A way of life

Where is the glamour? Where is the fun? Working in films seems to have this cache and yet, at the moment I see NONE. Although it's only somewhere in the region of 11am, I have already been awake for close to six hours and at work for the last five. Today was the first day of shooting, so I had to leave the house waaaaay before the sun came up and I know that I won't leave til waaaay after sun down. The lack of free daylight hours is depressing on so many levels. So depressing in fact, that I shall go and console myself with a cigarette until something more interesting happens.

AWOL, yet again.

As quickly as I came back, I disappeared once again. I am the ether of blogging apparently. However, I have good reason for my lack of posts; one of my dachshunds, Holly (pictured above), has blown a disc in her spine and has been laid up for the past few weeks, trying to regain full use of her hind legs.

In between working, eating and sleeping, I've also been ferrying her to and from the vet's. As I'm sure you can imagine, watching your child-equivalent suddenly unable to stand owing to creeping paralysis is very distressing and I haven't felt very much in the mood for flippancy.

Normal service will resume soon.

White trash dining

Is it really that awful that I:

1. ate crunchy nut cornflakes for dinner

2. that I ate said cornflakes straight out of the box, with my fingers, whilst lying on a beanbag

3. I was down the above with a jack and coke?

Yeah, probably. Maybe someday I'll get to the supermarket and stop living on the food I find in my room. Maybe.

Blogs, blogs everywhere...

It's always sad when a good blog comes to an end and I'm sad to report that the daily dump has ceased to exist. It's author, Beligerent Intellectual, has pulled the plug on musings that have kept me entertained for the last few months, ever since I discovered it on a blog hop when I should've been writing an essay. I just hope that he springs up again elsewhere some day to amuse me again.

But where one door closes, another opens and I've just recently discovered stopkatie.com, which may just fill the metaphorical blog hole that dailydump has left in its' wake. I have a somewhat similar fascination with polaroids and as such, her collection drew me in just a little more.

In other news, I've finally unloaded a load of last month's pictures on the last remaining free space on my hard drive and hopefully sometime soon, a selection will form a very dubious photo post when I run out of things to say.

How did it come to this?

I'm not quite sure where I lost my social life but I think it was sometime not too long ago. Whilst I can shrug off weekday drinks with a quick flashback to one 6am start with a hangover, I hate knowing that somewhere out there my friends are having fun without me - they and I both resigned to the fact that I am now a hermit for much of the weekend. I venture out on Saturday nights, providing I haven't spent the other part of Saturday trying to sort out the rest of my life.

And so it has come to this. 5ive's The All Star Talent Show, featuring the likes of Jodie Marsh, Andy Scott-Lee and other 'celebrities' singing, dancing and doing magic tricks. The best part was probably when the screen showing clips of performances broke and Andi Peters kicked it. And only then because I am inherently sentimental about Andi Peters from when I was a kid and watched him in the broom cupboard on BBC1. (Note to the writers, the overuse of smooth is not funny.) However, I must add my kudos to Jodie Marsh; I missed her first performance tonight but I did catch her winning turn around the floor and I was reasonably impressed.

It has occured to me over the last few days that the only thing I ever blog about these days is TV. Am I really that sad?

Probably.

The mysterious ways of the world

Sometimes, just when you're absolutely convinced that everything is normal, fine and dandy with the universe, someone or something throws you a curve ball. Today's curve ball is Jennifer Aniston being voted Best Dressed by the readers of People Magazine, top ten below:

1. Jennifer Aniston
2. Halle Berry
3. Jessica Alba
4. Beyonce
5. Eva Longoria
6. Charlize Theron
7. Kate Moss
8. Christina Aguilera
9. Jessica Simpson
10. Kate Hudson

Whilst I salute Ms Aniston for her stylish nature, I cannot help but wonder how she's best dressed. Her style hasn't changed noticeably in the last 5 years, there's no evolution in her wardrobe; she just sticks to CalvinCalvinCalvin. In terms of personal taste, I find her a bit preppy and wholesome looking but I guess that this is the image that has pleased the Middle America demographic and thus it shall stay.

Elizabeth Sporkin seems to have a very different opinion on the matter, describing Aniston:
"She has a fashion sense that is very accessible..she wears jeans and T-shirts and blazers. She dresses like a regular person, and her evening wear, if you were going to an event, you would think you could really dress like her."

I'm sorry but accessibility and being able to buy the same outfit in a department store do not a style icon make. The art of dressing is a quest into how to put things together, how to carry them. Not to look as if you're any regular lady who might lunch. We want to emulate, not duplicate. Hence, Kate Moss is the setter of a thousand trends.

Maybe its simply a matter of public taste, I personally could never imagine a universe where Jessica Simpson would appear in this top ten either but clearly in the States, its a different story.

odd fashion rant over.

Oh, blargh.

Blargh. I don't feel interesting or interested in anything today. Bad midweek tv schedules, coupled with 8 hours under a field of fluorescent tube lighting has completely fried my brain. Rather than try to sound even vaguely coherent, I will let you go about your business.

I fell in love with kids' tv

As you may've noticed, I'm back. A combination of factors ranging from a 12 hour day to a temporarily live-in boyfriend meant that I had little want (nor access) to my laptop or any computer for that matter - bar the five minutes a day that I could sneak in the office over lunch.

Now, the boyfriend has gone home and I have much more sociable working hours, at least Monday to Wednesday, as I help my aunt, pulling outfits at a costume warehouse and translating where needs be. It means that I leave the house at 9:30am, am back by 6pm and get to watch TV past 10pm for a few nights without the punishment of sleep deprivation the next day. Unfortunately, it's only one more day and then it's back to the harsh reality of getting up at 6am and returning at nightfall on Thursday.

The recent lack of hours has allowed me to feed my Neighbours addiction, even if it is only the second half. Yesterday, I also had the delight of being able to watch another episode of Evacuation, where a bunch of modern day city kids are stripped of their hoodies, mobiles and 20th Century paraphenalia and forced to wear sack cloth in a 1940s parallel universe somewhere on the Norfolk border. I saw the first episode last Monday, when they arrived at the gates of another dimension a farmhouse. I was instantly smitten and equally saddened by the fact that I wouldn't get to see any more of the show until I struck kiddie programming gold yesterday.

A week on and its amazing to see the change in all of them. After being introduced to the world of horse powered plowing, one proclaims that the activity is "one of those things thats in the top ten of things to do before you die". Even the token posh girl enthuses about how fun the countryside is. Shocking. I would've thought that they'd be crying for coke and suffering withdrawal symptoms from the lack of texting. Apparently not but once in a while, I like to be proven wrong. Anyway, I should stop simpering about reformed ASBO youths, they're only harmless now because of the sack cloth.

Five years on

9/11 is one of those moments that gets seared into your brain, like my parents' generation where were you when Kennedy was shot?. I remember standing in the lower sixth common room at school, waiting for the inevitable afternoon bell to ring when suddenly the song playing on capital was interrupted with a news flash, although information was still vague and over the screeches of my class mates, I could barely make out the words before the bell rang and the radio was switched off for afternoon registration.

Rushing out to my car at the end of school, I listened to news reports the entire way home and when I finally barrelled through my front door, the TV was already skipping between Sky News and CNN. And for two days, it remained that way, all other programmes forgotten as the same horrific images were looped over and over in front of our eyes.

But unlike the desensitisation that we feel to most images of violence, five years on, the horror of those photographs still remains as vivid as the day they were taken. But the pictures that take a back seat, that are often forgotten, are those of who died that day. The image at the top of this post is of a wall inside the Tribute WTC visitors centre in New York. We are often too focused on the mechanical horrors to focus on the innocent lives lost that day and the faces that went with them.

Absence almighty

I've been gone for a while, lacking in internet access and waking hours in which to do anything other than eat. That's pretty much it. Will return soon. Ish.