green eyes, red eyes

The island is a small rounded crescent like shape that reminds me of a piece of an orange. It's not very big, only having a population of about 4000. Like a typical holiday island, it has glorious white and yellow sand beaches, warm crystalline water and huge over hanging palm trees. Like other similar islands, it has become a place of luxury resorts and tourism, where the rich come to relax and holiday with coconuts in one palm and their iphones in the other, all the while floating and sun-baking in one of the many large swimming pools dotted around the island. One would expect life here to be a relatively happy place - busy, full of life and yet laid back in every way.

Not so.

 

Every 100 days or so, somebody goes missing. Every single non-tourist lives in fear of this. They don't count the days of the year like the rest of the world - well they do, but locally, the year is defined by 3 and a half cycles of 100 days. On every 100th day, you will find the towns deserted. Not an open shop. Every person, save the confused tourists will be boarded up in their houses or hiding within the hotels, keeping a close eye on their children and every window and door to their household. No opening is left unboarded. Even toilets lids are strapped down until that night is over. Every man, woman and child will tape over the key holes and every crack they can find in the house before huddling together in their beds with ear plugs in their ears. When the sun finally peeks over the horizon the next morning, the citizens of the island will finally come out with a sigh of relief. They have survived another cycle. In the distance, there will be a wail of grief. Another one gone. Sometimes exactly who has gone missing is undiscovered for days.

 

No natives have lived or landed on this island for hundreds of years. Natives still refuse to come here and say if the Westerners want to be visited by the evil that lives there, who are they to stop them? The locals now living on the island have never been able to get a coherent story of the island's past. All they know is that there was romance, betrayal and a curse for revenge. That and the 'thing' that visits every cycle is female. A woman with one eye red and one eye green.

Be a good story

Life can really take it out of you. You get out of bed in the morning and what happens? You get steamrolled by a Femojan elephant that resembles nothing like an elephant - it looks more like a giant rh... never mind.

 

This is only going to be a short post. For reasons known only to the onions with the rotten cores sitting unhappily in my house and pretending to be good onions so that I will eat them, life can take unexpected turns. Not all of them unstressful. Understatements are the amuse bouche of the day, so bear with my incoherence. I'm tired, annoyed, frustrated and perhaps just a teeny-weeny little bit stressed. Hear me roar/scream/cry/shout/laugh all at the same time. Of course, like me, it's inaudible. Being inaudible in itself can be like settling into your favourite armchair and just when you are getting comfy, a great big grizzly bear decides to sit on you. It gets comfy sitting on you and who are you to complain (right)? You don't want to get eaten or ripped limb from limb... and while you are sitting there suffocating under a ton of fur and fat, guess what? Yeah, a hoarde of animals come along one by one and sit on top until you are a veritable pancake beneath the weight of a million animals and creatures of all sizes.

 

Life is short. Any day could be your last. God only knows which day, which hour, which minute, which second. But I concur. Life is much like being chased up and down mountains and valleys; in and out of forests and fields; caves and waterfalls; rivers and oceans (- ok, the whole entire galaxy), yet wherever you go you're being hunted. Yep it's a man hunt by your deepest, darkest nightmare. Others will only see a blur and have a distinctly uncomfortable feeling of danger and move out of your nightmare's way, before they too get embroiled within it. Sometimes they don't move fast enough and get eaten. Then you blame yourself for all your inadequacies.

 

The point is, life is a gift. It may not be one you like. But hey, well, you've only got one chance.

 

Life is a story. Your story. Your magnus opus. This is your only shot at making good with what you got and showing the whole entire universe that you exist and exist for a reason. Almost everyone (save a few weirdos) love a good story. Make your story worth having lived through the tedious.

 

Make your story, a good story. Live life. Live loud and face up to those challenges, cos what's an epic story without the breakthroughs and the impossibles that became possible by miracle?

 

Hope you make it through the day without somebody coming along and drawing fake moustaches/beards/ornaments on your face with a permanent marker.

roasting with patience

Yesterday was a bit like today, but unlike today. Sorry? Oh, you mean, how does that make sense? Nevermind the details are unimportant. The troll's toenail clippings are. That's disgusting? Of course it is, but if you come over here (just remember to hold your nose), you may notice that stuck to the dirt beneath the nail there is where your lost earring may be found. No problems at all. What? My fault? What? How is it my fault that you snuck into the cave when I told you not to and nearly got eaten? How is it my fault that you accidentally kicked the troll in the eye when you tripped over a clot of dry snot and fell onto his sleeping mat? I beg your pardon! Language, my dear friend. Language! Do you like being woken up by being poked hard in the eye by a twig of a limb? I should think not.

Good idea. I forgot where we were for a moment. Hush! Don't laugh. It's - eeew... not funny. You try falling waist deep into a pool of drool and see whether it's funny or not. Help me out here. No, I'm not wiping it on you on purpose - that is unless you want me to. Come here you. Let me give you a hug. SSSSHHHHHHH!!!! Don't shout so loud. You'll wake him up!

Yes. I agree. Let's move on. Goodness, saliva is sticky stuff. Disgusting. You reach under the pillow. Carefully now. I'd get glued to the thing if I tried. That's it. That's it. Slowly... slowly... Look at the beauty! Come on. Let's find the right jewellry box. Nononononono - don't - ok you've done it this time. Run! What? Don't - don't give the key to... me...

Ummm, sorry to wake you up sir, but if you'll just excuse me...

Don't - you - ever - do - that - ever - again! Next time just drop it and run! What? I'm... oh. So I am. How did I run as fast as I did still holding onto the thing? Nevermind. Oh look. There's the box. No, no. I dare not. Let's hide away somewhere until he's gone back to sleep or left the cave or something. Trolls have an awful sense of smell, despite their gigantic noses. It's because their noses are always blocked. Full of thick globs of green mucus. That's why they snort so much. Didn't you know? Perfectly. We're perfectly safe, so long we sit still... and from the looks of things, the troll is trying to wait us out. Trolls have extremely bad eyesight too. Sit still and we'll just look like little globs of dirt. So what? We certainly look like it now.

unscheduled

Some days writing something here is not a top priority - like when you need to go save the world from being blown up by megalomaniacs or when you've been royally summoned by the current monarch of Terebinthia or when there's been a dalek invasion or when someone is trying to bring cybermen back to life and the Doctor's no where in sight. Then there are the times the Queen has ordered you to go on a super-secret mission and you might disappear for weeks; times SG10 have lost their DHD and can't dial home from a hostile planet and need rescuing; times Atlantis is under attack again and Rodney McKay has accidentally been locked in a room that he is having trouble getting out of because there is a saboteur fighting him over the network systems; times Brennan and Beckett have gotten themselves kidnapped, into deep water and you're the only person who can tell Booth and Castle where to find them - then there's the trouble of getting through the bad guys to get to them. There are also the times when the toilet falls apart or you've forgotten to muck out the chickens' stalls and feed or water them for three days and they are in danger of dying or the washing machine is bubbling or the microwave blew up or the pressure cooker blew up or you just plum need some rest from all the work you've been doing (such as the above).

Yeah. Sometimes this becomes a much less priority when you have to fight to keep your job and to avoid having to repeat a whole 4 years of training all over again... and haven't been well for the entirety of the first holiday longer than a day that you've had this year. Ok. So what if I'm exaggerating? You get the gist.

It's not like anybody bothers even staring at my ants marching across the screen. I mean, where does that get fun? No colours, no pretty pictures, just using your imagination to see the landscape from the top of the steep cliff where the clouds are your neighbours, icy breezes comb their fingers through your hair and below you... well. Below you are clouds of green. Like the tops of broccoli. A whole sea of them. They could well be a mass of green-dyed, afro-style hair-dos. Every now and then, a warmer whiff of air rises from below and brings the smell of wet earth, growing things and ammonia. From this position, you can see the edge of the forest and what direction you should be going in, but once beneath the trees you know you are likely to lose all sense of orientation as the sun goes hides behinds layers and layers of clouds, dooming you to wander lost in the bush/forest for the rest of the days of your life - forcing you to become a wildman/woman that scavenges and fights with the animals for survival in this place so unlike the city with its shops and fast food. You don't even know what plants are likely to be edible, much less animals and you don't even want to think of what insects might taste like, although the thought of grubs and giant beetles is beginning to seem rather meaty - more and more edibly appetising. This thought makes you want to cry. You might never see your new yellow Bumblebee car again.

It's like when we had DOS. Everything was words on the screen and you couldn't even scroll to see what it said before. If you forgot the instructions from the screen before, well, too bad. Either you had to repeat the command and read 200 words per second or you just made something up and went with the flow. Now we can have multiple windows, scroll up and down and even have dinky things like hyperlinks in the form of a picture button thing. Guess times change.

So this is me ranting. Ranting for no particular reason. Crying to deaf ears that cannot hear me through this screen and to blind eyes who will read this post and do a double take. 'What is this mad woman going on about? She can't even spell appetising right!' Americans and their obsession with being different from the rest of the world. I don't have to spell it with a 'z' if I don't want to, ok? I'm feeling particularly stubborn today, so don't get me in the mood - cos I will fight you with a chainsaw. Maybe an axe. Or a sword and shield. Shield would be a good idea. Ok then. A longbow. Nah. Machine gun would be better. Over faster and less way you can run and hide.

Listen to me talk! I am in a murderous mood aren't I? I may have to run and hide from myself if that keeps up. I have found the majority of the Series 5 Doctor Who transcripts here: http://jpgr.livejournal.com/ But you will have to trawl through their archives to get it. I don't like their journal set up, because you can't search through past posts easily, but who am I to judge? It's not like my blog's set up any better. Still looking for 'A Christmas Carol' transcript. I've got all the other transcripts for the new Doctor Who to date. You can find them somewhere if you search google. There's a guy that has done 2005+ and has an archive of the classic series as well. I think. Go find it yourself. I can't be bothered right now finding out his web address (largely because I haven't yet learnt how to make links in HTML yet). I'll get to it one day. If anyone finds someone who has transcripts for the tv series Castle, please let me know. I'll be happy to hear from you.

For a long long day
And a long long night
We can sing this song
Give ourselves a fright
Until we're sick of it
And will have a fit
At least it's not
'This is a song that never ends...'

Pumpkin and spinach gnocci

So the pasta looked good in the glass. I deined to part with some of my hard earned cash to try a medium sized container. $6.50 . Was it worth it? Did the university cafe live up to its low standards?

I tried the creamy light yellow-orange sauce first... it was reasonable. I could have done with a little more cheese, but on first taste, it was the standard pasta taste one would expect from most standard cafes.

Then I tried one of the orange coloured gnocci. It stuck to the roof of my mouth. Perhaps chance had given me a not so good piece. I tried one of the green ones. It stuck to the roof of my mouth. So did the white ones. No. It couldn't be. Gnocci is meant to be mushy? Is gnocci really supposed to stick to the roof of your mouth? Are the different colours all meant to taste exactly the same?

(Here dear reader, I must pause and let you know that this is only the second time I have ever eaten gnocci in my life. The first time was only an old left over piece from my sister's lunch two months ago and it was not mushy.)

So. What makes a good gnocci? I have absolutely no idea.

In this interstingly sad pasta where I craved more cheese to break up the monotony of the sauce, I then found an orange finger. A piece of pumpkin! It was like finding treasure in a game I was quickly tiring of. I dove to find another piece and was rewarded with a piece a little smaller than the tip of my finger.

There was no more.

I could have cried.

In the end, I left 5 pieces of gnocci. My tongue was sore from the constant cleaning it had to perform on the roof of my mouth. Two orange, two green and one white.

Granted, there were rare finds of pumpkin. Granted the gnocci came in three different colours. But where was the wholesome taste of the pumpkin or the furriness of the spinach in the sauce? Note to self. Next time I want to try pasta, try an actual Italian pasta restaurant type eatery. Not a low-grade university cafe. Even if it looks good through the glass. Even if it smells nice and the sauce was reasonable. The attempt will give your mouth a work out and more likely than not exhaust you.

The pieces of pumpkin and my little cup of hot chocolate were the only things that saved my meal. So. What makes a good gnocci? Somebody tell this ignoramus, please. And please don't tell me it is meant to stick to the roof of my mouth.

I'm bored

So, the towerness is fading to a rubble of stony vile. Here's something nice and short, while neutropenia is still the subject and meningitis complicates the style.

Nifedipine and mickey buttons have nothing to do with travel coupons.

Writing a story is like picking up every single pebble on the driveway and revising like picking up every grain of sand upon the path.

in the tower 4

Just as they were entering the umpteenth door identical to the one that the teachers had ushered them through, they heard a noise. It was only small. A whirr-whump. Then footsteps.

They ducked down out of sight of the windows and peered through the crack in the door hinge.

A dark figure bent over so that the soft orange glow from his belt would not give him away. He crept along the corridor toward them. A board creaked.

"Who dares creep around at this time of the night?" a voice boomed as the lights flickered on in the corridor. A bulky figure in a dressing gown stood with his hands on his hips in a doorway further down and the two children could see his hairy legs via one of the mirrors in the hallway. The mysterious figure crouched low. "Who-"

The question was cut short by a gurgle and the sound of spurting liquid hitting wood. Jacky gasped without realising it and Luke clapped his hand over her mouth. Too late, they saw the figure suddenly look in their direction. He crept toward the door and it rattled a little on its sliding groove when another voice snapped out.

"Paulos, what are you - " a scream followed.

Right before their door, Jacky and Luke saw the soft orange glow envelope the masked man and with an electronic whine, vanish. The two stared at each other, eyes wide, still too afraid to move.

Doors slammed and feet came running. Soon there was a crowd and the noise of screaming, crying, fainting and hysterics filled the formerly quiet night air. In the cacophanous confusion, Jacky and Luke hightailed it back to their room where they flopped on the floor, gasping as if they were fish out of the water.

"He didn't see us," Jacky breathed over and over. "He didn't see us."
"We hope."