i can't believe i'm doing this. with the new layout coming on saturday, i thought i'd like to put up a real picture of myself, so i borrowed stu's digital camera, and snapped away last night. with the final result that i have 4 pictures which i don't mind too much to go in the top right corner. but i don't know which one i like best. so... i'm having a poll - you can decide which picture you like best. now that's what i call democratic blogging :) oh and just so you know, i'm not topless in 5, the strap of my top had fallen down, and i didn't notice.

updated 31/1/03 i've taken the pictures down because i'm completely embarrassed by my own self obsession. if you do really want to see them clicky here. from the look of the comments though, the glockenspiel photo below is everyone's favourite. although it might be a bit big.

this is really just for the benefit of archel who wants blogs to be more like soap operas. i'd like to point out at this moment that my all time favourite soap opera was sunset beach.

...previously on 'are the stars out tonight': tara's glockenspiel was cursed by a fortune teller on walmgate stray... stuart has been kidnapped by ducks and is being held in central hall... with battle of the bands on monday, will ladybird ladybird be able to play the semis? gina is battling with her conscience over whether or not she should steal the indie soc clubnight profits (although there aren't very many)... and after falling over while dancing on friday, chris j has amnesia and has no memory of marrying su president tom connor... cue terrible saxophone based credits involving members of the york sinister massive running across vanburgh paradise (note to non-yorkies, this is the worst named piece of windswept concrete in the whole of north yorkshire.)

stay tuned for more exciting episodes of 'are the stars out tonight'. or not. prolly not.

sometimes i feel more scarred. sometimes i can cope with the chicken pox scars on my tummy and that one on my cheek where i had a mole removed and the oval one on my elbow where i fell over in the summer, and the thin white lines on the top of my arm... and then the strap on my watch breaks and i'm forced to remember that one of the reasons i wear a watch is that i have a neat round scar on my wrist where i stubbed a cigarette out once. and that i have to be careful what clothes i buy because wearing short sleeved tops is embarrassing for all concerned.

but y'know, once i've got to sleep and dreamed about living on the moon and being jane eyre, everything's fine. and i wake up feeling like things are all going to be fine. although i do need a new watch.

still i found troubled youth which i shall be watching. it gives me the urge to buy post-it notes and write slogans on them like "sous les pavés, la plage" and "humanity will be happy the day the last bureaucrat is hung with the guts of the last capitalist". because i'm all about mai 68.

so if you want to hear my band at battle of the bands you can listen here, which is pretty exciting really. the songs we played are: glastonbury, sorry, go ladybird go, sunday stories, kitten called clive, and c-c-c-concentration. also featured: me talking about cool granddads, the fact that we're not shambolic and attempting to say how much chris j likes ribena in the face of a microphone which fed back everytime i spoke into it. stuart thinks the vocals are too loud and the guitars too quiet. but as one of the singers, i beg to differ *smiles*.

we just went to see the two towers, which i enjoyed quite a lot. but i would like to say why, why are eowyn and arwen in it? they're not in the book. because they wanted a love story? well it was completely unnecessary. i'm a girl and i don't need sappy love scenes to keep me interested, respect my intelligence damnit. grrr. but gollum was brilliant. *yay* and the battle scene *whistles* really really impressive. although it did have a bit of that gladiator scene in the colosseum. you know the bit i mean. you don't? nevermind, it wasn't a brilliant point anyway, just that there clearly weren't as many people there in real life as there seemed to be in the film and you could kind of tell. i liked it all the same though.

"my goodness!" i hear you cry "who is that vision playing the glockenspiel?" it's me. at battle of the bands last night. playing with ladybird ladybird my band. and guess what? we got through to the semi-finals! and it was a really good gig too, we were really tight for once and i only forgot the words that one time and it was in the last song anyway. and i managed to not mangle the english language like last time, although i did have a quite nasty bout of verbal diarrhea while chris was getting his violin out, fortunately i can't remember what i said, except for something along the lines of:
me: i don't really have much to say.
audience member (actually alex ball): shambolic is the new together. (it's our catchphrase)
me: but not tonight, tonight we are not shambolic, we are together. well actually we're ladybird ladybird, it would be silly if we were called together.
chris j: what *are* you talking about?

and now we're all very excited about the semis, which aren't for a while. oh and flight 19 (stu's other band) are playing in the heats tonight, and we're all hoping they get through as well, they did last year and they're even better now apparently.

updated 24/1/03 - flight 19 did get through, and i took some pictures of them which you can see here, also if you want to see some other ladybird ladybird pictures click here

wow. remember how we went down to sussex? actually i didn't post about it, so you probably don't, unless you were there. anyway, stu has put up a picture of chris j from when we were there: here, and it's really really good. even though you don't know who chris is (and you may not care), you should still look at it.

that day we'd gone down to the dell in peacehaven where there's a small children's playground (which i remember quite clearly from my childhood). we had a go on the rope climby assault course thing and then the swings. chris didn't believe how high he was going so we all took photos to show him. this is stu's version. it looks like we had been magically transported back to the 1970s (which might be mostly to do with chris' clothes that day). later on we flew kites, because if you're going to conform to a sinister stereotype, then you might as well go the whole hog.

in the immortal words of laura llew, whoot (boy that sounds wrong coming out of my english mouth)! i got reviewed and it's pretty good. i know i'm supposed to be all blasé about it, but i'm pretty pleased, because i'm really doing this in a vacuum with only the odd "oh i read your blog the other day" to help me along my way. so thanks very much teranika, i really appreciate that (and i hope i haven't corrupted you too much).

oh yes, my redesign. i've decided that the first of february will be the grand unveilling, with that being the 6 month anniversary of the blog and also the 8th annual richey day. the only question is whether i'll be able to sort out the tables before then. ooh i bet you're all on the edges of your seats aren't you.

that's enough meta-topic. i made potato gnocchi for tea, fresh. but now i'm feeling slightly stuffed (and maybe slightly potato expanding in stomach). i guess that's not the kind of pain mike's looking for. let me see what i can dredge up. i did a year of freudian analysis, i'm sure i can think of something(!) or you could have a look at my 100 things list for a few teenage traumas.

artist's (well mine anyway) impression of new hair cut: it's quite a lot shorter than i anticipated, but i think i like it. it'll be good for battle of the bands 'cos it should look quite rock and roll if i put enough wax in. hurrah. i will not, however, be replacing the picture of me in the top right. because i like that picture.

recently (well in the last day or so), people have been getting here with the search julian casablancas girl. was it a sign i wondered? i am, after all getting my hair cut today. maybe google was trying to tell me something... that i could be a female julian casablancas if i just got my hair cut the right way. so i killed some time doing this: so i could find out what it would look like. pretty rock chick i thought, but somehow not quite me.

my other option (not this time taken from google searches) was to go for a reese witherspoon type haircut. because i really liked her hair in sweet home alabama. but what would it look like on me? not bad, but still not quite right (or maybe that's just because i'm just not blonde).

in the end, i think i'll stick with my usual fashion guru - edie sedgwick. y'know she's got that good sixties hair thing going on, and of course she was deeply fucked up, so i think she's a pretty good role model as role models go. or not. . just so you know, i am going grey, but i'm not quite that bad yet, the problem being that the only pictures that are around of edie are in black and white, with the result that the hair cut looks like it was taken from a very cool old woman. which in some ways it was.

"It's ok not to conform," i thought to myself the other day, "because i'm not pretty". i don't know exactly where that came from, but come it did. and i think it's probably true. do people who are "cheerleader cute" (as elizabeth wurtzel puts it in her book bitch, which i'm rereading at the moment) feel like they have to fit in just because they're pretty? does being attractive make you conform, no, because there are hundreds of attractive (mistakes, misshapes,) misfits. but then being a conformist doesn't make you attractive either. what i mean is that if you're not one of those hyper-cute kids, it's easier not to fit in. after a while, being a non conformist becomes a kind of conformity. or maybe i'm just babbling on.

i'm having trouble sleeping. well, that's not entirely true. i'm having trouble sleeping too much. in the last 24 hours i think i've spent 14 in bed (not all in one go of course). i don't really understand that. it's been an effort to wake up, in fact i still don't feel very awake. is it the big d? i don't think so. it's been a while, but i think i'd prolly recognise the usual symptoms. on the other hand, it was a feature of my last years of school that i would come in at the end of the day and go to sleep until my parents got in at about 7. and they wondered why i never did my homework! but also i can't really get up the enthusiasm to go out. which is why i'm sitting blogging instead of being at fibbers watching ryan. grrr.

on the plus side i got my results for last term, and i did bluddy well! 68 (a high 2:1) for the orally assessed paper and 5/5 for the italian one which i did the exam for on tuesday, so that's quite cheering and generally good, looks like i'll be getting that 2:1 which i wanted *yay*.

bleargh campus smells like someone filled a fridge with cheese and milk then left it for months and months before pouring it into the lake. or something.

after my exam (not too bad thanks, the translations were pretty easy, but i'm not so sure about the essays) i went for lunch with stu in derwent. it was pretty yummy - faux enchiladas, almost as good as the ones i make myself (alright better, but that's only because i don't often get around to buying guacamole and sour cream). then i went into town.

i have bought: *some headphones from borders (i remember when they opened the borders in oxford street, it seemed like the coolest place in the whole world. my friend vicci and i would just go there and stare at the employees who all had black hair and looked impossibly cool.). * a desk lamp from habitat, it's very nice all stainless steel and forties style. * a child's book of true crime, which i've started reading and it's pretty good. * oh and an £8 bangle from miss selfridge, yes i know that's outrageous for a bracelet, but it's sooooo purty.

also i got from huw (the nouse music editor), 2 singles to review - the new badly drawn boy and the new lemon jelly, i've heard both of them and they're grate. then i also got an album called tallahassee by the mountain goats. i've never heard of them, but it's on 4ad and it's got tony doogan doing the production, so it can't be all bad.

updated 8/1/03 - a child's book of true crime was grate, i read it in one go last night (taking some time out to watch wife swap). and as for the mountain goats, they're brilliant, it's a really good album. i'm slightly disappointed. i was looking forward to slagging them off. ah well.

oh god. it's just not like shopping in real life. i just spent £57.30 at amazon. what was i thinking? well, ok one of them (the riverside shakespeare) was for my course this term, and it does cost £37.50. but then you see there was the buffy season six debacle. £15.74! bargain! but really, do i truly need buffy on video? no. but i couldn't help it. at least in real life i'd have had the option of wandering off and looking at clothes (although you see topshopdotcodotuk always looks tempting too). but noooo, on the internet i have the option of buying a huge great text book and buffy videos at the same time. *gah* bluddy convenience of bluddy internet. it's completely unfair.

so i suppose i should be coming up with new year's resolutions? hmm.
*get fit - it's time to grow some muscles. really. i'm going to start going swimming again.
*eat more healthily (see above).
*drink less alcohol and more water.
*see more live music (i hardly saw any bands last year, and yes that's quite a lot to do with york, but there's still no excuse).
*work really hard at my degree (at the moment it's still just about possible for me to get a first, if i put in the effort).

i think i'm going to do a detox week again this year (starting after my exam next tuesday). last year i did a week of just eating brown rice, raw fruit and vegetables, juice and water. it was really dull, but i felt very virtuous, and y'know i feel like i should give my liver at least one week off a year.

new year's eve was good. i ended up going to popstarz. jess and milena spent most of the night joined at the lips, which is understandable since milena lives in germany and jess doesn't. i completely failed to pull - the closest i came all night was when some drunk foreign bloke tried to chat me up. hello, gay club. straight men in gay clubs drive me mad. in the end i started speaking italian to him (he wasn't italian) and he went away. i phoned the york sinister massive (well, chris j, gina and stu) at about 2 and it sounded like they were also having a fine time.

came back up to york yesterday with an horrific hangover. stu came over and we watched harvey, which was quite funny. i thought it was a bit cutesy, but nice enough.