sleepless? got mail? i know the feeling...

Well, the brilliance of Meg 'n' Tom had to be revealed at some stage in this blog 

You again? Tom and Meg in Sleepless in Seattle

So far, in my many (7) posts, I have discussed King Arthur, Mountains, Goats, and, strangely enough, Football. I haven't asked any tough questions, or asked anybody to choose between two perfect entities.
Until now.

That's right, it's time for an epic, two-dimensional, and frankly, unfair question. This is the real fridge-opener that you've been waiting for. Oh yes, it's time - past time, actually - to discuss the two heavyweights of early 1990s romantic comedy involving Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Some people may call them the only two romantic comedies that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were in together.
These people have obviously not seen Joe versus the Volcano.

Others may call them movies that have an unprecedented amount of brown suits in them.
These people have obviously not seen One Fine Day.

Others still may refer to them as examples of why not to go to internet chat rooms/write people letters because you heard them on the radio.
These people are just wrong.

As you can see, this is a diverse and divisive topic, this You've Got Mail/Sleepless in Seattle (henceforth YGM/SIS) debate.
First, some things to think about.

I've seen you before: Meg and Tom in You've Got Mail

monday knight madness

You know you've hit a low point in your life when you find yourself saying - actually saying, aloud, like talking - 'Mordred is king? Tch, I don't want Mordred to be king! What? Who wrote this? WHO WROTE THIS?'

Welcome to the bottom of the world. The pit, if you will, of doom.

That's the kind of thing I'm saying to myself at 7 o'clock on a Monday night while other people are getting ready to go out, get the shift, get moving, get pizza, or get something. The only thing I'm getting is annoyed because some 15th century dude made Mordred king while Arthur was in France. And then he let him take over and ruin everything. Well, he let the people let him take over. It's a long story.
(Should've said Spoiler Alert there really - sorry for ruining all those surprises.)

The worst part is, I don't even hate Mordred that much. Why am I talking to myself about something I don't even care about? The only reason I even know who he is is because I've got a tutorial on the Death of Arthur in two days. I'm not into the fantasy genre. The only thing I knew about Guinevere before I read it was that her name sounded sort of like Genevieve, and Keira Knightley played her in that crap Clive Owen version. Before last week Mordred wasn't even a thing.

... so that's what was happening in Camelot when Mordred took over

the purpose of mountains

I was bored, so I found this picture of a goat

After I went to Barcelona I came home with a cold and wrote a Really Bad story about a mountain. I wish I had put a bear in the story because then it might have been less bad. I spent the whole day thinking about mountains and weather and what winter is like in the mountains and what birds sound like there (conclusion: they sound the same) and what kind of mountains they have in America - when I was supposed to be doing some Greek - or possibly Roman- related essay thing. Sigh. Boredom leads to a whole new world where mountains are Interesting and Important and bears are simply an afterthought. In the land of boredom, mountains have colours and contours and stretch up to the white sky. That's if they're in Ireland. If they're in America, I figure that they've got houses on them with blue gardens. In Peru they're like orange roads through the desert.

I like them. They're more boring than volcanoes. Volcanoes are always causing havoc and strife and exploding all over the place. Mountains are like, yeah, I've got magma. But I'm old and tired and bored of erupting. I want to stay here and watch Midsomer Murders and possibly have a biscuit and maybe another and then I'll just lie here and sleep for a while.

That's mountains for you.

dr seuss and the art of being un-bored

If only lectures were like this

When I'm not reading books about green knights that say things like 'bi bonnken', or books about people who don't have phones (that's the 18th century for you!), or books about rampaging Macedonians, I'm absorbing college life. And by absorbing I mean sleeping on the couch to the backdrop of Sky News.

All that aside, in my dozy states I've developed a sort of passion for Dr Seuss. First of all,  I'm a girl who understands the meaning of boredom. Well, I like to think I do. Seriously, after an hour in a lecture where the only word you understood was 'neutrally', boredom doesn't even come into it. Boredom is a dodgy pub that you passed 40 miles ago, and you're on the way to becoming an Actual Dead Person, killed by the boredom of your own degree.

Anyway. That has little to do with the supposed topic of this blog post, Mr Dr Seuss. Here is a man who made worlds that were so un-boring it was impossible to be, well, bored. Fluffy trees with fluffier creatures hanging out of them, trying to sleep. Foxes wearing soxes. Jungles of Nool. Landscapes that curved and held no straight lines. Boredom didn't come into it.

bored yet?

I know I am. That's why I thought it was time to recap on My Boring Week.
What happened this week, Shona?
Well, this week was very boring, blog. Let me explain.

Bit of an overstatement

life goals: part one

Right. Let’s get this thing started.
Life Goals:
1 getting it started (see above)
2 getting it done
3 getting it done without getting metaphorically/literally Smushed by something/one.

HOW TO ACHIEVE SAID ‘LIFE GOALS’:

1. Getting It Started.
A vital step in the process of doing Anything.
You see, I find that some people think they have it all sorted. They think they have, if you will, the Fox in the Bag. The course. The job. The girl. The guy. The praise. The glory.
These people are all wrong. You see, the key to having it all sorted, to having, excuse the gesture, the Book on the Shelf, is this: Doing by Undoing.
If you are like me, you have this proverbial Car in the Garage due to an overwhelming ability to be lazy and to also get it done.
Watch and learn...

punctuation lessons

... another Important Thing

Thought punctuation was all about the commas and apostrophes? Think again. As I discovered today, there is a whole other world of punctuation out there that I was horrifically unaware of. The shame! THE SHAME! Oh, it’s horrible, it’s horrible. Not knowing this kind of USEFUL information meant that I would be more suited to giving tours of Machu Piccu than ‘reading’ English. When I lived in those dark times of Not Knowing How To Put A Line Into My Essay, I would have been better at pointing out historical archaeological details about a place that I had never been to than sitting down reading something that had been written in the 1700s by some guy with five slaves and 300 acres. Without even considering the question, To Put In Inverted Commas or Not To Put In Inverted Commas, I was blind to the real study of English. The Real Stuff.

But, all jokes aside, seriously.
Seriously. One day in front of the television and I’d learn what the weather was like in Turin. One day in an English class and I learn that when you use the dash (‘The Hyphen’), you must leave a space either side so that the lecturer correcting your essay won’t have an actual stroke. It transforms this sentence of made-up words that my lecturer likes to pontificate with, from this

Neutrally explicified-

To this:

Neutrally explicified –

I know. Totally different, right?

the questionable land of punctuation marks