someone please tell me..

Why the hell are crazy people always obsessed with the freemasons?

i have eaten so much cheese i think i am about to vomit a cow

happy christmas

So, the annual Christmas Eve pub night was, as per usual, delightful, tipsy and filled with reunions with persons many of whom, it is unlikely I will meet again until Christmas one year from today. Which is okay, it's nice getting a yearly update.

Looking forward to celebrating the feast of conspicuous consumption tomorrow with excessive presents and food etc.

Sam's niece is scared of Father Christmas but I told him to tell her he's so damn fat that even if he is evil she can probably outrun him.

Happy Christmas xoxo

philosophophee

One of the main things that studying Philosophy has taught me is that when it comes to a lot of things, there aren't really any rules. There are frameworks that we apply to things because it makes it easier to deal with them but when you actually investigate them, the things we take for granted can be knocked down like a house of cards. Governments do not simply have the right to power because they are governments, art cannot really be defined in any universal sense, "right" and "wrong" cannot be defined external to our own moral compass.

All this might seem painfully obvious but still we seem to operate our lives on the basis of contrary beliefs. Are we as creatures so conflicted in our nature that we choose not only to act, but to KNOW contrary to what we believe? The only real way of negating this is to accept that perhaps there is no one universal truth but just a number of different truths that operate in greater and lesser spheres. That can either be immensely disquieting or wonderfully freeing - robbing one of all purpose, or lifting a burden.

I'm getting a bit fed up of Leeds at the moment, I think it's just pre Christmas malaise. Actually, that's complete bullshit, it's because a lot of stressful stuff has gone on this past month and I miss my boyfriend. The knock on result of this is that I'm looking forward to going home for Christmas even more than usual. I'm going to miss everyone but I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks holed up on the sofa with a dvd collection, playing computer games with Fenrif and eating until I'm more stuffed than the turkey. Not to mention the usual christmas reunions and shindigs - always fun catching up with other Wirral escapees!

I'm looking forward to next Semester a lot more than this one - the modules I have chosen are a lot more enjoyable than this years - Political Philosophy has been great but Renaissance and Restoration Literature are just two massive behemoths of modules; both enjoyable in their way but I'm struggling to really immerse myself in both of them - I think I could do it if I was only studying one or the other but together they're a bit much. However I'm hoping to just get a comfortable 2:1 really, and hopefully really pull my grades up next year.

well, little blog, it has been a while.
3 jobs, 2 houses, 3 different countries, a plethora of different housemates (some more temporary than others) and a few wacky adventures since my last entry and I am currently sitting on the sofa drinking tea (mostly cinnamon) and trying to recover from a nasty little cold that seems to have taken up residence in my head (urgh.) I am not quite ill enough to justify genuine staying-in-bed-watching-tv-all-day recovery, but it's reading week anyway so I gratefully accepted an excuse to miss my 11 o clock lecture and am planning to head in for my 5 o'clock seminar. It's on the political philosophy of John Locke - minus the property ownership part which we covered last week. I spent all day on friday in the library reading up on him but for some reason I can't really seem to grasp what his fundemental points are - apart from separation of power, which I agree with, and that we need laws to be free, which I'm not so sure about. I have a couple of books sitting next to me which would probably explain it to me but I want to do a bit of tidying before I go into uni, and maybe watch a film (Legally Blonde - guilty pleasure) so perhaps it will happen - possibly not.

Erm sooooo, recent developments - like everyone in the blogosophere, and indeed the western world, I too am quite pleased that Barack Obama will in January take on the duties of the new president of the USA. Not being American I don't think it has as much resonance for me, which makes sense I think, but still, after the last guy it's nice to see an American President who can string a sentence together (remarkably well actually) so I think cautious optimism is probably a good stance to take regarding our friends over the ocean - for the first time in a very long time, which is no small achievement. So good on him.

I'm trying to find German lessons in Leeds - preferably a night course if possible, at a basic level. I have some experience of German but only a very very very small amount, having studied it for two years in school but not even at GCSE level. I'm spending next year at Heidelberg University, which will be amazing, but will require a better knowledge of the language than I have at present!

Sweet, glorious spare time - poorly utilised but fervently enjoyed, oh how I love you so. I have had chance to gather my thoughts over the last few days and do a few chores that sorely needed doing. As of today, however, the flat is reasonably tidy (including my bedroom, possibly for the first time since I moved in) the recycling has been done, even most of the glass; a few emails have been sent and, um, that's it really. Nevertheless I am feeling much more accomplished than the previous few sentences would suggest. It is very true that the state of your environment affects your mindframe, I believe. Tidying ones own belongings can be very therapeutic. This is probably why it is so much more difficult than tidying up other peoples mess, especially when you aren't in the right mood for it.

I went to speak to the antique shop on Hyde Park corner before about collecting my Ottoman. It's gorgeous - vivid pastel violet, curling lines and floral print on the cushion. I've discovered to my delight that I really enjoy looking round the antique shops. I'm thinking of going round a few antique fairs and getting some old pieces to do up over the summer. I'd imagine it's probably pretty easy to botch up but we learn by doing, after all.
I love the juxtaposition of old and new - antique desks with painted on motifs, gilt mirrors with feathers and beads. Fleur de Lis in bright pink on turquoise. They have a real tiki bar for sale - faded pink plastic fringing, bamboo and a suspended swinging rack for drinks. It's hideous, I love it.

Presumably because of the high turnover of tennants in our flats, there is always a pile of unclaimed mail in our building. It accumulates into an increasingly unmanagable pile until every couple of months, someone (maintenance?) throws it away and the whole process begins again. T Elbrigani, Joseph Webster and a girl who lived in our flat called Sarah something. Sarah was evidently a subscriber to Heat magazine. The last 2 weeks I have been reading it on her behalf. I forgot how unattractive that kind of magazine is. Their voice is one of such nasty, insecure, unappealing women. Example: This week they had a section called "The Naked Truth" featuring photoshoots they had done with female celebrities like Davina McCall and Fearne Cotton without makeup and airbrushing.
Ostensibly, the purpose of this was to promote a better female body image, to show how even beautiful glamorous women have flaws like the rest of us, how magazines like themselves purport an unrealistic standard of beauty etc etc etc. Which is sort of commendable, in a way, but then they undermine all of it by putting on the cover to illustrate the story, a picture of Fearne Cotton from the article, sans maquillage - with the caption, "Crikey, look at Fearne Cotton!" To be honest she doesn't even really look that bad anyway. This is just so typical of the hypocritical and contradictory nature of this kind of "Journalism" (and by extension, the people it is aimed at) - nasty, bitter and a victim of it's own worldview. Embaressing.

Incidentally, there is also a picture of Lauren Laverne which touts her as a DJ. I only know who this woman is due to remembering her being quite annoying in Kenickie and then presenting a Buffy documentary that coincided with the premiere of the first episode of season 6 in the uk, in which she was also quite annoying. She has cropped up every so often since then, generally in roles that highlight her capacity for annoyance. I am expecting her to migrate into the lower tiers of the super yacht industry any day now, before beginning a lacklustre career in space travel.

How many no money boyz are crazy
How many boyz are raw?
How many no money boyz are rowdy
How many start a war?

- M.I.A

How unusual.

Sophie has moved into the flat for a couple of weeks to keep me company until it's time to move into the new house. We were carrying the last of her stuff in when we saw the strangest thing.. a cat being chased by two birds!! They were really pissed off as well, the cat was bricking it.

excuse the grammar; it was an messenger conversation. Nazism in the name of Grammar is not okay!

This statement is a lie. says:
u never did tel me if that holes documentary was real

fenrif.avi says:
i did, and it is

fenrif.avi says:
as far as i know

This statement is a lie. says:
thats so good

This statement is a lie. says:
that renews my faith in humanity

fenrif.avi says:
what? some guy not being able to find a hole

fenrif.avi says:
?

This statement is a lie. says:
yes

fenrif.avi says:
haha

fenrif.avi says:
your silly

This statement is a lie. says:
AT LEAST I LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE A MAN CANT FIND A HOLE FENRIF

fenrif.avi says:
i live in that same world pip... you wouldnt have even known about that film if i hadnt shown you it

fenrif.avi says:
sometimes i think people dont understand how awesome i am with my abilities to find new and exciting media of all forms and verietes... and how benevolent i am in sharing them with my friends

fenrif.avi says:
IM A FUCKING SUPERHEROE!

fenrif.avi says:
haha

This statement is a lie. says:
that makes me your nemesis

fenrif.avi says:
only if you activly seek out bad entertainment and hten keep it to yourself

This statement is a lie. says:
well funnily enough fenrif

This statement is a lie. says:
thats exactly what i do

fenrif.avi says:
haha your such a bad liar

fenrif.avi says:
where do you go to find these new unexciting forms of entertainment then?

This statement is a lie. says:
nowhere

This statement is a lie. says:
thats the point

fenrif.avi says:
YOUR the point

fenrif.avi says:
if you were an animal youd be a narwhal

fenrif.avi says:
and youd love it... with all your narwhal friends. playing stupid narwhal games

fenrif.avi says:
"ohh look at me pip the narwhal, im sooooo cool because im a narwhal"

fenrif.avi says:
noone belives your narwhal lies, especially not your nugly narwhal wives

fenrif.avi says:
pssshhh narwhal

fenrif.avi says:
i bet your even behind the north korean kidnappings of japanese citizens

fenrif.avi says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese

This statement is a lie. says:
yeah thats a little side thing I'm workin on

This statement is a lie. says:
you know

This statement is a lie. says:
just sort of trying out a few ideas, seeing if it takes off

This statement is a lie. says:
the usa are pretty interested actually

fenrif.avi says:
in north korea kidnapping japanese citizens?

fenrif.avi says:
tahts just the sort of thin usa is nito

fenrif.avi says:
did you know the usa withdrew from the human right council last week?

This statement is a lie. says:
no

This statement is a lie. says:
no i didnt

This statement is a lie. says:
thats insane

This statement is a lie. says:
why!

This statement is a lie. says:
"we just dont think basic human rights are, you know, a good idea"

This statement is a lie. says:
"what with them being for the good of individual human lives and all"

fenrif.avi says:
i think theyre just trying to fuck the country up as much as they can. so that when the democrats come into power theyll spend their whole term trying to fix it, and failing. while fox news and all the other right wingers tell people "look at what a mess theyve made" so they reeelect the republicans in the elections after

This statement is a lie. says:
good tactics, really

This statement is a lie. says:
urgh

This statement is a lie. says:
when will the world realise it would be so much better if we were in charge

This statement is a lie. says:
well,, me

This statement is a lie. says:
you can be my second hand guy

This statement is a lie. says:
right hand guy

This statement is a lie. says:
whatever

fenrif.avi says:
second right hand guy?

fenrif.avi says:
or right second hand guy?

This statement is a lie. says:
both

It's a real shame M Night Shyamalan turned out to be a bit of a none starter. I just watched Unbreakable on the tv and was reminded of how genuinely decent I think that film is. I remember going to see it in the cinema with Nicky Magee - the day after I had my haircut, and got very upset when I washed it and it looked nothing like it did in the hairdressers - and being pleasantly surprised by how moving I found it. It's well written, has a twist that isn't visible from a mile off, and inspires a lump in the throat without ever being overtly sentimental. And then it all went so wrong.. the Village is creepy and well thought out but just feels a bit stale and flat. I've avoided Signs and Lady in the Water (and it was a sensible decision by all accounts) and I was never massively impressed by the Sixth Sense, but I've always had a fondness for Unbreakable. The Happening, however, looks fairly promising. Perhaps a remedy to his fall from grace? Time will tell.

Network Rail have become the bane of my existence. The more often I get the train, the more I am in shock about how terrible the service they provide is and how expensive it is! A train journey from Leeds to London on saturday that should have been direct and taken 2.5 hours tops, took almost 4 and I had to change 3 times, with one leg of the journey being taken by bus. And I paid 55 quid for the privilage! I'm going to start my own alternative rail service which is powered entirely by peoples dissatisfaction with rail services. Projected passengers for our first quarter are 99.5% of all British rail users, with a 0.5% margin of error. Seriously though, when it costs more and takes longer to get a train somewhere rather than fly, how can people be blamed for using planes? It's cheaper to, for example, fly to Germany and back than it is to pay full fare down to Brighton. That's really stupid.

I'm also falling in love... with my new phone. It's like a fairytale romance. It was like fate... I rang T Mobile on the off chance; you know, not really looking for anything, and it all just kind of happened. This sexy little fucker came into my life and started making all my dreams come true. It's like we're best friends. It knows everything I want before I even know I want it. If I want to make a movie of my totally gross and embaressingly incurred foot injury, N95 is there. If I need to take pictures of plesiosaurs in the natural history museum or check my facebook on an overly long train journey, it's no problem at all for my ever patient N95! On a phonecall in a shop and need to take a telephone number quickly but don't have a pen or paper or human friend about to indelibly print the number in their mind? Can N95 have the number input whilst still on the other call? Of course it can, what a silly question! I've yet to discover its full capabilities but I would not be surprised if they include full personal organiser abilities, alarms that actually wake me up and the ability to transport matter forwards and backwards through time.

My boyfriend is in London and my roomate is in Bristol and I am in Leeds, remembering how much I dislike living alone. This flat is abundant with strange noises. I'm trying vainly to upload the photos off my old phone to my laptop so that I can migrate to my shiny spanking new phone that arrived today (at 7.30 am, cheers T Mobile.) Unfortunately technology, like a deadbeat divorcee parent, has a habit of making wonderful promises and utterly failing to live up to them, leaving sad eyed children in it's wake.

I need to do some serious tidying. My life, once again, is strewn around me in every available space. I need to get a train around two tomorrow. So I could either sleep now, get up early, try and enforce some kind of order on my chaotic surroundings but probably not get up until an hour before I need to leave - or, I could tidy now, not sleep until the sunrises and probably not get up until an hour before I need to leave.

The price of my return ticket just jumped up 45 QUID in the space of 5 minutes. The Uk rail system is a joke. It would probably be cheaper to fly.

I was going to write more but I'm going to go and weep into my pillow at the sheer irrational expense of getting ABSOLUTELY ANYWHERE IN BRITAIN.

Goodnight.

busy busy busy. I am trying to decide what modules to take at University next year but it's too limiting - I want to do everything. All the philosophy (well, all the bits that aren't logic), especially aesthetics, pol phil, philosophy of science, philosophy of language and literature. But then I want to do all of the English too. And a module on modern Chinese society, and lots of cultural anthropology. If only there were enough hours in the day (and I were awake for more of them..)

I bought a lilac ottoman from the 1930's today from one of the antique shops on Hyde Park corner. The plan is to tidy into it all my art stuff that's currently littering the living room floor and give my long suffering flatmate a break. However I have been struggling to tidy my bedroom for the last 3 months so, we will see how that pans out.

"This is the age
when my past should be gone
but it's just stronger than the aims I have
Turning the pages
I used to hang on to
I was young and I have changed my mind"

DINOSAUR!

Look, new dinosaurs! Not those rubbish ones either, these baddies had proper massive teeth, as dinosaurs should, unless they are ginormous herbivorous sauropods which is also acceptable.

"Eocarcharia dinops or "fierce-eyed dawn shark"..... possessed blade-shaped teeth and a prominent bony eyebrow ridge. Unlike Kryptops, its teeth were more suited to attacking live prey and severing body parts.

The Carcharodontosaurids, the group to which Eocarcharia belongs, included predators as big, if not bigger, than Tyrannosaurus rex." (taken from here)

Who needs a valentine when there are new fossills of dinosaurs being discovered! Dinosaurs are scary and awesome and rad, Valentine's Day is a sham holiday created by the purveyors of chocolate and novelty stuffed animals. Valentines are for jerk offs. Dinosaurs just make me happy :)

Whatever happened to Britney Spears?

.. When Britney Spears was first unleashed on the world as a perfect, polished, pouting popstrel back in 1998, I was about 11 and in my first year of secondary school, a world away from the perfect, polished, bubblegum princess who was suddenly cavorting on screens everywhere, pouting and preening. She was all over everything I saw - SMTV, MTV, Smash Hits & Top of the Pops magazine, newspapers, tweenie teen mags like J-17 and Sugar. She was one of those popstars that even your older relatives know about and reference to show that they still have their finger on-the-pulse of modern pop culture.

  Fast forward almost ten years and as I am sure most of you know, Spears is in the process of having a complete mental breakdown. I'm not sure what gave it away for you - her increasingly erratic behaviour throughout 2007 (photos of her as she stumbled out of various clubs without knickers and completely trashed, perhaps? or that video on youtube where she's clearly on drugs and talks about time travel) might have fired the warning shots, or perhaps you were oblivious until her Richard O'Brien-esque bald look was splashed all over the front pages. But the fact is that, a divorce, a drastic haircut, losing all access rights to her children, and several stints in rehab and psychiatric care later, Britney today is a far cry from the pretty young girl who pranced across our screens back in 1998.

For those of you who choose to avoid the gossip pages like the plague, I'll give you a brief overview of just how far Britney has fallen. I'm sure you're all familiar with the earlier triumphs of Britney's career, and for arguments sake, we will say that her descent began back in late 2006, following her split from Kevin Federline, "K-Fed" to his friends, notorious stoner and renowned waste of space. (Arguably this could be viewed as one of Spears few sensible decisions over the last couple of years, but it provides an opening bracket to a period of self destruction that doesn't seem to be anywhere near its close yet.)

I have to admit that at first, I thought people were being a little harsh on Spears for going out and partying hearty. After all, she had just got out of a marriage that was by all accounts not ideal – why the hell shouldn't she let her hair down a bit? (no pun intended). But then the infamous sans-underwear pictures came out. And then it happened again. And again. Personally, if through some horrific twist of fate I ended up with my most personal and private region splashed all over the front of the tabloids, I would probably never ever leave the house again. I would probably never ever leave my bedroom again; in fact I would seek to live in some secluded place where I never had to encounter humanity, like the Loch Ness monster, or Marlon Brando. I certainly would NOT be rushing out with my new BFF (for 2 weeks) Paris Hilton to do it all over again. Britney, however, seemed to have no qualms about doing so – and it wasn't some weird misguided sexual liberation thing either. The pictures showed her being scooped out of clubs, eyes rolling back into her head, barely able to walk.

After this, things spiralled pretty quickly. There were increasing reports of Britney going to nightclubs and basically making a fool of herself, taking off her clothes, desperately seeking attention, getting horribly wasted. February 16th 2007, she checked into rehab for the first time – and out again, the same day. And then, the infamous haircut.

By this point there was room for very little doubt about the rapidly deteriorating state of the girls mental health, but for anyone who still needed it spelling out, what better way to cement yourself as being a few sandwiches short of a picnic than by shaving all of your signature long hair off? I remember when I heard about her latest display of insanity, I rang my friend to inform him, and he shrieked "You're kidding!" incredulously down the phone, sure that I was winding him up. We all went out that night, didn't sleep, staggered to the Asda at 9am for supplies. I remember thinking at the time that I was glad no strangers cared about me enough to warrant photographers catching me at that particular moment. I bought a copy of the Mirror, Britney's freshly bald head staring out at me – not defiant or rebellious but just plain lost.

  A period of yo-yo ing in and out of rehab followed this, along with the complete decimation of any respectability Spears may have had left. Photos of her in a variety of humiliating states underline the fact that this was clearly a woman who should be receiving some major and intensive therapy. She was completely and utterly unravelling. She was a total laughing stock. Yet, unbelievably, a new album was released, and a new single, "Gimme More," despite the fact that she should probably have been taking a very extended career break. However, when there are that many people with a vested financial interest in the career of one woman, her welfare is not going to be the primary concern – not when the cash cow is still ripe for milking. Incredibly, Gimme More was Spears most successful song since "Hit me…" was released. Despite her implosion, there are clearly still immense amounts of money being made from the girl. And paying the price, two little boys, 2 and 3, who are no longer allowed any contact with their mother.

  For me, the point where I knew she had actually lost it and that something bad had happened way past the point of no return, was the no knickers incident. Most of the other stuff up to that point could be explained through the lens of history as just the sort of eccentric but glamorous behaviour we forgive in our most cherished of stars – Edie Sedgwick and her heroin, Frances Farmer in a bath at a party and ultimately lobotomised, Marilyn Monroe and her pills and her booze and her affairs, Judy Garland and her childhood amphetamines and chemical romances…… the list goes on. All of these women remain icons to this day despite (or maybe because of) being prodigiously screwed up in a variety of strange and exciting ways. Even among Britney's contemporaries we have Lindsay Lohan (rehab for alcohol addiction after getting caught driving pissed multiple times) Nicole Richie (heroin addict, once upon a time) and Paris Hilton (who has made a living out of allowing herself to be portrayed as some kind of coked up real life Barbie doll) – none of whom have sunk to the depths of depravity that Britney herself has reached.  

How does it happen? How does a girl with that many safety nets – that many people desperate to stop her from screwing up, if only to serve their own best interests – manage to so spectacularly implode, in the full glare of the flashbulbs of the worlds media?

I think for most of us, it would require maybe one or 2 photographs of us looking horribly worse for wear stumbling out of clubs before we grew older and wiser and resolved not to get into that state again, at least not anywhere with a multitude of cameras raring to capture our lowest moments to be hungrily devoured by people seeking to escape their own reality and keen to judge. But Britney has lived with those eyes watching her since her teenage years. Her whole adult life has been watched, recorded and systematically dissected by millions of people – that isn't strange for her, that's normality. The paparazzi are as much a natural fixture in her life as managers, family, money, and her relationship with them is seriously weird, hateful of them one day and inviting them to party with her the next. She jostles desperately for the approval and love of faceless masses; both resentful of and unable to live without it.  

I went back and watched the video for "Hit me baby one more time" on youtube recently, when the current furore came about. The video and Spears in particular are very sexualised - lots of come hither glances, gyrating hips, a pornified schoolgirl uniform, lots of midrif. Pretty much matches the vague memories I have of it. What was new though, and I would imagine, the result of viewing the video through the eyes of a 20 year old rather than the eyes of an adolescent, was how uncomfortable it made me feel. Everything from the title of the song to the video is selling a glossy, sexed up, faux-virginal fantasy. When it was made, Britney Spears was 16. It made me feel slightly sick.

There is an inherent irony in the fact that a country with a massively vocal religious right, where the age of consent in many places is 18 or higher, gave us one of the most successful breakout pop hits of all time from a 16 year old girl marketed based on her sex appeal. Symbolic perhaps of the hypocrisy of a culture that would preach so strongly against any deviance from rigid conservative right wing values yet simultaneously exploit a child for all that she is worth.  

The celebrity culture that we endorse puts people up on a pedestal and then pulls it out from beneath them, rejoicing as they fall tumbling down. We think we have a right to violate every single aspect of a persons life just because they have opened the door to fame. Regardless of the involvement we arguably might have the right to expect in a persons life once they have taken on the dubious mantle of celebrity, it would be nice to think that when they start showing signs of having a genuine mental health issue we would have the compassion to step back and allow them to get well. Instead, there is a website entitled "whenisbritneygoingtodie.com" (whoever guesses correctly gets a ps3!). This is positively ghoulish.  

In this voyeuristic celebrity culture we have created, the line between purveyor and product is increasingly blurred. For people like Britney Spears, their brand and lives are inextricably entwined. Their success relies on an image being upheld, and every action they make is a part of this. Can you imagine the immense pressure to be beautiful all the time - your entire livelihood relying on you sticking rigidly to a predefined image? This isn't a case of acting a certain way at work and then cutting loose at home, this is a case of actually becoming your product. Not knowing which part of you is even you any more. Not knowing if any part of you is yours. And as much as it is possible to claim that this was a situation Britney entered into willingly herself, fully aware of the consequences of her actions, I just don't know how this can really be said about the decisions made by a 16 year old girl.

  When Spears was sectioned at the end of January, there was a convoy of cars following her ambulance the length of a football pitch. For the last year, she has driven around LA with an entourage of paparazzi constantly at her heels. She does not have to worry about any of the things that bother the rest of us – finding money to pay the rent or go out with friends, trying to scrape together a new outfit out of the pile of clothes lying on the bedroom floor, those funny little butterflies that dance in our stomachs when we wonder if that certain boy or girl will even notice us. She doesn't get the chance. Any opportunity she had for a "normal" life went clean out the window at age 16.

Instead she has been left with this surrealist valley of the dolls style nightmare; a grotesque parody of a life where even falling to pieces doesn't provide any escape.


 

"To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case. To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case - that is, to be killed. This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman." – Angela Carter

 

Daffodil or a diamond

Daffodil
Originally uploaded by clockworkcherry

unfortunately, due to my less than impressive horticultural skills (I struggle to keeep my cactus alive), this beautiful golden plant is no longer with us

RIP little buddy

it was so fuckin PRETTY tho

Originally uploaded by clockworkcherry

and once again, the months are beginning to fly away; like a stack of papers scattered by the wind, chasing them back would be vain torture for my fingertips. Instead, there are snapshots


(more here: click)

It was one of those mornings when the air seemed so cold and grey that at any moment it could shatter like glass and fall away. Teetering down the road in high heels I could barely walk in at the best of times, I clung onto my friends arm for support - perhaps too optimistically as he was having equal trouble staying stable himself, faring marginally better only because of his lack of 3 inch heels. We had wandered straight into a britpop album cover circa 1996.

(they keep messaging me, these lost girls - brief windows into their lives which are both beautiful, and sad. It makes me realise that, although I am a girl who does a little too much of everything, I am not the only one. We are blessed and cursed and sometimes, I just wish they could see how wonderful they really are. It isn't right, really. Keep sending me letters from the trenches, you funny little angels - I will keep telling you to keep your chin up, forget the bad boys, treasure the good ones, and soon we will meet up and toast to the world until gin blossoms grow everywhere. I'll come by with ice cream and the number for takeaway pizza and we will laugh about it all, concoct a battleplan and find our way back home again. I am the patron saint of lost girls, remember)

I was on a mission last weekend to get out of my head, I think. I'm not really sure what I was trying to prove to myself but hopefully I got the message. My body still feels a little poisoned; all the peppermint tea in the world won't clean my mind, although I am giving it a good try. There was lots of laughter, and Bansky jokes ("stop writing my fucking name everywhere - Bansky" "This will look good in the guardian - Bansky") and star wars videos, me and Zoe making dens and displaying habitual environmental resourcefulness, random encounters, missed opportunities, Geordies drowning in the biggest k holes I have ever witnessed, and watching the film "kids" (the one about aids and rape), as well. on ket. the fucking nutters. I can't think of any activity less appealing frankly

I woke up early this morning. It felt good, to actually turn up somewhere on time, I think perhaps a personal best. We learned how to express arguments logically using PL, which I have to grudgingly admit, does make sense and has finally provided me with a justification for having learned algebra and all that jizz at GCSE. I can just TELL it's going to end up pissing me off though, mostly because my brain just sees anything numeric or logical and tends to go off in a sulk stamping it's feet and crying "nu uhhhhh." So I'm going to be spending this semester trying to work out wffs and tearing my hair out


From "Qa", we get generate wffs such as "∃xGx", "∀yGy".

From "(~Pa→S)", we get "∃y(~Py→S)" or "∀x(~Px→S)".

From "(Qa↔Qa)", we get "∃x(Qx↔Qx)", "∀z(Qz↔Qz)" (But not "∃x(Qx↔Qa)"!)

From "(~Qa→Qb)", we get "∃x(~Qx→Qb)", "∀z(~Qa→Qz)" (But not "∃x(~Qx→Qx)"!)

From "~((Pa&S)↔(~Fb∨Ka))", we can get :
"∃x~((Px&S)↔(~Fb∨Kx))",
"∃x~((Pa&S)↔(~Fx∨Ka))", etc.
(But not "∃x~((Px&S)↔(~Fb∨Ka))")



OH FUCK

and even though the sky is bruise blue grey and the rain is never more than seconds from falling, the sun is shining sideways on everything. There are new lakes popping up all over the place and I imagine a loch ness monster swimming through them and a rainbow is framing the trees of the park. It is strange and it is happy and I wonder how everyone else can fail to be as excited by this as I am

i am writing this sitting back in my flat on my second full day back in Leeds. I have decided to develop into a sort of hermit, venturing out into the cold wastelands of the outside only to purchase milk and a copy of the guardian. I have been watching episode after episode of Arrested Developement and Larry Clark films and painting concentric patterns and drawing conclusions about applied ethics. (it is scary, the deeper you venture into the world of ethics, the more it becomes apparent just how much of our current moral code is based upon our acceptance of certain positions as unquestionable. As soon as you begin to dig beneath the surface a little, to root around amongst the foundations, the whole thing is liable to collapse like a house of cards.) I have also been playing a new game I have, where I choose a random ingredient from in the fridge and find and make a recipe involving it. So far I have made tomato pitta breads and broccoli gratin. The results were mixed but enjoyable.

I had a shuffle fest on my ipod earlier today while I was working, which led to the interesting combination of dillinja, soundgarden, handsome boy modeling school, velvet acid christ ,lovage, velvet underground, cowboy junkies, and badly drawn boy. Also tickling my ears recently have been the Vangelis song at the end of Blade Runner, Hello Mr Blue Sky by the Electric Light Orchestra, and anything by the Cardigans.

I could quite happily stay as a hermit forever (so long as I had plenty of dvds and books and paints) if the world outside wasn't so interesting. I am writing this in case of the unlikely-but-ever-growing-possibility that I decide to stay in here forever (or at least until summer comes.) More people should hibernate, there are a lot of positives to it.

disclaimer: stream of babble ahead

so I am writing in this today because i have found that not writing and carefully measuring my words as though they were grams of gold or something is a) fucking stupid and b) not doing anything particularly productive for me anyway. why would i stop them from flowing out, they are not a finite resource to be guarded, it's like that song about the magic penny from infant school, "hold it tight and you won't have any.. give them out and you'll have so many they'll roll all over the floor." And writing is how I break down walls and it's how I do/am going to do pretty much anything that's important to me so I should do more of it. at the moment I am thinking about pyramids a lot. What are the various things that they represent? To me I think they are a nice symbol of what i percieve as the tripartite nature of many/(all?) aspects of llife. I think the various facets of peoples personalities generally fall into 3 primary sections. Conscious, subconscious, psyche? dunno threw the last one in because it sounded right, haven't really put much thought or investigatiion into it yet really. maybe the psyche is the conscious and subconscious actually. dunno need to look into that one a bit. Anyhow this is another paralell with christianity that I have found within my own personal beliefs - the tripartite form of the holy trinity (god son and holy spirit) being a fundemental part of (some) christian beliefs; i am not a christian but rosie, who is a pink pretty flower who i used to live with and one of the best sunniest people i know, is and so i spent a year going to a christian discussion group at her church which was really interesting. (conclusion: christianity comes down to a leap of faith, willing suspension of disbelief - agreeing to accept certain truths just because - [guess that's what faith is anyway] - not something I can do now, maybe ever) There are two other paralells but one of them escapes me at the moment, however the first is the belief that we are living in a fallen world - that the world in it's present state is not as it is supposed to. (can't believe that a world this flawed, yes beautiful but so inherently corrupt was meant to be this way) a friend of mine argued that he believes saying there is a way the world " should" be is a very dangerous path to go down as it indicates some kind of divine plan - higher sentience etc, but that's maybe the reason why i think it's a path worth going down anyway. interestingly my feelings about christianity - interest, detatched but genuine appreciation for certain aspects but unable to truly accept the message as a whole doctrine - entirely reflect my feelings for the psy trance scene. I like and respect the ethos and have genuine admiration for people who can have cultivated a community in this modern world that is not based around selfish desire; i can appreciate the fact that the music is very complex and combines mathematics and structure with elements of eastern philosophies and also makes nice gleepy gloopy bwomp noises, I admire the complex and beautiful imagery that combines the natural with the cyber, .. but I just don't really buy it all. the music is sometimes kind of crap. maybe it's time i take a chance and just start taking plunges. but i cant ever see one side of anything, there's always fucking 3 (also anyone who says hallucinogens are the only way to free your mind and achieve enlightenment is mistaken i reckon; they are not the only way, they aren't even the best way)set myself free of a lot of things, so they can fly off and do their own thing, they have no purpose to me any more. Now, just need to focus as much attention outwards as I do inwards. at least i know i can fall in love though. it's a trick and a half as well, being able to wear your heart on your sleeve and then it getting torn and bruised, to not hide it away locked up til its cold and dies because youre scared, but just keep it out there and still it beats hard, strong, steady. so this year I am going to write more in visible places (not scrounge these words for what use are they to me and me alone, they float around my head all day anyway) and learn more things, like: knitting, and cooking, one recipe a week, and maybe how to be a vegetarian, and certainly how to be less like an existance and more like a life. imho, meaning of life: create, understand, experience. hehe. 3 sides too. only just noticed that. how nice :) . A thought experiment to illustrate this is to imagine a life of matrix stylee people in pods, no life, no existance. what is it that we find so horrific about this hypothetical scenario? the lack of creation, experience and above all understanding. for me anyway. so i reckon that's the meaning of my life, for me. can anyone recommend knitting tips? i love tea. my friend zoe once gave me jasmine tea brewed from a flower. it were ever so classy like. Im lucky enough to have encountered some wonderful peoples over the years. i appreciate them more and more when i see how they have survived as themselves in a society which sometimes(always?) feels like it's trying to fuck people over and milk them for all they are worth; and make them love it. Fighting that is nigh on impossible but i know people who try and for that i love them. even if it is in different ways. christians think the psy trance heads have it wrong. vice versa. different paths. everyone always thinks everybody who doesnn't think what they think is wrong.The last thing my mother said to me when i went travelling was "Remember: nobody out there is your friend. trust nobody." i think she was mistaken. and maybe sometimes its worth getting dicked over a couple of times if it means you don't lose hope.

happy two thousand and eight, time for a change maybe?