Surprise Song Sunday: Swallowed in the Sea - Coldplay

I could write a song, a hundred miles long, well that's where I belong, 

You belong with me.

Word of the Day: Belong

The Avengers.

As you've probably deduced from my wonderfully creative title, I saw The Avengers yesterday. 

It was so good. For some reason, it seems like it's been forever since I've seen a good old action flick with no romantic subplot/random chick-flick moments in the middle. 

Not that there's anything wrong with romantic films, and other such tomfoolery. I've just not been in the mood for them. In the slightest. And then the Hunger Games decides to spring all that stuff on me when I least expect it. I'm sure you understand my grievances now, such that they are. 

Anyway. I digress. It was a good movie in its own right. A bit confusing, but hey, that's kind of what you get when you chuck in a bazillion guys with different superpowers into one movie. I expected it to be more in the flavour of Iron Man, but surprisingly, it played more like Thor, except better. It had the same kind of weird humour that me (and I think most other people) find absolutely hilarious. That was kind of the best thing about it, really. 

Oh, the other best thing, because I'm such a history nerd, and because I've been reading a lot about German history lately, was when Loki landed in Germany and attempted to subjugate the people. German people. Who I've just learned, really, really hate authoritarianism as a general rule. For obvious reasons. Good one, Loki.  

Here's the trailer (or a trailer) for those of you that have been living under the proverbial rock. 

What are you asking me to do?

Apart from that, not a whole lot going on except for this essay that I'm trying to smash out. Hopefully works out ok. 

Next movie to look forward to: Batman. Oh my. 

Word of the Day: Avengers

Surprise Song Sunday: The Rainbow Connection - Kermit the Frog

Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices, I've heard them calling my name.

A song. Sung by a puppet frog. Playing a banjo. It has no right to sound so nice.

Word of the Day: Kermit

Flight of the Adele

So I was just reading some stuff regarding The Voice.

It's a TV show you may have heard of. Or even seen!

Anyway. I read this thing, where they were calling someone who sang on the show 'Australia's Adele', or something.

It irrationally irks me. They whole comparing someone to Adele thing. As if she's the end all and be all of singing, or the only singer that ever could sing. Ever.

Maybe you're a fan. I know I'm not. I can appreciate the fact that she's a fairly good singer, but I don't really think she's the best ever. It doesn't actually matter to me that she's not the best singer ever. I listen to lots of people that wouldn't be considered your typical 'good' singers'. But there's also the added problem of her songs/voice not really floating my boat that much at all. But if you think she is in fact all that, and more, that's perfectly fine. If ever there was something that was subjective, that is the so-called 'quality' of music.

It just annoys me that whenever someone has a fairly powerful voice, or, as it increasingly seems, just a voice at all, and they happen to be not a male, they're immediately given the suffix 'the next Adele', as if she's the highest benchmark in voicedom. Sometimes even when they are male. Although they then tend to fall under 'the next Justin Bieber' category, like it's something really cool. 

Speaking of good voices, THIS JUST IN: Flight of the Conchords are putting on another gig on the 15th of July at Rod Laver. Which would be good, except that I'm still overseas. Sucks.

Let's relive one of their greatest moments. Right here.

Could somebody please, remove these, cutleries, from my knees?

Word of the Day: Adele

Til there was you.

I love this song. So cheesy, but so pleasing to the ears. Kind of like most Beatles songs actually.

Also, if you're interested in linguistics at all (I know, who would be?), the first time I properly listened to this song was when my Linguistics lecturer from last semester was all like, "Hey, this song is a great example of the rhotic 'r' that's found in American English."

See, The Beatles overcompensate for their lack of rhotic Rs, because they're from Liverpool (innit), and so, I dunno, they feel insecure or something. So yeah, that's why you get the ridiculously overemphasised, and oftentimes made-up, rhotic R on words such as saw(R). Yep.

Word of the Day: Rhotic  

La Vie en Rose.

A blind girl singing one of my favourite songs ever has piqued my interest in The Voice.

What a voice, what emotion, what maturity.

I may start watching tonight.

Word of the Day: Voice

Deloittering about the city.

So I took an action-packed journey out to the city last night to have dinner with a few Deloitte friends.

And it was action-packed. Some guy got sick on the train, so we had to stop for about fifteen minutes. Pretty full-on stuff. Had to call an ambulance for him. Felt pretty bad for him, then felt kind of guilty because I started being slightly concerned about being late, then finally settled for feeling bad about both. Making it doubly bad. Or bad squared.

Anyway, I hope he's alright.

Dinner was good. Wish there could've been a few more people there. Not for the sake of having more people, but just because there were people that I wanted to catch up with that weren't there.

Not that I didn't want to catch up with the people that were there. And great people they were. And probably still are. In fact, we had such a good time, that three hours flew by like...a spaceship. On high speed. Or something.

Getting a Charmander plushie (all the way from Japan!) from Phuong last night was pretty much the highlight of this midsem break. Either I don't have very exciting breaks, or Charmander's just that awesome that he has the ability to change my psyche. For the sake of my pride, we'll go with the latter. Cheers Phuong!

(I'm still pretty excited about it).

There's the little fella. Isn't he just adorbs?

In other news, I finished the Huanger Hunger Games trilogy last night. Took me about a week all up.

If you think that's an amazing feat, try it for yourself. Really not that hard, and I'm a fairly slow, albeit dedicated, reader. There's a lot of space in between sentences, the font's big, and there's a lot of action that frankly, doesn't make much sense even when I read it carefully, so I just skim over it.

If I were to plot the books on a chart, the resultant curve would be a negative linear line. For those that are not mathematically inclined (like me), that means that they got progressively worse.

The first one was good. I loved the first one.

The second one was like, wow, you just spent half the book touring the country, and the other half going through the Hunger Games again. Except this time, in less detail, because you've already done it once.

Third one was pretty excruciating. Katniss spends half the time either insane or wallowing in a very deep well of self-pity and pain. I actually derived very little enjoyment from reading it, because the whole thing is just too much death and destruction raining down on one poor soul. The ending is also pretty bad. She tries to tie it all off in one chapter, which, to me, seems too cursory and casual.

Looking forward to the next movie though. Should be better than the book anyhow.

Probably a good idea to go sleep now.

Word of the Day: Charmander

Running in circles.

Nobody said it was easy.

No-one ever said it would be this hard.

Word of the Day: Scientist

500!

So last night, I log onto my Dashboard, and I see this:

How bizarre. After my 500th post, I hit 10,000 pageviews. Couldn't have planned it better myself. 

But yeah. Wow. 500 posts. Half of a thousand. Cinq cent. The big five-oh...oh. Together, those figures - the 500 and the 10,000 mean two things (but also, possibly quite more, but also maybe quite less, because, as we all know, you can read anything or nothing from stats):

1. I say a lot of things. 
2. Some people read some of these things that I say. 

To commemorate (for want of a better word) the 500th post, I've rejigged the blog layout. Allow me to guide you through it (if you haven't figured it out already. I know it took me a while to figure out what the hell was going on).

Click on posts to expand them. Just thought I should tell you, because it's not very apparent that they often expand into something bigger and greater.

At the top of the blog, I believe you can do all sorts of nifty things i.e. changing the layout. I think I've defaulted it to 'Magazine', because it's the one that doesn't make my blog look like a newspaper collage made by a three-year-old. Not that there's anything wrong with newspaper collages, per se. Or three-year-olds. Or both of them together even. It's just not really something that takes my fancy. But yeah, go ahead and make it a flipboard or whatever if it floats your boat.

See?

On your right hand side, there's this grey bar thingy, where you can access the followers, subscribe, profile, archives, etc. 

Pretty cool yeah? Yeah.

The rest, I think, is fairly self-explanatory. In case it's not, from newest to oldest posts, read from top to bottom, left to right. Any questions related to the new layout, the blog, me, or just life in general, please ask. I know you won't (I'd be happy if you did), but the offer's there. 

Time to bring back the old Daft Punk video. A little bit because of celebration, but mostly just because. 

Word of the Day: 500

Worst friend ever.

Word of the Day: Lonely

The Huanger Games

Saw The Huanger Hunger Games last night. Was quite a good film. Solid acting, good plot, scarily believable.

It also made me a little bit sad afterwards. I don't know why.

Actually, I might have an inkling of an idea why. I think it was the random love story in the middle. Seemed so simple, straightforward and beautiful. Guy says something stupid, girl ends up liking him for making a goose of himself. End of story, and they both lived happily ever after.

I think it's the same kind of sad that I get when I listen to Taylor Swift. Who incidentally has a song that coincides with the film:



I now have a phobia of seeing films with love stories in them. Which, I figure, is pretty much every film. Urgh. Guess I'm never watching another movie ever again. Except maybe Avengers. That better not have a love sideplot to it. I don't think I'd be able to handle it. Tony Stark and Captain America or something. What the hell.

Word of the Day: Hunger

The worst thing ever

I might have said this before, but I'm pretty sure the worst thing ever is waking up from a really awesome dream.

That disappointment you feel when you wake up, and realise that the dream's not real. It's enough to make a man cry. Almost.

Word of the Day: Waking