Writing Task 1

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Adam Randall
I have been given five writing tasks by my good friend David Tubb and I shall be writing one of these each day this week. These will be somewhat different to my usual entries, and so I am just writing them as well as my regular entries, rather than instead of.

Today’s is for me to write about three good things that have happened in the past week.

The first is also the most recent: Today I met with my friends Dalfino Madrigal Keyte and Christian Watkins and visited a pub with them. Dalfino now goes to a university in Plymouth and so I, unfortunately, do not get to see him very regularly, though I can still chat with him using the internet. Christian is somebody else I don’t get to see too often, but, unlike Dalfino, he has a very minimal internet presence and so my communication with him is very small. So, it was very nice to see the pair of them today and Christian very kindly bought me lots of Diet Coke and even gave me a hug as I left. Dalfino also invited along my old friend Michael Woodham, somebody who I have known almost my entire life, and while I may not be as close with him as I am with Dalfino and Christian, it was still nice to see him again.
    The second is actually the day when I was given these writing tasks (Thursday). I popped  into Bath and spent the afternoon doing things with David. We popped into the toy shop, the game shop, the sweet shop, had a pizza, got some books and all other kinds of fun things. It was during this day that I discovered the mint flavour M&Ms, which I found rather tasty. At the end of my time with David, I was very kindly given these writing tasks and also got to briefly see my friend Naomi Brennan. Much later in the day, I also had a nice conversation about onions with another friend of mine (who I can’t name).
    The third event concerns another friend of mine who I am unable to name (so similar to the other friend, hey? Almost as if they were brother and sister) specifically, my friend Rhinowater who I wrote about the other day. This won’t take many words to explain, but he and I planned out the storyline for a collaborative writing project we are making together entitled Monster Village. So, that was a very nice and with that there are my three happy things of the week!

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Be Nice

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Adam Randall
I decided I would write a blog entry about niceness as it seems to me that it is virtue which is rather undervalued. How often do you hear somebody say (about somebody else) “Yeah, they’re nice, but…”? My question is: but what?
    I find that a lot of people view niceness as a bonus, but tend to like people if they’re intelligent, funny or any other additional things that are generally valued more highly. But this seems silly to me, from my point of view, niceness is the most important of all virtues. I don’t need the people I like to be funny, intelligent, outgoing, loud or any of the rest of that kind of thing, I just need people to be nice, and the more nice somebody is, the more I will like them. I mean, why do any of the other qualities I mentioned even matter to people? Niceness is important as it is a sign that a person can be depended upon, no other virtue really has that upside. Although, I will say that intelligent people do tend, in my experience, to be nicer, but, to counter that, many intelligent people can be arrogant and rude, and some unintelligent people can be very nice indeed.
    Sorry, this blog entry may be a bit short (and lacking a point) but I just thought I’d raise something which I don’t understand about a lot of people. Why is niceness (the thing which is most important to me) not valued as highly by others?
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Rhinowater

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Adam Randall
I’m sure some of you may remember that in February I wrote an entry called Single People Day where I wrote nice things about my wonderful single friends Naomi, Egan, Dalfino, Mairi, George and David. Now, originally there was an extra thing about another friend of mine, but, due to a small misunderstanding it was deleted. I thought it was gone for good, but I recently found it saved somewhere else! As such, I decided to share it with you, just so that they didn’t miss out. I cannot tell you my friend’s name, but I am able to write their internet name ‘Rhinowater’ (named after his favourite animal and favourite element):

The brother of a friend of mine, and my newest internet friend. While I have never had the pleasure of meeting him in real life, I’ve had lots of enjoyable chats with him by using Skype, and also a very brief chat on the phone. He’s made several of his own top 10 lists relating to video games and I always enjoy hearing them from him, but, most impressively, he has a long and exciting fantasy story planned out in his head which I find very fun to learn about! If I’m ever bored, and he comes online, he’ll always be able to entertain me with those lists or his story.

I suppose I can also add now, that what with the various other people I chat with online being rather busy with university work and whatnot, that he has become’main’ person I chat with these days. Almost every single day I can depend on him for a nice enjoyable conversation!

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Sightseeing

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Adam Randall
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This is a new thing I’m going to do: every time I visit a famous or well-known place, I’ll photograph Colin there with a suitable pun! This photo was taken the last time I went to London to visit my lovely internet friend Mairi Mac Arthur, it was actually the same day that the anecdote of this strange blog entry happened.
All finger puppets can be bought here.

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Dreamer Eva

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Adam Randall
I have recently found myself with a new writer friend and so I would like to draw your attention to their work. Here is a link to her profile on FanFiction.net. Her latest project is a story called My Opposite and is based on the video game The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It contains a very interesting reinterpretation of the relationship between Link and Girahim, which all starts when Link finds himself having to care for a severely injured Girahim. I shan’t give away too many details as I wouldn’t like to spoil it. The story is told from the points of view of both Link and Girahim and it is all very emotional, you know everything that they’re thinking and what worries them. The style is also very poetic, which sometimes makes it flow very well and also makes it quite nice to read. I was asked to include a quote to hook you all in, so here’s quite a nice (utterly context-less) line for you “The moonlight was beautifully blissful and yet blinding at the same time, it made the floating island around me glisten under its seemingly perpetual light.” Happy reading 🙂 (I should give a quick warning though, the story is rather an explicit one!)

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British Indian Ocean Territory

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Adam Randall
This is the latest of my challenge entries, the random country picked using The Random Country Generator.

Now, British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) doesn’t exactly sound like much of a catchy name for a place does it? Well, it does actually have a much more normal name (The Chagos Islands) but for some reason the BIOT name is the one which is more commonly used! I suppose that ‘proper’ name has most likely just been replaced due to history of the island (more on that later). Very strangely, much like Singapore and the Faroe Islands (the two other random countries I have done so far) this country is ALSO a collection of islands rather than a single land mass. I wonder how long it will be until I get one which isn’t a collection of islands.
    As I’m sure you can guess from the BIOT name, this country was ‘captured’ by the United Kingdom (and France) during the British Empire years. It’s quite sad really, the government has been slowly turning it into a place used solely for military reasons. At the moment the overall population of the islands is only at four thousand. Since the sixties, thousands of people have been evicted. In fact, there are no longer any native inhabitants, everybody who lives there came from France or Britain (or somewhere else entirely). On the upside though, some natural areas there are almost entirely untouched by humanity and, as such, steps have been taken to preserve them. This could mean that there are exciting undiscovered species waiting to be found there.
    That’s about all I can say really. Since it’s such a small place, and so few people live there now, there’s not really any remaining culture to talk about. Nonetheless, I hope you have enjoyed learning about the British Indian Ocean Territory!

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Story in the Woods

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Adam Randall
My latest colaboration with David Tubb, and my personal favourite so far.

(click here to buy the book in the video)

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Rock

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Adam Randall
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I expect that this joke is lost on a lot of people. There is a Japanese band called One OK Rock, here is a song by them if you’d like to try their music. Other than that, I guess there’s really nothing to explain. And if I do say so myself, I think this was one okay joke 🙂

Finger puppets can be bought here.

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The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Adam Randall

PictureThis game is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, but, as with the majority of Zelda games, no real knowledge of the other instalments is required to be able to enjoy it.

The story begins with Link searching through the Lost Woods in order to find an old friend of his. This search goes very badly, as the Skull Kid appears along with two fairies and steals his horse, Epona, and all of his items. Link chases after him, but the Skull Kid curses him so that he becomes a Deku Scrub (he’ll later find himself transformed into a Goron and Zora too), and abandons one of his fairies with him, who then becomes Link’s companion for the story. Link finds his way into some sewers, then meets the Happy Mask Salesman who asks him to try and find a missing mask of his. Link leaves to sewers and goes out into the world of Termina, only to find that the moon is falling and will destroy everything in three days. You gain the ability to time travel though, and you are able to live the same three days over and over again as you try and save the world.

The whole three day cycle idea is one which I like very much. There are a very large number of side-quests to do, and if you don’t do them, you’ll see the lives of the non-playable characters become really miserable. I would say, in fact, that the side-quests are the main appeal of this game, there are only four dungeons to do in this game (the least of any Zelda game) so you’ll spending much more of your time solving people’s problems, than fighting monsters and whatnot, and I certainly would not call this a bad thing.

The game looks very similar to its prequel, but it is really very different. The tone, especially, is very distinct. Ocarina of Time has the big bright world of Hyrule which was full of interesting and funny characters, but the world of Termina is much darker looking, and while you may still have funny characters, they all tend to have a depressing backstory and, even if not, are going to be killed in three days when the moon crashes! Also, while Hyrule seemed big and bold, Termina seems very mysterious; there are several strange things hidden around and definitely many more secrets.

On the whole, I have to give this game the high score of 9.5/10

Buy it here.

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Number 69

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Adam Randall

One thing which I have particularly fond memories of, are the English Language lessons I had in my sixth form. In the class (well, in one of the two classes) I was sat next to my friend Laura, and behind us were my friends Rory and Louise. One lesson I remember quite clearly, was when we were discussing the ways in which words find new meanings.

“So, you see,” said the teacher, “in the past, the word ‘ejaculation’ would have only meant shout, or, to burst out with, rather than the sexual meaning that it has today.”

I frowned at this and turned to face my friend Rory. “Isn’t the ‘shout’ meaning still the main one though?” I asked him, confused.

“No! You’d better stop using it in that way, if you have been, it’s very uncommon now,” he told me.

“What are you two talking about?” the teacher asked.

“Oh, Adam’s just talking about ejaculations,” he replied before I could say anything.

“Oh, right,” she rolled her eyes at that, obviously thinking I had been making a silly joke about, what I had only just learned was the most common, sexual meaning of the word.

The lesson moved on, and after a while Laura was having a chat with the teacher (her mum).

“A problem I have,” said the teacher, “is that it’s hard to know what the class already knows! Just yesterday I found myself having to explain about the word ’69’ to a group of Year 8s!”

I frowned again, “Rory,” I said as I turned, “what’s she talking about? What is 69 other than a number?”

Louise and Rory both burst out laughing at that.

“What is it? Please tell me, it seems to be quite important. Also, are there any other numbers like that?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain it to you later,” said Rory, and he did (I shan’t explain it here, but if you don’t know it, the best thing to do would be the ask somebody else, as searching on Google may well give very explicit images).

“What are you all talking about?” the teacher asked again.

“Oh, Adam’s just talking about 69ing,” Rory said, before I could answer.

Again the teacher rolled her eyes, obviously thinking I was telling some childish sex joke. I never got a chance to explain the two misunderstandings to her either, which is a little embarrassing. But yes, that English lesson, I suppose, proved to be part of my sex education, with me learning about 69ing and ejaculating. Not quite sure how to wrap this entry up.

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