http://definitelynot-shaunna.tumblr.com/post/43272599055/hey-guys-check-out-my-first-video-where-i-talk
Look look look, my lil'est (but still taller than me) sis is a Youtube vlogger! So proud! Patiently awaiting the day she gets Internet famous and hooks me up with Jenna Marbles now... Eee. In this video, she talks about how the Internet broke her and made her socially inept.
*wipes away single tear of pride*
Showing posts with label Social. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Je Suis En Retard
Ooh! I forgot to tell you about my Frenchman experience from the other night, didn't I? It's not nearly as funny or risqué as it sounds, especially when I refer to it as "The Frenchman Experience", but I feel we've bonded, my anonymous Internet peepsters, so that means that you are now subject to my every waking thought. Until you stop reading, anyway.
Please don't stop reading me! I love you! I can change!!
As a reminder to write about The Experience, I've been walking around all day with the word "French" scrawled on my arm. That in itself amused me. I found myself wondering what people would think if I suddenly died on my way home, and when they found me I would just have this word and no other explanation on my body. Would they think that I'd decided to take up learning the language of luuuurve, several years after taking my GCSE in it and immediately forgetting most of what I'd learned? Maybe they'd see it as a request for a French themed funeral. I hoped for the latter. They could serve everyone baguettes, and all my friends and family could mourn me in kicky little berets and drawn on curly moustaches....sigh. I might go home with the word French written on me every day now. Just incase.
So, The Frenchman Experience... Anyone who's ever learned French in school and not bothered to take it any further that that knows that the sentences they teach you are pretty much totally useless, unless you are in very specific situations. Here are some of the scant sentences I recall from my teens (nobody is allowed to pick these apart - accuracy unlikely here):
- Je suis maladroit: I am clumsy (actually, forget that one. Quite useful).
- Je porter mons pantalons: I wear my trousers. When will I ever need to tell a French person I'm wearing my trousers? This should be a given, shouldn't it? If you have to inform people that you are wearing trousers, then maybe you need to re evaluate your life...
- Ou est la gare?: where is the train station? I don't intend to get lost in France anytime soon, so doubt I'll require this one.
My personal favourite by far, though is "Je suis en retard" - "I am late". Not especially funny, but when you're twelve, and your classmate is being forced by the teacher (who knows what she's doing, she knows!) to tell the class that they are sorry that they are "retard", nothing is funnier.
But, but! On Monday night, I actually got one of these phrases used at me! I had the opportunity to communicate in basic French! I was traipsing down the dark, creepy alley between the gym and my car, behind a lanky and unthreatening looking gentleman with a backpack. In a world of my own, probably fantasising about food (note: I'm never not fantasising about food), I very nearly had a coronary when my tall fellow perambulator suddenly stopped and whirled around to look directly at me. I had such a fright that I didn't hear what he'd said.
"S-sorry?" He smiled, amused at my baffled lady-shock of been suddenly turned on in a dark alley.
"Ou est" he repeated amicably "la gare?"
YES!! I knew this one! I understood what a French guy was saying! And I knew where the train station was. Today was a good day! I beamed at him triumphantly.
And then remembered that I don't know the response to that question in French. Only how to ask it. Trying not to let my inner turmoil show, I continued manically grinning and gestured dramatically up the street we'd just turned off. I think it was my visual equivalent of that speaking in English VERY LOUDLY AND SLOOOWLY that us Brits like to employ when faced with foreign language speakers.
I've never seen a person move so quickly. I didn't even get a "merci". Spose I'd do the same thing in his shoes, if I'd asked him a sensible question and just got mad grinning and flapping in response. Ce'st la vie.
Please don't stop reading me! I love you! I can change!!
As a reminder to write about The Experience, I've been walking around all day with the word "French" scrawled on my arm. That in itself amused me. I found myself wondering what people would think if I suddenly died on my way home, and when they found me I would just have this word and no other explanation on my body. Would they think that I'd decided to take up learning the language of luuuurve, several years after taking my GCSE in it and immediately forgetting most of what I'd learned? Maybe they'd see it as a request for a French themed funeral. I hoped for the latter. They could serve everyone baguettes, and all my friends and family could mourn me in kicky little berets and drawn on curly moustaches....sigh. I might go home with the word French written on me every day now. Just incase.
So, The Frenchman Experience... Anyone who's ever learned French in school and not bothered to take it any further that that knows that the sentences they teach you are pretty much totally useless, unless you are in very specific situations. Here are some of the scant sentences I recall from my teens (nobody is allowed to pick these apart - accuracy unlikely here):
- Je suis maladroit: I am clumsy (actually, forget that one. Quite useful).
- Je porter mons pantalons: I wear my trousers. When will I ever need to tell a French person I'm wearing my trousers? This should be a given, shouldn't it? If you have to inform people that you are wearing trousers, then maybe you need to re evaluate your life...
- Ou est la gare?: where is the train station? I don't intend to get lost in France anytime soon, so doubt I'll require this one.
My personal favourite by far, though is "Je suis en retard" - "I am late". Not especially funny, but when you're twelve, and your classmate is being forced by the teacher (who knows what she's doing, she knows!) to tell the class that they are sorry that they are "retard", nothing is funnier.
But, but! On Monday night, I actually got one of these phrases used at me! I had the opportunity to communicate in basic French! I was traipsing down the dark, creepy alley between the gym and my car, behind a lanky and unthreatening looking gentleman with a backpack. In a world of my own, probably fantasising about food (note: I'm never not fantasising about food), I very nearly had a coronary when my tall fellow perambulator suddenly stopped and whirled around to look directly at me. I had such a fright that I didn't hear what he'd said.
"S-sorry?" He smiled, amused at my baffled lady-shock of been suddenly turned on in a dark alley.
"Ou est" he repeated amicably "la gare?"
YES!! I knew this one! I understood what a French guy was saying! And I knew where the train station was. Today was a good day! I beamed at him triumphantly.
And then remembered that I don't know the response to that question in French. Only how to ask it. Trying not to let my inner turmoil show, I continued manically grinning and gestured dramatically up the street we'd just turned off. I think it was my visual equivalent of that speaking in English VERY LOUDLY AND SLOOOWLY that us Brits like to employ when faced with foreign language speakers.
I've never seen a person move so quickly. I didn't even get a "merci". Spose I'd do the same thing in his shoes, if I'd asked him a sensible question and just got mad grinning and flapping in response. Ce'st la vie.
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
2013: You Can Do Eet!!
Happy slightly-belated-because-I-was-hung-over-yesterday New Year!!!
If your New Year's Eve celebration was anything like mine, you spent it in a friend's house, talking way too loudly and enthusiastically in your loved ones' faces and waiting for the moment you were allowed to set the poppers off. The things that go "bang!", not the...y'know...poppers... It wasn't that kind of a party.
...Mine had a round of The Big Bang Theory board game in it, so it was better than yours. Obvs. Or sadder. Depends on which way you look at it. Whatever, my team won! Give me a big, posh "hooray!"
I have great, big, sexy feelings about 2013. Yesterday, I had nauseous, hungry and sleepy feelings, but a dangerous nap in the bath in the middle of the day (because I like to live dangerously) followed by an early bedtime has left me feeling pretty optimistic today!
One of my favourite things about the new year is making resolutions I almost never...no, wait, never keep. And up until now, (and I think that this is what most people do too) they have mostly been based around making myself a bit less shit. Here are some familiar ones that might overlap some, if not all fellow resolut...ers' (?!) January to-do lists:
* stop biting nails
* be less wobbly/rotund/jiggly/skinny-impaired than previous years
* get off arse and exercise til lady-beefcake style buff
* be less socially inept
* kill less often
Sound familiar? ... The last one was a joke, by the way.
*hastily nudges hatchet behind sofa with foot*
In recent months, I've had the odd epiphany that has brought me to my temporary sanity, and looking at these old, pretty pointless and ultimately stress inducing goals, I've realised that if I were to choose a resolution from such a list this year, I'll do what I always do. And this means sitting on the sofa, wailing and fretting about not achieving my new "goals" for a while, and then biting my nails, stuffing myself with chocolate and sleeping because it's February and I'm not Wonder Woman yet.
This year I'm doing something different. I have allowed myself two achievements that I want bragging rights to by 2014, and neither of them involve changing myself too drastically. And I know that failing to achieve them won't leave me sobbing in my jammies about what a lardy, lazy she-klutz I am. And this lack of pressure makes them feel much more achievable. By the end of the year, I want to:
*run at least a 10k race
* get paid for at least one piece of writing. Any writing.
Easy peasy! And to make me feel even better about this decision, the fates have handed me a bit of luck already! My manager overheard me talking about wanting to write anything at all for money, and instead of firing me on the spot, he's arranged for me to meet a freelancer friend for advice and lunch on Friday. I love advice! I love lunch!!
Mmm. Lunch.
But, seriously, handful of mostly anonymous readers... My soppy bit of advice (you listening, self?!), stop trying to change yourself and just get on with just doing stuff. Less worrying, more scurrying!
2013.... The Year of Doing!
*nods self importantly, gets up with purpose, heads to fridge*
If your New Year's Eve celebration was anything like mine, you spent it in a friend's house, talking way too loudly and enthusiastically in your loved ones' faces and waiting for the moment you were allowed to set the poppers off. The things that go "bang!", not the...y'know...poppers... It wasn't that kind of a party.
...Mine had a round of The Big Bang Theory board game in it, so it was better than yours. Obvs. Or sadder. Depends on which way you look at it. Whatever, my team won! Give me a big, posh "hooray!"
I have great, big, sexy feelings about 2013. Yesterday, I had nauseous, hungry and sleepy feelings, but a dangerous nap in the bath in the middle of the day (because I like to live dangerously) followed by an early bedtime has left me feeling pretty optimistic today!
One of my favourite things about the new year is making resolutions I almost never...no, wait, never keep. And up until now, (and I think that this is what most people do too) they have mostly been based around making myself a bit less shit. Here are some familiar ones that might overlap some, if not all fellow resolut...ers' (?!) January to-do lists:
* stop biting nails
* be less wobbly/rotund/jiggly/skinny-impaired than previous years
* get off arse and exercise til lady-beefcake style buff
* be less socially inept
* kill less often
Sound familiar? ... The last one was a joke, by the way.
*hastily nudges hatchet behind sofa with foot*
In recent months, I've had the odd epiphany that has brought me to my temporary sanity, and looking at these old, pretty pointless and ultimately stress inducing goals, I've realised that if I were to choose a resolution from such a list this year, I'll do what I always do. And this means sitting on the sofa, wailing and fretting about not achieving my new "goals" for a while, and then biting my nails, stuffing myself with chocolate and sleeping because it's February and I'm not Wonder Woman yet.
This year I'm doing something different. I have allowed myself two achievements that I want bragging rights to by 2014, and neither of them involve changing myself too drastically. And I know that failing to achieve them won't leave me sobbing in my jammies about what a lardy, lazy she-klutz I am. And this lack of pressure makes them feel much more achievable. By the end of the year, I want to:
*run at least a 10k race
* get paid for at least one piece of writing. Any writing.
Easy peasy! And to make me feel even better about this decision, the fates have handed me a bit of luck already! My manager overheard me talking about wanting to write anything at all for money, and instead of firing me on the spot, he's arranged for me to meet a freelancer friend for advice and lunch on Friday. I love advice! I love lunch!!
Mmm. Lunch.
But, seriously, handful of mostly anonymous readers... My soppy bit of advice (you listening, self?!), stop trying to change yourself and just get on with just doing stuff. Less worrying, more scurrying!
2013.... The Year of Doing!
*nods self importantly, gets up with purpose, heads to fridge*
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
I'm Not Drunk, I'm a Social Bloody Butterfly!!
Christmas dinner with work last night. Nothing quite like watching your workmates happily chatter amongst one another over a well cooked....
Bah, fuck the saccharine blog talk!
Last night was my third Christmas meal/do with the company I've been swapping time for money with since the day I ran out into the car park, leaping for joy that I'd got my first proper job... In front of my now-manager, who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was still stood by the door, probably immediately regretting his decision.
This was the only one I've attended sober. It was bizarre. Good, but bizarre. The food was cowing lush, my workmates were making me do little almost-wees of laughter, and the secret Santa gift I got was so thoughtful it made me squeak.
As I said, I've been nothing short of plastered for the past two such events. Most of us end up being in the same state. Tis the season to run around dance floors with no shoes on with your professional superiors...or something.
It just doesn't feel like Christmas has been done justice if the next day, at least half of the office aren't sweating in front of fans, groaning and wearing sun glasses indoors in the dead of winter. And it's never in vain. The nights out we have are silly, memorable, and nearly always end up in a casino at six in the morning.
But last night was weird. I'm socially awkward at the best of times (a socially inept blogger? Holy crackers, Batman!!), but because I wasn't lubricated in the brainular region this time,I just couldn't bring myself to relax. My posture was so rigid, I looked like I had hot GHDs lodged up my anus for the whole thing. I was hypersensitive, and could feel my brain lighting up like multi coloured fairy lights. At least it kept things seasonal.
I was either talking so quickly that I wasn't forming real words- just sort of chirruping at my colleagues, talking too quietly to be heard, or shouting in mad, overly enthusiastic bursts.
I looked. And sounded. Fucking. Mental.
I'm not sure if it's just a British thing, or If there's a sad truth in my saying that, contrary to my prior belief, I've never got over the fear of big groups of people, no matter how well I know the people in it. I've been more or less convinced that I got over all that shit at sixteen, seventeen....coincidentally, somewhere around the time of my first alco pop (gag).
Hmm. Something fun to think about.
Right after my night out with aforementioned work buddies this Black Friday. Christmas spirit first, over indulgent self an analysis after!
Cheers, all!
Bah, fuck the saccharine blog talk!
Last night was my third Christmas meal/do with the company I've been swapping time for money with since the day I ran out into the car park, leaping for joy that I'd got my first proper job... In front of my now-manager, who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was still stood by the door, probably immediately regretting his decision.
This was the only one I've attended sober. It was bizarre. Good, but bizarre. The food was cowing lush, my workmates were making me do little almost-wees of laughter, and the secret Santa gift I got was so thoughtful it made me squeak.
As I said, I've been nothing short of plastered for the past two such events. Most of us end up being in the same state. Tis the season to run around dance floors with no shoes on with your professional superiors...or something.
It just doesn't feel like Christmas has been done justice if the next day, at least half of the office aren't sweating in front of fans, groaning and wearing sun glasses indoors in the dead of winter. And it's never in vain. The nights out we have are silly, memorable, and nearly always end up in a casino at six in the morning.
But last night was weird. I'm socially awkward at the best of times (a socially inept blogger? Holy crackers, Batman!!), but because I wasn't lubricated in the brainular region this time,I just couldn't bring myself to relax. My posture was so rigid, I looked like I had hot GHDs lodged up my anus for the whole thing. I was hypersensitive, and could feel my brain lighting up like multi coloured fairy lights. At least it kept things seasonal.
I was either talking so quickly that I wasn't forming real words- just sort of chirruping at my colleagues, talking too quietly to be heard, or shouting in mad, overly enthusiastic bursts.
I looked. And sounded. Fucking. Mental.
I'm not sure if it's just a British thing, or If there's a sad truth in my saying that, contrary to my prior belief, I've never got over the fear of big groups of people, no matter how well I know the people in it. I've been more or less convinced that I got over all that shit at sixteen, seventeen....coincidentally, somewhere around the time of my first alco pop (gag).
Hmm. Something fun to think about.
Right after my night out with aforementioned work buddies this Black Friday. Christmas spirit first, over indulgent self an analysis after!
Cheers, all!
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