Postcards From Italy

in which boys prove once again to be the biggest banes

2009-06-12T01:25:09Z

I'm sorry, but there's ABSOLUTELY NO WAY you can put a positive spin on telling a girl that perhaps she secretly enjoys being raped, no matter how much of a joke that was meant to be. Not in any case. It's even more pathetic if you're trying to get the girl's attention.

I swear, sometimes boys are the shittiest and saddest pissups in the world.

Welcome to the Yorkheads!

2008-10-21T21:03:53Z

It's been 11 days since I've been in the UK, and I have to say I'm having lots of fun! I went to Topshop today for the student discount sale thing and bought a winter coat - 75% wool - and I'm pleased as a polecat. Several disheartening realisations upon arrival have, however, somewhat dampened the mood.

1. Eating out in the UK is bleddy expensive. I keep making offhand currency conversions in my head and I think oh wordy life must! be coming to an end why is food so expensive!!!!11!11
2. I can't cook to save my life. I tried to fry onions yesterday and they came out black as my black heart. And today I boiled broccoli and along with it all their nutritional goodness. None of my cooked meals so far have turned out quite the way I expected them to. Then again, there's nothing much one can hope for a tasty meal when everything's just thrown into a a pot of boiling water.
3. Every time I eat something out of a can I feel a portion of my brain turning into mush.
4. It's FREAKIN FREEZIN. I'm continually amazed at how four layers of clothing can fail you keep you warm when the wind comes ablowin'. I can't believe it's only October and it's already 7 degrees out. York is surely too northward for any sense to come out of education :(
5. Drinking, apparently, cures all ailments. My flatmate was scalded with boiling water, and was told by a paramedic to drink more so the pain would subside.

On the other hand, I'm pretty much settled in :) I'm still adjusting to how the timing of everything is different. Where I used to stay up late chatting with Sounisians I find that it is now in the evening. And I find football matches awkwardly timed. But everything seems to be fine. People are friendly enough when they are drunk, although most people seem to be drunk most of the time.

Lessons are boring as crap. I fell asleep in my Politics lecture, although in my defence it didn't seem very informative. A part of me wishes things were a little more challenging here, but then again I don't mind the extra time for reading. I want to write papers. To discover the world with insight. But hopefully it'll be better when the weeks have gone by.

So, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN! What's been going on with your life! I am keen to find out.

I would write more, but I have to shower. The paranoid android in me still insists on showering everyday, even though that is apparently not necessary, but I don't dare touch my pillow with a (or as I imagine) dirty head.

needs help

2008-09-16T16:40:35Z

Hi guys, I need some help in making a decision

For uni I would like to learn a language - each "level" is about a uni year long. I want to study Japanese but problem is I'll be studying it at level 3, which is the highest level they currently offer, and I'll be done with learning all I can possibly learn from the uni in one semester. Should I study Japanese there and finish it with some middling proficiency (whereby I wouldn't be able to advance further) or should I pick up a new European language (something like Spanish teh Sexiez) where there are more than enough levels to occupy my entire time at uni. Plus I can also learn the language to a reasonably high level than compared to a smattering of knowledge for two languages

comments plz? thanks :) I don't know what I should do yet.

get me away I'm dying

2008-08-02T15:45:59Z

Dissolving into my bed with such ease these days as is the ease in which I slip into a sober sombre moods, I have to admit that I am heavy bored. I've been stuck in front of the telly, I've been reading the bible. 5 more episodes, 100 more pages. I have all this energy, all this time, but nothing to direct it toward. I gloss, I picture, but nothing sinks in that could hit me in the head with such force of understanding that would have me leaping from these sheets with joy. I roll to the other side, I cry, and I go back to sleep. And I hide while waiting for this grave emptiness to pass. What of joy then? Joy morphs into the heartbeat of my head, pushing through ideas which should be felt and not thought. It could be more specific; the state of the world, the state of my life, this sense of helplessness I seem to be sunk under these days. But it isn't true, because the only thing I want to do is to do nothing and wait for death. Until this wave passes, and everything blends into pale vagueness.

Recently revealed was a troubling revelation about the life I should live and what I should give (or what should be taken) that would be a life that one is meant to live. But I hold this knowledge at a suitably chilling distance, observing from far away the meaning of my being. It's the usual conundrum - begging for understanding and cowering away when the purpose is understood - what has been, to date, the story of my life. So instead of trying to sort out my life, instead of trying to smooth out its rumpled inconsistencies, I hide, and I wait for this incredibly compelling sense of purpose to pass. I feel myself being diced into wholly unconnected blocks; one for myself, one for someone else, the rest a crumbling heap hidden in an obscure corner. I am at the forefront of either a major breakthrough or a major breakdown. I can't decide what it is, neither am I too keen to find out. So in the meantime, I hide in bed, waiting for time to pass quickly enough that this liquid fragility will solidify.

I have these great dreams of what I want to do. Detailed plans of several different lives that I could lead mapped out in my head, waiting to be realised with the smallest of steps. Yet instead of the smallest of steps that I should be taking I stand paralysed because I fear the greater plan that somehow was missed in all the missives about the small print and the cloudy bay. I stand and I think about the last major commitment that I made which ended with me permanently damaged. I write, I sing, I think, but not well enough that would point me with certainty in any direction. I think, and I become sad. Or happy, depending on the circumstance. And I look at the thought which produced emotions so far swung in wild directions, and I get confused.

When all fails, they say, look to the one great comforter who was, and is, and is to come. The solid rock which never wavers, never gives in. But I imagine I am in a funnel, and as time passes, my world narrows and I realise there is only one exit from which I flow. On any other day it is comforting; maybe on a deeper level it soothes, but right now, when everything lies an unreal picture, I lie on my bed and wait.

stolen from Jade first, Peggy second

2008-02-20T14:59:44Z

you are olivedrab
#688E23

Your dominant hues are green and yellow. There's no doubt about the fact that you think with your head, but you don't want to be seen as boring and want people to know about your adventurous streak now and again.

Your saturation level is higher than average - You know what you want, but sometimes know not to tell everyone. You value accomplishments and know you can get the job done, so don't be afraid to run out and make things happen.

Your outlook on life can be bright or dark, depending on the situation. You are flexible and see things objectively.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

so others get violet, or pretty light colours, and I get drab. *is resigned*

appellations @ 2008-02-03T17:37:00

2008-02-03T09:39:45Z

*has succumbed to ridiculously overpriced chocolate jaffa cakes*

*and percy pigs*

..yummy!

how do you want your toast? very well done, please.

2007-12-18T17:46:53Z

I was hoping for some supper, so about an hour ago I decided to toast a piece of pastry I bought from the local bakery this morning (it was called crab puffs).

1. Rain puts pastry into the toaster and sets the timer for 10 minutes. Ha! said she, this time I remembered to turn the power on! I shall not be thwarted!

2. 15 minutes later, mother bursts out of her room and yells WHERE IS THE FIRE!

3. Rain remembers she was toasting a piece of pasty and catches a whiff of a horrible mixture of toasted pastry goodness and the house on fire.

4.

Pictures of ruin. The crab is still, thankfully, visible, although slightly burnt.

Slightly burnt bread. Oh, it's just a sheen of shiny black fur.

5. Whilst busy snapping pictures of the damage, burnt smell wafts throughout the house. The entire family chokes.

Danke. XD

History

2007-12-05T17:30:33Z

I just finished David Fromkin's A Peace To End All Peace

I found a quote from Leo Tolstoy and I think it describes my sentiments pretty aptly. "And consequently nothing was exclusively the cause of the war, and the war was bound to happen, simply because it was bound to happen. Millions of men, repudiating their common-sense and their human feelings, were bound to move from west to east, and to slaughter their fellows, just as some centuries before hordes of men had moved from east to west to slaughter their fellows."

David Fromkin's take makes history so.. inevitable. A plays B against C and distorts the truth, presenting a romantic picture of D to E, subsequently turning against F to push some secret agenda which nobody knew of. Rinse and repeat. You can see so many parallels between the post WWI situation and the current wars we are facing now, yet is it too idealistic to rue the "what could have beens" if only we knew?

I don't understand. It's not so much the fact that people are over-ambitious and will seek to conquer all that they can put their hands on, it's more of if we already knew that humans are so fallible, why do we persist in entrusting so much power in the hands of a concentrated group of individuals? It's times like this where I wish we could freeze the heart; even if there is no love, there can be no war either.

Which is why we read books. Books present a way out; books are insulated, there cannot be too many factors involved. X is going to be betrayed by Y, because Y is the villain, and there is no Z to suddenly descend upon us to wreck the story simply because it would not be good story telling. The enemy of Attolia is the Mede, and not some other power that decides to invade Attolia because the government was replaced by a cabinet with imperialistic tendencies. Only in real life we find the Bolsheviks suddenly in the picture after years of a Czarist Russia, the picture dramatically altered because Woodrow Wilson had a stroke. People appear from nowhere to change the face of history. We can only hope, but not expect an Ender to save the day with his blissful innocence.

In books all the facts are presented. We know that Kemal tried to play all the Allied powers against each other to win security for Turkey. We know that Lloyd George wanted the entire Middle East for Britain all whilst hiding behind Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points. We are equipped with the power of hindsight to rue the missed chances for peace and a better ending. With this hindsight we hope that we will learn not to miss the opportunities again. Yet can we persuade smokers to quit smoking because it kills them? Foresight is just as elusive today as it was thousands of years ago, and sometimes it's easy to be overwhelmed by the helplessness that the world will spin round in the same direction, over and over again.

"So young and so disillusioned", was what a friend commented several months ago. There's just a limit to how much a person can be disappointed before losing faith.

and Pol Pot comes to mind...

2007-11-30T03:32:55Z

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,

This year I've been busy!

Last Friday I invaded Iraq, broke it, and couldn't glue it back together before Mom got home (-1012 points). Last Tuesday I stole avian_xj's purse (-30 points). Last Wednesday I pulled aged_crone's hair (-5 points). In June I committed genocide... Sorry about that, willow_41z (-5000 points). In November I ruled Iran as a kind and benevolent dictator (700 points).

Overall, I've been naughty (-5347 points). For Christmas I deserve a lump of coal!

Sincerely,
appellations

_{sorry about that! ._.}