Raconteur. (Previously The Thing.)

Half way through the year. Go figure. You’d think I’d be half way through my goals, wouldn’t you. Well, you’re part right I suppose. Some I haven’t really started. Bad me.

As promised, June was fairly awesome. It had to be because I was born in it. As were many other people, so parties all round. Woop! Let’s see how June behaved then…

Exams are over! Whey! That’s one thing stopping me slouching over this silly low desk. I can get out, bend and move like a human being. Especially in this warm weather we’re having. No reason why I can’t straighten it out.

Although, yeah, bringing interesting news on the shape of my back really isn’t what you come here to hear about (I’d hope, anyway).

Wow. Not a lot changes in a month, does it. My regime, if you could call it that, really hasn’t changed since May. I go to the school gym once a week. It’s enough from my point of view, but I know it isn’t enough if I’m to get rid of the lack of henchness. How do you define henchness, anyway? Oh, right, Simon…

John and Simon (along with his sister, I do believe) got a free entry to Topnotch gym in Sol Central as they stopped looking for presents in the wrong place. I said no to it, mainly because I didn’t want them knowing my phone number and annoy me all the time. But afterwards I kind of wish I went. Eh, never mind. They said it was rubbish anyway.

Right, well. This being the month of my birthday, I was bound to get some new clothes. I did, and didn’t have to spend a penny. Hoorah.

I got myself this funky green t-shirt, a Superman t-shirt, a Mr. Tickle t-shirt and a Formula 1 t-shirt. Oh, I also got a few pairs of snazzy socks. You like?

I purchased the one you see me in this month from a very fancy YouTuber called JohnnyDurham19. Maybe you’ve heard of him?

So yeah. I don’t care if you don’t like them (well, I do really…) but I think this month has been pretty awesome clothing-wise. It’s set to get better, too, as the Canada trips only a couple of months away. Everyone needs holiday clothes, right?

Oh my. This month’s not a good one for denerdifying myself.

First off, I turned 18. Okay, okay, there’s drinking and crap I can do, but the first thing I did was order The Sims 3 from my shiny new card online. Ever since it arrived I’ve played on it every day, I think. My Wakoopa stats (which simply showing that I have any means I’m still an utter nerd) say I’ve played it… a lot. Bad times.

Secondly, I’ve sort of been embarking on a load of little nerd projects. The biggest of which being that ball game I keep going on about on Plurk. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then obviously you don’t visit my Plurk or Twitter enough.

Saying this, though, I really should start on another project which is nerdy, but a sociable nerdy. I know what I mean…

I got myself a haircut a couple of days ago, at the same old usual place I go to. But in a switch from my usual pessimistic side, I thought it went quite well.

Okay, in these pictures which were taken about ten minutes after I got out the shower the day I got it cut. It makes it frizzy and nasty. But when I grow into it, I think it’ll be quite a fanciful look, but I’m really not a hair expert, and it only cost £9. Meh.

Ahh, finally. A category I can really sort of go on about something. Seeing as it’s the month of my 18th birthday, I couldn’t really stay in could I?

The original plan for my birthday night out was to join it up with Becky’s. But then the day before she cancels it due to work stuff. How rude. So I end up planning my own little birthday bash which I hope you’ve already heard about even if you weren’t there.

So then the following Thursday I went to Chicago’s All You Can Drink which, shall we say, is a brilliant idea. I’m sure it’d get boring, but I want to go again. Take me now!

Then we had Timi’s birthday, we’ve got Jordan’s coming up and Tanya’s little get-together on Thursday. I’m sure now I can legally actually do these things, more clubbing is on the cards.

Oh, I loathe this section. There’s no real way to talk about it.

I’ve got no exams to worry about, so now I’m more carefree. I’ll do things on a whim if they sound good, and won’t if I have a gut instinct their bad. I’m a bit middle ground here.

I’ve had to get this whole passport thing signed by Smithy at school and while I’d usually try to inconvenience anyone else as little as possible and just deal with it myself, I kind of had to bother him lots. I hate talking on the phone, too, and had to do that with him. I suppose that’s taking risks.

I’ve got my friends some birthday presents sitting right behind my laptop. They weren’t cheap, so I hope they like them. That’s kind of risky…

Meh. I’m all out. June seems like a good month. Now we’ve got a summer heat wave to quote-unquote "look forward to", I don’t see why the next half of the year can’t be as awesome. Bring on the summer!

This is probably just me talking here, but I’ll address it as if it’s a mutual feeling felt by everyone in the same situation. All year – from September until June – you’re constantly working towards an end of year exam (or… eleven). If Mr Quinn is anyone to go by, homework set on a Friday, worked on until the next Friday, when more is set. It’s a never-ending work cycle. You just have to search my blog to find just how much effort I put into it (or to blog about it, but whatever).

So come the 17th of June, it all sort of ended. Finished. Finito. No more Geography, Maths or Computing to worry about. Ever again. Of course I’ve got uni work, but that’s basically working on stuff I’d do for fun anyway. It’ll bring in elements from my A-Level studies, sure, but I’m not going to need to know about the over-gentrification of the Cairngorms National Park ever again.

So from having the rare hour or two of free time during a weekday, I’ve got the whole day. I’m not the sort of person who wants to waste it sleeping in, but for some reason that seems to happen. Mainly because I have nothing to get up for anymore. Well, get up early for, at least. I’ve found myself being plonked at home watching This Morning, going for a random drive somewhere, or at the laptop blogging about nothing to do…

So I’m looking for things to fill this new found void. I’ve got plenty of things I could be doing, but they’re all pretty nerdy. It doesn’t bode well with the whole ‘7 Things…‘ aim. So I’ve been mulling over some random ideas for some fun times in the summer we can do for the last few times we’ll all be together.

Of course one of those things is Canada, but that’s not until early August. Another thing is the final Duke of Edinburgh expedition, but god knows when that’s happening. I’m talking things we can all participate in. If the weather stays like it is, I say one day we go on a road trip to the nearest bit of coastline. We’ll need to corral someone else who’s willing to drive as, ambitious as I may be, I don’t think we can fit 10+ people in my KA. Nuh-uh. It just won’t work.

I’ve also kind of applied for tickets to watch Guesstimation and Hole in the Wall but I’m kind of thinking if I was successful, they would have told me by now. Shame. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see Dale Winton get all excited about a wall with an unusual shaped hole in it?

The Living End and Enter Shikari are playing at the HMV Picture House in Edinburgh a couple of days after we get back from Canada. Going to that would just be epic, but may be a bit of effort. Plus I’d need to find people to go with. Hmm.

So maybe I’ll be stuck with doing the nerdy things. Okay, so making a ball game for Kongregate (Plurk people should know all about that), a redesign for this here blog, a couple of nerdy sort of presents to do and stuff to get the ball rolling for uni should keep me entertained if those things don’t happen. Shame. That’s boring.

1. Smithy’s a bit forgetful.

2. Online shopping is way too easy.

3. Tesco love me more than Nectar.

4. Come the Canada trip, I’m going to have to be the responsible adult.

5. Some charities need better things to do.

The end of exams are a funny time. All of a sudden, you’ve got so much time on your hands. You could put it to good use by doing some housework, cleaning your room or even just baking a cake for example. Some kids go to Sixfields and play football in a car park. That’s… kind of productive… right?

There’s been a serious lack of entertainment since exams finished (for me, anyway) this time last week. Okay, we had Chicago’s on the Thursday but apart from that, it’s been quiet. Simon decided to take it upon himself to organise something to do with lots of people we hadn’t seen for a while. As per usual, we meet up at Sixfields with John, Will, Gazz, Jake and Dunkers.

With the usual amount of accuracy with us planning things, all we had to do was play football then "Play pool/eat junk food XD" from 8 until… whenever. That’s the usual run of things. So we did, in the back car park of Tenpin because we’re that cool. Playing doubles and having a bit of a kick-about. Just like old times.

Then Will started to get antsy about being hungry. We said he could eat as soon as he scored, but however hard he tried he just couldn’t. Dunkers had to in the end to stop him crying, I think… but yeah. All that to go grab a McDonalds.

I scrounged enough money together to get an Oreo McFlurry (which, I must say, is nothing like the advert…) and saw this girl walk off with a caramel sundae. A caramel sundae! Those things were truly epic just for the giant pool of caramel that sat at the bottom. I was heartbroken when they stopped doing them a while back. But when did they start again? Why wasn’t I told? ARGH.

But anyway. Enough about the sundae. Afterwards we went into Tenpin to do one of our usual activities – playing pool. Now before that, we stopped off to look at the grabber machine to see if the snake I mentioned before was free now and it was, right beside this round pink thing wearing a cap. I was pound-less and heartbroken. But thankfully, Jake to the rescue, grabbed me the snake for my car. He’s now sitting pretty on the back shelf of my car. Aww.

We played pool and I left them playing pool while I put the snake in my car. On the way there, I found £5 on the floor. Bingo! So, as curiosity killed the cat, I decided to play and see what on earth this pink thing was. Turns out it’s a spherical bird thing wearing what can only be described as a old schoolboys hat. I gave it to Jake as a sort of thank you for getting the snake.

At the end of this night, the bird thing got ran over, throw into a bush and put in Jake’s car wheel before finding its way into Jake’s cup holder. Again, Will went off because he’s way too manly for this and conveniently waits by Dunkers’ car.

Problem being Dunkers couldn’t go anywhere. His car wouldn’t start. After about 20 minutes of faffing around and the third attempt of jumpstarting it, the car came alive much to the relief of Will and Simon (and Dunkers, obviously ). I dropped John off and that was that, the end of the night.

Okay, so it wasn’t the most entertaining of outings, but Jake made me promise to blog about it, so I did. It’s worth it for the snake, really, isn’t it?

A guy named TJ who lives across the pond in the US recommended a show called Lie To Me. I saw it was on Sky1 here now so I started watching it. The basic premise of the show is to solve mysteries using the power of  body language and, more importantly, the spotting of microexpressions.

Now I’ve always been fairly into body language. It shows what people truly mean when you’re around them. You pick it up, but you wouldn’t necessary know you’ve picked it up until you’ve thought about it afterwards. Things like the inability to stand still when you’re nervous and sticking only your thumbs in your pockets when talking to someone indicates your attempt for sexual dominance – they’re all picked up on by your brain and the people around you will act on it, but they won’t know they’re acting because of it… if you know what I mean.

Microexpressions are on the same level. They’re involuntary expressions which show how we’re really feeling when we’re trying to conceal the obvious expressions (like smiling when we’re happy). They only last around 1/25th of a second, but they’re vital things.

We all share seven microexpressions – Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise and contempt. They’re virtually universal indicators for all of us. You’re probably thinking "Yeah, that’s basic enough. When someone’s angry, they scowl." but do they?

If someone’s being interrogated for example, they aren’t going to just scowl at everything and say "Why, I have no idea how those drugs got there…" because they won’t be believed. What they do is blank out all expression from their face. But everyone shows some expression unless they’re hiding something, so it’s usually an indicator if they do ‘go neutral’ that something awry.

What you then look for are muscle contractions usually associated with certain emotions. Not all at once, just the odd one or two. For instance, if someone’s trying to hide the fact they’re angry, they’ll tense their lips or wrinkle their forehead. It’s only really prevalent if you’re looking over a meeting again that you’ve recorded that will show these clearer.

Like I said before, you’ll know something’s not right at the time, but you don’t know why you know. That’s because all our brains have evolved to recognise certain emotions. You know when your pet’s happy because you’ve just evolved into noticing the tiny triggers the let off. It’s also the reason behind your ‘hunch’ – You know, that gut feeling you have whether someone’s legit or not.

So next time you’re greeted by a smiling, happy salesperson down Abington Street, just look to see if they are always smiling, whether it looks forced, or whether there’s signs of any other emotions in there especially when you tell them you don’t want to know.