OH YES!

Mah rappin' SKILLZ!!1!



















Well seriously.



You try it.

Shoes For Thought

Currently Loving: An art project that threw me back twelve years to the films I watched as a small child. I now have the soundtrack of the Swan Princess and Thumbelina to accompany Anastasia and The Silver Brumby on my MP3 Player.

Another insomnia-filled night. I suppose I'm lucky I got four hours sleep. I don't need this now, but I guess it's better than having it in exam time.
Unfortunately I doubt it's one or the other.



Backpacking. To Marks and Spencer. On a Sunday afternoon. In the snow...
With a basset hound.
Nice.
Apparently, however, this kind of behaviour is not as exclusive to the Seller family as was first thought. While I sat outside M&S in increasing YouthOfToday fashion (twisted around a trolley barricade refusing to move for anyone) tugging a embarrassingly nosey hound out of the way of cars crawling along at about two miles an hour, I saw numerous brave souls in varying degrees of personifying the phrase Death Warmed Up trudging towards the collective beacon that was the tiny shop.
Then everyone seemed to freeze. More than we already were (British Spring? Are you kidding?)
A woman in a black skirt and suit jacket was walking across the car park. Her hair was immaculate, as was her makeup and posture. What set her apart however was that, while everybody in the vicinity (including the floor staff and management) was wearing either walking boots and hiking socks or wellies protruding over layered legs, this woman was wearing golden pumps with black lace stitched around the top. There was a single intake of breath from every backpacker and weatherbraver as they stared at this lunatic prancing past with snow on her feet and no a care in the world.
Again, this says so much for our community spirit. We do not meet other eyes. We certainly don't speak to one another. But if there is a break in the norm or a particularly outspoken rebellion and were there with our hisses and our stares.
English nature at its best.

Coming Of A Certain Number Before "Age"

Currently Loving: 20th Century Fox's "Anastasia". Just got the DVD for my birthday and I know every word after nine years since the video got thrown out.


I was sitting in History colouring in the Iron Curtain with a thick black marker when I realised I was probably obliterating cities at a time considering the scale of the countries I was bordering. The "shadow falling on the scenes" was, in effect, quite literal for those who lived right on the edge of that paper.

~~~

I woke up yesterday, and I was no different from the day before. At least I didn't feel different. Nobody ever does on their birthday.

But something obviously does change every time someone turns sixteen, as that's when the government decides they can trust you with - ahem - certain things. I don't really get it. Okay, so every government needs a point where they can say yes, you can do this now, but has anything really changed in that person as they shift from one age to another?

"Age is just a number." ~ Joan Collins

Exactly. People don't change over night. You can't suddenly be ready for these kinds of tings. Some people do it early, others wait for ages. This age is a number, just a number for the government to say they are exercising a certain amount of control on the few people who actually listen to them. You take a risk. You pay your part and see if it works out. Many people are left utterly disappointed, but hey, if everyone won, there'd be no risk, right?

Yeah, lottery tickets are bitches.

Amongst The Tree Wrestling (A True Story)

Last Saturday I helped out at my Grandmother's Christmas Fair.
Know what you're thinking.
Waaaaow, Rassy! How exciting!

Aaah, simple townie. You underestimate these women's cutthroat approach to Church Fundraising.

So I set foot into the small, bright FREEZING Church Hall and I'm immediately bombarded with 'hasn't she grown?'s and 'your the spit of your mother's. All's normal so far. I shouldn't and don't expect anything different from the once or twice a year I go to my mother's home town.
My Auntie and I are on a stall, and when I heard about it I thought it sounded great. Her idea was to have a Christmas Tree with numbered baubles on it. You choose a bauble, get the present with the same number on it. Simple, no? Not with these old ladies. It appears any idea that is not a) Thought up by a certain clique of old ladies or b) traditional to a Christmas Fair (tombola, bric-a-brac, bookstall) is instantly sabotaged from the inside. By my own grandmother no less. No worries, she'll never read this, I don't think she knows the Internet exists. So, instead of numbering the presents, my Grandma WRITES ON EACH ONE WHAT IT IS!!
Nyaaaaaarrgh!!
Why, Grandma?!
WHY??

So basically we got a lot of people asking what the point of it was. We had to explain unfortunately we had no idea. So that was Cloak and Dagger slightly. These old women commit Fair Attraction murder but get away with it because they pretend to be oblivious. Conniving beasts. What's annoying is they're really good actresses.

My brother was on the Name the Bear stall while my mother was helping out at toys. My brother needed a couple of fifties for change and my mum passed them over. Half an hour later she let slip she committed such a travesty, got a severe telling off from the old crone next to her and was sent to get it back. Territorial much? The cash is all going to the same place and in the end there's NO record of who got the most or suchwhat. These women just want any excuse to show off to their chums at the next Ladies Guild they single-handedly paid for the church roof.

Oh yeah, another thing. Bitchyness never dies out. It grows old with you. An argument broke out about who was on which stall. "I'll do it, Peggy!" "But where's Phillipa?" "I don't know but I'm doing it!!"
Peggy walks away and both woman's faces were mirrors. Nose crinkled up, gums showing, teeth bared. Scary scary. Remind me to keep Peggy sweet.

You also might have noticed I didn't do a currently loving up there. That's cause it's down here. There's two. First off, I was kicking myself I didn't have a camera that day, as I saw the one scene that would probably sum up Christmas Fairs all over the country. Santa, boots, beard and all, hanging round the corner out of sight of any kiddies listening intently to the announcements, raffle tickets clutched in gloved hand. Also, I'm currently ecstatic about the fact a woman my Grandma talks to on the bus has caught herself a toyboy with a boat in the Bahamas. Future me, here's to hoping.

The M Word

Currently Loving: My maths teacher's total obliviousness to the youth of today's language. Today we had to explain what LOL, ROFL and LMAO meant. He thought the latter was LAMO, as in, what a lame joke. He seemed to get that alot.



Maybe it's just cause I'm growing up. Maybe everyone thinks the world is ageing with them, that the prospect of something once so well loved is now looked upon as babyish or immature. It causes some to panic - and why shouldn't it? The idea you can never get back to when life was simple, when you took it day by day and never worried about the future. Never worried about war, politics, the environment, illness, death, the terrible things humans can do to each other.
Never worried.
These people have good reason to panic.
I don't know how I've lasted this long.
Perhaps I haven't, and I'm mad already.

Magic - pure, simple wand waving - is never used anymore. JK Rowling got it right in most aspects, and I think the reason she's so popular is that the initial idea of a school for kids with wands, broomsticks, cats and potions, is that is so darn simple nobody thought they'd get away with it. But she did. And how.
But now it's all shady, diluted magic, even those books and programmes about magic itself. Tithe and Ironside, gritty, 18-rated Faerie books, show magic as hazy and uncontrollable, best left alone.
Merlin, of all things, uses long Latin phrases the boy wizard hardly ever gets right first time.
Betwixt, by Tara Bray Smith, doesn't even bother describing the odd, instinctive magic it's characters use. A guy turns into a human Moth. What? How, why?!
Hell if I know.

Then there's the fact most things are entirely disowning magic altogether, and replacing it with it's greatest foe. Science.
Heroes is about a group of people who have certain strands of DNA that generated unique abilities.
Gone, by Michael Grant, features an unanswerable Lost-like conundrum that we know is linked to nuclear fallout.
Even one of the shows I'm the most faithful to, the fantastic Doctor Who, dismisses magic as nonexistent.

Martha: Is it real, though? I mean, witches, black magic, and all that? It’s real?
The Doctor: Course it isn’t!

Dudes. What's wrong with a couple of choruses of Abracadabra?

By The Power Of Three Let Them See

Currently Loving: Why Should I Worry? from Oliver and Company (it's Billy Joel!! SQUEE!!)

Megan Fox, Keira Knightley, Emma Watson, Beyonce Knowles... the list goes on and on. All these girls are considered the height of everything. They're successful, they're rich and they're beautiful.
Or, as some may say, these girls are glamorous.

glam⋅our  /ˈglæmər/ [glam-er] –noun
1. the quality of fascinating, alluring, or attracting, esp. by a combination of charm and good looks.
2. excitement, adventure, and unusual activity: the glamour of being an explorer.
3. magic or enchantment; spell; witchery.

Yeah, see that last one? A glamour is one of the primal forms of magic, dating back to the beginning of mythology. Essentially, it changes your appearance to anyone looking at you, although some can cast glamours on things around them. It's not particularly offencive in magical battle (what some I know would call "flashy stuff" (I know no Wiccans, unforunately)) but looks a lot of fun if it exists.
Thing is.
Glamour.
Glamourous.
Fake?

Something to show you what some glamours are like, although you'll have to skip to the end, I couldn't cut it, sorry:

It's Happening Again...

Currently Loving: Gone and Hunger by Michael Grant

The phone rang, and Michael Grant reached over to answer the inevitable call he'd been waiting for since that morning.
"Michael!" The publisher's voice boomed through the receiver. "It's time for an update! What have you got for us?"
"Well..." Michael picked up and Biro and began twirling it restlessly, glancing nervously at the bookshelves. "I had this... one idea.."
"Go on!" Once again, Michael held the phone away from his ear in response to the bellow coming from his publisher's throat that was probably setting off earthquakes in Japan.
"Uh, okay. Well, what if I have a load of child characters, all under the age of fifteen, say, and all the adults in their world suddenly disappear and they're forced to fend for themselves?"
"You have read Lord of the Flies, right?"
"Um...?"
"Next!" Michael began speaking before he'd brought the phone back to his mouth and had to repeat the first sentence. "Well, next I thought- I said next I thought of people suddenly discovering these weird weird powers, like supermen, without any explanation. There'd be Healers and people who can run super fast and shoot fire-"
"Have you been keeping up with Heroes? I hear they're showing it across the pond now."
"Yeah, but these would be kids-" Michael was cut off by a cough.
"Xmen."
"Well... wait! Wait!" Michael grasped his desk, an amazing, inexplicable and frankly brilliant idea forming in his mind. "What about all those things... together?"
A silence.
"I like it!"


Okay, so the entire conversation above is fictional (and far too dialogue heavy, I apologise) but you get the jist. The fact that this book has elements from other books, films and television is blown away by the sheer awesome (I use that and actually mean Awe-some. Not just my usual slang, ladies and gentlemen, no way!) quality of these books. Forget all your Wolverines and Peter Patrellis, there's a new hero in town now. Sam Temple is a quiet and reserved surfer going to school in small town Perdido Beach. Then, in the middle of third period history class, his teacher poofs. No. Not poofs.

"One minute, the teacher was talking about the Civil War.

And the next he was gone.

There.

Gone.

No "poof". No flash of light. No explosion."

At first dumbstruck, the full horror of Sam and his friend's predicament soon overwhelms them. Every single person over the age of fifteen has disappeared. No parents, no siblings, no teachers. Great, eh?

Maybe not. No police. No doctors. No pizza delivery guys. The children of Perdido Beach find themselves alone, leaderless, and hemmed in by a strange barrier that burns to the touch. All they have is the town, a small segment of sea and surrounding hills, including a nuclear plant, a hotel, a large portion of forest... and a boarding school; Coates Academy.

Now the book sounds a little less shallow, but just think about these ten things before you write it off as your usual teen flick:

1) The babies and toddlers are still there. Who is going to sacrifice their time to look after all them?

2) Food's going to run out soon, but who has the balls to tell people what to do, what to eat and when?

3)People are beginning to get hurt, who's going to look after them?

4)Cars, guns, drugs, smokes, they're all now available to anyone man enough to claim them.

5) Not everyone likes everyone else. Bullies are ruling the streets. Are kids capable of murder?

6) What are the Coates kids doing up on the hill?

7) Why are some kids noticing strange differences about themselves? "I'm sure I couldn't fly before the FAYZ..." (that's the Fallout Alley Youth Zone; a universal name for the goldfish bowl everyone's found themselves trapped in (and no, that's not a quote from the book))

8) A talking coyote? A flying snake? How come that book just walked away?

9) Kids always quarrel, right? Well now they have guns, powers and desperation. Who's going to sort out the fights?

10) What's that voice...?

Unfortunately, I have history coursework for tomorrow. Sound familiar?