Theme Songs For Favourite Things – Smileys #2

Basia Bulat – A Secret

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Favourite Ninja Smiley – Gift-Bearing Ninja

In my previous post regarding my fondness for these little critters, I mentioned a particular yen for the Ninja Smiley. While it’s true that I have more than enough smiley-love to go around, I save a little extra for those of the ninja variety. I can’t rightly say why, they’re just one of those things I find inexplicably irresistable. Especially this one.

The iconic ninja tends to represent stealth, evasiveness and ultimately danger. I wonder if a ninja bearing flowers is even more dangerous than one who’s throwing stars at you, perhaps so if you consider love and romance a more torturous thing than a swift, silent execution. Possibly the most telling thing of all is that he’s retained his anonymity and weapon. Honestly I’d be pretty darn scared to reject him. I might even steal his idea – next time I decide I’m going to make any kind of bold declaration, I’m borrowing that outfit  so I don’t feel so conspicuously bare and/or threatened! On the bad side, people may not ever know I was the one that always wanted to say certain things, but on the good side, no one will ever know who to call a chicken. In fact, calling a ninja chicken is probably a bad idea, even if that’s what they are.

To briefly sidetrack… Up until very recently, it was my firm belief that traditionally, Valentines Day was supposed to be for all those secret admirers out there to reveal their true feelings to those they ‘admired’. The romantic fantasist in me refuses to believe this to be a misnomer, despite what Wikipedia says. While realistically and practically, I can appreciate the meaning to have evolved from whatever beginnings and become a day to honour and celebrate all forms of love, the idea of hidden, romantic passion appeals to me at a completely different level (for one thing, it’s been one of the central sources of inspiration and therefore themes in my creative writing; though I should probably point I tend to favour less the romantic side and more the so-called dark side).

Anyway, the theme for my florally-inclined ninja, is the very apt A Secret by Basia Bulat, a sweet little song that belies the underlying sting; and today it’s not just dedicated to him, but to everyone who could never tell.

In either sense of the phrase.

 

S4E

 

 

Theme Songs For Favourite Things – Smileys #1

Grandaddy – Nature Anthem

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Favourite Multi-Purpose Smiley – Build Me Up…

That’s right, I have a thing for smileys. So much so,  that I can’t just have a favourite smiley, I have to break it down into smaller categories so that other favourites don’t miss out.

The truth is, I love these little guys, and both collect and use them relentlessly. Before my old computer gave up the ghost, I had amassed some 400 on my hard drive, and just a smidge under 200 had been uploaded to my Photobucket account so that I could find and use favourites at a moment’s notice. I will even admit I have spent a late night or two trawling the net for variations of my particular favourite, the elusive Ninja Smiley.

But first thing’s first.

That little dude puts a smile on my face every single time I see it. I would totally love to do that and could see myself spending a day doing so (ok, so maybe not a whole day. I have a yen to see real snow and activities – if I ever do – will include more than the above. Plus, I did once visit a  place here called Mt Thebarton Ice Arena, which was an indoor ice skating rink that also had a 120 metre man-made ski slope. In my attempt to ski said slope, after a 10 minute beginner lesson, I think I made it about two of those metres in an upright position, then tumbled the rest of the way down and got completely saturated, thusly also very cold. I stuck to tobogganing after that).

But I adore the way that smiley just never stops loving what it’s doing (play along with me here, I know it’s not real and that it’s just a few frames in a continuous loop). I love the look – ^_^ -  when he goes to jump in, and the look – >_> – after he gets up, checking to make sure no one’s watching, before re-building the snowman and jumping into it again.

So, for my little friend, I’ve chosen a song that is similarly a little random, repetitive and irreverent, but more importantly, a pure indulgence in whimsy and therefore also makes me smile.

 

S4E

 

Time Well Spent

Now that all the musical ramblings that were making soft-but-persistent maraca-rattles in my head are out of the way, I get to concentrate on the really important stuff: staying up late, swapping manly stories, and in the morning…I’ll make waffles. Well, two out of three aint bad – I don’t much like waffles. (Pancakes, on the other hand… Big fan). I don’t think my stories are all that manly, either. I’d hope not. But I do like to stay up late and do…stuff.

 

 
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The shifty eyes are actually rather apt (least of all because this post is imported from another, very informal blog I have elsewhere, though it’s been somewhat altered). Mostly though, the eyes represent the once upon a time that staying up late had to be done undercover – bed cover, that is, complete with a torch rapidly being drained of power and squinting in the dim light so that I could continue to read Pinquo by Colin Thiele and pretend I was asleep whenever necessary. After a while, Colin Thiele was replaced with Agatha Christie, who was in turn – sadly – replaced by Dolly and teenage romance novels like Sweet Valley High (or magazines ‘borrowed’ from my brother’s bedroom – a veritable treasure trove of information on boys ). Occasionally, when all in the house were assuredly asleep, I would creep into the lounge room and spend the rest of the night watching MTV and falling in love with various guitarists, then penning awesome (read: terrible) poetry about all my crushes.

Skip ahead a few years and I strangely find myself an insomniac.

That’s probably a lie. It’s far more likely that I developed a taste for the guilty indulgence of staying up ‘way past my bed time’ and engaging in pursuits that cause my contemporaries to roll their eyes and ‘tsk’ at my reasoning behind the choice. I feel nonchalantly defiant towards said tsk-ing. The things I am able to achieve at night, when all is quiet and no one is pestering me to fulfil certain obligations, are incredibly important. With unbroken concentration, I can achieve far more in the hours past midnight than I’ve ever been able to when my eyes are stinging from being exposed to (un)natural light. My pursuits may be of a leisurely nature, at least according to some, but I most certainly approach them with fervent dedication, and can not rest until all goals have been ticked off the list.

So, on that note, I find myself with the compulsion to make the following declaration (after spending many nights perusing the freely available emoticons on line – particularly of the ninja variety): I have found the coolest smiley in existence.  Not only that, I’m going to post it here – prepare yourself for impending awesomeness….

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I believe my work here is just about done, particularly considering I’ve now wasted sufficient time to make it late enough to play Resident Evil 5 with the appropriate amount of atmosphere.

S4E