Verdigris

During the past year, I had read exactly four articles on the collapse of civilisation thanks to technology and antisocialism being bred into the next generation. Four!! That means that a group of people actually agree on it! They argued that with people talking so much on mobile phones, texting and emailing, no one will bother with good old socialising face-to-face. And so everyone will lose touch with everyone else, no one will make any new friends, people will start working from home via the internet, and so everyone will become reclusive and soon the world will be deserted.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration on my part. But you get the general gist of it. The people of the older generation seem so panicked at the thought of everything falling apart due to technology, but these same people aren’t doing anything about it. They watch society from apart with abject horror, not doing anything to stop it, and then pause to send a text message to their friends.

But isn’t the fact that everyone’s talking about it prove that it’s not actually happening? Those articles would never have seen the light of print had it not involved society being intact enough to publish it and then pass it along to a public who reads it. Technology isn’t stopping people from talking to each other–it gives them more of a chance to do so. And there are many things that just aren’t appropriate for over the phone, and people get together to talk about that. And for most people the internet still can’t beat any get togethers or other social events.

I get the feeling that I’m rambling here. But the point is that those journalists were whining over nothing, in my opinion. Society is not collapsing; it’s evolving. Just because others have trouble keeping up doesn’t mean it’s not going as strong as ever.

Well, it’s time to depart. I most likely won’t be on the internet again till February, but you never know. I might go to Mark’s or some such. My dad is going to Germany with his girlfriend to see her parents and I won’t see him all holidays. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or overjoyed. No holidays without dad! But he chose her over us for Christmas Day… =s

I’ll keep on writing, unless my computer dies in the heat D= but hopefully it won’t. I’d better not have jinxed it just then. it’s an iMac, and so I still haven’t figured out how to use my USB on it. It doesn’t acknowledge the technology, I think =(.

Holidays! To Rorouni Kenshin! To days of sweltering heat! To working until I have bought the whole manga series of Fruits Basket! To going crazy from solitude because I’m too phone-a-phobic to ring friends and organise things!

 …

Happy Christmas. The flash attached is one of the only animations I had time to finish–enjoy.

Note: I finally put this up on my blog! It’s a biography for English. I did it on my mum. We have different last names because my parents are divorced, in case you’re wondering :s. And now that I’m actually writing stuff, will I get any reviews…? Ah well.

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Leonie McDonald was born on the 12^th of October, 1956, two years after her older brother Peter, and spent the first few years of her life known as Leo, because Bill McDonald wanted another son, not a daughter, damnit(although you would never hear a devout Catholic such as him say those words). Though by the time her parents were ready to say goodbye to each other and never look back, she had two younger siblings,
Lorraine and Christopher. The McDonald clan was large, and growing larger, as each of her 34 first cousins ended up with five children (don’t even bother with the second cousins). 

Leonie wasn’t especially bright as a young child. Her teachers would say the exact opposite, in fact. She repeated fourth grade, and the only thing she excelled in was R.E. (despite the fact that until a certain age she thought that the 11^th commandment was, “Thou shalt not get caught.”). When her mother rang the school to inform them that Leonie had won the Commonwealth Scholarship, the principal’s first reply was, “It must be a mistake. There must have been a misprint!” Luckily for Leonie, she hadn’t handed her report in to her parents during the holidays (scared that her father’s wrath would ruin them, and she was probably right), and when they asked for it back she gave it up quickly and with much relief. It came back with straight A’s. 

When her parents finally separated, she was fifteen years old. She reluctantly gave in her small army of guinea-pigs to her greyhound-owning neighbours while she, her mother, Margaret Pierce, and her siblings went in search of a home (she only got two back). In an attempt to win a caravan, they filled out fourteen shopping jeeps worth of competition forms. Margaret’s motto became, “Feast and be merry—tomorrow we diet!” But when things seemed hardest, they finally struck some luck. When they came home with rumbling stomachs, it was to find that they had won food from one of the many competitions they had entered. 

Leonie was very accident prone, as well. In grade two she broke both arms (by punching a boy) and fractured her skull, and also got yelled at by the principal by climbing the school roof. In grade 3 she had viral meningitis.  In grade four she broke her elbow. She had glandular fever in year 12 and got a glass pipette stuck in her right hand, and had to go to hospital. She slid down a banister and knocked down the headmistress, who was a nun. She burnt her friend’s plait in an attempt to straighten it when the seamstress caught them. She smuggled baby chickens into her desk, and her teacher didn’t notice, even when they started cheeping. When the ticket inspector came onto the bus she tore up everyone’s tickets and twisted them into a headband, which got everyone in trouble. When she was meant to be interviewing journalists at Mike Willesees Program for a media assignment, she couldn’t finish it because the journalist, Greg Shackleton, got shot in
Timor. Her teachers reply to that was, “Only you, Leonie.” She had real white mice as accessories to her school hat (which was bright red) and got in trouble when they escaped onto the bus. 

She snuck off during lunchtime with friends to the Monastery and swam in the pool, but priests came in so they had to hide. When the priests left and she finally got back to school, lunchtime had ended. She had been locked in a cemetery. She was late for school one day when the horses from her riding school escaped onto

in
Blackburn. She filed half a library into alphabetical order before someone came over and explained that it worked by category. In year 12 she was rejected by fifteen schools for HBC, because she had six years worth of F’s behind her, and so she ended up in

Hollingsworth
College for dropouts. 

When I asked her about her adult life, she said, “More or less the same.” She’s had amnesia, been married twice and had five children. Last year she broke her leg so badly that she was bedridden for two months and her kids had to stay with friends. She turned fifty-one this year (not that she wants anyone to know that, though) but her life isn’t over yet.

This essay-thingo (it doesn’t actually follow a proper essay structure) I did for english last year. Read it! Tell me what you think. Here it is;

——————

A difficult time in my family was during grade six, in 2003. At the start of the year, Dad got us kids together and told us we were moving. “We’re going to move out, just us, because your Mother is feeling unwell and needs her own space for a while,” Dad explained, his hand on William’s shoulder. 

I heard Mariah and William start to cry, and I barely kept back tears. We’d lived in our house since I was five years old. William had lived in that house almost all his life. The reason we’d moved into that house was because of William’s unexpected arrival, upon which there was not enough room in ‘the old house’ for all of us. But as far as we all knew, there was no reason for Dad to move us once again. Even if it was, as he promised, only for one term of school. 

I think it was Rebecca who went up to ask Mum why this was happening. Mum was shocked. She had no idea that any of this was happening. Dad had gone behind her back to take us out of school. I could tell that she was upset. 

Time flew by. I tried to forget about what was happening, but it always remained at the edge of my mind. More than once I overheard Mum and Dad fighting, and felt scared. I never imagined that any of this would happen. Before now, I remember thinking how lucky I was to have parents so much in love. 

We moved house two weeks before the start of school. Everything was quiet, for a while. Mum came with us, while my twenty-three year old brother,
Arran, lived in our house with a few of his mates. Then school started. 

I felt lonely. The school only had 132 students, including me and my three siblings. Rebecca, me, and a girl named Sarah were the only year seven girls in the school. Rebecca and Sarah got along fine, but I didn’t know anybody, or get along with anyone. Quite often I found myself up a tree reading a book, while everyone else played Cops & Robbers. Then, before I knew it, the first semester was over, and Dad’s promise to go home before the second term had been broken. 

For a week, Rebecca and I went to South Australia to spend the holidays with my nana Jill and
Pa. It was fun, and I could forget how horrible things were at home. I even sent chocolate eggs in an envelope to Mum, even though they got crushed on the way. 

But when I came back, Mariah pointed out to me that Mum now slept in a different bed. I shook my head and blocked my ears, refusing to believe it, but later on, Mum told me that she and Dad were separating. I had one cry, and that was it. 

Before the holidays were over, we were back at home and enrolled in our old school. Minus Dad. Now, two years later, we see him twice a month, during weekends. Everyone’s changed. I’m not sure if it’s for better or worse, but I hope it’s for the better.

The heat hangs thick in the air. The sun burns down like invisible fire, drying skin to dust. The smell of sticky, too-warm food wafts over, climbing up the nose, unpleasant and impossible to escape. The light is everywhere, golden and smooth, bouncing off every surface and hitting the eyes. Plants are dry and brown, and gilded with gold, turning their half-death into brilliance. Faces are golden-brown, lit from light bouncing up from underneath. Pale legs are tucked into the shadows and people lie about like cats, blinking sleepily in the heat and spread out on the ground. 

The heat is supposed to rise, but the sun is a shameless golden disk of heat that spares no inch of the world. Its beams are invisible but, looking up, it is almost possible to see the heat; a shimmering shade of yellow that, it is known, is full of UV rays. Sighs fill the air, and people are forced to move themselves through this unbearable heat, their movements slow and tired from hot, sleepless nights. Freckles stand out like moles, hair is bleached a shade lighter, skin cooked a shade darker. The smell of thick heat is still around. Accidental movements on the ground stir up faint clouds of dirt that taste empty of any life, dry. The throat is parched and gags as summer invades the senses. 

Summer noises, the buzzing of flies somewhere just behind the ear, the quiet murmur of the crowd punctured by the occasional yell or scream of laughter, and still the hot breeze lazily tossing hair around, fill the mind. Maybe, it is thought, just maybe it would be easier to cope with if there was a hint of moisture in the air. But the air is thick and dry, full of wishes for rain or at least some cooler breezes, so tangible, but not quite solid enough to pick out and throw in the bin. 

Motions are made in the air that do little but move the heat about. Summer is a cursed thing, living, breathing, stealing life from every single atom of air, filling up the dreams of others in the night with only worries and half-remembered, imagined threats, and suppressing the desire for a sweet, cool sense.

I’m up to chapter 51 in Fruits Basket. It’s sooo cool. READ IT!! *squeals* There is nothing in the world that I love more than Fruits Basket. But that’s not what I was going to write about.

I FINALLY got a computer. But it was not what I was hoping for. It had two USB ports on the computer, taken up by the keyboard and the mouse, and two on the keyboard, but I can’t put my USB in it because the keyboard ‘doesn’t have enough power to support it’. It’s quite old. And while I’m thankful for the person who lent it to me, I’d be better off using my mum’s computer, because that one has a printer.

*sighs* Things never, ever turn out the way they should…

I was going to do something deep and meaningful. Something that struck a chord in the hearts of those who like to read blogs. Something that said, we’re all people. Let us gather together to become great…

 ”We are all people. Let us gather together to become great!!”

There, I said it.

Too hot. Tired. Heat… arck… *slumps against keyboard* Must… write…. Although does anyone know anything about the tower of Babylon? Apparently they became ‘too great’ or something and so they were *punished*… Diana Wynne Jones’ book Deep Secrets has references to it, although the tower of Babylon in that is different… something to do with wishes…

Hot… Sun… Destroy… Sleep…

I have a new way of getting around the countryside! ^_^

Last night, my cousin Jacquie, Mum and I got out our new cart and attached it to one of our ponies, Sheba. It was great! Teaching a pony or horse to pull a cart usually takes at least six weeks, but Sheba behaved splendidly–as though she was born for it. We were even able to ride in it! The only time she misbehaved was when she was on the grass–she didn’t want to get off, she wanted to stop and eat–and when a cute little dog went past. It didn’t bark at her but it had asthma and because she had blinkers on her she couldn’t see how small it was, just hear it’s heavy breathing. It was beautiful.

Another few! You know you’re writing Lit Fic when…

• You’ve looked at so many websites for mental/physical disorders, depression, relationship help, etc (for character realism research) that your spouse/roommate/parent sends you in for counseling when they see your browser history.
• You can sum up your plot in one sentence, but you think it sounds lame and insist that “it’s really all about the characters”, so you try and explain them all but realize you can’t.
• At least one of your characters does (or has done) some kind of drug.
• You get to the end of the book, and the four main characters (with very traumatic pasts- I swear I am incapable of writing anything without SOME measure of angst) have a ‘happy ending.’ Then you decide it to write an epilogue in which they KILL THEMSELVES (for really good reasons, actually), just for the hell of it. [Fact: This REALLY screws with people’s heads.]
• Your characters are so abstract a concept they have no names only “He” and “She”.

 I’ll stop now. I hope no one minds me putting these up here. To see more, go to http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1002114 to get to this specific forum, though if you just want the National Novel Writing Month main page then it’s just www.nanowrimo.org.

I think I’ll go add that to my blogroll now…

Has anyone heard of nanowrimo?

The National Novel Writing Month is a big competition in which you have to write a 50,000 word story in ONE MONTH. I want to do it, but it seems a bit difficult seeing as a) I have a short attention span, b) I would have to write it all by hand, and c) it’s close to half over already. Maybe I’ll do it next year.

I was looking at forums on it, and there was one called; You know you’re writing literature when… and then it followed with many posts by different people on how to tell if you’re writing lit. Some of the posts I saw were;

• When you write a story about a girl writing a story in which you are the main character.
• When you explain what the story is about, and your friends ask “Alright… But what actually happens in it?”
• When the narrator dies
• You look at the notes for the “plotting” phase of Nanowrimo and you suddenly realize what seemed like a credible artistic plot in your head written on paper looks like the rantings of a disturbed mind.
• You know you’re writing Lit Fiction when the reader knows everything about your character except for how they look.
• You’re tempted to use your own therapy sessions to delve deeper into the neuroses of your characters.
• You’re 20,000 words into the story and none of the characters actually have names yet.

And so on and so forth. A couple of people on Syn radio were also arguing about how basically, Literature Fiction is Angst. They sounded so surprised about it that I laughed. But it’s so obscure, and so filled with symbols that don’t symbolise anything, and so… angsty–full of meaningless existences and such–that I thought it was plainly obvious. Ah well.

Did anyone like my story? “The Red Dog”. I was doing a writing activity in which we had to create a sense of menace as a story went on. I don’t really think I succeeded. I wrote another one that I lost in which I changed a girl with a scraped elbow into a girl bleeding to death because someone ripped her eye out. It was really twisted (as in, super twisted. I’m worry for my sanity) but I loved the way it turned out because I’d written it so well (if I do say so myself).

Someone comment me! Pleease.