New Slang

I blew up a seagull

2008-10-03T21:48:00.002+01:00

This blog is now closed.

Thank you for reading all of this utter, utter bollocks. At 374 posts, 15 drafts and 1 year and almost 1 month I think it's time to move on. I shall not delete it as I was tempted to do. Despite it's ridiculousness I am rather fond of this little space.

Anyway I thought I should say something. I said hello after all, I should say goodbye for symmetry.

Let's end it on this

2008-10-02T11:57:00.003+01:00

I have to write a seminar paper for History. You will not believe how fucking easy this course is. My paper is 800 words plus I have to give a presentation with a couple of other girls. I have to talk for maybe 5 minutes. My essay for the semester is 1500 words. I mean I wrote 1500 the other day in one sitting. I could sit here and write 800 words. Granted they wouldn't be very academic but it is nothing. Not that I am complaining. Course not. But Jesus. 800 words.

What's my subject? Well I took Gender again because 'some religious battle in France' was already full. But I decided not to do femininity this year. It was the same question I'd answered last year and I mean 800 words, I may as well read something new right? Challenge myself.

Could men lose their claim to manhood in early modern Europe?

That is my paper.

I also learned about Satyr burlesque but that's a whole nother subject.

JULIE

2008-09-30T08:30:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-28T20:41:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-28T16:49:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-28T09:15:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-27T17:53:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-27T10:42:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-26T20:13:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-26T10:31:00.002+01:00

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'

2008-09-25T18:03:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-25T10:16:00.003+01:00

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?

2008-09-24T20:15:00.005+01:00

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

2008-09-24T10:35:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-23T22:59:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-22T22:12:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-22T16:00:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-22T10:55:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-19T15:32:00.016+01:00

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

2008-09-18T23:31:00.002+01:00

"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

2008-09-18T10:02:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-17T17:14:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-17T10:03:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-16T16:38:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-14T22:47:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-12T09:50:00.009+01:00

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.

2008-09-11T13:20:00.001+01:00

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

2008-09-11T09:47:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-10T20:01:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-10T08:57:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-08T16:55:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-07T19:33:00.004+01:00

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.

2008-09-06T19:40:00.001+01:00

Also yesterday I had been on here for a year.

Her socks

2008-09-05T12:44:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-04T22:30:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-04T10:05:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-03T19:11:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-03T09:50:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-02T09:29:00.004+01:00

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.

To the workers in the Bell Street office

2008-08-30T17:23:00.002+01:00

One: Milk cannot be recycled. Nice try, you are all disgusting.

Two: The cupboard is not a kissing booth. Please don't, just don't.

It was gay day today. George square just packed fulla pride. Lot of scary-looking lesbians. Every one I've ever met has had huge breasts, it's intimidating.

On a completely unrelated, I swear, note I saw the most beautiful girl. Asian with fantastic flicky hair and great jeans and I very nearly fell over I was staring so much which would have been bad as I was crossing the street. She just had a look about her that made me want to know her.

On another unrelated note I shopped too much. Must stop that. Soon.

My little sister's eyes so wide

2008-08-29T12:10:00.006+01:00

A website glitched and refused to work for me. So I emailed them and they offered me an alternative and then I gave them something I wrote that was sent back to me because she'd given me the wrong email. So I grit my teeth and sent another email and got the right one and gave them something I wrote. Guys this is huge for me. Huge! Half the reason I don't do things is because I'm incapable of writing formalities about myself. I can psyche myself up enough to send things off, hand in cvs, fill out application forms, enter competitions but jesus a handful of words saying here it is, here I am, hope to hear from you. I just can't.

So yeah, go me. Now all I have to do is win.

I was watching the news just there. They were talking to some woman about McCain and dear god. Everything she said was a perfected speech. She was aggressive and defensive and it wasn't for the fact that it was a woman asking her the questions I would have despaired of my gender completely. She was this blonde, stretched, caked thing. Older than she wished she looked. Oh, it was bad.

In other news Julie stayed home sick today and played GTA in the way only she can. I have not seen such spectacular spins of flaming vehicles and the cries of oh crap! why did I get back in? The defining moment was when she tried to steal a Mafia car. She got punched, shot in the head and when she casually sauntered away three burning cars hemmed her in and crushed her polygon head before everything exploded and she was informed she had been wasted.

"Why did they do that?" My little girl wailed. "What did I do to them?" Then she shot a policeman and battered a whore, complaining that she didn't have much money for a prostitute.

My brain and tongue just met and they ain't friends just yet

2008-08-28T21:08:00.004+01:00

Ok so I watched The Simpsons Movie (bad but I guess not terrible) and I watched The Wicker Man (which could have been called Nicholas Cage Punches Some Women) and I also watched Back to the Future (I forgot they swore quite so much, I was surprised and amused). But forget all them.

I recorded a film called Love Me if You Dare because it had Marion Cotillard in it and I now know who she is since I watched La Vie en Rose (and she's in Big Fish! I did not know this). It wasn't until the french title told me it was called Jeux d'enfants that I realised I had heard of this film before. Two kids start playing a game of dares that carries on as they grow up getting more and more dangerous is basically what Sky told me. Pah! It gave no indication about what the film was like. This was one of the most ridiculous, silly and ultimately pointless love stories I have watched in a while and I adored it. It was like if Amelie had a really mean streak and I do hate comparing every French film to Amelie but colour wise and silliness wise I'm going to do it anyway. Completely different message and the ending was almost ruined. It was so perfect and then there was another scene and I was like nooooooooooooooo but then it was ok. If I interpreted it right, then it was good.

So in conclusion I am very much in love with this movie. It may be that it's because he looks like a guy I fell in love with for awhile this year but I'd like to think it was more because the film was good.

Spill it out on the ragged floor

2008-08-28T11:43:00.002+01:00

I sometimes feel that I project myself onto others too much. Like I'm slowly gathering a group of people to reflect my own personality. Collecting familiar traits. I can pick and choose and avoid the parts of me I hate. Mostly. I thought this a lot more eloquently than I'm writing it.

I'm watching another french thriller. This time about a page turner plotting revenge against a pianist who dashed her hopes of brilliant piano playing as a child. At least that's what the information button tells me. So far it's been a lot of weird looks from the girl who played the mother in L'Enfant (and who is rather good) and I think she's trying to injure the pianist's son subtley through difficult piano playing and she just kissed the pianist and made things awkward. The pianist is a woman. I think I just missed some sort of lesbian connection just now by typing. I'm really only watching because the pianist looks like an older version of an old friend of mine. Seriously I think the French can make a thriller from anything. I've watched lemmings, children and piano players. Interesting mix. I'm just not sure where the revenge is coming in. Unless it's I will destroy you by loving you! Maybe I should pay more attention.

Oh holy crap awesome bit!

This cello player put the moves on revenge girl. He handed her his cello and then just launched some sort of awkward boobattack from behind. Her face didn't change but her hand moved up the neck of the cello and I was like no that's terrible phallic imagery, terrible! But then she slammed the spike on the bottom of the cello onto his foot and he is in hospital. The music implies that more revenge is to come. I think she's now trying to drown the son. And I think I just saw her breasts. This is why you should close the curtains in changing rooms properly. She's like some sort of evil lesbian, I love it.

Je me souviendrais de mon petit ami

2008-08-27T14:59:00.003+01:00

My dad just called from Paris. He's there filming for a day and called to make me jealous.

"I can save you some money. I'll take notes for your research instead. Not like there's any other reason to go." I shrugged off his taunts and he sighed. No fun if I don't get wound up.

Apparently it's sunny and the woman in the background sounded like she was shouting about her cat.

Bring me back a fat notebook of grey rain, writers hideouts, sweeping skylines and a kiss of Autumn boatrides. I miss my French lecture hall. I realised that last year. I miss the freezing room that smelt of gas as I sat there so very lost with all those grammar points I never learnt squeezed in snug with the curly-haired crazy and the silly-named Russian. Friends for a year and lost when I restarted. So many films and coffees and cheating on tests. Societies full of foreigners and bands with fractured English.

I watched The Black Dahlia again. It makes more sense when people stop asking whatcha watching, who's that guy, why's he doing that? Still not great though but now I have the book to compare it to.

2008-08-27T09:41:00.002+01:00

Falling apart not at the seams. Seams can be repaired, tidied up, tucked away. Any seamstress will tell you it's the main fabric you want to avoid tearing. Even if you can save it, it will look ugly. It will look repaired.

I'll just sit here and bleed at you

2008-08-26T12:36:00.002+01:00

I woke up early early this morning and shifted through texts I couldn't be bothered reading last night. I always like waking up to something to read. Although probably not great to start the day beating yourself up over the fact that someone is using an extended metaphor of addiction in an attempt to see you again. I'm better than heroin, guys! Fuck I guess I just can't help being so goshdarn amazing, now can I.

Anyway I woke up early early and decided to publish stories in my head. Plan out interviews and signings and reading and most importantly the dedications. Spend advances so far in advance you won't even have to think when you get the cheque. This destroyed an hour. Then I got up and sighed at my fringe for several minutes. I went back to bed with a pen but only doodled screaming attacks on my own personality.

Oh fuck what did they do to Sharleen Spiteri?

I'm poring over maps instead, calculating costs and packing bags full of books. I'm sitting in the red Mustang my uncle owned when he was my age, cheaper than an airplane because other people's memories don't cost me a thing. There's printouts and annotations and scraps of plans of ideas. Go here and here and here. Part of me was resigned to the fact that I wasn't going to get it out, thinks there's no point I'm never going to get there, never going to do anything. But fuck it, I have to try. So there's guidebooks and maps and printouts and my tights have a line trailing up the back of my legs because you have to wear a skirt to write this. Do my hair even though there's nobody to do it for. I'm doing it for my notebook, impressing my own characters, and I'm thinking ahead of advances and long trips and walks round buildings I love. I'm thinking dedications and piles of paper with a finished quality to them. My dad wrote two books, one he was commissioned to do so it doesn't count as much I guess. Still two books means my name is in two dedications. My mum told me the other day that some college course used his first as a textbook for a while which meant a bunch of students read my name.

This is what I did to pass the time before I made it down the stairs.

You'll remember the guy who said all those big words

2008-08-25T15:12:00.003+01:00

My mum picked me up a street away from home. Julie was feeling ill and needed picked up from school. School never changes. Even after all those fancy renovations it went through, it's the same old daft place. Keeping my head down I recognised my English teacher coming out of the office and just prayed she'd keep on going. When I say my English teacher I mean she was the head of the department and I had her for three of the five years I studied English. We didn't get on. Not really. In first year she read my first novel and told me what I was doing wrong which was good. In third year she criticised my interpretations of Shakespeare but she praised my essay on The Yellow Wallpaper. In fourth year she criticised my taste in literature until I turned up with Steinbeck and Orwell and that shut her up. It was my fifth year teacher who let me run riot with my ideas even when they were blatantly bullshit. It was my second year teacher who gave me books and told me to read Sylvia Plath because she was a 'mouthy feminist so I was sure to like her'. He was the one who pinned every essay of mine to the wall of the English corridor. I did not pick advanced higher English despite my A in higher because I did not like her. I wasted my time in Spanish and Music and Philosophy instead. I had to deal with her on the last day when the littlest one went to get her card signed and she turned those scary witch eyes to me and said "So Catherine. What is it you're doing?" And I don't lie and tell her English. "Why didn't you pick advanced higher then? It would have been helpful?" Oh you know, other things. Keep my options open.

So woe is me indeed when she suddenly turned and said "Catherine! I didn't recognise you! What is it you're doing?" And I don't lie and tell her History. "Did you not enjoy English?" I lie and say I did very much so but French was iffy. "You should have picked advanced higher. I remember your critical evaluations." Critical Evaluations. I loved that phrase. It was so ridiculously academic for an essay. And then the dreaded "So what will you do after that?" And I can't answer. I can't say I'll write. I can't say I have plans. I can't say I'll backpack across Europe and start a writers commune like Byron. Because come on who doesn't want that? Apart from all the dying. Some scandalous hideaway of the best. We could revel in our genius. I escape after a few more awkward uh huhs and smiles. She says I look different, I've changed and she waves her hand in my facial direction. I don't want to tell her that it's because my hair is scraped back and curly. Or because I was hungover. Or because I hadn't brushed my teeth yet, or changed my jeans that I dried sitting on the sink counter with one foot holding the door shut and the drier blasting my sodden crotch. And I bloody well hope I look different from when I was seventeen!

Then I bumped into my French teacher. The one who tried to get me to thank him for my A. He gave me an odd look but said nothing, thank God. I didn't need to meet every teacher from subjects I ditched in university.

And this was the first thing she chose to animate

2008-08-24T00:01:00.005+01:00

I made this ages ago to show Julie how to animate in Photoshop

2008-08-23T21:57:00.001+01:00

Jump from the hook

2008-08-23T11:30:00.003+01:00

Meet a new person and tell them your name is Kate, Alice, Cassandra, Natasha, Gwen. Tell them you're twenty-four or sixteen. You're studying Chemistry, Sociology, English or Russian. Do your hair a different way, put on make-up for a change, a dress, an outfit. Dance with a man who could be your father and tell him you're younger than you are and see if he falters. Tell them you're foreign, speak with the accent you practiced in all those language classes and buy another beer until you believe it yourself. Change your tastes and preferences just for a moment until someone new comes along and you can switch, jump ship, buy another drink.

It's an extension from when the hairdresser asks if you're doing anything nice after this. My boyfriend's coming up to see me, my girlfriend's back from holiday, I'm going shopping, I'm going to a party, a gig, an orgy, I'm going home. Doesn't matter what I'm doing, tell them something different anyway.

Meet a new person and choose your own adventure. Just remember to backtrack if you decide to like them. Remember what you lied, what you want to keep, what you want to change. It's a complicated business this juggling act.

I found all my old postcards under my bed, and letters and junk. I found my secret box, the one with two lids that are a pain in the ass to open and held so many things. Torn up love letters and rings and necklaces and stones and secrets. I pulled them both open, wrecking the skin on my thumb that's already looking ropey from trying to make things work, and there was nothing inside. I'd taken it all out last time I found it. Disappointment.

I tell the tale of a girl, but I call her a woman

2008-08-21T22:43:00.004+01:00

It's a boiling snarl that doesn't suit me, pulling my lip from somewhere around my nose, inclination of my eye. It's the sound of a kitchen knife being pulled from it's drawer. It's the sound of the skin snagging and tearing. It's the pop as my teeth break my skin again and again, disfiguring my smile by distraction. One drunken kick to my face and I can still taste his boot. I laughed into the treads of mud and rubber. With each new lie I build a better model. I read somewhere recently I forget where, I read a lot, too much that's what they told me. I read too much, I think too much. They warned me I'd strain my eyes with all of those words and they were right. I'm formulating a headache right now reading this shit. I read somewhere about memories, how we change whatever it is we're remembering because we are remembering them. We replace the memory each time we think about it. I rewrite my history every day and there's a small part of me that knows I'm lying. That knows that never happened but I shut it up because hey, it could have happened. It should have happened. It's a better fucking story so keep your mouth shut until I say it's safe.

I wrote a goddamn masterpiece, smiling at my ruined face in the reflection of the empty bus. The hints of eye liner smeared by the rain into the grey bags of my eyes. You look tired she said to me every day. First thing before saying hello. You look tired. Fuck you I answered on the last day. Why haven't you died yet? And I met her on a bus with her new man and she laughed and told him how I had hated her. Wasn't it funny? Irrelevant.

I wrote a goddamn masterpiece. It was a plot you wished you'd written. You wished I'd told you before this bus had crashed and I'd been eviscerated so it could have been yours. But I stared hard at the little wisp in the dark window, my raincurled hair scraped back as short as it should be at this time of year and I knew as soon as I pulled the pen out of my left pocket I'd only write about myself. And look it's just as true now and maybe I'll hit publish, I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll let this rot with all my other drafts. Maybe I'd regret it and maybe you'd be interested but seriously go read something else. I update this constantly to bump the last post away from the top.

t-i-r-e-d spells it.

Woe is me

2008-08-20T09:18:00.003+01:00

My mum had some Trinny and Susanna crap on the tv about colours. A whole programme that was basically oh my goodness different colours suit different people! My word, who knew? So the only bit I paid attention to was when they categorised women into shades. Guess what shade I am? None of them because I didn't exist on their system. Just like I don't exist in the system that creates foundation. Oh they covered so many combinations but dark hair, dark eyes and skin like you saw a ghost and then panicked and ran blindly, fell down some stairs, snapped your neck and then came back as a zombie? No. I'm on my own there. How will I know how to dress myself? I must now sit sobbing in mismatched underwear because clearly I am some sort of freak.

I had a dream that I had this notebook I once didn't buy because it was expensive and didn't have many pages. I had forgotten all about it as well and it was beautiful. And I bought it (in my dream) in this fantastic notebookshop that I found in Paris last time I was there. I mean really it was like a stationary shop but it had piles of moleskins in the window and these fantastic little books with fuzzy covers and oh god I just remembered this other shop I found. It had handsewn leather notebooks, incredibly fancy and utterly beautiful and I just stood there while the woman watched me suspiciously because the place was tiny as I just touched every single one and sighed. They were so freaking expensive. This is all because I miss my diary which I filled with utter crap but it was perfect in every way and I can't find a suitable replacement so I had to make do with ikea books. I mean they're good books with good paper and I like writing in them but they only excite me when I put them all in a pile. Goddamn dreams, I was convinced I had that book. I went looking for it this morning and then I remembered I couldn't buy it because I needed bus fare. Goddamn subway breaking down. Oh god they had a gorgeous notebook in the Louvre gift shop as well that was such an odd colour but I can't get too upset about that because I bought a necklace instead and I adore that necklace. Gah buyer's remorse is awful. Let's move on shall we?

I watched The Cell yesterday. And it was stunning and terrible which is what I'd heard anyway. My mum came in near the end and asked questions. After I tried to muddle my way through the plot and it was drawing to a close she suddenly declared that she had seen this film and wandered away. She was more annoyed that I hogged the tv all day as I worked out how to transfer vhs to dvd made more difficult by the fact that The Maltese Falcon and the Big Sleep were on the same video and I had to pay attention and press stop to change dvds half way through. She told me in hushed tones just before she went to bed that she really hated Humphrey Bogart and I assured her that it was ok, I wouldn't make her sit through his films again because I was done. I lied! I have one more. Mwahahahaha.

It's the answer to a question I don't think I was asked

2008-08-19T13:20:00.003+01:00

I was thinking the other day and talking mostly to myself because I like the way my voice sounds in a car at night. I'd started thinking a while ago after I read about the death of an Italian actor and how his wife, his lover and his girlfriend had all been there in his last moments. I was thinking how we manage to devote ourselves to the pursuit of a fulfilling relationship whatever that is and we fall in love. I could go all philosophical about that but I won't. I've seen it and I've done it to myself but it's like a constant redraft, rewrite, redo. You meet someone and maybe you do love them but maybe you decide to and you always did. And we're programmed to get over it and move on because you can't stop living just because you fall out of love. But I was thinking louder than I spoke since I spoke about trivial concerns, pitying trivialities. I thought instead about what it feels to have your heart break and live and how it is possible to go through all of that and forget and fall right back in love all over again with somebody new. And I guess I was just thinking about how utterly insane it was.

I have fallen in love two and a half times in my life and had my heart broken once and a quarter. That's how I figure it anyway and every regret that I have has nothing to do with any of that. And I just thought that was funny.

2008-08-19T10:22:00.003+01:00

My dad had all the Raymond Chandler books and when I could only find two of them in the box upstairs he immediately went into a tirade against his brother who must have stolen them. In my uncle's house there has always been shelves and shelves of books. My dad has a plan.

"Next time we're there, kid. I'll keep him busy and you check and see if any of them are mine."

So it was wonderful when I opened the cover of one of the pile of books and saw my uncle's name written there. My dad accused my uncle of writing his name on his property because he wouldn't have taken it with him if it hadn't belonged to him. Well ok but I found a single of Bohemian Rhapsody with my uncle's name and HANDS OFF all over it. I pointed out that both my uncle and his wife are English Lit students so of course they'll have tons of books and if he did take them it'd only be because it was a free book. I also pointed out that just because I didn't find them all doesn't mean they're not there what with the box being bloody huge and me being bloody tiny.

And Dad if you are reading which I know you are even if you keep denying it Humphrey Bogart was not in the Long Goodbye. I was right and it is odd that that they would then put him on the cover of the book. So ha! Make me feel like I don't know anything. It was Elliott Gould. Nyeh.

Also did you hear about the penguin who was knighted?

You know how to whistle, don't you?

2008-08-18T15:13:00.005+01:00

Last night I had a bad moment, a dizzy spell and what I like to call, in my head where nobody can hear, an existentialist crisis. I lay very still in the dark and tried to calm down but there's been something creeping in my bones for the longest time and it wouldn't let me be. And then my phone went off. Nearly every day at 2 and/or 11pm I receive a text asking what's happening. I have a small collection of these now all from the same boy I have not seen since I was sixteen. If I don't respond and he's drinking then the series of nonsensical pestering begins. If I don't respond and he's sober I get peace and if I respond either way he eventually tries to twist whatever I say into some sort of innuendo to make it easier for him I guess. Must be nice to have such clockwork horniness. Now usually I can brush this off, take it as an uncomfortable compliment and laugh at his persistence but I was having a bad day, bad week, bad time. Still am in fact and will be until Wednesday is done with. Oh wonderful complicated day. For a girl who has never had a problem saying no I've done exactly what I've been so goddamn fucking terrified of doing for over two single years and that's become passive again. This is the reason why I stay so very far away from things that look like relationships and while I'll flirt with most people I rarely give out information that leads to continuing the talk. I would rather be utterly and completely alone than a passive little girlfriend.

At one in the morning I gave up a little. At two in the morning I was furious with myself and tried to sleep but the neighbours were having a conversation outside my window and I kept thinking they were under my couch. At three in the morning I wrote pages and pages of rubbish since I lacked anyone better than myself to talk to. At four I had a dream about a parrot. I didn't see five o'clock. Six o'clock I was merely aware of the ticking of my clock, by seven my dad was awake, by eight so was Julie and I managed to gather my consciousness enough to wish her luck because she's back at school now and that can't be any fun. Nine I gave up and made it down the stairs to be told to get a job for the first time of the day and then I watched To Have and Have Not and stopped freaking out. And all I can think is maybe if these guys knew how I spent my nights they wouldn't want to share them with me.

Also I am wearing red tights right now. You just can't feel like crap with red tights on, they're happiness inducing.

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

2008-08-17T17:09:00.003+01:00

Topshop is terrible. I will say it. Whereas before I spent most of my time stocking up on tshirts and the occasional skirt, maybe even a pair of jeans come the sales, now if I can be bothered going in I buy pants, rings and maybe a pair of tights if they are particularly great and there isn't an equivalent in Primark for a fraction of the price. That is how I shop. This is mostly because a lot of their stuff is now hideous, over-the-top rot and if I wanted to look like a crackwhore I'd spread my legs and sniff my own brand of blow thank you. I don't need Miss Moss to tell me what to wear. However, their website informed me of this

Every self-respecting fashion addict knows pins should be dressed in lace tights and thigh-high socks for the new season.

Holy crap! says I. Thigh-high socks, yes please. I was confused then when there were no socks for sale. I didn't let that bother me though and gamely entered the fray with pennies in my pocket and fought my way through the scenesters and isthatamanorawomanican'ttellohgodhenoticedmestaringmaybeishouldjustaskohnoiseeabulgeinthosegirljeans.

They have no thigh-high socks. They have hats and scarves and lots of stuff that would imply they have new season stock in but not what I want. Not the one thing I convinced myself would be the perfect thing to cheer me up today. The bastards.

So I did what any self-respecting half-miserable exhausted girl who will soon realise she has not only put on a tshirt that belongs to her sister but that it is inside out would do. I bought a pair of impractical knickers with money I was saving to buy a dvd. And then when I tried to sort my top out on the train this huge fat guy gave me an odd look and I paused for a moment. Then an old couple sat beside me and I gave up, doomed to be the wrong way round for another twenty minutes.

That was my day apart from lots of mopping and hoovering and sighing and general contemplation over how I manage to wind myself up over silly little things. My new plan for the remainder of the year is to hide from everyone. I will drown myself in blankets if I must leave the house or if I feel obliged to pass the time in the company of the people I do not hate like some sort of vampire. It is the safest option.

I have an excellent idea, let's change the subject

2008-08-16T14:49:00.003+01:00

Mixed bag of films yesterday. I finished watching Them. I guess if you have some intention of watching this film don't read anymore because I'm going to spoil it.

Them was actually pretty good as thrillers go and I'm not big on them really. The man gained my respect as he checked the bathtub by stabbing at the curtain with a big stick instead of slowly opening it. THIS IS WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD ALWAYS DO BECAUSE WHO KNOWS WHAT IS IN THERE. Holidays with me are fun. The woman gained my respect by being pretty resourceful and not a total wuss. She pushed one of the guys off a building after all and in the obligatory running through a wooden area she didn't fall down as much as one might expect. There was no annoying music to inform you of scary things. They loomed, you saw, you were a little bit worried. Most importantly the couple seemed genuinely afraid and you don't really know what it is chasing them until quite late on and when you do (they are just kids playing twisted pranks) it's still creepy. More so because they're human, real and children. Best bits were when she had her eye to the hole where the handle of the door used to be and one of them suddenly stabbed a metal rod through, almost blinding her. But it didn't. Hurrah.

I then watched Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. Starring Bob Dylan! And man did they ever want you to notice it was Bob Dylan. Ooh look cowboy stuff INTENSE CLOSE UP OF THIS AS YET UNNAMED AND SO MEANINGLESS CHAP. Highlights were kids swinging in a noose, anything where Billy the Kid was in it being all charming and killing people and Bob Dylan's hat. Low? I didn't need to see an old man being bathed delightedly by half-naked whores. Nor did I need to see him jammed in a bed with them all with such an old man grin. It was creepy.

Then I watched 21 grams which I'd had recorded for months. According to it Hitman is in cinemas soon! It was fantastic but then I'd seen Amores Perros and Babel so I expected it to be so. Charlotte Gainsbourg's voice lulls me to sleep though when she speaks English. Very odd.

This morning I watched 10 minutes of Picnic at Hanging Rock but was so utterly bored I deleted it and watched To Catch a Thief instead because who doesn't like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly being all charming in blinding technicolour? It was pretty unremarkable I guess. Some shots were great and it had its moments but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again.

I still have Tell No One, Zodiac and Everything is Illuminated recorded and about six or seven more waiting. I don't know if there's room for them all but I've done ok. I had to delete Stranger Than Fiction for the 3rd time because it was recording at the same time as something else which I didn't even know you could do. Apparently you can but you can't watch tv at the same time which my mum insisted she did so that went away. I can't really be bothered with it. I couldn't be bothered seeing it in the cinema despite being invited and I can't really be bothered watching it now. I'm not sure why.

It's really nothing new

2008-08-14T11:23:00.003+01:00

I've got black coffee, an orange and a little hedgehog pill and this is called how I'm going to make it through the day. I can't read which rules out every one of the books cluttering up my couch and I left Kerouac feeling awkward next to a prostitute because I could no longer understand him. The majority of my films cannot be watched because the remaining ones are subtitled or monotone and I can't concentrate. I set myself a task this week, well two tasks actually. Task number one was scavenge around town for cheap dvds and maybe a pair of tights and not come home until I was exhausted and I had walked far enough to see something new. It's the task I usually set myself when I go to uni only with more turning up to lectures maybe. Task number two is chapter three. I printed it out, I pulled out the appropriate notebook and I scoured my floor for a decent pen. But can't read, can't write so I just type nonsense to assure myself I can still communicate. I'm spending most of my day hiding from my phone. In my dreams all it does it ring. In reality it beeps with another distant meaningless hey from someone more bored than I. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for to be honest but I appear to be doing so.

My new passport arrived. I am officially allowed to run away now. It's my insta-cheer up these days, calculating flight costs. I was slightly amused by the fact that if you fly to Paris on the 12th of February you could pay £130 and coming back on the 16th will cost you £180 with everything inbetween getting staggeringly high. But take a trip a week before and you'd pay £60 each way and gain more points by being unexpected and breaking expectations! I didn't even ask to see flights in Feb but there you go, it decided I should. I also laughed as I looked up football dates so I won't be surprised later and there's a game on Valentine's day. Parkhead holds some 60,000 odd (mostly) men. That's a lot of annoyed wives.

Oh bleh I need to hurry up and feel better, I made a goddamn list of things to do this week! I actually wrote it down, neat and concise and organised and bam I got the sniffles and my mum gets flu so I'm left making sure the house doesn't fall down. I hope I never have kids, let me tell you that now. I had the strangest dream last night that I can't even begin to describe. I swear it felt real. I was sat in my old sitting room, squeezed in with a bunch of other people I didn't know and we'd just been to a girl's funeral. I had a bunch of diaries in my hand that had been hers I think and her boyfriend was going to write a book but they kept slipping down the back of the sofa into a shelf of cobwebs and then I had an argument about Catholics, someone insisted I had to go down to buy milk and all I remember is the guy had purple in his hair and facial hair that shifted if you looked at him for too long at a time. Do you ever get that feeling when you've been looking at someone for too long and their face shifts into someone else? Like it's as if you've never really looked at them before because you know them too well and then you suddenly see what they look like and it's completely different from the way you know them? I kept getting that when I talked to him and I woke up annoyed but without a headache so that's something.

In general I think I'm doing quite fine

2008-08-13T09:58:00.003+01:00

Cold, cold enamel on my neck and my knees shiver in the window somebody left open and I'm too short to close. I've sat here so long my legs are doll legs, flimsy on their pins and my doll fingers fidget with the clasps and hooks and snapping plastic. Pull it all off me and try and ignore the headache before I realise I have one. It's 6am. Roll up, roll up and see the great pretender. Live another day as Miss Smith who is as cynical as she appears because the world is predictable. She has lived it all before in her head and she ticks off your replies as you give them. Follows the narrative through to the end, making allowances for free will and twists. I want no eyes upon me but one, two, fall for me and talk, talk, debate and discuss and consider my most favourite subject: me. But not the me in my little head. Oh no, too real, too silly. I want lies, rumours, misconceptions and lies because it gives me something to focus on. If I don't look and I don't touch I can soar out of my bones. It's divine and addictive and

I want a throwaway love and a cast-off life. Second-hand dreams and affections reminiscent of those films I love. Quote and remind. Preserve and plagiarise. I'm steady for now but the right word will tumble me down. Too many people living too loud and throw out tendrils to pull me into some new farce and every two years the world revolves and repeats itself. Just a star bright and I want to spit ash on obnoxious faces. I want to disappoint. My finger holds no hope of a ring and my belly just longs to be flat. I have no plans but a mouthful of whisky and a masterpiece under my fingertips. Just give me a little time. I think sometimes of borrowed time and I wonder, eschatological verification. A row of published work and a4 pads of paper I must compete. 13 smiths on the shelf and sometimes I feel so bound by my gender. Two tits and a pussy somehow qualifies me to a standard, somehow makes me fair game. A target to stick a dart in. Claimed, marked, punctured and maybe I need that. Maybe I want that but I can only picture it in the quietest moments and it's always

I'm feeling a little claustrophobic and as the sun shines a little brighter my headache shifts position away from my eyes. Careful now. You are never as great as you believe to be but you are rarely as awful as you suspect. Selling yourself short means your heart won't break and if you're heart won't break, the world can't end and you're not really living then are you?

Strike a pose

2008-08-12T23:13:00.003+01:00

I am fascinated by models. Utterly and completely fascinated. I watch all those shitty supermodel shows, mostly because some of those girls are wonderfully catty and horrible human beings but also because damn models are fascinating. I mean they sell themselves, their bodies are a commodity used in order to sell clothes. I remember when I was younger and read awful magazines there was an interview with a girl who was a part-time hand model. If she broke a nail she was out of a job and it was just so insane. I read a model's livejournal pretty religiously. Most of it is pictures of crazy food she has eaten or odd products she finds (she's in hong kong). I found her because her boyfriend beat her up and there were links to it everywhere as she posted her bruises and ranted angrily about how he was an idiot. I was only interested because he was a member of the shins and I knew her name from watching terrible model shows. I always liked her, she talked a lot of nonsense and had a sense of humour. Also she has pope socks and I am always a supporter of girls in socks. See also this girl I found once whose socks I covet. Sometimes I think it is the reason I remain friends with a certain chestily endowed friend of mine, her sock collection is rather pretty.

But yes models. I collect interesting adverts because I don't give a shit about what they're selling, it's just damn interesting photography. And it's that sort of tall, skinny androgynous thing that is so oddly sexual and yet utterly unattractive. I can't explain it. My first best friend, who I idolised and though she lied almost compulsively I believed every word she ever said to me until I hit about fourteen, modeled for a little bit, nothing big but she did minor runway things for young collections. This is really rather irrelevant I just had a flash of her. I remembered she existed. Huh.

LEMMINGS

2008-08-12T18:30:00.003+01:00

I was going for French thriller day today. I had three recorded Lemming, Them and Tell No One. Oh my god was Lemming awful. Awful!

Wikipedia tells us that Lemming "deals with themes such as infidelity, suburban alienation, ghostly possession, and what to do when lemmings invade your home." Umm no. It deals with what happens when your boss' angry wife has a tantrum in your house, seduces your husband, blows her brains out in your spare room and then possesses you for a while so that you confuse your husband into thinking lemmings are everywhere! and fuck his boss. This is so your husband will go mad and murder his boss for being a cheating bastard and thus pacify the restless spirit of the wife. Then everything will go back to normal.

I have spoiled this movie for you now but who cares it was awful.

I watched 10 minutes of Tell No One in which a couple got naked and went for a swim and then the wife huffed, went off into the dark and screamed.

I watched twenty minutes of Them in which a mum and her whiny daughter were killed mysteriously in a car at night and a rather attractive teacher teased her writer husband and it was very cute until the music got intense and then my mum (who is now ill, much worse than I yay for sharing) pitifully moaned and I gave up.

SQUEAK.

LEMMINGS HAVE SEIZED CONTROL OF THIS BLOG POST

LEMMINGSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

rien de rien

2008-08-11T20:50:00.003+01:00

Mondays are days off as far as unemployment days off can go. It's haircut day and letter sending day also. So happily drugged up on magical hedgehog pills I watched 3 films today. Mostly because I've set so many new films set to record and so many still unwatched. I'm out of room guys! I have at least two days to watch and/or burn onto disk them all!

So I watched Candy with Heath Ledger (who is dead, I forget, I remember, I am saddened, I forget) and the plot was your standard young people are in love and take drugs but I liked it. It had perfect moments and some real sweetness ruined by all the evil drugs. Julie said it was BORING.

Then I watched L'enfant which was similarly sweet but awful. I mean it's a film about a guy who decides to sell his baby, but it made me laugh sometimes just at the childishness of the guy. Julie said it DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH MUSIC, PFFT

Finally, I watched La Vie En Rose which was very pretty and a little sad but I felt kinda detached. It was nice to listen to and the actress (name forgotten, can't be arsed looking it up) was very good. It was ugly in a good way. Julie said THANK GOD THIS IS DONE and SEE THEY KNOW HOW TO USE MUSIC even though it was of course about a singer.

I made my mum watch Bande a Part a couple of days ago. It was supposed to be a cunning plan in which my dad would watch it, realise he likes Godard and buy films that I could then steal. He won't do it himself because he goes PFFT FRENCH FILMS but he owns La Dolce Vita and there is no way Fellini is less pretentious than Godard. It failed though because he didn't watch it. My mum was very much in awe in Anna Karina's eyes which are gigantic and utterly fantastic. I have to buy me more films. But ahh no time, no time. I have to watch some more fast.

I don't feel safe in this world no more

2008-08-10T19:34:00.004+01:00

So I decided a few things in a drugged up haze last night. I have a cold by the way. It comes of the new season starting. And man was that fun. There's the unfurling of the flag because we're awesome but they had Tommy Burns' wife do it following a video montage set to him singing some song that was difficult to hear because the music was tinny over the bad soundsystem. I mean I'm not one to get all sentimental about a man I not only didn't know but never thought about for more than a passing minute when he was alive but it was kinda grim. She was looking rough and the manager was all teary looking and then the game started and it was just so dull. But enough about football.

So I decided a few things, thought some shit out and tried to untangle the ungodly mess I like to call feelings. I came to the conclusion that life is a lot easier without people. I like being alone but I can't be when I meet people because then there's that need and desire to go out and gasp have a good time with them. I can, however, control who I see and all those pesky strangers. Sick and tired of putting up with drunken acquaintances undoing all of my good work warding off desperadoes I told myself I'd save myself some grief (and some francetastic money) by getting home before nightfall. Well let me tell you my week of shunning the night life has brought me more creeps than stepping out the door. So my body acts accordingly. Ok so I can't afford the oh my god leave me alone hair cut so I've become a big mess of unattractiveness instead topped off with the cold. Yay. And I sort of have a date. I don't really do dates to be honest. My very brief and barely worth mentioning relationships since the dire high school era were really just me falling into someone who was there. Dates generally are boring, tiresome affairs in which I feel very much under scrutiny and I act up because of this. Oi, oi, oi I can't stick to my own conclusions when people keep interfering. I'm being my most uncharming as well! I have to fight myself every step of the way as I scream go away, go away, go away.

I read Autofiction a couple of books back. Half way through the main character has an argument with her own vagina for about a page and a half and it was perfect.

I think mostly I'm all bleh because it's a date with a nice boy. I don't know how to deal with nice boys, they like nice things don't they? And nice girls with normal lives and smiles. Maybe I will cancel and find myself a creep to shoot down with harsh words and a sarcastic bat of my eyes. That I know I can do. I think I just accepted because I can't let down a nice guy. I made a bastard cry but I feel awful if I make nice guys do that oh well I thought you'd say no anyway face which I cannot stand to see. Oh it's the burden I must bear being so very wonderful.

Le roi des sorties

2008-08-08T14:44:00.003+01:00

Sometimes I think about making films since half the time I think in film anyway. Scenes play out, fade in wash out, music swells, linger the camera on this, then cut to him, wait for her and my fingers have to keep up with the words to explain just what kind of sigh that is. I think about making films a lot. I actually (and this is something I don't often share) but I very nearly picked Film and TV studies at uni which would have enabled me to make my films. I thought about it seriously because I'd looked it up for my boyfriend who wanted to do it and vaguely asked for help in looking it up. I applied to that course for him and I did not apply myself because I didn't want to study beside him even if we had been together. I don't study next to people I am in love with because I study for myself. It's why I end up talking to people in other subjects, faculties and universities as it turned out. He applied to English as well on a whim with Philosophy because he thought he'd be good at that thinking shit which caused me to turn to French if I'm perfectly honest. Couldn't follow me there could you, with your scraping credit pass in standard grade! Ha!

Anyway I dream of making films but the reason I don't do anything about it, and I know enough people that if I wanted to I could do something it, is the sheer number of other people involved. If I write something it can be mine if I don't show anybody. OnceI let somebody else read it I give it away a little but it's still mine. Unless I became a one-girl cast and crew I couldn't make a film in the same way and I cannot act for one thing. Much like I prefer male writers I prefer male directors too. There's something so seductive about film and all those directors that fell in love with their leading ladies and made film after film with them in it I dunno it gets under my skin. In a good way. It's romance captured on camera that you can't achieve in any other way.

Jesus these are the best strawberries ever.

yeah

2008-08-07T13:08:00.006+01:00

You know that way when you try really hard to like something because everyone does but ultimately you don't and you always knew you wouldn't but if you said anything you know everyone would like you a little less? And you think am I the only one who sees the problems of liking this? And maybe I'm just not getting it, maybe I'm missing something and I have no right to judge but I still can't bring myself to like it and I feel like a fraud every time it's mentioned. The thing is I remember so clearly when everyone talked about how much they all loved it and I laughed and thought wouldn't it awful if I hated it and I do and it is.

Let's not make any sense today!

I had a dream I was going to an art exhibition and we were so excited because it was supposed to be amazing. The artist, who was a musician I think and that's why we were excited, had pasted his face onto the photo album of a famous model. She was famous because she was always pregnant. That was her thing. So we went to the exhibition you and I and sat awkward on a bench with fingertips touching at the blow up image of a disturbed stalker and we wondered is this art?

And then you said "I'm cheating on you" and I smiled and shrugged and said "ok" because at least you weren't obsessing and I wasn't pregnant. Hurrah.

2008-08-07T12:24:00.002+01:00

It's very hard to explain but sometimes I am outside of myself. It's like I am myself but not myself and oh I can't be bothered writing this. I don't even know why I'm here. I have a total of five? five word documents ticking away, little line keeping my space for me while I dawdle. I have three windows open in Safari, one in Firefox and two in msn which I'm only on to prove a point to myself (namely that when her name is in his name he says nothing but if he feels lucky he signs out, deletes her, signs back in and is all Hey there and my god I am amused). I have three drafts in one blog and seven in another (two of which begin with I want to set this straight and three with I can't) I have four notebooks in use around me, 2 finished drafts to consider, one abandoned Frenchie who plagues me with doubt and frustration and one email account that a certain advisor has yet to reply to. I CAN'T REGISTER UNTIL YOU DO AND I WOULD LIKE TO BE A SECOND YEAR FOR ONCE. One more day and I just do my own thing with that uni, only way.

I can't even be bothered eating. I'm going to wait and wait until I get all lightheaded and woozy and then I'll eat junk. Hurrah

le temps de l'amour, c'est long et c'est court, ca dure toujours

2008-08-06T10:31:00.005+01:00

The front cover is folded down slightly in the top right corner. Not entirely like The Blind Assassin was but half so the photo and the cover have separated. Other than very vague bashing on the spine it is perfect. A fraction of the price I always buy through the marketplace because although I ideally want to make a living writing my own I don't want to pay for the ones I read. Hypocrite! But even when I wasn't budgeting myself I never liked to spend so much money on books and I could do it so easily. I haven't been reading in a while, I'm reading a new book every two days now it's wonderful. I don't care for this technological age (though I write this on the internet but like I said hypocrite) because there is nothing better than holding a book and finishing somebody's thoughts. Working them into my own. And I have been writing too. I glanced down at my idle document, half wondering if I can make it long enough to send anywhere, if it's 'different' enough this time and I've written 3,000 words. It's too bloody long and I've barely begun. Oh well.

This morning post brings me Kerouac. The pages are white and I can't remember if it was new or used. Must have been new but I flick through and I smell tobacco, a cloudlike waft like a new packet tore into and now it's faded into the spine after its release. He has his own introduction in the style of a form or a resume. There's his name, date of birth, education, married: Nah. So I read this but really I have to go dry my hair before it curls. Well maybe just the first paragraph, see what it's like.

HERE DOWN ON DARK EARTH
before we all go to Heaven
VISIONS OF AMERICA
All that hitchhikin
All that railroadin
All that comin back
to America
Via Mexican & Canadian borders . . .

and I'm lost, gone into the page and my hair springs upward. I'll have to sit bored before the mirror now, flatten myself into doll-like acceptability. The funny thing is I bought this book on a recommendation from a character in another book. And I trusted her judgement because I liked her.

Aventure et amour

2008-08-05T12:28:00.004+01:00

I've spent all morning watching old french trailers. There is a reason I am in love with Godard and it is because he makes me smile while my head spins trying to keep up. Truffaut (or what I've seen of him since I missed seeing Jules et Jim twice) has the same quality of ridiculous but not quite the same spark. And then you get the comparison between the french trailers and the english equivalents. Like The Bride Wore Black here shows none of the ridiculousness or the downright comedic side of the film and my god watching that reminded me so very much of how Kill Bill it was. Seriously if you're going to rip a film off just admit it. It's not like he hides it any other time. Crazy.

Anyway the Godard ones are perfect. It's pretentious and French and ridiculous and I could watch them forever. Like short films really and I can't afford to buy more foreign films because they're never as cheap as I'd like. Not even in Fopp's French film sale. But I'll see them all eventually. When I'm rich I'll sit in my home cinema and watch old films all day. Parfait.

Pierrot le fou
Vivre sa vie
Alphaville
Breathless
La Chinoise
Detective
Bande à part
and my favourite of the bunch
Masculin, Féminin

I soothed Julie with food

2008-08-04T12:58:00.002+01:00

and so I am here for a moment and only because I'm bored and because they're making a live-action Cowboy Bebop film.

The best part of this is the way the article is like here is some film news, LOOK AT GIANT COSPLAYING BREASTS. Well if you insist internet but she does have the face of some sort of adorable rodent.

I had horrible, horrible dreams but they were also hugely boring so fuck it I can't be bothered writing them out. There was a long speech made by some sort of feminist in a ball gown and I decided yes, she's right, no more men in my life ever and then my phone went off (in reality I mean) and it was male and I had a fit of silent half-asleep hysterics. It was just really funny.

Here is a pointless and irrelevant song lyric.

2008-08-03T11:23:00.003+01:00

Here is a very long paragraph sans the appropriate number of commas.
It might be about myself or my tiny quirks/flaws. It might also be about a movie or book or something
Maybe it is about Joey Comeau! I wish I was on Livejournal so I could write that in sparkle letters.

This post seems cheery and mundane because it's about how I like typewriters and don't like spiders and oh little sister you do make me laugh.
And yet now it is about how I never get any sleep. Damn you little sister.

Now it's about a dream I had while not sleeping. Cats were stuffed down somebody's dress and my tall generic male friend was smoking cigarettes in a trenchcoat and there were pickled babies everywhere and it was tragically beautiful in a way that makes no sense.

I am so not gay for the ladies. Why does everyone think I'm a lesbian anyway?
BTW my desktop picture is always a scantily clad girl. Always.

Sex sex sex sex beer beer smoking is so cool sex sex boys la de da dededemandez Jack.

I finished my 28375034968097th novel today but I dropped it in a puddle on the way to uni which incidentally is a drain on my soul because everyone has silly accents and none of the boys like football. I pondered the philosophical nature of this occurrence before I remembered my shitty ex-boyfriend who I am so over no doubt about that but I still wish I had stolen more from him.
Sputnik is a word I now use because it is Russian and I love Russians. Especially my imaginary son Dmitri who I will never have because I'm scared of men and babies in pickle jars.

gggggggggg
little sister get off my keyboard.

The 22nd of July is somehow relevant though I can't actually remember why so better be vague about it.
You know what happened on the 30th of July though? No you don't because you were not paying attention and you never hear me complaining. Except last year I complained a lot then. The end.

The End.

...................

2008-08-02T12:56:00.000+01:00

...........'K.

Dear Friends...

2008-08-01T21:38:00.006+01:00

Particularly you, Some Guy/Stuart.

This is a matter of the utmost importance.

I have hidden Catherine somewhere nobody will ever find her (except me and probably our mother at some point), and have seized control of this Blog. I will not release the Blog nor Catherine until my demands are met.
What demands, you ask?!

I WANT YOUR CRISIS CORE.

JUST FOR A LITTLE WHILE.
That is ALL.

It's really not much I ask of you.

You have 24 hours to deliver unto me your Reply, or the Blog gets it.
And to prove that I'm serious, here is Catherine's Ear.

...What? I'm holding it up right now. It's not my fault you can't see it. Dummy.

-Julie

In my head there's a city at night

2008-08-01T14:17:00.003+01:00

Itunes used to let you watch trailers for free, those were good times. I used to stay up late, watching everything and anything while I idly flirted online with the boyfriend. Automatic cyber relationships, fun, fun, fun. Anyway when they stopped letting you do that and made you pay (pay!) to watch trailers I sort of stopped watching them and then every so often I get the urge. It's a miniature film. So I've been watching some. I'm going to share because I hit a momentary block in the writing due to being hungry and there being no food I can be bothered to eat.

Choke has been made into a film. I don't know if I knew this and forgot or never knew this at all. It has Kelly Macdonald in it and there's something about her I quite like.

The Last Mistress has already been out but I liked the poster and the trailer makes me laugh. There's something about French costume dramas, I've seen a few (not through choice) and everything is so seedy and maybe because I've only seen Asia Argento as some sort of conniving mistress but her face bothers me.

Disney's first Black Princess and the return to 2D animation. I do not like the firefly but I am not the target audience. It's set in New Orleans during the Jazz Age though, there's a lot of potential there. Plus Anika Noni Rose (the name of the actress playing the voice of the princess) is a great name. Makes me smile to say it.

Coen Brothers. It made me smile.

Benjamin Button directed by Fincher and based on Fitzgerald.

and

this just seemed odd.

Mostly it just gives me something to click later when I get bored and feel like watching some more trailers.

A great black wave in the middle of the sea

2008-07-31T14:51:00.004+01:00

Death Cab for Cutie are not terrible. I'm tempted to go so far as to say they are pretty good but you see I have to pretend I'm listening to some other band to like them due to associations with hearing the name over and over and over again. But I listened to a whole album without paying attention and I enjoyed it.

Also as much as I want her to be good this girl right here:

is terrible. Not even in a so bad it's good way, not in a tolerable way. A damn shame.

Also Rob I haven't yawned yet. It's like I'm determined to make you wrong that my body has broken itself. I very much want to and I haven't.

The Brothers Bloom

2008-07-30T18:36:00.003+01:00

The trailer can be found online here and it's a bit trailery. In that it ain't great.

However! Mr Johnson's own words were that "it would be nice if the trailer looked a little like the movie" and "Every single thing in the movie that explodes or appears to explode (or appears like it might at some point appear to explode) is in the trailer. Plus anything where anyone falls down. They wanted to sell it as an action/comedy." So there you go. Be not disappointed by the fact it seems like Ocean's Eleven but instead of Brad Pitt they got a big nose.

A love that would look and sound just like a movie

2008-07-30T14:33:00.004+01:00

I'm a closet romantic. I turn my nose up at any film these days involving couples that isn't to do with breakdowns or tragedies and I turn my nose up at couples in general which makes me a hypocrite considering how very cliché some of my relationships were. But I have a soft spot for classics and starlets and the special way eyes shine in black and white films. The Audrey Hepburn week on Sky a while back was just magic for me. Do you know how many of her films involve her going to Paris for some reason? It's a lot. It made me wish I could afford more dvds. Pierrot le Fou is stagnant at £8 everywhere I look and every time I remember I want it it's a bad week for buying things. Good thing is, my classes this year are all in the afternoon so I'll save on the having to eat and I can spend more money in Fopp. I always wished I could have been fluent in French. I tried and I studied and I practiced but somehow I went from being able to string paragraphs together with irritating ease to tripping over the present tense. I think possibly I was blessed with the ability to learn, pass exams, forget. More room for new things?

Anyway I was watching Sabrina because I made an omelette and there's a scene where she cracks eggs. In Paris. Ooh let's be annoying and put a youtube video in here. I've never done that before. It's not a great film but it was the first scene that made me pay attention and it's just so ridiculous in a way I only tolerate in films like these. I think that maybe I feel like falling in love. It's been a while and the last one proved so very disappointing when it turned out he was a bore. And the existence of his arse was doubtful. Really I think it's because my feet were cold and these socks have ribbons. Makes me girly. Anyway watch as Audrey Hepburn tries to kill herself! Hell, I'd gas myself too if Humphrey Bogart was going to carry me like that.

To Joe

2008-07-29T21:35:00.003+01:00

Thank you for the muffin, it made me smile. I'm sorry I did not seem more enthusiastic about it and I'm apologising only because I forgot to actually say how cute it was when you plonked it under my nose and I meant to. I did think it quite loudly and that counts a little bit.

Also I was going to work in your name more, perhaps to an irritating extent, but then I couldn't remember the last time I ever read my own name online so pfft to that. So will you be happy enough, Joe, to see your name twice in one post?

Let's go for three for a laugh, shall we?

To Mr ex-Cleavage

2008-07-29T10:03:00.002+01:00

You should have known better than to play gay chicken with this straight girl. I play to win and your ruined lip is a testament to that fact.

To Ross who looks like that Hard-fi guy

2008-07-27T16:11:00.002+01:00

You are not a bad guy. Pretty average but not bad and I have never complained about any conversations you have struck up even when it was blatantly obvious you were rather bored and single because hey, I was too. I have never complained about the drunken texts and phone calls because generally I keep my phone on silent for my sister's sake and I answer if I'm awake enough to be coherent. Generally I stopped actually sending replies to people along the lines of FUCK OFF I AM ASLEEP because generally it would come out in sleepy gibberish. Generally I am pretty tolerant.

BUT

Please note 1am is not the best of times to begin a conversation anyway though I was awake, I think, and I would probably have responded if I was. But if you are going to go to the bother of contacting me could you have at least thought of something that wasn't merely Hi. Seriously, even if it had been inappropriate or ridiculous it would have been better than Hi. Hell even when you sent my name and a smiley face it was better because I could at least laugh at you. My texts are free and I can't even be bothered responding. I hope you had a good night anyway because you're not a bad guy.

Still not gonna sleep with you though.

I'm sweating dust

2008-07-26T21:53:00.003+01:00

My attic used to be a bedroom. Most rooms in my house actually used to be bedrooms and as a result we used to have a ton of bathrooms too. There's one in the attic, it's currently full of black plastic bags. Somewhere in there are my parents' typewriters and my mum's wedding dress that I tried on once and made my dad look uncomfortable. There's my toy train that pumped out real smoke as it went round and the first laptop I learned to type on and a ton of books. It was the books I was after tonight. I dived into three boxes and took anything that I might be interested in. The last box came up to my chest and I couldn't reach the bottom. I nearly fell in twice. I didn't find everything I wanted and I nearly screamed a couple of a times when I thought certain things were spiders but you know I got it together and I salvaged what I could. Turns out my dad read a lot of detective stories. He's in a huff right now because although his book list contains 5 or 6 Raymond Chandler books The Big Sleep is not one of them. He suspects all his good stuff was stolen by his middle brother, the English student. I could only find 2 of them anyway. Others I found were the Black Dahlia and I, Robot and a Rousseau book. My dad has Rousseau and he laughs at my philosophy leanings. We could not locate a certain I can't remember if it's still banned in this country so I'm not going to name it book but I did find The official KGB handbook that gives instructions on how to spy on and maybe murder 'enemies of the people'. Brilliant says I. I'm now in the position that I have far too many books to read. It is fucking fantastic. It all came about because I asked if other Kerouac books were worth reading after On the Road. His response was 'maybe a couple but most are shit' and when pressed further he said 'something about a tree? That one's terrible.' I then asked if he'd read Hemingway because I never have and I feel I should. He said he'd 'read one, don't have it. S'allright'. My dad is very much not the English student. Although I did find How to Write Crime Novels and a wealth of Journalism handbook style things. If I get very bored I'm going to try my hand at shorthand again. Still no typewriter though. How am I supposed to write a tragic romantic masterpiece, smoking and sighing and possibly being French with no bleeding typewriter to clack on! I knew I should never have let it be tidied away again.

There was also a cubby hole stuffed with books, one of which was signed by the author (Terkel) and quoted some song I did not recognise which I'm assuming is from when my dad was in Chicago (where he bought books in an illegal bookstore and went to a ton of jazz clubs and I've always been insanely jealous about that trip since I was old enough to appreciate how cool it must have been), and a shoe box stuffed full of letters helpfully labeled 'letters'. If I had a week to myself I'd set up in that attic and read everything, find some secrets and treasures but my dinner was burning downstairs and Julie was fighting with my mum and my dad was being generally clueless about everything so I dumped what I could carry onto my couch (having checked thoroughly for bees) and collapsed in the one room with a breeze through the window.

Oh and I watched American Psycho today. It was pretty good although I probably shouldn't have watched it so soon after Batman. Made it too funny. Well in a sort of HAHA BATMAN KILLED A GIRL! way. You know, hilarious.

You're lost little girl

2008-07-25T08:48:00.003+01:00

Sputnik flew Laika over the sea as my heart pretended not to break with my nose to the window, steaming up mountains and valleys and cities and towns. It was much like pretending not to be in love which gets easier each time you try it. I found a book in my dad's room that teaches Russian and I took it up to my room having checked thoroughly for our little buzzing friends. The Cyrillic alphabet makes me dizzy. A couple of years ago I went to St Petersburg and it's Paris in its design and Paris in its feel but its dangerous. The older people give you looks for being short and brunette because it is a city of the frighteningly tall. You should have seen the women. Think drunken girls on a night out for the outfit, glittering and foolish, only put that on a girl at least a foot taller, in catastrophic heels and legs that tower and it'll be 2 in the afternoon instead of the morning and you've got it. It was European oldest of all with hints of the Soviet, more prevalent as you leave the city in a minibus full of strangers and AmericanEuro splashed on the very top. And there was a moment, I have to ignore the big moments for this since I was in a shit place before I got there and then there was omg Julie (before you hit me for mentioning russia without telling you how much I love you, omg you're so awesome and such, do you still have that teddy bear? You are not awake yet, tell me later) but anyway.

There was a moment in the taxi when we were leaving and my face was glued to the window, not wanting to go home because I never want to go home and there's no bigger sink then the plane touching down. Every sign and every word was a shape I couldn't understand. I'd picked up a couple of words if I stared at them long enough and I could hear a couple of words if I listened hard enough but I was stuck on Da and Niet and Sbaseeba with a smile and a shrug and a please don't look at me. And that's when I learnt the Cyrillic alphabet makes me dizzy and I was determined to either crack it (which seems impossible without a class) or write it.

Sputnik flew Laika over the sea while I pretended my heart wasn't breaking and a success can be found even without survival. I call it project number four. The more I do the more likely one of them is good right?

Playing the fools

2008-07-24T11:04:00.005+01:00

It's cosy, sitting in a room full of old friends and strangers when it's dark and getting late but not so late that you have to start thinking about leaving. Very, very cheap wine brings my eyelids down and I'm firmly stuck on the floor against the couch with legs and arms and a head on my lap and it's cosy. I could fall apart right here and a dozen hands would hold on to me. I've missed being here. I'm not exactly myself but I'm not so far away.

In the middle of the night a boy who likes to text me when he's drunk (and I thought was abroad right now) sends the message "whos dis". I'm going with drunken mistake/amnesia/girlfriend found a name she doesn't know and ignored him. It's always easier to pretend it's not happening.

There's a Czech film showing at the gft at the end of August I want to see called a blonde in love. I didn't really realise how gutted I was that I can't do the one subject that appealed to me until I found that film. I'm almost as disappointed as when I found out the French class the year after us got to study Godard. They got to study Godard instead of the film Buffet Froid which I doubt many of you will have seen, not because ooh look at me I know french films or anything but because it was the most pointlessly dull rubbish. Surrealism is fantastic in art but it's tougher with film. It's either hilariously ridiculous or makes no sense in a terribly pretentious way. It's even harder when you're in another language. I think I just miss learning another language. I can't speak any with confidence but I like working them out, following the rules and constructing sentences. I don't know what languages on offer are really an option though. Blehh.

I found a bunch of free sewing patterns online. I'm declaring August make some more dresses month. It justifies buying the material from ikea a while back. I'm not great at doing things from scratch but we'll see how it goes. Also I watched Lolita, the Kubrick one. It was ok, I seem to be saying that about every Kubrick film I see but maybe I just haven't seen the best ones.

Rumours that are completely unsubstantiated

2008-07-23T09:44:00.005+01:00

It never really leaves, that's the first thing I had to learn. I had to learn to separate myself from myself and think passively. It's a little surreal sometimes when you watch yourself live and hear words fall out that you weren't expecting to say. It's easier drunk because I switch off and it usually takes the wrong word in my ear to bring me back. Very occasionally the right word. Rarely the right touch. There's only a few people I can stand to be that close. Yesterday was Tuesday the 22nd of July and if I'd been coherent I'd have written this then but I wasn't so I didn't. Yesterday was Tuesday the 22nd of July. Five years ago the 22nd of July was a Tuesday. You can count the years of my life from that date.

It never really leaves. It ingrains itself into just about everything. I walked home last night with my hands on my spine to feel the bones twisting. I walked a plank of the kerb all the way down to my house and past it. You have to avoid the stone five along from my driveway because it slopes into the drain. You can lose your footing and dash your brains out on the asphalt black. I walked the plank down to the park and peered into the darkness first. Local junkie kids like to hide out here but it was Tuesday the 22nd of July and a lot of them are on holiday, shooting up in prettier places in the world so it's quiet and I sat down on the big swirling circle and put my head on my knees, just for a moment. Walking in the door of my house pushes the reset button and I have to wake up to go to bed. For a moment I let my head swim and there was a pricking and a choking and a sighing because I knew it was Tuesday the 22nd of July and it never really leaves once it's there. If you'd spoken to me a few weeks ago when it was still June I would have smiled easily. If you'd spoken to me a couple of weeks ago when July was first spreading out I would have been passionately sour but yesterday was the day that it was and I teetered. Push me and I just might fall.

It never really leaves but it becomes easier to ignore. Yes, it would be easy and yes, it would be simple. Quiet and uncomplicated if you can pull it off but that's why you dream. I have to finish something first. There has to be an achievement. It's all just dust to cover it up because when it really pushes you, the dreams are too unattainable anyway. It would be easy, simple, quiet and uncomplicated and then it would leave. If I had a knife, sharpest you ever saw, that would cut it out finally I can't tell you for certain that I would do it.

I'm being unfair here because I write this for myself. Everything I've written here I've written for myself and I know it's read but I pretend it's invisible and I ignore the words I post until I hear them repeated back and then I remember. So maybe I should apologise for writing this and abandoning it when I push the big orange button. Then again, you're making the choice to read this. Oh I don't know. I just found it remarkable that Tuesday had come around again and it'd be the same date and it'd been weighing on my mind anyway because it never really leaves.

We don't believe in you

2008-07-21T22:52:00.002+01:00

When the big happies are hard to reach you gotta settle for the little smiles. I slide through the kitchen in cosy socks with ribbons or float through the bathroom in tights with a run of slits above my left knee. The nylon distorts my freckles and my bruises. There's the release of a well-scrubbed face with whatever microbead things that scratch and tingle to making it all better with the moisturiser, the only one that doesn't make my skin worse. There's turning the tub of Julie's doublebase on it's side so the cream ploomphs onto the plastic and finding the circle of invisible dryness that disappears and reappears in exactly the same place. Like a ten piece was rubbed onto her skin and placed on mine. It's finding the bumps on my left shoulder to remind myself of myself. There's other smiles like a book that feels just the right size in my hand or the pink of the gaffer tape that holds my earphones together. There's the fact that my mum seals up my window with sellotape and then we wonder if the bees will get stuck and if they have bodies or just fuzz. Then we sat for the longest time trying to remember if bees had heads.

There's a smile of a quiet song with a piano. There's picking out all the red skittles and making a pile to eat one by one. There's finding out my dad likes the same band as I do and has two of their albums. There's pens falling out of my pockets as I try to carry too many notebooks at once. There's a message from someone who barely even knows me but liked me enough to say hey. There's a big glass of water and a blank piece of paper and a pen I haven't chewed yet and my mum interrupting because she needs a book to read and saying my room looks like a brothel. There's a certain way that girl moved, a combination of colours and the nose of a boy that caught my eye. There's knowing that in a couple of hours when I think that's time to call it a day, I won't sleep because there's too much to think and knowing I won't write it down but the barest hints like Cinderella in a courtyard of bubbles from the fountain or feet hanging down in the back of the car as she pulls herself further outside or twins dancing in thrift store suits. It's knowing all of this will come before the bad thoughts and then the dreams and then the headaches before my coffee. But for now I've got a smile to tide me over and half a glass of water and a mouthful of jack and a pen I've only chewed a little. I just need another piece of paper.

I am now allergic to my place of work, yay

2008-07-20T18:53:00.004+01:00

Now I clean, sneeze and have to clean again.

The girl in Barnados now knows me by sight. I got the biggest smile today as she came out of a door and sought my eye contact. She also made sure she said bye to me when I left even though she'd been downstairs. I want to hug her. However, I think I exhausted my luck with the skirt which still feels amazing despite going through the washing machine twice and found nothing of any interest.

When I was getting something to eat a man laying some sort of pipe or tubing in the road said good morning so cheerfully I thought I'd imagined it but he was still standing smiling and ignoring the other worker when I turned round so I said it back and he just beamed. It's like the sun made everyone happy and for once I'm not grumbly even though I'm shattered. But it's very fun talking to someone until you fall asleep so I'm not complaining about the lack of sleep for once.

Dear tv drama land

2008-07-19T21:08:00.002+01:00

Your tiresome fear of female sexuality has become unbearably predictable. Must I watch as every woman who cheats is punished in some way? Is their a rule that says all female characters who enjoy sex must be whorish? And anyway they're just ultimately looking for a husband in the end anyway. I'm not a raving feminist, I want equality yes but I know men and women are different. Sometimes I think life would be a lot simpler if we were all just assholes and said the things on our minds but we won't for fear of how others will react. I suppose alcohol is supposed to help, with the removal of inhibitions and all that but I still hold the capacity to lie even when I lose the power to walk.

What I'm really saying is I watched Casualty tonight with my mum. I was playing my gameboy during the boring bits, which since they kill off every good character (ridiculously attractive paramedic, where did you go?) was pretty much all the time. There's this story about asshole doctor man and pretty nurse who had a fling and then SHOCK turns out she didn't want to see him again because she was married to SHOCK this other doctor but they were keeping it a secret for some reason. Also he was having an affair with this female doctor. And then some stuff happened and nurse continued her affair with asshole doctor. This week the wonderful twist of adulterous nurse's son was nearly killed whilst she was busy boinking asshole doctor. OH NO says I. Now she'll feel all guilty and refuse to ever speak to the doctor ever again and she will cling to her husband. Especially if the son dies.

How does the episode end? With the nurse PRAYING TO GOD that if He saves her son she will stop being a dirty whore. This is because the show cannot justify such selfish behaviour from a woman. SHE HAS CHILDREN! The doctor, despite making her feel like shit anytime she had a moral crisis, will only feel sad because he loves her. He receives no punishment but sadness. Boo fucking hoo.

Oh for fucksake says I and then since I was here already I decided to rant.

If you haven't looked at Dr horrible yet you must hurry. It stops being free to watch tomorrow. And I'm reading Being There by Jerzy Kosinski, pretty good so far. And I can't take Slavonic Studies because it clashes with History. Fuck. But I saved the reading list and maybe I'll just read them myself. That's what I did for English Lit this year. It's like an academic recommendation list.

Everyday means another bee to rescue. Goddamn stupid bees.

2008-07-19T11:36:00.003+01:00

My friend was a mix of a girl named Ashleigh from school who had done gymnastics and Nicola the first friend I made at uni with her mad hair and soft Edinburgh craziness. She took my arm as we wandered around the dark woody campus, looking for the door. We found a seat, padded leather bar stools on grass and settled down for the powerpoint presentation that would act as our introduction to the degree. It was long and I was eating an apple. I span the core round the table until I started getting looks from the other people so I stood up and made my way to the front to bin it. My skirt was black and fifties sticky out and my shoes rubbed into my heels as I stepped around clusters of students. It was agonisingly slow and I had to take the long way round. By the time I got back a new group of people had taken seats around us. My stool was hidden between the backs of whispered laughter and I shrank smaller, darting through until I managed to get my ass on the seat. I straightened up and pushed them away. One guy I shoved was this huge broad dark and scruffy man who snatched my hand in his and introduced himself loudly, booming that he had another class to get to and I had to shout my own name several times before he heard me. He cuffed the top of head as he left, laughing as my hair exploded even bigger. The lecturer had things to tell us, something about a repeat the next day and then I back outside with my friend complaining that I missed my university and she sighed and pushed me down a hill.

Then Julie had a birthday party and her dress wasn't zipped properly up the back but she wouldn't let me fix it. Her and three others had plates of cakes only the cakes had been crumbled into the paper of the plates and I shuddered to see them try to scoop it into their mouths. This tiny little girl kept complaining of being hungry and then she picked up a screwdriver and several screws, called them a fancy name and tried to fix a shelf. I took a screw away from her and pierced my finger. Then I was on my hands and knees in a bookshop looking for something for Julie who was shouting abuse at a bunch of people in the doorway. I was tangled in a card display when one of them came up behind me and tripped me up. I leaped up and he held my hands as I struggled to hit him and all he did was laugh.

Woke up to deal with bees.

I'll comfort myself in the next life

2008-07-18T11:05:00.004+01:00

Watchmen Trailer is online now.

I'm going to say it. I have my doubts about Zack Snyder. I have seen his films. Dawn of the Dead made me laugh but I don't think it was supposed to. And 300? Guys I'm saying it, don't bother arguing with me, it was pretty stupidly bad. If it just the battles it'd be fine, I loved that speed up, slow down, spear through somebody's face kind of thing. If you read Homer or any of those Classical guys the battles are pretty much that anyway. You get a long description about a guy and his family and his life and then SPLUNK arrow through the eye and out his brain! But come on, it was shiny and so WE ARE NOT GAY overly macho and then you throw in the unnecessary woman bit (I wanted her to fail, stupid whore), the unnecessary LOOK AT THE MANY POSITIONS US SPARTANS HAVE SEX IN BECAUSE WE ARE NOT GAY. It was as my dad remarked when we walked out "a fifteen year old boy's wet dream'. I saw it, I was entertained for the most part, I would not watch again.

So a man who has made two films, one a ridiculous zombie film, another a bunch of men in little pants screaming and now he's made what he says is a very faithful adaption of a very good comic. I imagine it'll be a good film so long as you're not precious about the source material. Or it will be ridiculous. Also Oxymandias looks terrible.

You know, with the season over I haven't really seen my dad much. At least before I had 90 minutes every week to talk shit with him. It means we start booking things together. We're seeing the Last Shadow Puppets and Chuck Palahniuk and then they've made a film about Lou Reed's Berlin and I'll probably take him to see that too even though he's seen the concert twice now. People wind me up a lot about football and I do like the sport although I have to be in the mood to watch it sometimes but it really is the easiest way I can connect with him. Laugh is here I am, bored waiting for Julie to get up, typing about my father and he calls with cryptic murmurings before declaring that I can ignore the call and hangs up. Thanks dad, you crazy old man.

You guys love Whedon don't you?

2008-07-17T20:32:00.002+01:00

Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Thank you Mars Volta guy for being so very nice and talking far too much about tv or I would have missed this.

Nathan Fillion is in it by the way if you haven't clicked the link yet. Why haven't you clicked the link yet?

I don't know what I'm doing still here

2008-07-17T12:43:00.005+01:00

Scarecrow and fungus, they ran through a stop light but it was ok because nobody was there.
Scarecrow and fungus, they ran through a stop light but it was ok because they were on foot.

One day I will marry this woman.

Free music so you can learn why.

This too shall pass

2008-07-17T08:52:00.003+01:00

I've been awake for several hours and I've got that hangover that comes of dim grey mornings. No alcohol, I don't need a drink for the headaches to hit me. When I was wee I used to curl myself up tight, push my head into a cushion and scream, muffled in the hopes they would ease but they never did. I have a craving for peanut butter, I'm tearing up my mouth trying not to think about it.

So let's not. I find it easier to type here than in a word document and my notebook runs along my burnt finger when I hold it the way I like. Notebooks paper cut. I once sliced my wrist on the edge of a particularly short notebook. That itches like you cannot believe. Not the point, or maybe a new point. When I'm stressed out beyond belief it shows physically and not always intentionally, not anymore. I'm stronger now, not as goddamn stupid. There was this huge pause between sticking my hand on the side of the sizzling machine and spinning round the island hissing through my teeth. That pause is the silent peace of a busy mind. It's the deep breath, the murmur that you're doing fine, and then you plunge in full and you can scream and shout and it would be ok but you don't anyway, you just keep on hissing and you let yourself cry even though you swore you were never going to let yourself cry and every time you tear up when it gets too much you gotta clamp down on your lip and tell yourself to grow up a little. The world is not some big bad wolf but don't go skipping through that forest without looking. Naive little bitch.

I used to be the one that everybody turned to, I won't know if I still am if I keep avoiding people and I am such a good little avoider. I practice my lies in my head while I shower and on the bus and before I go to sleep. I'm prepared for what you have to say. But they used to come to me and I listened and I soothed and I was maternal and I understood but nobody wanted to probe why I understood, how far I understood and I forget what I ever told you. I forget what you know and I worry it is too much and I'm sad that it isn't enough. Lying there, tired and pissed off at the world I tried to null the alcohol swirling in my system because the worst thing that can happen is the depression. It hits and I try to pull my skin off. I should have known something was up when she staggered in beside me in an old winnie the pooh jumper that jarred with her frilly thong that was trying too hard. My life was painted perfect by her. I wasn't allowed to have problems, like I have to be in love always and I have to care. I have to feel bad. So many rules for so many different people. Listening to her pulled me back too many years and I hate thinking about it. Anything I say about that time results in "I never noticed that" and I wonder if what I'm saying is the truth or if I was just truly unnoticeable. I know I'm not now. Somedays I try to walk, try to live without anybody seeing me and I can feel eyes on me. Strangers smile at me and I used to walk down this little road, university something and count the looks from the English students who had their class before me. Then I'd check in the reflection of a car to check I wasn't odd. Odd beyond my own control, I mean. Go away, go away but I'm vain and I need the uncomfortable glances. I need to know I'm worth looking at.

I'm starting new again come September. Another year with another class and it will be pointless like all my classes are pointless. It will be my seventh first year subject with my first two second year subjects. And I wish I could go back, I wish I could be in 3rd year like everyone else but I was weak and tired and I just wanted to get in. I thought it would take care of itself but my problem is I can learn it and I can read it and I can understand but I cannot speak. Je peux l'apprendre et je peux l'lire et je peux l'comprendre mais je ne peux pas l'parler. I want a revolution, I want a cause to fight for and I want to spin down those streets and find a hand to pull me close and let me know

it's just another morning before the world wakes up and I boil the kettle. Good morning.

Thinking about puddles, puddles and mistakes

2008-07-16T21:03:00.005+01:00

I didn't tell you about my dream the other night. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget but I just could not be bothered blogging. Funny thing I sometimes forget I have actually posted something here. There's a post here for almost every day and I often have no memory of writing it.

Anyway, dream. It started in a street, there was some fuss about a dress, I don't remember this part too hot, but there was a big fuss anyway and then sometime later this little girl skipped past me to hail a cab. Big yellow New York one like cabs always should be. She had her long hair in a french braid, I remember because I can't do it but my aunt could and she used to twist my hair on top of my head when I was little and my hair stretched all the way down my back. I was watching a programme just there and this girl had this wondrously long braid and I sort of want that. I also sort of want to chop it pixie again but I probably won't. So she skipped out, dragging a suitcase and she was wearing the dress. Black and white and skimming her ass as she leaned into the road. She slid into the cab and the boy with me whistled. We were in the jungle. We stayed in the trees not wanting to touch the swamp. My view cut to the three guys on the other side. They were posed smiling bubbles under the water and I worried. He told me not to care and then I lost any control over the dream. There was a crocodile. They panicked but it was in the way of the only exit. But an Irish guy threw a rock, and he kept on throwing stuff until it was buried under some sort of large computer. I saw this scene so many different times. I kept waking up, and then I'd shut my eyes again and see it and I couldn't understand why so I made my Irish man who switched into many different men and eventually started to cry kick the computer which was now a box off and there was the dead crocodile staring at the trio with the dress and a braid in its teeth.

"This is fucked up. Fuck you guys," said my Irish man and he started throwing stones again at something else and then my mum woke me up by hovering by the end of my bed and I freaked out.

I want to take you far from the cynics in this town

2008-07-15T16:19:00.001+01:00

I have decided

2008-07-14T12:17:00.002+01:00

to wear this skirt forever.

Hell it even makes the burn on my finger look good. God how I love you, Barnados. You and your creepy as fuck giant moths and kinda pretty but also kinda ugly girl at the till that always smiles and approves of my choices. She has the warmest smile. See on anyone else I'd be turned off and resent the intrusion into my weekly browse but on her it makes me feel glad I stopped in and even gladder when I find something truly great.

Like this skirt. Hot damn. It's like the perfect length and it sits on my hips just right and it's such an odd colour I could wear it with anything and it feels amazing like I may have already said. Dear god, I'm in love. And I was going to go out and show it off today but my dad forgot to pay my wages so I'm skint. I may have to go for a walk.

Summer don't know me no more

2008-07-13T18:27:00.005+01:00

Guys, guys see this skirt?

I paid a fiver for this skirt. It feels amazing. Seriously, I could touch this skirt forever which is gonna be a problem when I wear it out. Be like the time I had these amazing feeling tights and I couldn't keep my hands off myself. Not appropriate but my god, it feels amazing.

Walking down to work I found a letter on the ground. I didn't read much of it, was something medical about a consultation about cosmetic surgery on the eye area. It was kinda weird. I don't like invading people. It's like I'd like to read Sylvia Plath's diaries but she never intended them to be published so I don't buy them. I feel weird even reading certain blogs and hell if I find a mention of myself I stop reading. Saying that I listen into conversations all the time and I watch arguments so maybe I'm talking shit. Wouldn't be anything new. I was gonna do a post about how much I adore Cibo Matto but I can't really be bothered. They are great though. If you want cute Asian girls (one of which was Noodle for a little while) singing nonsense about food and Obi Wan well they're your band.

Why don't you tell it like it really is

2008-07-12T12:42:00.004+01:00

I had a flurry of writing earlier this week. Every moment I had to spare I was curled up with a notebook and several pens sticking out of me. I lose most of them in my hair to be honest. They make for good chopsticks. While I was out the other day, after I had successfully burnt myself, my mother took pity on what was the floor of my room and hoovered it for me. In doing so she recovered at least six bics which is awesome because now I have a choice of pen. Anyway I've been writing. I've not touched my only finished piece because blehh I have too many issues with it, I can't progress with my French one until well I go to France and I'm just polishing up the pieces I can write with absolute confidence. It's a rather cheery piece though and I'm not consistently cheerful enough to really dig in and get all of it out of my head. It's there though and there's a lot of notes and stuff so it won't fade like a lot of stories do if I neglect them for too long.

My third one is the one that's consuming me. It's not helped by the fact that I've been reading Bukowski and Palahniuk. I want to write male. See all my best pieces, the ones I am truly proud of and other people have read, all those ones are from a male perspective and I'm always really scared about doing that. I want a voice obviously, because an author without a voice is just a story teller, but I want to be able to write something different everytime and be recognisable without being easy to identify if you follow. Like oh that's by the same author but what in the hell is that person like. I guess it stems from the fact that when I think of a writer I think of something masculine. I started this third thing as a experimental piece. I was a little bored, sick of looking at my old stuff and thought fuck it. I'm on holiday, I'm unemployed, I just sorted out what I want university wise (though I can't make it happen until August but at least I know what I want now and yes it is pointless but hey), I'm more or less on top of this thing called life because I essentially tried a month or so of just not giving a damn. But this thing I'm writing, it's ridiculous and it was really just a filler until I came up with something good. Somehow I've objectified my only female character and if she isn't nagging, she's giving my narrator a hard on. I swear I did not intend this. I was going to write it from her point of view, instead I'm some sarcastic drunk guy in his thirties hanging around with kids and God waiting to ride out the apocalypse in relative safety. And it is backwards. And it's like I'm proud of it but I don't want anyone to read it because it is ridiculous and I can't tell if it's just pretentious nonsense or if it's a goddamn masterpiece. I'm either fantastic or I'm insane or I'm rather dull. We'll see how it goes. I know it's daft to aim so low as to want to be a writer but that is all I want. It's not what I'm going for, I need a job and a career and a life since I cannot picture a marriage or kids. But you know I've wanted it since I was about six years old so why shouldn't I hope to achieve it? If I don't hold on to it I'm left with not a lot after all.

continued on pain of Julie attackegg

2008-07-11T18:56:00.002+01:00

So yesterday I managed to be very very dumb and burn myself on the toastie machine. I got to watch the blister form under the tap it was pretty freakin cool let me tell you, only at the time I was not a happy kitty. Julie came through to enquire after her dinner and found me with my hand in a cup of water sobbing like a big girl. She was all iffy and hovering around until I showed her that I had in fact hurt myself.

"Thank god. Thought it was emotions." she proceeded to pat my head and call me a big wuss. "I mean sometimes I'm so tough I just stick my whole face in the machine, for laughs." It was her way of showing she cared. So after it stopped hurting quite so much my mum bundled me up and dragged me down to the pharmacist so three pharmacists could inspect me. They weren't patronising or anything but it was still pretty daft. Was like when I was in primary school. I always hated going to the office and showing them my skint knees. It's like I'm really just letting someone else tell me that yes, you have hurt yourself, silly girl. Don't make it worse. I'm being careful as hell. I mean I burn myself quite often, just little ones. 1st degree since Julie was so keen to tell me that my finger is 2nd degree burned.

"1st degree=red line. 2nd degree=blister. 3rd degree=FACE FALL OFF. In fact Catherine we best cut your finger off now just in case."

Julie also checked on me while I slept to make sure I didn't lie on my hand. So sweet right?

Well until she remembered I'd promised to bake her some cookies this week.

"When you gonna get in the kitchen and make me a tasty snack, bitch?" It was difficult, shall we say, but I managed it although I didn't even attempt to crack eggs with a finger out of commission.

J'aime ça! is Julie's cry of delight

2008-07-11T18:49:00.002+01:00

I had a hankering for an ice pole. Yes, it's cold and wet and miserable outside but fuck it, I have an imagination, I can pretend! The shop only had these insane pod like nonsense so we settled for Calippos. Or Julie did and I had this Ribena knock-off one which wasn't bad but you know, no artificial anything so a little more bland than usual. I was whining about the lack of real ice poles and Mum was all they had them, shurrup.

"No! Those were stupid ones. Real ones are neon bright and like a foot long." Here I extended my arms (with caution for reasons I'll come back to) rather wide. Distance and measurement were never my strong points.

"Boys must love you," my mother laughs and I choke on my iced treat. THEN JULIE WAS AWESOME

To Andrew of Campbell Street

2008-07-10T10:17:00.003+01:00

I am sorry you could not possibly know that just because I was up dancing and laughing that I would be fun and/or easy. This is mostly due to the fact that I'd wanted to go home at 11 and it was coming up for 3. I was drunk on corona, jack and tequila because it was £1 a drink so why the hell not and annoyed that I was still there, that I'd been id'd at the bar (never happens), that my order was questioned several times even though I'd spoken loud, clear and confidently, that I looked like shit because my hair was such a mess all I could manage was pigtails. This is also due to the fact that your face was problematic. Angles I could not understand and facial hair like that thing you did in science, you know, with magnets and crumbs of metal. Also you made the mistake all men make of using the words "you should". I don't care what you are recommending I do, don't fucking say it. I will not be told what I should be doing. And you had the cheek to try to goad me into dancing more. I mean you were fucking asking for it.

So that is why I laughed in your face constantly and shrugged off your stares. That is why when Last Night came on I leapt up and bounced out of my heels and dipped my ass to the ground because Kirsty did not know how to do it. That is why I did not acknowledge you trying to dance behind me. That is why I leaned back so close and darted out of your way every time you tried something. That is why I left without saying goodbye and ignored you outside and when you demanded a hug I sighed so loudly at the taxi door and half-heartedly waved an arm out. I'm so sorry you were too interested, I'm sorry I slid away when you tried to kiss me. I'm sorry that she was so drunk that she cried half the night because her life is a mess.

I'm sorry that while I was trying to calm her down I was busy trying to find the perfect phonetic spelling for the next line in my next novel. I'm sorry that at 5am my hand found my phone in my jeans and typed tequila headache oww but did not send it because 'it's the wonder of communication and why should I send knowledge of my crippling hangover over the sea?'

I'm not sorry that I went home early even though I had to get her out of bed and my heels echoed too loudly down her street. By doing so I calmed the resent in my chest, I gave a man directions to a street he was already on and I saw Glasgow laid out before me covered in clouds. I wanted to scream louder than anything that I fucking loved my city but I can't stay here any longer.

I am slowly losing my mind.

2008-07-09T10:25:00.002+01:00

Me, my mum and my dad were watching newsnight last night. Or rather my dad was trying to and my mum was all 'it's my birthday stop it' after already changing the channel to Swiss Railway Journeys and insisting we watch it until she got bored. So we're watching the news and suddenly my dad waves at us to shush because he knows the woman who's sitting at the table. My mum laughs and says 'I have never seen her when she wasn't wasted' and then it cuts to another woman on the screen. "A professor! Fucking joke," cries my father at the woman's subtitle. "Is she nervous or something? She looks uncomfortable," my mother asks. "No, she's just really fucking fat." And then we all hugged. I do so love watching BBC programmes with my dad. I like to know who hates who and who got really trashed at some wedding.

My hair last night was the curliest it's ever been. You've never seen my hair like that. This morning however, I might have spent two hours with the ghds and it'd never sit like this. SERIOUSLY WHAT HAPPENED? I have no before picture though so you'll just have to take my word for it.