Random facts about me

1. My socks never match, assuming I'm even wearing shoes. 
2. I have a bunch of books. And I've read most of them. 
3. I'm usually cold. 
4. I color in coloring books.
5. I have a bunch of stuffed animals on my bed, but the one I cuddle with is the only one i throw across the room. Along with both of my blankets. 
6. I'm pretty obsessed with Harry Potter references. 
7. I played pottermore for awhile, but I got bored with it. Now I'm just waiting for them to open book two. 
8. I have a lot of movies. like... Obnoxious.
9. I'm very easily sucked in to the tv.
10. I love Tim Burton.
11. And Helena Bonham Carter.
12. I like chocolate. 
13. And gum.
14. I don't like blonde hair.
15. I have blonde hair. 
16. Je parle un peu français.
17. I know some sign language too. 
18. I like tetris. 
19. And Farkle.
20. And bop-it. 
21. And that weird toy from the 70s that always looks like the spinny wheel is gonna fall off. 
22. I find my own blog very boring. 
23. Because of 23, you should all leave ideas for posts, questions, etc in the comments so I can expand!
24. 24 isn't really a fact. But you definitly should still do it. 
25. I like My Name is Earl.
26. Kenan & Kel.
27. Family Guy.
28. American Dad.
29. All That.
30. Rugrats.
31. Yes, Dear.
32. I don't like Maury. 
33. Or Springer. 
34. I  like New Girl.
35. I liked Allen Gregory, but they canceled that show after one season. 
36. I used to like South Park. Not so much anymore. 
37. Drake and Josh. 
38. I dont like Zoey 101.
39. I kinda like Victorious. 
40. I like Invader Zim. 
41. When it comes to TV, I guess I never grew out of the nineties. 
42. American Horror Story starts production on season two this summer. :D 
43. I like amanda. (HI AMANDA!!)
44. I also like brandon. (HI BRANDON!)
45. I guess I like my evil stepmother too. 
46. Wanna know my address?
47. P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney. 
48. You silly internetz people thought I was gonna tell you where I live.
49. You'll just have to go kill some other blogger in their sleep!
50. Speaking of sleep, I think 50 bullets are quite enough. 
51. But I'll give you 51 just because you're just so darn cute! Good night!

The Headphone Dilemma

I would just like to preface this post by saying, Jessica, you did say I could write about anything...

Also, hi, I'm Amanda. This is my first guest post so I'm not really sure what guest post ettiquette is but I will try to keep my elbows off the table.

On the the actual post.

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In the current generation, music is a big deal - from rocking out to some classic rock while driving down the highway to listening to your favorite band before you go to sleep, we are surrounded by music and we take it everywhere.

One of the best inventions of our time is the portable mp3 player - or the iPod if you're an apple maniac - but with the best comes the worst. And the absolute worst has got to be this:

Cheap headphones.


Why do headphones break so easily? I find myself buying new headphones at least every six months if not less depending on the brand.

Why do the headphones always go out on the side that I hear from better? As a person who has only partial hearing in one ear, this is incredibly frustrating!

And why do they make headphones that I can hear from across the room? The only good headphones are the ones that block out all outside noise - and keeps the noise from bothering other people!

And don't even get me started on the static!


The point is, headphones are the most frustrating product on the planet. If someone would just make some decent headphones. That would be lovely. /endrant

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... Boy, where'd the time go? I should probably get out of here before Jessica gets back...

GUEST POST

I finally found someone to do a guest post! My seven year old sister, future author and illustrator of children's books, Astrid Crowley. Enjoy!


The Baby Turtles By Astrid Crowley


Once there were a couple turtles. They got married and they always loved to kiss. They would always hug too. One day, they had three babies. Their names were Ilae, Katy, and Marissa. When they were born, they were always crawling around and trying to find food, but their parents wouldn't let them, unless they stayed in their house. They were always eating bugs. They were always crawling around. They would not stop crawling around, they would just keep finding bugs everywhere. 


They had little cute clothes. They always wanted big girl clothes, but they weren't big girls yet. Their mommy was smaller than their daddy. They were very afraid of piranhas. Piranhas were mean. One day, the little turtles went to find fish to eat, but a piranha almost ate them. It was scary to them. They fell in the water, but swam away just in time. They ran home and hid in their rooms. They would never stop being scared of piranhas. Piranhas always tried to eat them, but they could never catch the turtles because they were too fast.


It was their fist birthday. They had never had as much presents as they did on this day. They got so much presents that their rooms were filled, and they couldn't even go in! They realized they had so much toys that they wanted to donate some to poor baby turtles. The poor baby turtles were so happy that they became friends with Ilae, Katy, and Marissa. They baby turtles were very happy because they knew that many other turtles would have been too selfish to share their toys. 


And they all lived happily every after. 

Illustration by: Astrid Crowley

Weird Maybe-true-but-i'm-not-gonna-research-them Facts.

• The population of the Earth can be a source of many interesting statistics. In the year 8,000 B.C., there were only 5 million people on Earth. Four thousand years later, the population had only risen by 2 million people, to 7 million people. Nowadays, Earth's population rises by 2 million roughly every nine days.
• Worldwide, around 265 people are born every minute and 115 people die, for a net increase in population of 150 people every minute.
• The average American spends 18% of his or her income on transportation, and only 13% on food.
• Around 40% of murders occur during arguments.
• A 1947 study found that during the Second World War, only about 15 to 25 percent of the American infantry ever fired their rifles in combat.
• One's lifetime risk of dying due to living with a smoker is 1 in 4,200. Getting struck by lightning over the course of a lifetime is more likely, with odds of 1 in 3,000.
• Around 1,900,000,000 Christmas cards are given in the United States of America yearly, making it the largest card-sending occasion in the country. The second-largest is Valentine's Day, with approximately 192 million cards being given.
• The story of Cinderella first appears in a Chinese book written in the 850s.
• William Shakespeare's average annual income as a playwright was under £20, which works out to about £8 per play. However, he made about twice as much from writing plays as Ben Jonson, the only contemporary playwright who was better known at the time than Shakespeare.
• Shakespeare used around 29,000 different words in his plays. About 6,000 words only appear once. About 10,000 words are not found in any surviving English literature prior to Shakespeare.
• Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story in 1838, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", in which three shipwreck survivors in an open boat kill and eat the fourth, a man named Richard Parker. In 1884, in the real world, three shipwreck survivors in an open boat killed and ate the fourth, whose name was Richard Parker.
• It is estimated that over 7,500,000,000 copies of the Bible have been made.
• Winnie-the-Pooh is based on a real bear. On August 24th, 1914, a Canadian soldier and veterinarian named Harry Colebourn, en route to a training camp in Valcartier, Quebec, purchased an orphaned black bear cub for $20 in White River, Ontario, which he named Winnipeg, or Winnie for short. When his unit was sent over to France during World War I, Colebourn loaned her to the London Zoo, intending to take her back to Canada after the war. However, Winnie's gentle disposition made her the zoo's top attraction, and on December 1, 1919, he donated her to the zoo. In the mid 1920's, writer A. A. Milne often took his young son, Christopher Robin, to the zoo, and Christopher named his teddy bear "Winnie-the-Pooh" after Winnie. A. A. Milne went on to write several best-selling children's books about Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. (where did "Pooh" come from?)
• Emily Dickinson wrote over 1,800 poems. Only seven were published in her lifetime, all without her consent.
• Shakespeare makes Lear, an early Anglo-Saxon King, speak of not wanting spectacles. In relating Macbeth's death, in 1054, and King John's reign in 1200, he mentions cannons. In Julius Caesar, he makes the clock strike three. However, these three inventions were not invented until the fourteenth century. (this one gets me....)
• In 1991, the Art Loss Register, a database of stolen works of art, was created. The database now contains over 300,000 works of art, including hundreds of pieces by Picasso.
• Around one in three murder cases are never solved.
• In 1877, during the height of violent labour unrest in the United States, three men were found guilty of the murder of a foreman of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company and sentenced to hang. Two of them went stoically to their deaths, but the third, Alexander Campbell, swore that he was innocent. As he was being dragged from his cell to the gallows, Campbell rubbed his left hand in dust from the floor and pressed his palm against the plaster wall, and shouted repeatedly, "This handprint will remain here for all time as proof of my innocence." Even after Campbell's death, the handprint remained. In 1931, Carbon County Sheriff Robert L. Bowman undertook a renovation of the cell, removing the section of plaster wall containing the handprint, replacing it with a new section of fresh plaster. However, the handprint still came back, and still exists today.
• In 1865, William E. Brockway printed a counterfeit $100 bill so perfect that the Treasury Department's only recourse was to withdraw all authentic $100 bills from circulation.
• In ancient Babylonia, if a poorly-built home collapsed on the owner, killing him, the architect was executed. If the owner's son was killed in the house collapse, the architect's son was put to death. If the homeowner's wife or daughter was killed, the architect was merely fined. (wow. just wow.)

Okay. I'm done. Feel free to not read any of these. no big deal. And, as always, I leave you all with an invitation to ask me advice, or give me subjects you would like me to address, ooooor even if you would like to do a guest post. :D