Right, so I moved back to Exeter two days ago and we've only just got internet - it's sooner than we expected to get it, but our router seems to be made of fail and the only way I've managed to get a connection is by Mega Long Ethernet Cable of Doom. I'm one level down from the router, you see. Anyone who actually wants to enter the house is gonna trip and die. *thumbs up*

So I'm moved in, I've filled my food cupboard, ordered some of the books for my course, just started getting used to all the walking that being a student in Exeter entails and I've seen a few people for the first time in months. I think this officially means that I'm back.

Also, if you like sex, drugs and creepy pictures in attics*, you should go watch Dorian Gray. Like, right now. Why are you still here?





*And Oscar Wilde.

Not much going on at the moment. I spent my last few days in Exeter either staying up far too late with Yksi and Rhosyn or tidying and cleaning the house to the tune of Matt making lists and commenting on my mould cleaning technique. He seems to think that doing everything at the last minute is not a viable option. I've been employing the last-minute method for twenty years and it's worked out for me so far. How do you tell an obsessive-compulsive social retard that you know what you're fucking doing and his comments on how late you sleep in are not helpful?


Now that I'm home, my time has mostly been spent playing Rock Band and reading Harry Potter. I started again from The Philosophers Stone and loudly feigned surprise at the plot twists.

"He's a what?"

"She wants him to be on the Quidditch team? Oh, that's a relief!"

"Oh gosh, I never expected it to be Quirrel!"


And my laptop doesn't appear to be working, so I won't be on MSN. Phone me if you want to get in touch. I am a sad and lonely rat. And there's one song on Rock Band that I can't play on Hard. Woe is me.

Oh, and I've been watching that 5-part Torchwood series, but I'll comment on that when it's finished.

Where is my brother with those jelly babies?

It's time for another week-long creative writing exam. This time I don't have to write a self reflective essay, but the tasks I have to choose from are a bit longer.

( The exam paper )

( My ideas )

So I'll definitely be doing question 1, and I can't decide between the others. Question four would be interesting but difficult. Question 2 might be boring and I don't really have a proper idea for question 3.

Anyone have any input? Your own ideas you don't mind me using, additions to my ideas, or just feedback on which of my ideas you liked?

I'm not very good at poetry, but I've written some poetry stuff for my creative writing course and I thought I'd share it with you.

This is the ballad of Jack the Ripper.

This is a short series of poems and set pieces that chronicle a woman's mental breakdown. Read the author's note.

The first is jaunty and cheerful. The second is angsty and intellectual. And I might be wrong about terminal velocity O_o

This is the best game ever.

Here is a link to all of the Twilight books.

You have to pick a chapter, scroll down randomly and pick out a paragraph. Then you have to find everything that's wrong with it - all the clichés, the bad writing, comma rape (thanks Dekaff), the over-amorous zeal with which the author wields her thesaurus, over-use of the word "chagrin" and anything that just makes you cringe.

Then you re-write the paragraph so that a normal person might read it and quite like it.

Warning: the penmanship is so bad that you'll want to cry. You might have to get drunk before you play this game.

Edit: New game - write Twilight fanfiction that's better than the actual novels.

From what I've tasted of desire, I'll hold with those who favour fire, but if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is just as great and will suffice.

I'm well literary, me.

But seriously, I think the human race will do OK. If we can't get out before the sun explodes, we'll be in trouble, but if we find a way to travel fast enough and make it out of the blast radius in the next... wow, we have hundreds of millions of years, don't we? I think we may have evolved into something else by then. Will we still count as humans then? But yes, I think we'll be OK. And even after the sun explodes, planet Earth will be fine. Some life may even still exist, somewhere, for a while.

My housemates, on the other hand, have been hitting things with a hammer. The future looks bleak for them, I'm afraid.

Wow, why isn't Writer's Block like this more often?

I'd usually recommend something full of fantasy and plot and suchlike, something at the start of a series that would guarantee reading material for months, something like Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett, but the timing is right for this one...

You have 13 days to read Neil Gaiman's Coraline before the film comes out. It's about a girl with normal parents, the kind that love her but never have time for her. She goes wandering, finds a secret door and emerges in a world full of Doppelgangers with buttons for eyes. Her new parents love her and shower her in attention... but maybe a bit too much.

Then things go all creepy and there's also a cat, so you should read it.

Also, the film is directed by Henry Selick (the guy what did Nightmare Before Christmas.)

So. My creative writing task this week is to find some ballads and do a presentation on them, and I went for Somerset ballads (well, folk songs really.) The best title I found was "Hey for Zommerzet-Shire (Lively delineating how jocund they be, that Jerk it, and Ferk it, under the green-wood tree.)"

Also, otilu  had this idea:

Give one of my characters a topic. Any topic. They will then proceed to write a short piece on it. It can be an object, a philosophical concept, a person... anything goes.

I asked her for Yoda's views on l33tspeak, LOLspeak and the like, so you should be extra mean to me. Here's a list of characters:
( List of characters )
</lj>

I finished reading listening to The Graveyard Book a couple of days ago. The ending left me with an empty, unfulfilled feeling. Without giving too much away, it felt like the end of Pirates of The Caribbean, with all the excitement over, Elizabeth in an ordinary, boring life and separated from the other characters with no chance of a reunion. It was sort of supposed to be a happy ending, but I didn't share Bod's enthusiasm for the world outside the graveyard.

I have a wonderful song to share with you:





And now I'm off to finish some more pictures. (Bob - you will be happy to hear that I'm doing yours now.)

Urgh. I've been trying to finish off my creative writing journal so that I can revise for my Renaissance and Revolution module in the next two days. I have to sort out this celebrity big brother parody in which the housemates are Hitler, Gandhi, Father Christmas and Elvis, I have to finish off a magazine article from the future and I have to write a Just So story called "How the Rat Got Her Tail". Well, those are the things that I have decided to write/finish off before I deem my journal completed. And on top of that, I have to find 5 poems and 2 short stories from the anthologies on our reading list and stick them in the journal in a way that does not make it obvious I've left it until the very last minute. And since I never bought the anthologies, I'm using the internet to find the poems, which turned it from a simple task into a stupidly difficult task.
Firstly, I couldn't find a list of the poems in the anthology so I took the ten poems mentioned in the only review I could find and searched for them on Google. Thankfully, after a couple of hours searching, I had found five of them in their entirety (in really obscure locations) and all five of them seem to be relevant to my interests. The short story search was simpler and I'm currently half way through The Haunted House by Charles Dickens which is rather good but long winded and patronising towards women.
So when I've finished Dickens I'll have two short stories from the other anthology as I have already got some extracts from The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown, by Gilbert K Chesterton, which is quite funny and clever. Even so, I don't think I'll finish the journal today. It would have been a lot simpler if I'd just bought the poetry anthology at the start of the term.

In other news, in case you didn't know what The Most Adorable Thing In The World Ever is, or have misconceptions about what it might be (such as baby penguins or a sleeping kitten), it turns out to be Neil Gaiman carrying his dog down the stairs.

I'm surprised as you are. I thought it was a drugged-up Rodney McKay saying "have you seen... a guy? I think I lost him. He looks like you but with messy hair."

I've been reading Neil Gaiman's blog (well, the Livejournal RSS feed.) If I wasn't in love with him before, I definitely am now.

But that doesn't have anything to do with much. Apart from the fact that I don't think I've squee'd over the new Coraline movie yet (Neil Gaiman marries Tim Burton and has a stop-motion love child.)

Oh, and (quoting Neil) "The biggest and the best news of the day is that Terry Pratchett is now Sir Terrence of Pratchett. Hurrah.
I shall buy a cap first, specially." (interesting fact: Neil now owns a hat. Yes, I made a Twitter account just to keep up with his.)

* * *

Gah, I'm spiralling further and further into a fangirly pit of digression. Here's why I posted:

I've been researching Robert Burns because I thought he'd be the kind of hoopy frood to stick in my creative writing journal. And then I decided to turn my half-formed idea of an ode to a hangover into a fully-fledged parody of Scots Wha Hae (except I used the English translation because I'm not awesome enough to write it in the Scots dialect.)

So here's my version. I quite like it.

And while I'm here, here are two other short stories I've written for my course:
They Came At Us With Dragons
Culture Shock (badly titled. Couldn't think of anything better.)

Read 'em.

* * *

And now for something completely different: kitty_cross (my sister) suggested a Doctor Who themed drinking game based on my last post. (I went overboard and decided to turn it into a new post.)

I shouldn't really post 2 days in a row, but I feel like I have enough crap to make an entry.

Firstly, yay on Obama winning the election. I don't care all that much, but it's good to see a coloured President etc etc. (Not just that, of course - he also happens to be a good candidate. Still the fact remains that our country is currently being run by a walrus. Britain needs change too! *mutters about electricity prices*)

Secondly, I've been looking up different forms of poetry for my creative writing module. Very boring, until I looked up Rubaiyat, which is a typically boring form of poetry that happens to have been parodied by a creative genius. Thus, I ask you to read The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten (with illustrations.)

( More talk of Doctor Who )

In my creative writing seminar we were told to write a poem based on A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, by Craig Raine. The title we were given was "A Martian Goes to Princesshay" (that's a shopping centre in Exeter, for those who don't know.)

This isn't the first thing I've written for my creative writing module (obviously), but it's the first thing I've liked enough to shove into the dark and spooky realm known as the Internets.

Here's a link. Please read it. Also, read the poem it's based on first because that one's much better.

Guess which store in particular I've referred to (thought a martian would find it interesting) and what the other two types of shops mentioned are. Also, I'd like feedback - particularly constructive criticism as I will beat (with a stick) anyone who gives me unadulterated praise.

(but please be nice)

Me and Rob made a poo chart. Matt wasn't impressed. I made a column for each of us and one for guests and at the bottom I wrote "marks out of 10 and a comment please". Rob's comments are hilarious:
"9/10 - now that's what I call a ghost poo."
"2/10 - when did a wet fart become a poo? Needed a lot of wiping whatever it was."

Was in Vaults last night and got stopped by someone who had noticed my tail. It was a couple of LARPers and they wanted tails for their characters. I got the guy's phone number and I'm going to put him in touch with Ikkarub who made my tail. I love random encounters.

And then... no, can't put it where my sister can read it. Ask me.

And this morning I went to my lecture drunk (don't know why I bothered, the lecturer was the most pretentious guy ever. And he had the audacity to quote e.e.cummings and Oscar Wilde. And he said that the most exciting thing about reading a book as a child was the big ornate letter at the beginning of each chapter. I don't know about you but I was more excited by the fact that Mr Magnolia had only one boot.)
I sat at the back so that I could stretch out over 4 chairs and Not Puke. And I giggled all the way through because the things this guy was saying were ridiculous.

One more thing... I've been told by someone that I'm the best kisser they've ever kissed. This isn't the first time. A lot of you have kissed me. I want opinions - I don't have to be your best kiss ever but I want to know what you think.

I has writ a story.

Read it and tell me what you think. Also, it's awfully rainy today, isn't it? I missed my Mum's e-mail telling me to bring the washing in because I was downstairs, trying to coax the cat out from under a bush where she was huddling in fear of what was quickly becoming a flood. And then I was busy trying to dry her off before she covered my bed in Wet Kitty.

I really really am getting my scanner out tomorrow, I promise. Because I like the stuff I've been drawing.

Interesting note: my skin is slowly turning yellow. I'm on a mission to eat fruit and veg. Will update here. Today I murdered a helpless plum (which I had to eat outside because they are squelchy). More fruit adventures coming soon.

Oh, I should probably tell you about my stalker.

( It's not that interesting, really... )
Rarr. Anyway. Read my story and comment. Bitch.

Bugger. I just lost The Game.

Edit: I relation to this post, I show you this picture and say I Told You So. There Is Chemistry. They Are So Totally Doing It.

So I said goodbye to the duck ponds where we hunted for fairies and fought to the death. I said goodbye to the bush into which I vomited and the shower that I've shared with 4 people (not at the same time) (don't tell my housemates).
I even said goodbye to the vacuum cleaner, which may have given my mother the idea that I'm crazy.

Then I turned in my keys and went home. It was about an hour and a half after this that I got pounced and covered in dog hair. I'm not sure it's hit me yet that I can't go back to my room in Lafrowda.
Waitasec. I still have my second set of keys. Lafrowda hospitality services think I've lost them.

*laughs evilly*

Some things that are awesome:

A happy rat (by the awesome furry artist known as Cerberus)

An animation of the scene in Goblet of Fire with the kooky old guy wearing the dress.

Gay penguins.

DA likes me again. It's letting me upload stuffs. Hoooooray. Go check it out, bitches.

Nat's latest drunken adventure: It doesn't seem to have penetrated my mind that drinking a whole bottle of wine leads to me throwing up and then trying to fight Simon.
But this time I was dressed as Marmite. I debated painting my face black but decided it had to be done. Please look on Facebook for pictures of me and my new best friend (I can't believe someone had a Golliwog. Comic timing at its best. But did Johnny have to tag the Golliwog as "Natalie Adcock" and me as "Racism"?)

In other news... apparently there were bombs in Exeter town centre. This sounds very dramatic, doesn't it? But all it means is that we couldn't get to Iceland because the Police had cordoned off the entire town centre. Instead, I had to go to Sainsbury's - no pizza for me.

In other other news - Rob's seminar group decided to do their presentation dressed as goths. Seeing him in black eyeliner, nail varnish and my jewellery completely made my morning.

I also had a presentation to do. I'm sure our group made no valid points whatsoever, but we were hilarious. We roleplayed a Freudian therapy session as various characters from the books we were studying, played a clip from Pulp Fiction because it was vaguely relevant and our Holland Hall resident quoted things she'd heard from people who live there ("If I hadn't gotten into Holland Hall, Daddy was going to buy me a house so I'd have somewhere to live.")

Yeah. Now I'm going to watch a film about peoples' heads exploding. Why? Because it has David Hewlett in it.

I am doing a dance of barely contained glee.

Reepicheep is going to be voiced by Eddie Izzard in Prince Caspian.

This is me right now: (Disclaimer: me no draw)

Firstly: Go and read Poetry by E.E Cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

Secondly: Stolen from coloursofdusk  - fill it out in a comment.

If you've ever watched The Mighty Boosh, picture me as Vince and Simon as Howard and read this conversation we had last night.


In more serious news, I have switched from English and Psychology to single honours English and I've chosen which modules I'm taking next year. 17th Century Renaissance literature, social change in the 20th Century, "Desire and Power" (this one's going to be really cool. It's stuff like A Midsummer Night's Dream) and a creative writing module.
Like this year, I'm going to have one 2-hour seminar and one 1-hour lecture for each module, which means 6 hours of work a week. I'm starting to realise that this is a bad thing because I'm incredibly lazy and not motivated enough to do anything work related in my non-scheduled time. If they forced me to do stuff I'd be more productive.

In less serious news, I have thought of a story about a cat based on an experience I had the other week. It goes like this: