about that last post. mark won overall in the end. and he cried! i was transported back 10 years to a time when take that were my one true love, and mark was the best thing since sliced beatle (quote there stolen from velvet goldmine). i remembered sitting round my kitchen table and telling my mum and dad that them and east 17 was like the beatles vs the stones. of course i did the same a couple of years later with blur and oasis, when i clearly didn't really understand the situation in the 60s at all.

yes i know it's really sad to post twice about this but y'know. i've got this feeling that if our tom j*nes had been in the big brother house, he'd have been pretty much the same as mark was. and he's just won chair of goodricke. the only question is will either of them make anything of their win, or will they both slide back into obscurity (although with a name like tom j*nes, it's hard to be obscure from the start really)? *feel the profound thought there* and you thought i was just killing time before buffy!

to avoid the shenanigans happening over at troubled diva i shall only refer to these people by their first names. to find out who they actually are, click the links (assuming you don't already know).

celebrity big brother has reminded me of a couple of people that i actually quite fancy. namely mark and sue.

oh mark, you were one of the first boys i ever fancied. take that were certainly the first band i ever liked. and it's thanks to you that i ever started listening to the radio, discovering the delights of good music. but i always had a soft spot for you. your own indie phase, the jangly delights of clementine. and you were always my favourite member of the band. so i'm quite happy to see you doing well. even if you are a bit dull.

and as for you sue, you little minx. i had a feeling, but y'know, i broke my gaydar a long time ago, and i was never very interested in your ex either. ah yes, i remember sitting in front of light lunch when i was off school sick and thinking: "i would". 'tis true. i shall be voting to ensure you stay in the house (even though you are up against mark), because you look just like my friend fluffy from school. and that should be enough for anyone.

and yes, i know that it's even more boring with celebrities than "real people", but it's a bit more fun (or at least more comprehensible) than bluddy palomar.

i'm unsure how i feel about julie burchill. sometimes i think she's great - really spot on - and then other times i want to hang her with a pair of brightly coloured tights. but she did draw my attention via this article in the guardian yesterday to the fact that it's the international day against violence against women tomorrow. a bit of an unwieldy title it's true, but the message is really very fucking important.

I picked up some statistics from here:
- In the UK, since 1981, the largest increase in violent crimes has been in incidents of domestic violence.
- One in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence.
- Two women in the UK a week are killed by their partners or ex partners.
- One in twenty women in the UK will suffer rape.
- In South Africa, a women is raped every 26 seconds.
- Each year, about 2 million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are trafficked, sold or coerced into prostitution.
- Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way – most often by someone she knows, 1 in 4 of these women were abused during pregnancy.

i used to be much more militant about this sort of thing than i am now. but i did want to mention it here, not least because i haven't seen any publicity for this at all. anywhere. if it hadn't been for julie burchill then i'd have never known. i suppose v-day is better known, and has a better site and is just cooler. seems to me that it's a shame that the campaign is divided though.

i am, it's true, something of an addict when it comes to cheap fashion. when i was in london on monday (feeling shaky but not like i was dying) i did the oxford circus trio of topshop, h and m and miss selfridge. but there wasn't actually anything i liked very much. ok, let's look at that sentence again: i went to the three gods of high street chic and couldn't find anything i liked. and these are the flagship stores. what's going on? i know i have quite strict rules about what i wear (no short sleeves, skirts only if i've had my legs waxed, matchy shoes and so on), but there wasn't a thing i liked in there. so i ended up getting makeup from h and m in the end.

but shoes, now they're a different story. my old adidas campuses were really beginning to hurt, so i thought i'd better get a new pair, which involved a lot of looking in office not just looking for a new pair of trainers, but also just looking at all the lovely shoes.

about my new trainers, i know it's kind of sad that i care, but they've changed the design, so the sole is a lot thicker and the little trefoil at the back is gold instead of navy. plus at the moment they just look a bit bright and white and glowy. hopefully the mud capital of the world (as i have renamed york) will do its work on them soon. but it took me a long time to get the old ones looking quite as crappy as they were.

oh yeah, and i forgot to mention, as i was walking down berwick street to get to oxford circus from neal street, and singing a pulp song to myself when who should appear in front of me but jarvis cocker himself. and to think i complain about never having any good sleb spots.

reader i went home. i felt so shite that i needed someone to look after me, so i practically crawled to the train station (ok, i would have done if sarah hadn't helped me get there and buy my ticket and stuff) because the only person i wanted to see was my mum. who has provided me with hot water bottles and hot ribena, and who says i "shoudn't stay up too late" (she literally just said that). i'm feeling better now. although i'm not planning to be back in york 'til tuesday or wednesday, as i'm still feeling just rough enough to stay home (and visit the good shops). so that's a bonus to being ill. as is the fact that i seem to have lost like 4lbs over the last week.

urgh. i feel like i've been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. damn 'flu. and this is really 'flu, not just "i've got a bit of a cold so i'm going to call it 'flu". i've spent most of the day in bed, trying to read harry potter and the goblet of fire, but struggling with it. getting up once to get a lemsip and use my very exciting new turbohaler.

the only reason i managed to crawl onto campus was the suggestion that the luverly natalie might be interested in going out with me (adrian phoned me at 12.30 last night to tell met that she'd texted him with something along the lines of "is it true that she likes me. only i'm not very good at talking to people i don't know and i get shy". so adrian and i had a crisis meeting earlier before he texted her back on my behalf. the upshot was, though, that she just broke up with her boyfriend (for god's sake why do all the lesbians here have boyfriends?) and she'd like to get to know me better, but she doesn't want a relationship, which leaves me free to explore my options with k. i thought i might ask her to go to ysc with me tomorrow, they're showing kissing jessica stein, which seems appropriate. but there's the possibility that i'll be in an even worse state by tomorrow. so who knows what'll happen.

very strange dreams last night possibly inspired by wearing my movie star coat to sam and alice's gig last night in leeds (the gig was excellent by the way).

i dreamed i was teaching a drama and film course with some inner city kids. we were supposed to be putting on a production of othello (oh yeah, there's also the fact that i've been reading the basic eight), but they didn't really understand what it was about - one girl asked me "is othello a saint". another boy asked me "who's the hamlet?" which i assumed meant which was the biggest role. he was playing iago (which he called hugo in a blatant O reference), so i told him he was playing it.

i realised there was about half an hour left so i started trying to cut othello before beginning rehearsals, but then a film came on with my jarvis giving a running commentary. it seemed to be a documentary about judy garland going shopping as a normal person. no one recognised her except a little girl and her mother who walked off with judy and her chaperone as the chaperone explained "judy's been a normal girl today."

movie stars must have been on my mind because i then dreamed that i was at the launch of asahi beer, and their publicity stunt was to have 4 old, famous actors round a table eating japanese food and drinking asahi. present were humphrey bogart, bela lugosi , audrey hepburn and mickey rooney. bogart was enjoying the meal, but kept saying that there were only certain times he could eat. he was drinking a kind of lo-alcohol asahi which i don't think actually exists. later he found a piano and started playing and singing. my nana was there, and she and lots of other people started singing along.

then there was a kind of awards ceremony, which seemed to actually be the nobel prizes (except they don't give prizes for any of the things that i dreamed). after the award for vintage clothing came an award which went to a film called "the scientist" (inspired by coldplay's latest single?) a film which appeared to be set in hungary. the director came up to the podium wearing a military uniform and said with a very strong eastern european accent "thankyou for this, i did it for you", everyone cheered. then bela lugosi pulled a string to reveal a banner which read "the scientist - we did it for you".

Then i was back in the film class watching the end of a film in which mickey rooney played a journalist who was forced to join a baseball team and turned out to be really good....

and then i woke up.

we didn't get it, in fact we lost by a slightly larger margin than last time - 19 votes as opposed to 1. that'll learn me for not standing for lgb officer with adam, who was unopposed, but i don't much like him. i'm feeling quite relieved that gina and i will be able to enjoy the indie soc britpop night, without having to worry about the liberation disco. and i've been saying to everyone that i'm resigned to actually getting a good degree. but the thing is i am also kind of disappointed, or maybe embarrassed. i feel like people should be saying (to paraphrase oscar wilde) "to lose one election may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness". i may write something for the satyrical page of nouse (the student newspaper) about it. but perhaps that's taking being a good loser a bit too far?

k, it turns out, was missing the bright lights of london and had headed home to her native chiswick. she may still be there for all i know. she emailed sarah on wednesday to apologise for missing a meeting and sarah relayed the message. she still hasn't replied to my text!

having woken up extremely early (for me) this morning (half 8, i was so tired i put my pants on inside out. oops), i fell asleep at half past 5 this afternoon, while trying to read labyrinths which i just don't understand. i slept for about two hours, and had some really fucking strange dreams. several appeared to be about blogging. but one was actually about saving diarmuid gavin from a fire. all together now: "at the first moment of waking up, she knows she's losing it. oh yeah she's losing it..."

gina and i have spent most of this afternoon distributing flyers for our election campaign. i forgot to mention that we're running for women's officers didn't i? anyway we are. hustings were last night, and they went pretty well. the women who are running against us seem to have a lot of similar ideas to ours, and they're really nice too, so whoever wins it'll be a good thing. i don't think that i'll be too upset if we're not elected. it's not like i don't have a degree to be getting on with anyway. and i'll know that if cat and alice do get it, they're both lovely girls (not like that ok!). chris j and alex b made everyone feel better by asking about a million questions about belle and sebastian and whether they would affect our campaigns. i think it's just as well though that we didn't mention that we actually met through sinister, because they might have assumed we were just "pasty faced vegan geeks", or even "a bit freaky", which of course we're not.

in other news, i still haven't heard from the elusive k. i texted her on monday to ask if she fancied coming out for a drink with stu, sarah and i, and to let her know about hustings. but she hasn't replied. sarah, who knows her a bit better than i do, suggested that she might have gone home, but she could at least text me back. i'm surprised by how bothered by that i am. i didn't think i'd really care either way, but actually i kind of do. maybe she's just run out of credit. or she's lost her phone... ooh that's a good one. well i can dream can't i?

i also forgot to mention that jarvis came up last week. he'd just shaved his head so he was looking a bit *eurgh*, but it was nice to see him, even if he did get outrageously drunk again! apparently glenn's doing really well, and is actually back working at the young vic which is really reassuring. not only that but he's got a new girlfriend! also he's down to about 8st, which is a little light for him, but y'know he's been trying to lose that weight for ages *n.b. this is irony, i don't actually mean it when i say that cancer is the best diet he's ever tried*.

inspired by summer's post about the film amelie (which i watched the other day with stu) i would like to give you a description of my likes and dislikes in the style of the beginning of the film.

"feather boa likes plays on words, for instance her nom de plume. she likes the way clean clothes that have just come out of the dryer feel. she likes the smell of second-hand books ("it makes me think about the people who read them before me") and she likes knowing the words to obscure forties musicals which most people have never seen (like the bluebird, the movie shirley temple did instead of the wizard of oz!). she dislikes using the telephone, and being asked to sing unexpectedly and when the backs of her trousers are wet."

i made caitlin's pesto chicken for tea tonight, and it was extremely yummy. i recommend you all try it. (if you want you can try my spicy food too, which is also quite nice.)