I recommend the following

I've mentioned how many hours I spend watching films (film reviews beginning again as of tomorrow by the way) so I figured that although I can't write reviews on all of them, because I just don't have the time, I could at least just write a simple list of films I think are good, bad or even wonderfully ugly, which sometimes can be great. I'm also doing this because I constantly look up lists of films that people do/do not recommend, especially on IMDB. So I want to have my own, maybe I can do what others have done for me and point someone in a good cinematography direction, hopefully. (This is in no particular order or genre)


-Wanderlust (2012)
Me- ***     IMDB- 5.6/10
Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston are a married couple with money troubles, standard. They accidentally stumble upon a hippie/free living community and decide to give it a go, not so standard! I fount out about it online, I'd never heard off it before that, which I thought was weird because I found it pretty hilarious.

-Wild Target (2009)
Me- ****     IMDB- 6.8/10
With Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt and Rupert Grint, it's bound to be good in my opinion.   Someones an assassin, one the assassenee, and the other just caught up in it.

-This is 40 (2012)  
Me- ***     IMDB- 6.2/10
Paul Rudd again. This film is tagged 'the sort-of sequel to Knocked Up', it's the older sister and her husband of the girl in the first film, and obviously it's about them turning 40. I'm not nor have ever been 40 and married, but I thought it was pretty realistic for what I do know of being 40 and married.Writer and director of the movie Judd Apatow shared the making of the film with his wife Leslie Mann and his daughters Iris and Maude Apatow, who play the wife and daughters in the film.

-Feast of Love (2007)
Me- ****    IMDB- 6.6/10
Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear and many other decent actors. This film is based around love obviously, it follows a number of people's stories that are all connected. It truly is a rollercoaster of emotion. Both myself and my friend found ourselves chugging down water to keep the tears back, it wasn't easy! Really good film though, with interesting twists.

-Primal Fear (1996)
Me- *****   IMDB- 7.6/10
Ever since I saw Fight Club when I was younger, I have been in awe of Edward Norton. I think he's pretty damn phenomenal, recently I've watched a lot of films with him in, so prepare to hear more raving about him. This film is about an altar boy being accused of murdering a very loved priest. But of course, there is far more to the story than first thought. Richard Gere co-stars.

-Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Me- ****    IMDB- 7.4/10
I was recommended this film by a friend who has unusual but very good taste in films, she tends to find ones that aren't so well known. It took a year but I finally got around to watching it! And it was very good. Another pretty emotional one, and I have to say after reading about the plot I wasn't sure how good it would be. Basically Lars (Ryan Gosling) has a doll as a girl friend. Sounds very odd indeed, but actually, it's extremely well done, and very heart-warming!

-Mississippi Burning (1988)
Me- ****    IMDB- 7.8/10  
Excellent portrayal of segregation in Southern America in the 60's. Gene Hackman and Willam Defoe are two very different FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three young civil rights activists. The investigation tears the town apart and many are taken as collateral damage.

-Powder Blue (2009)
  ****
Jessica Biel, Forest Whitacker, Ray Liotta and Eddie Redmayne are four characters crossing paths in L.A. as a stripper, a suicidal ex-priest, an ex-con and a mortician, each with their own interesting story/situation.

-Daydream Nation (2010)
Me- ***.5   IMDB- 6.3/10
Cat Dennings is a teenager relocated to a small town with many troubles. Bordeom and naivety entangle her in two dfferent relationships, one with a high school teacher, the other a stoner classmate. This story is just as much about the town itself than the story of Caroline Wexler (Dennings).

-The Oranges (2010)
Me- ***     IMDB- 5.7/10
Two families who have been friends forever and who live across the street from each other encounter a pretty uncomfortable situation when the daughter from one and the dad from the other begin an affair. A mixture of emotion, awkwardness and hilariousness. Very good cast, including Oliver Platt who I've been a fan of since'Lake Placid'.

-Martian Child (2007)
Me- ***     IMDB- 6.7/10
John and Joan Cusack both star in this movie, as brother and sister! John Cusack's character David is a widower who decides to adopt a kid. As he was an odd child himself he gets paired up with a radical little boy who believes he is from Mars. Heart warming, funny, and a good picture of how it might be to take a lost child into your world.

-25th Hour (2002)
Me- ****    IMDB- 7.7/10
Edward Norton again, because I CANNOT get enough of him. Montgomery Brogan considers his options as a convicted drug-dealer facing a seven year sentence. Directed by good old Spike Lee. It's difficult to decide who's side your on throughout this film.

My first shooting star, possibly a comet actually

On Wednesday 6th August 2013, on a beach near where I live, sitting with some lovely people, I saw my first shooting star. I have never said this before in my life, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to say it again, and forgive  me for sounding award-winningly corny, but it was magical. My friends told me that normally shooting stars aren't that amazing to be fair, apparently they're normally a lot less clear and more like this...

                                                  But the one we saw looked more like this...

                                                                                                                  ...It was so clear that the tail of it actually looked kinda glittery in a way, and it was so bright that just after it showed it lit up the entire sea in front of us, honestly for a second, I thought that we may of been about to experience the same fate as the dinosaurs. It really was incredible. Think that's all I have to say on that.

A real catch 22

     In May of this year I moved to a new city with my boyfriend. This was due to the house ourselves and our housemates lived in being knocked down. Think that's slightly weird? It happened twice in a row! Nah it's not so weird though, we lived in houses that got knocked down to build new houses. Anyway! Obviously we could have stayed in the area, and found a house near by, but it was my home town, and since the age of about 12, I had been dying to get out of it. Also, we had all been living in a bubble, for about two years or so we had been in our own world, and all of us reluctantly agreed, that it was probably time for us to explore other places, people and things, even if it was just for a little while, plus each of us had certain commitments we needed to uphold, whether they were to ourselves or others. And if you knew my friends and I, you too would agree with us, we were pretty damn dependent on each other in a way.
     So now we are all apart, and I am experiencing a very big predicament. I love the place where I am. It's like the mothership has called me home. It's awesome. To be honest, if I ever had kids, unless I find somewhere better in the time it takes for that to happen, I think I'd want to raise them here. HOWEVER, I recently realised that I have absolutely no desire to make new friends. I know that sounds really bad, and I do love to meet people, and share thoughts with them and such, I guess I enjoy good conversation with interesting people. But ultimately, I do not wish to go out and make friends with people, if it happens it happens, but I don't intend to go out searching for them. One reason is because, I don't really like people, maybe that's just because I've met more bad ones than good, or because I take a very, VERY long time to be myself around people, not because I'm fake or two-faced I don't think, just because I'm shy or self-conscious I guess.
     Therefore I want my friends, the ones who I already have and love so much. But most of them are in different places, not many of them are even in the hometown at present, and most the ones that are will be leaving to go back to uni or jobs in September. And I don't want to be living there at the moment anyway, it was a BIG step to move away, I don't want to reverse that, especially so soon afterwards.
     Here is where my predicament lies, the friends I have aren't moving to where I am, not anytime soon anyway, and I don't want to move home, and I don't think I should move to wherever a friend is, because that's kinda desperate. So I suppose my only option is to stay where I am, and save up enough money to visit people whenever I can and have them visit us when they can. I know that I can live with this, I've been doing it for three months already. It just kinda sucks. But maybe the sucking of it is more prominent because we were, for the most part, all together for quite a good amount of time. Maybe I will actually make loads of new friends, although I promise you now they will not be better than the ones I have already. It's literally not possible. God I hope none of them read this, past or future friends...

In your FACE-BOOK

     Facebook is very much like loosing your virginity. If you don't have it, you go around acting like you deserve a certain level of respect for not 'joining the crowd' and just getting it, and you may even openly pity'those that are 'weak' and have signed up to publicly display their lives on the web. If you were completely honest though, there's probably a little part of you at least that feels kinda left out in some way, and rather curious.

     And if you do have Facebook, you may well truly believe that it's the source of everything and everyone you know. And like a horny teenager who likes to say they've slept with many people, because of course that makes them...'like, totally awesome', you have AT LEAST 500 friends, er..sorry, FACEBOOK friends. Guaranteed too that half those people you never even had a conversation with, or if you have, you can't remember it because you were on a night out and probably inebriated in some way.
     I remember some researchers somewhere in the world announced a couple of years ago that the average person can, at most, have 150 friends. I believe their definition of friend was probably something along these lines:

A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.

     Now I'm not going to sit here and criticise and pretend that I don't fall into any category, because of course I do. I first got Facebook really soon after it came out, but I was still on Bebo then (hahhaha I know, you'd laugh EVEN MORE if you'd seen my profile on it) but I couldn't get to grips with it if I'm honest, I think I was 14 and obviously not so great with computers. So I left my account to go stagnant. Then later, when shit loads of my friends had it, and Bebo was becoming really uncool, I realised that I probably needed to update my online life and move to more habitable (popular) places. So I did. In 2007 I became fully Facebooked.
     Three years on, 2010, how are things with my online life? Well, total honesty, every morning before I'd even got out of bed, and every night before I fell asleep, I would scroll through my ENTIRE homepage on my little Blackberry, not just Facebook either, TWITTER too. Yup, those two sites were very much a part of my life. I needed to ensure that I had read every single new update on both so that I didn't miss a thing. Not only that, but I regularly updated my statuses on both so that everyone could see all the 'awesome' things I was doing, por examplay..'OH MY GOD I'M SO TOTALLY WASTED'. I don't know if I ever actually wrote that specific phrase, but I unfortunately have to admit that I wrote so many that were similar. I guess I felt like I had to prove myself to people, many of whom I didn't really even know. I was also constantly obsessed with the feedback from my status and picture updates/uploads,

'How many likes has it got now? Who's liked it? Are there any comments? And how many Facebook friends do I have now?!'

I had a very unhealthy habit, very unhealthy indeed. Anything that takes over so much of your day-to-day life is either bordering on, or has become a fully fledged obsession. And you know what? OBSESSION is very, very bad for your health. Whatever it may be. As my Dad always says, 'everything in moderation'.
     So in January 2012, when I'd just become a girl *WAIT FOR IT* friend, and therefore had way more fun things to do with my time, I decided that Facebook, Twitter, and anything remotely similar, didn't have to go for good, but seriously needed to take a back seat in my life.
     I'll be honest, I didn't have much faith in myself that it would stick, firstly because I fold like a little bitch under peer pressure and of course, my friends were still all hanging out there, and I hate to miss out on things, and also because I have a rather addictive personality. HOWEVER, other than for communication purposes, occasionally looking at funny things and friends photos that I actually wanted to see, and maybe uploading a few photos myself because people actually wanted to see them too, I didn't go on. I went from spending about half my day on those sites, to checking Facebook only, once a week or so. And let me make this very clear, IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. No longer did I concern myself with who had liked my status, no more time was spent coursing through peoples pages to find out who was up to what, I didn't give a shit what my profile picture was, and the best of all, I deleted every person who I wouldn't or hadn't have/had a conversation with, this absolutely included 'exes' (VERY IMPORTANT- DO NOT spend your time looking at an exes page, even if it is 'just to see how their doing'. It is NOT OKAY.) I stopped using Twitter and others completely because I just couldn't be bothered, Facebook I still wanted because it is genuinely a brilliant place to keep in touch with people.
     How is my online life at present you ask? Well I recently moved away from home, so I do spend a little more time on it than I'd like, half because I do want to talk to people I miss, but the other half is spent boredly (<that may not be a word, but if it's not, it should be) killing time when truthfully, I should be doing more productive things, i.e. my washing, or writing this stuff. I currently have ABOUT 105 friends I think, and interestingly, and not that I'm counting I just have genuinely noticed whilst researching for this post, I get more 'likes' than I ever used to when I had five times the amount of friends. Weird right? Maybe it's because the only people on my friends list now are people that actually give a shit about my life, maybe it's just a coincidence. Who knows, or who cares? IT DOESN'T MATTER!  
   
     If you sound like you're me before 2012, then consider liberating yourself from your computer. If you never even tried the F book and actually kinda want to, then set up a profile! And just remember,

                                                                                 EVERYTHING IN MODERATION.

Film review - The Hangover Part III

Better late than never...

I'm going to start off with 'The Hangover Part III' (2013).

100 minutes
Directed by Todd Phillips
Comedy

A wolfpack member is kidnapped by a hardcore gangster, the others must endure some shitty situations to ensure his safe return. 

Now I'll be honest, I loved the first one, because it was hilarious, part II however, I didn't see the point in at all when I heard of its release. Why would they destroy a genuinely funny film by making a secondary copycat? Bad, bad move. Unfortunately it does seem that the large majority of films being released over the last two years or so are sequels and prequels. Have we officially run out of material?! Gosh I hope not. With this in mind, you can imagine my dismay when I saw the poster for the third movie. 

'Really?! I mean REALLY? So the third installment will officially brand the first film, which I loved, a shit film. Great. Way to ruin ANOTHER film.'

Okay, so I can be a little negative at times, but I'm passionate about films so I tend to take it to heart. I also noticed the tag line for part III,

'The end.'

                                                                      ...and I couldn't help but wonder what this meant. The end to what? These films were about the crazy antics of four hilarious guys and the consequences they had to deal with the morning after. If I'm honest, I couldn't really think of any loose ends to tie up. But naturally this tag line did it's job well, so at the cinema last week after finding out that 'The Great Gatsby' was completely sold out, we opted for this instead. 

I was very, VERY pleasantly surprised. Obviously my expectations had been quite low, so it wouldn't of taken much to impress me, but it gave so, SO much more than I had thought it could. And there absolutely were loose ends to tie up. I hadn't even realised that they existed, I think that this was one of the elements that made the film so brilliant, there are twists and undercover threads you don't even know are there, until you see flashbacks to the previous movies. They're not the only surprising factors either, there were a number of unexpected moments. And this is pretty grand coming from me, a self admitted 'telepathic' twat when watching films. Yes I'm one of those annoying people who feels the need to blurt out my prediction of what's coming up in the story, and to be fair, I often get it right (but I should think so considering the amount of time I've committed to my television over the years). Not only did the film have a genuinely surprising story line that kept me eagerly watching throughout, but oh golly, was it funny. Tears were brought to my eyes more than once, and at some point my stomach muscles started cramping up from laughing so hard. The comic delivery from each character, very much like part I, was awesome and intense.

My favourite character, ahhh, for this film it is genuinely hard to say! But I'm gonna be predictable and go with Alan (Zack Galifianakis). Because he is ridunckulously hilarious with his facial expressions and weird personality. I can't get enough of him!

IMDb rating (from over 40,000 users): 6.1/10

My rating (from me): 6.5/10  

Emergency post

I saw this on Facebook and was shocked to realise the process I go through every morning when simply choosing underwear, because for me personally, this depiction is 100 per cent accurate.

Disclosure Part 2

(Coming soon)

Disclosure Part 1

There are a number of questions that I believe you can ask someone in order to quickly distinguish the type of person they are, either by the actual answers given or simply by their reactions to the questions. For example, one of these questions is...

'Can you tell me how many Facebook friends you have?'

                                                                        ...I'm not going to say anything else on that particular question right now, just have a think on it, interpret it how you see it. The question that I do want to discuss is...

'Do you believe in aliens?' 

(I use the term 'aliens' here to name any extra terrestrials, any life on a planet(s) other than our little blue one, any life form/species that doesn't originate from Earth.)

                                ...What is your reaction to that question, what is your answer?

I think it was about a year ago that my Dad, a brilliant man who works hard to look after his family and has as much sanity as any human person in the world, became intrigued by UFO's and alien life. Since this slight obsession began, he has driven my family and I, and...well, anyone willing to listen, a little crazy with his listings of famous UFO sightings, stories detailing government cover-ups and conspiracy theories relating to extra terrestrials living on Earth. Now although I have watched the occasional programme about UFO's and the possibilities of alien life, I've never been inclined to follow up any of these kinds of things with any passion or real intrigue, like most people, I've always been of the peaceful opinion to just get on with my own life and enjoy my time here on this indescribably incredible planet, because ultimately, none of that UFO business is really going to affect me. For all I know, this is the best opinion to go through life with, certainly the easiest anyway. But when I was at my parents last week, my Dad told me about a video that he had just seen on Youtube, with a former minister of defense for Canada publicly admitting that it's time for disclosure on the large majority of information that is being withheld from us, on the subject of known alien life and other known planets with life on them. I was shocked and very VERY interested to see it. Before you read anymore of my opinion on the subject, watch the video for yourself, the top link is the short version (just under 10 minutes), the bottom link is the longer version (25 minutes, more information at the expense of a little more of your time)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEQdvYFMBAU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcbCafpvIT0

                                                                                                                        ...(I watched the 25 minute version of this meeting, and I'm currently trying to find a video that covers the entire conference, if anyone happens to locate it, please leave a comment with the link!)

I'm a very open minded person, very accepting of many different opinions and certainly always willing to hear other views. Firstly because I find people and their thought processes fascinating, and secondly because I am a very indecisive person most of the time. I like to know all the options previous to making my choice, and so by listening to people and learning about, let's say different religions for example, I feel confident when I do make my own decision on the subject. So why for the last year had I been brushing my Dad off with an annoyed expression on my face, every time he tried to inform me about a completely relevant subject that he was passion about? Because I'm an idiot, and because I'm human. Even an extremely open minded and curious person such as myself will dismiss initially outlandish seeming ideas, if society already dictates them to be such. When broaching the subject of alien life, this is the magnificent barrier we face, society as a whole does not believe, or even know how to comprehend the idea of it. Not only that, but we openly mock those that do,

'Yer that's Barry, we stay away from him, he's weird. (In a low whisper) He believes in aliens.'
'Hahahahhaa what a fruit loop!!'

But how are we this naive, even in 2013? Unless a person has strict religious beliefs that could be tarnished or complicated by the subject of aliens, we have no excuse to ignore, not only the evidence out there, but the subject in the first place. Look at yourself, look at the animals that fill this Earth. In comparison to the many marvelous creatures that share this planet, who themselves are magnificent, we are PHENOMENAL. We have the ability to consciously think, to choose, to build instruments and machines which allow us to explore the land, air, sea and even space! We are so advanced it's actually quite unbelievable. So with this in mind, the idea of life on other planets seems far more conceivable I think.

Weekly picture

I have not been online for an entire week. I'd like to say I've been really busy with my very important hectic schedule, but that would be a lie. Honestly I've just been without the internet and visiting out the way places.

My picture this week is actually from 2009. I chose it because it's where I'd really like to be right now.

(High and happy)


I haven't stopped the 365 challenge by the way, been writing almost everyday in fact. Not only is the story beginning to take a little bit more shape, but I'm really enjoying it. Sometimes I'm not in the mood of course, like a parent attempting to get a difficult child to sit down after-school and do homework I force myself in front of my laptop, but I'm an extremely good procrastinator you see, so I end up spending three hours playing solitaire. Eventually though, the writing happens. You can't procrastinate forever can you? Anyhow, tomorrow I will be posting a few film reviews because I've never actually written one, and I should probably make some use out of the many, many, hours I spend watching films. The movie I'm watching this evening is called 'Sirius' (2013), this is one which I shall write about tomorrow, it also links up to another post currently under construction about something called The Disclosure Project. Now you may or may not know what that is, but either way, you can read about it here tomorrow, if you so wish.

Weekly Picture

I'm going to be honest with you, this photo was taken about a month ago, not this week. But let's not fuss over the details, ultimately it's 2013 and the man is USING a phone box?! I only ever see people in them taking photos, I don't really know why that happens either, maybe it's a novelty thing.

(I'm sorry, who's calling?)

Day 2

(A day late due to internet problems, but I did actually complete it yesterday.)

Short and sweet, here are some new characters I introduced (the bit in bracets being the English meaning of their surname):

Klaudia Luft   (air)
Selena Roth   (red)
Marie Wexler (money changer)
Tobias Schwartz (black)
Max Vogel (bird)
Peter Wulf (wolf)

Underwater ballroom

A few years ago I was watching something on BBC 1 I think, maybe about hidden treasures in the UK or something. Anyway, I remember one specific thing which was about an underwater ballroom in Witley, Surrey. To find it you allegedly had to find this lake, in the lake is a statue of a person pointing, you're then supposed to walk in the direction that they are pointing, which should take you to a woods, in the woods you should find a small door, you go through his door which takes you down stairs, underground. Once down the stairs, you should find a little rowing boat sitting on a small river/lake (I'm not quite sure on the exact details here), you then get in the little row boat and then pull on a rope I think which takes you to the other side where you get off. After walking down a windy, damp, rather smelly corridor, you apparently find this...

                                                       (This is the view if you look up)
          ...Where you end up is under the lake you originally visited to arrive where you are now, the lake with the stature in it. Now watching this n the TV I was astounded, and made a mental note to eventually visit this place, but of course I never got around to it.

UNTIL! Back in February a friend started to talk about this underwater ballroom to some other, extremely disbelieving friends. When I heard I obviously piped up with my little bit of knowledge from the TV itself, and you know, always believe what you see on TV! (Obviously, that's a joke.) But even with my input to justify his story, which by the way, was that he hadn't just heard about this place, he'd been, about a year previous, himself and some friends had driven out at night and managed to find it, they followed all the instructions and ended up actually looking up at the picture above for real, (I was so, so envious) our friends still thought we were full of shit. So on a chilly, wet February afternoon, we drove out to Witley common, the  place where my friend was 100 per cent certain we would find the lake holding the statue that would lead us to the ballroom. However, after walking for an hour, we realised that this little outing wasn't going to be as simple as we initially thought. After a few phone calls to his friends, we discovered that the lake was not open to the public on National Trust ground as my friend had remembered. Turns out that in fact, it sits on someones land, PRIVATE LAND. Which of course, we found. We walked across Witley common, crossing a road, we came to the entrance of Witley Manor I believe it's called. Here is a picture from good old Google maps, and I've added some red stuff to make it more clear...

                                                                                                            ...After we got to the entrance, we spent about twenty minutes debating what to do, and my friend who had been to this place before suddenly recalled that they had actually climbed over a thick stone wall to get to it (a key piece of information that we really would of benefited from knowing before we ventured out, yes). So we now understood that our options were limited, and that our chances of seeing this inconceivably astounding attribute to our countryside was fading fast. We figured our choices were like this:

• A - Give up and go back to the car, accepting that the world is an unfair place, and also ensuring that the one of us who had work would make it on time.
• B - Climb over the wall, forgetting the fact that it's daylight and we're not exactly masters of breaking and entering, risking getting in a little bit of trouble, which at the time was far more serious for some because of work related positions.
• C - Walk back along the wall to arrive at the intimidating gates that are the entrance, and argue over who has to ring the big bell (ha) and ask if we are allowed to 'pretty please' see their lake.
• D - Come back soon when we can be less visible with the cover of night, and attempt to find it then - but to be honest we all knew this meant it would more than likely NEVER happen as it wasn't very often that we left the house, unless we were forced to complete some kind of foraging (either food shopping or going to earn money to buy the food).

Unfortunately with time and risk of getting caught being issues we had to consider, our options ultimately were A and C. And there was no way I was leaving this place without at least trying to get a look at what we had come to see, so C was indeed our choice. But the door bell didn't bloody work. So we waited in this driveway for someone to notice us, which no-one seemed to for quite some time. Eventually though, a guy who was doing some kind of work at the manor began to appear from behind the opening gates in his white van. As he was a guy, it was myself and the other female of our foursome who approached him, in the hopes that he would be potentially more inclined to give any information he had over, and maybe even get us in. We told him our pre-prepared story that we were four art students, wanting to photograph the lake for a project (complete bullshit of course). He turned out to be a pretty nice guy, but regrettably explained that he thought it unlikely we would be allowed to see the lake, as the owner(s) of the land liked to keep it protected from the public, especially as they had recently experienced a lot of problems with people braking in at night in order to see it. With a little persuasion however, the nice man drove back down to ask someone in charge if it would be possible for us to see the lake. But he returned with the answer he expected, a solid no. 

Disappointment, such disappointment. We had been walking and waiting, and walking and waiting some more for almost two hours by this point, and more importantly, we had been really, really genuinely excited to see this treasure. And I don't know what your reaction was when you read the reason above of why people, even a few excited 'art students' just wanting some photographs, were not being permitted to visit it, but personally I was pretty pissed off, and even more stunned.

'So their not letting people in to see the amazing underwater ballroom, because people keep breaking in at night to see the amazing underwater ballroom. Surely the best thing to do would be to open it during the day so that people aren't forced to break in at night, unsupervised or whatever, this way it could be controlled and there will be a greatly reduced risk of things getting damaged.'

Now, firstly, I didn't realise that this sort of astonishing landmark could be kept as completely private land, if you look at places like Longleat house near Warminster, for example, a stately home where a family ACTUALLY still inhabit, it's open to the public 6/7 days a week I think, so how is it possible that this gem in someones mass of land is being kept solely for their viewing?! I kind of assumed that all those sorta things get picked up by the National Trust. Maybe that's me being a dumbass. And obviously I do understand the difference between the ease of controlling the flow of visitors in an incredibly large mansion with huge corridors, compared to managing all those people down tiny winding stairwells and onto a little boat, if my information is correct anyway. But I am honestly shocked that something so wonderful could be closed to the public. Surely this is something that we all should be allowed to view and appreciate? After all, what's the point in it existing if it is never seen and marvelled at? Even if the owner(s) want to keep it  as their own land, would it not be a good investment, or even just a beautiful thing to share by opening it for people to view, even if this has to be done with some kind of tour that you can get tickets for? I don't know, maybe I would want to keep it for myself too if I lived there, but I struggle with the idea that I could spend enough time down there to justify that selfishness. 

Anyway, here are some more mind-blowing pictures of this incredible wonder that I hope to one day see for real...

Day 1

Okay, so I know I didn't get around to uploading my first piece of the three-six-five challenge last night, I'm sorry, don't be mad, I got a little distracted. Now to the Batmobile!!
Right, so my first step has been to print off all of my writing I have so far, very happy I did this too because I forgot about half of the stuff I had, and that's the half that I think will be helping me over the next 365 days. So now I'm beginning to piece things together and work out a story and timelines in my head, and I may actually be beginning to form something in the shape of a very feather-light book thing. Now although I'm very nervous to do it, I said I would update this blog with little bits from my work everyday in order to keep motivated, so here is my first snippet..
         
            ...but before I do! Here's a lovely picture of very cute puppies in dungarees, because although it's probably bordering on animal cruelty, I'm hoping it will soften the heart of any person who does come across and choose to read what is below, because no-one should judge something when in a bad mood!

Actually just to clarify, I NEVER show my writing to people, yes I realise how ridiculous that is considering I genuinely hope to make a career out of it, but seriously, only two people in the entire world have read some of it, well anything that I wasn't forced to right in school anyway. So what I'm saying I guess, is be gentle...
And here's another cute picture of some ducklings in a sink, just in case your mood isn't quite light enough yet...

'I look at her, standing in front of me, so willing to give up everything in order to sustain this blurry picture of a relationship we share.  I rise from the chair and take two slow steps towards her, elongating the moment so that the future cannot approach so fast. Taking her hands in mine I look into her strong, destructively dark blue eyes, the colour of the sea as the sun begins to set, the blue is there, but it’s on the verge of some quiet shade of black. The situation reaches critical. Either I take another step towards her, kiss her bare pink, red lips, letting her know that I’m with her, whatever may come our way, or I take her soft hand to my mouth and gently kiss the back of it to say, ‘I love you, but this is our last kiss’, the wise choice to be honest. How could we have been so foolish to let this occur in the first place? But really there is no question at all is there. I know this. Whether I like it or not, I don’t have a choice, I haven’t had one since that first night with her. My heart is within her chest just as much as hers is within mine. Beating beneath my rib cage every second of every hour of every day. Eternal. Inescapable. Toxic.  I know I’m not strong enough to break it, just as much as I know I cannot live without her, and that this relationship will inevitably kill us both.  So I step into the gap between us pull her closer and kiss her hard. One swift movement and the decision is made, the deal is done, death will ensue but I’ll be damned if we don’t have a hell of a time before it comes.'


(I'm terrible at spelling, I don't get punctuation right most the time, and I certainly don't adhere to all those weird rules about how you should write, quite frankly it's probably because I'm a bit of an idiot, but I enjoy doing this either way, so let's just go with it okay.)

The 365 Challenge / Weekly picture

I saw on Facebook that a friend is doing the 365 challenge, as she is a photographer, this entails taking a photo EVERY DAY. The photo can be of ANYTHING, it just has to be a photo and she has to take one every day. The point in this challenge is to encourage and motivate her to get her camera out, because anyone with a hobby knows that it isn't always easy to fit it in around life, we get distracted, and before you know it, it's been a week since you posted on your blog, so you have to do three in a day because you have all these things you wanna talk about and get out your head.

So, I have been inspired to set my own 365 challenge, now I tend to take a lot of photos anyway, so to keep that up, I'll keep to a weekly routine of putting a picture up every Monday(ish). But my personal 365 challenge will be to write a page, at least ONE page, of a SPECIFIC piece of my writing. This should mean that in a years time, I will have a minimum of a 365 page book, so far. Now it may turn out to be incredibly shit, or it may turn out to be quite good, honestly, I don't know, obviously I hope for the latter, but I'll have to wait and see. Whichever way it goes, I'll have done 365 pages, and I think that is certainly positive progress for my writing, and for myself really. I won't upload my page to here everyday, because I don't want this blog to become completely orientated around a potentially shit novel, because that's pretty dull, and honestly this is just a place for my brain notes and strange ramblings. What I will do however, is either sum up the page I've written (if it's interesting) or just post my favourite line, this way we all know that I am actually doing it. So by midnight, I shall have put up ANOTHER post today.

For now, here is my picture for this week,

(Always be aware of the angry birds.)

New names

A few people to keep an eye on, because hey, if anyone does read this and I do influence at least one person out of 7 billion, I'd like to point them in a good musical direction.

No.1   Hobbie Stuart - A friend of mine came across him whilst traipsing through Youtube for good covers about two, maybe three years ago. He's very talented in my opinion and he does seem to be making some serious ground with his followers and views on the up 'n' up. One of my favourite covers of his is 'Fast car' by Tracy Chapman...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqj-sZrh12I
If you like his voice subscribe to his Youtube channel, he's uploading new songs pretty regularly and has some awesome songs of his own too.


No.2   Amity Ray - I may have spelt their name wrong, it is potentially Amnity Ray, I absolutely cannot remember to be honest. But what I can tell you true is that they are a new girl band, which isn't normally my kind of thing at all (although I am the first to admit that I do find myself singing along to disturbingly catching songs like 'DNA' by Little Mix, I hate myself but what can you do?!) and their are 4/5 members between the ages of 18 and 24, their first single will be released in July and they have already been signed up to tour with famous faces such as Pixie Lott. Now I can't speak for the whole group as I haven't heard their music yet, but I can talk about their lead girl, Sophie Goodwin. I haven't known her personally for a fair while, but I can say with great confidence that she is genuinely a lovely girl, and shit, she can sing! I first heard her voice whilst playing Playstation Singstar age 13, along side her equally talented younger sister, Priya (who may also be a name to watch by the way). Sophie had a strong voice then so I am very excited to see her perform 8 years on. I managed to find this clip on Youtube, seriously take a look, this is genuine talent...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlYiWyZ9gaY


No.3   Imagine Dragons - Okay, so they are not exactly a secret, in fact you probably know this song for being on the trailer of the new Stephanie Meyer film, 'The Host'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu-xFvLaE68
But I can't get enough of it, or them. I'd say more, but either you'll love this song the way I do, and find it speaks for itself, or I guess you just won't like it.

Comedy Central

You recognise this logo, correct? (If not then you genuinely live in a cave, so congrats on having Internet!) Well, if you don't know it, it's the emblem of Comedy Central, home of such television shows as 'Two and a half men', 'The Office U.S.A.' and my personal favourite (probably one of the best series ever made), 'Friends'.

So if you watch this channel, and you are unable to fast forward through intensely annoying, only occasionally entertaining adverts, that forever curse our televisions and make us want to pull our eyes out with the nearest sharp instrument, then you may have seen one of these before...

Okay, so these appear for about half a second during the ad breaks, no-where near enough time to read them in full, or even the first line in fact, hence why these have all been paused on. The colours used are always black, red and white, the three colours of the Comedy Central logo. As you can read above, the paragraphs share nothing in terms of subject material, they seem to be the very interesting, odd brain notes of an anonymous person, and I seriously mean it when I say anonymous  I have been searching the Internet for an hour or so and I cannot find ANYTHING about these messages or who wrote them, even on the Comedy Central website itself. There are a few forums and other blogs where they are being discussed by people, like myself, just wanting to know what they are and the point in them. And of course numerous conspiracy theories are also being chucked around, for instance, people are saying that the highlighted words on each individual paragraph are some form of either subliminal or panic messages, which I don't personally really believe, I think it's more likely that someone is probably just having some fun at the expense of bored/observant people like myself, however, if you do string together the highlighted words, they can sometimes make up weird sentences, i.e...

'tough military murder public satisfaction' (top left corner)

'labour seems laughed at' (bottom left corner)

                                                                                    ...due to this I can clearly see why certain people are becoming ever more concerned by these odd ramblings. It's also interesting to point out that subliminal messages are supposedly banned in England (supposedly being very over-emphasised here, because personally I think a lot of advertising use forms of subliminal messaging, hence why I, someone who isn't a crazy fan of fizzy-drinks, can end up craving a cola after an over-excited ad where someone ends up drinking from a can with a huge smile on their face), so technically these messages that appear cannot be certified as SUBLIMINAL. So what the hell are they?! I have absolutely no idea. But this is my favourite one to date...

Bus drivers are a strange breed. What's going on in their lives and minds that makes them behave that way? You'd think being entrusted with several tonnes of metal and glass would make them drive with diligence and caution. But no. They plough through streets in their hulking steel beasts with enough speed to rip a hole in the space time continuum, which is ironic as space and time are things to which they seem totally oblivious. As the old saying goes, you wait for a bus for ages then three turn up at once - and run you over. But don't panic live for today. You may be hit by a bus tomorrow.

(No personal offence meant to bus drivers here, any of you that read this and dislike it can disinclude yourself from this slightly harsh stereotype, because your reaction means that you are clearly not one of the emotionally empty driving robots being referred to.)

My completed video

Many, many moons ago I was given a piece of coursework to complete, the end result being a music video. I never finished that coursework, in fact I dropped out before the year was complete. However, to prove to myself that I'm not a complete waster, I finally completed and put that video together. I know, I know, it's not great, a fair amount of it is annoyingly just out of time, and I can't really draw, but I completed it, and that's not something I tend to do.

The song if you don't know it, is 'Keep your head up' by Ben Howard, from his debut album 'Every Kingdom'. If you don't own it, get it now, yes, right now. It's awesome, well I think it is anyway.

If this video is a bit fuzzy, and your curious/bored/interested enough to wanna see it clearly, try this youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skDShnoCZr8

(In the unlikely event that my old media teacher D.C. comes across this, I hope you like it, and I haven't forgotten about the wine.)

Strawberries

Strawberries. Classic, red, juicy, unanimously adored by many, if not for the fruit itself, then for the flavour which has been 'copied' and used universally for things such as sweets, deserts, milk, lip balm and even condoms. So what do you picture when you think of the delicious red berry? Pretty much every person will describe something along the lines of this..

                                                             ..reasonably petite in size, ripe red, top heavy, with an all-green leafy hat and a little stem. Generally a perfect picture of a strawberry. But we've all come across an odd ball whilst snacking on a punnet of the fresh red stuff, one that makes you go 'Oooh, look at this one, kinda looks like the distorted face of an old man smoking a pipe!' Okay, so maybe not that exact phrase, but you get my point. Now I can't speak for the entire strawberry loving population, but personally, and as I'm sure many of you would agree, out of these two berries, I would much rather eat the above one as it looks far more inviting. However, is it fair to so quickly dismiss the below, far less attractive strawberry, purely because it doesn't meet the average perfect strawberry specification? The chances are it's just as juicy and bursting with flavour as the one above.

                                                           Even so, I would still choose the more appealing looking strawberry to eat first, before I just as happily ate the other. Why? Because I'm a human being, and because it's programmed into us to judge things by their appearance. It's an instinct there to protect us, so that a few thousand years ago when we were still unable to form words or cook a Sunday roast, we knew not to eat that unhealthy looking piece of browning boar, and instead choose the fresh bloody mammoth meat that had just been caught (I realise those two animals probably never shared a timezone, let alone a cave, but they were the first two creatures I thought of). Luckily today we are evolved enough though, for the most part, to consider something that might not at first seem so appealing, because you genuinely can't judge a book by its cover, you can have an instinctual response to turn it away due to the strange looking boy in glasses with a scar on his forehead on the front cover, but ultimately our higher level of intelligence, and I think our natural curiosity, allow us to think and reconsider our options, not simply based on appearances alone. 

So I suppose my point, if I have one, is that we shouldn't feel bad about ourselves when we feel the urge to walk on the other side of the road because there's an unwashed hobo dancing with a tambourine for a bit of change coming up ahead. We should, however, be intelligent and open minded enough to consider all aspects of the situation, not just the physical characteristics, but all the other points behind it, because maybe that hobo has a really awesome story to tell, or even just a hilarious joke that will keep you smiling even when your boss is being an absolute shit head to you later that day. 

Who knows..well, no-one, until someone comes along with the courage to find out.