stolen from cinnamon_sakaki, here are the males and the females (some fictional, some real life) who have captured my 20-year-old heart at some point over those last 20 years- ( many a picture contained within )

A picture of something that makes me angry/sad

most of the pictures of things which make me angry wouldn't really be suitable for lj- animal abuse, female genital mutilation...yeah, not very pretty :/ in fact, today's meme is a big downer :( here's something i found outside my front door yesterday, and which never fails to enrage me-




i was in the bath, you bastards!

Put simply, this is impossible for me to answer. I'm not going to think too hard about it for that reason- rather than boring you with one of the many possible 'this book changed my life!!' emo-type posts I could come up with, I'm just going to tell you about the book I'm currently re-reading- Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Sorry if I enrage any fans :P


Now, all of you who know me will know how easily I cry at things. Almost every Disney movie ever made can leave me incapacitated for around an hour, no matter how many times I've watched the scene over. I think I've been blessed with a slightly weird sense of humour to balance this out :P I still go a bit red in the face when I remember how, at least 3 months ago now, one of my seminar tutors asked the class what we thought of Thyestes. I instantly answered with something along the lines of "It was bloody hilarious!!", and I swear I heard a tumbleweed blow past- Thyestes, for the record, is a play in which a king mistakenly eats his own children. But, the puns, there are so many of them! And you can practically hear the villain twirling his villainous moustache!! Let's just say I find it hard to notice emotional stuff when it's embedded deep in melodrama- remember that for later,
Anyhow, I love Gone With The Wind. I LOVE it. But for all the importance the academics might place on it, at it's heart, I'd swear it's only Valley of the Dolls- with corsets, box auctions, a bit of a war, and a barbecue. It's the trashiest novel I think I've ever read, and I swear it paved the way for every historical Mills and Boon type novel that came after- sneaking your lady into a masked ball at a whorehouse? check. providing an education for your harlot's baby? check. sexy, sexy marital rape- the kind that really prods at your feminist guilt response when you get just a little turned on? in spades, my friends- spades. Just like in Valley of the Dolls, every single tiny little thing that happens to go in the opposite way to the way that one of the women wants it to is hammier than the damn piglet. The women don't argue, they screech. They screech when they're hungry, they screech when they're overheated, they screech when their clothes don't fit any more. Still wonder why Scarlett and Neely from VotD share the same last name :P ?
It's the men that make this novel truly great, and believe me, in real life, I am not one to stand for arguments along the lines of 'but I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't!'. Y'all probably know the story, so I won't go describe it- it's really, really long. But Ashley, who Scarlett comes to see as kind of pathetic, actually goes through 9 full circles of hell, and doesn't fucking moan about it either :P I'd guess (not being much of a historian) that all of it is very realistic- his experiences, both emotional and otherwise, and his reactions to them- and that's a sad thought. Without being too spoiler-y, the event which happens to Rhett towards the end stunned me into silence. "But she's afraid of the dark!" (I'm actually getting teary-eyed...) is such a brutal scene, and completely skipped over in the movie, where we only see Rhett finally exit the room he's locked himself in with Mellie, who then, as one would expect from one of the 'Wind' women, promptly steals the scene by fainting -.- ** The reasoning behind it is simple enough, and so 'Valley' that it's untrue- the commanding, unrepentant manly man really had a heart of gold! D'awwww! But somehow, it's pulled off in such a way that I'm left absolutely torn up inside- completely unlike anything else in the whole of the novel! Why Scarlett couldn't have been written this way, ie, as less of a superficial bitch, is beyond me. My only guess is that Mitchell was aiming for realism in her Southern Belle.

I should add that the reason I reread Gone With The Wind this Christmas is because I've been giggling all the while I've been watching True Blood and reading the Sookie Stackhouse mystery novels- all the Southern Belle-ish behaviour that Sookie pulls off is so anachronistic, when her brother's outside the bar fucking some girl next to the trash cans! Reading GwtW has left me with a huge desire to see more of vampire Bill in flashback sequence, and more of the female vampire who made him as well. I can highly recommend the movie version of Gone With The Wind, because it's over 70 years old, and as such it deserves to be watched often, and by someone who knows how :D the acting still floors me, even if Clark Gable's MANLINESS completely overpowers Vivien Leigh, who holds her own so brilliantly in every scene he isn't in, the subtlety is crushed out of any scene they appear in together. I suppose that if they'd left in the scenes they cut with Rhett and Mellie, and they'd let Clark Gable cry on screen, all the women in the movie theatre would probably have swooned simultaneously, and caused a panic- No? Just me then? I know he has a mustache, but, seriously...I would, in the worst way :P The film gets a lower rating than it should on my costume scale, because the dresses tend to put me in mind of those awful knitted dolls that they put over toilet rolls in old people's homes. That doesn't mean I don't want Scarlett's scarlet-coloured gown- or to be carried up a flight of stairs, kicking and screaming, in Rhett Butler's arms :P

Day 03- Your Favourite TV Show

Carnivale. Partly because it dared to repeatedly show a curvy lady dancing all sexy-like, but it was so much more than that, so much that I'm getting sad that I had to write 'was' just now :( If you've seen it already you'll know what I mean when I say Boy do I wish I could have been in that show, I have so much love for the costumes, the sets...the interiors, that is, not the dustbowl, I faint when it's too hot. If it weren't for this show I never would have heard of La Rosa in Whitby (thank you, online fandom...) and if I hadn't been to La Rosa I wouldn't have spent as much of the summer as was left on my return learning all about the history of burlesque, the circus and american pre-war dance music <3 I've since added Coney Island to my list of 'places to visit when I finally get a damn time machine'...and may have drawn and mocked up a couple of sets of vintage underwear to work on when I have a chance :P

Honourable mentions (those both ongoing and proudly amongst my dvd collection)- Gormenghast and The Tudors, because they both star Jonathan Rhys Meyers (as well as being perfectly awesome in practically every other way! I'm Team Skinny Gormenghast-era JRM, not Team short-haired muscular JRM, if it matters :P) Rome, for being the first rough and dirty historical drama I'd seen in pretty much ever; True Blood, because it's hilarious; Glee, because it's hilarious and also a freakin' musical; Angel, because my entire life between the ages of eleven and thirteen were comprised of very little else :P and Nana, because it's consistently the best portrayal of almost everything I hold to be important in almost every area of my current life. Plus it's goshdarned pretty.

i'll catch up on the meme tomorrow. jesus fucking christ...i hate posting like this.

i hate it, but i'm so angry. i've just grabbed my laptop and run out of the living room because my mum's response to a drama-type show on tv where a young man got damaged from the waist down by a hand-grenade in world war two was come out with 'well he's gay, he got what he deserved'.

i didn't say a thing to her- because yesterday when i laughed at her for not being able to see the print icon on her laptop screen, she told me i had better be nice to her since she just bought me tickets for disneyland.

i feel sick. i'm sobbing in my room because i feel furious at her, but i'm so, so much more disgusted with myself. what the hell am i meant to do when someone i'm dependant on for a home here, for rent in norwich, let alone presents and, you know, emotional support (like she's given me any of that in the last 5 years which hasn't only been in response to a problem she's either caused, wilfully ignored, or tried to fix by telling me to 'sort myself out')- what am i meant to do when that person is so heinous, and so fucking *casual* about it too? can anyone give me any advice? my dad will tell me she was she was making some kind of joke, like he always does when i ask him if he thinks she's out of line too. if that's the case then her sense of humour is fucked up- even if it was just fiction the guy got injured fighting for his country, what the hell does it matter whether he was gay or not??!

god, since when do i ever refuse to speak up because i want a quiet life? i don't know what's wrong with me- the first thought to go through my head was 'i won't be able to pay for my holiday if i piss her off now and she takes it away- 'i'll have to be the one to tell sophie it's cancelled'. that's sickening. and i'm upstairs now not doing anything more about it because i can't exactly run down now and attack her over something she's probably already forgotten about. i left my sewing things downstairs so i don't have anything to distract me from thinking about this until i'm calmer, i'm just going to get angrier and angrier. i can't even look at her.

why aren't we allowed to shout at our parents and tell them they're acting in a bloody terrible way?? i'm a fucking adult...why do i even care about falling out of her favour? why am i more concerned about myself than about the way she must feel about my friends, people i have loved in the past and people i still love now? of course whenever i start to try and tell her anything about my sexuality she starts humming a little tune or something to that effect- that's seriously what she does, it's like a fucking comedy sketch. dad's fine, but he won't ever take my side over hers- like her, he doesn't believe in discussion between parents and 'children', and takes even the slightest dissent as a sign of 'disrespect' and gets shouty. why? because he just wants things to run smoothly. i fucking hate him for that- the way he actually says 'i refuse to argue with you' before he shouts me down, just shouting 'no, no, no, no!' over me when i say 'but...' even if i'm trying as hard as i can to be rational about the things he's saying, to lower my voice, to be fucking polite when i'm brimming over... now what do i find myself doing? shutting up, walking away... i'm so furious because they don't give me any way to address things that i have a problem with. i'd be told it's not for me to question their beliefs, that they don't concern me and i don't have the right to take issue with them...i could agree with at least part of that, in any fucking case other than this one!!
i'm just disgusted. and i know this rant is pointless (i've already abandoned punctuation), this isn't going to solve anything and i'm sorry for inflicting it but god, just when i thought i was having a good day. mum had helped me with my sewing, i was still on a high about the holiday...i was even thinking yesterday, and telling chris today, that it wouldn't be so bad to come and live back here if it's true that half the library are leaving in july, and if my boss really meant it when she said that i could do her job, no problem.
i need to calm down before i wreck everything for myself- to use my parents for money, essentially, is really wrong, and while i know that's not really what i'm doing- it's not like i'm hitting them up for drug money or anything- i still feel really, really guilty. i wish i was in a position where i could just distance myself from them, but i'm not independent enough at all- not financially i mean- yet i feel terrible for wishing i could just cut them out! but the things they say upset me so much, so much that i get upset because i got upset. god, i hate my brain!!!!!
in a few months i'm going to be jobless and i'll need their help more than ever. i should be able to put up with the occasional hideous remark. but goddamnit, i shouldn't have to! they should keep those fucking evil thoughts, which they shouldn't fucking have, to their damn selves if they have to!! how can i make them stop if they wouldn't fucking listen if i tried?

someone help? i'm completely at a loss, and i can't get myself to calm down.

My favourite film-

Velvet Goldmine, hands down. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, dressed like David Bowie, singing like Steve Harley, fucking Ewan Macgregor...what more does a girl need from a movie? A cameo from Placebo, covering Marc Bolan? Oscar Wilde references in every single scene? Christian Bale jerking off, i hear you say, you filthy perverts? Well... :P

Runner's up awards go to Ed Wood, The Notorious Bettie Page, Wall:E, Beauty and the Beast, Lilo and Stitch, Grindhouse, The Science of Sleep, and Kamikaze Girls

here's a meme for the new year :) it's a pretty good one, actually, because it's requires me to post one a day for the rest of the month!

Day 01- My Favourite Song

Aaaand I'm already stuck :P

The one song which always gets me dancing (usually like a bit of an idiot :P) is Love Shack, by the B52's :P I can't resist singing along to anything by The Puppini Sisters, although I prefer the original, slightly ugly version of Falling In Love Again by Marlene Dietrich.
My favourite Disney song (and yes, Disney deserves it's own category!) is probably the emo-tastic reprise of Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Or maybe I'll Make a Man Out Of You from Mulan...or the whole of Pocahontas...or He Mele No Lilo...
My most-listened-to on itunes is currently the Glee choir version of Don't Stop Believin' by Journey, and on Spotify it's Coney Island Baby by Tom Waits
The two songs which will make me cry, unfailingly, every time, are The Living Room by Amanda Palmer, and Asleep by the Smiths. I'm sure that that qualifies them...

Nope, there's no way I can pick just one!

( here's a list of what's to come )