365 Challenge : Judgement Day

If you were to judge your favourite book by its cover, would you still read it?

Ha!

Well I’ve been out all day so I think its nice that I get a nice easy question to easily answer and get this over with.

Yes I would.

In fact the Discworld books my mum owned when I was a kid had such strange covers that it was the reason I stole them and read them in the first place! I always loved the covers, they were jam packed with strange and funny looking things. When I was young I had no idea what any of it meant but the older I got, the more I read them and the more I look I appreciate them even more.

I’ll never judge a book by the cover.

I mean a book, I judge people all the time.

365 Challenge : Deja Vu

Have I ever felt Deja Vu?

Yes but not in the real sense of it.

I feel it a lot when I start talking to proper hard headed fans of things. You can feel it coming. You could be talking about something completely different and suddenly that curve back to the same old same old just comes at you. You can feel yourself on the curve and do your best to put a barricade down but eventually no amount of pushing against that wave will stop it.

Also feel it a lot when you talk to people at work. That sudden feeling of “been here before”.

I don’t think I’ve ever had real Deja Vu though.

In a way I’ve always wondered how it feels. I’ve had others explain it to me, Amanda is pretty sure she’s lived through some events two or even three times, being able to see the results so clearly because she’s known she’s done it before. It amazes me, it also works into my life view that when you die your life is like a loop and you just replay it. I like that whole “your whole life flashes before your eyes, its called living” idea. When you die you just go back to the beginning.

Unfortunately it just never happened for me.

Sad really.

365 Challenge : Idyllic

What does your ideal community look like? How is it organised and how is community life structured? What values does the community share?

Ideal community?

Personally I think the question doesn’t really ask what a ideal COMMUNITY would look like but what you’d love to dictate to other people to make THEM perfect for YOU.

What does it look like?

Well I’m pretty much in some pretty ideal communities already. Or have been. The 2005-2009 Bebo F1 community was wonderful as was the community we made for ourselves after that. The Wrestling community on Tumblr have their moments. I think the one I love the most at the moment is the anime debating community brought together by Twitter User IcebergLuffy. Its the most active I’ve been in a community since about 2010/2011 and is a wonderful community even if I only really contribute to it during the debate on a Saturday (it tends to be posted early Saturday morning but in the US it starts Friday evenings.)

So yeah for a introvert recluse a online community is perfect for me.

I really would like to be more into the communities in general again like I used to be. The problem is with my paranoia when you get burnt once you think it’ll happen 100 times over. The way I left the F1 community I was part of and actually Digital Spy and the Strictly Come Dancing / F1 community on there too has left me feeling pretty down on opening myself up again. Its sad because the communities I’m kind of part of just seem so nice but I kind of clam up the second I look like I’m making a step forward.

Its why I tried and kind of still trying so hard to join a community on WoW which just seems impossible for me.

How is it structured and organised?

It doesn’t matter. Even a online community it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day people need to be left to live their life the way they want to live it. It would suck if people were forced to do things one way for any reason.

Sure we have structure in our life that we have to follow. We HAVE to go school and HAVE to in some way get a job in our adult life and follow the rules of both but we are still individuals that have a choice over certain parts of our life.

If you start trying to structure it for a whole community then it stops being ideal because its just brainwashing people into acting in your perfect way which even if you brainwash people to believe its the “best” way just won’t fit into some peoples way of being.

So no structure or organisation.

Of course if you are talking about smaller things its nice to be online when other people are. Its why I loved the #F1Chat stuff when it was big and being online at the same time to talk about F1, Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing, World Cup matches and other things. Obviously if your gaming there needs to be organisation so you are online together at the right times.

The thing that makes me sad is not being online the same time as people to talk about F1. I think having to work Sunday’s started to kill my interest but by the time I stopped working Sunday’s the highlights meant I no longer got to always watch at the same time.

Pah.

What values do we share?

It depends what you mean by values.

If you mean the big ones you’d hope everyone you share this Earth with will live by good ones but I honestly think that people shouldn’t judge others because even if they on the outside seem to have terrible values you really need to talk to them before you truly make your mind up.

The sad thing is people are too busy to react strongly when they disagree that everyone becomes defensive and more often then not people lose the chance to actually get to know each other properly. There are lots of people that have really strange values or opinions that when you get to know them you learn that they aren’t actually as strong into their convictions as they first sounded or else are just nice with dodgy values.

365 Challenge : Competition

What activity, task or game most brings out your competitive streak?

I’m not sure I have one at all you know. I’m so used to being poor at things that I don’t get competitive. There really is little point for me.

As a kid the only person I knew that liked gaming was my cousin and he is 10 years older then me and was just generally better then me. He never showed me how to do anything so just gave me a control pad and expected me to be able to beat him. As a kid I loved things like Mortal Kombat but I didn’t really own anything like that and if I did own a game, like Soul Caliber, he refused to play against me. I also had no time for track and field type games so he’d always play them against me but would never play my F1 or wrestling games against me.

Its the same for card games and board games. I grew up with shitbags that refused to explain rules and didn’t give you time to read them yourself so you had to “learn as you went” which basically meant learn the rules as they worked in the other persons favour.

Possibly why I have such a pessimistic outlook on my abilities in gaming, then again some of the shit I get up to in Fall Out 4 reminds me that I’m right in my pessimistic outlook on my gaming abilities (or I guess my lack of them.)

Then again it shouldn’t surprise you because I’m generally just very nervous when I am around people in general so how the heck could I get competitive against people?

Its nice though.

Means I’m neither a sore winner or a sore loser. I’m used to losing and am always shocked to death if I win.

365 Challenge : Local Flavour

Write a piece about a typical “local” experience from where you come from as though it’s an entry in a travel guide.

Am I the only person that has never read a travel guide? 

A local experience that everyone should look out for here in lovely Plymouth is any part of it that is falling to pieces. Don’t value your life? Then just walk up and down the Plymouth City Centre and surely some falling debris will eventually hit you. From falling sides to the carcass of the big screen that only needs a bit of strong wind to blow apart.

Either that or you could visit one of our three thousand charity stores.

Make sure you visit in May when the whole city goes pirate mad including a pirate weekend. If you like pirates it worth coming down to Plymouth for the pirate weekend where people dress up as pirates and we put up flags on the Barbican and actually have no real pirate stuff happening.

Do I sound like I hate Plymouth? Because I really don’t ya’know….

365 Challenge : Stranded

If I was stranded in a random foreign city with no friends and no money there isn’t hell of a lot I could do really?

Its a strange question, why am I stranded in the first place? Will things get better for no real reason after this one day?

I guess you’d have to find a police station and tell them that you are a foreigner with no money and not sure why you were there? Possibly ask to use a phone and find a way back home.

Now if my friend had dropped me off in a city on holiday and I’d done something stupid like leave my bag in their car and they weren’t meeting me till later on, first of all I’d find some way to be able to tell the time. There is no point walking around too far if you don’t have some way to tell the time. After that it’ll be as easy as finding museums and churches, historic locations or just beauty spots. You don’t have money so you can’t go anywhere really so it’ll just be hanging about.

Problem is I would never just randomly go somewhere with no money as its a necessity so its hard to imagine a reason why I’d end up stranded somewhere with no money at all!

365 Challenge : Bedtime Story

When I was a kid I think the bedtime story that I was in love with was possibly Funny Bones! I can’t remember any others before that but I would have already been quite old by then!

I don’t think Funny Bones did anything to my life.

If we’re going by books I think possibly changed my life it would probably be the Secret Garden. It opened my eyes a lot in a certain way, not to look at things from the outside and to always look through the eyes of amazement of everything I see. Look for the beauty in things.

It also made me fall in love with gardening. The thought of seeing things growing and having to look after them. It made me want a secret garden all of my own.

For someone who reads a lot though I do struggle to remember books I read when I was a child!

365 Challenge : INTJ

Do parties and crowds fill you with energy, or send you scurrying for peace and quiet?

What do you think?

I’m introverted so don’t really like parties and crowds but I think that has a lot to do with me thinking that people would have no interest in hearing what I have to say. It also has a lot to do with my paranoia, I’m always worried that people are judging me or just laughing at me.

Someday I kind of hope that I’ll be able to brave it more often but I doubt it.

I’m getting better with certain kind of crowds, as long as I’m not expected to talk or do anything. I still get real paranoid just in general.

The last time I went to a party I’d been dragged along by my ex and I ended up sat behind them all as they played card games, not a single person said a word to me all night and I just had to sit and hope that my friends would text me as I was all on my own. Maybe that is one of the reasons I hate it?

There are many reasons I hate it though.

I’m not sure how to act in social situations I guess which is the hardest part of it all. I don’t want to annoy people or have them think I’m a idiot so I tend to not talk. My biggest problem at times is purely that I stutter, not in the traditional sense but words just refuse to come out of my mouth correctly so it puts me off talking to people.

Its just really hard.

365 Challenge : Menagerie

Do you have animals in your life? If yes, what do they mean to you? If no, why have you opted not to?

I have a shit ton of fish and then these two.

Scooby Doo, a three year old Border Collie (or three next month anyway) and…

His Porkliness, Mac the Guinea Pig.

They mean the world to me. Doodle has the uncanny ability to be able to tell when someone is upset so does his best to cheer them up (you can guess how handy that is!) and Mac is such a little personality.

In fact Mac is as un-Guinea Pig like as can be. He hates other Guinea Pigs (preferring the company of dogs) , hates being touched and spends most of his time looking like a potato squeaky angrily at me.

They are both giant morons.

365 Challenge : Impossible

6 Impossible things I believe in?

1/ Dragons

2/ That it’ll get better for the people who deserve it

3/ Flying Monkeys

4/ Love

5/ It can’t get worse

6/ Fish