Happyhat

I thought that many people always, or mostly write about struggles in their life, and only write about good things if they are substantially good. Well, I'm not having a particularily great day, in fact, I am feeling quite frusterated with lots of stuff, but there is plenty in my day to be happy about. So this is a happy post.
Today, my english teacher was away, and we got to leave school early, and I got home by 2.00. That was fun. Also good, was that on the trian home, I had a talk with a guy who I hardly ever speak to, and as far as I know, not many people speak to much. That was good. I love doing things like that, and making friends with new people. It always makes me feel heaps better, as well as, I hope, them.
Today, I also got the opportunity to blog on the internet. I get this everyday. How privileged I am to be able to do this. And that people would read this, probably even today, is so special. It means that I have friends, people who are interested in my life, or my writings. That, in itself, is a privilege, and something I am grateful for.
Also, this morning, my Dad (Wow, I really don't know whether I'm meant to spell "Dad" with a capital letter or not. One day I will find out.) left for America for a while. A few weeks I think. This isn't really a good thing, or a bad thing, just a thing of note, so I thought I'd throw it in there. It's an exciting thing for him, I think, although it's linked with work, and he's been there many times before.
So, I have been happy today, and have more of today yet to be happy about. There are always good things, everyday, even if they're sometimes hard to see. Is truggled thinking of god things today, but they were there. Good. Yay. Happy. Happyhat.

Books

Ok, so, I like books. Yay! Out of nowhere, I decided to write down my favourite books, which could be considered strange, but is not to me. Isn't it better to have a post about favourite books, than no post at all? Yes. Anyway, I recommend, if you like reading, to read these books, if you have not already. They are best. They are also included in no specific order.

• William Golding, Lord of the Flies
• George Orwell, 1984
• Phillip Pullman, His Dark Materials
• The Bible
• J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
• Frank Herbert, Dune

These books are all fantastic. Many also have themes and issues within them that I could discuss until the cows went to bed. Yes, that's right, not untill the cows came home, but even until they went to bed. Once again, if you like reading, and you havn't read these books. Read them. Now.

MSN

Well, I get annoyed at a lot of things. I don't get angry very often, but I get annoyed a lot. Right now, I am anoyed at MSN messenger. For those of you who don't know what it is... well, I'll assume you do.
It is so annoying because people who you just simply don't want to talk to, talk to you. Also, people who you probably DO want to talk to, but not over MSN, they talk to you also. Then there's people who you want to talk to on MSN, but they don't seem to want to talk back. It would help if people actually just said whether they feel like chatting over MSN, instead of stupid lack of communication, even though MSN is meant to be a communication device. Irony!
I really don't like conversing on MSN. If you want a conversation, the easiest way is a phone call. I only really like informing, being informed, and maybe joking around on MSN, while doing other, more important things.
But now, the thing that annoys me the most about MSN is this: When my status is set to busy, people DO NOT respect the fact that I'm busy. Sometimes I set my status to busy and only talk to one person. This is because whatever I'm doing, I can also talk to ONE person. Maybe two. But When it's set to busy, and people instigate a conversation: Bad. Bad bad bad bad bad!
Aargh. MSN is so annoying. But it has its purposes, so I will not abandon it. If only people stopped abusing it and wrecking it and making it annoying.
Anyway. Getting quite caught up in annoyance right now. No offence is intended to anybody through this post. I don't always hate MSN this much. But right now, and 80% of the time: I do.

Rant over.

How well do you know Jono?

How well do you know Jono? I Know him quite well. And BAM! I also know why! Because he is me. Here is a test to see how much YOU know me. Take down your answers, and check the comments for the results. Then comment, and tell me what you got! Not cheating. Here is test.

Q1: What is my middle name?
A: Courtney
B: Ashleigh
C: Brianna
D: Lindsey

Q2: What is my favourite colour?
A: Orange
B: Silver
C: Magenta
D: Cyan

Q3: I go to which school?
A: A stupid school with hardly any Asians.
B: A smart school with hardly any non-Asians.
C: A mildly interesting school full of fish.
D: A very interesting school not full of fish.

Q4: If I could only have one of the following, which would I have?
A: A cardboard box.
B: A metal box.
C: A small and relatively pathetic handbag.
D: A star picket.

Q5: If I had to listen to music from a solo instrument for an hour, what instrument would I want to listen to?
A: A Piano.
B: A Saxophone.
C: An Ocarina.
D: A Guitar.

Q6: Carcinogenic means:
A: Slightly more likely to give you cancer.
B: Not vaguely unlikely to not give you no canncer.
C: Highly likely to most unlikely cause a consolidation response.
D: Not likely to give you an unlikely chance of not getting no cancer.

Q7: 62+74=
A: Not telling.
B: Window.
C: 58.
D: Not likely to give you an unlikely chance of not getting no cancer.

Q8: Wimsey, my teddy, has how many olympic gold medals?
A: None, but he has 28 silver ones.
B: 28, 000, 000
C: 28, 000, 000, 000, 000 (twenty eight billion)
D: 28 x 10^28, 000, 000, 000, 000

Q9: In Europe, my name means:
A; ,Best
B; Doubleplusgood"
C- $pontaneously predictable
D: Grammatically Correct Man.

Q10: Obscillitron.
A: No way!
B: Butterfly.
C: Aku tidak bisa jawab pertanyaan ini.
D: Save as draft.

Aha! How do you think you went? I bet I beat you at betting that i didn't not make the mistake of failing to not beat you.

Good / Bad

Recognising what is good and bad about yourself is very important. I think one of the big flaws a lot of people have is that they hide from their own good qualities, and focus on their bad qualities. Half of the things that make us individual are bad things. So what? But, in my opinion it is more important that we need to understand what we are good at, and not push these things to the side. Not being afraid to point out what is bad about yourself is one thing, but not being afraid to point out what is good about yourself is another, and, possibly, harder thing.
Basically, I'm writing this to share some of myself, without caring about what other people think. So if this in any way offends you, (which I can't see why it would) then no offence was intended. Following is me admitting what I am good at, and bad at. Read:

MY GOOD QUALITIES:
I am very creative, possibly much more so than many people. I am good at drawing, writing, and generally creating stuff on the whole, like characters, concepts and ideas.
I am also quite friendly, most of the time. I feel like I can be friendly to any sort of person, and try to be a good friend to people. Along with this, I feel I encourage people a fair but, which is good.
I am good at certain sports, like ultimate frisbee, badminton, aerobics and other SYG sports, as well as many other ones which I love. The only real sports I don't really enjoy are footy, basketball and cricket, which is stupid, because they're like the three main sports in Victoria.
I am good at many otehr things, also, but they are not coming to mind straight away, so I will nt mention them.

MY BAD QUALITIES:
A lot of the time I am selfish, thinking about how a situation will benefit me, and not thinking of others, but not all the time, though, I am constantly trying to stop this.
If I feel like being around one person, when I could be spending time with somebody else who probably needs my company more, I tend to spend time with the person I feel like being around.
I don't like people assuming things of me. Maybe this isn't that bad, but I'm not sure.
I am not god at strategy games requiring concentration, like chess etc.
I am lazy a lot, and will not do things I should do, when I should do them. This is a serious fault that I need to work on more.
I should be doing homework right now, but I'm not.
There are more bad things, but they are not coming to my head straight away.

There! I have shared some of myself to others, without hiding from the truth.
Now, my challenge for everyone reading this is: write down what you are good at, and what you are bad at, like I have done. If you own a blog, write it on that, so that you cannot hide from these facts. Anyway, if you don't want to, that's fine, but I encourage it.

Finish post.

Characters

Characters are arguably my favourite thing ever. I get inspired most of all by fiction, stories and the like, whether that be movies, serials, books or whatever. That is my passion. But within these things, my favourite aspect is that of character. To me, a story is really good so long as its characters are good. Some stories have crap characters but a good plot, this makes the story bad to me. But a story with awesome characters and a crap plot is good to me. Mind you, plot is very significant, still, for a good story. Note: When I say story, I mean any sort of story, not just books.
Anyway, I love characters so much, they are my favourite. Some characters are so good they make me melt. I actually melted a few times. Melting is fun. Anyway, I have decided to share a few of my very favourite characters, below. There are many mroe characters that I love, but I either couldn't find a picture of them, there isn't a picture fo them, or I simply couldn't be bothered finding any more pictures. Here are my favourite characters:


GANDALF: Wow, Gandalf is so cool. For those who havn't seen Lord of the Rings, or read the books, you cannot possibly understand how cool Gandalf is. He's pretty much the best I know of. If I was a character from Lord of the Rings, I would be Gandalf. And Iam Mckellan played him so well in the movie that I have decided he is one of my favourite actors. Yay! Fun!

AURON: Aha! Nobody knows who this is. He is quite clearly one of the greatest characters ever invented. I'll leave you to find out who he is, but he cannot be understood untill you've at least seen him in his original context. Definately one of my favourites. Best best best best best.

JACK SPARROW: It shames me to say that he is one of my favourites, but I simply couldn't deny it. He is right up there. Besides the awesome plot line, he is half of why Pirates of the Caribbean so good. Unfortunately, many twelve year olod girls and the like have ruined his image, but as a character in the actual movie, he is so good. Good good good.

OBELIX: If you have ever read Asterix, you will understand that Obelix is very much the best character in it. He is so stupid, yet so strong, and so helpful yet so annoying. And he has such a cool little dog. And he is incredably fat. He is also, most of the time, very funny, and oblivious to the world. I like.

COSMO: Alright, I watch kids T.V. So what? We all do. And as much as nobody will admit it, you have all seen Cosmo. But maybe not. I don't care, I have seen him and that's all that matters. Despite being for a significantly younger age group, I love Fairly Odd Parents, it actually makes me laugh, especially Cosmo. He is so smanbastical. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks so, but I don't care. Watch Fairly Odd Parents. Cosmo is cool. Channel 2.

25 reasons myspace is stupid

I don't know if anybody realised, but I don't like myspace very much. It is bad bad bad bad bad.
Here is why. Myspace is stupid because:

1- You can't teach it anything.
2- You don't need one.
3- It takes up to much time. Time that could be spent blogging.
4- Commenting on myspace, or having conversations over myspace can be done on Messenger, E-mail or Blogger instead.
5- Most of the photos of people on myspace are stupid. They are always angled so that, conveniently, someone's cleavage is showing, or their pathetic excuse for a six pack, or something like that.
6- They make stupid musical noises, when the internet is not suppost in interfere with noises that are already happening in the environment.
7- People stay up too late using myspace.
8- People who have a myspace blog less. Bad.
9- "Myspace" is not a word. It should be "My Space", or "Stupid site that I put stupid things on."
10- Many people who use myspace have a list of friends comprising of people they don't even know.
11- It encourages gossip.
12- It is not Blogger.
13- Wimsey does not have one.
14- Everything done on myspace can be done using some other means.
15- It does not learn.
16- It has an IQ of twelve.
17- It has an EQ of negative seventeen billion.
18- It cannot dance.
19- It cannot jump.
20- You can't take it for a walk in the park. Unless you have wireless internet. If so, and you still walk it in the park. Well. You're wierd.
21- It does not eat what you didn't finish for tea.
22- If it had a human form, it would be that little ridiculous minimalistic symbol which is meant to look like a person and is suspiciously similar to the little messenger man symbol.
23- It has to copy its little man symbol from messenger.
24- I'm yet to see the word "Smanbastical" used on any myspace.
25- I don't have one.

Photography

I get annoyed at smiling for photos. Bad bad bad bad bad. I hate having to put on a fake face so that in the future sombody can look at the picture and say "Wow, he was happy.
I hate having to look at a camera, when a photo is taken, and have just my face in it, or my torso. I hate these sorts of photos.

Sure, we all want these sort hanging on our wall, showing what we look like when we're happy. Fine. Take one or two good ones, then that's enough! Real photos are of real situations. If you want to set up a photo, a posed photo, that's perfectly fine, but at least make it have ther intention of looking like it's not meant to be set up. When taking a picture of nature, do you trim the trees, paint the mountains and twist the scenery so that it's facing the lens, before taking the photo? No, because it would look like you ruined the scenery. But you might throw some dirt onto something to look like it was more rustic. See, that would look like it wasn't meant to be set up, even if it was.

I hope, if you're reading this, you know where I'm coming from. Real photos are meant to capture a moment, not an artificial assortment in which people stop smiling as soon as the photo is taken. Aargh. Angry.

Below I have put three photos that are examples of good photos. I also have reasons for why these photos are good.

Well, here is a photo of a sandcastle I built once. The waves would have come and washed it away, so I took a photo. Here, photography has been used to preserve something that could otherwise not have been preserved. Good. This photo gets a tick.

Now here is a photo of Ben Chong preforming a smanbastical dunk off Matt Waters' back. This photo captures the time when me and some friends were at Lauren Pinches house, and doing all sorts of different dunks and what not. Silliness and funness of that time captured proporly by photo? Yes. Tick for this one.

Aha! It's Starfish Man! (a.k.a. me) This is almost one of the photos I hate, but not, because of an important fact: this photo does not look like it's meant to be set up. Even though it is obvious that I stood there like that specifically for that photo, it looks like that scenario could have come into place without the camera being pointed at me. This is true. So this photo kills two birds with one stone, one, it captures me at the beach, and memories of that night, and it shows what Starfish Man looked like, for those who would otherwise never know.

See, these are photos with purpose, and goodness. From now on, no more smiling stupidhead photos. Bad bad bad bad bad bad.

Re-Lenting

Well, as some of you may know, I did lent this year, for the first time ever. But I did it in a slightly not so conventional way. I gave up buying food from the canteen at school, (Which was a big step for me), and I did 100 pushups and situps every day. Fun!
Anyway, lent is now over, and I am continuing with it, doing it again, or as in my catchy post title, I am re-lenting. (Which is a play on words that I stole from Ben Chong's blob!) So, what this entails is me continuing with my 100 Pushups and situps, but I have decided to continue with only 50 a day. It is easier. I am also going to still not buy stuff from the canteen. But for these 40 days, I am adding something extra.
Basically, the extra thing for these 40 days is that I have to make a specific effort to make someone else feel better. This could be encouraging them, doing something nice for them, or even making lfi easier for them without them knowing I did it. I like this idea.
So, anyway, I am doing this challenge/lent with Kelly Styles, and for acountability, we have to tell each other what we've done every day, and write down in a journalish thing what we;ve done. Sounds so fun, yes? Yes.
So, there endeth my post for now. I hope it has given you a perfectly fulfilling insight into the life of Jono. But maybe it hasn't. Oh well.