Paperlilies: The Blog!

Housemate changes

2011-04-15T05:46:00.000+01:00

My housemate is moving out later this year. She is going to start a course at a college and will be away for a whole year, and who knows after that. Her parents actually gave her the house we live in (lucky!) so not only my friend but also my landlord will be gone. I don't know what will happen with it all- I'll have a new housemate and she'll still be my landlord, though I might become the default landlord for the new tenant since I'm actually living here.

The cats will probably go to her parent's house, which I'm kind of really glad about. The house will be infinitely cleaner without them puking and moulting on everything, and otherwise their departure will make no difference to my living here- they don't even let me touch them let alone stroke them!!

I've lived here with her for over two years now, and she's a great housemate. I worry sometimes that as she so rarely annoys me, I must be enraging to her, but I hope that's just paranoia. Now there will be a new person!! And I have no idea who they'll be. I guess there aren't many people who know now where they want to move in six months time, but I wish we could work it out sooner rather than later so I knew what was going to happen. I'm so worried they will get annoyed with my late hours, or be messy, or be annoyed with my mess. What if they are noisy when I'm trying to sleep? Or they eat all my food? Or never pay the rent? What if they hate me?! I feel like it's taken me all this time to finally settle in and feel like this place is my real home, and now it's all going to change!

Royal Wedding, where's my invite??

2011-04-13T06:28:00.000+01:00

So the Royal Wedding is in a few weeks, and I am hit with a dilemma. Do I go and watch the 'procession' (a car driving slowly, surrounded by all the police in England), or do I watch the whole thing on TV? If I go with the TV option I have a further choice- My own TV, the one at my parents' house, a street party in Essex or a house party in Birmingham. Any party seems kind of pointless seeing as the wedding is at like 11 am, and I don't get out of bed til after 12 basically ever (if I can help it), and who wants to drink before 11 am?! And there would be drinking with this thing, surely? I'm gonna need something to drown my despair that my tax pennies are being spent on some rich people's wedding.

The procession... well I've been to a few 'street carnivals' in London (once, as part of my youth club*, I attended a record breaking attempt to stage the biggest procession ever!! Which failed). And they suck ass. There's a ton of people everywhere, you can't easily move, it's uncomfortable to just stand there, there's hardly anything to look at, and anything there IS to look at is obscured by someone taller than me with someone shorter than me on their shoulders.

However, it's a 'once in a lifetime' kind of thing, right?? I guess it comes down to what I want the legacy of this ultimately pointless event to be in my life. A fun tea party in some place with a TV or the fact that I was actually 'there'? There's so many draw backs to going to the procession, not least of which is there's nowhere then to actually watch the wedding itself, and the issue of getting there and back (the tube will be totally rammed, there will probably be some bomb scares, riots or protests that will further disrupt everything)... I mean jeez.

I bet I just end up sleeping in and missing the whole thing.

*yes I was in a youth club, what of it?

Squid me

2011-03-21T13:03:00.003Z

Hello internets who still read this blog!!
I came on here to find something and I realised how much more blog-like this is compared to Tumblr. I do like how easy it is to blog on tumblr, and I like how instant and simple it is to interact with other people, but it's also nice to have a more one-sided internet outlet too.

I moved around the living room so I am not staring at a grey wall any more, and am facing the room. From behind my desk I look like a receptionist or something! "welcome to my house, who are you here to see? Please take a seat."

Anyway someone tweeted at me asking if I minded if he painted a version of a drawing I did on his baby daughters' wall! And if I had other squid related art, so I searched around for my favourite quid painting which doesn't seem to be online anywhere. I have way too much squid art... I think they're so beautiful! I also love jellyfish but find them hard to draw.

Is it still August?

2010-08-19T19:16:00.001+01:00

You know how on Twitter, there's this thing now that shows you people you should follow? Well today I looked at Shaycarl's one, as I've heard his name a thousand times and had literally no idea who he was. He had this video on his page that was sponsored by footlocker and was really awesome. Well filmed, well put together... I liked it.

I don't think it's how other people react to things, but whenever I see someone doing well and succeeding in a field I have any experience in (whatever it is, art, design, youtube), it completely demoralises me. I think other people feel inspired by seeing others do well in their fields of interest, but not me. It makes me want to give up and not ever try again. It's pathetic, but rather than feel happy for those people, I feel jealous and angry with myself for not being as good as them.

That's why I never try hard in anything, never really bother to push myself, because there's always someone else out there who is way better than me at whatever it is I could ever try to do. And if you can't be great, why try at all? It's so stupid, I know. I know! But I can't help myself- this is why I never watch youtube videos anymore, because they just depress me. It all depresses me.

BEDA Whatever

2010-08-15T17:17:00.000+01:00

Oh yeahhh, I forgot about writing on my blog every day.
The truth is, I've barely been online at all the last little while. I was hanging out with my brother at my parent's house for a few days, then went to london for some birthday drinks the other day, and I've been feeling pretty crappy recently so I just want to lay on the couch and not think about anything other than how ill I feel. FUN TIMES.

I've been watching Clone High- it's a great show, I can't believe they only made one season of it! It's genius.

I can't wait to see Scott Pilgrim, but for some angry-making reason, the distributor decided to not release it in the UK at the same time as they did in America, so I have to wait til the 25th to see it. Which is exactly when I'm in Cyprus, when I won't be able to see it. And once I've come back, I don't think it'll be in the cinemas any longer, and even if it is, I'll have noone to see it with. THANKS FOR RUINING MY LIFE, MOVIE.

Wah, I promise the next blog post will be less whiney.

Internnnettt

2010-08-12T05:04:00.002+01:00

Waaahhh I'm at my parent's house on their super slow internet, trying to upload something onto HitRecord, which is not working. I'm pulling my hair out here!!!

Stupid lame internet grumble grumble

BEDA9: boringgg

2010-08-09T00:34:00.001+01:00

:O I totally forgot to write a blog post yesterday til it was like 6 am and in bed and all like 'meh'.

And I only just remembered because I saw that Adam posted a blog. Haha I knew this would all end in tears!

So yesterday I went to a nice italian restaurant with my lovely boyfriend! Which was nice. Then today I didn't do all that much other than re-arrange the bookshelf in the living room by both subject and height (I know! So exciting!).

Then bf, bro and I watched Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Nacho Libre and two episodes of Mad Men. It was RAD.

Oh yeah I made this phone cover:

I'm thinking I might sell my other phone covers on ebay and see how much they go for.... people have asked me to sell them before but I've been reticent to do so because they take a while to make and it seems like I won't be able to sell them for any sort of profit at all... but I dunno, might aswell?

These are my tidy shelves!

Top shelf: novels and magazines, and the spazzy tigers <3
2nd shelf: random subject book like The Profanisaurus and The Art Of Ballroom Dancing, and art and design books.
3rd shelf: work books, gardening and language books. Travel books and comics. And my Blythe doll! And a framed birthday card from ages ago with maneki neko good luck cats.
4th shelf: postcards and other crap of mine. A bobble head of me that my boyfriend gave me!! :D

BEDA10 Maplins Electronica

2010-08-07T00:28:00.000+01:00

Woohoo so today I hung out with my brother- we had coffee and then went to Maplins! And I bought a bunch of LEDs, a soldering iron and some other electronics bits to make a tiny torch thing (for fun). I have since made... a thing, with them, but unfortunately the two rows of LEDs won't both light up, only one at a time will.. I can't work out why! So that's annoying. I should have bought a bigger circuit board to experiment with more. Ah well. I don't really know what I'm doing.

Anywayyyy I also went to TK Maxx and bought an amazing Givenchy scarf for £25 instead of £100 :O It's amazing, it's cashmere, wool and silk and has unicorns on it.

I am mega glamorous 24/7.

I also saw this fake wii nunchuck called a FunChuck, but I misread it first as Funch UK and was like wha?! What a dumb name for a product! Funch!?

And then in the Library we came across this book- Cookin' with Coolio! It seemed to just be regular recipes which was kind of a let down. I wanted it to be all ghettoey and more Coolioish.

OMG YOU GUYS

2010-08-06T02:44:00.000+01:00

Emma Watson turned black and white :O

BEDA10 Day 5, sandwiches are the best

2010-08-06T02:30:00.000+01:00

Yayy so today I made amazing delicious sandwiches with my boyfriend. Pita bread, where would I be without you? Oh what's that? two stone lighter? Hahah, oh YOU.

I uploaded a couple of things to HitRecord today! But it's just old stuff that I thought was better suited to this new home. I am going to do some more animations for there I think... it's quite relaxing doing frame by frame drawings for animations. Atleast for me.

Watched a film called The Joneses, which is about a fake family that do stealth marketing! It was pretty good. And right now we are watching Julie and Julia! It's a nice film, if a little Nora Ephrony. I've seen it before and I love it! It makes me want to do the same with like, the Heston Blumenthal book, just without all his insane equipment. Say... that's a pretty good idea!

Right now my favourite blog is Captchart- it's so hilarious!! I post most linky things on my tumblr, but this needs to be seen by the world!! All 5 or so people reading this need to get on this.

See you tomorrow! xx

BEDA10 day 4: documentaries

2010-08-05T00:45:00.000+01:00

I did a painting of a tiger a few weeks ago and had done a second one to compliment it, but wasn't happy with it, so today I worked on it some more to make it look more like the first one. They're.... supposed to look kind of spazzy.

I watched this documentary about Alicia Duvall (a ropey looking glamour model) and her 14 year old daughter. It was so amazing. You should watch it on iPlayer if you missed it (and live in the UK). It was like Absolutely Fabulous or something- the daughter, while very pretty, had no interest in the world of plastic surgery and modelling that her mum was trying to push her into, and just wanted to study Biology and go to university. Any description I can give you won't do it justice.. you have to see it for yourself.

I asked people on Twitter what to write about earlier, so here we are:

Fainting: I've never fainted!! Kind of want to know what it's like though.
Turnips: I don't like them! Sweet flavours do not belong in savoury foods.
Good documentaries: Well I just wrote about one, but there's loads on 4od... I really liked one I saw that was about people with loads of cats, and I watched one last night about a guy on the road to male physical perfection, which was kind of interesting, and I saw one about Miss Nude Australia (most strippers are failed dancers, essentially). And yesterday I watched one about women who'd had botched plastic surgery which was good.
You know someone told me that these sorts of documentaries are classified as 'news', and because each terrestrial channel is required to provide a certain amount of news stuff, they churn out these scandalous not-really-news documentaries. Edutainment!

In uploading the photo of the tigers, I found these photos I took a while back of the eggs I used my japanese egg shaper thing with! They're supposed to be star and heart shaped but the eggs weren't quite large enough...

I'm going to have a bath now and watch a movie. I guess it's kind of dangerous to watch things on my laptop (perched on the top of the toilet) whilst in the bath, but it's not plugged in, so all that could happen is the laptop could get ruined, right? Riiiighht??

See you later... if I'm still alive!! :O

BEDA10 Day 3: nail polish, falafels and asda

2010-08-04T00:30:00.000+01:00

So this morning I had a terrible nightmare that England was wiped off the map by a huge nuclear bomb, killing all my friends and family and leaving me stranded in India. It was harrowing.

I woke to find that the two nail polishes I ordered from the magical land of ebay had been delivered!! Wooo! I would take photos for you but it's easier to just show you some swatches already on the internet, so here they are:
Zoya 'Happi':

OPI 'Extravagance', which I thought was going to be like this:

but is actually more like this:

which is ok I guess. When it is in super bright light it has tiny holographic particles that look all rainbowey and awesome, but when it's not, it just looks like a dark plum colour.

I went out with my brother to get falafels and go shopping in Asda (truly, I live an exciting life). In the Falafel place (fun by the loveliest woman ever, by the way), an odd lady came in who was inhumanly excited about being both Israeli and loving falafels. It was kind of disconcerting, as crazy people tend to be.

Then we came home and I attempted to make a cherry pie. Let me tell you, it did not work out so well. The cherries were delicious but the pie base never cooked, it just layed there, uncooked, mocking me. So I threw that out and we just ate the vastly reduced cherries (we had about a spoonful of them each) with a bit of cream, and it was great.

Me, Alan (my brother), Chris (my boyfriend) and Laura (my housemate) then watched a bunch of super trashy tv like Ten Years Younger and some programme about the hazards of plastic surgery.

I wish I had more to tell you but I really don't!! My whole day has felt overshadowed by that horrible dream, and I just want to go back to bed to dream something else to de-traumatise myself.

BEDA10 day 2 The Sorcerer's Apprentice

2010-08-03T03:28:00.000+01:00

Wow so, hello again from yesterday, how I have missed you.

So TODAY I went to see a screening of The Sorcerers Apprentice. It's the new disney film with Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel in it. It was ok. I was given the tickets by a nice lady who works at Disney, so I feel bad saying it was only ok. It wasn't awful or anything, it had it's moments and was enjoyable enough, but I think the age range for this is probably the under 12 demographic rather than me, and it left me feeling a bit flat.

The trailer:

It's about a guy who turns out to be some distant relative of Merlin, and Nicolas Cage has to coax the magician out of him by training him in various ways. There was a totally nondescript love interest that (of course) caused all sorts of palaver for the young apprentice but inexplicably is still interested. I think the best aspect was the reworking of the fantasia sequence with mickey mouse and all the mops, which was really well done, and it was pretty cool to see New York being driven around with people throwing fireballs at each other.

I feel like Jay Baruchel, who I've seen in She's Out Of My League (which is surprisingly pretty great!) and a couple of other things (I think he's in Sex Drive?), is a good actor, and has been stereotyped (by hollywood) as the 'loveable nerd despite not being physically attractive' in movies where you're supposed to root for him because he's the charming underdog. But I don't think he's charming enough as an actor to pull it off. I want to like him, but there were little quirky reactions to things in this movie that if they'd been done by someone else would have been hilarious, but the cinema remained silent and things awkwardly moved on.

Bleh, I don't know. I wanted to like it more than I did, and I can't quite put my finger on what it was that I didn't love. I give it two and a half stars out of five.

BEDA10 Day 1 Predators and hello

2010-08-03T03:05:00.000+01:00

Hey so here we are in August. It's my favourite month because my birthday is in it!! 23rd, baby! I'm right on the cusp between Leo and Virgo... not that I really believe in all of that stuff or anything. Though I do tend to find that people who's personalities I consider similar to mine are also August babies too. And I hate being told I'm a Virgo!! I'm a Leo god dammit!! I'm a fucking lion!!

Anyway, the reason I'm writing a blog today is that I wanted to copy WhatAboutAdam and blog every day of August but hey, look at me being late to start! Hahaha. How lame of me. I guess I'll make today have two blog posts so I can pretend I wrote this yesterday.

Anyhow, yesterday, the real first day of August, I went with my brother to see Predators. I wish I'd liked it more, but it just wasn't all that. I enjoyed some aspects of it, but it didn't all tie together as well as previous predator films. The general premise is that Adrien Brody and a bunch of other people wake up as they're plummeting to the ground on parachutes. Then they're all like WTF? And discover that they're all trained killers... and obviously because we know it's predators, they're there to get hunted down by the aliens.

I loved the previous predator movies, and even thought Alien VS Predator was pretty good (haven't seen AVP2). But this new one only ranks next to Alien Vs Predator for me rather than the original film, in terms of story and general.... pizazz. There's these fancy souped up predators now? Like the previous ones were sooo easy to kill? Why? And Adrien Brody, whilst he's good in this film, and generally a great actor, just isn't the right guy to head up an alien killing action film like this. Maybe they were trying to be clever with it and I just don't get it, but... well, I don't get it. As I said on Twitter, three out of five stars, but half a star added for how ripped Brody was.

I guess I'll try to take a photo each day too, to keep it ~~interesting~~ less lame.

OK stay tuned for (hopefully) a blog every day of this month!! I doubt they'll all be so long as this, this was just to get you up to speed. See you ~~in five minutes~~ tomorrow!

Random photos from the last little while

2010-07-12T18:45:00.000+01:00

NailsA pavlova I made for Mother's day (I think)

A bunch of cakes

For some reason I had about 50 photos of my toes on my camera ?

A bunch of pink stuff from my desk

Fascinating!

What's up blogland?

2010-06-02T23:30:00.000+01:00

Hi. If you follow my twitter (which, you should, I've been trying to break 3000 for MONTHS now!) you will know all this news, but for those of you who aren't so web 7.6, here's a blog post to catch you up.

Ok so I quit my job a few weeks ago... I hated it, life is beautiful now, and I truly appreciate the free time I now have whereas before I didn't even realise how good I had it. I like German people, but I don't like German bosses. Or working in a windowless box. Or having to spam twitter all day.

I'm going to LA in a week!! To E3... So excited!! I'm also going to get to hang out with some of my youtube buddies and LA friends (I'm so international).

I've been making some animations and trying to get to know HitRecord- a complicated to navigate, yet awesome site where everyone collaborates their music, video, writing and whatever other skills. It's all run by Joseph Gordon Levitt and if anything gets used in a real life movie or whatever, they actually pay the people who've been involved!! I'm hoping to do more fun bits and bobs to add, and maybe upload some of the things I've done in the past that were set to specific music which I don't have the rights to- people might write music for them?? Anyway, check it out. I'm pretty proud of my flower animation :)

Today I bought a DSi, on account of how dim my DS's screen is, and how my R4 card just makes it worse.... I bought Pokemon and just started playing it- I haven't played it for YEARS but it all comes flooding back!

My Ikea bed is still a huge pain in the ass. The slats fall through no matter what you do. I'm thinking of giving in and just getting the more expensive slats. It may well be the last thing I ever buy from Ikea. TAKE THAT IKEA!!! Take it.

I went to the MCM Expo! Me and Lizzlizz had a stall again, and for once I sold loads of stuff!! And actually BROKE EVEN! It's a successful business now right? :/
It was great to see the zine people again!! Check out these people for awesomeness: Lizzlizz, People I Know, Ninja Bunny, Cute But Sad, My Cardboard Life.. there are others but I can't think of them all right now.

Ok I'm going to watch Junior Apprentice now... L8R

Rip offff

2010-04-20T18:07:00.000+01:00

You know how I hate to complain (schnarff), but I'm going to complain riiight now. I know, it's the best.

So I needed infills on my fake nails. I thought I would go during my lunchbreak like a real city girl and go to the OPI nail place in Selfridges as a fancy treat.

So disappointed. I got infills, which would cost £15 to £20 in a normal place, but it was £37, plus a £5 tip that I felt obliged to leave (for some reason). They need doing again less than a week later, as the infills are sooo far down the nail that it looks like they weren't even done! AND it took FOREVER!! OPI don't use drills to file the nails, fair enough, but they LIED to me to say it would be less than an hour (in a normal place it would take about 45 mins max), it took over 75 mins and meant I was late back to work.

PLUS!! The polish somehow dried with bubbles in it?! HOW!? I am sad that it was so bad, as the girl who did it was lovely, but she was literally filing my nails comedically slowly. Remember in the Simpsons when Bart and Principal Skinner are stuck in the school and they lick envelopes to pass the time, and at the end he's licking them soooooo slowly because his tongue is so dry? It was like that!!

Waste of money. I need to get my nails done again, and this time I will go somewhere it's less heinously expensive, better quality, where they know what they're doing. I'm so sad my favourite nail company were so lame.

ONE star out of 5. Unbelievably disappointed.

Why I am not going to VidCon

2010-04-05T00:46:00.003+01:00

So, Vidcon.

Vidcon is the 777 for 2010. I'm not going. I'm friends with a few people who are but I really have no desire to go.

I've been thinking about why I have so little wish to go. It feels the same as how I have no desire at all to go to a school or university reunion. I feel like everyone graduated the youtube highschool and I'm still there being a cleaner or something. The people who I feel are/were my genuine friends whom I met via youtube have 90% moved on to other things and barely communicate online anymore. I feel like those friends would happily hang out if we were ever in the same landmass, but as for day to day e-hanging, it's gone.

And that's fine. They moved out of town when they graduated YT High. I'm still in this crappy town.

I've been to 3 of the main youtube meetups- 'As One' (remember that?) in San Francisco in 2007, 777 in New York the same year and 888 in Toronto in 2008. The first one was a revelation- these people who I had never talked to face to face were exactly as they were on screen, and so was I- it was like we already knew each other. It was amazing to talk to people who knew exactly what I was talking about and had the same shared experiences as me, at a time when other people still weren't sure what Youtube even was.

777 is probably my favourite memory connected with youtube. I stayed in an amazing Manhattan apartment sublet from some hipster fashion student, with Calli (TheSlyestFox), Mark (DentonUSA) and Paul (PabloKickasso417). It was Summer, we went up to the roof, we drank beer, we talked a bunch, we hung out and had fun. Then we went to the 'gathering' in Washington Square Park, and for one bizzarro day, I was a celebrity. People filmed me chatting to other people who were also filming me. People had me sign things. People were all shy and humble to talk to me. Photos were taken. I met people I'd not met before. It was awesome. It was sunny! It was overwhelming. It was stressful yet amazing. And very very strange. This all was at a time when I happily made new friends via the internet. Something that I've found harder and harder to do since 777.

888 Happened. Calli, and other awesome people I'd long hoped to meet (Frezned, for one) came, and I had a good time with them in the apartment we rented, but the love was gone for me. I didn't really watch videos anymore, aside from a rare few here and there. I didn't so much care about making videos anymore. I was in the middle of filming the incredibly stressful 'Bryony Makes A Zombie Movie'. Mark and Paul weren't there this time, their interest in youtube had waned as had mine. I was there mostly to hang out with my friends, and I had a nice time, but compared to the happy memories I had from New York, Toronto was boring, depressing and lonely. The actual gathering was cold and depressing (to me atleast). It rained, as if the weather had grown as bored of youtube as I had. The one moment that sums up the experience for me was when Cory (who the fuck was Cory, btw?) who'd organised the whole thing, had all the 'big names' up 'on stage' (around a microphone that was on the same floor we were all standing on). I wasn't called upon to go, I was all 'LOL WHATEVERZ!' but it rather summed up how my e-star had waned, atleast in the face of the uber stars like SXEphil and whoever else was there (honestly I can't remember who was there).

So in one year, one month and one day, youtube had gone from happiest day on earth to 'fuck this lets just go home in the rain'. I am overstating the case, 888 was a part of a month long trip that was fraught with stress and upsets of many kinds. My brother and I stayed in Montreal a very long 7 days, with nothing to do and nowhere to go (people say Montreal is great but honestly, outside of rural France, I have never been so bored and fed up with rude French people.) The rest of the trip had amazing moments and I don't want to disparage what was a fun (and expensive) time, but the Canadian part was disappointing for me, after 777's wonderment.

During this time between gatherings, I lost contact with Kim, who had up til then been my very best friend on the internet ever. Mark and Paul had less and less youtube interaction, and I talked to them less and less. I made videos with less frequency and with less interest in the response they garnered, and generally, we all went our separate ways. To conclude this overlong analogy, I think 777 was the graduation of youtube school, after which everyone went off to college (aka real life) and I stuck around like the loser older kid with nothing better to do.

And after Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie was nominated for a BAFTA, I thought I fucking had it made. I thought 'hey, I am a BAFTA NOMINEE (though in reality, the nomination was for the production team behind the project rather than me) the offers are gonna come ROLLING IN'. The offers did not come rolling in, and I spent most of 2009 living off of the £150-£400 youtube adsense money I got each month (more in months I made topical comedy skits that got lots of views), and the random sponsorship fees I got from companies to promote things on my channel.

That's amazing. Even though I basically didn't care about it anymore, I lived off of youtube for over a year. Sure, I have no savings for that entire year, and I didn't really advance myself in any useful way, but I had a lot of fun times doing whatever shit I felt like, and wearing pyjamas for 70% of the time. I'm the real version of one of those banner ads 'MAKE MONEY OFF OF THE INTERNET WORK FROM HOME ONE MILLIONTH VISITOR!!' I should write a book.

So what was I even writing this for? I guess just pondering over my reasons for feeling rather queasy at the idea of going to VidCon. Analysing what it is exactly that makes me feel so revolted at the thought of it. If I were to go, there would be a handful of people I actually know or am interested in, and a handful of people who might be interested in meeting me. It makes me feel ill the same way I used to feel when I was supposed to go out and meet my friends. Social Anxiety. Not being good enough for whatever imaginary reason I had. 777 was the first (and I think only) time I've ever really felt like a bigshot special person. 888 I felt like a has been. VidCon would just be like those ex minor soap stars that somehow turn up at fancy hollywood events, botoxed and old looking. Clinging on to whatever it was that they were once known for.

I don't want to feel like a washed up nobody, so I am not going to go.

*DISCLAIMER*
Before anyone gives me shit in the comments, I am very grateful for all the opportunities I have had because of youtube. I do still enjoy making videos, and seeing their reactions, and in some ways I now enjoy youtube a lot more than I did (atleast during 2008). I am incredibly lucky to have been afforded these amazing opportunities, and I am extremely thankful for them. Please do not comment to say something along the lines of 'how dare you be so ungrateful', because I am incredibly so. To have had (and to still have) the amazing friends I have made because of this crazy youtube train is very rare indeed. I am thankful to every person who has had even the slightest interaction with me online (good or bad). It has all added up to an unusual and amazing few years of my life. Thankyou.

Tequila Face

2010-03-05T03:40:00.000Z

Holy ASS I have never been so busy in all my days!

Ok so I started a new job. It's in many ways cool but also lame in many other ways. I may talk about it more in the future but for now, lets all be happy that I'm not going to live in the gutter for a while.

Because of this job, I have literally no time whatsoever to do anything. I have to plan around like, taking a shower. I'm even working weekends. However!! I have also managed to fit some actual fun into my life! The other day, I was invited to attend a bloggers party thing (not sure what it was really) by Jose Cuervo Tequila- they are launching some sort of competition to find the 'face of tequila', and so had this awesome Mexican themed night put on at a bar in shoreditch (which, by the way, if you walk from Liverpool Street, is less heinous than if you go from my most hated place in the universe, Old Street).

It was super cool! I loved it- there were tequila cocktails (which I drank too many of, of course), delicious hors d'orvrerueues (however that's spelled) and nachos! And on top of the food and drink, there were some mexican wrestlers! And some weird casting couch thing that made no sense. But it was all fun, and I was glad to get a chance to hang out with my new friend and sometime work buddy (it's complicated) Loukia.

When we left we each got a bag that had a tshirt, a pair of aviator shades (?) and a huge bottle of tequila in it! Oh free stuff, will I ever tire of you? (no!)

These are our tequila faces. I'm 100% sure we will win!

Anyway, it was mega cool, so I suppose now you should go buy tequila? The prize for the winner of the Face of Tequila competition is a trip to Mexico to be in a film! (about tequila?), so worth taking a look!

Postcard vote!

2010-01-21T09:53:00.000Z

So there's another zine thing coming up which I will be at, selling postcards and my amazing zine, and badges (all of which are available on my online shop, by the way).

At the moment I have 4 postcard designs, but I am planning on getting another set made for 'The Thing' zine event, which is on the 27th March. I might get some more badges too!

If you would be so kind, would you tell me which of the following you think I ought to get made into postcards? I am thinking of getting 4 designs made...

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11

12

13

14

They all look a bit washed out, and are brighter IRL.

Week two

2010-01-18T01:14:00.000Z

Week Two!

This has been such a busy week- it snowed lots, then all the snow melted. I still didn't do any painting but I DID do some drawing, which I will try to post scans of tomorrow. I made a video which subsequently got spotlighted on youtube, which is cool. I went to Ikea and bought myself a double bed!! I'm so excited to have a brand new bed that I bought for myself to my own specifications. It's getting delivered tomorrow hooray!!

I watched a couple of films Half Baked (it was ok), GI Joe (worst thing ever), and half of Slumdog Millionaire (which I won't go into again here). We got a DVD in the post (my housemate is a member of one of those netflix things) but it's a David Lynch film so I'm not holding my breath to be entertained. Haha I sound like such a grouch.

I've decided to change my video day to Thursday and painting/drawing/making day to Friday, so I have Friday to finish off whatever I made on Thursday if needs be.

I've barely read any of my book, but I did buy LoveIt magazine... oh god what is happening to me.

Snookie Jersey Shore video

2010-01-15T01:49:00.000Z

New video! It's me being Snookie from Jersey Shore (a reality show from the US). The video seems to have caused some confusion as it's not actually out in the UK yet. I don't even know if it ever will be seeing as it's kind of a niche social group that we aren't so familiar with here. Maybe they should do one in Liverpool or something- the Shazza Show! Anyway, enjoy:

Now I have to go and paint my nails a non-french-tips way. Which reminds me! Check out my other blog for more girly crap about nails and makeup and whatnot!

Week one of 'the regime'

2010-01-11T03:22:00.000Z

So week one is done of my new 'regime'. It went pretty well I think. It was an experimental week, so there's definitely things that need to be ironed out.

Monday- errands- I did all the post I needed to do, but as always, have a heap of reciepts and crap I need to deal with. I want to make sure I do proper work on Monday- no IMing, no twitter or google reader! Just worrrk. I also want to (if I have time, which I think I will) work on blogging on Mondays, because as we all know, blogging is hard.

Tuesday- Brainstorming/research day- I went to the Hayward Gallery with my brother!! We also went to Forbidden Planet where I purchased a Ghostbusters lipbalm which I subsequently left at my parents house. The exhibition was one about Edward Ruscha, who's work I liked before seeing it in real life, where it seemed completely ridiculous and full of itself. He seems like he struck on gold once and then tried to recreate that forever after, failing miserably and producing work that wouldn't look out of place in a GCSE classroom. ZING! Take that Ruscha!!
Anyway, needless to say, I didn't find it very inspiring :(

Wednesday: Collaborative work!- On wednesday I went out and played in the snow that had fallen the previous night!! I know, not really collaborative work per se, but... snow!!! What am I gonna do, stay inside when there's SNOW? Saw a snowman with a hanger for a mouth. We called him Hangermouth.

Thursday: Painting/making things day- Again I played in the snow :/ Then I made celery soup!! that's semi creative? I didn't paint or draw anything, but then on Friday I drew the animation to my video, which kind of counts.

Friday: Video making day- Success!! I made a video on this day! But I got carried away making some music and an animation for it, so I finished it on Saturday. I believe Friday afternoon US is the best time to post videos, so I'm thinking of moving video making day to Thursday!

Week 1 results:
Paintings: 0/1
Videos: 1/1
Drawings: 1/1 (kind of)

Books read/reading: I'm currently reading and enjoying 'A Case Of Exploding Mangoes' by Mohammed Hanif which was reccommended to me by someone on Twitter when I was in a bookshop :)

I'm going to make sure I take lots of pictures next week for my end of week blog to make it less tedious! Thanks for reading :)

Cheryl Cole Advert parody video

2010-01-10T03:48:00.000Z

I made this video over the last few days- I went pretty all out (for me), making an animation and some music from scratch for it. It's a parody of the Cheryl Cole L'Oreal adverts for some shampoo of theirs.

New Regime!

2010-01-05T00:30:00.000Z

Ok so today is the first Monday of the new year, and the first day of my new regime. Basically, because I work from home/freelance/barely survive on youtube money, I have a lot of free time on my hands. I therefore need a lot of structure to ensure I don't just sit reading google reader posts all day long. Hence, my magical new regime.

Basically the new regime is a specific thing to be done on each day of the week. The weekends will be time off unless there's something exciting I want to get finished. I'm my own boss, afterall.

After some deliberation, the following is my masterplan:
Monday: Errands and email, paying bills, going to the post office, etc.
Tuesday: Video/art/idea brainstorming, research day (may also include day trips to museums and galleries!)
Wednesday: Collaborative work! (ie.... hanging out with my friends/day off) and movie night!
Thursday: Painting/making things day (possibly on stickam)
Friday: Video making day

Over the year, I plan to have completed atleast 50 decent youtube videos, 50 paintings, watched 50 movies I haven't before seen (generally one of each per week) and have read 12 books (one per month on average).

This sounds like the laziest, easiest plan ever, I know, but I feel like I pretty much wasted 2009 thinking other things were going to come out of stuff I was doing, and not working hard off my own back, which gets me nowhere. I don't know what even happened to last year! It has melded into one huge amorphous blob in my brain. I don't want 2010 to be like that, I want to have a bunch of stuff to be able to look at and declare 'work of 2010' with. Hopefully this is a way to do that. Any freelance work that happens on top of this will obviously take precedence, but I want to make sure I fit these things into my week so that I have structure.

Ofcourse, I will be blogging about this, may mention it in youtube videos, tweet about it, etc. We'll see. I declare 2009 OVER, and 2010 to have ARRIVED.*

*cheese to the max.

EDIT: I just searched Google Images for 'Regime' to illustrate this post with something vaguely topical and this came up! WHAATT? Oh internet, you are so wonderfully strange.

A Christmas Carol Premiere!

2009-12-01T13:44:00.000Z

I know I keep talking about this event, but I wrote this at the time and held off posting it because I wanted to get some photos for it, but then they never materialised so I'm just going to post it as is- I'm sure you can use the power of imagination to insert the pictures in your mind!

Ok so if you didn't watch the video I posted about this the other day, I got invited by disney to attend the premiere of the new adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. I know, I was as shocked as you. I ofcourse said 'duh, yes I would love to come', and so it came to pass that I attended it last night.

Before the event, I met Grace from Disney (!) and was given a gift bag (!!). It contained a candle holder, a scarf (both with 'A Christmas Carol emblazoned tastefully upon them), the book, the tickets (in a GOLDEN ENVELOPE!), and some press release notes about the cast, the director and other blurbs about the film itself. It all came in a fancy disney shopping bag which I will cherish forever. (seriously I have tons of special bags that I can't bear to throw away. It's a sickness).

After spending approximately 7 hours getting ready, my boyfriend and I took the tube to Leicester Square. Once there we were greeted by the most elaborate premiere I've ever seen (on TV or in magazines. I've never seen one IRL, but I am going to assume that this was by far the fanciest that there ever was). The whole central area of Leicester Square (the small park like area) was blocked off in various ways, with bridges connecting it to three of the cinemas surrounding it.
Everything within the area was made to look Dickensian and Christmassy- there were lots of people who seemed to have arrived via time machine singing carols, fir trees all over the place with fake snow on them, even a snow machine! The snow seemed to be made of some sort of watery plastic stuff (just like the real thing!). The cobblestones underneath the red carpet made it a little treacherous to walk on in the heels I elected to wear, which I imagine added an extra sheen of glamour to my appearance. I was afraid it was going to rain but luckily for my mascara, it did not.

We had press passes to go on the red carpet to film whatever we wanted before the actual premiere, so after being ushered onto the red carpet (an ACTUAL RED CARPET!) we filmed some amazing (lame?) stuff of me forcing people in the crowd to say they were excited to meet Paperlilies (when in reality they had never heard of me and had no interest in my ridiculous plans).
Other actual legitimate press were there, such as beautiful Connie Huq and Alex Zane, from many excellent TV shows, including but not limited to 'Rude Tube', in which I star (ie, was in very briefly and have never watched).
I decided to extend my forcing of strangers to pretend to care about me* to actual recognisable celebrities, and asked Alex Zane to pretend to be excited to meet me. HE SAID YES!! But that he had to film stuff but would try to later. I figured oh well, atleast he said he'd try, I wasn't about to bug him, seeing has he was literally at work with about 8 people filming him and stroking his hair lovingly.
But then! As me and Chris were trying to film me awkwardly saying something along the lines of 'I'm here and isn't it great!', The Zanester (shh) came over and talked to me and pretended to know who I was. It was the highlight of my life. Seeing as I was fully expecting no more than a curt 'NO!' *mace*, I was more than happy with the result.
Hopefully Chris will find his camera cable and you will be able to feast your eyes upon the delicious awkwardness, but for now, my gaspy recollection will have to do. It wasn't til this morning that I realised that we have that rudetube connection, which obviously left a lasting impression upon him. If only I'd realised! We could have talked for hours about LOLworthy videos and how hilarious internet people are.

ANYWAY. We all had to get off the red carpet until 7, so Chris and I went to a corner of Leicester Square that I inexplicably have never been to before. We had some pretty good Italian food considering we were in tourism central, and then, after caking on some more makeup, went back to the carpet. We joined a giant queue of people waiting to get in to the carpet area, then, like delicious humanpaste, squooshed through to the cinema. There was a velvet rope (a velvet rooope) that divided the normies from the bonafide celebrities on the red carpet so alas I was not afforded the opportunity to tell Peter Andre that I never liked Jordan in the first place.

Somehow we managed to meet up with Charlie, Johnnie, Alex and Jimmy (the Chartjacker chaps) before going over the bridge. We filtered into the Empire cinema (their main screen is amaaaazing!!). Each seat had a bottle of water, a chocolate bar and a bag of humbugs on it! I think the humbugs were a nice touch. Chris (having grown up in Cyprus) often has no idea what things in British culture even are, so was totally confused as to why they put mints on everyone's seats. Doy.

We all put our fetching 3D glasses on, and the film began!

I LIKED IT :O

I honestly wasn't actually expecting to for a number of reasons- I don't like Dickens that much, I don't usually care about 3d films, and I thought it might be a typical Americans-trying-to-do-English-stuff-but-messing-it-up scenario.

Let me tell you, I was wrong. The 3d was amazing!! I don't know how but I think the lenses make your eyes cross somehow and make what you're seeing into a magic eye stereoscopic thing. anyway, it was well done and didn't have much of that 'woooaahh I'm going to poke my HAND right into the AUDIENCE!' schmaltzy 3d sort of stuff, which was a relief. the animation of London was incredible, I actually recognised some areas of it!

The story was still Dickens, but it stuck well to the story and even the dialogue. What's always bugged me about the story was that there's so much wallowing in how bad the whole of Scrooges life is and has been and only a small part at the end where he's changed and redeems himself, but in this it was more even, and after Scrooge being such a jerk the whole time, his transformation is hilarious and believable, and much more enjoyable.

Jim Carrey voiced Scrooge and the ghosts and was really good at them. His accents were spot on and I didn't have that annoying 'WHAT ACCENT IS THAT!?' aspect that US films often do with UK adaptations. There was one character who had a line that reminded me of the Bar Wench from that casino episode of The Simpsons ("freshen yah drinks gavanaahh?!?") but it only served to highlight how well everything else was done.

The ghosts were scary! Especially the third one! It was a shadowy Death figure, who chased after a shrinking scrooge on a skeletal horse drawn black carriage for what seemed like a terrifying 20 minutes. I think if I saw that when I was actually a kid I would have had nightmares. I think if I get a fever any time soon I may hallucinate that entire sequence (and sue Disney?). I'll keep you updated on that front.

In conclusion, I had the best time ever. I loved the whole experience (clearly) and enjoyed the film. I left feeling excited for christmas and wanting to give my friends giant turkeys and loving hugs for presents. I would say that if you wanted to go to see a film with your family over the christmas season that you know, ties in with Christmas, see this one. It had enough laughs and fun for children, yet stayed true to the dark themes of the book to entertain older people. I didn't feel patronised at all whilst watching it, which is I suppose one of the hallmarks of Disney films. the animation was amazing, the 3d was incredible, and it warmed my heart!

*:'(

Interview with me on iLikeCharacters.com :)

2009-12-01T01:48:00.002Z

The nice people at ilikecharacters.com interviewed me about my paintings and illustrations! Here is a link :)

PaperQuestions 6!

2009-11-26T05:00:00.001Z

what do you think of ijustine?

I think she seems cool, but I've never really watched her videos. Everyone was going crazy a while back when she was on a game show?

This is the 120 eyeshadow palette: http://www.bhcosmetics.com/?action=ProductInfo&Id=1

A lot of the makeup gurus on Youtube talk about it.

My friend just ordered one. It is such a bargain for only being $30.00US (you can probably find it on ebay for less). It is VERY pigmented, so its worth it. You should check it out.

I just bought one!!! Hahah you should get a commission :D I've decided to not buy ANY new makeup in 2010.

If you're ever having a bad day, what is the one thing that you can think of or do that always makes you feel better?

Talking to/with/at someone!! Or having a nice cup of tea and a snack, or watching something trashy on TV.

Have you considered being a television presenter? You are charming, witty and very attractive. There is a charisma thing that happens between you and the camera. Very few people have that.

I SUCK at trying to memorise lines, and I find it hard to pretend to be high energy and peppy when I'm not filming myself... so probably no, I'd not be a good TV presenter!! I should see if there are courses you can go on. I have experience with using an autocue when I worked at eBuyer (cringe) and of being presenterish when working on Bryony Makes A Zombie Movie. I'm not that good, but I think I could get better... meh.

Also, thanks for saying I'm charming and witty and attractive :)

I'm a 24 year old gay guy from the States, and I'm totally in love with you and would marry you if I could! :-p You've probably been asked this before, but if you were into the girls which celebrity would you date?

Jennifer Connelly? I don't know, I don't really follow celebrities so I don't know what any of them are actually LIKE.

Have you ever played RuneScape?

What's the perfect peanut butter sandwich?

Peanut butter and RAISINS!! Everyone poopoohs this but it is total win.

Do you think answering these questions is fun?

It's quite fun but I think I'm going to leave it after this batch as there's loads and it'll get boring if I keep just posting this on my blog.

Would you drive a Lotus Elise?

I guess. I don't have a drivers license though.

What's your favorite kind of cheese?

I love cheese!! Halloumi is probably top of my list though. And fresh buffallo mozarella!!

Is the Stickam painting day still going to be on the 28th?

Yes!! I should make a video tomorrow about it!!

Do you like white bread?

Yes. I like all breads!

Were you "popular" in secondary school?

I was friends with a lot of people, but I wasn't popular outside of that- I didn't go out hardly ever and I was often the butt of my friends' jokes. But I was sort of a 'class clown'... I don't know, I don't feel like I was, but maybe I was.

What's your religion?

I'm an atheist, so I don't have a religion.

What colour of hair do you like best (on you)?

I think red!! But I think blonde suits me most- it seems like it should be blonde, if you know what I mean! And it does go blonder in the sun.

How many nailvarnishes do you have?

I don't know! But loads! Probably around 100!

What do you do to relax?

Go on the internet :P

Do you prefer Mac or PC?

Mac

Do you listen to techno music?

Yeah! I love dance, drum & base, house... I also like other kinds of more mellow music too. I like most kinds of music but not reggae.

What's your favorite book?

The book I have read most is Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, so I guess I have to say that, but I feel like I've grown out of that angsty stage so I'm not sure now.

Would you paint me a picture if I paid you for it?

I guess so! I should work out a price and just have it as an option on my shop.

Whatever happened to the zombie movie?

I don't knoww... It became this huge ball of stress and after the contract for the Bryony Makes A Zombie Movie ended, and I wasn't being required to work on it anymore, I just couldn't face working on it, and it's languished since then. I would love for it to get finished but I have to either find someone who understands it and wants to take the reins (which has so far proved impossible, noone seems to grasp the ideas of the project, being an online collaboration rather than a straightforward scripted cast film), or do it myself, which is such a daunting prospect that I feel anxious just thinking about it. I want to get into a position where the script is available online for people to take parts of it and make them, then link them all together on youtube somehow. But it's just not going to happen til I put a ton of time and effort into it and I haven't yet. I suck.

Is it true you're naturally a brunette?

OMG yes :P

Has the shop on your blog done well?

It's done pretty well :) I keep meaning to add more things to it like those soft toys I made and the zine which I have yet to sell a single copy of. I want to make more postcards!

What's your favorite type of sandwich?

The club-esque sandwich that I invented! It's cooked chicken and crispy bacon mixed up with mayo and a chopped shallott, inbetween 3 slices of toast, with some lettuce and whatever other salad I feel like throwing in there. Oh so gooood.

I'm going to ask you this because I love you; are you saved?

Hahah no :/

Do gay people bother you?

No!

Have you ever eaten Nutella?

Yes! I can't have it in the house as I'll just eat the whole jar with a spoon.

I think turquoise eyeshadow would look best on you, would you agree?

I like experimenting! I don't have a 'favourite' look.

Have you ever used Ubuntu Linux, and if so, do you like it?

I haven't! I would like to try but I'm too scared to try to install it! Also, I am pretty happy with my Mac's OS.

What apps do you have on your iPhone?

Tons! *goes through phone* I use Echofon for twitter, I have the BBC, NY Times, ITN, Sky News and Independent News apps, ebay (a really good app! It alerts you when something you're bidding on is almost up, warns you if you're outbid, and you can pay for things on it too!), Skype, facebook, Ping (a messaging app), Flashlight (a flashlight :P), Wikipanion, UMMS medical info, TV Guide, Flixster (which is great! It shows you what cinemas are close to you and what films are on and where, or you can search for the film and it'll show you the closest place it's on!), Urban Spoon (shows you restaurants near you with links to maps and reviews), Trains and Tube Status (train/tube times and info)...

As for games, my favourites are Airport Mania, Unblocked, Solebon (solitaire), Muddled, Dash, Scramble (word games), Enigmo, Lumen, TapTap, Girl Wars, Fruit Tycoon, Frenzic, Papaya Farm, Lineup and Hangman... I have loads more but I never play them.

Do you recommend Derwent coloured pencils?

I guess... I don't use coloured pencils much, but I have used those, they're good :)

Do you like exercise or playing sports?

I love riding my bike in the spring and the summer, but otherwise I don't do much other than walk a lot.

Do you ever feel self-conscious about the weight you've gained since you started making youtube videos?

Well yeah, of course I do, when people constantly comment on my videos about it. However, when I was at my thinnest, when I started on youtube, I was basically suffering from an eating disorder, and was still called fat in comments, so... you can't win! If I let youtube comments get me down I would be depressed all the time.

Would you accept an invitation to be a Page 3 girl?

No.

Do you know where estonia is?

L'estonie! I unfortunately don't know anything more than what I see on Eurovision :( I will look into it and learn more about it!

Do you think youtube will EVER get boring (as a whole)?

Yeah, I think it's a bit boring now. It's very predictable, certainly.

Do you play any musical instruments?

Nope! The one thing I will never master is music. I'm way too impatient to learn.

Have you ever flown in a helicopter?

Yes!! Into the Grand Canyon on holiday once!! It was awesome :D

Twinings or PG?

I don't care. I guess PG. Or actually, whichever one is Fair Trade.

Are you nocturnal like me?

Yes!

Do you use a color wheel to see which colors go together?

Nah, I just try things out and see how it goes. I sometimes take photos of things with photobooth on my computer in black and white to see how the tones of things go together, but I never ever use a colour wheel.

I sent you an email and you didn't reply. Why?

Because I don't know what to say!! I feel bad about it but I get a lot of emails that say a similar thing and I never know how to respond, so I don't... :(

What time do you usually go to bed?

4 am :(

Should I get a 17" MacBook Pro or an Alienware M17x?

Macbook! I don't even know what that other thing is.

Why couldn't my brother find you at the Expo!? I wanted a postcard.:( He was dressed as Steampunk, I hate it! Sorry if any of you like. Anyway, why couldn't he find you? Where were you?

Actually, I can probably answer this myself, he was probably buying Halo merchandise and didn't bother to look for you.... Nvm. I shall go and be annoyed with him.

Well possibly he didn't look, but the whole 'comics villiage' was in a remote corner of the event and was the least busy part of it. I think lots of people didn't even realise there was anything where we were. It was pretty shambolic honestly.

Would you say you had a great time at university?

Yeah! I learned a lot that I don't think I would have otherwise learned, but that was 90% things that I didn't learn in university itself, it was just living away from home, managing money, being independent, cooking, making friends, falling in love... all that stuff that was the real fun/important experience.

How do you feel about Sarah Palin?

I think she's super fake.

Did you get a swine flu shot?

No! I'm waiting to get the Swines D:

Would you consider yourself "sexy"?

LOL no.

What countries have you been to?

America, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Corsica. I really want to go more East though! and to south America too.

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Favourite Ben & Jerry's flavour?

I only really LOVE the icecreams that have tons of bits in them, so I love Phish Food and Chocolate Fudge Brownie. I don't care that much for icecream generally, but on a hot day I like to have fruity sorbets!

What is your favorite thing to do to pass the time?

Internet :/

Do you have to pay customs/duties if I send a package from the U.S. to your PO Box?

No! So long as you mark it as a gift and write on the customs form that it's worth like $5 or something.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

All of my international friends who I never see, let alone all together!

You're so pretty! Any beauty tips?

Wash your face every morning and night with a mild liquid soap!! Try to get enough sleep... I don't know otherwise.

So, what are the origins of 'theenglishrose' and 'paperlilies'?

'theenglishrose' is my twitter name, because I had Paperlilies and then freaked out about twitter and deleted it (doy), then I couldn't get it back cause some namehogger has it now so I came up with theenglishrose. I don't know why! I hate it now.

The Paperlilies name comes from the one origami thing I know how to make off by heart- a lily. I don't know why I chose paperlilies rather than paperlily. Ironically enough I don't really like real lilies that much! Though I do adore lotuses and roses and waterlilies. Real lilies smell kind of overpowering.

THE END!! No more questions!!

PaperQuestions 5

2009-11-23T00:59:00.000Z

I can't believe that sooo many questions have come in!! I thought I'd get about 5! :)

Would you kiss me?
Probably not... I haven't ever randomly kissed anyone that I didn't know well beforehand.

Name something you really want to do but haven't got to yet.
Travel more, do more paintings... I really want to print a book of some kind by 2010, I think that's my mission- I've always wanted to get involved more in book design.

Who are you rooting for on X factor?
Joe! And Olly.

What do you think of Lady GaGa?
I used to think she was annoying and overly manufacured, but I saw her playing live on Saturday Night Live and she is genuinely really talented so I respect her for her super skills... but I don't love her music.

What do you think of vegeterianism?
I think it's ok. I tried it for Lent once and I found that I just ate a lot of cheese and salads. On a moral standpoint I don't really care that much about animals. I'm being honest! I feel bad about it because I have a few vegetarian friends and one of my BFFs is a full on vegan, but yeah... show me all the depressing PETA videos you want... animals aren't people so I don't empathise with their plight, and I think there are more important things to be an activist for. Also I hate soy milk. Having said that, I have been to some great vegetarian and vegan restaurants and have had nice food, just as a lifestyle it's not for me.

I've noticed that you seem to dislike a LOT of things popular with the general public - Top Gear and The Beatles to name just a couple - would you say that this is accurate? Is this due to an urge to stand-out from the crowd and be innovative and inventive?
I don't dislike the Beatles, I just don't LOVE them. I HATE Top Gear because I find the programme very contrived and I can't stand Jeremy Clarkson's faux anti-everything stance. However, I do get a little irked when other people have or do the same as me I guess. I think it stems from having an unusual name maybe? I can't deal with other people called Bryony. Having said that, I like Xfactor, which is pretty popular.

Have you ever watched "How Clean is Your House?" ?
Yes! I love that sort of 'freak of the week' show.

Do you have the 120 eyeshadow palette?
No! What is that?!

How do you feel about Robert Pattinson?
He's ok... definitely not on any of my top hottest guys everz lists though. I prefer the new guy!!

Do you primarly make your living out of youtube revenue?
Not really... I make some money from it but I make more via sponsorship things.

are you a little disillusioned these days with corporate youtube and the big 'stars' who shape their content to milk ad revenue?
No, I think it's just been the natural progression of the site into a business.

Are you just naturally artistically creative or have you developed it over time? I want to paint so extremely bad but I can't! Every time I try, I either cannot think of anything, or if I do think of something, it sucks in the end and looks like a child painted it :O I have the passion, just not the skills haha.
I believe that everyone has some creativity within them, but unless you show a natural attraction to it, you're unlikely to be encouraged to use it so alot of people grow up thinking they aren't good at it when they just refuse to try. I've been painting and drawing since I can remember so I think my skills have just developed over time. I don't think you need to go to classes to 'learn to draw', it's just something you do, the more you do it, the better you get at it. I haven't painted or drawn enough this year- I have been too busy with other things so I really want to devote more time to it in 2010. I think you should keep painting and you'll get better at it- it's important to not be too hard on yourself!

Why don't you move in with your boyfriend? Do you think you'll get married?

I don't know! I like having my own space. We might get married, who knows! Not for a long time though. I'm not about to start popping out babies over here.

why didnt you answer my question? it wasnt weird/sexual/personal or anything. did you reword it? because a similar question was asked but in a better way... oh wait you probs didnt want to answer the same thing twice. fuck im such an idiot. this was pointless. uhh have a good night/rest of the night? laderrr
Uh... I have left some questions as they were kind of duplicates of other ones, so it seemed a bit much to answer them twice. I've also left out any that I thought were inappropriate for whatever reason. Weirdo :P

Paperquestions Part 4!

2009-11-22T20:37:00.000Z

what are your opinions on gay marriage?
I think people should be able to marry whoever they want, as long as they are in love :)

what do you think of quiche?
It's delicious.

When you met David Mitchell at the BAFTAs, did he seem nice? Did you at all get the vibe that he wants to marry me?
Yes.

You seem really cool and nice. How does a (nice, non-creepy, non-serial killer) stranger from the internet get to be your friend?
Uh... I don't know! By being cool? Haha I have no idea!

What part of London do you live in? East, West, etc?
North!! (the best part)

What do you think of Steampunk?
Something about it really irritates me.

If you could choose to believe in one crazy idea, what would it be? And I mean fully believe, like sometimes you just couldn't resist the urge to tell people on the street about Griff, the Magical Salmon that lives on the moon, or Allah.
Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have been touched by his noodly appedage, have you?

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Hold a huge BBC reality TV competiton.

what's so special about Daniel Clowes?
He conveys stories in a realistic way and is awesome.

whats it like to have a kind of fame and no kind of fame at the same time?
It's weird?

What was the deal with the contact lenses and brown wig you got a while back?
I was planning on pretending to be Cheryl Cole for a video! I still hope to at some point...

Do you get recognized a lot?
No.

You're in a contest to dispose of a million dollars in a week, but no more than $5000 on the same thing or in one place. How would you spend it?
I would go down Oxford Street, buying clothes and shoes... maybe go to a travel agency and get a holiday somewhere, buy CDs in HMV... a fancy handbag in Selfridges, some nice makeup, some fancy jewellery... If I didn't have all the restrictions I would spend more on shoes and handbags and get all the makeup in the world! I'd probably stock up on things like beads and paint and canvasses too.

Do you have a real social life parallel to your youtube-based internet one?
Yes!!

Do you like cats?
I used to like them more but the ones I live with currently are super boring and just moult hair on everything and run away from me. It enrages me. I would get a cat of my own in the future if I could have one like the one on the Sheba catfood tins, or a beautiful long haired tabby... but I'd be sad if they hated me :(

How do you keep your skin so clear?
I wash it every morning with a mild face soap, and in the evening I make sure I've taken off all my makeup and I wash it again, then I put Savlon all over it and use 'Witch Stick' on my spots. Savlon is an antiseptic healing cream you put on grazes and burns but I like to use it on my face as it doesn't make it too oily or dry it out, it just heals any zits I have. Witch Stick is a tea tree prittstick thing which is the only thing I've ever found to be good at reducing and preventing spots.
Also, usually in videos I have makeup on so any spots I have are covered up anyway :P

what happened to your cool cakey blog banner??? That was so cool ...
I took it down cause I was going to work on it and make it less huge! I haven't got round to it yet.

I'm glad that you like k-pop. How about I do the honors and get you into it? Just watch random youtube vids of 2NE1, f(x), SHINee, Wonder Girls, KARA, 2PM, Brown Eyed Girls, SeeYa. And check out allkpop.com
I shall check it out!! :D

Have you been to Australia? Would love to see you and Natalie do a video together. You are both lovable nut cases.
I haven't been!! I am scared of spiders :/ But I have been assured that I would be fine. Also I have met Natalie IRL and she is tiny and awesome.

As an english girl, what's your opinion of the french? (honestly!). I myself am "une française" and my retarded english friends say they're rude, have no Navy and go around scoffing at "Ze stupid ingliiiish!! Honhehonhehon!!". Would you agree with that statement?
I think there's a colourful history between our two nations... I would be lying if I said I have never been disparaging about the French, but honestly, I'm sure that our assumptions of you are as wrong as yours are of 'le roast beefs'. We're all people!! Let's just get along :)

Are you proud to be a British girl?
I've never totally grasped what 'pride' really means. I AM British, but I have no choice in the matter. I'm more proud in my own achievements than those of this place I had no say in being born in. I do feel a certain attachment to the place and always jump to it's defence, so perhaps I am?

Would you move to America if you were offered a really good design job?
Yeah if I could get a visa. I would probably have already moved there if I could get a visa, but even people like Lily Allen have been refused entry due to visa issues, so I doubt I have a chance.

Come to America and be my friend. I need some of your awesomeness to rub off on me.
Maybe one day :)

What's your favorite type of clothing?
Dresses!! I very rarely wear trousers, I find them uncomfortable and a bit ugly.

What's your favourite food?
Farfalloni Con Funghi.

How long does it take you to get ready when you go out?
Not that long. It depends on how fancy the place is- after washing my hair it'll take me 45 mins to an hour (mostly cause of dealing with my hair). If I don't have to wash my hair, I can be ready in 15 mins.

What's your favorite place to go when you're bored?
Charity shops.

Would you recommend going to Leeds Met for graphic design?
Uh... I guess. It was ok. I enjoyed studying there, but I don't feel that they really prepared us for life as a designer very well. Also, I left with no discernible skills and taught myself Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator so... it was a bit pointless.

Can I have a hug?
Ok. As long as you don't smell weird.

Hi Paperlilies! Why do you reply to your email at about 2 am GMT? Just wondering.... :D
Cause I go to bed late!

Since you're inspired by Japanese art in some of your work, do you watch any anime or read any manga? Any favourites if you do?
Not really... I read Lone Wolf and Cub (I think that's what it's called?) when I was younger, but I wouldn't say they'd especially influenced me. I like Scott Pilgrim and Daniel Clowes graphic novels... But generally I prefer super bright things like Murakami's art and the more childish Japanese characters like Sanrio's Cinamoroll, Little Twin Stars and San-X characters like Kogepan and Mamegoma. I love Rilakkuma and (the dutch) Miffy, and Q-Lia's characters.... Anything aimed for the under 10 year old japanese market basically.

PaperQuestions part 3

2009-11-21T13:35:00.000Z

What's your favourite colour?
Turquoise, mostly, but I really do like most bright colours, and pastel colours... not so into blacks, greys, browns and creams. Anything that's not 'neutral'.

Do you like energy drinks?
No, I hate them!! I don't even really like soft drinks, but even the smell of Red Bull makes me gag- I have a theory that it's cause it smells like Calpol (that childrens medicine) so it makes me psychosomatically feel as ill as I would have felt as a child when being given medicine. Also I don't like the idea of taking something that seems like a drug, though I don't feel that way about alcohol...

You do know you're absolutely gorgeous, right?
I never used to think I was pretty at all when I was younger. It wasn't til I started posting things on youtube that I had any idea people thought I was in any way attractive. That sounds super emo but it's true. I have the internet to thank for my self confidence! Hah, imagine that. I'm more confident in my looks now, but I don't think of myself as 'absoloutely gorgeous'.

Would you bake me some cupcakes?
It depends... I may make some for myself and let you have one or two. If you're lucky/nice to me.

Are you anyone's favorite person?
Maybe my boyfriend? I hope so :)

What do you think of k-pop? J-pop? Any favorite groups/singers? I met the Wonder Girls this Summer, I LOVE THEM. Do you like them?
Yes! I want to get more into it but I don't know where to start. I should get WhatAboutAdam to learn me up on it all. But I DO love the wondergirls (what I've seen on youtube)

Do you drink any alcohol?
Yes... I like a cocktail whenever I can find an excuse to have one, I like wine with a meal, beer on a hot day... I try not to overdo it.

Would you ever consider doing more cooking/baking videos? Your cupcake video was awesome!
Possibly!! I do like cooking, but I never want to duplicate other peoples' videos and most things are already online somewhere... the same goes for makeup videos- there's hundreds of makeup gurus on youtube, I feel kind of lame trying to do it too when they've got it all figured out and fancy and professional.
If you want a good cookery channel, check out PrincessDiana161- she is my favourite foodtuber! Hilarious and delicious- the perfect combination. My dream is to eat at her house one day!

What is your favourite place in the whole world? (even someplace you haven't been to yet!)
I love Cornwall very much, I spent most of my summers there as a child so I feel very calm and peaceful there. Someday I want to go to Japan and India. I went to Cyprus this summer and liked it a lot. I really like being in America.

Chocolate or Vanilla?
Chocolate
Beer or Wine?
Depends on the occasion. Probably wine.
Coke or Pepsi?
Neither really... I don't care.
Doctor Who or Jack Harkness?
Neither! I'm sick of both those shows now |:(

What do you think of goth/emo people? You seem to not like them :/
I do like them! Why do you think otherwise? I WAS one at school (kind of)

Are you into cute American boys?
I do have a thing for American accents...

What online games do you play, and can I add you as a friend on them?
I play OMGpop games (which keeps coming up- I'm not sponsored by them or anything! :/) but otherwise nothing.

What's the deal with Jordan? Why exactly is she so famous over there?
Because... I have no explanation. People like to have someone they can villify? Because she has huge boobs? Don't ask me, I'm not the one watching I'm A Celebrity and buying her books.

At what age is it no longer appropriate to call it a willy?
13

Noone gets a dry t zone!
True!

Does it bother you that people constantly comment that you look like Drew Barrymore?
Not really- I was first told that in school, so I've had people saying it for ages. It is kind of weird trying to work out how to react though- it's flattering so I want to say thanks, though I don't really see it myself, but then, I don't want to say NO I DON'T. It's funny when people think they are the first to see it too.

Did you pic the Cliche picnic table tablecloth background? It's kind of hurting my eyes!
Yes! Delicious picnic.

Obviously all hair colours look good on you ... but you looked fantastic as a brunette. Will you ever dye it brown again? Is there no place for a brunette Paperlilies in this world anymore?! D: Is it so insane!?
Well thankyou :) I might do it brown again. If I get bored of being blonde (and/or run out of money to keep getting it done) I would have to go back to my natural brownness.

If I'm ONLY able to lie and I say to you "I'm lying", am I lying or telling the truth?
Get behind me, demon!!

Hello :). What colors do you use when you paint?
Ur... all of them? As for what kind of paint, I like ceramcoat acrylic paint because it's very bright and pigmented, but also quite runny and easy to mix, has good coverage. Otherwise I use Derwent or whatever other brand paint I come across. Ceramcoat is my favourite though!! And I can never find it in the UK :'(

What do you think of Dr Brooke Magnanti/Belle de Jour?
I liked reading her blog- the whole thing being a mystery was quite exciting. That she's come out now sort of ruins the mystique, but I guess good for her for doing what she wanted to do and staying in control of it all. I do worry that it kind of glamourises prostitution though, when her experience is very removed from that lived by the majority of sex workers, none of whom have book deals and TV shows. I think it comes down to choice- great for her to have a choice in the matter, but lots of people unfortunately don't.

what the fuck is a samoflange?!
Something from Thundercats.

More PaperQuestions!

2009-11-21T04:38:00.000Z

IS There your favourite song?
I'm not sure if I have one favourite song. I immediately thought of this when I read that question though.

I hate you. .. uh i mean, er, form of a question, uh... "Why do i hate you?"
Because I hired that hitman. My bad.

How terrible was the MCM expo? And how much £ would it take for you to kiss a furry
It was good! I had a nice time :) It was a bit crowded with sweaty teens (not near our table alas) but it was fun. I don't know if I could ever kiss a furry. Is this what it's like for homophobes when thinking about gay people? :/

Bryony, what even happened to the emo cupid destroying the world with a heart competition?
I uh... forgot about it I guess :/ (also it wasn't THAT good of a competition idea)

Anything: will you ever send paperlilies to your fans again?! (we'd like that :)
I dunno, they're kind of a pain to make. I must've made thousands by now. Make them yourself!

there are actual vampires who drink human blood, my friend was going to do a documentary on them but chickened out. who is your favorite person in the world?
Your friend, if they ever make that documentary.

how many blog and youtube account do u have? ;p
I think I have about 5 or 6 youtube channels and 7 or 8 blogs.

when will the next xplx update be? or has it been retired?
It's there for when I need an e-outlet to be emo.

what would you say its your biggest inspiration when painting?
Cute japanese characters/faces.

Is it wrong of me that I find you incredibly sexy?
I don't think so.

WHEN ARE YOU DYING YOUR HAIR LIKE A RAINBOW
When my hair goes white I plan to do it- dying your hair crazy colours is hard unless you bleach it first, so I figure I'll wait til it's naturally bleached!! That said, I might do some streaks some time.

Which YouTube channel is your guilty pleasure? (one you're perhaps embarrassed to say you enjoy watching, hehe)
I enjoy spot-squeezing videos. It is very gross and I love it :/

what's your biggest fear? (so i can remind you everyday)(not really)
Spiders D:

DAKOTA FANNING IS KISSING GIRLS IN MOVIES. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE WORLD?!
People love to see girls kissing. I think there should be more boys kissing in movies. Get to it, twilight guys. I bet there are literally hundreds of slash fanfics out there that revolve around those two getting it on.

Do you ever go to bed at a reasonable hour? :)

No.

WHY WERE YOU IN AMERICA?!?!?!?!!?????!?!!!!!!!1
I was doing an internship in a design company!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!1

what are you doing with your life?
Currently, answering these questions. Other than that, LIVING THE DREAM.

what's your favourite game?
OMGpop has Draw My Thing, which I love, and I also love Pictionary, Monopoly, Scrabble, Careers, and all those Cranium, Balderdash type games too. And Trivial Pursuit!! The board game season is upon us!! I need more board game enjoying friends- noone ever wants to play with me :(

What kind of tea do you like and how do you take it? Tell us English Girl!! :D
I like normal 'english breakfast tea' with milk and one teaspoon of white sugar. Don't leave the teabag in! Other than that, I love peppermint tea with nothing else in it.

I know you like the paper flower stuff and stuff... but is that why you named yourself paperlilies or is it a reflection of your inner psyche and feelings of fragility?
Uh...the first thing.

Do you like subway? If so, what kind of sandwich and stuff do you get?
OH and what's your omgpop name?
I used to like Subway before I worked somewhere that the only thing you could get was subway, so I had it twice a day 3 days a week. That kind of killed it for me. I tried them all, and I can tell you: they all taste the same.
I think my OMGpop name is Bryony.

I wonder if people actually get answers to stuff through this
No, it never happens.

How did you end up perfecting your American accent?
I watch a lot of American TV and films and am quite good at mimicry.

Favourite TV show?
See my last blog post!! I love Flash Foward, Fringe and Mad Men. And silly detective shows :/

What's your favorite kind of peanut butter?
Chunky

Who is your favourite youtuber? (besides yourself :D)
CommunityChannel, AmazingPhil and TheWineKone. But also like 100s more, just those are the ones I can think of right at this moment.

What do you want for Christmas the most?
Hair tongs! And a replacement toothbrush head. And some nailpolishes.

Will you reply to me on twitter?
No. (I don't know who you are!)

TV shows I like to watch

2009-11-21T04:05:00.000Z

I just wanted to write this down.. I've been writing lots of list things lately... feels good man.

Glee
Hated it at first but loving it now, though I don't like Sue or the wife or how horrible every female character in the entire show is. Was it created by a mysogynistic gay man or something? I love that they called the other asian kid 'Other Asian'. The whole show is great and hilarious but I feel like something is wrong with it, I just can't put my finger on it.

CSI and CSI NY
Totally bored of these now but I keep up with them because..?? I don't know. Since Grissy Griss left (Grissom) the show just isn't the same. The NY series is just a 'look how freaky New Yorkers are!! CRAZEEE!', but I like it? I don't know, I feel like the shows are neighbours I see frequently but aren't that good friends with. Skeet Ulrich is in NY at the moment, as is Nelly? Why??!

NCIS LA
I recently discovered that this show stars CHRIS O'DONNELL (my number 1 crush 4ever IDST circa 1995) and LL Cool J?! (the ladies love cool james)* I saw the original NCIS show and thought it was the dumbest show ever, and this is equally as dumb and lame, just... Robin is in it. THE BOY WONDER. Stop looking at me :/ But yeah this show totally sucks D:

*also, Ja Rule... stands for Jeffrey Atkins Rules? or is that just something I made up in school?

Lie To Me
This show is so another of those 'detecting shows with a twist!' (see also, Numb3rs- math can solve anything!!) The twist here being that Tim Roth (what are you doing in this show, BTW) can tell if people are lying. It seems like it's going to run out of storylines sooner or later, but the actors are pretty and the characters are kind of good? It's fluff entertainment? Hah, the more I analyse these things the more guilty I feel for consuming it. My brain is riddled with saturated televisual fat.

Mad Men
This is an actual good show! I got into it because of the amazing 50s/60s styling of everything (it's super detailed and it's also my favourite era, stylewise) and because I am interested in advertising and design, but now am so absorbed into the characters that now they take centre stage. It's over for this season :( But I cannot wait for the next! So much happened during this one! I can't say too much as I don't want to spoil it for people who've not seen it yet so shhh. I like to imagine Peggy and Joan are the young versions of my great aunt and my grandmother who had the same names. Also, Don Draper is amazing.

Dexter
My friend Kevin said that Dexter is "a show that dumb people think is 'edgy'" which has severely hampered my enjoyment of it. I mean, I KNOW It's trashy TV, I wasn't waiting for it to get all 'The Wire' on me. But yeah, the entire show is so ludicrous. It's about a serial killer who only kills other murderers which makes it all ok, right? The whole thing is held together with such a flimsy plot that it's amazing it's held on for, what is this now, season 5? John Lithgow is in this season as another serial killer. It is ridic.
Interesting fact: The actor who plays Dexter and the actress who plays his sister in the show are married IRL!

Fringe
Fringe never seemed to get very big in the UK which is weird considering it's a new millenium Xfiles crossed with Lost, both of which are huge here. It's full of mystery and shadowy characters and stuff which makes no sense at all. It feels less trashy than something like NCIS. It's made me keep watching for 2 seasons, waiting for some sort of pay off so it's doing something right. It feels like there should be more recurring characters to me though- there's really only 3 leads which feels sparse. It's nice seeing Pacey in something else :D Where's the rest of the Creek kids now huh?!

Flash Foward
Is everyone in this show English? was this made with some BBC grant or something? (even though it's on channel Five). Every person in this show was in something else previously so my boyfriend and I only ever refer to them as such. 'Shakespeare', 'Shakespeares Wife/The woman from Lost', 'The guy from that show', 'Harold from Harold and Kumar', 'ER curly hair woman', 'the hobbit'. I wanna know what the towers were all about!! Get the hell on with it, mysterious show!

America's Next Top Model
I don't even know why I watch this show anymore. The most recent season (the short girls one) was just terrible. Did you see the season finale? Terrible. Everyone involved clearly was just going through the motions. This show has totally jumped the shark. But I know I will tune in next year for sure!

PaperQuestions!

2009-11-21T03:15:00.000Z

I made a formspring- it's basically a simple submission form that lets you ask me anonymous questions! Go here to do it if you wish!

These are the Questions so far!! (exciting!)

can i really ask you "anything"? lol hahaha. :D
Yes. I don't have to answer though :P

do you like vampire bats?
I guess?? I was disappointed when I discovered that they don't usually feast on human blood though. Or turn into vampires. I like bats :)

Would you eat a panda for £100?
Totally!! I would love to eat Panda and see what it's like! I don't much care for black and white animals anyway. Too monochrome and boring. I hope PETA don't come and throw fake blood all over me for saying that :/

remember when you had orange hair?:D
I do indeed remember. It was a strange time.I kind of want to dye my hair red all the time but I like it right now... Oh hair dilemmas!

fav color nail polish?
I don't have ONE, I love them all!! I think my current favourite thing to do is a rainbow of pastel colours though. And this amazing holographic nailvarnish I got!! And I recently got a matte one but I'm not loving that so much.

I have been with you from the beginning and I still watch your videos now, you were the first video I watched by myself, my first favourite, and my first subscription.
No matter what anyone says you are the best example of what a youtuber is and I hope you never leave <3 plus we played omgpop together and it made my life =x
That's no question!! But... thanks :D OMGpop is my favourite thing on the internet! Lets play every dayyy

Blue Lipstick from Lime Crime!

2009-11-15T16:39:00.000Z

I got sent some lipstick from Lime Crime Makeup- they make crayzee bright colours in awesome unicorn packaging. I got 3, one of which is the bright blue 'No She Didn't'!

I wanted to try out what other makeup would work with it, so I played around for a while yesterday. I think pink and blue and purple eyeshadows work nicely?

I think it looks pretty awesome anyways... Though I posted it on my facebook and everyone made jokes about hypothermia U_U But then, I'm the one who looks super cool! It's definitely not one for the faint of heart! I'm going to try out some looks with the other ones I got, so I'll post those up soon enough.

The lipstick is matte, so I put some clear gloss over it to shine it up some :) The pink eyeshadow is actually from Lime Crime too.

Also coming soon is the post about the Premiere of Christmas Carol!! I have it all written out but need to get photos for it. Damn real life getting in the way of internet business!

Sister Act

2009-11-10T23:54:00.001Z

I totally want to see this. Is it supposed to be any good?

Cheryl and Simon

2009-11-07T16:42:00.004Z

Ever since this jerk friend of mine told me that he 'knew' that Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell were having an affair, I can't get it out of my head!! It's so gross and weird. But then the other day my housemate bought Closer magazine (I know :/) and there was a whole article in it about how Cheryl and her footballer husband never see each other and are 'on the rocks!!', and then today I found this amazing site of X-factor GIFs (thankyou internet <3), and IT LOOKS IRREFUTABLE. LOOK AT SIMON'S ARM SNAKING AROUND CHERYL D: As we all know, if a gif exists, it definitely happened.

A Christmas Carol (prologue)

2009-11-06T02:23:00.001Z

Argh! I have a long blog post (and video!) about going to the Disney premiere of A Christmas Carol, all set to post, but all the photos are stuck on my boyfriends' camera and noone can find the cable to get the photos and video onto a computer! So I've been holding back posting anything because I don't want to put up a boring meh post of millions of words with no pictures. However, if I don't find something by tomorrow, I am just going to post the blog and vlog and then post another thing with all the images once I find the damn cable or a card reader.

NB I need to get a video camera of my own.

the shop

2009-10-20T13:21:00.001+01:00

So I finally made a shop! Still not got 'round to making the banner at the top of the page smaller, but the link to 'shop' actually goes to a shop now! I spent forever one night making a site, which I then had to find hosting for, the only hosting I could find was lame free hosting with a giant ad at the top, and then the day after I put it up, it went down because it had too many visitors! Most annoying. So last night after I freaked out, I made a new temporary site on blogger. I wasn't totally happy with the shop anyway, so I suppose this gives me the opportunity/makes me have to redo it. It sells postcards and badges :)

However, I have lots to get done before the MCM expo this weekend! I am hopefully going to finish making this zine today so I can find a cheap photocopier (or try to get my dad to do it or something? If only I had my own!) to get it printed by the end of Friday!! Time is ticking away!!!

I hope people like the zine- it's kind of outside of my comfort zone to draw like I have been making myself for this, normally I draw individual things that are kind of devoid of context, but this is all about context. Anyway, I will post some of them up here soon.

Back to work!

Drawing of me by Vince

2009-10-17T18:03:00.003+01:00

Vince, who 'is not a pervert' (according to his email!) sent me this picture of me he drew in MS paint. Thanks Vince :)

odd shaped cupcakes

2009-10-17T17:51:00.003+01:00

Claire Q (Klayreq) sent me these photos of some cupcakes that she made- as she didn't have a cupcake tin, they all ended up odd shapes, so she decorated them as follows! I love them :D

Harry Potter

Michael Jackson

Edvard Munch's The Scream?

Thanks for sending them in Claire :)

Accounting

2009-09-24T22:33:00.003+01:00

So today has been all kinds of exciting! (lies) I have been going through all my old receipts and bank statements and doing my accounts. I'm registered as self employed so I have to submit tax returns at the end of the financial year. I have a while til I have to do it, but I haven't even looked at this giant bag of loose receipts for almost a year, so I figured it was high time to get on top of it.

Oh my goodness, how boring it is! And that is coming from someone who actively enjoys filing. It's just tedium. Which is why I usually try to keep on top of it and do 10 mins of it every few weeks. It's just sorting out receipts, finding the date on them, working out if they're some sort of business expense (like blank canvasses, paint, video equipment...) and then putting them all in this ledger thing. It's usually pretty depressing because only then so I realise how much I spend on crap. And eating out!! I seem to have endless receipts for restaurants! I didn't think I led such a fancy life. Though with each restaurant receipt, delicious flavours flood back to my mind.

At the same time, I've been watching The Wire, finally! I don't want to look it up or find out about it at all because I don't want to read any spoilers. It seems pretty good, but so far it feels a lot like Law & Order: Cursing Division. Which is ok, I'm just waiting to be like :O .

When I got bored of that I started watching the new show Glee- a show about a school glee club, whatever that is (like a musical team at a school?) it has good and bad points... it seems like it can't make up it's mind if it wants to be realistic or just all out pantomime. All the characters read like something from a Disney channel TV show. Actually for all I know it is on the Disney Channel.

Blah bloopity... that's the stuff I did today!! And that is the kind of exciting news you subscribe to this blog for :P

More interesting stuff to come on here and on youtube soon!! Still waiting on my wig from ebay! I'm getting pretty concerned about it :( Where are you, wiglet?! and I'm planning another stickam painting day soonish! And have been trying to work out what illustrations to turn into postcards and other things for the Expo I am going to in October or whenever it is. And a few of my friends are having babies! So I want to make them something cool! Like a childrens book maybe!

BBC vision conference

2009-09-23T15:39:00.005+01:00

So about a week ago I was invited to go to this BBC conference thing and be part of a talk about the future of broadcasting/the internet/I'm not sure what. Ofcourse I said yes! And yesterday was the day. The talk was infront of an audience of BBC and other TV people, and held by Robert Llewellyn, who asked me and the other guests questions about the internet and our endeavours upon it.

The other guests were Myles Dyer, Cassetteboy and Jon Petrie from popcorn comedy. It was all pretty great aside from the actual being on stage being asked questions part. I feel like such a turd for complaining at all because it sounds so diva-ish or something but it was just horrible. HORRIBLE.

They'd asked me to send in some video clips 'that I'm most proud of', so I sent a few clips of videos I felt were pretty representative of me and what I do. I can't recall the exact ones but it was the Britney Spears one, the Miss West Carolina one... a couple of vlogs, skullboy.. that sort of thing (comedy, vlogs and arty stuff).

The thing started, Myles was first up, and was asked tons of questions mostly about himself and his use of youtube, then a little about stickaid. He answered his questions fantastically, and I figured I was gonna be ok because at the end of the day I was going to be talking about stuff I know, and was comfortable with. So I go up, they show about 10 seconds of stuff about the zombie movie. None of what I'd sent them at all.

Fair enough I figured, the stuff I sent might not have been as high quality as they'd needed so they used stuff they had (perhaps?). But then the first question was 'so before this, had you done anything else on youtube?'. So I was like 'uh... yeah I started making videos on youtube 3 years ago...uh...' I was totally on the backfoot at that point and had no idea what to say.

I was all ready to talk about what got me started on youtube, what I think the future of it is, how the online community could interact with traditional media, copyright issues for the new millenium, digital ownership, etc etc etc. I had so much I was thinking it was going to be about, but I was sitting on stage with hundreds of people looking at me who'd never heard of me before thinking that the abortive mission to make the zombie movie was the only thing I had ever done online, or of any note.

The rest of the questions for the next 10 minutes were solely about the zombie movie- what's the future of the zombie movie? Did you always have aspirations to be a director? How did you come up with the idea? It was just fucking torture. And because I was so unprepared, I had to basically make up answers to them on the spot- I stumbled over words, sounded like a fucking idiot, seemed like I didn't know what I was doing- because I didn't. I felt like such a fool. It was so embarrassing and disappointing. I was thinking that the whole thing might atleast mean I made some good connections at the BBC perhaps, and be good advertisement of who I am and what I do, but now all they will know of me is that I tried and failed to make a stupid zombie film.

It was made even more frustrating that after me, the two others were asked questions that were so much more about what those people are actually about, that I also wanted to put my two cents in about, but I couldn't cause we had to hurry it up. There were a few questions at the end that I wanted to get into and answer properly and maybe make people realise that I'm more than a zombie abortion failure, but again we had to be quick.

This is all from my own perspective, and the other people I talked to afterwards said I answered the questions fine, and maybe I did (I don't think I did). I just am so mortified that, as I see it, I made a huge fool out of myself infront of people who I wanted to think I was actually pretty great. No! It's not even that- it's that I feel I was made out to be something that I'm actually not.

I wish, WISH that I had asked what the questions were about beforehand- Robert had a sheet of pointers but didn't want people to look at them first so we didn't form answers before the actual interview, which is totally fine, but I just wish I'd asked what the subject was. Too bad I assumed it was going to be about what they implied it was going to be about.

Anyway, on the upside of it all, afterwards I had coffee with Cassetteboy (not his actual name- I've forgotten it in my haste to blank out all the horror) and Jon (who's name I only remember because he gave me his card) and his girlfriend, and we talked more on the subjects at hand, and it was cool. I wanted to stay longer and perhaps make a better impression on people, but I had to go as I had a prior engagement. I had lunch with my boyfriend and cried (cried!!!) about this whole debacle. Then we watched a film about climate change which was depressing.

And now I'm writing it in my blog so that hopefully, if anyone that was there has bothered to look up the loser idiot that 'the bryony makes a zombie movie girl' is might actually see that I am more than the IZM, that I'm more intelligent than the Sloth impression I did on stage, and that I'm actually vaguely intelligent in real life and in normal conversation. And! That I actually have some good ideas and valuable insight into the future of broadcasting for the internet generation! And that I DO know what I'm talking about!

:(

EDIT:
I hope I didn't sound too ungracious and ungrateful (are those the same thing) in this post- I really am glad to be asked to go to this thing, and I enjoyed it, despite my loooong post here! It's all stemmed from a big misunderstanding mostly. Hope I didn't/don't offend anyone!!

Best Pun Ever.

2009-08-30T18:24:00.002+01:00

I thought of this in the middle of the night and had to write it down immediately. I KNOW RIGHT? Please, take this pun and do something better with it!

The first and last of my comic attempts

2009-08-30T18:21:00.002+01:00

With added lazy photoshopping.

(actually, I did a bunch of one-page comic strip things when I was at uni, over the space of about 3 days and never again! I wish I could get inspired/draw better :'()

Squiggle Dog

2009-08-30T18:19:00.001+01:00

I found Squiggle Dog hilarious for a whole day.

Letter from Cyprus (flight to/from)

2009-08-30T18:10:00.003+01:00

While I was in Cyprus (well, when I was on the plane there and back) I wrote a letter to the internet... I don't know why, I just had the urge. If you feel so inclined, please read on! I could transcribe them for easier reading but... by now you know I'm not exactly unlazy.
If you click on one, it will take you to the flickr page and you can see it larger so you can easily read it. :)

Birthday awesomes

2009-08-29T16:30:00.002+01:00

My most excellent friend Lizz from Lizzlizz.com (and this is her blog link!) sent me this birthday e-card that she drew! I didn't get a chance to post it til now. Thannnksss lizz :D I'm planning to draw a grizzly bear for next Grizzly Bear Thursday!

Cyprus!

2009-08-25T13:30:00.004+01:00

Woah so, I'm back! I went to Cyprus for about 10 days. I'd never been before and it was AWESOME! :D This is going to be a long post about my holiday so I'll tell you whats up first and then you can leave if you don't want to see holiday snaps.
We didn't win the Skindividual thing! :'( But I think the girl who did win had WAY more people signed up to it and seems to be much more into those bands than me so I think it's well deserved. I have about 200 emails and other stuff to respond to (and I haven't even checked google reader or youtube yet :/) So I might be out of e-action for a few days but I want to make a video soon! So... watch out? haha
Oh also! to the people who bought the paintings I did, I'm so sorry I didn't sign the Ghost TV one! I meant to, I don't know why I didn't do it :/ I hope they all got there ok!

Ok sooooo me and by brother flew to Cyprus, with our magic wings that we grew. We got there at about 4 am and fell asleep pretty much straight away. My boyfriend (who grew up in Cyprus) picked us up and took us to the hotel. It was an easyhotel, which is a chain of hotels based on the easyjet brand which is just super basic with optional add ons that you can pay for. It sounds skanky as hale but it's not bad and it was super cheap. And seeing as we were there to see Cyprus rather than stay in the hotel all day, it was fine. Good service will stay again B+++.

I took my camera but didn't get round to buying any batteries on account of being lame. I took a few photos on my phone but that's it! I know I know, lame. I did, however, write a letter to the internet, as it were. I wanted to twitter when I was on the plane but obviously I didn't have an internet connection there, so I wrote a letter, which I am going to scan and post on here! It's just my journey on the flight mostly.

Cyprus is HOT! Like, you-might-die hot. I love that, but most people seem to hate it. I wore factor 30 suncream every day, applying it like I had OCD but I still got a little burnt! Not too badly but I only had one tiny part of my back exposed accidentally to the sun with no cream on and it was burnt! So, yeah... this just in, if you go somewhere as sunny as Cyprus, suncream vigilance is recommended. Haha that sounds like a band name: Suncream Vigilance!

Anyway, we were in Larnaka, where there's a ton of nice cafe's along next to the beach, and everyone has frappes all the time on the nice couches that are outside. It's SO NICE! haha, it's like a dream come true I tell you, a dream come true! It's so warm that they have couches that they just LEAVE OUTSIDE. It never rains, there's not even the possibility of rain. Or fog or mist or dew. And also no chance of people just slashing them or drawing giant dicks on them. I can't imagine anything like this in England, at ALL.

So we went to the beach a few times there, we had amazing cyprus food all the time, I ate my bodyweight in delicious meats and halloumi cheese. We went to this cool pub that's there, they give you a bowl of popcorn with your drinks? Which seems weird but is also very awesome. Also they come over and serve you when you sit down, not like jostling-at-the-bar English pubs. The smoking ban hasn't happened there yet, and I was kind of surprised at how much I had gotten used to there being no smoking indoors of pretty much any building here in the UK. It didn't bother me, it just surprised me that it surprised me, if you know what I mean.

One of the days we went to Nicosia, which is the capital city, and also is the only divided city that belongs to two countries! Cyprus is officially at war, and the north part is under Turkish control, while the south is Greek. Nicosia literally has a border control across the middle of the city, where you have to show your passport and get a stamp as you leave the Greek part and then get another when you come back, leaving the Turkish part. We (me, Alan, Chris and his cousin Antoni) went through this rigmarole to have a look round the other side.

It was so strange! I had no inkling that there would be much of a real difference between two sides of the same city, that has only been divided for about 40 years, but there really was. While the south part is very European-feeling, the north part felt like a totally different place. I felt for the first time since being there that I was in a foreign place that I could potentially be in any danger. South Cyprus is greek, and therefore greek orthodox, ie, christian, and North Cyprus is Turkish, ie, Muslim, and there were a few mosques around the city which just added to the sense of difference on that side. The whole place seemed dead- I barely saw people, and the people there were seemed pretty miserable, sitting in the shade of ramshackle awnings and crumbling buildings. The whole place felt like it was in disrepair, just falling apart. The only shops that seemed to be open (or even currently in business) were selling fake designer bags. I'm sure there's plenty of nicer areas but it was really weird and I was quite glad to leave it.

We met up with Chris's friend Cristalleni (I probably spelled that wrong) and then went back to the other side, after having our passports checked and stamped. We went to a nice bar (that had wifi!) and had frappes and lemonade. Then we went to another bar which was also a bookshop and played scrabble and smoked an apple shisha together which was fun! Then went to yet another bar that had a huge list of belgian beers to choose from and again more popcorn.

On the last night alan was there, we had a meal for my birthday, where me, Alan, Chris, Ant, Chris's cousin Vasilia, her fiance, and Chris's other cousin Maria had a HUGE meze meal, which basically means a ton of different things on different plates that you all share brought out over a couple of hours. You start with salad and dips and bread, then move onto cheese and meats and stuff, then onto more meat and fish and then you descend into a food delirium. There were snails at one point. It was all most excellent and delicious :D

The day after that, me and Chris got the bus from there to Ayia Napa, another town further up the coast that is like Ibiza or something. We stayed in a hotel in a town just next to it as a treat for my birthday and it was amaziiiiinnnggggg! I've always wanted to stay in a fancy hotel with a pool and sun loungers and just sit next to the pool and stuff (growing up my parents viewed time spent at the hotel as wasted time and I have pretty much never lounged by a pool on holiday before, let alone for a whole day!). The first night we went out to Ayia Napa with Ant, his brother Chris (another cousin of Chris's... lots of cousins) and Matt and Nikki who Chris and I went to university with in one way or another but at different times (this is so confusing). The place is like a disneyland of alcohol. It's kiiiind of awesome. I recommend it! We only went to two bars: Bedrock (Flintsones Themed!) and Aruba (I think it's supposed to be safari theme? I don't know). I wanted to go to this one that was themed like a castle but it was a club and you had to pay to get in and by then I was pretty drunk and some people had to drive and stuff. There's people who accost you in the street to tell you about the mega cheap deals in their bar: the reason we went into Aruba was cause this short scottish guy convinced us that it was the cheapest place to get drunk in town (his words!). We got two beers and two shots for €5 (about £4.50 or $9 I guess). I only wish I had gone there while I was at university. The Black Eyed Peas song 'I Gotta Feeling' is very popular. I think they could have played it on repeat and people wouldn't have minded.

The next day, after recovering from my hangover with just melon and a hardboiled egg from the vastly comprehensive breakfast buffet at the hotel (why is bacon called 'speck' in German?), we went to the pool, where we swam around and lounged all day long. There was a barbecue which we had kebabs from (delicious) we had iced tea and more frappe, at one point someone came around giving out cold towels. COLD TOWELS. FROM A FRIDGE. THAT WERE ROSE SCENTED. Noone I've told about this has been sufficiently excited about that but I can still not get over it. Rose scented cold towels to put on your face!!!!!!! Delivered right to your sunlounger!!!

Anyway, it was thoroughly awesome. There was a high percentage of the out-of-shape-middleage-guy-with-younger-hot-wife demographic around, which I kind of enjoyed in a weird way, and there was a family from Liverpool (judging by accent) and one of the daughters was yelling at her (fatter, younger) sister in the pool, "UGH! I SAID I didn't want to get my hair wet!! *storming out* And you wonder why everyone hates you!!" They'd made up later though as we saw them playing ping pong together.

After all of this excellence, we came back to Larnaca on the bus, where Chris and Ant and Maria took us to the airport, where I solemnly flew home (again on my wings that I use for such occasions). The hotel was crawling with annoying English people and I hated them all. I wrote some more of the letter-to-the-internet, got on the plane and then watched Monsters Vs Aliens (3.8 out of 5) and Last Chance Harvey (3 out of 5). The guy sitting next to me was kind of weird... it was a pretty boring flight- I blocked out most of the screaming children noises with my ipod or the seat-back TV. And then was home!

I had such a good time in Cyprus, I want to go again! I can see why people love it so much. I hope I do get to go again one day. I feel energised after the trip, I want to be productive and work harder at everything! I have been so complacent for too long, I need to work hard and just try harder. I think I'm going to save and get some more education. Everyone I tell this to seems to think it's a stupid idea, but I want to do a course in something like book keeping or accounts, so that I can do more specialised temp work (and get paid more for it), and if and when more fun art projects come up, I can drop the temp work and do them instead. I have found that doing artistic creative things as a job are too draining on my creativity, which leaves me not doing anything creative outside of those jobs, which seems like more of a waste of my talents than being paid for doing something non-art oriented. I don't know if that makes sense, but it does in my head.

I'll post photos when I find the cable to upload them from my phone :)

I love this video

2009-08-13T21:52:00.001+01:00

STICKAM AWESOME DAY SUCCESS!

2009-08-09T01:17:00.003+01:00

So the painting day was a HUGE Success!! Pirates, robot penises, fridge marriage proposals, and, of course, painting! It was a long day but really fun and I had a great time talking to all the awesome people who hung out all day!! I definitely want to do it again soon! For like a half day every month maybe?! And we could theme them too! I want to do one on Pirate Day! where everyone has to dress as a pirate and the paintings will be pirate themed! And Halloween! And Christmas! :D

Ok so here are the finished paintings!! These aren't great photos but I JUST came off stickam and am FRIED! haha! I am going to scan them in properly tomorrow but for now, enjoyyyyyyyyy!

'Blue Background'
now called 'Cookies Diving Into a Glass of Milk'

'Blank 1'
now called 'Robot Fighting a Squid'

'Blank 2'
now called 'Fat iPod Gorging Himself On Tunes'

'Blank 3'
Now called 'Dancing Pills'

There's some slight additions and modifications to them all, and I've signed them all too, but I will post those photos tomorrow! And I'm going to show them in a video too! Woooooooot :)

Time for a bath and bed now!!

Stickam Painting Day! Sat Aug 8th ALL DAY

2009-08-04T17:24:00.005+01:00

So do you remember ages back I did some paintings on Stickam and auctioned the canvasses from before they were even painted, then had people tell me what to paint while I was painting them? No? Well, I'm doing it again this Saturday! I'm also ebaying a couple of paintings that I've had laying around for ages that I don't like that much (I HATE the painting of the orchid but it took forever and I can't throw it out or paint over it!). So yeah, check them out and come to the Stickam-fest on Saturday. I'll be on there all day so you should be able to see it! I'll twitter about it and whatnot so hopefully people won't forget before the day :P

This is my Stickam page, I'll be on for all of Saturday UK time from about 11am or so, til late at night. US time is 5 hours behind on the East coast and 8 hours behind on the West coast, so if you're in California you might want to watch earlier in the day as I'll probably finish about 1 or 2am UK time which is 8pm there.

Click on the below photos to go to the ebay auction pages for each thing. I'm including a British candy bar OF YOUR CHOICE with each auction, and an origami lily! So exciting I know :P

These are the (EXCITING!) blank canvasses:

This is one I painted a blue gradient background onto already:

And these are the ones I'm selling that are finished already:

I'll sign them all before sending them tho.

Beyond Biba!

2009-07-20T02:39:00.004+01:00

I was invited to the premiere screening of 'Beyond Biba, A Portrait Of Barbara Hulanicki' on Friday at the V&A Museum in London and it was awesome!

Biba was a fashion label/shop in the 1960s that was very iconic of the time. It was started by Barbara Hulanicki and anyone my mothers age (including my mother) swoons into fond reminiscences whenever you mention 'Biba' to them. I love their logo, since seeing it on a tiny box my mum had from there which she keeps beads in (I don't know what she actually bought from the shop itself, I think it was a bit too expensive for my mum and dad back then...).

But Barbara Hulanicki actually went on to be instrumental in the amazing 80s-ness of Miami in the 80s, doing incredible interiors there after finishing with Biba. The documentary goes into detail about how she went on to do all these different things which I hadn't known about before. I'd just heard of Biba, rather than all the things that came after it.

The film was really interesting and quite inspiring, as Barbara seems so... I don't know what the word is, but she just goes with the flow and does stuff, and it's all good stuff. I suppose it makes me feel like I don't need to know where I'm going so much as I just need to keep doing stuff with my talents, and go wherever life takes me. I worry so much about what's happening in the future and what happens next that I stop myself from just accepting what's happening and seeing where it goes.

After the screening there was a Q&A with Barbara herself! Which was interesting. She seems so down to earth and relaxed, which was cool as I imagine people who are so reknowned would be kind of haughty, or something. Someone told her how she'd sat in the shop while her mother had shopped there, and that when she had a daughter (who was also at the screening) she called her Biba! Everyone clapped but it seemed kiiiind of awkward. Especially since Barbara had just said how the name was essentially meaningless and someone had told her that it sounded like a charwoman's daughter (if I recall correctly).
I wanted to ask her what inspires her, but I felt like it was a silly question that seemed somewhat self evident after the film, though I'm still unsure of what it was that inspired and inspires her... she said she likes Primark! Which proved a little controversial, but I think she likes that it's very much the disposable fashion that really was kickstarted in the 60s, and it's available to everyone, and Biba was supposed to be accessible and cheap? It was very interesting.

So yes! I liked it :D
If you want to go see it, there's another screening on September the 20th at the V&A, and there's other ones around the world. It's suuuper limited release which sucks, but if you get the chance to see it, I would reccommend!

Cupcake photos!

2009-07-15T02:31:00.002+01:00

I meant to do this more periodically but I've only just gotten round to it and there's loads stored up!! These are some of the pictures people have sent me of their awesome rainbow cupcakes! (and some other random cakes too!) Thanks to everyone who sent me a cake pic! :D Hope they were delicious!

Iheartparamore13
Who sent about a hundred photos of them eating the cakes! <3

NKKnono
Awesome noughts and crosses cake and microphone cake!!

TheGreatPerhaps
Excellent addition of chocolate icing!!

TummyRoad
Who made an excellent "collection of criminals and misfits" click through for the larger sized picture to see the awesome eyepatch and cigarette details on these ne'er-do-wells!

TemariRocks97
I'm getting so hungry making this post! Those look so delicious!!

TelevisedBaggage
Lol sorry for not turning this photo around! I'm too hungry... must make cake....

MissMossXX
Who made these with her lovely nieces Elan and Eleri <3

IfAutumnEnds
who suggested mixing the cake with icing til it's all like a smooshy playdough consistency, then FREEZING IT to make cake-sicles! Ahhh this is such a delicious (and dangerous!) idea! I love it!

Lightangel103
Who assures me that these are brown, white and yellow inside...

SurfingNurse
This made me lol <3

Oh goshhh thankyou to you all! sorry I took so long to post this! It took foreverz! I have to find some cake now!
If you sent me some of these pics and I got your name wrong or haven't linked you properly, let me know and I'll put it right!

Britney Spears Saved My Life

2009-07-12T15:32:00.005+01:00

I watched 'Britney Spears Saved My Life' yesterday (iplayer link here for UK watchers). It was a documentary about people who are huge fans of Britney Spears. It was kind of interesting, as the people followed in the documentary were quite diverse and the filmmakers did delve into their psyches a little, going behind their obsessive seeming shrines and actually finding out why they had latched onto this particular pop star so much.

This is a supercut of all the 'HAHA LOSRZ' parts of the video.

Each of these people had some sort of borderline insane thing about their love of Ms Spears- one had the receipt from buying one of her albums preserved in a scrapbook, others had dance routines worked out for each of her songs and every single one of her perfumes.

However, the people interviewed had genuine reasons for their love of this music. There was a boy who had been outcast by his friends at school and his religious family because he'd used Britney's music to get over the death of a friend, there was a girl who had been in hospital 'because she was sad', a gay guy who was 'lonely' and found solace in the music.
Of course there were also super camp* gay guys and ditsy girls who just loved her music and seemed not to have much of a psyche at all.

What irked me about the documentary was that the makers seemed to have really exploited the people they filmed, moreso than even regular 'crazy people who are weird' documentaries do. These people may have been 'crazy fans' but they each had a reason for being so into Britney Spears, mostly because they in some way related to her public struggles with their own lives. We're talking about a girl who was in hospital with depression who hinted that she may have attempted suicide, which is pretty powerful, yet the documentary seemed (to me) to denigrate them all with it's derisory tone. It kept the camera on them as they cried listening to her songs, the interviewer probed them when they were clearly trying not to 'go there' into revealing more about themselves than these clearly damaged people wanted to reveal.

It felt like they had looked at what they'd made at the end of filming and despite having these genuinely interesting stories, decided to go with a Heat Magazine 'HAHA LOOK FREAKZ' tone, which to my eyes did not suit the content of the show and was frankly insulting to the people interviewed, and to an extent, the viewer.

This got me to thinking about songs that have stuck with me in some way, that provoke an emotional response. There are way too many to list, and to list them would be pointless as the reasons behind my love of them are as diverse as the songs themselves. But I think it would be churlish to judge me solely on my to-the-grave cry-my-eyes-out love of 'Do You Know The Way To San José'.

*check the comments

The Edamame Bean Photograph

2009-07-12T02:53:00.002+01:00

A chap called Felix sent me this very lifelike picture of the edamame incident!

Thanks Felix haha <3

Plush Squid!

2009-07-10T13:19:00.002+01:00

I have been really into squids lately. They are so cool :D I've been painting them and drawing them lots. I made this squid last night and today... I'm going to make another one which is more anatomically correct, as this one only has 5 legs, rather than 8 and two tentacles. I should call it something...

I'm going to try to make a jellyfish next!

Naked In-flight safety video!

2009-07-01T00:25:00.002+01:00

I've long been fascinated by 'body art' where they paint directly onto a naked body. It looks so cool! Also In-flight safety videos are usually so crushingly boring so it's super coolio that Air New Zealand made this video for in-flight safety- they're all naked but painted with their uniforms! :D New Zealand accents tho.. :S

Vote for my terrible no good video!

2009-06-27T15:18:00.003+01:00

So I made a music video.
I posted it on youtube. I worked for 3 solid days on it. Editing it for literally 3 solid days. At the end of it, maybe the video isn't as great as it could have been with more time (and sure, more skill) but there it is, finished.
So anyway, here's the video if you're dying to see it. Don't get your hopes up as it hasn't been well received!

We had to rush it because we wanted to enter it into the competition for The Green Man Festival. So yeah. People aren't loving it on youtube. I feel extra senstitive about it because other people were involved in the music and the video making and I feel like I've let them down somehow. I wish I'd had a few more days to work on it, or a day or two to not work on it so I could come back with fresh eyes and see what would make it better.

ANYWAY I should stop this pity party! The reason we made it was to enter this competition.
So if you care about me (regardless of my apparent lack of any skills or redeeming qualities) please go and faff around to vote for it! There's one question on the info form that asks what band is headlining a certain day. For ease of reference, the first day is headlined by Animal Collective, second day by Jarvis Cocker, and third day by Wilco.

I promise to make more populist stuff from now on.

I'm really tempted to use this photo for the CV

2009-06-16T18:37:00.001+01:00

Help me with my CV photo headshot thing!

2009-06-16T00:38:00.005+01:00

Hey guys so I am making my CV and some of the jobs I'm applying for are kind of performancy, which means I need a 'headshot'. I have a TON of photos of myself (photobooth will do that to a girl) so I have plenty to choose from but I don't know which to choose!! So below are some that I was considering, could you comment and let me guage which is the best? Or if there's any in particular you think would work let me know that too. It needs to be one where I have the same colour hair I do right now (ie, grubby blonde colour).
Fanks x

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Turner/Rothko and Terminator Salvation

2009-06-09T15:40:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I went to the Tate Britain to see the Turner/Rothko exhibition, which was good but was pretty much90% Turner and 10% Rothko. It was supposed to be a comparison between the two artists, as they have similarities in their work. Turner painted things like this:

And Rothko painted things like this:

But they were separated by over 100 years. Anyway, it was pretty great to see these things IRL after admiring them for years without seeing many of them. I am so lucky to live in London surrounded by all these galleries that are FREE! Yay my life is super.

After that highbrow culture bath, me, my housemate Laura and our friend from university Dan went to see TERMINATOR SALVATION! We couldn't get any of our other friends to come with us as they all snobbishly brandished the terrible reviews it has at us. But I like some trash, Laura loves Christian Bale and Dan likes The Terminator. So we watched it at an Odeon Cinema and the usher let us sit in the MAGICAL SOFA SEATS! They're actual sofas that are super comfy and usually cost more, but the usher was the greatest guy in the universe and thus, let us sit in them.

Anyway, the film was great! It was a silly action movie, but in my opinion, it had a lot of heart, wasn't too cheesy or cliche'd, had some HAWT guys in it (not into Christian Bale, but totally obsessing now over the new guy in it, Sam Worthington). So, yeah, I think it was good. I have always missed pre-teen Edward Furlong in all the terminator films (aside from 2, obviously) so the fact that he wasn't in it was kind of a pooper for me (despite that, you know, being impossible). OH! and for the original film's fans, there is a total SURPRISE in it! That you will shit your pants at when you see it. Which face it, everyone is going to see it eventually, even if it's just on TV at Christmas a few years from now. THEN YOU'LL SEE.

After that, we got pizza and went home. T'was awesome times!!

Today I am planning on making a video and finally posting the cupcake photos people sent me! And eating left over pizza. Mmmmm.

The Apprentice: IT'S FINISHED Q.Q

2009-06-07T23:18:00.003+01:00

So The Apprentice is finished! :'( I was relieved that ......
crap I can't remember her name!! I haven't slept for about 28 hours?? Or something. Brain. Fried. Derp.

YASMINA!
I am relieved that Yasmina won! She was pretty great. Those chocolates looked like they tasted crap but the box was awesome!

To say adieu to the show, please listen to this magnificent ode to the wonderful Margaret Mountford, one of Sir Alan Sugar's aides, who has left the show now:

By the marvellous Joe Cornish, of Adam and Joe. Seriously they are the best radio show DJ people ever. GO AND DOWNLOAD THEIR PODCAST IMMEDIATELY! They are hilarious. Noone can compare.

The Edamame Dilemma

2009-06-07T03:03:00.004+01:00

I posted a new video! It's just a video blog about this incident at a sushi restaurant. Some of the comment's are hilarious! After the video I have copy pasted my favourites.

ALSO! Fact alert!!!!

Tertris Pornz

2009-06-07T03:01:00.001+01:00

Hahaha Totally Rule 34.

Via baby sinead

Now Monopoly is for girls too!!

2009-05-20T03:00:00.003+01:00

So the other day I happened to be in Toys R Us (I like to browse) and in the pink aisle of stereotypically girly things, there was this gem:

Monopoly Boutique Edition, a 'girl' monopoly. I almost put it down and moved on, thinking 'eh, I guess it's just the same as regular monopoly but just with a pink board and in a pink box'. But then I noticed the playing pieces on the front:

Alongside the requisite monopoly car was a pair of sunglasses and what looks like a chihuahua. Uh... I suppose that's par for the course if you're going to make the board and hotels pink. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

I turned the box over and read the little write-ups:

"MONOPOLY BOUTIQUE EDITION IS PRETTY IN PINK - JUST FOR YOU, GIRL!"
"It's the Monopoly game like you've never seen it, dressed up in pink and all about stuff you love. Buy boutiques and malls, go on a shopping spree, pay your cell phone bill and get Text and instant messages. You and your friends will adore the funky tokens, cool buildings, and cute illustrations. Best of all, the game is stored in a beautiful keepsake box. So gather some girlfriends and play the world's most popular boardgame - designed just for you!"

Oh my god. I have been playing monopoly for all these years, without realising I wasn't really supposed to. What was I thinking?! Playing monopoly with that crappy old boot and top hat?! Buying hotels and houses when I could have been sashaying around the board wearing sassy flip flops whilst chatting on my 'celly' to my bffs on the way to get mani-pedis! Oh Em Gee you guyz, I totes have to pay my cell bill ewwwww. Oh awesome I just got an IM that says I won a modelling contract!! PHEW! I gtg, TTFN!!!

There's more:

"COOL GAME FEATURES INCLUDE:
8 collectible tokens just for girls
Keepsake storage box with removable tray and mirrored insert
Pink gameboard with fun properties like "Jillian's Jewelry Store" and "Savannah's Super Spa"
Pink and purple translucent boutiques and malls instead of houses and hotels
Instant Message and Text Message instead of Chance and Community Chest
Pink Title Deed cards
Redesigned Monopoly Money
Flocked bankers tray
2 pink dice
Instructions

Savannah's Super Spa. I wonder if you can get a brazillian there.
I can literally not believe that someone wrote this and someone else approved it when it says "8 collectible tokens just for girls".

Atleast I can wear the board game pieces on a chain or charm bracelet.

I wonder what the boy version of monopoly would be.

*sigh*

stickers...

2009-05-06T15:14:00.001+01:00

Hey guys so just incase you were wondering, I haven't yet sent out the stickers from the blog's 'sticker exchange' BUT I thought I would maybe wait til the other lot from the video come through? What do you think? If you don't want me to wait and send you what's there already, let me know! I can't email the specific people as I don't have your email addresses, but I assume you read this blog, as you sent stuff after reading about it on here in the first place!!

I'm going to the post office todayy! :)

Do your bit for net neutrality!

2009-05-04T02:24:00.003+01:00

Ugh ok I know I NEVER go on about causes and good effort things BUT! this is SO important and if you're reading this on the internet, which unless you print off your blogs to read later, you are, then this affects you.
Basically, this wednesday coming, the European Parliament are voting on 'the Telecoms Package', which, if voted in favour of, will mean internet providers will be able to block whatever websites they want, effectively destroying the freedoms of the internet. It will be like when you're at school or an office and you go to some site and its all 'nu-uhh! You aren't allowed to look at that!!', which I am sure you have experienced at some point and know how infuriating it is. Imagine that in your house!! And it won't be like, no animal porn, or even no torrents or limewire, it will be whatever the ISPs decide on. If you have internet from BT, for instance, they might decide you can't use Skype or MSN. You will no longer decide what you want from the internet.

SO. The only real way any of us can affect this is to try to show the people voting for this, our MEP's, that we're firmly against this, and why. There's a bunch of ways you can contact your MEPs, there's these websites where you can find info about your MPs and MEPs. There are loads of template emails you COULD send but I tried to send something like that via theyworkforyou and it didn't let me, and to be honest, it doesn't really make that much sense to basically spam someone to try to get a message across. I am writing to them (immediately after this infact) in my own words and am going to explain how it would affect me and why they should vote against the Telecoms Package. I urge you to do the same.

If you don't live in Europe, I don't exactly know what you would be able to do, though as email addresses aren't country specified, I guess you could email them too if you wanted to. Bear in mind if this thing goes through it would affect the whole world and also set a very dangerous precident to other governments.

This whole thing is so scary to me!! I literally have a sick-feeling about it all. Please please please do your part to keep the internet free from corporations' restrictions! Net neutrality is so easy to take for granted, but once it's gone, it will be gone forever.

MEP contacts:
http://www.europarl.org.uk/section/your-meps/your-meps
http://www.writetothem.com/
(I've written to my MP before via theyworkforyou.com, which is run by the same people, and got a personal letter back from them, so they do read them (amazingly!))
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/MEPs_by_country

Ok please do what you can!

How to make pompom pets

2009-05-01T18:32:00.002+01:00

This lady is SO CUTE!! I want her to adopt me and be my grandma and we can do crafts together

Count to ten glue!!!

The BAFTAS!

2009-04-29T03:11:00.004+01:00

Ok so apologies for this being a few days after the fact! I've spent the last few days trying to find photos of me at the baftas to no avail. Life is so hard. In any case, this will be very long and extremely detailed, but I promise to stop talking about the baftas after this post.

Alright, so I couldn't sleep the night before- eventually I fell asleep at 7am, waking up hours later to rush into London for the first of my (complimentary!) appointments to change from looking like I'd had just 4 hours sleep to looking like a bonafide person-who-is-legitimately-at-the-Baftas. On the tube I started feeling really nervous. I actually thought I was going to puke, which I've never done out of nerves in my life. I concentrated on how I was breathing so I didn't hyperventilate, and once out in the air, I felt much less like I was about to pass out. I tubed to Knightsbridge and schlubbed up the stairs- the Mandarin Oriental is SO fancy, they have about 20 doormen and 5 spas, and fancy little sofas with poufy cushions everywhere. the Bafta stuff was all on one floor, which, when I got there was teeming with busy looking people in various states of being tarted up.

The first thing was makeup, which a nice gay fellow from Australia called Chris did. He was later to do makeup for Jaime Winstone (who I was secretly ecstatic that she didn't win for Dead Set, a zombie Big Brother show that was reportedly very good but which I felt slighted by due to our thing also involving zombies, and also because we went to the same primary school). He gave me a lip gloss! Score. The whole suite had been decorated with MAC stuff, a whole black wall with MAC written all over it, huge full length mirrors, about 20 makeup people all in black and looking pristine.

Then I went back down to the 'bafta-lounge', a room full of people I felt I awkardly recognised, yet didn't exactly know. ie, I know for sure I have watched them in something on TV at some point in the past. They were all tiny. I chatted to a reporter lady from Heat magazine who was very nice. People were making small talk and I realised that everyone there getting all this makeup and hair done was in pretty much the same boat- not really around friends but being in the same situation as one another, and nervous, like starting university where you form alliances with random people based purely on sitting next to them. It was surreal but not unpleasant. I got changed into my awesome dress, then sat for a while thinking how hungry I was but unsure of how to get some food. I talked to a lovely woman who's name I don't know, and who I did not see later in the evening. I wish I knew who she was!

Eventually it was time to get my hair done, where I sat next to a woman who seemed very arch and somewhat luvvie-ish, I felt kind of out of my depth, as the show she produces she said has won everything else it's been nominated for. Any time anyone asked me what I was doing there I was all 'urrrm, I'm Bryony, from Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie? Its in the new category: 'Interactive'. Yeah... don't worry'. People just kind of looked confused. The hairdressing people were nice! And they took my address and said they are going to send the products used on my hair today. I wanted more stuff!! So my hair lady said she used a bunch more things than she really did which they added to the list so now I get some free hair stuff :D

Crap I just deleted a bunch of stuff I wrote here. Shitsticks. Well, after the hair, I got a taxi, which I've never done before in London due to being a pauper, the taxi driver was kind of a grumpy cliche, then I got to the BFI bar where I had scotch on the rocks, which was exactly the right thing to have, then walked up the red carpet. There were lots of random people there, lots of fancy proper photographers, and a bunch of news crews, none of which gave a shit about me. I took a photo with Lizo Mzimba, a news reporter guy, despite his producer lady telling me to fuck off (in so many words). Despite that, Lizo said it was ok! And here is the photographic proof:

Alas, my arm in this photo is approximately the size of his torso. C'est la vie!

There was a massive pose zone at the end of the red carpet, which I was urged to go onto by the peeps I was with, but ditheringly chickened out of, and as I was pondering over it, we were shunted into the building by a large officious looking man (who I think at the end of the night may have been the same fellow who refused to allow us to exit the building with stolen bottles of wine. Some people!)
I think I may regret my lack of decision at that point for a long time to come. Anyway, we took our own photos and probably looked like dorks:

I found out after the whole evening that there was a youtube reporter there. Well, thankyou so much youtube, for not letting me know anything about that whatsoever, that was a really dick move on your part. Good one.

Anyway, I was trying to find a photo of me on the red carpet (or anywhere in the Baftas) to no avail, though in this photo one of the people I was with is in the background:

Mighty impressive, I think you will agree!

So we go inside. It was weird. There was free champagne being doled out, so I had some. Everyone was sort of milling around. We just sort of stood there, drinking and chatting, looking at people and wondering if they were famous, and occasionally being awestruck by actual 'celebrities' like Jonathon Ross (shorter and fatter than I had imagined), Dr Who (exactly as you would imagine he would look), Tamara Beckwith (about 9 feet tall), etc etc.

We got told over the loudspeaker to go to the auditorium (where I saw Brian Wilson play last summer!) where we sat in seats, looking at the rather grand stage

Those two chaps standing up? Jonathan Ross and David Tennant! my photos from this point on are quite terribly blurry, as I was trying to covertly take them without anyone noticing. Here's another masterpiece:

Here's the stage:

The show started and I turned off my phone. Then I turned it on again after about 5 minutes, as I realised I couldn't possibly not tweet the whole thing. Also, it was a bit boring, and the three glasses of champagne I had so far had were steadily filling up my bladder, and twittering took my mind off it a little.

As our category was going to be in the 'also presented tonight' thing at the end, we didn't know when our category would be called, which meant I had to wait, desperate for the toilet, for about 90 minutes. During that time, the detatchable straps on my dress decided to detach themselves, and I had to get one of the BMAZM entourage to fix it for me twice. Eventually the category was called, people laughed at the edited recap thing of the show! I felt right then like 'maybe we have won. I'm actually going to go on stage at the baftas and get a bafta. oh my god. this is actually happening.' As I was thinking this, I realised my left dress strap had once again come undone and I was suddenly in a huge panic as to what on earth I should do about it- I couldn't go on stage with only one strap!! Ohh my godd what should I do!?? I determined that I would have to either take them both off as we trundled down to the stage, or state into the microphone that my dress strap had fallen off, to the huge audience of special people. But then the horrible judges from Masterchef opened the golden envelope and announced that the winner is......
Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies online.

Honestly, my first feeling was intense relief. I wouldn't have to stand up infront of all these people and announce that I couldn't dress myself properly. But then came crushing disappointment, a feeling of 'this is so unfair!!!!' and relief that I could finally make Gary Lineker and the guy from The Wire move so I could go and do a wee atlast, and fix my stupid straps.

I peed, I returned, made the famous people and their unfamous counterparts move out of the way, and watched the rest of the show. I don't really remember much of the awards itself, other than thinking Helen Mirren really is superhumanly perfect and that her dress was my favourite of the night, some young dramaschool girls won one of the awards and I thought how unfair it was that they would get extra free things when they were clearly so priveledged already. Being surprised that the Wire guys were not American but English. Being glad that David Mitchell had won a Bafta, being bored by a few of the long speeches that were, to be fair, extremely boring, being astounded that Wallander could win anything, let alone a bafta (have you seen that show?! It is just the worst thing in the world) being annoyed that if Wallander could win something, why the fuck couldn't we!? Being sad that I hadn't gone onto the red carpet pose zone...

In any case, eventually it finished, and we all went down and ate. For some reason there was a meal that I thought was pretty nice, though as I hadn't eaten anything except for three tiny canapes and a complimentary chocolate bar, I could have eaten cardboard quite happily. Famous people walked by our table, I wanted very much to talk to some of them, but was too intimidated, and didn't want to inconvenience them or be a tourist. The whole thing did feel like a strange sort of safari- an outsider let into this weird little world, things to see but not really be a part of. Experienced through the eyes of an outsider, to report back when they were safely back home in their own world, in my case, the internet! I twittered the whole thing, it seemed the only logical thing anyone could do. I tried to twitter at Stephen Fry, Alan Carr, Jonathan Ross, but all to no avail. As if they would bother to check twitter at the baftas.

After the meal (starter: smoked salmon, main: braised beef (delicious), dessert: weird jelly stuff that made me feel pretty sick), there was a... party? The closest thing it resembled was a wedding reception: free drinks, cheesy (yet actually excellent selection of) music, people milling around and just drinking more and more, occasionally talking to other people and commiserating with one another about losses, or congratulating one another on wins. Graham Norton was one of the few recognisable faces that stuck around, I wanted to talk to him but had no clue what to say, so I did not. Two of the male dancers from Strictly Come Dancing were there, they looked unreal.

The bar had a selection of free drinks, three different cocktails: a blue one which was vile, a peach one which was nice, and a moscow mule. I think I had 4. Eventually, after realising David Mitchell (from Peep Show (and other good things)) was still there, quietly talking to some people at one of the tables, I decided to bite the bullet and talk to him, reasoning that I would likely never again be in anything like this sort of situation. I explained that we had been nominated for an award but had not won one, and would it be possible to borrow his one and take a photo with it. He kindly obliged, and I am now his biggest fan in the whole entire world. He also told me how he'd prevously been nominated for things and not won them, and the night of not winning becomes a strange 'I didn't win' night, but the next day you're happy you atleast got nominated, it's just the night-of that feels weird. He was so nice!! I guess I had expected him to just be standoffish and "oh another peon *sigh*" but that he took the time to talk to me, when I was probably drunk off my ass and making him pretend to award me a bafta, makes me beyond grateful.

This is me being pretend-awarded with the bafta

I do really worry that I was like Homer Simpson when he gets really drunk and embarrasses himself infront of a bunch of dinner guests, but in his own perception, was an excellent host, causing much hilarity with his smooth 'fly in an icecube' and other lame jokes. Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. In any event..

This is a life long dream realised:

At the end, we stole some wine, sneaked out and drank it next to the river. It seemed a fitting end to such a surreal evening. My taxi home cost almost £50, the next day my housemate reminded me that I really need to pay the rent and bills, the cat pooed in the living room, I did some washing, I put photos on facebook. Today I went to the pub and watched the football, a game that ended with a 0-0 score.

Everything is exactly the same as it always was.

THE DRESS

2009-04-21T15:02:00.003+01:00

SO yesterday I went on a dress hunt, and I found this one, which I think is the one. What do you think!? AAHH I LOVE IT SO MUCH! With the straps or without??! I'm thinking blue shoes? There's some nice Dune ones. Haha I am going to be totally brassic once I've got everything.
Dress: £195
Shoes £??
Magic pants: £30
Clutch Bag: £??
Hair: FREE!
Makeup: FREE!
Nails: £15?
Taxis: £??
= me, poor.
I'll have to make lots of amazing youtube videos and try to earn some money from it for once.

Twitter

2009-04-19T18:53:00.004+01:00

So as I'm sure most people who read this are aware, there's a website which the internet savvy have been using for over a year, but that newspapers and celebrities have just discovered, called Twitter. The old-media, ofcourse, are up in arms, all 'look how crazy the internet is!' about it, while those of us who use it are all 'oh, yeah... I've been using twitter for ages. What about it?'.

Today I read this article by, of course, someone who writes for a newspaper, decrying Twitter and being all pearl-clutchy about 'what it all means', that everyone is 'oversharing' like we are.

Now, I don't LOVE twitter, I use it, I check it all the time, it's great, but I don't write this as some sort of 'omg don't talk bad abt twitter!!1!' defense of something I hold dear, but the fact that people don't seem to get why twitter is popular really fucking baffles me. It's a website that you type whatever you want, answering the question 'what are you doing right now?'. That's what it is, what it does, and that is all.
Newspapers are that on a grand scale- what is happening right now, but written out, edited, bound up and printed and sold, and read after the facts have happened. Twitter is like pure news, albeit from normal people, not foreign correspondants, and usually minutiae rather than breaking news-worthy news, but it is news, nonetheless.
If some huge thing were to happen right now somewhere in the world, I would most likely hear about it first through twitter, through real people who I follow, through their eyes or opinions. I could ask them direct questions, and they could answer them. I could try to help them if they were in danger, as other people following them could. Twitter is the same as the news, just on a microscopic scale, where we choose who reports to us, and we have a direct line of communication to the people reporting.

Sure, there's a fair amount of 'omg I lost my keys', but when you are connecting to actual human beings and not some other giant conglomerate, that's what you expect. I follow people because they are my friends, either from online or off, and a few celebrities who actually seem interesting. I don't have to actively buy into any of this. It's just communications between friends, like meeting up or emails or phone calls, but again, on a tiny scale.

Old-media people (especially newspapers) seem to have such a huge problem getting their minds around the idea of anything being self-published and subsequently actually becoming popular. In the offline world, you have to have the backup of some sort of media company to really make a success of filmaking, writing, or even designing and art, especially to make money. But online, those same structures of deciding who or what is going to be famous, successful, lauded are just not there. Sure, something on the front of the LA Times' website is going to get a lot of hits, but so is something on the front of BoingBoing.net, where it might endure and turn into an internet meme. There are structures, sure, but they're not controlled by old fat guys in a fancy office anymore.

And so it seems like with anything coming from the internet, it's translated to print media with a rye smirk, a snigger. 'God the internet is so full of freaks!', that denigrates everyone who actively uses the internet to the status of weirdo. While I'm the first to admit that the internet does have a lot of weirdos on it, there are a hell of a lot of weirdos in the real world, and it's not fair to assume that everyone in the real world is insane by tarring them with the same brush.

I don't exactly know the point I'm trying to make, other than old media needs to really re-think their attitudes if they ever want to remain relevant, and the internet gets bored of things very quickly, but it also never forgets.

moosturiser

2009-04-15T13:41:00.002+01:00

So I twittered the other day 'I got moosturiser in my eyes again! What is wrong with me?!', then I said 'Haha of course I meant moisturizer rather than moosturiser. Because that doesn't exist.'

WELL! A chap called Eric subsequently emailed me to say that moosturiser does, infact, exist!!
www.uddercream.com
So there you go.

I'm going to the BAFTAS :O

2009-04-08T04:34:00.005+01:00

I'M going to the BAFTAS!
Didn't I already blog this!? I'm going! I need to make a video about it! I am so excited. It hasn't totally sunk in yet. If even half the people nominated for awards are there, I will get to see (and maybe awkwardly talk to!) some actual famous people!!
I'm planning on losing about 10,000 stone, spending a lot on a dress and shoes, and coming up with some sort of non-lame way of getting photos with all the famous people I can. The best thing I have thought of so far is to get myspace photos with them all? It works well on youtube folk, but actual famous actor people are probably going to be like 'ewww who are you? Get me more champagne!'

I tried to send Stephen Fry a message on twitter but I don't know if he'll read it/notice it in the zillions of messages he surely gets all the time. But if he did, and is now reading this, then hi!
If not, then I will look super weird when I dorkily try to talk to him at the actual ceremony.

I'm going as part of the group of people for 'Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie', the documentary about the Zombie film (which I AM still working on, if intermittently). Supposedly, I would get to actually have my own award to keep!! (hopefully not made out of chocolate). I will be able to do the one thing I've always dreamt of when watching the Baftas: put it on my face as if it were a real mask. Seriously, why does noone do that?! Assuming we win, ofcourse, which I'm trying to not get my hopes up about due to it being up against some channel 4 sex thing and the olympics. Whatever happens, I'm hoping to sneak a retarded looking photograph with a Bafta over my face, because, short of literally breaking into a famous persons house and stealing their bafta, I'm never going to get the chance to do it again.

Back from Amsterdam!

2009-03-29T22:28:00.003+01:00

I may be some time getting back up to speed with the internets. I will post about my trip as soon as Calli uploads the photos!

dailybooth

2009-03-24T02:55:00.002Z

So I made a dailybooth account, imaginatively with the username 'Paperlilies'. I need a new online handle, so bored of this one.

Incidentally, Dailybooth reminds me of the character in 'Bones', Seely Booth (seelybooth!!!!!), who my brother and I find vaguely hilarious. Seelybooth got chubs man.

iphone cover

2009-03-23T18:04:00.001Z

I made this ridiculous cover for my iphone check it out:

Rose D'or Nomination!

2009-03-18T15:20:00.003Z

Woo! Pete Curran, who was one of the directors on the Zombie film 'World Wide Dead' (which is still unfinished and I agree, I do suck!) emailed me to say that the BBC3 documentary has been nominated for a 'Rose D'or' award! I've looked at the website and it's true!! I have no idea what that means, or if I get to go there (as it's technically not MY documentary, it was made by Hat Trick, the production company), or who might win or any of it, but it's very exciting nonetheless! I hope I do get to go somehow, as it's in Lucerne, Switzerland! I've never been to Swizerland, and I would love to go one day. And obviously, see actual famous people maybe! If there's a way people can vote on it, I'll totally reblog and beg for votes :P

I want stickersssss!

2009-03-17T02:29:00.002Z

Ok so you mayyyy remember I blogged a while back about really wanting some coolio pens that you can write on glass with, and how if someone sent me some, I would totally write them back and send them cool stuff too? (workingo n the sending back part as we speak, I live further away from the post office than I used to!) Welllllllllllllllllllllllll, I got sent about 5 packs of the pens!! So thankyou to everyone who sent me some!! I have either written back already or have written back and it's still sitting in my 'stuff to post' bag, but something is definitely coming your way soon!

So anyway, I wanted to switch up my request line a bit, and so I thought we could have the (first?) international STICKER AND GLITTER EXCHANGE!!!!! The way this works is you send me cool stickers and glitter and rhinestones and whathave you, and I send something back of a similar sort! Or I can send you candy if you prefer, depending on your preferences. Lord knows I'm basically addicted to shiny things, and I looove stickers, I have a huge box of them! So what dost thou say? Sticker exchange? Lets do it you guys! PO box address in the side!

cakes!

2009-03-13T13:11:00.003Z

So my internet was being a total beyotch yesterday and I didn't upload a video!!! I know i know, I suck. However, I did make cupcakes so that evens out right? Or are those things not even remotely comparable?

They look way better in person.

I have a ton of stuff to send people so I really have to get that done today! I've been distracted by lots of things lately but today is the day!!

2009-03-12T20:30:00.001Z

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

cake!

2009-03-07T23:15:00.004Z

I made this chocolate cake for my boyfriend's birthday! I ate loads of the icing as I was making it, I feel soooo sick. But the cake tastes great!!

help me go on the interwebs!

2009-03-06T00:22:00.003Z

Ok I need your help. I have serious internet issuez right now. Basically my house has internet, but the router thing is broken and therefore the wireless doesn't work, and I can't access the internet via my computer. I COULD get a wire but that will be messy and untidy and I'd rather not have something so 1.0 as a wire in this day and age.
I've been shopping around for a new thing but I basically have no idea what I need. Do I need a wireless router or a wireless modem router? If I get one will it work?? I seriously don't understand what we need. It's so baffling and annoying.

so, yeah, I need to know what kind of thing I need (router or modem router) and what brand is best. I don't want to spend shit loads but at the same time I want something which is definitely not going to fuck up. I like Netgear for example because they look nice and I am a girl and a mac user which is why how it looks is important to me. that's another factor- a PC is the computer which will be connected via a wire, whereas the wireless ones will be macs.

As for what we have right now, I can't remember (it's late and my housemate is asleep in the room with the router thing in it right now), but the other day my boyfriend brought round his aunt's netgear one which we swapped with the current one and that worked though it had a password set on it which we didn't know so couldn't use it properly, but it did show that it was connected to the internet and I could pick it up via my computer in the next room.

so please help me!!! I am confused and really need an internet expert to help me out. Calli told me about some amazing sounding thing where you can hack your router so that it goes at a higher speed but it seems really fucking complicated and as this blog probably shows, I am not about to be able to do that without losing all my hair and crying myself to sleep.

So the criteria are: new wireless router, does it need to also be a modem?, looks nice, is a decent price (less than £60), as fast as possible, works for mac and PC, is piss easy to install and won't fuck up ever. either comment or email me (its at the side somewhere). I'll be super grateful!! Once this is sorted I will probably take this post down so I don't have 500 people telling me how to do this!! Thankyou internets!! I know you are gonna help me out and I am thankful already!

westfield

2009-03-05T01:53:00.003Z

I went to the Westfield Center in Shepherds Bush today! It's a big new shopping center which opened just as the 'crunch' hit. It's full of awesome stores ranging from generic mall types like Topshop through to homewares things like Habitat, to super highend like the first (stand alone) miu miu shop in the uk! I didn't look in there because I didn't want to be sad at not having any money or being one of those rich girls from the UAE. My mum and I mooched around it all day, we had salad at a place called 'Tossed' which was delicious but was marred by the eyestabbingly obvious lametard shit written on the back of all the workers shirts, like 'Watch me toss' and 'I'm a tosser'. Ugh. But yeah, delicious and healthy!
I bought some bowls in marks and sparks, a book of cake recipes that was on sale and some cake cup things from Habitat. I've been on the look out for some good boxes for the bathroom but didn't find any. I do indeed live the most exciting life!
Then on the way back we stopped at selfridges to pick up my miu miu wallet which I'd taken back there to be repaired. I scored a free dustbag! I love miu miu, why must they be so expensive? :'( Then I came home and was all boohooey cause I was tired and grumpy.

ahhhh

2009-03-04T19:18:00.005Z

So, some massive cheque that I wrote ages ago and forgot about got cashed the other day and made me go overdrawn and Barclays fucking charged me £22 for the priveledge. FUCK YOU ASSHOLES I am so pissed off!!!!! And I can't even get the internet to FUCKING WORK TODAY because my housemates' router fucking is BROKEN so I have to steal it from some neighbour which means it is totally unuseable. Seriously they invented the term 'spitting feathers' for how I feel right now. My housemate keeps saying she's gonna call the router makers but has she?! NO! and my boyfriend has said he'll bring his one over so we can try it out, but has he? NO! And he's not answering his phone! And my housemate wants to eat dinner and I am so not hungry right now. I want to drink a box of wine and smoke a 10 pack and cough my angries away. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

OH AND ALSO! My room is so fucking freezing!! !A builder said that the wall isn't fucked up but seriously, it's not NORMAL for a room to refridgerate and grow mould on the wall is it? No, it's not. It means the room has damp. Which is fucked up. I seriously do not need this shit right now.

AND! We need dishwasher salt but we don't fucking have any! and the shop is 102291 miles away and it's fucking raining outside.

FML.

Edit: I have calmed down now and feel much less stressed. My wonderful boyfriend came over despite having had a tooth out the other day and being in pain and we tried out a different router which didn't work but did show that it's the current router's fault that it's not working at the moment. He also brought me two huge bars of chocolate and is awesome. Also I love my housemate and we had a great dinner (turkey with goats cheese, pear and spinach and pine nut dressing!)

new video suckerrrrz

2009-02-26T00:58:00.002Z

So I juuuust made a new video over on the Tubes of you, and I kind of forgot about how intense and fast it is when I post a video and there are all of a sudden comments coming in and 'FIRST!'s all over the place. I forgot! How crazy is that? I kind of enjoyed making this video, though it's pretty much 2 weeks late to catch any Octomom fame-runoff, which is what it was inspired by, atleast. It's so awesome when the first people who comment are positive about things! I think I let the assholes get to me maybe.
Anyway there it is, a video I made. Yup.

rambling

2009-02-24T02:04:00.003Z

So I've been struggling to find some sort of direction in my life- I don't have any firm goals- I fell out of love with graphic design which was a goal from about 2000, 9 long years ago, and now I'm left with much the same feeling of not wanting to pin myself down to anything too specific. I filmed a video today!! I am going to try to edit it tomorrow. Also tomorrow: shopping delivery! Food shopping. When did meat suddenly become so expensive?? And vegetables! £1.20 for a cucumber? what the hell? I'm making a vegetable patch again this year! Actually, two vegetable patches. My boyfriend is jealous that I'm making one in my own garden this year as he thinks my heart won't be in the one at his house enough. It will though! I can't wait- it's really exciting! It sounds boring but when you grow something from a seed like that it really is uplifting and amazing. The miracle of life!
When I was little I had a book about animals that undergo a metamorphosis, like frogs coming from frogspawn and butterflies from caterpillars. It was really cool, but I was so disappointed when I rediscovered it years later to find it was all about how this miracle is because god invented it and it's all his plan. how did that even get onto my bookshelf?! I think it's far more romantic for something to just be, without some creator of it all. Like the stars and the grains of sand and infinity, it's all so much more magnificent to just accept it and not understand it at the same time. But then again I'm sure that religious people would say the same. Sand comes from rocks bashing against each other for millions of years. Brighton's stony beach might one day be soft sand.
The dehumidifier in my room filled up with water!! I emptied it out- there was about 2 or 3 liters of water in it! I miss studying science- I love the idea of molecules being more densely packed until they take on a different form- air into liquid, liquid into solid. You could compress air into a solid if you compacted it enough! It's so interesting and beautiful. that's another thing that you could explain away with religious things I guess. It's the same sense of wonderment I think. Imagine how exciting it must have been to have been around in the Victorian industrial era- all these new things being invented and discovered! I always like imagining going back in time and showing people really bright things or very modern things like iphones and plastic and flourescent paper. It was just coming into the time when you wouldn't be killed for having such radical thoughts, though being female would likely have meant noone would give me the time of day. Did you know Marie Curie invented xrays? and her husband was given all the credit for it at first because they didnt believe a woman could have thought of it. she got the nobel prize in the end though! and then died of radiation poisoning :(

zzz sorry for the rambling!

Star Trek TV Connexionz internet mega search conundrum

2009-02-20T02:00:00.006Z

You know when you watch a TV show or a film and there's an actor who you KNOW you recognise, but you can just not work out where from, and it sticks in your brain like something in your teeth and bugs you and bugs you til you eventually can't go on any longer and take your own life?
Welllll today I was watching Startrek The Next Generation, and there was this guy on it who I knew I knew from something from modern times. The storyline was all about Deanna Troi being betrothed to some guy she'd never met, even though he had fantasies about some other woman he'd never seen in real life before and she really had feelings for Riker (who doesn't!) and he was all butthurt about it but it worked out cause they didn't get married in the end anyway. It was kind of a dumb episode. BUT! That guy was from somewhere else, BUT WHERE?! It bugged me all episode, thinking it would pop into my brain eventually, but no.
this is the guy (on the right for anyone who is LAME and doesn't know who Picard is (snort!)):

Before reaching for the pills, I decided to detective it out.

I missed the start of the episode (on sky) so I couldn't rewind it to see the credits at the beginning, and there was no name on the end of the episode to IMDB, so I searched all over the internets trying to find a TV listings page that allowed you to look at what WAS on, rather than what will be on in the future. I finally found the episode listing, which luckily actually showed the title of the episode but no actor details beyond the main characters. I then looked up 'startrek episode guide' and found this insanely detailed (official?) site all about it. And of course they had the episode details. I found the guy, searched for the actors name aaaaaand........
(scroooooll down incase you also are racking your brains and want to prolong your agony of not knowing who this dashing fellow is!)

ITS THE BAD GUY OUT OF PRISON BREAK!

I literally said 'yessssssss!' and punched the air when I saw who it was! Purely because I finally had the meaty chunk of 'who aare you?!' out of my brain-teeth at last. Also because I am a dweeb. I shall now be able to answer in some obscure future pubquiz that the guy out of Prison Break is called Robert Knepper and starred in an episode of the first ever season of Star Trek The Next Generation.
You probably soooo don't care but this was actually pretty exciting for me.

Primark

2009-02-17T01:34:00.002Z

Today I went to Primark and I bought:

Duvet cover
Pillowcases
bottom sheet thing for my mattress
7 pack of socks
amazing granny pants
assorted underwears
tights
a small pink bag
a large blue shiny bag
'guest towels'
those weird tights fabric sock things that are for flats?
gel shoe cushions
two tshirts
pyjama bottoms
pearl hairband
bow hairband

I think that's it. It all came to about £50. I realised why Primark is so awesome- it's because it's like being mega rich- it's all so dirt cheap that you dont even look at the price of things. It must be how it is for Paris Hilton when she goes round Harrods or something. 'I'll take one in every colour!'

The London flagship store is fucking insane though. Fucking insane.

I never made it to the camera photo thingy as me and my friend Dan couldn't find Scotland Yard! We gave up and went and ate a full english at a greasy spoon, then found it on our way back to the station, before spending money all about town. I also partook in the Clinique bonus time thing! I love getting a set of tiny sized products by spending huge amounts on various crap I don't really need.

don'watchme

2009-02-16T09:40:00.004Z

Today I was woken up my my housemate accidentally bag-ringing me, ie, her phone accidentally called me while it was in her bag. I yelled out to her/her bag's contents to see if she'd hear me, but alas, she did not. So I'm awake fairly early, though last night I fell asleep at the pretty respectable time of 1 am (after watching Fringe- sooo awesome! Like a 00's version of the Xfiles).

SO. I had planned on doing a few things in central london today, and as I'm awake in time, was thinking about going to this protest type thing outside Scotland Yard, which, for those who don't know, is the Police Headquarters (wouldn't it sound so much better if it was called London Police Headquarters?). The reason for it is because from today, it will be a criminal offence to take photographs of police personel. I don't entirely understand how they can justify this, it's so clearly Orwellian and insane. I guess maybe they're doing it so when scumkids are beating people up and then the police try to stop them, and the kids film them and put it on youtube, they have some way to stop them from doing that?? Despite, you know, it shouldn't matter if they ARE filming them, unless the police are doing something they shouldn't be). I don't know- I think they SHOULD be being filmed, ALL THE TIME, seeing as we public are being filmed constantly. London has something like the most CCTV cameras per capita in the world.
On the one hand, sure, it is nice to think that evil crimz will be stopped and caught and crime will be less because of heightened security, and a massive DNA database, and information on all the citizens in the country to trawl through, but at the same time, it's fucking scary- I've been captured on CCTV countless thousands of times during my life, I've never committed a crime, but all sorts of information is available to the government and/or the police should they wish to look it up. I and every other private citizen in the country is on the same level to the popo- we are potential criminals.
CCTV doesn't make me feel safe, nor do the police. Nor does the never-open police station where I live. Nor do notices everywhere 'for my safety' make me feel like I won't be mugged or raped or killed for some arbitrary reason. Nor do the other signs warning me not to take photos of CCTV cameras, or to report people who do. The looming spectre of 'terrorism' is what allows them to push these things onto us, because, after all, it's 'for our safety'.
Excuse the cliche, but surely, if our civil liberties are being eroded to this extent, haven't the terrorists already won? /cheese.
So anyway, for me, it boils down to not wanting to feel like either a criminal or a potential victim of crime. I want to go to this thing because I figure I might as well be on the police database for something cool rather than something boring like I faredodged a bunch of times on the trains in the past and didn't pay my TV license once.

ANNNDDD on top of that I want to go shopping maybe. yup.

reebok classic in mouth

2009-02-14T16:43:00.003Z

So I wrote a ranty blog post about those creepy baby-having children, but I backdated it because it was pretty judgy and not thought out and too tied up in my emotions and preconceptions and blah blah. I figured it wasn't really worthy of this 'amazing' blog of mine so I removed it from the front page. If you still want to read it go here.

Top Ten Baby!

2009-02-11T00:34:00.003Z

So a little while ago I blogged about the Belle and Sebastian competition which I'd entered an album cover into, and thanks to all your votes, I got into the top 10! I didn't win, so they aren't going to use my thing as the actual cover, but I DO win the back catalogue of B&S Cds, which is awesome because I don't have them already.
The B&S site seems kind of badly kept up to date, but it says all this on the Matador website and they emailed me too about it. I am going to the post office tomorrow* to see if it's there! Yayy!

THANKYOU ALLS :)

*actually my housemate works right by the post office and offered to pick it up for me because the stupid place closes before I manage to get up and go there of a morning.

Awesome video

2009-01-30T18:21:00.000Z

This is SO GOOD! <3

Big Brother Audition 2008: a retrospective

2009-01-30T03:41:00.003Z

I was just reading AmazingPhil's blog post where he mentioned in passing auditioning for Big Brother, and it reminded me! I haven't blogged or posted a video about my experience of auditioning last year! And so, I shall now.

For those unfamiliar with Big Brother, it's a yearly TV event, in which a bunch of strangers are put in a fancy house full of cameras for a few months and broadcast all the time to the nation. I don't know how well it really did in other countries but in the UK it is HUGE.

Well. I usually watch the show, and last year, someone emailed me from the production team and said that they wanted me to come to the second round of auditions! It was with no pushing from my end- I had no idea the auditions were even happening (it was around about this time last year). So I went down to the Emirates Arsenal Stadium (*puke*) on a rainy afternoon in my shoddy work clothes (jeans and a tshirt or something equally unexciting).

The Emirates stadium is HUGE and rather wonderful really, despite being for such an evil football team. After walking around it's eerily empty surroundings, I found the entrance (which was right next to the place I had originally walked up to but subsequently went the entire opposite way round the massive oval building before finding the door which was inconspicuously marked with an A4 piece of paper), and I went in. I told the friendly bouncer security guy that I was asked to come here, rather than having auditioned the previous day and gotten through (I felt pretty smug, obviously), I was on a different list! and I was ushered up an escalator to a canteen type of area full of people milling around, some with earpieces and clipboards who clearly worked for the company that makes the show.

The people were exciting to me, as I wanted most to see or meet someone who would finally be on the actual show (up to this point, I'd not really entertained the idea of being on the show myself, and was only going to see what happened). The people I saw were so precisely the kind of people you expect to be on Big Brother. There were the overly made up women with high heels (it was mid afternoon on a soggy Tuesday if I recall). There were the 'beautiful people'- men and women who you suspect of belonging to modelling agencies (and who later turned out to actually belong to them)- all fake tan and muscles. There were fake boobs galore! Fake hair, fake nails.. There were lots of supergay guys- squeaky annoying highpitched ones were the most noticeable, guys with makeup, quite a few fashion gays, wearing 'their own creations' (one assumes) that made no sense and looked pretty awful (a skirt made from a ragged black piece of fabric held together with buttons and safety pins is one thing I recall, a long haired fake fur jacket was another).
The producer/researcher people (it seems that anyone employed by a TV company in a random role is called a researcher?) were all marked by their tired, uninspired faces- they looked SO bored, and I felt quite sorry for them. It must be so tiring. I used to work summers enrolling students into a college, many of them non-english speaking- it was very exhausting, and I can imagine tending to so many wannabe divas must be even more so.

I joined a queue at a table where stickers with numbers were being given to people, was given my sticker and a massive form to fill out, then sent to fill out my form. I think there were about 3 forms in all that I filled out, full of all sorts of questions, many of them kind of too personal, I felt. Things like 'what age did you lose your virginity' and 'how many sexual partners have you had', amongst things like 'name your three favourite kinds of food!!', 'whats your favourite colour?!'.

I was sitting at a table filling out my form, and people had no real idea how much we were supposed to be talking to one another- whispered conversations were had between people- some people had been going off to other rooms, escorted by researchers, and we wondered where it was and what happened- some of them came back, but none were at my table and so we didn't know. I unfortunately don't remember the exact people at my table- I did write/record my account of this day after it happened, which would be in much more detail, but I don't know what happened to it, and I was under contract to not talk about what happened at the audition for the few months after it happened. It was really only Phil's post which made me remember it again.

At one point in all this, I realised how, compared to the huge effort that all the other people there had clearly made, I, in my jeans and tshirt and vans or whatever it was I had on (ie, little to no effort made) looked so out of place. The feeling of inadequacy that I felt in school seeped back into me, and I felt like I oughtn't to be there. It was compounded by a male model type (who was an actual male model, it turned out) looking me up and down before not allowing me to move up in the chair queue we were sitting in. He then struck up conversation with a beautiful asian woman (who he did allow to sit next to him). Suddenly I was hit with the strangest image in my mind, that of all the other people there in all their hair and tan and makeup and high heels being turds encrusted with jewels, whereas I, whilst looking like a turd, was actually a chrysalis, that was a butterfly inside. It sounds soooooo cheesy I know, but I had this image in my head right then. I felt amazing all of a sudden, like 'Fuck you, you beautiful asshole!! I'm AMAZING!'. And for that alone, the experience was worth it. I felt like I was pretty special, being ASKED to be there, compared to all these rubes who'd actively tried.

Anyway, one person I DO recall was a nice lady who I sat next to at one moment in the day, and struck up a conversation with (we were in that room for hours upon hours). She, like me, had been invited to participate in the second round of auditions, which was the only reason we were there. the reason she'd been picked was because she'd been in a lot of tabloid papers due to being both a town councillor and a strip-o-gram! She was a really nice person, and it was interesting to talk to her.

At some point, I eventually got called to go to another room. I was taken upstairs to one of a series of rooms that was decorated with thick black curtains. A camera pointed at me as I walked in, I sat in a plastic chair infront of it, and then a mysterious voice talked to me. It was a producer in a chair behind the curtain who I'd seen enter the room moments before. They asked me a lot of questions related to the ones in the questionnaire, some of which made me uncomfortable. There were a few which were clearly asked in such a way as to try to antagonise me, like 'why do you make videos on the internet?? are you trying to get famous?' which on the face of it doesn't sound that bad, but it was worse the way they asked it.

After the 3 or 5 minutes, I left the room and went back downstairs. I was greeted by some sort of head producer who took me aside and said 'congratulations Bryony, you've got through to the next round of auditions!' (side note!! A trick beloved by car salesmen and their ilk is to use your first name to make you feel more familiar and trusting, but because my name is so hard (apparently) for most people to pronounce after only reading it, it makes me SO suspicious, and kind of freaks me out a little bit). I said how I didn't see that I should really be congratulated, as I had done nothing but be myself, which wasn't exactly a stretch. He disagreed and said it was more than that but didn't digress further.

Anyway, the day was over, and after about 6 hours or something stupid (I was told it would take no more than about 1hr 45 mins or so) I went home, feeling pretty weird.

I think it was the following day that the next audition was, which I now felt obliged to go to. It was at the same place (I went the right way around the stadium this time), and I turned up and again had to wait ages after my allotted time was up. I didn't mind all that much though. My friend from the day before wasn't there, and this time I kept mostly to myself. The main crux of the day was a group interview/chat thing. After a few hours of milling around in the same cafeteria type place, I was called into a large room where seats were arranged in a circle, with about 6 or so people sitting in them. At one end of the circle there were two producers (one of them was the 'congratulations' guy from the day before) lounging at a table taking notes and feeding conversation topics to the group.

So we sat there and talked about all sorts of stuff. Most of the people talked at one point or another. People were called away at various points and other people came and went. By the time I left the group had swelled to over 20 people, and we were running out of chairs. A few people who remain in my memory are a woman who used to be a policewoman, another male model, a woman who I really thought was a transvestite but wasn't, and who had a tattoo going from the front of her crotch to her bum, which was of a star, and she said it was 'a twinkle on my twinkle!'. She was, incidentally, the only person who I ever saw on the show, in the very first episode in which they flashed through a bunch of audition footage, and she flashed her boobs to the camera (thats how I know they're fake!). Also there was a 'psychic' guy, I think there was a goth girl of some kind, there was a cool black guy.... I cant remember any more.

Eventually I was called away, and I can't totally recall if I was taken to another black curtain interview or just was taken to the side and told I'd gotten through again. Either way, I had gotten through, and was told Id be contacted in the next few months if I'd got through even further.

After the whole audition process, I really had a kind of crisis- I felt like if I got in, I'd HAVE to go in and be on the show. All my friends (of course I told everyone about it despite being told to not talk about it) wanted me to go on it because they'd have fun watching me in there (and I would have loved it if I'd been them and they me). But I knew I didn't want to go on there- the feeling I got from the audition of being sized up and watched really creeped me out. I went over and over my answers to the tricky questions that came up in my interview, thinking how weird and awkward it would be to have so much of my life out of my control in terms of how I'd be edited and the things that would come out about me. The thought of being an ex-big brother housemate was pretty disgusting to me. Eventually, after lots of thinking it over, I emailed the people at Endemol and told them I wasn't interested and didn't want to be further considered as a potential housemate. Once I did, I felt an immense weight had lifted off me.

And so, I'll never know if I was 'good enough' to be in the big brother house. I'm glad I don't know, though I guess the sadist in me would like to know if I'd been considered down to the last howevermany, and yet I'd turned THEM down. But it's just as well I don't I suppose.

the end!

Are you serious, America?

2009-01-20T16:54:00.002Z

Ok, let me first say that i do have something of an aversion to sweet food and savoury food being eaten together, even having them on the same plate kind of squicks me out- american breakfasts of bacon and eggs with some sweet pancakes and syrup on the same plate are super gross to me. Having them one after the other is fine, but at the same time/on the same plate is just wrong to me.
So that said, you can imagine how grossed out I am by the following video:

I don't want to offend you, American readers, but WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!??!!? Does this not seem like the wrongest thing in the world to you?? DONUTS AS THE BUN FOR A BURGER??? WHAT?!??!!?!!? WHAT?!??! THIS IS THE WRONGEST THING IN THE UNIVERSE! And not even a donut cut in half and used either side of the burger, but TWO donuts used one either side of the massive burger. Why not spread some syrup on there? Sprinkle some pure calorie sprinkles on it? get liposuction, save the fat, then inject it straight into the donut itself?

I am not going to be able to eat a burger or a donut again for a LONG time.

Slumdog Millionaire: not upbeat.

2009-01-20T03:11:00.005Z

I just watched Slumdog Millionaire and I HATED IT.

I know this will be unpopular because it's all oscar nominated and everything but seriously? So depressing. The people I went to see it with (who loved it) were saying how uplifting it was, and I basically think that this film was about as 'uplifting' as Schindlers List, in that it was insanely depressing and bleak the entire way through til the very end when a couple of people get saved from the horror of everyone elses lives. Oh man. Just.... I'm not into depressing/deep things I guess. I like bright happy fluffy things, which I know is probably shallow of me, but I'm too prone to depressing myself that I don't need to watch films which are horribly sad the entire way through.

If you are planning to watch this film (ie, are a sado masochist), watch out for the SPOLIERS BELOW!

this film contains: Child abuse, the intentional blinding of a street kid so he can make more money for his owner guy, parents getting senselessly killed, prostitution of an underaged girl, implied rape, abusive relationships, a brother who is an out and out ARSEHOLE, torture, police interrogation, massive poverty, a girl having her face cut and subsequently being scarred, death everywhere, a gormless protagonist, corruption... I think that's everything.

The plot centers around the main guy's life in the slums where he grows up with his brother (the aforementioned arsehole) after their mother is killed by random people for no reason, following them being taken into an orphanage/thief/begging gang where a kid who can sing well gets acid or something put in his eyes so he can make more money begging, til they escape and then spend the rest of their generally depressing and shitty lives going round the slums. There's a girl he falls in love with at the orphanage who gets generally whored out, blah blah... Anyway, he ends up somehow being on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, where he gets all the answers right due to them being in some way connected to his various depressing life events (which is all in flashback). Even that isn't in any way upbeat or happy, the host of the show feeding him the wrong answer to the final question (which for some reason he doesn't choose), then shopping him to the police for assumed cheating. That's where all the flashbacks happen, during being tortured (simulated drowning! Electro torture!) by the douchebag policemen.
The one TINY single piece of happiness in the whole fucking film is that he manages to win the show and find his one true love (now with a big scar on her face of course, after her asshole bro and his boss got angry with her for trying to run away). They meet up, he's won the show, it's all gravy for them, AND NOONE ELSE! after his brother inexplicably killed himself/initiated a shootout in a bath of money in some sort of attempt to redeem himself for his selfish ways throughout the film and everyone else who we've seen in the film being killed, maimed or assumed dead. Noone gets any kind of comeuppance (although a few of the bad people do get shot I guess, but none go back to the poverty that the main characters are borne from).

In any case, regardless of my personal distaste for uberdepressing films in general, the film itself has such ludicrous coincidences. How come all the questions in the film were in the same order as the things which gave him the answers occured in his life?

In conclusion, I fucking hated pretty much every minute of this film (aside from the random credits' bollywood dance sequence), and will never again watch a Danny Boyle film. Further more, I would like to say to Mr Boyle should he be reading this, that I personally feel a vengeance toward him.

NB!
I just watched the trailer again and it reminded me of another thing I hated about the film: The music!! I HATE M.I.A! Seriously can not stand that voice. She seems like a cool person and stuff but her voice is like fingernails downa blackboard. I am so tempted to make my own version of a M.I.A. song.
And the trailer uses 'hoppipola' by Sigur Ros?? HOW ORIGINAL.

AAHHH I HATE THIS FILM SO MUCH!!! It pisses me off so fucking much that any film that deals with someone coming out of a poor background (especially by fucking Danny Boyle) inbues this kind of ethereal worthiness in them from the get go. This idea that because someone is from a shitty place, the fact that they are a good person is somehow a fucking miracle. It's... racist? Classist? I don't know exactly, but it upsets me on a fundamental level. It seems to imply (to me, and I'm reading into this here) a sort of old world art/patron sense of 'oh look! A poor person who's not a thief or an idiot!! What a funny anomaly! How quaint!'. It's like old paintings of 'The haywain' or whatever, with rich people making/buying art which was of peasants feeding geese or whatever other poor-people things they did. Not helping the situation, but just looking at it like just another amusement.

Vote for meeeeee

2009-01-17T01:59:00.005Z

Hey I made three designs for the new Belle and Sebastian album's art competition!! PLEASE please click on this link and scroll way down the page and click the little star saying 'I like this one!' which (I assume) votes the designs up in some way? Of course, if you don't like them, vote for one of the other designs :P. The winner gets their cover on a special edition of the album! I think it is eventually just the record company's decision, the site is a little vague...

You don't have to log in or anything, it's suuuper simple and I will love you all forevers!

these are my designs:

poladroid

2009-01-09T17:19:00.003Z

There's this free programme called PolaDroid which you drop your regular digital photos into and it transforms them cutely to look like polaroids (RIP). I did a couple and it really does look cute! Not really very practical for anything, but nice nonetheless.

This is me right now:

Get Digital

2009-01-09T13:23:00.003Z

I subscribe to a blog called RedThreat, which has a bunch of free music to download, mostly dance disco house electro whatever (I have no idea about music terminology). There's this ONE track which I think even people who don't like that sort of music might like- it's called 'Get Digital', by some hipstery duo from Brooklyn called Purple Crush. (download/listen here) I'm blogging about it because it's littered with internet terminology, though it makes little sense. there's a whole bit that goes like "I got my hotmail, gmail, hit me on my email, yousendit, zshare, cracked copy, freeware" anyway... I think like, Calli will appreciate it and everyone else will be like 'ew I hate that sort of music ew'. I DON'T CARE! I LOVE IT! I'M LISTENING TO IT ON REPEAT RIGHT NOW AS I WRITE THIS!

I moved out!

2009-01-06T14:53:00.003Z

So Im in my new house!
Though there are a bunch of things that combined have made me kind of sadgrumpy. Council tax is like... £100 a month or something! Which, combined with other bills, means my rent is basically double what I thought it was. fuucckkk. Also my room is insane, maybe posessed by ghosts? because it's colder than a witches tit. By which I mean, it feels like it's being actively cooled, like a freezer. Luckily my housemate's parents brought over an awesome heater which made the room deliciously toasty for me last night and enabled me to have a great night's sleep.
The other issue is the internet!!! We have a wireless router but the wireless doesn't want to work, so right now I am sitting in my housemate's room with my laptop plugged into the super short ethernet wire. I think the box is fucked maybe? Anyway, it sucks ballz because one of my greatest pleasures in life is to lay in bed and read my google reader (hundreds of glooorious posts to read nom nom), which is nigh on impossible unless the random non-passworded internet connection from upstairs or next door or somewhere wants to work for me (it never does :()
So yeah, mega annoying. Having said all that, I feel good to be in a new place- I feel like I can be myself a little more in a way. I haven't gotten all my art things here yet (I have about 3 pens and my sketchbook!) but once I do, I can work on drawing allll day long! :) My (vague) plan is to concentrate on building up a great and comprehensive illustration portfolio and try to get into an agency of some sort. I have a few design things to do too, but mostly for personal projects.
I'm very easily drawn into negative emotions- all the above has really gotten me down lately, especially with the FREEZING weather, and my boyfriend being gone for weeks and weeks, I've intermittently felt very low at times. Its important to try to avoid that though, as it's very cyclical and spiralling down is too easy, so I have to try to keep upbeat!
Anyways. In a little while our shopping is going to come and I tidied the cupboards up to make space for everything, so I can put it all away. Then I'm going to go swimming!! I can't WAIT. I love to swim, and haven't been for years! I finally live near enough to a swimming pool that it's a viable option to just pop over there. I probably don't even fit into my swimming costume anymore! I'm looking foward to it, but not to the journey home, due to the cold- I HATE the feeling of water in your ears when you are outside in the cold- it feels likr being attacked by needles into your brain!