The Sound and the Fury

Reply to this post and I will give you five words that I associate with you. This meme comes via top marra saffronlie, who gave me the following:


1. Paris
One of my favourite places, ever. What can I say that hasn't been said about Paris? It's just wonderful, all I need from a city. It's huge and sprawling, it's intimate. It's needlessly rude and yet so delicately beautiful. It's chaos during the day, a graveyard during the night. There's always this undercurrent running through the place, the echo of revolution and bloody, dark history. I am just fascinated by Paris and feel it deserves its hype. Disregard the plebs who bemoan the rude French or how expensive it is; they have failed to discover its true beauty. Stand outside Nicolas Flamel's ancient house or watch people worship at the Rue de Bac and tell me that this city isn't bewitching. One day I'll live there. One day.

2. Verbal bitchslapping
I'm not sure if this means I need one, or that I like or am adept at giving them out. Anyway, I REALLY LIKE DOING SO. There are so many stupid people spouting off their ill-informed, rage-inducing opinions and... and... I waste a good proportion of my working days arguing with people on The Guardian's Comment is Free threads.

3. Wine
Everyone associates this with me! I'm not an alcoholic, you guys. I just appreciate a good wine. Actually, that's a lie. I find aged wines and your fine French vintages far too refined for my palate. Give me a good, rustic rioja any day.

4. Good eats
I adore cooking and exploring, rite. If I can't always have the time to be jetting off somewhere, I can explore the world via my taste buds. Cooking is therapeutic (unless it's beef wellington). I love to cook for others, especially men (they eat with such gusto!) and pride myself on rarely following recipes, but finding my way to something via taste and spice and love of cooking.

I eat out a lot, though. I rarely went to restaurants as a child, perhaps never, so I feel it's deserved. My company also gives me a card with a monthly budget to spend in restaurants of my choice. My colleagues eat a menu del dia almost every working day; not me. I survive on pasta and rice and then splurge the budget at ridiculously-priced, ostentatious seafood restaurants once a month. Je ne regrette rien. >:D

5. Liverpool
As much as I try to deny it, this stupid, incoherent city is part of me. I love it for its feel; I despise it for its backwardness. I feel like it's given me a lot, but then it is a place devoid of opportunity. My family history is inextricably linked with this place, this melting pot where Irish and Scottish diaspora came together to create wonderful little me. I appreciate it more now that I'm away, when I come home and see that bombed-out church, soak in the arty district and adore the splendid August bank holiday festival. It's a sometimes sad place, often needlessly violent, but with an essentially good heart and a willingness to believe that the past proves a great future. I'm definitely a product of that place.

(Is today your day? Take the death test!)

You know, extremely bad taste aside, I don't feel so compelled to try out this quiz. It's really bizarre, because I also keep getting a really offensive advert on my Gmail (always in Spanish) asking me to take a death test. NOT RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.

I have been reading Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire this week. And it’s not good for my blood pressure. Let me tell you, internets, about Amanda Foreman’s sickening, fawning, absolutely useless biography of a sickening, fawning, absolutely useless woman.

Firstly, the part that offends the historian in me: I cannot believe that Foreman is a historical researcher at Oxford. Her primary sources are, for the most part, absolutely irrelevant. Each chapter is prefaced by some random newspaper report about a new fashion – it really gives one the feeling that Foreman just grabbed whatever sources she could and stuck them all in there, with no attempt to interpret the text. The most infuriating part is that Foreman counts Georgiana as the primary source for one of the few interesting parts of the book – the madness of King George – and then promptly glosses over that to tell us about yet another intensely boring gambling problem and a parliamentary debate! Apparently, this book came about after the author researched Georgiana for her PhD - and by God, it shows. It's such a plodding, meandering collection of sources with little interpretation.

Here's an example of the titillating, completely relevant details we learn about Georgiana: the spoilt cow and her cohorts make up their own accent and dialect in order to prove how very special they are. They send each other sickening letters like ‘How do oo do?’ (Apparently, it was far too common to pronounce ‘you’ correctly.) Wait, why was I reading such claptrap, again? Even James Hare remarks on the self-indulgent notes she sends to her friend Bess whilst they're in the same house: ‘…The usual answer is, “As oo do, so does poor little I, by itself.”’

Aren’t these fully-grown women just adorable?

The best thing is that Bess is her husband’s mistress. Who lives with them. Not that Georgiana displays any fighting spirit or intelligence, but cries and weeps when people point out that Bess is probably not the best person to have around. And then Bess gets pregnant with the Duke’s baby, Georgiana (‘Jaw-Jayna’ in the stupid Devonshire house patois) with some random politician’s child and…and… no, it’s too annoying to relate. Needless to say, there are few repercussions and the two silly women have a troupe of children who probably send more literate notes to each other.

I also find it unforgivable that Foreman tries to move us to tears with how very, very terrible things are for Georgiana. (She gambles away to the tune of ₤6 million in modern terms and has to escape her creditors by – oh, dear God, how could she bear it? - fleeing to the Continent to ‘take the waters’ for her delicate, fragile health.) Georgiana, she asserts, is incredibly brave in going near France, poor lamb, for she ‘feared her creditors more than the depredations of semi-literate revolutionaries.’

Wait. Let me get this straight, Foreman:

You mention in passing that people in France are rioting, killing because they are literally starving to death. Everyone from Marie-Antoinette to the people gathering in angry crowds at the Palais Royal has spent the last few years in a whirl of pamphlets, outraged speeches and literature, citing the very literate Rousseau and his famous Man is in chains quote – and you sneer at them for being semi-literate? How very dare they riot about starving to death when poor, brilliant Georgiana has gambling debts that make her pretend to be sick every time anyone mentions it?

You know, I’m not one of those who wept when Diana died. I don’t consider the woman a Saint. But I do feel some sympathy for her. She did some excellent humanitarian works – raising awareness on landmines, HIV… this spoilt, stupid, stupid ancestor of hers whom Foreman paints as an 18th century Diana did nothing of the sort! The much-maligned Marie-Antoinette was more concerned with the poor and the unfortunate. Antonia Fraser managed to write a brilliant biography which completely rehabilitated her and revealed the tormented, gentle queen beneath centuries of negative propaganda. Foreman, in contrast, does a splendid job of introducing the reader to a woman and making her intensely dislikeable with every dubious claim about how fantastic and revolutionary she is. Georgiana goes out, dressed like a moron in fox tails to canvas for Fox (who asked her to sponsor him for Parliament as a favour), is duly called a moron by the public and press, and suddenly she’s this amazing, spirited predecessor who made the world a better place? What bravery! What an amazing person, completely deserving of a 400-page biography.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about this dull, stupid book is that Georgiana’s younger sister, Harriet, seems to have led the more sympathetic life. She was overlooked by her mother in favour of her annoying sister. She married a man who was a strange mixture of devotion and absolute cruelty, who beat her mercilessly, although she fought back against him as bravely as she could. Her daughter was the infamous Caroline Lamb whom fascinated Byron. She was determined, fiercely loyal and never gave up. I wish there had been more on her and not the spoilt, stupid woman who couldn’t even pronounce her own name.

It's heartbreaking to contrast the hope and the spirit of the people pushing for change in Iran last week to the murder and chaos today. It was stirring to see women refusing to be cowed, demanding freedom and modernism be brought to the country. So many people, so much hope.

And since this is my journal and not a circumspect newspaper: A rigged vote. That twat Ahmadinejad crushing all that hope and causing bloodshed by rigging the election and trapping Iran in that hateful cycle yet again. That utter twat Ayatollah Khamenei refusing to have the balls to support an investigation (I guess human rights aren't too much of an issue). Well, until the people continued fighting and demanded and pushed and showed such bravery in refusing to be cowed.

Why are the EU and Obama being so crap about it all? You're 'disappointed' and 'concerned'? Stern words! That'll show 'em.

I hope that the general public in Iran overturn this absolute travesty, this joke of an election. I hope that, if our leaders can't or won't express more than 'disappointment', that people the world over give their support and their empathy to these people.

http://emsenn.com/iran.php

Italian woman who missed the tragic Air France flight dies in car crash.

Aargh! How very Final Destination. Poor woman.

I wish The Perry Bible Fellowship would update more than once every blue moon. I miss reading such a demented strip and no other webcomics (that I've found - suggestions gratefully accepted) match its cruel absurdity. There are of course XKCD and Dinosaur Comics to fill the void, but the only one that actually has me gasping not to let out a howl of laughter every time I read it is 4chan stalwart Garfield Minus Garfield:

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

Such a simple idea, but it gets me every time.



But seriously, guys! Any recs? 

Eurovision this year was FANTASTIC! That was definitely the most enjoyable show in many years - the calibre of the songs was much higher, Russia really did put on a brilliant night.

I loved Norway's entry (he looks like Frodo, for feck's sake!) and understand why it won with a landslide. I have no idea why Iceland (fluffy dress), Azkaban Azerbaijan (lol wut) and the UK (poor man's Leona Lewis) scored so highly, but it was nice to see the western countries given a fair chance for once, without too much infuriating eastern bloc voting.

I wanted Germany to rank higher, just for that audacious Dita Von Teese appearance. Haha. Oh, well... so, here, have a Norwegian hobbit:



Fantastic, cheesy, brilliant stuff. Can't wait for 2010! :D

The Blurb:

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

The Prizes:

1. One signed ARC of SHIVER
   
2. Four signed copies of LAMENT
   
3. And for each of the friends that you got to comment, Maggie will critique the first 5 pages of any of their manuscripts!

The Rules:

1. Link to the pre-order page (see below)
   
2. Post these rules on your blog and let them know who sent you (Team AM! And YOUR friends will say YOU and it's like an awesome pyramid scheme where there's no scheme and everyone wins!)
   
3. Leave a comment on Maggie's entry here. If the click doesn't work, cut and paste from here: http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com/105279.html Let her know I sent you. ;)
   
4. If any one person gets 50 friends to post, Maggie will make it THREE copies of SHIVER and EIGHT copies of LAMENT! Plus that awesome part about the first 5 page critiques.
   
5. You must get at least five friends (THAT'S YOU!) to post this on their blogs to be entered.
   
6. Contest runs from May 8-15 at 8PM EST.

PRE-ORDER THE BOOK HERE!

I attempted to read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was a teenager. It was beyond me; going on about all that important, depressing stuff reminiscent of those black-and-white documentaries my father watches. I cast it aside and read some Point Horror instead.

It was both late and the right time for me to finally read the entire diary this year, because I finally understand the context of what happened, not just to the Jews in the Netherlands, but how the ordinary people tried to help and what a risk it was for Miep and Bep to help them -- moreover, why they risked their lives to help them. I'm also glad to have seen the actual house now, to understand how claustrophobic the place truly was.

There isn't much to say about the diary that hasn't already been said -- how touching it is, how amazingly talented the girl was, how it's such an important document to remind us of what happened and the folly of persecution. The one thing I didn't like, that I would possibly have understood more as a teenager, was her constant diatribes against Dussel and, above all, her disregard for her mother. It's hard to judge how much was her simply giving vent to her worst emotions in her diary and how much significance she placed on things. This brings me to a BBC dramatisation from January that I watched whilst in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago - it failed on some levels (I hate that everyone misquotes the last line of her diary), but was very strong in giving her context and showing how she might have misinterpreted things -- she scowls to Margot that Mr. Dussel is 'sulking', when to the viewer it's quite obvious he is grieving.

There is an amazing, short sequence at the end where she tries to hide in the bathroom and the arresting soldier dispassionately remarks, 'There's another here, a kid.' Headstrong, precocious Anne, Anne who recorded history, Anne who said she didn't care much for others, she had grown too much in the war -- sitting on her bed and trying to fasten her shoes with shaking hands. Dussel leans forward and, with paternal kindness, fastens the buckles for her.

I wept.

If you want to watch this fantastic adaptation, you can stream it here. I really recommend it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, saffronlie!

BB I think you need this:

YES KEVIN YES YOU DO NOW SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

( Get all dressed up nice for the special occasion! )

In sum, happy birthday, marra. Hope it is excellent and stuff.

I may possibly have imagined I was in an olympic stadium at one point, smugly watching my opponents crumble at the crucial 131 centimetre stage.

Hahahaa. Came across this on Youtube tonight... learn to speak with a 'British accent'. Or, you know, nooohrt.

I'm having great fun with an absolutely absurd article in The Guardian today wherein a writer asserts that she's sick of Nazis being portrayed in the media and that she can't escape them: she's had The Reader, Valkyrie and Red Baron ruined by Nazis.

Quite.

The very idea that ignoring what happened or deciding to try and forget Hitler will somehow make everything magical and great is the craziest thing I've read in a long time. The writer is Jewish and writing in a British newspaper - how can she be so daft and disrespectful to the millions of dead to suggest that the best thing is to forget that little fuss in the 1940s? Absurd article, but great feedback from the readers.

The Comment is Free trolls are probably my favourite internets people ever. I always wonder if The Guardian journalists are surprised at how very intolerant and angry their readerbase actually is. :D

“I opened the driver’s door wide. It opened easily. The person looked at me... I said ’You’ve got to get out of the car. It’s going to burst into flames’. The person replied ’F*** off, just f*** off’ and she raised her right fist towards me in a threatening manner before slamming the door shut."

Woman in road-rage strop allows herself to be burnt to death to prove a point.

D:

I've been listening to Girlfriend in a Coma a lot recently, triggered by the awesome Gilbert episode of Being Human. That programme has a great soundtrack and what better way to celebrate this than sharing some of the notable songs from the series? Please feel free to take and share:

Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around
From episode six - Herrick and Mitchell sequence

Aaliyah - More Than a Woman
Annie practising her haunting technique

The Smiths - Girlfriend in a Coma
Telling song from the lovely Gilbert and Annie story

The Specials - Ghost Town
Gilbert's walkman song of choice

Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
You know I'm here, waiting for you - Annie anticipating Owen's return

Joy Division - Love Will Tear us Apart
Parlsey sauce

Soft Cell - Tainted Love
At the club for 80s night

Scissor Sisters - Comfortably Numb
Owen arrives at the house

Duffy - Mercy
George at the cafe

Johnny Cash - Hurt
Poor Mitchell ;_;

The Killers - Human
Mitchell and Lauren

I've had such a stupid, weird week. I haven't been feeling too good lately -- I developed acid reflux a few years ago and it seems to have become worse over the last few months, to the point where I vomit at least twice a week with it and always feel deathly sick if up before 9am. So I was in work on Wednesday and felt the familiar pain and pressure on my stomach and knew it was Hurling Time. I ran to the loo, began the tiresome routine and then realised that all I'd brought up was, um, blood.

I was all, WTF WTF, but just went back to my desk, Googled it and then carried on with work. I still felt dreadful after half an hour, though, so told my colleague I was feeling peaky and would work from home for the rest of the day. She asked what was wrong, I told her about the blood and that resulted in OMG GO TO THE DOCTOR, going to said doctor, who said OMG GO TO CASUALTY and going to Casualty, where I was made to wait for six and a half bloody hours as an 'Urgencia' case. I was furious and tired and just wanted to go home.

There were several silly and painful tests -- the tube up my nose and into my stomach owwwww -- blood tests and drips and x-rays and all annoying stuff that lasted until the early hours of the morning But then, I met an American girl who had been travelling but had taken ill. She was one of the nicest, most calm people I have ever met -- she was glad to have another English-speaker there, offered me saltine crackers and some Omeprazole and talked to me about Italy and France, her home back in Ohio, all kinds of things. And then she came back after one round of tests and had obviously been crying; they suspected Crohn's and wanted to run more tests, meaning there would be no Rome or Paris for her and a lot of worry. And still she tried to make the best of a bad situation, remarking that she was glad at least to have the tests here because they would cost less and at least it was getting sorted. And amidst all this, she spoke to the nurse and pointed out that I had been waiting for ages and could they please help? 

I never got to say goodbye to my single-serving friend before I was hauled off for some bloods, but I think I'll always remember her. I love that life will always throw up amazing people and lessons when you least expect it.

Anyway, in the end, I've been a bit of a hard-living fecktard, eating too much spicy stuff, not paying heed to the fire in my stomach and the constant coughing and acid has torn my oesophagus. They gave me stronger medication, advised me not to eat anything fun for a while and arranged for follow-up care, so all is good.

I hate hospitals, and how lonely and wrong it feels to be young and in A&E , even briefly. I hate that medicated smell and the groans of pain from patients, the horrible sense of illness and even death. I tried to fight off the encroaching self-pity and loneliness as I sat in some room hooked to a drip far from my family - I had spoken to my mum before I went in and she had asked if I wouldn't just get a flight to the UK and be seen there? At some points, I wished I was there. The staff were really good and made sure that when they could, they would assign a doctor to speak English to me to make it easier, but you can't shake that feeling easily, can you? 

I switched my phone on when I got into the taxi home. My mother and sister had left messages, colleagues and friends had messaged and last night I had to apologise to a friend who said he was really angry with me for not calling him or asking for help. I'd be hard-pushed to think of anything more frightening than having to go to hospital in a foreign country - and yet, it wasn't all that bad, apart from the wait. I feel grounded here. Hee.

I JUST MADE BEEF WELLINGTON FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER 

The Bad:

I bought the wrong cut of beef, so had to trim and trim and trim it
I folded the pastry in incredibly daft ways so it started leaking
I forgot that I needed clingfilm to seal it first and set about panicking
I lost the egg brush thing and so ended up brushing it in the most haphazard way
I couldn't remember how long to time it
I forgot to get thyme
I forgot the garlic
The mushroom paste went everywhere
I couldn't find strong English mustard, just minging Spanish supermarket 'mustard'
I forgot to grease the tray so some of it stuck to said tray
Gordon Ramsay's how-to video is all, 'Beef. Cook. Wrap! Mushrooms. Fridge. Oven. Done!'

The Good: 
It tasted absolutely divine. Shockingly good. Like, OMG.My tastebuds were screaming with pleasure at each mouthful. I was all, 'Ramsay! Why would you smother the beef in mustard and then add some mushroom salsa thing to it? What!'

But it works. Oh, how it works. If I can just not fail on all the other stuff in future, this'll be a perfect dish.

It’s a taxing entry, certainly. Please ignore its confusing and verbose nature and go and enjoy music or browse a comic if it vexes you. Regardless, grant me patience for this entry.

I consider it very important to relate in this journal the curious story of my appetite for destruction, achieved by searching (during dinner) for foolish examples of origin as opposed to performing necessary tasks in the office.

The problem is, admittedly, that the sentence refuses to be rushed. Regardless, I have achieved beauty, if not rapidity.

BRB, going to punch some flowery ancestors in the throat.

My friend Vicky had a spare ticket going for Jose Gonzalez, so I joined her last night for a concert at the Palau de la Musica Catalana. This is an absolutely beautiful, ornate old building tucked away in the business district.

I'm not a huge fan of Gonzalez, though I do like a few of his songs and adore Heartbeats. The concert was good - he has a great voice live and had a good rapport with the audience. I was introduced to some really good new songs from his new album. He did a fantastic cover of Teardrop by Massive Attack, but I was waiting and waiting for Heartbeats and was amused when some girl in the audience shouted a request for it.



And it's just such a nice song, so beautifully delivered. It was the perfect song for that magnificient, dreamy hall. I found my thoughts drifting as I listened, lulled by the song, the ambience and the beauty around me into a really content, brief peace. The song and that magic time lasted all of a couple of minutes, but it was so worth it. Fantastic.

Hmm, this is a tough one. I'll list my worst jobs:

Factory Worker
What the hell. I think I ended up doing this one summer because I desperately needed some cash for university. I just took the first thing that came along, which was working in some factory in Liverpool, packing gluten-free bread. The job started at 6am, but there were no buses from my village at that time, so I had to walk six kilometres to Dovecot and then get a bus from there, then walk through some nondescript 'technology park' to work. I had to stand at the end of a conveyor belt and pack bread that was coming off the line. The plastic was still hot to the touch and I wasn't given gloves, so that hurt. We had to stand up for eight hours and I was told off for 'leaning' against something for support. Plus, the girl opposite me was one of the stupidest people I have ever met, so conversation was tedious. (This isn't to say factory workers are stupid; there were lots of clever people there and, depressingly, one had a first-class history degree).

I recall glancing over to the clock and nearly weeping when time seemed to stand still. The work was so tedious and physically tiring that on the second day, I staggered up my garden path, greeted my parents who were lazing in the sun and then collapsed onto the grass. I never went back.

To This Day I Don't Know What My Job Was
I applied for a job in Glasgow as some sort of secretary. My training consisted of 'Action these files and use this system. Lunch is at 1'. The firm was some... insurance broker place, I think, and was rapidly going under. There had been a smarmy young man in a senior position whom all the secretaries loved, but who just didn't do any work. We had furious, screaming clients ringing us at all hours of the day demanding answers and it was so unpleasant fobbing them off that I and the three other secretaries took it in hour-long shifts to answer the phones.

Also, the main boss was in the process of being demoted by Head Office in Liverpool, whose reps insisted was 'fat and stupid' on the phone. That's a bit harsh, but he was a bit nuts, shouting, screaming and stomping about every time some other fault of Smarmy's surfaced.

Plus, there was some crazy legal system I just couldn't understand, documents that had to be typed in a certain way and filed and cross-referenced but nobody knew where the references were and after asking and asking and asking and being fobbed off like those customers, I took to playing Solitaire all day. Thankfully, another job came up two weeks into this confusing hell.

ASDA Checkout girl
First year of uni, I had no money at Christmas, so I took on a Christmas position at this supermarket. It was okay. The money wasn't bad, but the midnight closings (with someone always having to run in as I was shutting down the till and keep me waiting for half an hour off the clock while they grabbed 'essentials') and the general tedium grated. But the worst thing was the beeps. Imagine the constant beeps of the scanner as you go through shopping trolley after shopping trolley after shopping trolley. Now imagine you're on a line of thirty or so tills, so each second of each and every day, there are several beeps.

Okay, it's just work, right? Except that each night, I would lie in bed and as I drifted off to sleep, my head would be filled with echoes of beep, beep, beep...