green eyes, yeah the spotlight shines upon you....+_+

today at dinner my mother wanted salmon and my dad wanted tuna. me and brother didn't mind, so we went fifty fifty. that's genetics for you.
a strange weekend. for me the harry potter movie was not quite as bad as berengere said it was, but not as good as theo said it was. voldemort wasn't scary. he was a bit too bald and human. and daniel radcliffe had some dumb lines, for example "i love magic!", although he did try acting a bit. rita skeeter made the whole film. totally awesome.
everything is christmassy. bought presents today and played sleigh ride in orchestra. then came home, and did some physics for once in my lifetime. i have an interview. well, four actually. for some reason one interview isn't enough at oxford. four's the minimum. i wish they would just combine them all into one slightly longer one though. damn katrina not having to do two tests and send off four essays and got to four interviews. also the bloody interviews seem to have been scheduled for the weekend before my extended essay is due in. (*panic, convulsions, horror etc.*)

strasbourg people are back. tim returned bearing a beatles haircut and a scarf of mine that michael gardiner stole. no sign of becky or michael currently. in fact most people furtively took friday off.....hmmmm (not that i can talk).
very impressed by the comments by the way, not used to all this attention, tee hee. and while we're on notting hill quotes, "i'm just going to the kitchen to get some food, then i'm gonna tell you a story that'll make your balls shrink to the size of raisins".
i wish it would snow. lucky lucky people in cornwall. if it's going to be cold then it could at least be beautiful too. had to wait for my cello teacher to give me a lift this morning at 8.30. newham academy of music is the coldest place on earth.
i am going to see kurtis' performance of my fair lady in march. very very excited, although it is four months away...*just you wait, henry higgins, 'till you're dead*.

still rather depressed though. still have an extended essay to write.
and an interview to prepare for.
and a room to tidy.
and miles to go before i sleep.
and miles to go before i sleep.

i'm going to fail just a hundred per cent....

i have decided that having three free periods in a row is distracting and unproductive. as some chav scrawled across the common room: 'don't let free periods fool you into thinking you are any more free.' i achieved nothing in those three hours, though i did get to listen to louise's AMAZING new iPod, it's beautiful, and you can even watch videos and movies on it... just like liam i was tempted to sell everything i own in order to afford one of those. then again the value of all my possessions would probably not be that much, i mean what do i own that has any significant value? my cello would go for at least £600, but there's the slight hitch that it doesn't actually belong to me. everything else holds only sentimental value...

my cat has become very affectionate recently. perhaps she's pregnant. though i believe she's been neutered. doesn't ever leave my room though: sleeps on my bed at night and sits on the keyboard when i am trying to work. (or playing online trivia as the case may be).

i long for christmas now. because i am tired and weary and fed up with working and being depressed. and not working, and then not being able to not work because i have so much work. and then worrying and crying and playing online trivia because i haven't done any work, and then not doing any work because i'm playing online trivia and then everything revolving in an increasingly desperate viscious circle. long live christmas, where you're allowed to not for work for a minimum of three days. at least. if not two weeks. pure heaven.

i am such an escapist.
x

here are the things i could be doing instead of writing my extended essay

-tying my shoelaces.
-falling in love.
-eating tuna mayonnaise.
-smashing things in time to the yeah yeah yeahs.
-going outside wearing far too little clothing.
-having a hot, hot shower.
-walking over the creaky floorboard in my room again and again.
-boiling eggs.
-painting in orange and green.
-phoning my sister.
-buying someone flowers.
-adjusting my watch to greek time.
-reciting shakespeare.
-watching hollyoaks.
-frying chicken, and then eating chicken.
-writing a letter to someone i love but haven't seen in months.
-getting drunk.
-watching music videos.
-making interesting things out of silver paper and feathers.
-being nice to my cat.
-sleeping.
-rearranging all my books into alphabetic order.
-sticking things on my wall.
-looking for my graphical calculator. or my library books.

i discovered this morning how heavenly cornflakes are. i could live on cornflakes. and other orange things like mangoes and mini cheddars. and other things beginning with 'm' like muffins and melon.
as you can tell, i am ridiculously hungry today.
maths felt strangely subdued without tim and joao. typical, to abandon us learning about vectors while they get drunk in strasbourg. at least today i have finally finished my ToK presentation. and i got sixteen out of twenty! not back for a disgustingly last minute piece of work.
i have reached the firm conclusion that my life has no purpose or meaning.
i am going to write my extended essay, eat dinner, hoover my room and then read the political writings of william morris.

i knew a girl at school called pandora. never got to see her box though.

ain't no sunshine...

i have found the most unbelievably accurate site about the IB ever. according to the site the top ten reasons to be an IB candidate are:
10) I want to conform to an international standard of educational excellence.
9) I want to be surrounded by other intelligent, dedicated students.
8) I want to work extremely hard.
7) I want to sacrifice almost all of my time to studying.
6) I want my class rank to be as low as it can possibly be.
5) I want to have an overwhelmingly high stress level.
4) I want to immerse myself in an environment of competition and mutual jealousy.
3) I want to burn away any vestiges of creativity or independent thought that I might have left after sophomore year.
2) I want to discover that all of the extra work I did to get the IB Diploma made absolutely no difference in my college admissions.
1) I feel masochistic.

SO true. taking the IB is the biggest regret of my life. it's an awesome site by the way. ironically i was looking at it while avoiding doing my extended essay this weekend. particularly amused by the idea of someone writing their extended essay on whether ernie and bert are gay. i wish i had thought of this. existentialism is not quite as fun.

a fairly good weekend, but i wish i had done my extended essay. played scrabble on saturday night. i won, thanks to "quoth". on sunday i felt ill again. it was my mother's birthday. i gave her two teapots and four green pens. she was delighted.
might go and commit suicide now. or i could start my TK presentation.

hmmmmmm.

a long time ago i used to write shit poetry. wrote this when i was fourteen. jesus.

You left your sandals
scratched and torn in the yard, shaving
foam in the bath, your love shut
out in the dark. I still taste your
scent, pay your rent, mourn
and lament. This is where your
mail is sent, where I wait
and frustrate, pretend you're late,
pretend I'm not in a state
while inside I rage, tear out the page
and start again, tears and promises,
fears and pain, washed down
the drain by your memory,

my love crushed and torn,
though it was forsworn,
although tenderly it
was born,
a silent dawn of
amounting lust and desire,
a burning fire that you put out.

Even though I scream and shout
and slam doors, fall asleep on the floor,
think of you more each day, you
refuse to go away
inside. That stale ecstacy
too good to last, a spirit of the
past, and everything reaks of
your presence, is stained by your touch,
lacks your fingers so
much, from colour to black and white, here
to out of sight, you've
taken flight though i'm still here,
the same room in blackened doom,
the same bride without a groom,

a sealed tomb.

[If you want to read some good poetry, try Reid's site. Or here. Or here.]

what's so good about being eighteen?

in my opinion these should be the milestones of life:

13 and three quarters: Adrian Mole's age.
17: Jacqueline was seventeen.
20: End of teenagedom.
22: Grand job. (In the city it's alright...)
23: Feeling twenty-three. Acting seventeen.
25: Lower age limit for space travel.
30: We'll get married when we're thirty. I wanna do it on your birthday.
33 and a half: Legal grandparenthood possible.
35: Half of biblically allotted lifespan.
36: Have now been an adult longer than a child.
40: Upper age limit for space travel.
41: Have outlived John Lennon.
55 (approx.): Have lived for 20 000 days.
64: Last possible sixth power. (Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four??)
70: Biblical death.
81: You have lived one year for every box in a Sudoku. Congratulations.
82: Hairnets and dogfood. I'm EIGHTY-TWO.
120: I'm A HUNDRED AND TWENTY. I'm A HUNDRED AND TWENTY.
165: Have outlived Albus Dumbledore.

x

give me a slice of your mother

my mother is the most evil, malicious, vindictive woman i have ever met.

you're the mother growing cold /you're the bath now running old

Gwen wins again.

And here are my reasons to be depressed:
1) I am the only member of my family who doesn't suffer from chronic depression. (Living in Camberwell counts as depression.)
2) I am not particularly depressed, but have been hoodwinked into pretending I am.
3) Most of what I know I learnt from: wikipedia.org, dictionary.com and various online trivia sites.
4) My school librarian is a psychopath who hates me and sends me hate-mail because I owe her 25p. She has even installed a fingerprint system for issuing books because she thinks I am lying about my identity. I have twice been accused of stealing books when I wasn't, because of the ridiculously over-sensitive alarm system. She has sent me twelve notes via registration in the last two weeks.
5) Many of my friends are fixated with Japanese anime movies.
6) Many people who go to my school are middle class stoners.
7) Many people who go to my school think that East London is a place swarming with terrorists, open graves and immigrant gangsters, far from the safe haven that is Chelmsford.
8) I live with my mother, who won't let me move out for uni unless I get into the most elitist university in the country, as apparently this is the "only place worth moving out for".
9) My dad is not objecting to this.
10) I am writing this, instead of using my time to think deep and positive thoughts and write my extended essay.

i think that does it.
x

this is a low +_+

i have been indulging in a strange pondering competition with my siblings regarding which one of us is the most depressed... i almost certainly lost.

jack's 10 reasons were:
1. i'm addicted to the internet
2. i have no money and have been forced to smoke mayfair cigarettes for the last two days
3. i'm almost in my late twenties and live with my parents
4. i can't install wireless network device drivers for Linux on my computer
5. i have no friends
6. i have about three weeks to come up with a project which will mean that uni this year wasn't a waste of time
7. everyone i went to art school with is now famous
8. my body clock is on los angeles time
9. i no longer have any middle-term memory
10. no-one visits my website
yours hanging by a thread,
jack

francie, clearly the winner, came out with the following:
1. I have a £500 overdraft, no money and no hope of getting any for the next three months.
2. I live with four men, at least one of which I actively dislike, who believe a wild night in consists of leaving congealed-food-encrusted plates all over the floor, decorating every flat surface with a cocktail of cigarette ash, skunk and News of the World sports sections, and playing playstation for seven hours in silence. And who can't piss straight into a toilet even when sober.
3. I am voluntarily(!) choosing to move in with two of the above. If I can pay the deposit.
4. I am addicted to cigarettes and sudoku. The emotional and time cost of the one is almost as much as the financial and health cost of the other.
5. I share a bedroom with an anally-retentive obsessive compulsive who moves my stuff when he thinks I'm not looking. And never buys me flowers.
6. I am taking a course that is really really hard work and have to hand in four assignments over the next three weeks. All of which count towards my grade. And they're by no means the only homework I have.
7. Not including the homework/lesson-planning/coursework, I work a 45 hour week and never take home more than £150.
8. I find I spend my commuting time worrying about things that have already happened, instead of about things that might happen in the future.
9. I don't have any friends that I ever see or communicate with outside of the school holidays. (Apart from Liz.)
10. I had my first two-day weekend in three months last weekend and spent it in bed with the worst flu-like disease ever. (Ok, not as bad as stuff like TB. But still very bad.)

OK contenders, if you want to give in now I'll forgive you.
If not good luck! You'll need it.
Love Francie

i feel tragically defeated! there was me doubting the meaning of my existence and procrastinating because i haven't finished my extended essay, and my brother and sister send me ridiculously suicidal emails leaving me feeling relatively happy about my problems. does anyone else have ten reasons why they are even more depressed, because i was left pretty dumb-struck!

am i talking too fast, or are you just playing dumb?

the HAT test in finally over, and generally today wasn't bad, have been feeling really depressed at school recently and i'm not sure why. saying that, by the end of the school day i genuinely felt i had achieved nothing except doing a test and making a rather pointless Fairtrade leaflet...

david blunkett has resigned! again! why the hell was he back in the first place anyway? he doesn't want to be there, the public don't want him to be there and on top of this he's a really nasty piece of work - corrupt and notoriously right wing. not to mention identity cards... what a waste of time. i hate blunkett - i hate his attacks on asylum seekers, and i hate his disregard for civil liberties. apparently tony blair said blunkett left office "with no stain of impropriety against him whatsoever"....right tony. i mean, he only had an affair with a younger woman resulting in a son which he then spent ages proving was his, was involved in a scandal using his position to get a visa to his nanny a lot quicker than anyone else could have and took up a job illegitimately without following the rules of parliament.....

on a different note i'm glad smoking has been partly banned. i think the social aspect of smoking will suffer greatly, and this will put a lot of pressure on people to give up. pubs will be much nicer places without all the lingering smoke and passive smoking is deeply unfair on non-smokers. all of my family have smoked at some point: my mother until she was in her later 30s, my father until nearly a year ago, joey occasionally until a couple of years ago, and francie and jack still do. i think the most effective way of getting people to give up is to make smoking as difficult a habiit to endure as possible, and if this means banning it then fair enough. in france you can smoke anywhere, (non smoking areas were only introduced a couple of years ago), cigarettes are dirt cheap and as a result everyone's at it: most people start when they're about 14. i have to confess having smoked a cigar once when i was totally wasted in st. james' park, but it is not something i wish to repeat.

by the way i have investigated the reason why xander is on wikipedia's list of one-eyed fictional characters, i think it's some kind of confusion with the time when he was blinded in one eye in series seven although i'm not sure if this is the case as i have never watched series seven.
either way, XANDER HAS TWO EYES!
x