To be reviewed:

Sorry for that odd article I've posted up without explanation. Basically, I've been writing a column for this webzine, but I seem to have hit a brick wall and can't proceed beyond this bland structure, with appallingly bland sentences. So I thought it might be a good idea for me to open the floor and ask for people to comment on it (critically, if you have time), and I'm posting up my most recent article here and opening it to comments.

I'd appreciate it if any one would care to take the time to read it and tell me what can be improved on, and how I could go about doing it. Anything would do - you can do it on anon if you want to, or you can just tell me what you think about it if you don't know how to comment critically on it.

Everything not said in malice would be appreciated :) and I'll internet-hug you if I can't do it in real life!

Article below the cut:

Review:

(ugh, I realised that there's something wrong with my fonts, so everything I write seems...small somehow. Well yes, the font is physically small (umimposing maybe), but it makes it feel like everything I write lacks conviction, which may be a personal character flaw I'm trying to get rid of. So that's definitely part of the problem. Expect a revamp, maybe. And a good think about how I use this blog in general.)

The Dark Knight Rises.

(taken from my Tumblr)

I watched The Dark Knight Rises last Friday, and started writing this post after I’ve came home to puzzle out my feelings about the movie; but, typically, I’ve procrastinated finishing it until today. 

I thought it was a good movie - the kind of movie that can be considered to be among the class of good movies released this year - but it could be better. It had so much promise. The first half puts into place such an interesting foundation, and the second half didn’t feel like it lived up to the expectations generated by the first. 

Ramblings of me trying to make sense of the movie comes after the cut. Will contain spoilers. Writing this has also been more difficult than usual because I could gauge the popular response towards The Dark Knight Rises, and this is not a popular response. Not offensive, either, just that I’ve never seen anyone saying this anywhere:

Hello again!

Sorry folks, but I seem to be updating blogspot very infrequently these days, for a couple of reasons. Maybe it's because I've found a supportive medium in Tumblr, with all its people and ideas and gifsets and general thoughtfulness. I've learnt to write better there over the past few months, and the layout of blogpost just doesn't feel as conductive, and definitely lacks the sense that I'm actually addressing my post to a fixed group of people, which helps me to find a voice to write in. I could bury the things I write amidst clever reblogs and the 'read more' function, so it's a way to free myself from the need to be 'perfect' (perfection is a lie), and I wouldn't have to worry about being clever and well-written all the time. I could just write an easy introduction, and write everything else under 'read more's in bullet points.

That said, here's my Tumblr, and you can find the things I write under the 'blog' tag you can find in the 'about me' section (although reading those in isolation from the other reblogs feels very jarring). I might post one or two of the longer things I write here, just to keep a record if you're still coming here!

*be warned, my Tumblr is a bastion of fandom, feminism, and LGBT rights, with the occasional thing about politics, literature, and movies thrown in (although I'd definitely think the last two is part of being in fandoms! What, you haven't heard of the TS Eliot fandom?)

Personal statement.

The exams were over and done with about a month ago. I remember having worked rather hard for it, but perhaps not in a way to get the best grades - I worked at it in a way that would satisfy myself rather than for the grades, which meant a lot of preparations having to do with the way an essay is structured and the language, and very little time going into practicing writing essays to meet the time-limit. Sounds like such a simple thing to do, but it seems like something I'm constitutionally incapable of - I would always be doomed to not having enough time to finish my essays. Haven't spent enough time on last essays, and spent rather too much time on the first ones. But still, I'll get by with a decent grade, if not one that would make me proud.

I spent the month fussing over my personal statement for my university application - with weddings, food trips, holidays, and books thrown in intermittently. It wasn't an easy month - I didn't have ideas on how to begin writing my personal statement, and even after I had some, it never felt perfect. It is frustrating to be chasing after a missing thing when your brain can't, for the life of it, figure out what exactly that thing is. At some stage, it was the content; at others, it was the language. It still doesn't feel well well-connected now, but after some point, you've got to let go. Listen to Neil Gaiman when he says: 'Art isn't ever finished, only abandoned.'

(Well a personal statement isn't art, but this axiom applies to anything 'creative' that doesn't have a fixed answer; that can be expressed in what seems like a hundred million ways.)

So I'm letting it go now. I've filled in other details in my UCAS application and secured a reference letter from one of my lecturers (it was so complimentary I felt slightly proud, and I'm sure I don't deserve it). The only thing left to do is to plug in the final edit of my personal statement, confirm everything, and send it on its way.

It has been a good project (like anything creative), but one that became frustrating because it was dragged out too long with no other responsibilities in between. Nothing in daily life to push creative buttons, and too much time to reflect on my shortcomings - not quite a good way to spend a month.

The Land of the Dead.

What is it like to step into the land of the dead? For a fleeting moment, I was transported there. I got a glimpse of the life I once lived, a remembrance of the many debilitating weaknesses I had, that I can so neatly define now. And I’ll tell you what happened when I step into the land of the dead.

The beings there are shadows of half-formed thoughts - flimsy, unsubstantial. The hollow men of Eliot’s poem. Leaning together, headpieces filled with straw. When they whisper together, their voices are quiet and meaningless. “Shape without form, shade without colour,/Paralysed force, gesture without motion”. Eliot has been there too. They speak not of the human condition, or anything that requires much thought. Their voices are so entwined with elements of social domination, bullying, bitterness, shallow thoughts - scarcely leaving space for anything else.

(I found this pretentious twaddle in my drafts folder on Tumblr. Must be written a few years ago. It is so pretentiously dramatic, but I thought it's sort of interesting to post it here. I don't even remember which exact event inspired this. God, what was I thinking? Maybe that's why it was in the drafts folder. Interesting, nonetheless.)

Boredom.

You think boredom is sitting in a class you find tedious?
No mate, that's restlessness.
Boredom is that feeling you get when you surf the internet for hours on end, when what you're actually doing is trying to find a meaning to your life.

And frankly, I'd take restlessness over boredom any day because with restlessness, at least you know what you ought to be doing now instead.

The most unbearable part of this is that, applying this definition, I am almost certainly in a constant state of being bored.

Desert Island Discs #2

Like I mentioned in the previous post, I'm starting to making playlists of songs featured in Desert Island Discs episodes. I don't want to double-post - otherwise the odds are that I'd only have posts about Desert Island Discs playlists here, and what's the fun in that? - so here's the link to my Desert Island Discs tag on Tumblr. Check in once in a while if you like this sort of thing, or are just looking for continuous music in 45-minutes bursts!

Desert Island Discs playlists

I love Desert Island Discs. There’s just something about the program that’s almost as therapeutic as hot chocolate in a quiet cafe. The guests are normally very well interviewed (Kristy Young is ace at what she does), and the little glimpse of insights in them are an oasis of warmth. The guests’ music choices are wonderful too - I’ve always wished that I could listen to more than just little snippets of the music. So when I was listening to Mark Gatiss’ DID today, I realised it would be a good idea to create YouTube playlists of their song choices to listen to, in one continuous stream.

This is the Desert Island Disc page, if you might be interested. The BBC has, quite amazingly, made DID episodes recorded way back to the 70s available as downloads, for which you can get off BBC Radio 4’s page on iTunes too. Go run through it - there’s an amazing list of (mostly British) figures in their archives, and it’s always enlightening in some manner to listen to them.

I think I’m going to try making playlists for different DID guests I’ve listened to, and post them here in the hopes that the utility of my efforts would extend beyond my own pleasure. Here is Mark Gatiss’ DID, and here is the playlist of the music he’s chosen. Have fun!

And hello, guys! The two of you still reading this! Hello there! Yes you! Hello!

I've just came back from Penang, from what essentially is a massive food trip. I've eaten so much that I'm feeling awful and I'm hating myself - I'm someone who feels more comfortable eating very little, so this bout of gluttony feels like something I should atone for by fasting for at least three days. It's the holidays too, and I have a personal statement to write, universities to apply to, and maybe a job to apply for!

Here's the Australia photos I've promised months ago (I know, sorry). I'll try posting more frequently.

Though God help me I don't know how that would help because I'm watching A Study in Pink now. Again.

Rule of the Day:

I am only allowed to watch one episode of Community every day.

A very lemony photo-post.

With reference to this:

Brother and lemons are as follow:

The Chinese numbers were my idea.

(can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that my brother can really draw? Look at his chilli on the bottom left. The thing beside it is a banana. The other are flowers.)

(I think we can basically conclude that I am one odd-ass person.)

Oh,

you're not perfect, after all.

And it has always been this way, hasn't it?

Through the Telephone.

Have you ever heard people with heartbreak in their voices?

The whole conversation, one-sided from where I sit, was an attempt to convey information, a genial conversation with a friend. He was trying to sound cool throughout, but at that moment when he spoke about betrayal, or something of that sort, there was an unmistakable pain in his voice. Heartbreak, I’d call it. That one moment, I felt his pain acutely, even though I usually am removed and very much unconnected to him.

Sometimes I think we have nothing in common, and pity him because of the vibe of disappointment and hatred surrounding him.


(I found this, written years ago, in my Tumblr-blog)

Hello!

Since we've last met, I:

- have discovered Tumblr and its wonderful community of people. Here's my Tumblr-blog: I don't write anything there, I just reblog the things I find beautiful, wonderful, clever, or painfully funny. Gems of human existence on the internet really. (Might have a lot of fandom injokes you might not understand.)
- have got myself my own 'alternative' fashion column.

I'm still writing here, though probably with a different frequency. Still live-tweeting my life on twitter.

x

I think our problem is:
That I am jealous of you (I think this is jealousy)
And you don't like me very much (I think this is disdain).
Now that's settled. Let's proceed from there.

(oh, a superior-inferior relationship. What fun. At least we agree on something.)

Broody.

'She remembered a man in the hotel foyer, very tall, he handled his baby like a newborn lamb: setting it down on its stomach to swim its way across the carpet. And Hazel had, briefly, wanted to be married to him instead.' 

God, I read that, and am a little broody now.
It doesn't help that I saw a man about my age caressing what probably is his young sister or cousin with such tenderness the other day.
If this were an alternate universe, I'd walk up to him and say, 'Sir, I love you'.

I like gentleness. And it, and love, is shown so vividly when you handle a baby.
I find it more appealing in men because, well, I'm heterosexual. I'm programmed to.

Quote from Anne Enright's short story, Yesterday's Weather. 

Bursting into song-and-dance in the middle of a pop-based quiz show?



This about redeemed the atrocity that was 'No Air' being incessantly inflicted on us a few years ago.