[Skerry's Scrapbook] Musings of an English Student

[Syveris]

That must have been a really funny scene. I totally know what you mean by insane family, though... Once, my mother and I were in a hotel, and we had brought our own food, because restaurants around the area were too expensive, and we were just going to stay there one day, anyway. We had to heat it somehow, and my mother had the same idea that your aunt had: an iron. We used it as an oven.

Yay for crazy ideas that work and for insane parents that have them.

[Skerry]

Ha ha love it! At least there was a good reason behind it. It made sense in a weird way, I mean. It isn't like me cookig processed cheese on a light bulb but yeah... Okay the cheese thing didn't even make that much sense, I wasn't intending to cook it I just wanted to see what would happen.

For anyway dying to know the answer, it burns and that's it. It was on my reading bulb too so every time I was reading at night there was a burnt cheese smell. I read a lot so needless to say, my room permanently smelt of burned cheese until my mum finally changed the bulb.

[Hope Dawnwhisper]

Ermagerd we share a birthday! I like to pretend that all the fireworks are in celebration of my birth, rather than the celebration of the-death-of-that-dude-who-tried-to-destroy-our-monarchy <.< Long live the Queen and all that :3

[Skerry]

We do? Well that's cool. My birthday is usually introduced to people as "it's on Guy Fawkes" whereby I receive blank stares until I explain. My explanation always sounds really sarcastic. Don't think people believe me. I also have a tendency of saying the rhyme (Remember remember the 5th of November, etc.) because I'm a nerd cool like that and I know the whole thing

[Drusilla]

Heya Just letting you know...I'm part Irish on my dad's side. I bet you have a pretty accent!

[Skerry]

It's official. The weather in Ireland has gone nuts.

High winds and mini tornados are a perfectly normal, if dreadful, occurrence in other countries. Those other countries are usually used to such weather and as a result have some measures in place to deal with them. Ireland does not have any measures in place because hurricane force winds don't happen that often.

You get the occasional small storm, yes but not all that often. Usually we just get rain, Ireland is good at rain but we do not often get amber and red alerts. Around Christmas, we had two large storms with amber alerts. We've had a few wind warnings and then suddenly yesterday the wind starts picking up a bit and BOOM! Today there's a sudden, "oh actually that wind might be a bit worse than we first thought, whoops!" Actually if I remember rightly, we were basically told it was going to be cold... Cold and storm are not the same, I don't think.

So today has resulted in Shannon airport an Dublin airport being temporarily closed, Dublin I believe is still diverting. Cork airport is suspended. 215,000 homes and business are without power because lines have come down (they've restored 45,000 so far). Trucks have been tipped over, 100s of trees have been ripped out and buildings being severely damaged. Dublin has been fairly all right apparently (though the wind was pretty vicious and hard to try and walk through) but the storm which is called Darwin, will be passing over it properly tonight.

A couple of days ago, the weather crisis was flooding but mostly in places along the west coast and Cork of course. Flooding, we should have measures in place but we don't. This sort of extreme winds? This isn't normal so how on earth could we have stood a chance.

Good luck places in Wales and England because if it doesn't calm down when it reaches you, you're going to have great fun. Scotland will probably be all right.

[Abstract]

Ouch. So many funny storms. We were hit with something similar in Canada, though there was a lot more ice involved, around Christmas. Britain had some odd storms as well, didn't it? I remember one year when my aunt and uncle were flooded in their place in Exeter over the holidays... v.v

Anyways, sounds annoying. We had the same problem with power outages, with some people being out for nearly five days... though it took well over a week for places in New Brunswick. At least you have power! Or... seem to. Else how can you post here?

[Skerry]

It's amazing that we still have power at all actually. A few miles away from us there are places with no power and we're fine. Our lines are underground apparently but if the main power was hit we'd be gone too. Think most people have just had the overhead wires fall down in this crazy weather.

Electricity we have, water, no. Well, the water pressure is extremely low so technically we have it. The pumps that are needed to get up the hill where I live are powered by, you guessed it, electricity! So that's another problem. The sewage treatment plants have also pretty much stopped working. The last time one near us stopped because of a power outtage for awhile stuff leaked into the sea and then came back in on the tide. Talk about gross. They closed the beach obviously but still... Ew!

[Drusilla]

Stay safe!! Okay?

[Caela Dorin]

Okay so I haven't posted on my scrap in awhile. A really long while but I was reading Traverse's scrapbook (oh my God, so many movies I love/want to see!) and it got me thinking about movies which got me thinking about books that were made into movies which of course led onto books. So I decided to share my thoughts on some books that I read recently. Not all of them or else I'll be here all day. I went into a serious must-read-loads-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction faze at the beginning of the summer so I went through lots of them. I'll probably have a few posts detailing different books as the mood takes me. So a couple of thoughts on...

The Wind-Up Girl

I came across this book purely by accident and the blurb interested me so of course I picked it up. The Wind-Up Girl is an interesting if unusual read. The book is set in a future Thailand. There aren't flying cars and spaceships but that doesn't mean that the march of progress hasn't left its mark. Some of it's familiar. Food is a thing that's hard for some people to get, there's a Western influence trying to dig its way into the East but there's a difference. In this future, the world is reliant on Western calorie companies. They provide everyone with safe food. The world needs them for the simple reason that not all food is safe because due to genetic tampering, some foods have acquired new diseases that kill humans. There's the additional problem of new parasites as well which crops have to made resistant to as well. Thailand is trying to fight back by producing their own food again although a number of things have died out over the years. Something like a tomato is an amazing thing to people because it's been so long since it existed. You get the picture.

So you've got multiple points of view in this book. A Malayan Chinese immigrant, a calorie company man working under cover, two environment officers and the person that the title refers to, a Japanese created human, a wind up girl. Everything is very disjointed at first as you can't see how everyone is connected but you do get to see it after awhile if you're willing to push ahead through it. You have many different elements in this book, everything from greed to Thai nationalism to abuse. The wind up girl might not start off as a big character but her story is a terrible one and one that in the end has the biggest impact. You see her as human whereas nobody else does. To everyone in the book she's just a Japanese cast off left in a city illegally who has to suffer terrible humiliation and sexual abuse just so she isn't mulched and used as fertiliser.

Towards the end, she becomes a truly terrifying character to many but I was cheering her on. The underdog battling against the odds is a major thing in the book as well. The Thai are the underdog battling against the calorie men. The Malayan Chinese immigrant is just trying to make a life for himself again in a city that could throw him back where he came from to be slaughtered. Environment versus trade. It's all there, all very interesting. It's one of those books that left its mark on me though I'm not 100% sure why but if anyone comes across it who's into a bit of future drama and fighting for the underdog then by all means read it! Although it isn't suitable for younger readers and if you're a little squeamish you can always skip over bits.

Lilith's Brood

I read this trilogy a couple of months ago because I'd heard great things about the author, Octavia Butler. It was originally called Xenogenesis so you may come across it called that. It's the usual the humans have destroyed the earth kind of scenario (nuclear war!) but with a bit of a twist. While on the very brink of destruction and the planet becoming uninhabitable, a friendly group of aliens called the Oankali rescue survivors for the purpose of trading with them. What do they want to trade? Genetic material. For that they want humans to like them and learn how to coexist with them on Earth so that they can have babies together... So yeah, they have sensory tentacles all over them instead of eyes and ears and stuff so they aren't the most attractive of potential mates. So after being kept in stasis for most of 200 something years, they wake up Lilith permanently to make her their ambassador/mother figure. Then they leave her in a room to wake up other humans and make them live with each other and then teach them how to survive on the new Earth. Things could certainly go better.

So yes, the only other thing I can tell you without giving away all of the three plots is that the Oankali intend for humans to breed with them or not have children ever again. And they can also steal eggs and sperm by touching you, or at least the ooloi can, the third sex who are integral to the five way liaisons that they want. It's very alien, that cannot be denied. It's pure science fiction, undiluted and certainly a little odd in places. The information that you learn about the Oankali and how they've always been is interesting. Human nature doesn't come across very well though. There's the violence and the desire to rape which pops up ALL THE TIME but there's also a very rigid heterosexuality to the books. Don't get me wrong, having a third sex is great and all but there's massive emphasis on male-female partnerships even with the ooloi involved.

Interesting books all the same although I still wonder if the Oankali were good, evil or a mixture of both. Oh they also think that cancer is the most exciting thing ever. Just thought that you might want to know that.