Kitty | The Painter of Modern Life

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:38:33 GMT

I am doing the Big Read book meme because I need to chill out before bed, and I can't stare blankly at the TV like usual because Bethan has a boy over (really!) and they are watching a film. So I'll do this, then read a bit. Then sleep. Ace.

I got to get up really early tomorrow for a day trip to Manchester for this freelancing gig... Anyways, here goes.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I've seen this on TV so many times. I know that's no excuse, but I don't care enough to read it.)
2. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I read the first one. It was alright.)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (You will learn from this list that I do not like Dickens. I read A Christmas Carol as a kid and loathed him forever for it)
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (After Jude the Obscure I will never read another Hardy novel as long as I live.)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. The Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien (Like soupytwist this is the first book I remember having as a bedtime story, read to me by my dad)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (I fuxing hate it though)
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (Well, I'm reading it now. And wuite enjoying it, although everyone I know seems to despise it!)
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (I mostly just love the first book, but I love that pretty hard.)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I didn't get it.)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I read it for a very petty reason... everyone in my flat was raving about it and I wanted to hate it from an informed position. I read it in two hours. It was shit.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (fuck off, Hardy)
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan (I read the first few chapters then remembered I can't stand Ian McEwan. One day I will try again.)
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I think I have a battered copy somewhere that my mum passed on to me? She's a librarian and if books get damaged she cancels them from the catalogue and if they are still just about readable I get them, and give them a loving home. We're like a rescue centre for books. We never put a healthy book down!)
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (My dad has been trying to get me to read this book FOR EVER)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (I think I just avoid Austen books that I've seen the films of beforehand?)
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (This one definitely is on my bookshelf waiting for me)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (ooh, so is this one)
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers is like, my favouritest book EVAR)
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac (I read half of it then realised it was really dull. Great writing style though)
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (the fucker.)
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (Aargh. Need to read it again, at my leisure, to be able to really soak it up. Portrait of the Artist is fucking brilliant though, as is Dubliners.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (really?)
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White (My mum thought this might make me less scared of spiders. I just ended up feeling really, really guilty about being so terrified of them)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Could any true crime fan not love these? Or any true slasher, for that matter?)
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (although I used to have nightmares about the cloud world moving and getting stuck until it eventually came back to the tree!)
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (I used this book to really freak my dad out by pretending to have OCD. It was funny at the time.)
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (Emma insists I have to read it, despite the film being the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. It scarred me as a child, and to this day I cannot watch even ten minutes of it)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (A really hot guy once recommended this to me as part of a chat-up attempt. Why I didn't call him I will never know!)
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (A THOUSAND TIMES- LOVE!)
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (um, kay.)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:41:56 GMT

I have had such a busy two weeks. My parents birthdays are exactly a week apart, and this year that was consecutive Fridays, so I couldn't even go home the weekend in the middle, like I usually do, to gift them both. My mum's birthday was the 6th, so I, being unemployed, went home on Thursday night and stayed until Monday. Friday, mum and I went to Whipsnade zoo to look at animals and generally act like giant toddlers. It was fun. I saw lots of cute animals, and the zoo was pretty empty so we didn't get stuck in any crowds. Hurrah animals! Then Friday night we all went out for dinner, enjoying the novelty that was my parents, my brother and I all being in St A at the same time.

Then this weekend, I went back to St A at about four am on Saturday morning (slrsly) and after a five hour nap, spent the day with my parents for my dad's birthday and father's day all rolled into one. He picked a pub in Datchworth village for his birthday, daughter-bought pint, so I drove us out there. It also turned out to be the village fete! So we perused the classic car display and ate hotdogs and browsed the white elephant and generally had a lovely, sedate, country afternoon!

Back in London, I seem to be getting to see a lot of films for free at press previews that the lovely Jo has been taking me to as her plus one (mostly, I suspect, because journalists on the whole are absolute cunts and going to these things alone is a bit soul destroying) and last week even sent me with my own plus one! Her job has such good perks...

On the job front, I start temping (or should I say freelancing? It certainly sounds better!) at the company I interviewed for, doing the job I interviewed for tomorrow! I'm excited, and a little bit scared.

OH and I got a new haircut. For free. I was a training model for some Japanese people, learning the strange art of pretentious hair cutting at a painfully cool salon on Monmouth Street. You know, the kind that only do asymmetrical bobs or mullets. I seem to have got a combination of the two. They also dyed it two shades of brown (actually very subtly) and purple. I am not, as of yet, convinced it isn't awful.

Clicky for pictures...Almost looking normal...
Say goodbye to your eye... this is how they styled it!
Puple bit.
MULLET!

Prequel-tastic

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:19:20 GMT

I fucking love Neighbours. I can't stand Eastenders at all, but I love Hollyoaks and Neighbours. I like my soaps trashy, unrealistic and chock full of melodrama. I like plane crash tragedies, people faking their own deaths, serial womanisers with one leg, and people missing presumed dead who turn up with memory loss working for the Salvation Army. I like ridiculous teenage drug addicts, late night specials where date rapists get impaled in abandoned fair grounds, schemeing evil wives, and closet gay priests. Who doesn't?

I also have a massive girl crush on Libby Kennedy. I grew up watching the Kennedy family, and my first boy crush was on young Billy. Remember when he asked everyone to call him Bill because it sounded more grown up? Heh, yeah. And my first girl crush? Libby. She's like the amazing older cousin you looked up to as a kid, who always seemed so clever and strong and beautiful and you could never be convinced otherwise, even when she was babysitting in her jogging bottoms and burning your dinner. Even now, I adore her. She can do no wrong.

JKRs prequel-type thing was cool. I really kind of wish she would write a prequel, because if it was all James and Sirius running around back-chatting muggle police officers and taking down Death Eaters it would be pretty cool. But her James and Sirius in flashbacks aren't very likeable at all. I suppose she's never fleshed out their younger characters, so at the moment they're just walking cliches of teenage arrogance. Still, their story has so much promise! The drabble, meanwhile, is full of squee-worthy moments. The Order t-shirts were cool. Slightly stupid, seeing as the Order is, uh, secret. But hey, I always like a good merchandising opportunity. The flying motorbike will always kick arse, as will the cheeky teenage bravado of the boys. I loved that the policeman mistook their wands for drumsticks! That was genius.

I also devoured Supernatural: Origins, the graphic novel prequel that follows John Winchester's hunt for the thing that killed his wife. It was slightly disappointing, I guess. Both because the art wasn't my kind of thing, and because the storyline was a bit thin. I was hoping for more revelations about Mary's connection to the Yellow Eyed Demon, more info about Missouri and the Harvelles, and maybe an appearance from Bobby.

Not to be completely negative, I did love seeing John's stumbling firt forray into demon hunting, and seeing the start of this weird family life. The flash-forward storyline where a teenage Dean, who saw his dad shoot a man as a child, almost leaves the family, and then stops because he realises his Dad needs him to take care of Sam, is adorable. This family really does seem to revolve around Sam. He's the youngest, and they all strive to keep him away from the reality of their lives for as long as possible. It's lovely, but seems somewhat misguided. He ends up feeling isolated and eventually, as we see in season one, resents his dad and his brother for conspiring to keep the truth from him. The comic gives hints at this, but doesn't go into too much depth; for now it's mostly about John's move from family man to killing machine.

The little story at the end is cute, although feels like a fanfic drabble. I wonder if Dean ever did teach Sam to swim? Dean's desperation to stop his brother crying, to keep him safe, is so sad. They're just kids, and they're having the worst childhood ever. I really think John made the wrong decision. I know he'd just seen his wife burned alive on a ceiling, and that inevitably Sam would have been killed in the Yellow Eyed Demon's reconstruction of Battle Royale, but at least they could have had a few years of happiness instead of a life of pain, you know?

There was a rumour I read that they might keep this prequel comic going. I really hope they do. I want to see John's relationship with the Harvelles grow and then disintergrate, and I want Bobby back story, and I want more teenage!Dean and Sam...

ETA: And now I am going to do my ironing and watch the tennis and this makes me very happy indeed. Yay tennis!

Tue, 27 May 2008 22:41:07 GMT

I'm watching The Terminator. I love these films. I love that James Cameron doesn't patronise his audience, the way modern superhero/sci-fi films do. I've seen it so many times that I hardly notice now, but the film launches straight into the action, making no attempt to explain itself. For at least twenty minutes you have to pick up the story from the actions of the Terminator and the flashback dreams of Kyle (such a terrible eighties name).

I also love this story, because it's an epic that chooses to focus on the saviour of mankind'ss mum. Sarah Connor is the mother of the "one man who taught us to fight", the hero and leader of the future human race, but we never see him be anything more than a slightly pathetic kid. It's like the story of Mary before Jesus got cool.

Sarah Connor is a woman who kicks ass. She's a fucking icon. I love it.

It also has Arnie saying "Fuck you, azzzzholl" and, of course, "I'll be back". And one of the worst sex scenes ever put on film. There's hands gripping the sheets and everything.

In less Terminator-y news, I found a really cool website for all the geeky knitters in the world. Purlescence Storytellers is a blog where people tell a little story to explain what a fictional character would knit, and then post patterns and pictures. From Buffy knitting point protectors for her stakes to Persephone knitting something to keep her warm in Hades! The site runs classical and pop culture challenges side by side. It's so incredibly dorky, I wish I'd thought of it first!

Sat, 17 May 2008 10:53:02 GMT

I am having a geek overload.

I just read the second collected issues of BtVS season eight and squeed to death, and kind of wished I could buy individual issues so I wouldn't have to wait so long for the collected editions, but I just like them better! Still, it was Faith-centric and I devoured it in one sitting. Hurrah!

I also just watched the Supernatural season finale and OH MY GOD.

And now I'm running late.

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:18:38 GMT

This season... it's like Sara left and so did the Win.

The last episode involved Nick and Brass driving Drops, a recurring ~~character~~ suspect they got day released from prison, around the city looking for his girlfriend who was a murder suspect/kidnap victim. It's during episodes like this that you get poked right in the eye with the fact that CSI is a white show made by white people for white people. Brass's casual racism (all black men are criminals, all black men are pimps, their food is disgusting, etc) made me squirm.

Also, why did this plot happen in the first place? Isn't CSI about using the evidence to solve the crime, not about busting some dude out of jail so you can drive around making racist jokes like Beverly Hills Cop? Hahaha doesn't the black man eat gross food and talk funny? Hahaha don't the white men look out of place in "the hood"? Really, this kind of shallow storyline is insulting on so many levels.

Oh, and the previous episode had a little hispanic girl whose parents bleached her hair so that she would "fit in"... And this was pretty much accepted by the team with no comment. Aargh!

Couple this with the tendency of late for CSI to do the "women aren't victims, they're secretly terrifying murderers who kill their families whilst being weirdly sexy" thing, and I think this series might be losing its charm.

Bring back Doc Robbins and Grissom singing over corpses. Bring back meaningful interaction between the leads. Bring back Grissom's obsession for detail. And then give me a call. I'll be watching CSI: NY.

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:18:13 GMT

I'm listening to Metallica. Hurrah!

Much less sick today, Livejournal. I got up and did some washing and tidied my room a bit. No where near done yet but I can walk to my desk and the door now! I also opened all the windows in the flat because it had that mongy sick person smell. Like, stale sweat and stuff. Not nice.

I handed my portfolio in yesterday in a daze of drugs and feverishness. It's probably not as good as it could be for that, but since I did most of it before we got our extension, and therefore before I got sick, I have reasonably high hopes.

Today I have mostly listened to classis rock, knit, watched Supernatural (I'm watching the couple of episodes from season 2 that I missed last year- yay catch up!) and Stargate Atlantis on Sky (could John and Rodney get any slashier? Lines like Rodney describing John as "rakish" and saying they have a "saving eaching other's lives thing" and that they take it in turns. Too funny).

Later I plan to eat chinese food (apparently solo as my dinner guest is coming later and I'm hungry now!), knit some more, watch TV some more, and abuse brackets (take that!).

Ooh! I've sort of finished my ugly jumper! But I have one ugly addition to make before it's completely, uh, complete, so I shall save most the rejoicing until then. Suffice to say that it is UGLY and ill-fitting and the first actual garment I have made on my needles and thus I am excited anyway.

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:04:34 GMT

I'm siiiiiiiiick.

I'm too hot and I have a cough and I'm breathing funny and food tastes rubbish.

I'm sick and I'm whiny and I want a cold damp flannel and more sleep.

This is all.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:25:32 GMT

Listening to Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs' You Can't Buy A Gun When You're Crying makes me think of Supernatural, so here are some spoilers for the last ITV2 episode

I liked the last episode, but it sat unhappily over the hommage/theft line, plot-wise. They blatantly stole MOST of the plot from Assault On Precinct Thirteen, which is an amazing film with an even more amazing score that I must have watched, oh, a gazillion times. So yeah, guys, I noticed that. Not that every seige in a police station (that involves the cops having to free the prisoners, who were supposed to have been moved anyway, both for their own safety and in order to help everyone else get through the night, including a nice young receptionist lady who's terrified of guns and violence) has to be a rip off of Precinct Thirteen, although it is the masterwork. No, it was just that this episode was so obviously ripping off, not only the basics of the plot but much of the nuance and even entire shots! The moment when the possessed masses mutely approach the building could have been cut straight from the film. As could almost the entirety of the section in which they realise they're under seige.

I don't want to complain too much, because it was a nice spin (or should that be SPN hehehehe- sorry) on a classic thriller, but it was a little too blatant. I felt like one, definite nod to the original would have been better. I mean, Dean always makes pop culture references anyway! As it was it was just another example of SPNs frequent wholesale theft of the plots of genre staples.

Angel did this in an episode that had the gang under seige in the hotel, but it was nowhere near as in-your-face. It had the basic seige plot elements, yes, but nothing distinctively Precinct Thirteen until one moment, where Wesley and Gunn are brandishing their weapons and squaring up to the barricaded doors, during the calm before the storm moment (which also appears in SPN). This is the Jossverse, though, so the guys reveal which movie hero they are channelling for the upcoming battle. "Who are you?" Wesley asks. "Austin Stoker," Gunn replies. "Assault on Precinct Thirteen". So I guess even the hommage of this film has been done to death.

The last run of SPN episodes has been so good, though. There's been so amazing writing and acting on display (the less said about the appalling Bela, though, the better). Also more Bobby, and muchos exciting threads to be picked up in the future. I'm excited.

If I can swallow my "seen THIS before" anger, I actually did enjoy the episode. It had some good lines and I enjoyed the return of Agent Henriksen. Although will every FBI agent on their case discover the reality of what they do and fake their deaths? Really?

I liked Ruby's turn as Ambiguous Ally as well. She was... eviler in this episode. And Sam was too, which was interesting. Dean and Sam have pretty much traded places entirely from the beginning of the show, when Dean was the fuxed up, bloodlustin' brother and Sam was the "ohnoes, someone DIED!" brother. Now Sam's grabbing timid virgins through the bars of his jail cell!

Also, tattoos? Clever boys. Although the reveal of those was too funny, for some reason.

Ohhhh and what's Bela up to? Huh? HUH? And Bobby is the greatest. LOVE LOVE LOVE. And Lilith is a bit shit (another creepy little girl?) but the idea of Lilith as the big bad is super cool... I hope it's actually Lilith, patron saint of First Wives, and not some lame-ass SPN version of Lilith that just isn't as exciting. I'm not inspired by the little girl manifestation though. That would be too disturbing if the demon inside her is a filthy succubus a la Crowley's Lilith...

Ooh, which gives me the perfect opportunity to leave you with a poem from the Wickedest Man (no longer) Alive!(TM):

Lilith

The stench of the gross goat is in my nostrils instead of
the perfume of Artemis.
I plucked the Virgin by his broidered chlamys....who
could have guessed that hairry horror hidden ?
I have got gall to be my drink, who mingled my wine
with myrrh and musk and ambergris.
I made my bed of silk and and furs; and waking I found I had
swooned to sleep upon the midden.

Ah! Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some
rank savour of Sabbatic lust ?
What spell turned thhe, the maiden, to a monkey jibbering
antiphonal blasphemies
To those chaste chants I woeed thee by, the moment that
touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust,
Fair-seeming Sodom-apple ! Yet thy kisses smote all my
spine to shuddering ecstasies !

So strode the fool upon the mountain ridges, crying; One
step, and I attain the crest !
Lo! The loose cornice tricks him, and he tumbles, a
mangled nothing, to the glacier.
So the nun cries: One effort and I conquer; I pass the
gate, I win the appointed rest !
And passing it discovers the foul body of Sin that waits to
set his teeth in her.

So in my dreams, escaping from a monster, I turn one
corder; "there is refuge -there!"
Nay, there he lurked who never had pursued me....'twas
I who chased him to his proper holt.
Then, O thou vile adorable, my lover, my master, catch me
backward by the hair !
Fasten thy fangs upon my mouth's gasped anguish, and
split my dream-clouds with thy thunderbolt !

Though thou be God or Satan, do thaou master my death-
pand with thy life-pang, and possess
All that I am with all thou art, my Vampire, my Siren
that I thought a nightingale !
Abase me! Spit upon me! Scourge me ! Murder me !
Take thy wolf's meal of my loveliness !
Give me the reek of thy foul breath, and show me the
leper's face behind the shining veil !

Yae! Though I sink through measureless abysses, I trace
the incommensurable curve.
Thy foursqure wedge that rages in my circle shall match
it at the infinite period.
Polluted body, violated spirit, corrupted soul, stunned brain
and tortured nerve:-
These merge into thy bloody maw, Echidna, that shall
emerge the lone white flame of God.

Day Two

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:35:35 GMT

I managed to make it through Monday without buying anything! I joke, but really, I'm beginning to get a sense of how stupidly hard this is going to be. My brain is hardwired into associating new stuff with success, and therefore, no matter how ridiculous this might be, buying stuff makes me feel like a winner.

Which is dumb. New shoes are not going to make me a different person. I am not what I wear.

This might all sound like a cross between some horrible chick lit novel and Tyler Durden's anti-consumerist rants in Fight Club, but I hope it will help to examine the way I think and pull it apart, showing it to my conscious self as the crap it really is.

I fully intend to keep a diary of my progress in my Livejournal (and therefore, a syndicated diary through my Facebook). I hope that through this, I will be able to look back on this experiment and learn from it.

Considering I last went shopping on Saturday, I next thought about something I wanted, and usually would have made a note to buy, on Monday. I was wearing my hair down and sort-of-curly (I sleep with it rolled up so it's a false kind of curly when I wake up, on nights when I can't be bothered to blow-dry my hair before bed) with part of it pinned behind my ear on one side with a nice kirby grip with a daisy on that I found in my draw. I liked it, so I made a mental note to buy more pretty decorated kirby grips.

This was the point that I caught myself doing it. Whereas sometimes I'll stop myself thinking, "ugh, you don't have any money" this time I actually thought "you don't need that!" and I felt a bit ridiculous for having made a conscious decision to buy something I didn't really need.

A quick rummage through my draw turned up the partner to the daisy grip, plus a couple of gold coloured slides and a flat hair clip. Which is plenty, really. Plus a hell of a load of plain brown bobby pins which could be easily embellished if I so wished. I do own a lot of buttons and odds and ends of material, so it would be fairly easy to manufacture something new if I really needed to.

I made it a day before I wanted to buy something. This, sadly, hasn't really surprised me.

I also saw a sewing machine in Woolworths for £49 today. I want to spend some of my Christmas money (ostensibly already spent on crap I don't need, really) on this. The money was intended for my new computer fund, but since I got him some new RAM and a new hardrive (or rather, my Dad kindly did for Christmas), Hodges-the-laptop has been running beautifully, and I haven't had any of the annoying problems that were making me desperate for a replacement in the first place. But I kind of feel like this would be giving in. Despite the vow only excluding clothes, shoes and jewellery, to spend any money on something that isn't a necessity smacks of failure.

But on the other hand, a sewing machine is an investment, and not excluded by my terms. And it might also make not buying clothes easier to handle if I can make my own with some cheap, market-bought material.

Hmm.

A resolution...

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:38:03 GMT

I think I just had a revelation. Today has been divided between knitting, revising for my media law exam, and reading my new copy of Bust. This has been a bit of problem, because no where near enough of that time has been spent on the exam revision part, and the exam is tomorrow. Oops.

The questions that always plague me during a bout of procrastination have been whirling around my empty flat. Why do I leave everything to the last minute? Why can't I motivate myself? Why do I waste so much time doing nothing? This morphed into the usual pre-deadline self-hatred. Why do I spend money I don't have on things I don't need? Why, when I have a wardrobe that literally wont close, do I still buy new clothes on regular basis? Why, if left to my own devices, would I spend myself into bankruptcy with nothing much more than a box of barely worn, ill-fitting Primark shoes to show for it?

And I got to thinking, maybe all these things are symptoms of the one problem? There is something wrong with me. I'm sick. I need new things to feel happy, and when it comes to attaining my goals I am suddenly filled with lethargy. Then I punish myself, either by not eating for days, or through some other, more imaginative form of self-discipline, after which I console myself with something new. Something I don't need and can't afford. And then I punish myself, and the cycle starts again.

The fact that I am obviously addicted to buying things is obvious. I can control it to a certain extent- I buy things then feel guilty and return them, and sometimes I deliberately go, by myself, to a cheap shop like H&M or Primark and allow myself to buy one item, to get my fix without breaking the bank. But it occurs to me that this is a ridiculous way to behave. If it were alcohol that I was craving like this, I would have identified my behaviour as a serious problem a long time ago, but because it's shopping, and women with an addiction to shopping is normalised and made light of, I hadn't really twigged until now.

I'm hardly in debt up to my eyeballs with several maxed out credit cards hiding in the recesses of my wallet, but I can point to around £300 at least of unwarranted expenditure in my recent statements. And for someone currently sans-income, living off loans until May, this is unnacceptable, stupid, and verging on ridiculous.

I propose, therefore to kick the habit. I am going to go cold turkey on my most extravagent form of purchases: clothes.

Oh God. I'm dithering here at the computer now. The very prospect of stopping buying clothes fills me with dread. Ugh, which in turn fills me with revulsion. I clearly need to break this habit as soon as possible.

How long for? I want to say a year. I want to vow not to buy another item of clothing for a year, but my head is literally filling with images of pretty summer dresses that I look forward to all summer.

How sad is that?

Okay, no, a year will be too hard to maintain. Like a New Years Resolution that never gets past March. It's overreaching, and it seems like forever, so for starters I'm going to say three months to try and avoid feeling too defeatist about my chances. Considering I can't usually get through a week without buying something, this should be challenge enough.

Here's the vow, then. As the internet is my witness, I will not buy an item of clothing or footwear or jewellery until the 13th of July. Until then, I will make do with my extensive wardrobe. If the need arises, I will mend clothes rather than replace them, I will alter clothes that no longer fit, and I will make clothes if really necessary. I will borrow, and I will draft in the help of friends with sewing machines to make sure I stick to this resolution. I will avoid clothes shops as places of temptation with no real merit, and I use the time I would usually spend in them going through my wardrobe and removing things that I really will never wear or have never worn and getting rid of them.

This, my friends, is day zero.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:10:45 GMT

I lost half an article in a computer spaz out at college today and had to type it again. I was so frustrated/irate/destraught that I stopped trying to make an effort not to swear in class. At the end of the day my tutor told me to get a swear box.

Do I really swear that much? I don't even notice it, but I think I hardly get through a sentence without swearing nowadays. I have no idea why it's so bad. But I really let rip today... I was so angry with myself and on the verge of tears after I lost my work that I really turned the air blue. Especially when some people from a news class walked in when we were all working. The classroom is off the common room so people just walk in to use the computers and don't seem to notice when we're actually in the middle of a lesson. I actually did that really horrible "yeah, okay, we're actually in a fucking lesson if you wouldn't fucking mind?" thing. The poor embarassed girl legged it... although at the time I wanted to punch her for making a noise when I was trying to concentrate.

This pretty much sums up the relationship between news and magazine journalists, I think. Certainly at our center anyway.

Fuck a fucking swear box, though. Fuck it up its fucking arse.

I wrote my article in the end though. It's meant to be aimed at a business audience, so I wrote about the Beijing Olympics and about how we shouldn't boycott it because it's fucking hypocitical and besides, we don't want to give anyone ideas about boycotting ours in 2012. Oh and blah, morals, blah, leading by example, blah.

I don't agree with China's human rights back catalogue, and I don't agree with their actions in Tibet, but I don't agree with the war on terror either, so who am I to be jumping on them "they're soooooo much worse than us!" bandwagon.

On a lighter note, I have been listening to some really good new albums lately, which I would like to recommend you.

The Raconteurs' second album, Consolers of the Lonely, is better than their first. It's less pop hits and more The White Stripes. Let me explain. The drums are wilder, the song formats are less conventional, and there's more of a retro 70s-rock feel to the whole thing. There's also a nice country/folk influence that adds depth. Broken Boy Solider was alright, but a bit too safe and no where near dark enough for my tastes.

Blood Red Shoes- Box of Secrets was a super long awaited first full length album release, but now that it's here it's sure to be the cream of the indie rock releases for this year. A more garage punk influenced indie sound with louds of stuff that'll sound sweet on the dancefloor as well as some nice vocals. I'm not much of an indie conoisseur so that's all I feel I can really say... Suffice to say it's good shit.

I also had a listen to Camille's new album whose title I forget. It's sort of Goldfrappy, slightly off-kilter stuff. Some beautiful, husky vocals and some good hooks as well as unconventional sounds looped in there. Camille's obsession with her ability to hit the kind of high notes Mariah Carey would be envious of gets a little bit annoying though, as does her cutesy, "French Karen O" schtick. Having said that, there are a couple of really lovely, enduring songs on here!

OH also I updated my Rainlendar desktop calendar with some cute new skins. I now have one that's, okay, French, but displays a different piece of sushi on my desktop every month. How cute is that?!

Le sigh. Break over. Back to work. I have three more articles to finish today!

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:21:48 GMT

Bethnal Green
London - England - United Kingdom

A neighborhood on London's East End, historically known as a poor area. Bethnal Green was also where Willy Widdershins pranked Muggles with exploding toilets, which Mr. Weasley had to investigate in OP9.

(From the Harry Potter Lexicon)

Yay! So THAT's why my toilet exploded! Our new one is lovely though. It doesn't spray sewage out the back or anything. A "plumber" came and fixed it. I like to think it was one of Mr Weasley's colleagues from the Ministry.

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:32:45 GMT

Have I mentioned how much I love Planet Rock? They can't close it down, I can't get any other channels on my DAB for one thing!

Other than the amazing Alice Cooper breakfast show (SO worth getting out of bed for), there are the taglines. Oh the taglines. Personal favourites so far include:

At Planet Rock, we want to teach the world to sing. Like this... (cue classic rock song)
We're not rocket scientists, but we know how to rock it!
And the absolutely, laugh out loud brilliance of:
If music be the food of love... stand by for a good rogering!

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Meep. I've almost finished writing my article on lone travelling, although not quite. Although it's getting hugely long. Eep. And it's kind of birthed a second article whilst being written, which is exciting!

In non-journo school related news, I finally finished reading The Testament of Gideon Mack which was interesting in a slow sort of way. It was readable, but I think I missed the point. If there was one. I enjoyed it though, in an interesting, character-study way, but I suppose as an avid sci-fi lover, I read supernatural elements a little too literally by default.

I have an excited pile of books waiting for me now. I ordered a bunch off Amazon, despite being skint. I have:

The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain
The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler
Crooked Little Vein- Warren Ellis
A Pretty Face- Rafael Reig

And also Reig's Blood on the Saddle, which I read a while back and really enjoyed, so I though I'd invest in my own copy.

A whole bunch of noir/detective novels to devour. Yum! I don't no where to start... with a classic noir or a more modern book? I'm excited about Ellis's novel, especially, as I enjoy his surreal, dark, gory comic storylines.

Books=squee.

Also, I have started knitting a sleeve for my sick jumper (I'm making my first ever jumper and it's shaping up to be an ill-fitting, Weasley-esque monstrosity. I'm very excited about this fact. I want people in the street to go "ohhhh... Did you make it yourself? How.... nice." and throw up in their mouths a little, but secretly be really jealous that THEY don't have a hideous, candy-coloured, acrylic disaster to keep them slightly itchy). My first every sleeve! I'm excited, although I'm knitting it so slowly because I keep putting it down for ages... Still if I get enough work done this week, which it looks like I might, I can take an afternoon off to watch crappy films and KNIT. Yay!

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:04:19 GMT

Dean is the worst name ever. It sounds like bean.

...

WHY CAN'T I CONCENTRATE?

...

I have an itchy boob.

Meme. Because I've had too much caffiene and Family Guy to sleep.

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:34:20 GMT

Empire Magazine's list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows" ever.
1. Bold the shows you've watched every episode of
2. Italic the shows you've seen at least one episode of
3. Post your answers

50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City

45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers

40. Life on Mars
39. Monty Python's Flying Circus
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted

35. Alias (Really? It makes the list?)
34. Frasier
33. CSI: Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood

30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf

25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office UK
22. The Shield
21. Angel

20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who (new version)

15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica (new version)
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld

10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24

05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons

Well, that was riveting. In summary, there are only nine shows I haven't seen any episodes of. I spend too much time watching TV.

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:31:28 GMT

I get so frustrated when I drive on the motorway. When I want to overtake someone going about 55mph, they don't want to be overtaken by a "shit" Ford Ka (which are, according to many websites, always driven badly) so they SPEED UP. Then get all gleefull when I give up and drop back, seeing as now they're going 75mph, and then slow right back down again!

Okay, so my driving isn't that great anyway, I'll admit. I've only been driving since Christmas and I get confused easily when I'm driving somewhere new, which I often am, with lots of lanes and lights and three-lane roundabouts. But speeding up so I can't overtake you? Appallingly bad driving. Just because you're a man (usually) driving a "manly" car, does not automatically make you an amazing driver.

This didn't come out of nowhere, honest. Some twat was having a go at my car model today and I got all riled up.

Mr poor car. I need to sort out a parking permit so she can come live in Bethnal Green and get beeped at in Mile End and take me to the supermarket...

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:39:16 GMT

This is why no one posts things anymore. I just had to queue OUTSIDE the post office for about half an hour before getting to queue INSIDE the post office to collect a package that they "delivered" when Bethan was actually in. I swear, they don't even bother to knock, they just assume no one's in at 11am on a Monday and shove the card through the door. Lazy fuckers. I hope they all get bitten by rabid dogs.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:38:12 GMT

I'm supposedly revising. I drank a STUPID amount of Red Bull this evening in an attempt to stay awake and alert long enough to soldier through my incredibly boring shorthand revision tape, where some old geezer drones on in a monotone about football club groundshares at fifty words a minute and I have to resist the urge to a) write in longhand, b) fall asleep, or c) stab myself in the ears with mr biro. My problem is that the Red Bull didn't kick in and I dozed off a bit, so I turned on Planet Rock (my one working DAB radio station that isn't birds chirping infuriatingly- thank God it was one of the classic rock stations! They're the only reason I bought the damn thing!) and suddenly WHAM! the 'Bull hits me with enough force to have me jittering at my desk. Damn those uber cans of Red Bull! I'm now too hyped up to concentrate on anything anymore!

I just emailed the radio DJ. I must be REALLY procrastinating.

I want to write stories about a female PI. I want to read the second collected issue of Y- The Last Man because the first part was pretty good. I want to finish reading The Testament of Gideon Mack because I like it but I have no idea where it's going. I want a spring roll.

Damn Red Bull.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:35:20 GMT

My DAB signal is terrible in the flat here. Bethnal green is rubbish for reception, I have decided. We have combated this on the TV by getting Sky, but I miss my DAB! I can only get a few channels here, including Planet Rock, Virgin Xtreme and Birdsong. Hah! Not good enough! I miss Arrowrock, and Magic! I might have to look into getting a booster. I'm not sure how they work but anything that will improve my signal is desperately needed.

I spent this evening mostly practising my shorthand (at which I am still fairly terrible) and doing one of those blackhead remover nose strip thingies, which was totally gross and absolutely satisfying. Take THAT pores!

What else? I'm on work experience at the moment which I'm enjoying so far. OH and how much do I love that Neighbours is on at seven on Five Life? I teared up at that advert with Harold welcoming me back to Ramsey Street... You know, the one where he laments that us students grew up and had to do grown up things at half five, only now we can watch after our tea at seven! I'd link to it but a quick google reveals nothing...

Erm, that's pretty much it. Time for bed now, I feel. My recent obsession with CSI:NY has taken me into season four, which I'm trying to catch up with at the moment... but it's eating up all my spare time! I'm obsessed! I have loads of stuff to do for college so I'm trying to be really strict with myself at the moment but it's not easy, by any means. Aargh.

I have LJ tourettes, this post is rubbish.

Oh crap, and my paid account expired!

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:21:33 GMT

You know that old song that goes "this part of the night belongs to lovers"? Does anyone know what that's called? Or who it's by? I want to listen to it.

Power ballads make me happy.

I've been feeling crappy this week. I blame it on a combination of start-of-cold tiredness, getting my root canal finished yesterday which my dentist called "difficult" and I call "two hours of having your mouth open with a full grown man leaning on your jaw". Needless to say it HURT when the anaesthetic finally wore off. And throw in not eating for a few days (I feel bad, I stop eating, I feel worse. It's my way) and you have one sad lady. Still, I skived off college today to nurse my headache and take painkillers and sulk. Tomorrow I plan to get off my backside and go to college and stop whining, mostly.

Hot shorthand teacher tomorrow! That should cheer me up if nothing else does. He is really, really hot.

I kind of want to spend the weekend curled up in my armchair knitting. I might try and do as much of that as possible. My dad moved my old brown leather armchair down as well as my new bookcase and we have a new sofa and armchair suite that Bethan found on gumtree that's a lovely, well chintz I suppose, so our living room looks quite different and uber cosy. It's nice. I might take pictures soon so I can show off.

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:34:13 GMT

I haven't been on livejournal in absolutely ages, which is really sad because I have had loads of stuff to write about! My life has been well and truly getting in the way. Although I love having more stuff to do, it's been getting quite tiring... I could really do with a weekend of doing nothing to catch up on all the tidying and laundry and reading and other things I want to get done.

I should be doing something right now, actually. I have one article to research and write, a shorthand homework to do for the Hot Shorthand Tutor and I have a begging letter to write for work experience (and the necessary research to do for that so I can sound like I've been reading their magazines for years rather than only heard of them today). Instead I am watching episodes of CSI:NY on my laptop. Oops.

But CSI:NY is so good! Not as geeky as Vegas (I miss the dorky scientists of Grissom's lab) but with the latest episodes of the original CSI series showing distinct signs of stagnation (even William Peterson is looking decidedly mouldy), I have been seeking refuge in the enthusiasm of the early episodes of the baby of the franchise. The less said about Miami the better, in my opinion.

CSI:NY has all the classic elements that made Vegas so great; brilliant cast, interesting characters, clever scripts, bizarre cases and an exciting soundtrack. All infused with a dark, moody, grimy, street-wise, New York feel.

Err, but I am a geek. So what I really, really watch it for is the slow-burn relationship between Danny and Lindsay. Actually the cutest canon romance of any of the CSIs, and the most watchable, and believable. I just watched "Stuck on You" which really showed up the chemistry between those two characters, in a far less ham-fisted way than any of Vegas's Sara/Grissom "moments".

Oh, and I watch for Gary Sinise. I love Gary Sinise. Lieutenant Dan can captain my shrimp boat anyday.

That was a bit odd. None of the things I wanted to write about were CSI related... Oh well. Time for another episode!

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:50:54 GMT

I need a haircut. I am starting to look like an Afghan Hound, a la Jennifer Aniston in the latter years of Friends.

Moving this weekend has been loooong. I moved a massive car load yesterday but still have one more to do this afternoon. Meh. And then I need to get some unpacking done so I can at least get to the bed! I hate moving house. After this I don't want to do it again for at least two years. At LEAST. Hopefully never.

I've only been commuting into the Big Smoke for four days but I'm already getting London Lung as my body tries to adjust to the city air. I woke up today with a swollen throat. It's like taking up smoking. Eventually you need the pollution to feel normal, and your throat gives out when you're faced with clean air.

I love cities. They're my drug of choice.

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:35:07 GMT

Today was better. The course picked up a bit today. We had our proper news tutor this morning and he was lovely and reassured me that I will get better, with some guidance, at finding news stories. And that there are some options where I will be given a story to cover (just like a real paper, I guess) so I wont always have to scour the streets for excitement.

Here's where I need some help though.

Does anyone have any suggestions for magazines I should try to get work experience at? I'm having a mental block for some reason!

Also, suggestions for people I should try to get an interview with! Apparently we should aim high as previous students have got people like Sharon Stone! Wow! So who would be interesting to interview? If I get someone good I could even sell the interview...

Packing is still horrible.

The World was a Mess but her Hair was Perfect.

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:31:38 GMT

Ugh, do you ever have those weeks where the universe seems to be ganging up on you and you just want to hide under the duvet until it goes away?

Yeah, of course you do. Who doesn't? Well, this week is my week:

- I started my new short journalism course thing and it's a bit slow so far. We're only two days in but I failed spectacularly at an impromptu we-need-your-classroom-for-an-exam-so-go-away excercise in going out onto the street to find a news story. I cannot find news. I am hardwired to find the world boring and mundane, apparently. I found a good feature but sadly since we were looking for news, I failed. And then felt really bad about it and started doubting whether I'll really be any good as a journalist at all. Except, of course, I don't WANT to be a news reporter. Never have. Hmm. Hopefully I'll do better when it comes to the feature writing section of the course.

- I'm moving house this weekend and I hate packing more than anything else in the world. It never fails to make me ridiculously depressed and therefore make all other things seem so terrible, far out of proportion with the very small amounts of terrible that they actually are. My god that sentence made no sense.

- My Creative Zen mp3 player died on me. I think the battery's gone, most likely. Very upsetting- see above. I think I'll try and send it off to the manufacturer to be fixed...

- I have just had two periods in a row thanks to being sick two weeks ago and fucking up my pill-taking and biological cycle or whatever. Seems to be ending now, but really. A two week period is Not Fun.

- I'm stressing about asking my Dad for money. Which I shouldn't, really, because he asked me to tell him how much certain things were going to cost me so he could give me the money for them, but I hate asking for money and it's driving me crazy.

- I'm commutuing to London this week. This is expensive and uncomfortable and boring since my mp3 player died, and makes me very tired and cranky.

- I'm trying to sort out work experience at a magazine but I'm stressing constantly that I'm not cool enough or I don't know enough about music or fashion or art or cinema or politics to work at any of the ones I'm applying for. Why oh why do I have to be the person who knows a little bit about everything but a lot about nothing? Why am I such a stupid fucking idiot? Why am I letting myself get this stressed out?

At least the following things are good things:

- I am moving out, which brings, yes, more stress but is also a positive step towards... uh... not living here any more.

- I am listening to the new Hot Chip album in demo form and it sounds brilliant. I am also doing the same with the new Cat Power and it too is fantastic.

- I'm struggling with a third, here. I have Cadbury's Caramel in bar form and season two of Buffy on DVD in my room for later on, when I can't resist the urge to hide under the duvet any longer.