A real pirate doesn't care what time it is.

Dear Marc Jacobs,

You've made the perfect watch. Can I have one please? (I don't even mind that you can't read the numbers or tell the time with it).

Love from Emily.

Tender

You may remember a few weeks ago when I posted about how me and my pal Hayley got to go and be in one of our favourite band's new videos (if not, read this: http://ihategracefulpeople.blogspot.com/2010/04/they-look-like-line-up-for-1960s-class.html). WELL! Yesterday the video was released - along with the single - for Tender, the new one from Frankie and the Heartstrings. It was filmed by Carol Lynn (http://vimeo.com/user1338089) who also shot F&TH's video for Fragile. It is all kinds of amazing.

Picture Perfect

Cardboard Love

I found these pictures on http://ahashakeheartbreaker.blogspot.com/ (a very sweet blog, by the way) and they made me smile. So I thought I'd share them with you.

We'll Be Together Against This

This year will be the first year that I have voted in a general election (I voted in the local elections a few months ago, but this is slightly more important). Each party seems to be focusing a lot on getting those first time votes - from people like myself - and, for once, younger people seem to be concentrating on what is actually going on with our country. We are paying attention. This is important; this is our future. Which is why I am urging you, literally begging you not to vote Conservative.

Obviously I can't tell you how to vote. Obviously that isn't my decision to make. But please, if you're even considering voting Tory, just think it through. Do you really want decisions that will affect the entire country to be made by a slimy, greasy, utterly untrustworthy Thatcher-lover like David Cameron? Do you really want a majority of the tax payer's money to go towards funding second homes and dinner parties and fucking private dental care for the middle class minority? David Cameron canNOT change the country for the good. He CANNOT. Unless you are earning more than £100,000 a year, all the benefits he is promising will not affect you - at least not in a good way.

Remember, this is the Conservatives! The same party who 30 years ago privatised (is that a word?) the mines and power stations and rail companies so that everything nowadays is four times more expensive than it should be. These are the politicians who still idolise Margaret Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher!

Cameron keeps throwing the word 'change' around. But anything that Labour appear to have done wrong, the Tories could not have done anything different. The economic crisis? That was GLOBAL. The war? Not Gordon Brown's fault. There are things going on that people with all their do-gooder opinions do not know about or understand. What might seem like a bad thing now might mean secutiry for our country in 20 years time.

I've gone off track a bit. All I really wanted to do was urge you not to vote Conservative. I don't care who you vote for (but voting Lib Dem/Green Part/BNfuckingP would be an absolute waste of a vote) but please, please, not Conservative. For everyone's sake.

Oh My God

I NEED SOME BURGUNDY JEANS.

Take it easy (love nothing).

Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth
Someone might get hurt, but it won't be me
I should probably feel cheap, but I just feel free
And a little bit empty.
No, it isn't so hard to get close to me
There will be no arguments; we will always agree
And I'll try to be kind when I ask you to leave
We will both take it easy.
But if you stay too long inside my memory
I will trap you in a song, tied to a melody
And keep you there so you can't bother me.

Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe. Ask.

Ok, so I know that style blogs are the only blogs that ever get any kind of following, or ever really have anyone read them, but I'm using this to write down some of the things that I think (because, basically, nobody else will listen). Maybe every now and again a stranger will stumble across this and decide to read a paragraph or two, and maybe it will make them think about something a little different. Or maybe not.

The book that I just finished, Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland, was magnificent. For someone like me, who reads three books a week, to really be affected by something, is rare and really a special thing. Yeah, so it could have been 200 pages longer if only Coupland had been bothered to flesh things out a bit more. The characters could have talked more like real people rather than cliches. But the concept - the plot and ideas and questions in the story- was fabulous.

I'm not certain that I've ever finished a book with so many new ideas in my head. I'm not sure that I've ever questioned my own ideals the way I did when I finished Girlfriend in a Coma. It was sort of mindblowing. Beautiful, so sad, but mindblowing.

If you can get your hands on a copy of this book, please do. Read it. Appreciate it. It's only short; it's not complicated or full of obnoxious, pompous language. The questions it poses resonate more soundly now than they could have done when it was published 12 years ago. And they will keep resonating until something is done.

A few of my favourite quotes:

- Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers.

- At twenty you know you're not going to be a rock star... by twenty-five you know you're not going to be a dentist or a professional... by thirty, a darkness starts moving in - you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful... by thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing the rest of your life; you become resigned to your fate.

- Nobody believes the identites we've made for ourselves. I feel like everybody in the world is fake now - as though people had true cores once, but hucked them away and replaced them with something more attractive but also hollow.

- If you're not spending every waking moment of your life radically rethinking the nature of the world - if you're not plotting every moment boiling the carcass of the old order - then you're wasting your day.

(P.S. The Smiths song of the same name is also beautiful.)

"You have to improve upon the blank page"

Today in my Creative Writing class I began to studyy poetry. The basic rule was, I think, to forget everything I have ever learned about poetry and start from scratch. No rules, no boundaries, except, of course, that "you have to improve upon the blank page" (Nicanor Parra).

Here are two pieces from today's class that I really adored; the first is an extract from Charles Bukowski's (one of my favourite poets) poem The Man With the Beautiful Eyes, and the second is a poem by Don Paterson called The Lie.

The Man With the Beautiful Eyes

...he was holding a
fifth of whiskey
in his right
hand.
he was about
30.
he had a cigar
in his
mouth,
needed a
shave.
his hair was
wild and
uncombed
and he was
barefoot
in undershirt
and pants.
but his eyes
were
bright.
they blazed
with brightness

(I'm not certain if this is the correct form of the poem or if it's my copying and pasting that failed).

The Lie

by Don Paterson

Don Paterson

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour

before the house had woken to make sure

that everything was in order with The Lie,

his drip changed and his shackles all secure.

I was by then so practiced in this chore

I’d counted maybe thirteen years or more

since last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.

Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.

I was at full stretch to test some ligature

when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore

his gag away; though as he made no cry,

I kept on with my checking as before.

Why do you call me The Lie? he said. I swore:

it was a child’s voice. I looked up from the floor.

The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky

and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.

He was a boy of maybe three or four.

His straps and chains were all the things he wore.

Knowing I could make him no reply

I took the gag before he could say more

and put it back as tight as it would tie

and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door

Model Crush #2: Freja Beha Erichson

Do this one more time and I'll bite your fucking fingers off

Today's favourite is: CHRIS BATTEN.

Ok, so Chris is my favourite every day. I love him. I have actual deep feelings of love for him. He is, for lack of a better word, perfect. He is talented and funny and sweet and beautiful. He's tall and he's got lovely hair that curls up at the end and he's in my favourite band and did I mention that he is beautiful? If you've read The Time Traveller's Wife, then this is the man who I envision when I read Henry. Like I said...perfect.

“I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong.”

If I were a lad, I would totally rock a quiff. It has to be one of the sexiest looks ever.

Take note:























































I'm kidding about the last one. I think.

"If the shoe fits, it's too expensive. "