Random happenings in the life of Brooke

Because I am very slack at blogging, and because I feel guilty about this sometimes, and because I can’t think of a real topic at the moment, this blog is going to be a list of things that have been happening to me.  

The Good:

1) I FINALLY saw the Green Wing finale.  It’s been almost 2 years since the last episode of season two was shown here in Kiwiland, and when my friend and I wrote to the state broadcaster and clamoured for it to be shown here we were told that they didn’t have the rights.  This apparently meant that when they did finally get the rights they would disrespect the fans and show the finale at 12.15am on a Friday and not actually bother to advertise it.  Thankfully I happened to be watching TV at this random time and saw ALL of it.  I was ecstatic.  I kept waking my mum up by laughing maniacally.  Caroline’s dress was particularly awesome (if only I’d seen this before the 7th form formal).  Has anyone else seen it?  I’m not writing what happened because I kept getting spoilered when I hadn’t seen it and it drove me up the wall.  But anyway!  *sighs with happiness*

2) The other night I caught up with 3 of my oldest friends (we went to primary school together) and we went out ‘pub-crawling’ around one of the least ‘happening’ towns in the country lol.  I say pub-crawling - we went to three places, the first a bit of a dive, the second a complete dive (we dragged my mate’s bf out of there after about 2 seconds) and then a more normal place, where one friend ran into a guy she went to intermediate with.  He was really drunk and kept trying to kiss her and drag her into dark rooms - I kept grabbing her round the waist and dragging her back lol.  My hearing isn’t great and there was background music, so even though this guy told me about a million times what his name was, I was still convinced that he’d said ‘Gloria’, so I kept calling him that the rest of the night lol (btw, I was not drunk, I had half a shot of Bailey’s the entire night, I was just hyper!).

3) I am thinking of getting a dog.  It probably won’t be for a while because the place I’m living in doesn’t allow dogs, but a friend of mine’s dog is going to be crossed at some point with a Chesapeake (Retriever-New Foundland cross; the mum-to be is a chocolate lab) and I REALLY want one of the pups.  A girl one.  Izzy (the dog that my family had for years and was like my baby) was a girl (she died late last year) and I’ve always much preferred girl dogs (and boy cats).  I want to call my new dog Persephone, Seph for short.  I am a namenerd.  Persephone is one of the more out-there names on my list of favourites, and one which I would never use for a human baby, so I’ll bestow it upon my doggy.

4) I’m not actually sure if this is a good thing or not (as far as time management goes), but today I got back on the Shortland Street forum that I haven’t been on for a month.  I hadn’t realised how much I missed the other members (we’re quite a small group so we all know each other) - I don’t have many friends who will discuss Shorty with me without feeling the need to remind me regularly that it’s ‘just a show’ (I KNOW that, I just want to talk about it!), so I like the forum for my Shorty fix.  Is it weird that I missed the forum members?! Lol.  Also, I recently discovered old episodes of Shortland Street on Youtube.  Apparently some guy in Ireland puts them up every day as they air there.  As far as I can tell they’re about three and a half years behind, so I’ve been watching eps from when my favourite character (cruelly murdered last year :P) first arrived on the show.  *peers into crystal ball and foresees many late nights and a a possible Youtube addiction*

The Odd (nothing really bad’s been happening so this is just odd stuff):

1) I think I must be very overtired at the moment.  Last night my brother was out getting drunk (just for a change, he’s being very nihilistic currently) so my mum and I decided to just have smoked chicken salad for dinner.  She went upstairs and left me to take the meat off the chicken.  I was doing just find till I took the torso apart and saw its little wee ribs and thought about the heart and lungs that used to be there, and saw its little stump of a neck where its head was before it chopped off, and I starting crying!  I got so upset that my mum had to finish making the salads - she thought it was quite funny.  It was quite funny thinking about it now, but I still feel very sorry for the chicken - it was so little!

2) I hate Francesca Lia Block.  This isn’t really odd, it’s just an observation.  I’ve got nothing against her personally, I just REALLY dislike her writing style, and her books.  I’m taking a paper on contemporary American horror this semester at uni (last term I had to write an essay on why the movie Scream is postmodern) and two of FLB’s books (’The Rose and The Beast’ and ‘The Hanged Man’) are on the reading list.  Quite apart from not finding either one particularly scary (I prefer good, old-fashioned, terrifying if I’m reading ‘horror’ - ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, for example, gave me nightmares and made me afraid to get out of bed in case something was hiding under it - at the age of 18!), I just hated them!  I read ‘The Rose and the Beast’ (her re-telling of some fairy tales) first, and thought maybe it was just the one book, so I tried to give ‘The Hanged Man’ a clean slate.  I hated it even more.  It’s the kind of writing and story that’s trying to shock you, and it feels contrived to me.  I don’t like any writing like that, regardless of the author.  I think it’s my most-hated out of any book I’ve ever read, and now feel like I should go and re-read ‘Jane Eyre’, which I read for school in 5th form and hated with a passion, just to see if I like it more in comparison.  On the plus side, one of the other books for this uni paper ‘Coraline’, by Neil Gaiman, is fantastic.  It’s written for kids, and I got a little scared reading about her ‘other mother’ with black buttons for eyes even reading it on the bus surrounded by people in broad daylight.  The main character, Coraline, is so spunky and well-written.  She’s like a cross between Alice in Wonderland, Paddington Bear, and someone else that I can’t quite put my finger on.  *gushes*

3) My mum was watching the late news in the next room just before.  In Wellington at the moment they’re defrosting and examining and embalming a colossal squid that was caught last year somewhere between NZ and Antarctica.  The news article was something about the squid, but I only overheard the end of the story, when they threw back to the presenter in the studio.  His comment on the story?  ’Squid sex - inky!’  WTF?!  My teenage brother says stuff like that … when he’s DRUNK!  Not intelligent journalists! *sighs* what is the world coming to?!  I have to admit that I did find it incredibly funny though lol.  Clearly I am an 18-year-old drunk male.

So there is my eventful life laid out for you to peruse Hope you can find something to comment on here coz I really really like blog comments *grins cheesily and winningly*

 

 

What makes music ‘real’?

Ok so I’m the first to admit that my taste in music isn’t exactly what most people would call ‘cool’ - My favourite bands include the Spice Girls, ABBA, and Savage Garden; and I have this odd habit of falling in love with bands long after they were ‘in’ (case in point: Savage Garden, who I had heard of and even had one of their albums floating around, but never properly listened to until 2004.  Also the 10,000 Maniacs, who broke up in 1993, and who I don’t think were ever really ‘popular’ in the first place, I wouldn’t know, since I was only born in ‘88!).  Other favourites include Missy Higgins, the Corrs, the Dixie Chicks, Mika, Elton John, Cat Stevens, and Blondie, and I’m not ashamed to admit that Atomic Kitten, S Club 7, and Celine Dion get a run on my CD player when I need cheering up.  Anyway, to get (further along the way) to the point, I’m not the type of person who hides their music taste just so people will think I’m cool, since the people I tend to like will think I’m cool for NOT pretending to be cool (sorry if that didn’t make sense!).  Every now and then, though, something like the following story happens:  I was at work last night (I’m a waitress at an Indian restaurant), and it was very quiet so I was talking to some of my workmates about music.  One guy asked me what kind of music I generally listened to (the Spice Girls had come up, and we’d had a discussion about ABBA), and for some reason I found myself trying to make myself look ‘cooler’ by mentioning less common bands and musicians that I liked, and essentially agreeing with this guy in putting down my taste in music (I don’t like him, if that’s what you’re thinking - it’s just a stupid thing that I do sometimes).

So the thing that really got me thinking was when he asked me ‘So do you actually like any REAL music?’.  At the time I just laughed, but when I got home I thought about it some more, and actually started to get annoyed - who decides what makes music REAL?!  Is it that the singer or band write their own songs, their own music, play their own instruments - in short have full musical talent?  (As opposed to just a voice, although I hardly think that people like Kiri te Kanawa or Luciano Pavarotti could be accused of having ‘just’ a voice).  If that’s the case, then most of my favourites measure up - Savage Garden, the Dixie Chicks and Missy Higgins, for example, tick all of these boxes.  Even the Spice Girls wrote most of their own lyrics.  The only thing that separates Savage Garden from what this guy calls ‘real music’ is fewer guitar riffs, less yelling (I’m not saying rock is all yelling, I really like some rock bands, but my workmate cited Korn as an example of music he likes), and some different subjects on some songs.  So what if they sing more songs about love and relationships?  Songs are about that more often that not, in all genres, and maybe these guys get more satisfaction out of singing about that stuff than about whatever Korn or whoever are screaming about.  And anyone who’s really listened to ‘Two Beds and a Coffee Machine’ could hardly accuse Savage Garden of not singing about ‘real stuff’.  

So is ‘realness’ of music about the guitar riffs and yelling then?  Or is it about not having radio play or a massive fan base?  I like bands and musicians like that, but my workmate (and my brother and his ilk) would still call those musicians ‘not real music’.  In my mind, real music is about lyrics written from real experiences (and that you can actually hear) and melody, and I’ll admit to being a bit of a hypocrite - I’ve definitely called thrash metal and rap ‘not real music’, on the basis of my guidelines to music.  If no-one’s singing, then how is it really a song?  *ducks from rap fans everywhere*  In this I’m just as bad as my workmate, but I’d never diss someone’s music taste to their face.  Everyone has the right to listen whatever they like and not be hassled or made to feel small about it.  

Any other ideas what could be considered to constitute ‘real music’, or why my favourites aren’t considered ‘real’?  I’d be very interested to find out other people’s opinions on this.

Guess The Song

- Go to your iTunes playlist.
- Hit shuffle.
- Choose the first 20 songs. YOU CANNOT SKIP ONE. If it’s embarrassing you’ll just have to live with it.
- Post a lyric from each of the songs
- See if anyone can guess which songs they are from. If they are guessed, cross out. Try to get rid of them all.

1. Playing in the dark, I think that I’m beginning to know her

2. I get angry at your words and I go home, and you won’t call after me.

3. I will dance, I will sing, and my life shall be gay.

4. See I reckon you’re about an eight or a nine, maybe even nine and a half in four beers’ time.

5.  How’m I ever gonna get rid of these blues?  Baby I’m so lonely all the time.

6. It’s a jungle out there.  (I will be surprised if anyone gets this one!)

7.  Tell me your secrets, ask me your questions, oh let’s go back to the start.

8.  Hey there stranger, do you remember?  You were a part of my life.

9.  It’s like I know we were meant to be, so for eternity you will have a part of me.

10.  Everybody wants respect, just a little bit, and everybody needs a chance, once in a while.

11. She’s taller than most, and she’s looking at me, I can see her eyes looking from the page of a magazine.

12. Daddy where’s the sun gone from the sky?

13. Once bitten, twice shy, I keep my distance but you still catch my eye.

14.  Another town, another hotel room, another dream that ended way too soon.

15.  Smiling, dancing, everything is free, all you need is positivity.

16.  Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes, this is where the story ends, this is goodbye.  (This song cracks me up because of a particular episode of Vicar of Dibley… that possibly won’t help anyone lol)

17.  Hear the captain blow his whistle, so long she’s been away.  (When I was little I used to think some of the words to this song were naughty - I was hearing ’she don’t like that Canadian arsehole’, rather than the actual lyrics not in this bit though.)

18.  He came from Carolina on a west-bound freight train, didn’t have a ticket but he got here the same.

19. She’s got you talkin’ round in circles can’t you see.

20.  Coz I’m gonna make you see, nobody else here, no one like me.

Babies and Onions

The other night I dreamt that my mum was pregnant.  In the dream I woke up one morning and she’d had the baby, but I didn’t realise it had happened until she told me.  She pointed towards the baby, but there was an onion in my line of sight.  I was like ‘Mum, that’s not a baby, that’s an onion.’  She was like ‘Nooo! Over there, twit!’  And then she named the baby George-Miln (yes, as in hyphenated).  I was trying tell her than it didn’t flow (coz I’m obsessed with names) but she wouldn’t listen.  Then all of a sudden the kid was like 5 and eating porridge.  Very very odd.  When I woke up and remembered the onion bit I laughed so hard that I cried.  Mum just looked at me like I was nuts (which, incidentally, I am). :P 

A Very Strange Argument

A while ago I had a very odd argument with my mum.  Odd in both the subject matter and her reasoning.  It all started with her judgement of the light-switch fittings in our (rented) house as ‘cheap and nasty’.  Everything was fine until I stated that the rectangular white plastic light-switch fittings (hereafter referred to as LSF because I can’t be bothered writing it out every time lol) looked just the same as any other rectangular white plastic LSF, and that I couldn’t tell its quality just by looking at it.  My mum got quite upset at me.  Apparently my lack of ability to distinguish between ‘good quality’ rectangular white plastic LSFs and ‘bad quality’ ones meant that our wooden coffee table with wooden inlaid flowers (not my style, but from Italy and very classy) may as well be plastic for all the appreciation I have of quality.  Same for my pounamu pendant.  She actually called me a philistine!  I was slightly incredulous at the time, and still am now, although it really does make me laugh!  My mum and I don’t usually argue lol, this was just one of those very weird ones where you think ‘where the hell did THAT come from?!’ (By the way, still can’t tell a ‘good quality’ LSF apart from a ‘bad quality’ one lol :P)  

Friday 5 and Vices

Friday 5
1. How and when did you learn to swim?
At my primary school, from age 5 I guess.  The pool was so cold that we actually used to prefer swimming in the rain as it made the water feel warmer.  One particular day that sticks in my mind there was a thin sheet of ice on top of the water… a kid actually got hypothermia once!
2. How and when did you learn to drive?
I don’t drive.  I haven’t been taught to drive, with the exception of a couple of experiences with my dad, such as the time he made me do a three point turn the first time I’d ever been behind the wheel.  I CAN drive, just not very fast, and not legally lol.
3. How and when did you learn to tie your shoelaces?
I have no idea!  A long time ago
4.How and when did you learn to cook?
I’m still learning.  Most of what I know I’ve learnt from my mum, but I’ve learnt a bit from cookbooks and experimenting.  Through experimentation I learnt that I’ve inherited the ‘I-bake-terrible-scones’ gene from my mother.  One batch I made actually bounced when I dropped it on the ground.
5. How and when did you learn to type?
Probably in primary school, the first place I had access to computers.  I can only type with 2 fingers, but I can do that pretty quickly.  I used to have a Mavis Beacon computer game that taught you how to type using games, but I’d always just try to get the best score and look at the keyboard constantly instead of trying to do it properly lol. 

5 Vices
1. Procrastination
If procrastination was a pro sport, I’d be making millions.  My finest moment was starting an assignment worth 15% at 7am on the day it was due.  NOT good for the nerves, but I seem to get my best marks when I’ve done the work at the last minute.  Go figure!
2. Blasphemy
Lol don’t know if it counts as a vice when I don’t believe in the thing I’m blaspheming against (Perhaps this should be apostasy instead *would be going straight to hell if there was one*), but my mum tells me off if I say something like ‘JESUS CHRIST’ when I’ve just twisted my ankle - she claims it’s even worse than F***, etc…. 
3. Sloth
Just you try moving me off the couch when I’m determined to stay there.  Probably the largest contributing factor to Vice #1!
4. Disorder
Well, some people might call it disorder. Some may even call it ‘tornado aftermath’.  I call it organised chaos!
5. Jealousy
You’re on my list, Vanessa Paradis  :-P 

Take5 Tuesday

 1. 5 of your favourite words.

loom, phantasmagoria, schtroumpf (it’s French for Smurf), echidna, daft, smuggle and echolalia (ok so that’s not five, but it’s not Tuesday either lol.) 

2. 5 of your favourite quotes.

‘fraise-blonde’ - Mac (Green Wing), ‘unpredictable, yet compassionate, slightly masculine Kinks fan… with eyes.’ - Dr Guy Secretan (Green Wing), “for beautiful eyes, seek out the good in people; for attractive lips, speak words of praise; for poise, walk with the knowledge that you’ll never walk alone” - Sam Levenson, ‘cugini sandwich’ - David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel, ‘why is the rum gone?’ - Jack Sparrow

 

3. 5 things you like about your job (if you have one).

1. the people I work with (mostly). 2. earning money.  I can’t think of 5!  Maybe that means I need a new job lol 

4. 5 places you would like to live.

Ireland, In a castle by a loch with a cute laird in Scotland, On a farm, In a massive old wooden house, in Alice Springs. 

5. 5 things you like about blogging (or the internet in general)

Saying whatever I want and knowing people will read it!  I think this is a good enough thing that I don’t need 4 more lol. *is lazy* 

 

Celebrity Maths

I was watching the Brit Awards earlier, and apart from them being sooo much better than the Grammys (would a band accept two awards while completely pissed, holding beer bottles and wearing knee high riding boots and old-man caps at the Grammys like the Arctic Monkeys did at the Brits?  Not to mention Amy Winehouse’s perfomance.  The girl has a fantastic voice, but there’s something about her that makes me want to slap her!  She kept having to read her lyrics of the teleprompter, and she was NOT subtle about it.  Learn the words to your own songs woman!  Of course Kanye West was still a complete wanker accepting his award via satellite but that was the only low point), I had a chance to complete some fantastic celebrity maths: Tony Blair + Timothy Spall = Andrew Lloyd Webber.  If you’ve never encountered celebrity maths before, and therefore have no idea what I’m talking about, the following pictures should be helpful.

         +                     =           

 

I have a dilemma

So the CD/DVD store down the road is selling McLeod’s Daughters DVD sets for $70 each, when they’re usually $120.  The dilemma is, should I buy them just because they’re on sale?  I really loved McLeod’s Daughters for the first few seasons, but in my opinion it’s never been the same since Claire died (that happened at the end of season 3, for those of you who don’t watch it), although the 4th season was pretty awesome too, if only for Tess and Nick finally getting together.  Aaanyway I already have the first four seasons on DVD, and am wondering whether I should take advantage of the sale price to buy the 5th and 6th seasons (we’re now about to start the eighth and final one).  I don’t LOVE the more recent seasons, but I still like the show and feel a sense of loyalty to it, that something that keeps drawing me back every season, even as the original cast slowly dwindles to nothing and the storylines become progressively more soap-like.  There is also the fact that I’ve seen every episode there is, and have almost every ep on DVD or video, but video (taped from TV) isn’t as good as the DVDs.  I feel like I should get the DVDs just so I can say that I own every episode there is, and so I’ll have them if I ever want to share them with my future children. I know they’ll probably still be available in the future, and will be much cheaper then, but what if they’re not?!  This is a completely daft blog, but input would be appreciated! 

After the Honeymoon (another Meme)

Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?
I don’t think I’ve ever fallen out of love with an author per se, but one day I was reading a Virginia Andrews book and started actually reading it, like taking notice of the language used, and after reading a couple more (for the 100th time each probably), started to notice definite patterns in the types of adjectives, etc used, and the storylines and themes (I’d already noticed the whole incest thing lol but the similarities suddenly became very very annoying!).   It got so whenever I read one I couldn’t enjoy the story anymore coz I’d be analysing the language and story.  She went from being my favourite author when I was 13 or 14 to one who I read very very occasionally because the stories annoy me immensely in large doses, but I still like some of the books.  BTW Virginia Andrews is the name used on the books written when she was actually alive.  Any with V.C. Andrews on the cover were written after her death, supposedly based on her ideas, but by ghostwriters.  They are not as good as the real ones (but the real ones still annoy me!).  lol.