Soccerriffic! or, Death By A Tragic Overdose On Doubled Consonants

So. This is it. The big one. The final battle of this strangely fascinating war--the final match between giants. Spain versus the Netherlands at one in the morning. I'm half contemplating not staying up to watch it, although my family will probably forgive me shortly after never.

Why? Because I don't really care, I guess. I mean I picked teams as favourites and I got all het up when they lost and I screamed during matches (see this post) and I stayed up late to watch the ludicrously timed ones and I went all weird and philosophical about this entire nest of worries (see this post) and I felt the need after the second week to strangle the person who ever thought up vuvuzelas--but, you see, I normally wouldn't. If you had talked to me two months earlier I'd have called you crazy for suggesting I'd do these kinds of things. After all, it's soccer. Just soccer. I thumbed my nose at sports fans and felt smug that I would never fall prey to such primitive idolatry.

And then June rolled by and South Africa put on its show, and it was like I had never not been a soccer fan. I did all those stupid things and then I wrote about them (equally stupid if you ask me) and now I'm going to feel bad about it for the next couple of months. Because I liked it. I liked the whole shebang, the dysfunctional tournament which was by turns glitzy and washed-up, smart and clueless, knuckle-bitingly intense and channel-flipping boring. I liked being part of something that the rest of the world was feeling too, the way it gives you a nice warm feeling when you stand up and start clapping and all the other folks in the theatre or the auditorium or the stadium do too. I'd go so far as to say that I liked the feeling of belonging with other people, except that makes me sound emo, and Chronos will start laughing uncontrollably again like she does whenever I embarrass myself.

Make that Ms Schadenfreude.

Oh gods, I've started on another rant. This was meant to be a short post! Okay, look, you know, this is not going to end well if I just keep bursting into a tirade every time I bring up the World Cup, so I will amputate this entry RIGHT HERE on the dotted line and sew it back together. (To use a not so inappropriate surgical metaph--dammit, forgot the anaesthesia again. Bit too late for that, then. Nurse! Hold down the patient while I get out the crucible tongs and the chainsaw!)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [cut here] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Well. That turned out better than I hoped. Patient survived, didn't he? Although I'm sorry about his vegetable state. Can't have everything, I suppose.

As an impartial observer I would like to wish the best of luck to both teams. May the one with the most goals scored fairly win. And if not, may the side with the more creative instances of fouling (I'm thinking nude streakers and something involving live chickens) take the Cup home and display it with pride.

~Mnemosyne

PS. Just kidding about the impartial bit, because Netherlands will win.
Spain can go suck it.

EDIT: Damn, they lost.

Yet another new member of FerretGun who is neither ferret, nor gun, nor ferret gun, nor a stylistic representation of an anthropomorphic fermented soybean curd

On behalf of Chronos (who is out pillaging something, I suppose) I would like to intruduce, for your viewing pleasure, Pen Excalibur Nomad Gwin Umbrella Ink Ninja.

Or you could just call him Mad.

Adorable, isn't he? Just makes you want to cuddle him and squish him and hug him and smother him with looooove--but wait, what's this sign?

But he's so kyoot~! What could he possibly do to us? Snuggle us to death? Maybe chirp at us. Or waddle at us. Bwahaha, we'd be chirped to death by penguins. That'd make for a funky epitaph. But seriously, what could this adorable little pixellated blob do to us?

Well let's find out shall we? -menacing smile- If you would just position your hand here... and now poke.

Regrettable. But you know what they say: the gene pool ain't gonna winnow itself, lads.

~Mnemosyne

Facebook stalking 101

Time for an experiment.

In one tab, I have open the wonderful digital black hole that is Facebook. In another, I have open our list of Greek pseudonyms for all those people unfortunate privileged enough to know us. I will confess that I have kept touch with only a few of them since summer began, and I have no idea where most of them are or even if they're still alive. But that is about to change. Through the magical and multiple stalkerish options provided by FB, I will proceed to track down everybody on this list (whom I have added) and tell you approximately where they are. (If you're getting worried, then good. This is my job. -smirk-)

Girls

• Lyssa.
• She's back here after a perilously boring trip back to her home country. Honestly, to judge by the email communiqués she'd send out during said trip you'd think that she was being held there against her will. (Come to think of it, she probably was.)
• Eusebia
• India. She told me. A few days ago. I didn't cheat.
• Eirene
• Still here. I had to go dig through a completely and irreversibly corrupted somewhat heavily spammed message thread in my FB inbox to find this. Methe's "I fuck camels" spiel is getting old, by the way.
• Methe
• I think she's in India. To be honest I don't want to read more of her messages/wall posts than I have to. That girl scares me.
• Neikea
• Quick, to the land of tall people, fluoro orange, and cheese! For that is where we may find our soccer-loving quarreller.
• Polyhymnia (we need to give her a nickname. It's a pain to write her current one. Like a tongue twister for the fingers, I swear.)
• She be in her home city of ze Merlion. On a completely unrelated note, my grammar just died. Not to mention my spelling. -cough-
• Hestia
• How the hell should I know? She just drops out of existence when the school year ends. Seriously. She has this whole other dimension purely for the summer and winter holidays. Yes, I have categorical proof of this, and no, I'm not showing you what it is.
• Euphrosyne
• I do believe she has settled into her new home in Japan already. Although she sounds a bit lonely. Poor girl.
• Lycorias
• Two things. One, I have no idea if she's here. And two, I plugged something written on her wall in Finnish into Google Translate and the results have probably scared me away from that country for life.
• Thalia
• In Japan. This without any Google Translate either. Good timing on her part.
• Concordia
• Sorry, but I don't have her on FB yet :-S 

Boys

• Atlas
• Mr Tall Snarky Moron is in the US. I hope he chokes on his popcorn. Just kidding, actually, 'cos that would deprive me and Chronos of the pleasure of choking him ourselves. -smirk-
• Mania
• Don't have him added. I attempted to stalk him through his wall-to-wall with Lethe but the bastard has set his privacy level. What a bad time to be Internet-savvy.
• Lethe
• I suppose he's back. He carried on a convo with one of his NY friends about how a certain movie isn't playing "here" yet. Since the American girl was complaining about how said movie was of excretory quality, I'm willing to bet that "here" refers to... well... here.

Cower in awe at my awesome FB stalking skills. Well, some of it was luck. And some of it was just plain obvious. But some of it was stalkerishness. -wink-

Have a nice summer and stay away from the sharks.

-splash splash chomp-

~Mnem- "ARGH ARGH ARGH GET IT OFF ME" -osyne

5 Things to Do When...

Your computer dies 3 - 4 times in succession for absolutely no reason at all -

1. Begin throwing Pocky boxes or nearby objects at your cousin who is snoozing on the sofa after watching the Nancy Drew movie.
2. Start slapping whatever surface you are leaning on whilst cursing fate.
3. Grab any nearby game console and start viciously yelling when the most important button to the game starts malfunctioning.
4. Pace for a few minutes and start to wonder how the hell you are going to survive without your game consoles and laptop.
5. Abuse any nearby musical instrument - pissing people off is your desired result. No musical instruments? Improvise.

Yes, those are the five extremely vital measures I took when my computer died for no reason at all 3 - 4 times in succession.
Step 1: Yes, pocky boxes. It was such a shame to throw them too; they were foldable in panda and penguin shapes! I do hope my cousin didn't crush them when she revived from her half-dead doze on the sofa (Yes, I'm more concerned for the welfare of easily destroyed and disposable pocky boxes than my cousin). We just happened to be watching Nancy Drew (the beginning of which I happened to ignore in favor of my lovable, reliable -gags- laptop).
Step 2: Well, who wouldn't? I would like to also mention that the same morning, the computer shut down in the middle of a VERY important anime's finale. Mnem, you should know - that is UNFORGIVABLE.
Step 3: First, I picked up my Playstation Portable. That didn't work. It was out of power, and I had to reset the system. After I did that, I began viciously failing at Rock Band - Everlong by Foo Fighters on Expert level. That did not end nicely. Next, I picked up my DS which was near dying due to the abuse on my Hokkaido trip. Revived it by plugging it in. Started playing Rune Factory. The 'L' button, very important to the game, began malfunctioning. Responded by cursing fate before finally turning it off.
Step 4: I ended up guzzling my bottle of Mountain Dew which was nearby, as well as bustling to the kitchen for a nice cream puff. Needless to say, the puff nearly exploding in my face did not help to alleviate my bad mood. It was a damn good cream puff though.
Step 5: I ran to the piano and started thumping out the Moonlight Sonata Hamster Style. My cousin, who was already sleepily annoyed from the Pocky attack and being dragged out by my mother several hours earlier, was NOT amused. Dragged out by my mother -> going to her mother's office -> lunch with relatives who do not know when to stop putting food on our plates even though we had insisted that if they fed us any more, they'd end up with a design of half digested meat in their hair (in the metaphorical realm, of course) -> forced to act as pack mules when we told them we wanted to leave early (Grandmother's food stuffs).
Yeah, today has been nuts.
... did I mention my younger cousin, who just returned home, is using my ass as a stepladder to reach a higher cupboard?
Edit: Yes, my computer died in the middle of me writing this post. WTF.


-Chronos "Fk my computer's going to die again"

Nasal alert! 7 things that I...

... like the smell of:

- Honey. ("Buzz," said the bee, as it pollinated the flower.)
- Fresh grass. ("Buzz," said the lawnmower, as it razed the flower and guillotined the bee.)
- The sea.
- Burnt sugar. (Unfortunately, it's more of a hey-what's-cooking?-Oh.-It's-you scent than a dab-on-your-wrist-[of-all-places!-Isn't-the-world-odd?]-and-smell-nice-for-the-evening scent. And I think I just killed the dash. Oops.)
- Books.
- Baked goods straight out of the oven.
- Woolly jumpers. (Call it nostalgia for those few fleeting childhood years in the Northern Hemisphere.)

... hate the smell of:

- Petrol. (Or is it diesel? Never stuck around long enough to find out. The fumes make me dizzy.)
- Bleach.
- That funny, punguent, musty smell in badly-kept museums. (This is related to the woolly jumpers one above... when I was a child in France, we lived in a village near the Chateau de Versailles, and it was a pretty popular day trip in both my parents' minds and the minds of my school. I must have gone there at least five times in two years. Anyways, the interior of the chateau is still stocked largely with the exact same furniture that played grace to King Louis XVI, and even if you were skeptical as only a little child can be you'd have to admit that it sure as hell smelled like it.)
- The plug-in mosquito repellant gizmos.
- Airplane cabins. (Which is why I steal half the magazines on offer on the way to my seat, so I can bury myself in them until takeoff and forget about the stink. Doesn't make me terribly popular with the rest of the passengers, though. But screw them Which is a bit of a shame.)
- Chlorine.
- Unwashed PE uniforms. Oh dear God no.

~Mnemosyne

Only If You Videotape It: "Win 'Haha' Sites" continued

I feel obligated to expand on Chronos' site picks, specifically the Cheezburger.com one. Like she said, we're both teenagers, so if you get offended easily by bad taste and risqué puns then maybe you kinda shouldn't be here. -winks-

I Can Has Cheezburger? The original site, stuffed with cute/funny cat pictures that border on the inhumane. I still remember a time when it was a free-standing webpage with none of this ICHC network thing going on. Of course, that was back in early 2007 or something, which might as well be in the Victorian era as far as the Internet is concerned.

Very Demotivational. For snarkier fare than lolcats can offer, this is the place to go. I've pulled a couple of blog pictures off of there, including the (infamous?) "next time just buy the goddamn cookies" pic from waaaaay back in May.

Crazy Things Parents Say. Except it's not just parents, it's the whole gamut of relations--I've even seen ones about girlfriends' dads or sisters' boyfriends and the like. Sample quote:

Me: I don’t see why I can’t have innocent sleepovers with boys.
Dad: I don’t want you having sex with boys!
Me: But I can have sleepovers with girls… is sex with girls OK?
Dad: Only if you videotape it and I get a share of the profits.

Historic LOLs. In my humble opinion it's one of the best new sites on the ICHC network, and since it specializes in Ye Olde Pictures and Ye Olde Inside Jokes it tends to come off as a bit more arcane (and well-punctuated, ye gods) than the other sites.

Failbook. Bringing you the absolute best and worst of Facebook. You start losing faith in the online presence of sentient beings after a couple of pages. But then there's the odd "win" one, so that's alright. -huddles in corner sucking thumb-

Learn From My Fail. Stupid things people do. A bit of a happier, trust-me-on-this atmosphere than FML, though, and you usually don't need brain bleach afterwards. -underlines "usually"- No promises, mate.

Pundit Kitchen. Political humour that doesn't make you want to wince. Try searching for "Putin" and you will never look at the Russian PM the same way again. Oh, and the ones about Biden. Maybe one day I'll do a PK special...

Art of Trolling. More online WTF; despite the official web page name of "Chatroulette Trolls", the featured pictures tend to have a fairly even balance between the aforesaid Chatroulette, Yahoo! Answers, Omegle, and sometimes the occasional (hacked) Wikipedia page. Attention! Attention! NOT safe for work! NOT SAFE FOR WORK! You have been warned. -dimples-

Hacked IRL. For the non-savvy chunk of our nonexistent audience, IRL means in real life, and hacked means... well, if you don't know what hacked means then you'd better scuttle back to your Commodore 64s before you hurt yourself on the Internet. (Here, have a Band-Aid. Don't touch the motherboard.) For everyone else, Hacked IRL is the result of pranksters exercising digital tomfoolery on the real world. Expect graffiti. Lots of graffiti. Hell, my MSN icon came from that site. Can you tell I'm fond of it? Huh, thought not.

~Mnemosyne

Dora the Explorer makes a Comeback! Win "Haha" Sites!

You know, I've just realized I haven't posted any of the things I've said I would post in my "And O'er the Irish Pot of Gold" post. I believe Mnem has done a few of them? -rechecks- Never mind.

I bring you Win Sites.
Since I'm in the 'Haha' kind of mood, I'll give you the most popular websites to have a good laugh, ranging from kids who don't know any better to the wise elderly. I am a teenager though, so bear in mind my take on these are strictly limited by cliques and sites that people just know about (so basically, unless you are a teenager, it's useless reading this post. Hooray for contradictions.).

FMLife.com - The place for you complaining lot.
I say it is for complainers, and it is true. It is also good for people who are sadistic and like laughing at other people's misery (which is, essentially, what everyone who goes to that site does unless they are trying to post). Make sure to check the "you deserved it" box to really leave some icing on the cake. That aside, you can really read that thing for hours. Other people's misery is really good for forgetting your own, you know?

ICanHazCheezburger.com - The place for you visual learning lot. But... do you really learn?
A wonderful database and collection of fail photos taken by people around the globe with no life who happened to get lucky taking a picture which had a possibility of being a hit with the addition of a mere subtitle. Home to people such as cat lovers who love torturing their cats by making them wear clothes that are way too small for them or attacking them with ferrets and people who are masochists who just love getting hurt a lot, browse the different categories and you'll surely end up with something stupid that will make you laugh.
They are so powerful that Mnem and I can just send each other links of fail pictures for 20 minutes without getting bored. Now that's saying something.

IBQuotes.com - The place for them suicidal juniors or seniors.
If you're in High School completing IB, there is no way in hell you will not know about this website. Brought to you by teenagers who are up shit creek in the same boat as you are, this website provides damnably true quotes about the hell of IB - ranging from teachers who can't understand when enough is enough to procrastinating by posting quotes when you're supposed to be working. Well, we all get distracted sometimes.

MyLifeIsAverage.com - The place for you lot who are sick of FML.
Well, it could also be the other way around. Filled to the brim with stories that are just so goddamned epic, you turn to MLIA after your sides hurt from laughing too much at FML posts. Some of these are just "aw" or "damn", which is a good breather before returning to laugh at FML.
Yeah, this isn't good for much except to stop looking at FML for a few moments. But honestly, some of these are great.

My brother plays World of Warcraft and found out you could get the title of "the Explorer" in the game. He changed his character's name to Dora so he would be seen as Dora the Explorer. He's 17. MLIA

Hell yeah.
If you're in my timezone and are looking at the post time, yeah, fine, it's almost 12 am in the morning. Can't sleep. Haven't posted in a while though, so this is a good time for it.
Do you notice I'm not posting anything about the World Cup? :D

-Chronos

I rest my case.

"Please don't kill each other... please don't kill each other..."

I catch myself muttering this every so often. It's not a common occurrence, especially when compared to how many times I shout this out instead:

"Ohmigod, he's got the ball. Moron. They're gonna regret this."
-pause-
"Dammit he's circling! No, he has the ball! Round him off you fools! ROUND HIM OFF!"
-pause-
"HE'S GETTING CLOSER! KICK HIM IN THE SHIN!"
-pause-
"OH DAMN HE'S JUST PASSED THE HALFWAY LINE! KILL HIM! KILL HIM!"
-pause-
"YES YOU'VE GOT THE BALL NOW PASS IT TO SOMEBODY WHO ACTUALLY HAS A SHOT IN HELL OF SCORING!"
-pause-
"NO YOU MORON WHY DID YOU JUST PASS TO HIM, THE ENTIRE REST OF THE TEAM WAS OPEN AND YOU PASS TO HIM--"
-pause-
"YOU BLOODY IMBECILE! WHO PUT YOU ON THE TEAM?! I KNOW KINDERGARTNERS WHO CAN PLAY BETTER THAN YOU! I KNOW HARMONICAS THAT CAN PLAY BETTER THAN YOU! SHET, I KNOW NORTH KOREANS WHO CAN PLAY BETTER THAN YOU! YOU BELONG ON THE SUBSTITUTE BENCH IN HELL, YOU TURF-LICKING COWPAT!"
-pause-
"Feck, he scored."

~Mnemosyne

World Cup. Warning: may cause fever, dizziness, eyebags, rashes, double vision, tunnel vision, Kabelvision, nasal twanging, patriotic fervour, bad taste in soccer jerseys, loss of bowel control, and death

In general, I am not a sports fan. I don't understand much of the terminology (what the hell is a handicap?), or the rules (isn't it illegal to kick him there?), or the traditions (why do they line up with a bunch of little kids before starting a match?). I don't know many of the players, I get the teams mixed up, and I have decided on sheer impulse that the day I watch more than two minutes of a cricket match is the day I drink a mixture of lemonade and black powder and set myself on fire with a scented candle. So I guess you could say that sports and I don't have a terribly healthy relationship. In fact I could shoot it in the head and attend the funeral with no ill feeling.

But every four years, I suspend the apathy (or, in cricket's case, antipathy) towards the whole realm of physical fitness and get my game face on. Those are the years when the world drops its dramas, its follies, its trivial fits of military action, and tunes its TVs to whichever poor country is hosting the global tourney/bloodfest that is the FIFA World Cup. This year, it's South Africa. Make no mistake, I think it's a marvelous honour for a country so bitterly divided for so many years to be playing host to the one sports event (take that, Summer Olympics) that truly brings the seven continents together. But I can't love anything without feeling bitter about it. So that's my confession about it all--I love you, World Cup, I really do, but at the same time I think you're a hilarious scrobble of overblown patriotism, a colossal sinkhole of international funds... and a touchingly clumsy reminder of why humanity is not doomed after all.

Let's get this out of the way. The World Cup is stupid, stupid with a capital S except that makes me look dyslexic. It's volatile and it doesn't make sense, and there's much not to like. Crappy ball? Explained away as "too perfect". (Right.) Lacklustre teams? Oh, it's just the altitude. Spectacularly bad ref'ing? Nothing new there, but there have been some real horrible bombshells in the past month. And, dear God, let us not talk about the cost, because every single penny or cent or whatever currency it is you people hitch your lives to that goes into the execution of this global indulgence is money that won't be going towards saving lives, or bettering lives in any way save for some highly voluble entertainment. In short, there is much not to like about this institution, and from the way some people are going on it'd kill poverty and AIDS in one strike if we just wiped FIFA off the face of this Earth.

But I talked about hope, didn't I? The World Cup brings hope because it brings people together. It does what the Olympics tries so hard to do with the faintest of efforts: it bridges vast cultural divides and eradicates old taboos for every single moment of a 90-minute match. You can have a near-senile pensioner in the Cotswolds and a law student in Nanjing and a Hazara farmer's little daughter all cheering for the same team, the same eleven men in funny-coloured outfits running around with a terrible ball on the other side of the Earth.

I don't know of any other event that does the same thing. Not even the Olympics. And dare we dream that one day--

No. We daren't. Because this is real life. And just like that the dreaming is over and your favourite team is knocked out, your favourite player kicked in the shin or given a red card for ripping someone else's shirt into tiny little pieces. What on earth were we thinking, when we thought about peace? It's just a game, after all.

Maybe it's idealistic of me to hope that soccer can bring together a world that is already so frailly stitched together. But I would like to believe that it's possible. I'd like to believe that for an hour and a half we could suspend everything and unite. I'd like to believe it, but there's one thing in the way--the Cup itself. Because it simply doesn't make sense.

I don't know what can we make of this most secular of rituals that draws such religious fervour. I don't know what we can learn from this thing, this strange thing that burns with passion and fury and hatred--yes, hatred--and at the same time holds so close to our oh-so-human desires for peace. What can be said about this fragile microcosm of opposites, this living paradox, this wonderful angry horrible crazy incomprehensible tribute to just how much the world adores The Beautiful Game? What does it mean when we lose ourselves in the World Cup? What does it all mean?

I wish I could answer. I wish I could answer even one of these questions. But all I can do is stand on the sidelines and scream at the men who are too busy making history to listen to this little girl.

~Mnemosyne

Belated 2 month Anniversary!

OMG I SPELT ANNIVERSARY CORRECTLY. No, my self esteem is not low, as much as Mnem believes. I've just learnt not to expect too much from myself, otherwise I'll be disappointed. ;D You know, just like setting goals you'll never bother reaching, so don't set goals!
Firstly, I'd like to wish Ferret Gun, Mnem, and myself a belated two month anniversary! We have continuously posted for two months! What a great feat (urh... really...)?
... that aside, ahem... -cough-
There's a reason, Mnem, why tape cassette players get no love... especially if they are repetitive.
THEY ARE SO GODDAMNED ANNOYING. 8D

Sure, it's a little funny for a bit, but hearing the same pitch and voice and tone and static and white noise over and over and over and over again... -shotgun- Of course, I got my revenge by telling Mnem about D. Gray Man... in which I had to repetitively use some Philosopher's Stones from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood to revive her so she would listen to my complete summary. Of course, I have several more in reserve so I can go and absorb God one of these days...
Yes, I overused the 'and's. Over kill. -nurses 'and'- 
-clueless as to what to post- Well, Hokkaido was quite satisfying. If I could, I would probably want to settle down there permanently. I mean, seriously. They have really advanced bathrooms even up on a little cabin / shop in the middle of nowhere on top of a hill. Let's not forget their traditional ways are awesome -- yukatas, futons, and tatami for the win. Apparently, Mnem hates the little '--' too. Well, I like it. :P
YAKINIKU.
ALL HAIL JAPAN. ALL HAIL JAPAN! 


-Chronos