old family photographs

I love old family photos, don't you, Monster Friends? There's something really cool about being able to look at these strangers that are somehow connected to you, captured in this time you're never going to be a part of, or finding youth in someone you've only ever seen with wrinkles. And hey, the clothes are pretty awesome too. I never knew my Oma or Opa, and I am in love with this photo of them taken before they left the Netherlands, so I thought I'd share it - is it just me or does my Oma look a little like Claire Danes, and my Opa Brendan Fraser? They would have been around eighteen and twenty here, which is crazy! Furthermore, how amazing is that vintage children's bike - or is it a scooter? And the photo of my grandmother's wedding party is so sweet - gotta love colour-coordinated flower girls, long gloves and veils for the bridesmaids. You can't see the cherubic faces in this small version, but believe me, the original looks more like a painting than a photo. I'd love to get my hands on some old snaps from my family in Ireland one day. Do you guys have any favourite old family photos?


my Oma and Opa with my mother in Holland, 1950s

my mother
my grandmother with her bridesmaids on her wedding day

My place and yours: my secret weapon

So I'm jumping on this My Place or Yours meme gig and this week's theme is secret weapon, decided by this week's theme queen, My Bricole.

"No deep dark secrets here, just something you keep close to your creative heart. Whatever it is, it should something that you know you can go to in a pinch and it will never let you down."

It took me a while on this one - did I even have anything that I'd classify as my secret weapon? I was going to put "my brain", but someone beat me to it and I didn't like to copy :) Then I realised - Veronica!

photo from my flickr

Veronica has been with me since mid 2007, a present of sorts from my Mum - we'd just moved out of our family home due to my parents' (only to be year-long) separation, and I needed a computer I could take back and forth. She was either dubbed Veronica due to one of my good friends having a mac by the name of Betty, or it was the other way round and I just thought it sounded nice, I really can't remember which - all I know is that my nerdy nature kicked in and Betty and Veronica, named after the girls from Archie comics, they were. (It had been my dream all year to convince The Necronaut to get a mac - a battle that by the end I was totally winning - and name it Archie. Which would have been hilarious because The Necronaut is a ginger too.) Two and a half years later Mum and I are back at home, and my one-black-keyed, bird, birdcage and 'laugh' stickered, Tiger-running little girl is still going strong, albeit a little slow. We need to bounce over to Snow Leopard, but Monster Girl is cheap and Veronica is maybe fine as she is. Who needs up-to-date operating systems, anyway? (Well, Monster Girl does, if she wants to run The Sims 3 software that The Necronaut bought her for her belated birthday, but quite frankly she doesn't really want to run The Sims 3 at all right now. It reminds her of him, and she would spend way too much time sitting in front of Veronica with a bowl of pasta, creating a sim that looked just like him, then either a) making a sim that looked just like her and living her fantasies through them and regressing like 5 billion% in her "coping" endeavour, or b) killing him in the most awful way possible, which quite frankly is still a waste of time.)

Anyway, *pulls my shit together* Veronica is pretty much my best bud. As a writer and creative writing student, and also as a blogger, she's my tool of the trade, as a procrastinator and lover of lolcats, she's my homie. If anything is my secret weapon (apart from my brain of course!) it is my little macbook, who even forgave me for the coffee incident, which I'd rather not mention in any great detail, apart from to say that just because a CD drive whirs and makes scary sounds at you, and makes you push the disc in manually...does not mean it does not work! So there.

more secret weapons on Meet Me at Mike's over here :)

And the award goes to...Monster Girl!

Three times in three days, Monster Friends! Twice in twenty four hours! I am on a blogging roll, apparently. Don't worry, I'll stop bombarding you in a minute - I just wanted to share the delightful news that apparently, my blog is better than ice cream!

Cool, right? The lovely minteva minty mamface of and darling bestowed it upon me, and I have decided to graciously share my ice creamy fame with Em over at be a tiger, because she has been there when I've needed her recently despite her own goings-on, and because hopefully this will encourage her to blog a bit more, dammit!

What's your favourite ice cream, Monster Friends? Mine is butterscotch and vanilla with m&m mini and cookie dough mix ins from Cold Rock, and I thought I wrote a nice long rant once on my blog about cones vs cups once, but I can't seem to find it. I was going to reference it all smooth like, but turns out, Monster Girl? Not the smoothest egg in the incubator.

Keep it real homies! <3

Monster Girl: Can't Live Without...

So in the last couple of months or so, I've realised that despite what sitcoms and rom-coms might have you believe, basically next to nothing helps you feel better when the guy you want to be with for the rest of your life turns into some sort of alien life form delighting in distancing himself from the reality you had been enjoying as a team and family-of-two-of-sorts for the best part of what had been, up until then, the best year.

Things I learnt Monster Girl can definitely live without?

• The radio. Seriously, did any of you know how evil the radio can be? Demonic device from the FM lagoon!
• Kind people holding your hand. No offence, but I'm just wishing you were him right now.
• The silent treatment - really, you're doing this? Wow. Get more confusing, seriously.
• Food. Who knew? Being 44 kilos - not that glamorous, people. I looked completely revolting! I've gained a few and it's such a relief to be able to finish a meal in it's entirety. Pasta, I missed you!
• Blogs - I was too sad for the internet, guys. Yeah, it was pretty dismal for a while there. As it is I've had to remove a few cutesy blogs off my blog reader because I still can't handle them.
• Dreaming. Good dreams = torture. Bad dreams = torture. As a rule, dreams suck the big one.

Over the gloom yet? Hopefully, because the point of this post is actually...

Things Monster Girl Learnt She Can't Live Without!

• Friends. It's weird - you know you have awesome friends, but it's not until you've wailed and snotted agony all over their doonas, stolen their chocolate stash, made them endure too many car rides in which you're completely silent and maybe trying not to cry, whined something self-pitying about how you would've married that guy one day and why doesn't he even care about me at aaaaaall anymore etc for the thousandth time, that you realise just HOW awesome your friends are. Thanks guys.
• Televison. I honestly do not have the slightest clue what I would have done without Buffy, Full House, and Bones. You can't lose yourself in anything quite as well as you can lose yourself in television, except for maybe:
• 'Vasebreaker: Endless' puzzle game in Plants vs Zombies. So addictive and mindless. I beat my record twice in this time period, not the easiest feat.
• Cadbury's relatively new bubbly chocolate. My mother bought me a block a day for the first few days, and it was basically my entire diet. Good stuff.
• My little stand alone fan. Thank you, little fan, for helping me sleep in far longer than I should!
• Sweet emails from friends and friendly bloggers. Sometimes the simplest check in or silliest tidbit is equal to an entire block of Cadbury's bubbly!

Well, there you go, team. Oh, and also:

“This post is a part of 20SB’s Blog Carnival: Can’t Live Without, and Alice.com is awarding prizes to lucky bloggers and readers!”

Heartbreak and Halloween

So I've been busy getting my heart torn out - The Necronaut woke up one day and decided he didn't love me anymore, then stopped talking to me flat out, and now he's away at Army training, and I'm a broken confused shell of a person sitting around watching Full House and Buffy all day hugging a box of tissues and existing on a chocolate diet. The usual. Also, Monster Pals, I'm sick! I cried so much the night before he left that I blocked up my entire head and have been walking around the past couple of days with that disgusting feeling - you know, nose feels like it's filled with snot all the way to your brain, throat feels like it's filled with dust and mucus, head feels like it's filled with cotton balls, constant dull almost-headache, fatigue, the whole shebang.

I'm not always big on the blogging-intimate-details-of-my-life gig but I really hate neglecting my blog - I just don't have heaps to blog about that isn't suicide letters, or anything. (Joking.) So I felt as though I'd give you guys a bit of an explanation about why content might be a little bit dismal and lacking. I'll get there, but in the meantime, stick with me, okay guys? Cos I love having you stop by.

So what did everyone go as for Halloween? I decided after an afternoon wallowing on the couch watching an E! special to run with my broken and murderous heart and kick it as Courtney Love this year, in what has probably been my best costume in a very long time (my costumes are always incredibly poorly planned - one year for a costume party, I threw a yellow raincoat on, grabbed an empty wrapping paper pipe and came as the Yellow Submarine. Yes, as in Beatles. Yes, as in oh-my-god-Monster-Girl-you-are-so-weird-and-crazy-and-lame.)

Apparently Tara at Gin in a Teacup did the Courtney thing as well a few weeks back for a costume party - I feel like a dirty, dirty copy cat. Tara rocked Courtney modern-trashy style though as far as I'm aware (we want to see photos, Tara!) - I decided to go for a more demure Courtney:

I don't know how well I pulled it off, but gosh it was fun anyway! What do you think?

Courtney passed out at the end of the night - hello boobs.


Doing "lines" (icing sugar, people!)

Courtney is a creature of the night and will steal your soul!

Writing Instead of Writing

List of Things To Do Instead of Writing a Short Story Assignment Due In A Few Hours

• Write a list of things to do instead of writing a short story assignment due in a few hours
• Play Plants vs Zombies
• Watch Full House episodes on Youtube
• Arrange my Xena dvds
• Read Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
• Play poker on facebook
• Read blogs
• Dance around the house to the Glee soundtrack
• Try not to think about the boy
• Contemplate a cheese sandwich and try to guess freshness of bread without poking it
• Send my story to Emily of Be a Tiger so she can try and tell me what it's about because so far all I know is it goes "waffle waffle, pointless description of alec guinness-esque character, waffle"
• Post updates about how I'm not writing my short story on facebook
• Despise myself

10 Things I Hate About TV Series Adaptations?

Firstly, let's all just take a moment here to rejoice that September is no longer with us. Monster Friends, I'm not even going to pretend that month was fun while it lasted. For me, anyway, it was a cruel sort of hell-month filled with too much bad stuff for my liking. But I'm hoping the worst of it is behind me, and if you had a hell-month too, I'm hoping it's well behind you as well. So, let's just pretend all of that didn't happen, shall we?

Has anyone checked out the TV series version of 10 Things I Hate About You? If you haven't heard, you're probably in the midst of the brain fart that everyone seems to have universally had to deal with upon hearing the news. Yep, TV series. I know, I know. In the US this is pretty old news but over here in the southern hemisphere word travels slow and despite the first season being already over in the land of Lady Liberty, we're yet to see a peep.

The premise is much the same - Shakespeare goes to California and two sisters with a dead mother and a crazy over-protective dad start dating. Not each other, though. That'd just be a very, very weird production right there.

So how are the two 10 Things the same, and how are they different?

The Film

We all know the film. We all love the film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is reason enough for me, but let's just throw in stellar writing, a pretty sweet soundtrack, Heath Ledger in his early glory, a guidance counsellor who writes adult fiction, boob flashing in detention, the paintball scene in which every girl has to face the fact that her boyfriend will never be Patrick Verona, and the song. It's pretty much awesome from start to end, this flick, and hard to envision how you could even turn it into a TV series at all.

The Show

For those of you who haven't heard anything about the show, I can only assume you're sitting there going, "They bastardised it, right?" Well...yeah, they kind of did. How could you not? Let me just enlighten you here before you begin to harbor any illusions about the show: It's produced by ABC. Yeah, that means not so much of the boob flashing and adult fiction writing, people. Sorry. But in a way, I think that trying not to directly reproduce the film was a smart move, and the differences they've made give the show some element of individuality. Cameron's bestie is no longer that dweeb pre-Numbers, now he's a flaming homo! Mandela's around, but she's not so much Mrs Shakespeare as she is, errr, Mrs Goth Goes To McDonalds. (yes, I cringed writing that.) Joey is still way too into his looks, but he has the heart of a teddy bear and the word "sex" probably isn't even in his vocab. Oh yeah, and he's blonde. Chastity is the baddie now, and you wouldn't think Monica from Heroes would be able to pull her off, but somehow it works - you just want to punch her in the face, but brief glimpses into her vulnerability stop you from turning off the TV.

And how is the show the same? Well, the dad is played by the same guy. He's mellowed out a bit after having to deal with Julia Stiles, though, and he's much more in-touch and down to earth, now. That's not to say there isn't an incident involving a bear-cam, and while he hasn't pulled out "the belly" yet, that hasn't stopped him from subjecting his daughters to breath tests and time in the wheelchair.

But is it any good? I'm going to be honest, it took me two episodes to get past that first "Are they serious?!" hump. The acting was stiff, the magic wasn't there, the premise felt a bit forced and contrived. For whatever reason though, I stuck it out, and then it actually began to get kind of okay. I have to say, for me the major drawcard is the actress who plays Kat. Fellow Foxtelites and Nick Nerds may recognise her as the girl bestie in that Ned's Declassified show. And while that sounds like a casting mishap, she actually makes it work. Nearing the end of the series, I found myself actually involved in the romance-driven plot points, and when Kat got trashed at a house party I actually found myself giggling out loud. "Give it up for the naked mole rats!" You'll see. Check it out on youtube if you want - you can find all the eps there - or hit up sidereel.com. Let me know what you think!