stuff I said before about how I hated it because of the "bad writing"? Yeah, that was crap. I said it because Hayley Hoover said it, and I admired that girl so much that I wanted to follow her. Now, I'm getting a brain of my own and stopping giving a crap. I don't care if people don't like it. I'm sorry, but I don't. If you don't like me because I watch Glee, or if it annoys you, then you're evidentially not a Nerdfighter. It's a show that does nothing more than create happiness. What the hell is wrong with that?

I'm past the point of pretending. I don't want to act intelligent or intellectual by saying I dislike the show. What's the point in spreading hate? Really, there isn't one.

So leave me be. Let me listen to my Glee soundtracks as I swoon over Naya Rivera and Chris Colfer. I will ogle my favourite character and I will continue to watch the show with nothing but respect and love. You know why? Because I don't give a shit any longer.

I love Glee, and I love it a lot more than trying to appear to be something else I'm not. I'm sick of it. I've done it too much online, and I'm shedding that part of me. Goodbye, old Ben, and hello truthful Ben.

My name is Ben Cracknell, I am sixteen years old, and I love Glee.

BEDA 19: Zombie Apocalypse Soundtrack.

2011-04-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

Due to the fact that I want to talk to my friend without this hanging over me like a huge time suck, and the fact that I want to go and run and work my fat-ass-self out before it gets dark outside, I'm updating now and I am copying the one and only Hayley.

If you don't follow her blog, Hayley took part in the "My Zombie Apocalypse Soundtrack" game a commenter suggested to her, in which you put your iPod on shuffle and pick out songs that respond to some questions. It sounds fun, quick, and perfect for the time slot I have. So, let's not waste any more time!

1. The overall theme for the apocalypse:
"The Parselmouths Fun Song" by the Parselmouths. Uh, not my idea of fun, girls.

2. The song that plays when I kill my first zombie:
"Laughing With" by Regina Spektor. If it's a slo-mo montage, I can see this working.

3. The song that plays while I'm being chased by a horde:
"Creature Fear" by Bon Iver. Again, if this is slo-mo, I can get down with it. I guess the name is relevant, too.

4. When I kill my loved one:
"This is the Life" by Amy Maconald. Hahahahaha. Well, I guess they weren't that loved, were they?

5. When I find a group of survivors:
"Stranger" by Hilary Duff. OH MY GOD THIS IS PERFECT.

6. When I meet my new love interest:
"Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynrd

7. When I make my final stand:
"Defying Gravity" by the Glee cast. Again, it makes sense.

8. When I think I've survived it all:
"Lala Land" by Demi Lovato. Uh, wut?

9. When I discover a bite mark on me:
"The Boy Who Lived" by The Moaning Myrtles. THIS IS PERFECT IN A TOTALLY FALSE WAY.

10. The song during the end credits:
"This Song is About You" by Joseph Birdsong.

Well, there you have it. If ever I were to be in a Zombie Apocalypse film, I'm leaving it to you guys to make this happen.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

BEDA 18: ZOMG!

2011-04-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Guys guys guys guys. Are you all sitting down? Of course you are, because you're reading this, and we are Nerdfighters and we do not stand! The word "exercise" does not register in our vocabulary! How dare I have the audacity so suggest such a thing! So, now that I know you're sitting down comfortably, let me confess something. You ready for this? Okay. Breathe. I... Went out today!

I know what you're thinking. Baby, I'm still the same old hobo I used to be! I ain't changin'! It's just sometimes, things need to be done for the greater good. It wasn't an intentional, "oh, the sun looks lovely and alive today, I shall embark on a treacherous journey to the great outdoors." It was an accident, I say! AN ACCIDENT!

This morning I woke up, got myself a delicious breakfast of half a mango, a kiwi and ten red grapes*, switched on Juno, and by the time the film was finished I only had enough time to jump in the shower quickly before I needed to go out. I went to the dentist.

I had to have impressions taken for my braces, and while the experience was built up to be something horrible, I didn't find it bad. Sure, I was gagging on my own saliva, and the pink putty solidified all over my lips, but after they were taken, my teeth felt strangely strong and stawberry-tasting. It was lovely.

So after I had those done, my orthodontist who also doubles up as my dentist told me that I needed x-rays. She told us where to drive to, and to just go whenever I was free. Because I was already out of the house and in clothes that weren't pyjamas, my mother took advantage of this and drove me there straight after I was done having goo pressed into my teeth.

So, after I had God knows how many rounds of x-radiation blown through my brain, I was off again. I was done. But, oh, how deluded you are if you think I went straight home and curled up in bed, traumatised and dazzled by the great outdoors. I. Went. Out. AGAIN!

My step-dad is a computer technician, and Emilie, my friend, was having trouble with her computer. So, me, my step-dad and my mum all went to her house. FOR THREE HOURS! Guys, if this doesn't win me some kind of prize, I will be seriously pissed. Someone get on that. It shall be addressed to "Ben, he who hath endured great toil to achieve an honour higher than anything known." Thank you very much.

Now, I'm home for an hour before I go out AGAIN! My whole family is going round my... I don't know what to call them. Family friends? People who I've known since birth? Come on, you all have one. Just understand what I'm talking about so I can move on, goddamn it!

Anyway, yeah. I'm going round there until all hours in the morning (probably 10pm) to have a meal, have fun, and laugh. The mum in the family is genuinely hilarious. I always forget how much until I see her, then I just laugh. Yeah... That was descriptive.

So I gotta go. Sorry this was quick and pointless and quick all over again. I've just been nonstop all of today! It's a miracle.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

*I think I have OCD with grape numbers. OCGD. For breakfast, I can only eat 10. No more, no less. Just 10.

BEDA 17: English Attitudes.

2011-04-17T12:20:00.001-07:00

If there's one thing I dislike about England more than the crappy streets and the menagerie of chavs, it's the way in which we treat certain circumstances. I'd just like to point out and by this point I am using we as a collective noun, and not me and a certain group of other people. Some topics are tabooed, and some are just approached all wrong.

It's been on my mind for a while now that the topic of homosexuality is never covered. In PSHE class--Personal Social Health Education--it's compulsory to at least touch on it. As the name suggests, the lesson is about a number of things, be it racism, working, school, relationships or sex. Even though we have an hour a week of this lesson, I think out of the whole year last year, I had one hour in which we learnt about being gay.

When I say learnt, what I actually mean is the teacher shoved on a video from the middle ages and forced us all to watch. It was about two boys who ran away from home because they were being threatened, hitchhiked a lift with a man who literally threw them out in the middle of a busy road because they were gay, and I'm pretty sure they ended up homeless at the end of the film. Happy ending, huh?

Is it me, or does this seem like a completely false and nonsensical message to give to young teenagers? Homophobia in school isn't just happening, a lot of the time, it's inevitable. Teenagers have grown up with gay and stupid being synonymous. Showing a video like this is only going to further the idea that being gay is wrong, when it isn't.

A few weeks ago, I encountered my first ever actual account of someone being openly ignorant towards homosexuality. It's probably just because I'm extremely tall and people are scared by the way I look, but I've never really had a problem with homophobia. I get called "gay" down the corridor, and I get the occasional shove, but I've never suffered from any severe physical or verbal homophobia.

As I walked in the changing rooms before a PE lesson one day--before the bell rang, so I wouldn't have to deal with the crowdedness--a boy I considered to be an acquaintance was taking his trousers off. I walked past him, and he turned around and said "oh, I forgot about you." Initially, I didn't know what he meant, so I asked. To which he replied something along the lines of "well I didn't want to show you the front, so I turned around, then I realised that's not much better."

Ben: "Meaning?"
Boy: "You're gay."
Ben: "Yeah?"
Boy: "Well I don't want you looking at me."
Ben: "Yeah, because I really like the look of every guy I see."
Boy: "Yeah, probably. Look, it's your choice, but I don't want you looking at me."

More than the fact that he was blindingly stupid, and even more than the fact that he refused to apologise for being rude, I was more pissed off that he was adamant that being gay was a choice. Obviously I asked the usual, "well, could you just wake up one day and decide to be gay?" Thing, and he just said that he could do it easily, but he didn't want to.

If we had proper education about gay kids and being gay, I don't think it's too bold to say that things like this wouldn't happen. If we can educate the narrow minded, there wouldn't be need for them to be narrow minded. Ignorance isn't bliss.

However, in some cases, ignorance certainly is bliss.

I have the absolute horror of being a teenager in high school. (If you're offended by sexual content, then I suggest you stop reading now.) You know what that means, kiddies! You guessed it. Everyone is having sex.

In terms of peers, people have absolutely no problem talking about it. I can go a day and hear detailed explanations from at least 5 different people. I know about condoms, where they did it, for how long, what they did, what happened... I even know about... Other equipment. At this point in the blog, I just want to say that my county, Suffolk, has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in all of Europe. Ha ha.

Even though students have no problem talking about things like that with each other, they cannot talk about it with their parents. The UK is infamous for being prude when it comes to things like sex and puberty, when I think if we were more open with elders and people who were able to help, we would be more educated and able to know when it's right, rather than finding out ourselves.

The same goes for topics like racism and sexism. People don't want to admit it exists. They push it under a blanket, cover it up, and pretend it doesn't happen. It does. We can't ignore it. We need to educate people that stereotypes aren't always true, and just because someone may be different doesn't mean they're different. Covering up doesn't do anything.

People in England just need to stop being embarrassed, or discomforted. Accept that it's going to happen, embrace it, and educate your children. The more you educate, the less they're going to need to find out for themselves. Stop being so bigoted. RELAX A LITTLE!

To steal something from Lauren's blog, QEDA: Is the attitude the same in your country? Is what I'm saying ringing any bells, or do I sound like a crazed idiot?

Hope you're all well. I'm gonna go sleep and watch Juno.
Ben.
<3

BEDA 16: Lists. Nuff Said.

2011-04-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

Okay. Okay. This blog is going to be a mismatch of confusing things. There isn't one thing I'm really trying to get at, so to cut the discombobulation short, I'll put it into a list form. Also, because I love lists, and they are my favourite thing.

1. I haven't been entirely honest with you guys. You know that weight loss thing I tried to do at the start of the month? Yeah, that was all a lie. I was *going* to do it, but I just couldn't get into it. I found myself not eating at school because I didn't have time, and coming home starving and eating as much as I could find in the fridge. It was pointless me doing it, but I felt like a let down, so I lied and told you all I lost weight. You know what? I didn't even weight myself at the start of it! HA! Now, back to seriousness. Excuses aside, I want you all to know that I am finally down to it. I've tried before, and nothing has ever stuck, but I feel so differently about this time. I've made a weight loss Tumblr account (that you will not be linked to), and after 3 days it's already got 20 followers. It's insane. I've had such a good start, and though it may not seem like much to anyone else, to me, it's a big deal, and it's a start. I'm closer today than I was yesterday. I've joined some other websites so I can keep track of my food and exercise, I know what I should be eating and now that they've done all the work for me, I just have to oblige like a good little puppy. So far, It's going well, and I've planned out my ultimate goal weight, when I want to reach it by, how long it will take me to reach it and all the gruelling stuff like that which was putting me off before. Now that I've done all this, I know this time is for real. Oh, and if I carry on at this rate, I'll apparently be able to lose 8 pounds by this time next month. That's good, hey? OH ALSO, even though it's been three days, my mum told me I looked skinner. Lolololol.

2. BEDA is slowly becoming the demise of me. Okay, that was dramatic, but guysss, I can't think of things to blog abooout. I've tried to think of things like gay rights, bullying and weight issues, but those all seem too depressing for a blog that I want to be lighthearted. I want my blog to be an escape from the pressing outside world, and if I start rambling about stuff like that, it will just be one more blog you find on the internet written by a teenager who thinks his opinion matters. I don't want that. When I come round to it, I don't want to do it in this mid-BEDA frenzy. I want to take my time, do it properly, coherently and eloquently. At this moment in time, I lack each and every one of these qualities. So, I resorted to Googling 101 ideas to blog about.

3. Tonight, I learnt that Googling 101 ideas to blog about is pointless and doesn't help. Never try it.

4. I think my sleeping patterns are messed up, and by that, I mean I don't have a logical one. Will one of you wonderful people diagnose me? I find myself feeling tired all throughout the day, and when it comes to about 9pm, I'm done. I just need to curl up in bed and sleep. I sleep, as far as I'm aware, solidly through the night, until about 8am, when I wake up and get up straight away. This, for want of a better word, is my sleeping pattern. What is wrong with me? Y I SO TIRED?!

5. On Monday, I am getting impressions ready for my braces. This excites me to no end. Although I didn't have the hair-pulling misfortune to be put on England's notorious orthodontia waiting list--which, I think, averages out at a 2 year wait--and I'm getting mine just over 2 months after my original appointment, I just want them. I'm bored of waiting. Monday couldn't get here sooner. I'm excited about the pretty colourssss I get to choose!

6. Yesterday was Friday. That means that, since yesterday, I have had 8 days off school. After tomorrow, I have another week, the weekend, Monday and Tuesday off school. I go back on Wednesday and Thursday, have Friday off because of the Royal Wedding, have the weekend off and then the following Monday. That means I have 12 more days off school before I have to go back. As of late, I have done no school work whatsoever. I have three art units to complete, a shit load of Media to do, 27 pieces of online Biology homework, 7 mini English essays to write, maths homework, and probably some other stuff as well as revision for my exams. Guess when I'll be doing that? In 11 days time, baby. Holidays are meant for relaxing, not school work. And so I shall rest.

7. I drank 3 litres of water today. I've been peeing nonstop.

8. I'm so close to having last year's NaNo done. I finished the second revision today, and tomorrow I'm going over it again to change shit. Once that's done, i'll make sure dates and timing is all set up and spot on, line edit, spell check about a thousand times and then I'll let my mum read it. She's been bugging me for months, and I plan on using this as her birthday present. A) Because I frightfully poor, b) because I know she'll love it, and c) because I want some suck-up points. Problem?

9. I have some ideas for videos soon, so keep an eye out for those.

10. I really, really, really, really want to get my tattoo. I know my mum and the way she works, and trust me, if she's ever going to consent, I need to make the set up perfect. That asking will take place next Tuesday, on the drive back from my grandmother's. I shall update you all. I want to get it on the day the last Potter film comes out, because, as cheesy and gag-worthy as this may sound, it's the last real *significant* day to do with Potter. No one can tell for sure if any other books are coming out, so I want to get it on a day that means something. I hope this will persuade my mother. Probably not, but oh well. It's worth a try. (I want a black lightning bolt on my right foot, just under my big toe. In case you were wondering.)

My list has hereby been drawn to a close. Looking back, this wasn't half as interesting as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was quite dull. Maybe I should just list the stuff I ate today. Pull a Hayley and document my calorific intake. Yeah, that's the dream. Sigh.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

BEDA 15: Usurped.

2011-04-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

Something you may or may not know about Ben is that he has a really awful sleep routine, the kind which is the exact opposite to that of the majority of teenagers. Due to the fact that he is about to fall asleep at any second, I have forcibly been entrusted with the duty of updating his blog for this evening. I really hope I don't screw this up for you, Ben.

Hello, Ben's lovely readers! My name is Ellis, and I am very pleased to meet you all. I am very sorry to disappoint you if you have arrived here in order to get an insight into the world of Ben. However, for one night only, you will have to put up with my ramblings.

I'm not entirely sure what is expected of me tonight. Seeing as this is not my own blog, writing about anything to do with myself seems very inappropriate. I think I shall therefore settle with writing a sequel to Wednesday's post. Rather embarrassingly, this post was about me. Would anyone be interested is hearing the story from my point of view? Probably not, but here it is anyway, for those of you who may be at least slightly interested in hearing it.

Ben began by introducing me. I'm assuming that, by now, you all know Ben very well, and this will not be necessary. I will, however, note that he is incredibly tall in real life. This makes it rather awkward when we are together, as the dramatic height difference can often attract attention. Fortunately, Ben loves attention.

To me, Ben is the coolest person in the world. He has a talent and patience for writing that I can only dream of acquiring, a personality which is impossible not to fall in love with, and not to mention that he's all kinds of popular*. An incredible gift which Ben has been blessed with is the ability to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. He is the most caring boy I know, and he has helped me out on numerous occasions, because he's just generally lovely like that. I couldn't possibly ask for a kinder best friend.

It is true that the fist memory I have of Ben is him screaming 'OH MY GOD, ALICE!' at a girl I was standing with at the time. He was obsessed with Twilight at that time, and me being a lifelong dedicated Potter fan, I was irritated. I'm not going to lie. This may not be a first memory which I can look back upon with fondness, but I am very glad to say that things have improved greatly for us since then. Skipping forward to the next year, I found myself in three of Ben's classes. Although my first impression of him was incredibly inaccurate, and my second one not much better**, It wasn't until Ben started dropping frequent, relevant Harry Potter hints in our Religious Education class that I began to accept that my previous assumptions about him were entirely wrong. I barely knew him, but from what I could tell, Ben was lovely. Skip forward another few months to a rainy day on which I sought refuge at lunch in a disused chemistry classroom. There were a few other weather-fearers in the room, Ben amongst them. I think this was the the first time he ever directly spoke to me without dropping some kind of a hint to suggest a short but sweet conversation. He told me that he had found out that I liked Harry Potter too, and I assured him that I did. The conversation drifted onto topics such as Mugglenet, and concluded with a high five. In the split second contact of that high five, I believe our friendship sparked into life***.

This is starting to become a rambling life story. I'm awfully sorry. The point I am trying to make is that our mutual like for each other started long before Ben thinks it did. In his post, he claimed that I only began liking him after we both attended a certain birthday party. The truth is that I actually fell in love with his personality long before this. Trust me when I say that although our 'normal' friendship may only have begun in January, there was a lot of behind the scenes build up which got us to this point.

Ben used his post to describe me as an energetic 'hologram' with 'more grace than Dianna Agron', who is worthy of 'getting in his pants'. I would therefore like to respond by saying that Ben is highly interesting, incredibly kind boy who is easier to fall in love with than a new-born puppy. He also far more beautiful than he gives himself credit for. Please do me a favour and punch him every time he says he's not? I would like to take this opportunity, Ben, to publicly thank you for all the times you have been there for me at just the right moment. You have no idea how much you have helped me by just being there. I love you so much.

I can't help but feel as though I have robbed you all of your daily Ben time. In an attempt of recovery, here are some fun facts about Ben which I hope you will enjoy:
1. He likes his toast soggy, not crunchy.
2. He is apparently related to somebody who created a dessert which is still served in our school's cafeteria from time to time.
3. He owns a Gryffindor jumper and scarf. I am incredibly jealous of this, despite the fact that I identify as a Ravenclaw.
4. Despite the fact he displays his love of Zac Efron everywhere, he actually likes Darren Criss a tiny bit more. At least, he did the last time I asked. This may have changed without my knowledge in the past month.
5. Although he has never allowed me to hear him sing, he assures me that he sounds like a girl when he does. This surprises me, as he has a relatively low speaking voice. Perhaps I should persuade him to demonstrate the to me sometime?

Once again, I am very sorry that you've had to put up with this! If it helps, I will poke Ben until he agrees to write an extra long, extra detailed post tomorrow to make up for this pile of notsome. Does that sound like a deal?
Ellis.
<3 (Just because this is Ben's blog, and Ben always does a little heart here. When in Rome, y'know?)

* This is a personal joke of ours. Ben is actually rather well acquainted with the 'popular' people at out school, despite the fact he often portrays himself as a loner. For a boy who has every reason to be confident in himself, Ben definitely does not give himself the lovely reputation he deserves.
** As I have explained above, the seat which Ben chose to occupy in these classes was amongst the people who possibly have higher STD counts than IQs.
*** Upon proofreading this, I have realised how incredibly cringeworthy that sounds. However, it's the best I can come up with for now. It's getting late, and I've been told that I need to have this done or there'll be trouble. This will have to do!

BEDA 14: Myspace Survey.

2011-04-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

I knew this was coming. You knew this was coming. He, she, they knew this was coming. Yes, that's right. It's officially that time in BEDA where I Google for old Myspace surveys, and fill one out. Ah, BEDA, the inevitable things you do to your participants.

When was the last time you shaved your legs?
Uh, never?

What were you doing this morning at 8?
I was either laying in my bed thinking about making a new Tumblr, on Tumbr or peeing.

What were you doing 15 minutes ago?
Hahaha. Next question.

What are you wearing right now?
A lot of black. I just realised. Uh, my 'Ravenclaw' socks--black socks with grey and blue strips on the toes and heels--black sweat pants, my Moaning Myrtles Wizard Rock t-shirt, a black hoodie, and black underwear.

Are you mad at anyone right now?
No? I'm actually really happy today.

The last two people to say they loved you?
Ellis and the reflection in my mirror as I worked my fat ass out.

Kissed someone in the last 24 hrs?
Unless a dog counts, no.

Are you happy with your living arrangements?
Extraordinarily.

Last thing received in the mail?
A bank statement, I think, telling me I had £1.12p in my account. Yup.

Do you have any famous relatives?
No by dictionary definition, but like I've said before, my family is traced back really far. See here. Fun fact, did you know I am the last person who can carry on that family name? Yeah, no pressure, or anything. Wow, did they pick the wrong time to have a gay kid or what?

Have you ever wet yourself in a public place?
When I was young, yes.

Have you ever been searched by the cops?
No.

How is your hair?
I just had it cut! Thank you for asking!

How many different drinks have you had today?
Oh my god, I just realised I've only had two drinks today! This is madness for me.

What have you eaten today?
Breakfast was a kiwi and some red grapes, lunch was a ham salad sandwich, and tea was a chicken salad. I'm still dieting, and no snacks have been had. Booyah.

Are you any good at math?
Terrible.

What did you do Friday night?
I sleep. I'm pretty sure my grandma's elbows have a better social life than I do.

Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?
No.

Are you taken for granted?
Wow, that's a deep question for a Myspace survey...

Have you ever been awake for 48 hours straight?
Are you kidding? NO!

Do you like the ocean?
I do, yes!

Did you stay friends with your ex's?
I've never had an ex to stay friends with.

What are you excited about?
I don't know. Life's opportunities? In short sight, finishing school. In the long shot? Who knows?

What did you do two nights ago?
I came home from school and slept. It was glorious.

Are any of your great-grandparents still alive?
Nope.

Where do you keep your money?
We've established this. I have no money. I actually have more American money in my room than I do English, and I have one dollar. That should tell you enough about my financial status.

Do you remember the most naughty night of your life?
If this is meant sexually, the most exciting night of my life was when I watched High School Musical 3 and ate chocolate.

Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?
Alone. I don't like people touching me, or warmth. Lololol, emo stoicism.

What was the weather like on your birthday?
I skipped school that day! It was sunny!

Would you make out with anyone on your top friends list?
This question is clearly meant for Myspace.

Well, if you lived through that, you deserve a prize. Here, take this cookie*.

I love you guys. Know that.
<3

*I never said an actual, literal cookie. Though isn't he just preeetty?

BEDA 13: The Bestest.

2011-04-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

Despite very popular belief, I do actually have friends in real life. Friends, I might add, that are made up of skin cells and tissue and muscles and hair. Not the hard surface of my MacBook. When I reach out to these friends, I can feel their warmth, and not a frigid Skype call box. One of these friends reads this blog religiously, and she told me to blog about something interesting to make for the last two days. Well, Ellis, here it is. A blog about you.

Guys, this is Ellis. Say hello! She is 16 years old, about 3 feet tall and has hair that would make Hermione Granger's look tame. Isn't she beautiful?

Ellis is the smartest person I know. She gets full marks on exams--which I think is a regular occurrence in America? In England, that's a huge deal--her grammar is immaculate and vocabulary excels that of normal teenagers. She dances beautifully, she has elegance that would put Dianna Agron to shame, she is energetic and fun has a smile of a thousand angels. She is truly beautiful, but unlike most hot chicks, she is also the most compassionate person I know, fighting for equality no matter race, gender, physical ability, sexual orientation, hair colour or height*. She is truly a model human being. She also has a Twitter, and she is hilarious.

I should probably tell you about our past. Well, Ellis and I attend the same school. In our first year, when I was poorly misguided and obsessed with the 'T' word, I used to scream at one of the people she used to hang around with because she was the spitting image of Alice Cullen. I'm ashamed to say this is her first memory of me. Move on a year to when we have classes together. In my RE class, I used to sit on the row in front of her, and at this point, when I had moved to innocently stalking her via Facebook, I knew she loved Harry Potter. I mean, *our* kind of love, guys, not like those Tumblr hipsters! I used to drop Harry Potter references on purpose just so I would have the excuse to talk to her. It was all very PG13, Romantic-Comedy style. Gushy and awkward but cute. Needless to say, when I found out she loved A Very Potter Musical, I was in love.

Now, if you know me, you know that I don't do things by half. I was already convinced we were soulmates just because she said a grand total of about 20 words to me. As far as I was aware, anyone who knew what the initialism AVPM meant was good enough to get into my pants. I was convinced that I was her bestfriend, and grew into one of those creepy stalkers you see hiding behind potted plants, staring at their innocent victims. If Ellis all but blew her nose, I knew about it.

Fast forward to a party my other friend had, when Ellis swooned over my Bellatrix Lestrange wand, and I'm pretty sure that's when the feeling started to become mutual. As if by some act of Jesus, this girl liked me back, too, and wanted to be my friend.

Now it's almost a year later, and though we only really started talking in January, that time feels like a lifetime. She is fabulous and she is my best friend, and I love her dearly.

Trying to explain her is like trying to explain what water tastes like. Would you believe me if I told you she's like a hologram? Far too good to be true? 'Cause that is what she is like. A gift that everyone should know about. I truly love you, girl.

How was that post, Ellis? Good enough? NO?! You want more? Oh, all right then...

This is her sitting in a hollow tree trunk, albeit doing so looking slightly high;

This is her with my other friend, Rhiannon;

And this is her laughing. It's a beautiful action shot, if you ask me;

Now if that isn't a good enough blog post for you, I don't know what is. If it isn't... Then fuck you. I'm just kidding. (No I'm not.)

Guys, thank you for existing. I wish I could dedicate a single blog post to each and every one of you, except that you're not IRL friends. Sometimes, people who are actually flesh need a little bit of extra love, just because I spend so much time with the rest of you, anyway. ;)

Hope you're all well, and have a good rest of the week. I love ya', babies.
<3

*This is a joke we have. I make fun f her height, and she makes fun of mine**.
**Poorly so. I am the heightest king. She sucks at making fun of me.

BEDA 12: Puppies and Music.

2011-04-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

I have a shit load of work. Even though my Easter break officially kicked off on Monday, everyone in my media class is being forced to go to school on the first three days of it. You guessed it, readers; that means yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Where I'm usually a fan of going to school in holidays because it is made all sorts of fun by being where when you're not supposed to be, the amount of work we've got to do and in such a short time is, excuse me for saying, fucking stressful. If I'm ever going to finish this course, I just need to log off blogger and do my essay, proposal and write out my materials list. Psht.

So, again, I am truly sorry to do this. I have work that needs to be done and a puppy in the room next to me. I'm babysitting it for three days while it's owner is on holiday, because the people who are going to buy the puppy are on holiday. I don't know if any of you have been in the presence of a 9 week old puppy, but you better believe that I'm going to spend my time with it. Y'know what, actually? I'm not even sorry I'm leaving. SCREW YOU ALL, I HAVE A PUPPY TO LOVE ME.

If you really want to do something entertaining, knock yourself out on this. Seriously, you will not regret it.
http://bencracknell.tumblr.com/post/4556313170/thegeek531-bollywoodgaga-seawitchery-i#notes

Bye, guys!
<3

BEDA 11: I can't.

2011-04-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry, guys, but if you honestly expect me to blog when I have a new Harry Potter DVD in my DVD player and popcorn in a bowl next to me, you're seriously wrong. Sorry, but it just isn't going to happen.

As an apology, have this, in hope that it make you laugh;

and I will see you beautiful people tomorrow.

Ben.
<3

BEDA 10: Nerdiness!

2011-04-10T10:16:00.001-07:00

Asides form the obvious niches like the Harry Potter fandom, Nerdfighteria and The Hunger Games's ever growing fanbase, I realised that that I've never really stated forthright what other things I'm a fan of. John Green was the genius to say that "nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it", and I'll be damned if I was ever ambiguous about the things I liked. So, as a little insight to The World of Ben, I present to you today a list of the things I love that you may or may not know about.

1. X-Men.

I absolutely love X-Men. Like, research for hours, spend my time wishing you were a mutant, kind of love. I've always been so fixated with superheroes, and the idea of having a race of people, who all had different types of powers and abilities in the human world really got me into it. I originally got into the movies, then that progressed to me wanting to know more. I quickly became obsessed with different mutants, and what they could do. I watched the films, researched, watched the films again, read fanfiction, browsed the fanart and researched some more. It's safe to say that the upcoming film has made me beyond excited. My favourite mutant--Emma Frost--has a bigger part in this film, not to mention we get the backstory behind Mystique--a naturally blue-skinned mutant who has the ability to shape shift into any human being or mutant, even copying their voices--who is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who I'm sure you all know as the actress portraying Katniss in the upcoming movie adaption of The Hunger Games. This movie is set in the 60's, so seeing Magneto and Professor X before they were these powerful ulter-egos is really appealing to me. Emma Frost is my favourite mutant because she is everything I want to be. She is one of the top 5 telepaths in the world, capable of broadcasting and receiving thoughts, mind-control, altering perceptions and memories, psychic shielding, astral projection, mind switching, brain engram modification, mental sedation, and induction of mental pain via touch.erself. Her powers are incomprehensibly strong, and she can also use them over great distance. Did I mention she can turn her skin into an organic diamond? Like, a fucking diamond. She is practically indestructible in this form. Resistant to heat and cold, weight, pressure, vacuums, bullets, explosions... Anything*. And THAT, my dear friends, is why she is my favey fave. She always will be.

2.-- Van Helsing.
Can I just... I can't even deal. Van Helsing is one of my favourite films. Plus, it has Hugh Jackman as the leading man. What more could I want? No, in all seriousness, the film is so beautifully done that I find it impossible for people not to love. I think the main reason I love it so much is the form the female vampires take when they fly. I can't think of a proper name for it, but when they feed, they turn into a crazy half-woman, half-bat-like-demon-creature-with-a-blue-palor. Take this, for example. I've always said that I would happily watch an entire movie with just these three brides as the main characters. Even if it was them flying through a village in their hell beast form, massacring civilians left, right and centre. That could quite possible be the best movie I would ever watch. It's not uncommon for be the quote the brides, just because they're my favourite characters. Shame all three of them are victims of polygamy.

3.-- Juno.
Juno is without a doubt my favourite film in the whole world. It's on a completely different league to anything else. It's the one film I can literally quote 95% of, all the way through. More than Mean Girls, more than Harry Potter. I don't even need to listen to the dialogue to tell what part of the film it is. Three seconds of the soundtrack and I'm able to tell you what's going on, who is on screen and what is going to happen next. I'm aware that this is on the list of a 'How To Be Hipster', but I really don't care. Juno > just about everything.

4.-- Pokemon.
I don't even think I need to go into much detail for this one. Just know that Pokemon was one of the biggest things in my life when I was young. I would cry because Pokmeon weren't real. I would spend hours after school perfecting my PokeBall throwing-technique, throwing a tennis ball on the back wall of my house. Yes, I was amazing, and no, I don't still do it. If you must know, my three favourite Pokmemon are Arbok, Rapidash, and Staryu. Always and forever.

5.--Witches
Okay, this is where it starts to get embarrassing for me. Would you believe me if I told you one of my earliest memories was me being convinced I was a witch? Before my Harry Potter obsession, I was deeply under the spell--ha--of the idea of witches. When I was no older than 6, I marched my way around a local garden centre because I was in a mood my mother had forced me to go along with her. That's where I saw it. My beacon of hope. A dark brown, long and big witches broom. I begged and begged and begged my mum to buy it, because "this isn't the same as the ones you buy for Halloween. This one is bigger, and more reeeeal," and so my mother informed me that this was using all of my pocket money, and bought the £7 broom. I spent hours in the garden after that day. Literally hours. After I finished tea, I ran outside until it turned dark playing on this broom. I used to look up at the sky and wished harder than anything that I would fly high in to it. I straddled the broom, and kicked off, only to come crashing down back to Earth. After that day, I never tried to fly again, though my obsession with witches blossomed to a healthier, more acceptable form of Harry Potter.

6.-- Dolphins, Dragons and Unicorns.
I'm sure this was the point at which my mother knew I was gay. Dolphins and unicorns were my absolute favourite animals when I was little. My room looked more like a 9 year old girl's than it did a 7 year old boy's. Figurines, cuddly toys, posters, key rings, balloons... Everything that had a unicorn on it, I had to have, and anything with a dolphin on was automatically mine. To this day, I still feel the same. Dragons came and, fortunately, left when I was about 7. I spent £40 on two figurines, and when you're that age, that's a lot. What can I say? I was crazy obsessed with mystical creatures, and my mother was stupid enough to leave me in a shop with my stepdad. I threw them all away, though. It's a shame.

There are many, many more things I can think of, but in fear of boring you all even further to death, I'll stop now. Maybe I'll pick up the list in a couple of weeks time, maybe not. Who knows?

What are you obsessed with that may be unknown to the rest of Nerdfighteria? Leave me a comment and tell me. Surprise me. We're all safe here. We're all freaks, sure, but we're all safe.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

* I said ALMOST anything. She has one single molecular flaw, which if being shot by a diamond bullet, will shatter her whole body.

BEDA 9: Le Writing. Literally.

2011-04-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

BEDA 8: My School.

2011-04-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

Lauren posted a blog about her school schedule, and a little insight to her school. I distinctly remembering us Skyping one time, and her trying to explain to me what the hell an 'Orange Day' was, but to absolutely no avail. It has always fascinated me learning about different schools from different countries, because even though they're all crazy and nonsensical to me, they all aim towards doing the same thing, with the same outcome in the end. So, if you've ever wondered about my school or schedule, then read on.

First off, a quick explanation on schools in England in general.

When you're 3, you attend a thing called reception. In retrospect, and as clear by its name that I ONLY JUST REALISED, it's just a warmer to get kids used to the idea of school, before actually starting school. Then, at age 4, you move up to year one. 5, year two, 6, year three, and so on, until you reach high school at year 9 (age 13-14 [this is the year before freshman year for you Americans out there]). In year 9, you take compulsory lessons, and in year 10, you get to drop some compulsory lessons, and pick the ones you want to do from a list.

My year had three 'blocks' to fill, so I chose art--1 block-- and media--two blocks. Our school has a two week timetable. Over these two weeks, I have;

2 lessons of IT
3 lessons of PE
6 lessons of English
7 lessons of Science
6 lessons of Maths
10 lessons of Media
2 lessons of PSHE
2 lessons of RE
5 lessons of Art
5 lessons of Tech

Our school is a technology college, or so it claims to be, so each student is required to choose either food tech, graphic design, or resistant materials. For some god awful reason, I picked resistant materials.

We have 5 lessons a day. Typically, each period lasts 60 minutes.

From 9:15-10:10 is period 1.
From 10:15-11:15 is period 2.
From 11:15-11:30 is break time.
From 11:30-12:40 is period 3.
From 12:40-1:20 is lunch time
From 1:20-2:30 is period 4.
From 2:30-3:30 is period 5.
Then comes the bell, and it's beloved hometime.

Some days are okay, other are unbearable. Today, for instance, I would have had double art, tech, maths and biology, had I not had an art exam period 1, 2 and 3. That is a good day. On other days, though, it is infinitely worse; double media, chemistry, english and then physics is just an example. Those two sciences, so near each other, kill me. You can tut and roll your eyes as much as you want at how dramatic I'm being. It literally kills me. Literally.

However, not one to dwell on the negatives, I'm very happy today, because I practically have three weeks of school. It's the easter holidays, and due to some really clever timing on behalf of the royal family, the holidays have practically been extended for another week. Yes!

In conclusion... School sucks. It's a bag full of notsome, and I can't wait to escape it. Like you all no doubt know, we leave in year 11--sophmore year--and go on to college for two years before attending university. College is a place where you can take 3, 4 or 5 A levels, or do a specialist course. It's going to be fantastic.

Bye, guys! I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and if you've got time off, enjoy it. If not... Sucks for you. Listen as I laugh evilly and monotonously! MUAHAHAH!

Bye!
<3

Weight Lost: I got an easter egg today, so I don't know. Probably positive 4 pounds. Who knows? It's a mystery.

BEDA 7: Thoughts From Places: English Lesson.

2011-04-07T12:26:00.001-07:00

I walk in, late, because my physics teacher is the embodiment of the devil and insists that "the bell does not dismiss us,", and she does. I walk in through the blue door frame that has its blue door widely open, waiting for any late comers.

There is still a faint disturbance upon the classroom. People are out of their seats collecting their work books, dodging past people in mission to reach their seats. I walk in, and take my blue book, which is a brighter colour than everyone else's, from the table on my right, and walk to my seat.

A chinese boy that I call account as a friend sits too far back from the table, meaning I have about ten inches to squeeze past his chair and the table behind him to reach my chair. There is a row of four, and I sit next to him and a girl I don't like.

He moves in, and welcomes me. He hasn't shaved his usually smooth face, and it makes him look strangely younger. Like a twelve year old, trying to be more mature. He flicks his fringe out of his eye, crumpled up tissue in his palm, and speaks away in rapid chinese to the boy two seats away from him in a different row. I pretend that I understand.

Taking the same chewed up black pen from my bag that I have used for what seems like the entirety of that year, I scribble down notes from the starter that is projected on the board.

What significance does the sunset have in the novel? Pay attention to the fact it appears at the start, and at the end. Write three ideas for each quotation.

I write my ideas down, and know that if I told my teacher, she would agree. She walks in, late. It's strange, because she is in there first every other day. That's her room, and she teaches there all day. I know she was next door, because she walks in holding a box of battered novels, but I question why she was late, and wonder if it has any important significance.

She wears a simple, black dress., and what I automatically assume is a turquoise black Hermes scarf. It's tied tightly around her neck, the two drapes of dead material hanging to her waste. She wears bright turquoise rights, which makes the whole outfit seem more formal, for some reason.

She apologises for being late, and the class shut up instantly. She has a presence about her, and though she isn't harsh or old, people respect her and appreciate her.

A girl, from the row behind me, raises her hand and gives an answer to the question on the board. She's wrong, and I can see in my English teacher's face that she doesn't agree with what the girl has said. But she writes it, anyway, and manages to be enthusiastic about it. She never says an idea is wrong, even if she feels it.

I sit, silently, writing down far more than necessary. No one in that room could ever level up to me. Some more wrong answers are given, and the time passes.

The time ticks on, and then I don't know where it went. We're supposed to be writing about the setting of the novel, but I look around.

The chinese boy next to me blows his nose. And again, and again. And again for the whole lesson, the whole week, and the whole year. He is perpetually struck ill with a cold. The girl next to me tuts, and mumbles under her breath. I roll my eyes.

A girl in front of me laughs, and talks to the girl next to her. They talk, and then the whole class joins in in a chorus of random chatter. It's quiet, and everyone has a partner.

I am next to a girl I don't like, and a boy who talks to me about Mockingjay and Desperate Housewives. He asks who my favourite character is, and I tell him "Gabriella". He laughs, and agrees, and quotes her screaming, "Juanita, get down here!", though he pronounces her name "Enita!".

The time comes to an end. We're given homework, and I am excited. I know that I'll be the only one who does it, and I know that my teacher will enjoy marking it. We both have an unspoken agreement. A silent alliance. We both know that I am the best one in there. It's always been the way from the start of the two years I've had the pleasure of being under her wing. If no one else can think of the right answer, she comes to me, and I breathe it effortlessly. She smiles, and writes it down on the board in her same squeaky blue pen.

The bell goes, and it's the end of the day. I'm the last one out of the door, like every other English lesson. Most days, I stay behind and talk to her for just the shortest of times. Tell her something, ask for a book recommendation. Ask her a question about the exam. We both know that everyone else in there isn't going to do well in the exams just as well that we both know I'll fly through it.

I go to leave the door, but smile at her first. I see the people leaving before me and analyse their haste too much. They're going to be the ones who don't do anything with their life... They're running from something that they can't face... They don't like English because they're too dumb to understand it... I analyse my decision to leave last, too, and am happy to think what it means.

English is where I belong, and where I can communicate my whole mind without saying a single world. I understand everything my teacher speaks about, and she understands everything I say. It's the once place in school that I can excel better than anyone else, and it's my favourite place to belong.

BEDA 6: A Lil' Bit o' Everythang.

2011-04-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

I looked up from my laptop to look out of my window a minute ago and it was sunny. I looked up just now and it was night time. Oh, how time flies when you're reading BEDA posts by Kristina Horner.

To those of you who are commenting on my posts daily, I just want to put my love out there for you. I understand and appreciate that commenting is hard, and a lot of the time, can feel like a chore, especially if you're commenting on multiple BEDA participants' blogs, but for those of you who do, I love you. It makes me happy, and I love you all.

Thank to the wonderful Sam--who is also doing BEDA, and definitely someone all of you need to check out!--I have been diagnosed with PMS. I'm pretty sure the end of my cycle is coming up, though, so don't fear, blog readers; the emotions are calming down.

Because I'm particularly tired tonight and I have a stack of work taller than my 6' 2'', I am taking leaves from my favourite blogs and stealing their ideas. That's basically a nice way of saying I can't think of anything to blog about so I am using someone else's shit. Got it? Good.

Things I Ate Today
1 piece of brown toast with margarine and Marmite, a kiwi and a handful of grapes, cut up (I cut myself preparing this, btw) a glass of orange juice, 7 Tic Tacs, 4 crab sticks, a black bean sauce stir fry--noodles, beef strips, carrots, baby corn, courgettes, pak choi, red peppers, mushrooms, onions--another glass of orange juice, about 4 more grapes, a redbull and a lemon tea.

Who I Saw on the Bus Today
(A poor imitation of the aforementioned Sam's blog. She doesn't actually just blog about her public transport experiences, I'm just short on blog ideas to copy.)
The bus driver. I was so confused and partially offended by the way he treated me today! I gave him my £2, because I only wanted a one way ticket, and they cost £1.50, so when he went to give me my 50p change, he searched his palm for a silver hexagonal coin, when he eventually found one. He went to give it to me, and I got so excited. It was a new coin--2010, I think--and it was shiny and inviting and all things endearing to someone who is distracted by shiny things. But once he looked down and saw it was a new one, EVEN AFTER IT WAS PRACTICALLY TOUCHING MY FINGER TIPS, he mumbled under his breath, "no, you can't have that one," and gave me a crappy old one. I was so offended that I stormed my way down the bus to the seat I take daily, all confused, outraged and generally hysterical, because I found the whole thing hilarious. I also saw a blonde girl walk past the ticket bin, take her seat, screw her ticket up and throw it on the floor in a very swishy fashion. What a bitch.

Favourite Songs of the Month

QEDA #6
What book do you suggest I read? I'm currently about a hundred pages into I Am Number Four, and so far, it's brilliant! The story is much better than the writing, but I can't complain too much. So far, I would definitely recommend it!

I think that's all for today, folks. As always, thanks for joining me, and I hope I didn't bore you to death. You're all lovely.
Ben.
<3

Weight Lost: 2 pounds. But I'm pretty sure the scales were lying to me, but I didn't have the heart to reweight, in case it said anything different.
Chipotle burritos this year: 0. I'm yet to have my virginity taken
Subscribers: 118
Nail color: Natural?
Miles run today: Probably negative 2.

BEDA 5: Teenage Emotions

2011-04-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

As much as I deteste using it as an excuse, my hormones are being a bitch recently. I find myself being far too happy, far too emotional, far too hungry, far too energetic, far too tired and far too aware of how beautiful Zac Efron is all at once. Some days, it just gets too much to handle.

You know what I remind myself of? A pregnant woman. I managed to thankfully skip the whole 'moody teenager' phase, because rather luckily, I went through puberty very early. I was a very angry young child, and as my mum refers to me, "a little attention-seeking shit." Because I skipped this stage, though, it means that I'm completely unable to have a bad day without sticking out.

I was never a normal teenager. I didn't have weeks where I would dye my hair and listen to Marilyn Manson, then switch to herbal remedies and meditation the next week. I was pretty solid, and pretty stable. Now, if, for one reason or another, something pisses me off and I just want to punch a puppy in the face, everyone thinks Armageddon is going to happen. As lucky as I was for dodging the train early, I can't help but feel like I was cheated, too.

This kind of recently came to my attention. The past month, I've been acting like a pregnant woman. I've been getting really upset over absolutely nothing and crying one moment, and then so unbelievably happy the next. If it wasn't for the fact that I didn't have a uterus, I would be scared, readers.

I don't know what the trigger was exactly, though I have an idea. I'm pretty sure it's because things have been changing around me, and I don't know what is happening or why.

YouTube, if I'm being perfectly honest, has changed a lot. I miss fiveawesomegirls and disneykid1 , and it's getting to the point where I am watching their videos just to feel a little bit of happiness on bad days. I've been missing my URL friends like crazy, 'cause communication with them all has been stopped dead, and all of this has left me feeling... Lost. I got so used to it for so long that I became dependent on it, and now that it's changed and chemicals in my brain insist on making my life a living hell, those two things add up and make a very explosive Ben.

I find that because I'm in a 'funk', for want of a better word, that my presence online is lacking considerably. I posted a video on YouTube on Sunday, and as of now, it has 2 comments and 60 views. Not that I care about views or comment numbers or anything like that, but... Are you kidding me?! Has my absence had that much of a detrimental affect on my reputation? Does everyone hate me now, or something?

Maybe this whole blog post is completely irrelevant. Maybe I'm being a whiny bitch, and I should just shut up and stop being so dramatic. If there is one thing I excel at, it's making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe I just need to such it up and accept that some shit changed, and stop acting like a little bitch moping around. Who knows?

I feel terrible to say that this blog post is done. I have homework to do, and a book to read. I also have pineapple to eat, so I think I'm going to get on that.

Bye, guys!
Ben.
<3

Weight Lost: Dunno. Haven't checked today. Too... Lazy...

BEDA 4: Expectations

2011-04-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

You know what I've realised recently? I have my expectations set far too high. I expect so much out of what I have, when I should just be thankful for what I do have. I know, and comprehend fully that I am so blessed, so lucky, but like just about everyone on this planet, I am not satisfied. I want more.

I want more money. I want to have nicer hair, and a nicer body shape. I want abs, and to be smarter. I want to be able to drive. I want to be 17, but I want to be 17 for a long while. I want to leave school and runaway to college. I want to read hundreds of books a week. I want to be a better Nerdfighter, a better URL friend. I want to be a better IRL friend. I want to be able to help everyone else. I want an iPad, and an unlimited supply of sushi. I want time zones to go away, and to let me talk to my friends whenever I want. I want to be a professional writer within a week of leaving school. I want to make money from it, and travel the world. I want a happy family, and to live a very long, very happy life. I want Zac Efron.

The likeliness of any of that happening? I'd say right now, it's about a 50/50 per cent chance. Maybe some of them will come true, maybe some of them won't. Maybe they all will, and more, but maybe none of them will come true. All I do know is that I want far too much.

I should be happy. I know I should be. And I am happy. I'm blessed. I'm a middle class white boy with access to free health care, an education and cheaply priced food. I have transport, a mother model, a father model, and a sister. I have daily access to running water so I can wash, drink and use the toilet. Yet, as lucky as I know I am, I constantly seem to want more.

This struck me tonight as the Hunger Games cast list was released. We've known Katniss's portrayer for a while, but Peeta's and Gale's were released today. It's safe to say that I am disappointed. I had my heart set on other people. Who? I have no idea. Just... Other people. People who look different, people who have different histories. People who I envisage to be Peeta and Gale. I can't imagine these people playing characters in one of my favourite book series.

But honestly, why should I care? At the end of the day, even if they do completely slaughter my views, maybe they'll make someone else's. They won't ruin the story, because I have the books as my raw source, but I can't help but yearn for them to do it justice. If this is how people who haven't read the series will be introduced to the story, and the characters, then they need to do a half-decent job, because I won't stand to see civilians bitch about such a beautiful thing.

I'm expecting far too much. It's not fair to put this much pressure on the actors' shoulders, but on the other hand... I like the pressure. I want them to feel like it's there, because then they'll feel the need to do their roles justice. I'm so ambivalent!

The same thought crossed my mind recently when I was contemplating the last Potter film. This isn't the end. I know it isn't. I'm not going to forget the times I had, the people I met, the hours and hours I spent reading the books, but this definitely feels like closure. Not a close... a form of closure. It's a neat tie up to something that is perpetual, instead of leaving it forking off in a thousand ways. It's for that reason that I want it to be perfect. I have fantasies that I'll finish the film, and magically end up in my room so I can lay in my bed and cry. I don't want to deal with talking to my family, or the Internet. I just want to wallow in a ball by myself, and think about the years and the times and the film by myself. In reality, though, I'll have to waddle my hysterical self through the cinema and back to the car where my family will tell me to stop being so stupid and laugh at me. I'll go to my room where my mum will come in and ask if I'm all right in a stupid voice, and I'll tell her to go away and she'll be in a mood with me for days after. Then they'll constantly bring it up, making jokes out of how upset I was.

I don't see why I'm building my expectations up so high when, with my luck, they'll just fail to ever happen. But hey, at least I have expectations. I have goals, and aims, and I'd much rather have copious amounts of them set too high than to have none and not do anything with my life.

Tell me how I'm acting. Do I sound like a spoilt rich kid? Or do I sound passionate, with a fear of things not turning out well? Right now, I can't make my mind up.

I hope you're all well, and tell me in the comments how you feel about the casting. All details can be found on www.MockingJay.net

Ben.
<3

Weight Lost: 1 pound. Yaaaaay. #sarcasm

BEDA 3: Taking Advice

2011-04-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

Due to my scarce imagination, I am taking advice from Laura and blogging today about something in my room. I have nothing better to do, because the only thing I actually did today was Google sushi. So, here goes.

I think I'd call this thing my most beloved possession. More than my MacBook,and my external hard drive, this thing is the most valuable to me. This is the thing I would save from a burning building.

It's a helium balloon that belonged to my grandfather. As a short backstory, he was very, very ill for a very, very long time. Most of it self-inflicted, seeing as he smoked a lot, but he was, as many grandchildren believe, the best granddad ever. He was the smartest person I had the pleasure of knowing. He taught me so much about things I love today. His culture, Scotland, space, the plants, mythology, star signs... He was one of the few people who was just as hilarious as he was smart, and that is saying something.

Before he was sick, he was very athletic. He played football very well when he was young, and it got to the point where he could have played professionally for Scotland. Unfortunately, at a time when professional sport wasn't a sensible or accepted lifestyle, he left Scotland and moved to England to take an apprenticeship at Sizewell Power Station. He met my grandmother by accident on a wall one night, and I've been told that it was love at first sight. As much as I hate that expression, I can't help but believe it.

My grandmother already had a child at that time. This part is a grey area for our family, because my grandma refuses to tell us who the child's father is, but my granddad stuck with my grandmother, raised the child as his own, adopted her, and had two more children with my grandma--my mum, and then my uncle respectively. He worked at the same power station for over 40 years, and became very high up. He was honoured and well respected there, and at his funeral, so many workers and people I didn't even know turned up to pay their tributes to their old friend.

I don't know if his illness was partially due to his work choice, or it was entirely due to his smoking, but after 10 years or so of being in hospital, and one leg amputation later, he passed away.

This balloon... This tiny, metallic sheet of material filled with gas was something we gave to my grandfather. It reads 'Get Well', with a sun and a cloud and a rainbow. I know that without a doubt he loved it. It must have also been hard for him to accept, because all of us, deep down, knew he wasn't getting better. We knew what was coming, and we just had to wait until it did.

And he was the bravest man I ever knew. Even in his absolute illness, weighed down with asphyxiation and fatigue, he was still daring to laugh, daring to make jokes, daring to be sarcastic to my grandmother. He still accepted everything. He was so happy and so proud to see our faces every visit. He held our hand ever time, and could tell it broke his heart to let go, because he always hung on a little bit longer than necessary.

After he died, my mother, sister, grandmother and I were sorting through his stuff and among other things, like old shirts and watches, I found that balloon. I knew straight away that I wanted it. I needed it, because it was still inflated. All of the helium was still in it, and it was a survivor, like he was.

7 years down the line, I still have it. It's in my wardrobe, still fully formed, still in perfect condition. And, it's for what reason, with what the balloon means to me, the messages behind it, what it symbolises and whose it was, that it is my most prized possession. I was so lucky to have a grandfather like him, and I can only take this balloon on and cherish it for as long as it's still alive as a tribute.

Wow. This was unexpectedly emotional. I wasn't expecting to feel this was. It's strange... You never really feel anything until you come back to it. As terribly cheesy and cliched as this sounds, I know for a fact that he is in a better place now. He struggled for too long. He fought for far too long, and at least now he's free from that.

I love you always, granddad. You're most of the reason I'm the person I am today. Thank you.

<3

BEDA 2: Remember How It Went?

2011-04-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

I wish I had something fun to blog about. I wish I could be interesting and though provoking, but then I realised to be those things, you actually need to do things with your day so you can get inspiration. And I seldom do anything productive on weekends, let alone interesting.

Let's see. Well, today I didn't eat breakfast. I was going to get some, but then it was past the time acceptable for breakfast. So I ate some cookies instead. Would you believe me if I told you that was literally the most interesting thing that happened to me today?

The closer I get to finishing school, the less I seem to do. It's completely illogical, because I should actually be spending my time revising for exams that are coming up, or finishing this piece of course work or that essay, but I find that all of my subjects within school are gradually drawing to a close, instead of spurting out in a hundred different ways like I was expecting.

I just assumed that right before the end, they'd try to cram in as much as possible. Add any extra information we'd need, and then let us go. I'm glad it's the other way. I feel satisfied that things are getting tied together, because it seems like my entire school career has been one huge explosion. Different things, tricks, facts and strategies seem to be added every single year. Suddenly, things are dwindling down. Teachers are more carefree and accepting. They recognise that we want to leave. There's certainly a sense of... Proudness, with certain teachers, the ones who have had you straight from the beginning. It's all very odd, and very beautiful.

Unfortunately, though, with this severe lack of school work comes a lack of getting my sorry self out of bed every day. There's nothing to dooo, guys! It's getting to the point where I have to shower for fun. SHOWER!

Tomorrow is mother's day, so I suppose that's something to look forward to. I'm very, very poor this year, so my mother only has something small, but I've been promising her something since Christmas, so I'll work really hard to get that done before her birthday in June.

Other than that, other than showering twice a day and eating cookies, I dare say today has been dead. I cannot think of a single thing worth mentioning. I made some really delicious rice for tea. That's interesting. But other than that... Nothing.

Was I kidding myself when I said I could do BEDA again? It's a two week easter break in a week's time, and if I'm finding the second day hard to blog about, how the hell will I manage blogging for 16 days with no school? I think it's safe to say I need help.

Give me suggestions in the comments. What I can blog about, if you have any topics you'd like me to voice my opinion on. A review of something. Anything! I just need ideas, and I need them in abundance. If I'm going to complete this, and you're going to survive reading this, then I need help. We're in this together, readers.

I have a video planned for tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that. Knowing me, it probably won't materialise into anything, but I feel terrible for not uploading in ages, and I like the idea of this video. I just need to be able to pull it off. That's the tricky part.

I'll leave it here, folks. Like yesterday, I forgot to weigh myself so I can't figure out any weight-loss just yet. I'll do it tomorrow. What ever.

Hope you're all well,
Ben.
<3

Weight Lost: Still nuttin. I promise I'll check tomorrow. Or something...

BEDA; ROUND TWO!

2011-04-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome, fabulous readers, to the official first blog post of Blog Every Day in April 2011! This is my second ever BEDA--although my first one was in August, admittedly--but I completed it and I am proud, and those two factors, I feel, qualify me to be extraordinarily cocky and to have the internal voice telling me I'll complete it easily. In reality, though, I'll probably struggle with things to blog about and end up posting complete nonsense. But even if that does happen, at least I'll be sticking to my monthly quota, by blogging Every Day in April.

I'm optimistic today. BEDA (be it April or August or any other month that starts with the letter A)* is without a doubt my favourite time of the year. My favourite people all come together and give their blogs the nurture and love that it can sometimes go without. I get regular updates from two of my favourite bloggers, Hayley and Kristina, and I also get to blog a lot more, and it doesn't matter if it's rubbish, because it's blogging, and that's all that counts. As the debatably controversial Nanowrimo saying goes; "it's quantity, not quality". I like to hope that I'll park myself somewhere between the two.

I don't want to make this post too heavy. It should be light and springy, as a nice transition from Neglected Blog to One That Is Over Flowing With Posts. I will be the first to admit, I've been otherwise occupied recently. A lot of it could have been easily diverted, but that's in the past. It's gone. Bye bye, excuses, and hello dedicated work! I'm here, and hopefully BEDA will be a wake up call to me in telling me to blog more often.

So... Where to start off? I could tell you about my day? I woke up at 6:30, because I really needed to pee, so once I drained my bladder, I hobbled back to bed and slept until 7:15. Yes, those three quarters of an hour actually means something. No, you may not make fun of me or tell me I could have spent that time doing something productive like doing one of the four thousand pieces of over-due homework I currently have on top of my book case. I needed that sleep, and it was blissful.

Then I got up fo' realz, ate some toast--brown bread, margarine, Marmite, thank you very much--jumped in the shower, and changed into my uniform. My mother took me to school, and for the first three periods of the day, I had an art exam. Yay for Ben! After some rather questionable lunch, I walked down to the woodshop/graphic design building outside of the school, and completed my double period of woodshop. I kicked ass, blah blah blah.

The bell rang, I went to the extra hour after school IT catch up, and then I drove home. I ate food, spoke to my IRL best friend, and now I'm here. On this blog. Bloggin' it out. For BEDA.

I just looked down and realised I'm not wearing trousers. I don't even remember taking them off! I'm also wearing a cuddly snake around my neck, so I'm sure any abuse you wanted to hurl at me would be permissible. Evidently, I am the epitome of what a teenager should be doing on a Friday night.

Speaking of Friday nights, I just noticed it's past half 9 and that means I should be in bed with Juno. I think I'll leave this post here, and to make up for the pure crappiness of it, take this as a form of self-inflicted public humiliation. Maybe that'll be punishment for a half-hearted post.

I'd also like to quickly say before I go that I want to do something cool at the end of every post. Like Hayley does, and now like Lauren does, I want to do something awesome. Unfortunately, any brilliant ideas evaded me, so I'm stuck with the countdown of weight loss. The past couple of weeks I have unintentionally lost weight and started eating healthily. I have no idea why, but I'm taking advantage of this. I'm not weighing myself right now because it's night and I don't want to be depressed when I jump on the scale, so I'll wait 'til morning and then work out a decrease then. At the bottom of each post, I'll count down the pounds. Let's see how much I can lose! Who's betting at least 5 pounds? More? We'll have to wait and see.

Byeeee, guys! Hope you're all well! Talk to me in the comments!
Ben.
<3

Weight Lost: 0 pounds.**

*Yes, I know they're all used up. Make up your own. Algublina. (Al-gu-b-lee-na)
** So far. ;)

Top 40 Favourite Songs

2011-03-28T10:35:00.000-07:00

I realise that I've been painfully scarce on the Interwebs recently, and that's down to two things. One, the fact that I only have 24 days of school left. Ever. and two; because of thing one, I am seeing my deadlines for certain pieces of work rush towards me. I've been staying clear of anything tempting on the Internet, knowing that if I sneak away from those deadlines, they'll smash me straight in the face when I'm not expecting it. Have no fear, oh beloved blog readers, 'cause you bet your asses that I'm doing BEDA. WHO ELSE IS?

I miss the world. My last few blog posts have been depressing, and I hate it. So, to redeem myself, I am compiling a list of my top 40 favourite songs. If you're ever wondered, want some new music for your outdated iTunes or because you're bored, then read on. You should share your own top 5 in the comments below. Also, I really like boasting about my music taste, so that's a contributing factor as to why I'm doing this.

(List in order from best to worse.)

1. Begin- The Wailing Jennys
2. Angel From Montgomery- Bonnie Raitt
3. The Call- Regina Spektor
4. Lovers Without Love- Joshua Jameson
5. Somewhere Over The Rainbow- Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole
6. Defying Gravity- Wicked Cast (OBC)
7. Winter Song- Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson
8. The Chain- Ingrid Michaelson
9. Letting Go- Maisey Rika
10. Hedwig's Theme- John Williams
11. Game of Life- Maisey Rika
12. Take Me or Leave Me- RENT cast (movie)
13. Early Fall- The Mudbloods
14. Wayfaring Stranger- Eva Cassidy
15. Beautiful Dawn- The Wailing Jennys
16. Snape vs. Snape- The Ministry of Magic
17. Starlight- Muse
18. There She Goes- Sixpence None The Richer
19. Flightless Bird, American Mouth- Iron and Wine
20. Anyone Else But You- The Mouldy Peaches
21. Tire Swing- Kimya Dawsson
22. Playing God- Paramore
23. The Cave- Mumford and Sons
24. For Matt- Lauren Fairweather
25. Days of Summer- Team Starkid
26. Not Alone (Reprise)- Team Starkid
27. Barefoot Floors- The Wailin Jennys
28. Phase 3- Joseph Birdsong
29. Time After Time- Eva Cassidy
30. Heaven on Earth- Belinda Carlisle
31. Human- Ellie Goulding
32. Tonight- Lykke Li
33. Landslide- Glee Cast
34. Looking Up- Paramore
35. What About Myrtle- The Moaning Myrtles
36. Taking Chances- Celine Dion
37. Nerdfighterlike- Lauren Fairweather
38. Take it Down- The Wailin Jennys
39. Use Somebody- Kings of Leon
40. O Children- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

So, there you go! I fully appreciate that song of the versions may not be the original, but after all, these are my favourite songs, and I think that I get to decide which cover is better. Haha!

Hope you're all fantastically well, and I will see you soon for BEDA!

Ben
<3