I'm meant to be reading up on starting uni tomorrow. But I really really want to be drawing. I haven't drawn enough recently; how am I supposed to improve if I don't practise? In any case, I'm not actually doing either. I'm just procrastinating and moping about it.
HELLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I haven't had this feeling for a year. Long time no see!
;__;
Oh Jesus I am still so freaking itchy! Those annoying bitey flies! I didn't think they'd do me in for three weeks straight. And everyone's like 'get some anti-histamines, get some anti-histamines', and I don't know, but I'm pretty stupidly stubborn when it comes to medication. It's kind of cheating to take anti-histamines. I should be able to see it out. I mean, surely, my immune system will work better if I leave it alone right? It's only a bit of swelling; that means my body's busy fighting off whatever it needs to fight off.
Unless, of course, my immune system is really over-reacting, in which case, I'll wait until it gets really bad, then go see a doctor. IF I DON'T DIE FIRST.
Anyway, itching aside (even if it's very difficult for me to think of anything else at the moment), I did some proper good tidying up today. Not like the kind of tidying up where things look more tidy afterwards, but the kind of tidying up where you dump all your paperwork onto the bed, then sort it into folders. You don't know how happy sorting everything into the correct folder makes me. I even got that Windows Live Hotmail and sorted all my emails into folders too.
It did take me a lot of procrastinating to get all this organising done though (I'm practising procrastinating for when I'm a student again). I think I've checked my emails and facebook about a million times today. Also, I'm onto episode 5 of Heroes now.
Here's some news, which is probably really old now, but still. So I found out that the new Gundam anime is interesting, because one of its character designers is Yun Kouga! I don't know what's going on this year, but it seems that artists I like are determined to force me to watch mecha by doing the character designs. I don't like mecha; I can tell you that for nothing. I can't think of anything more boring than watching big robots fighting (although if the robots come with electro music a la Daft Punk, then I don't mind so much). Also, I haven't watched any Gundam, ever. Am I going to have to watch this one? I watched Code Geass earlier this year, and liked it a lot, despite myself. Because, if you look past the giant robots, Mecha does tend to come with pretty characters and lots of fanservice.
Hmm, maybe I'll see how much I've got on my plate come October, and then decide if I'm going to watch it or not. The animation might be awful for one, and I can't see any characters that look like Soubi either.
So I watched the first two episodes of Heroes. They were actually quite exciting, but I was quite glad of the parts with Hiro in, because I'm really not used to watching programmes without subtitles any more. The thing that has enamoured me though, was seeing a tribute to the Chinese Backstreet Boys in the first episode. That was kind of awesome, and it tells you a lot about the target audience for the show.
In other news: no, not the news about those insect bites that I have, which are itching like hell at the moment, in fact, they're itching so much that bathing in hedgehogs sounds like a pretty nice prospect, no, the news about what I was telling you about yesterday, which was Flight of the Conchords. It turns out that you can find the songs that I saw the other day on YouTube, so here they are:
Jenny
Issues
Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros
Business Time
Albi the Racist Dragon
She's So Hot...Boom!
Well I'm back from a long weekend at home with my parents. I took my laptop back with me and managed to successfully watch the whole backlog of anime that I had still to watch. I think I watched about 7 hours of screen the other day. But, what was good about it, was that I was able to hook my laptop up to our big widescreen tv and watch everything through there. Yeah!
I really must try not to watch so much next season though. I'll have studying to do. Even though I did just steal the whole first season of Heroes from my Dad, which I've got to fit in somewhere.
So, um, not much has happened. I went to see a medieval bridge, and I got some new boots, and I had a dream which would have made a very interesting period drama (with Julian Rhind-Tutt playing the bad guy, and very well I might add). I went to a talk this lunchtime about 18th century men's clothing, which was absolutely fascinating. Did you know that waistcoats used to have sleeves? And that English gentlemen were known for their informal dress? And that partway through the 18th century men started carrying canes because they'd stopped carrying swords? And that the skirts of their coats used to be stiffened with horse hair so they'd flare out more? I was engrossed. I love old-school men's clothing. I tried to store all the information for future use: I need to draw more period clothes.
I have to go draw now in-fact, because I haven't drawn for days and I'm itching.
Edit: So I forgot to mention the most important part. Which was that I turned on the TV to see Figwit on it! Can you believe it? I can't believe it. So his aler ego Bret McKenzie is in the Flight of the Conchords, which is being shown on BBC4. And it turns out that the other member of Flight of the Conchords is only the guy from Eagle vs Shark (which is a very nice film, and you should watch it). I watched the special last night; it was funnier than I thought it would be. Lets hope that the series will be just as funny. Because I'd almost forgotten all about the Figwit saga, until I saw him on my tv. Maybe I'll have to go back and watch FOTR (and ROTK) again.
Haha, I was just looking at the FAQs on the Figwit site and there were even official trading cards with Figwit on them. Brilliant! My inner Tolkien fan is disgusted, but my inner internet fan is jumping for joy.
So. Tomorrow is my last day at work. It's been a year already. Can you believe it? I spent half of the day being pretty zen about it, and the other half moping around and being sad.
I then have 1 (one) week off, in which I will go see my parents. Then I go to uni. Again. For the second time. I have mixed feelings about being a student again. I've just spent hours reading all about enrolling and everything. I'm partly excited, and partly really missing the last time I was a student. I've suddenly realised that I have a horrendous loyalty to my old uni, and feel like I'll be somehow doing it an injustice by enjoying my time at a new university. Which is complete nonsense, of course.
But, I had sooooooo much fun when I was a student before, and met sooooooooo many nice people. And how on Earth can I ever hope to repeat that? (But seeing as I'm going to be a postgrad this time, I'm assuming that it'll be less fun by default anyway.)
And I just checked my timetable for our induction week. I thought it was going to be plain sailing in the first week, with very little to do. But I find out that busy timetable is BUSY. Seriously, I'm not going to have a chance to sit down. And I thought being a student was all about having lots of free time, and jaffing on the internet all day (at least, that's what I remember doing). Oh well, I'D BETTER MAKE THE MOST OF MY WEEK OFF THEN.
I've got lots of cartoons to watch next week. I've just downloaded a load of Loveless to read too. Mostly this week I've been watching nothing but Toward the Terra.
Toward the Terra is great (if it was a little dull in the middle). Surprisingly, I think my favourite character might be Keith, despite him being a complete bastard. I'm just. I'm really hoping that he's going to atone for everything at the end, and come to see that he's been wrong all along. And his relationship with Matsuka is interesting because it's just so contradictory. Personally, I think that the fact that Matsuka reminds him of Shiroe is no small factor in this. Also, Matsuka has pretty eyes.
Tsubasa chapter 166 is completely ridiculous! Completely! I'm betting that Ohkawa was off her tits on champagne when she wrote this one.
I'm not distraught like some people seem to be. I'm just utterly dumbfounded. How on Earth did Kurogane's stunt work? And how on Earth did he know it was going to work? Because, I don't know about you, but it's not something that I'd automatically think of. I don't think I'd ever find myself in a tricky situation and then suddenly go, 'Oh I know. That'll be a good idea!'.
The whole thing reeks of CLAMP trying to insert a bit more excitement and angst into the story.
Oh, well, maybe they'll explain everything perfectly, but at the moment I'm just sitting here going 'Wait...what?'.
It's just a bit OTT is all I'm saying!
(Just you wait, I'll be saying the same thing all over again over some new chapter - probably when Mokona tries to save the day by overdosing on painkillers or something)
I've been trying to catch up on everything that I've missed on the whole of the internets while I was away. It's taking a while. Here's where I'm at:
- I watched CLAMP on Top Runner. How cool was it to see them talking? And I loved watching Mokona draw (even if it was just for a few seconds). I really enjoy finding out anything about the way CLAMP work. I proper look up to them. And when they mentioned that they started out all sharing a 2-bed flat, and practically living on top of their desks: HOW AWESOME IS THAT. That's some proper dedication right there. How bohemian <3 (Is it wrong that I would love to be more bohemian, even though it means living in a freezing garret and being poor and miserable?)
Ahhh, I'm so jealous. I would love to do what they do for a living. I don't care that they work super hard; it must be well fun and rewarding and stuff. Seriously. I want to do eet.
- Well, both Tsubasa and xxxHolic have been pretty darn exciting recently, haven't they? I'm quite glad that I got to binge on a few chapters in one go. Although, I have to say, xxxHolic has been FAR more interesting. Sure, Tsubasa has the plot, but xxxHolic is the one that messes with my brain. Just WHAT IS GOING ON? I really want to know. And everyone has been asking this from the beginning, but JUST WHO IS WATANUKI? Ahhhhhhhh, I want to know!
- And I've started watching a series called Mononoke. I'm quite taken with it. It's a kind of trippy ghost story. Everything about this show is good, even the crazy accordion music in the opening titles. It has a brilliant atmosphere. Brilliant.
Well, look. I've overrun my bedtime by nigh-on 15 minutes now, I'd better go. I'm still getting on well with a ridiculously early bedtime. Rather than thinking 'aw, do I have to go to bed?' I actually look forward to sleeping. It's kind of super.
So I just spent the last 45 minutes deleting a backlog of spam, and now I have no time to read all this Tsubasa/xxxHolic that I've just downloaded (because it is now my bedtime).
But I did manage to upload that Clematis page.
In other news, have something that's already old hat despite being less that a week old (I love the internet). Background: the Tube drivers have been on strike in London over the past three days so travelling anywhere has been sort of epic. Luckily I walk to work so it hardly affected me at all, but this song is funny anyways (beware if you're delicate or at work, it's a bit sweary):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKRMQmVczts
Also I want to tell you about the funny dream I had last night. It was funny to me anyway:
I was in a corner shop and the shopkeeper (who had a generic comedy foreign accent) offered us some sweets because he liked us. He said
I have the sweeties here; it's good for de children. De children like ze sweeties, and so they come in ze shop, and it's good, you know.
And then when he was giving us the sweets, some kid came in and tried to get one too, only to be beaten back by the shopkeeper.
No no no! Children aren't allowed to eat ze sweeties! Get away! No!
Woo! So I've got the internets back!
The problem is that our landlord's set us up with 'AOHell' and it is HELLA slow.
Any joy I had at having the internet back has been negated by it taking 15 minutes to download 3MB. Seriously. Maybe good if you're checking your emails. Not good if you've got weeks of jaffing to catch up on.
Oh well. At least it's back. I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if I can last. And then I'll switch to cable internet. (ps Hey Steve, how do you get your internets so cheap? Please point out to me which package you've got)
Alright, I've got spam to delete and a new page of Clematis to post. But first I have to sleep (it's been a long month).
I'm not actually back yet. I thought I should just pop in and let you know what's going down.
You might remember that I mentioned that my internet was going to go down so we could switch ISPs. Well that's about it. We're still waiting for our new broadband connection; it's taking AGES! I'm starting to go quite crazy. Thank God I can at least check facebook at work. I am getting Tsubasa withdrawal symptoms like mental though. I have no idea what's going on anymore.
So, I'm in Bristol again for the weekend and have taken over Steve's internet connection for my nefarious ways.
Hopefully I'll have an internet connection of my own on Monday, or next week, or I don't know... sometime in my life.
Arrrgh *break down and sob*
Well, here is the first Clematis update in ages. And after it being so long, the page isn't even that good. Oh well; here's to hoping that I'll get into the swing of things soon.
By the way. Did anyone mention Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations? Because it looks like my dreams may just come true, and it may just be awesome. Not that I'm letting my hopes run away with me or anything, but did you take a look at the character designs? Oh man oh man.
Also, my mind is like I broken record at the moment. I want to draw Lelouch again. Note to brain: just leave it and go eat some pie.
I'm off to see Steve tomorrow for a few days. See ya.
So my internet connection is still here. I am dazed but happy. I have no idea when it's going to die on me, so I'll try not to think about it.
I've just been home with my parents for a few days (I'm off work on holiday this week). It was nice. I did nothing. Although I did end up walking through this beautiful meadow. The meadow was too overgrown to sit in, but it was beautiful. The sun was shinning, the breeze was blowing, and you couldn't hear anything apart from the chirping of a multitude of crickets. It's hard to find anywhere more peaceful. I was captivated. I could have stayed there all afternoon, but sadly we were just passing through.
The pictures don't do it justice. You had to be there. But suffice to say, my imagination ran away with me for a little while.
The other thing I did at home was read. A lot. I finished reading the book, Counting Sheep by Paul Martin, which I think I've mentioned here before. I liked it so much when I read part of it at Theresa's house, that I had to buy my own copy. It's absolutely fascinating. I couldn't put it down; and for a non-fiction book, that's saying something. I would recommend that everyone reads this book. It will change your life. I feel like it's changed mine.
The book is all about the science and psychology of sleep. It's main argument is that no-one gets enough sleep anymore, and that the world would be a much nicer place if they did. Think about it. Do you feel like you've gotten enough sleep when your alarm is ringing in your ear in the morning? Chances are you don't. Do you feel tired all the time? Chances are you do. Sleep deprivation is common, and it makes people unhappy. But society is a funny thing, as is peer pressure. In today's society sleeping is something that people don't care about. It is a common view that you are lazy if you sleep in late, but it's also a common view that you're boring if you go to bed early. People who can get by on little sleep are admired for how much they can fit into their day. Considering how health conscious people are nowadays, it's surprising that sleep is held in such low esteem. Sure, eating healthily and doing exercise is good, but sleeping is important for your health too. Perhaps even more important. A person can go for longer without food than they can without sleep.
Well I've had it with peer pressure. This book has made me realise what we all know: sleeping feels good. I enjoy sleep. I enjoy dreams. And I'm not going to feel guilty for doing something that I enjoy. You know, I think I've felt guilty every time I've taken a nap in the past 18 years. Every time. Well not any more! From now on I am going to sleep as much as I want, and I'm not going to feel guilty about it!
So...dreaming. The parts of the book about dreaming are the most interesting to me. It's fascinating. And it's surprising when you realise how active your brain is while you're dreaming. Sleep is not downtime; rather, it's another state of being (for lack of a better phrase). Everything you dream seems like nonsense, but it is as equally a valid part of your mind as your waking self. It's quite scary to think about. Especially because we hardly remember any of it. I'm sure it's only because we remember being awake more that we use only our waking self to define who we are. I think I might be talking nonsense, but just think about it; we don't just switch off when we sleep; it's a large part of our lives, and therefore a large part of who we are.
So I've really been paying attention to my sleep over the past few days (not having to go to work helps). I've kind of decided that I shouldn't be scared of the idea of having a lucid dream, and maybe I should try to have one. I almost did have one, but I didn't because I'm rubbish. I dreamt that I was checking for dream signs so if I could tell if I was dreaming or not. The theory is that you realise that you're dreaming because things like books and mirrors and clocks don't work so well in a dream, and once you realise you're dreaming: Congratulations! You're in a lucid dream! So I dreamt that I was looking at a plant and in a mirror. My reflection was in the mirror, and I could make out the separate leaves on the plant, but everything was much more fuzzy than in real life. However, the dream me concluded that I just wasn't wearing my glasses, and therefore what I was seeing was just a product of myopia and not a dream, and that I must be awake. So my dream didn't become lucid and it continued on it's merry way. How can I be so rubbish? I can't even tell the difference between real and not real? How disappointing.
I've also been dreaming about watching animations of CLAMP manga. In both dreams I had, the animation quality was amazing, and both times Kamui was in the animation. In the second dream I noted how the animation was much better than Tsubasa Chronicle. In conclusion: I obviously have high expectations for Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations.
So before I go now and sleep. I shall leave you with a quote with a beautiful metaphor that was given in Counting Sheep. It was taken from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë:
I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
Alright! I managed to watch episodes 24 and 25 before my internet connection goes down!
spoilers spoilers spoilers
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about Clematis. I'm still meaning to draw some, but it seems that I've still been feeling unsettled about this whole flat business. Hopefully I should come out of this stupor soon, but there probably won't be a new page up until my internet goes away and comes back again. Please bear with me!
I wonder if anyone actually checks my blog for Clematis updates.
And about the picture: I don't know; it's just quick and dirty. I think maybe Chloe is on the phone to her sister; she doesn't seem too thrilled about the conversation, whoever she's talking to.
So I finally found out what's going to happen to my internet connection. At the end of the month we'll finish with our old ISP, so my connection will be down for a couple of weeks while we get a new one set up. I'm sad because I'll have downtime, but glad that I can be prepared for it now (I've already got lots of stuff to read and watch so I should be fine).
In other internet news: Will it ever stop raping my childhood?
I watched Quadrophenia on my birthday. It was pretty cool. I kind of want to have a scooter and be a mod. Only, like, with less of the fighting in Brighton, and more of the dancing with wolves.
It's my bedtime again. Laters.