KJHDKJHDKD

in regards to my lack of interest in writing anything on this blog, here is my opinion on a pop culture thing. as some of yall may have noticed i work in a shop that sells books and music and stuff so i am constantly exposed to everything popular all the time and i either develop stockholm syndrome (re: rihanna's last album which i heard so many times that i ended up loving it) or becoming far too invested in picking it apart and criticising it SO i want to officially throw my hat into the ring fifty-shades-of-grey-wise. yep i'm going to go there.

REASONS FIFTY SHADES OF GREY IS SHITTY

1. it is completely not about BDSM. i admit, i'm not super well-versed in the technicalities of BDSM lifestyles or how they're accurately represented in writing, but the relationship in fifty shades of grey is just dumb. all the main character (anastasia steele) (can we just think on that for a second) does is whine about how much she hates her beautiful amazing wonderful superjesus magic boyfriend constantly belting her/ not letting her touch him/ invading her privacy/ not respecting her wishes etc etc the list goes endlessly on. forgive me if i'm wrong but BDSM is consensual activities that both partners do because they want to, not someone letting someone do something they don't like to them because they feel obliged/ are scared not to let them do. that is ridiculous and paints a portrayal of BDSM as solely for people who are emotionally fucked up/ abusive when that just isn't true.

2. there is absolutely no rhyme or reason for anything that anyone does. seriously the characters do things that literally can be traced back to one motive and that is to make more trouble. drama is meant to develop characters, to test their emotional boundaries and ultimately cause them to develop; it isn't meant to just give people a reason to cry self-indulgently about how much they want their boyfriend to kiss them. reading this book is the literary equivalent of watching jeremy kyle: endless pointless detail, no real reasons are given for you to particularly care about anyone involved because they're so irritating as people, and there is no catharsis because no resolution is reached after all the shouting of trivial details and complete lack of introspection. and i am totes over watching jeremy kyle because i'm a grown up now.

3. the author is english and writing about america. usually this is something that doesn't bother me, i mean i loved vernon god little and thought that was great and that's the same thing, but this is just terrible and unconvincing because the author has done really weirdly thorough research on some things (the building christian grey (lol) lives in is real and describes in actual real detail in the book) and absolutely none on others (spelling paedophile with an a which americans don't do) and the inconsistency really gets to me. i don't care if i'm being trivial, it's true, if i'm distracted by the characters/ world of a book being really forced and uncomfortable i'm not going to care who they are or what's happening to them because they're not real to me. if you're going to write about something but you're not sure that you actually can do it authentically then good grief just stick to what you know.

4. it began as twilight fan fiction. i have talked about my feelings on twilight before (namely that i think it's awful) so it seems pretty obvious that i wouldn't like fifty shades. but the whole nature of plagiarizing someone elses' story and characters seems like a piss poor premise because it's so cheaty. you can't just decide 'oh i like this book, i'll rewrite it so i like it even more and then i'll sell it' because you're making money right off the back of the thing you like, which is wrong even if it's as dumb and shit as twilight. it's lazy and i don't approve of it. once in a while there are exceptions obviously, if the person doing it knows the text really well and has an interesting interpretation and is an excellent writer, but in this case none of the former are even a bit true ever. at all.

5. for a 'dirty book' it seems to have trouble with the female anatomy. anastasia steele literally refers to her vag as 'down there'. like who does that. you have a vagina, say you have a vagina. you can describe a cock in full (alarming) detail but you can't even say the word vagina? nope. not buying it. bull. come back when you have more autonomy.

6. and this is the biggest one: it's just badly written. i can't, won't and shan't forgive bad writing. the dialogue is blunt and on the nose and completely hollow. there is absolutely no characterization at all because having your characters tell each other they're 'bright' and 'witty' isn't the same thing as actually writing characters that are bright and witty. you have to do that, as the writer it's your job. if i call myself a howler monkey it doesn't make me a howler monkey, in the same way that anastasia steele will never be anything over than a wet blanket judgemental weak-willed annoying shit. there is redundant phrasing out the wazoo ( being belligerent and angry at the same time is pretty easy seeing as they're near on the same thing) and the plot is about as well planned and paced as a really badly planned and paced plot. it's just terrible. everything about the book is terrible.

up in the woods, down on my mind

i have portfolio due tomorrow (poetry ugh) and obvs i've left it all to today because really would i be me if i hadn't? i know yall wouldn't love me so much if i was actually productive cos that's boring lame reese witherspoon type shit. anyways i'm taking a lil break from my terrible pseudo-teen emo poetry because it turns out when you only listen to bon iver and elliott smith for two days and don't stop drinking coke you produce some pretty weird stuff. i'm not even going to get into the sexy poem about dogs i spent an hour writing (joking? you decide) but either way i'm getting pretty fed up of trying to think of ideas. i have 57 lines out of 90 which is kind of ok, and i have yet to do some kind of critical thing i don't know what it is but whatevs i'll wing it. i find poetry pretty easy. it's the kind of thing i don't need a lot of time to do, because for whatever reason if i take a week or half an hour on a poem i'll write the same thing. i don't revise a lot, i just do it and it's done. usually i do ok in poetry thankfully so let's just pray i wing it again. in first year i did my portfolio in a day and got 75% so i'm not too worried. all you have to do is use long words and not too many commas and you're golden. lessons on how to be a poet kids!

HOW TO BE A POET BY KATE 'THE POET' MENZIES

DON'T TRY TOO HARD

if you process sentences for too long you kind of stop looking at them too objectively and you forget what sounds like normal human language and it all goes a bit weird. just say a sentence and then forget about it. i'm not saying that once you've said something you can't go back to it, but do it briskly so you don't turn into an alien and need to be taught how to speak properly all over again. i can't be bothered teaching english as a first language any more i have things to do.

FIND A GOOD SOUNDTRACK FOR YOU

i know you're not supposed to work and listen to music, but we had one of those hilarious exam techniques classes in year 11 once where the woman told us about different types of learners. there's kinetic, who need to wiggle while they study, and visual who need to be able to see (it was a long time ago and i wasn't paying much attention bear with me) and then there was one kind who needed background noise NOT to get distracted and i was amazed that they were admitting that these people exist. i honestly get more distracted by silence than by listening to *nsync while i study and i'm glad that that's now recognised as a valid thing. it's all about finding something comfortable and inspiring for you to write to, whether it be bob dylan or nicki minaj, whatever tickles you. personally i head for depressing acoustica a la bright eyes, but that's just me, i have angst.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO GET RECREATIONAL

now i'm not endorsing drugs here, i'm just saying that i take them and i think they're great. the two things are not one and the same. (besides who cares what i think my life is a shambles and if you're using me as a moral compass you're going to end up adrift on a dead sea of special brew on a surfboard made of failure and sick) but i say if you feel the need to get some creative juices flowing with a nice glass o merlot or whatever you have lying around/ have stolen from a tramp then go with it. i've written some pretty good shit tanked up on whisky and calpol, and i don't do it too often so i say it's ok. i mean look at david bowie, he should be made to take smack all the time because he's pretty bad off it. we went from ziggy stardust to that weird techno album thanks to sobriety. thanks a lot sobriety you wet blanket party killer.

DEADLINES ARE NATURE'S PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCER

i never feel the need to do any work until around the twenty four hour countdown to deadline, but when i get down to it, i really do it. honestly it has varying results, but with poetry i find it pretty consistent. i just let myself recline until the stress and accompanying stress rash on my chest #sexy buck me into getting the bastard done. usually involving staying up all night intermittently weeping, working, and watching tv whilst drinking obscene amounts of anything caffeinated i can find. it gives me horrific stomach cramps but what doesn't? nothing. ever.

there. now you have all the necessary tools to be a great and excellent poet. if you're not it's your own fault and you didn't try hard enough now leave me alone i have work to do jesus christ

hurfhujfdjksd

two days in a row holy fuck it's almost like i'm a writer. although this is just for my portfolio so i guess it doesn't count but WHATEVS

A wooden framed swing creaked sadly outside under a sky that looked like supple grey suede. Tucked inside her attic bedroom, a cocoon in the skull of a tall semi-detached terrace house, Genie leant back on her elbows and sighed, the longest, bluest sigh the room has ever seen she hoped. The walls were spattered with spots of damp that multiply and grow down towards the lilac skirting boards. The force of the exhaling, the earthy steam boiling up from her lungs, slowly brought down her ribcage until it was level with her pointed hips and she lay flat on the floor. There was a slow quietness in the dawn hours, a kind of tremulous fog that slithered creamily out of the cracks in the windows and doors. Genie could feel it clinging to her eyelashes and pooling in the twin hollows of her collarbones. It dripped down the cabinets like spilt milk. It seemed to her that she was entirely alone, a feeling that the King children weren’t used to. Genie, her four sisters and one brother had always moved freely through each other’s spaces, slipping in and out of rooms and conversations like silvery minnows in a stream. To feel entirely alone, like there wasn’t a spare sibling or two perhaps curled in a corner reading a magazine or dozing gently, was a strange and unwelcome feeling to them all. Since the relocation of the King family to their new tall house Genie had acquired her own bedroom, a converted attic room with sloping walls and yellowing daisy wallpaper leftover from someone else’s childhood. A flight of warped wooden stairs separated her from the third floor, which housed her sisters Josephine, Mallory and Francine, and the sounds of their pattering up and down to her attic soothed her like a mother’s heartbeat. Tonight however the attic was still and Genie lay prostrate on the carpet next to an open lined notebook, pen between her teeth like a cigar. She twisted her neck and laid her right ear flat on the floor in order to read back what she had written so far:

‘A Thorough and Honest Assessment of the Genetic Benefits and Drawbacks of Choosing Genie King as a Mate*

*Author recognizes disambiguation of noun ‘mate’ and here clarifies that within this report it shall hereto after refer define ‘mate’ in terms of reproductive means as opposed to colloquialism of ‘mate’ as meaning friend.’

Genie was sixteen years old, an age at which she had realised that she had never thought about romance, or love. It seemed romance oozed from every television programme, every advert, every carefully designed mini skirt and choreographed teen ritual, and yet Genie had never even kissed anyone, never doodled their name decorated with hearts onto her notebooks. The decision to catalogue all of her various personal habits and failings had come shortly after her sixteenth birthday party.

jhgsdjhsd

well i finished my essay (explain how two modernist authors enforce and/ or subvert binary gender roles #lesigh) and now i have none left for this semester apart from an exam but whatevs that's not for like a month and a half so yessssssssssss get in there my son howay the lads gan crackers hew! that's all the geordie phrases i can contextually use at this point but rest assured i am thrilled with myself.
SO
i joined plenty of fish and okcupid because let's face it, the mens are not bashing down my door for a date and also i get bored easily and like picking fights with strangers. i deleted okcupid in a drunken blur and that left plenty of fish which i think was worse. i tried match dot com also but it tried to make me pay so i was like hairflip i'm outie

MY EXPERIENCE ON PLENTY OF FISH

you know, the one who has autism

a recurring trend was people telling me that my profile was weird which i personally don't think is true but there you go i guess that's why i'm single




check out this impeccable logic. he kept messaging me after this asking why i hated men and why was i afraid to love after which i sent him a link to 'i wanna know what love is' and he stopped

this is completely true now yall know my secret

STORY OF MY LIFE

this was one of my personal favourites because he looks like what every man on a dating site should not admit they look like. also because he tried to woo me by saying that he's into electro music which i actually loathe and that he used to have pink and yellow hair which i imagine would make him look like a very sinister mr blobby.




this is the guy above's profile which i find really disturbing like if they make another paranormal activity or whatever this should really be featured because i swear after i read it i didn't feel right for like half an hour it felt like the profile was touching me

this one i have no idea what the heck he is talking about but kudos for the word wizardry colin, you're a boss

and they say that chivalry is dead!





......
i still just... no

i also explored the effect of using nice or weird pictures as my profile pictures. as expected, pictures like this:
got a lot more messages than pictures like this:

that does it for another edition of how pathetic my life is. join me next week when i will debate the benefits of something v.s. another thing or whatever i don't know byeeeeeeeee

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**this is a bit of a short story i am working on i promise i am a writer and i write things i promise pinky promise no backsies i will post the full thing when it's done**

If the sky is what is above us, then the sky in every chain music shop is a mess of silver glowing pipes and ducts ribbed with thick white veins. Matt H. and Kev, and Matt. S and Paul; I knew them in the way people in the same chain know each other. Social interactions like peripheral vision; you saw them in regional memos in team photos, or you saw them at biannual northeast parties at the sour damp carpeted venues hired out. We all shared the same sky. Every day spent under the dull reflections the pipes cast. The weather never changed for any of us. Outside it could have been snowing or glowing hot but in the shops, everything stayed the same.

The only exception to the unchanging forecast for them was October the 22^nd 2002. The day Rod Stewart’s collection of big band covers of classic American songs was released. Rod glowed out of the plastic cases of a thousand CDs in his white dress shirt, toothy and wrinkled like leather. The pipes caught glints off the cases and shone them back down, and it seemed almost like a sunny day. Outside, not that anyone could have known, it was raining; huge grey tears poured onto the slick concrete. Inside they were safe in their world of black rubber floors with thick raised pads like Braille and fluorescent lights and Rod Stewart’s dead eyes winking from every plastic display cut-out. Tills sang a monotonous symphony of beeps and clicks. It had been a hard day for most of us: I was coming down with a flu that made the world feel filmy and slimy like a rotten pond. Karen had been through a particularly bad break-up with Matt S. and had refused to work on the till next to him, and let big black tears run down her face silently all morning.

khkhdds

seeing as i never actually do anything of any value, this evening found me in a creative frame of mind. probably because watching tv cannot possibly be fun any more after how much i watch so my brain is telling me to use it or watch it atrophy into a puddle.
anywayz i continue to be a purveyor of the fabulous service of okcupid, and have continued my research with journalistic integrity and aplomb via screencapping weird messages and sulking when nobody pays me any attention. it's a learning experience and i continue to grow spiritually every day that i log in.












THINGS OKCUPID HAS TAUGHT ME

1. people just do not like my personality/sense of humour. for an overwhelming proportion of my life i have been able to speak, and i think everything has just been going downhill since that began. i curry reasonable favour via being reasonably pleasant to look at, and then i ruin everything by speaking. this is the general consensus. just look at that guy who solely said that to me. it's something i have been told a lot in my life. it makes me understand how cheryl cole feels a bit. and i don't like that one bit. is it time to give up and become mute? NEVER. until the end of my days will i think it's appropriate to be obnoxious and vocal about everything.

2. men do not like rejection. like not one bit. if they come onto you all 'hey sexy' and you're like 'ew get away' they suddenly start insulting you like nobody's business. like children losing at games of monopoly and tipping the board over and screaming. it's terrifying! are some men really so stupid that they think they are entitled to say whatever they want to a woman with absolutely no recognition of the fact that she's a human being? fuck everything!

3. dating websites break down any kind of social barriers and or reasonable expectations of social behaviour. people just say things like it's going out of style to be a cock and they want to get it out of their systems.

4. some guys like to wear tights.

i will keep yall updated in case i find a belgian prince. here's hoping.

sdjhgsjhgsdj

in lieu of actually reading the book i was assigned at university (the good soldier, in which everyone commits suicide and has affairs which sounds excellent on paper and somehow is actually depressing as hell) i decided i would do literally anything except read it. which naturally brings me to my blog. my little space of the internet. that's how i like to think of it, there's a teeny tiny space on the internet that i have, and it's mine, and i can do with it what i please.

THINGS THAT CHEER ME UP WHEN I AM SAD

1. IKEA
i am not sure what the lure of ikea is, but ever since i was little ikea makes me feel like everything is alright. walking around looking at all the lovely foreign names, getting plates of meatballs with jam on them, buying useless delightful home items, it all just makes sends me to a happy place. i thought seeing 500 days of summer would marr that slightly because zooey deschanel shits on everything i love and makes it twee filmy balls, but not even she can touch ikea. it's like heaven to me.

2. THE OFFICE
i will specify: i saw the office when i was about fifteen and thought it was absolutely shit. i only just started watching it again recently and realised what an absolutely brilliant thing it is. i'm pretty sure david brent is my spiritual animal. i've seen some of the office us but it just doesn't seem the same to me. plus it doesn't have this:


which is exactly, as an englishman, how i dance. when it reaches 00:52 i am in tears, every time. but something about the office, like with ikea, makes me feel like life is ok. maybe it's because it takes me back to being fifteen, when my biggest problem was the fact that i had motley crue hair and couldn't find anyone to buy me booze. those two things are still problems but i'm now seeking help.

3. GETTING A COFFEE
i'm attributing this to being a middle class white girl mostly but getting a takeout coffee always cheers me up and makes me think in my little head that i look like a grownup because that's what grownups do they get takeout coffee and then they send faxes or whatever. starbucks soothes the repressed suburbian soul.

4. READING TRASHY TEENAGE FICTION
if it has the words 'teen' 'girl' or 'kissing' on the blurb somewhere i'll read it. for funsies. doing a degree where you talk about proper boring books really makes you long for nothing but inane teenage drama hence my obsession with the oc. although in all fairness i was obsessed with the oc when it came out so maybe that's irrelevant.

5. MAKING SOMETHING
it doesn't matter what it is, but it must involve glueing things. i love to glue things to other things. and when i create a new thing with glue and things i am thrilled. sometimes i just glue things for no reason.

6. CHEESE
oh my lord i love cheese. it is just the most delicious soul cleansing food on this earth. if there are aliens out there the only reason they would come to earth would be to have cheese. unless they have something better than cheese in which case they should share. i don't like blue cheese but other than that i am pretty much for all cheese. brie and anything with cranberry are my favies. my mum got me a cheese plate for christmas and i ate the whole thing. in fact in retrospect i don't think she even specifically got it for me, i think she just got it for christmas day and my cheese brain looked at it and said 'that is for me. all of it shall be eaten by me alone' the fact that i'm fairly lactose intolerant doesn't bother me at all. the time i spend on the toilet with stomach cramps is time well spent if it's in the name of cheese.

i'm going to continue this when i'm not tired/ watching the office. i'm watching it right now and i'm in a smiley smiley coma

JOURNALISM

i decided a little while ago that my life just wasn't pathetic enough after exhausting drinking alone and crying to the fray, so i joined a dating website. okcupid to be precise. it has taught me many important lessons like that people are terrible and it has boosted my self confidence because people have stopped messaging me entirely despite my profile saying that i drink alone and that i cry to the fray and that my favourite activities are 'THIS IS DUMB. le sigh'. this is what you get in return for true honesty.


this is my personality according to okcupid. i don't know whether to be flattered or not (i'm not).i mean i may be political and 'indie' but my predominant quality is that i'm sloppy. in what sense i don't even know but it doesn't sound very attractive. and also i'm 'passion driven' which i'm assuming is okcupid's way of saying i'm a boning machine. but a compassionate one so fine.
having completed about six hundred stupid questions because i was bored i began to receive messages from people who were for some reason attracted to my profile and here are some of those delightful interactions with my fellow humans (click on them to read further):




as you can see i am quite the catch. i received an email saying i was one of the 'sexiest people on okcupid' which although is quite clearly a ruse to make me pay for a membership i couldn't help feeling a glow of pride: i am one of the most attractive freaks on a website for single losers. YEAH.
i no longer have any desire to live.

kjhkjmsdnm,sd

when i'm not talking about menses (around 10% of the time) i'm thinking introspectively and profoundly (not) about life and more importantly myself in relation to it. sometimes i try and read like self help articles or videos in attempt to better understand my fellow human, which i've realised is futile, because i don't only not understand men, i don't understand anyone at all. i don't know whether that's me overestimating myself wildly or me sticking up a finger proudly and proclaiming that i have no social skills. it's murky water. the fact that i've been housebound all week with a chest infection/ confined to the house by jewish law (lol) means that i've forgotten to talk to humans for like a week. i'm sure for a normal person that'd be finesies but i am not one of you. i'm a bit basic. i've lost my damn train of thought again FUCK

let it flow

*disclaimer: for all of yall who refuse to acknowledge/ do not find funny the existance of and discussion of periods and or feminine hygiene (or in my case lack of therein WUT) i probably wouldn't read this if i were you because maybe you'd faint and need some smelling salts or something*

SO
periods.

every girl you know has them. we have them and they fucking suck a sack of camel dicks. they're different for every girl, some girls are lucky and have 'light' periods for like three days and don't cramp or get hormonal. gonna say right now: i am not one of these girls. i would not be here if i was one of these girls i would be out in a dress holding a cocktail and laughing carelessly while i enjoyed my lack of homicidal thoughts. that is not where we are right now. we are on the opposite end of that spectrum. we're at the end where i'm wearing a bathrobe and crying at toddlers and tiaras. because despite all the ways in which i scream about people who say 'geez are you on your period' i am actually very volatile on the rag. but you know what, you would be too if you had pms (spots, irrational emotional explosions, sore stomach) and a chest infection (sore chest, vomiting up what look like wet green cornflakes). you'd be pissed too. i know i normally hate everything but this is different, this is like everything makes me irrascibly angry and depressed and bound to cry at some point. but let's face it: THIS HAPPENS TO EVERY GIRL. and most boys. i'm pretty sure men have a time of the month also because jeez sometimes they act worse than we do, and for no reason no less. i've lost my train of thought now.
i just hate everything. i'll edit this at some point.