Yes We Can!

Finally, over 4 years after that story being written, it has an ending. And not just an ending, an amazing, awe inspiring, audaciously hopeful ending!

I stayed up until 6 in the morning watching the BBC coverage at East Slope bar with hundreds of other students, and it was the most fun, exciting and stressful night of my entire life. I didn't stop crying for roughly 2 hours after i found out Obama had won, i was that happy. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night, but i've been skipping around all day grinning at people like a mad thing.

Another good thing that happened today, which makes me rank November 5 2008 (because in England the votes came in on the 5th, i'm not a stupidhead who got the date wrong) as right up there on the cool day scale, is that i made a proposal to the drama society to direct Othello for the Brighton Festival. Brighton is England's largest arts festival, considered Edinburgh's little, but quickly growing sister, and my proposal was accepted! Come May, members of the general public and theatre going community will be able to watch a play I directed! I'm so excited i could scream, but i won't because the walls of my room are paper thin and i think Paul is trying to watch a film next door.

anyway, that's all i wanted to say. Life is good.

If you're not smiling already, then here's a postsecret that made me laugh.



Also check out today's a softer world comic, and put your mouse over the image, and think happy thoughts.

Sleep to dreamier sleep be wed, Pt. 3

The people called Americans continued to sleep. As we mentioned earlier, they existed in a collective nightmare, which was shaped and guided by their highest-ranking leaders, including the most creepy and - overtly, comically - evil-like person to hold high office since - well, the comparison is difficult. Who would compare, in a democracy at least? Would Thatcher rank this high? (Discuss.) Anyhow, this particular wretched person was named Cheney (Dick), and though everyone knew he was a bad man, there was a large group of the sleeping Americans who chose, apparently, to think of him as cute-bad, as opposed to truly bad-bad. That is, they knew that while in Congress he had voted against the honouring of Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela, and for logging the living shit out of every forest known to man, and against pre-school for disadvantaged children and about a thousand other things that seemed reasonable enough to reasonable people. But still they thought, well, yes, he is quite creepy and very evil-seeming in every conceivable way, but isn't he, somehow, so evil-seeming that he's actually kind of cute? Sort of like David Bowie in Labyrinth or Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet? You know, that kind of evil that's so ridiculous that you almost like the evil-doer, because they're so willing to go out and camp it up? This is what the sleepers of America thought about Cheney, who kept them living in a constant nightmare from which they could not awaken. He and his little friend, who looked like a turtle, told the Americans that the nightmare was a dream, that chaos was safety, that blood was gold, that their feet were actually their mouths, that leprechauns were hippos and that cookies were shrubbery. And so many sleeping Americans thought it all so ludicrous that they kept sleeping, as waking up would surely deprive them of such rich entertainment. Meanwhile, the other half of the American sleepers, those who wanted to awaken from the nightmare-dream, were trying like mad to awaken the sleepers and thus awaken the collective body of Americans. All had to awaken at once! And this was very hard, for everyone was very tired. What would it take, the wanting-to-awakens thought. How to rise from this state of near-coma? They kicked and screamed to no avail. They rang bells and threw cold water on the bed. But, in the end, do you know what did it? What woke up the willing sleepers and allowed the nation to rise from this red-black slumber? Neither do I. This story needs a good ending. Please send help.

Hopefully in a couple of hours we'll get the ending the story deserves. If not I'll just stop being American, because there's no point.

Sleep to dreamier sleep be wed, Pt. 2

The people called Americans could not, it seemed, wake up from this nightmare wherein their two highest-ranking elected leaders were so clearly the wrong people for their positions, so ill-meaning in every way, that the situation defied even Nixonian standards of White House-based nefariousness. The most fiendish player in this nightmare, as we were explaining in the last instalment, was the vice-president, whose name cannot be uttered here for fear of upsetting children and plants and clouds. Suffice it to say that he was more evil than the designers of Happy Meals or the makers of smokeless tobacco, and the Americans dreamt dreams of him, constantly and without end. The Americans as a group were asleep for many years and were experiencing wretched dreams full of exploding children and men beheaded on TV, of ever-present fire and screaming and eyes everywhere wanting murder. The Americans were trapped in, it was thought, one collective red-black dream, and the only way they could awaken from the dream was for most of the dreaming Americans to choose to wake up. But the problem - the very strange problem - was that half of those dreaming chose to remain in this dream. (Did we say dream? Have we been saying dream? It was a nightmare, of course. A nightmare unlike any other, a nightmare that felt like the wearing of a lead cloak without holes for air or sight.) So while about half of those sleeping wanted to awaken, the other half watched, indeed, lived in, this very upsetting dream full of flames and blood and said, "I think this dream is OK", or "This is the best dream to be dreaming right now", or "It would only get worse if I chose to awaken". This was, of course, very frustrating to those who wished to wake up. Those who wished to awaken stirred and turned restlessly. They grabbed the covers, they opened windows, they moaned and coughed and kicked. But nothing, it seemed, would work. The sleepers slept and slept and even, sometimes, nodded and smiled when they watched and listened to the two men leading their nightmare. The two men would say to them, "Have you enjoyed the nightmare thus far? Because if you love the aforementioned exploding children and endless fire, we have more so very much more! - of that, to come."

Concluding part comes tomorrow.

Sleep to dreamier sleep be wed

I'm reading this out at Write Club this week, because it's the night of the elections, and because i want as many people to know the true extent of Dave Egger's genius as possible. It's in 3 parts, Here's the first:

There was a group of people, called the Americans, who once had a very vivid nightmare, simultaneously. The nightmare, which lasted many years, was nightmarish in many ways - but one notable facet was that in this nightmare the vice-president of their country was someone so outwardly and cartoonishly evil that his existence seemed ludicrous and wholly unbelievable, even in a nightmare. In the history of nightmare-villains and movie-villains and villains drawn with crayons by troubled children, this man stood above them all, though he was not very tall. Or maybe he was tall, but it was impossible to tell, given he walked very much like a hunchback, his head set deep into his shoulders and favouring one side. This way of walking seemed suspect, but it was nothing compared with the way he spoke. He spoke out of a small and dark corner of his mouth, in a way that was so comically fiendish that it seemed a put-on. If an improvising actor, asked to conjure a bad man or perhaps a minion of Satan, conceived of such a way of talking, his acting coach would say, "No, no. Pull back. Way back. We're doing the vice-president here - not Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein." But this was indeed the way the vice-president spoke and walked. And his laugh? A mirthless thing, a chilling "Heh heh heh" (again, emitted from a dank corner of his mouth) accompanied by a forced shaking of his round fleshy back. Yes, yes, a fleshy back that was, like the rest of him, always sweating. Or it seemed always to be sweating, every inch of him, oozing with oil and perspiration and, perhaps, small brown-black worms that would leave and enter him via his pores, their bidding known only to him. Was he impervious to death? He seemed to be. Over the years of this nightmare-life, God had tried, four or five times, to kill this man, by striking his heart. But each time the man's heart was struck, the vice-president laughed his rat-rat-tat laugh and shook his fleshy back, mocking God in much the same way that vampires mock certain crosses, or, say, anal leakage mocks olestra.

I'll post part 2 tomorrow and part 3 on Tuesday, before i go to the bar to watch the elections broadcast live. Should be a long night!

Drink up, me' Harties, Yo Ho!

Spot the similarities.







I sense a recurring theme in my choice of costume for various events over the years. Do you see it too?

"Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order." Samuel Beckett

Do you think dyslexic people have difficulty dancing to "Y.M.C.A."?

I'm already grown up, i just get older

Alternative fashion inspiration, mildly pervy, whatever you wish to label it, Natalie Portman in Leon is pretty much the coolest kid in the world, and she dresses pretty damn well too!






Mathilda: How old were you when you made your first hit?
Léon: Nineteen.
Mathilda: Beat you!

Write club, Je convoite pour vous

Last week at open mike night, my friend Alex performed a rap about how he wished he was Jewish, and a rather racy love poem, for which he requested a 2 syllable name from the audience. I Yelled mine out and he performed the poem to me, which was hilarious if slightly embarrassing. Afterwards i thanked him, and he said that one day he would write me an original. Fast forward to last night at Write club, a society for writers of short fiction and poetry which we both attend, and he stands up, explains what happened at open mike night, and tells the group that he's written that original poem just for me.
Here is the poem, which i heard for the first time in front of about 25 people, most of whom i don't know. It was one of the most embarrassing and hilarious moments of my life thus far.

When I saw the one called Lucy,
How I wished she would seduce me,
Kiss me with those Thurman lips,
Straddle me with those Hayek hips,
Thinking of her, one on one,
Late at night, I’ve had my fun,
Down I go like the setting sun,
I can’t wait to make her – Whoa!
A little soon, I would say so,
This Lucy girl, she is no whore…

…Her homemade dress falls on my floor,
Dammit, I’m a man undone!
It’s a little weird for everyone,
First I rap ‘bout Judaism,
Now I’m rhyming ‘bout my jism,
Sorry all for all this filth,
It’s her that mused me! Blame the lilf,

Anyway, back to the song,
In all its many shades of wrong,
This Lucy makes my heartbeat restless,
Her Seberg body leaves me breathless,
I know that I’m no Michael Cera,
And that this poem will prob’ly scare her,
But I’m a cheeky little fuck,
And so I hope with any luck,
She’ll break my post-poetical tension,
Satisfy my crude intention,
See my spritely smiling face,
And let me get to second base.

I absolutely love it, and have a copy posted up above my desk. I especially like that details of our conversation last week have found their way in, like how i was wearing a dress i made myself, that i love Jean Seberg and kind of want to be her in Breathless, and that i have a deep and enduring love of Micheal Cera. Utter genius!

Je T'aime

I thank God, Allah, Buddha and Zeus for Longchamps new ad campaign.






Shame about the ugly blonde girl in it though, otherwise it would be perfect!

New Obsession

"Possibility isn't limited by technology. And it's certainly not limited by human imagination. What makes something impossible is the lack of cold, hard, cash." - Rob Beschizza

My beautiful and terrible best friend Kelsea-Jane introduced me to lookbook.nu, and now i have no life! As if i wasn't having trouble dressing myself already, seeing as everyone who inspires me sartorially is about 5 foot 2, size zero and has no breasts to speak of, and my 5 foot 8, size 12, boob and booty-liscious frame can't really carry off the same style. Now I have to look at cool Swedish and German people with perfect hair and impeccable fashion sense, before getting dressed into my uninspired wardrobe and facing the harsh climate of October on the south coast.

I've been obsessed with the sartorialist for some time, but that was always ok, because i knew i couldn't afford anything that those people were wearing, and if i could then it was probably being worn pre or post show by some infinitely enviable model or other. The people on lookbook are my age, sometimes even younger, and their clothes are affordable. This makes the whole thing so much worse because i know that i could get the clothes, probably the exact outfits, if i really wanted to, but where they look cool, relaxed, un-put-together and endlessly sexy, i would look like a desperate try-hard trying to dress like someone cool, relaxed, un-put-together and endlessly sexy. The distinction is obvious and very depressing.

If you're curious who i'm actually speaking about when i say these things, here's some fashion porn for you, direct from lookbook and my mildly fetishistic dreams. Enjoy.






The person who i really love, and who i check up on every day, is Nouk B. He makes a real effort with his photos, so that they do more than just showcase his amazing style. He is quite possibly the best dressed man in the entire world and i quite want to marry him. Can you blame me?