Friendship: Newt the Wonder Frog ... this one's for you

* Warning: this post may contain traces of unabashed, soppy, emo-like utterances


Well what a week it's been, blog-chums! Events of the last few days have been unexpected and heartwarming and have left me "all toastie inside ... and leaking!" as the dear old Grinch would say.

Here's another good quote ...

"and they say the internet is such a solitary experience, that you don't make friends, only 'cyber' friends that you'll never interact with. I think this blog (one among many) proves the lie of that statement"

Know who said that? The very cool and excellent Tennyson ee Hemingway from the equally cool and excellent andy warhol goes shopping blog, that's who. He left that comment on my last post. Wasn't that a nice thing to say?

(Ok, brace yourselves, here comes the soppy part ...)

And I have to admit that I am constantly amazed and delighted by the people who wander into my little corner of the blogosphere and welcome me into theirs in return. They are funny, intelligent, fascinating (some of them are downright sexy! ... yes, I'm talking about you ... oh, er, no, not you *nervous grimace*, the person ... yes! you! How you doin? *suggestive eyebrow waggle*) and generous to a fault. I like to think that I've made some real friends in the last few months and hopefully will continue to do so. Maybe I'll never meet them in person but so what? It doesn't detract from the value of a kind word of support or the sharing of a point of view or a joke, does it?

Now, c'mon everybody, let's take our clothes off, (well, except for that guy there ... he should stay clothed at ALL times) light some candles (careful men, we don't want any unnecessary singeing) and have a group hug whilst singing along to the Golden Girls theme!

Beautiful!

(Ok, and we're done with the soppy ... )

I want to tell you about my number one blog-chum, Trinity.

But first I guess I should set the scene ... I was a bit naive when I first started blogging, I didn't have a clue what to do and I didn't know anybody else who had a blog to ask questions and advice of. So I just merrily typed and posted away, until one day I noticed somebody had left a comment!

Now, wouldn't it be awesome, in a glitzy, Hollywood movie kinda way, if that first comment had come from Trinity? Thus starting a beautiful friendship in a cool, fateful manner ...

Yeah, but it wasn't him.

I had to go FIND HIM!

Tsk!

Deciding that comments were kinda cool, and realising that there were like, you know, other blogs out there, blogs I could like, you know, read 'n' stuff I took the brave step of searching for like-minded souls, kindred spirits, people who liked zombies.

Yep, that's hows I found him, via zombies (well, via Shaun of the Dead on his profile to be exact ... I later searched on Anchorman, fact fans, and found Dr Zibbs, "what kind of weirdo calls his blog That Blue Yak???" I wondered, then it was a short skip and a jump to leaving a few smart-arse comments on his blog, stalking his funniest commenters until they came and checked me out, and then stalking their funniest commenters etc ... and Bob's yer uncle, blog history was made!)

Anyway, back to Trinity ... the title of his blog, Newt the Wonder Frog's Lily Pad caught my eye. I like things and people that are quirky, and when I saw "inappropriate sniffing" in his list of interests I knew I had to take a look at his blog.

What I found was a man on a mission.

(Cue mysterious, leitmotif)

Trinity was and still is working his way through a book entitled "This Book Will Change Your Life", I'll let him describe it in his own words, as quoted from his "Day 1" post (which you can read in full by clicking on the above mentioned book title):

"It has a daily task that is extremely odd, random, dangerous, etc and you are to perform the tasks daily to add some new life to your life. Thus, today being the first day of the year, you can see how I believe fate had something to do with me finding this book.

Anyway, I am going to do my damnedest to finish this experiment and you should see at least one new blog a day chronicling what the hell this book is telling me to do. I will be as thorough as possible and hopefully I can stick to this"

I thought the whole thing was kinda cool and unique, it captured my imagination and has done so ever since. Plus, I soon realised that Trinity was indeed a kindred spirit, if a bit bonkers, and there I was, hooked to him and his blog.

Now, a few months later, and a whole lot wiser, I believe THE BOOK (cue extremely sinister leitmotif) was possibly written by sadistic, devil-worshipping, 14 year old boys with a penchant for toilet humour and Scientology.

THE BOOK is pure evil. (cue extremely sinister leitmotif)

Here are some of the things THE BOOK (cue extremely ... oh, whatever, you get the gist) has demanded of Trinity (click on the links to read the corresponding post):

Give himself an enema

Lurk in dubious chat rooms with strange women

Build his own cross and suffer as Jesus did: Yep, he really did, on Good Friday too ... there's even pics to prove it

Family Love Day: (actual quote from THE BOOK) "Incest works well for animal breeding, so why not for you? Today explore your deeper feelings toward a cousin, a sibling or a parent perhaps. Taboos, after all, are made to be broken" ... !!! Scared yet?

Take a pregnancy test by wiping pee on one of the pages


And that's just the tip of the horrifying iceberg. But to his great credit, and I truly admire him for it, he has stuck with THE BOOK through thick and thin and has faithfully carried out all that was asked of him, with very little complaint or use of illegal substances.

(I would have had an exorcism performed on the bloody thing months ago and then burned it at the stake, just to make sure)

Mind you, it actually gave Trinity a task on Monday that worked out pretty well.

He had to send a message in a bottle to somebody.

He mentioned in his post that he had done so accordingly, sending it to somebody who not only read his blog but who also had a blog of their own. He refused to say more until said person received the message, when all would be revealed.

The subsequent post comments went something (actually) like this:

Girl Interrupted: Oooh! I hope it's me! I hope it's me! I hope it's me!!! Ps: I am going to be royally PISSED if it isn't me! :)

Trinity: I hope you aren't too pissed.

Girl Interrupted: :( *sulk*


I think his leitmotif should now be changed to "Poker Face" by that aptly named GaGa woman, because yesterday I got a delivery! *smug, triumphant grin*

It was in a FedEx box and everything! I've wanted a FedEx delivery ever since I saw Castaway, and here it was, a dream come true, and I hadn't even had to be traumatically sucked out of a plane or form a close, emotional bond to sports goods. Woohoo!

Fortunately the Swiss Family Manson weren't around, so I got to open it without fear of interrogation.

This is what I found ...


A real message in a bottle! It made up for all the disappointment of never finding one during all those warm, idyllic summers of childhood spent at the seaside, combing the beach for treasure and gazing wistfully out to sea. Wondering if anybody had found my own, childishly scribbled messages of "Help! I'm a prisoner in a toothpaste factory!", "I'm coming to get you, Love Jaws x" and "Tammy Laine smells like poo" (apologies Tammy if you ever happen to read this, it was personal, but I was six at the time, and to be fair, I thought everyone smelled of poo).

Ah, happy days!

So next I decided to read the message. Except ... do you know how hard it is to get a poxy message out of a poxy bottle? It's BLOODY HARD! But finally, after an hour of swearing, getting my finger stuck in the bottle, swearing louder, cursing people foolish enough to send a message inside a bottle ("Could've sent an email ... but nooooooo! WTF is wrong with just sending an IM anyway, FFS!!!" ... Gwen would've been proud of me) and unsuccessfully looking for a hammer with which to smash the message out ...

Ta-Dah!!


And here's the message (you'll probably need to click on the pic to enlarge it enough to be able to read it ... unless you have superpowers, which would be pretty cool and fancy *cough*show-off*cough*) ...


Isn't that lovely? It's almost as though he really likes me or something!

As mentioned in the letter, Trinity had also enclosed a really cool comic book, Fables: Legends in exile. This was such a surprise, Trinity is an aficionado of comics (geek) and is pretty obsessive (nerd), which I've never really understood, and may even have teased him about on occasion, having never seen a proper comic book or understood the charm and the allure.

This was my first and I loved it straight away ...


The plot basically takes fairytale characters (known as Fables) who have been forced out of their own lands by the sinister "Adversary", and puts them in New York where all manner of gruesome yet interesting things happen ...

Bloodfest MUCH.

I want to quickly show you some of the artwork too, because for me it's one of the best things about the book.


Cinderella (meets Kill Bill) ...


Not sure who this is, possibly the Black Forest Witch (terrible posture!) ...



Rose Red (giving new meaning to the phrase "keep your hair on!") ...

Awesome, eh?

But not as awesome as Trinity, because he'd even sent me snacks to munch as I read my comic book (Cheetohs and Red Velvet Cake! Mmmm ... who needs vegetables?) ...


I'm such a lucky girl!

So thank you Trinity, you totally rock ... you're like the brother I never wanted! You nag me and act as my very own Jiminy Cricket (not always a good thing, from my point of view) but you also make me laugh and smile, you're a good guy, you like lots of the same things as me (which obviously makes you cooler) and I can talk to you about anything and everything ... it's also kinda cool that you've been there with me, almost from the beginning.

But not as cool as liking zombies.

I really do have the greatest blog-chums, they've turned my dull and dreary week into a festival of fun and smiles, which is very much appreciated.

(It's ok, it's not a full-on soppy moment)

So, thanks to friendship you've had three posts out of me this week, giving us all an invaluable lesson I think, something we can learn from ...

If you want more posts, you have to send me cool stuff.


As Trinity would say ...

That is all.