May 6, 2011

Friday Fragments

Haha, just kind of disappeared again this week. Sorry about that. I have no real excuse except I was either out doing stuff or reading stuff or writing stuff. So yeah.

1) Here's an awesome thing of the day from Letters of Note about libraries. You can get the full context at their blog, but here are a couple of the letters:



I love that Dr. Seuss' letter is written in crayon. There are also letters from EB White and Hardie Gramatky which are really interesting.

2) So it's Mother's Day on Sunday. Most people get their mothers some kind of plant life... but not for my mother. You see, she kills every plant she touches. I wrote a poem about it last year. She wasn't amused.

3) Wednesday night at youth group, there was a conspiracy to saran-wrap my friend Joe's car. It was amazing.


4) School starts again on Monday. This semester I'm taking:
Communication Inquiry (which I recently learned is basically how to do research)
Piano Class I
New Play Project (which will be super awesome)
Group Problem Solving
None of the classes sound particularly difficult (except maybe piano class...), though NPP will probably present its own challenges. Still, I'm looking forward to it.

Have a good weekend, everybody! And if you're a mom, happy Mother's Day!

May 2, 2011

Top Ten Tearjerkers

...In any given media. Not in any particular order. Why? Because.

Spoilers ahead, of course.

1) (To give a little context- the little boy with the gas mask had died, but he'd been brought back wrong so that the mask was part of his face. Also, this takes place during WWII.)



"Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"

2) Married Life - Up
(To be fair, certain moments of nearly every Pixar movie does this, but this is particularly notable because it happened within the first twenty minutes of the movie.)



3) A Series of Unfortunate Events... *sigh* there are just so many, especially in the last few books. The part that really got me was this... (MAJOR spoilers ahead!)

"'The night has a thousand eyes,'" Kit said hoarsely, and lifted her head to face the villain. The Baudelaires could tell by her voice that she was reciting the words of someone else. "'And the day but one; yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.'"
Count Olaf gave Kit a faint smile. "You're not the only one who can recite the words of our associates," he said, and then gazed out at the sea. The afternoon was nearly over, and soon the island would be covered in darkness. "'Man hands on misery to man,'" the villain said. "'It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can--'" Here he coughed, a ghastly sound, and his hands clutched his chest. "'And don't have any kids yourself,'" he finished, and uttered a short, sharp laugh. Then the villain's story came to an end. Olaf lay back on the sand, far from the treachery of the world, and the children stood on the beach and stared into his face. His eyes shone brightly, and his mouth opened as if he wanted to tell them something, but the Baudelaire orphans never heard Count Olaf say another word.

4) Of Mice and Men - at the very beginning, you have the guys like us speech.
"But not like us. Because-"
"Because I got you an'-"
"An' I got you."
(And, of course, the ending...)

5) Harry Potter, where to start. Let's just say Harry's entire existence until the epilogue and call it a day. Especially when he starts thinking that everybody's abandoned him (that is, at the start of almost every book.)
Also, this.
"After all this time?"
"Always."

6) A Very Potter Musical: (and don't get me started on the sequel)
Quirrell: "You came back?"
Voldemort: "I came home."

7) The Hunger Games
Fhhhh. This is harder than I thought it would be. Why are top ten lists so difficult. Remind me that I shouldn't do this again. I guess I'll go with the heartwarming one since this list is mostly comprised of depressing ones at the moment.
"You love me. Real or not real?"

8) Lord of the Rings (the book)
"I am glad that you are here with me, Sam. Here, at the end of all things."

9) MPSA- Homestuck (had to get a webcomic in there)
Heartwarming: [S] John: Reunite with your loving wife and daughter.
Depressing: The most recent one since there are just... so... many.
TG: im not a hero 
TG: my bro was
TG: john is
TG: im not

And finally, a web original poem that's heartwarming and depressing at once.
10) "the bluest eyes you'll ever see, and hair so brown with power. when she left, i talked with her, and called her my sunflower."

OK! Now for something cheery!

I still have no idea why I was compelled to make this list. This was a terrible idea.

May 1, 2011

Sunday Scraps

...Because I was really busy on Friday and Saturday. Heh, sorry.

1) School-wise... exams went fine. Don't really care how I did, just happy the semester is over. :)

2) This book trailer for Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow is pretty brilliant. It reminds me a lot of A Series of Unfortunate Events because there is such... joy in its complete and utter misery (just watch the video, it'll make sense). Also, I'm really excited for this book because I've been watching Katy Towell's flash movies for six years. SO YEAH.
(The video won't embed, so you actually have to follow the link. And yeah, you should definitely watch her short films. They're marvelously dark.)

3) You know you might be a little sleep-deprived when...
...you're writing in a notebook, and when you hit a bump in the story, you start hitting the notebook against the table and yell "Move, story, moooove!"...
...you refer to your handwriting as font...
...and you forget that you can kind of draw cows.
It is a little embarrassing that all three of these things happened within an hour.