Job Hunting Sucks

And the sky is sometimes blue.

But it really, really, really sucks when you don't have a decent internet connect and can't even access the damn page you need because the web has decided to be slower than molasses in a properly cold January. Someone hire me? Please?

If someone would lend me a quiet corner it would be much appreciated.

Well, I'm back to having a story. Even better, I have two that I'm working on. One a fanfic type thing (because that's always fun) and the other was something I dreamed up a few years ago and started have figured out a way to make it work. Woohoo. Except things aren't that easy. I don't have a place to write. I can't even read in my bed because I have the bottom bunk, never mind write in it. Of course, the room doesn't have a desk which might just be as well because I know that I wouldn't be able to make the other two girls treat it as a desk and not a storage area. Grrrr.

It's weird. I have to work. When I would normally be writing, or day dreaming. I've also noticed that I've stopped doodling. I doodle, and scribble on paper. I need to be paid for making things up, that is all.

Oooh, I'm on a roll here, blogging without any reason to.

ITunes is being annoying, they don't have a group i'm looking for, nor do they have the theme song to "Firefly." THIS is why I used Kazaa, because you couldn't get the stuff that you would find there anywhere else. How else would I have found out about Clubbed to Death by Rob D, or Counting Crows, Idlewild, Yeah Yeah Yeah, the Strokes, and far too many that I would probably get wrong because i can't remember their names/the internet made remembering titles pointless.

so yeah, going to download more stuff now.

When did Malcolm Gladwell start a blog? It would be my new work obsession, except that I "don't" have time to surf the internet at work, I'm far too busy pretending to be busy for that. Just finished Blink, which has got me thinking and appreciating some of his ideas, and he writes for the New Yorker (lucky!!!).

I take books too seriously. Part of me knows that books are not definitive (nor are magazine articles, although I'm always shocked that it was some person like me who writes those things), but I tend to take things written in books seriously. Picked the habit up in school and could never get rid of it. Alas, I recently read a book by Kate Fox called Watching the English which is enjoyable, especially if you're recentlly moved to England for a bit. As American, I find the class system interesting, especially since it appears to have this weird contridiction of class not equalling money (I knew that, but it just doesn't make sense). But here's my question -- if the goal of most lower and middle middles is to try and fool everyone into believing that they are really more genteel, why do they persist in doing things that immediatly mark them as being lower middle? And would a book like Fox's make a difference? (Perhaps this is only an American thing, social climbing).

I ask because I'm seeing a guy who says, pardon when he didn't quiet catch what I was saying. Fine, except that now I know that's a lower middle thing, and I'm put off by it (associating lower middle with other things -- like social status and poorness), and I keep inventing reasons to not like him, for instance, that he doesn't bother to take notice of the time when he knows that I take the tube home and that the tube closes at midnight (or as I learned last night, just a little past). But he likes me, a lot, or he thinks that he likes me, which amounts to the same thing. Do I like him? As more than a friend? That's a good question.

Still waiting for the Aussie to call me. Oh, why wasn't I paying attention to when he said he would be back from South Africa (add that to the countries I want to visit). Will txt him Friday.

My throat hurts again. And I ate something which I probably shouldn't have today. I've decided that the best bet is to get rid of everything and throw caution and money to the win. I never want to see another turkey sandwhich again. Never ever ever.

Just because you really needed to know that.

First of all, blogger has been really weird lately.

Second, I have been in an awful dry spell lately. It's just that I don't have a place to write. Everything closes really early, and as much as I love my computer, it's not the way I write (on Dante, maybe, but not Derrida). London, or perhaps my apartment, is making me lack inspiration. When I get back to the States, I'm getting a single, and I'm going to hole up and write write write. Its been over a week since I wrote something good, and i can't decide if that was actually good. Another problem is work, I spend eight hours in a room in a flat with my boss, and I don't even get to escape for lunch. I need to come up with a story, just something to spend my life on. Now, I'm with these people who I doubt even have imaginative lives, they will just talk talk talk. And I have these good ideas, but I can't get them written down at all. It's exactly like being tired without being able to go to sleep.

Rare Ould Times

Gripes and Observations

My Brazillian girls went out to a pub out in Acton to celebrate St. Patrick's day. I miss Boston, I miss St. Patrick's Day in the States where everyone knows why they're celebrating, and even if they're still getting drunk, its of a different sort. Let me put it this way: I was queuing for the bathroom and a girl asked my why Saint Patrick was famous. Now there are a few reasons, he brought Christianity to Ireland, he's Ireland's patron saint, he used the shamrock to explain the trinity. I chose to go with the most obvious. He cast the snakes out of Ireland, I said. The girl replied that I was only the third person here she had asked who knew that. I would have tried the experament myself, but it was too depressing. Although, I went one better, when people asked why I wasn't wearing a Guiness hat or badge, I replied (with a lie, although it's kind of true -- thank you Grandma Liz) that my grandmother was an O'Connor. (Also claimed that my name was Maureen, which confused the South Africans a bit). You would think the celtic jewellery would have been enough.

I think I ended up explaining to a few people that Americans celebrate St. Paddy's as a celebration of a heritage. There are a few cities which dye their rivers, people serve green beer, and if St. Patrick's falls on a Friday, most of the Arch-diocies allow their parishoners to forgo their Lenten fast to enjoy corned beef.

Trouble of one sort

One of my friends had to go to the hospital last night. She fell down the stairs and re-injured her tailbone which she had fractured four years ago. Poor thing. She's going to be all right, as there's nothing we can do but let the bone heal itself.

And the flat made a friend last night as one of our neighbors was coming in while I was waiting for the paramedics/ambulence. He was kind enough to wait around with me while I waited for them, and then stopped by today to see if my friend was all right. Sometimes the world's okay, you know.

Trouble of another kind

I'm sort of seeing two guys. One's an Aussie, he's much older than I am, an accountant for BP, and bears a passing resemblence to Matt Damon. The other is English (by way of Irish grandparents), is a computer programmer, and doesn't look like anyone except maybe a very dorky Weasley. I fancy the first, and have a passing interest in the second. Well, the second makes me laugh, and is nice, but not attractive. Except the second has an interest in me, and the first is in South Africa on holiday at the moment and I haven't heard back from him since we went out (the first also has excellent taste in movies and television -- we spent an hour discussing South Park and Family Guy). So, I'm waiting to see if the Aussie calls me back, because I can't remember when the hell he's suppose to be back from his holiday. And luckily for me the Weasley is away for the weekend.

Will keep you posted.

Oh Happiness.

ITunes has the Daily Show and the Colbert Report availble for download!!!!! Now, I can introduce my flatmates to the glory of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert!!!!

I'm the happiest fangirl in England right now. Now if only it were individual clips of the show rather than the entire episode...

::sings the daily show theme in starbucks::

The boss has this great idea to reduce spam, which is to start charging for e-mail.

As usual, my boss has failed to grasp the internet, and the way that techonology, works. I use Gmail and rarely ever see the spam that floods my inbox. Mozilla's Thunderbird is also great in this respect, far superior to Outlook. I've tried to explain to him that if businesses or people don't want to get spam there is a simple solution, don't put up your e-mail address on the web as an e-mail address. Its amazing how much spam my main address gets (currently the spam folder is at 444); my other e-mail, which i rarely give out and never use for posting only has 4. I've also tried to explain to him that many people (say, people in their 30's and younger) would just move to other messaging services, and that many websites do messaging internally, or that many communities have spouted because e-mail is free, and that making people pay would change an entire culture, and probably not for the better. For instance, in middle school and high school, I was part of an e-mail group called Cabin X. It was nice to go home and read ten e-mails about our lives, Star Trek Voyager, and the X-Files. I couldn't find people with the same level of interest in my hometown, it was nice to have a group I could talk to (even if I've never met them). However, if I had to pay I doubt that would have happened because I had no way of paying for things on-line back then, and I doubt that any of the others did as well. And I doubt that we would do frivolous things like try to start up the e-mail group every few months.

The fault is believing the e-mail equals lettes. E-mail has ceased to be letters for a long time, it has become something more and different.

Some of the casting for Stardust has been announced. My prediction is that this should be a lovely, lovely film as the book/illustrated novel was good but not great, but it would make a better movie anyway. The book was released in two versions: illustrated, like a comic, and just words. From what I've been told, the just words one is lacking something.

Might I say thought, that I love the casting (aintitcoolnews provides info). Claire Danes has been one of my more favorite actresses over the years, and Charlie Cox just looks like Tristan (he can also play the innocent very well, I've seen him in Casinova and Merchant of Venice and have liked what I've seen). At least Neil has confirmed that Mr. Cox will indeed be playing Tristan (yay!!!!).

Pardon me, I'll just keep bouncing around for a bit.

Wishful Thinking and Happy Birthdays

Happy Birthday to me, well, almost happy birthday, tomorrow's really my birthday.

Feeling kind of down today, it seems like everyone's busy and I'm stuck being not busy. Didn't get paid last week (it's a long story involving my boss's bank), and I'm looking for another job on the off chance that this bank problem becomes a sort of permentant fixture.

On the other hand, I'm at the British Library, which is a perfect place for reading and writing and well constructed. If only internet weren't so expensive.

Went to see an exhibition at the Tate Britain yesterday, it was The Gothic Imagination: Fuseli, Blake, and the Romantic Imagination and while I thought that much of the exhibit was rather good, I wish it were a bit more intertextual, drawing better connections between these paintings (or the style of the paintings) and later writers and artists. At the end of the exhibit, the curator did something of the sort, showing clips of movies which drew inspiration from Fuseli's "The Nightmare" (which someone had no idea what they were writing about when they said that the subject of the painting is not definite, or didn't bother to look up nightmare in the O.E.D and know that the word referres to incubi and succubi which were thought to sit upon a sleeper's chest and drain away their (sexual) energy through the night). Yet, that seems as if it were the simplist element that could be pulled from the exhibit. There certainly is a connection between the paintings chosen and film, especially those from German Expressionism and any later films which were influenced by them, but the technical influence, the use of mise en scene, and lighting, and techinique are ignored for sensation.

More delightful was going into the bookshop attatched to the exhibit and seeing my favorites, including Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Angela Carter's Fairy Tales, Marianna Warner's from beast to blonde, and Katherine Briggs collection of English Folklore and Fairy Tales, as well as Edward Gorey. That, my friends, is heaven to me.

My computer has decided to work again! Yay.

Lot has happened the past couple of weeks. At the age of 22, I'm finally figuring out the dating habits of my generation. A kiss does not mean anything, spending lots of time kissing isn't a guareentee of anything, and if he says that he wants a date with you, he still probably doesn't.

I've seen three really awesome shows. "Embers" with Jeremy Irons, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" with Kathleen Turner, and "Measure for Measure" at the Royal National Theatre (my favorite theater of all time because it's lively and the seats have leg room). Measure was def. my favorite production. It moved at a movie like pace and was well done, although I'm not sure what Lyssa would have thought about it. The production made me think about the Duke's actions, and whether or not his punishment of Angelo was fair. Not so much the end result, but the methods employed by the Duke, especially since much of the tension of the fifth act is due to the Duke's seeming as if he is on Angelo's side and then switches, and the point is to humiliate Angelo as much as it is to implicate him. But why is the Duke allowed to decieve everyone? And why is marriage considered punishment (as two of the characters are married, unwillingly, in the end)?

Stuff to think about.