Monday, January 31, 2005

the jesus army play some choons

Now this made me smile. Apparently fresh and funky Christians have been infiltrating the music scene while no one was looking. Nice one.

It bugs me though. I know they don't want to isolate their audiences by singing religious lyrics, but I love it when I get an album and then realise the singer's a Christian. Even better when you can see it in the lyrics. Like Sister Hazel, or Zwan (unless they were being ironic... I wouldn't know). I reckon the Stacie Orrico approach is best: "I know, I'll trick them into buying my album by releasing songs about boys and the meaning of life and then BAM, God songs in yo face!". Nice one. If she could have done that without also doing: "I know, I'll release funky pop rock songs to trick Fi into buying an album that's actually weird RnB and not as fun as she thought it would be." Natasha Bedingfield did that too (another closet Christian, woohoo!). Honestly, can't a girl indulge her shameful taste in girly funky pop/rock without being peppered with silly bits of gangsta hipping tripping.. rhyddim.. stuff? Maybe it's a Christian thing. You'd thing ladies of the lord would have better musical taste. Sigh.

Speaking of bringing Christianity to the masses (yeah, because that's exactly what I was talking about. Worst. Segue. Evar.), the Christian Union at college have started a teaser campaign. For a couple of weeks, the hallways have been decorated with little fluorescent signs with question marks on them, like on the video for Where is the Love. Last week, the question marks were joined by little explanations, small enough that people had to peer to read them. "The College Christian Union are running a series of talks on the reality of God..."
Niiiiiice. I didn't go along to the first talk, I have yet to see if the sneaky advertising worked. Maybe our college is on the brink of a spiritual revolution?

"Yeah, but aren't Christians all gay-hating fascists anyway?"
"What would Jesus do? Jesus would shut the hell up and let me talk."
"I don't mind Christians, it's those psychotic Jesus army, we wanna change the world types that get on my tits."
"You felt the holy spirit? No, dear, that was the wine."

Maybe not. Not yet, anyway.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

lost in transaction

Having discovered the wonder that is dooce.com (both touching and hysterically funny, my new favourite blog), I'm kind of wary about slagging off my job on this here site. It's a pickle: I don't want to be Dooced myself, but on the other hand, I really don't give two hoots about my job. Part-time supermarket work for £4.50 an hour? I know there's them that'd be glad of my job, but I, sadly, just ain't one of them.

So here it is, my homage to getting fired for hating one's job, otherwise known as "Lost in Transaction: How to piss me off between the hours of 11am and 8pm, each and every Saturday, at an unnamed supermarket in Sandhurst."

1) Refer to me as you there. Granted, it's only happened once but I was really quite offended. Last time I checked, I wan't a peasant and you weren't the lord of the dirty smegging manor.

2) Approach my till with an expression that says "I'm far too good to be in here but darn Marks and Spencers don't do brand name ketchup and I need the Heinz" and thrust a giant box containing a hoover or excercise bike or some such piece of crap without even looking at me. If you're aiming for my face, at least take a moment to look at it.

3) Hand me your credit/debit and loyalty card before I've scanned your shopping. Yeah, because I have a place to put that. There is quite obviously a specially designated area behind my till in which I keep your financial paraphernalia. Obviously, the whole point of this new chip and pin system was that you let me play with your credit card for a full ten minutes before you use it.

4) Having given me your credit/debit and loyalty card, look at me like I'm about to steal them. If you're so damn protective, why don't you keep a hold of the things until you need them, do I look like the provisor of your Mastercard??? On second thoughts, maybe I can think of a place to put your Visa...

5) Men: Stand at the top of the till and leer at me while your wife drowns in a sea of groceries and screaming children. When she eventually asphyxiates in a carrier bag, berate her for being incompetent, yell at the kids and wink at me. I'm sorry sir, is there something in your eye? Is it my finger? Oh no, how'd that get there?
Women: Stand at the top of the till while your husband drowns in a sea of groceries and screaming children and watch me like a hawk lest I should diddle you. Here's the deal you snooty bitch, left to my own devices I'll probably make mistakes. With you breathing on my face I definitely will. And you know what? Next time I double scan something by mistake, I'm not going to menu-void-void last item-are you sure-yes it.

6) Talk down to me. Assume that, because I'm working in a supermarket that I'm a single mum with no qualifications and a boyfriend on benefits. Furthermore, having made this assumption, believe that this makes you better than me. Sometimes I wish I was as white trash as you think I am, just so I'd be hard enough to kick your arse. You've just bought 12 bottles of Lambrini and three bottles of own-brand vodka. JUST BECAUSE I'M JUDGING YOU DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN JUDGE ME.

7) Under 5s: Climb on the belt and start singing "I am incredible" at the top of your voice.
Parents of the under 5s: Smile indulgently while your child does this. If all else fails, why not give them my pen to chew on?

8) Invade my personal space. Boundaries don't exist in supermarkets, so feel free to lean over the till and pick things up. What did you think, that I was going to withhold the crappy biro from you? Maybe I'd forget to give you it and we'd all be caught in limbo for eternity, receipt unsigned? Or that I was gonna sit there and taunt you with it? "It's my pen and you're gonna have to say please a couple more times."
By the way, this applies to your receipt and card at the end of the transaction. Clearly, I have no intention of handing you the card and receipt, that's way beyond my mental capabilities. Be warned, one of these days you're gonna lean over my till and I'm going to sink my teeth into your hand.
Oh now you want the card? Now you don't trust me with your credit card? Tough luck, you'll get it back when I'm good and ready.

9) Start eating the food before you pay for it. In fairness, I appreciate that kids can be annoying, and if tiny psycho baby has its heart set on one of the biscuits you're buying, I won't stand in your way. And most customers are very good about giving me the wrappers to scan, as opposed to chucking them away before they reach the till. But when you show up at the till and hand me an apple core, you're starting to tread the thin line.
One more time, with feeling: How can I weigh your apples if the majority of your apples are already making their merry way down your digestive tract? You think I can charge you for an empty bag of grapes? You think I'm stupid enough to not notice that you've eaten half the bunch?

10) Say any of the following things:
On finding that your shopping costs less than you thought it would - "Ha, every little does help!"
In reply to my shout of 'alcohol' (under 18s can't sell booze without permission) - "Yes please!"
Having just asked when I finish, and been told that I don't finish til 8 - "Ah well, only three hours to go, then!"
Having just been asked ' would you like any help with your packing?' - "Oh, yes please."
As far as I'm concerned, it was a rhetorical question. Now get the hell out of my store.

that friday night feeling

Writing doesn't help; it sorts things out, it clarifies them but they're still there. Eating doesn't help. Working doesn't help because I can't concentrate. My friends are so cheerful that they irritate me, or so down that I feel spoilt in comparison and hate myself for feeling bad. Either that or they try to help and talk to me, which freaks me out and I have to get away. Sleeping doesn't help, because I can't, and when I do I have bad dreams and wake up so fast I might as well have sat awake all night. Drinking doesn't help, dancing doesn't help. Smoking, crying, music, singing, reading, chilling, praying, worship... Only one thing helps and I think about it all the time, way too often, it's not healthy.

I might delete this post tomorrow, when I'm thinking clearly, when I'm feeling a bit lighter. I don't know if I want to hide or cry for help, I think I need to do something though.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

so much beauty in the world

There's far too much going on in my head to write down. I like to think of my face as being like the underside of a duck: you can't see it happening, but beneath the surface there's two little legs pumping like mad.

That was an appalling analogy, but you get the gist.

-----------

I have this friend who's very proud of his cynicism. He's big on that whole "I'm so jaded and world weary" thing, when really he's as sheltered as a snail in a bunker (now that was a better piece of imagery for y'all). It irritates me, when you see people as young as me and my peers, who like to act like they've been there, done that and come out the other end seeing this corrupt and futile world for what it is. Come on guys, we're 17. We've never even had full-time jobs, puberty's still lurking about us like a persistent smell (simile strike three!); don't pretend like you know the ways of the world.

I'm very aware of the fact that I'm sheltered. I've been hardly anywhere, in the scheme of things I've done hardly anything. A lot of the A-level students at my college look down on our schoolmates who went out after their GCSEs and got jobs. There's this attitude of "Oh look at you, you're too thick to get qualifications so you're out having babies and working and getting council flats, you poor things." It's a load of shit, quite frankly. The snobbery in the education system is disgusting, like on the bus I take every morning, where the tech students and the 6th form students sit and snipe at each other. We're boffs, they're thickies. No, we've chosen to academic qualifications, they're doing practical courses. That's the way to deal with a manual labour shortage, make people who don't get A-levels feel like retards, woohoo!

The point is, besides my beef with higher education, that all the students on that bus in the morning are doing the same thing. We're delaying adulthood. We know that, eventually, we're gonna have to get out there and live independently and get jobs and work for a living. We don't want to yet. Yeah, we want to learn, we want an education, but one of the reasons we want it is because it's a few more years when we can evade the real world. I don't want to go and slog at Tesco full-time, I want to have fun at uni and be a student and enjoy a couple more responsibility free years before I'm forced to grow up. That's the truth.

So who's got more right to be cynical and world weary? Me? Doing my A-levels, financially supported by relatively well-off parents (despite employment issues, still comfortable), all set to go to university because I've been blessed with the brains to do so, or a girl I went to school with, pregnant in a council flat with no boyfriend and a dead-end job at McD's? Me and my mates, we have our problems, but we're living in bubbles. We're still like kids, y'know?

Even so, I'm different to how I was a year and a half ago, when I started college. I can't look after a kid, or run a household, or hold down a job, or live like an adult, but I've had to learn, in my own way. And it's really changed me, I don't appreciate things like I used to. It's not that I'm cynical, it's just that all the things that used to floor me I take for granted now.

I've always been one for the American Beauty tangents. You know, the old "most beautiful thing I've ever seen", staring at a paper bag for twenty minutes and suddenly being aware of a great benevolent force trick. I was more aware, I think, of the beauty in every little thing I can see, and the wonder of creation that used to hit me every day before I became a Christian and took the fact that there was a benevolent creator for granted.

We were watching Donnie Darko in Film studies (another fantastic film) and I had my first American Beauty moment in ages. There was sunshine coming through the blinds and, because the room was in total darkness, it was really noticeable. It was kind of muted, but it skidded off the desks and on to people's faces and it was moving because of the trees in the way. I was sat there, looking round at everyone's faces with the sunlight and shadow and the reflections from the film on the screen and I just felt really happy, it was just a really lovely moment.

It's nice, especially at the moment, to know that I can still feel like that, for no reason at all other than the world's a very pretty place to be sometimes.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

mysterious ways

So, tonight we had our monthly youth service at St Mary's. You could tell God was moving: Gemma planned to do a talk on the tsunami and when we arrived at the church, there were newspaper clippings pinned on a board in the church as power points. The last thing she said in her talk was "What's stopping you?", in reference to people's unwillingness to pray about big disasters; in the back of the song sheet, Graeme happened to have written a message called "What's your excuse?" in reference to people's fear of acting out for God.

We were worshipping, a few of us girlies and Rob were leading, harmonies and acoustic guitar, v.nice. After a disagreement about who was meant to be leading, we prayed and decided to focus on worshipping rather than who was singing what, and we all sang together, which was lovely. Then, between songs, Gemma stopped us and said she had a word from God that someone in the group needed to 'let go'. I tried to avoid instantly applying the word to my own life, which is what I always do and it's invariably not aimed at me. Tonight though...

In the middle of "I can only imagine", I started crying. I'm not sure why, it felt like everything was catching up to me and I couldn't hold back everything I usually hold back. I cried like a baby for about 20 minutes solid, I couldn't stop. Gem and Lou prayed for me, and I was starting to calm down, when Stuart came over. He had a poem, he said, God had told him that someone at the service would need to read this poem. He fished it out of his notebook and handed it to me.

It was the poem that my granny had framed in her flat, the poem that me and my brother had desperately wanted to get hold of before they cleared out her belongings after her death. We never managed to get the poem, but on this night that I randomly started catching up on all the crying I've tried not to do for years, Stuart had that poem written down in his notebook and he gave it to me. I think I scared Stuart, I squeaked like some kind of rodent and slammed the book shut, and before you could say "Kleenex", I was off again.

He asked me, as did everyone, what was wrong. And I told him the truth. I don't know, I really don't know.

The funny thing was, people kept saying, "That's so weird, I've never seen you cry before, you're always so happy." Humour as a defence mechanism? Maybe it's about time I stopped that.

Maybe.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

*burns the most depressing day of the year*

I was just commenting on a mate's blog, when I realised something about yesterday. As I said in the post, yesterday wasn't the most depressing day of the year until GMTV said that it was. It was going quite well. Admittedly, it was only 8am but I was in a great mood, I'd had a good's night sleep and woken up bright and happy.

Then the TV told me it was going to be a bad day and, like a fool, I made up my mind to prove it wrong.

I immediately realised that my group's drama work (we cut up an entire play and stuck it back together to make a new play - hundreds of tiny numbered slips of paper in a plastic wallet) had disappeared. After some frantic and hysterical searching, I realised it must have been thrown out in our weekend's mad tidying. Oh bother, I said, in my usual impeccable language.

I missed the bus. Got a lift to college and, of course, the vending machine was out of Pepsi. No caffeine, no brainwaves. Trekked across the main building through seas (and I mean seas) of students, got some Pepsi, went upstairs and walked into the wrong lesson. This isn't my class, this is a first year class being taught my last year's teacher, who recognises me and makes a scathing comment. This is also the sociology class of that nice-looking first year boy who blushes whenever we talk to each other. Life's just like that, or at least it is on what is actually the most depressing day of the year.

I head to drama, my actual lesson (who can't remember her timetable?) and walk in 5 minutes late, meaning I have to explain in front of my entire class that I don't have my group's work. Funnily enough, the way I tell it (my parents chucked it out by accident) is misinterpreted by my teacher. It's true that we had an argument and they chucked out a load of my papers but I think I made it sound worse than it was because he was really sympathetic and now my whole group are tiptoeing round me. Huh. Only on the most depressing day of the year could I accidentally make my class think that I have domestic issues. Oh shit, parent's evening is gonna be awkward now...

Lunchtime. Writer's Club. Hardly anyone shows (they're all busy being depressed) so it doesn't go well. I send one girl into trauma by glancing at her notepad. I saw a heart and started to make a joke about her being soppily in love with her new boyfriend, a guy from my Film class. She thinks I've seen something else, the very personal thing she was also writing on the note pad and in a horrible misunderstanding, confesses something very private to me because she thought I already knew it. V. embarassing, Winter blues all-round.

Film Studies, and my embarassing obsession with Elijah Wood comes up again. Of all my regrets, confessing to my Film class that I know everything about the man from the kind of cigarettes he smokes (Indonesian clove, introduced to him by Josh Hartnett on the set of The Faculty) to his place of birth (Cedar Falls, Iowa) to his favourite music (The Smashing Pumkins but not their album Machina because he thought it was too poppy) was definitely the worst.
Jokes ensue. I'd look good with a restraining order, apparently.

I try to go home early, planning to visit a mate in Yateley. Because this is the most depressing day of the year, I don't have my phone or my keys, end up wandering around Yateley in the freezing cold and rain for over an hour, get lost (in Yateley? lost? am I stupid?) trying to find Robbie's house, realise I don't know which house he lives at, go to someone else's house to use the loo, find out where he lives but am told that he's at work, so I go to his work and he's there but he's busy and there's no payphone so I have to walk home in the dark and am very late and parents are mad. Domestic issues? Girl who cried wolf. Now I have them.

Then I cut myself whilst drying my hands on a towel (I can't figure it out either, but somehow it happened).
Then I went to rehearsal and forgot my costume. Then I forgot my lines.
Then I couldn't sleep.

When I did sleep, I dreamt that Nicole Kidman and this guy Ben from college had taken over the world (entirely feasible, I think. Most likely to be a secret serial killer? Nicole, Nicole, Nicole) and then everyone from my youth group were comparing scars on their wrists. That was upsetting and slightly close to home, I woke up this morning in what can only be described as a funk.

Today has been a brilliant day. My General Studies exam consisted of writing an essay on "The role and relevance of the Holy Book or Sacred Writings in a world religion of your choice." Yes! Bible basher and proud, coming at you with the most religiously biased essay your AQA moderating ass has ever read, booyah!

My General Studies challenges (set informally by the students to liven up the exam) went very well. Last year I had to put in the word 'banana' and the phrase' well, that's what I always say anyway'. I failed, sadly. This year I managed the following: 'haemorrhoids', 'Mrs. Goggins', 'that's not what it was designed to do' and 'super-added soul'.

Ladies and gentleman of the interweb:
"While some think that stories of grapevines and Samaritans are as useful as a wire-brush to your haemorrhoids..."
"The mass media itself is becoming more spiritual, just look at The Passion of the Christ. Even blockbusters are being made with super-added soul..."
"You can't simply open the Bible at any given page and expect to find the answers to your problems. The Bible doesn't offer quick fixes because that's not what it was designed to do."
And, my favourite...
"And that, as Mrs Goggins used to say, is the crux of the matter."

How I chuckled. I got home and had the nicest bacon sandwich in the world. If today wasn't Burn's night (try being the only person in a Scottish family who doesn't eat haggis. It's almost as bad as being the only to one to call them 'potatoes'. "They're tatties and if ye dinnae spik it properly ye winna git ony!") then I'd be ever so cheerful.

The good thing about that exam wasn't that I got to feel smug about completing all my challenges, but that it got me thinking about the Bible, the real point of it in my life. Feeling inspired.

Och aye.


Monday, January 24, 2005

i only laugh...

It's odd how people use humour as a defence mechanism. Me and a friend were talking about it at new years's, how everything seems a thousand times funnier when you know you shouldn't be laughing. Ever seen the episode of Coupling, with the giggle-loop? It's so true.
It's an awful habit. And, incidentally, one of my oldest tricks. If you're making people laugh, they can't see how you're really feeling. Which is why I couldn't stop making jokes when my granny died, why I got the giggles when I broke up with my boyfriend, why I have to take the piss out of scary films when I'm chicken-shit underneath.

A woman from my drama group was on holiday in Thailand over the holiday season (can you see where this story is going?) and she got caught in the tsunami. Having swum out of the swimwear shop (they were shopping for a snorkel, the irony was apparently not appreciated) and clambered up on to the roof, her and her husband were left with a group of Thai locals, trying to find things to laugh about. They sat there, with bodies bobbing past them in the water, and told silly jokes, to try and distance themselves from the shock of it all.
Another friend of a friend was out there at the time, and in reply to a frantic "are you alive?" message, he txted the phrase "Surf's up!" to his friends and family across the world. Why? It seemed damn funny at the time when half the island he was staying on was submerged.

I guess you have to deal with things somehow. People bottle stuff up, they tell their friends, they tell complete strangers, they write it on the internet where they're not even sure if anyone will read it. We have these defense mechanisms, like puffer fish. We make inappropriate jokes and laugh like crazy when we know we shouldn't. We all have our shit to bear, all have to learn to laugh it off.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

the remote part

In the beginning, there were answers,
Then they came along and changed,
All these questions and their answers seem to change.
So I’ll wait ‘til I find the remote part of your heart,
Nowhere else will let us choose a comfortable start.

We stop in every passing place,
To watch the world move faster than we do,
Watch it pass with our eyes closed the way we usually choose to.

So I’ll wait ‘til I find the remote part of your heart,
When no where else will let us choose a comfortable start.

And even if the breath between us smells of alcohol,
Call it confusion in the best way possible.

- Idlewild

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

the funny thing is...

...That tonight, when I have so much on my mind, so many thoughts running through my head, I can think of nothing to write about on this here blog.

I went to Royal Holloway today. I know everyone's meant to fall for the first university they visit but I would like to state now, for all of cyberspace, that I cannot imagine anything that could top Holloway. I'm in love. Is that pathetic?

I'm going to bed, I have to revise two module's worth of Sociology for my exam tomorrow. Funny how these things happen. I could procrastinate for England, 'cept I'd never get round to doing it. Haha.

Watch Thirteen, it's brilliant. Don't watch Lost in Translation - unless you have a fetish for a slightly stoned looking Scarlett Johannsen wandering around Tokyo for a couple of hours and not saying much - it's not.

I do like the idea of two people being in love without feeling the need to hop on the good foot and do the bad thing.

I'm listening to: Dido. It's soppy music, I'm in a soppy mood. Could be worse, I was listening to Avril earlier...
I'm feeling: Slightly blue, slightly... confused.
Quote of the day: "I am not sad; only I long for lustre." Siegfried Sassoon.

Monday, January 17, 2005

God forbid that my posts should be organised...

My father just lost his job. That's the third time in as many months. My father is an intelligent, polite and professionally experienced man. My father is over 60 years old; my father finds it exceptionally difficult to get job interviews these days. People, employers, want young blood. They want people fresh out of universities, people with years ahead of them. My dad has years of experience behind him, and no one seems to want to give him anymore.

***

"...We should not be influenced by cultural interpretations of a divinely inspired text," said one of the leaders at my friend Laura's church. Apparently, if he had his way, women would be seen and not heard within the church environment. He 'lets' women play a part in his services, in the spirit of 'live and let live', but he doesn't like it. Gender equality is 'dangerous liberalism' in his eyes.
Laura told me this today. I'd like to say I expressed respect for his dedication to the biblical texts and outlined my disagreements in a moderate and understanding fashion, but that would be very, very untruthful of me. See my previous post for some of my views on feminism. It's something of a sore point, nothing makes me spit like good ol' gender issues.
As me and Laura were bitching seven kinds of fury about this guy, a nasty, niggling thought crept into my head.
Let me get it straight how I stand on this. Women are equal to men. Different, yeah, we may be physically weaker, men may be less good at multi-tasking or whatever it is that we're meant to be good at, but we are equally human, equally able to succeed, equal in God's eyes. Men and women have as much right as each other to preach, to spread the Gospel, to go on missions, to be evangelists, teachers, youth-leaders, vicars, pastors, ministers, revolutionaries. I have never once doubted that.
I'm no expert, I see it like this: you have to be aware of the context of the Bible. In the same way that you can't take an isolated verse and try to use it as a teaching, you have to read it in its chapter, you can't read the Bible as a work on its own. It is a book that was written by people at a certain time. Divinely inspired? Most definitely. The word of God? Yes, but God didn't write it down himself. It was inspired by someone perfect, but it was written by people who are human - inherently flawed. Could we write a text predicting the social values of the future? No. But we could write a text describing the truths we know about our God, truths that are constant and eternal. If we did, it would be influenced by the way we live, the values that are instilled in us without us even realising. The truth would remain the same, but if someone was inspired by God to write the Bible today, it would be completely different to the one put down 2000 years ago.
I figure, the Bible isn't something you read, it's something you have to understand. You can't just take it at face and leave it at that. You have to figure each bit out, find the truth in it. I don't believe God wants women to be submissive to men, to be silent in church and wear headscarves, or whatever. It might say stuff like that in the Bible, but to me that's not the truth in it.

I was thinking all this, and saying it too, at lunchtime today, when a nasty, niggling thought popped into my head.
Where do we draw the line?
I believe, completely, that gender equality and Christianity are compatible. What if I'm wrong?
When people attack Christians for not approving of homosexuals, I think, can you prove that it is right to be gay? I'm contradicting myself. If we have to look beyond the context of the Bible, could I prove that it's wrong?

***

Still single. It's very nice actually. I thought I'd have so much more time to myself now, but I don't. I was trying to work out why I'm still as stretched for time as I ever was, and I realised. Before, I was doing everything I wanted to do and making time for him. Now I'm just doing what I want to do and it's just the right amount.

***

Holloway interview: T minus two days.
Number of plays I have to read in order for my interview questionnaire to be a vaguely accurate account of my reading habits: 1 down, 7 to go. Why did I lie, why?
I'm listening to: Alanis Morrisette:

"I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed
I'm brave but I'm chicken-shit
I'm sick but I'm pretty, baby."

Friday, January 14, 2005

drama and feminism

I love my drama course at the moment. The unit we're doing is my favourite so far - take a play, find something you like about it, chuck out the rest, smash it to pieces and stick it back together in your own special way. We're massacring Fen by Caryl Churchill, taking the central concept of death and the afterlife and exploring it in a musical cabaret/circus/black comedy style with singing, dancing and a giant cupboard that is the portal to the next world.
Weird and pointless things please weird and pointless minds...

***

At Priory Players, we're doing a Lorca play called The House of Bernarda Alba. I'm the maid, which is a more than healthy boot to my ego (humility is a virtue) because it is actually as small a part as it sounds. I don't mind the small part, it's actually good because I don't have much time to stress about anything bigger, but I think being on the bottom of the casting list playing a character who exists on the bottom rung of the rural 1930s Spanish social ladder has had a bad effect on me.
I have become the maid. The director can't remember my name, so that's what I'm referred to. Sigh.

***

I got a letter today from Royal Holloway. I have an interview and audition workshop next Wednesday. That's 6 days. Way to give me notice, you swines! Holloway is my first choice, so I'm freakishly nervous about going there. More so since I got the results of a re-mark from last year's practical exam and it turns out that I did get an E after all. Ouch. This means my overall grade is still a B, meaning that Drama is still the weakest of my A-levels, meaning that I have to work my butt off this year to get the grades I need to take over the world.
Speaking of working my butt off, I would like to make this proclamation.

To all of you who think that Drama is a doss subject. To everyone who has raised their eyebrows at the fact that I'm going to get a degree in "arsing around on stage in funny clothes" instead of going to Cambridge to study bloody Chaucer like a good little girl... My drama coursework (at last count) was 22 pages long, close on 8000 words. It's not finished yet. I have more to write. Would the real Drama cynic please stand up and let me slap you upside the head with a piece of paper that says "DRAMA IS NOT A DOSS, I'LL GIVE YOU DRAMA!".

I know you don't care, but I feel like the funkiness of Royal Holloway needs to be broadcast.
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Drama/theatres/boilerhouse/boilerhouse_tech_specs.html

***

We were talking about Sex in the City in English today (we get wonderfully distracted in English, all 20 of us get the giggles simultaneously, teacher included. Is it our fault, when William Wordsworth uses phrases like "Superadded soul"? Barry White tribute, superadded soul? Anyone? Never mind). I can't remember how we got onto it, but I made some derisive comment.
Helen almost exploded.
"No no no it's fantastic, it was so funny!"
"It was just rich women having lots of sex..."
"No not at all, it was really empowering, they were women who went out and got what they wanted."
"By having lots of sex."
"It's not just about sex! It was about relationships and friends and family..."
"So why wasn't it called Relationships in the City?"
"Because that sounds crap, no one would have watched it. It was totally feminist anyway."
At this point, my teacher jumped in with his usual display of eloquence.
"Helen, it was shit. It made women look like shallow, materialistic nobodies with nothing more valuable about their characters than their ability to look pretty and get laid."
"Yeah," pipes up the weird blonde girl at the back whose name I cannot remember for the life of me, "why does everyone assume that women can only be empowered through sex?"

It bugs me too, crazy blonde girl, it bugs me too. Sometimes it seems like no matter what a girl does, she's gonna get criticised. I'm 'frigid' because I don't sleep with guys. Another girl is slutty because she does. The women in Sex and the City were objects, shallow and materialistic. Women who don't objectify themselves and gain intellectual power instead are prudish and boring.

I'm sick of trying to figure out what I should and shouldn't be. I refuse to objectify myself and turn in to a Barbie doll, but I'm not ashamed of my sexuality and the fact that I am female. I'm not going to stop acting like a ditzy giggle-girl because it's fun - if people can't see that I'm intelligent and thoughtful then that's their problem, not mine. Just because I dance doesn't mean I'm drunk. Just because I prefer the company of guys, doesn't make me a slut. Just because I call myself a feminist, doesn't mean I'm gonna burn my bra and join an exclusively homosexual separatist movement, dungarees and crew cut compulsory. The world is made of pigeonholes, I'm sure they're nice and warm but I'm not gonna squish myself in just so I can live in one.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

And, as I try and pretend this isn't my second post within two hours, I realise there is much to tell.

(This blog is important to me, I need it as a way of keeping track of what I do.)

In the last week, the first week of the new year, many things have happened...

- I found out that a woman from my drama group was caught in the tsunami in Asia. When I say caught I mean one small twist of fate away from being swept out to sea by it. Her and her husband decided to stop off in town and buy a snorkel on their way to the beach on the coast of Thailand. That's one of the constant themes you find in life - how the tiniest most stupid decisions can be so mind-blowingly important in retrospect. My best friend stood at the top of the world trade centre exactly one week before it was destroyed. It's the near-misses that are so weird.

- I borrowed a new cd off an old friend - Run by High Lantern by Sketchie. I'm getting into this funny, ambient music, pretentious though the song titles are. Although, as part of my new movingawayfromangstyrockmusicandgirlypop movement I bought Mezzanine by Massive Attack back in December and was sorely disappointed. Teardrop, if you haven't heard it, is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. Whenever anyone dies, or there's any kind of tragedy (it's been played a lot in news reports on the tsunami) they play that song, which gets kind of annoying, but it's still amazing. The rest of Mezzanine was distinctly bland, and very samey. Humph.

- My best friend Liz (I say best, she's one of my integral posse - Danielle, Paul, Liz and Taz) turned 18 today, and last night she had a lovely partay. Expect many unflattering and poorly lit photos of me and my bitches soon. I have to write about the party because I had more fun than I've had in so long, a really amazing time. You know the best thing? I was stone cold sober the whole night. My alcohol tolerance has been shot to hell ever since the Winter Vomitting Virus, so I'm temporarily tee-total. I say temporarily... I'd forgotten something very important - I have much more fun (and I'm much more fun to be around) when I'm not drinking. Inhibitions? What inhibitions? I'm self-conscious when I'm drunk, when I'm sober I dance like Beyonce, or at least I think I do, and that's what counts.
Backwards? Moi?

- I went back to college and realised that everyone is coupling off. It's funny how you only notice when you're single and trying very hard to be happy about it that everyone else seems to be getting together with someone.

- I went on a diet. Then I went to KFC.

- I developed a weird kind of insomnia. I can't sleep for hours, then when I do I have dreams that are even more vivid and creepy than normal.

I'm gonna go watch Some Like it Hot. If nothing else, when I dose off at 3am I'll dream of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag rather than giant talking spiders.

G'night cyberspace.

rated for swearing

It's one of those things, I suppose it's a problem, but only because I can't understand why it is.

If that makes sense.

At SoulintheCity this year, we had certain rules we had to follow. For those who don't know, SoulintheCity was an evangelistic urban mission in the streets of London. In plain English (rather than Christianese), it was several thousand young Christians camping across London and working on community projects with the local churches across the city, doing nice things like painting fences and clearing parks so as to make the citizens of London feel nice and rosy:). Equally important, it was about walking the talk - getting out and helping people, serving people instead of sitting around talking about it, getting out and talking to our neighbours instead of waxing about how we should love them. We went out there wanting to show what the church of Christ is really about, knowing that what we did would reflect back on that church. Which is why, I assume, they put down a no-swearing rule for the mission teams.

It's not that I'm an unpleasant person. I'm not cruel or deliberately vile to anyone, and if I am that I will back down straightaway and apologise. For the most part, I'm quite a nice person. I will admit though, that I do swear like a trooper.

I know that a lot of people strongly dislike the kind of language that I use on a daily basis. A lot of people find it offensive, which is fair enough, I don't have a problem with that. I will glady curb my language to avoid annoying someone, difficult though it may be, because I'd rather change the way I talk than offend someone just for the sake of defending my 'right' to curse. I'm worst at college, my slightly-less-liberal-than-last-year's teachers don't smile on swearing, but (to coin a phrase), my college friends simply don't give a shit, and thus the air turns blue. I've been hanging out with Christians an awful lot more this year, which is fantastic, and means that I'm generally swearing a lot less, because I'm getting used to not doing it.

It says in the Bible that we should use the gift of speech for god's glory, and not talk coarsely and say unkind things. Which I'm all for. But, there's this niggling thought...

At SoulintheCity, I tried very hard to speak clean. Aside from the fact that there was a red-card behaviour thing in place on the teams, I genuinely wanted to be a decent ambassador and all that, give people the right impression of the church. So there I was, exchanging shit for sugar (hah!), bollocks for bollards (hah!) and bugger for bother (nah that one's not funny) and feeling very pleased that I was managing to conquer my age-old bad habit.
One night, I was getting piggy-backed down the gravel path to the campsite, when the person who was carrying me dropped me. Barefoot (as I tend to be in the summer), I landed heavily on a very sharp stone.
And, with uncharacteristic self-control, I yelled "FUUUDGE!!!" at the top of my lungs. A guy walking past actually applauded. Again, I felt quite pleased with myself.

But then I started thinking. With all the different nationalities on our campsite, all the different languages being spoken, those not familiar with English swearwords who had heard me yell that would have assumed that I'd just hollered an obscenity to the night sky. So, if I say something with the same sentiment as a swearword, in the same tone of voice, in the same situation as if I was swearing, what's the difference. I change the last few letters of a word and all of a sudden I'm not doing anything wrong?

I believe that words are words. What you say using words can be incredibly powerful, but the words themselves are just letters, just sounds strung together. If I'm angry, if I'm upset, if I'm frustrated and want people to listen to me, what's the difference if I say 'fuck' or 'fudge?' The words themselves are not bad. If you were learning English, there's nothing about the word 'shit' that would repulse you because it would just be another word, like 'cat' or 'bowl'. Are we only offended by swearwords because we've been told that they're bad?

But then... I've hung out with some people whose language has been pretty ripe, people who make me look moderate and well-spoken, and I've heard people take words and give them horrible and disgusting meanings. I suppose people don't like swearwords because they're the ones that get the blame. Everything that's crude and disgusting gets attached to these words, and we hate them by association.

I find myself objecting to the idea that some words are good and some are bad, that there are some words that you shouldn't use. But then... If my best friend casually refers to me as her bitch, I'm not offended because to me, it's just a word. No swearword, no F word or B word or C word can make me flinch, but if someone calls me stupid, or a moron, it stings, because it's a pet peeve of mine. You can call me fat, but call me a hypocrite and that's gonna sting.. The word 'dyke' is just a word to me, but to someone else it might be the word that sums up a lifetime of prejudice. The word 'nigger' is just a word to me but how much it means to other people.

My very meandering conclusion is that words are just words. But people are people, and we're not as straightforward. We attach all these meanings to words, they have power because we give them power, and it's easy for me to dismiss them, but I have words that I don't like, just as other people don't like mine. But I still maintain that it's what you say, not the words you say it with that counts.

By the way, as far as swearing on this blog goes, I still really don't want to offend anyone. However, this is my space for my thoughts and my thoughts are not always pretty. I'm never gonna be deliberately gratuitous but if I can't express myself here, I can't anywhere. If I do ever say something that you think is out of order, you have my sincere apologies, but that's all I can do.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

2005

2005 ladies and gentleman, are we good? Is this year shaping up well for everybody? Good. Me too.

I feel I should have some massive review of the year thing going on, it's been quite a turbulent one, all things considered, I'm just not sure how to mark it. I will say that this is possibly my favourite time of year. Being a ridiculouslly analytical person, I find myself taking stock of my life pretty often. The big ones are during the summer and, obviously, new year.

My big 2003 analysis took place at Soul Survivor when I became a Christian. At the end of 2003 my thoughts were all about purity and self-esteem. This summer was SoulintheCity, which was a difficult one. The painful realisation was that I'd make a commitment to this Christian lark and, quite frankly, ballsed it up. Sick and tired of being a hypocrite, I hit the proverbial crossroads - am I gonna do this or not? Do I just give up, chuck the bible in the cupboard and stop pretending to be something I'm not but at least be honest about it, or do I try again and actually do it right this time? Needless to say, I chose option B. I spent the next few months forcefully dragging my life into line and trying to get back on the right track with God. It's been about as pleasant as trapping my earlobes in a vice but it's working, I'm doing it and every day, however much that day might seem to suck on the surface, I get a little bit closer to my God, a little bit more like the person I want to be.

So. End of 2004. What's a girl to say? Keep on keeping on. Stuff will get better, and it is getting better even now, so what complaints can I possibly have? Never has a new year and a clean slate meant more to me than this one. Yeah, I'll probably mess something up again soon, but I'm happy in the knowledge that if I do, I'm always going to have another slate to write on.

Resolutions:
1) Sort out my Sundays. If not in the morning then the evening, if not at St Peters then somewhere else - bum in Church, regularly.
2) The next few months are the last precious times of full-time education I have until October 2006, and the last I will ever have in the company of many of my weird and wonderful friends. Savour them. And do lots of work too.
3) Remain single until I've finished my exams. For all those who just let out a resounding snort, I agree with you, it probably won't happen, but I can aim high, can't I? Knowing my luck,my destined husband is gonna walk into my life with a small fortune and a big car sometime in the next week and I'm going to turn the man down. Ah well.
4) Stop drinking coke. Yes. Right. (As I type this, I am in fact sipping coke).
5) Read the bible more often. (May actually achieve this one).
6) Keep my room tidy. (You can't see, but I'm laughing right now).
7) Don't tell so many rude jokes. (Oh dear...)
8) Stop swearing. (You know where you can stick that one).

Ok. The resolutions are becoming farcical. I'll keep the important ones, I promise. Happy New Year everyone, I'm off to get some more f***ing coke.