Sweet Lorriane

Sorry I haven't been on for a while. I am attempting to study. “Attempting” being the operative word. I am so angry with the television.. It is just way too painful to watch lost and the OC in succession. Too much melodrama and bathos, nice and icy on the rocks. Which reminds me, I recently discovered something called evil tea. 2 oz Captain Morgan® Original spiced rum and 10 oz iced tea although I am yet to find out about this great sounding spiced rum. Okay. After the exams. I will not be suicidal about this. My phone is the most evil thing on earth. It does NOT tell me when my inbox is full or when I have new messages. I mean seriously, is that too much to ask? I mean all it does all day is sit around and be a phone. How much work can that take? Phones are very stupid. I found this long entry on my old blog about my reliance on my phone. I don’t know, I think something stupid happened that involved me not charging it, and it dying, and me spending the day without my phone being very whiny. Yea I suppose I was just anxious that my hordes of screaming fans would not be able to reach me. I was going to write an either very funny entry (but nothing very amusing happened except for shi thinking that I was going to unzip my pants and pee on the lamppost in school when I was standing in front of one on Tuesday, oh and of course there’s the very funny thing that happened but that I cannot write about here, involving a very sorry teacher, haha.), or a very insightful one about life, love, death and everything in between (but it turns out that I don’t have that many thoughts. Who would have thought.), so I will just qualify my randomness. There.

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n."

" In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.

Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone."

Extracts from Eloisa to Abelard. Alexander Pope.

"Peter Abailard (1079-1142), at thirty-eight a famous scholar, became at this time the tutor of Eloisa, the eighteen-year-old niece of Fulbert, the canon of Paris. Their passionate secret love resulted in Eloisa's conceiving, whereupon Abelard removed her to Brittany. After refusing to agree to marriage for a long time because it would ruin Abelard's career in the church, Eloisa finally consented and the couple returned to Paris for a secret wedding. But the uncle's anger revived. Abelard took Eloisa to a convent at Argenteuil where she was professed as a novice. Her uncle then paid ruffians to attack Abelard in his lodgings and castrate him. After his various attempts at monastic life, students again gathered about Abelard and built him the halls and church of the Paraclete, sixty miles from Paris. Further persecution by his enemies or fear of them eventually led him to accept the Abbey of St. Gildeas in Brittany. When Eloisa's nuns were expelled from Argenteuil, he offered them the Paraclete and visited them as a spiritual director, until his visits caused scandal. Eloisa began the correspondence after a letter, addressed to an unfortunate friend, describing his adversities as a means of comforting the friend, fell into her hands."

At my most beautiful. (heh)

Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Sylvia Plath. Mad Girl’s love song.

This is in Villanelle Form by the way. Haha, my friend’s doing the Lit SATS and apparently they ask for crazy things like that. It’s form is incredibly complicated. Along the line of ABCCBAABC and so on, the last line’s ABCC. Why on earth would any decent 18-year-old know that?

Heartbreaker (This is a Very Important question)

Okay don’t take this as an insult, but are the people who leave comments and then tell you about like insurance or health or debts real people? Or are they the blog-comment- board version of spam? Someone help me out here? Confused.

Oh, and I just realised that my titles are confusing. It’s actually just whatever is playing on the windows player thingy. I’m a simpleton you see.

Survival in the 21st Centuary

Stormbringer

My mother is the greatest woman on earth. She just bought champagne white chocolate mooncakes. For those of you ignorant to this great-taste-of-heaven-invention:

“The mooncake (Simplified Chinese: 月饼; Traditional Chinese: 月餅; pinyin: yuèbǐng) is a Chinese cake-like confection that is traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival, although mooncakes can be eaten at other times throughout the year as well.

Mooncakes are round in shape to symbolize the moon. According to legend, when the Mongol Yuan Dynasty ruled China in the 14th century, Chinese rebels were able to overthrow the Mongols in part because they hid secret messages inside mooncakes, which the Mongols did not eat, that were then passed around.

Most mooncakes are made of ground lotus, or of bean or seed paste, and other ingredients, occasionally with egg yolks in the centre”. Reference, Wikapedia

Anyway, swoon, slice of heaven.

And if anyone knows how to get photos from a Nokia 3220 onto a computer, I’d appreciate all the help I can get.

Carry On, Questions... the questions of a thousand dreams

So I just read the most hilarious blog on earth where this guy swore like 22 billion times per sentence (and that is only a Slight exaggeration). But since I am no allowed to swear anymore well bah. I don’t understand how one simple word can take on so many meanings. And really, what is so bad about that sweet little four letter word. It just takes on the meaning you intend it to right? So if you think that something is f***** fantastic, well then that is a GOOD thing right? Bizarre. But I’m quite happy being this sheep –follow-the-leader-type character, so I’ll buy the whole it’s just wrong argument. Well for now anyway. Maybe if I psych myself out, I’ll actually be successful at this not swearing thing for one whole day!

Today was, surprisingly, fun. It’s surprising how much fun you can have when to let go of your animosity and contempt. Truly surprising I say. I suppose that my state of shock is quite evident from the number of times I have said surprising so I’ll leave it at this.

Guess what. Every time I have said “surprising” in this entry, I spelt it wrong. Including that time. Thank God for spellcheck.

A Little Less Conversation - Note below.

And through the poplars a tiny amount of light shone upon their hands. He felt the tenderness in her delicate skin, lightly rubbing her knuckles. Then he retracted his own to the safety of his pocket.

The promise of eternity in a touch, a look, a kiss. I just cannot bring myself to believe in that. Eternal love. Is that really possible? To love a fellow human being for that long? It seems more the product of cheap mass-produced valentine charms then an account of real romance grounded in reality. But then, I suppose love makes you do crazy things. Maybe I am just a cynic with my inexperience. But they call it falling in love for a reason right? I always assumed that it meant that you’d hit the bottom sometime. But perhaps these are just the musings of an over-critical literature student.

This is in part because my random friend has gone on holiday. Did you ever have one of those? The friend you call in between advertisements or when you’re walking home or when you’re just absolutely bored? The friend that doesn’t take offense despite your purely utilitarian motives at times? If you have no idea about what I am talking about, then you definitely need to find out. This you need far more then a visa any day. Don’t listen to advertisements. They lie.

I think that I’d make a terrible salesperson. I definitely cannot advertise.

I have just acquired a whole series of tom-jones-edwin-starr-elvis-other-similar-schmuck-type music. Very good.

Tragic or hilarious? there's a fine line between the two.

Nazis' exploding chocolate plans

By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

German sabotage agents developed an exploding bar of chocolate and what was probably the first shoe-bomb during WWII.

German agents planned to use exploding bars of chocolate

Photographs of these and other devices, held in the files of the security service MI5, have been cleared for release by the National Archives.

The devices were intercepted by British intelligence in various locations, including Turkey, but there is no evidence that any such bombs were used - and certainly not in the UK.

These ingenious objects got no further than four explosive cans of peas, which were found on German agents who landed in Ireland by small boat and claimed that they hoped to get them into Buckingham Palace. Details of this plot were reported two years ago.

The latest pictures show how a bomb could be hidden inside a chocolate bar and how explosives could be disguised as the soles of a shoe.

It appears therefore that Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic in December 2001, was not the first would-be shoe bomber.

Nazi Germany planned attacks using explosive throat pastilles In pictures

There were other examples of devices with explosives inside them - a tin of Smedley's plums, lumps of coal, cans of motor oil, shaving brushes and a mess tin.

Also released by the Archives from MI5 files are examples of German wartime propaganda aimed at the British population.

According to the official historian of MI5, Cambridge Professor Christopher Andrew, the German sabotage failure and the low standard of their propaganda are examples of their overall intelligence failure in the war.

"Why was German intelligence and propaganda so much worse than the Russian?" he asked.

"Possibly because Germans did not want to be spies. All German spies in Britain were caught and all were non-German.

The original shoe-bomb?: explosives disguised as soles

"German propaganda was incredibly bad. Some of it was Monty Python stuff. It illustrates the incompetence of German propaganda at the time.

"German espionage and sabotage in Britain reached the level of 100% incompetence in World War II."

'Apron strings'

One propaganda sheet is so bad that Professor Andrew thinks it might have been a spoof written by British civil servants.

Headed "Naziministerium des 3ten Deutsches Reiches", it says, in English: "To the men of Britain and Eire. You have proved yourselves a race of abject COWARDS unwilling to leave your Mamas' & Wifey's apron strings and FIGHT ME.YOU LICE, VERMIN, SPAWN of PROSTITUTES."

Other bombs would be planted inside coal, plums and motor oil

It goes on and on and includes some anti-Semitic remarks as might be expected.

Other pamphlets were a bit more sophisticated. One, issued before the war, starts: "My dear English reader, you may be surprised to receive a letter from Germany. I am a friend of English-German understanding."

There is also an interesting fake copy of the London Evening Standard, dated February 1940. Its headline reads: "The massacre of the RAF".

However it is so bad as to be laughable and again might even be a spoof.

It has a box in the top left hand corner which reads: "Take French laxative: it will keep you on the run."

Everybody hurts (appropriate. I hope you stop.)

I think that we are defined by our needs. Every emotion is related to the degree to which our primal needs are satisfied. Okay, I lied. I am no sociologist. I ripped that off Marslow. Makes sense though. Sometimes we even become defined by our denial of these needs like food, security and sanctuary. In which case, it is these needs that make us human, that reveal our humanity.

On those scary nights when the world seems to close in on you and you feel completely abandoned, it is of course attractive to believe that needing only ever kills you slowly: build up walls and burn all bridges, reject before being rejected.

Yet, if our needs epitomize our humanity, then what a scary alternative this rejection represents. To be the shell of the man you once were.

Time -Pink Floyd

Life biased by the cautious eye of a filmmaker. Not that I am a film maker of course, it’s just that sometimes I see myself as a separate entity, I watch myself, my actions, my thoughts panning out. I can see myself in two dimensions, the me that is living, breathing, existing, and the me I imagine I am, the instinctive me that exists only in a world without self control. Problem is, sometimes I feel like I lose control of that latter dimension and the most banal, primate, base instincts fill my mind, and I can literally feel them corrupting me. In a world without God, I think that I can honestly say that I would be amoral, rebel without a cause. This is really truly difficult for me: this holding on to truth, life, and just goodness. I am so scared. Yet, I know instinctively that I shouldn’t be, because that is being hypocritical of the trust I boast about putting in God. Lord please be patient. I try. The world just seems so lonely sometimes. Like this poem I heard by Shane Koyczan today that talked about how loneliness is a strange thing because we all spend so much time at it, that some of us actually excel in it, but yet that none of us will ever be graceful at it. I think that is so apt but I can’t seem to find the words. If you know them please send me the link. Sorry about this strange depressed rambling entry.

I intended to write this nice long entry about friendships and stuff. Bugger, got very de-railed. Anyway, I was thinking about relationships (the regular platonic kind) and friendships and well, depressingly, how to tell if they are going to end or if they will last (I explained my penchant for the melodramatic right?) and well anyway, I came to this conclusion: people are about simple everyday things. There will always be extraordinary circumstances under which you will feel extreme emotions, but these are rarely representative of the regular. Most times, long standing relationships epitomize “nice” – moderate, not passionate, not intense, but sustainable over long periods of time. But life is made up of several shortcuts right? Several intense clips all jammed together like a badly pasted anthology. That’s where our extremes come from. But they are unsustainable, emotions that rarely crossover from clip to clip. Almost like Tamsin versus those Eustacia-esque moments. To think that Hardy’s pessimistic industrial outlook would still be very relevant to our lives.

Sorry for the randomness. I feel a bit like a bad juke box.

Me and Bobby McGee

People are like onions. Maybe that's why they make us cry. Hit by the potent stench of recognition. It’s the layers that get you in the end, peeling them back that causes the onion to screw your tear glands over.

“When you slice through an onion, you break open a number of onion cells. Some of these cells have enzymes inside of them, and when they are sliced open, the enzymes escape. The enzymes then decompose some of the other substances that have escaped from sliced cells. Some of these substances, amino acid sulfoxides, form sulfenic acids, which then quickly rearrange themselves into a volatile gas.

The gas reaches your eyes and reacts with the water that keeps them moist. This changes the chemical's form again, producing, among other things, a mild sulfuric acid, which irritates the eyes. The nerve endings in your eyes are very sensitive and so they pick up on this irritation (this is why our eyes sting when we slice onions). The brain reacts by telling your tear ducts to produce more water, to dilute the irritating acid so the eyes are protected. Your other reaction is probably to rub your eyes, but this will actually make the irritation a lot worse, of course, if you have onion juices all over your hands” – howitworks.com

You see! You see! People are far too complicated for their own good.

Know the most bizarre thing though? Simple, plain, in your face humanity is far less pretty to deal with. Be careful what you wish for.

Here with me - the bloody irony

Sometimes I get so angry with you guys it makes my blood boil. It doesn’t really but I just needed to say that. Instead I just feel sad. And then I feel needy and stupid for feeling sad. And then I (once again) decide to be independent and leave you alone so that you’ll all figure out that you need me and then come rushing back to me. And that inspires me to the border of anger. But even then. Bugger.

Then other times I realise that we’re all insecure, we just show it in different ways: lashing out, bravado, humour and what have you. So I hope that answers your question.

I don’t understand why I have so many Christmas songs. My player’s on the random play option you see. It seems to favour dance tracks and holiday tunes, which is completely irrelevant to anything in my life of course. If God’s speaking to me I doubt it’s through the music. Like “cure for the itch”. Like what the hell is that.

Faith.It was a toss up between Auld Lang Syne and Faith like a child. So you understand, the lesser of two evils.

I think that I’m naturally inclined to misery. I think we all are. I have these recurring images of me breaking up with a boyfriend I don’t even have. It’s like I need to miserable. The melodrama makes my life mean something. Maybe. I suppose that at some point we all need to learn that only sad housewives and maids watch daytime TV, and that Soaps are not at the popular height they were at with the bold and the beautiful. Like when _ asked me once why we’re just so damn over-dramatic, after I explained that it’s just a surface thing. Because that implies that inside we’re dead. More drama.

Oh god, I’m starting to sound like_. Bloody …

I remember the family tree _ and I made in sec 1 for the characters from Days of Our Lives. It got too complicated after a while so we gave up: far too much incest.

Like Egdon Heath. With it’s face “full of tragical possibilities”. And Eustacia Vye whose great dream was “ to be loved to madness”. You see, everyone is contrary… Happiness is mildly unsettling.

I truly do not understand how I came to acquire so many bubble gum pop and elevator jazz songs. Truly.

wish you were here

Sometimes just your existing can make me smile. Does that sound insane? I hope not. Thing is, now I’m pretty much affirmative that I’m just in love with the dream, the idea of you. Seems so bloody cliché. I suppose you know you have become that when everything you write can be summarised by some soda pop song, played in strange fast food joints on old top 40s shows. That's why I think I need to say good-bye. Don’t get me wrong. It's actually scarily comfortable being in love with a vision. You really believe in it; you get to experience the whole range of emotions. Just imposition. At base, men can be divided into about five basic stereotypes. 1. The bad-boy who's just dying to be saved (several time people's choice awardee!), 2. the saint, protector of all small animals, often bizarre things like cockroaches included, 3. the strange science guy to pseudo intellectual types, often disenfranchised, yet firm believers in their causes, 4. the jocks: the men that hide behind high talk and much bravado, appear too stupid to care but who knows and 5. the girl’s-best-friend-I-completely-understand types. Of course there are exceptions and more often than not there are compromises. I think first loves are always however stereotypes. Before you’re old enough to understand nuance and suggestion, the first is often a product of your own imagination. So maybe that’s why. Because I will always love you for what you are not, and worse, what you cannot be.

On a completely unrelated note, I think the word tactile is fabulous. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this now, about the significance of touch: how much it means, how much it suggests, how much we require it. And I suppose that there is no other way to encompasses everything so completely emotive in such a simple way, so clean, clinical, effective- tactile. Sometimes I think that if I could just touch you, hold you, kiss you, that everything would be better. But you know, every you refers to a different person, and that’s how I suppose I now, with absolute certainty, that what I believe is not true.