returning from rome

So I have returned from Rome feeling a little more cultured and a lot more sick. I some how caught a chest infection on the flight over there (which was delayed for 3hours btw) and I just can't shift it. I also feel a lot more melancholy. Not being in England made me forget how crap everything is over here right now and coming back was a cruel reminder- but ho hum.

Halloween however did cheer me up. :)

It was possibly the first time in my recollection that I was not the most sluttily dressed in the club :P woohoooooo! xx

Stick on bras

I wasn't going to venture out tonight, namely because of the crap week I've had, but I've always been easily persuaded so now I'm off to a birthday party. (I haven't seen the host for proably 8 years but nevermind!)

Anyway, I found this dead cute dress in Topshop ( a little black velvet 'belt' type dress) but it's completely backless. A problem for me since I'm breasticly challenged and not wearing a bra makes me look like a very tall 12 year old boy. Disaster.

But in the changing room I spot a friend of mine trying on an identically shaped dress (with her jeans still round her ankles I might add) and she told me to go for a stick on bra. Apparently they really do work.

I'm not so sure. I've bought one. I've tried it on, and it does stick - but for how long? It's not the most secure bra ive ever worn (but then the other week I went out with two on so maybe I'm not the most logical of judges). And on top of this - its not exactly the most sexy piece of lingere I own :P

I guess tonight will be the teller - either that or I'll just wear something else! :P

Long Time no post

So I haven't written anything for the last...what - 7 months maybe? Mainly because the thing was no longer being assessed and I had other pieces of work to concentrate on, but also, well I just ran out of things to say, (well maybe not things to say but relevant things about journalism to say!)

AND when marked apparently I used to many exclamation points - so !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ha! !!!!!!!!! I'm clearly to dramatic for journalism :P

But I'm going to try and start keeping it up to date again - not because I have any profound words of wisdom - most definitely the opposite - but because I need a release.

So today I went with my auntie and visited my mums surgeon, we thought maybe a few more answers might make the grieving process a little easier. It didn't. In fact in many respects I feel terrible.

I always thought that knowing the truth about situations makes them easier to bear - but in this occasion - knowing that the Dr had never had a patient come through what my mum had really didn't help. Knowing that know one really knew how to treat what she had didn't really help. And knowing that maybe she knew just how serious her condition was without telling me really, really didn't help.

It just made me feel a whole lot worse.

On a positive note I completely love disney films - and anyone who doesn't is old! Sword in the Stone rocks my world!!!!

The future of magazines

Last night me and a couple of my friends went to a talk on 'the future of magazines'. Fun times. 

We went for free (something to do with our university sponsoring the event) but everyone else there paid £25 a ticket!!!!!!!! All i can say is UNLUCKY! 

It was an average talk (not worth £25) but free wine, crisps and minsterals were definitely the highlight! (and our uber sexy name badges of course)

Oh and the future for magazines???? They're fine.

My lent 'challenge'

well hello! as I am sitting here I'm eating jelly belly jelly beans- an invigorating experience! So far I'm doing well- the only mank flavour I've had is grapefruit (normally i end up with a mouth full of aniseed and toothpaste).

Neway having spent the week editing our uni news website (www.westminsternewsonline.com/wordpress if your interested- your probably not)  I havn't had time to tell of what I'v given up for Lent (and how I'm going to cheat at it)

First of all, I've given up having "coffee and a cake together in the canteen at uni". I can have coffee  OR  a cake at uni, or I cant have coffee AND a cake not at uni, but not both at the same time at uni.

I think i should be able to manage that quite easily don't you? (Indeed today I coped fine-I had a coffee and dolly mixtures instead!)

My 2nd sacrifice APPEARS more hard core.....but it's not.

I'm giving up alcohol.

BUT

Jesus only spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness, there are 46 days in lent. Vis a vi I have 6 free drinking passes to use whenever I like! and considering I normally only drink once....maybe twice a week anyway.....I don't really think I'll be any worse off! Excellent!

I wonder if there's anything else lame I can give up....coffee flavoured jelly bean perhaps??? ewwwww.

My anti valentines day

Now I have never been fond of valentines day, whether i'm in the singleton camp, permanantly attached to someone else, or in a blurry confusseled place between the two.

I don't like it when i'm single because obviously im bitter and just want to throw up every time I see a heart or a rose. 

BUT

I also hate it when i'm not because I truly do not believe you should have just one day to say that you love someone. It's something that should be done everyday not once a year. And for the same reason I'm not a fan of anniversaries, so what you've been together 2 years, 3 years....why congratulate yourselves for that? If your with someone you should treasure them all the time! not take them for-granted 364 days a year and be nice to them once to even it out!

Anyway, having split up with my bf at christmas, yesterday I was a bitter and twisted singleton all morning, then promptly forgot all about it at the prospect of an 'anti valentines day skool girl' party me and my friends were having that evening. (By some stroke of 'luck'-is that really the right word??-we all seemed to be single)

So determined to get very drunk and have a good night we started partying around 8.30, and pretty much forgot entirely about it being valentines day and got incredibly drunk, and played a lot of singstar.

It was only when we went out that we were reminded of what losers we were.

The club was dead.....and filled with particularly desperate looking men....perhaps we looked desperate too?eek? and it then occurred to me that no one else was out because everyone else....i mean everyone....the whole town practically (minus a few freaks)-has a significant other.

Or at least someone they could call up so they didn't feel too pathetic on valentines day.

So there wasn't much atmosphere in Bakers.....but it being half empty had some huge bonus points from when i was standing

1 every song i requested (no matter how crap) was played

2 every shout out i had was, well, shouted out lol

3 I could bust some amazing moves without jumping on top of someone and causing a pile up

4 No queue for the bar.

So after feeling momentarily pathetic-I had an amazing night!

The only thing missing was the lack of male talent......but then since I'm seriously contemplating becoming a lesbinim, that didn't really bother me :P

9021 0h no!

90210, America's richest postcard-with America's skinniest legs. These girls are tooooooooooo skinny, (well not Annalynne Macord-Naomi Clark she has a beautiful figure and looks healthy) but Shenae Grimes (Annie Wilson) and Jessica Stroup (Silver), ewww.

Don't get me wrong these girls are very gorgeous.....until your eyes drop past their hips. Their legs are literally like twiglets-spindely and boney and to be honest not remotely attractive. Basically they are too thin.

Now , clearly the show wants to show these girls off to their full potential, so either make them put on 5lb a piece or keep them in jeans because toothpick look is not a good one.

Nor is it helpful to promote a bodytype that so clearly is the result of under eating.

Stand these two girls next to the original 90210 cast, and wow! Stand these two girls next to Shannen Doherty and Tori Spelling from the original cast and the older generation look positively obese.....and we all know they're not. Tut.

Snow week :)

So I finished work ex and have spent the last week buggering around. I was going to be good and blog everyday, practice my shorthand, and research some possibly story ideas, but instead i did.....well i just didn't to be honest.

However I'm blaming my lack of work on the snow-everyone i know had a couple of days off work due to it.....so why shouldn't i have chilled too?

Not that my week was unproductive of course, i had the culinary experience of cookies and tgi fridays, the cultural experience of the cinema and various dvds and american trash on tv (I today cried at CROWNED a beauty queen reality show), i travelled-up the M25 and back again, and celebrated life with tribal dances (I went clubbing and got hideously drunk) and i practiced my communication skills (I sent a lot of texts)

I also spent a lot of time sleeping.

The one think i didn't do this week was shop, a real rarity i must say-but you see shopping involves going outside and since its cold, i have no money and my credit card bill hadn't been paid by that point-i thought it best i declined from my favourite activity.

On another note, i start back at uni tomorrow, so i will once again be on top of the news agenda and reading the Guardian on the train and pissing off whoever im sitting next to by waving the paper in their face. woop woooooooooooo

Is big beautiful??

So I spent the day reading about how Nathalie Cassidy and Jessica Simpson have recently put on weight.

Jess has easily gone up 2 dress sizes from her 36-24-36 days and thats me being polite. Cassidy has gone form a size 16 to a 8 back to a 16 in less than a year. Which is not good.

But the point im making is that all the comments written by other people who read these articles on line say things along the line of 'these girls look fantastic with a few extra pound on them' 'big is beautiful' 'a handful is better than a stick any day'.

Excuse me, but anyone that thinks Jess looks better now then when she was Daisy Duke MUST be taking crack. MUST.

Now I'm not saying she isn't beautiful, because she is, and I'm not even saying she's fat, because she clearly isn't-but it is laughable to say that she looks better now than she did in 2004.

I think people who say they prefer chunky monkeys are lying, curvy yes, fat no. And believe me there is a huge difference.

I've always thought Cassidy was rather butch to say the least, but for the short time in which she dropped those dress sizes she looked awesome. And you could see in her face that she knew she looked awesome- in photo's taken this week she looks glum and depressed. Get back in the gym girl!

Most people who say they're not fat they're just big boned are lying. I should know, I have big bones. I'm 5 foot 10, with man size hands and size 7 feet. My hips are also disproportionately large compared to my top half. If i wanted to be big-believe me I could be-and if i was I would certainly claim i was big boned, as after all I am! But thats no excuse for being over weight...well it is.....but it's a crap one.

Court clothes-how to get a guilty verdict before you even open your mouth.

So right now I have the urge to right some really personal things just to get them off my chest. And if my blog wasn't so clearly labeled as mine or come up on my facebook wall then perhaps I would. But it does so I'm not going to.

Instead, I'm going to write about fashion in the courts.

I asure you, it's a real eye opener.

Now, if I was (God forbid) to ever have to appear in court, I, like the other right thinking members of society would wear a sombre suit, (and possibly show a little leg in case it was a sexually frustrated male Judge). I would also be clean-as personal hygiene is very important.

But today, in Southend Magistrates Court, I saw some REAL sights.

So, when appearing in court, I have discovered that it is fashionable to wear sweat pants. rolled down at the top so your pubes are showing, and rolled up at the leg to show off your fake uggs. Note- they must be fake- real are soooooo passe.

These should b accompanied by a t-shirt, 2 sizes too small so it rides up over your pertruding stomach and preferably with a vulgar saying em-blazed on the chest.

On top of the t shirt should be a ratty looking anorak (from a market stall obviously) and if its shiny black PVC- you know you've got the look down.

Jewelry wise remember-more is more. Be like a gypsy and wear all you've got, and if you don't have a pair of thick over sized hoops, invest in them- it will certainly impress the judge.

Finally the most important aspect of the look, a nice flick knife in your pocket-you never know when you might need it.

Day 2.

Day 2 of work experience.

Again pretty uneventful. Spoke to a few people on the phone and got some lame arse quotes and wrote more picture stories.

Then one of the guys that works in the office (not a sub) said he'd looked over what I wrote and tweaked it. Fair enough, so i looked at what he'd done and he'd completely re-written it! And whats more (and I'm not saying this because I'm arrogant and bitter) it was so much worse than what i'd written in the first place! It was clumpy and the sentences were too long. Now i certainly do not claim to be shakespeare, and i can take constructive criticism, but what was the point in that?lol

So being at work I missed Obama's acceptance speech :(

And get home in time to watch a triple bill of Friends :P 

Work experience day 1

So today was my first day at work experience at the Southend Echo. After having a complete nightmare trying to park, i ended up parking in the £15 a day multi storey (although due to my cunning and genius I took my car out and put it back in at mid day so I only paid £9 woop!). I will be looking for somewhere more pocket friendly tomorrow.

I arrived at 9.30 (after a quick confidence boosting trip to Costa Coffee) and was instantly unsettled by the grim silence of the place, to be honest I don't think anyone was that thrilled at the prospect of ANOTHER work experience kid. Which, you know, is fair enough really, I'm perfectly aware that most get under their feet and are always doing things wrong or asking winey questions....but then how do we learn??

So after sitting quietly for maybe 15mins I trotted off behind Laura to go sit in the Courts for 3 hours. I'm always amazed at the amount of idiots in Southend, I really shouldn't be but I am. One guy was being tried for 4 armed robberies, but tried to get out on bail by showing the Magistrate his back. Yes, really.

In the afternoon, I wrote 3 little stories to go along side some pictures on utterly irrelevant things in an effort to fill space. For the most part i spent the day looking up the presidential celebrations and wishing i was part of them lol.

Not a bad day in all.

A little bit of wisdom from Mark Twain

New Years Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

A cauliflower is just a cabbage with a college education.

Approaching law exam

So tomorrow afternoon I have to sit my media law exam. I am not happy about this for several reasons.

1-That revision is seriously eating into my television watching/going out time.

2-None of said revision seems to be going in

3-In a real journalistic environment-we would always be able to consult a book, a colleague or a lawyer.

So to me it seems pretty pointless having a three hour exam on things that off the top of my head I am not really going to need to know,-especially since at the level to which i will eventually enter the profession, all my work will be viewed by at least sub editors.

It also seems to me that practically everything published could be viewed as defamation anyway and that anything juicy can be covered in an exemption of one of the varying laws. It is so annoying.

And it makes me hope that nobody reads my blog since I could definitely be sued for some of my comments-although considering I'm only a student with no money the most they could get off me would be my GHDs, so maybe not a big problem.

 

Rugby Romance

So Mills and Boon are turning their hand to rugby romances. Right.

' "Oh my God" Her hand covered her mouth. She glanced at him in desperate panic. 

"They filmed me kissing you. And it's on the giant screens" Her voice rose, her cheeks were scarlet, and her reluctant glance towards the stadium ended in moans of disbelief. "O God, I can't believe this.....and my hair all over the place and my bottom looks huge, and-everyone is looking"

His eyes on the pitch, Prince Casper watched with cool detachment as his friend the England Captain, hit a post with a drop goal attempt, "More importantly, you just cost England three points" (The Prince's waitress wife)

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for romance, but with a rugby player....really?

Also 'The Prince's waitress wife' sounds like a completely ridiculous senario. My good friend waitresses in the players lounge and hence has seen Princes William and Harry and all the players several times. Not once have any of them acknowledged her further than to take a glass off her tray. No thank you, no hello, nothing. And she's a pretty girl too.

I think I could right a far more accurate version of a rugby romance...

The Rugby man-whore

"Lads I'm smashed.....pass us another snakey b" slurs Chris 2nd team Captain of the Quinns, and Skankbag passes him another pint

"Cheers bruv.....right last one to finish has to get naked"

"Chugg chugg chugg" cheer the rest of the team as Chris and Skankbag spill purple drink all down themselves. Skankbag finishes first them promptly vomits his drink back into his cup.

"Right Chris, since u lost, get naked and drink this crap!" He laughs as he passes the sick filled cup to him. Chris smiles blearliy and strips off in the middle of the club his small cock dangling limply.

"Chug chug chug" Yell the rest of the team. Chris drinks the majority of the pint of purple sick and slops the rest down his front and on the guy next to him, swaying dramatically and struggling to stay up. Suddenly he spots a group of girls in the corner of the club

"Corrrrrr she's fit, I'd shag her" he gawfs pointing very unsubtly at the frizzy haired, dumpy bespectaled girl with her tits completly out and a skirt 3 inches too short for her thick legs. Still naked he stumbles over.

"I expect you recognise me, I play for the Quinns" he slurs lunging at her while staring at her tits. She drunkedly giggles at the absurdity of a naked rugby player coming on to her and after 5minutes of small talk and another pint of snake bite, they go off to a corner for a fumble.

Thats a rugby romance.

Takeaway, takes the piss :S

So today, I stumbled upon and article on our local rags website saying that 82 food joints in Southend have received the lowest possible scores in a Food Hygiene and Safety poll.

Scores on the Doors publish the hygiene results for restaurants, pubs, cafes, takeaways and burger vendors, giving them a maximum of 5 stars.

The problem I have with this poll, is that after looking it up myself, all my favourite places to eat at about 3am in the morning, whilst either staggering to a taxi rank or back to one of my friends houses, have all received 0 stars. Not just one, but all.

Where am I going to eat now???

SO I looked into it further and discerned that in order to get no stars at all the kebab hut has to have "Almost total non-compliance with statutory obligations'. Now I don't really know what this means, but surely it cannot be good.

And I know that on more than one occasion I've seen them guys put cold chips in the microwave and then give them too us, and the same of manky bits of meat....I guess I'd just never really thought bout it before.

This creates a huge problem for me- where am I going to eat now??? 

Although saying this, by the time 3am rolls around on a Saturday night, I probably won't care.

Barbie turns 50, what exactly does she represent??

Most women at 50 start to show signs of slowing down somewhat, not Barbie!

If anything, she's speeding up.

With her everlasting beauty (which has nothing to do with botox) and over 100 successful career changes, this little doll, bulldozes everything that gets in her way. Is that girl power or what??

Any doll that tries to challenge her superiority she destroys, from Rock star Jem, to the British Sindy none were safe. Even Bratz, that posed the first real threat to the doll giant has been crushed-Barbie sued them and prevented the company from making anymore dolls (to be honest I was wondering where they'd gone to).

Barbie is successful because she moves with the times, she has never been stuck in the past, but a forward thinker, who resembles the idea that girls can do anything, and look good doing it too!

People dislike her because she's unrealistic and she represents the unattainable, but she's a toy, a fantasy is you will. In 1995 the International Journal of Eating Disorders complained that if Barbie were a real sized human her measurements would be 38-18-34, and Finnish researchers said that she'd be so thin that she would not be able to menstruate. They're completely missing the point. SHE"S A DOLLY. Barbie is not real. She was never meant to be real, and anyone who thinks otherwise is severely deluded.

Barbie is an aspiration, she encourages girl power and shows girls that it's ok to be beautiful and a doctor, or a presidential candidate or whatever they want to be.

what will 2009 bring?? a responce

A headache.

I have had one for 2 days now. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.