Live Long and Prosper

Today's favourite: Zachary Quinto

That lovely dark hair. Those lovely dark eyes. That very lovely tight shirt he wears throughout Star Trek.
And you know how much I love a man wearing glasses.
Woah. AND A CARDIGAN. Excuse me, please. I need to go and have a lie down.

I must have it

The lovely Penny Dreadful posted about these insane(ly amazing!) swimsuits by We Are Handsome today, one of which I absolutely fell in love with. Obviously because it involves the face of one of the most visually perfect men to ever have lived.

I am also rather a big fan of this one:

They are exacty the kind of creepy thing that I love, however, £105 for a swimsuit is fairly extortionate...

But then again, it does have James Dean's face on it...

NEW FAVOURITE WEBSITE

I like to pass on to you all the wonderful things the internet reveals to me, so today's offering comes in the form of Learn Something Every Day, a fun-filled, fact packed extravaganza of a website that features stick men drawn on paint and insane pockets of knowledge, such as 'a woman will own an average 111 handbags in her lifetime' (yeah, I hit that two years ago).

Money can buy happiness.

I thought perhaps today I might take a more proactive approach to blogging, as all I have seemed to do recently is write a few lines about art or books and post some photos. Actually, I am going to do pretty much the same thing here, but at least these are photos that I have taken myself.

I have been internet shopping.

I have quite fallen for Very catalogue (which was, when I was a young lass, called Argos Additions). Now, I realise that catalogue shopping is probably not the most sophisticated form of purchasing clothes... but seriously! They sell size 9 shoes. They have a menswear collection modelled by Steve Jones. They sell PPQ, for goodness sake! It's cyber-shopping heaven - like ASOS, only I can pay in three months time (like, when I'm not going on holiday in six days).

This is what I got:Love Label Claud ankle boots.
I am, in fact, far too tall to own a pair of platform four inch heel shoes, but how could I resist? A giant I may already be, but at least now I'll be a giant with epic boots (and yes, those are my legs! You may be fooled by the paleness of them into thinking that I am the walking dead, but no, that's just my palid natural ginger genes coming through).

POP PPQ skirt.
It's brown. It's ugly. It's something a 1940's schoolgirl would have been forced to wear during the war. I HAD TO HAVE IT. (The skirt arrived creased, though, thus the snazzy website photo and not a slightly blurred one of me and my pasty northern pins).

POP PPQ dress.
Whilst I have been quite literally gagging for this dress ever since I first saw it, depressingly by the time I decided to actually buy it, they only had a size 18 left. I'm a 12. But I bought it anyway, with the intention of modifying it using my trusty sewing machine. (Also, it was on sale - which means necessary).


I then moved on to Amazon, which was a mistake of the greatest proportion. I cannot visit that website without buying something, anything. I must admit that this time I got slightly carried away with the offers of free P&P and the fact that oh my gosh if you get this book second hand it only costs 57p!

So this what I have been reading the past few days:
The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis (re-reading for my dissertation)
The Andy Warhol Diaries - Andy Warhol. I have an obsession with Andy and have done since I was about 9 or 10.
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk. It is ridiculous to think that I have never read this before, but I know the film off by heart, so it isn't especially new to me.
2666 - Roberto Bolano. Recommended by Bret Easton Ellis. I'm halfway through. It's intensely good.
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion. Another Bret recommendation. It's lovely to me to see what he was reading as he developed his own style of writing.
Rome and Prague guide books. For information purposes only.


Finally, I received the absolute sweetest gift in the post today, from my beautiful friend and soulmate Gregory Tehern, who is currently away, studying physics on an extended exchange trip. I haven't seen him for slightly over a year, which sounds like a very long time (and feels it, too).
The letter reads Je t'aime.

Sir Hugh Casson

My dad, an artist himself, yesterday introduced me to the work of Sir Hugh Casson, and I have absolutely fallen in love. Each painting is tiny - on average 7x9 inches - and they are so simple, but so beautiful. What a talented man he was.

We're All Going On A Summer Holiday

Firstly, I must start off by apologising for the horrendously tacky title. Pathetic, I know. But now, with the formalities over, I will move on to the fun stuff: IN ONE WEEK I AM GOING ON HOLIDAY.

Yes! I am going on a three week holiday in Europe. In seven days time, I will be in Rome, swanning about the eternal city in the scorching August heat. After fours days in Rome, my brother - who I am travelling with - and myself will then embark on a group trip up across Europe to London. Or, in simpler form, this:

I am very, very much looking forward to it.

Inspire #4

Photos from: A Collection of Inspiration, and various other places that I have forgotten.

Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Alone - Edgar Allan Poe

Us and Him

Left hand seats, front row, two dark-haired girls looking right. That's me and Hayley. Front and centre - that's Bret Easton Ellis. WHAAAT.

Woah

How selfish of Angelina to take all of the planet's perfect genes, and then to just show it all off in that insanely beautiful dress. Bitch. I actually love her.

25.7.10

Nowadays I spend a lot of time in my room, sitting there, doing nothing. I stare into space. If I lie down on my bed, I can look up through the window and see birds in the white sky, two or three or seven. The brightness gives me a headache and sometimes I think that I need to sleep. I like to look at the things that I own; I like my bookcases and records and stacks of magazines. I like the diaries on my bedside table that I forget to write in. Sometimes tears come to my eyes and I do not know why. Sometimes I light candles and turn off all the lamps and lay on my bed in the flickering darkness, until I open my eyes and stand up and blow out the candles, just because I like the smell of the smoke.

The Kids Don't Stand A Chance

In 2008, I had a few obsessions. Vampire Weekend were one of them. Yesterday, I heard my brother playing A-Punk on Guitar Hero, and I remembered that I love this band, so I got the album out and listened to it, and I watched all their old videos, and I rediscovered that Ezra Koenig has the prettiest eyes on the planet, and I found out that lovely lovely Jake Gyllenhaal was in the video for Giving up the Gun off their new album. Oh my.

Why would you speak to me that way? Especially when I always said that I haven't got a word for you, all your diction dripping with disdain. Through the pain, I always tell the truth.

'The weather is good, it's sunny, you can go out and sit in the park and open a book by Valéry, possibly the writer most read by Mexican writers, and then you go over to a friend's house and talk. And yet your shadow isn't following you anymore. At some point your shadow has quietly slipped away. You pretend you don't notice, but you have, you're missing your fucking shadow, though there are plenty of ways to explain it, the angle of the sun, the degree of oblivion induced by the sun beating down on hatless heads, the quantity of alcohol ingested, the movement of something like subterranean tanks of pain, the fear of more contingent things, a disease that begins to become apparent, wounded vanity, the desire just for once in your life to be on time. But the point is, your shadow is lost and you, momentarly, forget it.'

- Roberto Bolano, 2666

I want to live here

This is the prettiest place that I have ever visited. Sadly, though, I did not take this photograph, as I was inside the castle. (It was snowing, though).

I am currently reading: 2666 by Roberto Bolano, which is stunning, as well as very long and extensive interview with Bret Easton Ellis. Everything he says makes me insanely happy.
I am currently listening to: This is War by Thirty Seconds to Mars and Take a Vacation by The Young Veins
I am currently watching: (500) Days of Summer (again). Mostly for Joseph-Gordon Levitt, as I have re-realised how adoreable he is.

Vote David

Yesterday I met David Miliband. Woah.

In advance of reading the following, it is probably best if we look back to May, when I posted this. Ready? Ok, so you are now well aware of how much I adore David Miliband, the man who, I believe, will be our future prime mister, and not only that, but the man who will take our fair country back to the glorious heights of the 1997 Labour administration.

Yesterday, lovely David did a talk in York, which I attended. My goodness, he is sexy. He just has this vibe. And he is SO TALL. Taller than me, at my monstrous six feet and one inch. I was astounded and delighted in equal parts. Anyway, he made his fabulous speech and answered questions from the audience, and then afterwards he met people and I shook his hand and had a photograph with him and he put his arm around me, wow, I got quite hot under the collar.

Yeah, ok, so he is rather funny looking. But in person...oh my, in person, he is a babe.


It would be very kind of you if you ignored how moronic I look in this picture. Thanks.

23.07.10

Right now, I am obsessed with pictures of hands, nice hands, and this:

Another thing: today is the one week anniversary of the day that I met Bret Easton Ellis. I am still feeling enlightened by the experience. The other day I stared at the photograph by my bed and I just cried.

I've reached that point again where every time I close my eyes I feel as though I am sinking. Happens every two months or so. It's an internal sensation, a little like desperation, mostly like I am in a room with windows but no doors. So many directions but not a single option. And sometimes I let myself think back to that summer - not because the memories makes me happy, but because I am worried that I am forgetting all those little things about you that made me laugh or smile or even cry. And because it has been a year, afterall, and a phone call does not make up for not seeing your face, and I hate how I have stopped seeing your expressions through the words in your emails, like how you scowl when I'm right and you're wrong, or how your eyes crinkle up at the corners when you laugh really hard. Mostly I can forget, because remembering isn't all that fun, like a punch in the chest isn't all that fun. And that is not even why I feel sad - though missing you, and remembering how much I hated you, and remembering how much I loved you, is probably part of it. No. I don't know why I feel sad. I can't explain it. But now I think about it...maybe that's why.

Inspire #3 - Reese Witherspoon in 'Walk The Line'

I absolutely adore Walk The Line, not least of all because every single thing that Reese Witherspoon wears is beautiful and makes me desperately want to be a young woman in the 1950s.

I think I prefer Joaquin Phoenix's outifts though...I am a firm believer than since around 1880, men have had far more excellent things to wear than ladies.