Statistical Embarrassment

I've just made myself a list. I love lists, and this one I thought about doing this morning, waking up on a hard floor in the middle of an empty living room, hoping I'd fall back asleep. I remembered the reason I initially had a Lovefilm membership (which I have not had for over a year, but do quite miss now I have free time to watch DVDs). The reason was to try watch all those famous / classic / highly regarded films that I never would think to watch. I got through a fair few, but today I actually tested myself.

I scrolled through the IMDb top 250 films and wrote down every film I haven't seen or can't remember much of. I wrote down 174 films. That means I have embarrassingly only seen 76 of the 'best films' of all time (arguably, depending which type of criticism one follows). Seventy six. That's pitiful. Especially considering just how many times I've watched some truly terrible films, I now feel like I have wasted a lot of film-watching time.

I did however watch Dear John and The Lucky One last week. These are both cheesy romantic films based on books by Nicholas Sparks, who also wrote The Notebook, which I've already seen. I now know how every story he will ever write will go. He chooses some interesting subjects, but the male lead is always part of a war, so goes away for some time, and the female tends to get engaged or have been engaged, so there is the third wheel, jealous-male type character, and their love is strong, of course, and they all enjoy spontaneous outdoor sex, and the men are also very handy people. In The Notebook he builds and does up a house for her, in The Lucky One he fixes her old boat, and in Dear John he charitably helps build a persons house with her. As much as Ryan Gosling, Channing Tatum and Zac Efron sold each of these movies, and someone has to keep making cheesy romance films to continue Tatum and Efron's careers, I really don't see any point in another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks book. So stop, Hollywood, please.

In contrast to what I just said, there is this film buzz at the moment about The Paperboy, which has just premiered at Cannes, being a very successful and surprisingly good film, which stars Zac Efron. So I may have to eat my own words. But I hope whatever happens, he continues to bless my screen with his beautiful face / body.

Cold May

My throat feels swollen and horrible. Illness is creeping upon me, and it's the worst timing. I had nothing to do for a week, and was fine. Worked for four days, getting ill, and still got one day more to work. And just got a call from the local-ish pub asking to do my first shift on Saturday, 11am, lunch shift and dinner shift, and work Sunday too. I need to be better by then. Can't be infecting everybody's lunches!

I am also really angry with one person, but because they are ignoring my texts, its really hard to be angry with them. Like, I'd have to go out of my way to tell him I'm angry, and he's not worth all that trouble. It's really frustrating. I want to hate him, but he hasn't done anything that I can hate, because it's his lack of action I hate. GAH.

On the plus side, I'm having a good weekend, and my mind is too busy to worry about silly things. I hope that all this emotion I have that seems to be floating in time and space, waiting for who it belongs to, can grasp reality soon. I'm not comfortable having so many emotions that I can't deal with. It makes my dreams really dense and boggy, like dirty water. They make no sense and I can't enjoy them... So I have been waking up promptly and am now ill. Catch 22?

I'm also playing Diablo 2 again. For absolutely no reason. My computer isn't compatible with it, so it's a bit dodgy, but its good to come home and hack up some monsters and undead folk. Takes the edge off all my loose emotions.

Hopefully the next entry will describe how successful my first shift is. Fingers crossed!

Come Clean

Today, I started my adaptation of the book 'Come Clean'. It's a book I just saw one day, looking at me on a shelf in Waterstones, I read the blurb and thought 'yeah, this is a good use of the £6 I have in my purse'. It is a really bizarre story, and a very amazingly written story of two different things - one girl having to deal with a wrong accusation, timed perfectly with the story of that girl and her brother growing up. It's perfect, in my head, it's like this perfect little circle and it's so emotive, there are so many striking and fucking memorable images that I am really excited about writing it. Hollywood can't make a sequel out of it either, so HA. And it would be utterly pointless in 3D. It's about story, and I will be really nice to get dug in.

This does mean that Impressions is officially 'pending', I am not working on it, but one day I will finish it. Episode three is a bigger bitch than one and two, for a multitude of reasons, and I hope that one day I can turn around with a fresh eye and think 'scrap half of it, I know what to do with it now'. But for now, I need to let it rest. For now, Dali feels too young for my head to get into. Her problems and woes are far from anything I can think of right now, so we're not meshing well. We've had a small falling out, but I'm sure that there is more to our relationship than this; there's always more to come.

I don't know how long it will take me, but I want to do it justice. So today is the beginning of the Come Clean adventure.

Life On Mars

I had a dream about you again. Whenever it used to happen, I would wake up feeling guilty. I'd wake up with this weight in my heart, and it felt horrible, and I couldn't shake it for so long. But last night was different. Last night, in my dream, I knew I had something good inside me, and a happiness about us that I wanted you to know about. I didn't want us to be awkward or weird any more - I wanted it to be the way it used to be. I wanted to give you the present I'm actually making in real life, and I wanted to ask you to forgive me, because I know I did some stupid things, and tell you that I don't want to dwell on what once happened anymore, to focus on the fact that we were once so close, and that could still be the case. I wanted to tell you that I missed those moments, those long days we had together, we'd laugh about the smallest thing for hours, we'd just sit and eat and watch whatever program we were into, drink wine and giggle endlessly. I know that things changed when you moved house, but I genuinely believe that no one person is to blame for what went wrong, it was just an inevitable shift in our lives. I wanted to hold your hand and play with your nails, to play with your hair, to pull funny faces and show you my massive belly and just feel that closeness again. I miss it. I miss you.

You were right. I do need some time to be single, and to figure out things about myself I've never had to before. I'm doing it now, Soph, because I know you were right, and I want to be me again - the me that you could tell everything in the world too, and not the me that you ignored in the classroom.

I'm changing, and I feel it, but I have no idea what into. Either way, I want to say thank you. You'll get your present soon. I just need to remember your address first.

Never Let Me Go

I wrote this a while ago. I didn't want to post it at the time, but I think I can now. I think enough has been said, and enough has been done.



Book 1: James

I'm in love with my best friend. I don't know what to do about it, because we didn't make it more than a week as a couple, yet I cannot live without him in my life. I'm a teddy bear and he is my stitching, and most people don't notice him there, but when you get close you can tell that he holds together every part of me. And for the first time, I don't long for him more because he's unattainable. I mean, he might be attainable, I'm not sure if he ever thinks of me that way, or of what we could be, but more than that I just can't lose him as a friend, but being his friend makes me love him more every day, in a cruel circle I'm stuck inside. It sounds so childish, and it probably is, because I've known him that long, but there's something I can't say no to. There's something in me that needs him in more ways than I care to admit to, and its really fucking scaring me, but I can't ignore it, hard as I try.



Book 2: Matthew

I'm suffering from a lack of closure. I was in love with a guy who got lost - even he can't find himself, who he used to be, and its heartbreaking. He was amazing in so many ways and I don't think he ever knew that, and I wish I could bring that guy back to tell him, but he's not there anymore. It's like trying to talk to a picture - it looks the same, but it's all 2-dimensional, with false emotion and the pretense of remembering who he once was. I sometimes get these pangs, like a harp player plucking my heart strings, and I long to know him again, to talk to him, to be near him and just know that he's around. Obviously I took him for granted, and I feel crap about it, but I want to be able to tie up the frayed string of our relationship. Closure is so hard to find when you don't know where to look for it.


In other news, I watched 'Never Let Me Go' yesterday. Jesus Christ that film is depressing. Like, more so than the Notebook. Why did nobody warn me?

Paint Your Palette Blue and Grey

Today, I'm going to start drawing again. Its been years, so this could go horribly wrong, but I want to get into it again; like drinking Starbucks or joggings, its something you have to do continually before you really feel 'pro', and get results. I don't know what I would even do with the drawings, but I guess I've got to run the marathon before I figure out where to put the trophy.

And, as I'm in the mood for artistic stuff, here's the sultry tones of Charlie singing a cover of the Don McLean classic 'Vincent', a song I've always loved, and I particularly enjoy this version.