not.in.paris

So I got a hell of a lot of homework on Tuesday and spent most of the evening doing my maths. Fun fun fun, eh?

Now, I was going to use this afternoon to catch up on the rest and finish off today’s homework. Pretty essential, really, because I have to:

• Finish writing about the Chilean earthquake of 1960 (due on the 7th)
• Produce a leaflet about how to survive an earthquake in an LEDC (due on the 7th)
• Write some rubbish about what my survey says for food tech (due tomorrow)
• Write my speech for the National Youth Parliament Competition (due tomorrow)
• Write a question for the Prime Minister for the NYPC (due tomorrow)
• Write a bunch of sentences about towns in German (due sometime next week)
• Fill out 3 ridiculously long sheets about characters in the Tempest (due tomorrow)
• Decide whether I’m making a normal cake or carrot cakes tomorrow in food tech and collect my ingredients (due tomorrow)
• Learn a scale on flute (due Friday)
• Learn a movement of a sonata on treble recorder (due Friday)
• Learn my part of a duet on piano (due Friday)
• Produce a career study on some career, which was set back in about November and which I haven’t even started. Due on the 15th
• Find a picture for art. Will take ten minutes at the most and is due next week

Not a light workload. Most of that lot is dead easy, but unfortunately a lot of it is time-consuming. I forsee many long evenings doing that lot…although, of course, I was going to do it tonight, wasn’t I?

Not likely. Remember that piano duet? I was supposed to be going over to my friend’s tomorrow to practise it with her, after the Youth Parliament session. Turns out she can’t do tomorrow after all, so I ended up going to hers straight after school and staying there until a quarter past six.

Guess I didn’t do much homework after all, then…and now it’s 9pm and I have my speech to finish, my question to tidy up and my food tech crap to write. Plus all that English to do…and cake stuff to find…

Fuck.

There’s something very sad about pre-ban bottles of absinthe.

There’s very few of them left, now, and those that are are generally in far from mint condition. They’re all that’s left of the age of les heurs verts; the only way we can drink exactly what all those Parisian absintheurs would have drunk. I’ve never tasted absinthe, but it can’t possibly taste the same as today’s. These are bottles that are more than a hundred years old, in most cases. They have been legal and illegal and are now in a bizarre state of limbo. Back in 1890, these bottles would have been everyday objects, but now each surviving one is a relic to be treasured. There is a finite amount of pre-ban absinthe and that amount is dwindling. Will we ever really know when we have drunk the last bottle and the sun has forever set on the Parisian boulevards of 100 years ago?

Guess I ought to just update…

This week’s been pretty dull. I’ve got a cold. Weather’s been crap. Had an argument with a friend; thankfully that’s all patched up now but it’s still a pain. I’m generally tired of the world in general (at 14…bloody hell!).

I could go into lots of detail about what I’m annoyed about but I can’t really be bothered.

I’m involved in the National Youth Parliament Competition and now I’m on my school’s press team, which is what I wanted in the first place but then another bunch of people took it and then one of them pulled out so they asked me. Only bad thing is the teacher that runs it won’t let me pull out of the debate, which means I have to do everything for both of them and also means I can’t get properly involved in either. ‘Tis a right pain in the derriere.

I’ve been doing a lot of work for the press team, since I haven’t had a great deal of other homework. That’s about as exciting as my life is at the moment. Even if I did have homework, I probably wouldn’t bother to do it…most of what I get is pretty much crap.

My enjoyment of school has gone down to about 0.1. Nothing’s changed…I’m just sick of the same old shit. I have a crappy timetable and crappy teachers this year. We’re not doing anything interesting in class. Most of it is piss-easy anyway and a great deal of it is totally useless. Call me a cynic, but that’s how I think. When the fuck am I going to need to work out inequalities, outside of an exam? It just doesn’t interest me. The only subjects in which I really pay attention are French and German but half the time they’re still so easy that I can just drift off. I don’t even bother listening in English any more. It’s hard to tune out Luke sitting next to me, going on about how totally cool he is and how totally drunk he was last night and how totally stoned he was and how totally cool that is and then listening to Beth replying to him about how OH MY GOD she’s got no eyeliner and OH MY GOD Luke’s not talking to her and OH MY GOD in general. I wish we were streamed for English…

Same old, same old. Mr. fucking Rose. Bullshit rules, bullshit classes. Why bother trying any more?

Gee, I haven’t posted anything in ages! Not like me.

Life’s been pretty crap. Nothing in particular…just that general, all-round crapness that descends at random and takes a hell of a lot of work to get rid of. Of which to get rid? I’m becoming obsessed with not ending sentences on prepositions. As if anyone gives a damn! The rest of my grammar’s not exactly perfect, but that’s something upon which I absolutely insist. People think it’s dead funny when I correct myself. Hummity hum.

I’ve been doing a lot of music practise lately. Recorder, flute, piano. I feel like I ought to do more. I’ve been playing for a long time now (well, not piano, but flute and recorder I have) and even though I really, really love to play, I hardly ever seem to. I just don’t get round to it and then I do play and I can hardly drag myself away. I’ve been putting in more of an effort to play every day, which helps, but I can’t help thinking that it ought to be more of an all-consuming thing. Most professionals or even dedicated players practise for an hour or two a day and I’m lucky to play for ten minutes. What am I doing wrong? I don’t know. Perhaps I should just force myself and then I’d get used to it.

Piano’s been getting a lot easier.I’m having lessons at school, which is good because it means I miss a bit of lessons on Fridays. No problem! The only thing is that my friend’s just started too and we’re in the same group. Don’t get me wrong, I like her and all, but she’s so competitive! I just want to learn the piano, not have a fight over it. There’s no need to try and be best! Just let it go for once, ‘kay? I know that’s a lesson that I need to learn too, but she takes it to extremes.

I’m pleased that I’m learning to read bass clef better, though. And the whole thing with two hands is getting easier. I’ll get used to it in time.

Hopefully I’ll remember to update again pretty soon! (Ha.)

So I got my first science module test results back today. That test counts for 10% of my final chemistry GCSE grade. I took it in November and I just got the results today, which I quite surprising because my teacher said he thought it would be about the 18th. Ah well, guess it had to come someday.

I don’t know my raw mark but it translated to 35/40 which is one freaking mark off an A*.

I guess that really proves that I’m a perfectionist. I see an A instead of an A* and it makes me feel like a failure. One freaking mark. That’s just a lucky guess away from an A*.

Yeah. I guess that just shows how narcissistic I really am, eh? Well, tell me something I don’t fucking know.

Philosophy

The explanation of our troubles is that cosmic beings are playing games with us. During his lifetime, each man plays cosmic chess against the Devil. God is playing with one set of rules, and the Devil with the other, exactly opposite set of rules. The shameful secret of God, the trick he used, because the truth would hurt too much, is that there is no good, or evil. Only truth. Do we go on clinging to the idea that God made us or realise that it lies within us to make God? By learning to manipulate the space-time continuum, man will become God, and will no longer exist in the physical universe as we know it. I have become a second generation cosmic being. I am conceived in the womb of nature, but in my own mind, in the womb of the universe. I was forced to admit that nature forces on a cosmic being the only sin they are capable of: the sin of concealment. It is a small sin for a man to commit, but it is a terrible sin for a cosmic being. I am what I am and I see the nature of my offence. I will only resign this game if you will agree that on the next occasion that this game is played, it will be played according to therules that are devised by my great God. It is finished. It is finished. It is the mercy.

11:15:00

It is the end of my game. Truth has been revealed and it will be done as my family requires me to do it.

11:20:40

There is no reason for harmful

–DONALD CROWHURST’S LOG ENDS HERE–

It is one of those lazy afternoons. The world is slow and small: there is nothing beyond the few square feet in which I exist. Everything is languid, rounded. There is nothing clear or sharp. Things blur into one another; nothing is distinct. I know I am thirsty but there is no reason to drink. There are plenty of noises but everything seems silent. Avery jet d’encre C2651 mini etiquettes permanent. That’s what it says on the paper off which all the labels have been peeled. The computer is humming more loudly than usual. The keys on the keyboard all seem to be in the wrong place; they are hard to press. I am sitting uncomfortably but it is not a bad feeling. It is eighteen minutes until three o’clock. Three o’clock, the midway point of a lazy Sunday afternoon where everything has blurred if there was anything there in the first place ho hum this is nonse.

I was gonna write about something else right now but having sat down at the computer, I’ve once again become pissed off about something else entirely so prepare for a short tirade.

Ready for a brief shock? Not every fourteen-year-old is a total idiot.

I understand that this takes quite a bit of understanding, but please bear with me. This post is prompted by a blog post I read by someone citing all sorts of ridiculous measures they plan to take in order to protect their children from paedophiles, including stealing their passwords, and also an article on the BBC, based on a Panorama programme (which was, ironically, the same one that prompted the other blogger). Here’s the article: link.

I, as a 14-year-old who has used the internet extensively from a very young age, can confidently say that I have never encountered anything like that in all my experience with myspace, bebo, facebook, multiple forums, the blogosphere and chat rooms. This is NOT something that happens to anyone who sits down at a keyboard. The simple fact that I have managed to avoid this shows that it’s quite possible that it’s the stupidity of many people that gets them into these situations.

Sure, I’ve run into a couple of weirdos on the internet. Everybody has. But you know what you do? Now, I know it’s quite difficult to understand that a poor, innocent 14-year-old who has never encountered any danger more than being tagged when playing 40-40 in (yes, the blogger I mentioned actually claimed to have been playing 40-40 when she was 14: I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve played that game since I was 10 at the oldest) would have the gross amount of intelligence required to undertake this action, but what you do is just stop talking to them. Shock! Horror! Amazement! My GOD isn’t that intelligent! It only requires around three point five brain cells, darling. Honestly.

A direct quote from that article: ‘I wondered how a real 14-year-old would deal with this kind of approach’. Well, I guess it depends on how amazingly stupid this 14-year-old is.

Another quote: ‘today she got sent several unsolicited pictures of male genitalia’. Oh my GOD! A penis! These people seriously think that 14-year-olds are completely unaware of the existance of the penis? Hm. I could name three, maybe four people in the five classes on my side of the year (all 13- or 14-year-olds) who have definitely had sex and plenty more who are surrounded by suspiciously large numbers of rumours. Now, it’s perfectly possible that they all managed this without viewing male genitalia, but I have a suspicion otherwise. A picture of a penis is not mentally disturbing. Get the fuck over it!

You want to put parental controlson your computer? Fine. That’s fine. Hell, even my parents keep them on when they browse the web because they can filter out a pile of shit that you don’t want to see. As I said before, porn isn’t exactly mentally disturbing, but if you’re looking for a 17th century oil painting, it’s not quite what you’re looking for. By all means, put the computer in a space where you can see it: in my experience, it strikes me as rather useless, because I’m sitting here right now with nobody in the room and I could be talking to whoever the hell I like (and seriously, what kid is going to let their parents stand over their shoulder reading their IMs?), but if it makes you feel better, do. But there is no excuse for deceiving anyone by taking their passwords or patronising them with ridiculous safety measures. The world is not perfect. Get the fuck over it, everyone!

‘ Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.’

Sucks. End of an era, I guess.

Not that that will stop me. I don’t care how many proxies and add-ons and fiddles and manipulations I have to go through: I will get my Pandora back!