Chris Pratt on going from a soft, portly chap to his super buff Guardians of the Galaxy body

The Friend Zone

When did Daniel Radcliffe become awesome, exactly? Because that happened.

(Via bethanyactually)

Scenes from my life: conversations about a dress

Him: I don't like it. It's too.. twee?

Me: That's kind of the point.

Him: Well maybe you've gone too far.

In case anyone out there is reading this and has recently come into some superpowers that enable them to grant wishes...

... this (the top pic) is how I'd like to look in clothes all the time thanks. That tshirt! The skirt! The white sneakers that are a teensy bit like my Fred Perrys but somehow much better... I die. I die.

Scenes from my life: The Inglewood on a Wednesday night

Barfly: You know you can tell what kind of red it is by looking at it in the glass.

Me: I'm not sure that's true.

Barfly: It is. It's all about the colour.

Me: I think you'd really need to taste it.

Barfly: Not true. I can tell that your wine is a... Shiraz.

Me:... Okay.

Barfly: Taste it!

Me: I'm... I have to sit down.

Really dumb things my gym instructor said to my body pump class this week:

"If you knew how many calories were in wine you wouldn't drink it."

In case you're not all Williamsed out

The response to Robin Williams' death that most resonated with me came from the rather excellent Sarah D Bunting at Tomato Nation.

Failure

I have waxed lyrical before now about Guardian beauty columnist Sali Hughes before now. It's no secret I think she's great: funny smart and with an attitude I both admire and wish I could emulate. So it comes as no surprise to learn she's also brilliant when writing about things that have nothing to do with beauty. A concept, even, that is almost anti-beauty: failure.

Like most people I've experienced by fair share of what could be described as failure and at times it has crushed me, depressed me and made me wonder if I'd ever bounce back. I fear I may even have fallen into this category of people, described by Sali:

"There is no one duller than a person who quacks on about life having dealt them a cruel hand. Seriously, these people are impossibly draining and so comfortable at their own pity party that repeat failure is not only a forgone conclusion, but also a lazy way of never aiming for success. Don’t be that girl. In one year, my closest friend was made redundant, diagnosed with cancer, and bereaved when her partner was killed in a terrorist attack. And yet she still put herself directly in the line of failure to launch her own small business because otherwise, she wouldn’t be living. Some failure is inevitable, but it’s never the beginning and end of your story unless you allow it to be."

Once upon a time I had a tendency to feel sorry for myself. My life wasn't, objectively speaking, all that hard but it felt hard to me and I let it weigh me down.

These days I try very hard not to be that person. Like Sali I have a friend who has faced a real shitpile the past couple of years: a seriously ill husband with ongoing health complications, the loss of a second income and all the resulting money problems that come from point a and point b. To an outsider it seems like just when one problem resolves itself another appears. I have no idea how she copes as well as she does but she has taken everything on the chin and doesn't let any of that grim awfulness stop her from living and taking risks, not to mention still being a top friend always ready to listen to other people's problems and take them seriously rather than just (justifiably) shrieking: "My problems are bigger!" in response.

I may never be quite so zen and awesome as her but I also credit myself with having learned the ability to suck it up and move on when the occasion requires it. Many times, of course, it's not as simple as being able to suck it up or get over it. Some problems, or failures if you like, require you to be able to ask for help and to accept it. That in itself - the asking, the accepting - is a way of trying to rise above your circumstances at a time when it feels like you're swimming through treacle. It can also be kind of a bitch to do.

I'll give the last word to Sali but if anything I've written here resonates you must follow the link above post haste and read the full article. She is a delight. She's also quite a dab hand with the ol' make-up brush. Just sayin'.

"You simply cannot enjoy success in the same way if you’ve never felt failure."

"I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."

(Lauren Bacall)

Good news

Apparently I'm not the only one who has developed a serious girl crush on Keri Russell lately. She... I mean, I don't know how to say this but she makes me want to... wear pants. For realsies.

Things I enjoyed about Guardians of the Galaxy

1. The easy charm of Chris Pratt

2. Being reunited with my screen boyfriend Lee Pace, albeit distantly glimpsed behind some highly unappealing make-up and costuming. Dude got buff.

3. Jokes that actually made me laugh.

4. A romance that didn't make me want to harm myself and others.

5. The talking raccoon. I'm not made of stone.

6. Eating a rum and raising choc top while watching it. Simple pleasures.

Happiness as a 31-year-old homebody is:

1. A stack of new books, arrived in the post.

2. A two day weekend.

3. Zero plans.

Things I said on the phone today in the course of one 20 minute phone call that were massive understatements, showing great restraint on my part.

1. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate.

2. I'd have to verify that, I'm afraid.

3. That doesn't sound entirely correct to me.

4. I'm afraid I do have to go now.

Things I heard in the lunch room at work that made me roll my eyes #23

"People take cold and flu tablets and these things but you can't fight a cold, you just can't."

"Comparison is the thief of joy." 

(Theodore "call me Teddy" Roosevelt)

The movie, Reaching for the Moon, is a reminder for me of why I hate being asked to rate movies out of five stars. It's too reductive. Say "three stars" and they assume it's kind of a turd, say "four stars" and they'll be expecting a masterpiece so you have to qualify that, well, Pitch Perfect isn't for everyone.

Reaching for the Moon isn't a perfect movie. It's not even a... great movie. If I had to rate it out of five I couldn't justify more than a three, probably: there are bits that don't work, some painfully long aspects that don't seem to go anywhere. And yet it's one of those movies that has stuck with me and that I feel like will probably stick with me for awhile yet.

It's also introduced me to the work of American poet Elizabeth Bishop, who is hugely accomplished and was a complete stranger to me. I mean, come on, if this poem -

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- isn't worth $17 for a movie ticket then I don't know what is. Gorgeous.

For me, I guess, the only question that matters when it comes to movies is whether it's worth seeing. Reaching for the Moon is, to me, worth seeing. Another better made and arguably more capital-i Important film like 12 Years a Slave... well, although I can appreciate it's well made and all it just didn't do it for me. I wouldn't be able to recommend it. Then you take something pretty lame like, say Hairspray: not a great musical or a great movie, I'd argue, but I saw it twice at the movies because it was just so freaking enjoyable.

So when it comes to the movies, if you care about such things, forget about star ratings and start thinking about whether it's worth the price of admission, the calorific debt of a choc bomb and two hours of your life.

Smokin'

I am endlessly grateful that I never took up smoking. I didn't find it particularly gross when I was younger and briefly dated a smoker but the smell of stale smoke on someone now makes me appreciate I dodged a bullet. That much said, these babes - I'm sorry, there's no other word for their particular brand of boobs-out yum - made it look pretty hot. Bad babes.

Things I Have Learned Lately

Grand Designs is right: it will cost more and take longer than you ever imagined possible.

Mr Whiskerley's sneeze is the cutest thing in the world.

I can be a morning person if I have to be.

Not everyone deserves another chance or to be continually defended to others. Sometimes people aren't misunderstood: they're showing you who they are. And they're kinda dicky.

My brother is really good at puzzles.

I don't like being drunk as much as I thought I did.

Everything in life comes at the cost of something else.

It is possible to read a book and drink a cup of tea while having a shower. Just.

Awkward scenes from my life #12

Making a domestic violence joke to someone, not realising he's been a victim of domestic violence.

The lesson? Don't make jokes about domestic violent, dipshit.

“With short hair you begin to crave pearl necklaces long earrings and a variety of sunglasses. And you brush your teeth more often. Short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style. When it starts growing out a little and losing its style you have to wear sunglasses until you can get it to the hairdresser. That’s why you need a variety. Short hair makes you aware of subtraction as style. You can no longer wear puffed sleeves or ruffles the neat is suddenly preferable to the fussy. You eye the tweezers instead of the blusher. What else can you take away You can’t hide behind short hair… you may look a little androgynous a little unfinished a little bare… but your face is no longer a flat screen surrounded by a curtain: the world sees you in three dimensions.” (Joan Juliet Buck)

Songs to live by

Low points from an otherwise enjoyable trip to Marble Bar

1. Realising the door on the caravan I’d be sleeping in for three nights didn’t shut. At all. Not even a little bit.

2. Being told by the woman who ran the Marble Bar Caravan Park that she recommended “sticking a knife in it” to hold the door shut.

3. Realising I did not have a knife, either to try the door thing or to kill myself.

4. Being denied extra blankets by the caravan park woman because she didn’t have any spare. But how do they cope when it was time to wash the blankets, you might ask? EXACTLY.

5. Testing the claim, made by the aforementioned caravan park woman (of course), that the air-conditioner in the caravan was reverse cycle and would heat up "if left on long enough". It was not and it did not.

6. Waking up in the middle of the night in a pitch black caravan with a half-open door in time to hear a particularly gruesome bit of my American Psycho audio book. I guess that one's on me, Marble Bar Caravan Park.

Things I learned after reading (the completely enthralling) book Rebecca, having previously only seen the Hitchcock movie based on the book:

SPOILERS ON A 100+ YEAR OLD BOOK TO FOLLOW...

1. Not everyone feels that finding out your husband is a double (kinda) murderer is a turn-off.
2. Never listen to the help. They are always trying to fuck you over.
3. It's good to have land.

Roger Federer as Religious Experience

Confession: I didn't watch the Wimbledon finale. And, sure, now knowing what a great match it was I feel a little bad about that. But the thing about finals in any kind of sport, I tell myself, is that there's always another one. Seriously, it will be back and there will be another great final. Just give it time.

You know what there won't be another of? David Foster Wallace, whose essays I love even if I'm clearly just not smart enough to get into his novels. One day, Infinite Jest, one day you will be fine but life's too short to slug through something you don't enjoy. Anyway, Wallace's essays really are great: "Consider the Lobster" is possibly my favourite or "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", which I took on a cruise and which made me laugh like a drain. But one that's been doing the rounds this week for obvious reasons (and which I've linked to from this blog before) is also very good: "Roger Federer as Religious Experience". I mean, what a great title - you read that title and you know this thing you're about to read is not going to be quite like all those other things you've read. As someone who has pretty much zero interest in sports journalism or sports writing this is one of the very few pieces of sports-related writing I go back to again and again.

Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re O.K. 

The Moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do. We’ve all got our examples. Here is one. It’s the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There’s a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner...until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer’s scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi’s moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does — Federer’s still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there’s no time to turn his body around, and Agassi’s following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side...and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball’s past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi’s side, a winner — Federer’s still dancing backward as it lands. 

And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), “How do you hit a winner from that position?” And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of “The Matrix.” I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.

You can read the whole thing here and I strongly suggest that you do.

Things I wanted to say but did not say to the person who made the comments below"

1. If you don't want to be photographed (doing a thing) maybe you should consider not (doing a thing).

2. The fact that you're shouting "You have an attitude! You're horrible!" at me makes me think you might be the one who is both horrible and has an attitude. Call me crazy.

3. You saying that you're good friends with (someone sort of important) doesn't make me more likely to do what you want me to do. It's actually kinda the opposite.

Things I was told today in the course of doing my job by just another satisfied customer:

1. "You've got a real attitude".

2. "You don't feel bad".

3. "You're horrible".

Simon Snow and Baz on the other hand...

Call me naive but until I read Rainbow Rowell's wonderful novel, Fangirl, it never occurred to me anyone would consider Draco Malfoy hooking up with Harry Potter. It still strikes me as deeply wrong on a number of levels but that's not to say this piece of fan art, via Cremebunny.tumblr.com, doesn't charm. For starters, where can I buy a pair of Harry's awesomely high pants? Inquiring minds want to know.

On Maintenance

There's nothing I can say about Nora Ephron that hasn't already been said. Either you've read her and you love her or you... haven't and/or don't. To my shame I didn't start reading her essays until quite recently - drawn in by the irresistible title I Feel Bad About My Neck, so I can't claim she's been a huge influence or that I know every word she's written intimately. She hasn't and I don't... which is sort of good news since it means there's still plenty out there for me to read for the first time.

All I do know is that she's clever and funny and very, very readable. Since this week marks the two year anniversary of her death I thought I'd post a link to just one of her very nice essays on, well, Maintenance. It starts like this:

You know what maintenance is, I'm sure. Maintenance is what they mean when they say, "After a certain point, it's just patch, patch, patch." Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won't have to hide behind a stack of canned food. I don't mean to be too literal about this. There are a couple of old boyfriends whom I always worry about bumping into, but there's no chance—if I ever did—that I would recognize either of them. On top of which they live in other cities. But the point is that I still think about them every time I'm tempted to leave the house without eyeliner. 

There are two types of maintenance, of course. There's Status Quo Maintenance—the things you have to do daily or weekly, just to stay more or less even. And then there's the maintenance you have to do monthly or yearly or every couple of years or so—maintenance I think of as Pathetic Attempts to Turn Back the Clock. Into this category fall such things as facelifts, liposuction, Botox, major dental work, and the general area of Removal of Unsightly Things—of varicose veins, for instance, and skin tags, and those irritating little red spots that crop up on your torso after a certain age for no real reason. I'm not going to discuss such issues here—for now, I'm concentrating only on the routine, everyday things required just to keep you from looking like someone who no longer cares.

(You can and you should read the rest here)

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again

I love considering opening lines in novels - why they work, which ones don't work, the point at which a cute attempt to suck the reader in becomes irritating. A good opening line stays with me even if the novel turns out to be a little bit of the meh variety. So I very much enjoyed Glen Weldon's blog post on the subject, not least because he included two of my favourites. I mean no surprises there - these lines are kind of everyone's favourites, that's why they're famous. But still:

“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.” – Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” – Samuel Beckett, Murphy

Via Into The Gloss

I don't often read interviews with people and wish we were friends so I could pop around, drink cocktails and just Let Them Speak but, yeah, Debi Mazar you got me. You got me.

Scenes from a Gorman store or How to Be a Horrible Person and Force Your Husband to Overshare With Cute Sales Assistants

Perky shop assistant: So have you guys been out for lunch?

Me: Um, no.

(Silence)

Him: We've been having lunch with my grandmother.

PSA: Oh. That's nice.

Him: And watching a movie.

PSA: What movie?

Him: Well it's kind of a short film. It was actually made by a relative of ours and...

Conversations

Her1: We all go off the rails sometimes and do things that are... not good and self-destructive. I mean me for one...

Her2: Yes!

Her1: Hah!

Her2: No, I wasn't meaning you. I was talking about me.

Her1: Oh yeah, you too.

Her2: We both...

Her1: I know.

Dear Colin Firth,

NEVER CHANGE.

Love,
All of Us

Friday reading

I don't know but the last line of this paragraph made me laugh a lot today and I wanted to share the love. The full thing (it's not long) is worth a read if you're interested in identify and, you know, that kind of thing.

"I come out of the closet twice more between the ages of 12 and 16. About twelve times more if you count the number of times I write, “Please, God, don’t let me be gay,” in my prayer journal or post anxious questions about the heavenly fate of homosexuals on Christian message boards in the early days of internet anonymity. Thirteen more, if you count the time I named my cat “Rock Hudson.”"

(You can read the full post here)

Mood music

I'm not saying I'm angry at the world tonight but if I was doing an impression of a moody teen in her room with the stereo on I might be listening to some of these and I would highly recommend you do the same next time you feel the need, ideally as loud as propriety will allow.



Nick Cave, Thirsty Dog
I should have posted one of Cave's live performances but all the ones I could find were a bit rubbish and since this is the perfect angry song I didn't want to muck it up. This song asks more questions than it answers (um, what happened at the hospital, for starters?) and is basically perfect. Love's always having to say you're sorry? True that.



The Buzzcocks, Everybody's Every Happy Nowadays
This one - and the record it comes from - got a serious workout from me in the late 1990s and early noughties. There aren't that many bands from that era I can go back to again and again but The Buzzcocks are one of them.



The Men, Candy
I don't know what it is about this song that makes me think of flicking cigarettes the faces of those that have wronged me. I wish, obviously.



The Ramones, Judy is a Punk
I used to have this song ready on my iPod in London when I had to run up a lot of steps to get from one tube to another or generally wanted to be closeted in my own little world for a very short period of time. If you listen to it I think you can see why.


PJ Harvey, This Is Love
This is a very good song, is what it is.



The Smiths, Half a Person
Obviously. I could have chosen a good half a dozen other tracks but this one is a keeper.



Robyn, Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do
The clue is in the title.

“I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.” (Graham Greene, The End of the Affair)

Reasons why my oldest friend is probably still my oldest friend, or Things We Said At Dinner Last Night

1. "Oh you eat at the same pace as I do."

2. "I love the lack of interaction with the waiters."

3. "Are you full full or do you want to get ice-cream?"

The dinner party

I don't read a lot of short stories but I read this Joshua Ferris short story, "The Dinner Party", years ago and for some reason it returns to my mind again and again, year after year. I also blame it, in part, for my mild-to-moderate dinner party-induced anxiety.

Signs it is probably a good thing I am not responsible for a small child #23

When Mr Whiskerley brought a tiny (dead) mouse inside for approval I shouted "murderer! j'accuse!" at him while he stared at me with his big round eyes, wondering why I wasn't proposing a feast in honour of his hunting prowess.

Poor me

Poverty is not something I've ever had much personal experience of. I've been broke, sure, had periods in my life where I've earned very little and if you looked at my bank statements right now you could see that my credit card is one big bill away from being maxed out, I owe money to my parents and my parents-in-law and usually run out of money about two days before pay day. But this is middle class poverty and if I go on to mention that the reason my financial circumstances are so shit just now is that I'm covering one mortgage on my own and a lot of bills so my husband can cover the mortgage on the new place we just bought, I can't imagine I'd get - or deserve - much sympathy. I have to watch my money but I can still afford to have dinners out, buy the odd pair of gorgeous (and gorgeously costly) Alannah Hill stockings and pick up a glossy magazine on my way home after a bad day in the office. 

Moreover, I have well-off parents who I know will be there for me in a pinch and a husband who - although also up to his eyeballs in debt - can come up with money in a crisis. I am by no stretch of the imagination poor.

Even so, I have experienced how depressing it can be not to be able to buy what you want because you want it or to put off paying a bill by a few days when you're waiting for your pay to come in. All of which can only hint at what it's like to be properly poor and not have enough money to pay the bills - an experience journalist Amy Gray has articulated rather nicely here. You should read it: it's free.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Mark Ruffalo

This one hurts, I can't lie. Last night, while watching the (completely excellent - go and watch it now) film, You Can Count On Me, Andy made a throwaway comment about Mark Ruffalo slightly resembling my brother. Which... no. I don't see it. I will never see it and I don't think it's just because I really don't want to see it. Even so I nearly avoided posting this one because, you know, weird. Then I took a long hard look at myself and realised I shouldn't, nay, couldn't deprive the world - by which I mean my modest blog readership - of the gift of Mark Ruffalo with that little hint of a smile, that jaw and a body just begging to let it run to fat. However, in the interest of non-awkward sibling relations I will refrain from telling you what I'd like to do to him. For now.

Programming note

I draw to your attention two new additions to the list of links on the right side of this blog: Man Repeller and Advanced Style. I am not what anyone would call fashion forward but I love these blogs for the way they make me feel about clothes and style and the excitement they inspire - just every so often - about getting dressed in the morning.

I know I post this once every few years but it never fails to calm me if I think I'm having a bad day.

If You Have an Enemy

If you have an enemy, picture him asleep.
Notice his shoes at the foot of the bed,
how helplessly they gape there.
Some mornings he needs three cups of coffee

to wake up for work,
and there are evenings when he drinks alone,
reading the paper down to the want ads,
the arrival times of ships at the docks.

Think of him choosing a tie,
dialling wrong numbers,
finding holes in his socks. Chances are
his emptiness equals yours

When you thoughtlessly hurry a cashier
for change, or frown to yourself
in rush hour traffic and the drivers behind you

begin to remind you
the light has turned green.

(John Skoyles)

I'm super subtly implying I'd shag Quicksilver. Repeatedly.

I disagree with many of the choices made in this game of Shoot, Shag, Marry but words can't describe how happy I am it exists.

(For the record, the correct answer is Beast, Wolverine and Professor X, unless we're throwing young Quicksilver into the mix in which case... well. I mean, welly well well well...)

Hate and love

Love: The Man Repeller. Being funny and clever at the same time is hard. Being funny and clever about a subject like fashion is very hard indeed.

Hate: Mamamia.com.au Do I need to explain why? It's because they're shit, okay.

Love: A Girl Called Jack. I felt for Jack Monroe when I read her heartbreaking "Hunger Hurts" blog as a single Mum on benefits in the UK struggling to get buy on feck all money. I fell for Jack Monroe when I received her cookbook in the post (proceeds to charity ya'll, get on it) and found her recipes to be simple, charming and tasty as.

Hate: The level of condescension I've encountered in an, um, new work-related venture.

Love: The generosity of some people I deal with at work. I'm not a very generous person but I admire the quality in others and some people continue to astound when it comes to how freely they give of their time, ideas and words.

Hate: Logging onto Twitter. Okay, I don't hate it at all - Twitter is a hugely useful resource and mostly very entertaining. At the moment though... I just can't take it. Too much I say.

Love: Joel Dicker's novel The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. The art of writing a well-written page turner never fails to impress.

Hate: Getting out of bed at 5.30am to go to the gym before work now it's dark and cold and Mr Whiskerley is usually draped over my head.

Love: Feeling strong and fit. I only started exercising regularly to lose some weight but the thing I love best, okay next to the fact I can eat cake and not put on weight, is the new muscles I've discovered in my arms and legs. I'm lame, this I know.

You did not eat that

I am on Twitter. I am on Facebook. But when it comes to Instagram I just... cannot. I have no... just no. I don't have a problem with other people enjoying it an all but I feel deep in my bones it is simply Not For Me. This little article on the Instagram account You Did Not Eat That is the first thing I've read that makes me think maybe I'm wrong and I'm missing out. Because, you know: heh.

Winging it

This is a lovely little column about one of life's greatest (for me, anyway, so far) realisations: that everyone in life is winging it. I wish someone could have convinced me of this face 10 years ago.

Happy Wednesday

"Since that moment it is all up with me. My last remaining shreds of happiness and self-confidence have been blown to the winds, I can do no more. Yes, I am unhappy; I freely admit it, I seem a lamentable and absurd figure even to myself. And that I cannot bear. I shall make an end of it. Today, or tomorrow, or some time, I will shoot myself. My first impulse, my first instinct, was a shrewd one: I would make copy of the situation, I would contribute my pathetic sickness to the swell of literature of unhappy love. But that was all folly. One does not die of an unhappy love affair; one revels in it. [ . . . ] But what is destroying me is that hope has been destroyed with the destruction of all pleasure in myself. I cease to write, fling the pen from me -- full of disgust, full of disgust! I will make an end of it -- alas, that is an attitude too heroic for a dilettante. In the end I shall go on living, eating, sleeping; I shall gradually get used to the idea that I am dull, that I cut a wretched and ridiculous figure."

(Thomas Mann, The Dilettante)

3 reasons Croupier is a great, great movie you should be watching right now.

1. Clive Owen. No really: CLIVE OWEN. I've long had a reasonably soft spot for Owen, with his symmetrical good looks and gravelly tones, but the last movie I loved him in was Sin City - quite some time ago - and I'd forgotten just how entrancing he can be when he's entirely on form. He is electric. He is fantastic. I want to have 300 of his babies. Or maybe just eat him with a spoon.

2. The whole movie is quietly full of really quite brilliant advice about how to live your life. As someone who has no idea how to live life I eat this shit up with a spoon. You're either a croupier or a gambler, Owen's character intones at one point, and I find myself thinking yes, yes you're so right. But my favourite, and a little line I use again and again on myself to recover from loss or disappointment? "Hang on tightly, let go lightly." How perfect is that? It's perfect it is.

3. "Now he had become the still centre of that spinning wheel of misfortune. The world turned 'round him leaving him miraculously untouched. The croupier had reached his goal: he no longer heard the sound of the ball." This is the opening monologue to the movie. If you can watch it and turn off the movie without watching a minute more then you, Sir, are mental.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that 

will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If 

you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." 

(Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms)

Modern curses

May you be seen crying at work. 

May the most substantive emotional support you can offer a grieving friend be the febrile sentiment “Sending good thoughts your way” in a Facebook comment.

May your partner never be awake when you whisper “Are you awake?” because you desperately need a... (Read the original entry here)

Sad things from the interweb

I'm not crying. I've just been chopping onions. I'm making a lasagna...

Lessons learned from watching the movie That Awkward Moment

Women be shopping.

Fun Fact: Scenes from my gym

My body combat class has a move called "street brawl" where you literally pretend you are holding someone down on the ground with one arm so you can repeatedly punch them with the other. I... don't know how to feel about that.

Being sick: then and now.

Then: It meant a day off school.

Now: I usually feel too guilty to call in sick, convince myself I'll be fiiiiine and wind up shivering at my desk, staring into the middle distance and feeling wretched. See: today.

Then: People (read: my parents) brought me sweet treats and let me eat them rugged up on the couch in front of the TV.

Now: I just did a coffee run for the office and now I have some random veggie stew for lunch that looks a bit like vomit. If I'm not already sick before I eat it...

Then: People (again, read: my parents) took care of me.

Now: I can't even take care of myself. I mean I'm really thirsty but the walk to refill my drink bottle is just... too much.

Blubber

Clearly I am a big pussy because I started to write something about this awhile ago but then I started reading it properly and sort of blubbing and so I stopped that and never wrote the post because, you know: tears. This time I’m not even going to try to write something about what Jillian Meagher’s husband has written, except to say that it is probably important and definitely gutsy and – as the blubbing may suggest – quite sad. I also can't stop thinking about the Maya Angelou quote he mentions, which is lovely:

Since Jill died, I wake up every day and read a quote by Maya Angelou – “history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Things you do not want to happen to you while at the movies and eating a delicious easter egg that happened to me at the weekend:

Have the button on your jeans literally... fall off. I mean, the easter egg wasn't that big...

Words to live by

"Elegance is refusal." (Coco Chanel)

Overheard in my lounge room

"If Mr Whiskerley (the cat) was a character in Les Miserables, who would he be?"


(The answer, btw, is clearly Enjolras - I will truck no argument)

For X-Men geeks only

Gambit was always my favourite X-Men character, pretty much because he and Rogue were cute as a button together what with all the tortured feelings and, well, I'm not saying I attempted to write (and illustrate!) a spin-off comic involving those two but I'm also not saying I didn't, if you see what I mean. I digress. What I'm saying is that Gambit in the comics is cool, damnit, especially to an impressionable tween. That fact did not stop me from laughing at this skit because... well, kind of yeah.

Things that grind my gears

Those two dicks from Queensland on My Kitchen Rules who always talk about "the ladies" and make gross sexist generalisations about all of womankind. Their most recent generatlisation about a dinner party that was all women was that, because of the absence of cock, "it could go one of two ways - a hen's night or a cat fight". Ew, no.

Scenes from my life

I know it sounds like a made up line from a book or a dumb movie but today at the gym when I opened my purse to take out my membership card a chocolate bar wrapper fell out. THAT IS ALL.

The Skinny

I haven’t been blogging too much for a number of reasons but perhaps the biggest is that I have been a bit too preoccupied with that most boring of all things: losing weight.

My weight loss has not been a big exciting thing, like those women you read about who lose 200 pounds, but a sort of small, slow and pretty dull thing. I only had about 5kg to lose and I lost it in the most boring way possible: I went to the gym more. I ate less. I drank less. I socialised less. It was fiiiiine.

Now I find myself in that weird place where I’m no longer doing what I’ve spent the past couple of months trying to do –lose weight – and just trying to keep it off. It takes practices that maintenance does. I’ve never been one for regular weigh-ins in the past but that’s probably why my weight has fluctuated over the years. In the past I’ve never really realised when I’m getting plumper or skinnier until I see myself in photos and think ‘oooh’. Now I try to weigh myself most days and although I know plenty of people who think it’s weird and head fucky to weigh yourself that often I find it works for me and stops me from freaking out over an anomaly. I try not to let my day be determined by the number on the scale although, as Andy can attest, it does affect my mood. I’m only human. Except for the fact that a lot of my dresses no longer fit as well as they did and tend towards looking slightly sack-like I like my ‘new’ body. I’m fitter than I’ve been in years and years, I think I look better. My boobs are… well they’re actually kind of small. I’m not sure how I feel about that bit, actually, but I’m getting used to it. So for me, although it’s been a boring few months I’m glad I did it.

This post is not in keeping with the spirit of this blog, inasmuchas there IS a spirit of this blog but for whatever reason I felt like I had to write something to acknowledge what I’ve been up to. Losing a few kilos, which is not such a big thing, has changed other aspects of my life too because of the ways in which my lifestyle has changed. It's made me happier, calmer, just... better. 

Anyway, this entry was prompted by a recent meeting with a friend, who was surprised by my slightly-skinnier body and asked how I’d done it. I mumbled something self deprecating and changed the subject, as I am known sometimes to do, but when I got home that night I lay awake and thought about it. So this, young readers, is what I should have said to my friend.

• I ate less food. Yeah, I know: it’s boring.
• I wrote down what I ate. I plugged it into a handy little app on my phone that came with an even handier little wrist gadget that tracks my steps and sleep patterns but I could just as easily have written it in a notepad. Something about knowing I would have to type in ‘giant Caramello koala’ into my phone would make me stop when I reached for the fundraising chocolate box. Some of the time anyway. I'm not going to lie: I still ate quite a few Caramellos.
• I exercised more. Again: Zzzzz. I tried a whole bunch of different gym classes I’d never tried before, got well and truly out of my comfort zone and had, dare I say it, a lot of fun doing so. I never thought I could go to 6am gym classes before work. I'm not a morning person, I told myself: I love staying up at night. But I started doing it once a week, then twice, then more and it made me feel so good I didn't mind adjusting my bedtime to 10.30 instead of 12. I've never been an exercise nut but throwing myself into it like this and making it part of my daily routine has changed my life for the better. I've always been prone to what you could nicely call 'blue moods' and as many times as I heard that exercise was a great treatment for depression I didn't pay it as much heed as I should have. I can't say whether the change in my outlook is down to the exercise or a whole bunch of things but, although I still have days when I feel soul-crushingly down, my good days are getting more common and my bad days less common. As much as I really hate it when my alarm goes off at 5.30am my morning workout sets up my whole day so that I go to work feeling tired but also energised. I don't think it's endorphins per se - in no way do I get anything approaching a natural high from exercise, I seriously have no idea what people talk about when they say this - but I feel healthier and that makes me want to eat better and be nicer to myself as well. This attitude definitely did not arrive overnight - for a few weeks I was dragging myself to the gym basically against my will - but it did arrive and I'm grateful. I know, I know: VOM. I’ll let myself out.
• I told people what I was doing. Not a lot of people but close friends heard me crap on about “Project Skinny” probably more than they cared to. I don’t know why telling people about it helped but it did. At the very least I guess I didn’t want to publicly fail.
• I prioritised. Along with the whole exercise thing this was maybe the biggest change I made. Before I was trying to lose weight I’d always say yes to everything: yes to work drinks, dinners, coffees, cake at work… I could go on. In hindsight I can see I had a total fear of missing out on a great night. Once I was trying to lose weight, however, I found I had to learn to say no. So although I still went to the dinners and drinks and coffees I really wanted to I no longer felt obliged to go to the pub if I wasn’t in the mood or felt guilty for staying in on Saturday night when I had loads of people I 'should' have been catching up with. I had an excuse. Similarly, when someone at work brought in cake for their birthday I didn’t feel obliged to eat it to be polite: if it looked great and I wanted some I had it (I'm still thinking about that warm fig cake FUUUUCK). If I thought I’d rather skip the cake and have wine with dinner  for comparable calories then I did that instead. Prioritising like this actually felt tremendous and is something I intend to apply to all aspects of my life, not just my still-kinda-soft tummy. 

Phew. There you go. The first and last time I ever hope to write about weight loss. Because: boring.

Less boring: Comedy Central’s new show, Broad City (just to completely change the subject). I’ve only watched two episodes and it has thoroughly charmed my heart. Go watch.

Just for today, give me this

I am so over people. I know I’m just having a bad day. I know people are not all bad. On the contrary I believe most people are nice or at least good, honestly I do. But today… well, today people are just The Worst.

I am over people at work. I am over pitching stories, working hard on stories and not seeing those stories run or seeing them cut to shit. I am over having to make conversation, take an interest in other people’s lives and answer my damn phone. I am over people blaming their mistakes on me.

I am over people outside of work who run down my employer and/or my profession even though they don't understand it or, possibly worse, ask if I've been on holiday because they haven’t seen my name in the paper for awhile. Tip to the world: PLEASE NEVER SAY THAT TO A JOURNALIST UNLESS YOU HATE THEM AND WANT TO MAKE THEM CRY.

I am over the person who emailed me today to tell me what an awful person I was for trying to do my job in the least invasive and traumatic way possible. I am over what a bitch she was, even if she had a right to be pissed at me, and I am over fighting the urge to be a bitch back. I am super over the way she corrected my spelling. I mean, whatafuckingbitch.

I am over the person who keeps harassing me to do a story on something that is not a subject I cover and is not a story anyway. I am over her passive aggression and her stupid follow-up emails. I am over the way my heart sinks when I hear her voice.

I am over the woman at the local café who I swear smirks at me every time I go in because she probably thinks I’m a loser for drinking so much hot chocolate.

I am over my friend of 10+ years who got married and from whom I literally never heard again. I am over the fact she is now pregnant and the only way I know that is because I’m Facebook friends with her husband.

I am over friends who never ever instigates catch-ups and leave me secretly suspecting that they hate me.

I am over the woman who takes my Monday morning Body Pump class and always stuffs up the routines or makes her own changes that confuse everyone, including me. I am over the girl who was in front of me today and couldn’t get the timing right. I am over the other girl who put her bench super close to mine even though there was a tonne of room. I am over the guy at the desk who spoke to me that one time and now acts like we didn’t have a proper conversation ever and he doesn’t even recognise me. I am NOT over the good instructor who takes my Body Attack class and on whom I have a deep non-sexual crush based on admiration of her upper arms.

Today I am basically over the world.

Tomorrow: free hugs!

"In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer."

(Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa)

Overheard in my office cubicle or How a Stranger Broke My Heart

Hotelier: We had (celebrity) stay with us recently.

Me: Really? I had such a crush on him back in the day.

Hotelier: Yeah he's pretty lecherous these days.

Fan me

Not to offend the interwebs or anything but in my experience 99.9 per cent of fan fiction is not for me. Much as I love, love, love Rainbow Rowell's book about the topic, Fangirl*, I don't seek out or read fan fiction except in unusual circumstances because I'm just not interested in what most people have to write. Which made it all the more delightful to stumble onto this bit of truly delightful fan fiction where a well known (to certain types of people) fan fiction author writes a short, funny fan fiction about... not cheating on her husband with Benedict Cumberbatch. It is delightful.



* Seriously, it so so so good. This is the first book in a long time that I have finished and just... started reading it again because I wasn't ready for it to end.

Giles for the win

Yes, yes a thousand times yes. In any event, I've been in love with Giles (no I don't recognise his actual name) since I saw him laughing hard at a very dirty Buffy-related joke at an awards ceremony. Oh the times we would have together.

Word

Signs I need to get a life #17

This actually made me really angry. For at least a few minutes.

Advice to live by

"Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick and pull yourself together." 

(Elizabeth Taylor)

I have a two-pack

Kind of. That's right: I kind of have a two-pack!. It popped up overnight: last night, as I wiped Connoisseur choc-chip caramel ice-cream from my mouth and hopped into bed I swear my stomach looked like normal. Today: abs! Two of them! Okay, sure, most people who *have abs* have a six pack. Maybe even an eight-pack. But as someone who last had stomach definition back in the nineties (maybe) and has never exercised as hard as I am right now, I'll take my two puny abs and celebrate. Two is still better than none, after all. And, um, now I just have the four more to go.

Conversations

One of the State's top scientists: I've lost 13 kilograms in the past couple of months.

Me: Wow. How?

Him: Not eating.

Me: That'll do it.

Valuable ways I have spent my time lately:

Gorging on Season 3 of Veronica Mars to prepare - mentally, emotionally, um, physically?, for the Kickstarter-funded movie. Yes, I'm concerned it's going to be fan servicey as hell but do I care? Hells to the no: I've been in Logan Echolls' camp so hard since that first kiss outside the motel room in season one and man I really need to go back and revisit those early seasons, I'll see ya'll in a month.

I will be buying this month's British Vogue

In case you were interested.

Weird things I have discovered I am not half bad at lately:

* Removing nails from wood with a crowbar (don't ask).

* Learning the aerobics-based routines for my body attack classes (who woulda thunk it?).

* Cooking omelets (I have never been able to make a particularly good omelet and now, holy shit, I can almost every time and it's amazing to me).

*Bullying people into doing what I want (ok this sounds like a bad thing but in a work context it's useful - historically I've been a bit of a doormat so for me this is a step forward).

* Stepping on Mr Whiskerley's tail in the night (this is definitely not a good thing but it weird me out how good my foot is at seeking him out in the dark).

Signs The Husband and I may be well matched:

Me: So I sort of ate half of last night's trifle for breakfast. I feel shame. But the rest is yours for dessert.

Him: I ate the other half for breakfast.

Cute overload

I don't normally go in for cute, particularly when it involves old people. For one, I don't find old people cute and, for another, I find it sort of gross and infantilising when old people are treated like they're just sooo cuuutte. FFS: they've been here longer than you, they're not a fucking puppy.

That much said this story about an old Japanese woman and her cat or, rather, the photos, just undid me. The one where the woman pushes the cat through the field on a little trolley thing? I die. I die.

The run continues

I love going to the movies. I love everything about it: the darkness, the fact that you're forced to focus on the screen and nothing else, the enforced laziness of sitting in a chair for two hours and the ability to get carried away by a story.  I like to see a lot of movies because I like to make up my own mind about whether I like them: part of what I understand about the movie-going experience is that there will be good ones and there will be bad ones. That's the deal I sign on for.

So it strikes me as unusual that the last three movies I've seen - Her, Inside Llewyn Davies and most recent Blue is the Warmest Colour - have all been freaking tremendous. I came out of Her buzzing, thinking "I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that made me feel like that". And I came out of ILD feeling exactly the same way... and ditto for Blue. In each case the movie has stayed with me for days and I've found myself wanting to go back to the cinema for a repeat viewing. It's very weird.

Part of me has wondered if I'm just become less picky than I used to be, if nowadays I'm prepared to call any 7/10 movie "wonderful. life changing etc". But I don't think so. Instead I think that for some reason - luck, good instincts, all of the above - I've just had a terrific run of movies. I don't know when it well end - maybe never. Maybe I'll never see a bad movie again, Perhaps I'm destined to see modern classic after modern classic for the rest of my movie-going life.

I certainly have high hopes for the next movie on the list: Vampire Academy*.




* So I'm only sort of taking the piss because although I really doubt VA will continue my run it's based on a fantastic book series and I'm genuinely super excited for it so there.

Conundrum: to post or not to post

On the one hand, this girl is maybe the cutest thing I've ever seen and I must share her with the world.
On the other hand, looking at her photo makes me want to never leave the house again. Like, ever.

(Photo comes from the wonderful The Sartorialist, which you should all be reading)