merry motherfucking christmas

how we spent christmas eve and the wee hours of christmas day

my sister had to be rushed to hospital. she had a seizure of some kind. i`ve never been so panicked and scared in my whole life but somehow still managed to call 999 and coherently give them our address and phone number

she`s back home and relatively okay now, thank god. not quite the start to christmas we had hoped for


merry motherfucking christmas indeed

like an ostrich

you try and bury your head in the sand so you don`t go crazy from all the shit that`s happening, then something happens to bring it all home.

alison's uncle is being held hostage in iraq.

hardly something you can ignore.

leaving on a jet plane

Fri 31-Dec LHR - DEN

Thurs 6-Jan DEN - JFK

Mon 10-Jan JFK - LHR


strange that previous post laments the state of america, yet the same day i book my trip over to the states to go in little under two months. can't wait though. skiing and partying can safely be separated from politics. i hope.

the death of democracy

*thanks to dogseat for image

It’s the day after the US Presidential Elections. Bush got back in. Something like 51% to 49% is what I heard.

The day is grey. There’s no sun and the low clouds are blocking out any blue sky. Everything seems faded of colour in this light. The trees are shedding their leaves. All in all, the weather pretty much matches my mood. It’s reflective of how a lot of people feel.

The New Yorkers were all so optimistic that I thought maybe Kerry had a chance. They were all gathering at one house to watch the results come in, bottles of champagne chilling for the celebratory drinks, flasks of whiskey tucked in back pockets to calm the nerves as Jon Stewart chatted his way through Election Night. But the champagne and whiskey turned to commiserating drinks, something to steady the nerves ahead of four more years of Bush.

That’s what I’ve seen a lot of. “Four More Years.” “Four Year Hangover.” “How can 59, 054, 087 people be wrong?” as on the Daily Mirror, above. Strange, they always seemed a fairly right wing newspaper. Jumping on the Kerry bandwagon.

I saw Kerry’s concession speech where he got a standing ovation. “We’ve still got your back man!” someone yelled from the crowd as the applause subsided. I almost cried.

I think we might be hearing the death rattle of democracy.

more bikes, less cars

halloween critical mass last night was sooo much fun

after swapping the huge mountain bike for the chonch bike (aka deathbike for cutie, recently renamed 'elizabeth' by sam) we congregated on the south bank by the national. i just about managed to hook up my devil horns to the front of my bike.

to be honest, the mass was a little disorganised and there seemed to be some power issues to be worked out; no one ever seemed to really know where we were going. we went over waterloo bridge, up kingsway, round bloomsbury square, then headed up to the couriers pub (can't for life of me remember name), up clerkenwell rd, past farringdon station, through smithfield, then down over london bridge, along the south bank to tower bridge, back over that (where small confrontation occurred between posh twat and overzealous slightly scary bike courier guy wearing a death hood) past the tower of london, along that route back to the west end, along the embankment, trafalgar sq, charing cross road up to tottenham court road, up oxford street where we shut down oxford circus by riding in circles for a while. which was amusing. then they headed up portland place to who knows where while me, diggle and sam hopped off our bikes, locked 'em up and went to The Heights bar, a bar about fifteen stories up on top of the st george's hotel. very nice.

me and sam then for some reason decided to cycle home too, which almost did me in.

one week later...

well. quite a year for the red sox. first world series win in 86 years. took its damn time coming. screw the curse, screw the yankees, screw st louis, we won. hah.

or something a little more sporting.

and now, after all those nights of staying up to watch the bloody games, i need some serious sleep... zzzzzz...

curse schmurse

Bos: 10
NY: 3

have it!

unconscious comfort

had a really restless sleepless night last night, brain churning, couldn't get things off my mind

at one point i woke up to find myself curled up foetally, thumb in mouth, cheeks wet with tears

jesus

felt emotionally exhausted which only added to the insomnia

what's going on?

puellae est in bar

so i was out with friends the other night. we were in a packed vodka bar in central london. one-in one-out style. we're young, we're in a bar surrounded by lots of other young people and freely flowing alcohol.

and it suddenly occurred to me we were talking about latin. yes, latin. caecilius est in horto. cerberus. matella.

are we like the biggest geeks in the world?

i can't believe it's october already.

shit.

9/11... belatedly

it was three years ago last saturday. wow, it seems both so much longer and much more recent than that.

following various links i ended up on laura holder's site (aka lauratitian) and saw her post about 9/11 when it happened and it got me thinking.

actually it got me feeling. i see things like this, these personal glimpses at the disaster that happened and i can't read them properly. i feel choked. i feel like i'm almost about to cry.

so where was i? it's something everyone remembers, isn't it.

i was working my last day at starbucks in uxbridge. it was the end of summer vacation between my first and second years at university. i'd spent the summer working back at starbucks after Thomas (manager) had invited me back, and had been whored out to various stores: richmond, kingston, gloucester road, uxbridge. kingston was the best, it was where mikee and scotty worked. uxbridge i didn't like very much. apart from the fact that it's miles away, the people there weren't so easy to get on with and they seemed to resent the fact that i'd come straight in as supervisor when i was the youngest person to work there (hah. sorry. that was a belated hah, as well).

so i get in to work for a 1pm shift and i've just punched in when my sister calls me on my mobile to say a plane had crashed into one of the world trade center towers. we were both kind of "wow" but it seemed like a crazy joke at the time.

in the next hour more people came in and reports trickled in. both the towers had since been hit. a plane had flown into the pentagon. i had to explain to Roberto (spanish? south american? can't remember), one of the guys working with me, what the pentagon was. when he understood it was a US governmental building he cracked a huge grin. "good. down wiz ahmairicayn goverrement." what a prick. i hated him even more right then. maybe if he'd realised what a big deal it all was he wouldn't have said it. but he still did.

my sister called again, more panicked this time. she was home alone and i think she just wanted some reassurance, to hear a family voice. there wasn't much i could say, especially as i was meant to be working. she stuck a VHS in and pressed record; every channel had been taken over by the news.

when i finally got a break, i went over to the electronics store in the shopping mall where we were based. i think it was a Dixons. the mall was pretty empty. there were other people gathered in there, standing hushed in front of the bank of televisions that always line the back walls. all televisions were either showing footage of the event, or were tuned to a Sky Movies channel that just showed movie trailers in a continuous loop. one of them for that schwarzenegger flick, The 6th Day and there were a few seconds when you couldn't tell which screen was showing reality and which was showing the future apocalyptic style film. i suddenly couldn't stop shivering and got out the store.

i don't remember much of the rest of the shift; i don't think anything much happened. everywhere was much quieter than usual, i know that much.

those are my main memories of the day. then a couple days later, driving up to nottingham and back in a day with claire to drop stuff off at the new house. driving with her is usually pretty fun, we put on loud music, she pisses around, we talk and joke. we listened to bbc radio the whole time, constantly talking about the tragedy and we barely spoke a word between us. it was strange.

and now. it's the personal accounts, like i mentioned, that affect me. it's almost as if it's been overdone or something in the mainstream media. although saying that, the images of it in Bowling for Columbine made me cry and not be able to stop.

a while ago, whilst at work, i was browsing through people's archives (it's so much easier with a good broadband connection) and came across frank's dedication to the event here and, even though i was at work, it made me cry. that sneezy feeling you get in your nose, the choking feeling in your throat, the prickling feeling in your eyes when you're trying your hardest not to - started as i read his caption then eventually got the better of me as i scrolled down and read the comments.

and that's just one of them that immediately springs to mind. like i said, it's these personal takes on the tragedy, the personal element that get me. i think it's been - i don't know, overdone or something in the mainstream media. the pictures and words are still horrifying but when it's just something like this - and from people i've met in person, no less - then it just brings it home to you.

Fear of Failure (yes, I'm capitalising it).

Some people use it as fuel, the hot hard core of their ambition.

Others are so crippled by it that they don't even try - which of course is a type of failure. It's a vicious circle. So scared of failing that you don't even try and in the process fail anyway.

It's ridiculous.

I've had enough of bitching about how sick I am of this city, how I feel stuck in a rut or something.

I can't even bitch about being scared to call The Producer 'cause Fate's wheels turned and clicked and we bumped into each other. And it was good news that I heard - but obviously I've barely done a thing about it. Written a couple of paragraphs. Why? Because I'm scared they won't like what I come up with when I know this thing inside-out, back-to-front and in Latin if it really came to it? Probably. It's taken on tones of apathy, this fear of failing thing. It's become more of a "nah I can't really be bothered" more than I "oh god what if they don't like it." It's just a masquerade.

But enough. If I'm tired of London (then I'm tired of life?) then I can do something about it. And I am.

And this writing thing. I'm going to do it. I need some self-discipline. I need to find somewhere to work; there are way too many distractions here. But people are leaving and going back to school and so on so the place will empty out a little. That might help.

And a job. I need to get a job. I don't have time this week (no, honestly, I'm already working on Thursday and Friday) but Monday morning, bright and early, I'll go do the rounds of the agencies, peruse the Guardian Media. Get something to keep me going.

And soon I'll blow the hell out of this popsicle stand.

The Producer speaks

so i bumped into The Producer the other day; he was walking out a dry cleaner's as i walked past - when i should have actually been in richmond. and he'd tried to call me an hour previous but my phone had been off. it's so easy to see these "signs" everywhere...

after a little chitchat:

"...what it comes back to is that I think you're a fantastic writer-"

oh god, that sounds like there's going to be a 'but', he's going to say 'but- something', oh shit, but what?

" - and what's coming back from these people is that they think you should write a book."

oh.

yes, that was unexpected. now what??

hey, at least it saves me calling him. i hate calling people.

signs

so the deadline for that job i kind of wanted (trainee script editor) was actually august 20th, not august 27th. that means i missed it. i obviously wasn't meant to have that job. maybe it's a sign that i shouldn't be editing other people's scripts but focusing on my own. because if i'm honest with myself, in my heart of hearts that's what i'd love to do for a living; write scripts. i think i had it too easy the first time round, with a producer saying he wanted it. but now - it's probably just gathering dust somewhere at shepperton. and i'm too chicken to call and ask what's going on, if he's still looking for an agent for me, if he's even still interested. i keep telling myself i'll call in september. i'm just one big coward. afraid of failure. so maybe i should just admit that i fucked up over this job application deadline instead of seeing everything as a sign. it's just a way of interpreting everything to your liking. it's stupid.

anyone?

this weblog is a tiny little fragment of cyberspace that i get to call my own. to do what i want with it, to share with others. a couple of people sometimes read the posts; i know this 'cause they leave comments. that's fine. it's a kind of validation.

i saw this quote about a month ago: "sometimes the things you don't want to talk about are the things you need to talk about most."

true. very true. i'm not much of a talker in reality, but i thought this could be my space to vent, to talk, to get rid of some of the demons. but it's so much harder than i thought. i don't if there's some kind of boundary i'm not meant to overstep. my posts on here range from the everyday talking about films, to the emotional heartwrench that i try to hide up or just fail to accurately write about because i let myself get caught up in the emotion. i don't know if by writing about the things that eat away at me i might alienate people. or what if people i know read it? what then?

so what's the answer? start a new blog? an anonymous one?
say fuck it all and write about it on here, where i suppose i might at least get some answers?

can anyone tell me?

the life you save may be your own

not so nice incident at liverpool street station last night waiting for one of the last tubes home after adam's b'day party. perverted man. i vented here.

so i jumped on the first train that turned up, a circle line, and got off at kings cross to wait for the h'smith & city line. a girl sat down next to me on the bench, looking like she was trying not to cry. then she was crying, quietly, to herself - the way you do if you can't help crying in public. she worried me, and i almost checked what was wrong, but something - that kind of unwritten rule about not talking to people on public transport, or that innate sense of britishness whereby you seem to ignore public emotion - made me stop. i was going to ask her when we got on the tube but she got on one carriage and i got on another. i could still see her through the carriage windows and she was still really upset and it was hurting me to watch her, so a few stops down the line i just got up and went to the next carriage and sat down next to her and asked her if she was okay.

she said her heart had just been wrenched out, proper heartbreak, but it was her own fault. i tried to tell her it wasn't. it was really upsetting me. i don't know why i overempathise so much. it's weird. emotionally numb, just feel others' pain or something too much. i just chatted to her till edgware roadwhere she got off to get the circle line round to sloane square. i apologised for breaking the unwritten tube law about talking to people and she said it was fine, it was actually quite refreshing that someone gave a damn or whatever.

i remember back in february, after that guy harrassed me all the way on the district line then followed me off the train, how relieved i was to hear a human voice when that guy asked me if i was okay or whatever. it's like - i don't know, just someone reaching out or whatever. i couldn't just let her sit like that the whole time on the tube. even if it wasn't for her, i needed to do it for myself because it was upsetting to see her, and i would have felt like such a shit if i hadn't.

i've just noticed i tend to lose coherence and any ability to write properly when writing about something emotional. strange.

and on another note, you'd have thought that having deleted someone's mobile number from my mobile's phonebook would be enough to make me realise the relationship is probably dying if not dead. but no, it needs for me to have re-entered the fucking number then to re-fucking-delete it for me to maybe think this is finally it. fucking idiot. i don't know why i give people so many chances. people that i love, i mean. it's a shame. the friendship was taken for granted. maybe because i was upset by that among other things, maybe that's why i went and talked to the girl. but maybe if she got off the train just feeling only 0.01% better because someone acknowledged her, then i guess that's a good thing.

oh, and look. it's friday 13th today.

make it so

or, things i learnt from art departmenting, part 3:

17. j seems to have been a jedi in a former life. obi wan hattobi or something. (heyyy, goes nicely with the hanalita-solo name i got...)
18. to "cut in" does not mean drive in front of someone rudely, it means to paint carefully around the edge of things such as windowsills, plugs, sockets and the edge of walls. i cannot be trusted to do the latter.
19. before this, i didn't even know what a valence was, let alone own two of them
20. windsor is quite a sweet town but i wouldn't live there, despite the grand castle
21. slough is definitely *not* a sweet town and i certainly wouldn't live there for all the tea in china
22. B&Q trollies are absolute arses to push around
23. i defintely can't wear those jeans again for anything other than painting
24. i need to find a job that is as satisfying and enjoyable (in its own way) that i can get paid for. twenty quid away from the overdraft. eek.

(part one and part two )

snakes everywhere

i fell asleep this afternoon (hey, i'm takin sleep wherever i can get it) and had really strange dreams about snakes

but get this - it was like a trilogy.

there was the first installment which was like some kind of X-Files ep or something, something to do with people being taken over by a big snake or alligator type thing. but that story concluded and everyone was safe and happy.

then the second installment kicked in. and from there it just got worse. it turned into some Roger Corman kind of horror movie, with snakes and 'gators everywhere and no one was safe and being killed left, right and centre. so fucking weird.

i just got done reading The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov. i think that's where it's all come from.

but what am i meant to do when i either don't sleep, or when i do have bizarre freaky nightmares like that?

good lord.

"these go to eleven"

just watched A Mighty Wind whilst babysitting
 
came home and put on This Is Spinal Tap
 
"nowtro, if you will"
 
"mime is money, my friend"
 
christopher guest is GENIUS. soooooo gooooooooooooood.

to whom it may concern

please, get out of my dreams


this isn't easy, but i'm trying


but please-

maybe it's 'cause i'm a londoner...

walking around london is one of the best things. exploring all the little back roads, stumbling across treasures, strange shops, people, stories, houses. and the museums and galleries that are free. i wanted to go to the wallace collection today, but we kind of ran out of time as we went for dim sum in chinatown after oxford circus - heading away from manchester square.

and i go through phases of constantly having my walkman jammed on, walking around with a soundtrack to wherever i am; or just not being able to handle the music, like it dulls out some of the world around me or something, and burying the walkman under the rest of the junk in my bag.

i did it in new york too. it was so nice having those first five days all by myself, just walking all over the place, block to block. i think it's slightly easier there, what with that grid layout and all. but - and this is going to sound gay in a totally gay way - you get a better sense of the city when you do this. off the beaten track or whatever.

there are times when it feels like your own private city, when you come across something you've never seen before, or some amazing little shop. like that second hand bookstore in NY that was around union sq somewhere. all those bukowski and harry crews books, and the ladders that you moved around and climbed up yourself to rifle through the top shelves (imagine that happening at waterstones or barnes & noble... they'd be so scared of litigation if someone fell or something, customers wouldn't be allowed within a five mile radius of a ladder). and the fat cat that just sat in the middle of the back room and regally watched the book browsers, and the other cat that twined itself round your ankles as you weighed up whether to buy those two william faulkner books (you didn't in the end as you figured it was only your third day in town and you should watch your money until you knew how the trip was going to play out). and the smell of the books, kind of dusty and musty and papery.

i was trying to convince HF today of the beauty of doing stuff like this, trying to convince her to just walk somewhere, anywhere, wherever we end up, but she was tired, full from dim sum and feeling a little grumpy or something, so that idea was dismissed.

never mind. i like going by myself, antisocial bug that i am. i'd rather go by myself than with someone who just doesn't *get* it. and i don't think she does.

with all that ra ra ra you playin yaself

clearing up my room i found all my old mix tapes from years ago

jeru the damaja. wu tang. tribe called quest. noreaga. redman. funky dl. rasaan patterson. mostly taped off choice fm. blast from the past. can't tell you how much it takes me back. almost like being 15, 16 again.

was listening to dymon-'all i want' and wanted to start wailing.

but goddamn if 'playin yaself' ain't a hottttt song. maybe i'll see if bella has any jeru albums or summat.

it's suddenly turned into being all about hip hop again in the past couple weeks.

"with all that big willy talk, you playin yaself"

rock... hard place...

i had this dream last night that the reason sam hasn't been in contact, seems as if she's not speaking to me, is because i - i won't tell someone something

and she was all like "it's for your own good", and refused to talk to me until i did something about it

but it left me in the position of: if i didn't say anything, then i'd lose her friendship; if i *did* say something, i ran the very real risk of losing this other person's friendship. stuck between a rock and a hard place.

'cause although it was a bitchy thing to do, kind of immature, i could see a method in her madness (there's a back story to the whole thing that i'm not going into...). but i didn't know what to do - i was thinking that was it worth being friends with someone who would do something like that. then remembering how good the friendship was when it was working.


then of course i woke up.

but i've still spent all day thinking it's real, and having to remind myself it's not.

coincidentally i actually got an email from her this evening. i'd like to say out of the blue, but i texted her on friday night to see if she was back and this was a four line email response to that. four lines. wow.

better than nothing?

i'm such a sucker. loyal to the point of stupidity.

but like i say, i now can't get this idea out of my head, about her being really pissed off that i'm too... "me" to do anything, say anything, whatever.

t'was all just a dream. queen mab at work playing her dangerous games.

tears for fears

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaarrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

huh

right. hopefully that's out of my system.

that's three times people have said something along those lines. GAAAHHHHH.


hhhhh. okay. whatever.
it's never gonna happen.
it's fine.
fine.

rockin the shit ghetto baby style

i keep forgetting to say, we saw this totally bling bling ghetto baby on brick lane on sunday

she had gold everywhere, including a fat gold chain round her neck that hooked onto her dummy so she wouldn't lose it

hardcore ghetto baby style

kind of wish i'd taken a shot

poetic interlude # 1

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows:
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes -
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreasm,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
And strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lies,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.

John Clare (1793 - 1864)

*****

no real reason for it being in, i just found a scrap of paper with it written on when i was going through some junk and really liked it and felt like sharing. it's not one of my favourites, it's just - a poem for a monday.

fiction is the lie we use to tell the truth

from script secrets (my emphases) (wait, is that the plural of emphasis?):

"For a script to be good, it needs to be something personal and emotional... but for a script to sell it needs to be something commercial that a couple hundred million people will pay to see. How do you find an idea that's both? What if all of the commercial ideas you come up with you aren't passionate about, and all of the personal ideas you come up with aren't commercial? How can you turn that personal and emotional idea into something with commercial potential?

...for a while it seemed as if everyone I knew betrayed me. I ended up hardening my heart and withholding my trust. I closed myself off from the world. After a couple of years living like this I realized I was miserable. Those walls that prevented me from having my heart broken again or my trust betrayed also prevented me from having any friends or any real relationships. I had to tear down those walls - even if it meant getting hurt again.

This was perfect material for a screenplay - very emotional, and something that most people can identify with on some level. But there were three problems with writing this as a script:

1) Not interesting enough. Gee, my heart got broken and a friend screwed me over - big deal! Who cares? This stuff happens to everyone, so why would six hundred million people worldwide pay to see my version? How would this be entertaining? Let's face it, this story is like listening to some friend tell you about the bad day they had at work... boring!

2) Even though I was over the broken heart and the friend's betrayal, it's still painful subject matter. Would I really want to relive all of that stuff in a script? Would I subconsciously tone it down in order to make it easier (emotionally) for me to write?

3) When all was said and done, the girl who dumped me and the friend who stole my deal weren't the real problem, I was. Hey - people get dumped every day, but how many completely cut themselves off emotionally afterwards? How many people go out of their way *not* to fall in love again, and go out of their way *not* to form friendships? The real story was that I had stopped trusting people... was I brave enough to tell that story? Would I try to sugar coat it, or maybe make it look like my ex-girlfriend was a monster so that my reaction would make more sense? Could I really be honest about my emotions?

Which is why I believe that fiction is the lie we use to tell the truth.

I was going to wear a disguise... find a way to explore all of these painful emotions in a safe environment. So I used the tool of magnification - I took my basic story and blew it up. Magnified it.

...All I did was take an event from my personal life and raise the stakes, intensify the emotions, and change the back stabbers into bloodsuckers. That's how magnification can be used to turn your personal story into a big commercial story. Find the basic emotional conflict in that personal story and magnify everything around it."

interesting.

list one

my list of things to do when i get the f- out of this job:

* sort out broadband. dialup is giving me a headache and a half
* script w/ J - we must sort something out
* sort out room - finish painting it, put up remaining shelves, tidy up
* new job?? - update CV, prob sign up w/ some agencies
* research internships abroad - most likely NY and Pareeee - visas etc - maybe call Bill and see if he has any good contacts in NY?
* travel: NY, Cuba, Hong Kong, Prague, Rome, Berlin
* delete web history from work computers i've used - so they don't stumble across fotolog or this
* go to brighton for a day (take camera) - megabus has cheap deals
* watch series three of 24
* spend a day watching old buffy episodes. no doubt cry at 'Becoming parts I and II' and 'The Prom'
* make dentist appt
* make doctor's appt
* ride bike
* see maria
* james II's 9th b'day party on 11th july (football party)

* SORT OUT LIFE - in general. needs a lot of sorting.

slowdance/makeout

vegas?

vegas??

wtf?
--------

on a whole other note (these entries are turning schizophrenic) thanks to b-dub for the faaabulous CDs. can't believe they got here so fast. must have been a speedboat or something. total flashbacks listening to them of the bbq at chonch's, asking pk who sang the songs, trying to explain that i didn't really grow up in the whole soft-rock thing and therefore didn't really know these songs so well (a conversation that repeated itself this weekend just gone w/ LBG. people always find it amusing that i had never been to a gig before about a month ago). slowdancing to - surprisingly enough - the slowdance CD and working out that at the time of my prom pk was 30 and finding it kind of funny. the crazy dancing and striptease in meadows' house. but this is just repeating a post a few back about the actual bbq.

cuckoo...

i swear to god, prozac would help so much right now.

it's a shame i'm not a drug person.

everything is so up and down.

maybe electroshock treatment. or a lobotomy.

bring it on, nurse ratched.

caffeine highs

so the coffee i had earlier has well and truly kicked in

i'm jivin around in my chair, dancing to the music i'm listening to on my headphones, rabidly flicking through netpages (mainly fotolog to be honest)

then i go back to the purchase order software that i keep minimising on the screen and my eyes just glaze over...

at least i get to go home in an hr and twenty mins

i can't believe it's critical mass tonight and (a) i didn't find out about it sooner (thx frank) and (b) i've already got unchangeable plans. it sucks.

of all the restaurants...

I bumped into my producer as he was walking out The Ivy this evening

Does anyone else find this as funny as I do?

(and what are the coincidences? i was walking up from seven dials as he walked out and almost into me)

a small good thing

even if old friends let you down and fuck you around, remember there are new friends who are more than happy to help.

small rays of sunshine that they are.

oh, and the raymond carver story to which the title refers made me cry when i had to read it at university. i was in the middle of the library at the time, too.

FAO: Sara

stop reading my blog. i didn't think you read it any more.


thanks.

one of the things currently wrong

i haven't heard from P. properly in ages.

i'll send a text just to try and touch base, make contact. no reply. or the briefest of replies that couldn't sound more like a brush off if it tried.

i try to talk on messenger. i get ignored. or the briefest of replies, where P. sounds incredibly distracted, gives really generic answers and makes no attempt at conversation or returning the questions.

i try calling, leave a voicemail or message with someone else in the house. no calls back. i even got through one time, was promised i would be called back in about an hour (P. had just walked through the door). obviously never heard back.

if P. was a guy, i would have given up weeks ago.

but she's meant to be my "best" friend. and suddenly it's like we're strangers or something.

i don't know what's up.

we co-ran a company together.
she practically spent half of last summer and the previous summer at my house.
she considers my family hers.
we have conversations where no one has any idea what we're talking about.
we do that weird psychic link thing i seem to get with people when i spend a lot of time with them.
we have a similar sense of humour, like the same books, films and other superficial things.

we're the ones we turn to when things are going down the pan, when the winter crazies set in, when vodka is required at 1 in the morning after bad breakups, the ones we celebrate with after dissertations have been handed in, final exams taken, the ones we go to brunch with up at the american-polish diner and sit there reading the papers. the ones we share really fucking stupid jokes with that still make me laugh (Amanda Huggankyss? Snipers and squirrels? Glamorama? Band on the Run?)

we had more contact when she was in brazil for fuck's sake. when she wasn't that happy, when things were bad here, there were always long emails or conversations on MSN. and even a phone call where i spoke to brazil on my mobile for like, forty minutes. (surprisingly not that expensive, although i hadn't meant for it to be that long, or to call on my mobile, it was just what happened.) we both needed it though and i didn't care.

so how can a friendship that can be that intense or whatever suddenly dissipate into nothing?

so she's back with j, friends always seem to take a backseat when it comes to boyfriends/girlfriends, it's a fact of life. that's understandable. but - fuck it, i don't know. its since she got back from brazil that it's all been weird. did we both change that much?

do i give up or keep trying? am i just humiliating myself if i do?

cutting it

"did you ask the hairdresser for it to be like rachel from 'friends'?"


pah. stupid boys.

i love my job

gaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHH! bah! arrrghhh!

christ, this job and this woman are doing my head in. i'm rapidly losing patience, and it takes a lot for that to happen. but she never lets you just get on with things, she always has to double check and treat you like a child. makes me want to say why don't you just do it yourself, instead of telling me to do something then hovering over me whilst i do it or whatever. AGHHH! oh, and she's always got so much to do, but instead of *doing* it, she sits there getting in a flap about it, constantly telling me how much she has to do and how much of a panic she's in. then she sits and plays cards on her computer.

MAAAAAAAAAAA!

okay, maybe this is slightly PMT-induced, but genuinely driving me bats. i'm SO leaving at the end of june. the other jobs i've been doing at this company have been boring but i could stand them. this facilities shit is so at the opposite end of the spectrum from interesting or anything i want to do, and working so closely with her... goddamn.

maybe i'll quit and take july off. doing some writing (that would be an idea). maybe go do another summer school program at st martins, or something.

anything to not be here. it's a shame, there are some good people here and i could do with the money. it's just this particular job.

bah humbug.

note to self:

damaged people looking pensively/sadly/angrily/frustratedly in broken mirrors is a terrible cliche. do not use.

between a rock and a hard place

i can't decide which is worse, trying to comfort/advise someone you're in love with about a relationship they're in, or their partner who you're friends with.

i'm not of the school that would try and drive the wedge in further.

you want them to be happy whatever, and the person they're with usually makes them happy. so you want them to kiss and make up, even if -

gah. whatever. maybe i should go to sleep.

things never seem so complicated in the mornings.

spirit level

oh, and one more thing:
16) being able to stick things on exactly straight first time round is a gift, but i don't know how useful it will be in life


the perfect antidote to some creepy derren brown shit - a freddie prinze "plank of wood" jnr film. but i only managed to watch five minutes before i wanted to put my fist through the t.v. screen.

a crack team of art department bitches

things i have learnt from art department-ing:

1) "okay folks, that's a wrap" are some of the sweetest words you can hear
2) art dept will get yelled at for anything and everything
3) there is always a strange tiny yet noticeable division between art dept and rest of crew
4) when the director starts chain smoking, that's probably not a good sign
5) don't bawl out other art dept members unless you're the Art Director...
6) ... but pick axes and fuck-off big mallets still should not be left on a public pathway for ten minutes while there's no one from the art dept anywhere nearby
7) two hours' sleep isn't quite enough to last the day
8) caffeine is your friend
9) low to no budget may mean, alas, you get dragged in as an extra
10) don't point malfunctioning staple guns at your eyes
11) white tack won't hold up pictures
12) black tack gets stuck to your fingers
13) "lefty loosey, righty tighty"
14) flat head screws are a bastard
15) the tube sucks. public transport is a joke.

i've got the black lung...

i'm a bit of a snot factory at the moment (mmm pleasant). caught something from the plane, probably, where the germs just circulate... i snickered at the strange lady sitting in front of me who wore a face mask, but i now understand why she did it.

*cough* *cough* *sniff*

it sucks being back at work. being back in london, actually. i've just gone straight back to the "what do i do now?" mode of thinking. i don't know how much longer this job can last.

i'd like to go away again.

but i'm also really getting back into school mode. maybe a masters. or maybe summer school will cut the craving again. it worked last year. i just feel like dedicating a year to going back to school now is too much. i'll try and pick up one of those big course directories you can get and see what i want to do this summer.

a language. and history. and more art. and literature.

goddamnit.

*atchooo*

excuse me.

one crazy assed bbq

hell, what a bbq.
met pro_keds in the library bar (ave A) first, along with salmon and her friend jenny.
beers.
bumping into david cross again.
big rats on the subway.
car from p_k's to fort greene and the bbq at chonch's house.
more beer.
margaritas.
running out of tequila so making dirty margaritas.
only eating chips (doritos) as never got round to grabbing any bbq.
thinking it was a good idea to bring out the water balloons.
instigating a conveyor belt system at the sink with frank but the balloons kept tearing.
big water fight.
wet kitchen floor.
slow dancing in the kitchen with p_k to the slow-dance-bbq CD jeff had made.
the pimpin party going on in the garden behind the one we were in.
twizzlers.
moving on to meadows' place.
talking to a "shemale" who then started playing bongos.
frank's striptease.
jeff's spontaneous dance routine.
curling up on the sofa with meadows' new martin parr book.
falling asleep on the windowsill, then crawling to the couch when jeff and aimee staggered out.
waking up and walking out into the beautiful morning light but realising i had no idea how to get home.
asking the guy at the petrol station.
the G and F trains being surprisingly full for 6:30 on a saturday morning.
pancakes at mcdonalds, mmm.
no sleep.
ajay probably dragging me to coney island in a couple of hours.

it's aaaaalllll good.

bedford avenue theme park

crazy crazy rainstorms yesterday. we walked into bloomingdales just as it started, and it had paused when we walked out - crossed the road into a sandwich bar and it started again. horribly humid as well. the downside to summer weather.

the NY meetup was last night. i was happy to casually walk in, don't know if this was 'cause i'd already met a bunch of them. met a lot of other cool kids like pro_keds (j'adore) and staciemerrill rebekkah and sharonwatt and meadows...

when i walked out onto bedford ave from the subway it was - i'd heard a lot about it, mainly from panther, but it seemed kind of like a theme park. toy town-ish. everyone hanging around, all these crazy dress senses, so many people about. it was kind of strange.

asked the bartender for a vodka lemon lime and got the blankest look. "uh, vodka 7Up?" yeah, whatever.

someone also said to me "the bartender speaks funny, are you guys from the same place?"
the barman was from dublin.
close, guys.

stacie bought me an "empanada" which was gooood (hey, it was food, right? hadn't eaten in a while) and pk ordered me a car... apparently their word for a cab. while we have taxis (the black taxi cabs in town) and cabs - like minicabs - they have cabs (the yellow ones you get in the city) and cars, which are ones you order from firms, like minicabs... how confusing.

a selection of meetup pics:
me & prokeds 'share a moment'
hott tub
more hott tub
being doubly photographed
frank n adam
a little spillage
hidden meadows
up yours
bad brainware...
empanadas
for every action...
there is an equal and opposite reaction
it's only rock n roll... the A+ boys
bear + beer
oh dear

suck my neck

vampire movies can often suck ass bad stylie (when they should be sucking neck, ha ha) but van helsing is genuinely one of the worst movies i've seen in a long time. ugh.



but lost boys still rules the roost.

brooklyn bike gang rule

i think that's about it, really.

i shocked even myself by agreeing to go hang out with people i've never met, but i figure what have i got to lose? i'm here by myself, don't know anyone... figured it would be fun. and it was *so* much fun.

we went to some home-run kind of bar in DUMBO with ramshackle outside booths and beer at $2 a bottle, then on to the Run For Your Life night run by black label bike club a couple blocks away (we took a, ah, slightly circuitous route to get there...)

they had loads of souped up bikes there and black label kids were working on them whilst we were there. the brooklyn bike gang kids were having a whale of a time ridin round... while some of us just took photos.

all in all, a crazy introduction to brooklyn. but a wicked night.

my trip so far

* i walked past david cross about an hour after landing in NY

* there have been big thunderstorms both nights i've been here

* there is a great deli right round the corner from where i'm staying. uh oh

* i watched a softball game when i was killing time in central park. it was the broadway league: The Producers vs The Playwrights. it took me ages to realise it was the show 'The Producers', and that Matthew Broderick, Mr Ferris Bueller himself, was sitting two rows ahead of me. he then batted and played 1st base for his team. he was okay. everyone was a little sycophantic. first time up at bat he missed, second time he bunted it down to first base but the guy fumbled it, so Broderick managed to get to first while the right fielder scooped up the ball. everyone was like "yeeeahh matthew! go matty!" and i was like - it wasn't that good. anyone else who did that might have got a smattering of applause or something.

* i just couldn't bring myself to go into banana republic even though my sister wants me to bring her back something from there

* my credit card has already been refused (eek)

cops don't speak so good

"An aware and titillated citizenry, that's how crime's reduced."

Titillated? Really?

twist schmist

i *heart* sam rockwell
and nicolas cage is the bomb
but matchstick men still isn't a great film.
twist schmist. guessed it about twenty minutes in.

"slightly off balance"

this was way too good to pass up.

i'm meant to be doing some edits, but obviously am just surfing the web and followed a link to some - i dunno, personality profiler or something. did the test (procrastination) and check out what the (scarily accurate) summary results were:

Hannah, you are moderately right-hemisphere dominant and have even preferences between auditory and visual processing, traits that might make people perceive you as "slightly off balance."

You are most likely to be slightly disorganized, a "dreamer" and a person who focuses more on the end result than the immediate task at hand. You are creative and spontaneous if somewhat lacking in direction and focus. You are a learner who is generally patient and a person for whom time is an ally, not an enemy.

You are more passionate than most people with regard to life and learning and recognize your own intuitive abilities. You have sufficient goal-direction to satisfy yourself and guarantee success without being or feeling driven. You are willing to be reflective about yourself and others without getting lost in rumination.

The balance of your sensory modes allows for both learning and expressive capabilities achieved by few. You are active and "seeing" while retaining an equally strong propensity for being reflective which slows you down a little but allows for a more comprehensive perception and analysis of situations and problems. You do not spend excessive time analyzing since you mostly trust your perceptions.

In all likelihood, you have a tendency to overcommit and cannot understand why others get upset since you operate on a different "time table" than they do. Your organizational abilities are frequently overwhelmed by the stimulation seeking and active nature of your mind as well as by the tendency to create new categories and gloss over details, making categorization and classification almost impossible at times.

To the extent that your career path allows for creativity and abstraction as well as a bit of disorganization, you should find yourself equipped to handle any learning that is required. Your own personal adjustment to your style should come naturally although you are likely to feel frustrated by your own limited discipline and often wonder "Why?"

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 50%
Visual : 50%
Left : 44%
Right : 55%

revenge is a dish best served... on t.v.

the best thing just happened.

there's a programme they air on one of the channels here called Cheaters where camera crews follow around cheating spouses, catching them on camera, then confronting them... you get the picture.

this woman just came to the building. i let her in 'cause she said she was here for R---- TV, our channel that it airs on. she sat down in reception, saying she wanted to speak to someone about cheaters.

"i've seen the show. my husband's having an affair. i want to put him on cheaters."

she seemed very calm. quietly mad.

the show is made in the US, however, so there's not anything we can do. we had to break the news. she then asked if we knew any private investigators.

hilarious for us, but i do feel bad for her. men are bastards.

"surprise!"

so i got this phone call today from a buddy from university.

"a little bird tells me it was your birthday recently..."
uh... kind of. about three weeks ago.
"oh. so it wasn't april 16th?"
nope
"hmm. [pause] i got an email about two months ago, some friends of yours were trying to organise a surprise birthday party for you. i had the 16th in my diary. i emailed them back with my phone number but never heard anything else."
really? how strange. no, it was march 23rd. i'm not having a party. sorry. so anyway, how's life?

i don't really know what to make of it. apart from assume that if someone/people (i could take a wild guess, it wouldn't be that hard) were still planning it, it's, ah, kinda just been ruined. oops. hate big surprises like that anyway so thank god they didn't do anything.

on kilburn high road at lunchtime i saw this old man rockin a pair of bright blue - well, i guess they'd be turquoise converse all stars. brilliant.

november blues

up to nottingham and back again today, always fun. saw panther though which was cool. revoltingly tanned.

found a CD in the car that i'd made in november - originally entitled 'november blues'. i found the track list quite funny:


Live & Let Die (Wings)
Where Is My Mind? (The Pixies)
Solitary Man (Johnny Cash)
Ballad of a Thin Man (Bob Dylan)
Me & The Devil Blues (Robert Johnson)
19th Nervous Breakdown (Rolling Stones)
Sunny Afternoon (The Kinks)
Last Goodbye (Jeff Buckley)
Mr Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
Save Me (Aimee Mann)
Heroin (Velvet Underground)
Morning Glory (Tim Buckley)
Wildflowers (Tom Petty)
Try Not To Breathe (REM)
This Is A Low (Blur)
The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
Say Yes (Elliott Smith)
Day Is Done (Nick Drake)
Anna Begins (Counting Crows)
Street Spirit (Radiohead)


it's a bit of a hit and miss compilation, i have yet to come up with a definitive one, but ignore the artists and read the song titles and it's clear what state of mind i was in back then. wonder what a psychiatrist would make of it.

when i grow up...

I want to be Jessica Stevenson. She's the bomb.

Shaun of the Dead (I know, going to the cinema when the weather was this nice) - v funny. Muchly amused.

Couldn't sleep so stayed up to watch Office Space (s'okay, pretty funny, but can see why wouldn't have nec been the hugest cinema hit. can also see why gained video following) so went to bed about three-ish, then got a phone call at like 6am from someone just wanting to chat. 6am? Crazy lady.

Thus have spent the day very overtired, doing very little, wishing I had my bike here and wishing I had enough energy to actually go and do something. Other than sit in a cinema.

how i spent my friday night

watching spaced and eating jaffa cakes.

two words: Party. Animal.

on a completely different note, it turns out that travelling hussy Panther has actually been back in the country over a week. biiiyatch.

how to spend a fairly cheap evening in the most expensive capital city

so we went to a film preview screening for journalists etc that i'd been invited to at a production house down soho (shattered glass, i liked it more than he did) that i don't have to write a review for 'cause someone else already has (hurrah)

then we went to the VX Collective launch party at Hospital in Covent Garden where they initially couldn't find our names on the guest list and where we continually downed the free champagne, made friends with two of the waiters, bitched about the idiots there (dude, you should have seen some of the outfits. try-hard much? such a shame), realised leah wood was there but got over that in about two seconds, talked shit, admired the canapes (mini shepherd's pie, mini fish and chips, mini toad in the hole) but i couldn't eat anything 'cause i don't eat meat, and wished we could see the annie liebovitz exhib better (shitty lighting in the gallery)

then we went for dinner at a thai place down wardour st that's one of those "bung-everyone-on-the-same-table" kinda places, like wagamamas, v nice, v cheap, i got confused by the bathrooms as they had weird symbols on them, noticed two girls in one so followed them in asking in they could read thai or something then they pointed out that the symbols were actually in the form of a figure sitting down (girls) and standing up (boys). kinda cool.

so in the end the only things i had to pay for was a travelcard and dinner. about sixteen quid in total. rock on. thank god for free drinks.

God's handgun?

More script copy-typing. Have found possibly the best sentence yet.

"...But with the help of God and his registered handgun..."


Brilliant.

Go Fish

I have a review due in tmrw, and a 1500 word article due in at the end of the week. The review currently stands at about three paragraphs long, the article is non-existent. So what am I doing? Letting myself be dragged to High St Kensington by my sister to go shopping. Such a martyr.

I'll do them later...

Out for drinks w/ Curly and Alex and some of Alex's mates last night in Gloucester Road (of all places). Bar was *empty*. Lots of wine. Played cheat (aka bullshit) and then Go Fish. Except that when we played when we were younger you used to just say "Laura, have you got any tens?" and if she had a ten of any suit, she had to hand it over. But then this guy John said that you had to actually specify the suit as well - ups the stakes, so to speak, makes it a game of wits as you have to remember who asked for what, who's got what... Well, as much as Go Fish can be a game of wits.

Playing later after three bottles of wine just made it all the more funny.

Did anyone pray for a pair of giant shoes?

A surprising lack of chocolate for Easter Sunday (hey, guess what, I've decided it's time to bring some proper punctuation to this bitch).

Got dragged to church this morning, the first of my twice-yearly routine (xmas being the second time, midnight mass). I'm still having issues taking it all seriously. It doesn't help when the sib is giving her usual running commentary.

Christmas 2002 was the 'That 70s Show' inspired routine. We'd spent the previous couple days watching back episodes on Trouble (they seemed to be playing them round the clock), including the xmas ep where 'the gang' put on their xmas pageant, with Kelso wanting to be a space wiseman and all that shit (actually quite funny). So the priest is talking about Baby Jesus (not sure why the b in baby is capitalised, it just feels like it should be) and Fi is just added comments to everything he says, and I'm pissing myself, trying to laugh quietly, while my dad smirks, my mum pretends she doesn't know us and everyone around us frowns.

Or Christmas 2001 when I realised a guy in our church looks exactly - and I mean EXACTLY - like Ned Flanders. Tall, thin, rectangular head, moustache, glasses, religous type. I'd always thought this guy look familiar, but then it suddenly hit me who it was. And I was with Fi and Bell (grown up altogether, like another younger sister); I told them this and we spent the rest of the service reciting one line to each other and crying with laughter.

It's the ep where Bart Simpson has had to wear those corrective shoes, and he's finally allowed to take 'em off, so he kicks them off and they fly through the Flanders' window.

Ned:"Did anyone pray for a pair of giant shoes?"
Rod: (or possibly Todd): "I did!"
Ned: "Okely-dokely!"

Not exactly comic genius written down, but *so* funny when you're bored in church and you can't get over how much someone looks like a cartoon character.

Today's service was a relatively tame affair by the sib's standards; I think it was because we were both half asleep and would rather have been in bed. Just the usual comments - someone doing one of the readings "...and Isaiah said..." Fi: "Isaiah talked shit, didn't he?"

Then we were talking during a hymn over a shared hymnbook and the guy in front of us turned round and gave us a strange look, causing us both to giggle like schoolgirls as we thought he was mad at us. Then he turned back around and gave us a spare hymn book. Eek. He was just being nice.

I don't know what it is about church that turns me back into a ten year old, or why I continue to go when I feel like this. It's just hypocritical.

Monster

saw Monster this evening. interesting. theron certainly earned her oscar. HF described it as harrowing. i couldn't decide quite message the film was trying to give, whether a shitty upbringing/BG was a viable excuse for things, or you can't blame the past, can't make excuses...

messed with my head a bit, left me with all sorts of bad questions on the nature of rape, the effect of sex on the psyche (sounds like some shitty new age book), the victim/survivor mentality (are you a victim of abuse, or a survivor?)... just things going round and round and i want it to stop

vive la france

daytrip to france, en famille. stock up the "wine cellar", obviously. quite a tame affair compared to some we've had though. bought a bottle of vodka for like 4 euros (about two quid!), a carton of fags for curly and some whisky for j. feel i should have actually asked more people if there was anything i could get them, but kind of forgot...

bill called to say first agent had rejected it. i was surprised by my lack of reaction to this. i didn't want to talk to him for long because obviously i'm in france so the phone call would cost me money or whatever, but i was surprised to hear from him (had figured it would be a buddy on the phone who i could call just shout "infrancecallyoulater" and immediately hang up. but it wasn't. i don't know if it's the fact that it's been so long, or what, but then i was sitting in the car wondering why i wasn't disappointed or anything. maybe it's because i just don't believe anything will happen. i don't think i will believe anything will ever happen until it's the first day of shooting and there's the AD shouting "we're going for a take" and everyone's in their positions. a looonnng way off. never never land.

new article published on knotmag today, the insomnia one, got the email once back in london.
waking life

'Dinner', God Jr, and a brief trip to the ICA

finally got to the theatre this evening, 'Dinner' at the Wyndham with HF. i liked it, nicely un-PC, but got a really numb arse from the seats.


then walked over to the ICA to meet J and brillo. always feel really out of place at the ICA. i say always - i've only been there twice, this being the second. met the boys up the top where J was curating some room. pieces of paper sporadically stuck up on the walls. it looked like scribbles i'd done in lectures when bored. so contemporary art goes over my head. i'm not ashamed to admit that. gimme a good painting any day. the boys were saying that some people had seemed to think that *they* were part of the installation or something, the way they'd been hanging out in there, and J said some guy had been closely examining a smudge on the wall. it's just a dirty mark! not art! but that's the whole point - he obviously couldn't tell if he was meant to be admiring it or wondering what had happened to the cleaners.


picked up a leaflet while waiting down in the foyer and they actually have pretty good stuff at the cinema (for some reason this irrationally annoys me; i feel i shouldn't like anything there. stupid) and the gift shop had some good stuff. a david shrigley book. and looked like they had a good selection of magazines. will have to investigate further.


had an interesting 15 minute hunt around leicester sq and piccadilly to find a japanese restaurant that didn't have an absurdly long queue, ended up in a wagamama's between haymarket and regent st w/ brillo. good food, good company. he rocks.

ben and the bullies

motherfucker. woke up this morning with right eye swollen shut and left eye going the same way. i look like i've been punched in both eyes.


dr gave me some ointment. was waiting in pharmacist's for ages, and randomly started talking to some woman who has the same bday as me. and ellen freeth's dad (girl i went to primary school with) was in there as well. it took me about five minutes to work up the courage to ask if he was her dad (i knew he would be, cause he told the chemist his name when he walked in to pick up something). it's very strange. he's still in broadcasting, and remembered the film we'd all made in year 6 "Ben and the Bullies" - where ben tate was the new kid who got bullied at school. i remember being the one who did the slate and everything. lots of fun. and then they showed the video on a continuous loop at the parents' evening a few weeks later.


by some strange postal miracle, my shit from amazon turned up today (only ordered on monday at about midnight) so, despite the fact i couldn't keep my eyes open properly, i hid in the living room away from the builders and watched some 'spaced' (series one) episodes. then repo man (what a film). then fell back asleep again. ah me, the life of being ill.


the most annoying part though is that it was the film screening tonight of the film i helped out on back in feb, the LFS one 'Virus Meridien' (what a gay title). i kinda wanted to see it, see how it turned out. tres irritant. there was really no point in going though. wouldn't have been able to see my way there, or see the screen, and i probably would have grossed people out with the way my eyes are at the minute.

tears to the eyes

meant to go to the theatre this evening w/ HF - a bday present, she got me a ticket - but my right eye was all funny. started at work, just figured it was adjusting to contact but it wouldn't stop tearing up and going kinda gungey (mmm, nice). at about 430ish i just stood up and said i was going, as i couldn't work on the computer screen properly anymore because of it. went home and took out contact lenses then went to meet HF in town. luckily managed to change tickets for another night (so wouldn't have been any point in going tonight), but the run ends on saturday so we had to get saturday matinee. we then went for dinner, where i had to eat with one eye shut. really distorts your perspective and depth perception...as i learnt on my walk back home from the station earlier on.


not too sure what's going on with this thing, have dr's appt for tmrw morning. can barely see screen, will have to go now.

everything but the kitchen sink

so the builders came in today and completely demolished the kitchen. took everything but the kitchen sink. seriously. it looks very strange. we've created a make-shift kitchen in the living room, moved the kettle and microwave in (although the latter has an incredibly inpractically short plug and lead so doesn't plug in anywhere yet). already tempers are frayed and nerves are shot. the house is small enough as it is, ruling out that entire room means we are all completely living on top of each other. nightmare.

another year older and deeper in debt...

so. 23 today. shocker.


lame ass day. early twenties, meant to be peak of partying performance. woke up wayyy too early (5-ish) so am now completely knackered. lil sis bought me lunch (for a change), had dinner with the fam this evening, now i just want to go to sleeeep. i'll postpone the partying till some of the kids get back in the country.


happy birthday to me, and all that jazz.

theoretical physics

birthday bbq today at s's, in wimbledon. lots of oxford people. met a guy who is in his first yr of a phd in theoretical physics. hf asked what it was, i was sorely tempted to crack a joke. "theoretical physics, like 'i think i see that bunsen burner, therefore that is a bunsen burner.'" luckily i bit my tongue. i have a strange sense of humour. anyway, apparently it's physics without the experiments, more sitting around in dark rooms hunched over, propounding earth shattering (hopefully) theories. or something.

showed hf the "fat lady" short story for her opinion and miss MA-in-Creative-Writing actually gave me a quick crit which was cool, useful as i didn't know what i was doing with it. it's cool that she has this practice, will have to get her opinion on more things. it's funny how people are sometimes kind of - scared? wary? i don't know, just a bit hesitant about giving true opinions, but i'm always curious to know what people think of my work. like with b---, he always seemed like he didn't want to hurt my feelings or something, whenever we were talking about BNFM, but i need these criticisms, else what am i going to work on, build on? i'm objective enough to be able to take it.

the weather is being very mercurial today. sunny - although incredibly windy - then for no reason at all it will rain solidly for five minutes, then the sun will reappear. spring time is here.

mother's day. the younger sib has disappeared somewhere; can't do a thing till she returns.

the flowers on the clematis outside my window are out, and the blossom on the peach tree is budding. a new project, herbal tea, Abbey Road, a handful of toffee popcorn; everything is fine.

cogito ergo sum

a quote from a columnist on knotmag struck me:

"When you strip it all way, we are lonely and confused and, all told, rather pointless. Our constant bluster must be amusing to whomever created this universe; because nothing we do is important. In 90 years we're all going to be dead, and whatever we have created during our short time here will be forgotten. Everything I've ever written, anything I've ever done, will, eventually, be the dead sea scrolls, relics, strange curiosities easily dismissed..."

amen, brother. thank god for will leitch.

i know kung-fu

ways you can tell you're not taking your job seriously, part one.

you've been left alone all morning as the rest of the department is at a meeting out of office. copy typing yet another crime-series script, you come across the lines

"According to L-----, self-defense is about more than just physical fighting techniques."

your first impulse is to add the line "try to realize... there is no spoon."

i know kung-fu.

a host of golden daffodils

on the train this morning between acton central and willesden jct, i noticed this tiny patch of scrubland - a small trapezium of land bordered by the railway tracks and back yards. it was a dump, overgrown and piled up with trash and garbage that people had obviously just chucked in there. and in the middle there was a tiny circle of clear and a small silo of bright yellow daffodils. it looked kind of beautiful.

the clouds are very low today.

too much buffy is bad for the psyche

i love that it's still light...kind of dusk-ish...when i walk to the station in the evenings now. the most magical time of day. and my road smells of springtime and the anticipation of summer. that incredible blend of the cherry blossom and magnolia and warmth. it makes everything seem good.

i watched 'the laramie project' this evening, the HBO film of the play about the killing of matthew shepard in 1998. it was - i don't really know. i thought it was really good, but the main thing that kept echoing as i was watching it was "this is true. this happened." i did, of course, cry like a bastard, and i know films emotionally manipulate you anyway, and this was obviously no exception especially given the subject matter, but it was still that "it's all true" thing that got me. and the amount of hate just pouring off some people - that guy phelps or whatever, that turned up at matthew's funeral with the "matt in hell" and "fags burn" kind of signs just make me so angry and frustrated and you just don't know what to do. i guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion. i guess? i mean of course they are - esp in america, freedom of speech etc. but there's a time and a place. and the reaction of the public was amazing. the catholic priest they interviewed, they were apprehensive about meeting him so i'm sat there thinking "oh christ what's he going to say" but this guy seemed to have his head screwed on and his feet on the ground and he said some good things. then the baptist minister one of the girls talked to - what a prick. this is what i hate about religion, the intolerance, the narrow-fucking-mindedness of it all that just drives me to the wall. (cf. religion article on knotmag...) there were scenes of candlelit vigils and so on and it made me want to have something to believe in, but what?

we fill our lives with things: religion, work, friends, family, alcohol, drugs... each to their own, whatever it takes to get through the day. i just don't yet know what that is. sometimes it's writing. sometimes it's the sun shining. often it's the thought "once this day is over, one day nearer to the weekend..." :)

i'm giving up on f-log for a while, i'm just not feeling it at the minute. it's not really going to matter one way or the other, is it.

on the train this eve coming back from work, a guy sat diagonally opposite me in the next section of seats - i guess mid-30s, early-40s, bald, wearing a black hoodie. and my mind immediately went "ooh, he's obviously the bad guy." too much buffy is bad for the psyche. it makes you see "bringers" and demon people when in reality they can't help it if they're bald and decided to wear a black hooded sweater that day. it also makes you think you're more powerful than you are. then you get followed home and realise you actually *are* the blonde-running-down-the-alley archetype that joss whedon was trying to turn on its head. anyway, it still made me laugh to myself that i thought that about him. lucky for him the train was crowded and i didn't have room to do some high-powered buffy kicks and roundhouses...

looking after charlie this evening and when he was having a bath he got some water up his nose and worriedly called me to tell me, then told me how "if you get a bubble in water in you it can kill you if it gets your brain or heart." as in, if you get an air bubble in your bloodstream it can kill you. i had to reassure him that getting a bit of water up his nose would be okay, it wouldn't kill him.

happy birthday laura, hope all is well in colorado, miss you. happy birthday to the parkinson twins - curly claire and ben, see you guys soon i hope. xxx

if i was a child i would point out that it is only a week till my birthday, but i am soon to be 23 and am therefore not even remotely interested or excited in this news.

Vanity Publishing for the Digital Age/The Boy Who Cried Wolf

i still can't really get my head round these things. blogs, i mean. they just seem so... self-absorbed. like i've re-subtitled my page, "Vanity Publishing for the Digital Age". surely that's all it is? who actually cares what i did or think or see? why do people read these things? the vicarious thrills they get? that feeling that you're peering into someone else's life? it's like reading their diary. possibly more to the point - why do people WRITE these things? why am i writing this now? because i write, but this could just as easily be part of my private journal that sits on my harddrive, password-protected, never to see the light day. but it isn't. hmm. i can tell this is a thought that is going to be going round my head all week. the vanity and self-obsession inherent in blogs.

thinking of "the absurd state of the nation" - this morning a conversation with my father about which would be a more likely terrorist target, the tube or the buses. this was just before i went to the station. none of the usual "have a nice day, dear." instead we agreed that london would probably be hit in some way at some point this year; that public transport is indeed a good way to do it; whether it would make more sense to hit the tubes, trains or buses. i figured that tubes are fairly localised if underground, whereas buses can effect the whole street. of course, a tube done badly enough could technically make the ground collapse i guess, destroy water lines, gas lines, electricity and phone and cables and so on. this is a horrific conversation to have. but it seemed so normal. it wasn't until i was thinking about it later, out of context, that it seems like an appalling conversation to have. and the more worrying thing is that neither of us were panicked or overly scared. it has become a part of our daily lives now. this incessant warmongering and propanda that the media spouts "Terror Warning for England" "Tanks Outside Heathrow" "London on Full Alert" just seem to have desensitised people to things. well, me at least. i see these new headlines and i think "yeah, whatever." it's like the boy who cried wolf. maybe sometimes it works, puts people a little more on their guard, but mostly it's like, so who's threatening to blow us up or release a deadly virus this week. one day it'll happen and, despite all these stuff about it, it'll still catch people somewhat off guard.

and that's only the start of the absurdity. that such a conversation can be so mundane. let's not even think about all the other shit that has slowly been piling up since the start of this new millennium.

outside of cyberspace

too many hours in cyberspace and i figured i should venture into reality (reality? noooooo!) walked up to the library, where the magic eye to open the doors wasn't working from the outside, so there was a cluster of people waiting for someone to be coming out. the whirrrr kachunk sound; the doors slowly inch open; the eager visitors surge forward, pushing in between the slowly opening doors, mowing the old man down, trampling him under foot. i think the council might need to look at the doors.

sainsburys, packed as it's saturday afternoon. the PA announcer thing kept going off "contract cleaner to aisle 13, contract cleaner to aisle 13" "azim to desk 56 please, azim to desk 56. " then the chick doing it got the giggles. "this is a staff annoucement, please could lucky go to the kiosk - lucky to-" she broke off and there were two seconds of uncontrollable giggles, a whine of feedback and a sudden click as the announcer was turned off. obviously saturday afternoon was too much for her. and yes "lucky to the kiosk" was actually what she said.

passed a small girl quietly singing to herself, "i hear thunder, i hear thunder" and i was instantly in the infant school hall with miss morris sat at the piano and twenty five other six year olds. then someone almost ran me over with a trolley and i was back in 2004 in a busy supermarket. it was very strange.

this f-log thing is becoming a bad habit; i stopped so suddenly to take a photo someone almost walked into me.

i walked past a woman carrying a tray of brownies a couple blocks from home. i wanted to grab the tray and make a run for it. i controlled that urge.

placebo on the radio doing a cover of that pixies' song, Where Is My Mind. not bad.

a star studded premiere

first entry. so, a new website. interesting. i'm not hugely tech-literate, so i have no idea how this will all turn out. although, out of my family, i'm about the only one who can do anything. i feel i should set up a separate phone line on my mobile for tech support for when one of them calls me.

"okay, so, how do i do timer on the VCR?"

"...it's due in ten minutes and i need to go and print it out and i don't know how to save it to disk - help!"

"well, how do i move down a line?"
"press enter."
"enter? what's that?"
"enter. ENTER.... carriage return?"
"ohhh."

three feet high and rising burning up the stereo and weird springtime weather - sunny but keeps sporadically pissing it down.

bear with me while i wrestle with this bastard. i'll have square eyes by the end of the weekend.