One Thing at a Time

I have a lot of hobbies. Dance, writing, crocheting, drawing, guitar, singing, writing songs, blogging (fail), and I quite enjoy people watching. Writing, writing songs, and blogging can't happen at the same time, it seems. I go in phases. Lately, my story writing has been really productive. For my latest story, I only need to write one more chapter to break my amount of chapter record of... well... six. And I've had a lot of good ideas lately and characters whom I love. I mean love in the real sense of the word, I think, because if they were real humans, I would seriously love them. They're also cooler than me, so I would facebook stalk them and stuff until they complied and became my friend--in real life, not on facebook. Though, they can be my friends there, too.
Because I've been working so hard on that, I haven't written a song in two months. Which is sad because I'm getting sick of my "No Slip Soul" ringtone. I find that every song I attempt to write has common themes: sunshine, moonbeams, rainbows, prisms, Roy G. Biv, and is either in the key of D, C, or G. Though I started one in E that was pretty good.
Lastly, blogging! Textual blogging is fun and all, but it would be funner (I'm aware that "funner" is not a word) to video blog. But I don't have a youtube account or decent camera. Bummer. I'm gonna go do  something else now. This was short. Bye.

Sugar Free Poison

Other than something that sounds like a cool name for a dog, what is aspartame? Sugar free poison.

I'm serious, which is a rare occurence, believe me. If you see something labled "sugar free" they may as well be saying "deadly, proceed with caution".

Am I exaggerating? Hardly. A lot of countries have prohibited the use of the artificial sweetener. I have no idea why the U.S. has bothered to keep it around.

This ingredient is prominent in diet pop. Which is all around bad news. It's taking pop (chemicals, sugar, and carbonation) and substituting the sugar with evil.

Diet pop drinkers tend to drink it because of things like watching their weight, diabetes, avoiding sugar, or some reason that is not on my nifty little list. But get this: effects of aspartame include gradual weight gain, aspartame addiction, craving for sweets, loss of control of diabetes, and other nasty stuff.

So as you can see, this does more harm than good. A lot more harm.

I encourage you to look this up. I did after hearing about it, and I learned a lot. Is the damage really worth that guilt-free satisfied craving? When you look it up, check out all of the side effects. You'll probably want to write a blog post warning people too.

On a lighter note: I have an awesome fairy coloring book that I am addicted to coloring in. Is it an unhealthy addiction? We'll see! So far it just gives me something to do during the American Idol commercials.

-Aurora B.

Delightfully Awkward

We've all seen comments like this on facebook, conversation, or in  whatever else:  "that awkward moment when..." which is then followed by something that really isn't all that awkward. Here is the real definition from dictionary.com:

awk·ward

   /ˈɔkwərd/ Show Spelled[awk-werd] 

adjective

1..lacking skill or dexterity; clumsy. 

2. lacking grace or ease in movement: an awkward gesture; an awkward dancer.

3. lacking social graces or manners: a simple, awkward frontiersman.

4. not well planned or designed for easy or effective use: an awkward instrument; an awkward method.

5. requiring caution; somewhat hazardous; dangerous: an awkward turn in the road.

EXPAND

6. hard to deal with; difficult; requiring skill, tact, or the like: an awkward situation; an awkward customer.

7. embarrassing or inconvenient; caused by lack of social grace: an awkward moment

8. Obsolete . untoward; perverse.

So when you go to say "that awkward moment", make sure it really is "an awkward moment". If you don't, it really will be awkward because the learned people around you will think you are  "lacking is skill or dexterity; clumsy" in matters of speech and so forth.

I would say that I am an awkward person. I would say I fit 2,  sort of 3, and 7 of the above definition. I was thinking last night, "why do I struggle with a silly little thing like natural conversation, especially when I write so much?" I then realized, almost every character I have ever enjoyed was, like me, delightfully awkward. They didn't bother to fit in with normal speech and everyday conversation, so they made it their own original way to speak. The characters who were good with natural conversation had a tendency to be a little more high-strung, rude, exclusive, etc.. I guess I  was subconsciously proud of my awkwardness. Either that or I was trying to justify it.

Being delightfully awkward means you roll with things well, don't question the  bizarre, say things that are insightful, but really random and out of place. It means other things, too, but this was the list that immediately came to mind.

Here's an example of some delightfully awkward characters. I have better examples on my own computer, but this was all that was on google documents. Maybe I'll give a better example someday:

JOLENE

Happy someone in the world's birthday, by the way.

CHARLIE

What?

JOLENE

Someone in the world had a birthday. Actually, I bet a lot of people did... Yay!

Summer looks up at Jolene with a thoughtful expression.

SUMMER

I wonder if certain days have a higher average of birthdays than others.

JOLENE

I bet they do. It seems like an oddly large number of people were born in February or on December 28th.

ALEX

Were you?

JOLENE

No, man. I'm October. I've told you that like, four times now.

ALEX

Sorry.

JOLENE

That's okay. I forgot your birthday too.

There you go. Those are my thoughts on "awkward".

--Aurora B.

No Slip Soul

I have debated with myself about what to write about. I have had no really good ideas, so I'm going to post this epic song I wrote called No Slip Soul. It's a play on words because the song is about socks. The chords are still there because I was too lazy to delete them for blogging purposes. So there. Please enjoy the song.

Play DGA softly

Spoken Intro:

This is a song... about something very dear to me... Well at least... Dear to my feet...

Been there for me since I can remember... Wear 'em a lot right around December

(Tempo Picks Up)

Chorus:

 D            G    Em        A

Oh-h-h-h  no slip sole

D            G     Em       A

Oh-h-h-h  warm toes

D                  G      Em      A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    OH YEAH

D                G         Em       A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D                 G         Em      A

Verse One:

D                 G                    A

Cold winter's day with no heat

D                      G                 A

I started losing feeling in my feet

D                   G        Em             A

My toes were blue so I sought ou-u-ut 

D         G                             A

The very thing this song's about

Chorus:

D        G    Em        A

Oh-h-h-h  no slip sole

D        G     Em       A

Oh-h-h-h  warm toes

D                  G      Em      A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    OH YEAH

D                G         Em       A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D G Em A

Verse Two:

D                   G              A

Sliding on the hardwood floor

D                           G            A

'Cause my feet don't stick to it anymore

D                  G           Em                               A 

Having a barrier between my foot and shoe rocks

               D                   G                  A

Where would the world be without socks?

Chorus:

D            G    Em        A

Oh-h-h-h  no slip sole

D            G     Em       A

Oh-h-h-h  warm toes

D                  G      Em      A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    OH YEAH

D                G         Em       A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D               G    Em      A

Oh- h- h- h   Oh -h -h 

D            G     Em       A

Oh- h- h- h    Oh- h- h 

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    MEATLOAF!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    WHAT!?

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    I SAY MEATLOAF!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    SOAP

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D                 G        Em      A    

Da da da da da da    OH YEAH!

D             G

Oh-h-h-h    (x3)

D        G    Em          A

Oh-h-h-h   no slip sole

D         G    Em          A

Oh-h-h-h   warm toes

D            G

Oh-h-h-h   (x3)

D             G

Oh-h-h-h    

D             G    Em          A

Da da da da da da    SOCKS!

D             G    Em          A

Da da da da da da    OH YEAH!

D  G Em  A

D               G

Oh-h-h-h..... 

D

Socks.

It sounds even better when it's out loud. So if you're really special and I actually know you, maybe someday if you ask nicely I will sing for you. 

The end.

Knee Socks, Narwhals, College Ruled Notebooks, Et Cetera 2.0

This is Knee Socks, Narwhals, College Ruled Notebooks, Et Cetera 2.0.

I was looking back at the first version, back when it was the only ever version, and I was not happy with it. It had no structure or plan, and that irked me.

I thought about sharing it with others outside of the three people I had already shared it with and realized that I wouldn't really want to show it to a whole lot of people. It seemed kind of sloppy and awkward. Though, I will admit to being a little awkward in real life. The people who were already readers knew me pretty darn well and were familiar with the way my brain worked, so there was no emarrassment when I showed them. It was already to late to redeem myself. :P I wanted to share it with more people, but I wasn't comfortable doing so.

Since I was unhappy with the former version of the blog, I deleted the posts and decided to start anew. Now the posts will be better written, more thought out, and more awesome. The new posts will be on a schedule (though I might change my mind. I tend to do that). I want to give myself a deadline to see if I will work better under pressure and end up with more-- and better-- writing. Or I could freak out from the pressure and die... or something like that.

I'm thinking a story once a month or every two weeks on Friday and a post once or twice a week-ish. You know, provided I don't die from the pressure (this is where you silently laugh to yourself because I'm really funny).

So that's it for now. Hopefully I will come up with some clever thing to write about soon.

Don't choke on your toothpaste,

-Aurora B.

P.S. Did I mention that I enjoy ending with bizarre little things like "don't choke on your toothpaste"? Yeah, that's going to be there for every post. It makes me smile.