113
I wrote this for the Alchera project.
Compose a journal entry for every day of the two-month project period. Restrict yourself to exactly 113 words.
No more, no less (the word count does not include the title for your
entry). One more restriction: no references, whatsoever, to yourself.
This is an un-selfish, ego-busting project. You can talk about things
you've seen, observed, whatever, but no "I," no "me," and definitely no
mentioning your name (except when scribing it to your entry in a manner
of authorship). Each member is allowed five missed entry days.
Although, I encourage to miss no more than three.
04 April 2002
Rearranging furniture is a great way to relieve stress. You get to
shove things around (and they make a satisfying thump noise if you
shove too hard and knock them over), and when anyone who wasn’t there
while you were moving them walks in, you get to confuse them.
Matthew has put his bed behind his door (so the light switch can only
be reached by his feet and anyone trying to wake him up will smack him
in the head with the door), his chest of drawers in the middle of the
room, sideways on to the window, his stereo blocks any access for
anyone wishing to open his curtains… it’s fantastic.
05 April 2002
Today, Lisa and Matthew have gone to see Monsters, Inc. A very funny
film, yes, but a bit too sickeningly sweet in places. The minifilm with
the birds shown beforehand was a lot better.
Right from the first few seconds it was obvious exactly what was going
to happen – the small birds were going to push the big one off the
wire, and then they’d all be pinged into the air. And that is exactly
what happened. The blue midgets pecked at his clawed feet until he fell
the few inches to the ground, and they lost all their feathers. It was
completely and utterly predictable.
But it was still very, very funny.
06 April 2002
Things which were said at the Leaping Hare 2002 (a Pagan conference which happened today):
The Maoris are one of the few 'primitive' tribes to traditionally allow
divorce, as their creation myth involves the divorce of their sky god
and earth goddess.
Druids are cool.
At one point after James was monarch instead of Elizabeth I, 70% of all witnesses to the witchcraft trials were young children.
Once, in Blomberg, 300 people were burned as witches in the town
square. Afterwards, houses half a mile down wind had a half-inch layer
of fat covering them.
Woad is gross. For it to work, you have to get a guy to urinate on it first.
07 April 2002
One of the Druid alphabets (known as Oghams) had every letter named for
a different type of tree, and so in writing a leaf taken from each tree
could be used to represent each letter that was needed. On those
occasions when writing needed to be recorded, the leaves could be
threaded onto a length of string to form a sort of ‘book’ (and there
were ‘librarians’ whose job was to keep the leaves in order and replace
those which needed it), and when somebody wished to read it they walked
along its length, looking at every leaf.
Have you ever wondered where the old expression ‘to leaf through a book’ came from?
08 April 2002
Isn’t it strange how the years seem to go by much quicker as you get
older? It must be some kind of time warp, because a year can seem to
have gone past in a week, but the year before that still seems a
century ago, and how can that make sense?
Another bizarre thing is that extremes of weather can change the speed
of the day. Thunderstorms make a lesson seem like nothing, but on those
occasions when it is far too hot, a minute is like a lifetime of
torture if you’re in a physics lesson.
Perhaps if scientist could harness this mysterious power, time travel would become possible at last!
09 April 2002
Space Corps Test-Pilot Ace Rimmer is a truly annoying character, and
also has the world’s most unintentionally hilarious name. For those who
haven’t heard of him, he’s a character in Red Dwarf,
a bizarre but very amusing British comedy-scifi tv programme. He first
appears in the episode entitled “Dimension Jump” as a parallel-universe
version of the Rimmer we know and love, and proceeds to be a complete
smeghead and make Rimmer feel bad for the rest of the half-hour. And
what is with his whole “Smoke me a kipper” thing? Granted, he’s funny.
But everyone’s laughing at him, not with him. And he has a quiff, which
is just a sin. Damn fool.
10 April 2002
Today’s entry is about the idiocy of whoever wrote the French oral
questions which the current Lower Sixth have been given to learn. If
somebody asked you “If you were the Minister for Education, what would
you do to encourage young people to have a more positive view towards
Europe?”, could you have thought of an answer? An answer, in fact,
which you must be capable of translating into French?
How about “According to you, are the French overly concerned about
their health?” or “The environment is a very large topic. Which section
of it particularly interests you?”
It’s just not possible. And this is worth 35% of the mark for this year?
11 April 2002
What is the sound of one hand clapping? Cl- or –ap? Or something else entirely?
If a tree fell in the forest when there was noone there to hear it, would it really make a sound?
Is there really treasure at the end of the rainbow?
Why is it so impossible to find the end of the sellotape?
Where did all the flowers go (long time passing… ha)?
What is the meaning of life (and not forty two)?
How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
What’s the time, Mr Wolf?
Would you like some toast?
And most importantly, does anyone really care about any of this?
12 April 2002
Here are some random, vaguely astronomy-ish facts for your reading pleasure, taken from today’s General Studies lesson.
Jupiter has many moons (maybe about nine?), including: Io (the home of Rimmer!), Callisto, Ganymede and Europa.
The furthest away thing that can be seen with the naked eye is
Andromeda, which is over two and a half million light years away
(really, really far).
Crab nebulae don’t even remotely look like a crab, but there you go.
There’s a really huge telescope, called the VBT. Which stands, imaginatively, for the Very Big Telescope.
Apparently we should actually be calling quasars ‘quasi-stellar
objects’. Because they look kind of like stars, but they actually
aren’t. Or something.
13 April 2002
Today you can have a joke.
There was this man, right, and he was in his car, driving along.
Suddenly, his mobile rang. It was his boss, informing him that he’d
been promoted.
“Oh, good,” he thought, and kept driving. A few minutes later, the boss
phoned him again. "You've been promoted again," he said. “Wow!” thought
the man, and kept driving.
The third time that the boss rang, he told the man he’d just been made
managing director. He was so surprised, that he drove into a tree.
A policeman came up and asked "What happened to you?"
And the man replied "I careered off the road."
Wasn’t that just a hoot?
14 April 2002
Ali G Indahouse is such a hilarious film. Really. Go and see it now
(well, if you live in Britain. If not it probably isn’t shown for you,
and you probably don’t know who he is anyway).
Especially the bit with the “camouflage”. Oh, so well hidden in bright orange and fluorescent pink. Ha!
And the human chain to blow up the safe was both cute and funny also.
“Trust me, I got a D in Physics”… that was Ricky C, maybe? Hilarious.
The video is definitely going on the shopping list… well worth the £3.90 ticket, a hoot of a film like that.
Go and see it, you know you want to…
15 April 2002
Today was very boring, compared to most other days as a whole. It was
shorter, for one – the last lesson (in this case Physics) finished at
half two instead of half three.
Lisa was ill today, and so the purple people (who will just be getting
to Head Street around now, probably) will have to survive with out a
singe Bob. Poor them… how will they survive?
In other news, it is now sufficiently late in the year for the lawnmower men to have started appearing again.
Which is nice, because they are good luck. And good luck is always useful.
Hmm… there aren’t quite enough words in this entry yet, are there?
16 April 2002
“Idoru” (idol or popstar, probably?) by William Gibson is a seriously
weird book. Once it has been ticked off the ‘read’ list, there should
be a review in c+. So far it’s quite confusing, and if the reader was
asked what it was about the answer would probably have to be ‘um…’.
What’s happened so far: well, the main characters have been introduced,
and one of them (Chia McKenzie) has made her way to Tokyo from Seattle.
Also, there’s some conspiracy about a band called Lo/Rez, and a woman
who was having an affair with a celebrity who is now dead. Once the
plot becomes more evident, a less vague analysis may appear.
17 April 2002
Aren’t the Muppets completely fabulous?
Don’t they rock? Why yes, they do.
It’s impossible to have a favourite one, you know. Anyone you ask
‘Which is your favourite muppet?” will go on to list as many of them as
they can remember.
Here goes:
Kermit, Miss Piggy, Rowlf, Scooter, Fozzie, the Swedish Chef, Rizzo,
Gonzo, Yolanda, Dr Teeth, Zoot, Janice, Beauregarde, Lips, Animal, um…
Camilla, Bert and Ernie (do they count?), Oscar the Grouch, Pepe. Hmm.
Sam Eagle. Statler and Waldorf. Robin, Kermit’s nephew. Oh, and Lew
Zealand, yes?
There are definitely a lot more than that. The Fraggles, for example.
Just a small sampling for your… uh… delectation? Is that a word?
18 April 2002
The Falkirk wheel is so cool.
“Designed to reconnect the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals and sited
in a natural open amphitheatre at Rough Castle in Falkirk, this
remarkable and elegant mechanical marvel is the only rotating boatlift
in the world and truly one of a kind.”
It’s like a lock, only way more entertaining. Kind of a lock/big wheel hybrid.
It even has a dot-com of its very own. Falkirk-wheel.com
Which has a cool count-down thingy, which says it opens in 13 days.
It’s being opened by the Queen and everything, way impressive. And
there’s a “Falkirk Wheel Experience”, whatever that may be. It sounds
fun anyway.
Definitely a cool thing.
19 April 2002
Today is my birthday. Not talking about myself is not going to happen.
20 April 2002
The Dark Crystal is such a great film.
The evil Skeksis and the strangely hippified Mystics are cool – although the bit at the beginning, with the Emperor… bleh.
And the Trial by Stone thing was just confusing.
Matthew kept ruining the dramatic effect by imitating the Chancellor with his demented whimpering. But it was still cool.
Another DVD in the collection is The Best of the Muppets (or something like that), which also rocks.
The Mana Mana song in particular.
And edible paperclips, Pigs in Space… hmm.
The Muppets have been over-mentioned already, yes?
Never mind. They are cool, so can be mentioned over and over.
Mana Mana (doo doo doodoodoo), etc. etc.
21 April 2002
Whenever the Bob family do anything, anywhere, ever, their conversation
always ends up revolving around food. It’s one of the immutable laws of
the universe. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, never mix
whites with colours, and the Bob’s will always talk about food if you
leave them long enough.
It tends to happen more quickly if they are actually eating at the time, obviously.
One Bob will give another Bob a recipe, several Bobs will declaim their
hatred for Gary Rhodes’ habit of piling everything up into a, the whole
Bob clan will collectively reminisce about a time when they all had a
really nice lunch together…
It’s getting repetitive.
22 April 2002
Did anyone else see Blackadder Back and Forth last night? It was so, so
funny, but then Blackadder always is. And the time machine was very
Starbucket. Besides the added bonus of Hugh Laurie (who is yummy) there
was much hilarity. Blackadder beat up Shakespeare (that's for every boy
and girl for the next four hundred years!), and tried to explain Tesco
bonus points to Queen Elizabeth I (Okay, imagine a market times ten. A
super-market, as it were.) And Rik Mayall was in it. Who is also yummy.
He was playing Robin Hood. So it was generally quite fabulous.
The quotes above might not be exactly right, but it’s the gist, okay?
23 April 2002
Hmm. A day of no ideas for things to write for Alchera. For today is
boring. Don't you hate being bored? Isn't it just so... dull? Well,
that's probably the point. How many words is this so far? Almost forty.
Hmm. Someone just streaked on the snooker that Matthew is (for some reason) watching. How incredibly odd.
No, still boring.
Um...
This is probably not so exciting for you lot to read either, huh? 75, by the way.
113 minus 81 is 32.
Ooh, Blogger Insider questions have just materialised. How completely
exciting. And then maths homework, unsurprisingly. Oh, the joy.
Only a very few more words to go. And the end. Sorry!
24 April 2002
This month of writing 113 words for Alchera each day is drawing to a
close, which is certainly a relief, as at present it makes a total of
three diary-like things to update daily. It's strangely reminiscent of
last years GCSE French and German Writing exams. "Describe a wonderful
party in your region. Write about 300 words." "What do you think about
school uniforms? 135-150 words." and other equally thrilling subjects.
Plus, of course, this week's Physics planning exercise. You know, the
one that's worth 2.5% of the final mark. That is supposed to have about
500 words.
Although none of these are exactly long, which is something, at least. All very thrilling.
25 April 2002
Aren't kao ani and those little icons just the cutest? Obviously,
waiting for them to load when there are billions on a page is really
irritating. So all the ones belonging to this site go on the same page.
Which you really should go and see, because they're so diddy. Here. Have a link to them.
Although the meaning of the word "kao ani" is a mystery so far... but
never mind. They're cute. The best one is the fourth one, which is
juggling.
In other news… the Bill is on. If you don’t know, it’s a programme
about the police. In London. It’s not incredibly interesting, really.
Or even at all, actually.
26 April 2002
So what do you think of the new layout on the blog part of this page?
The et ceteras (where you are now) haven’t been changed yet, but that
will happen at some point in the near future, hopefully. It’s quite
similar to the old, blue design (being that both were based on designs
from Firda’s CSS colouring books – link at the bottom next to the
copyright info), although more purple and more to the centre instead of
to the left. So… do you like it?
Also, the darling sib is watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which is a
truly bizarre programme. The characters are all very… American (which
makes sense, really, ya?).
27 April 2002
Today’s entry is au sujet de the Discworld Convention, which will take place in August of this year.
If you haven’t heard of Discworld:
a) You should have, it’s groovy.
b) It’s a series of books set on a flat, round planet on top of four
elephants on top of a turtle (or possibly a tortoise?), and it’s
hilarious.
The Convention should be much of the fun. There’s a ball wherein
everyone gets to dress up as a character, which sounds totally fun. In
fact the host of the ball is a vampyre (the Count De Magpyr) which
sounds also jolly.
Plus there should be multiple other, generally Disc-y things.
Completely way fun!
28 April 2002
My sincere apologies, but I have too much revision to do this today.
29 April 2002
Seeing as today was mostly incredibly uneventful, you’ll have to put up
with ramblings against today’s physics practical – a practice for the
actual practical exam which is worth 7.5% of the final mark for A Level
Physics students at CCHS.
Today’s hour-long exam involved bending bits of wire into equilateral
triangles (which is really not good for the fingers) and hanging them
off a pin, then pushing them and seeing how many oscillations per
second happened.
Oh, and then there was a bizarre formula/graph-drawing thing, which
apparently everyone got wrong judging by the wide variation of answers.
The point of all this was completely in-obvious (if that’s a word?), to
say the least.
30 April 2002
The people of the day are Gemma and Saffron. Gemma for her general fabulous lift-giving loveliness.
And Saffron because she is <voice tone=“squeaky”>cute</voice tone>
Saffron was a little baby girl who was on the (amazingly overcrowded)
bus today, eating a banana. She also played peek-a-boo and danced, and
waved goodbye to all the purploids. Which was of the cute also.
En plus, today is Bealtainne, which if you don’t know is a pagan festival. So… Happy Bealtainne!
But later on it will be parents’ evening, which is a bad thing.
Well, this is the very last bit of the last day’s Alchera-ing. It’s been fun, although incredibly frustrating at times.