Holy crap, you guys.

I have been nominated for two award things! Sophie from Pretty Passions, Fine Fashions nominated me for a Versatile Blogger Award and Batman (!) from Batman is Real nominated me for a Liebster Award. (Who or what is Liebster?) So, thank you so much, both of you! I'm still in shock. I was kind of assuming no one looked at most of the crap I post.

I am going to handle the Versatile Blogger Award first because it is shorter. 

Here are The Rules:
1. Nominate some other bloggers

2. Let them know you have nominated them

3. Share 7 random facts about yourself

4. Thank the blogger who has nominated you and link back to them in your post

5. Add the Versatile Blogger Award to your post

I'm going to be a bit rebellious about the nominations for this award, because I'll have to nominate eleven people for the next award and that is going to be hard, man. Instead of picking people, I'm just going to say that if you're reading this and you haven't already been nominated (because I think a lot of people have)- tag, you're it!

Okay, now onto my Seven Facts.

• I know Spanish, a large amount of French, and a bit of Russian. Russian is actually a very nice language and I plan to come back to it and finish learning it someday.
• The first language I learned was actually Latin, but I forgot it all because there aren't many opportunities to practice it out there and also because I didn't really care about it. I hated learning it. I think it did help a lot with learning all the other languages I've learned, though.
• I am listening to music pretty much constantly.
• However, I also tend to listen to songs over and over again, which is why I will never get a Last.fm account. No one needs to know about that time I listened to Lost in Emotion like five times in a row.
• I have my computer background set to change every hour.
• I love cats but I'm allergic to them and it's like the saddest thing.
• I didn't learn to tie my shoes until a couple years ago... I was 16, and I managed to avoid that for such a long time by wearing flats, slip-ons, and sandals all the time...

Now it is time for the Liebster Award! I'm not quite done with this bit yet, sorry.

Here are its rules:

• You must share 11 things about yourself.
• Answer the 11 questions that your tagger has given you.
• Choose 11 other blogs for the nomination. Nominees must have under 200 followers on Google Friend Connect.
• Leave 11 questions for your nominees.
• Lastly, thank the person that nominated you and link back to their blog.

11 things about me:

• This isn't entirely about me, but my URL is actually two words: Xyzzy Zzyzx
• I've seen Robert Pattinson in person unintentionally.
• I actually taught myself to swim without drowning or anything.
• I just failed my road test for my driver's license a couple days ago.
• I went to a writing camp-ish thing once and it was amazing.
• I like grapes but not grape juice or anything grape flavored.
• I went to Jamaica once.
• I only received one detention in my entire school career and it was for violating my high school's uniform by wearing Christmas socks a couple days before Christmas break.
• I read Animal Farm by George Orwell when I was like 10 because it was lying around the house. I keep meaning to find it again and reread it because most of it went over my head.
• The Camp NaNoWriMo I'm doing right now is the eleventh event like that I've participated in, and if I succeed, it'll be the seventh one I've won.
• My very first blog was actually written in the persona of my grandmother's annoying dog. Yeaaaah. I was like eleven.

11 Questions from BatmanIsReal:

1. First of all, how are you?

I'm good, I guess.
2. Favorite album?

Oh God, I have to pick just one? Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth is probably the best album I've ever listened to, so that was my first thought. When I listened to it for the first time I remember thinking "Why haven't I known these songs forever?" because they were just that good. But there are many other albums I love every song on and keep coming back to that I could put here just as easily.
3. Describe your favorite pair of socks.

My favorite pair of socks is black and it has outlines of sitting cats in a bunch of different colors on it.
4. If you could permanently change (or fix) something, what would it be?
Wow, this is a vague, hard question and I feel like I should come up with some big deep thing to say to answer it. But the only thing I can really think of is how greedy some people are, because greed is the root cause of so many problems.
6. Least favorite book?

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Ugh, that book. I read it for my AP US History class and I had to write a paper about it when I was done and I hated every second I spent writing it because the book was just so bad I didn't want to think about it. Upton Sinclair wrote it to show how awful life as a factory worker was and push socialism as an alternative. Plot and character were obviously secondary concerns. The characters are about as complex and compelling as paper dolls. And at the end, the main character discovers a socialist club and suddenly transforms from being nearly illiterate to being an eloquent advocate for the wonders of socialism so Sinclair can fill the last few chapters of the books with his thoughts on how it's going to SAVE THE WORLD, YOU GUYS. It's just horrible.
7. How much cash do you have on you right now?

None.
8. How old are you?

Eighteen.
9. Film or digital?

I feel kind of like a hypocrite saying this because I own a digital camera, but film.
10. Have you ever taken a stand? If so, how was it?
When I went to my hardcore Catholic high school, we had to take a theology class for all four years and it was the worst. The department was really into theology of the body. So they talked all about how women's Essential Purpose is to have children and how contraception, abortion, masturbation, premarital sex, cohabitation, divorce, homosexuality, and showing skin are all completely against that Purpose and instead of doing all those things, we should fulfill that Purpose by getting married to a nice Catholic man and being a housewife. We actually had take tests on this stuff where we had to pretend we agreed to get an A. This all made me sick to my stomach, honestly, so I tried to argue in class and stand up for feminism and the idea that women are important as people and not just as walking wombs and it, uh, didn't go well. I was the only person vocally disagreeing- there were other people who disagreed but they didn't bother speaking up- and it led to me being marked down on several assignments. And it ended when I was literally cornered by my teacher one day after school and lectured at about marriage for like twenty minutes. After that I gave up too because it just didn't seem worth it. I clearly wasn't about to convince anyone about feminism or get any of the people who disagreed to stand up or do anything at all except exhaust myself, so what was the point?
11. Ever pulled a prank? If so, what was your best prank? If not, what prank would you consider pulling?

Um, this is kind of pathetic, but the most successful prank I've ever pulled was on myself. When I was in middle school, I taught myself HTML and made a whole folder full of web pages I'd put together. A few years later, I decided I needed to go through them and delete a few. And when I opened one of them, I was treated to this youtube video embedded on autoplay and the caption "HAHAHA you just got rickrolled, sucker!" And that's the story of how I rickrolled myself...