Plus, it’s Coffee Wednesday today, which can only mean one thing.

Coffee.

On a Wednesday.

So I gots to go be social wiff ma friendies which is a really good thing at the moment, since I kind of need it. I broke up with the boyfriend I mentioned in my last post, for reasons that will remain mysterious in nature. I’m handling it really well for my first real break-up, and the first initiated by myself. However, I suddenly find I have much more time on my hands, and could do with using it up and spending some more time with my friends and just be happy being me, single. I sound silly there, but oh well. Whatever floats your goat

You know what floats my goat? The activity nights they do at Church for kids my age. I recently “came of age” as some oldies might say… I hit 18 in other words. And, as a “Young Single Adult” I get to go to the Young Single Adult activities, open for the unmarried between 18 and 30. First one for me is Fridaaaaay I originally thought it was a dance, though I was recently informed otherwise :/ I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear :/ my friends that I haven’t seen in, like, FOREVER are going to be there, plus my recently exed boyfriend. He likes purple. I’m not wearing purple. And yes, I am aware that THAT definitely sounds silly. But oh well :p Either way it should be fun and following that, I SHOULD be going shopping Saturday, I need a shrug or a bolero or something that’ll go with my prom dress. It’s bluey-purple, and GORGEOUS. But, I already have some silver shoes I was going to wear with it, so I might get a silver shrug and accessorise silver…. Hmmm, that reminds me.

You know the hair thingies I mentioned in last blog?

They’re broke.

One I broke months ago, the other broke in my Church bag the Sunday before last. The day after I broke up with him – talk about disappointment. I didn’t need that too! I still feel heartbroken that it happened! :’( so I’m going to try and buy a new clip today, if the shop’s open/if I remember.

Anyways, I ought to get my stuff together before I go. Ciao!

Once there was a young camel, and it lived in a field – which was odd because they’re designed for desert, not greenery. So anyway, this camel called Geoffrey was a bad, naughty camel, and he liked to play and investigate.

One day, Geoffrey and his pet platypus, and his friend Sandy the otter decided to dig a hole to China, not realising that they were on the wrong part of the globe for that. Surprisingly, they ended up in South America. So the cute little trio went to play in the rainforest and in the Amazon with their new friend, Daisy the flesh-eating piranha. Daisy liked geoffrey very much. So one day, after a luxurious day swimming and playing catch with their teeth, Daisy asked him to dinner. Geoffrey left his friends behind to go on a journey down the Amazon to have a little more privacy with his date, who then proceeded to attempt to gnaw off his face, during which attempt, Jeromalina the llama jumped in in the nick of time, and saved Geoffrey by shedding her wool in the piranha’s mouth, making her choke, (or rather, it would have made Daisy choke, had her airway been in her throat. However, with gills, this was not the case). Instead, Daisy got severe constipation, wasn’t hungry and went home, leaving Geoffrey and Jeromalina alone.

Later, Geoffrey the camel and his new girlfriend, the beloved Jeromalina the llama, got married and made strange cross-breed babies, which was made possible by the fact that camels and llamas have the same number of chromosomes.

Their offspring consequently had a fair temperament, made nice wool, (not as nice as alpacha), and had an odd hump, accompanied by long legs. Their new race, known as the “cama” have spread across the face of the Americas and are nowing plotting the destruction of all mankind. And they all lived happily ever after (but we didnt.)

The End

Although, I must say, it’s surprising how much simply buying something new, like a new hair clip or whatever, can do. There’s this one hair thing, and it’s one of those where you have a plastic bit that goes over your hair, and then you have like a chop-stick type thing that goes through your hair and through the plastic, and it holds your hair up…

Man, I love those things.

I don’t even know why, it’s probably because they hold all my hair up, nice and tight, and don’t get on my nerves or make me feel like I’m having a bad hair/cba-day…

I dunno. They’re cool, regardless.

And I went into town yesterday, and to my surprise, my EMA had gone in to my account, and so I withdrew some, and managed to find these cool hair thingies! I always break them, so I thought that, to be safe, I would buy 2, each for a quid.

I felt so chuffed with myself. I was in a good mood for hours. I was all pleased and excited like a child, all because of a simple hair clip. I would LOVE to know why I was so pleased. Could be because I’d wanted one for a while, and “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, although whether or not that applies to objects I am unsure. I don’t think I “grew fonder” of these things. If anything, I would say I “grew less fond”, not having one in my possession, and not thinking about this clip thing much.

Or is it a girl thing? Like with shoes, for some strange reason, a girl just can’t have enough. Not even my boyfriend’s mum, who has a big closet FULL of shoes, with all of these divided shelves like “cubbies” for all her shoes…

I am SO jealous of that woman. And Paris Hilton too – you should see the size of her collection! She has a whole room, probably bigger than my bedroom, devoted to shoes! AND (how sad is this) they’re all arranged according to colour!

To be honest, it’s sick really. She is one person with hundreds of pairs of shoes, and in some places, hundreds of people don’t have one pair. Well, at least not shoes like we have. Probably like leather mocassins or something, that are home-made and purely functional, not pretty or sparkly or shiny or fashionably uncomfortable at all… Poor women. There are some poor women out their who have never even heard of high-heels… High heels, the invention for healthy, wealthy women (and some men) from countries where the major problems are National Health, H1N1 vaccination conspiracy theories and Government greed & over-spending, not poverty or starvation. For women, like myself, who delight in the “little” things, like shoes and hair clips…

Thinking of the less fortunate makes me feel kinda greedy for buying two.

So far I’m not sure I have.  But you tell me…

From a literary, I-do-A-Level-English-Language-and-have-had-some-prior-writing-experience standpoint, it’s apparent that the first blog was more like a commentary, with some personal opinions thrown in… “With A Purpose To Inform”, one would say in class… Call me an idiot, but I don’t think that is the essence or intended primary purpose of blogging.

And then there’s my second attempt, which was almost entirely composed of opinion, but I’m unsure if that’s a good thing.

Meh, that’s why these things aren’t professionally published: they vary in style, awesomeness, purpose and format from one bloggage to another. There’s way too much change and variation between articles by one author (just look at mine so far! One about blood, another about British ignorance, and this. I don’t even know what this is… oh wait, the title gives away! What a surprise!), nevermind variation between each of the thousands or more that would be being published if blogging were like a professional online magazine business…

Which is an interesting idea, isn’t it? An online, professional magazine business… But then I guess the entire internet is just exactly that, and there are lots of amateur sites which attempt that, by simply providing the links. Obviously, those site creators overestimate their audience’s willingness (or is it their capacity) to do things for themselves, instead of just finding a better website which provides all of their entertainment on one page.

Which is likely to be the site they return to, since nothing, not even brain cells, is/are expected of them. None of this “click the link below and do the dang work yourself if you’re so interested” business.

Psshhh, what do they take us for? People who sit at a computer for hours at a time, often eating too-big meals or sugary, energy-giving junk food which should make us more willing or at least ok with/resigned to doing things themself with less reluctance?

But anyway, we’re getting off-track. But maybe that’s a good thing? More variation=good? Or is it the Kiss of Death?

Speaking of which, if the Kiss brings death, then what’s the act which brings life (no, not that way. We’re talking metphorically here) ? Is it like, “the near-fatal-stab of life”? Or “the stomach poisoningness of life”?

One could say, that the opposite of death isn’t ‘life’, but is, in fact ‘not death’. And it would follow that the opposite to life is ‘not life’. In the real world, ‘not life’ and ‘not death’ equate to the same as the traditional idea of what is opposite to life or death. To them, ‘not life’ is death, for the most part, and ‘not death’ is life.

But many people’s minds live not in the real world, preferring to reside elsewhere. Preferring to distract and wash away their minds and identities through the media… Through books and films and celebrities and people’s looked-down-on obsessions with the media… Like readaholics; or those obsessed teenagers who know EVERYTHING about their “fave celeb hottie”, and everything that poor person ever said to any interviewer anywhere; or those “freaks” at Star Wars or Start Trek conventions (whichever you think is dorkier – personally, I’d opt for ‘Trek, simply because of it’s, ”ample naycells”-yes, I watched the movie), which conventions most people never seem to know about. It’s like they’re organised by secret societies who must establish whether you’re enough of a “Trekkie” or “geek” to attend before divulging that precious information on the TMP of these Hallowed  and Sacred Star Trek Conventions. (TMP means Time, Manner, Place. An acronym I picked up in German and never forgot. Possibly something to do with my German-knowing mother)…

But I digress. Let’s reverse and back up a little from our digression to the Kiss of Death. Upon editing the grammar and removing some of the more repetitive features of my appalling first draft of this blog, it occurred to me that you can also have a Kiss of Life. So it’s possible to have Kisses of Life and of Death, and the normal ones in the middle. So if you can have one from each end of the spectrum, and we know you can have ones in between, then where are the other in-betweens belonging to other dramatic concepts, like those of life and death? ‘Love’ and ‘hate’ have ‘like’ and ‘dislike’, in between those somewhere is ‘indifferent’; but what about ‘free’ and ‘enslaved’? The opposite to free varies with opinion I suppose, and whether or not one is truly free is debatable, as some consider freedom an absolute, an either/or choice, not unlike digital radio, which is either on or off; others consider it like analogue radio, anywhere between on and off – like you can be free in this way but not in that way… And you can be free to do this, but not to do that… And so on.

And what about the more obscure and random opposites? Like “tied up” or “not tied up”? How about that? Is there a medium, besides the idea of somehow being partially tied up?

Not that it matters, just more digression, which is somewhat pointless. And again, is that a good thing?

Or was the totally irrelevant stream of consciousness and thought just another unwanted, usually not-accepted-without-laughter-at-my-expense tangent?

I don’t know these answer to any of these questions (maybe, just maybe, that may be the reason I asked them in the first place? :O shock/horror! Gasp!)… But maybe you could let me know…

Or maybe I will just write another blog sometime in the future, when I’m bored and can’t think of anything to do but write about what I’ve learned..

 People with this opinion really make me angry. They generalise about these people and make judgements based on what they see on TV, when they know nothing. Somehow they manage to be pessimistic and disbelieving about many things, and yet all of the exaggerations and stereotypes they see depicted on TV, they are gullible enough to believe. It really gets on my wick. What’s more is they dare todo it in the presence of one of those who it’s aimed at, expecting to get away with it. I speak from experience here, having both visited America and been confronted by one such person of this “opinion”.

As a bit of a teaser, joker, and generally “normal” teenagers, I may make little (although admittedly, sometimes frequent) jokes at the expense of welshmen(or women)/ginger people etc, however the difference is, when I and those others participating in the same friendly banter do this, we do it as FRIENDLY banter, and those whose turn it is to be the butt of it this time know we’re kidding. They know nobody actually means it and that it’s just a bit of harmless fun, whereas those that criticise Americans in this way meant it, they make it UNfriendly “banter” (but it’s not really banter, more like uneducated guesses in a narrowminded and judgemental fashion) and they are completely ignorant and know nothing of the truth about what Americans are really like.

And some even have the nerve to argue that somehow this twisted, judgemental opinion based on their own narrowmindedness and TV’s OTT depictions are actually truth?

I am sorry, but I find this hardly acceptable. I don’t mind them having opinions, they have a right to. I just wont tolerate criticisms aimed at my father nation when there is not one ounce of truth or knowledge behind what was said.

If you are going to have an opinion, you have to have information or knowledge, or something – anything legitimate – that gives you reason to believe your opinion is plausible. If it’s impossible, it’s a lie, a false belief. It’s hardly an opinion, that all Americans are fat and stupid and ignorant, because it cannot be possible. SOME may be like this, but not the majority, and certainly not ALL of them. It is not an opinion. It is a lie taught by the ones who are actually ignorant, to those who put their faith in the wrong place because they think that evidence-TV-supports it.

Those who agree with me have every right to be angry, just as everyone has a right to an opinion. The right to voicing opinions in the wrong place though? In the wrong way? No.

Those who have been led to believe this, have been led astray, and granted they may not mean all too much by it. They just made the mistake a) of having a the beginnings of/gullibility to take on such a stupid “opinion”, and b) voicing an opinion in the presence of numerous people who know quite a bit more on the subject, some of them (including myself) having actually been to the USA.

Surprisingly, I personally am not offended by the opinions of the truly ignorant, just angry that some people actually believe these opinions to be true when they know nothing. At least nothing on this subject.

Fair enough to those who have met the odd American who fits in to the stereotype, but is one or two Americans a sufficient basis to make such an assumption? I think not.

So I gave blood today. I was super-nervous before I went and I even took Jolly Ranchers in my pocket and Mtn Dew with me for afterwards (I e-ordered them and they arrived just before I left – great timing! Made me in a better mood for giving blood)… I was really scared, because I have never donated before and I knew it was gonna hurt, but I didn’t know how much…

As is the norm with humans, I feared the unknown.

So anyway, I walked in there and gave in the form I’d received in the post/mail… I should probably tell you that I registered last time I went – right before I was told I couldn’t give blood because I’d had a cold, which I guess I did make it sound a little worse than it was because I was too scared to give blood that day…

Moving on, I handed in my form and took the cup of water and waited for the lady to come and get me. She checked my form with me-there’s all these health requirements, and stuff, like you have to inform them of whether you’ve been travelling outside the UK in the last six months… And absent mindedly I’d opted for “No” on a question only meant to be answered by men-the lady made my sign my initials by it, and she crossed it out! Do I look like a man? Do my forms say I’m a man? No. So clearly it wouldn’t take a genious to work out that I had ticked that box when I shouldn’t have, so why do they need me to give my signature for that?? Weirdos.

So then the woman took blood from my finger and, using a pipette, dropped a teeny bit into a tube with some blue liquid to test whether I was anaemic. It was pretty cool watching my blood float down the tube in a weird blob, instead of looking all runny like when you cut yourself… But yeah, that test proved I’m not anaemic…

And then the scary part… I waited to be called to a bed, and then another woman put one of those odd miniature rubber-rings around my arm and let it expand and put pressure on my arm so they could look for a vein. I’m right handed so she did this to my left, which turned out to be not good enough, because they couldn’t find a “good enough” dang vein and had to do this on my right arm to find a better vein… Nearly made my hand go numb with the pressure the second time!

By this time I was making awkward conversation and giggling nervously at things which were hardly even funny… All this messing around, and no blood removal! I just wanted it to hurry up! And i got that wish-she proceeded to stab me with the needle, which I looked away for, squeezing my eyes shut and holding my mum’s hand with my left one. The initial pain was VERY… uh, “not nice” shall we say… But after that, I wasn’t so bad, and I was able to settle for staring at the high ceiling of the church which the BloodBank was being held in, holding my breathe, with a tight chest. The pain eased up some more and I was so relieved! I chatted to my mum and promptly got bored at around halfway through. I had to sit through ANOTHER 7 1/2 minutes of tingly hand, gentle numbness and the required opening and closing of my hand…

And then came removing the needle-man I was worried about that!

No way near as bad as I thought, and not as bad as insertion, the removal was barely noticeable. Another lady, who I’d chatted to during the blood-sucking process, told be it was time to stop, andpulled the tape off my arm, and applied pressure to a point just above the needle, which hurt. I didn’t look, and just chatted about whatever it was that me, mum and her were chatting about, and then all of a sudden there was a cotton bud on my arm and the lady was telling me to apply pressure over the cotton bud with three fingers! I hadn’t even noticed her take it out! When I asked her if that was it, she replied jokingly “I’m afraid it was. Sorry it wasn’t more exciting for you.”!

And that was it! How anti-climactic?!

So then she left to do the same with another patient, and a man came over and put the plaster on, while I questioned him about with they use blood from veins, which are the ones that carry blood without oxygen, when it would be more useful to the transfuse-ees to have blood already with oxygen in it. He didn’t know. Which to be honest seemed a little bit lame for a blood-taking-dude… Anyways, he told me to slowly and gently get off the bed and go over to the table with refreshments and get some juice and cookies, which I did happily, helping myself to chocolate “BourbonCream”s and a few stickers: one that says “be nice to me, I gave blood today” and one about giving your first blood donation, and a car sticker: “Save a life, give blood today”.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad experience. I may save someone’s life, prevent disease and increase well-being… And I had an excuse not to do anything “strenuous” like exercise, or heavy lifting, or difficult chores all day… And an excuse to whine like a soldier with a battle-wound if I wanted

So yeah, I’m glad I did it, and as soon as the lady asked, I booked my appointment for my next donation. I thoroughly recommend donating blood. It’s a brilliant and easy way to help someone and make a difference. The workers are all really, really grateful for you being there, and I think the person receiving your blood will be grateful too And so what if you hurt a little? Isn’t that better than someone dying. If for every time I donated blood, I saved a life, I would do it daily if I could. But I can’t, I can only do it quarterly, which is why you should consider donating blood too.

Only 5% of those who actually can give blood, do.

That’s a pitiful one person in every twenty. Doesn’t that suck?

So make a difference. Be that one special person, loving, giving and Good enough to save a life. Give blood today.