Tag: hyperbole and a half

#oneaday Day 117: Justifiably Short Post

Hello. I’m not at home. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know exactly why I’m not at home right now. It’s, shall we say, a difficult time, but I have been graciously put up for the night by the lovely Amy Walker and her family, who have helped distract me a bit from the unpleasantness rattling around my head. Said unpleasantness is largely due to the fact that the crystallised memories in my flat were exploding in my face and making my eyes leak almost constantly. I was so angry, then so upset, then upset and angry. It was impossible to focus. Having got away from that for a little while, though, it’s marginally easier to face everything. So thank you, Amy, for being awesome and taking me out of a situation that was sending my mind down some dark alleyways.

Someone else I need to thank for being awesome is Allie Brosh, who left a really, really lovely comment on this post. I’ll let you go read it (and my gushing, emotional response) at your leisure rather than recreating it here. I knew that today was going to be unpleasant (I underestimated quite how much, but that’s beside the point) but Allie’s heartfelt gratitude for my post (and a similarly gushing email I sent her) truly made my morning.

Difficult times come and go. Sometimes really, really difficult times come and feel like they’re going to stick around forever. That’s how I feel right now. But when the difficult times go away again, all you’re left with is awesome.

So to everyone who said something nice to me on Twitter today, to everyone who sent me a text message or an email of support today, to Amy and her family putting up with me coming over, talking crap, drinking their booze and sleeping on their sofa, to Allie Brosh for making me smile, to anyone who comments on this post – to all of you I say one thing.

Thank you. You are the things that make it worth not giving up. You are the things that give me at least a little hope for the future, even as dark as the place I’m in right now is. And once all those crystals have finished shattering, once I’m reborn as someone new on a brand new path, you are the ones who are going to still be there for me.

Keep being awesome. Good night.

PS. Sorry this post is so disjointed and stream-of-consciousey and doesn’t include any stickmen. (Yet.) But at least a few of you understand exactly how I’m feeling right now. Others of you are sympathetic, empathetic, whatever you want to call it. Whatever. You hopefully all understand that my brain’s a mess right now.

So on that note, I’m going to stop talking. Good night.

#oneaday, Day 112: Hyperbole Squared

Sometimes you come across something – or someone – so utterly wonderful you want to share it – or them – with everyone. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will already know what – or who (okay, I wish I hadn’t started this now, it’s getting tiresome) – I’m talking about. Those of you who have been confused as to why I keep shouting “BAP!” at semi-regular intervals – well, consider yourself prepared for an education.

If you’re wondering who the girl on the right is, this is Allie Brosh. Allie, a self-confessed “sexy lion”, is 24, lives in Montana and has a Boyfriend with a capital B. She also has ADHD, a copy of Paintbrush and a gift for writing things so utterly charming that you can’t help but want to follow the chaotic saga that is her life. Her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, ping-pongs around between heartfelt lucidity, infectious childlike enthusiasm and some of the funniest, most surreal imaginings you’ll ever come across in your travels around the Internet. She also invented the term “mandatory sex party”, which went from being a three-word Googlewhack (so not a true Googlewhack, but I’m not picky) to having 28,800 pages mentioning it in the space of a year. And she apologises for saying fuck a lot.

I have no idea how I found Allie in the first place. I was looking in my Bookmarks Bar in Google Chrome and saw that mysterious » symbol mocking me at the end as if to say “ORGANISE YOUR BOOKMARKS, YOU TOOL!” I clicked on it just to see what forgotten secrets it was hiding and saw a peculiar-looking entry in the pop-up menu that appeared.

“Hyperbole and a Half,” it said. “Come and look. That’s an intriguing title, isn’t it?”

It didn’t actually speak. That would be weird. But anyway, I clicked on the entry to see what it was and was confronted with this post. It made me laugh. A lot. Particularly because of the drawings. Well-done bad MS Paint drawings are always amusing, but Allie has a real talent for drawing hugely expressive faces with the simplest of shapes. This, coupled with the prose, made me know immediately that this was something I wanted to keep reading. So I checked out the featured posts she had in her sidebar.

After reading the first paragraph of this post and looking at the picture, I was literally crying with laughter for a good five minutes. That’s not an exaggeration. Any time I look at the “BAP!” picture (in fact, any time I even imagine the picture) I start giggling uncontrollably. It was perfect – even more so because I know that I’ve done something similar before. The word “COCK!” became a useful, if moderately offensive, shortcut to fill dead air in a conversation for my friends and I some years back, and even as I creep closer to 30 I don’t see that situation changing any time soon. (I’m in touch with my inner child. Sue me. I am rubber, you are glue and all that.)

Also, this.

Once the giggles had subsided, I decided to delve back into Allie’s archives and read her posts from the beginning, which turned out to be the middle of last year. Her blog has evidently changed a lot over time, with it starting out as an opportunity for her to get the things that are seemingly racing around her head out onto a page and shared with the world as quickly as possible. She writes like I imagine her talking – quickly, enthusiastically, jumping from one subject to another and often getting distracted by something, veering off onto a complete tangent and oh look a squirrel that’s nice isn’t it? And she writes about everyday things people get excited about. Destroying snow. Getting drunk and going down a slide, only to find yourself giggling on the floor for a good few minutes afterwards. Grammar pedantry. Imagining monsters in the ice.

Okay, so some of the things she writes about aren’t exactly “everyday” things. But at times, there’s a beautiful, childlike innocence to the way she writes and at others, there’s a wonderful sense of heartfelt sincerity and honesty. There’ll be at least one story she tells on the pages of her blog that everyone can relate to, whether it’s the description of her shower being incapable of anything except “lava water” or “liquid ice”, the tales of her weird neighbour who always collars her for “therapy-time” or her account of the mission she went on to hijack someone’s Wi-Fi just so she could post.

Peppered throughout the blog are more of her hugely expressive MS Paint creations, always there to support one of her stories in a hilariously visual manner. I haven’t yet caught up with the “present day”, but I guess (judging from the recent posts) at some point she started to move more towards the “humour” angle and further away from the “personal stories” angle. In some ways, this is a shame, as the stories she tells about herself are always incredibly entertaining, but fortunately she has a wonderful sense of comedy, too.

So if you’re at a loose end, looking for something to read or want cheering up in a hurry, I strongly encourage you to go and check out Hyperbole and a Half. Be warned, though, once that sexy lion has her claws into you you won’t want to let her go!