Hey guys, long time no et cetera. Been taking some time off LJ to spend with te family around my birthday.

Anyhoo, the meal I had with the clan was lovely (lemon sole stuffed with prawn and crab!) and I GOT A LAPTOP! I'm on it now.... Also got a little spondulicks and some nice little knick-knacks.

Life has been relatively uneventful. I'm finding school more and more of a chore, reading The Scarlet Letter in most of my lessons. However, I got a letter from Oxford the other day inviting me to do a pre-course two week residential up there for an IN-TEN-SIVE Italian course.

Planning me and Kelly's birthday meal has in many ways become a living hell. 46 people, meaning 46 pre-orders and 46 deposits - ugh! Luckily, everything is finally settled and it's tomorrow night at an Italian restaurant. Now just to hope we don't start trashin' the camp, as they say in Tarzan.

We all went out to Wellworths yesterday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellworths_(GB)) and they were doing half-price pick 'n' mix and free Starbucks coffee! Score! (We live for the small things...) And then on the way down the road, there was this evangelical preacher who was banging on about Jesus and shouted "What about you youngsters?! Do you believe in God?" as we were trying to sneak past. Parvin immediately goes: "No - I like my sins," prompting out friend Bill Graham Mark II to holler at our retreating backs: "Well, they'll take you straight to hell!"

Lol. How have you all been? I mean that sincerely because I won't have time to catch up with your jounals :D

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! I'M 18!!!!!!

PLUS, IT RANDOMLY STARTED SNOWING IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS AND NOW IT'S A FEW INCHES THICK AND THEY CLOSED THE MAIN ROAD SO - NO SCHOOL!

SNOW DAY BIRTHDAY!!!!!

Jess is coming round later to give me my present and drive me up to the Co-Op to legally buy alcohol.

Going out for a big family meal tonight, where I'm going to get my presents.

This is all too cool. I might just throw up like a little kid at a birthday tea after too much jelly and excitement :D

Hey chaps, random question: I was plucking the inside ends of my eyebrows and now, about five days on, a little bunch of spots has developed at the top of my nose. I'm assuming the opened pores got gunked up. Anyone know what I can put on the skin after plucking to stop this? Baby lotion acts as a panacea for all ills in this household, but I suspect it would just gunk it up more?

Haven't updated in a while, simply because nothing inspiring has happened. Started reading Empire of the Sun, Men without Women and some French book on slang.

It Happened One Night and The Big Heat arrived from Amazon, to keep me entertained over this dull weekend. Luckily, by next weekend I'll be 18 and we're all hitting the town :D

The Charles W. Cushman Collection: The most gorgeous collection of 1940s-1960s photos from all over the world


Over 14,000  images, from delectable colour shots of New York in the 40s




Also hundreds of pics from England, Italy, Mexico, the Middle East...

Oxford Uni students in the swingin' 60s :D


Meheeco


I could spend all day on here...

Went to Dan Rogers' house in Dorch last night with a bunch of others for a little partay. He had loads of vodka and pizza, so we were well equipped. Plus, he'd made the most gorgeous lemon meringue pie in an admirable display of housewifery.

It was all Theatre Fags, plus a few of us straight girls, and one of them had brought a CD holder full of musicals soundtracks, so we danced in the kitchen to Hercules and Chicago until his mum told us to shut up ("POP!...SIX!...SQUISH!...CICERO...LIPSCHITZ!").
Then we went in the back garden and played drinking games and gossiped. As me and Dan spoke French, we could bitch privately, too :D
Also, just before the taxi came for us, we went to the playground next to his house. There was this car parked opposite, guy and girl sitting inside, just sitting. Then another car screeches up behind them and another guy gets out. The two guys open their boots and start putting something from the second guy's into the first's. Suspish.

Anyhoo, yeah.

Then I came home and flicked through the news channels. On FOX there was some dreadful woman named Ann Coulter, who I am given to understand is quite famous in America. She made Bill O'Reilly look like Karl Marx.

Good Lord. Her suggestion for those octuplets was to withhold all benefits from the family, thus forcing them to put them up for adoption! ... Ta-Da! That'll teach 'em!

Even O'Reilly said "Erm...That's never gonna happen in America."

Don't know if you guys outside of the UK have heard a lot about this, but Father at 13 years old seems to be taking up a lot of UK press at the moment. Shocking, and he looks even younger in the picture. Best moment was when a reporter asked what he planned to do for the baby financially and he said "What's financially?"  Scary stuff.

Anyway, I have found the perfect faith-restoring antidote to all those gone-is-innocence woes:
9 Year Old Writes Dating Book
Just too sweet :D

Dear Work : Kindly fuck off.

So, I turn up at the hotel at 7.25 this morning, only to see that I'm not on the fucking rota. Deputy Manager shuffles his feet and mumbles that Real Manager isn't here, so he doesn't know why I'm not up to work today, but I'm not, so ... bye. Cue having to fucking turn around and go home.

PS., I Hate You

Half-term tomorrow!!!

I hate school. I'm fed up of stupid people being slow. Just gimme the books and let me go home, thankyouverymuch.

The Bogart biography came. It's awesome. And thicker than I expected.

I LEFT SCHOOL AT 11.45AM. I GOT HOME AT 5.15PM.

5 AND A HALF HOURS FOR A 20 MINUTE JOURNEY.

AND WHY?

Snow.



The main road between Dorchester and Weymouth was closed ... just after we got on it. Trapped thus in a blizzardy limbo, we crawled up the road at a rate of one metre per ten minutes.

We had rather fun times, though, seeing as the road was closed the other way, so we could get out of the car and muck about. It was so eerie, given that it's the busiest road in the area, to see it just still and white. And people walking right down the middle of it! I guess in Ye Olde Times that's what people did all the time, but it was surreal beyond belief.
 
Highlight had to be Jess throwing a wodge of snow at Tasha as she crouched in a field to pee, knocking her over backwards with her arse on display :D

Three and a half hours on, the police finally got round to tell us not to bother waiting anymore, to go back to Dorchester and stay with someone we knew. The others went to Tasha's boyfriends's, and I asked them to drop me at the train station. Instead, the dropped me a two minute walk away, but the ice and snow plus my Converse was hell.

After a few minutes of struggling inch by inch along the street, I realised "No matter how much you invoke the spirits of great heroes, you are not going to make this. Ever."

So I called my friend Dina who lives nearby, and just burst into tears! Oy veh, but I was so cold and exhausted and desperate. Bless 'em, they came out to get me, supported me to the station and bought me a warm milk from Starbucks.

Anyhow, just got home. I guess in Russia, this would be normal :D

Yeah, so on Wednesday night, I got called up to replace this boy who was sick in a regional debating heat... Two hours before we had to leave! It was in Exeter, and my history teacher, Killer, (who runs the team - nockname comes from her surname, rather than a murderous instinct) drove me down. It was only a two-man team, so I had to write a seven-minute speech in the car!

It was a speech opposing putting condom machines in schools, which meant that Killer - only trying to help - ended up telling me about new ways of teaching sex ed. ... using the word 'genitals' and talking about penis size until I wanted to do a drop-n-roll out of the moving vehicle :D

I think I pulled it off all right - my partner is a lovely guy and a great speaker (plus, one of the chairboys was a really cute American who kept looking at me - although there were only three girls there, so that's not such a big thing :D).

On the way back, Killer's phone starts ringing and she asks me to answer cos she's driving, obvs. It's one of the Union Presidents, Katy, in floods of tears....

Turns out, the school social was that night, and it's gone MENTAL. 500 angry, drunk 16-18s rampaging around a nightclub. You name it, it's happening - drugs, police, vandalism and fistfights. Keep in mind this was at 9.30pm....

The place got shut down by 11pm, emptying 500 even angrier drunk people onto the pavement where because most of them lived in Dorchester, they had to stand out in the sub-zeros until they could get a lift or a taxi. They apparently ran out in front of cars and kicked them...

Yeah. Social of Shame. We at the student magazine are going to run a story on it :D

For some reason the Superbowl was on BBC1 when I went to bed last night. I'd never seen an American football game before. I watched it in a kind of goofy, idiotic trance, with no idea what was going on, who was who, how one accrued points etc etc etc.

Eventually, the Pittsburgh people scored a touchdown, but the Arizona guys threw a hissy and it got cancelled. They still managed to keep three of the six points though, I'm not sure why.

It was cool.

From Cracked.com: 'Lost in Translation - 20 Baffling Foreign Movie Posters :D :D :D

Remi's party was awesome! I drank a bottle of rosé in about half an hour and then felt the need to a) throw up in her bathroom, (rather neatly as it happens), and b) lie down on a futon upstairs. Just until I felt better, you understand...

Yeah, I ended up spending the whole night there, fell asleep about 1am. There were people in there the whole time, which meant I actually witnessed most of the more interesting happenings (ie. Tasha cutting her foot on broken glass and bleeding everywhere, then attempting to come on to everybody, including Remi's mum ... (!?) ).

There was also some panicked running around after a radiator broke off the wall when people were sitting on it, spilling water everywhere and necessitating the complete shutoff of the house's water supply.

The radiator mishap (which her mother took with surprising sang-froid) meant that when we finally rose, groaning, to meet the world this morning, we could neither scrape the gunk from our teeth nor wash the dirty-stopout grime from our revolting teenage forms.

Instead, all the people who stayed over (being Remi, of course, me, Kelly, Dina and five guys, all acid-tongued queens) spent the whole morning sitting round the bedroom in our duvets. We drank copious amounts of fruit juice (no tea or coffee, or for that matter, water) and ate the chocolates I'd given her as a present. It was a really fun morning, spent recollecting the various events of the previous night and bitching about everybody. I haven't laughed so much in ages. I know it's a cliché, but those gays can really bitch ;D

All in all, a fine old time.

And there's now a photo up on Facebook of me after someone thought it would be fun to unzip the front of my shirt. Which my dad saw on his news feed. Oh, blimey.

Japanese Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! "Go go Turtles power up transformation!" etc


Also, some wanker posted up copies all over the Common Room of some pseudo-Marxist bullshit from Tim Morello, Rage Against The Machine guitarist about how we were all, like, slaves to the machine, man.

So we started defacing them. Mine was 'Indiana Jones did NOT fight for this!' :D

Dina's was awesome. Not least because on the way I stopped by the hotel and I've finally got my hours back!

The highlight of the meal was all of us doing the Amanda Thripp scene from Matilda word-for-word from memory (gay drama guy: "My Mommy thinks they're sweet"  all: "Well, your Mommy ... is a TWIT!").

Afterwards we went to a swish dance bar and ALL GOT IN! Except my friend made fun of the barmaid's accent and got chucked out :D

Got home about 1.30am, and caught up on all the nerdiness I'd missed partying by watchingn Alastair Cooke's America.


Stayed up to watch Good Night, And Good Luck last night. I really liked it. It's a subject I've always been into, and David Strathairn was incredible as Murrow. Parts of it were so screamingly unfair that I wanted to yell at the screen, but I guess that's the reality.

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT AND VITAL FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN OLD MOVIES.

MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE IS EDWARD G. ROBINSON GABBLING HIS LINES INTO NONSENSE, BECAUSE I ALWAYS WONDERED HOW THEY MANAGED TO TALK SO QUICKLY.

It's great because it makes the classic stars seem so human. Their reactions to making mistakes are exactly the same as the modern generation, even cursing in a way that would never have been allowed in the final product. Seeing these beautiful 30s actresses snapping "Goddamn!" is a joy to behold ;D

ALSO, LOL HUMPHREY BOGART : "No, so I think I'll keep one sitting ... right in the ... .... thing..."


OKAY, PAT O'BRIEN CALLS SOMEONE A BASTARD! RIGHT THERE ON YE OLDE FILM ON YE OLDE MOVIE SET!

I AM OFFICIALLY DECLARING THIS THE BEST THING EVER.


 EDIT: OH CHRIST, HERE'S ANOTHER ONE! FEATURING THE LIKES OF BETTE DAVIS, PAUL MUNI AND BASIL RATHBONE, NO LESS:

Yay, weekend! Dina's birthday meal tomorrow, should be a larf.

About a third of the way through The Audacity of Hope, really enjoying it. In fact, it's making me a bit mopey that our politics is so small and petty and generally naff. Mind you, he's hardly making US politics seem that great - all the lobbying and the corporations and that - but his rhetoric is so convincing that you find yourself getting enthusiastic anyway.


Also: 6 Baffling Mistakes Every Movie Criminal Makes
I love Cracked.com :D


To finish, purloined from phinnia : Lego Inauguration!

Interesting Presidential Fact: Electric lights were first installed in the White House in 1891 for Benjamin Harrison. However... the President and his wife were so afraid of them that they often refused to touch the switches and slept with the lights left on.
                                                  

Wow, I really enjoyed watching the inauguration, despite the somewhat disjointed commentary provided by Aunite (the BBC, rather than my actual auntie ;D).

Nice to see the Yanks put on such a show, given they don't get as many chances to have pomp and circumstance as we do. The ceremony was beautifully done, great atmosphere. I was sort of worried it would be tacky, but it was very solemn and portentous.

I have a complete crush on Joe Biden. Even taking the oath, he seemed so warm and friendly.

Unlike Mister O himself, who slightly ballsed up his own attempt. Seriously, he can memorise a fantastic ten-page speech but he can't come in at the right time on a five-line oath? ;D

The speech was superb. I honestly felt that he was talking to me and to everyone else outside the US who has vested so much hope in him. I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of our government. All I know is that it increasingly feels like Westminster is some shady entity which semi-occasionally emerges from the silent depths to add on another tax or outlaw something. For me and my friends, we feel closer to Obama and have more faith in him to change our lives than our own leaders. I can only imagine how an American must feel.

One thing though - who invited that preacher? I was watching the inauguration, not televangelism! Seriously, don't you preach at me, mister! Also, we were informed that this chappie is famous in the States ... what? How does a preacher get 'famous'? Here we have one famous clergyman and it's the Archbishop of Canterbury :D

The older guy who came on at the end, however, was much more dignified and affecting. He totally quoted Black, Brown and White by Big Bill Broonzy, too! Blues shoutout! On that note, Aretha should totally have sung 'RESPECT' rather than try to jazz up the unjazzable My Country Tis Of Thee. Trust me, we have had God Save The Queen a long time and we know it is impervious to all attempts to make it less dull.




Anyhow, good show. Now let's see how he does ...


EDITED BECAUSE OF COURSE I CAN SPELL INAUGURATION. .... RIGHT?