"We have an obligation."

I'm deep in the depths of dissertation week, or Hell week as it is commonly known amongst third years. Something i just found out is that because i am doing a joint honours degree, i have to write twice as many words as people doing single honours. I now judge anyone on a single honours course who is freaking out because they have to hand in 10,000 words next Monday. I think they are week and a laugh at their pain. 

I have now finished one of my English Essays, a 4000 word analysis of humanity and limitation on the works of Kazuo Ishiguro, and am hoping to have finished my 8000 word Dave Eggers dissertation by tonight, so that i can really focus on my 8000 word Sexy Vampire dissertation, which i haven't done nearly enough work on yet.

In re-reading all of Dave Eggers' books in preparation for this dissertation, i fell back in love with him (not that i ever fell out of love with whim, just that it had been a while since i read some of his books.). Probably my favourite passage in the whole of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is this exchange between Dave and a friend of his, where they plan out how the world should be.

“Get everyone together.”

“All these people.”

“No more waiting.”

“Means through mass.”

“It’s criminal to pause.”

“To wallow.”

“To complain.”

“We have to be happy.”

“To not be happy would be difficult.”

“We would have to try to not be happy.”

“We have an obligation.”

“We have advantages.”

“A luxury of place and time.”

“Something Rare and Wonderful.”

“It’s almost historically unprecedented.”

“We must do extraordinary things.”

“We have to.”

“It would be obscene not to.”

“We will take what we’ve been given and unite people.”

“And we’ll try not to sound so irritating."

It makes me want to get out of this damned library and do something with my life, but i can't, because i still have 10,000 words left to write by the end of the week.

Send me all your luck.

Sugar Kane

I can't help but be fascinated by her.

Bite me.

I have been on campus since 9 this morning. I just took what was supposed to be a short break, but what quickly turned into a 3 hour chat over drinks, with my friend Sarah. It made me very happy indeed.

I was telling her about how I watched Interview with the Vampire last night and couldn't take it seriously because of the joke in Bowfinger about how Tom Cruise didn't know he was in it. Well, i was trying to tell her, but i couldn't quite get the words out because i was crying with laughter. No joke in the history of cinema has ever made me laugh as much as that one, and every time i think about it, or watch that film, or see Tom Cruise being interviewed, it just gets funnier.

In other news, I finally decided on a title for my film essay. It's called "It's only OK to like sex if you're evil: Transgressive Feminine Sexualities in  Vampire Cinema" and it is so much fun. I love doing a silly degree!

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall..

 "Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary." 

 "When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed." 

 "...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy." 

The first thing i am going to do when i finish my dissertations is read His Dark Materials again. It has been too long.

Are dissertations meant to be this fun?

It's 2am. I'm in the library. I've been here since 4 this afternoon. I'm having so much fun!

I changed my film essay from a worthy but entirely depressing analysis of the representation of paedophiles in contemporary Hollywood cinema to one about vampires as signifiers of queer sexuality, and now i get to sit here for hours on end reading essays about Buffy, my favourite television show of all time.

I completely realize that it's dissertations like this that give film studies a bad name, but when i can spend 10 hours reading critical essays which make me laugh out loud, cry a little bit and make me excited to write 8000 words in the next 2 weeks, I really don't see how that's a problem.

Oh i do love being a geek.

"I shall call him Squishy."

I've begun to realize that i collect photos on particular themes. One of them is Jellyfish. It's rare that I'll come across a photo of a jellyfish online and not save it. For reasons she will surely understand, they remind me of my mum.

Cut through all the cryptic crap

I have just spent entirely too much time on this website: http://betterbooktitles.com/
I read about it in the Guardian. Basically a comedian and writer has taken some of the worlds greatest pieces of literature and re-named them so that people can find them more easily in bookshops. Here are a couple of my favourite examples. Can you guess the real titles?

It may not be big or particularly clever, but they do make me laugh.
(Redesign and titles by Dan Wilbur)

"He takes men out of time and makes them feel eternity."

Did you all have good Easters? I had a lovely Easter.

I accidentally got a job at one of the best ice-cream shops in the world; definitely the best ice-cream shop in England. It's called Boho Gelato and we make all the ice-cream downstairs and the mojito sorbet will make you believe Jesus is risen. By the end of the summer I'm going to have one giant, muscular scooping arm and one weedy little money taking arm, but i don't really care.

Yesterday i spend the day in the park with some friends drinking alcoholic ginger beer and reading Victorian ghost stories, then had a BBQ at my house, then went to a friend's gig. Brighton in the summer is too lovely, it makes writing dissertations very difficult indeed.

I also got an email from virtual-godmother extraordinaire Cristina Thorson, asking for new music to listen to in the summer months, which prompted me to make a pretty spectacular mix CD for her, which might just be the soundtrack of my summer. Those of you who are facebook regulars have probably noticed the 30 day song challenge thing that's sweeping the Internet. I've resisted thus far, but i thought i could maybe post it up here for the next month, with music videos, in case any of you want some new music to listen to.

So, number 1 on the list is your favourite song. This is nearly impossible to answer. Mine changes every day, but the one I've been listening to pretty consistently for the past few months, and which never fails to bring a smile to my face is Underwear by Pulp. I've already posted a video for that up here, so I'll go for my next favourite, which i have loved for longer, even if i now listen to it slightly less often. Enjoy.



Oh, and the title of this post is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, but is it about Jesus, or is it about the fact that the new series of Doctor Who has started? That's for me to know, and you to ponder.

Stop. Look. Listen.

By now you all know of my love for Amanda Palmer. Her music speaks to me in a way few other artists do. I may not listen to her stuff as frequently or as openly as i do other musicians, but if I'm feeling down, or angry, or in any way diminished then she is the one who i know can set me right. On her blog yesterday she wrote a post about a play she saw, and this part I thought was really beautiful.

This is something we do together. This is what theater does, what it’s for. Catharsis.
We’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
We go to the darkest places to feel things to the marrow, and think about them in a space made for thinking, feel in a space made for feeling.
Where it’s safe.

It was part of a post she wrote about seeing a play based on the Columbine school shooting, which happened 12 years ago yesterday. The play was a highschool play which the school banned the students from performing, until a local theatre allowed them to perform on their stage.She went on to write about the importance of allowing young people to express themselves through the arts. The end of the post i found particularly moving.

after everything we’ve learned….really?

really, shut the kids up?
shut them up for trying to tackle real art? for trying to say real things?
really, try to stop them from making art that doesn’t apologize and pander, art that swears, art that’s dark and mean and reflects like a jagged mirror?
really clamp your hand over their mouths when they decide to put on a play about the things that are ACTUALLY meaningful to them?
really?
….really?

marilyn manson said, when asked by michael moore in (“Bowling for Columbine”) what he would say to eric harris and dylan klebold if he’d had the chance to talk to them:
“I wouldn’t say a single word. I would listen to what they have to say, and that’s what no one did.”

do not stop listening.
if you don’t listen, they notice.
if you don’t listen, they get angry.
if you don’t listen, they turn the darkness inside out.
eventually, if you don’t listen, they shoot at you.
listen.
everywhere.
all the time.
until you fall dead in the ground, until your fingers fall off and your head hurts:
give the darkness an airtime, a venue, a canvas.
listen.
look.
listen.
you will hear what you what you need to hear.

Songs of innocence

A little something to brighten your day.

Macauley Culkin and Elijah Wood

Gary Oldman

Jim Morrison

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Sean Connery

I love these photos. Something about them just makes me unbelievably happy.