Miffery at common mistakes

You all know that I can be a bit of a Nazi when it comes to spelling and grammar, so I thought I'd highlight some of the most common mistakes that really, really get on my nerves.

#1: "alot"

This one is completely ridiculous! There is no such word as alot. It is two words: a lot.

#2: "Am"

There's been an increasing number of people using the word am in place of I'm. It should be noted that am ≠ I'm, making sentences such as "Am annoyed with you." sound horrifically deformed.

#3: Misusing and abusing the apostrophe

I honestly don't know why it's so hard for people to grasp the use of the apostrophe. It's used to signify missing letters and/or ownership/relation. For example, if you were to refer to my mother, you would say, "Scott's mother." See? Easy.

#4: Homophones

The confusion of your over you're has been getting on my nerves since I could spell. It is not that hard. Your implies ownership, e.g. your car; whereas you're is a contracted (i.e. shorter) form of you are. For example, "You're an elf."

N.B. "They're over there, reading their books."

#5: Punctuation crises

Firs off, there's the punctuation overload. What I mean by that is messages like this: gonna go,,, out now!!!!!!

Not only does it look hideous, but the overuse of the exclamation mark diminishes its effect. There should only be one comma used at a time; that is, there should never be two or more commas coming straight after each other. Also it bugs me when people use commas where there shouldn't be any. Example: I'm, shattered now! Can't wait to, get to bed!!!!

#6: The slaughter of the semicolon

While I don't claim to be an expert when it comes to semicolons, I do have some idea of where they are used. However they are not to be used to link two words together (e.g. "love;you"); nor are they to be used interchangeably with apostrophes (e.g "I;ve got a lot of work to do"). Please, don't slaughter the semicolon; if you can't use it, just don't use it at all.

#7: Alphabet explosion

You've all seen them: statuses on Facebook that look as though the alphabet just up and vomited all over them. A prime example: "ii cantttt believeee itt!!!" Honestly, the language works as it is; stop fucking it up with too many letters.

That seems to be the main ones covered, at least. Funnily enough, as I was writing this, I came across a picture on Facebook that said, "i loovee' you!" which fits right in to #7: Alphabet explosion and #3: Misusing and abusing the apostrophe. Not to mention the fact that the I isn't capitalised, but that's another story.

That's all, folks!

A Small Box of Time

I wrote a story because I was bored.

“Hello,” I said. “How may I help you today?”

“For a start, you can get out of my way; I’m a very busy man, and I don’t take kindly to time-wasters.”

“Ah, so it is time you would like,” I replied, reaching into my jacket pocket. “Here, take this.” I pulled out a small purple box tied with a ribbon. There was a tag on it that read Time.

“What is this?” the very busy man asked, a puzzled expression suddenly appearing on his face.

“Why, it is time, of course. I aim to assist, and since you wanted time, that is what you get.” I said to him.

“But,” he said. “But how can you give me time?”

“Ah, yes, well. That’s a bit of a secret, I’m afraid. Open the box.”

The man stared at me for a moment, judging whether or not he should open the gift in his hand. He returned his gaze to the box, and pulled off the ribbon. Removing the lid, a great white light spilled forth, dousing our surroundings in the purest illumination one can ever hope to witness. Unless you shop at IKEA, of course.

There came a ticking sound; the ticking of a clock. The now bewildered man continued to gaze into the box.

“It’s—” he paused. “It’s talking to me. How—?” His question was cut short when he realised that he didn’t quite know what he wanted to ask. “What is this?”

“Sir, are you not paying attention? It is time. Should you wish to put it to use, I would very highly suggest you take it out of its box and allow it to become acquainted with you. Speaking of acquaintance, what is your name?”

Despite his astonishment, the very busy man managed to inform me that his name was John. Ah, John; always John. Common as muck, that name.

“What do I do with it?” John asked me; he clearly wasn’t paying much attention.

“Oh, for crying out loud. I knew you wouldn’t cope with opening the box before reading the instructions.”

“Instructions?”

“Yes, the instructions,” I informed him. “You see? On the bottom of the box. It does say quite clearly that you should read the instructions before opening the box lest you hurt yourself due to your attention being elsewhere. Oi!”

John suddenly looked up, as though he had been woken from a dream.

“What were you saying?”

“For crying out loud, you mortals. Look—”

“Mortals?” John interrupted.

“Yes, mortals. That’s what you are, isn’t it? Now shut up and pay attention. All you’ve got to do is stick your hand in the box and take out whatever’s inside. The light is tangible; you should be able to take hold of it.

“Once you’ve got the light, you have to hold it in your hands. Bear in mind the fact that this is time you are holding, so it pretty much knows everything about everything. The time will speak to you, and you must talk back to it. If it deems you worthy, it will become a part of your being and you will be forever changed, blah blah blah, whatever. Got that?” I didn’t wait for a reply. “Good. I have other appointments. Cheerio.”

I vanished in a puff of purple smoke, and the very busy man named John was left standing there on his own, desperately trying to make head or tail of the time he held in his hand.

Unfortunately for him, the time deemed him unworthy, and therefore wasted no time in removing him. He vanished from the spot upon which he stood; all evidence of his very existence removed in the less than the blink of an eye. How very unfortunate.

The Soup Dilemma

Dear readers, there is a question that has plagued my mind for a number of days now, and I really do need an answer. I've discussed it with a number of people but an answer has still not been reached. The question:

Do you eat soup, or do you drink it?

You might think "well, you eat it, don't you!" Yes, but then soup is a liquid and, traditionally, liquids are drank. So does this mean that you drink soup? It should, but then...

You use a spoon with soup; you don't use a spoon to drink, do you? I've never known anyone who drinks a cup of tea with a spoon. And soup can be classed as a meal, which must mean it's food; and food, such as it is, is eaten.

Do you see my confusion? I really want to know whether you're supposed to eat it or drink it. I mean, it's pretty safe to say that a stew is eaten because it's got lumps of food in it. Food that has to be chewed. You don't chew soup, so do you drink it?

Perhaps we should just stick with a more ambiguous verb and say that it's slurped, or even that it's consumed.

A quote

I've nothing much to say but I do have this quote, which I did find quite entertaining.

Consulting a dozen or so recently published punctuation guides, I can report that they contain minor disagreements on virtually all aspects of the above and that their only genuine consistency is in using Keats's poems as the prime example. Strange, but true. They just can't leave Keats alone. "It is Keats' poems (NOT Keats's)," they thunder. Or alternatively: "It is Keats's poems (NOT Keats')." Well, poor old Keats, you can't help thinking. No wonder he developed that cough.

From Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

Thieves!

Right! You must be warned: there are thieves operating everywhere, and these days they seem to really be picking up the pace at which they steal.

Incident numero uno:

On Monday 15th of February, I was in Waterstone's in Cardiff looking at the books. A guy came into the store and started speaking quite loudly in a foreign language. He was pointing at books, and picking books up and asking me about them in his gibberish language. I felt something brush very lightly against my leg and then he continued with his gibberish and then left the store. Little did I know that he was a pickpocket and was just that moment making off with my phone.

You think it's not going to happen to you, or you think you'd be able to spot it when it does happen, but then it does happen, and you're left without a phone. How very miffed I was. The first thing I did was toddle off to the Orange shop and buy the cheapest phone they had so that I could tell people not to reply to any messages from my old number. I also cancelled my old sim card, just for good measure.

The art of the pickpocket is a tricky one, but should you encounter someone who has mastered it, you won't even notice that your stuff is gone until they are gone. Be careful.

Incident numero dos:

On Friday 19th February (i.e., the day just gone), my mother was shopping in Caerphilly. She had parked her car at the top of town near the train station as she had intended to go to Cardiff. She was walking to her car, when a man ran past my mother and grabbed hold of her bag as he did so. Unfortunately for him, my mother grips the strap of her bag when she wears it on her shoulder, so she had him looped. She yanked him back, and knocked him to the ground. My mother stood on the man, holding him to the ground.

At this point, I am told, a man came running out of his house shouting, "I've called the police, I've called the police!" He thought that my mother was hitting the man for no reason. She replied, "He just tried to rob me! I'm not going anywhere until the police arrive, and you'd better keep your nose out or you'll be on the floor with him!"

Luckily for my mother, there were three witnesses (two people from the dentist nearby and a bus driver), and the entire incident was recorded on CCTV. The police arrested the man, and I am told that he wouldn't tell the police who he was, where he lived, etc. and that he was known to the police. My mother and the witnesses gave statements and she was allowed to leave.

Of all places for thieves to operate, I wouldn't think of Caerphilly town. Robbery like this is the sort of thing you would hear about on the news or see in TV shows, but lately it all seems to be getting a little closer to home. Be careful.

So there you have it; two robberies on members of my family (me being one of them) in the space of five days. I cannot stress this enough: BE CAREFUL.

I'm sorry if I sound a bit preachy, but I don't want anyone else to be robbed. That is all.

Until next time,

Good day.

OMG

By golly! Having given up on the traditional British pancake yesterday, I decided to go scouring the web for a new recipe - and discovered this, the recipe for the most delicious pancakes I have ever tried. And the best thing? You can store all the dry ingredients in a jar, already mixed up, so that you have your own pancake mix! I thought it was genius. I had some for breakfast this morning and they were YOM.

For the dry mix:

600g of plain flour

3 x 15ml tablespoons of baking powder

2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon of salt

40g of caster sugar

Just mix it all up and put it in a jar or whatever. It's well good! I had trouble getting it into the jar, so I made a cone out of some greaseproof paper I found and put it in that way. If the jar's big enough, you can just mix it when it's in the jar, so you don't even have to get a mixing bowl dirty. The mix will make 4 loads of pancake batter.

For the batter:

150g of the above pancake mix (it works out roughly to about 4 and a half heaped tablespoonfuls)

250ml of semi-skimmed or full-fat milk (I use a little less because the batter goes too runny otherwise - I think it depends on the quality of your flour)

1 egg

1 x 15ml tablespoon of melted butter (I put more in than it says.. just get a blob, stick it in a dish and shove it in the microwave for 20-30 seconds to melt it — much easier than using a pan)

Just mix the egg and milk in with the dry ingredients, and add the butter just before you cook the pancakes. Make sure you whisk it, and whisk it good!

For the cookin's:

Heat a pan. You don't really need oil per se because there's butter in the mix, but I do add a teensy bit of oil just in case. Our frying pan's a dick though, so I don't really have a choice.

The recipe says to spoon drops of 1.5 - 2 tablespoons of batter into the pan, but it works just as well if you use about half a ladleful. When bubbles start appearing on the surface of the pancake, flip it over to cook the other side. It should take about 30seconds to a minute, depending on how hot your pan is.

And repeat! They're lush with golden syrup, but you could have them with whatever you want to put with them - I think they'd be lovely with a dollop of ice-cream and some strawberries!

The batter mix makes about 8-10 pancakes depending on the size of them.

Right-ho, I think I should apologise for this random blog post. I don't usually post recipes, but these pancakes were so good I just couldn't resist sharing the recipe with you. Normal blogging to be resumed immediately.

Sadness and Pancakes

My dear readers, I have somewhat of a confession to make. I give off the impression that I am always happy, be it at school or otherwise, but lately things have gone rather rapidly downhill, plunging me into a heavy sadness that lingers above me like the rainclouds above my home.

So what, you may ask, has caused such a sudden sadness? I must be honest with you: it is pancakes. A craving for them had come over me, and I simply couldn't resist. I mixed the batter as per instructions, but no matter how hard I tried or how well I oiled the pan, they always either a) got stuck or b) ended up as a wad of undercooked sludge. I have a sneaking suspicion that it was too much milk that caused the problem with my pancakes; either that, or the pan was too hot.

I thought I could cook pancakes. I made some yesterday and they were rather lovely, if I may say so. They didn't last long with Mother around, anyway. But alas, tonight my pancake skills failed me, and as I write this I am devouring a small bag of Cadbury's chocolate buttons, trying desperately to fill the hole left by the sad excuse of a pancake that was the fruit of my effort.

I thank you all for your support during this difficult time.

Good day.

Spring my form, biotch!

Err... excuse the rather ghetto-sounding title, I don't know what came over me (that's what she said! (sorry)).

Anyway, I've been flying around some people's Formsprings lately and it's really quite fun asking anonymous questions. I've been springin' forms since the early version of Formspring, where you had to set up the form yourself and it wasn't formspring.me.

As a result, I decided that I'd finally jump on the proverbial bandwagon and open the floodgates to Formspring. As the website's slogan says, ask me anything. :-)

Click here to do so.

I haven't got much to blog about lately because I lead a boring life, so this is about as exciting as it's going to get for a while.

Cheerio!

It's about bloody time!

Well, exams are over - for now, at least. For most people this means chillaxing a bit after school, now that there's not quite so much pressure on them to cram in as much information as is humanly possible. But for me, there's something I want to make a start on, as I agreed upon at the beginning of the year. When it was time for New Year's resolutions, I told myself that when exams were over, I would get in shape. That time is now.

I find this a little bit of a difficult subject to talk about, as anyone who is overweight (though in my case the situation far transcends the 'overweight' mark - officially I'm in the 'morbidly obese' category) would sympathise with. It's not easy to talk about it - well, I suppose it's more the fact that I'm reluctant to talk about it, rather than it not being easy. It's still not quite the easiest thing to blab about, though.

See the thing is, most people have been in shape, then got out of shape, and then resolved to get back in shape. With me, this is not the case. I have never actually been in shape; strange as it may seem, I have never known what it is like to be of a healthy weight and size. Even in primary school I was overweight and struggled with cross-country, often I was left breathing so heavily that people thought I had asthma.

The thing with being overweight is that it's not a sudden thing - it's not a mess that suddenly appears on the floor that you can just pick up. It's a gradual thing, that happens slowly without you noticing, and then before you know it - BAM! You're 21-stone and classed as being morbidly obese.

I feel that I should make my feelings on this somewhat more clear. I'm not looking for sympathy here; I'm just trying to make it clear how I feel about being overweight. You know, I'm not overly bothered by it, but I am bothered enough by it that I want to make a change. I'm not sure if that makes much sense, but I hope it does.

I don't really know why I felt the need to post this. I shouldn't be boring you with my troubles, but I thought it was about time that I actually spoke about it. By speaking about it and telling people about it, it gives me more reason to put effort into trying to lose weight - or else face embarrassment at the face of my readers. Now that wouldn't be nice, would it? (Probably not, I should imagine.)

For now, I bid you good day:

Good day!

Facebook fools!

I must confess: although I intended to stay away from the Internet altogether, I only managed to stay off Twitter, DailyBooth and MSN. I do still go on Facebook. But hey, it's still an improvement, eh?

Anyway, something that's come to my attention lately is the amount of groups on Facebook that claim that there's a new 'Facebook Chat'. Most of these groups are called something like, "How to activate the new Facebook Chat! Join now!" What people fail to realise, however, is that these groups are only there because they want bucket loads of members. You'll notice that a lot of these groups don't have any posts on their wall - I wonder why.

What's even funnier is that people don't realise that, to begin with, Facebook would have said if they updated their chat. Another thing is that they would make it available to everyone, not just people who add their friends. Also, the so-called 'new Facebook chat' things that the groups use as their display pictures are actually screenshots of Mac applications superimposed over the top of the normal Facebook. On one of them they're actually cheeky enough to use iChat! On another they use the third party application Adium.

It strikes me as odd that so many people don't seem to notice that Facebook would make the new Chat feature available to everyone.

One other thing: people are even going so far as to follow the instructions the groups provide: which involves copy and pasting a piece of Java Script into the URL bar. BAD IDEA. I'm not saying that it's going to damage your computer, but putting any unknown link or code where you can't make out what it is from its URL is a bad idea. People might be redirecting you to a website which automatically starts a download of a virus or something. That may be the worst case scenario, but that's not to say that it couldn't happen.

Either way, it's still pretty funny.

Good day!

More on exams, and a bit about the Internet

I briefly touched on the subject of exams in yesterday's post, but I want to tell you about the horror I'm going through with the exams I'm sitting this week.

Well, there's nothing really that horrific about it. I'm just getting incredibly stressed about the exams, and for no good reason: there is always the opportunity of a re-sit. Which, as you probably know, I intend to do.

Today I had a Biology exam. I can't tell you how it went, since I'm actually writing this post in advance, but I can tell you how revision went: horribly. Gone are the days when my mind used to absorb knowledge like a sponge; I was sat at my desk for about an hour reading and re-reading the same question over and over again. It simply would not sink in. As you can imagine, this got me rather angry, and in my anger I tweeted this:

"I give up. Biology can go fuck itself. I don't care anymore."

Which, to an extent, is true. I've given up revising for the exams we sit this week. I already know that I'm not going to do well in them; there's still a part of Maths that I haven't learned, Biology isn't compatible with my brain, and Physics was just doomed from the start. However, I have decided that, contrary to what yesterday's post might suggest, I will put effort into learning what I need to know for the exams — but the re-sits, not the current exams. There's no point in me cramming now and doing badly in the exam and giving up. I might as well sit these exams now, if only to get a sense of what they're like, and then I will arrange with my teachers that I go in during free lessons to go over work. To keep what I learn fresh, I'm going to ask the teachers for huge amounts of past papers and exercise sheets which I will do when I get home from school every day, though I'll probably do the sheets weekly.

I know this makes me sound like a massive geek, but I really want to do well at school: if only to get into Uni to study English.

People who know me well enough will know that I am practically an internet addict. I am. The internet takes up far too much of my time lately, so I've cut all my connections on social networking sites. I will no longer be using DailyBooth, Twitter, Facebook or MSN Messenger. As a consequence, I should have far more free time on my hands; time which I can use for school work, reading (God knows I need to catch up on my reading) and to finally get a handle on some of the things I've let slide over the past few years. If you know what I'm talking about, well done you for figuring it out.

For now, however, I'm going. I'll still post here (hopefully) twice a week. I've no idea what I'll talk about, but I'm sure I'll find something.

Good day!

You know what I'm talkin' about

That's right, those dreaded exams are once again upon us; though this year, they do seem to be posing a far greater threat to our wellbeing. Aside from being possibly the most difficult exams we've sat thus far, I seem to have lost all motivation to do well in my chosen subjects.

I've always been a fan of English Literature: both the subject, and literature in and of itself. As such, I would ideally like to go into something involving English Literature when I leave school; after thinking about it - and believe me, I gave it an almighty amount of thought - I came to the decision that I want to be an English teacher. Preferably, as you may have guessed, of English literature.

Now! The point I wish to make is this: the way to get into teaching English is by studying it at University. So why, on God's green Earth, must I have three A-levels to get onto the course? It strikes me as odd that in order to get onto a literature course you need at least two other subjects at A-level; and you have to do well in them, mind you. What about people who have no other interest but in English literature? Are they denied their chance to study it at University because they can't tell their chloroplasts from their mitochondrion?

If it was up to me, people would be allowed to study whatever they liked, regardless of how many other subjects you're good at. I'm struggling to see what significance Mathematics or Biology would play in securing someone a place at University to study English. I dunno, it all just strikes me as a bit odd.

Your thoughts? If there are any readers, drop me a comment below. I'm interested to hear what you think of this situation.

Physics = poo

Despite it being a snow day, I've been in revising for hours. I've been focussing on Physics, since that's the one I need to revise most. What have I learned? Well, one thing. That I literally cannot answer a single question in the exam paper. I've been stressing about it all day, and it's really getting me down. So I thought to myself, "You know what? Fuck Physics. There's no point struggling and wasting time with a subject you don't understand. Leave it alone, drop it after the exam, and stick to revising the subjects you know you can actually do well in." So that's what I'm doing.

I'm leaving Physics alone. I can't cope with it much longer. Even Mr Webb won't believe me that I just can't do Physics, despite my having to call him over every time I tried to answer a question in the past paper. So fuck it.

I'm going to revise Maths and Biology. Biology is easy enough as it only involves learning things. There's no working stuff out involved in Biology, so it's probably the easiest subject I have an exam in. And there's no point revising English because a) it's not a real subject; you can get with making it up in the exam and b) you can't really revise for it.

So that's that.