I fail at life simulation games.

No, really.
http://games.the-n.com/games/avU/

So, you know how you try and set up certain relationships before you start? I had it all sorted: preppy couple, goth couple, cute indie couple, token gay guy, science chick, friend to everyone...

Yeah. That worked.

In a nutshell:
Prep girl is cheating on jock guy with emo guy, who is two-timing her with indie girl, who left indie guy after he cheated on her with nicey-nice girl but is now going out with science chick; meanwhile lesbian goth girl keeps taking indie girl on dates destined to fail, and as we speak science chick is on a date with gay guy.

No wonder my own love life is a failure, if I can't even sort the lives of pixellated characters!

EDIT: Since posting this blog, emo boy is now also with nice girl, as is jock guy - although he has ditched indie girl.
EDIT: And now all relationships have disintegrated but for prep girl and jock guy.

The media.

I'd never really given a thought to the way the media makes us view things or people, but I watched something today that really made me think about it.

Now I don't know if any of you have seen Orange UnsignedAct, but for those of you who don't know it's basically the credible version of an X Factor-style thing: the only rule is that artists must write and perform their OWN songs. Now, I recorded it to watch today, and one thing about it really annoyed me.

There's a young lad in the competition called Dan Scotty. He's very good, but they wanted them to do acoustic performances, which he really doesn't do and so left the competition. Okay, I was kind of sad that my favourite had gone out, but these things happen and it was a very close contest. The thing that really annoyed me, however, was how the show was edited. I saw Dan for the first time this summer, and he was a really nice, genuine guy, who was a little shy but very friendly. I had a really good night (despite getting tinnitus from standing too close to the speaker!), and it always makes things better when the person you've been to see is happy to stand around and chat afterwards. However, the clips used in the show were edited in such a way to make him look arrogant, selfish, and a generally unpleasant character. This could not be further from the truth, and it really wound me up that some bloke sat in an office somewhere thought he had the right to twist the public's conceptions of a person so shamelessly. If he really was that kind of person, then sure, but having met him and knowing that this is not true, I felt... well, I'm not really sure of the word. Violated? Disgusted?

It's the sort of thing I expect from the tabloids, but a low-key show aiming to find REAL talent? A low blow, that's for sure.

WARNING: ANNOYING QUIZ ALERT

Just thought I'd let you know: today's blog will be something of a rant, so I'm going to post this first, to get it out of my system and to give me time to organise my thoughts without sounding whiney. I will probably fail, but never mind. (:

01 What phone model do you have?
Nokia 7373.

02 What color is it?
Pink. 'Cause I'm cool (:

03 How much battery do you have left?
Well, the bar is full, but that means nothing!

04 How much memory do you have left?
Phone: 1.8MB/Card: 1.5MB.

05 How many songs do you have on your phone?
35.

06 How many pictures do you have?
33.

07 How many camera pictures do you have?
28.

08 How many messages do you have in your inbox?
235. I only recently started keeping them, though, so there would otherwise be WAAAY more!

09 What does your first message in your inbox say?
You can so tell its jared just by the eyes
(I believe that would be Coist watching Chapter 27.)

10 What does your 10th message in your inbox say?
Lmao, edward won!
('Cause Twilight kicks Harry Potter's ass XD)

11 What does your 50th message say?
On my way ive already seen 3 in the 5-7 range
(*sigh* Only one thing on that girl's mind XD)

12 What does your most recent message say?
Still friends methinks
(Obsessive freak.)

13 What does your first message in your outbox say?
There's nothing in there right now, 'cause the outbox on Nokias is weird.

14 What does your most recent sent text say?
well, that's better than nothing at least (: xxx ps you should get online, tbh xxx
(Incidentally, she was already online XD)

15 Who was your latest call off and when?
My dad, at twenty past seven last night when I was trying to straighten my hair.

16 Who did you call last and when?
My mother on Wednesday, 'cause I couldn't see her in the car park and thought she'd left me there. Yes, stupid, I know.

17 Who is your first contact?
Abi.

18 Who is your last contact?
I don't actually know to tell the truth. Someone from Last Man Down, but they didn't put their name on the email and I thought it rude to ask.

19 Who do you call/text the most?
Coist. Definitely.

20 Any numbers that have just appeared on there randomly?
No, but I'm about the only one out of my friends!

21 What's your ringtone?
Hadouken! - Crank It Up
(Yeah, I follow the instructions in lyrics. God help me with subliminal messages!)

22 Message tone?
Just the ordinary bleep, though it did used to be Relient K - Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care

23 Alarm?
It changes all the time, but right now it's Goot - We Could Love

24 What's your phone background?
This awesome picture I took of Sean Smith.

25 Screen saver?
Just a clock. Nothing interesting (:

It has come to my attention...

... that my blogs are not very interesting. I apologise for this, but the fact is, I don't have a very interesting life. I also only really get to post once or twice a week, as I have some kind of weird anxiety that means I refuse to post anything vaguely personal when I'm somewhere my family can see (I know, I'm a freak).

However, today I took a photo which I absolutely love, so I might add it on here later if I can find an SD port on this laptop. I love flukes like that, when you just click the shutter on something you don't think much of and it turns out as a stunner.
But then again, anything can be beautiful if you look at the right way. It's just trying to capture that beauty in a real, relevant way that's the problem.


P.S. If anyone has any ideas on how I can make this more interesting, please let me know. It'll make me happy (:

I'm sorry, I'm sorry...

I know I said I'd blog here nearly every day, and I apologise profusely. I am a failure and a letdown, and I beg your forgiveness. I don't know how I can ever repay you. I don't even have an excuse, and I know that that is completely unacceptable behaviour.

On the plus side, today was awesome. Chilled with Coist and Charlie, and got Loz's, frankly, amazing birthday pressie - who knew the sonic screwdriver also dispensed bath fizzers?! Nope, me either. Also hung out with Dean who can't speak properly 'cause he's a dirty Stokey ;)
"Say 'cookbook.'"
"Cooooook Booooooook."
"No, COOK. BOOK. And busssssss."
"Buzzzzzz."
*shakes head*

However, we must love him forever for introducing us to the Hippy Hippy Shakes Company. That place is possibly the most amazing milkshake bar in the WORLD. I swear, any chocolate bar, sweet, biscuit or other you can think of, they do. Put it this way, Between us we had Wispa, Nutella and Haribo flavours. Anybody in Hanley in the near future, I suggest you check it out if you know what's good for you.

Not forgetting the 'rather portly' Wolfbanger Hehe!

And good news! I finally found somewhere other than the takeaway near Manchester Academy that sells Rubicon sparkling mango juice! To make things even better, they also have pomegranate, passionfruit and guava flavours! WIN.

So, I guess that's all, really. Just wanted to rub off some of my really great mood on you (:

Mocks... Joyous.

So, I started my mock exams today. I have one thing to say: it always bodes well when the first track on your music exam is 'Great Balls Of Fire.' I kid you not. I think I might actually have done vaguely well on the Orchestral Landmarks, with is kinda weird, but hey - I ain't knocking it! Maths was simultaneously really easy and horrifically hard. Ditto for English.
Will probably fail Drama tomorrow, but I'm not all that fussed - it's only a mock, after all. Revising Of Mice And Men right now; I must say I love the videos on BBC Bitesize (if they didn't take FOREVER to buffer!), they're rather funny.

So there we go: and uninteresting blog on things you don't give two hoots about. Surprise Surprise. (:

'And in the morning, we will remember them...'

I've just got back from our local Remembrance service with rather a feeling of dissatisfaction - mainly my own fault, I'lll admit. Now, it was a lovely service, don't get me wrong, and I love being in the Colour Party, but a party of me felt almost as though I shouldn't be there, wasn't appreciating the occasion as I should've.

The reason for this was the prayers; in particular, the Lord's Prayer. I've said that prayer every night before going to bed when I've been at my grandma's for as long as I can remember. Because of this, it's been ingrained in me so much - from before I could ever have understood it - that the words just don't mean anything to me any more. The emotion that should have come with that part of the service just wasn't there, and I felt so awful because of it. As much sadness that I feel for all those people killed for no reason, I just couldn't feel anything for the words coming from my mouth.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

So, today set me thinking...

We take a lot of what we have for granted, and so much of it relies on complete coincidences. I don't mean this in some kind of preachy way, but can you really imagine your life without that best friend you rely on and love so much you would die for them?

I'm going to tell you two stories, about two very different people.

The first is an old friend of one of my best friends. She moved away when they were quite young, and they all but lost contact. Now, about a year ago they got back in touch and - possibly more importantly - my friend also put her in touch with another good friend of mine, along with the rest of us. We all clicked instantly, and I can't honestly imagine my life without her in it; she's become a great friend to all of us. Unfortunately, we don't get to see her all that often, as train fares are, frankly, ridiculous.
However, we were up in Manchester today to meet up with another friend (who I'll tell you about shortly) and me and one of the aforementioned friends were absolutely starving. However, the others dragged us around loads of shops first. Then when we finally got to the food court, it took us absolutely forever to decide what to eat. We eventually made up our mind, and who should be going for food at exactly the same time, but her! Of all the thousands of people in the city, we happen to be in the exact same place - at the exact same time - as the only one we know.

The second story is about someone my friend met by chance last summer. Now, you know how you have those friends who you see quite often for a certain amount of time - say, a school holiday - then never see again, except maybe to say 'hi' to in the street? We ll, he was just one of those people, until a couple of months ago. We happened to be sat in town, having decided not to go to the park for various reasons, when we saw him walk by. We got talking, and ended up sat there for hours just chatting. Since then, we've all stayed in touch, and he has also become one of those people who I just can't imagine not knowing. The funny thing? Had our other friend turned up and we had gone through with our original plan, we never would've seen him - probably ever again, as he went off to university this year.

So just think: those little decisions in life, those things we don't think about, the automatic reactions we have to the way the world turns around us: even the smallest thing can change a life; we could accidentally stumble into that thing we can't live without, or be right around the corner from it and never even know.

So just enjoy life; the world will find a way to make what needs to happen, happen. Whatever obstacles our human interferences throw in the way.

This is where it begins...

So, I've tried to blog before, and it's just never happened. However, I've recently been reading the blogs of some people I admire very much, and this time I'm determined to make this work.

I'm not a talker, but I have some eloquent thoughts that I want people to hear somehow. I'm just some unknown British kid, in some unknown British town, who wants her voice to reach others. You might not like what I say, you might not agree with a word of it, but at least you'll have heard it.

And that's all I really want right now.

The name's Becky, and it's nice to meet you.