I miss my stupid online text-based game :/

no, not the game, the community. there are two sites that i often kept open and would refresh while doing other things... i normally didn't pay a lot of attention to them, but they were habit. they were both forum sites related to the game. or linked with it at least - a lot of their content was not game related. but i've decided that it's best to stay away from them because they're likely to draw me back into the game.

but they are habit, and it's hard to break the habit. a few times already today i've found myself on one of the forum sites without really thinking about it... it's just such a common action for me to open up a new tab, type the first few letters of the url and then autocomplete and go. i don't use bookmarks for the sites that i use most, because autocomplete is just as easy, and leaves less mess. instead, my bookmarks are sites i've happened upon that i thought i might want again but suspected i wouldn't be able to easily find.

i still talk to a few people from this game on aim, but only the ones who i'd consider friends and who i've chatted with a lot about non-game-related issues, a.k.a. real life. that's the split in the community - game-related and real life. your game-related life and your "real life". many people spend more time in their game-related life than their real one.

it really is a substitute social community. it IS social interaction, it IS a social life. it's just one with a different medium of communication - only written, instead of real life that consists of written as well as verbal, tactile, and visual communication. its limitations can even facilitate communication better than real life, in some cases. it can be easier to open up to someone online, an internet friend, someone who isn't "real". and one doesn't get interrupted much in writing. you can share things with these people who you've never met, and likely never will meet, that you couldn't share with many of your real life friends - because the fear of being judged and found to be a complete fucking psycho is less severe.

it also helps that many of the people online are a lot like you, and may be undergoing the same issues, conflicts, etc.

And yes, I fully realise that by throwing my myself into dA, and by throwing myself into blogging, i'm simply replacing my stupid text-based game social life with another "virtual" one. but i can see good things coming of dA and focusing on my photography. blogging i'm not so sure about - but mind you, i'm also not so sure that i'll even stick with this and won't get bored of it after two weeks. what's the standard life span of a blog, i wonder?

but blogging is, i think, more introspective. or more egocentric :P

I have replaced my stupid text-based online game with deviantArt. There's a lot of stunning photography on dA (which is the aspect of it that I'm interested in) but there's also a lot of angsty emo artwork and poetry.

Let's find some examples!

A quick search for sorrow returns five pieces of artwork featuring people crying. Three of these are close ups of their eyes. A high percentage of the work on dA is closeups of eyes. Yes, eyes are pretty. Yes, close-ups of eyes are cool. But it's been done, alright?

Others feature blood or bad overdone goth make-up. and then there's the fan art. Wouldn't it be a slightly better display of your creativity to make your own character rather than seeing how well you can duplicate someone else's? Hell, I can't draw for shit, but even I can use tracing paper.

"fulfill your nightmares", "horror has a face", "screaming bloody murder" (this one is a face shot with the contrast boosted too high and the entire thing tinted red).

dA is great, but it's a pain in the ass sifting the quality from the shit.

Chai tea

I went to visit a friend of my mother's in Victoria a few weeks ago, and she made chai tea. It had never occurred to me to make chai tea before, so I gave it a try when I got home. Needed a bit of experimentation, but I've found a version that I'm pretty happy with :)

There's a lot of room for improvisation in chai tea because its taste varies widely from place to place. There's really no one strong distinguishing ingredient - I've found you can even replace the black tea with green tea. You can use whatever spices you have on hand - just use some common sense as to what would be appropriate.

My method:

Boil water in kettle (I do this because it's faster than doing it on the stove)
Add boiling water to pot on stove with two black tea bags - can also use some kinda spice tea bag, e.g. bengal spice or gingerbread spice or anything that sounds like it'd work from its ingredients
Add ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom
Let simmer for a few mintues, then add two capfuls of vanilla
To sweeten, add any of the following: honey, sugar (brown or white), syrup, etc. I use a combo of honey and brown sugar myself.

then just ladle it out and add milk!

It keeps well in the fridge and can be consumed hot or cold.

I'm quitting my stupid text-based online game.

The game itself isn't anything to write home about - it's just the hook. What really drags you into it is the community. The community is the worst timesink ever, and it's all fucking useless. Some of the people are cool, sure, but then there's all the morons. Yet, it's addicting. It's a substitute social life if you don't have one in real life.

I'm good at the game, and I'm popular in the community. Go me! But there are so many things I would rather be doing with my time, so now I"m going to quit. There are many people who have "retired" multiple times, but they get dragged back in eventually, so I hope I'm able to stay out.

you know that burning you get in your eyes when you've been up for too long or staring at the stupid computer for too long or whatever but you aren't tired so you can't sleep?

It bugs me. I can't do anything that involves my eyes being open, but I can't sleep. I can lie in bed or sit somewhere with my eyes closed and think. How thrilling.

Sometimes I think i might have ADD. I often get up and walk to the kitchen and then forget why I'm there. I've opened the fridge door and found myself staring into the fridge, having forgotten what I wanted to get out of there. I' ve found the teapot in the fridge and had no clue how it got there. I forget to do things that people ask me to do and that I say I'll do. And to have not yet talked about the computer is to have been brutally dishonest because at the moment that's still my life. I open new tabs and forget immediately where I wanted to go in them. I click on the menu bar only to forget what I wanted to do. I open my illegal file sharing program and then forget what song I opened it specifically to steal.

But the one that pisses me off the most isn't computer related. It's lying in bed not sleeping related. I let my mind wander, and wonder it does. Sometimes I'll think of something that sounds like a good idea or just some thought that interests me and that I decide that I want to think more about. But in the split second between the thought and the realisation that I want to remember it or focus on it, it's gone. I can't remember what the thought/idea was or even a general theme. sometimes i feel that I can rememebr the lead up to the thought, but when I actually try to focus on that, I can't remember that either. but it feels like i should be able to. I don't even know what these thoughts are, if they're images, ideas, words... they're just completely forgotten as soon as they are thought. One use only. Transience at its best.

I've got a group project to do for one of my geography courses. Two of the people in my group are cool, the other one, we suspect (we being me and the two who are decent), hates us.

Of course, that could be our fault. Sometimes he gets what he thinks is a good idea, and explains it. He speaks clearly, he doesn't stutter, he uses proper English, but... he doesn't make any sense. He'll be explaining an idea, and we'll be listening, and we'll be thinking, huh? and waiting for the thought to clear up, and it doesn't. so then he's done and you can see "wtf?" written on our faces. I've started doing the smile and nod and "oh, okay" thing.

This blog does not have any posts. Please add at least one post in order to preview.