_

Ridiculously, ridiculously excited about this.

Elsewhere, I have a day in Paris on Friday. Unsure whether to do the Musée d'Orsay or just to sit at a cafe in the Montmartre and read Queneau and French gay mags. YUM.

 I love life in France!

Everything's great. I'm staying somewhere really great. The city's small and awesome and welcoming. I'm speaking French every day. Today was walking around the town with a disposable camera day. Ergo, photos to come!

I've still to find my Gaspard. BUT, the food is divine. And the weather still sunny and bright. :)

Details/updates will follow!

Toujours obsédé par quelqu'un...

 'mais en fait' is the hottest phrase in french ever. pronounced, of course, maison fete.

closely followed by 'que les autres'. pronounced k'les autres.

mais en fait, c'est mieux que les autres.

er, yum.

Tadzio, Tadzio.

Off to Barcelona for 4 days.

I love life.

I love this photo of me and Lizzie. I love when people take photos and upload them months later!

You know what I just remembered? When everyone started calling Courtney Love a psycho hose-beast. Hilarity.

In May 2008 I looked the best I've ever looked. Though I certainly didn't think this at the time. Hindsight = love. Must regress. Must copy facial expressions / hair styling / complexion of those photos.

Regression imminent.

Also, god bless facebook and its epochal minute-taking, sans lequel I'd probably never register important stuff like this.

(anyone remember that quote from Mrs Doubtfire? LOVE.)

I think I might need a filling of some sort. One of my molar's is ever so slightly hurting and over sensitive. I think this all the time, but feel more certain this time round. I hope it ain't the case. I've never had tooth decay and my mum would kill me. And the idea of a needle in my gum has my skin crawling.

Any of you had a filling? What's it like?

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portions of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Shakespeare was so a homo. AND DON'T I JUST LOVE IT.

Patrick Wolf paying tribute to Michael Jackson by singing a Joni Mitchell song is pretty much one of my favourite things ever.

This is stolen from a guy from my school's blogspot that I stumbled across. Credit to him. It amused me so I shall repeat it here. If he ever reads this, he'll think I'm weird, but I can live with that.

Phases of Internet Talking:

(from an msn convo:)

"so

1. is 'r u going out 2nite? u fancy her lol'

2. I really hate it when people use bad grammar. Heh. They're losers.

3. omgzz!!!!1111111one!111 STFU lolzzzzzzz

4. yeah hes a dick lol

4 is the most advanced phase of internet writing but you have to go through the other 3 first well i never did the first tbh but at least two.

whatever. I inspired this conversation colin was basically recycling what i said the night before. yeah, and it's so true. so for anyone stuck in the 'Heh, why can't you retards spell' phase GOD SO FIRST LIVEJOURNAL KILL YOURSELF NOW. haha i no. and for people needing to justify their lol and omg with extra digits after the exclamation mark..i understand...but soon you'll just have exclamation marks or none at all and not care about adding anything on to it. because you don't care lol. i think i've reached a higher spiritual level. lol"

i'd like to think things have moved on since then and it's likely i've been hanging out in morally dubious internet forums lately, but the number of "I am a grammar Nazi" (often followed by a comma splice before the nazi elaborates, incidentally) types about is still alarming. i'm not actually saying this because i'm unable to write a grammatically correct sentence (guess what i think it might be time to bring up the fact that i was 2nd in higher english at the top state school in scotland again!!!!!!! until recently i was labouring under the illusion that i was first but over christmas my friend adam brought out a copy of our 2002 school magazine which confirmed that a smug boy whose mother's apples i distinctly recall refusing to eat (such a brat) in the early 90s because they were organic held that title).

a lot of the time the internet seems to demand a more ~casual~, conversational approach to grammar and conventional rules just get in the way (lol). i'm not proposing a quirky, unique new style, although natch i did go through a brief sub-ee cummings &mpersand phase. when you're writing something spontaneous on someone's facebook wall, say, the aforementioned comma splices and even NO PUNCTUATION WHATSOEVER between independent clauses are not only acceptable but desirable - it helps the flow, and feels right. in a way it's like writing naturalistic dialogue in a story.

re the lol issue - GOD. people actually say "you're not actually laughing out loud when you write lol" after the age of 16? OH REALLY OH OK THANKS BABES. imo being a ~grammar nazi~ is something you should grow out of as a precocious adolescent, along with hating pop music and thinking tv is for retards.

one thing i do worry about for the future is whether or not there's a cut off age for typing all in lowercase. it's another thing that i think suits a lot of internet interaction, but when you reach a certain level of maturity is it the communication equivalent of an elderly man in a babygro? idk.

I love signing onto livejournal from different computers (eg. my laptop at home / desktop at uni) and hitting 'restore from saved draft' and seeing the last entry I started and never finished. All my stillbirths.

Omg Elyse Sewell (of antm fame) just replied to my comment at her lj (which is amazingly well written and peppered with hawt vocab). Omg I'm sewww excited; she's furious selective about who she replies to. ♥

I'm moving to Saint-Étienne in the south-east of France next year. It looks kind of shit but amazing. And small enough that I'll get to know the place. And like, 45 mins from Lyon. And namesake of the band (which is hot). And the school looks amazing:




Omg it properly does look amazing. It has Jumanji airs.

Now I have to write emails to the head of the school and the head of the English department and pretend I CAN ACTUALLY SPEAK FRENCH. They gave us a bunch of stock phrases though, so it's gonna be artifice of the highest order. St-Etienne has the second oldest still-working tram system in France. Cuteness! Also, - no that's it. I'm excited.

Yesterday was eversoslightly surreal.

Saturday night I was in Glasgow, for a friend's 21st in this gorgeous penthouse flat in the dodgiest area of town. Sunday I slept in and had a lazy afternoon with my parents eating lunch and sipping tea and catching up on the Jordanhill gossip. They were out till THREE A.M. on Saturday night at their friend's dinner party. This is literally a first, if my memory serves me right.

I got the train about 4 that afternoon. Some beautiful human being had left an unwanted return ticket sitting by the ticket machine at Queen Street, which I snagged. It's good deeds like that which restore momentary peace to the universe. The train pulled into Edinburgh at ten to five. I picked up snacks and headed to the DESTINATION OF MA DREEEEMZ. Basically my friend Lizzie is going out with this guy who's in the army, pretty high up, pretty much loaded, and had booked the two of them into the Balmoral hotel for a night. AKA only the poshest hotel in Edinburgh, the hotel JK wrote Harry Potter 7 in and signed some statue. Lizzie was in there the whole afternoon, and Dan (her Fijian/British army-lad boyf) wasn't arriving till 8.30. So I headed there at 5 laden with junk food and The Times and we sat on the double bed as so





(so much lawl)

occasionally looking out over North Bridge at the buses and the pedestrians streaming by below, totally feeling like we were famous. All I needed was a wee baby with a blanket over its head! It was truly surreal. Widescreen plasma tv malarky. Pumping up the tunes. Getting our MJ on. And then calling room service for tea and coffee. It was fucking mad. I walked into the 'lobby' (as the Americans say) and the concierge asked me cordially whom I was here to see. "Ma pal Lizzie, room 146 babes," I prolly managed, in Weegie drawl. He then proceeded to call Lizzie's room and get all deferential on her ass, dropping absurdities of politeness left right and centre. And then he sent me up, tinkering grand piano serenading me in the lift on teh way (one floor; laziness ftw). Then there was some chick playing a harp. It was bizarre to say the least. I felt like I was in fucking Belgravia. Or Manhattan or something.

Tonight's been less refined. I did make spag and meatballs for Lizzie and I, with wine and Ella on Spotify. It was quite lovely. I miss feeling famous.

PAPA. PAPARAZZI.

Five days in Glasgow. Now back home.

Went back to my old school. Music teacher legend retiral. It was the weirdest thing, but fabulous. Played music as an FP, an alumnus (is that the word?), stared incredulously at kids who were knee high last time I saw them and now can carry tubas up stairs. Afterward, there was a reception for former pupils and staff. It was all very nostalgic and surreal and involved telling my life story 20 times. Enjoyable though.

Going to film festival stuff tonight with Zara and Gemma. To see this Disney film called The Crimson Wing about flamingoes. It looks actually amazing. Narrated by Mariella Frostrup, aka little miss jizzvoice. Her voice is actually grainy as fuck though so on big screen speakers one wonders how much damage that could inflict.

Also, got a twitter. http://www.twitter.com/holajack. Add me if you gots one too. x

For the premier of some film (not this one).

COMMENCE OPERATION STALK THE BEJESUS OUT OF HIM.