Interesting American Things.

Remember 'French Fries' being renamed in America as ''Freedom Fries''?

Well they've gone one step further, according to a friend of mine's facebook status.

"Xxxx Xxxx : German measles renamed as 'liberty measles' by a Massachusetts physician = highlight of doing dissertation research today".

There we have it.

If you get Liberty Measles, I guess you've got the liberty to not get them again, if you wish.



In continuation with this conversation over facebook, I asked him about it, and he said
"Nope, just a superpatriot being an idiot. At the moment my dissertation ranges from the nonsensical renaming sauerkraut and measles, to the horrific persecution of conscientious objectors. It's just becoming depressing..."

I've asked him what Sauerkraut is now called. Should've been obvious, really: "Liberty Cabbage".

*applauds*

"On the road again - Just can't wait to get on the road again. The life I love is making music with my friends"

My suitcase is packed. Some clothes that require immediate washage are in my rucksack for after my lecture, and I've got my train tickets. This time Saturday morning I'll still be asleep, but in a 'strange' bed. Oo-er.

There might even be a man in it. Unless he's really *awesome* and has already by that time sneaked downstairs and made me breakfast. ;)

^_^ Eee. Seeing my Man-Thing tomorrow night. I get up at 8. I do my 10 am lecture, my 12pm lecture, my 1pm seminar, my 2pm seminar (urgh) then at 2.50 I wish my friends a good weekend, rush to my room, grab my suitcase, put things into my rucksack I hadn't already (unless I just use a different bag tomorrow) and then off to the train station I go, once having acquired some food for the journey. Train leaves at 4.57. Plenty of time. I need to get there at 4.30 ideally.

Then I change at Wolverhampton. (Not been there yet, but it can't be worse than Leeds or Birmingham New Street) and then I get to Bournemouth at about 10.15pm. Where he shall hug me, warm me up a bit, take my bag, and as we go back to his, I can decide whether I'm too shattered by the journey to go round his friend's for a bit, since they want to meet me and she thinks it'd be nice, rather than me meeting about 20 of them Saturday afternoon all at once.

Which is fair, but either way I'll be ok I guess.

Right. So today I'm going to my 10am (in a minute) then I'm doing washing, whilst trying to write up a report on della Porta, and possibly getting a book in the short loan on it. Then I'm either getting lunch or going to the workshop about some Marxist guy... which I don't know I will. And then this evening I'm going to the history society lecture which is for once relevant to my course (specially since the course tutor's doing it) and there'll be thai food afterwards in town. Yum yum.

Phoo. Better get going. But I have hiccoughs! ;_;

Time wasted. For now...

Well I thought I'd give this blogger-compatible software thingymajig a try, to create my own template background. The template of the blog itself had many things I didn't want, but couldn't get rid of, and I think that is what ultimately cause it to epically FAIL. But then it's my first ever background. For anything. (Other than posters and the like.) So I thought I'd give it a go. I figured that if it worked, ''great!", if not, then I'd have to go learn all the more technical stuffs about webpage design and crap. Which is fine. Just. I haven't got the time at the moment.

Did however resize the header for this page, just to use it for a while...

I did take screenshots. I wanted to go for a sketchy look, since I do indeed sketch and doodle a LOT. I'm not necessarily very good, but it doesn't stop me when my fingers get itchy holding a pen, and the lecture is very very dull.

There was more at the bottom of the page, but I over anticipated how tall the background was supposed to be. But about...1000 pixels. But that's cool. I can edit it. x)

So you see, I spent about... an hour on this actual program, and about two hours trying to sort out Photoshop, since it decided to metaphorically blow up.

When it came to exporting however, the html didn't work. All the I had to show for it was the icons for the RSS, Edit, Author and New Comment buttons. Nice.

I do have other tutorials for non-software reliant template making that I can try out when I'm not supposed to be writing essays or doing homework. Urgh.

Got some which even base their ways around photoshop, and go into the html of it all any shizz so it should be very very un-fun and off-putting.

In fact, since writing this (30mins ago?) I have found an actually very simple and very good tutorial that CAN NOT GO WRONG. Well. Only where colour swatch titles are concerned.

After writing the above italicised text, I have tried out said tutorial, and yes it CAN go wrong, since the person writing it has not given the right instructions...

So anyway, that's how I've spent my evening. I'm now going to actually eat something. Nothing too heavy though, as I'm supposed to sleep in around 2 hours.

Lamentation

Don't worry, this isn't a neo-emotistic post. I am merely lamenting the loss of my senses.

THIS TIME LAST TERM I WAS AT LEAST 50% THROUGH MY FIRST TWO ESSAYS

This term, I'm about 50% through the research of my first essay. Nice. Just panicking a little. Not to mention that I shall probably take my lecturer's awesome book, Crusading and the Crusader States (Andrew Jotischky. Buy it), with me to Bournemouth, but with also very probably not really get a lot of it read. I only need to read that book as it is INCREDIBLY good for finding out all the events and possible theories about failures and successes with each crusade in a lovely, clearly written manner. That and my lecturer = <3. We all want to adopt him and take him home to keep as a pet.

AT HOME I USED TO DRINK SOUP MADE OF HOT WATER AND A QUARTER CHICKEN STOCK CUBE

Since levelling up in the world, and therefore having to pay and provide myself with my own nutrition-based needs, it has not even occurred to me to save about £2 per cup of soup by doing the above. Instead I've been buying other flavoured soups, of which I tend to favour the chicken anyway, so there was very little point.

It was only on browsing a guy at Uni's Live Journal space that I made this realisation, since he made a short post describing how to make said ''soup''.

Currently we are having a casual conversation on his wall about stockcube soup. We are therefore thoroughly awesome.

I AM ALLOWING TOO MUCH OF MY TIME TO BE TAKEN UP BY PROCRASTINATION

However it must be stressed that I do actually do work, and I have made plenty of notes for the next few seminars (except this week's... somehow I can't bring myself to finish it. I also can't get hold of some resources, so may have to ask my ''partner'' for this seminar what she thinks).

I'm also supposed to have a shower and get dressed for a meeting at 5. I'm currently still sitting in my dressing gown, writing this, instead.

MY ROOM IS IN AN ALMOST-CONSTANT STATE OF DISARAY

Family and friends from home will think this normal, but really, considering how when all my stuff's at home, in a larger room, with still limited space it's a fair(ish) claim, it's rather hard to keep a box-room overfilled with junk tidy if a lot of said junk is composed of books, papers, sheets, plastic folders, lunch time's plate, necessities such as my medication and hair drier, and the washing bag at the foot of my bed next to the bin. There is just no where to put all of it - I've got very full and tidy shelves. In fact, considering how full it is, and how unused a lot of things are, I'm even taking a lot of stuff home with me at Easter to leave at home until I have a whole house to put them in.

MY BRAIN WON'T STOP SINGING THE SONG AFTER WHICH THIS BLOG PAGE IS TITLED

I don't even think my brain fully knows the chorus words at some points, but there we go. It's irritating. Here I am reading about Frederick II's lazy-assed attempts to get troops to Damietta in 1220, when I've suddenly got 'Pretty Balanced' in my head, demonstrating that it's entirely true that my mind IS a box and things are either put in or taken out. 

EVERYBODY HAS LIVEJOURNAL
Ok. Maybe it's cool to be different, but on searching for a relocation location for my blog, I hadn't even considered livejournal. Does this mean I'm the lamest kid on the block?  At least the profile pages on Blogger are way nicer than the livejournal ones, no matter how customisable a space it is.

"THE NOISE"

Aye, there is a strange electronic noise that's taken our flat by mixed surprise and alarm, as it's noisily emitted from the room next to me, at least twice a day. Sometimes as much as four times. Good stuff - shows it's NOT battery powered, and (apart from the lack of quite the right sort of noise) therefore not a vibrator. 

(My flatmate so wants it to be a giant rubber penis or something. The childish thing.)

It's incredibly loud, and as I allow my pc to stay on later and later, as the close-by humming of the tower quite competes with the noise coming through my door and wall, I do know when it's happening because as people go to and from the kitchen (which is opposite) I hear them telling each other at each other's bedroom doors that it's "happening again" and "I could hear it all the way down here" (here being the other end of the long corridor). 

I have a great desire to ask the girl in the room whether it's her new hair dryer. Partly because I want to know if it's a warped fan/heater or hair dryer (air is definitely involved in this electronic device) and partly because if it IS a new hair drier, then her excuses last term for taking 3 hours at 1am to dry her hair were blatant lies - she claimed her hair drier was broken and so took her longer. The girl still takes a good 50 minutes longer than I do, drying my hair, and my hair's thicker than hers! Mine's done in less than 10 minutes - usually about 5. Depends on how much I've towel-dried it first. Perhaps she should consider doing that and dry her body (perhaps even get dressed!) before she immediately descends upon her poor, heat-damaged hair that's still dripping wet, fresh from the shower. It being broken and therefore ''taking longer'' doesn't explain why she does it three times a day, either.

Crazy times. I've actually recorded the noise on my phone. Unfortunately I have no way of uploading it. But should it ever occur that I'll have to call The Porter at 3am because she's at it when everybody else is trying to sleep, I'll have some evidence. Sounds ridiculous even through the tiny tiny speakers my phone has!