Sunday, May 26, 2013

19 Things to Do with Long Hair

To see the video I am blatantly ripping off, scroll to the bottom.

THINGS TO DO WITH LONG HAIR:

1. Brush it with a hairbrush!


2. Make it as tall as you can.

3. Chew on it when you're bored.

4. Twirl it around your finger

5. Put some of it in a hairband   
6.  Put ALL of it in a hairband

7. Headbang!
This is rather hard to photograph with an iPad. I did get a nice one of the ceiling, though. 


8. Use it to cover your acne!

Yep, the blackheads  on my nose are now totally invisible. And if I look like a deranged maniac, well...

9. Use it as a hiding place!


Oh no! Someone's coming!

Quick! I must hide!


"Well, there's no one here..."

10. Put it in braids! The more the merrier!

Or weirder...whatever floats your boat...

11. Hide secret messages with it! No bangs?


 No problem!


(That was supposed to say "Secret message," but I got ticklish when my friend was writing it.)

12. Put it on someone else's head!

Me and my friend Felix, who got another sonic screwdriver for her birthday.


Me and my dad.

Me and my cat Fluff. 

13. Use it as a mustache!


14. Or a beard!


15. Use it as a cat toy!


16. Tuck it up under a hat.
Or two. 


Halloween costume hat. I was Puss in Boots


Deerstalker!

Robin Hood! 

Possibly the coolest hat I own...

..except for this one. :D 


17. Fling it around when you play a musical instrument!


18. Pin it under your fingers by accident!

This is actually quite painful and annoying. 

And 19! Do your Cousin Itt impression!

The real Cousin Itt...


Me!

Oh yeah, and 20...

20. Cut it all off and donate it to Locks for Love!

So yeah. I got my hair cut short. And I love it very much. The back is so FUZZY. 

And here's the video I ripped off. It's extremely funny. 

All respect to Charlie McDonnell, a brilliant young man who does funny things on YouTube. Check out his new short film The Tea Chronicles!!

As a little note, I can do the wet dog thing with short hair but not long hair. :)

Bye now.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Review 5. Bowties are cool.

Review:

If you have a nose for intrigue, would rather be adventurous than well-behaved, and are the despair of your lady-like mother, you may fit right in at Madame Geraldine's Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. Sophronia, a troublesome girl from a good family, expects a normal finishing school where she will be taught to crochet, dance, make small talk, curtsy, and do everything else that a lady needs to excel. But within Madame Geraldine's, she finds lessons on espionage, combat, vampires, werewolves, technology, and everything else that a first-class spy needs to survive. Join her in Gail Carriger's Finishing School series, where young ladies learn to finish...everything.

Also: The Doctor is not the only one who can rock a bowtie. Observe.


Points to whoever notices something new besides the bowtie. More on that later.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Review 4 and Funny Stats

Review:

Etiquette and Espionage is an engaging romp through a delightful steampunk Victorian world. Author Gail Carriger returns to the thoroughly engaging world of genre-juggling that she first established with the adult series The Parasol Protectorate, some of whose characters also appear in Etiquette and Espionage. Although vampires and werewolves take a back seat in comparison to the technology in Etiquette and Espionage, they still spice the fantasy world up enough to make it truly enjoyable for fans of the supernatural as well as anyone who likes a cast of strong female characters.


And now for another topic! I hope you're not getting too tired of these reviews.

When I started this blog, I figured that probably not that many people would read it except for my old classmates, who I sent the link to. Now I'm at 880 pageviews--yay! Thanks, guys!

The thing I find interesting, though, is that a lot of my audience is in Europe and Asia. The most traffic on my blog comes from:

United States
Germany
Russia
South Korea
Ukraine

For some reason I find this very weird, in an extremely cool way. I'm not entirely sure why. I can't really wrap my head around the fact that there are people all around the world, people I don't know, reading my humble blog. It's like...whoa. The Internet is so cool! (Mostly.)

I'm not getting a swelled head here--at least, I think I'm not. I just find it weird. Like, wow. Thanks for reading!!

(Shout-out to anyone reading from the UK--you guys have the best entertainment! Harry Potter, Discworld,  Doctor Who, Sherlock, Merlin...the list goes on and on. Thanks, guys!)

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Review 3

Etiquette and Espionage review:

Etiquette and Espionage, an engaging young adult/middle grade book, features intrepid young women, a flying boarding school, subterfuge, interesting lessons, vampires, werewolves, and a mechanical sausage dog. What more could you want from a steampunk book? The heroine, Sophronia Temminick, is not your average British schoolgirl: she enjoys tree climbing and mechanical inventions over tea parties. She is perfectly suited to the mysterious Madame Geraldine's academy, a flying airship in which students  are trained to finish...everything. This is a fun read and I hope you enjoy it!

...I really hope that was 60 words, because I'm too tired to do more and/or check.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Review Project pt. 2

Etiquette and Espionage review:


Etiquette & Espionage, a steampunk/urban fantasy middle-grade novel, was an enjoyable read. I thought that the Parasol Protectorate, an adult series by the same author, was actually better written and plotted, but E&E was still fun. Part of the fun of E&E for fans of Gail Carriger is that E&E takes place some time before the Parasol Protectorate, but features some of the same characters. If you've read the Parasol Protectorate, you'll recognize some old friends and make many new ones in E&E. 

Review of The Lost Child of Tir na NOg by Katarina Bethel:

The Lost Child of Tir na NOg, the literary debut of high school senior Katarina Bethel, is actually pretty good. It tells the story of Audrey, a changeling child who, with the help of a mysterious faerie, must find her way to Tir na NOg, where her destiny awaits her. The book had some problems with continuity, and some of the characters could have been more clearly drawn, but that should be fixed in the second edition which Ms. Bethel assures us is on its way. The story itself was engaging and incredibly well researched. I've read a lot of faerie books myself and the attention to mythic detail was impressive. 

The fact that Katarina Bethel is a good friend of mine has nothing to do with my advertising her book. Well, maybe a little. 

Buy it on Amazon! It's worth it!

Monday, May 13, 2013

The Review Project pt. 1

I follow the blogs of a few of my favorite authors. One of them is Gail Carriger. Sometimes they host contests, and right now she's having a review contest to win an advance copy of her next book.

I really want one, so here's my first review of Etiquette and Espionage, the first book in the Finishing School series

This book is awesome. The heroine, Sophronia, is brave, impulsive, and flawed, which makes her more believable. As a less-than-ideally behaved young lady of good family, she is sent away to Madame Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But to her surprise, this school doesn't just teach young ladies to curtsy and make polite conversation with nobles. Finishing School teaches the young ladies to finish...everything, from secret missions to their enemies. Set in a steampunk world with a backdrop of vampire and werewolf society, this book was quite enjoyable.



91 words. Yay. (The minimum is 60.)
Now about the contest...
See, it's not actually being judged on the quality of the reviews. 20 reviews are being randomly selected. And yes, you can enter multiple times...which is why I'm going to be putting up lots of Finishing School reviews until June 10th. Sorry. This is the only blog I have and I'm not on Goodreads.

But to make it fun, I'll include a review of whatever else I'm reading too!

Which right would be...uh...well, I'll just review something I finished a while ago, because I actually remember the author's name.



Review of Jump by Ginger Rue:

I had my doubts when I started this book. It's from the point of view of Brinkley, a self-obsessed snobby teenager, who is put in therapy because her behavior has caused four other girls to leave her private school. This is her last chance: if she doesn't improve, she'll be expelled. The only reason she hasn't been expelled is that her parents paid for an auditorium. She is a total brat and I wasn't sure if I would like reading about her. But I did. As she starts her counseling sessions, Brinkley begins to have strange experiences wherein she enters another person's body for a few hours--thus literally walking in their shoes. These experiences teach her what it's like not to be her, and her character undergoes a profound change over the course of the novel.
I thought that the author worked in the change in Brinkley's character really well. It was gradual and satisfying.
The premise was a little weird, but I liked it. And while some things are never really explained, I think that allows the reader a little freedom to form their own theories. So yeah, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

Okay, gotta go now.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

And You Thought Classical Music was BORING...

There are some truly bizarre stories out there.

For instance, there was one composer, J.B. Lully, who stabbed himself in the foot while onstage. He had this conducting staff that he pounded on the stage to keep time, and he got himself in the foot with it. Then he got gangrene, refused to have his foot amputated, and died. And all this from conducting classical music. The orchestra is a dangerous place to be.

(I learned about this in 4th grade when I played one of his pieces and double-checked my facts here.)

I'm sure there are plenty of other gruesome composer stories--but the one I heard yesterday is pretty darn weird.

It's about this guy.
This is Franz Liszt, and you know how these days Justin Beiber and One Direction have crazy fangirls? Yeah, he had them too.

Liszt was the first piano virtuoso. He invented the piano recital, and his must have been pretty exciting, because the Victorian ladies of the 1840s would rip up his handkerchiefs and fight over his gloves for souvenirs. Some ladies kept his coffee dregs in vials around their necks or on their dressing tables. There was one lady who picked up a cigar stump that Liszt had dropped and chained THAT around her neck. She had it put into a locket with "F.L." monogrammed in DIAMONDS on it. It smelled extremely nasty.




You know how these days people throw their underwear at rock concerts? Yeah, Liszt fangirls did that. They threw their underwear at him while he was onstage.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

Lisztomania started around 1841. Here's what your typical Liszt fangirl would be wearing to his concert.



Leaving aside the fact that this was the early Victorian era, reknowned for its propriety--how the heck did they even get their underwear OFF??

You'd have to get through, like, two petticoats and a corset to find anything you could throw. And this is at a classical concert. You know, like an opera house, with lots of seats. How exactly does THAT work?!

(Here's a question for anyone who's been to a concert with underwear-throwing: Do you take it off, or just bring an extra pair? I haven't been to a concert like that, so I have no idea.)

Another thought: Victorians didn't really bathe as much as people do nowadays. Their underwear probably would have been fairly...whiffy.

EW.

So next time you're at a rock concert with underwear-throwing, remember where it all started:



By the way, if you want more recent classical hotties, check out 2Cellos. Although for these guys, "classical" is stretching it...