15 January 2011

tumblr is more fun than blogger ever was

byeee, suckers! ;)

see you in some other part of the internet!

i'd suggest you send me a postcard, but you'd have to belong in a lunatic asylum to want to do *that*.

18 December 2010

Let It Snow

I have returned! (from the abyss? from the dead? from the wagon?) I apologise for the hiatus, although I fear that I may have to go AWOL at least once next year as well, since I barely had time to sleep this term, and next term is reportedly going to be even busier. (This term: school hall-opening concerts, mocks, Cinderella, Christmas concerts. Next term: GCSE concert, NYT audition, sixth-form interviews, Jesus Christ Superstar, drama practical exam, and I'm sure I've forgotten plenty. To be honest, these probably all deserve their own blog posts, but y'know, I'm lazy.)

Part of the problem is that I feel obligated to write veritable essays on this blog. Thus, I am considering getting a tumblr for short thoughts when I'm busy. Except a fully anonymous one. Meaning I couldn't link to it here, because too many real life people follow this. If you can find me, I will be impressed. ;)

It's the snowiest English winter since we moved. Luckily I'm on holiday now (\o/) so I have nowhere to go. Well. Except the party of my friend who shall be named Adelaide for sake of convenience. I still envy the not-really-called-that Queen Victoria, who's off visiting family in India for a month. She says it's twenty-five degrees, and the locals are complaining that it's cold.

Perhaps I will write here more. Perhaps not. I feel rather ambivalent towards blogging at the moment: it seems to serve no purpose that a diary wouldn't. Either way, have a good time during whatever winter festival you choose to celebrate. I'm off to hibernate!

27 November 2010

temporary post of excuses et cetera

busy, busy, busy.

i hate to go a month without updating, but real life is sitting on top of me and hitting me with a big hammer labelled 'work, bitch', so you get this half-intelligible dreck without capital letters instead.

look for me around christmastime. i will give retrospectives and better excuses then (i hope).

23 October 2010

Living For Tomorrow

So, three days of internet deprivation might not be pleasant, but it is useful. Still nice to be back, though.

Upcoming posts include Life in C, some rambling on rehearsals, and probably some more of my now-epically-overdue summer posts. (I am developing a bad habit of making promises that I might not keep, here ^^)

For now, have some Strange Product Of Epic Boredom.

~

On hearing that I've never been drunk, someone told me that I need to live life more.

To this, I riposted that I did: it was simply that my way of living life doesn't involve getting drunk.

He said that no, that wasn't what he meant. He meant anyone could get run down by a bus tomorrow, so we need to live in today. He said that this is the only time in our lives when we can do what we like without responsibility.

I didn't agree, but I didn't argue. It did make me think, though.

Do I really live for today? For the most part, I don't. I live for tomorrow, for my future plans and my castles in the air. I rarely make a decision without thinking about its consequences, its repercussions, the pathways it will open for tomorrow.

But should I live for today, really? Because if I live for what I have now, I don't have that much to live for. My friends, I have, but in this moment I can't easily spend time with most of them. My family? They're odd and a little bit askew, and they don't need me enough for me to devote my life to them. The world? I can't even get there. I don't have the independence to enjoy today; my principles and ideas and philosophies stick me to the life I have, and the way I live walls me in.

For the most part, I live for my ambitions. I make a friend today so I will have them tomorrow; I act today so I can act better tomorrow; I read a book today so I will have finished it tomorrow. Is that wrong? Or am I just more optimistic than I thought I was?

It is the way that I live for the future that makes me disagree with the third part of his statement. I don't believe that I'm too young to have to take responsibility for my actions. Today, impulsive decisions might not be problematic, but tomorrow, or someday, they will always have consequences. So living for tomorrow regulates what I do today.

In a way, maybe this is just a philosophy of procrastinating happiness. It seems my philosophy is to get through today and live for tomorrow so that, when tomorrow comes, I will live for today. Tomorrow, I will be independent and free, and I will have the power to make every moment good enough to live for each as it comes.

I will keep living for tomorrow (like Elizabeth Grayson does in Anne of Windy Poplars, I suppose) because that way, when tomorrow comes - and it will, someday, in five or six years perhaps, but someday for a certainty - it will be awesome.

26 September 2010

A City in Allegro

Just managed to apply for an NYT audition. I have a feeling that filling out the application was far more stressful than the audition could ever be. (Currently thinking Rosaline's speech to the dead Juliet from After Juliet as my monologue. Any opinions, o internets?)

~

Went to the Science Museum in London yesterday. The museum is cool, but the city is better. I love London; it's a city that moves in allegro, and it's difficult to stay in andante, even when it's necessary.

There's one particular corridor in the King's Cross Underground station that always makes me think, 'Right now, I'm under London.' Its walls are grey and curved, so it feels like being inside a giant pipe. I think I am doomed to always be a tourist.

We took the Tube from King's Cross to South Kensington. I cultivated the art of standing unsupported, with the unfortunate victim being one poor man whose brown shoes I stepped on heavily. A man at the other end of the carriage was reading a Romanian newspaper; a curly-haired girl in a formal party dress searched through her handbag, and a bleach-blonde, makeup-caked woman somewhere in her late twenties was coming back from shopping.

Many writers far more skilful than I have covered the museum itself. I dare only add the footnote that we ate linguine for lunch in a café where the only light source was the glowing tabletops. The waitress was Polish, the dissatisfied man next to us was ethnically Chinese but had an English accent, and the woman on the other side of us was a terrible mother. The glass saltshaker glowed. It was most satisfactory.

We used the museums subway from and to South Kensington. There was a man with an electric violin playing Baroque pieces who had a sign on the inside of his open violin case which read 'No Smiling: maximum penalty £200.'

I smiled anyway.

~

Might start posting this summer's Extremely Overdue Posts soon. Might not.

Bonus question: can anyone guess why the location of the summer school is an extra motivator for me to get into the NYT? ;)

02 September 2010

Letters to the World

Dear Summer Holiday,

why didn't you listen to me? I told you to slow down! I told you! And now you're threatening me with impending school? That's rich, coming from something that can't even listen to simple instructions.

Yours irritably,
Me.

~

Dear BBC,

Really? Splitting the next series of Doctor Who in half? More than a year's wait for Sherlock?

Have mercy on the poor addicts!

Yours with withdrawal symptoms,
Me.

P.S: Or at least give us copious makeouts to compensate for the wait.

(CC: Stephen Moffat, Mark Gatiss)

~

Dear Spider,

I accept your right to be on my bedroom wall. That's fine. As long as you stay in one place.

In the hopes of waking up without a spider on my face,
Me.

~

Dear Wireless Router,

Stop screwing around. Some of us actually want to use the internet.

Yours exasperatedly,
Me.

~

Dear Science Coursework,

please be magically finished with no human intervention next time I look at you.

Yours in vain hope,
Me.

~

Dear Money,

Where are you? I'm sorry for calling you the root of all evil. Please come home, I need your help!

Yours contritely,
Me.

~

16 August 2010

Books I Would Probably Kill For

Freak List, entry three: Sherlock Holmes, 2010 version. (Me? Fangirling about yet another loquacious, amoral genius? Never. ^^)

~

I have quite a sizeable list of Books I Really Want To Read. In some cases, I have a legitimate excuse for not having read them (for instance, the book's not out yet, or I'm broke). And some, I have no excuse whatsoever. (I don't count 'can't get past the first chapter without losing interest' as a valid excuse. Even in the case of War and Peace. *is shamefaced*)

I haven't written down the list. So don't expect me to just recite it.

One of the books near the top of the list, however, is Anna and the French Kiss, by the charming Stephanie Perkins. And I have a valid excuse for not having read it: it isn't out until December. I fell in love with Stephanie Perkins' writing style (bubbly, quirky and clever) via her blog, back when the Book, her debut novel, was still called Anna and the Boy Masterpiece. (She refers to the Boy with a capital B. I think I need to refer to the Book with a capital B.)

Needless to say, my reaction when I discovered she is giving away an ARC of Anna was to squee loudly. (It's nearly midnight, and my house is silent. I sincerely hope that means I didn't wake anyone up with the squee.) My second reaction was "SQUEEEEE IT'S INTERNATIONAL HOW CAN I ENTER HOW HOW HOW?" Yes, I'm ashamed to say that it probably was about that coherent. So, the giveaway is over here, and this is an entry. Also, there is now a countdown widget in the sidebar. Because I am just that desperate. ;)

Another item on the list is (still!) Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Covenant. I swear the world is conspiring against my efforts to get hold of this book. Seriously. I tried to get it in my local Waterstone's. They didn't have it. Then I tried again. I couldn't afford it. Soon I will resort to Amazon. I mean, seriously? Seriously, World?

Bookshops in Cambridge are dropping like flies at the moment. Except the flies don't drop much around here. Only on my face when I am trying to sleep. So that's a bad cliché to use. Still. I think two out of five have closed in the last six months alone. It's quite depressing.

I will sign off, before I get more off-topic. Speaking of topics, things which I want to write about soon include the concert season, the German Exchange, reviews of Love Never Dies and A Winter's Tale, and probably Results Day or some general insanity. Or just many more posts of me ranting about my latest TV crush. You choose.

(I joke. I will, of course, choose the more esoteric option, just to be pretentious and refrain from the use of diminutive words. ;) )