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.