People Not To Be Like: Anakin Skywalker

Anyone familiar with Star Wars knows the story of Anakin Skywalker. Talented jedi in training, he marries Padme and then turns to the dark side becoming Darth Vader.
For obvious reasons, you don't want to be Darth Vader. But what about Annie? Why don't you want to be like him?
Allow me to illustrate.

My mother, sister, and I have an inside joke that I actually helped create. It goes something along the lines of this:
Me: But I want a giiiiirlfriend!
Mom: You can't have a giiiirlfriend!
Me: then I want a seeeeeeeeeeecret girlfriend!
Mom: you can't have a seeeecret girlfriend!
Me: then I'll have a wife!
Mom: You can't have a wife!
Me: then I'll have a seeeeeeeeecret wife!

If you notice- that's whining. Why? Because Anakin whines. Actually, Annie whines a lot. It's easy to see where Luke gets it, if you listen to Anakin.
And, unlike Luke, Anakin never stops whining.

He also seems pretty abusive, if you think about it. I went to a lecture for Girl Scouts once, for A Safe Place, which is a home for abused women who need someplace safe to go when recovering (or escaping) an abusive relationship. During this lecture, she talked about the different types of abuse in relationships. You know what?
Anakin fits in two of them.

So, he might be the main character in Star Wars. He might even be really epic in parts. He might end up being the most epic bad guy ever. He might have the most quoteable lines in the entire series of movies.
But:
Do not be like Anakin.

Because he is whiny and annoying and abusive. And just in general not a good guy.

(I'm not a fan, can you tell...?)

New New New New ...ness?

My mother is always cooing over new parents, saying that they're so cute... and clueless. While I can't quite empathize with her (and can't seem to write a good intro to this post), I can empathize with thinking that new = cute.
No, really.

Newbies are, by definition, cute. I see them on websites all the time. No clue what to post, or where to post, and putting things in the wrong sections, and writing in BIG BOLD COLORED LETTERS  that are in colors you can't even read because they clash with the background and using text speech and friending everyone that says hi to them, and just in general making so many mistakes and just not realizing it because they're newbies.
Disclaimer: I have been a newbie. I have made these mistakes. I utterly regret them.
But sometimes being a newbie to a particular group is especially amusing.
Let's take a look at some of the most oblivious, clueless, and undeniably cute newbies that I run into.

The New Author
You see them all the time. The cocky teenager who thinks they know exactly what they're doing. The grownup with too much time on their hands. Mostly it's the teenagers who amuse me, however. (yes. I like to make fun of teens. It's a hobby.) Here are some rules as to how to spot the New Author in teenage form.

1. An obsession with their characters.  I mean a real obsession. More than a simple, "Hey, Jackie, go away so I can finish my homework" or "Gavin, get the heck away from that cat!" or even just seeing them wandering around their house. I mean, more than having most of their text conversations morph into character lounges. New authors truly are obsessed with their characters. They will text someone simply so that their characters will talk. They'll be surprised when a character informs them about something that happened in their pasts. They'll greet random drop-in characters in books with surprise, wonder, and utter baby-ing.

2. A disregard for planning.  New authors have no experience. Therefore, they do not seem to comprehend the amazingness that is called a "plot". They claim that they're most original when they don't have an outline to stick to, and they claim that plots are for losers.
Oddly enough, after they write their first free-form novel, they then tend to say something along the lines of, "You know, maybe next time I'll plan. I don't really like how this one rambles around."
Please note that I have nothing against free-form novels. I think they have their place, and I'd actually like to try writing one eventually. I just believe that you need to have some experience before attempting one.


The New Homeschooler
Oh, I guess I'm a bit biased on this one, having been homeschooled my entire life. But even I know how to answer all the questions that a new homeschool parent will come up with... "But how do you find other homeschoolers?" "What about curriculum?" "What if my kids don't listen to me?" blah blah blah. (For the record: There are a ton of homeschooling groups out there. Some are religious, some are not. There are a number of ways that you can find these groups, I suggest searching the internet. Another good way to find homeschoolers is to go to the library on a school day. Find a couple of kids that look like siblings and chances are you've found a homeschool family., We personally pick and choose what books we learn from, but there are many boxed sets that you can choose from., Well, that'll happen, but generally they'll more or less do what you say.)
I'm not even going to make some rules for finding New Homeschoolers, because you generally find them wherever there happens to be a group of already homeschoolers.

The New Blogger
Again, I'm biased. I've been writing on this blog for four years, and I've definitely been a new blogger myself. (Some of my old posts? Awful!) but now that I've gotten a bit more experienced, I can poke fun at other bloggers without risking someone calling me a hypocrite. (Maybe.)
Here are some ways to find the New Blogger:

1. Posts apologizing for not posting.  I don't even mean the occasional "sorry I didn't post, I was on vacation" or "I'm going away for a while". I mean that every single one of their posts will be an apology for not posting. I went through this stage: it's nothing to be sorry about. It's just stinkin' cute is all.

2. Big, bold, colored letters.  Just like forum newbies, this generally shows that they're a rather inexperienced blogger. (except in my case... I used the colored letters about a year into my blogging, which means that I have no excuse whatsoever. Shun me.)

3. Annoying self-advertising.  This is different than shameless self advertising. Why? Because with shameless self advertising, you generally know what you're doing is pretty dumb. If you see someone shamelessly self advertising online, they'll say something along the lines of: "Go read my blog! (insert blog address here). Shameless self advertising FTW!". Someone who is annoyingly self-advertising will not apologize for what they're doing, but will instead think that they're being sophisticated. This will include pestering you every time they see you to go and follow their blog.

4. Asking you to follow their blog.  No self respecting blogger will ever ask you to follow. They will ask you to read, but never to follow. That's just harrassing you. (Besides. We all know that followers don't always read the blogs they follow.)


Of course, now I find myself needing to apologize to anyone I may have offended. Not because I actually mean it, but because it's the nice thing to do and it keeps y'all reading my blog . So, I'm sorry if this offended anyone. I try not to be too offensive. :)

To make my apology sound genuine, let me add:
I myself am a newbie in so many ways. I am a newbie speaking Japanese. I am a newbie on many websites. I'm a newbie at putting on makeup. I am a newbie when it comes to dying hair. I'm a newbie in so many ways it's not even funny.
Which is why I try to poke fun at the things I'm not a newbie in as much as possible. ;)

So, I shall leave you by asking... (Because you as a blogger know that asking a question is the best way to get a comment... *hint hint*[shameless asking for comments FTW]) what are you not a newbie in? And how do you tell the newbies from the oldies? And what about the ancients?
Heck..
What about Naomi?!

That's a joke from Love Of Chair which is a small part of an old program made in I think the 70's called The Electric Company which was made to teach kids to read. Yes, we have the boxed set. And, yes, I still watch it. :D

The Problem With NaNoWriMo no. 1

The first problem I have with NaNoWriMo actually only comes into my mind about a month later when I finally get around to trying to write some more on the novel. This problem?
The fact that my book sucks.
In fact, the problem is that since I give myself the ability to write badly in November, I do write badly. Which is the point of a rough draft, of course. But then when I come back to my book in December, I'm suddenly struck with how completely unrealistic and horrible my book is.
Urgh.

Be Warned

Food. Is. Amazing.
No, really. If it were not amazing, I would not be opening up my post with this. As you can tell, my posting ability has gone down the drain, if I'm just posting about food. My brain has been all over the place (eeewwww) recently, so my one-theme posts tend to be either pathetic, or half-finished in my drafts folder. Sorry. I had some really good ones.
And yet I keep getting comments on my random posts, and not so much on my not random ones... Hmmmm...

But, anyway, back to the subject. Food. It is delicious. It keeps us living. How weird is that, anyway? We put strange substances, such as cheese, into our bodies, and we continue to live. It's a bizzare concept, if you really think about it. About how our bodies are actually really like machines. We don't control any of it. We really can't control whether we're breathing or not breathing or whether our hearts are beating or how fast, or how we're digesting stuff, or anything. Our bodies just do these things.
Bizzare, huh?

Another strange thing to think about is sleep. Every night/day there are (if you're getting enough sleep) about 7-10 hours of your life that you probably won't remember. That's 7-10 hours of your life that you are more or less unaware of. And yet while you're asleep, you're aware of what's going on. Your dreams. Who knows what deams you don't remember!
Or, think about it. You don't remember anything. For all you know, you could be going through extreme pain while sleeping, and you wouldn't remember it. You could be transported to another world and come back and you wouldn't remember it (actually a story idea I have). It creeps me out! But in a good way. :)

Words also don't make a lot of sense. Writing this, you probably know exactly what I'm saying. If I say "a bear with balloons" you probably get the mental image of a large, fuzzy, mammal with four legs, holding a couple of helium-filled balloons tied to ribbons. You probably don't get the image of a small electronic device being pelted by tiny rocks by an army of mechanical pencils. (You might be, though. I wouldn't know.) Words don't make a lot of sense. Why are things named what they are? Why is "blue" called "blue" and not "jigoff"?
I don't understand how this communication thing works so well.

Or colors. For all I know, what I consider blue, versus what you consider blue, could be completely different. Your blue could be my orange, your yellow could be my chartreuse! You never know! It's so creepy thinking about this sort of stuff.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to a sort of revelation that I had no clue I'd come to when writing this post which I honestly did think was going to be on that amazing, fantastic substance called food which I am now desiring having not eaten a large breakfast this morning:
We are completely different people.
No, really! We are not only individuals, but we are pretty much completely seperate little units. Think about it. Our minds are like those hamster balls that they run around in. We can bump into each other, and we all somewhat resemble each other, but we're all seperate, all sort of isolated from each other. And we can never get into someone else's thoughts.
O_o
...
...

And that's why I should never start out a post without knowing where I'm going to be ending...


Anway, I'm going to go eat food.
(food. is. amazing.)
Have a (insert holiday greeting here)!

~Angela