My Bed

So this is where I spend about 95% of my time, i.e. my bed. And the bedside table. I mean I don't spend time on the bedside table, but it's included in the whole ensemble. Notice all the healthy snacks and empty Diet Coke bottle going on there. I am not a neat person, nor am I very healthy. Let's just get that out of the way. I sit in bed, drink diet soda, and eat cookies and cheese biscuits all day long. While watching Sherlock and Doctor Who. It's glorious and sad.

Anyway I'm a bit tipsy, I've had 2 pints of Strongbow and was intoxicated enough to eat a chicken quesadilla even though it was spicy, but I was super hungry okay? And yes, 2 pints of anything will get me loose and happy. I'm that small, and I don't eat a lot. Stop judging me!

I don't know why I thought I needed to update right now, as it's 1:23 in the AM, but here you go. Enjoy. I have Doctor Who pictures on my wall.

Edinburgh Part 2

And here is your Scottish bagpiper, everyone! I'm super stoked about him. I took a bunch of photos of him that turned out to be really awful except this one, and then I emptied my coin purse into his case. Yeah, I'm a total BAMF, emptying coin purses into bagpipers' cases all over the place. I like to support the busking industry. It really stimulates the economy. In all seriousness though, if you see a street performer who actually entertains you or makes you smile, even if it's just for a second, you should probably give them some of your pocket change, if not more. I completely admire talented buskers, not only for their courage in going out there to play for the masses, but also because of their talent -- which is clearly going unappreciated if they have to busk to make money. Just saying. What a dreadfully boring paragraph.








So these photos are all from my second day in Edinburgh, most of which was spent at the Royal Botanical Gardens. I really, really enjoyed the Botanical Gardens. If you've never been to such a thing, I suggest you try it! They're really calming and beautiful, plus you learn about crazy plants from all over the world. Win/win situation right there. My favorite bit was the glass houses, but my favorite room, the rain foresty one, was so warm and moist that it fogged up my camera lens and I wasn't able to get any decent photos in there. Boo! You'll just have to imagine lots of thick hanging moss, curling ferns, and the slow drip-drip of condensation falling from the tips of leaves to the mossy floor. I liked it.






















And finally, I'd like to draw your attention to some pretty cool cars I saw on our walk back to the city center from the Botanical Gardens. I saw two minis parked near each other and I had no choice but to photograph them, because if you combine the two cars pictured, you get my dream car. Retro mini, British racing green. Bam. Then we saw this badass grey hulking thing, lookin' all retro and stuff. So I had to photograph its beautiful visage.

I didn't used to give half a shit about cars, but ever since I became hopelessly addicted to Top Gear, I've grown fond of the gas-guzzling, environment-destroying things. This is probably due to some strange subconscious and Anglophilia-related need to please Clarkson, May, and Hammond, but until a therapist tells me to stop, I'm gonna love them up like the hilarious assholes that they are. Who else loves Top Gear? You know you do. I feel like everybody in the UK feels nothing but searing hatred towards Jeremy Clarkson and his minions, but in America we don't care about political correctness, common decency, or the planet. So the boys are totally welcome in the States any time they'd like to have a visit. We don't care.

Edinburgh Part 1

"Yes! Finally! Photos from Edinburgh!" said my readers, in my mind. Yep, it's that time again, time for pictures I took while traveling somewhere. Lots of old buildings involved. Will I ever get tired of taking pictures of old buildings, looming above me? No. Nope. Never.

I talked about it on twitter, but since my twitter has become more and more of a cesspool where my thoughts go to die, I can understand why you would stay as far away from that place as possible. So I'd better just update everyone: I went to Edinburgh for Christmas. It was pretty awesome. I met up with my friend Lily and her partner in crime Angus, and stayed in a really cool flat right below the Edinburgh Castle (the view from outside our building pictured above). Lily had been working up in Orkney over the fall, and then she and Angus trekked around Europe for a few weeks before ending their adventure in Edinburgh with me. I was super glad that they invited me to spend Christmas with them, because otherwise I probably would have spent the holiday all alone in my dimly lit room, eating beans and sobbing.

Here's a neat story. The morning I arrived, Lily and I planned to meet at a Starbucks near Princes Street in the Edinburgh city center. Lily didn't have a working mobile at the time (what primeval world is she living in) so she sent a facebook message before she left the flat, saying to meet at the Starbucks on George and Castle. So I got off the bus at George and Castle, went into the Starbucks, bought a latte, and waited. And waited. And waited. After a while I decided Lily must have gone to the wrong Starbucks, so I went down the road to another nearby Starbucks. She wasn't there. I think I must have gone back and forth between those two Starbucks like three times, tweeting and facebooking forlorn messages as I went, finally just sitting outside the original Starbucks full of despair.

After a while of sitting there convinced I was going to die alone on the streets of Edinburgh, Lily finally showed up all panicked. Apparently, you guys, there is a third Starbucks in that vicinity in Edinburgh, to which Lily had initially gone. So while I had been wandering back and forth between two Starbucks on George Street, she had been going back and forth between the Starbucks on George and Castle, and the one on Princes Street. Jesus Christ Edinburgh, talk about confusing. Maybe, before erecting three Starbucks locations in one small area, consider the sad mobile-less Americans who might be trying to find one another, lost and alone and scared, on the cold streets of your city. Maybe think about that one next time.












Despite the harrowing first hour, Edinburgh turned out to be pretty amazing all told. If you've never been, you should go. People kept asking me what I was doing for Christmas, and every single person, when told I was going to Edinburgh, exploded with, "Oh my god you are going to love it, it is so beautiful and amazing, narrow streets, cool shops, so quaint, castle, oh god Meg you will love that Scottish shit." They weren't wrong. I loved that Scottish shit.

I even tried haggis, which I was convinced would be disgusting (because who doesn't have a horrible idea in their mind about what haggis is all about), but turned out to be pretty okay. I couldn't eat more than a bite because the idea of it freaks me way out, but it tasted okay. I did like those tatties and neeps, though. Mmmm tatties and neeps.

My favorite thing about Edinburgh, and I imagine Scotland in general, if I'm honest, was the ever-present and often eerily distant wailing of bagpipes. I felt like, no matter where I was or what I was doing, the whole time I was in Edinburgh, there was bagpipe music in the background. Sometimes it was far away, those melancholic strains drifting through Old Town, and other times it was blasting loudly from a speaker in some kitschy Scotland Gift Shop. The best, though, was the man standing outside a church or some old building or other, playing actual bagpipes. Now, bagpipes are no new thing for me, having grown up like three blocks away from Rose Park in Missoula, where apparently every bagpiper in the city goes to practice for hours at a time, but there's no doubt about it: bagpipes are way better when experienced in Scotland. God, I love bagpipes. (Bagpipe man will be featured in the next post of pictures from Edinburgh.)














Well guys, I guess that about does it for my first post about Edinburgh. I really liked the city, and I could totally see myself living there, unlike in London, which is a terrifying prison of concrete and pigeons. (Not really; I love London, but if I had to live here for years on end I fear my soul would whither and die. Unless I lived in Hampstead, though; I think I could manage Hampstead.) I'd love to go back to Scotland later in the year and visit the highlands, and Orkney, and basically everywhere cool that doesn't involve being in a city.

Homesickness

Guess what! One of my favorite places in the world isn't actually real. It's in a video game. BIG SURPRISE. I've already done a post about Mass Effect and how cool I found that one spaceship to be, but my relationship with World of Warcraft goes much deeper than just a casual fling with some BioWare RPG. Okay, yeah, for a few years there I was pretty addicted to it and put off doing normal human things like eating and bowel movements in favor of leveling my mage or raiding on my holy priest, but let's forget that for a moment! Let's forget that I abandoned my friends for a year for this game, and just remember the good times. And there were many of those.

Sometimes I try to tell people about WoW, and how much I loved it, and I basically always come off sounding like a meth addict or an unforgivable loser. The fact is, though, and I've come to realize this more clearly recently -- I don't miss the gameplay of WoW so much. I don't miss the PvP (although twinking around in Arathi Basin on my 49 hunter was always a good time), and I don't miss raiding, unless you count the golden days of Karazhan when Greg was shamelessly flirting with me in whispers, and that crazy-eyed Australian girl kept copying my mage specs because I was clearly the cooler female in the guild. No, those were just perks. What I mostly miss, I've found, is the world itself. The landscapes, the magic, the inhabitants, the music -- they all go together to create this pretty badass world that you can explore in its entirety. I feel like the world of Azeroth is a place I actually used to live in, and now I've left, but I miss it because I'll probably never experience like I did the first time.










Admittedly a lot of the appeal for me was also in the social nature of WoW. I got to spend time and interact with Greg while gaming, which is pretty fucking neat. We also had several out-of-state friends who we knew mostly through WoW or other online games. Now Greg is living with one of them in Salt Lake, so clearly we made some legit connections in game! (That, or Greg's roommate is waiting patiently for the opportune moment in which to kill and eat him.)

The thing is, though, I really do miss the world of the game. I particularly miss one continent that was introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, called Northrend. I remember boarding the zeppelin from Undercity to Howling Fjord for the first time, and becoming totally obsessed with the music that played on it. I mean, how can you not be obsessed with these glorious harmonious strains? Scandinavian music is the best.




I could make an entire post on the music of WoW, but I won't, unless you want me to, and then I will. Because seriously, it's the best game music ever made, not counting Ocarina of Time, and selected music from Fable II. I used to go to certain zones in WoW just to listen to the music there. Or I'd be in the middle of questing or something, and my favorite bit of the song would start, and I'd drop everything just to sit and listen. I know. I'm just that cool.












Northrend is such a great place, though. It's dark and snowy and Scandinavian, mysterious and full of hulking viking-like creatures. I have dreams about it. (I know. I'm just that cool.) Maybe these screenshots I took years ago will give you a tiny insight into how beautiful and enthralling WoW, particularly Northrend, can be. I just feel like people don't pay enough attention to how lovely the game is. I wish it were a real world that I could live in. I feel homesick for a place I've never been. Sigh.

Dick Move

A lot of times I can be a dick. And I'm not just saying this in a funny, "Haha I'm such a dick when I give rescue bunnies to lonely orphans on my days off!" No. This isn't irony, people. This is fact. A lot of times, on complete purpose, I am a dick. Even without meaning to I can be a giant penis. I assume all of us are this way sometimes, but I find that I'm particularly prone to it on the internet. Big surprise. I like to comfort myself that I'm not the only one, but who knows, I might get drunk and black out and be every single troll on the internet without knowing it. I just have a bunch of different IP addresses that I use. And like, different emails. (I don't know how the internet works.) Anyway the point is, let me be straight with you all: I'm not always nice.

I feel it's important to be genuine on this blog, because what you read here is absolutely 100% me. I don't filter, I don't edit (except for grammar). I am actually this awesome. I am also this much of a loser. Up to you how you read it, but what I write here is completely genuine and I stand by it. That also goes for what I write in the comments, and what I write on twitter especially, because on twitter is where I bitch about stuff. I mean really bitch. If there's somebody on facebook who bugs me and I think might not be on twitter, I'll bitch about them there. If there's somebody on twitter who makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a spoon, I'll rant about them on facebook. That's how it goes. You know you all do it too. I'm not trying to be somebody I'm not. I'm not trying to love everybody and be loved by everybody. I don't hate anyone except homophobes and rapists, and I don't think that hate is something worth spending time and energy in cultivating. But I do complain a lot, and I think venting and ranting is a healthy way to blow off steam. I do. So that's me. Maybe you disagree. Okay.

Alone in my dark room, angry at somebody on the internet.

That said, sometimes somebody finds out that I'm bitching about them. Or I actually bitch about them to their face, which often happens on facebook or fandom!secrets (which I don't read anymore but I always used to leave trollish comments there and it was glorious). Don't worry, I'll never do it anonymously. I don't believe in that shit; if you want to be an asshole, take pride in it and own it! Anons are the worst. So when somebody finds out I've been bitching, like recently on my twitter, then I get to feel like a giant throbbing cock when they call me on it.

Yeah, a giant throbbing cock. To the person who commented on my blog the other day and I totally said snarky things on twitter, well... you know who you are. I said what I meant at the time, but I'm sorry. It was probably in bad taste. But at the same time, would you rather I just pretend to be super into the comment you left that annoyed me? Or even ignore it, if it annoyed me that much? Nah, you don't want that. If I piss somebody off on the internet, I'd rather they tell me, and preferably in a public forum where we can angrily type at each other until we get all of our feelings out in the open. The internet is a magical place where we can have arguments without fear of fisticuffs or a black eye. I'm not afraid of internet arguments. I embrace them. I'm easily embroiled. Greg thinks this is silly of me, because it always gets me riled up, but whatever. I enjoy it. I enjoy being snarky. I do. If you piss me off in the comments of my blog, it's likely I'll bitch about it on twitter. Go see! Don't be afraid.

I hate children!

And this isn't me saying, "Don't leave annoying comments on my blog." In fact, the opposite. Comment however you like. I won't censor. I won't delete. But I won't censor myself when replying or reacting to what you say. It's an open forum, guys. And if I find your opinion or your tone offensive, I'll probably say so.

I do regret not just taking up my recent issue directly with the commenter, because it would've been more constructive and interesting and not passive-aggressive that way, but we all make mistakes. We're all passive-aggressive at one time or another. I can be a real dick, I know I can. Just... don't be surprised when I am. I'm not perfect, and neither is anybody else. I have strong opinions. I have strong reactions. I'm a drama queen, I exaggerate, I'm easily riled up. These are all facts about me, and probably personality flaws, but this is all me. I'm laying it out. I don't want to gloss over my faults and pretend they don't exist because that would be doing you all a disservice, and it would be creepy and fake. So I don't do it. This is me. I'm not some magically sweet adorable person who loves all things. Sometimes I'm a penis. So there it is.

Merry Christmas

Just wanted to make a quick update to say Merry Christmas to everybody who celebrates Christmas! And if you don't celebrate it, then change "Christmas" to whatever holiday you currently celebrate, as "happy holidays" is such a milquetoasty thing to say. Sorry, super PC people out there: YOU'RE BORING.

Last night Lily and I went to the midnight Christmas Eve service at St John's near our flat, and it was really nice. I'm not a member of any church but I do think I succeeded in not embarrassing myself too badly. We sang carols and I went up for a blessing during Communion. The sermon was also really great; he totally spoke in favor of the Occupy movement, which I thought was pretty amazing, and not something I would have expected in a church service. We so often forget about true Christian values, when there are so many "Christians" who speak nothing but hate and stand for nothing but greed. And that's a shame. Anyway it was a really peaceful, moving way to start my Christmas.

That said, I hope you all have an amazing rest of your holiday, and enjoy your Boxing Day as well! ♥