There are giant slabs of concrete connecting the world.

You will rarely find a place (that is, in the U.S.) that you can't get to by road (dirt, concrete, asphalt, etc).

If you guys hadn't heard, I went on a ROAD TRIP last night and today (I AM BACK NOW AFTER THINKING THAT I WAS GOING TO DIE BECAUSE OF THE SNOW). It took four hours (give or take a half hour) to get there (and then back). During that time it was dark and I was tired and bored and I can't sleep in cars so I just thought.

And y'know what I thought? I thought about how many FREAKING roads and highways there are. They cut clear through forests and give reason for people to drive drive drive and kill kill kill the world.

I think that's stupid.

I was also thinking about what Scott Westerfeld said at a book event thingy. He was talking about how roads and highways connect everything. But in two (almost three) of his books, Leviathan and Behemoth, they use walkers. And the walkers don't need roads. And he said that the world could have easily gone that way. Screw wheels, legs are more efficient. (If any of you read my post on fabulousness from the booky thingy when Scott Westerfeld came to town, I couldn't find the picture of a kid wearing a fez and on a walker thing and THIS IS IT.)

But we decided that killing things and taking up so many resources is a good idea. I know what you're saying. 'BUT ERIN CONCRETE IS STUPID AND NO ONE CARES ABOUT USING IT UP!' but I'm saying that all the zillions and gabillions of signs they use every few feet is a waste of metal. Also the concrete takes up space that could totally be used for like, fixing the freaking world because stupid global warming.

So pretty much what I was thinking is that the world is stupid. You have heard me angst enough, I am tired (I totally walked like, five miles today D:) and I'm going to bed now.

Scott Westerfeld is one of my own personal gods.

So tonight, Scott Westerfeld visited my fabulous town of towniness. Disclaimer: Read the title of this post.

So he came and spoke and signed books and answered questions and I was so excited and I almost cried and I had an internal panic attack and it was just the most amazing thing ever. While he was speaking, I decided to write down some quotes. They're pretty amazing, though a few need to be explained.

• While talking about where he/other authors get their ideas... "We make shit up... (he glances over to the one or two young children in the crowd) Sorry, kids."
• Discussing creepy dentists... "Where do you want your teeth to be in five years?"
• When talking about his books being translated into other languages, he talks about flipping through a french version of Uglies and says "I know that hoverboard is planche." 
• He asks a question that no one knows the answer to, someone guesses it, and guesses correctly: "...Yes.......But you're just guessing that!"
• While he was showing us slides about how hand-drawn pictures disappeared from books in the 1920's because of cameras, he said "It's such an early camera, notice how the camera is hand-drawn."
• Right after what was said above, "People did not get imaginations in 1920, they got THE CAMERA!"
• A slide in the powerpoint popped up of a walker (something from Leviathan, if you haven't read it, read it). Read it in a whiny voice. "Why is it a giant walking tank?"
• I don't really remember what relevance it had to what he was talking about, but he was talking about TV... "I secretly hope that either the doctor or the lawyer is a vampire... or an alien."
• This one takes a kinda long explanation. So apparently he was talking to Keith Thompson, the guy who does his art, and he told him to just draw a chase scene (I believe) and he did and he came up with this and he said    that the walker was kind of ridiculous and that no one would ever make something like that. And then we were showed a real picture of a kid on something exactly like it, wearing a fez, found by Keith Thompson. It was strangely scary and I wish I could find it on google, but I can't, since I can't remember the name. But anyway, apparently, when the illustrator sent that picture to him... "And he said, "OH REALLY?" After that being called lame.
• This needs no explanation. "Which I think means totally fucking stupid. That kid does not look happy. Which is partially fez-related."
• "I can't get in a fight with Keith, he's Canadian!"
• When he showed us a photo of a diorama made to show his illustrator how he wanted a picture to be set up, we laughed and he said "Surely you are not laughing at my diorama."
• As he was discussing how to honor Australia in Leviathan... "It was either a tazmanian tiger or the Sydney Opera House."
• Think of the same whiny voice as that other quote at the beginning. "So why is it a jellyfish, Scott?"
• Basically a summary of how the Darwinists came to be in Leviathan: "If Origin of Species was a cookbook."
• "Between asymmetry and people jumping off of shit, you can write a billion novels."
• When he was talking about when he was thinking about adding another book to the trilogy just for extra art... "This is a trilogy! We can't have a fourth book!"
• Discussing realizing spacing... "I had to replance 'Alek crossed his legs' with 'Alek crossed his eyes.'"
• Showing off fanart... "You can tell it's manga because it's windy!"

So those were the highlights of Scott Westerfeld coming and being fabulous. He is a genius and fabulous and he should definitely make this place a permanent stop on his tour list. I also got four books signed. It would have been five (maybe six) if two friends had returned Behemoth and Pretties to me in time. D:<

So for all of you that live around here and didn't go and like his writing, you guys are big stupid-heads because that's stupid because he is fabulous and stupid-heads.

NaNoWriMo is the sexiest and unsexiest thing in the entire freaking world, man.

I am very well aware that it has been years (two weeks?) since I last blagged. I am very well aware that this is what I now say when I start a new post because I often don't have anything else better to say. And just to let all of you know, I have a list of things to blog about, but what I've chosen for this one takes priority. I might also do a review at the end of it if it's not as long as I planned, because I totally just read an epic book that came out on Tuesday. And if you don't know what it is... A PLAGUE UPON YOUR FAMILY. (Spoiler alert: I DON'T DO THE REVIEW. Not until the next post, children.)

I'm sure most of the people reading this have heard people hiss 'NaNoWriMo' or 'NaNo' during October and November. It's not a secret. It's not something horrible like You-Know-Who, okay it kinda is, but no-one flinches or starts crying when you say it.

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place during the month of November. The goal is to write at least fifty thousand words in thirty days. One thousand, six hundred sixty seven words a day. I will promise you two things if you do it.

1. It will ruin your life.
2. It will make your life amazing.

How will it do that? you ask? Both at the same time? That's not possible. IT IS! WITH THE POWER OF NANO, IT CAN BE YOURS FOR JUST THREE EASY PAYMENTS OF $19.95.

Not really. Anyway, I totally forgot what I was originally going to say. Oh yes! I was going to elaborate on how it does both at the same time.

• How it ruins your life~

It does this by slowly embedding itself into your head and even after the month is over you'll be checking your word count every five seconds. Once you end up breaking the habit, you'll realize that it's July and November is just a few months away and the habit will pick up again in the first few hours.

Your family will begin to get sick of you locking yourself in your room for hours at a time, even if you already do this. If you ask them questions like 'What if I wrote a novel about gay vampires who beat each other up?' they'll begin to respond with generic answers like 'You need more of a plot than that.' and you'll start to ask dumb questions like that on a daily basis.
You'll begin to feel a stronger connection to your main character(s) than your closest friends and you'll begin to refer to them as actual people. And you won't talk to your friends at all because you'll be far too busy trying to write.
You'll write under the desks during class and instead of eating during lunch when you're behind (or ahead, for that matter) on your word count.

• How it makes your life amazing~

It makes your life amazing by giving you a goal and by the end of the month, no matter how many french verbs you've conjugated in the middle of dialogue to boost your word count and no matter how many times The Traveling Shovel of Death comes in and kills someone you'll still (hopefully) have at least a start to a novel, if not more.
It makes your life amazing by making you check your word count every five seconds because really, what's life without a little obsessiveness?

It makes your life amazing by pissing off your family, since that was probably one of your main goals in the first place.
It makes your life amazing by disconnecting you from your friends because when it's all over you can reconnect and share novels and you'll have so many more things to talk about.

It makes your life amazing by adding a bit of danger. I mean, what if the teacher catches you novelling instead of note-taking? BLASPHEMY!

So as you may have guess, NaNo is a very stressful time in a young person's life. So if you're a teacher and your student doesn't turn in their homework on time, don't take off points because they might have stayed up until two the night before trying to finish a scene and get their wordcount up.
If you're someone's boss and they seem to be slacking off just a bit more than usual, and you've noticed a Word document up on their screen a bit more than usual, but them some slack.

If you're a parent (HEY PARENTS, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, THIS IS FOR YOU) and your child stays up a bit later than you'd like because they're writing, don't chop off their heads. If they complain a bit more about going places without computers or doing chores, it's because they are invested in writing and WRITING MAKES KIDS SMARTER. (Maybe. I totally made that up, but I bet it's true. It makes them more creative and stuff, though.) DO YOU WANT TO DEPRIVE YOUR CHILD OF THAT?

As for me doing NaNo, last Wednesday (day) I had two ideas that I was trying to decide between. Wednesday (night) I had an idea, so that's a third one to decide between. Flying cities, Europe and bumblebees. Yesterday I asked some friends and I narrowed it down to flying cities and bumblebees. And I put my status on facebook as 'Flying cities or bumblebees?' and everyone except one said flying cities. So that's the idea I'm doing. It's the story I was probably going to do anyway because I have most of it planned out.

I have a question for you people. Would it be totally lame if at the end one of my mainish characters pulled a Harry and was all dead and everyone thought they were dead but then it ended up not but then the bad guy is all but defeated when they come back? And it's possibly going to be my main character's love interest.

Good golly, that was far more than I ever expected to write on the topic of NaNo. Prepare for more or an absence of more in the coming weeks.