To: Every Boy Ever

First off, read this article about Every Girl Ever. This blog post won't make much sense otherwise!

Hi, every boy ever! Thanks for writing that article about our date. It really shows how much you understand women. It was really helpful to me; I hadn't realised what a vapid, talkative, irrational bitch I was until you pointed it out! Still, us women are all crazy, as you told me yourself, so I guess it can't be helped.

Anyway, about that date. Sorry I spent so long in the bathroom; there's nothing like a slightly disappointed look from your date to bolster your self-esteem. I was trying to make myself pretty enough to meet your high standards. Well, they're obviously high, because when you saw that photo of my friends, you called Beth (who, by the way, has a body I would die for) "the fat one." You're so funny! With that kind of sensitivity, you must be a hit with the ladies.

I would have done the hair and makeup stuff sooner, obviously, but I was busy having a life of my own that didn't involve you. Can you believe that? I know for next time not to be so rude!

But hey, I know you're really a gentleman, right? You opened the car door for me! And the smug, self-righteous look you gave as you did it was just so cute!

Did I talk too much over dinner? Oh jeez, I'm sorry. I do that. Especially when my date is staring silently out the window with his head on his hand. If I'd known in advance that you didn't care about my job, or my family, or me, I could have saved us both a lot of time!

Still, wasn't it great that we bumped into my friends? It spared us from spending any more time alone together in awkward silence, even though that was SO exciting!

It's such a shame that you didn't hit it off with Christine; that would have saved me a lot of trouble. I don't like her that much, but I still felt bad about leaving you there with her. I thought maybe you just didn't like me, and that you were a nice enough guy with other people. Guess not! Still, at least I managed to have some fun while you weren't around!

Thanks for the ride home. It was really nice of you, although I did seriously consider making the three mile walk alone rather than endure the painful silence of your hatemobile. I feel bad for misleading you into thinking that we were going to have sex. For some reason, nobody ever told me that a date constitutes a legally binding contract!

Anyway, maybe I'll see you around, or maybe I'll work very damn hard to make sure that never happens. Also, you kiss like a fish.

Recommended blogs and flower pics

Yesterday, I went to a wedding. The wedding was unique and wonderful, and worthy of a better post than I can write today. so I hope you'll bear with me until I get the photos uploaded.

(On a related note, I want everyone in the photos to be able to find them easily; so after much consideration and sulking, I've decided that I may have to reactivate my Facebook account. SIGH.)

Until then, I thought it was time I wrote about a few of my fellow bloggers. There are some remarkably entertaining, intelligent people out there on the internet, and I fully intend to find all of them. Eventually.

Here, then, are a few blogs I read and enjoy.

1. It's no secret that Wil Wheaton is a fantastic writer, as well as a lovely chap. If you're even remotely interested in geek culture, gaming, writing, or just reading about the life of a strange normal bloke / internet celebrity, I really can't think of anywhere better to go. WWdN: In Exile
2. Meg Pickard* writes for the Guardian, takes wonderful photographs, and is endlessly fun to read. Her site, Meish.org, is also the home of the infamous anti-Valentine's cards.
3. I've only been reading Boobs, Injuries and Dr Pepper for a little while, but she's funny, and fascinating, and I fully expect to continue reading for a long while to come.
4. Innocent Loverboy is a sweet and sexy student who blogs about life, love, and the chaos that comes with it. Give his blog a looksee, and if you like it, tell him I sent you!

In the year since I wrote this post linking to other blogs*, I'm embarrassed to say that my reading list hasn't got much longer. This is where you come in. If you'd all be very kind, I'd like you to post your favourite blog in the comments section. For everyone who does me this favour, I'll click their name and take a look at their blog as well. It's only fair, right?

*Yes, Anna and Meg are related. Sisters. And it does show in their writing styles, and the things they get irritated by; which I think is very charming.

Facebook Suicide

I'm sure you've heard it before. The bitter, jaded rants from those who have tried facebook - or those who haven't, and don't intend to, thankyouverymuch. I'm sure my reasons for tearing down the wall are common to many others, but nonetheless I thought I'd share the reasons why I jumped on the noncomformist bandwagon.*

1. It is just like myspace. No, don't protest. I know you've turned 18 now, and thus rejected the colourful background and musical / glittery baggage of MySpace or (heaven help us) Bebo, but it's the old game in a new dress.**
2. The temptation to go facebook-stalking proved to be just too much for me sometimes. As the old saying goes, "What has been seen cannot be unseen" - and now that includes seeing my good friends in wedding gowns and fairy dresses, which might have been less aberrant had they bothered to shave the beards off.
3. The useless apps drive me to distraction! I know the worst facebook plagues - the zombies, pirates, vampires - have passed. I am no longer asked why I'm "walking everywhere on facebook," which let me tell you is a blessed relief because it made ABSOLUTELY NO BLEEDIN' SENSE. But every day there's a new quiz to ascertain which member of the Hungarian royal family I am. Or someone sends me seeds to start my own facebook cabbage patch. Or I'm invited to a group proposing that we enforce old ladies to wear green hats. NO, NO, and NO.
4. My 'friends' are not my friends. Some of them never spoke to me once at school. Some of them, I honestly don't remember at all, leading to much embarrassment on my part when I give the 'how do you know this person' details a try. I considered going through and deleting the not-really-friends one by one, but I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and quite honestly my friend-friends can contact me anyway.
5. In fact, anyone can contact me anyway, given a bit of effort. If they can't be bothered to put the effort in, maybe I'm not that fussed about seeing them! Think of it like a captcha requirement on a blog post. It cuts down the noise-to-signal ratio.
6. I miss getting emails. Don't you miss getting emails? Not subscriptions, or spam mail, or notifications, but honest to goodness emails from a person who wants to say things to you. Those were the days...
7. Privacy concerns. Amidst all the hubbub about the Government storing and accessing my information, it seems like as good a time as any to bow out. So that's what I've done.

Has anyone else killed off a social networking profile? I recently put a bullet in my myspace, and I let bebo drift into the dark long ago, but facebook was the hardest cord to cut by a long shot.

*Oxymoron? WHY YES!
**Mixing metaphors for your pleasure.

Atakachik!

Right, only a brief post to tell you all about the new Atakachik game on Newgrounds! I say new because I happen to know it was uploaded mere hours ago. It's the latest creative effort from the legendary my boyfriend and his mate, and as an early alpha tester, I can vouch for its awesomeness!

Stream of consciousness

I tell you what, you know you're a creative type when you almost wish you could get your heart broken just for the kickass poetry / music / art you'd get out of it.

It's been a long time since I seriously put out creative content regularly. I don't count these blog posts because, if I'm brutally honest, I put less effort into these than I would a poem or a picture. I guess that's one of the drawbacks of finding writing easy; it makes you lazy.

The past couple of nights, I've been staying up far later than I should wishing that somebody in particular was online. Somebody I've never met, and have nothing to say to. A sure sign of mental illness! He's... I guess, a blogger, and before that he was a youtuber, and I get the chance to chat with him every now and then about how things are going. I find him very exasperating, for reasons I won't go into here, and I have no idea why I suddenly feel like I need to hear from him.

Also, sheesh, how many times can you put "I" into a paragraph.

I used to have youtube vids up myself, actually. Only three or four. I found them today, having not watched them for a couple of years I guess, and it was really interesting to get a fresh look at myself. I could see how eager I was to please, to seem confident and interesting and fun. How much I wanted to look pretty and unique. It's interesting how deep-seated the need for approval is in some people. Aww, I told myself I wasn't going to do this, but: name-drop ahead: I was talking to Robert Webb on Twitter, and he seemed very aware of the fact that he seeks approval from everybody. He said it was the performer character-type, and I think I understand.

So here I am again, up at 3:22am, thinking too much about the wrong things instead of sleeping. I've got church in the morning and everything.

Awkwardness and Clones

Imagine a house full of animals. They don't know which of their housemates are predators and which are prey. The only possible way to survive is to hide from all of them, and to show no fear in the event of an encounter. If it sounds like a terrible reality TV show, I understand. But the fact is, this is sort of what my life has been like lately...

Since moving into this house last summer, my housemates and I haven't really... gelled. I like them, but we don't talk much, and it's led to this peculiarly uncomfortable situation...

Maybe I can explain better.

On the rare occasions that I leave my room, I don't expect to see anybody else. I avoid the communal areas as much possible, and they do the same. As a result, whenever one of us sees another, there's a brief moment of paralysed terror, like a rabbit in headlights. I try to get over it as quickly as I can, squeaking out a quick "hi" sound before they can realise that I was utterly stunned to see somebody else in my house.

(It's not like I'm not fully aware that I'm living with six other people. Intellectually, I know this to be true. It's just that when confronted with another person, I instantly want to run and hide in my room.)

I know it's not just me, either. I know because, occasionally, I'll hear a click of someone's bedroom door opening as I walk to one of the bathrooms, but I won't hear footsteps until I'm safely hidden away.

To be frank, explaining it now, it sounds ridiculous. I know it's ridiculous. Several times I've been tempted to say "It's ok, I know you're there and you know I'm here, let's all just stop this charade!" but I don't. I don't because doing so would mean admitting that I've been playing this ridiculous game for eight months.

It's as if the Emperor has been strutting around naked for so long, that to admit to feeling the wind in his nethers is simply unthinkable. No, he must simply soldier on, and hope that he dies before anybody points out his nudity.

And, taking a leaf from the venerable Emperor's book, I am moving out in a few months anyway. Best to just pretend nothing unusual is going on. Best to keep my head down, and forage for food under cover of darkness.

Y'know, I'm so glad I never told any of them about this blog... If you don't hear from me again, one of them found this, and I killed either them or myself or both. It would be the only honourable way out.

In other news, I recently got sent some photos a friend and I took months ago... lookit! It's me, and me, and me!

An announcement

I can't express in words how grateful I am to everyone who helped me out with the BlogInterviewer competition. It means more to me than you could possibly know that I've made money from my writing for the first time in my life!

When I started this blog 3 and a half years ago, I envisaged it as little more than a diary; expecting maybe 5 readers, and really not knowing how long I'd keep at it for. One domain name purchase and complete design overhaul later, I can honestly say that Almost Daily Exploits is something I'm truly proud of.

That said, there are limits to what I can achieve in this format; and after a lot of thought, I've decided to take the blog down. I considered just stopping blogging, but I feel like it makes a much stronger statement if I remove it altogether. I dwell on the past too much; I don't really need almost four years of accumulated memories weighing me down.

So, I'm moving onwards to bigger things; and maybe someday soon, you'll see my name in print! Best of luck to you all, and thanks once again for your encouragement and support.

Anna x x

Sparkles and unicorns

Oh no, they be stealin my idea!

Well, not technically my idea. Although how close it is to my website design is once again making me desperately rethink this look.

See, the problem is, I learned enough CSS and HTML to get this layout in place, and then I forgot most of it. QUANDARY. Maybe when my boyfriend's less busy I'll get him to lend a hand...


CLICK THE BUTTON

DO IT

CLICK IT AGAIN

Secret places

I had a pretty good childhood. My family got on okay, and I lived on an island with fields and beaches and forests... life treated me well. But there was something missing from my youth, something that I've always longed for - I knew, as so many children do, that there are supposed to be secret rooms.

I'm sure you know what I mean. We've all read the books, haven't we? The ones where a tapestry conceals a hallway, or moss hides a door. Narnia's wardrobe, Harry Potter's platform 9¾... fiction is littered with secret doorways to unusual places.

It even happens in real life - there's Anne Frank's bookshelf; Queen Victoria's wardrobe in Osbourne House that leads into other rooms. I remember going into her room on a school trip as a child and being amazed that the Queen of England would employ such subterfuge. If I was queen, I would do the same.

Why have I never had a secret room?!

It's what I longed for when I shared my room with two other sisters, and it's still the most common dream I have. I dream of being somewhere familiar - my home, my church, my school - and finding unexpected passages, or a gap in a fence, or a big wall hanging beyond which lies a secret space that nobody knows about but me. I can't count the number of times I've had this dream. It used to be flying, but now I dream - sometimes as often as five times a week - of these secret places.

Perhaps that explains my love of exploring.

It certainly explains my love of Ben "Yatzhee" Croshaw's games; I've only played one so far, but secret rooms feature heavily. OH MY GOSH SEAMLESS LINK! Maybe some of you have seen his amazing game reviews (I don't care about gaming, but watch his reviews obsessively), but I want to recommend his own games. They're honest-to-goodness, point-and-click, pixel-art masterpieces. You can find them linked at the top of his site. (Where it says The Best Stuff.) The links will go, as ever, on the left.

Also, just for fun, I made a picture of myself in the style of Jeph Jacques (artist and author of the epic Questionable Content). What do you think?

Things what I have drawed

I was always a bit of a prodigy at drawing. As far as I can remember, I was the first person in my class to realise that faces don't consist of two blue dots and a smiley red line. I recall making a rather less-than-spectacular attempt at perspective at the tender age of 7 (prompting my friend to ask me why the bath in the picture was in the ground), and I distinctly remember someone once asked me to draw a well for them.

So with all this evidence of my artistic genius, it might be hard to imagine that there are some areas in which I struggle. I know! Doesn't make sense, does it! Me, Anna, being less than amazing at something!

No, actually, I want to be serious here because it's a great source of frustration for me. I can't draw men.

Women I can draw; I have a lot of fun drawing women, and I can see definite improvement when I practise a lot; but when it comes to the unfairer sex (sorry?), I just can't seem to get it right.

I blame my 'drawing manga' book. I bought it a few years back out of curiosity, and found out that it's actually astonishingly fun to draw girls! They have curves, in places! But when it comes to the strong, sexy, roughly triangular torso of an adult male, I have no helpful book, and I can't trace photos of myself. Rendering me helpless. And hopeless.







See? Look! WHAT is that about! The moment I decide to draw a man, I lose 30 IQ points and develop the drawing ability of an injured chimp. It's most upsetting. It's been this way for years now. Every now and then I'll pick up a pencil or plug in my wacom tablet, and produce something that I want to delete straight away for fear it might infect all my other pictures with The Crap.

Interesting thing of the day: UK types, you might have heard that Robert Webb (aka 'him off Peep Show') won Comic Relief's celebrity dance competition. This is the video of his winning performance, and I'm sure you'll agree that... uh... something.

I don't know if you can watch that video in America or elsewhere. Not that that matters, as you probably don't know who Robert Webb is. Or you might, I guess. I'm rambling.

REMINDER: Please vote me up again! The competition's hotting up!

EDIT: I'd also like to recommend ablog to you all: GavD's Wrestles with Life. He's a fantastic writer, and his latest post about the causes of ridicularity poses some interesting points.