JULIE

It is Julie's birthday today.

She is awesome and now 15. The very pinnacle of angst and other teenage characteristics.

She has every season of House on dvd. I may never see her again.

You're eating brains out the back of my head

La Blogotheque is my new favourite thing. I'm building playlist upon playlist of wonderful things.

Maybe you would like to watch The Shins wander around Paris and play some shit. Who wouldn't? or how about Arcade Fire in a lift? Final Fantasy? Maybe a little bit of the Animal Collective if interesting sounds are more your fancy. They also have The Spinto Band! It's like the first one as well. So much love for this site.

These things are found here.

Can you be in love with a website? I am in love with this website.

That's quite enough of that nonsense

A girl that worked in one of the offices I clean lives in Hagrid's Hut. I almost wrote down the rest of the address so I could visit and demand dragon eggs or whatever it is that Hagrid did after that, I don't remember. There were so many French people selling food. I got a coconut thing and stared longingly at the Turkish Delight but there was no seller at that stand. Gutted.

I have written a poem about Jack and Jill. They went up the hill and got shot. It is probably terrible but I love it so who cares.

Not I.

I'm gonna watch the Pixies now. They are all so fat, I may just shut my eyes and listen. Kinda seems a waste of an HD channel but WHATEVER.

You're so vain

Woke up with a bad taste in my mouth and a headache in the corners of my eyes. But by the time I'm frothing minty freshness at the bleary smear that represents me in the mirror I've already started to erase you.

I am not a social person. I am only ever as close to being myself on a one-to-one basis and that entirely depends on whether I like you or I trust you (the two are not mutually exclusive). I would say at this moment in my life and for the best part of a year there are two people who could say they know me and I would not get defensive about it. One I like and one I trust. One of each like some dippy parents who want an ideal. I have never had any problems being alone. In a group or utterly by myself I think the same amount of shit, I overanalyse the same amount of shit. The times when I've come home happy are when I've seen the one I like or the one I trust. Which reminds me I should call the trustworthy one and take her out for a drink sometime soon. All I have ever done is seek the quiet in the bustling. Hence the West End where I can take a bus into people every ten minutes if I need to or sit still somewhere and not talk to anybody. I don't care what people think of me, you can believe that if you want to. What I care about is when people talk that idea of me they've created and infiltrate to question what I do. I have never asked anybody to help me. I have never asked anybody to fix me. I have been single for a long time but not as long as I talk. Because there's little to say. And yes I do in fact want a relationship but I want to fall in love. I want it to mean something and more importantly I want a relationship that will not change me in any other way than to make me happier. It's this reason why I seek and hold on to the people who don't feel the need to tell me what's wrong and what's right. It's this reason I fall in love most days with people I don't know and will never know or I fall for people I can't have and I'm not sure I really want but I fall anyway. If we ignore films and songs and books the last time I cried was at the sky, in a fit of what you might call pretentiousness. I can be hurt and have been hurt but you know what. I am nineteen years old in my second year of a pointless degree with no real job and no real talent. I am not even that attractive or that smart. I am alive though and not unhappy being so. At this moment, that's good enough for me.

So in the nicest way I can possibly manage, do fuck off.

Miles Davis had the worst taste in denim

There was a deer in the East end of Glasgow, running through the parked cars and gathering a crowd of green and white hoops.

Also McManus launched himself into the crowd sometime in the second half, hurdling the barrier of ads with too much momentum. Nobody caught him.

Pretty girls make graves

A one-way ticket to Paris costs £70.

A night's stay in a hostel costs €20.

So right this minute I could stay roughly 3 weeks and then hope I evaporate somewhere in Montmartre.

Sunsets with people you don't love

Do we, as human beings, have some innate desire to climb up as high as we can? I was just thinking we go on holidays and pay money to climb up towers and buildings and mountains. I wish I had kept count of every step I climbed whilst on holiday. I wish I could calculate the Empire State and the Eiffel Tower and the Spanish Steps and La Sagrada Familia and the steps leading up to Catherine the Great's palace and the Wallace Monument (I did in fact count those steps). We climb, climb, climb to get the highest view. Reaching up to God, touch a star, swipe a cloud. I'd make some reference to the Tower of Babylon but I never got that far in the Bible. Though I did find out the Whore of Babylon was just a metaphorical whore.

I have a sudden urge to write something about Jack and Jill.

The woods are full of wardens

I was never a religious girl. My mother advocated that her children would be told to believe whatever they wanted to believe in. That God existed if I said he existed. My dad kept his mouth shut, never one to push what he thought on anyone else unless it involved a man with a guitar. I learnt on his knee more chords than I can remember. I sat by the window wedged open by a red box full of business cards that I was invariably drawn to because of the colour. If I shut my eyes all I can see is green and that was the garden. This was my dad's first office in my first house I have a memory of. I learnt rock progressions, influences, diverging strands, genres. My early childhood is this kind of haze of trees and my face squashed against car windows and mountains and the sea. My very first memory was with my gran, strangely not from the set of grandparents I was closest to, and we went on a walk round where she lived that's full of these towering fir trees that plastered the ground in needles and smelt unbelievably wonderful. My memory is of cherry tomatoes bursting in my mouth and of red squirrels hiding up in the trees above me.

None of that was what I wanted to say.

I head into uni earlier than I need and come home later than I should. This is because I wander. I can't tell you where anything is in the West End. I can't tell you where you can get a cheap drink and a good seat. I can tell you walls and trees and bumps in the road, benches and bridges and ducks and the foreign section of Fopp and the little back street with BOOKS ---> on the wall and the new bookshop that's opening on Byres Road tomorrow. I can tell you stories about the BBC if we head down that way and how the price of bagels has increased since last year and how we used to loudly shout equations when we cut through the Maths building to get to English Lit. I could tell you stolen coffees during tests and stolen kisses during films. The mildest cases of stalking to kill the time before a class. I set out everyday in the hope of getting lost but my father gave me a sense of direction along with my dark hair, short stature and a cynical slant even he thinks is getting worse. I didn't care about university which is why I didn't apply when I already had the grades in 5th year. I applied when everyone else applied in a sort of 'that will do' manner. I went to one open day after I had been accepted because I'd already fallen in love with the place. I didn't even know where the other universities were exactly and I didn't care. See every day I can wake up and I am me, stuck in my head with everybody else's problems. But I stick a book in my bag and I get away. Cheaper than the plane to Paris or New York or Frisco or Barcelona or St Petersburg. Cheaper than the boat to Dublin or the train to London or Edinburgh or the car ride up to family I don't know on a island. It's easy to lose myself there because there are so many languages shouted over my head it makes me dizzy. In winter in the Hetherington building I could sit and watch a boy and girl frown over their own Cyrillic alphabet. For a few hours in the day none of you matter.

I'm not a religious girl but I took a walk through the park with the sun shining cold Autumn blues and I stumbled into a jam session half-hidden in a bush with a double bass and make shift drums. The preacher girl with long hair tied around her head shuffled along on the bench to make room for me and none of us said a thing. We erased ourselves in an afternoon and it didn't matter that I was floundering. My motto since I grew up was to keep in mind that nothing really matters. But don't look at that negatively because it isn't meant negatively. It's when you hold yourself quiet and just look and think and feel and listen and I mean really listen, you might realise that nothing is certain and nothing is true and nothing is right except that you are in that moment of time. You are this mess of colour on a rushing background, this pulsing breath of stale air recycling the thoughts of everybody. I am everybody who ever thought reincarnated and I am nobody and one day I will stop messing around in the shadows and stay outside my cave.

Every book is my bible and every song my hymn but I'm preaching to myself past and future while my present sits mooning with her face to the sky wishing she never had to come down.

Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words'

I usually try and put all the fictiony stuff separate from here, but fuck it. I'm here already. I was in a terrible bus today. Single decker, seats that look like you could lift them up and the windows were all too high. So I shuffled down, trying not to feel like a child and I cracked open the last two chapters of my book. The book I bought based on a recommendation from a character in another book. Everything is breathless and I'm not sure if half of those words were typos or if he meant them. It's writing, pure writing. Not fiction. An amalgamation of thoughts in various places with no real connection but the thinker. Reading it I almost missed my stop, then when I sat on my bench I almost missed my class dreaming past the white pages at the leaves that keep on falling and I counted every used up butt, every pile of ash, every chewed up wad of white gum. I scanned for treasure but found nothing worth taking home. The thing with Kerouac is every time I read him I fall in love. The front cover has this blurry half a smile and I fall in love. Sometimes I feel like all I do is fall in love with writers. Every good book I finish I adore and it consumes me until I read another one until my head is just this mush. Bits and pieces from films and songs and books and poems. Colours and feelings I try to hold onto. I've fallen in love with a dead man's words and saying that I know what is wrong with him and I know that I should never ever let him sink into my writing consciousness but there's this terrible longing for some mundane adventure. The ones you get sitting in crowded flats with the cheapest red wine you can buy that still contains alcohol. Maybe I've been unlucky. My first year at least I found a few interesting people. Seems like these classes are just full of class A bores.

I came too soon so I came back

You know I had some crazy ideals back when I was a young girl (but not too young or that would be creepy). I made the naive decision that I would never fake it. That in this one thing I would be honest. If I was feeling it then yes I would show it. And if not then I wouldn't. And to this decision I stayed true, for a while, much to the chagrin of the boyfriend. But you see I didn't imagine when I made the decision that I would ever become bored. I couldn't imagine becoming bored. In fact I remember the very first time I went against that decision. It was one of the most depressing moments of my dreary life.

Now maybe when I came online last night I shouldn't have responded to 'how are you and your vagina?' but you see I took it as a kickstart to the block that threatens my fingers and I've been ignoring by doodling nonsense these past few days. Time to test my vocabulary! They used to say I had eaten a dictionary, so time to showcase my thesaurus abilities. Though in truth all I did was not sign out and give vague indication that I was still sitting here. It is so very easy to be worshipped if you build the pedestal yourself. It was only when I finally left and my phone buzzed with the words "Did u?" that I remembered my decision. But I didn't send the No I typed out. I turned my phone off and watched a film instead.

Who would I see regarding stolen government money?

I didn't expect much from Charade. Before I even played it I wasn't expecting much purely from the synopsis and the fact it was yet another Audrey Hepburn film set in Paris (she does not cut her hair in this film). Moreover it was an Audrey Hepburn and a Cary Grant film. However, the titles were pretty damn good, all swirly colours and whatnot. But let me tell you, Charade is actually pretty good. It has a trio of bad guys including man with a claw hand and a Texan.

Also this



I watched Doctor Zhivago as well. It was very pretty and very long.

Tu persistes à regarder les autres filles

70 minutes into the Dark Passage and Humphrey Bogart walks down the stairs in a grand entrance making it the first time we see his face unobscured in any way. Which is a pretty long time into a film to see the main character. 70 minutes in and the first thing he does is hit on the leading lady despite spending most of the film in her company and making no indication of any attraction on his part until now. Then he leaves. Smooth bastard.

Opus 36

It's like a shrinking inside of myself. A retraction. Poke a snail with a stick and it'll curl back into its shell. I can feel my bones fold away, starting at my fingertips, rolling down my arms until I'm a tiny ball in my chest. This is a crisis of existentialism. This is when I waver, when I crumble, when I want to dial those eleven numbers of yours and send my electric impulses down imaginary wires to your electric impulses and I want you to tell me it's ok. It's all ok. But I won't because you won't. You never did and so you never will.

Sometimes I can control it. I feel myself slipping away so I turn the music up a little louder until my nose hurts, it's so loud. I slam my teeth down onto my lip until it splits again. I grind into the scar. I dig my fingernails, four white claws into my arms, my thighs, my neck. You have to hold on. I held onto Kerouac today as I floated away on a bench in the park. I left him take my breath away as I devoured his page-long sentences. I sank my teeth into the flesh of an apple instead of my own. And I didn't notice that I was inching forward, pulling my skirt along my thighs. I didn't notice I was mouthing along with his railroad rambling or that I had forgotten where I was or who I was until my music stopped for a breath and I heard everything again. Glancing up I caught sight of a boy staring. By staring he reminded me that I was. I thought he might say something, he looked like he might say something and I smiled to know it was ok to speak to me but then I hissed and stuck my burnt knuckle in my gob. I had forgotten about that too. By the time I had recovered I could only catch sight of his tawny lion head three benches down from me and he was lost to the fuzziness of my shortsightedness.

To best explain it think about when you are drunk and you realise you can't feel your toes without concentrating very hard. And that you don't seem to have a nose anymore. And everything doesn't seem quite real until you touch it. And everything is very far away until somebody takes your hand or kisses you or you drink very very cold water. Then maybe you might see where I'm coming from. Or you might not. I don't really care. I just don't like being alone at night and I am alone tonight and I am so tired of losing myself, floating on, waiting. But here I am babbling on the internet like some silly little girl again. Why can't I just shut up?

what a coincidence that we are all better than everyone

Over the past four days I have watched 12 films. 13 if you count the fact I am currently watching From Dusk til Dawn on channel 4. I am declaring that an achievement. I have paid a fiver for 8 films (once of which I cannot own for it was on the big screen), 2 more films I have not decided if I want to keep yet. I now have 63% remaining in my sky+ planner. So here is my new list. Some are repeats either because they were too long to stare at this weekend or they are yet to be recorded. Yes, my life is terribly dull. This is what I do to stay sane.

These I need to watch before next weekend.
Zodiac
Doctor Zhivago
Dark Passage (which will be my third out of four Bogart and Bacall films) - I have only seen about 15 minutes because I have to go but oh god so good.
The Strawberry Blondes
Charade
Withnail & I

Because all of these will be recorded over Saturday and Sunday.
Breaking The Waves
Tell No One
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Edukators
Passage to Marseille (which is billed as a 'supposed follow-up' to Casablanca so I suspect it will be bad)

A couple of real mean motor scooters. Ahh I love this film.

After this I should think nothing of falling down stairs

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

But at least I don't see you float away

My hair was pinned to the ceiling leaving me dangling ungainly, waving around like a skeleton decoration for Halloween. All the while the phone was ringing and ringing and I couldn't reach it because I was too high. Somebody was shuffling around below me, I could just see the top of their head below my feet but I couldn't speak. Not that I had no voice, I was incapable of opening my mouth. I watched instead as they rummaged through my bag and my jacket, found a packet of cigarettes and waved at me as they pocketed them. My purse disappeared likewise.

Goddamn fucking bastard. I never should have given him a key.

A love that would look and sound just like a movie

I have five films set to record over the weekend. Each film uses about 10% on average of the sky+ planner. I have 43% left at this moment in time. So I'm going to ruin my eyes in order to watch, burn and delete all that needs to be watched, burned and deleted. I got off to a terrible start as North by Northwest was too long to fit on my dvd. A whole morning wasted. As soon as I record this weekend's films I'll have to watch, burn and delete them too to make way for next week's films. A tiring process of cultural enlightenment. Anyway I'm bored so here's the list of current and futures. I'll update with reviews when I get through them.

Everything is Illuminated - gets much better as it goes on. Mood spoiled by Gogol Bordello reminding me of a dancing communist dressed as a hula girl.
Zodiac
A Time to Leave - it's an 18, French and the main character is gay but still I did not prepare myself for the sex scene. That aside it was rather good. Subtitles were tiny though.
28 Days Later - the film of continuous panning.
Sherrybaby - marks the first time I have ever disliked Maggie Gyllenhaal.
The Good German - very pretty, story was so-so, it lacked some of the ridiculous charm of the films it was trying to recapture but all in all I quite liked it. Clooney, much as I do like him, is no Bogart.
The Man Who Knew Too Much - there's something about Doris Day's face that meant I couldn't look at her for any length of time. It was really odd. Good film though but seriously, weird face.
The King - I've never seen a vengeance film so bright. Gael is love.
The Big Clock - ridiculous noir. I am happy.
Doctor Zhivago
Atlantis - I will always love that mechanic girl
Evil Dead 2 - was not in the room while this was burning, however I did manage to stick my head in at nearly every good one liner.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles 2/4 - love, love, love despite the fact Angel reminds me of a most irritating bastard I know.
Basil the Great Mouse Detective - Ratigan! O Ratigan! I love it almost as much as I loved it as a kid and I loved it so much the video wouldn't play anymore.
The Strawberry Blondes
Withnail & I

Eyes don't fail me now.

Also I came across this. Words cannot describe it. Ok maybe Drill Bra are words that will help in the describing.

I have no beef with the rest of this day

"It's about the job."
"You're here about the job?"
"Uh huh. Can I leave a CV with you?"
"You want to leave a CV?"
"Yes. Yes, I do."
Only I very much don't want that job after talking to you, asshole. You look about twelve, don't patronise me just because you're wearing a tie your mother bought you from Next. Cheeky bugger.

The art store was prettier and cheerier. The music stores refused to take it and redirected me to a website that instantly shoots me down (it is harder to blag when your options are merely Yes I have retail experience or No). Another day of selling myself. It's the follow ups that bother me. But I paint the smile well. I even manage a small conversation with the woman in Ann Summers, was cordial to the security guard that walked me to the door asking me if I though it might rain. I listened to the Classics secretary whine about first years as we walked to her office since I managed to turn up to the wrong registration class. So much politeness. I had nothing left by the time the old lady grabbed my arm and said there's a 66 up there. You can see it? No, no I can't see it. I am shortsighted and busy looking in the other direction where my bus is. Stop trying to make me get on the bus with you.

Goddammit there is no cornflower blue. Why do you need Light Crockery Blue or Light Grayish Cobalt? I mean really it's spoiling the doodle. I watched North by Northwest tonight. Cary Grant. He always makes me smile. And I found a conker today. And I walked further down the road to catch my bus into the class I missed to see if the black cat was out but only the other cats of that house were out and they never come when you call them. There is a band called The Vaselines. That is a terrible name. My hand is covered in authors I couldn't afford today. 6 or 7 of them in ink I'll have to scrub off in a big black bruise like the eyeliner that's sweeping down my cheek with every drooping blink

Fuck you Thursday morning

When I am awake but not really whoever i am talking to in my sleep starts repeating my name over and over ignoring my responds of What? I never get angry and they never tell me what they want. This is how I know I am awake. Now that I've worked it out as soon as I hear my name I panic because I don't want to face the world, not yet. I want night eternal, nocturnal bliss. And I want to know why my phone was left in a pay phone and what kind of mugger only steals your jeans. Seriously, fuck you mind. My head hurts, I can't remember what I dreamed and what I actually did (which is a worry)(oh no my jeans are on the floor, safe) and I have about 5 hours to kill now before I trundle on the bus to see what strange new world is lurking for me today. Fuck you.

I appear to have skint my knee. What am I? 5?

Don't you like it on the sly

It was hidden in a maze behind the physics building. Down a road called Science Way, i shit you not. I walked through some sort of workshop where a man looked at me funny with his flask, then I stepped into a courtyard filled with my fellow historians. Oh dear god though, I was stuck in front of two girls from English lit. I am so unbelievably happy I decided against retaking that subject. All those girls are the same, and the original was shit to begin with. Anyway I have to choose between gender and some religion thing that happened in France this one time. Gender has the allure of 'holy shit it's so freaking easy', French has the appeal of 'i don't have to buy any texts for it'. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I went to several secondhand bookshops for research. One had so many rugs. And ladders! On my way a man wolf whistled at me. Proper wolf whistle, which is a first for me. I thought I'd imagined it actually and did a terrible double-take to see this very serious looking guy in a doorway just staring. I mean was it the bizarre curls? The huge bruise shining through my tights? My skirt was great yes but covered almost completely in a big jumper. I'd like to think it was my fringe because it looks fantastic today so much so that I felt like telling someone but to save money I merely pointed in the direction of pierced-face ex who was out again today. So I'm going to pretend it was that and not my ass. Romance!

An old chinaman with broken teeth grabbed my arm as I reached for my headphones waiting for the bus home. Muttering and gesticulating wildly so I smiled and nodded and apologised. This was not good enough. Holding my arm again he started tracing shapes and eventually I realised he was asking How Long? It was a clock he drew on my arm.

The kids get high and eat tv

I've been having dreams about balloons lately. I think it's been about three nights now so naturally I turn to the same website that told me that dreaming of kittens 'denotes abominable small troubles and vexations will pursue and work you loss, unless you kill the kitten, and then you will overcome these worries'. The content of the site might be from 1901 and maybe that's why I read it because maybe it makes me giggle. Ever so cheery it tells me that 'blighted hopes and adversity come with this dream. Business of every character will sustain an apparent falling off'.

But pray tell me my esteemed site du web what does it mean when you have one of those metallic balloons in black and green and the colour rubbed off in a powder that stained my skin. People arrived, as they often do, and asked about all the crazy bruises but the balloons were gone and I told them I had rolled down some stairs. Not that I had fallen down some stairs but that I had been rolling down them.

"That is the worst excuse I have ever heard" and I woke up. At 4am my phone went off, this guy seems to believe I owe him something. I owe him something because he pesters me. It's like an insane way to guilt me into doing something. The hope that I'll take pity on him and open my legs. Seriously, that's insane logic. Makes me wonder if that's really how girls work. I mean why keep trying if it never does?

Anyway who cares! I'll be at uni in a few hours if I ever move myself. I have two days in order to bag free stuff! Free stuff nobody really wants! I'm hitting the secondhand stores so hard. I want a new jacket. Only I'm supposed to go to some lecture theatre that does not exist on my map and from I can tell it's in the Physics building. Wonderful.

the queen of the eyesores

See when someone tries to run you over with a bicycle, that's real resentment right there. That's when you start to wonder about yourself. That's when you think maybe I should have just sat in the garden if I was so determined to get some fresh air out of the day. But then if I had I wouldn't have seen the very first boy I never kissed who has since pierced his face. I didn't get a real good look at him because my eyes are weird today but man it was like he was pierced all over the place.

Stars died for you tonight

I watched Tess of the D'urbervilles tonight. Considering I have not read the book (I would have done so had I continued English so I was saving it for that) and the BBC just churns out period dramas all over the place, I have to say I enjoyed it. Actually to be fair I did enjoy their Jane Eyre despite Rochester being not what anyone could call ugly and Jane did try and the crazy bulk of the wife in the attic was decidedly slim and not so menacing. When you've been reading the book since you were twelve it doesn't matter so much. Anyway it was good and very pretty and the cast weren't too modern looking.

I have been dithering about my hair, mostly because of the fringe and it's waywardness. I'm blind enough. Two things made up my mind though. Straightening out the inconsistent curls I realised just how long it is getting and maybe I watched Gemma Arterton tonight and sighed silly little girl dreams about stamping about in the countryside all romantic like. Perhaps without the rape and psychological abuse though, sort of ruins the whimsy. God I hate that word. I like whim and I like whimsical but whimsy is blehh.

I think my shift button is broken again. I've had to go back and recapitalise everything. Stop dying on me laptop! I love you! Didn't I adorn you with stickers which were free and amusing? Didn't i painstakingly remove all the sherbet I accidentally giggled into your keyboard? Haven't I only dropped you twice?

I have an urge to rollerskate. I used to have the best rollerskates. Aaand I am losing a coherent train of thought here so it's probably time to go do something else. Like sleep! Or write, only I wrote half of a story and my mum told me my imagery was too dense and I don't want to cut any of it out. I wrote freckle-dusty nose and a vague scrawl I haven't perfected about the waxy remains of her lipstick and sleep is winning. Write tomorrrrrow.

Anthems for a seventeen year old girl

I've not bored you all with music for awhile so let's do that. What's new, what's new.

After seeing the name Ladytron turn up in ticket emails a ridiculous number of times (They are playing the ABC in November apparently) I thought hey, why not listen to them because you can't fault them on taste (Roxy Music if you didn't catch the reference because you didn't grow up on glam). So I am listening to them right now and I am enjoying the various noises.


I found a girl called Esperanza Spalding which first off is a great name and then I saw her and I had to check her out. That hair! She's Latiny jazz and it's all very pretty.

I've been listening to a lot of silly French sixties pop including an album from April March who did Chick Habit (which is a cover of a french song) and a whole bunch of other chirpy nonsense. I also managed to track down Roller Girl which was in the video with the socks! and quite frankly is a fantastic song to dance to while you wait for the kettle to boil. I also found a french cover of Paint it Black which amuses me.

I tried to gather some sort of reasonable jazz collection. My dad was very unhelpful, claimed he knew nothing about it and that I should 'pick an instrument I liked and then look up who was great at it'. So I just went with names I recognised. It's only after I'd done so that he tells me he has John Coltrane records in the attic somewhere and Miles Davis on his ipod (some huge album thing were his words) and a bunch of others. See I knew he had Coltrane, I knew I'd seen the name in our house before but any CDs that got my hopes up turned out to be John Cale (an entirely different John.) So yeah there was that.

From there I found the aforementioned Esperanza, a frenchie american called Madeleine Peyroux who sings like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday so I'm happy. I moved onto Dustin O'Halloran who plays these heart twitching beautiful piano solos and was in the Marie Antoinette soundtrack.

I found a band called Eskimo Joe. Their music is alright, nothing hugely exciting, but they covered the Pixies and they're called Eskimo Joe. They are Australian and their wikipedia page tells me their music is 'frequently played in the background of Home and Away'. Good for them.

Oh, I checked out the Mountain Goats after seeing their name bounced around a few places. He is fantastically depressing! Seriously I managed to pick up the album about his abusive stepdad but the music is good. I also got the Verve's new album because I thought why not? I haven't listened to it much but I keep tuning out their new single and hearing Love is Annoying. Not great.

The Dirty Pretty Things new album is fucking awful.

And finally this is the most beautiful version of the best song about other people's fluids. And while we're on her subject I like this better than the original.

I've been trying to find new bands you see. All the ones I like either don't tour because they're collectives or whathaveyou, dead or split up or are currently recording new stuff that I must wait for. I haven't been to enough gigs, guys. I've got terrible cravings so I may just start going by myself again. Also the Kills are playing the same night as Dylan Moran. Come on! Why can't the things I like space themselves out better!

Oh! I forgot Stars. Very pretty band, dreamy female singer. I've been listening to In Our Bedroom After The War. I am perhaps drawn to names but hey that's how I find some of the best bands so it's all good.

My fringe is too long. Why did I get a fringe cut in again? I forget for you see I am blinded by my own hair.

Also: we now have a mouse in our house.

Another bad morning

I was at a party, different rooms for different sets of people with overlap because I steal groups. It was Kirsty's house since parties generally are there. A note was handed to me with a conversation that trailed down in clumps of terrible handwriting that basically said

I know what you want. She leaves at the end of the night. Do what you want with her but tomorrow she's off limits.

And I sat on the edge of this metal thing while the party paused to wait for my reaction and I felt like crying or laughing or screaming. I had been sold and this was the receipt. He stood up and left and I waited and tried to make it out the door after him. Not sure if I was going to kill him or ask him why or what. Instead I ended up in the kitchen with laughter and whistles flowing through the swing door. I starting tidying up. It was eleven o'clock. His hands were tangled in my hair and I stabbed him repeatedly with knives and forks and empty beer cans but he wouldn't leave. Then one room started emptying. I stood up some stairs so I would be level with the last of them and he hugged me but left. Scored my cheek with his stubble. Couldn't stay, I'd be fine. As soon as the door shut something hit the back of my head and I fell. At this point I got up for some water and found myself in tears. I don't know what any of it means. I never know what any of it means, just that I'm tired.

Later I was shaking this little animal, ugly and odd shaped. There was something caught in its teeth and I shook and shook and shook until this pile of nonsense fell about my feet. There was a gun and History and yesterday and his cadaver hands and a set of playing cards and a bunch of other things and I poured it out while this girl watched me with the biggest bug eyes. She concluded that it meant violence and I crawled blindly towards the plug where my phone charged and typed in eleven numbers I didn't know I still remembered but I woke up before I called it.

I live on a diet of c-words

What news from the west?

Balloons! That's how they're luring new students in. Sadly I could not find the source. Feels like years since I been there and it's like coming home and going on holiday at the same time. The freshers are generally pretty rubbish though I did see the cutest guy with all this scruffy hair and sideburns but he was with his mammy. D'awww. Also seen was a woman with a motorcycle that had all this wild hair and thick braces (I do so love braces) and a man with a permanent one eyebrow up and one eyebrow down. Flooded a small area with CVs since my last interview went so miserably. Classics is still wonderfully cosy and History's door is still too high for me to reach the latch. I'm in two days next week for registration and then it's back to uni, a week on Tuesday. I am ridiculously happy at the thought. Not least because I can justify my pass again and take buses everywhere. Everywhere within the G zones anyway. My hair is an explosion. Fireworks on my head. I tell you I walked down Kelvin Way over the bridge and far away, thinking fairy tales, dreaming mythology, singing philosophy. My leather stinks of rain and second-hand smoke and my hair is Chanel, the only perfume I dare risk on my skin (I am influenced by girls in bowler hats, yes). It smelt like impending rain. The Subterraneans was a terrible film yes but there was a scene with the arty redhead telling the frenchie to stay away from the writer. Once the novel is done so is the love affair. Well I finished my novel and I fell in love. This is all I can make out scrawled on the back of a half-printed scene.

"Do you love me, Sophie?"
"No point in that question."

Used to be one of the rotten ones

I am consumed by girls in my head. Girls I want to be and girls I have been. I can put my hair in bunches and I am fifteen years old, I really have not changed all that much despite what crazy English teachers may claim. And I still avoid certain events, certain places for fear of finding old friends, old dates. I couldn't go into my local supermarket for months until it was clear he had left the kiosk job and I only dated him for a week. I am very much aware of the hold my past has on me. I like to repeat things, my memory is ridiculously detailed at times and I wish it wasn't. I wish I could get wicked drunk one night and erase everything. I can be sitting on a train and suddenly I think about things I haven't thought about in years and I'm lost.

Do you ever wake up confused? You wake up in the body of somebody you didn't think was you. You check your email and all of it is about things you don't understand, from people you're not sure you even know. The post is in some other language. The kettle had a different handle, the back door won't open and your head is pounding from an addiction you don't remember ever feeding. Sometimes my mind likes to imagine I am foreign. Completely foreign and I don't understand any of the signs in the street or the words shouted from strangers around me. I wander around and drink it all in and imagine I have a faraway home to return to. There's fear that grips me and pushes me to walk a little further, to ask for directions to a place I've been to everyday. I strike up the briefest of encounters with real foreigners. Ask where they're staying, how long for, where their home is. I hear Glasgow's lovely this time of year, if you can get past the rain. I seem to spend too much of my free time trying to get lost but I make it back to my bus stop everyday. One day I keep hoping I won't. I'll walk off the face of the planet. I'll erase myself because that's the only way you can remove everything else. I'll send a postcard if I end up someplace nice. I'll call you if I don't.

Didn't want no more voices in her head

I watched a programme last night where Joanna Lumley went to the top of Norway to see the Northern Lights. And it wasn't one of those unsatisfying programmes where somebody goes on a trip and nothing really happens. She went, she saw, it was fantastic. It's something I've always wanted to see. I've wanted to go North since his Dark Materials and South to see all the penguins since I read To Trouble a Star (which is a title I misremembered, wikipedia tells me it was Troubling a Star but I like mine better). I read a lot of Madeleine L'Engle books, I never thought much about the whole God thing. Bit like when I read the chronicles of Narnia, never associated Aslan with Jesus.

Anyway, apparently my gran also watched the programme and has seen them for herself when she was younger. In Orkney. Guys I think I just found a reason to visit family I don't even know!

Also everytime I find out Svalbard is a real place it's like my heart wakes up.

Also, also I've been doodling tattoos for about a week now. All I need is money, a large helping of courage and my dad to look the other way for the rest of the time I'm living with him. Not much at all.

Oh give me a girl singing over acoustic guitar and if she laughs in the recording I fall in love. Give me a guy who speaks in plain riddles. Give me something I don't have and I'll learn every part like it's new every time. Give me something to live for, tired of things to die for. I'm throwing out too much here, I'll never know if you wanted it. Like the boy in the union who asked for a pen and bought me a coffee when I started talking too much. Or the girls in my tutorial group who tracked dramas like soap operas. I changed names and altered situations a little but spilled out secrets, mine and everybody else's. I'm on the brink once my watch passes a certain point, well no it stopped. It's always at a certain point and I'm always at the brink of picking up the phone and calling you. I'm just too afraid that you might not pick up.

But there I go again, telling you all too much when I only wanted to share something small.

So kiss me with your mouth open

Saw a girl who'd slashed up her jeans above the pockets. I could see the lacy edge of her underwear and a hell of a lot of skin. Now yes, this sounds hott but she was tiny. Short, skinny, no ass to speak of (and there must be an ass to speak of) and she had this lost look. Not a lost endearing, potentially interesting look. But a genuinely lost look. It was as if someone else had taken a pair of scissors to her flat butt and she wasn't aware of it. Such a waste.

I've been listening to a lot of music. Catching up with bands I always meant to know but never found the time. I like having new strings of thoughts to rattle round in my head. There's cold in the air, you can smell it. I am instantly happier having sniffed this.

Also yesterday I had been on here for a year.

Her socks

I want them. They did a photoshoot with Kate Beckinsale to emulate this video (which is how I found the video and the socks, oh my god the socks) and it made me realise how unattractive I find that girl. Especially when they played they cut the two together. I'll take crazy Frenchie who can't dance over Kate sticking her bra out at me any day. Have you checked out the socks yet, I really think you should.

Also Topshop stole my pants. I buy three because oh look it's a buy three deal. They run out of the best one so they don't tell me and just send me two. No option to pick another pair to replace them. Gee thanks. Two is one less than three in the oh yay I bought something excitement scale. Ok so they didn't charge me and it is money saved and I don't need more underwear but still. They stole my pants. But the rest of my order is just awesome enough to make up for it. Top of the list of the counter argument to "Why Catherine is a guy" was "she has good underwear". It was a list to be proud of but alas, it fell down the back of my locker. Some day they'll gut that place and future peoples will know that I have never seen Pretty Woman and my pants were deemed acceptable.

Hey babe why don't you tell me one of your biggest fears

1. Spiders. Number five in the list of reasons why I could not continue dating a certain nice boy is that he was also afraid of them. I kinda need someone to deal with the arachnid bastards.

2. People on the phone who are talking but not directly to me.

3. Axe murderers in the bath behind the shower curtain that either spring out as you shakily draw back the curtain or spring out behind you and you can see them in the mirror. Hotel rooms are problematic.

4. Being buried, alive or dead. It's the one discrepancy in my belief that when you're dead your body is nothing. I will not be buried.

5. Drowning. I can't learn to swim because there's the chance I'd drown and of course I will drown because I can't swim. However I do like being in water, especially at night.

Right so you read it, you tell me yours back. It is only fair or I'll assume you're all afraid of kicks to the shin and attack.

I always thought I should be a film critic

The Subterraneans begins with George Peppard hitting his typewriter and telling it off for writing rubbish.

I am hopeful.

Ok, so after lots of ridiculous stuff George Peppard has an affair with this redhead and when his crazy French girl gets mad (to be honest you can't blame him, she was pretty damn hot) he shouts that there is no time to be faithful. She responds by rounding up every man she knows and listing why she would love them, then she has a big party, he's all like what's going on for fucksake! and she says OH MY GOD I'M PREGNANT WITH YOUR CHILD, BUY ME A TV. I may be paraphrasing but I'm not exaggerating.

Oh and it's done. The conclusion was you be the mother and I'll be the kid brother. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE RESPONSIBLE DECISIONS WHEN YOU GET YOUR GIRLFRIEND PREGNANT. He also claimed that nothing truly terrible can happen when you're young. He's 28! From this and Funny Face I'm going to go out on a limb and say Hollywood didn't get the Beat generation as it were.

At least the music was fairly good. Next today is Blow-Up which is "an intriguing, erotic film that's rich in symbolism". The idea of intriguing eroticism amuses me greatly. Hmm yes that is a naked woman, do go on. Also someone searched my other blog for the words "freckles" + "kissed every one of them" which is highly sweet yes, but a terrible chore if you're dating a redhead I imagine. The endeavor swiftly becomes regret.

Screw the whole mockingbird situation

I may have mentioned my pregnant cousin, and by may I mean I have mentioned my pregnant cousin. She's not pregnant anymore because she had her baby boy. Just now another cousin sent me the link to the baby site full of pictures of him and the mum which I'm not sharing here because I don't like looking at other people's babies that mean nothing to me so I'm not doing the same. He's cute and he breaks my heart. It's just not even something I can consider. At a push I can dream of a marriage (it's a big push) but mother? Nu uh.

Also Kirsty is learning to massage! Oh how I kept my face straight after finishing Haunted not so long ago and listening to her talk hand motions and specific places, I have no idea. I chose not to mention it.

Oh! and my dream had a book in it. Hand written in crayon (I remembered because Kirsty bought an eye liner crayon) and it was some masterpiece or something but right on the back page in the blank pages before the cover was a crude love heart and my initials. I'm certain it wasn't my book but I don't know if I knew who it was by or from or what it was about. All I know is I've written Blow him to kingdom come sometime early this morning and I remember cracking up when I wrote it. Oh how everything is hilarious when you're half asleep. Also, I have new freckles.

Then she did a dance I ain't never seen before

I had a dream that there was a screaming couple in my bedroom so I hid out in my own room that was crammed full of junk. It was like it used to be when I first claimed it. Who needs 2 spare rooms when you don't speak to your family and they never visit? I had blue wallpaper held up by tacks that held up most of the plaster. Slam the door and it still trickles down to my busted speakers. The giant old desk was propped up against the bed and I could barely move. I tried to tidy it up while the screaming got louder and louder and my stuff was hurled around in anger. My cousin with his terrible sideburns and robot knowledge crawled through the maze of paper and lace on the floor and kept trying to hold onto me. And it's all just gone, right now as I type this because the mail made such a noise coming through the letterbox and I've got to leave in an hour and I haven't done my hair yet. It is a mess and I always feel like I should pretty myself up a little for Kirsty simply because she is such a girl. I don't want her to despair. Like when she and another friend of mine tried to forcibly pluck my eyebrows.

I suppose I should eat something. And you know stop typing things as they come into my head because god knows that's not a good idea.

I should take my nail varnish off instead of picking at it. The colour is called Dancing Queen. I may have bought it because it was called that although Carnival Queen was also very tempting. Full of glitter though and that goes gunky. Ah fuck, I need to decide if I can be bothered wearing a skirt. And see if I have money. And eat something. And do my hair. And fuck. My dreams are getting so fucking detailed and so bloody boring. I'm bored being asleep and I wake up shattered. Not fair! Oh! and it was so weird I found a bunch of pictures of a film called Blowup that seemed awesome and then it was on tv last night! Like it knew I wanted to see it. I also found a film version of Kerouac's The Subterraneans which I have set to record but have since found out it is terrible. But still I shall watch. I must admit The Lonesome Traveler has some beautifully insane descriptions but there's no point to any of it. I like it but I can't read it when I'm sleepy, makes me dizzy.

Ok, ok I'm going. Look at me being social and normal and sensible and I am out of underwear I think. Bleh mornings.

She knows that it'd be tragic if those evil robots win

I've been listening to The Flaming Lips a ton recently. And by that I mean Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots which I distinctly remember looking up because the name was so promising. Them and Cibo Matto because nonsense and strange noises work so well with a sunny day. I jumped off the bus three stops early and doubled back in the sunshine to walk down old haunts. I forgot how many people I knew lived up there. I hesitated on the edge of one street. It branches left and right with different names, each one is a dead end. One end was our den, the other was where the other Jennifer lived, the little tomboy sister of Christopher number two. Violent little angel. But my Jennifer doesn't live there anymore in her haunted house I half-lived in myself and can remember a ridiculous amount about. I've been feeling far too nostalgic lately but I've been watching too many old films with too many old film starlets that she wanted to be so you know. Association.

I had a long thought but when I tried to write it down I got as far as Ceilings bother me. I had this intense sensation of drowning.

I watched The Blue Dahlia last night. In bursts though as I kept getting interrupted. It was written by Raymond Chandler and starred Veronica Lake, whose picture we have on our kitchen wall, so I thought oo it'll be good. First watch I'm thinking not so much but mostly because I guessed the ending more or less and the dialogue seemed awful slow. Maybe he was just better at novels than scripts. I'm watching Silence of the Lambs because I've never seen it all the way through and then I'm back to noirs with House of Bamboo. And North by Northwest which I've been meaning to see for years. I do love Cary Grant, he makes me smile.

I remembered something a friend of mine told me. She marks her calendar to keep track of her drunkenness. Smiley faces for good nights out, Ooops! for mistakes. I just couldn't imagine writing oops next to a date. I do squiggles if there's things I need to keep track of but paired with what sort of mistakes she's recording I don't think ooops! covers it.

I shall end on people since I've done quite well in talking to strangers. There's the french girl who I talked to about the rain until her phone went off. She was this blonde little thing, with white cigarettes and a zippo lighter that looked so out of place in her hand and she held up the phone through all that hair and crouched down to the ground. Like a doll with a living face. There was the girl in the toilets who I caught dancing in front of the mirror and the other girl in the other toilets whose dress I complimented trying to keep a straight face and I won a subconscious wiggle of the swishy skirt. And lastly there was the little girl with a blue hair net pulled over her face chasing her brother round and round roaring. Yes, I admitted when she asked. She did look really scary.