Set Fire

morning. 9:05.

turns out i was wrong about the "i'm immune to fiction now". serves me right.

spent an hour trying to get to sleep. woke up. spent another hour trying to go to sleep. began to hear birds waking up. woke up. can't get back to sleep. not sure what the time was (actually i'm beginning to suspect it was 7:14...) but it was 7 something. decided to just get up and read, probably woke other people up as well.



funny how it says [friend] was playing words with friends 4 hours ago. whatcha doing at 5am, playing words with friends?

then again, it's saying i'm up at 9am playing bejewelled. i'm not! i just open it every day to get coins. i usually just play 5-6 games until i get a killer score then not play for the rest of the week.

anyway, real gamers play starcraft at 9am, while having an up and go.


i ended up playing 3 games of bejewelled because i noticed it was a new week and i didn't have a score for the week. so now i do. it's strange playing this early. sleep deprived. breakfast-less. arm slow to respond. brain slow to find matches.

it reminded me of Froz. Sean "day9" Plott talked about him his gaming autobiography video.
(heh, i just typed "day9 "sean" plott")
(and i was unsure of froz's spelling so i googled to make sure, and day9's autobiography was the third result)
anyway, i'm paraphrasing, but he would play "shoes on, shoes off, chair up, chair down, air con on, air con off, before meals, after meals, just after waking up, just before going to bed".

sound crazy?


...

yes, it does, actually. but it's not crazy. (or maybe it is).

He was just preparing himself for ANY situation. Pro gamers often have to travel. Many have problems with jet lag. I recall liquidhero (liquid is the clan and his alias is hero, he isn't a liquid hero) performing poorly in the blizzard cup, or maybe it was something else, there's so many tournaments that you could literally spend 200 days a year watching starcraft tournaments streamed. anyway, he was performing poorly and it was most likely jet lag because he's actually a baller. some say he's a hero.


it's amazing how fast esports is growing. it existed before starcraft 2, but as soon as SC2 came out, the western world began to catch up. and it just blew up. it's been little over a year and there's already so much. imagine in 5 years. maybe it will be bigger than "real" sports. hopefully.
incorrect use of the word. so what.

maybe i'm too tired to play atm. even though i don't feel tired. not in the zone.

maybe screw that i'm going to be like Froz.


oh i forgot to mention. Froz was one of those guys who

okay, paraphrasing

"he saw [some player, i forgot who it was, maybe it was nestea] playing, and everyone was talking about how fast he played. about how good he was. but he said "he isn't even that fast. i can play faster and better than that". so he did. he just decided that he wanted to be good, so he did it."


i don't know if you guys know of the existence of the Forbes "30 under 30" list. i know i didn't. but it's essentially

'These are the people who aren't waiting to reinvent the world. FORBES, leaning on the wisdom of its readers and the greatest minds in business, presents the 30 disrupters under 30, in each of 12 fields, making a difference right now."

but if you look here
http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2011/30-under30-12/30-under-30-12_entertainment.html
day9's in that list, between Chloe Moretz and Jaden Smith. it's kind of funny because the other two are both actors, age 14 and 13 respectively.


took me a while to find this, but here is a not paraphrased:

"i was hugely relieved to find out it was thirty people in each of twelve categories, so there were technically 360 people. because when i first saw the whole 30 under 30 announcement i actually just felt nervous because the last thing in the world i want is something like "mark zucherberg, founder of facebook! Day9, guy with webcam! This 26 year old helps raise awareness for water problems in Africa and helps get them the support and aid they need. Day9 talks about... a video game every day. and he travels... to also talk about that video game.
You know, i was a little concerned that there might be that imbalance there, and as we know i don't believe in imbalance."

that last part about imbalance was a joke. imbalance is when one race or strategy is too strong. almost unstoppable. so the game isn't balanced. you can think of balance as fairness.

he doesn't believe in imbalance, because most of the time it's just that the metagame hasn't shifted enough to provide a solution for whatever seems imbalanced.

whatever. nevermind.



we have a small plastic tree on the veranda. i don't know, but it looks exactly the same as the one we had in 2001. i think it was 2001... maybe it wasn't. i don't know if it's the same one, but maybe it is. it's cool that it's been preserved for so long, if so.



i think maybe animals do have emotions. similar to the ones that we have. well, some people more than others. some animals more than others.

last... last night, while i was listening with headphones on, i noticed my brother was knocking on the door, and i was a bit embarassed because i was tapping the keyboard with the beat. anyway, headphones off. he says something like "did you hear that?". i frown and think "what?". then i hear it and say "yeah..."
because for some reason the window in my room is open. the window directly faces the backyard. there are loud squawks and the fluttering and buffeting of wings in the backyard. the chickens.
//it took me way too long to figure out how to spell squawks.
"where's the torch" i think aloud, and my brother finds it. whenever we have a blackout i never know where the torch is and i get frustrated because i should, in the possibility of a blackout. there hasn't been a blackout for a long time now, and i'm grateful for that. i hadn't noticed the absence of something bad.
we step onto the veranda/verandah and i turn the lights on and off and on again, because if you only turn it on once it becomes an automatic light that turns on when the sensor is activated, and turns off when nothing activates the sensor for a minute or so. and if you turn it on twice it stays on.
i'm scared.
but the sounds seemed to have stopped. my brother shines the torch around the half of the backyard, and finds nothing. literally, nothing. no chickens, either. we can only see half of the backyard from here because the other half is blocked by a roof. there's a roof there. and another room/house downstairs.
we don't chase it.

the next morning, i wake up and hear them saying that three out of four of them are missing. but there are feathers left behind. on the side of the backyard that we couldn't see.

my dad says something ridiculous* about possums and i'm like what dude not possums
//by the way, another word which i use often but not here is "retarded"

i'm thinking that it was either a bird/owl of some sort, or a cat, or unlikelier, a fight amongst themselves or a dog. the fences are wooden fences and have holes in them here and there. maybe they fled to another home. or maybe not.

yesterday i went to see for myself. well i did the day before, but yesterday was different. there were no sounds as i approached. just the one. and there are the feathers. it looked like her neck was tucked into her, as if hiding like a turtle.
that's fearsomely terrible, i think to myself. losing your family to some killer in the night. and next night, it might be you. or the night after that. it could come back.
last night while i was failing to sleep having been haunted by fiction (it's actually quite a scary book, but maybe just for me), i heard one loud squawk. then silence.
oh no, i think
oh great, i think.
doesn't sleep.
i haven't checked this morning. but i'm pretty sure it was just a nightmare or something like that for the chicken.


it makes me wonder, can animals laugh or cry?
why not?
well, what do they do instead?
why are things like that, then? why are humans so different? what if evolution decided to bless a different species with intelligence? would we be the ones to be farmed?








my mum just started a pointless argument with my dad and then she's like "i don't want to argue"
#women