Lazy Rhymes

Okay, today is a two-post day because Take a Walk on the Wild Side just came up on my iPod when I was shuffling songs. I do like that song, but I have always been really annoyed by the bit that goes:
'But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head'.
Argh, the rhyme of 'head' with 'head' just slices right to my core!

Then I got thinking about other songs that do that, and realised that there are actually quite a few. The first one that springs to mind is War Pigs:
'Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses.'
Now, not only is that lazy but it's quite forced as well. At least 'even when she was giving head' kind of fits in with the rest of Take a Walk on the Wild Side- it's about the antics of a wild transvestite (I think), and giving head is something a wild transvestite would probably do. But the witches simile is just a bit weird. I know they mention sorcerers later in the verse, but I can't help thinking that they did that after thinking 'Hmm how can we follow up that weird witches simile we had to shoehorn into the first couple of lines because we are too lazy to even look the word 'masses' up in a rhyming dictionary?'. Sort it out Ozzy.

Then there's The Beatles. Even The Beatles are not above this.
'Hey Jude, don't make it bad,
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.'
Come to think of it, why did I think the Beatles would be above this? The entire chorus of Hey Jude consists of the word 'Nah'!

Oh god, and then there's that horrible HORRIBLE Kid Rock one that samples Werewolves of London and had a midi of Sweet Home Alabama as the chorus and was all over the radio a couple of years ago...
'We were trying different things
And we were smoking funny things
Making love out by the lake to our favourite songs.'
Go and die, Kid Rock. Your songs make me sick, and the mental image of you making love with anyone out by a lake makes me want to do an Oedipus and gouge my eyes out.


Last one I can think of is Light My Fire:
'Come on baby light my fire,
Try to set the night on fire.'
...I can't think of a witty comment to round this off. So...er...

Then there's The Hardest Button to Button by the White Stripes.

'It didn't last long, because I stopped it,

I grabbed a rag doll and stuck some little pins in it.'

I am kind of inclined to forgive the White Stripes because I am sure they probably put that in in a sneery kind of way. 'Our percussion is as lazy as our rhymes, we just can't be bothered to be rock stars because we are too cool'.

So what have we learnt today? That a lot of songs have lazy rhymes in them, but that sometimes it is acceptable. I am going to start collecting these and writing them down whenever I hear one.

Lotte Reiniger

Ack, I'm moving to Madrid on the 2nd of January! I have so much to do: flat-hunting, Spanish-learning, wardrobe-paring, Christmas-related activities.
So naturally I find myself watching early 20th century stop-motion animation.
This is Lotte Reiniger, who was a German film director and artist from 1918 onwards. She used shadow puppets.

I love love love fairy tales and folk tales, and I really like the way these have been done because the silhouettes are so intricate-looking and the scenery seems to have loads of depth even though it's only 2-dimensional. I think a still from one of her films would look really cool on a t-shirt, and might have to make myself one.
Anyway, off to learn some Spanish. Over and out.

This film looks just awful!

Well, I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 on Friday and yesterday (yes, it is that good, but that's not important right now.) As you would expect, there was a wide and varied selection of trailers before the film. One for Tron, which looks quite clever because Jeff Bridges plays a younger version of himself in it. One for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I might go and see because I have a weird thing for Prince Caspian. One for Meet the Parents: Little Fockers which I won't go and see because it looks dreadful and their only joke is still that 'Focker' sounds like 'Fucker'.

And THEN. THEN there was this trailer. (I can't embed it.)
It's a film about a train that is unstoppable. Presumably in the same way that the Titanic was unsinkable, because obviously it's going to end with the train being stopped. But this is no ordinary unstoppable train. Oh, no. This is train with HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS on the back. 8 trucks full of hazardous chemicals to be precise! OMG, how could this get any worse?

Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. You know that unmanned train with no airbrakes and 8 trucks full of hazardous chemicals on the back of it? Well it's zooming towards a train full of cute schoolchildren! Oh, and when it stops the chemicals will cause a big explosion that will kill everyone.

Who will stop this unstoppable train? Not the corporate fatcats. They're so out of touch with the real world of  real men and real trains, they just sit in their ivory towers and talk about profit and loss. The only hope for this trainload of schoolchildren and the residents of the towns, which for some reason don't seem to be being evacuated from what I can see from the trailer, is two gritty men. On the surface they might seem a little rough round the edges. They make jokes about daycare centres and retirement homes. They wear awful plaid. But both of them have a heart of gold. They love their families (you can tell because they kiss pictures of them), and they are willing to put their lives on the line to stop this unstoppable 'bitch'.
Perhaps my favourite moment in the entire trailer comes at 2:09. I really hope that it is preceded by this:

'As the police it's our job to stop this unstoppable train, but I'm stumped. How are we supposed to stop it?'
'I dunno boss, maybe we should consult an engineer or someth-'
'LET'S SHOOT AT IT!'
'Good idea, Lenny. Let's shoot at it. Why didn't I think of that? You're a smart kid.'

I also like the moment in which it states that the film is based on true events. If it has anything but the most tenuous link to anything that has ever happened, ever, I will literally eat my hat. I will get my woolly hat, put it in my mouth, chew it and swallow it. How could an unmanned train with no airbrakes and hazardous chemicals on the back ever end up zooming towards a train full of schoolchildren? How would that happen? Who would be stupid enough to allow that to happen? More importantly, if it ever had happened, wouldn't I have heard of it somewhere before?

The only reason I am tempted to see this film is an experiment to see if it is actually the worst film I have ever seen. It'll take a lot to beat the constant wanking-jokefest that is Stuck on You, but I reckon there's a chance it will.

National Poetry Day

Hooray for National Poetry Day! I like poetry, because I did English. My official favourite poem is Lullaby by W.H Auden, but there are many others that I like, depending on my mood. Here are some:

• For a morbid mood, Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith is always good. It's something you should quote mournfully in a black turtleneck. I remember reading a book at school in which a girl left this as a suicide note, which is nice. Can't really remember anything else about the book, not even the title. 
• For a 'classical' mood, I do rather like a nice bit of Sappho. (I'm not pretending I can read ancient Greek or anything- I can't.) I particularly like this one, although I can't find the translation that I like. I'm not keen on the ones where the translator has tried to use flowery language to convey the ancientness of it all. First Love by John Clare has a similar 'Love isn't wonderful, it's shit and it makes your body go all weird' attitude, which I like. Bizzarely enough I find it refreshing, even though Sappho wrote ages and ages and ages ago.
• On the subject of Sappho, Lesbos by Sylvia Plath is pretty good. I've always wondered why it's called what it is, which I know is probably obvious and makes me really dim for not knowing. Perhaps it's because she's jealous, and that Sappho poem I just linked to was about being jealous. Who knows? It's very angry in any case. Very very very angry.
• For a violent sort of mood, Ted Hughes' Lineage is also pretty good. Oh, I do like Ted Hughes. Sorry Sylv. (These bullet points are linking together quite nicely aren't they? I didn't plan this.)
• If I am not in the mood for horrible vitriol or depressing suicide poems, which occasionally happens, I like Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh. Apparently she hates it, but I think it's nice. Very optimistic.
• He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B Yeats is a pretty pleasant love poem. I did read a terrible, terrible Mills & Boon novel in which one of the characters quoted it though. This put me off slightly.
• Still I Rise by Maya Angelou is a BRILLIANT 'defiant mantra' poem. The last line should be 'YEEEEEEEEEAH!' It's like an eloquent version of that Chumbawumba song. 
• I'm going to round this off with a couple of 'quirky and obscure' poems. This and this are great, and very underrated, which is a shame.

Phew, what a trip through my taste! I have missed many other things that I like out, but I reckon all of my favourites are up there. Poems I DON'T like tend to be ones that are too lengthy (never have the patience for them), ones that are about nature (yawn), and more traditional love poems.
Anyway. Happy National Poetry Day!

Hello?

"This week, Matthew, I'm going to be... a receptionist!"


And boy, has it been fun. Answering the phones, filing, binding, getting paid, all that kind of stuff.

We have a system on our phones, whereby if someone is calling you internally you know who is ringing you because their name flashes up on the phone. This is useful because it means that instead of answering in your very best phone voice every time, just in case it is a client, sometimes you can let go. Instead of saying 'Hello, blah blah world trade?' or 'Good afternoon, blah blah world trade?' you can say ''WAZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAH' or 'Oh what NOW Katrina? Didn't I tell you I was BUSY doing the BINDING. God.' Or, more commonly, 'Hello.'

The difference between 'Hello.' and 'Hello?' is that when I say 'Hello.' the person on the other end of the line knows I know it's them. When I say 'Hello, blah blah world trade?' I say it like a question because I don't know who is on the other end of the phone. It is like saying 'Welcome, who are you?', but in a more polite and socially acceptable manner.

This distinction is very important. I caused a huge amount of confusion today by answering the phone to the CEO, who I knew was the CEO because I could see his name, with 'Hello?'. I think it came out like a question because he scares me and I wanted to sound helpful. Anyway, he thought that I didn't know who he was and said 'Oh hello it's blah O'blah here.' He also thought that I answered the phone to everyone with just 'Hello?' which obviously isn't allowed when you are a receptionist. So that weeny little change got me in trouble!

I have also begun to think about how I answer my mobile. I still always say 'Hello?' even though I normally know who is calling as my phone tells me. Why do I do this? Why do I not just say 'Hello.' like at work?

My theory is that this habit is a legacy from the days before mobiles, when you genuinely didn’t know who you were answering the phone to. I wonder if, in 20 years’ time, we will still say ‘Hello?’ upon answering the phone. Maybe we need to get a new word altogether.

As any smartarse worth their salt will tell you, Thomas Edison made ‘Hello’ the standard word for a telephone greeting. (The word did exist before then as well. If any smartarse tells you it didn’t they’re NOT worth their salt, whatever the hell that means anyway.) But that phone was one of those old crackly ones with a turny dial, not one of our sleek, sophisticated new machines. Now we have 3G and touchscreen and Caller ID and hold and all that stuff on our phones, greeting people as if you don’t know who they are seems a bit outdated. Our new word needs to be brisk and modern. And it needs to be easy to say. People these days barely seem able to cope with saying more than one syllable per word. (Seriously, the amount of people who shorten my name to ‘Luce’ when I have just met them is astounding. They don't seem aware that it makes them sound like a 'hey I'm hip' teacher or a sinister man with a beard at the bus stop. Shudder.)

Anyway, I’m going to advocate the word ‘Hi.’ It’s informal and annoying, but it’s easy and impossible to say as a question. Go on, try saying ‘Hi’ like a question. You can’t. So that settles it.

Even more things I've been enjoying recently

Listening to: (There are more things I have been listening to than anything else because I have been doing 'Market Research' for my Dad which involves quite a lot of staring blankly at the computer and typing. It's better with music.)

Antony and the Johnsons, specifically this song.


This song makes me want to produce a film, just so I can use this as the soundtrack for a really sad scene when someone quite important has just died and everyone around is doing that slo-mo "we're fucked without Gandalf" crying. I think it's their best song. It's certainly the only one I can listen to more than once in one sitting, the others tend to get a bit whiney.
By the way I haven't watched the video, but I expect it's really weird.

Siouxsie and the Banshees. I love Souxsie Sioux. She comes across as a bit of a douchenozzle in that Bill Grundy clip, but she was young then and I think we should forgive her. Aaah, I wish it was the 80s so I could be a goth. Not a lame goth, a proper one.
Here is a cover by them. I gather it was featured in a horror film because there's lots of comments on the video that say things like 'OMG THAT SHIT IS CREEPY !1!!!1' Probably Jeepers Creepers, for obvious reasons, but luckily I've never seen that. That would be another thing horror films had ruined for me, along with:

• Being anywhere near a drain (It)
• Showering (It)
• Drinking cups of tea (It)
• Being in a wood (Blair Witch Project)
• Sleeping (Nightmare on Elm Street)
• Lying in bed, not sleeping (The Grudge)
• Being in a room with a blank television screen (The Ring)
• Answering the phone (The Ring)
• Not answering the phone (The Ring)
• Everything (Final Destination)

Here is the video.


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YAPPO (or whatever she says.)

Mumford and Sons, particularly this one.



Oh, this is so good. It also makes me want to produce a film, so I can use this to soundtrack a scene when someone is driving dramatically across a panoramic landscape in a race against time to save someone they love. But then they don't get there in time (the 'Aaaaah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah' bit). But then they realise that there is still hope (the second round of 'Aaah'ing).
Disclaimer: I made a huge mistake in listening to this, followed immediately by 'O Children' by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. NEVER DO THIS! IT IS TOO DEPRESSING FOR A HUMAN BEING TO HANDLE! It pretty much ruined my day. If you listen to this song, you should remedy it immediately with a very happy song. Tina Turner or something.

Yesayer. I saw these at Latitude this year, and thought they were so great I bought a tee shirt, which I don't do very often. Unfortunately it's a bit small because there was nowhere to try it on, but that's another story.
They are good, and BBC 6 Music is all over them at the moment. They're sort of Afro-Poppy, like Fool's Gold. There's probably a more technical term for what they are, but I don't know it.
Here is a song by them:



Reading: 
The Leaky Cauldron's Daily Quotedown to the Deathly Hallows Part 1 film. Pretty self-explanatory I suppose. Ron and Harry's big tiff is going to kill me a little inside. :-(.

Watching:
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Go and see this! It's brilliant. I wasn't sure initially because lots of critics have given it bad/mediocre reviews. Ignore them, they're lame. Go and see it! It's really funny, and really cool. Especially if you're a twitcher like me. (I tend to get bored sitting still for a long time, and the fast pace helped to remedy this.) And there's a recurring joke with a hat, which I liked. It's very 'Canadian'. I can't really put my finger on what it was, but lots of the jokes reminded me of something a Canadian I used to live with would say. 


Over and out.

A worrying trend

There's a weird thing happening on my friends' facebook photos.
It seems that every week another of my female friends gets a centre parting. Not with a fringe, that's perfectly fine obviously, but a centre parting without a fringe. Where the hell this has come from I don't know, but I do think Alexa Chung might have something to do with it. Which is weird because even Alexa Chung looks stupid with a centre parting, so you wouldn't think anyone would want to copy her.

Even Sienna Miller looks weird with a centre parting.

Here is what I think of the centre parting:
no no no NO NO NOO! 
A centre parting is never okay! Never! It makes you look like Peter Andre! Why would anyone do this to themselves?
DON'T GET A  CENTRE PARTING! EVER!
The end.

Here are some things I enjoy:

Well kids, I've had a blog for a while and I still haven't done the obligatory 'Look at me, I'm a dickhead' post. That moment has finally arrived...

Unfortunately I couldn't make the images all pale and old-looking, but you'll just have to deal with that.

(By the way, I don't actually know who I'm writing to when I say 'Well kids'. I know of two people who read this blog, and only one of them does regularly. Ho hum.)

Dressing as a cat whilst home alone.

Large cardboard tubs of ice cream.

Small tufts of grass that look like hearts. 

I wonder if another dickhead found this before me and coiffed it into that shape? There's probably a blog somewhere with an identical picture. I bet it's a Tumblr though. 

Right I'm off to listen to Fevers and Mirrors and shop for nerd glasses.

Bye!

God I hate yoghurt adverts

Second post in a day! I just had to do two because I saw an Activia advert starring Tiffany from Eastenders. In this advert she is wearing a pair of very unflattering jeans and for some reason loads of people are swarming round her trying to put makeup on her. She says she needs a snack and everyone inexplicably freezes. Then she TURNS HER NOSE UP AT A TIERED CAKE STAND OF REALLY DELICIOUS LOOKING CAKES (Not cupcakes-I have aired my views on cupcakes) AND GOES AND GETS SOME SHIT-INDUCING YOGHURT FROM THE FRIDGE INSTEAD!
Noone, nowhere, would look at a plate of cakes and go 'Hmm, not really what I had in mind, instead I'll have an Activia which is infinitely more tasty'. They might look at a plate of cakes, wring their hands and go 'God that plate of cakes looks delicious, but I'm on a diet so I'll have to have this lumpy poo-yoghurt with a weird tinny aftertaste instead. My life is a joke.'
This low fat yoghurt advert was typical of all low fat yoghurt adverts. In the world of low fat yoghurt adverts, yoghurt is the best kind of food there is. It is better than cakes and pies and mousses and ice cream and tiramisu and strudels and trifles. In the world of low fat yoghurt adverts, yoghurt is just as tasty as these things but it's FAT FREE! so you don't have to deal with the GUILT! YAY!
a) Who cares about fat free anyway? People got over low-fat in the eighties. Now the done thing is to drink a gallon of olive oil everyday, eat 10 bags of nuts and roll around in butter and avocado to keep your skin and hair nice. And avoid sugar, which low fat yoghurts are full of.
b) Yoghurt is not as nice as any other dessert. It is sloppy and doesn't fill you up and isn't real food. It is not a 'treat'. I have a theory that noone actually likes yoghurt, they just buy it because they think it's the done thing. What is there to like about yoghurt? Nothing, that's what.
In the world of yoghurt adverts, not only is yoghurt some kind of heavenly nectar, but eating yoghurt is a social event. Women meet in shopping centres and museums to eat yoghurt, but most commonly they go to each other's houses and all flop around enjoying yoghurts. And all they talk about is how good the yoghurts are. 'Mmmm, tastes like apple pie!'. No it doesn't, though, does it? It tastes like a yoghurt trying to taste like an apple pie, which doesn't taste at all like an apple pie because IT'S A YOGHURT.
If I went to someone's house and they said 'Come in, I'll get the yoghurt!' before handing me a Muller Rice I'd think they were faintly odd. If they had every different flavour of Muller Rice and had put one aside for each of their guests I'd edge out of the house before running home as fast as I could.
But according to yoghurt adverts, when I am in my late 30s, the highlight of my day will be lunchtime. At lunchtime I will fall exhausted into an armchair and think 'Well, after that good hard morning of housework, I really fancy a treat.' Then I will smile wickedly to myself and think 'I know just the thing.' Then I'll pad sneakily to the fridge and get myself a yoghurt. Before I know it all my middle-aged (but still hip) friends will be over in their yoga trousers and mumsy hoodies talking about how fucking great yoghurt is. Better than shopping and sex and fulfilment and everything.

Above is the bleakest yoghurt advert of all time. Not only is the woman really annoying, but her poor bemused husband can't understand how she can be eating all this delicious stuff and not be a fat cow. Joke's on you, bemused husband, because it's YOGHURT! She was talking about YOGHURT all along!

Now I am going to shower and try and scrub off some of the despair watching that horrible advert left me with.

Budapest.

What a lovely place to go on holiday.
The architecture is like Disneyland but real.
They are also quite nice to their homeless people, and buskers have people with bubble guns to give them a mystical aura while they sing.

Putting on stupid voices ALL THE TIME

My Mum has a German girl staying with her. (I'm not sure why, I tried to ask the German girl herself but she just started talking about the German A-Level system.)
Anyway, this has made me notice that I put on stupid voices constantly. Not just when I'm doing impressions of somebody, although this is often the case, but just to jazz up my sentences a bit. For example I might say 'Bob can you move up a bit' in an Australian accent for no particular reason, or 'Mum can you pass the salt' in a really deep voice. Whenever I do things like this, the German girl peers at me. She just gives me a good old peer, as if to say 'Why are you talking in that weird voice?'. This makes me feel awkward, so I start putting on my 'awkward' voice, which I normally like to save for one of those situations where a conversation between two of your friends is threatening to escalate into an argument. The 'awkward' voice is very nasal. I think it's meant to be funny but I can't be sure.
Also in my repertoire is the 'best friend' voice, which I like to save for my oldest friend. That's a pretty weird voice, it's very high and makes you sound really thick. But the German girl will probably never hear that voice. She ain't my buddy.
(See? I even do it when I'm typing. That was meant to sound like Samuel L. Jackson.)
(Also I would like to clarify that the German girl is quite nice. I just don't really understand her and she definitely doesn't understand me, so there isn't much of a foundation for a firm friendship there.)

The Best Cuddly Toy I Have Ever Cuddled

I don't normally go gooey over cuddly toys but oh my god this panda.It is so soft and strokable, and just the right length so you can cradle it, and the soles of its feet are inexplicably red and it just looks so happy.

My Fight Club Alter-Ego

The other day I watched Fight Club for the first time. I rather liked it, and not just because Brad Pitt gets all roughed-up in it and it's weirdly sexy. Or because Helena Bonham Carter was playing a slightly different character to the one she usually plays in everything (although this helped). I liked it because it was clever and it made me think about what it meant etc.
As anyone who is even a tiny bit of a film boffin will know, the plot is about a man who gets insomnia because he is emasculated by his boring life. Then Brad Pitt turns up and it all gets really interesting. Anyway the major plot twist is that Brad Pitt is actually *SPOILER* imaginary *END OF SPOILER*. He's everything that Ed Norton's character isn't, and he represents everything that Ed Norton's character wishes he could be.
This got me musing about what MY Fight Club alter-ego would be like. Obviously my Fight Club alter-ego would be more attractive than me, but I think that is a given for all Fight Club alter-egos, everywhere. Other than that, I could only really come up with two things. I can't decide whether this makes me very boring or very content. Anyway, here they are:

1. My Fight Club alter-ego would be able to complain. Properly. I cannot complain properly, which means that I always end up putting up with bad service or shoddy goods whilst tutting to myself and feeling cross instead of actually raising the issue with someone. The closest I have come to ever actually complaining was phoning my accommodation service in second year to tell them not to send me any more threatening letters. (They thought I owed them money but I didn't, and I had told them this.) When the woman picked up the phone I actually ASKED if I could make a complaint. I literally said 'Can I make a complaint please?'. And the woman on the other end was bemused and said 'Er...' Then when I had permission to make my complaint I said something along the lines of 'This really er... isn't on. Sorry.'
My Fight Club alter-ego would not have done this. She would have phoned the office and said something like 'I know my rights, if you don't stop sending me threatening letters I'll go to the Citizen's Advice Bureau and consider taking legal action!'
My Fight Club alter-ego would be the type to slam her drink down on the bar and say 'This is Strongbow, but I asked for Fosters!' or take her tub of ice cream back to the cinema stand and say 'I found a lump of plastic in this Cherry Garcia! I demand a refund! I could have choked and died!' or to call the waitress over and say 'We've been waiting for around 37 minutes to get the dessert menu, I demand that you get the manager so I can give him a stern talking-to!'
This would be the kind of complaining that my Fight Club alter-ego would do. Dignified and menacing. Never 'I'll PETROL BOMB YOUR OFFICES AND WRING YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE NECK IF YOU DON'T DO WHAT I SAY RIGHT NOW!'
No no no. My Fight Club alter-ego would have a teacherish air about her when complaining, the kind that makes people go 'Yes Ma'am, sorry Ma'am.'
As it is, I think I am going to have to continue tutting and muttering for the rest of my life.

2. My Fight Club alter-ego would have 20/20 vision.
I am very VERY short-sighted. The kind of short-sighted where you walk into the kitchen and say 'Hello Dad' to your 16-year-old sister in the morning. I can see around an arm's length in front of my face without glasses or contacts. For someone who looks like a total dweeb in glasses and who is afraid of pain and paying lots of money for laser surgery, contacts are a godsend. I get a set of nice new lenses sent to my house every month with a little pot to keep them in and a nice bottle of solution, and they allow me to walk around without bumping into things and without looking like Eugene from Grease.
HOWEVER, there is a bit of a problem with contacts- you have to take them out at night, and you have to put them in new solution. (The consequences of falling asleep wearing them are pretty disgusting.) This means that you have to do some planning ahead. If you suspect that you won't end up staying at your own house, you have to make sure you take the little pot out with you and fill it up with some  new solution before you go. The number of times a potentially spontaneous and rock 'n' roll evening has been ruined by my contacts is surprising.
'Hey, why don't you all come back to my house and we'll play Mario Kart until the early hours of the morning?'
'Why, that sounds like a lovely ide... DAMN I don't have my solution, I shall have to miss out on hours of rock 'n' roll Mario Kart fun.'
I should imagine if I were single it would be even worse.
Also, it ruined some of my holiday in Thailand. (Here comes Lucy the middle-class backpacker, brace yourselves). I happened to run out of solution while we were visiting a National Park in the middle of nowhere, then lost my glasses whilst swimming in a river (yah). This led to the following set of conversations over and over again:
'Wow Lucy did you see that snake it was awesome!'
'No, I can't see anything.'
...
'Wow Lucy did you see that monkey just then?'
'No, I can't see anything.'
...
'Wow, that plant was amazing, did you see it?'
'No, I can't see anything.'
etc.
Some might say that an easy solution to this problem would be to take the little pot full of contact lens liquid everywhere. To them I say 'shut up'.
Anyway, my Fight Club alter-ego would have 20/20 vision. This would enable them to go out and not know where they were going to end up. They could go out in Spalding one night and wake up in Mongolia if they wanted to instead of having to miss out and go home and put their stupid lenses in their stupid pot.

FIN.

Cupcakes

At my boyfriend's house today, I started absent-mindedly flicking through a book his Mum owned. It was called '200 cupcakes', and as you would expect, it contained a vast array of different recipes for cupcakes. There were all sorts- honey and banana, frosted flower (yes, edible flower with frosting on it), fruit and nut, all beautifully iced and sitting decoratively on a lovely stand with lovely things like rose petals and stuff adorning them.
And I started to realise something: cupcakes make me uneasy. There is something inherently suspicious and mistrustful about a cupcake. I think that the main trouble is that they look so nice. Their appearance makes you want to eat them because you want to eat things that look nice, but it also makes you feel like you shouldn't eat them. It always seems a shame to ruin some nice piped icing by putting a massive bite mark in it. And if they are decorated with inedible things, like flower petals or plastic decorations, you have to pick them off which makes them look less nice. It's almost as if we're not supposed to actually eat them, just sit and admire how delicious-looking they are, like you're presumably supposed to do with this ceramic one. This paradox is unsettling and confusing and makes me feel weird inside.
Also, underneath the nice smell of vanilla essence, cupcakes give off the unmistakeable whiff of toil. Someone will have toiled to make those cupcakes look so delicious. I would estimate that icing a batch of cupcakes properly and meticulously adding all the decorations and things before arranging them nicely on a stand probably takes an average of 45 minutes. And I would estimate that the maximum time anyone takes to eat a cupcake is probably around 7 minutes. So why the toil? It makes me wonder if the only people who make cupcakes are:
 a) People who are desperately bored and have A LOT of time on their hands and get some sort of sense of achievement from really carefully making cupcakes look just so. (This kind of toil reeks of unfulfilment.)
b) People who like to arrange their food but not actually eat it.  (This kind of toil smells of underlying food issues.)

Obviously I am generalising about the cupcake-making populous here. I am sure there are some people who make cupcakes because they just find it relaxing or something. Also, I do understand that it's nice to eat food that looks good. The thing is, though, that you could probably make a cupcake look alright and pretty appetising with a bit of water icing, which takes about 3 minutes to make and put on a batch of cakes, and some sprinkles, which probably take about 2 minutes to put on some cakes. It seems so needless (and expensive) to whack out the banana chips and the fondant icing and the buttercream and the bits of lavender and whatever.
My other problem with cupcakes is that I don't actually find them that tasty. The icing is so thick and sugary I can practically feel my tooth enamel eroding as I eat it, and this distracts me from any deliciousness that might be contained in the cake. To me, the icing tastes of going on a bouncy castle immediately after jelly and ice cream at a kids' birthday party. Sort of sicky. This leads me to ANOTHER problem I have with them- the 'kiddiness' of them. They are cutesy in an incredibly try-hard sort of way, like a girl who talks in a baby voice to make boys like her. Their cuteness is their only distinguishing feature, really, and I feel that as an official grown-up, (I am 20 and a graduate and my title is Ms so there), I should be tucking into something like a carrot cake or a nice slab of banana loaf. I can at least pretend that these things have some kind of nutritional value and aren't going to make me go 'hyper' for 3 hours after eating them.
After some rooting around on the internet, I have found that I am not alone in my dislike of cupcakes. This facebook group are quite extreme in their hatred, showing the strength of feeling that a cupcake can goad people into. This website takes quite an academic approach to their dislike of cupcakes (and the author would also specifically rather eat banana bread or carrot cake than a cupcake, how weird). This person also hates them. I am sure there are thousands more.

On being always the best of the slightly worse

Ok, so I got my degree results today. I got 68% overall, which is the highest 2:1 mark on my course this year. It isn't quite a 1st though obviously.
It's got me thinking a lot about how I always seem to be slightly less than the best: the best of the slightly worse people. I (and the other people who got 68) am the best of the people who got slightly worse than a 1st.
I recently entered 2 of my short stories into a competition and both of them made the 'longlist'. This is a list chosen by a panel from which the shortlist is selected, and the winners are chosen from the shortlist. The fact that I made the longlist means that, again, I am one of the best of the slightly worse. My stories didn't make the shortlist. They made the longlist, which doesn't have the same ring to it. 'Shortlisted for the ---------- ------------- short story prize' sounds a lot better than 'Longlisted for the --------- ------------- short story prize'. But then, I made the longlist. I wasn't just put on the heap of things that didn't make the longlist. So that's good.
During my A Levels, I took an Advanced Extension Award in English. This was an extra little something for people who were good at English. The marks you could get, in prestige order, were Pass, Merit and Distinction. Predictably, I got a Merit. Not quite a Distinction, not as bad as a Pass. A Merit. My work merited Merit, but wasn't distinctive enough for Distinction. This was typical.
All of this sounds like I might be complaining, but I'm actually not. It's quite comfy here, at the top of the slightly worse people. I'm not astoundingly clever, but I am by no means dim. I am slightly, but not notably, above average. To confirm this, I took a (probably not very reliable) internet IQ test. I got the mark of 117, which is above average but not superior. And I think I'm actually OK with being above average but not superior. I am normal. And if I ever want to feel slightly better than normal, I can tell myself that I am above average. (But not superior.)

Things I've been enjoying lately

It's been a slightly crappy week. I've finally moved back to Lincolnshire and am failing miserably at getting a job, or even some work experience. I am convinced that I am going to be unemployed forever and will still be living with my parents at the age of 30. For some reason when I imagine this scenario I also have a beard. In addition to this, my whole family is going to Glastonbury and I can't go because my stewarding place was cancelled at the last minute. I also get my exam and essay results today, which I am very nervous about. Oh, woe is me.
Here are some things that have been cheering me up:
Reading: Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.
I'm only on page 62 of this, but so far it's like a hilarious version of A Child Called It, (if you can possibly imagine that.) It's about a boy whose Mum goes mad and sends him to live with her psychiatrist. Who is more than a bit zany. I don't normally read memoirs because I tend to prefer fiction and sometimes they get a bit miserable for me. I'm not the kind of person who likes reading about people's terrible lives because I'd rather bury my head in the sand and pretend bad things never happen. Actually that's not quite accurate. I think it's just that I prefer not to wallow in the misfortune of others. Anyway, this is a memoir and I really like it, particularly the style it is written in. It's a pretty fast read as well- I managed those 62 pages just last night.
Listening to: Fool's Gold. This band came up on my lastfm and they are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. They are from Los Angeles and the music they play is African-influenced pop. I can't really describe it but it's great. There's absolutely loads of members as well, so their album has a kind of Arcade Fire-y feel to it because there are lots of different layers to the melody and lots of different instruments being played at the same time. My favourite songs are Nadine and Poseidon. Also, one of the two UK tour dates they're playing this summer is Summer Sundae in Leicester, so I am considering going to that now. I have tried to embed the video for Nadine below, hopefully it'll work.


Watching: The World Cup surprisingly, because I never thought I actually liked football. The England matches obviously haven't made me particularly happy, but some of the other ones have been quite interesting. I haven't exactly sat riveted to the TV, but have enjoyed dipping into them now and again. I always thought when I watched football I was just humouring my boyfriend, but it seems as if a secret enjoyment of it has crept up on me.

Found this for £5 at a second-hand bookshop

I'm really looking forward to reading The Waves and Jacob's Room. I remember reading Mrs Dalloway in my first year and absolutely hating it, but after reading Orlando and To The Lighthouse for my modernism module, I went back to it and really liked it. It's weird to be reading books for fun now, it sort of feels wrong after having to read them for three years.

Post-Potter Depression

This holiday I've been home for 3 weeks, and this means sleeping in my old room, which means being surrounded by my old Harry Potter book collection. Every time I've had trouble sleeping I've ended up picking up one of them and flicking through to have a read of my favourite bits, and it's really made me realise how much I BLOODY LOVE HARRY POTTER! I love Harry Potter SO MUCH that it's actually quite scary. And not just the books either- everything related to them! I know some people hate the films, and admittedly some of the acting is quite bad and some of it too cheesey and they've cut out some good bits (I personally dislike the fact that there isn't a Peeves.) But I like them all the same, and last night I ended up rushing out at 8:45pm to get the Half Blood Prince DVD from Sainsbury's before it closed, because I was seized by an unbelievable urge to watch it. And while I was watching I thought 'Oh dear, very soon I won't have anything Harry Potter-related to look forward to, because the last two films will be out before I know it and what am I going to do then?' So I had a bit of a brainstorm and root around the internet for things to comfort people with Post-Potter Upset. Here are some suggestions, some of which I personally plan to indulge in:

 -Read: Harry Potter Fan Fiction

 It's highly, highly dorky. And some of it is quite weird and not very good, but some of it is okay. If you read the ones that have won prizes or are highly recommended they tend to be quite readable. 

-Listen to: Wizard Rock! (Or Wrock for short.)

Also massively dorky, but hilarious. This is more well-known in America than it is here. I generally don't like novelty bands. Tenacious D, Flight of the Concords and Richard Cheese all really annoy me, mostly because you'll be sitting happily at a party chatting away and then someone will put something on by one of the above and everyone will pause and then start singing along and chuckling to themselves in that weird way that people chuckle when something isn't funny anymore because they've actually heard the song a lot of times, and the jokes are only funny the first time you hear them (if they are indeed funny at all which is rare), but they still feel the need to chuckle to show that they know the band and are clever enough to grasp the humour. And then the rest of the party is ruined because people just keep quoting the song or even worse insisting that the whole ALBUM is put on and then you'll have to sit through another half hour of it and won't be able to have a decent conversation for the rest of the night. Anyway, I'm putting Holden away now. Back to Wizard Rock. Like I said, I don't normally like novelty bands, but some of these are just charming and lovely, and genuinely funny and catchy. And the lyrics are so dreadful, and the people mostly can't sing (apart from Ministry of Magic who seem to be using Autotune or similar, I can't tell), but it's just nice. And I love the lazy rhymes that appear when people use words like 'Weasley' and 'Scar'. 

-Visit: Universal Studios

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens in June. And I am INCREDIBLY upset that I won't be going because it is so expensive to go on holiday to Orlando in Florida. I am going to comfort myself by pedantically complaining that Ollivander's is in Hogsmeade. Fools.

-Get: This App

I don't have an iPhone, or know anyone who has an iPhone, but if I did I would definitely be using my iPhone to duel them on their iPhone with this right now instead of typing. (Expelliarmus!)

Or, if you're still upset about Harry Potter ending you could always get into Twilight. It's nowhere near as good, but the books certainly suck you in and it fills the HP hole, albeit very temporarily and inadequately. Plus Cedric is in the films.

I personally am now going to watch the extra features on the Half Blood Prince DVD. Here's hoping they cheer me up a bit.