Things You Can Find Hidden In Your Documents Folder

About an hour has passed since last blog post and I am STILL UNEMPLOYED and thus STILL IN BED and writing some fun things. A brief flick through aforementioned documents folder provided me with something I was planning to share with you a little while ago, since I thought it would be very useful to the public sphere in general.

So, few months ago some band on facebook KEPT sending me requests to 'like' their band.  I assumed these would stop happening in due course, and yet after the twentieth or so request I drafted up an email and sent it on.  Here is that email for you to also use if this situation should ever occur to you:

Hello you,

Despite seeing myself as a relatively adventurous, let's-try-anything-once, 'sure, I'll touch that impressive, weeping wound on your arm' sort of gal, there are a few things that i never want to do in my life.  i'll outline some of these for you now.

 1. Contract a horrible, debilitating disease.  This would obviously be no fun at all. Given this, I should probably change my standpoint on injury-touching but hey, I'm the inquisitive type

 2. Be taken as a political prisoner and tortured.  I would only last about a second so this would be embarrassing as well as painful

 3. Have to work in an 'office job' for a long time.  I would only last about a second so this would be embarrassing as well as painful

 4. Be exposed in any way to a song by Robbie Williams, a film featuring Adam Sandler or a TV show on which Jimmy Carr's face made any form of appearance. This is something I struggle with daily and thus a particularly sensitive topic

 5. Have my DNA somehow used to resurrect dinosaurs.  Wouldn't want the responsibility and also I've seen 'Jurassic Park', it didn't go as well as that nice Richard Attenborough said it would AT ALL

 6. Become a fan of Conchitas.  Having refused at least twenty times, i would have thought your enthusiasm for asking me would have been dampened.  However, this is obviously not the case, so here it is: I DO NOT want to become a fan.  Please NEVER EVER ask me again unless I send you a prostrate and hugely apologetic email begging you to give me another chance to become a fan.  There is about a 0.000001 percent chance of this happening, so hopefully you'll assume it's better just not to ask.

Thank you for your understanding, and I do wish you very well with Conchitas's future (I have nothing against the band of course, but I have never heard any of your songs and thus remain vastly apathetic towards any impending success/failure/events that you might engage in).

 Emily  (at this point you would write your own name, obvs)


I am happy to report that this worked very well; the band and I enjoyed a short period of entertaining and amicable email correspondence and they never asked me to be their fan again.  So, another handy guide to navigating modern life for you all.  You're entirely welcome. 

Now here's some Destiny's Child

'Day and Night' - Billie Piper

Not a relevant title at all; just the song in my head. It may apply a little bit since have spent the last day and night lolling around my room fending off a cold and coming up with some EXCITING IDEAS. Unfortunately, this and my interview/lovely sojourn to the countryside on Wednesday have conspired to delay my library video project, which I will now begin this weekend. It might well work better on weekends anyway; I want to meet people that freely spend their leisure time in libraries rather than being forcibly marched there by some sort of school or job.

It strikes my attention that this blog post isn't at all interesting, so to spice it up a little bit, let's have a chat about.......um......well, how about a nice Billie Piper song instead, thus rendering my subject RELEVANT to the post (and, I think, to today's society and Current Economic Trends ((that was some bullshit)) (((all these brackets are reminding me of Luce Irigaray's 'ecriture feminine' and feminist theory))) ((((now that's a reference)))) - speaking of which, Jimmy Carr was always a massive dick so I can't understand why everyone is so shocked to see even more evidence of this fact re: Jimmy'TheDick'CarrTaxGate'). I hope you all enjoyed that excellent punctuation; now let's enjoy a nineties CLASSIC.

Backstreet's Back - ALL RIGHT! the sequel

So have actually in the last minute decided not to cut and paste Proust blog into this one, just follow this link instead if (for God knows what reason) you want to see it. http://kclproust11.blogspot.co.uk/ hint: it's shit. However, it does feature some very attractive pictures of Jessica Fletcher, so this might almost validate its existence.

Backstreet's back - ALL RIGHT!!

Incidentally, there are SO MANY nineties songs that involve talk of things being back. 'Back to life, back to reality', 'Back for good', 'Baby got back', 'Back to the motel'.....and probably plenty more. Apparently the nineties were all over the comeback ting, so I apologise for not having written this in the actual nineties. Hopefully you can forgive me and we can move on together.

ANYWAY, my degree is now complete (assuming that I don't receive a ton of irate emails from the French department saying 'you wrote WHAT about Rousseau?! Get back here IMMEDIATELY' anytime soon)and so I thought it might be time to get back on the writing horse. So am going to plonk some of the crap I wrote about Proust for my uni-ordered Proust-blog (entitled, 'Proust, she wrote', of course) onto this blog and then I'm going to hopefully follow this up with my EXCITING NEW PROJECT* of harassing people in London libraries and asking them about books while shoving a camera in their face. So let's hope that that goes well and doesn't end in any form of conviction.

THANKS

*this may not actually work at all; it might all end before it begins with withering, unimpressed looks all round from library clientele. Let's hope not.

Something boring

Soz guys, I’m in the mood for something serious..! Obviously something vacuous and light-hearted shall follow shortly!

When I was very young, I used to read all the Enid Blyton books and I used to watch musicals. Feel free to lol gratuitously at this point, I promise you that this will only get worse from now on. Since this was what I was exposed to as a child, I obviously based my impression of the world on these things and I thought that that was the way life was. I used to make toy wooden swords with my granddad, and we would head into the woods together – him probably wondering how he’d ever ended up with such a bizarre sort of granddaughter and me looking for the adventures I spent all my time reading about. But we’d go into these ‘woods’, and I never managed to find something that lived up to my considerable expectations. I wanted a wood so thick and dense that the sun was barely visible; a place where one could spend days looking for a way out – a place in which mysteries could be found and solved. But all I found was a couple of square metres of saplings, pi r squared of disappointment and horribly obvious exits.  Clearly I must have misunderstood all these books.

A little older this time but not significantly, I was in a field, lying down and playing with the grass. There is something rather impressive about grass, I have always found – there’s nothing like the myriad stalks so easily pulled from their roots to illustrate the condition of living things, I think – and it is certainly a striking impression I have that it was amongst the grass that I first realised how amazing language is, despite the connection between the two appearing tenuous!  The idea that someone could make some motions with their tongue, that some subtle tones and affectations could make the world of difference to what was being communicated and the fact that so many people could understand these odd utterings was just so fascinating to me. That so many different people conceived so many different ways to represent the image of a tree, or a person.  That not only could we represent solid beings and creations by these special intonations, but also feelings and imperceptible things, was astounding and not just a little overwhelming. The question of whether these imperceptible things truly existed or whether they were just constructs of our desire to communicate was also an infinitely fascinating one to me.

As I have gotten older (if not in maturity, certainly in years) this concept of the human as a being in desperate need to communicate has fascinated me.  Our communications seem to raise a dilemma: why are we creatures with an inescapable need to be with others, to tell them our deepest desires and secrets and to try unceasingly to portray ourselves?  Do we need to have this correspondence with others to stimulate our minds and find solace in the other, or just to distract ourselves from less enjoyable practices? Is it possible that language, in fact, is the ultimate expression of vanity; rather than a means to find happiness through another's company and persepctive, is it instead a means through which we insist on foisting ourselves – or the selves we would like to be – on others; to force them to listen to what we have to say in an attempt to validate our own self-image? In short, does language exist so that we might share another’s existence, or so that we might share our existence with another?

For me, one of the greatest flaws of the English-speaking (as a mother tongue) world is that, since we conquered sufficient parts of the world that a vast population now speaks our language, we choose not to study other languages. The stereotypical 'British tourist' and other such ‘linguaphobic’ (neologism, bitch!) peoples can go to Mallorca or Ibiza and not only order a beer in English, but head to British pubs and watch the football. The prospect of speaking another language is supplanted by the fact that it is ‘necessary neither to communication nor need’. We are finally masters of the world in which we choose to inhabit. However, the point that modern British people are choosing to ignore is that the mastering of foreign languages is not just about being able to order a sandwich while sunbathing next to the pool. Every language has words that cannot be translated into English, sentiments that cannot be expressed simply through an equation of verbs, nouns and adjectives. Language is not something that is concrete, it is an ever-evolving device used to express emotions that certain cultures have identified as important. It is a tool with which we may understand the world, but it is also symbolic of the hope that one day we might find someone that thinks that what we say and feel is worth listening to – who will think that our words are worth tuning out the constant stream of communication that runs through our consciousness. Language is nothing but our desire to be heard, and it is – make no mistake about it – the most brilliant creation of the human race, and the ultimate expression of humanity.

For the child that grew up living in stories, the adventure is always seemingly out of reach. The tale is always too exciting to be true and the forest is always too small to hide the depths that we are looking for. But what contains the most exciting revelation in these books is not the thrill of the unattainable goal, it is the fact that anyone can (at least attempt to..!) understand what exactly was the author might have been conceptualising at that particular point in time. The idea that we can siphon the persuasions of someone’s mind into our own is something that is infinitely miraculous. So study languages, kids, and love your own one well.

THE HILTRON GUIDE TO EXCELLENT JOBS THAT NOBODY SEEMS TO THINK OF APPLYING FOR

In this highly selective and meticulously thought-out guide, I shall describe some of the jobs that I have always dreamed of doing. Hopefully, you too can share my dream and take away a new, special aspiration from this essential guide.

1. THAT PERSON WHAT NAMES NAIL VARNISHES ETC.
While waiting for interminably late friends in Bristol, I developed the habit of popping into Boots and looking on the undersides of nail polishes to see their special names. These ranged from things like ‘sexier than sexy’ to ‘emergency red’, but it wasn’t until I ventured into an Auckland mall and came across a red titled ‘don’t Socra-tease me’ and a green dubbed ‘at your Que-beck and call’ that I truly fell in love with this profession. Ideally, the new names would be delivered to the boss in a Bond-villain-esque Russian accent – imagine, ‘Da, Boss, this milky-white polish I call “lactating just 4 u”, you like?’. I certainly do like.

2. ICE CREAM VAN MAN/ ICE CREAM VAN WO-MAN
Yes, obviously, we can all understand the allure of tempting little children out into the street with the promise of tasty goods. But what could be more enjoyable than pulling up beside a school, ‘Greensleeves’ blaring away, then as the delighted, chubby-cheeked youngsters flooded out of the gates, just eating all your ice-cream in front of their piggy little eyes?! Excellent Schadenfreude! Probably less excellent karma though, but we can deal with that when we’re all beetles in our next lives.

3. MASTER PUN-STER FOR DREADFUL PUBLICATIONS
Because, really, we all want to write a Cheryl Cole/ Jordan/ assorted footballer/ Simon Cowell – based headline for ‘The Sun’. If in doubt, just use the word ‘gate’ instead of a pun to produce sufficient scandalous effect – e.g, ‘TITS-GATE’.

4. FRONT-PAGE EDITOR FOR TRASHY ‘REAL LIFE’ MAGAZINES
‘I was raped by a transvestite ghost!’, ‘My ex-boyfriend cheated on me with a marmoset!’ ‘I’m addicted to marrying fences!’ and ‘I am very egg-rieved: the story of an egg irritating me and ruining my confidence with snide asides’ – all titles we love to see on the front of ‘Pick me up’. But we’d love to write them even more!

5. JESSICA FLETCHER
Yes, it’s everyone’s favourite mystery-solver, the sexy sleuth followed by light-hearted and tastefully un-graphic gruesome murders. We too want an address book that seems to include a million relatives, including those special Irish chums of hers that have such believable accents. We too want to solve murders in the same way every week. We too want to throw our heads back and laugh at the end of every episode, usually for no apparent reason. And we too DEFINITELY want her wonderful wardrobe.

6. AGONY AUNT
Why oh why can’t we do a B.A in agony-aunting yet?! This is what’s really turning our once great society into the degenerate mess that we’re in now, with no real morals or......(for rest of sentence, see any ‘Daily Mail’ article). Basically, I want to give advice!!!!!

7. HOST OF ‘JEREMY KYLE’- STYLE SHOW
In running with the theme of the last utterly desirable job, why not take your gentle counselling to a whole new level?! We’re in England guys, there’s millions of useless people out there – we should be taking advantage of their misery by putting them on TV and making MILLIONZZZZ! Since we all know that all Jeremy Kyle is qualified in is being a massive tit, surely we can be tits too?!

8. AUTHOR OF ‘MILLS AND BOON’ –STYLE ROMANCE NOVELS
Because all of us could literally piss out at least one of these novels in about thirty seconds. For those of you less enlightened than I, every one follows this formula: girl meets boy, thinks he’s a prick but for some reason can’t stop thinking about him. Girl and boy get together - cue lots of adjectives and talk of nipples. Girl goes a bit mad and suddenly imagines boy is cheating on her/ about to move to Peru/ actually a mass-murderer and breaks up with him. Cue the abundance of the word ‘wrenching’. Girl stops being mad, girl and boy get married/ have kids. Expand on that, throw in lots of words like ‘thrusting’, ‘pulsing’ and ‘phallo-centric’ and Bob is literally your uncle.

And so ends this definitive guide to jobs we will always dream of having, but won’t ever know how to get. Yes, our lives will always be empty if we cannot find our deserved niches in one of these honourable professions, but cheer up guys! With your trusty BA in hand, there’s always teaching!

Star Wars!

In a recent bid to improve my seemingly endless affliction of ill-health, I decided to take it upon myself to endure a week or so without alcohol. Misguided, you might think, but I thought I’d experiment with these ‘medical’ ideas doctors and the government expound upon alcohol being detrimental to well-being. Therefore, it was on a sober Thursday night this week when I sat down to watch the final Star Wars movie – Return of The Jedi. Now don’t get me wrong – on a scale of science-fiction geekery I remain firmly entrenched in the ‘I like Alien 1 to 3, but show me a Predator or Star Trek episode and I’ll probably try to poison you. And definitely don’t ask me to fix your computer, I barely know how to plug it into the mains’ camp. However, Star Wars has always held a certain fascination for me, and it’s this that set me wondering about why it is that we so enjoy fantasy fiction – in all its forms.

Perhaps it’s that, as an ex-fencer, lightsabres represent possibly the most fun toy ever conceived. Swords are obviously wholly exciting and cool in themselves (I feel I should re-assure you at this juncture that I am definitely not some sort of anarchic mugger that assaults people with a full-sized samurai sword...promise!), but a sword that can slice through anything, make humming noises AND glow in the dark truly puts my array of dashing sports-swords to shame. On top of that, the idea of using ‘the Force’ would make life both far easier and much more enjoyable – from eradicating the necessity of getting off the sofa to fetch a beer (you can just pull it to you with your intense mind-powers, dontcha know) to the amusing prospect of insisting to anyone refusing you entry to some venue that ‘you want to let me in, you don’t need to see my name on the list’ just opens up a world of delight to be had by the blossoming Jedi.

And then there’s the possibility of using your powers for evil! Sure, normal human beings can be quite evil. Hitler and Stalin certainly had a good go and definitely made their way up several rungs of the bastard ladder. But surely the idea of being able to demonstrate your general pissed-off-ness by sending thousands of volts of lightning through your fingertips elevates you into a whole new stratosphere of evil. The ability to build a whole star dedicated solely to fulfilling your darkest desires and wontonly destroying any planet that even considers looking at you in the wrong way is also something that human fascists could merely dream of. Although that’s probably a good thing – without those furry little Ewok-things on our side, we’d be well screwed if Nick Griffin suddenly took to the skies and started destroying seaside towns all day.

However, it’s all this wishful thinking that draws me to my real conclusion. Whilst of course fantasy fiction allows us an escape from the humdrum vie quotidienne, surely it ultimately leaves us more depressed at our lack of special abilities? What child didn’t read Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials and then glare malevolently at the vague centre of their bodies, trying to transmit to their ‘soul’ their deep disappointment that it didn’t jump out of their ribcage and assume the form of a cuddly, talking beast to accompany and advise them throughout their life? And who didn’t gaze out into the night, hoping for an owl to swoop down and present them with an invitation to Hogwarts after the Potter opus? For any kid that spent hours trying to knock over a glass with their eyes or scrabbling at the back of every wardrobe they could get their hands on, fantasy fiction serves to reinforce the unpleasant idea that we are not as special as we think. And perhaps it’s that masochistic aspect of humanity that leads a 21-year old student who definitely should know better to wish once again that I also could have a special, humming, glow-in-the-dark sword to throw around as I run about saving the galaxy.. or even just on a trip to the pub - I’m not fussy if anyone’s got a lightsabre going spare...!