i may occasionally write blog entries. i do hope you enjoy them
20/11/2023
hello!! ever so sorry for the inactivity :( i've been thinking of redesigning this entire website to better reflect my personality because there was sort of this point in the summer where it changed entirely and this website doesn't really suit me in any way anymore? so watch out for that i suppose.
recently (more than a month ago) i went to a darren criss concert in london!!!! it was SO SO good. on the day afterwards i wrote out a full recount because i figured that if i forgot even just one tiny detail i would literally cry, and then i kept thinking "hey i should put this on the website" but then put it off for ages because i realised i would have to edit it for personal and locational info (train stations) and then i realised that it had been more than a month and maybe i should get off my arse and do that. so better late than never i suppose and i present A Very Starkid Weekend Recount (sorry) (13-15/10/23)
today (saturday 14th october 2023) has been an absolute FEVER DREAM and i just need to get it all down because oh my god it was AMAZING holy shit
so to start off with!! on friday 13th it was the premiere of nerdy prudes must die on youtube!!! and i'd already seen it on the digital ticket from 15th september but i took this as an opportunity to listen to the soundtrack for the nth time and i swear it gets better each time. it's like drugs to me. so anyway i was really happy and also super excited for the hatchetfield halloween party!! so it was a big starkid day for me. and when npmd was premiering i was just thinking "wouldn't it be cool if it trended on tumblr" but like i KNEW it wouldn't trend. starkid is, in my mind, a niche fandom of twelve people; i know realistically this isn't true but the only things that trend on tumblr for new episodes etc are big shows like ofmd and good omens and bbc ghosts!! not my silly little theatre troupe i discovered when i was eleven that changed my life but nobody i know has heard of! so, yeah, i entertained the idea as a little "haha wouldn't that be fun :)" scenario and then my friend zaphod sent a message to the discord server saying they are trending at #8 and i just absolutely lost it. and i kept checking back and it climbed to #6... #5... and then i checked back a little while later and okay yeah maybe i was wrong about the idea that it wouldn't trend but surely it wouldn't get to #1... so i didn't look at #1 and i got really disappointed when i saw it wasn't trending again and then i realised Hey i haven't seen what is at #1. like surely it can't be but it wouldn't hurt to check. and then i did a fucking double take when IT WAS TRENDING AT #1. i got about four screenshots i think i was in shock. because you need to understand that from my point of view i've been here since 2020 but i've never seen starkid trend! i never used to check the trending page much granted but even during nmt2 i didn't see it trend. so this was insane for me. i made a post about it too
so i was riding this starkid high i was already on and then suddenly 1am rolled around and it was time for the hatchetfield halloween party! and i'd jokingly said that i was going to take notes but then i ended up ACTUALLY taking notes and by the end (4 IN THE MORNING) i had 9 sides of them all hastily scribbled down. HFHP was EXCELLENT!!! the talkback was really great, it was so much fun taking part in the trivia challenge, workin' boys was SO GOOD (all my notes from this section are just gushing about it, notably i took up about a quarter of a page writing "LINDA" with about fifty hearts after it), the workin' boys talkback was wonderful, and the future of hatchetfield section was!!!! it was what i was most excited for tbh and it did NOT disappoint. i am SO excited to see hatchetfield's future after this!!! being 1am-4am i of course was in a more delirious state than i would be if it were during the day, so this was incredibly exciting for me. so i watched it all, i made some posts in between, took my silly little notes, had a FUCKING EXCELLENT time!!!!!, wrote up the notes afterwards, and in total i went to bed at five in the morning. but my GOD it was worth it!!!
oh and to top it all off, I AM LITERALLY SEEING DARREN AND JOEY AND LAUREN TOMORROW. IN REAL LIFE. I AM SEEING THEM. I AM GOING TO SEE MY SILLY LITTLE SONGS THAT I OBSESSED OVER IN YEAR SEVEN LIVE
15/09/2023 HOLY FUCKING FUCK OH MY FUCKING GOD I JUST GOT BACK FROM THE PALLADIUM FROM THE DARREN CRISS SHOW AND I JUST;;;;; HOLY FUCK i'm going to do a full recount of the day because if i forget any detail i might sob and sob forever
ok so i woke up at like 8:01 in the morning which was good although a little later than i'd hoped. we got in the car and drove to the train station early because i literally COULD NOT WAIT. the train to london didn't take that long but my god did the tubes!! we got to kings cross and went down to st pancras ("st pancreas" according to my mum) where we met this lovely lady, we got talking on the lift and stayed with her for a bit while we worked out our trains. after that it was kind of hellish honestly? we just kept getting on tubes until we found bond street, there were so many that we couldn't get out of because there were no lifts only stairs/escalators. it got very stressful so i had a bit of a cry but in the end it was alright and we got there. we went to pret a manger and i got a bottle of water and a chocolate bar that wasn't really that nice, but i hadn't eaten for ages so i nibbled a bit. when we saw the palladium, all the signs outside it were for the darren criss show!! we had a really nice assistance worker who escorted us inside (we skipped the queue, i have decided i am never going to any concert without mum, we didn't have to queue AT ANY POINT) and showed us around, it was all so brilliant. then we got to our seats!!! we were at the end of the row because of mum's wheelchair, third row because only the front few were accessible which was GREAT. i was next to a lovely glaswegian woman and her son, she had really wanted to go but her son seemed less than impressed. we talked about darren, she was a massive glee fan and kept talking about klaine, which was sweet; she said that the assassination of gianni versace was really good, so i'll have to get round to watching that. there was a group of teenagers behind us who seemed to be massive theatre kids, too, which was nice. AND THEN HE WAS ON THE STAGE. thank the high heavens for auto stabilisation on my phone's video camera because god i was shaking like nobody's business i was seeing DARREN CRISS my IDOL since i was ELEVEN IN REAL FUCKING LIFE. I WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS HIM. i was breathing all laboured i genuinely did not deal with it!!! it was fucking intense!!!! when he first came on stage he sat at the piano and wordlessly started playing the national anthem (ours, not the american one). then he started singing don't stop me now which was AMAZING. and oh my GOD the first act was SENSATIONAL i was filming a lot of it on my phone and i kept looking at the screen obviously to check it was a decent video and then i would go Hold on a second and look past my screen and remember OH YEAH. I'M IN THIS FUCKING ROOM. WITH DARREN CRISS. and my heart would STOP!!! joey and lauren were also onstage at this point but they were sort of singing in the background, and because i had a side view i had to crane to see joey and i couldn't see lauren at all :(((( after act 1 (i feel like calling it act 1 and act 2 is wrong because it's a concert not actually a musical but that's just how i've been thinking of it) our assistance worker came back and we went into the lobby to look at merchandise. there were a couple of t-shirts in the running, a black one and a yellow one, but i ended up getting the yellow one because it had the show name and info on the back!!! so that was an excellent souvenir, plus we got to skip the queue again which was so great. we got back to our seats and look when i tell you that act 2 was FUCKING TRANSCENDENT. I AM NEVER GOING TO BE THE SAME. THE SECOND HALF OF THE CONCERT WAS OH MY FUCKING GOD LEVELS OF INSANE I AM LTIERALLY A CHANGED PERSON I AM ACTUALYL NEVER GOING TO FUCKING GET OVER IT so for starters they LITERALLY SUNG GRANGER DANGER. LIKE FOR REAL. DARREN TALKED ABOUT STARKID AND HE JOEY AND LAUREN SUNG GRANGER DANGER. I HAVE SEEN GRANGER DANGER LIVE. I HAVE SEEN IT. PERFORMED LIVE BY THE PEOPLE WHO SUNG IT ORIGINALLY. IN REAL LIFE. but oh my god the highlight of the night for me was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT GOIN' BACK TO HOGWARTS. OH MY GOD. I THINK THAT'S MY FAVOURITE EXPERIENCE I'VE EVER HAD. DARREN GOT EVERYONE TO STAND UP AND THEN WE WERE ALL SINGING IN THE AUDIENCE AND IT WAS THIS HUGE SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND OHHHH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. WE WERE ALL SINGING THIS SONG AND I GOT SO CAUGHT UP IN IT BECAUSE LIKE!!! NEVER DID I THINK I'D BE DOING THIS!!!!! AND JOEY AND LAUREN AND DARREN MY THREE IDOLS SINCE I WAS ELEVEN WERE SINGING IT WITH ME. I DON'T THINK I'M EVER GOING TO GET OVER IT I REALLY DON'T. (for context, when i was eleven i found avpm on youtube and it kind of changed me fundamentally and this is the opening number from it; this is the way i found out about starkid/darren criss originally and it got me through a stupidly difficult year and it was my dream ages eleven to go and see it, i thought my only opportunity would be to scrape together the money to fly to america in 2029 for the 20th anniversary of starkid so this was HUGE for me) that is definitely a memory i will hold close for the rest of my life oh my god!!!!!!!! some more details from the show include:and then there was the journey home!! it was actually pretty good. we managed to flag down a cab instead of taking the underground this time, mum was waving like mad so the cabbie waved back with equal enthusiasm which was very funny. we got to kings cross again and got the train that terminated, but it was alright because a couple of people (one of whom looked weirdly like my old french teacher?) helped us get on the right one at xxx station. and then we had to get off and change carriages (still got on the wrong one but it got sorted in the end) and a man offered his seat to me so i could sit near mum and on my own which was really nice, we helped him look for his hat. i got a box of chicken from the mini waitrose at kings cross so i was munching that, and then eventually i dropped my bottle of water, so i had to run and get that which was quite funny. the train from xxx -> yyy was pretty nice, everyone helped us and also most people got off at the other xxx station so it was pretty clear, we sat at a table. we got home at a little past seven, it was amazing. absolutely perfect night if i'm honest
- darren picking some guy from the audience and periodically checking in with him throughout the show
- his t-shirt which said "god save the queers" (LEGEND I LOVE THIS MAN SO MUCH)
- lauren channelling linda monroe in i can't dance (<3333 i fucking LOVE LINDA. OH MY GOD)
- i can't dance being the only choreographed one?
- really just the whole thing i mean holy shit. i'm never going back to normal sorry i'm fundamentally changed now you see
- CLARK BAXTRESSER WAS ON KEYBOARD. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT LITERAL CLARK BAXTRESSER FROM STARKID WAS THERE. WHAT THE FUCK
- darren singing "part of that world" - a nod to iclemyer <33333 !!!!!!!
overall i just think that this is the best weekend i;ve ever fucking had. holy shit!!!!!!
also, a bit after that weekend, lauren lopez replied to my comment on instagram. that was just the icing on the cake for me really
so yeah!!! i love starkid so much and that weekend was literally AMAZING. i wanted to share it because it was just so so special to me <3
song for today: for a night like this by darren criss
well come on what did you think i was going to pick. i have a signed CD single of this song it's so good!!!! (it wasn't meant to be signed, but i ordered it unsigned and it came signed, although i tell that story so much i feel like i must have put it on here before)
there probably won't be spotify links on this page from here on out as i have pretty much stopped using it altogether in favour of soulseek downloads and CDs
12/08/2023
long time no blog post!! sorry about that one. i got a little uninvested in the website for a bit, and i'm coming back to it now but also it's the summer holidays and i've just had a lot on, so i haven't really had the time or motivation. hopefully i'll write more in the future. i've started keeping a journal, actually, but mainly to write about whatever hyperfixation has been consuming my brain at any given moment.
and on that topic.. [spoiler free] GOOD OMENS SERIES 2. MY GOODNESS i really don't even know where to begin. i'm making a page about it so i won't say all that much here but. i am SO FUCKING INSANE ABOUT THESE GUYS. there is so much i want to say here but i'm trying to keep it spoiler free; to summarise, NOBODY TALK TO ME EVER AGAIN. IT WAS SO GOOD AND I AM IN TEARS. listen to happy ending by mika after watching it!
i did buy a mika CD for that exact reason, recently. i think life in cartoon motion is now my favourite album ever. the true test of how abnormal i personally am about a show is whether i go beasty about an album alongside it, and therefore buy a CD of said album. with our flag means death, it was rumours by fleetwood mac, because of the chain and then i listened to the whole album again and started thinking about them; with good omens, it's life in cartoon motion, because the first thing i thought of after The Ending of series 2 was happy ending (because i just love to make myself cry!!). i will say though that my favourite song in the world, go your own way by fleetwood mac, goes with every show i love in one way or another.
ALSO, SPEAKING OF OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH!!!! OCTOBER RELEASE DATE FOR S2!!!!!!! this happened literally two days after i finished watching it with my friend. i think he may be psychic.
in other news, barbie!!!! i saw it three times, and on the third time did the barbenheimer double bill. i'll say that i definitely preferred barbie, but oppenheimer was good too. i got all dressed up all three times, it was honestly so much fun!!
i've also been learning SQL. will keep updated.
also, an update on dualbooting windows 7 with my main (windows 11) computer: i've found out that it's an issue with the internal graphics card, and have had to accept that it can't run win7 and eventually i will have to go back to that computer (i've been pretty much exclusively using the family one with windows 7 on it for the past 3 months). however, i do have a source of hope - my uncle has some old PC towers that he needs to get rid of, so i'm thinking i'll blag one of those and put windows 7 onto it. exciting!!
apologies for how disjointed this blog entry is. i really don't have a story to tell here, i just wanted to sort of give an overview of my life at present.
anyway, i'm quite tired, so i'm going to sign off here, but those are the main updates for now :) thank you for sticking around even with relative silence for months, it is greatly appreciated !!
song for today: my interpretation by mika
i mentioned that i bought a CD of life in cartoon motion, and it felt a little lazy to just put the song as happy ending. i think my interpretation might be one of my favourite songs ever, full stop. i hadn't heard it before buying the CD, i'd only heard the most popular ones from that album, but they're all SO good everyone go check it out btw
26/05/2023
i am writing this from a laptop running windows 7 YIPPEE!!!!!
hello !! sorry d for being a bit inactive on this site recently. i've been having a lot of stuff going on including exams and i've been pretty poorly, but now i've finishd most of my exams (and did really well i think!!) and i'm recovering, so i suppose i should really update here!! i'm hoping to do more on the site in the coming months because i do miss constantly tweaking and fiddling with it, no promises of course but hopefully :)
the first thing i'd like to tell you all about is regarding the first statement of this post. through a lot of trial and error, two computers, many hours, and surprisingly little bloodshed, i have finally managed - with no prior knowledge of this process whatsoever, aside from vague "oh huh i'd like to do that some day, maybe when i'm older" - to dual boot windows 7 and windows 10! i was originally supposed to do this with win7 and win11, on my laptop, but this didn't work, and the only help i can find is filled with solutions i either a) don't really understand, b) can't do on my specific computer, or c) are said to not work and i don't want to risk killing my main computer with all my stuff on it (here is the thread if anyone with better technical knowledge than me wants to have a look and maybe decipher!). thankfully we have a family computer type thing with a ton of storage space and just generally the rule is "if you can't do it on your own computer try it here". it's an absolute beast of a machine and i adore it. but yeah mum said that i could try it on there and finally i managed it. i have been absolutely REVELLING in this its actually insane. you can't possibly understand how much i FUCKING LOVE WINDOWS 7 !!! when it was filly working i was legitimately shaking. at the age of 10 (when i was leaving primary school, where the computers had windows 7) i was googling "windows 7 simulator" and the like. it's actually deranged how determined i have been to use it since then and yet never came across dual booting until like a year ago and even then didn't really connect the dots and go "oh yeah you could do that with windows too not just linux". but either way i'm glad i figured it out eventually !!!! (even if it took FAR too long)
in other news. i got another little phone! this one's a samsung corby from ebay. i'll put it on the phones page soon enough, once i can get a good photo. i also bought yesterday a set of lighters with little kittens on them which made me unreasonably happy, which will be arriving quite soon!!
i'm so glad it's the half term holidays. i'm going out with family tomorrow, and then on tuesday the 30th i'll be going to pizza express for my friend's birthday which will be fun :)
i will round the update off now, but hopefully there'll be more in future!! thank you all for sticking around <33
song for today: i wanna go by britney spears
it's so obnoxiously 2011. its the most 2011 song ever. literally not a more 2011 song than this. and i love that for it. a bit of obnoxiously 2011, could Not be from any other year, literally unmistakably 2011 music is excellent for you in moderation you know
22/04/2023
i've been listening to the radio a lot recently. i found my old mp3 player which has FM and tuned it to my favourite local station. it's quite comforting. this mp3 player has a function where you can take recordings of the radio, so i've got some including the best advert jingles for local services, i wish i could share some of them because they're absolute bangers but unfortunately that would mean revealing a highly specific geographical area. i like the radio.
i've also been bedazzling everything recently. my sgh-t100 is now absolutely covered in little diamantés on the front, and the back of the extended battery too. it's honestly amazing. i put some around the screen on the mp3 player as well.
school started again on monday. it's not very nice. you know, the holiday rest and a new course of vitamins had me hopeful, but honestly i was feeling better than ever physically until school began again. i even did PE for the first time in literal MONTHS, but then had to take the day off the next day because i could barely walk around. it's just not fair. one thing that's not often mentioned when you're chronically ill is the mental health issues that come with it? it's horrible having to miss out on lots of things, and having to plan ahead if you want to do anything at all. it takes a toll on you. mind you, complaining won't do much, so i'll just carry on trying !
but yeah. i just thought i would give a little update. the grief is coming in waves, so there are good days and bad days now, but i'm managing okay.
song for today: nisemono by ginger root
i've been getting into ginger root a lot lately, the story behind this whole EP is so great but nisemono in particular is just!!!!!!!!!!! SO GOOD all of it is top fucking tier though it was really difficult choosing which one to put here actually
09/04/2023
something a little different today.
on the 6th of april, at about 9pm, my cat simba passed away after being hit by a car. the blog entry today will be a memorial of sorts for him.
this loss absolutely devastated me. if you know me you know how much all of my cats mean to me, largely from the fact that i will not shut up about them. i must have thousands of photos of them, which i constantly show to everyone around me. i love those creatures more than i love most everyone around me. simba was (and is) no exception to that. i miss him dearly.
he was a special cat, i think. much too young and yet it seemed inevitable that he would go out quickly and with a bang. he had something about him that everyone saw but nobody could describe - he almost glowed. he never looked quite real, perfect in every way, animated. ever since he was a tiny kitten he had this wiseness to him, it's difficult to pinpoint, but you always felt like he could understand you. he knew more than the average cat, i think. he was funny around crystals and pretty rocks - my mum has them all around the house and he would always steal them off of surfaces and hide them underneath rugs and furniture and in corners. i've never been a particularly spiritual person but my mum said, and i have to agree, that he was sent from somewhere and meant to be here. he actually wasn't even supposed to be ours, originally - the owner of his mother had allocated a girl and a boy kitten for us, but there was some sort of mix-up and we ended up with simba and artie. that makes it even more special that we ended up with him, and even more painful now he's gone.
when i first found out, it was about 1:55 AM on the 7th. i hadn't been able to sleep at all that night, and suddenly my mum came rushing into my room, panicked as anything, and asked where i'd last seen him. i said that i didn't know, i hadn't seen him since the afternoon, and she left. she returned in a few minutes and broke the news to me, and i howled for the next five minutes, and sobbed for the next couple of days. i've never dealt with loss on this scale before - i think the closest thing was that of my great aunt, who i admittedly didn't know very well. grief is an awful thing. i cried and cried and cried, and whenever i wasn't crying i was feeling guilty that i wasn't crying. i have a stone, one that he liked, that i've been carrying with me, to hold when i think of him. it's helping, because the stone was a positive thing for him, so it's automatically a relatively happy item for me. if you've had a cat before you probably know how they can get so inexplicably attached to certain things, some cats more than others - one of simba's things was precious stones (as well as pom poms). we buried him in the garden on the 8th (yesterday at time of writing), and visiting it and talking to him helps as well. the pain has not gone but it is getting easier to cope with which is better.
i am going to miss everything about simba. whenever i went to school, or to the shops, or to my theatre group, or out with friends, or even just around the house, he would always be waiting for me on my bed when i got back. i have a soft blanket on my bed that he would lick and knead like a kitten. whenever he wanted fuss, he would get on the floor, make a mrowwl noise, and stretch out and show you his belly very dramatically. he was very dramatic in general - i remember one time, quite recently, my mum dropped her walking stick while simba and angel were in the room. simba was far away on the other side of the room, whereas angel was so close it fell right near him, and yet simba ran away with a yelp while angel kept cleaning himself. he was always like that about everything, he was very funny. he would steal your food but only if you were sitting in one specific seat in our living room. he blended in perfectly with the rug in front of the fireplace. whenever a camera was pointed at him he would pose. he had a bell on his collar, and when he wanted attention he would shake his head around to make it jingle. when he got incredibly happy he would start to look a bit demonic. he made funny facial expressions - one time he literally, actually frowned at me, whiskers pointing down, eyes wide, because i didn't give him food the moment i entered the house. he trotted. sometimes he forgot to put his tongue back in his mouth when he was tired, so he looked all goofy. i could go on forever about all the little perfect things about simba that i will miss forever and ever.
i don't think a day will ever go by when i don't think about simba. he and artie were my first cats. he was taken from us much too young, he wasn't even two years old, but i take comfort from the fact that he had a wonderful pampered life and i did everything possible to ensure that, and the fact that his death was quick and painless. i am devastated beyond what language can express but i will be grateful eternally for the time we had together.
thank you, simba. <3
25/03/2023
thank you all so so much for 20 000 views + 20 followers!! it honestly means the world that so many people have looked at my silly little website. i <3 you all so much !!!!!
i figured i should probably update the blog at some point considering that i haven't in ages. hello! i'll apologise that there haven't been any massive site updates recently either, bar some tweaks to the CSS. i've been pretty burnt out and my physical health is on the decline too so i've been dealing with that. still, i'm getting through, and hopefully soon i'll be doing more and more with this site! (i'm thinking about a full redesign of the home page, but don't hold me to that one.)
i don't really know what to write here to be honest. i've been watching what we do in the shadows recently which is really really good. it led me down a bit of a rabbit hole today though because i found out that kayvan novak, the actor who plays nandor, was in danger mouse (2015) which i hyperfixated on MASSIVELY when it came out (because i'd been shown the 1981 series ever since i could remember and i just got really excited for it). after i got into a state of shock i looked on the imdb page for danger mouse and some other things too and found out that, in summary, there are about seven people in the british comedy television industry and they all work on the same things. (if you look up a british comedy TV show and click on any given pair of actors they WILL have something in common like 90% of the time it's so weird)
but yeah thats about it i reckon! again thank you all for being here<3
song for today: choke by idkhbtfm
truly one of the songs ever. it scratches an itch
27/02/2023
i feel like sharing every little detail of my life on here isn't a great plan, but like i'm here now so i guess ?? we vibe
last night my mum got really ill. it was pretty scary at the time, especially considering that i'm incredibly emetophobic, but in the end she got her emergency injection and it was alright. tired today though! i got picked up from school by one of the local farmers my mum's mates with, the farmers round my way are well nice so i'm grateful for that.
also my ziggy stardust CD came today!!!! i LOVE it. it's a 30th anniversary edition, and it has this little booklet inside!! it was cheap on ebay because the booklet was actually ripped out but i just taped it back, i might glue it later on. it's a 2CD as well, so it's got the regular one and then a load of demos and alternate versions, i'll stick it all on the CDs page once i get the opportunity. it's weird to think that it was released while he was still actually alive.
i think that's my news just about done, really. little break from those massive lengthy entries!
songs for today: starman by david bowie and oh daddy by fleetwood mac
well i was obviously going to say a song from the rise and fall of ziggy stardust and starman is the most popular one for a reason. i absolutely ADORE it & also it's the reason i found david bowie's music so like
haven't been able to get this out of my head and i don't plan on stopping the "izzycore" joke (as in izzy hands our flag means death)
20/02/2023
i've been thinking lately about how this community of little personal websites has changed me.
i never really had a hobby just for me before my website. i talked in my last blog post about how i've always been intrigued by the internet, but never really understood how it was constructed. i won't go into detail because that's what the last blog was really all about, but today instead of how i really got to this point i'm focusing more on how having my own website and having that community has affected me.
i'm neurodivergent, and growing up i had just one person letting me express that (my mum), but unluckily for me she wasn't really allowed much authority over me as a young child because my father is a wanker. my point here is that for the first twelve or so years of my life i was forced to conceal, mask, supress almost every part of myself, which is obviously something i'm still trying to unlearn. this carried through to my school life, presenting as neurotypical, so i downloaded all the social medias my friends had (drawing the line at bereal, lol) and made the same kind of posts and followed my classmates, and so this carried through to my online life too. thank god i have a tumblr where i can just be myself, but even to a point on there because it's still social media in essence there's always a level of doubt in me, that if i say too much on this i might go wrong or make a mistake or get judged or whatever. i've never had anywhere i can be completely, utterly, one hundred per cent myself, online or otherwise.
then i found neocities!! and my god am i glad i did. never before had i seen a community of such cool, passionate, amazing people, with such a diverse array of websites and content and so much love poured into each and every one. even without actually interacting with any i felt so instantly at home on all of these sites which very quickly prompted me to start axelcentral. as i mentioned in the last blog post i'd done a bit of html coding before but never with such intent and such love for it. this website and this community made me passionate about something, more than ever before.
i messaged recently to finn (as in, finny's corner finn), "bloody love having a website. like i can just talk about whatever the fuck i want on there and nobody can even stop me. gnomeo and juliet is not something that anyone but the internet wishes to hear about and i just love that <3". and while i meant that as a joke it's true! i can just talk about whatever on here and it's good and it's loved and i value that so so much. having a website has made me so much happier, because i have somewhere i can be shamelessly myself, i have something fun i can focus on that i adore with results!! i can open up any computer and find MY WEBSITE on the internet!! i adore it here more than i've ever loved any other place before.
if you're reading this post, i love you. you've taken the time to look at my labour of love, you've taken the time to explore neocities and its community! if you have a personal website, i love you. you helped inspire me, and you will help inspire others. if you are thinking about making a personal website because of this and other posts and wesbites, i love you. i hope you go through with it because what this site and this community has given to me is priceless and i can't thank everyone enough.
<3
song for today: stand and deliver by adam and the ants its gotta be one of my favourites of all time tbh
back to top
15/02/2022
thank you all so much for more than 10 000 views on this site!! i really enjoyed making it and i'm glad people like looking at it, even if it is mostly just a collection of all my shit. i love you all!!
i've been thinking recently about why exactly i made a website. i know the steps that led me here (briefly: learned html in school -> made shrek "websites" -> made neocities site to host shrek websites -> made another site to refine html knowledge -> got off my arse and made this one), but like - i'm trying to think of what actually compelled me to make this? because it is above all a labour of love, i think. (warning for brief mention & fair implication of child abuse ahead)
i think the first reason that comes to mind is that i grew up primarily in the 2010s, so i lived through that point where web design went from fun designs, with nice logos and rounded corners and shines and skeuomorphism and html and just that general more hand-crafted feel, to the generic corporate neutral hellscape we have today. and that change makes me sad! when i was little the web was more fun! and it fascinated me a lot, i loved the concept of a website. i remember on TV they used to advertise the cbeebies website, and i begged and begged and begged my parents to let me onto it, because i really hadn't had much experience at all with computers (there was one at my preschool that we could play some games on sometimes, but it was very limited). and then one day we turned on the ancient computer that lived in the spare room, and went on the cbeebies website at long last, and it was so good! i wanted to go on it for hours, playing all of the little flash games and looking around at all the fun stuff. i only remember getting a glimpse, i didn't even get to sit on the chair as far as i can remember, it took about fifteen minutes to load according to my mum, but just taking a look at it intrigued me. i wondered and wondered about how you would ever go about getting a website, how you make one, everything about the logistics of getting your designated spot on the world wide web. i kept pestering my father about it - he worked in IT, he knew these things! - but he refused to explain it to me, saying i wouldn't understand. that made me sad. i think that's another reason why i wanted to make a website - to prove that i could.
for the majority of my childhood i wasn't really allowed on the internet. sure, i was allowed to use my mum's phone sometimes, but only to message my friends' mums to pass the message on to said friends (at the age of six or seven i opened up the youtube app, curious as to what it was, if that gives you any information about how limited my internet usage was). i had an old android tablet for games, but if i even turned on the wifi (or indeed the tablet itself) without telling my father it got taken away for the week. restricted internet usage definitely isn't a bad thing for children, lord knows they shouldn't have access to the entire content of the www, but equally i feel like complete lockdown is not the way to go. the games on my tablet and the few books on my shelf and the television were my only sources of entertainment at the weekend, because we didn't really go out (for a multitude of reasons that i don't care to go into) and i was barely ever allowed to meet with friends. because i wasn't allowed on the internet my fascination for it obviously grew massively, to the point where i was literally counting down the days until the next computing lesson in school.
when i got my first phone at age 10 (a cheap off-brand android; horrendously slow, but it was enough) was when i finally gained access to the internet. i guess the logic was "he'll use the internet on his phone anyway, so we might as well let him use it on his tablet too", because i suddenly went from no internet usage to complete unrestricted access. that also doesn't seem like a great strategy, but i wasn't complaining. overall i could have done worse, i think. i used pinterest a lot to see screenshots of old tumblr posts, and i read fanfiction on fanfiction.net, which led me to hand-coded fandom sites. which reminded me of how much i loved the idea of having a website! but you have to understand that i was a bit thick. i didn't think to just google "how to make a website", the only thing i knew was what was advertised on TV, which was wix. another thing i didn't realise is that i could put ANYTHING I WANTED on a website. so i made a wix website on my tablet and discarded it a day later because i hated it because i didn't know what to put there and it looked bad.
out of both of my parents, my mum was always the more relaxed one. this is why it wasn't a total surprise when it was revealed that actually the shit he did wasn't normal and he was abusive. that was when i was just about twelve, i think, and my mum left him. after that point me and my sister were free to do things without being monitored all the time, and i got my laptop. (prior to this i was allowed to use my mum's sometimes, but only really for school and accessing the CBBC website.) i started to get more confident, all of us were a lot happier. also, i'd just started secondary school. computing lessons were very different to those at primary school. eventually we started learning html, and the idea of having a website was brought back into the forefront of my mind. i would make rudimentary shrek-inspired "websites" (html documents) with my friends, figuring out the very basics of html until i'd learned that fully. that's when i started to think "you know what, i could make a website of my own if i tried really hard". i'm not actually sure how i found out about neocities, but i did, and i found sadgrl.online's website builder, and made a place to host the shrek html documents. it's not much, and i'm not going to share it here, but it was the critical point when i realised two things: (1) i can make a website holy shit!!! i can put WORDS onto the INTERNET!!!!!; and (2) i LOVE doing that!!!!!!!!. next up was will-schue (I AM NOT A FUCKING GLEE FAN BTW READ THE "ORIGIN" PAGE), which is still being updated to this day; and eventually axelcentral. i've always wanted to make a website. out of "i'm finally allowed to use the internet so let's see what i can do", out of "i'm going to figure it out even if you don't want me to", out of "i love doing this and i want to continue", out of "i love that i can have my own corner of the WWW to do whatever i want in"! and i think THAT'S why i made a website. i really love it here. <3
songs for today: stronger by britney spears and when doves cry by prince (these two choices are unrelated)
idk man i've been feeling nostalgic. also i can't get it out of my head but i won't exactly complain about that
OFMD FANS HOW ARE WE DOING. ARE WE DOING OKAY. I'M NOT
back to top
05/02/2023
happy february! i had an interesting experience today. it started with my mother driving past some houses ended with me sitting on the edge of the bath washing a load of mud off of my legs.
my sister had her friend round from the neighbouring village, and we were just dropping her off back home in the car. my mum mentioned that she had seen some lovely houses down an older road of this village, so once the friend was safely back at her house we decided to drive to that part and have a bit of a look at the houses. we saw them, and they were lovely, and we thought that was the end of it, except that it wasn't, because if it were then i wouldn't be saying it here because it would just be boring. now it is important here to note that i live in a rural farmland area, so there are a lot of farmers and a lot of farm tracks, and it's february so there is also a LOT of mud. anyway, we were about to go back home when my mum missed the only turning out of this road, and proceeded down a farm track. usually that's not an issue because a lot of farm tracks have a little bit you can turn around in, except that this farm track wasn't a standard farm track that a car can go down if it must, this was one routinely used by tractors, right next to a farm, with a sign that said "not suitable for motor vehicles". the driveable bit was between a soft verge and a lot of deep mud, and it was very narrow. once we'd got past the softest looking bit of verge, my mother made the executive decision to try and turn around, which as it turns out is not a viable plan when you're right next to deep mud. just as she began to get proud of herself for not turning on the soft verge we became stuck in the mud. i was elected to try and shove the car out, as the strongest person in the car, and so i had to roll up my jeans (i'd like you to remember here that it's february and i live in england and mud is fucking cold) and wade through this ditchy thing to try and push it, which somehow managed to result in us being even more stuck than before. we were beginning to realise now that this was a serious issue (not least because i need my trainers for PE tomorrow and they were now coated in mud), but as you'll remember this was a farm track routinely used by tractors, which meant that there was a farm a few hundred metres up. i was again elected as the one to run up for help, while my mum called her friend who is a farmer in the next village over to the one we were stuck in. i got to the farmhouse, and immediately the farmer guessed that we were stuck and said that he would help, so i ran back down to the car, and my mother told me that her friend would be driving down there too. when the farmer from the farmhouse arrived with his tractor, it took us a while to find our tow hook, and while we were struggling with that of course my mum's friend rolls up in his volvo, greeting the farmer like an old friend, revealing that he'd guessed exactly where we were and rung this exact farmer that had come to help us. in the end we were towed free and managed to drive back home fine, but it was really quite an experience and not how i expected to spend my sunday night
songs for today: the chain and go your own way, both by fleetwood mac
GOD i've loved the chain for SO LONG but ever since watching our flag means death i've just gone abnormally feral for it. like it's playing round my head at all times at this stage and as for go your own way i'm manifesting that for s2 because it's one of my favourite songs ever and i want to go even more feral for it like what happened with the chain because i am sane normal and average. thanks
back to top
23/01/2023
i've been thinking a bit lately (shocking, i know). maybe it's because i'm ill, and so i have to adopt coping mechanisms so i don't actually go mad, but like - what is life without silliness?? like, how can anyone go through life being just boring, sanitised, capitalist sadness? even just sticking a funny sticker on something or wearing a stupid shirt or making weird hypothetical lists (today i made one titled "reasons why i would be killed as a child in the victorian era"), i don't think we could go through life without things like that. i do think it's amazing that such simple things can make us happy, as well. i was thinking about that recently too, how a little thing like that causes a physical reaction to release hormones!! like that's the coolest thing ever!!! i can put a sticker on my laptop of a floating cow and my brain makes chemicals because of that!!!! i don't know much about biology but i just think that's the coolest thing ever.
i apologise for the rambliness of this entry, i've been pretty ill today so i'm not exactly thinking properly, but i thought i'd write something while i still had the energy. <3
song for today: don't stop me now - ...revisited by queen
i was sleeping over at my friend's recently, and bohemian rhapsody (as in the movie) came on tv, so i stayed up and watched it and while i did enjoy the movie the thing that stuck out to me most was the version of don't stop me now that played in the end credits!!! it was about one in the morning so i ended up jotting down in the notes of my phone a reminder to find that version specifically, which i eventually did a week later (having it just,, be there on the soundtrack was quite the shock to me, someone who deals with the gnomeo and juliet soundtrack) and holy. I AM GOING SO FERAL FOR THIS like i loved the song anyway because like who doensnt its so good but THIS VERSION MAN. I AM BEING KILLED VIOLENTLY AND BRUTALLY IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE THIS VERSION OF THE SONG IS RIPPING MY ORGANS OUT AND SPINNING THEM AROUND IN THE BLENDER I AM IN LOVE WITH IT i am so well-adjusted balanced and average
back to top
11/01/2023
happy new year! i would have updated this page sooner but i haven't had the time :( i've updated the layout of the website recently, so now it's more responsive on mobile and looks cooler on desktop (and i got rid of those dodgy iframes on the homepage too, and added this cool background). i like it much better now.
it was my birthday on 01/01!! i had a brilliant time. my friend stayed over and we watched goofy movies (the bee movie and the emoji movie) in different languages, although what we didn't realise is that in doing this on the shared netflix account it was also changing the language on the television downstairs, which resulted in my mother being awfully confused as to how she ended up watching the crown
in flemish.
i'm ill a lot lately. maybe it's the cold weather, but either way i'm off school quite a lot, so hopefully this website will grow more and more extravagant as i work on it from home.
one more thing - there are two new members of the sillyboy family!! go and say hello to them on the homepage :)
song for today: blackstar by david bowie
yesterday (10th january) marked the 7 year anniversary of his death, and so this song seems appropriate. </3
back to top
28/12/2022
i have decided that my blog will not be updated regularly, but i think i'll put stuff here relatively often :)
my birthday is in four days! i am very excited. some family came over today, which was nice, as nobody can come over for new year due to celebrations (drawbacks to being born on 01/01 lol).
in other news, i found out a lot about the song can you feel the love tonight by elton john today! for some context, i have a raging special interest (the 'tism) in elton john's music, and i was lucky enough to be able to play can you feel the love tonight for my grade 3 piano exam (i only missed one mark from that piece!! :D), so i would say that i know the song pretty well considering that i listened to and played it every day for about six months. i also knew already that one of the backing vocalists was rick astley - but what i wasn't aware of was the fact that the other two were kiki dee and gary barlow. to be honest i thought that gary barlow was BORN in the nineties but as it turns out it was actually the 70s. either way there have been collaborations between elton and kiki dee AND elton and gary barlow so it'd be interesting to see one with elton and rick astley.
another thing i learned about it is concerning the release. one thing that i absolutely adore is when there is an official instrumental or orchestral release of a song (take, for example, take on me symphonic version), and lo and behold can you feel the love tonight has one!!! it's very very good. the verses are as you expect but the chorus took my breath away when i heard it for the first time, it's incredible. i'm miffed that it's not on spotify.
final point of the day, i found a gnome website! i was looking for gnome puns to change my tumblr URL to and stumbled across letitbegnome.com. i like it a lot :)
songs for today: can you feel the love tonight (instrumental mix) by elton john, and last christmas by wham
can you feel the love tonight (instrumental mix) on youtubei know that christmas has been and gone but last christmas is an absolute banger and i love george michael! i won't take criticism on this
back to top
25/12/2022 - christmas day!
my sister woke me up at 5:40am today to open our christmas stocking, so i am very very tired lol. i got a shruddha (shrek buddha) statue and a camera!! we bought a couple of new toys for the cats, as well - a flopping fish that moves and a sort of green dome with holes in the side that a toy mouse comes out of, sort of like whack-a-mole. simba immediately loved the dome toy, as did angel (who tried to bite it over the top, to no avail). artie was a bit timid of it at first but started whacking it a bit later on. as for the fish - simba started going for it a bit, artie kept well away, but angel got so into it it was very funny! he held it under his little fromt paws but because it's an electronic flopping fish of course the tail was flapping and kept hitting him in the face repeatedly, and every single time he looked incredibly offended as if he couldn't do anything about it (i ended up taking it from his paws to prevent this, which he seemed quite grateful for lol). i took lots of photos on my new camera, here are a few of my favourites:
song for today: priceless from starkid's a vhs christmas carol (as yesterday i watched 2022's version! this means i've watched all three iteration of it so far, as i got a digital ticket to both the 2020 and 2021 versions and then i got a digiticket to the jangle ball tour, where it was performed as act 2) priceless is the best vhscc song btw. this is indisputable & i adore lauren's "i'll toast my hope that he DIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS" shes such a queen
i also highly recommend christmas electricity! i still remember the dance from when i learned it back in 2020 which is pretty cool
back to top