Sk8r Boi

Wor 'Cake is a TOP bird, but you know, I don't think she suffers fools gladly. I would therefore argue that wor lass doesn't like stupid little skater children. And I certainly don't, so that's quite handy.

In fact, you know what I hate more than stupid little skater children? Skater teenagers. Worse still, skater young adults. I was in the pub yesterday and fucking 8 of them came trooping in with their hoodies and Nirvana tops and their ugly little boards. ALL of them got served, even though they were ID'd. ALL of them sat looking annoying and dark with their hoods still up, feet on their boards with their pints of Fosters. 18 years old at least! FOOLS! FOOLS, I say!

Always funny when they fall off though...

Big Brother Blogging

Pinky and I are loving Big Brother this summer. Granted, it's been on all of a week, but so far so damn good.
As usual, we've got a fair amount of freaks and geeks. But my God, the numbers are already dwindling. We've had Shabaz placed on suicide watch before leaving, and now I discover that Dawn has been kicked out for sending secret messages! America, can you beat that?!

So, favourites. Well, Pinky's favourite is Richard, the gay Canadian who describes himself as a "sexual terrorist". I meanwhile cannot decide between Nikki and Lisa....

Memes

EVERYBODY has done the guilty pleasures meme (think Luckybuzz started it? Lisa DID start it!). Don't want Wor Lass to be left out, but by God don't think I can do it for her. Will give it a go though! (And you are welcome to try and fill in the blanks!)

Four Guilty Pleasures in Books/Reading:
1. Heat
2. Harpers & Queen (but would she feel guilty?)
3. Romance (bet she's read romance, she will have done...)
4. [blank]

Four Guilty Pleasures in Movies:
1. I
2. Dread
3. To
4. Think

Four Guilty Pleasures in Food: (Get in her frame of mind.... she loves darts...)
1. Bacon
2. Hamburgers
3. Chocolate
4. Lard

Four Guilty Pleasures in Music:
1. Papa Roach (she wants to feel guilty for that, whether she does or not)
2. Happy Hardcore (would not be surprised with that lass)
3. [blank]
4. [blank]

Four Guilty Pleasures in TV:
1. Big Brother
2. Some sort of soap.... I'll go with Coronation Street
3. Eastenders too...
4. [blank]

Four Guilty Pleasures in Booze:
1. John Smiths!
2. [blank]
3. [blank]
4. [blank]

And, while I'm here, here is something I am sure of (as seen at Devil's Kitchen)!

Which country should you REALLY be living in? The United Kingdom You have pride in yourself and pride in your country. You believe that history and culture is an important factor to the future of your country, and that traditions and values should be upheld. You love your scones and tea, and reading soppy romance novels. The UK is where you should be...

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Mine and Pinky's favourite subject

Max 12 °C, Min 4 °C where I am....


...Max 14 °C, Min 6 °C where Pinky is.

Ah, yes, me and Wor Pinky do like a little bit of weather talk. And by Christ it's been freezing here, 4 degrees my arse. Cannot believe it's nearly June, simply can.not. Thing is though, British weather is a touch bizarre. And the difference between North and South is ridiculous (granted, 2 degrees is not so ridiculous, I had hoped to show more of a contrast, but there it is). Been times where there's a heat wave down there and snow up here, or days where there's been sleet and freezing fog up here and sun down there... It is worthy of comment. And you can guarantee that somewhere in each of our emails there will be a comment...

What Brady is Pink Cupcake?

Literally all the cool kids have done this except Pinky, and I didn't want her to be left out. So here is what I think she would have got.

You Are Marcia Brady

Confident yet kind. Popular yet down to earth. You're a total dream girl. You've got the total package - no wonder everyone's a little jealous of you.

What Brady Are You?

The Real Pink Cupcake

Guest blogging is quite daunting, I will not lie. One is worried about alienating the readership of one's dear friend, and one certainly doesn't want to lower the tone of a blog as posh as this. Guest blogging was to be done with the utmost care, I thought. Until I remembered...

Aye. Wor 'Cake (and I will never let her forget this) once left what can only be described as a string of the crudest profanities in a comment on my blog concerning Dick and Dom. (Dick and Dom, my American friends, is a children's television programme on the BBC that was fairly recently criticised for it's lack of concern for even most the most basic rules of grammar.) My attention was drawn to this fact by the rather large percentage of hits from googling "dick and dom in tha bungalow" (this was before I deleted then retrieved my blog, you can't do it anymore I don't think). Countless young minds warped I would imagine. Not so angelic, eh 'Cake?

What else? The lass loves her darts. You know, sweaty fat men dripping with gold? Aye, she loves them. I think she likes snooker too, or perhaps it's cricket... Oh, she's a sod for trashy celebrity gossip mags too (though unlike normal people she appears to feel guilty about it). Aye, not such a posh blog, this. You want to see the real Pink Cupcake? Click here!

So yes, that's why she has so happily let her jaded northern friend look after her blog for a wee while I should think. God, I hope I don't break it...

Updated: Well, didn't find the original post, but found a post concerning her profanities (please just ignore my comments to Prof. Bastard).

Just to let you all know...

Hey people, it's Clare here, blogging on behalf of everyone's favourite English Rose. She's having a wee break from blogging at the mo while she sorts out some medical stuff, you know she hates blogging about illness.

She will be back soon, and until then let's send plenty of positive thoughts and cyber hugs!

Far too angelic?!

Your Deadly Sins

Envy: 20%

Gluttony: 20%

Greed: 20%

Pride: 20%

Wrath: 20%

Lust: 0%

Sloth: 0%

Chance You'll Go to Hell: 14%

You will die in a duel.

How Sinful Are You?

As seen in lots of other wonderful places. Only problem is, most of my favourite bloggers seem to be going to a different place! Help me come down with you, won't you?!! ;)

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

I think Badger pioneered the Good, Bad and Ugly post, and I thought it'd make a nice change from Random Bullets of Crap, so here goes...

The Good

• Where I live... Actually, this should really be The Awesome, not just The Good. Yes, I know I bore on about it quite a bit, but it really hit home last Thursday, when we had the best weather of the year so far. Oh. My. Word. I only had to walk less than a minute from my door to stroll along the beach and sit in a beachside cafe sipping coffee. Simply wonderful. Of course, some would say that such a holiday atmosphere isn't exactly conducive to dissertation writing, but I'm fantasizing about ways of working at the beach. Yes, maybe the sun has gone to my head!
• Again, where I live...Actually this wasn't going to be my next point, but Mr Cupcake's sitting next to me reading a review of a local cafe. The cafe serves 30 different flavours of hot chocolate! I mean, what's not to love about a city with such a cafe???!!
• Also, where I live (noticing a theme yet??)...I will never tire of visiting this place, especially when I can do so after a sunny Sunday stroll along the seafront, and a wonderful lunch sitting outside an local Italian restaurant with Mr Cupcake. The building's exterior is breathtaking, but pales in comparison to the interior. There is just nowhere else quite like it. If you're ever in the South of England, you should totally take the time out to visit it and some of the other delights of Trendy Seaside City* (which is less than an hour from London).
• And, yes, where I live (I promise, this'll be the last one for now)...Trendy Seasisde City holds an amazing arts/music/literature festival every May. In fact, outside of the Edinburgh Festival, it's the largest in the UK. On Saturday evening, we went to a reading/discussion with Irvine Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk, which was surreal, intelligent, thought-provoking, troubling, vomit-inducing and side-splittingly funny, all at the same time. (I'm actually going to write a whole post about it as it was so fascinating and impossible to summarize quickly.) We've also got a pretty hectic week coming up with two classical concerts, a theatrical adaptation of Paradise Lost, a firework and light display, and a discussion event with Richard E. Grant. We'll definitely be in a state of culture overload by the end of the month...
• My internet support group. As some of you may know, a while ago the wonderful Shrinky asked whether any fellow grad student bloggers might want to start a virtual support group, so that we could help each other meet our academic goals and maybe even finish our PhDs some day! Several of us joined in, and I have to say that I cannot believe how helpful it has been so far. I'd never really imagined that it would be possible to feel so supported and motivated by people I've never met in real life, and how useful we can be to each other, despite our varied academic disciplines. Anyway, you all know who you are, and you rock!
• Oh, yeah, my Gilmore Girls 4th Season DVDs arrived yesterday. Hoooooray! :)

The Bad

• I'm having a couple of medical issues again. Most likely nothing particularly serious, just frustrating, especially as I've been feeling a lot better this past month or so. I don't think it would bother me so much were it not for all of the medical stuff I've been through in the past twelve months. I'm just at the end of my tether with it all and don't want to have to think about it any longer. I can't believe how stressed out I've been getting about arranging simple appointments and going for tests recently. It's not as if I haven't been through far worse, but I think it's just that I'm worn out by it all. I need to see a light at the end of the tunnel with all of this, and whenever it looks as though I'm about to, there's some kind of setback. I'm seeing my consultant again tomorrow, so hopefully we can make some headway then...
• Even more than the medical issues themselves, I dislike the effect that they have on me mentally. For the past month or two, as a result of feeling much better physically, I've been so much more productive and upbeat about everything. I've begun to get into my research again, and I've been trying to get out and about a lot more. Yet, although I don't actually feel less well physically, I'm now really battling with myself to not get down. I don't like myself when I am, but it's so hard to fight it right now.
• I also hate the fact that when I'm down I tend to just hide away, even from my blog. This is why I haven't blogged much lately, which is of course my prerogative, but it's not what I want. I want to keep writing, even if it's just a fairly meaningless, waffly post. The continuity is very important to me, so is the community. So, I'm setting myself the goal of posting daily.

The Ugly

• My new haircut. Actually, it's not seriously ugly now, although it was when I left the hairdressers last Friday. I haven't had a fringe since I was 11, and have no idea quite why I let my hairdresser cut one in last week. I think it was a combination of hairspray fumes and the way she persuaded me that my hair could look so much better with one. It was that kind of brainwashing persuasion that hairdressers seem to be so skilled at. I didn't (and still don't) believe her, but I was having a low self esteem day, and managed to convince myself that a fringe would be the answer to all my troubles. Clearly, it wasn't. It isn't a very heavy fringe, so I've managed to sweep it off to the sides and when it grows a bit more, it'll be possible to tuck it completely away. The main problem is that I have to painstakingly blow-dry and straighten it every single morning to stop it looking like the sperm scene in There's Something About Mary. Not good and way too time consuming. (And, no, I'm not going to photoblog it!!)
• On the subject of photoblogging, I've lost count of the amount of times in recent weeks that I've berated myself for failing to take the digital camera out with me. So, I'll add to my resolution of daily blogging, a resolution to get some photos up on the blog again soon.
• My feet after a winter stuck in shoes and boots! I totally need a pedicure before I let them loose on sandals too often! My quick nailpolish job isn't masking their pale ickiness too well right now. ;)

* I realize that quite a few of the details in this post make it fairly easy to identify Trendy Seaside City. I've decided that I'm not too bothered about that, as I'd like to be able to talk about where I live and the things that go on here. However, I'd rather not mention the city by name, so it's not too easily googleable. So, if you know where it is, that's just fine, but I'd rather you didn't mention the name in comments. Thanks.

Doing what I'm told...

Clare tagged me for this, so I'd better get on with it...

I am chomping my way through a massive salad (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, beetroot, olives, pepper, chives, spring onions, mushrooms and tuna). I love salad, but it takes so long to chop up and even longer to eat. Having said that, salad making and eating has to be one of the only guilt-free forms of procrastination, as it's so healthy and you've gotta eat, right?

I want masses of inspiration for the chapter that I am just starting work on. A writing fairy would be good, also.

I wish I lived a lot nearer to my closest friends.

I hate peanut butter. Just don't get why most people don't. Ick.

I love Mr Cupcake, and I'm really proud of him right now as he got completely brilliant results in his most recent lawyerly exams.

I miss my Dad. He died 15 years ago last Sunday. It's very strange to think that he's been gone for more than half of my life now.

I hear men digging up the road outside and many seagulls. It's a lovely day, so the windows are wide open.

I wonder whether I'll ever get my PhD...

I regret not writing 'the one and only' as the answer to the first question on this meme. Says something about my age and sometimes appalling taste in music that I can't get that damn Chesney Hawks lyric out of my head. ;) Gah!

I am not a good cook. In fact, I'm pretty darn awful. I pretend that I don't cook because I don't want to accept the social stereotype of a wife cooking her husband's meals, but that's rubbish. If I could, I would, I'm just crap.

I dance badly but enthusiastically. You should see the video of my wedding reception. ;)

I sing too rarely, but much better than I dance. I was once classically trained and a choral scholar, but now the shower is my only audience...

I cry, but never in front of anyone except my husband.

I am not always as selfless as I'd like to be.

I make with my hands Wouldn't anything I write after this be grammatically incorrect?!

I write many blog posts in my head as I'm doing other things. I need to make sure more of them make it to the screen.

I confuse myself, quite often.

I need to finish eating this frickin' salad and start work on my chapter.

I want to sit outside in a pavement cafe sipping dry white wine and nibbling ciabatta and olives with Mr Cupcake. I can dream... (Oops...just realized I want isn't actually in the meme at this point, and that I've already done it above.)

I should go over to Phantom's to whine. It is Wednesday after all.

I start every day with a mug of coffee and a shower.

I finish most things that I put my mind to...eventually.

I'm not tagging anyone as I think most people have done this, but if you haven't done so already, consider yourself tagged...