C-OR-aline. Coraline Jones.

Hello,
The other day someone said I only blog once a month. Actually, that's not true at all - but I suppose I could post more regularly, however due to the sad lack of feedback I receive it is actually kind of hard to motivate myself into blibbering about nothingness. Yup.

Anyway, I decided to do some REVIEWS. Just because I feel like it. OK, so this post basically goes out to Coraline, my friends. A fantastic story about a girl who feels neglected that journeys through a door in her house to another world - exactly like her own, only better in every way imaginable. Coraline is wowed by this other world, and her "other mother" and "other father," both whom shower her with love and attention! It's a marvellous adventure; until she discovers that all is not as it appears to be.

By the way, Coraline is not scary. Well, no, it might be. I suppose if you are afraid of dolls, and jumping mice, and dopplegangers and 'menacing themes'......... It's a story where the more grown up you are, the scarier it seems, I think. So child yourselves and watch/read it! It gives you the chills, a bit, I reckon. IT'S AWESOME!  It's definitely worth your time, I promise :)

(Following contains quotes and hints, but no actual spoilers)
CORALINE: the book
Just this week I read Neil Gaiman's Coraline. It was a pretty lucky that I saw it in the library, because I had no idea that Coraline was originally a novel. And wow, it's unlike anything I've ever read before. Completely unique - it seems to have been written for kids...but is it really? The language is so simple, so immensly easy to read. It doesn't waste time on long, flowery descriptions, leaving a lot to your imagination - yet it's been so expertly written to really produce a thrilling, disturbing effect. My favourite thing, was that in the book, you can find so many creepy and cool excerpts that really just stick with you:

'Why does she want me?' Coraline asked the cat. 'Why does she want me to stay here with her?'

'She wants something to love, I think,' said the cat. 'Something that isn't her. She might want something to eat as well. It's hard to tell with creatures like that.'

'Darling,' said the woman. 'Why did you ever run away from me?'

'But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?'
'Easy,' said the cat. 'Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it.'
'Small world,' said Coraline.

'I swear it,' said the other mother. 'I swear it on my own mother's grave.'
'Does she have a grave?' asked Coraline.
'Oh yes,' said the other mother. 'I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.'

Part of the odd thing, is that Coraline is mostly written from a third person dramatic/objective point of view (thank you, it appears I might have learned something in English class after all). So a lot of the time, we aren't given Coraline's thoughts and feelings - only her actions and words. Kind of weird when you hear another character make a creepy statement, and you can only imagine how you would feel in Coraline's position. That is the beauty of this book, I think. TES described the novel as 'Alice with attitude in a dark, creepy, graphically described Wonderland.' I have to agree with this completely, and say that Coraline is an incredible work of literature. I would absolutely recommend! 4/5 stars

CORALINE: the movie

I first watched Coraline online (yes, yes, I am an evil child. But now I have it on DVD!) and I really wasn't sure what to think of it. It reminded me a lot of nightmares I used to have about being in an alternate universe where things and people were like normal, only srangely twisted, warped and menacing. They scared me. But after the second or third time watching the movie, you know, I just appreciated how great it was! One of those rare times I enjoy the movie more than the book; Coraline is a masterpiece. Using stop motion animation and creating a whole world in miniature (I think), it must have taken years to make. The visual effects, music, screenplay and voices are superb. It stays pretty faithful to the book - although it does add and take (added the character Wybie, which I'm glad they did) and it is an amazing interpretation. I love it, I love it, I love it! 4.5/5 stars

CORALINE: the ds game

Unfortunately, this game does little justice to the movie. The graphics are ok, but then I guess Nintendo DS games aren't famed for their amazing graphics. Anyway, that aside, I enjoyed being able to explore the Pink Palace - you can really look at the rooms and see a more detailed layout of the house that you weren't offered in the film - but the actual gameplay is rather lousy. The game gets off to a boring start, where your purpose is unclear and eventually you get bored of running up and down exploring the same rooms over and over again without really knowing what to do. After completing the beginning though, the game does get better, however only slightly. You can unlock different outfits for Coraline - which is pretty cool. The best part of the game is when you transide from her normal world to the other world. That was some pretty good work there. I just went 'WOW.' The music changed, the entire screen transformed into something more colourful, bright and appealing. All the boring rooms were beautifully decorated, and the whole world looked beautiful. The other world was great - forget Coraline being drawn to it - I was totally wanting to play my DS in the other world forever and ever! So that was a good aspect of the game - however the rest of the game is filled with boring, pointless mini games and activites that seem placed there just for the sake of having a 'game' in the game. These include 'squash the bugs in the bathroom' where you tap the screen to squash bugs, 'run away from the nightmare' where you have to tap her "nightmares" away and 'can you turn the key?!' where you merely touch the keyhole. So all in all, the game is pretty average, and that's stretching toward the lousy average. It's quite short - I was able to complete the game in under four hours. Good for a bit of addictive, lazy gameplay but if you're someone who goes and buys Nintendo DS games - I wouldn't recommend this game, it looks like a game just made to make money off the movie, and it's not worth the amount you'll be asked to pay for it. 2/5 stars.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaarrgghhh! Oh my GOSH!!!!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH MMMY GOODNESS!!!!!!!
I'm so excited I can hardly type. The preview for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I has been released!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check it out here.
WOW. YAY! HUZZAH!
I think I might actually faint from happiness.

Is it possible that I have been outwitted by a search engine?

Dear loyal readers,

I have decided to format this blog as a letter in preparation of my English exam, even though I've already sat the writing and reading exam and only have the viewing (in which the chances of me having to write a letter are pretty slim) left to go, but oh well. I see that I have already made a mistake by not putting 'loyal readers' with capital letters. Only now that I've pointed it out, I can't change it without creating confusion.
Never mind.

What I would really like to complain about is the mysterious case of the vanishing Google.
As you may or may not know, I have a slight semi-obsession for finding 'special googles' and posting them to this blog. So today I tried to get onto Google...only where was it? Google had disappeared! But then when I checked back it was gone! Now what is up with that?
It's a good thing I practice constance vigilance and snapped this snippet of my internet explorer as evidence:

See? Now all I have to do is found out where google went in those missing minutes. Gone for a bathroom break, I suppose.

OH and I wanted you guys to see this too:

I don't know who knows about what knows about me, but anyway, I have a real thing for owls and clocks. So when I saw the above picture picture - the two rolled into one!!!- my eyeballs nearly gauged out and I nearly fainted with jealousy.
That is all.

Yes. That, um, should be it.

wait. I forgot. This is a letter, so...

Yours sincerely,

Harris.

ps. Yes, I did copy Kendra with the whole making your name big at the end of the post thing. Forgive me :)

Welcome back winter once again

Happy June everyone!

I know everyone's saying it...but this year really is going fast! In just 30 days we'll be halfway through the year and celebrating because of the EOFYS! And I still remember being so proud of posting at exactly 12 o'clock midnight on news years' day: "HAPPY NEW YEAR." Well, actually, I was about 9 minutes off as I recall, but oh well, perfection is boring.

Anyway, here I am, studying for exams and such. Well, I'm waiting for a virtual copy of my maths book to download which my friend so kindly sent me since my copy of the maths book has mysteriously vanished just in time for the exam. NOT in the mood to blog, yet I choose to anyway since I've really got nothing else better to do as my mind is currently preoccupied with trivial matters such as the whereabouts of my missing maths book and whether or not I can own a snowglobe without smashing it. Anyway, I thought I'd just write a poem about winter. I suck at poetry, by the way, so don't expect anything great.

Oh wait. My maths book just loaded. Guess I'll just have to... catch you guys later!

deviantart.com (c) ~ ycxu

And here's a random picture for your enjoyment.

ENJOY THE COLD, BRO.

Banksy

I haven't found something (or someone, in this case) that I've found so thoroughly interesting for quite a while. These incredible .... would you call them artworks? are by the British grafiti artist who goes by the pseudonym "Banksy." His identity remains currently unknown. Check out more of his work here. It's quite amazing, actually!

the ultimate pacman

Pacman's 30th Birthday!

Seriously, this has got to be the coolest special google ever. Get onto google right now (because it probably won't be around tomorrow) and check it out! Not only does it look awesome, you can actually play it ;)

The socking no longer secret secret of 007

So there was a school social last Thursday. Whether or not I mentioned it before is actually quite irrelevant, because now you know. The theme was 007, and I rocked up in a tuxedo because I'm awesome (or because it was the only way to bail out of wearing a dress and looking like a mega prat). Well, it doesn't really matter - because I got to dance with all my beautiful mates and go kind of high on coke and red lollies =D

Anyway, so before I left the house I started hunting around for a pair of white socks - because I thought it'd match the black/white style outfit. And it was one of those convenient days when you actually need something and it's decided to play master level hide and seek. It was then that I actually realized that you wouldn't even be able to see what socks I would be wearing anyway. For all anyone knew, I could have worn my fluffy green socks with the skid proof bottoms or my stripey knee high socks under my pants and shoes and they would be none the wiser.

So if I can get away with wearing any socks in the world - what do the real 007 actors get away with?
Did Sean Connery indulge in silky socks with little bows?
Did David Niven wear poca dotted high socks?
Did George Lazenby secretly cherish toe socks?
Perhaps Roger Moore always had holes in his socks?

Or maybe Timothy Dalton liked socks with small plush animals stitched onto the sides?

Pierce Brosnan... perhaps he had a pair of MUSICAL socks? (although for all our sakes, let's just hope he didn't have socks which sung his own voice)

And Daniel Craig? How do we know what dark secrets he's hiding behind those shiny, polished shoes?

Food for thought =D

My brain hurts

I am aware that I haven't blogged in a while, but it's my blog and I can do what I want. I can't help it if I'm excessively lazy and too selfish to care about my readers ^^
Anyway, so today I went to this conference at Scotch College. I was a little disappointed to find out that the boys there did not drink Scotch Whiskey. But then again we don't wave around sceptres and we don't wear crowns even though our school name includes the word "King".
Rebecca promised to write some interesting things about the same excursion here. So check out that when you get the time because she is a blogoogling good blogger (and has started to blog regularly, unlike myself).

So we listened to lectures (yeah. the sort where you sit on your "boTTom" for hours and listen to people waffle. Only the nice lady had an insanely rad English accent, which it made everything she had to say far more interesting) on a few topics. Which included Justice, Truth, Beauty and Mathematics (I liked how it challenged the existence of maths. Is maths created, or discovered?), Time (I like clocks, but this was just downright boring and irritating), Nanotechnology and Sex in the 21st Century (highly interesting. I won't share the disturbing details here, but there is a certain pretty funny fact. But you'll just have to ask privately).

So what I was really interested in was Nanotechnology. I thought it'd be the most boring subject on the day's lecture plan, but it actually turned out to be the most fascinating. I suppose there must be people like me, who've only heard of the word 'nano' in association with the iPod nano. Well, nanotechnology is a branch of science which specializes in tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny things. Miss English kept repeating "not miscroscopic. Nano-scofic." Nanotechnology is being funded hugely by governments all around the place - because they all believe that Nanotechnology is the future, and that it will revolutionize the world - even more so than electricity.

Anyway, enough with the boring stuff. If you're still with me, then here's the more awesome stuff. With nanotechnology, it opens the world up to possibilites, (and many of these are already in action, close to a breakthrough an not merely future fancy daydreams) including:
1. FOOD. I know some certain people will be excited about this. Everlasting gobstoppers, chewing gum meals and lickable wall paper are all within grasp!!!! :o
AND they can use nanotechnology to manipulate the particles which make up our food - using WOW. So they coat water with a substance (eg. oil, sugar) so that using nanotechnology they can create something that looks, tastes and feels like chocolate - but is actually mostly water, therefore eliminating most of the fat and other icky stuff. Now wouldn't that make me happy.

There's heaps of other medical benefits, military advantages and so on and so on as well as the potential to cause huge damage with nanotechnology. So far it's a new concept, that has not had enough research done it yet....so it's rather hazy and dangerous at present. But I want to draw your attention to this:

NANOPANTS :o
Will not stain or wrinkle.
And they're working on pants that will not absorb odour. Think about it, without even bothering about washing them, you could live off one pair of undies for the rest of your life :D

Go outside and have some fun.... or you might end up like this!

Ahhh....Tim Burton :)

Pinch and a punch, it's the first day of the month

...no returns.
Farewell April, hello May!

M ary had a little lamb.
A n apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Y ou'd better appreciate this last month of official autumn. Winter's going to hit next June and we shall be...well, cold.

You know red, blue and yellow are my favourite colours. Not because they're the primary colours. They're my favourite colours, and they just so happen to be primary colours.

Anyway, may you all be blessed with an interesting and safe month.

And it's two weeks and a day until my birthday. Now if anyone knows where I can get some free cake...