The Purple Dragon Blog

I don’t think I mentioned it, but in between everything else I do I have just begun volunteering at the local library (the goal being to decide whether or not to get a library qualification)  and for a few weeks now have become a Girl Guides assistant leader. The girls are doing a musical at the moment, using songs from the movie High School Musical; I find myself glad that there is only about two more rehearsals left.  Those songs are highly annoying.

I’ve also discovered some all-natural cordial syrups, Alchemy Classic Cordials. I bought a bottle of ‘LOVE’ cordial; it’s lime & rose petal flavoured and it is lovely. If you’re a rose-water fan, this is definitely the cordial for you. The bottles are quite pretty, too.

As you can see, I’ve updated the blog. I found that I was getting sick of the brown, and the lack of my own image header has always saddened me. I’m sticking with the default image for now (well, sort of), but a custom image header is in the works.

Finally, some Angus-the-cat news; he hasn’t been to our house for quite a while, since Dad offended him, but he bit the neighbours toddler son and they now refer to him as Fungus.

Ingredients:
6 tbs white sugar
2 tbs golden syrup
2 tsp water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method:
Place sugar, golden syrup and water in a heavy saucepan and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar is dissolved.  Forget to immediately bring to the boil. Swear.
Bring to the boil and boil for seven minutes. Fail to turn heat down when temperature gets too high. Three and a half minutes into boiling, note that honeycomb is turning dark brown and issuing unpleasant-smelling smoke. Swear again. In panic turn heat right down and pour small amount of water into mixture.
Watch in dismay as honeycomb deflates. Remove from the heat and quickly add the bicarbonate of soda.
At this point the mixture is supposed to froth. Swear as mixture begins to set before bicarbonate of soda is fully mixed through.
Stir quickly and pour into a greased 28×18cm lamington tin.
Stare in dismay at the realisation that honeycomb has set on stirring spoon and saucepan. Boil water and pour onto spoon and saucepan and scrub until honeycomb melts and can be removed.
Taste honeycomb. Decide it’s not too bad. Remind yourself that this is why Mum banned you from cooking when she is not home. Turn on fans to disperse remainder of smoke.

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Oh, and I’ve finally added the blurry photos to this post here.

You’re probably wondering why I haven’t updated for a while. Two reasons: one, my grandfather died, which was naturally rather downing, and two, I’ve been working like hell to find a job. So yah. No time.

I thought, however, that I’d share a few things with you. First of all, a site named goats.com a while back featured a march that purported to be supporting the election of Voldemort for President. (‘Republicans for Voldemort’ read the bumper stickers - you can still buy them on the web site. One of them is pictured above.)

Right.

Second, someone else got into the spirit of things during local election time when he decided to spoof all the signs for local candidates by creating his very own, nicely-done Draco Malfoy election sign, complete with Slytherin crest. (‘Put a snake in office.’ Personally, I thought that the snakes were already there.) You can find his documentation of this and photographs on his blog, here.

 I just thought that this was worth sharing. Seeya soon, all.

My family has been cursed, and the curse’s name is Angus.

A while back our neighbours started having trouble with their new neighbours. Specifically, their neighbour’s cat.  Angus was a very affectionate tabby the size of a small tiger with no understanding of the concept of personal boundaries. He would wander into their house in search of people, and get into a fight with the two cats that actually lived in the house. This seemed rather amusing to me at the time. In retrospect, I should have seen it as a warning.

My neighbours went on holidays earlier this week, so as usual we have been looking after their two cats. Yesterday, as I was checking on them, I heard a loud ‘mrow!’, the tink-tink of a cats bell, and looked up to see a cat trotting towards me, delighted to have company. Well, I patted him, went home and told Mum about him, and she came out and patted him too. Mistake. Angus clearly thought ‘I have new best friends!’ because when we went hoime, he followed us there.

Our own cat, less-than-affectionately known as either Fang or Dr Jekyll on account of having a second, homicidal personality, was only half Angus’s size and so terrified of him. We chased him away. Ten minutes later, there’s a loud ‘mrow!’ at the front door. I go to look. Sure enough, it’s Angus. “Go away,” I tell him. “This isn’t your house.” Twenty minutes later he is gone…

…because he walked around to the side of the house and bailed up Fang. Again, we chased him away. Some time later it was time to go shopping and pick Li’l Sis up from school. Mum ets in the car. A few minutes later I walk into the garage: Angus wanders out from underneath the front of the car and regards me with a friendly expression.  I chase him away, again.

We shop, collect Li’l Sis, go home. I’m unpacking groceries from the car when there’s a shout from Li’l Sis: “Hey, it’s Angus!” Short, amusing incident that involves yelling Li’l Sis attempting to escape affectionate cat in order to go inside. Even once everyone is inside and all doors are shut, we can still hear the tell-tale tink-tink drifting through the windows.

Six thirty. Dad gets home from work. Comes in smiling. “There’s an Angus cat out there!” he exclaims. All groan. Angus comes round to back door and mrows. Tell him to go away. Angus stays. Dad goes next door to feed neighbour’s cats; tink-tink from bushes, delighted Angus rushes after him in pursuit. “I’m being stalked,” Dad complains. Eleven pm. Am getting ready for bed. Angus jumps up onto windowsill and presses his face against window appealingly in the belief that I am the most likely person to let him in. Heart melts; Angus is clearly a cat of uncanny perception. Tell him unconvincingly that he needs to go away. Shut curtains. Listen to tink-tink until asleep.

Awake at five fifty-five next morning. Groggily work out that someone is going “Mrow! Mrow!” at window. Roll over so that mostly-deaf ear is presented to the open air instead of functional one. Attempt to go back to sleep. Insistent shouts of “Mrow! Mrow!” from behind curtains prevents this. Six twenty-four am sit up, blearily open eyes, pull curtain half-open, say something along the lines of “go away, Angus! Shut up!” Shut curtains again, roll onto functional ear to block sound, resume sleeping. Seven am, get woken by parents. Lie there for twenty minutes wondering if getting up is worth it. Wander into kitchen and complain about Angus. Li’l Sis notes, “I thought I heard a cat this morning.” Pause. “I heard you, too.”

Angus presents himself at back door. Yell at Angus. Angus slinks off a metre or so. Go check on Fang in the laundry. Find she hasn’t eaten her worming chews. Point at chews and explain importance of them: Fang obligingly sniffs chews, looks up, clearly saying ‘there’s no way I’m eating those.’ Swear mildly at Fang. Scold Angus for appearing at laundry door. Stalk off. Eventually leave to go into town.

As Dad said, “I think this is just the beginning of the Angus story.”

 Stay tuned.

I know it’s cheating to post things from fanfiction, but… this struck me as such a good way to get out of handing in homework…

“Where am I?” Blaise Zabini, a shy Slytherin who had no ambition—at all, asked quietly.

“Who are all of you?” asked Terry Boot, a Ravenclaw with a knack for failing…well…everything.

“Who am I?” Harry demanded, hoping his voice came out as innocent as Blaise and Terry’s. It did, and then the whole class erupted into questions regarding their identity.Professor McGonagall was staring at the class in horrified confusion. She held up her hands, her head bobbing up and down with her labored breathing.

“All of you stay here,” she urged in a panicked voice, “I’ll be right back.”

“Where is here!” A boy Harry only knew as Sessisalian—a Hufflepuff, from Harry’s magic class—demanded in near hysteria. Professor McGonagall groped with something to say for a moment and then ran out of the room with whoosh and a panic.Sessisalian and his friends, the Outkasts of Hufflepuff, jumped out of their desks and ran over to the door, to check the hallway.

“All clear!” Sessisalian’s friend, Mark, yelled.

“Thank you all,” Sessisalian said with all the grace of someone getting a Grammy, “I appreciate you taking part in this diversion, and you will get your money after I finish my Potion’s essay.”Then without further ado, Sessisalian abandoned ship.

“Class dismissed!” Mark yelled, and within two minutes, the entire room was cleared out, except for Little Miss Moon, expert deceiver, who was to lead the teachers on a wild goose chase, so everyone wouldn’t get caught. 

~Chapter Nineteen, “Something Lost, Something Found,” lunakatrina

I saw a man wander past earlier today, in a work shirt and trousers. This in itself wasn’t unusual - it was the fact that the shirt was a brilliant, astonishingly vivid purple, while the trousers were a warm brown. I thought, “there goes a man who is colorblind.”

Am recovering from appendicitis and an appendectomy. Don’t know when I will post again; when I’m well again, obviously.

Yay! Computer!

My parents have banned me from it, you see, so I’ve had to come into the city to go online. :P Ghastly.

Okay, first a neat sound file you should listen to - “The Man Song” is a humorous song that goes for a couple of minutes or so. My sister and I found it very funny.

So how’s life? Not too bad, I suppose. I’m busy getting Christmas presents and trying to find a job. Not much else is going on.

This year has been the most formless, aimless year of my life, I must say. But finally things are starting to take some direction. Once this semester ends, I’m taking a year’s leave to simply work - hopefully at a bookstore - before taking up a different course in 2008.

Much as I like IT, I’ve decided I don’t really want to do it full-time. I have vague ideas of doing history or maybe journalism, but I don’t have to decide yet. I’ve got a whole year where I can just live day-to-day, working out what I want to do and where I want to go with my life.  And I’m feeling happier than I have in ages. Yay.

Plus I’ll hopefully have more time for fanfiction and blogging. Always a plus.

It’s easier to be a success if you can be content with what does not make you happy, but never stop aiming for what will.

Taking risks might  make your life more fun, but it also makes it much harder to fix when things go wrong.

You have two choices in life; you can try to please others, or you can try to please yourself. It is a rare person who is capable of both.

It’s amazing how many big things people will help you with if you help them with the little ones.

A little charm goes a long way.

They say that you can catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar. Me, I think that I can do without the flies.

Those who charm, usually want something.

Often the most interesting people to know are the ones that everyone else overlooks or shys away from.

There is little that is more useful than knowledge combined with understanding and a certain amount of ruthlessness. With those, you can eventually get just about anything.

One of the best-kept secrets to looking good is believing that you look good. Walk with confidence, refrain from fiddling with your clothing or hair after you’ve gone out into the public, and always wear a smile and keep your head up high.

Using logic might not change a person’s mind, but at least it’ll annoy the hell out of them.

There is nothing quite like accidentally setting your alarm for four in the morning. Or waking up the entire house at that hour, so that several hours later various family members ask you in patient, pained voices if you did, indeed, happen to set your alarm clock for 4am. Nothing at all.

I thought I’d make a book recommendation today. The book is “The Shockwave Rider,” by John Brunner. I don’t know if it’s in print, but it’s one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. It was published in 1975 and is set in the first half of the 21st century. It’s astonishing how much of the vision of the future in this is accurate. True, the technology is somewhat more advanced than it is at present, and there are flashes of the ‘future that was’, alternate timeline kind of vibe that you often get in books published during the Cold War (it was, after all, a rather bleak time in many ways), but still, amazing.

How accurate is the vision of the future encapsulated? Well, one of the main character’s weapons is a computer worm, three years before one was ever implemented, and giving us a name for that type of program. The novel also borrows the psychological concept of future shock, the shortest definition of which is “too much change in too short a period of time.” Considering how many people suffer from anxiety disorders these days, it was a remarkable foresight.  The story is tremendously engrossing, and builds up to a mind-blowing finish.

While in some ways this novel is typical of those published in the ‘golden age’ of sci-fi, in other ways it is quite different. The story is interesting, well-constructed, with good character development and a lot of detail. It’s also interesting to see the author’s view of a likely future, and exactly where he was accurate. Read it, man!

See wikipedia article for “The Shockwave Rider”

See wikipedia article for ‘computer worm’

See wikipedia article for “Future Shock”

See wikipedia article for the ‘golden age’ of science fiction

See wikipedia article about John Brunner