My Big, Fun and Scary List for 2011

Happy New Year's Eve! Unless it's really New Year's Eve, and that means I'll have just posted this - I'm cheating and writing this before-hand, seeing as I'm actually spending New Year's Eve doing something exciting that will make me happy and I don't even have to get drunk.
That was a lie, I'm posting this now because I wrote it all and I didn't expect to it's midnight, even though it's the 27th/28th, not New Year's Eve..

I think I'm at a point where I should start making New Year's resolutions (yes, that's how you spell that word?), seeing as I have too much spare time on my hands, and I spend it feeling lonely and lurking the internet. This is going to change. I'm going to be happy and busy, all of the time, but busy in a happy way because I'll be busy doing things that make me happy not being busy doing things that make me stressed and only stressed.

Every year on the NaNoWriMo forums, people write lists of Doing Big, Fun and Scary Things Together the following year. And I've never done one - I don't think I've made a New Year's resolution since when I was about 8-10, when every year I would say, "My resolution is to make no more New Year's resolutions HAHA LOL." ('cept I didn't say "haha lol", because it was about 2003 and we just didn't say "haha lol" back then.
Anyways.
I'm making myself a list for the Year of Doing Big, Fun and Scary Things to pursue in 2011 and I'm posting it to my silent little blog, because like I've learnt with things like NaNoWriMo over the last year, if I tell people I'm going to do things and then boast about them a little, it motivates me because I don't want them to know I failed. Easy.
So, without furthur ado, here it is;



LIZZIE'S LIST OF BIG, FUN AND SCARY THINGS TO PURSUE IN 2011

1. KICK THE ASS OUTTA SOME GCSES
Most are in my next school year, but this January my first exam is also the one I'm most likely to fail - Physics, and due to a combination of our fairly awful teacher and the fact that I don't have a grip of most things sciencemathelogical I'm not feeling very confident about this one. RE is in June, which should be okay, and I think that my Biology exam's at some point. I should probably know these things.
My subgoal is to learn to properly focus and revise at home, which requires a mixture of willpower, concentration and determination which I don't have at all.

2. WRITE STUFF, ALL THE TIME
I seem to have the determination to do nothing but troll the internet outside of Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo, but as I'm hoping to semi-publish my NaNo novel through CreateSpace I really need to give it that level of attention for the other ten months of the year. December was my time off. Now, I mean business.

3. BE MUSICAL.
I want to get a lot better at guitar, I want to really learn how to play the piano (a resolution in itself) - thus far, I mess around with chords and Youtube teaches me what it can, I've known for a while I should probably learn to read music fluently, it's just a good skill to have. I also want to improve my ukulele-playing skills, because it's awesome, and so I can play "Creep" like Amanda Palmer does here (sorry if the link didn't work).

4. BE PREEDY.
Yes, I'm secretly quite vain sometimes. Fix my hair, my skin (haha, sort of relates to the song above), and always look nice and controlled. No coming into school looking like a zombie and smelling like caffeine during November, nuh-uh.

5. BE KIND.
I'm not really a very nice person. Actually, I think inside none of us are a very nice person because we think mean thoughts and want things for ourselves, but nice people rein it in. I think once I was possibly just too shy and I did that. Nowadays, I'm too comfortable around people and I maybe even try too hard to be myself and the meanness comes through. I
will race an eleven year old girl for the last school canteen brownie. I tell my friends what I really think about my other friends, ect. And that's bad. It's a combination of this, 4, 3 and 8 which will make me a generally more likeable person (and maybe even complete 7? ;) See, there's selfish motivation in everything) and find people to do 6 with.

6. GO SEE A LOT OF GIGS.
Speaks for itself. And there's a sublist within this - made up of both bands and artists I really wish I could see, but maybe am unlikely to, and some who are just likely to tour anywhere near me in 2011 and might be fun. They're not all music, either...

- IAMX (likely to be in England at some point this year, I hope)
- Amanda Palmer, or the Dresden Dolls (it's possible)
- Derren Brown (he's coming to a theatre near me this spring, I found out the other day)
- Eels (I think I missed my chance as they did a UK tour last summer when I didn't really know who they were. Still, it'd be pretty awesome.)

Others involve Neil Gaiman, (and I mean reading stuff and not playing music, butI'd also pay to see that) though I don't know what chances are like, I'd love to go see Imogen Heap at some point, and also some stage shows. Oh, and Tim Minchin and Blue October and maybe even Robots In Disguise but I'm unsure of the likeliness of those last few people.

7. "GET THE GUY", LIKE I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE DONE IN MY LIFE MOVIE BY NOW
Because really, it's about time.
I don't mean to tease my friends, who are about the only three readers of this blog and probably get curious, but I feel like this is something I need to mention because it's something I need to do. I don't know why I feel like there's a ticking clock, even though I'm fourteen and not thirty, but what if when I'm old and live alone, I realise that feeling like this was special and doesn't actually happen very often and that I should've done something? I'm not stupid (or not very brave) and I'll try to make progress before I do anything OTT, but there has to be a means to an end.

8. GET FIT.
My gym card's gathering dust, and it's probably time I did this, admitedly, Everything In Between inspired me. I'm not 12 anymore, I can't eat slices and slices of Melba toast without losing out somehow and Costa's caramel latte contains a lot more calories than I would have thought.
I want to run fast. I want to run in fields for hours and hours and not get sweaty or breathless at all and feel the wind in my hair and poetic stuff like that. Plus it'd make people think I was awesome, and it's useful if I'm ever chased by zombies or something.

9. WATCH MOVIES WHICH I SHOULD HAVE SEEN, READ BOOKS, LISTEN TO BANDS ECT
... and generally become more culturally enhanced. I don't like the looks on people's faces when they find out I'm a media student who hasn't seen "Star Wars" or "Jaws". I'm also going to make a list of books I'll read in 2011, maybe I'll post it here. I want my iPod to be even more full of magic and wonder. I want to experience awesomeness.


10. LIVE LIFE ON THE EDGE (because if you don't, you're taking up too much room)
When I watched Everything In-Between (can you tell how much it inspired me?! Go watch it!) I left wanting to run in fields, paint the kitchen, love someone and do all sorts of exciting things. It made me realise how lazy I am, and how much more I need to live. I want to be braver and to live in the moment, I want to take risks, even really stupid ones, and do awesome things - I have to talk in vague metaphors here, because I have no idea what I'm going to do. Maybe that's the point.
That's a cheesy line to end on.

I hope you have a brilliant New Year, and do Big, Fun, and Scary Things with me in 2011.
Night night, from December 27th (it's JUST hit midnight, how poetic).

- Lizzie

Juno + parents = hypothetical pregnancy awkwardness

Yo.

it's December 23rd today - which makes it Christmas Eve Eve, and I'm off school now for two weeks. Instead of novel editing and rewriting, or doing some much needed physics revision I've spent my time off so far buying last minute Christmas presents.

I just watched the movie Juno (GREAT film) with my mum which turned out to be a mistake, because she's been going through a stage where she confronts me about anything teenage pregnancy related whether it's a story from a friend, an Amanda Palmer song. If I mention one of my friends' boyfriends or anything like that, she'll raise an eyebrow and a little glint appears in her eye. I went out for lunch with her today and made the mistake of bringing up two of my friends who she knows have been in a relationship since about August.
"So who else is dating?" she'll say, all of a sudden patronising and smiley, like she's asking one of the kids in her class what Santa's bringing them for Christmas. "What about you, are you dating?", which I shrug off with a "mhnehh." "No, you're not ready for dating yet," she assures me, which always makes me feel about 12 years old. The worst thing she says is, "So do they snog?"
She's more immature than we are.
But today I decided to come right out with an honest answer instead of being evasive, so when she asked me how soon I'd tell her if I got pregnant now, I said, "I probably wouldn't. I'd go get an abortion sneakily and you'd never know."
She blinked at me. "How would you get an abortion?" she challenged.
"I'd use a fake name. And I could pay for it, there's money in my account and I hope some of my friends would chip in. They care about me."
"So you couldn't tell me?"
"If I needed to. But that's only in an emergency."
And I would: telling her would be inconvenient. She'd want to know who I'd had sex with and then describe him to all of her friends on the phone. In some ways she's more gosspiy than my teenage girl friends.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5VgLOs0LwQ
This is Jonsi, who I came across just a few days ago and I really like so far. Jonsi is an openly gay musician from Iceland, who is blind in one eye and was lead singer of the band Sigur Ros. I was completley surprised today to find that HMV actually had not one but two copies of his album "Go", and Wikipedia defines his music as post-rock, ambient and baroque pop. I bought "Go" (a present from my great-aunt, who always gives me £20 at Christmas to "buy myself something nice), and I'm loving it so far, it's calm and magical and sort of takes me away somewhere.. The track I posted above, "Go Do" is complete beauty. To me it sounds like horses hooves and fields, and something else. It's lighthearted and happy, dances between soft and strong, loud and quiet, peaceful.

Tomorrow I'm singing Christmas songs and playing guitar at something called Plot 13 (that's the place it's at, I call it so because it makes it sound so much more exciting than it really is) in front of fifty or so people. The upside is, they aren't people I know. I'm excited and also nervous, it's probably good for me even though I'm going to have to wake up at 7am on Christmas Eve -> eventual sleep deprivation. It's the holidays but I've been so busy that it looks like I'm still sticking to my school sleeping pattern for the time being.
So I have to go and sleep now, see?

If we don't speak before, or I'm not back here, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

- lizzie

Cats, "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" and P4A

Callie is sat next to me, padding around and making mruh noises, because all of the thick white stuff outside makes her paws cold. The cats are fighting because they're bored and there isn't very much else to do.

I've been away from the internet for about two days now, mainly because I didn't really have anything I wanted to share with anyone, and so I kept away from Twitter and Facebook and here until I didn't have anything else to do.

Friday night was strange. In the time I'd spent being a teenager so far, I'd never been particularly drunk or smoked or other stuff that I'm supposed to screw up my youth by doing, until the other night when I suddenly tried a little too hard at being exciting and hardcore. Nothing very bad happened, just enough to make me realise that it's probably better to spend my free nights sat at home on my computer drinking mocha.
Is that bad?

The good news is that, The Things We Stumble Across/The Wall/my 75% written novel is safe! Two weeks or so ago, my beloved laptop took its fourth trip to our favourite repair shop after a virus from a chain email, and had to be wiped completley. I don't trust Norton very much, and I've lost a lot of random crap I'd written, and for a while I thought I'd lost my novel, until this morning I found a memory stick that it was on.
I am so, so thankful and relieved.

Last night I watched a movie called The Disappearance of Alice Creed and it was completley brilliant, and it scared me more than any film I've seen before. To begin, two men in balaclavas shop for some soundproofing in B&Q then kidnap a young girl. By the end, there's so much more reason to everything. It was extremely low budget, there were three actors we saw in the whole movie. It built up an incredible amount of tension and fear inside me, I remember sitting and trembling during one of the first few scenes. The plot and the characters' past is unravelled throughout the movie, with no flashbacks but simply conversation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX-LOYRupUA
I also want you to watch this - one of my favourite musician's videos for something going on on Youtube called Project 4 Awesome. Kina Grannis is a brilliant singer-songwriter and also an incredible woman, and I really did cry watching this video, and it surprised me because although charities' causes have made me sad and sympathetic before I'm usually quite a heartless cow when it comes to crying, as I've mentioned a lot. After Christmas when I'm no longer broke, I really do plan to donate to LLS.

I hope you have a good week.

- lizzie

I'm Going To Talk About The Dresden Dolls (featuring Herr Max Raabe)

At first, I wanted to write this blog about awesome covers of Britney Spears' song "Hit Me Baby One More Time", but it turned into something else. I don't know why I thought I should explain this.

I've been a fan of Amanda Palmer's for quite a long time, but I'd never really listened to her band, the Dresden Dolls, until they recently announced a comeback tour. I didn't get to see Evelyn Evelyn and, in vain hope, I told myself that maybe their tour would end up in the UK within the next few months.

I know most of Amanda Palmer's music but I hadn't heard the Dresden Dolls, so I thought before I planned on buying tickets to their potentially non-existant concert I should get to know all of their songs.

I knew how awesome Amanda Palmer was, and I imagined that the band would be mostly her. I completley underestimated Brian Vigilone's awesomeness.
Because Brian Vigilone is not just a drummer; I think that drummers are often thought of the backbone of most bands, with the exceptions of Ringo Star, Carl Palmer, Tom *McSurname* from IAMX and Focus' drummer, embarassingly I can't actually recall many names of percussionists from some of my favourite bands.

I'll talk about the Dresden Dolls more another time - perhaps I really will get to see them soon, but that's not the point. The point is that one night during NaNoWriMo this year I sat down at my computer and procrastinated by exploring all of the Dolls' music through Youtube. One of the brilliant things about them is the covers that they do at their live shows, and because of how special they are I compiled a list of some of my favourites for you.
I think maybe it's also a sorry for all the self indulgent crap I've been venting here recently.

COVERS

Cover of Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer
is perhaps my favourite, and definitely the funniest. Amanda on drums, Brian playing guitar, and Jason Webley's there because things are just more awesome when he is. I couldn't believe I hadn't realised that about the lyrics.

Another good one is Hit Me, Baby, One More Time
with somebody called Brendon Urie who I hadn't heard of before. Is that bad? Also, I squee'd at 2:33.
And this is how this week's blog almost ended up entirely a selection of hilarious covers of this song because of Max Raabe and the Palast Orchestra's version - in the style of 1920s German swing music. You'll find it. They deserve a blog to themselves, but it's wonderful.

Cover of Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These)
by the Eurythmics is also pretty brilliant, because it's a mixture of guitars and drums and strings and the vocals sound pretty magic. Sxip Shirey's there too!

AND SOME OF MY FAVOURITES OF THE DOLLS' ORIGINAL SONGS
... because there aren't quite as many covers as I thought

I first heard Delilah when I was about 11 or 12, and I loved it, lost it and came back to the band years later. Look around, and you'll find a performance with just Amanda and a singer called Georgia something from a band called Bitter Ruin who are pretty awesome.
A brilliant song about friendship and anger and females.

One day soon I'm going to teach myself to play Coin Operated Boy on the piano (one day I'll explain how I only sort of play piano).
"But I know he feels like a boy should feel,
Isn't that the point?
That is why I want
A coin. Operated boy."
It's short and energetic and I'm never sure if it makes me laugh or feel faintly sad inside, because it's a brilliant example of how sometimes Amanda Palmer can write a cheerful song about something much more serious. The music video is good.

I haven't heard Shores of California as much as the others, but it's a really good song and a Youtube commenter made me laugh when comparing it to Katy Perry's "California Girls" song, because it makes you realise just what you're doing. It's upbeat, heavy on piano and in ways I feel weirdly like it's almost bordering on lounge music - just from the first verse or so. Sounds best spinning round on a chair at 2am.

And finally, Sing.
When I first heard this song recently, I was sure I'd heard it before somewhere. Maybe you've read about my take on crying - only the most random rel life situations make me cry, it takes an eventful movie but for music, it's easy. And this song gets me every time. It's beautiful, the lyrics are overpowering and make my stomach twist. It's one of the songs that made me fall in love with the Dolls. It's a demonstration of how Amanda Palmer just understands human beings. I'm pretty sure I want it at my funeral.
"Life is no cabaret,
We don't care what you say,
We're inviting you anyway,
You motherfuckers will sing some day."
it's LOVE.

I'll leave you with that today. Can you believe that took me a bit of Thursday, then forty five minutes just now to write?
Have a good week. Hope your doin' well.

Lizzie

Priorities, Nicci French Novels and Soul High Fives

Today somebody told me that I was being over-dramatic, and it scared me.

I'm pretty co-dependant in some ways, and I didn't realise it until recently. A lot of the time I'm around people, large groups of them, I get distressed and sulky and I shut myself off because I feel isolated or ignored or like I just don't really want to be there.
But I do like people. I like being alone with just one person, and usually any one person will do, because a one-to-one conversation is so much eassier to carry out that shouting and numerous topics and interruptions. If I get on well with somebody, to the point that conversation is so easy we're talking as we think things without encoding, it's like gold dust to me.* I met somebody a while ago who I was so similar to, and understood so well in some ways that it was as if they prodded through my intestines, set off wriggling motions in my stomach and high-fived my soul.

I also get attatched to objects and memories. M y drawers, my phone, my "C" drive are all full to the brim with things that I ignore and don't want to let go of. When I was a child I would stay up as late as I could the night after Christmas day because I didn't want it to end.

My French exchange partner has been so perfect and lovely over the last week she's been staying with me. We got on really well, her English is excellent and when I played her "I'll Be Your Man" (see last post) on the car radio she didn't ignore the music, like most people I play music to/at in cars, but she said she loved it and asked for the name of the song to write it down. On Thursday, I cried at random intervals throughout the day because I won't see her until March.
I felt pretty angry at my friend, who'd trotted into school at 12 o clock (we'd all had to be awake since 4am to drop the exchange students off, some had gone back home and spent the morning off school) and told me I was being over the top. But it was understandable. If it wasn't me, I would have quietly thought the same.

When my grandfather died, my mum called me; at the time, I was babysitting with my best friend.
"Grandpa George died," she told me, and the first thing I felt was guilt because I'd been talking cheerfully until then and then more guilt because I was surprised at just how much nothing I felt. I told Poppy, she hugged me, and I felt strange because I couldn't cry or feel or even think about it very much, at first.
Over the last year, exchange partners (German, then French) leaving have lead me into crying buckets but not deaths in the family, finding out the guy I thought I was in love with was in a relationship, even some really sad movies have possibly been more important but I never felt the same about any of those.
Apparently, I should sort my priorities out.

*Since last week's episode of The Apprentice, I've started using "gold dust" as a similie a lot. Forgive me.

___________________________________________________________

Again, that was a lot of self indulgent crap so I want to make up for it by talking about Nicci French.

Sean French and Nicci Gerrard are two ex journalists, I think, a married couple who write murder mystery novels and psychological thrillers under the joint penname Nicci French. As with a lot of books, I read "Losing You" on holiday because it was my mother's and I'd run out of my own books to read. It was brilliant, the twist in the ending was fantastic and I drank it all up within twenty four hours. I also read "Until It's Over", which I reaally liked and was beautifully written. it inspired me to want to write about roommates who were randomly thrown into living in a house together. And I did.
I was painfully disappointed when "Land of the Living" wasn't quite as good as the others, and now I think about it "What To Do When Someone Dies" was almost a waste of my time.

I don't know what the point to that was. You should give some Nicci French novels a try, especially if you like a story with a twist at the end - I do, and I was so shockingly delighted by "Losing You" that I think maybe my hopes were built up much too high by the time I read the others. But "Losing You" is absolutley excellent, and read some of their other books.
They're good. You'll like them.

There's no better method to communicate...

Every so often, I go through a phase, which maybe lasts around a month, where I start listening to a lot of James Blunt music.
One of the most clear memories I have of one of these periods is about two years ago, when I went to his concert when he was touring All The Lost Souls. He played the piano and an acoustic guitar, and ran all over the stage and through the lower crowd with very crazy eyes and it was brilliant - I only regret I didn't know more of that music at the time. I think that James Blunt show was one of the first times I came out of a gig feeling so fascinated and alive and almost drunk from it all, like it had changed everything, just a little.
After his album launch webcast the other night, I remembered how amazing James Blunt can seem, and a day of me rediscovering him followed, after our year and a half apart. Anyone who follows me on Twitter will possibly have been there the two hours I listened to a song called "I'll Be Your Man" from his new album, and the next day my parents gave me odd looks when I came downstairs in a turban towel and dressing gown after singing "I'LL BE YOUR MA-AH-A-A-AN!" happily in the shower.
Most British people will only have heard of James Blunt because of "You're Beautiful", a single about five years ago which was a bit of a one hit wonder. If that's the case, or if you just haven't heard of James Blunt at all, go listen.
From his new album, I like "Stay The Night" and "Superstar" the most, along with the song I mentioned up there. "I Really Want You" is utterly gorgeous, and others which you'll find through getting lost in the magical pathways of Related Videos.
Fun Fact - James Blunt and I have the same birthday.


It's Pudsey Bear day and I'm not sure why I'm still watching Children In Need. My parents went to bed, I'm sat here watching Celebrity Mastermind during the break and I really don't know why.

So. I finished NaNoWriMo. :D
No, that's a lie. I got to the point, late on Sunday night whilst 'Creep' by Radiohead was playing during the most emotional scene I think I've ever written when I crossed the 50k mark. But I'm realising that's not all of it. I have to actually finish the story, which is still far away, and I will but I'm slowing down the pace. For the first time, I love my characters and I don't want to leave them behind, like with Script Frenzy. They need their story to be told, and I have to do it because it keeps me sane, in a way.

Also this week I met - meaning emailed and talked to - my French exchange student, Isaline, who's coming to stay with me next week. She's nice, she plays guitar and writes and I think we're going to get on well :) Exciting.

I went to a write-in last week and it was a lot of fun, and the lovely Chester ML gave me stickers for being at 42k at the time, which made all of the late nights, caffeine imbalance, homework stress and social neglection worthwhile. I stuck my purple octopus sticker inside my locker at school, so that I feel like an American whenever I open it.

Enjoy your weekend. :)

Lizzie xx

On Neil Gaiman's birthday...

I had the dumbest conversation with someone today.

ME: You must know who David Bowie is. "Space Oddity"? "Under Pressure"? dum dum dum doo bee dum dum...

FRIEND: Uh... no. "Under Pressure" is by Vanilla Ice.

ME: Wh... ?

FRIEND: Yes.

ME: You're kidding me, you don't honestly think that? It's by Queen and David Bowie, Vanilla Ice sampled it like with Jason Derulo and...

FRIEND: Shut up. That version is rubbish.

I don't think I've ever wanted to slap somebody so hard.

So I finished watching The Only Way Is Essex, a guilty pleasure, and got in and out of the shower. I have a little more to add to my wordcount today, because 40,000 is a nice, neat number to end on for the day, and I swear I'm not procrastinating but I can't possibly write a novel when my hair is wet?! So I came to write here, and today I may actually have something worthwile to say.

Today is Neil Gaiman's fiftieth birthday. Neil Gaiman is a very, very brilliant writer. You'll have heard of him because of Stardust, Coraline, and maybe even the Sandman graphic novels/comics but the reason I like Neil Gaiman so much is because of his short stories.
I'll tell you a story about how I came across Neil Gaiman.
When I was around twelve years old, I really liked a computer game called The Sims 2, and I ended up joining the EA Games UK forum. I made some friends there and a lot of them seemed pretty into a band called The Dresden Dolls. This was a long time ago and I didn't really appreciate music like that back then, but I did love the song Delilah which I still have on my iPod from the first time around.
I came across The Dresden Dolls again rather recently, because a year or so I started listening to Amanda Palmer.
I don't just like listening to Amanda Palmer because of her music. I think that that's only a proportion of the reasons she is awesome, the other being the internet. Every so often I will read one of Amanda Palmer's blog entries and start to shake a little, because it portrays exactly something I've felt, or I will hope to feel. A few days ago, Amanda wrote here about a band she loved in her teens called The Legendary Pink Dots, and it made me smile and laugh and feel about twenty times, because it's exactly how I want to live.
I heard of Neil Gaiman, of course, through Twitter, because he's Amanda's fiancé and also the favourite writer of a lot of friends I've made in the last year. These things lead me to go read something by Neil Gaiman, simply out of curiosity. One weekend I was shopping with some of my friends and searched almost violently through all the shelves for anything by Neil Gaiman. I bought Stardust, in amazement that I'd had no idea it was a novel first, and Fragile Things, the book of short stories that in certain ways has changed the way that I see the world.
I suppose all of that was my way of telling you to read Neil Gaiman novels, listen to Amanda Palmer and The Dresden Dolls and maybe even The Legendary Pink Dots.

NaNoWriMo is going very well - by the time anyone reads this, I hope I'll probably have reached forty thousand words. Most of it is garbage, but I'm proud of me. Forty thousand words is a lot of words, to write in a week and a bit. Plus, my homework isn't getting too neglected either; no NaNo inflicted detentions, yet. Yay. :)

Now I have to go. I have to write 1k more, and listen to a band called Hollywood Undead to prove to my friend that I'm open-minded.

Subliminal Messaging

Something weird happened today, and I don't feel very safe here anymore. I realised in the bath just now that, a little like in Joanne Harris' blueyedboy my blog doesn't just possibly have an Albertine who reads it but also a JennyTricks. And she isn't trying to kill me, not quite, but it was weird walking into school and having quotations from my own writing shouted at me.

I'm going to try and carry on as if nothing's happened.

I'm writing this to prove a point, but it's out of time which I don't really have; I haven't done anything towards my NaNo today and also my homework is growing and catching up to the point that I can't ignore it anymore. I planned on getting going as soon as I got home from school, I promise, but then I was watching TV, and then eating dinner and then in the bath and then asleep in the bath, and I've done none of it.

Today, I asked one of my friends, "If you could be anyone in the world for a day, who would it be?"
He shrugged, simply. "I don't know."
"Okay, how about this one," I persisted. "Any five people in the world for dinner at your house. Who would they be, what would you eat...?"
"No idea. And chicken caeser wraps, with bacon."
I don't know why, but I felt annoyed that he hadn't even considered it. I ask people that all of the time - sometimes famous people doing Q&As on twitter, who mostly seem to choose family and friends, and my own family and friends, who'll choose famous people.
I was a mind blown by the fact that he hadn't even thought about it. One night I asked my best friend this, and we both tried to come up with our five. We struggled, so pushed to ten, then unlimited, then went into extravegent detail whilst planning the seating plans and order of performances and the buffet, which Mrs Beaver and Monica Gellar-Bing had prepared between them. Today, instead my friend went on to change the subject and ask about which accent I'd have, if I could choose.
"Canadian," I told him.
"Awesome. I'd take Irish."
"Northern or Southern?"
He shrugged. "Irish."
A group of us spent a few minutes trying to say "about" (ah-boot) in a Canadian way, and then it all seemed pretty much over.
That's all for today. I have to go to a website called mymaths now. For once, homework > NaNo.

Lizzie xx

What've we got, got, got to lose?

I want to say hi to my awesome friend Beth Holmes. I got an email from her Friday night, saying that she'd read my blog and that it was beautiful and made her cry. I felt happy for a long long time after that.

Last night, I went to see Imogen Heap at the Royal Albert Hall.
This is going to be a long blog.
Know that I also saw Immi a week ago, in Liverpool, and that was a small, intimate standing up venue. There were several times I thought I made eye contact with my absolute hero. Afterwards, she signed my ticket (we didn't meet her, but it's a long story, and I met some brilliant and lovely people in the queue, whilst half of me felt sad for my ashtmatic friend, choking on the fumes from my new friends' cigarette smoke). It was an epic gig. I'd go as far as saying better than the time in February, and even more so maybe than the Royal Albert Hall, which I wasn't expecting. It was just completley different, I suppose. The Albert Hall was beautiful and grand and amazing, the orchestra was so powerful, but compared to the other two shows I'd been at, I felt disconnected and faraway. In our area, only Poppy and I sang "Just For Now". I'd say if I had to choose, between only going to one gig, I'd choose a small Academy show. But I didn't: I'm lucky enough that a woman named Antonia let Poppy and I stay at their house, and that my dad came to Liverpool with me and so many people I know try hard to understand, and meet my odd little addictions. But I loved being in the Albert Hall last night. I'm NaNo-ing and I don't have time to talk about the shows as much as I want to.
But I think my footage may have been used in Love The Earth. :D
London was wonderful, Poppy and I ran around a lot being late for the tube and other trains. it rained. I left my red umberella behind in the Royal Albert Hall (on the off chance Immi reads this, may I have it back if you found it :p?). And after the movie in the interval, I had what I'll consider as my first ever big heart-to-heart conversation, which sounds lame. But it was in the Royal Albert Hall, with my best friend, about to see my favourite musician, and I got things off of my chest. Now Poppy knows what she deserves to. It should be all over, really. Only I just mentioned it on Teh Internetz, so I suppose that made it slightly more real.

NaNoWriMo is going really well. I haven't been to any write-ins yet, but my word count is much ahead of what it needs to be and I don't know why. This year, I love my characters and everything's very easy all of a sudden, it's great. Right now I'm sat eating a plate of noodles at my desk. I barely have time to write this, because I told one of my friends that if I've not written 30k by Monday, she can slap me, three times. Tonight I plan to stay up late and write the 5k I need to, and then tomorrow, go out for breakfast with my friends.
I won't lie. It makes me feel brilliantly important that I don't quite have time to write a blog.

I'm happy at the moment, I think. There's nothing going on really anymore. Things are calm and still. I think I've realised, after several things that have happened, I want to live in the moment now.

Remember all that stuff I said, about still and calm. I'll be complaining about living where I do, soon, and that I'm stressed and lonely and that nothing is going on. it's all still true. But going to see Imogen Heap just stays in my mind for a few days, and clears away the cobwebs.

I'll go write now.

If you're reading this, I do love you.

Lizzie xx

Dreams, and balloons

I've had a lot of dreams recently. In one of them, we went on a school trip to a field where Derren Brown was sat at a table. He was telling fortunes and also there was a raffle, and I bought a raffle ticket because I was scared to have my fortune told but I wanted to meet Derren Brown.




Some amount of time seemed to pass, in a chunk of darkness or perhaps just sleeping without thought, and suddenly I was in my school art block shed with my friend Emily. She told me that I should go to Derren Brown and talk about my problem, because he convinced her to have an abortion and it was good advice (know that neither of us are actually pregnant). So I did, and I told Derren Brown something and he talked back in now what seems very vague and unfitting, but it made sense at the time because dreams are a different way of thinking.



He talked about a character called Jasper in Shakespere's play, Heartbeats (which isn't real as far as I'm aware).



I also dreamt that a lot of people in my class were doing NaNoWriMo, and we were all writing out novels in a lesson, instructed by my bitchy form tutor Miss Bates. She checked all of our writing, and told me to join two sentences together (I remember the word "Faithfully" was the first word of the second). I told her no, that wouldn't have made sense and both her and the school caretaker, who I've never spoken to in my life, yelled at me.



Then I dreamt I was babysitting Prue-Carla and Max, and I left the house and went to a shopping centre for some silly, important reason and was scared when they came back that their parents would be mad at me and they were.







I wanted to write something just now but I didn't know what. Looking round my bedroom for inspiration, I saw this on my computer. It is from the vinyl of Beirut's Flying Club Cup CD.

And then I started to write, with a pen and paper for real, and now I'm going to type the rest straight on to here. We'll see what happens.
___________________________________________________________________

It wasn't even twelve hours ago that all of this kicked off, was it, Clementine?

Only you could have triggered me to do something like this, and only you did. This is not what I am. I've only ever been this choirboy haircut, the Decathalon sweatshirts my mother buys me, oversized glasses and pockets full of stones.

I'm not sure I'll know how to be anything else.

I saw the meaning of life when I was walking home from school yesterday and it wasn't forty-two but it was a big, big balloon. I watched from my window as they blew it up, bigger and bigger, like a volcano ready to erupt or an egg waiting to hatch, or a pimple about to pop.

So I'll admit, it wasn't ideal. If I could have my say, you and I would float up to the moon with a red balloon, not this one. It's grey and has the name of a big car company across it, and it upsets me that it won't be quite as symbollic, the fact that we're going to defy society, Clementine, you and I.

All night I watched from my window. I've written some plans in the back of my Chemistry excercise book and assembled a bag containing some bits of food from the kitchen, my iPod docking station because I'm going to need to charge it eventually, somewhere, a couple of salads I bought from the Late Shop and money. £71.85 to be exact.

I'm practical, see, not some kid with a stupid plan to catch a bus somewhere to run away. It's a lot of money. I've packed enough clothes that I can carry and I have a penknife, so that I can protect you. Perhaps it'll be a good tool when we're flying our balloon.

I packed my mobile phone, only because I'm going to throw it off board when we're floating over the ocean.

It was 5am when my alarm went off first, and it's 5:25 now. The sleep sand from my eyes is unsticking and it's an hour and a half before I'd normally have to start the day. Next door you're asleep in your bed and if I don't do something, you'll wake up soon too, and straighten out your pretty red hair, apply the tones to your eyes that make you look severe and grumpy, eat those Ryvita biscuits you always have for breakfast, then head to your school.

If I don't go soon, they'll fly away somewhere on our balloon and we'll be stuck here for another thousand years but I don't know how. Perhaps I'll take a handful of pebbles from the garden and throw them at your window, will that wake you up? I don't know how to tell you that we're going to get away, you and I. At first you're going to think you're worried about your parents and friends, and other strings tying us down to the ground, I know and I try to understand that for you, Clementine, but it's hard.

You won't mind when we're up in the air, I promise.

____________________________________________________________________

I think there's more but I stopped, because I have to be up tomorrow and it's past midnight and I didn't realise.

Goodnight xx

five haikus

It's a Sunday night, I'm sat in bed and my cats are taking up all of the covers. Seeing as it's almost NaNo and I got an urge to start writing my novel - this is bad. I must wait until November. So, as my Nicorette patch, I decided to try and write some haikus.
They're pretty personal, and they're about various things. I like them. They're quick and fast and mean a lot and not much, they aren't very good but I'm proud of them for some reason. It's like when I talk to my friends very abstractly. I can say things without explanation, or certainty that anyone's listening.

Together, we walk
A motorway but stay between
Double yellow lines

I force each dose
By night, a self inflicted
Punch in the stomach

I am growing fat
Soon I'll burst out of these walls
And flop into Oz

To a pencil sketch
I add strokes of the rainbow
Until you glow gold

I beg for demand
But bat off all that you ask -
Flies on a hot day

I had a pretty mundane weekend. I did nothing at all today. Yesterday, I went out for lunch with my parents and it was in Trentham, so I bought some coffee syrup. I made myself a caramel latte when I got home. It didn't taste as good, because I knew it wasn't from Costa.
Exciting things are happening soon, though - this weekend I'm going to a family friend's flat in France with two of my best friends. The Friday after that, I go see Imogen Heap in Liverpool. A week later, I'll see her at the Royal Albert Hall, baby xD And NaNoWriMo is approaching. This is the few weeks I've looked forward to all year, and it's very nearly here and I'm happy.
Goodnight,
Lizzie xx

Hocus Pocus

Ôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô poPÔYôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô,
BoumPÔ,
Aaaah aaah aaah aaahUuuh oooh oooh ooooooooh


"Hocus Pocus" - Focus





Yes, yes I did just google those lyrics, and copy and paste them, because I feel like I should always use song lyrics at the top of my blog entries nowadays.


I also saw someone on songmeanings.net comment on the meaning of the song.


They said; "I think this song holds the secret as to the real meaning of life. "





Last Tuesday morning, my dad came into my room and told me that the night before that he'd been to a Focus show in Wolverhampton, the night before. After the show, Thijs van Leer, the lead singer, had been walking round the small club the gig was held at afterwards.


I've known some of Focus' music since I was very young: I have a distinct memory of being in my dad's car at around eight years old, listening to the song Hocus Pocus. There's a part where the frontman introduces all of the band, they're Dutch and I misheard all of their names. "On the bass guitar, Bobby Chelcoms... And on the drums, Betchy Smark. Peter Yann-Doo-May." But


I never misheard, "On organ, and flute, Thijs van Leer".


I imagined this flute playing, yodelling organ-ist (That's a word?) to look like a wizard.





I hadn't thought about them for a long time until Tuesday when my dad told me the story; he'd met Thijs van Leer, now frail and old, about sheet music for Le Cathedral de Strausberg. And he'd said that he had it in his hotel room, and my dad went back with him and talked about Jan Akkerman and music and my dad seemed fairly mind-blown. He gave him his personal email address and he'd said he'd remember him, because his name was Robin, also the name of the club he'd performed at. I get excited over small claims to fame, yes.





On Thursday, we went to their gig in Manchester, with my dad's friend he'd seen them with on the Monday. I haven't seen Stuart or his daughter Nicole for a long time, but we went skiing with them when I was about nine. Since then, Stuart split up with his wife. His current girlfriend, Rachel, came with us too.


We were mostly silent in the car. It's always strange when you see someone you were really close too as a kid. I recently saw my parents' friends' son for the first time in a long time, and he is eighteen now and going to university. I spent an entire night with when I was eight thinking he was awesome because he introduced me to Runescape, and typed "penis" into Google Images.


Nicole is two years younger than me, and I think we were pretty good friends when we went skiing. I don't remember much about her, so I don't know if she's changed a lot except that she was Older. She wore hoop earrings and looked bored, was constantly texting and wore a pouty bored expression. One of the things that made me laugh a lot was listening to her talking to her dad about walking home from school and having to go through an alley which, she declared in a matter-of-fact tone, "I can't go through, because it's haunted."





I could go on to further describe all of the other people there, but I won't because it isn't going to matter.


The support act were pretty good. Band On The Wall is a small club, and we went into the basement and met two of my dad's friends from high school. He hadn't seem them for twenty years until a week ago, and they seemed oddly comfortable around each other and I'm not sure how I feel about that, or how I'd feel if I met my friends from school after twenty years apart. I was amazed because they were a whole new breed of person I haven't come across before in the real world: the kind that go to gigs all of the time, one of them had seen Sting three times a week recently. And knew who Imogen Heap was.
The stereotypical audience member was a man, 45-ish, slightly long hair and a baggy black t-shirt. Perhaps he was alone.




Thijs van Leer came on stage, stood aside and the rest of the band led on.


He looked like a wizard.


I liked the concert a lot more than I thought; I was skeptical and maybe thought I couldn't enjoy music as much simply because it was instrumental, I was very wrong. They played the song my dad requested: Le Cathedral de Strausberg and it was pretty and sounded like bells. Another highlight was Focus III (I think) was the first song they played, I didn't know it but it was brilliant, and my favourites were the ones I knew, Sylvia and Hocus Pocus. Thijs van Leer held his arms wide open and the audience sang.



"Yodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyo-bab-baaaaa

Ahhhhhh-aaahhhh-aaaaaa-aaaaAAA!Ohhhhhh-ooohhh-oooooo-oooOOO!"

does not seem to describe the beauty and epicness of it, but there is sometimes no way to write music down.



Pocus was the last song they did and afterwards, we hung out at the merch table. My dad bought a shirt and we met all of the band and it was surreal because I wasn't ready to translate what I'd seen on the stage to actual human beings yet. Maybe instead, they were some of the first famous people, if you can call them that, people I've met and I was surprised at how human everyone was acting.

On the way home there was a bit of a fight with Stuart and his girlfriend, because he wanted to stop for kebabs and he was tired, and I went home and ate a slice of bread and it tasted like the best food in the world.

Lizzie

a day in the life of a "music snob"

"Music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry."

- Frou Frou, "The Dumbing Down Of Love"



I feel like I'm the only person in my life that feels like I do. About music, and words, and people and The World.

I doubt it sometimes but it's true. I am what the Windows Live homepage (it could have been Virgin Media, actually) once referred to as a "music snob"; they defined it as someone who has a very certain taste in music and is sort of arrogant to other suggestions.

I think I probably come across as being like that sometimes, but I'm going to defend myself. Here is why.

I am not un-open-minded.



When I was younger, I didn't like mainstream music very much but I didn't look much furthur, which is how I became a strange kind of twelve-year-old who carried round an iPod on which she'd listen to 80s rock music, along with Scouting For Girls and Paolo Nutini, at that time before they were popular.

It wasn't until about a year ago I started to find the true value of music, until I started listening to Imogen Heap who I found through the internet. Her music wasn't only wonderuful, but led me to a network of other alternative musicians, most of which are completley different to each other; I discovered IAMX, Amanda Palmer, Blue October, much more. Then there are others, various people have introduced me to, Beirut is a good example. Over the last year, I've bought about twenty physical CDs which I think probably a record for me. It doesn't seem like a lot.

Because I like my blog more than I'll admit and I have too much time on my hands, I even drew a diagram with Paint to show this.






The other thing it did was turn me away from mainstream music completley. I don't hate Justin Bieber and Cheryl Cole and Britney and The Wanted, I just don't like them. A lot. It annoys me that I can't get away from listening to all of this. I'm made to acknowledge Top 40s style music every day, it gets played on the radio stations my parents listen to and on people's phones at school or whilst I'm waiting for my Subway sandwich, it's in everyone's Facebook status. Most people I know haven't heard of any of the above in their lives, and that makes me angry.

The thing that's brought this on is a coversation I was having (which turned into a joking type fight, which turned into a really huge and very real fight, which turned into us both hugging and crying because we're teenage girls) with my best friend yesterday in which she told me she'd decided Beyonce was the best singer, ever.

I felt pretty betrayed. Poppy is an Imogen Heap fan, she goes to shows with me and a lot of the time likes a lot of the music I like - I didn't realise until yesterday that she's the only person I know that does like the music I do, that's non Internet-wise. She also listens to things like Plan B, though, she likes Eminem and pretty much everything that the cast of Glee cover. It makes me sad that my friends and I will never like the same kind of music; we went bowling quite recently, and I have a distinct memory of sitting eating chips whilst they were all singing along to the song Billionaire. I knew I'd made the right choice, that the week's number one hit would never make them cry late at night, that they would never find anything that made them feel in "eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh, stop telephonin' me", find that five second point in a really well produced song that actually makes a lump in your chest rise, see a live show as good as the ones I've been to, but it felt lonely and it makes me sad, sometimes.
Whoever is in between their earphones spent a fortnight singing in a recording studio, not two and a bit years writing, producing and playing every single instrument on an album.

I know I'm right. But sometimes I feel like I everyone else to.

An Invitation

Hello...

... it's October 1st today. This means things which are special.
- It's four weeks/twenty eight days until I go see Imogen Heap for the second of three times this year.
- It's one month until NaNoWriMo starts again.

Maybe you know that I'm a huge fan of the Office of Letters and Light events. This time last year, I thought of myself as a writer but hadn't done much outside of fanfiction.net; NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy got me writing.
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - is a challenge to write fifty thousand words of a novel in thirty days, every November and I can't urge you to partake enough.
Through both events I've met some amazing people through the internet, particularly Script Frenzy, people from all over the world. They helped me a lot during Script Frenzy, one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than NaNo, I think, was those last few days when one by one, we would pass the finish line. After a while, our group of writers grew too big for instant messaging conversations, and we decided to create a forum.
Scrends was born. It's small and friendly and we're hoping this NaNo will bring in a lot more traffic during November and onwards. My friend Bob is the admin and it's wonderful over there.
I want you to write books this November and I want you to join us.
'Kay? :)

I lost control. (sorry, contains talking about myself)

You've got me all mixed up inside,
These thoughts keep entering my mind,
I know these struggles all too well,
Guess I'm just one to kiss and tell
-Back Ted N-Ted, "The Mirror"

So. I did something stupid the other day.
If you’ve read this closely, or maybe even at all, you might have tried to guess but I haven’t done what you think. That would be more stupid. The other ironic thing would be that not even someone that read my blog would have thought of what I was thinking of then at all. Anyways.
A while ago, I went through an odd stage where I thought I was in love and around four months later, meaning now, I reached the point where I decided I’d tell my friends, or maybe just one of them, because it’s what teenage girls do. I’m not the sort of person that tells my friends everything I feel, just everything but this.

The situation it came out wasn’t really ideal, my friend and I were in a crowded place outside the canteen when she exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s -insertnamehere-!”.
Her sister, Jemima, two years younger than us, had no idea what was going on but was passing and yelled, "-insertnamehere-!"
Rosie looked at me and her eyes lit up a little. "Wait, I know who -insertnamehere- is! Omigosh, what happened?!"
And then various more complex rumours began to circulate round the group of about ten of us, like gossip does. It's the kind I'd never been the subject of before, and I probably should have known it would happen. It was an experiment, and I didn't like it much. Lucky, none of them will have an oppurtunity to tell -insertnamehere-.
Now things are a mess. Over the last two days, it's developed and no-one understands, several people are mad at me because they feel like I owe them some kind of explanation for things that aren't to do with them. But I know how they feel.

I didn't think I'd feel like this. I thought I'd maybe just tell my best friend, who I should tell if anyone, and have time and space to explain it thoroughly and maybe cry a little and I'd feel better. That's not how it worked out. Suddenly everyone thinks things are a lot bigger than they area. My friendship group is dealing with bulimia and light sexual harrassment at the moment; it seemed like the time to tell someone my big thing. Now people think I'm pregnant and all sorts of things.

That's the only time I'll involve myself with teenagegirlytype behavior. I've learnt my lesson now, and I definitely won't use song lyrics to talk about my feelings because it's super-lame. There won't be blog posts like this again. Or situations I hope.

Goodnight xx

multiple personality disorder: a strange kind

If ever you read something on the internet, maybe somewhere like wordpress or livejournal, some forums, possibly even fanfiction.net, vaguely dark or sexual or violent that's written by someone named Beth Barrow, it's probably mine. Let me explain.

I first combined the internet and writing when I was younger and for around a year, I frequented fanfiction.net. Stupidly, around this time I thought it was a good idea to talk to my parents about the stuff I wrote and I didn't realise there'd be times when I didn't want them to read things. Although it's unlikely, I know people can Google me now and occasionally find things, and that is bad, sometimes, so I'm doing what everyone on the NaNo forums seems to do; I want a pen name.

When I was a child, every time my friend and I went on a day out with our mums, I would demand that we change our names for the day. I was the sort of child that liked to imagine things, to make everyday situations more like something else - there was a phase when I was about seven where I would call my coat my cloak, for two years of primary school I kept a diary of things that were just absolute lies, signing it at the end of every entry with the name Lyra. I can't remember all the names I'd had over the years, but I recall being Marina one time we went to a farm, demanding my friend Charlotte name herself Aqua. If we went to Cadbury's World, my name was Lola for the day. I was Laura, then later Melanie, after a phase I went through where I was a fan of a girl band called All Angel's, who I later realised were very Christian based. Aged eight, I once went camping and made friends with a girl who spent a whole two days believing I was named Lulu.

We all told lies when we were children. Mine were just less purposeful.

The idea of a pen name or maybe, for now at least, seems like a good idea. I won't tell you what it's going to be because that would ruin the pen name idea. Soon, I will start to write things which will appear on the blog and they will be kept under my real name, which although I'm pretty sure nobody reads this, I don't want to take any chances. If I make an account on a website I've never been to before, under a username or pseudonym, or what they actually call them, I can be free to write about anything I feel like. It doesn't matter if I say stupid things, or mess up. It's not like it's me, anyway.

I feel tired today. I have to go to the same food festival twice this weekend. A few days ago I sat down to write a blog, then realised a lot of blood was exiting my foot. That's all I have to say right now.

Lizzie

When Things Go Wrong: a letter to my 20 year old self

Dear Lizzie,

Is that still your name anymore? So far I've been a Beth, an Elizabeth, a Lizzie and recently I've been thinking of becoming a Beth again, when I leave school and appear somewhere where I can change my name because people don't know me, but it's easier to become something else when you're five, and there aren't twitter accounts or organ donor cards or email addresses.
I have so many things to ask you.
Do you have a job? I'm guessing you're maybe still at university in the last year, but it depends how long you're doing what it takes to do whatever you've decided to do. That was a mouthful, even though I typed it.
I feel oddly sheepish writing to you, because you're a grown woman and clearly, I am not. I don't completley like the taste of coffee yet, I still worry about things like my hair for longer than I will have to when I'm you, and I've not done half the awesome things that I hope we're going to.
I'm scared to think too much about what you do. It's because I honestly don't know how things are going to turn out - I think I'm not naive enough to believe I'll ever be a writer, not in the way that people like Neil Gaiman are, because right now I don't have the concentration, and spend time worrying about the future, I think, amoungst other things.
Are there really complex iPhones now, and do you have one? That would be awesome. Do you not get spots any more? What colour is your duvet sheet? Where do you live? Are you in contact with all your extended family, cousins and stuffs? Is anyone dead that's alive now, did any of your friends from school marry and have children? 20's young, I know, but it happens.
According to a mock Wikipedia page I wrote about by 32 year old self (a rainy day), by 2018 Guitar Heroes or whatever it'll be called should be pretty succesful, and you should have left university and living in London, in a flat with Poppy for a while, with maybe a cat, drinking a lot of Costa and on the brink of being published and wonderful, a novel that's yet to exist or be thought about much. Something in my mind says that somewhere, this is being read by a scruffy, overweight budding accountant/Tesco employee, blushing in a bedsit, but I have no idea what I can achieve. Something in the middle, at least.
I'm publishing this to my blog which no-one reads, so I don't want to use names, but there's someone who's only a small part in your life right now who you (I should say I) think about a lot and won't be involved with until you're/I'm/we're at least thirty, according to the Wikipedia page, but it felt like something I should mention. I'm sure it won't happen. He is far away and unlikely. Still, an important chapter of the stuff I think about right now.
Are you still in contact with any friends from school? Poppy, I hope, and Becky and Emily Rhodes. Maybe Kathryn. Possibly even Alison, I don't know why. Emily-Marie will make an effort. Of the others, I'm doubtful. I hope that high school won't seem as big a deal as it does now to you.
There should be something to summarize, because I need to go to bed now, but as usual, there's no point for me to make. I'm talking about things I don't understand, but please do something useful, or that I'd want. I'll remember what I was like now then, when I'm you. Remember all of the things I thought I wanted to do, and the Wikipedia page of hopefullnes.
I have to wake up at 06:30 tomorrow, to finish my Media Studies homework.

Lizzie

I eat to fill the time, not my stomach. + a purpose?

I started reading a book today, whilst I was in the bath. It's called The Blue Eyed Boy and sort of lit-fic/psychological thriller-y, about serial killers and music and the internet and blogging and I like it a lot, partly because it made me think that if I end up writing novels When I Grow Up then it's the sort of thing I want to write. It's by Joanne Harris, who wrote another book I love called The Lollipop Shoes.
When I decided to get out of the bath, I sat up too quickly and gasped, though more in my head, because of the sudden pain that had manifested in the right of my stomach. I couldn't move for a while and felt a bit panicky, then found a towel and hobbled to my room and googled the symptoms of appendicitus (sp?) which it seems I don't have.
One of the symptoms of appendicitis I found was loss of appetite, which I semi ticked because I realised that the piece of chocolate I was eating didn't taste good at all, and tasted in my mouth slightly like cardboard. Then I thought about food for a while, and it made me think about how much I actually eat.

I started to write that about two and a half hours ago, then left it when I went downstairs and ate dinner. I fell asleep flat out in front of How I Met Your Mother, and woke up as the credits rolled, slightly confused.
When I came upstairs, I brushed my teeth and hair, came back to my computer and read one of my friends' tumblr blog for a while, which is about music and I'd say his musical taste is in the top five of people I know (if we're counting internet peoples?)
That's not The Point. The Point is that my blog has no purpose at all, I just have too much to say and nowhere to say it.
Really, that's all I have to say. I've run out. But what I think I'm trying to say is, expect things more interesting, or enlightening, or fun, or worthful (worthful = a word?) in the future. I'll try to come up with something. I always do.
But now, I'm going to sleep, maybe for a few days if nothing interrupts me. um... watch this space?

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - movie review

Every year I go on holiday with my parents, the resorts we stay at have a selection of the same kind of people. By the pool, of course, they read, and they all read the same things - my parents included. There's the same few editions of airport bought FHM magazines, copies of She and Elle and things, and always several of the same paperback novel that can be found on Waterstones chart shelf a few weeks before. This year, it was Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Done with my novels and short story complimations (oh my god. Noctures by Kazuo Ishiguro. let's get on to that later), I had nothing to read on the journey home. On the 5 hour flight, I couldn't sleep and read most of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The first novel of the Millenium trilogy is pretty brilliant. It is violence, mystery, sex, Sweden, feminism, love. It's also a 'who-dunnit' novel, which for once I did work out part of the answer to, but there's a second huge twist at the end. One of the main things I loved about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that characters came alive in my mind, particularly Lisbeth Salander who I've talked about here before, and Mikael Blomkvist.
Last night, I watched the movie.
I wasn't expecting to love it and for it to be perfect, because that's never happened to me with a book's adaptation (Push/Precious is an exception). But there was a lot that annoyed me about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
I watched the movie with my mother, and it was avaliable in Swedish with subtitles or English and dubbed , which we argued over and ended up watching dubbed - she won.
Lisbeth was good, but the first thing I said was, "Mikael Blomkvist is all wrong". I'm not that sure how I pictured him in my head whilst I was reading the novel - I didn't have an idea for a while until I read a magazine that said George Clooney was considered for the part in the US movie adaptation, which suddenly seemed to fit. Not only did the slightly dead-eyed actor look nothing like I imagined Blomkvist, but the script failed to convey his personality, which despite being a hard-ass professional fianancial journalist/detective/crime fighter there was fun in. One of the things that was imporant to Blomkvist and Salander's relationship, and made Mikael a little more likeable, was the Elvis music mentioned, and the present Lisbeth buys for him at the end, which I think would have translated well to the screen.
Not only was Mikael's affair with Erika Berger, a huge plotpoint throughout all three books, pretty much unexplained and ignored, but Erika looked all wrong. In the version I'm casting in my head, she'd be played by Jaime Murray or perhaps Sarah Parish, and definitely would not be blonde or look like my exchange partner's mother. I started out not liking Erika but by the end of the second book, although small she was firmly in the place of my favourite character.
There were a few other issues. Martin Vanger wasn't slimy CEO-ish enough, he was old and fat and suspicious. Harriet shouldn't have been blonde. Miriam Wu, though we only saw her a second, was just right, though.
Aside from all that, most of the movie was spot on. The scenery - Hedeby Island and Stockholm were how I imagined, but not the Millenium offices.
I liked ranting about the movie here. More later on.

Lizzie

Having heroes, Lisbeth Salander and Who We All Really Are

I am the sort of person that has a lot of heroes.

Maybe it's a bad thing, or not. I think in some way pretty much all humans get inspired or influenced by other humans, usually not the ones around us but those far away. I always have a few, sometimes they change or stick arounnd a long while. I can name them from the top of my head, and most people that know me would probably say the same. Imogen Heap. Neil Gaiman. Amanda Palmer, Kina Grannis, Chris Corner.

Most of them are to do with music, oddly there's only one writer, but what these have in common I think is creativity and freedom. And travel a lot and have a lot of people that love them and care about what they think, and that at the moment is what I want the most, and I hope that I want that pretty much forever, and maybe even achieve it.

There are real people too. My best friend, because she is one of the most strong willed people I know, and can teach herself to do things like drink coffee or run a long way. Another of my friends, perhaps the most beautiful person I know for real and also most intelligent, who I envied for a while before I got comfrier with myself - that sounded tacky. My three online friends, who I'm collabowriting with, because each of them are geniuses.

I had a severe case of hero-influence when I was around 12/13, which was the time I was obsessed with the show Britannia High. There was a girl in it named Lola, who was bright and ditzy a dancer and unrealistically dumb, and for some reason I idolised her completley. I started buying yellow clothes. I acted stupid, on purpose. It was ridiculous.

A few months after that, and a little overlapping, came Stacie Monroe, who is still one of my favourite fictional characters of all-time; a sultry, sarcastic, independant rather kick-ass female con-artist in a group of testosterone fuelled males. The TV show she was in was called Hustle, and you should watch it because it is genius.

Recently, my father gave me a book called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - big deal at the moment, I'm sure you've heard of it - and told me to read it because the female heroine was excellent. It's true, I'm halfway through and it is pretty brilliant, Lisbeth Salander (violent, intelligent yet deemed socially incompetent bisexual computer hacker) is wonderful and inspiring, and one of those characters that you feel crackling off the page. Yes, the book make me want to buy a Netbook. But she didn't make my list of people that are wonderful, partly because she isn't real and partly because I don't really have it anymore.

The point I was trying to make here was that I don't think I do this anymore, which is good. Yes, "heroes" influence me because they prove to me that I'm not going to be an accountant. That there's a point in writing down the things that happen in my head, that I can dress how I want to, that "music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry", and that there's people that maybe feel the same as me and if I ever get there, we will all be friends and have picnics in Berlin.


cats.

Lizzie

Love, and sandwiches (turkey breast, light mayonaise and cucumber on toasted hearty Italian, please)

One of the hundreds of things that annoys me about people my age (and there's lots, I'll write a list of them one day) is the way they use the world "love". Two of my friends are in relationships, as of recently, both with people they only met about a week before they started going out and already, apparently, they are in love. They all are.
Within hours, second only to changing their Facebook relationship status, it's screamed over their walls, latched onto their MSN name and at the end of every text. And yes, I'm inexperienced and my opinions are supported only by music and semi-famous people I don't know for real, but clearly they don't actually love this person? It's hard for me to understand how someone that's been in a relationship for an afternoon can believe they love someone, that they matter to them as much as their parents and siblings, and very close friends.
Recently, I battled inside my head with the feelings I had with someone and whether it was being in love. And I remembered an internet forum discussion about a similar thing, and someone saying something like "True love is like believeing you can find all your happiness in one person". And I thought, where is all my happiness? The answer was in writing, in hope that I'll do something useful one day and people will need me for something, and that I know on November 5th this year my best friend and I will go to London and see Imogen Heap.
The question came down to, would I rather the Imogen Heap tickets or a relationship with *insertnamehere*. I honestly had no idea. And that made me realise that if I had really been in love, it would be no contest.
That's what they all need to do.

Another thing that occured to me is that one of the main things I don't like about myself is that I don't really care what a stranger that stumbles on my blog thinks about me, but I care a lot what people at my school do. Recently, twice, I blurted out things I wished I could tell my friends about to two of my email penpals, both who live in America. Neither have replied yet.
Yesterday, I went to see a movie with my friends. I got the bus too early and had some time to kill, so got myself a Costa iced tea and a sandwich from Subway. Walking to the cinema with my sandwich, I saw some people I know, girls from my school that would be cheerleaders if we were American, and felt a sudden urge to hide my sandwich fast.
Why? I want to kick myself now. I care way too much what people think of me. I'm only painfully shy around people my own age that aren't my friends. Did I feel like I was a loser then because of my sandwich, or because I wasn't wearing half as much make-up then, or because I was alone?

I'm going to go now. But I'll come back soon, sooner than I did last time, with some more naked thinking and pointless theories about the world.
If you actually read this, I love you. (just realised that was really ironic). G'night.

Lizzie

stranger inspiration & killing time

hello,



I'm leaving for the airport with my family to go to Turkey at three o clock this morning.

Seeing as it's the summer and there's no school, my sleeping pattern's changed and I've started going to bed later and waking up later also. So seeing as it's only adding 1-2 hours onto the time I would normally go to bed at the moment, I decided to just stay awake until 3 tonight.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I am bored already and the internet is lonely.

Um... so on the off chance anyone reads this, feel free to email me? lizzie.hudson@hotmail.co.uk



I started writing a novel today. This is how the idea started.



My grandfather died last week. He isn't my biological grandfather, but he's been with my grandma since I was born and it always felt like he was. On Thursday, the day of his funeral, I got to my grandma's house slightly earlier to bring a tray of brownies for the wake.

There was nobody there except a tall man, I'd say aged about sixty, but I'm really bad at guessing ages. My grandma introduced me to him. "Oh, this is a complete stranger," she said, and laughed.

This man, Dan, his name was, had turned up at the door that morning and told her that the deceased's brother, who was supposed to read a poem, was ill and is friend had come to do it instead. Nobody had heard from Clifford at all, just sort of automatically trusted this man because humans trust other humans, it seems, unless they are slightly odd and eccentric or under eighteen or possibly German.

He was an awkward man, tried hard to join in conversation and fit in, and didn't have much of a sense of humor (A distant great aunt or something to my mother: "You're Robin's wife? I've never met you before." Dan guy: "Well, I've never met any of you before today. Heh.") He had very pale blue eyes and a frowny serious expression and the way he moved and acted reminded me slightly of a football manager.

Throughout the funeral, he was gradually bumped up to the point that he was... let's call it part of the main procession. If it were a wedding, he would have been bordering on best man. Whilst my grandma's friends and neighbours kept distance whilst close family comforted her at certain times, the stranger Dan would instantly by her side, squeezing her hand, reassuring her as if he were a close friend or a brother or something.

The part that scared me the most was at the wake, I heard my grandma say to a group of her friends, "Dan's been great, hasn't he? I feel as if I've known him for years."

The polite brownie making grandaughter I was stayed quiet and smiled and acted like you do at funerals.

The writer inside me was driven crazy with excitement. She dragged my body to the bathroom, with a napkin and a biro I'd fouund at the bottom of my handbag. Together, we spent a hurried two minutes scribbling on both sides of the napkin and along the parts of my arms that were covered by my cardigan.

I have a lot to thank him for, the creepy man that arrived from nowhere and got under everybody's skin. The exaggeration of Dan in my head has hopped straight from reality onto the page, but the rest of the characters in my novel, some made of flesh and others imagination, were born this morning. I was too excited to wait for NaNoWriMo, I have laptop and an empty notebook and a five hour plane journey to write with during tomorrow, as well as being in a strange place for two weeks.

I will leave you now. Here is a picture of a ketchup bottle I took in Key West last year.

first post

Hello :)
I've come back to fail at blogging again, or possibly not this time.
Maybe I can write here and babble about things and just be sad/happy and such.
Today is a Saturday, and I'm going to Turkey tomorrow which is exciting. This morning I went to open a bank account. The guy that we had the appointment with was named Mike, and told me he grew up in foster care.
So I don't have anything to say just now, but I'm sure I will in time.
To the future, yay?