The Art of Conversation...?

I just read someone's blog that was interesting, insightful and funny.
I am not good at writing blogs, and for this I apologize.
For one thing, I either talk about myself a lot, or talk about something else a lot. I have never, ever, talked about my experiences in order to draw out morals and things which are applicable to everyone. I'm doing it again here. ALSO: I am very neglectful. How this blog continues to get views I don't know.
Maybe they are all clicking on random links which somehow get them here?
Anyhoo, in real life I make a poor conversation partner, as I only quote things from Welcome To Night Vale and Skulduggery Pleasant or even Romantically Apocalyptic or The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. No one in my family knows much about any of these, and they get annoyed when I talk about them ceaselessly. 
But after hours of being in my room I see another human being and I'm all "HELLO ALLOW ME TO SHARE MY EXPERIENCES WITH YOU!" and my family members shy away from me.
Do I talk to people online? What do you think I'm doing right now? You are online and you are people. Smile, nod, accept.
And yes, I do try Facebook but most people can't reply (poor internet? missed my message? Maybe they know I'm boring...) or when I do strike up a conversation I'm either a very annoying person or I try to avoid being annoying and I have nothing to say at all so I keep asking them questions, keep trying to find out about their lives, and then the conversation somehow dries up.
So I go back to reading. Its fun and everything is lovely in the strange worlds I read about in books. But it means I am getting worse at conversations. 
Communication between people shouldn't be this hard or awkward. With some people I can converse well and for many hours (you know who you are.) but I am aware that with most people I fail utterly: normal conversations need to have a lovely symmetry of asks, answers, facts, jokes and other things. Maybe I should stop analyzing how I construct conversations?
I once read that the most boring people are the ones who have all the stories and jokes and keep talking and not listening to others.
I take an interest in people's lives, honestly. Just sometimes they don't type up what they are thinking and I'm just like "goddamnit, how do I reply to these brief statements of information?".
Have you ever had those conversations where people say hardly anything and you wonder if they are holding information back or not, and if they are do they want to share the information later and what even I don't know I am a terrible person and very negligent toward my friend's what is the point in life other than to avoid the horrors beyond and I have not used a comma in this sentence so you can see how quickly and panicky these thoughts are going through my head.
Is it easier conversing online or face to face? :/ I KNOW NOTHING ANYMORE.
And joy, exam results tomorrow.
Mine will spell: FUUUUUUUUUUU
Dark Dragon

Holidays

The holidays are great: the free time is marvelous.

I have read book 2 of the Wheel of Time (fantastic: a lot more monsters and magic than the first one) and books 1, 2, 3 and most of 4 of The Belgariad.

The Wheel of Time can be summed up thus:

There are three boys from a village in the middle of no where. They are called Mat, Perrin and Rand. 

They live in a world where a 'Wheel of Time' and a Pattern are acknowledged as things which exist. The Wheel of Time is a pattern of seven repeating ages. When it gets to the third age, what happened in the last third age will happen again. When it gets to the fourth age, what happened in the last fourth age will happen again. The cycle ends with a battle of good verses evil, and one puts the other to sleep until the next battle. Normally good triumphs over evil and everyone cheers. Important events are written down and used as prophecies for the next seven ages.

But the Dark One, the Father of Lies, is sick of this repetition. He seeks to ruin the cycle by ensuring his victory. Normally he is defeated by The Dragon Reborn, a highly powerful warrior-mage-person who will defeat evil before going mad and pretty much destroying the world himself (so when people hear about a Dragon Reborn they all go "OH NO, THAT'S THE GUY WHO'S GONNA KILL US ALL!" and forget that the Dragon is supposed to defeat evil first.) so the Dark One's plan is to find an destroy the threat of the Dragon Reborn, either by getting the young fellow to join him, or by killing said hero.

The Father of Lies narrows the list of candidates for potential Dragon Reborns to three teenagers in a remote village: Mat, Perrin and Rand.

Luckily a magic lady takes them away from the village and they start an epic adventure which spans thirteen rather chunky volumes. Monsters and parallel universes included. And telepathy with wolves. 

The Belgariad can be summed up thus:

There is a boy called Garion. He lives on a farm. From the beginning there are VERY heavy hints suggesting that he is linked to the ancient legend of the gods Torak and Aldur, the sorcerers Polgara and Belgarath, and ancient kings such as Riva Iron-Grip. These links are very, very heavily hinted. Most of the characters know what's going on. Garion does not. He is a very amusing character, prone to sulks and tantrums as well as incredible bravery and the inability to Not Eavesdrop.

The bottom line of the story is: Torak is evil. He once stole an Orb and nearly ended the world with the Orb. Luckily good triumphed over evil. But the Orb has been stolen again, triggering events that will fulfill a prophecy- but there are two prophecies, and the fulfillment of either one is possible. Naturally one is a "Yay, we all get to live!" result and the other is more catastrophic. 

The series is five books long, with good characters (all with bits you'll love and bits you'll hate.) and a variety of landscapes (I CAN'T DECIDE WHAT I LIKE MORE: DRASNIA, RIVA OR CHEREK?!) (Cherek=Skyrim) (...But Nyissa has crocodiles...) and lots of shape shifting.

Now that I've remembered the password for the blog I will try to post more frequently.

-Dark Dragon.

Wow.

Wow. This page has gathered dust. *strolls through quiet posts of silence*
Well... How's life?
Why do I ask zee question? There will be no reply...
Since I last posted, I have been on a Homestuck panel at Sunnycon:
WARNING! THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN... UM... Well, nothing explicit, but it can be called 'Homestuck Tomfoolery' and some people may go "Urm... k, I do not want to watch this..." There is a pair of pink underpants involved, I seem to remember.
I am in the background on one of these videos. Invisible. I was on the panel but my character is mute and unlikely to Strife.

I also saw Biffy Clyro live, which was awesome. :3 First time I'd ever been to a concert. It was joyful and magical and there was a tree on stage. A tree made of bones. o_0
Then everything happened.
Exams.
Nightmares.
More Exams.
I should be revising now.
byes, I'll update soon!

Dark Dragon

Return to the Unknown, but for how long?...

Right I'm back again, for now at least.

I've been meaning to write a book for some time now, but I'm not sure on what to write about first, so here's my plan, you can decide the story line for me.
The way it works is, if you comment on this post with an idea for a story, I will pick the most popular choice out of the comments, and then proceed to write the first chapter. This will then be posted on here for you to read, and then comment on what you think should happen in the next chapter (or what should be changed in the current chapter). This is the same for each chapter after that until we have a full story, which I will post in full on my own personal blog. 
Please comment though, otherwise this strategy will fail miserably, plus you won't have any input in my story.

I will read the comments sometime in the next fortnight, depending on the volume of comments.

-McDogFace

Sister Helen Prejean

Yo. Today I'm gonna blog about a nun (is she a nun? Are Sisters nuns? Probably.)
She is pretty bwas.
I first found out about her during the last few lessons before school broke up for summer last year. We got to watch a film called 'Dead Man Walking', which was about capital punishment. It was about a man who had been convicted for the murder and rape of a young woman, and the murder of her boyfriend. Until half-way through the film he claims he didn't do it. Then he admits the truth.
He's the bad guy, right?
Kind of. He's a Bad Guy, but not The Bad Guy, depending on your view of things. The film was about how he enlisted the help of Sister Helen Prejean to... I dunno, clear his soul or something? Her job was to help him 'die with dignity', to help him admit his crimes and accept what he did and accept the punishment -death.
Through this film, you see the horror of having to kill someone for a murder. You meet the victim's parents, who want retribution and rightly so, and then you meet the criminal's family and...
I dunno. It's hard to say what one feels when watching that film.
Well anyhoo, the film 'Dead Man Walking' is based on the book 'Dead Man Walking' which was written by the real Helen Prejean. And she wrote the book from first hand experience, because it was her job to care for the souls of those who had no friends, for those who had done the unspeakable. They are the scum of the Earth, but it is said by most Christians that we have a forgiving God, and we should be more forgiving.
As mortals, we cannot forgive a rape and a murder. Those things are sick- mostly the rape. Unspeakably disgusting. But should we kill people for it? In my opinion there is no 'humane' way to carry out capital punishment. You know how the lethal injection is supposed the be the best way to do it? There are three stages to that injection: first they paralyze you. You cannot move, but you can still feel things. Then they destroy your insides; lungs fall in, muscles loosely let one's bowl contents fall out, your organs dissolve. You are still awake at this point. Then they finally stop your heart.
Other than the slightest twitch of the face, the viewer can not tell how much pain you are in. As GLaDOS from the Portal games says:
"You don't feel pain, or at least you cannot COMMUNICATE that you feel pain. I consider that a failing, by the way."
They can't show you how much pain they are in.
Yes, they probably deserve it.
But do we have the right to do that to another human being?
Well anyhoo, in R.E these past few days we have returned to the topic of capital punishment, and we watched a documentary about it. At some point we also saw an interview with Sister Helen Prejean but I am terrible at finding videos on youtube, so here is a random interview with her. The one we saw was quite humourus, as she did impressions of people who directly quoted the Bible to defend capital punishment. People trying to out-quote a nun? Ha!
As was said in the film and, according to the documentary,  real life; "Killing is wrong, it doesn't matter who does it, if it is me or your government."

Dark Dragon

Mffm.

Why do revision? Why do schoolwork? You are useless; nothing you do is going to work. Not a good friend. Not a good student. You're going to fail in the exams so why bother revising.
So I'm just going to sit here, last day of term, and stare and bits of paper and pretend to revise. But why bother? I'm not clever. The information never sinks in.
Oh, we have passed 4444 views. Clever us.
I can't get to sleep because a voice in my ear tells me how useless I am, and as a sidenote hoe I should go and throttle my brother in his sleep.
Ah, these are the days. School again.

Let's think positively, shall we?
I actually woke up at a good time this morning. Eight-of-the-clock. Sure, I'm aiming for seven-of-the-clock, but it's progress!
Last night I managed to do four or five stupidly hard Sudoku. You know how you need 1-9 in each row, box and column? And they give you numbers at the start? These guys don't give you numbers. They give you clues to what the numbers may be. Grrrrrr.
Well, from left to right on my favorites bar (the websites I try to visit daily) I have the following news:
-RANDOM WORD GENERATOR: didn't click it.
-FLIGHT RISING BETA TEST: one of my baby dragons has grown up. The rest of the litter will mature tomorrow. I have seven dragons: my two starter dragons, and their two children, and three adopted dragons. The two adopted ones have matured so far, giving me four adults to use in battle at the Colosseum, and three little babies to admire all the time. The soon-to-be-adults are Eliza, (a purple mirror dragon named after a character in Fire World), Emerald (a completely green dragon, who is adopted. I love her so much: so cute!) and Bluetongue. Despite a green mother and a grey father, the purple and blue dragons are in fact naturally born into my clan. Weird.
-SMITHSONIAN DINOSAUR BLOG: didn't click it.
-GOOGLE TRANSLATE: didn't click it. If you are bored, go onto google translate, type something funny in, and make the voice-person say it.
-CUCKOO YOUNG WRITERS MAGAZINE: didn't click it.
-FACEBOOK: had a look through things. Today I was tagged in a picture of a really cute Cthulhu; d'awwwwww! (Cthulhu being the tentacled god of madness. Look him up, then read some Lovecraft. Like Poe, but more aliens)
-HOTMAIL: didn't click it.
-ROMANTICALLY APOCALYPTIC: it updated! The people who make it are moving into a new studio, so the picture isn't done by Alexius, but by another artist who does fantastic drawings of the adventures of Stalky and Lifealope. This week one of Annet's robot-thingys woke up, and found a patch of grass which is ILLEGAL! So she summoned lots of robot bugs called 'Gardeners' and burned the place down. 
-HOMESTUCK: it updated! The adventures of Jane Crocker, who is upset at the minute because Jake is being an arsehole. Also, Roxy got covered in glitter, so even if she is invisible and can fly, she is being tracked through the streets of Durse.
-POST OF RANDOM STUFF: I'm here aren't I? I've also checked the blogs at the side: James Gurney (who wrote Dinotopia!) made a post about abandoned buildings (huh, should he read Romantically Apocalyptic?) and also, I felt inspired to post something today.
-DEVIENTART: Alexius made a post about the new studio/office/thing, his new intern, and a book which has one of his artworks on zee cover (I had a look at it. Post-apocalyptic love story anyone? I'm not too keen on love stories myself). Someone thanked me for 'fave'ing an epic sketch of Flight Rising dragons, and a paleo/fantasy artist has returned to his art school which has better internet than his house so he is posting pictures like billio.
-GOOGLE: What would I need to google at this time in the morning?

Dark Dragon

School

Ah, school. How I hate thee.
I was revising most of yesterday for the chemistry resit. Today I need to revise some more. But I can't be bothered.
So I'm putting this post on the blog, then I am off to write some more of my story, Draconic Entomology, and then I'm going to work on the fanadventure with my friends (it's like a role-playing fanfic for Homestuck) and maybe I'll do some more stuff on the Beta Test of Flight Rising.
I'm a beta tester guys.
And when this game comes out, if you choose to play it, you shall be addicted to it just as I am. SO MANY DRAGONS!
And with that, I shall leave you with:

Dark Dragon