Laziness

A quick introduction before I start the main post. Yes, I forgot to post last week and I'm sorry. Two hours of French fits badly with having to write afterwards. Also, this post is a tad lazy as it's a speech I'm forced to write for English. The topic's Things I would put in Room 101. Enjoy, see you in a fortnight.

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"Above all, I wouldn't hesitate to put paranormal romance novels in Room 101. There are very few things I hate more.

Do I really care about some unconnected, 2D characters fall in love with a pale, muscle-y bloke who reinforces a bad image of masculinity? I wouldn't mind if I didn't have to wade through a pathetic slush pile to get to any kind of quality.

It's getting too popular for its own good. Some nearly-author sends off their paranormal romance manuscript and of course it's going to get published. An agent receives a half-legible story and they just know they'll be bathing in money by the end of the week.

Paranormal romance falls, sadly, under the umbrella of sci-fi/fantasy. I search for fantasy novels and young adult romance novels always come up. I see a book about the Devil. Brilliant! Always wanted to know to what Lucifer gets up to on a day-to-day basis. Yet no. It's a bleeding love story. I don't care about his love life, I care about his general evilness. He is Devil, after all.
One thing that gets me, though, is the readers of it. The fangirls, and I can assure you that 90% of them shall be female, are possibly the second most abhorrent type of fangirl. They shall squeal and scream, metaphorically, at every twist of the book. Boring, lifeless character A snogs boring, lifeless character B. Big deal!

It's not how they read, and subsequently share on the internet, the books. It's how they buy them. Fellow sf/f fans shall agree that being an sf/f fan is like being in Fight Club. You don't talk about it. The idea is you walk into the bookshop, hunched over and silent. You paw through a few books, although it's more likely you'll know what you're looking for, find one that looks nice and buy it, then go home. I find para-romance readers go to the section with an entourage of friends. They giggle loudly as they talk about dud pararomance book number eight and how it's just come out, smugly hinting to the world they've read the whole series. Congratulations, you can read!

Once they've finally bought it, after half an hour of talking about who has decided to play hard to get more or which character had his shirt off the most in the last book, their pompousness doesn't stop. They decide to continue to talk about every minor detail to all their friends as they walk out of the store. Who is going to sleep with who, how great it would be as a movie (tip: it wouldn't) and how many more books they can buy. Must I refer back to my Fight Club analogy? You can talk about the book in a highly detailed and legible review, and that's it. Discussing out of the house, and out of sci-fi conventions, is a major no-no.

So, as a message to every reader of Meyer, Clare and whoever else you care to name. Think about what you're about to read, think really hard. And then go read something better."

Personal Injury Claims

This morning, I discovered that I would be allowed to go on a school trip. Nothing much interesting in itself, although it's actually intended for students about a year older than me. A main concern was that because all the health and safety forms had been filled in for "older" students, the insurance wouldn't cover GCSE-age ones. And there's my buzzword. Health and Safety.
 
After the recent cold snap, half my school was cornered off with "exposed electrical wire" tape (well, it was bright yellow...), so nobody would slip on the ice. This meant that anyone who would have normally gone around there was forced to go through the corridors. And trying to get over one thousand students through the tiniest piece of corridor in a five minute time frame... let's just say it isn't pretty. Here's a better idea: Salt the heck out of the "dangerous" areas, instead of throwing kids in isolation set them to digging up the ice, and get the whole thing clear within a day or so. However, you should never apply logic when it comes to my school.
 
Years ago, many, many years ago, I was wearing Heeleys (wheels in heels, heels with wheels). Being about nine years old, I was wheeling along, clinging onto my mother's arm when we got stopped by a bloke. Apparently, I wasn't allowed to wheel along because of "health and safety reasons". Of course, my mother ignored him and we carried on as normal.
 
My mother then recently was involved in a minor car accident. And by minor I mean minor - her car was shunted from behind hard enough to leave a scuff. The offending car's owner immediately ran out of his car, scared to death of having a personal injury claim placed against him.
Why? She didn't have whiplash, why should she claim on it?
 
Adverts all the time say that we should claim on the broken arm we recieved last week and so on. Sure, you may get a payout now for the whiplash you don't really suffer from, but it'll only cause a letter to come through your door announcing a rise in car insurance. Risk assessments and "health and safety reasons" are becoming more about eliminating risks than managing it. If this continues on in this fashion, it may become harder for students to cheekily go on trips that are offered to older years. But then, do I really care about younger years?

Help

Last week, I decided to try 3D art. I do lots and lots of 2D traditional work, but none of 3D. After multiple failed attempts at mini wire people, I thought about trying clay models. However, then is a moment when you realise how much you know about other medians in comparison to clay. So, to be lovely and helpful to people wanting to start out in 2D media, I'm going to write a little help guide that shall hopefully be picked up on google.
 
Basic Drawing
Drawing with pencils is something everybody does. First off, I'll recommend looking at Andrew Loomis books (found here: http://alexhays.com/loomis/). Second, basic printer paper and your average HB pencil will do fine for the most part. If you want something more, there are different pencils and papers and such.
Paper. On the front of sketchpad there'll be the gsm/cm number. If you're thinking of bog-standard drawing with a pencil, then anything will work (however it's cheaper and easier to get something below 100gsm/cm). However, if you're thinking of expanding to watercolour pencils, watercolour, ink or anything of the sort, it's best to stay in the 150-200gsm/cm range.
Pencils. For large, smudgy work (by large and smudgy, I mean A5-A4 face/body shots), then look to the "B" range. Your average pencil shall be a HB, or possibly 2B. The further you go down "B" (2B, 4B, 6B, 8B are common), the pencils get darker, but smudge easier. If you actually intend to smudge the pencil work, go for 4B. Better yet, buy a set. However, for graphics work (smaller, more precise work. Most designs like paisley patterns are graphics), you want to go down the "H" range. See why the HB pencil is called that now? The "H" pencils get lighter and harder as you go up the range (H, 2H, 4H, 6H are common). You can buy sets that go from 6H - 8B for about a fiver.
 
Watercolour
Watercolour can be pretty expensive very easily, unless you buy a cheap Reeves set and stick to that. Other "compact" sets, such as Aquafine by Daler Rowney, can be slightly more expensive, but still good value for money. I personally avoid the small tubes of paint, but it's a matter of personal opinion.
There are two styles of watercolour - graphic style, quite detailed and bold. Graphic styles are mostly either facial shots or fantasy works. The other is what I call "vague" styles. These are mostly landscapes, and are fairly washed out and have little detail by comparison.
You can get three types of watercolour paint - full pans, half pans and tubes. A cheap Reeves set shall have full pans, Aquafine by Daler Rowney normally has half pans (it's a range, but their most popular one has half pans), and tubes don't come in boxes. Although half pan sets are the most expensive originally, replacement colours are normally the cheapest and easiest to find. A word of warning however - half pans sets rarely come with white (or "Chinese White"), so I advise buying a tube of it to go with your set.
Paintbrushes come in all sizes, but the ones you want to look for in a shop are blue-handled ones. I don't really see much difference and get along fine with a multipack of 20 for a pound, but if you have the cash it's best to invest in a £5+ watercolour brush. There are a few different shapes of brush, some are flat, some round and some that look a tad like a fan. When you're a complete newbie to watercolour and just want practise, a round brush that looks reasonably sized is good. Then, before buying many shapes of expensive brushes, try a multipack of cheap brushes to see what shape works for you.
Paper. If it's above 150gsm/cm, watercolour paintings shouldn't sink through to the next page. 150gsm/cm paper is ideal if you're looking to do drawings with small amounts of watercolour (or watercolour paper). 250-300gsm/cm paper is expensive, but great for solely watercolour pieces.
 
Acrylic
I love acrylic. It's almost like cheap oil paints, but a lot easier to use. Because it's such a thick paint, unlike watercolour, a mistake can easily be rectified by another layer of paint.
You can work on both canvas and paper for this. If I've got a brand new canvas (board), I might do a test run on paper first.
If using paper, stick to over the golden 150gsm/cm mark. 200-250gsm/cm is pretty good for acrylic. Then there's canvas on a wooden frame, canvas boards and canvas by the metre. Canvas by the metre is fairly advanced and I'd wait until you don't need a random guide on the internet before using it. Canvas boards are cheaper, but can be harder to find in a size you want, I personally prefer canvas boards. Canvas on a wooden frame are the most common, but also pretty expensive.
Paintbrushes are most recognisable by their long handles, and are what make up the majority of cheap multipacks. My art teacher said in passing that expensive ones are made from sable hair, I think it was. A flat brush of a smallish size is good for A5 size painting, and a flat brush of middling size (nearly the width of two fingers) is good for A4 size painting.
The paint looks confusing, although if you can get your hands on a multipack that's ideal. I recommend Daler Rowney's Simply... Acrylic range (I use Daler Rowney for nearly everything). It's pretty cheap, but it's thinner than other, more expensive types. I've never found it as a problem though. Things such as System 3 are almost twice the price, but are a lot thicker and can last longer. Whatever brand you choose, make sure to stick to the same one for your painting. Buying two brands and mixing them together can sometimes cause lumpy paint, and in some cases one colour is completely swallowed by the other no matter how much paint you add.
Once finished with the acrylics, all paint needs to be washed out of the brush asap otherwise the brush shall be ruined. It can be washed out with water, unlike oil paints. It also washes out of clothing.
 
Pen and Ink
Before you start - ink shall stain everything it comes into contact with, including skin (however ink shall wash out of skin evantually). It's best to wear old clothes when finding your feet with it.
Drawing Ink is it's proper name. The most common colour is black, but many colours are available to buy if you're willing to look hard enough. A fair price for a 15ml bottle is £5. Water can be added to it to wash it down.
All paper above the 150gsm/cm mark is fine. Think, will the paper take a Sharpie? Will the paper take a really skinny Sharpie? If the answer is yes, it'll take ink.
Watercolour brushes can be used, but the most generally accepted form is pen. They can be hard to find, but if the packet says "calligraphy pen" it should be fine. The pen nibs can be bought seperately, but they're mostly found in independent art shops. You can put the pen nibs in dedicated pens, but you can also stick them to the end of pencils, which is what I do.
 
 
Hope you find that helpful, see you in a fortnight.

YouTube

Now, I was going to talk about the snow, and having lots of it. Talk about Britain, and it's reliably bad coping of the weather. And also talk about living in the South East, and bearing the original large batch of snow. But I won't, because that's boring. Google "Britain snow blog" and you'll inevitably come up with some complaint or another. So I'll mention vlogging instead.
 
Vlogging is a strange thing. I've found it's more a teenager/uni student phenomenon, and if you allow ads before your video, it makes sense. Sure, you won't make thousands unless you go viral, but a couple of hundred views on three videos might get you a few pounds (don't ask me for exact figures). If I allowed ads on my blog and I had certain keywords, I could make a living off of this. Of course, that'd probably mean daily posts.
 
So back to vlogging. For those out of the loop, vlogging is video blogging. You sit in front of a camera and talk, or complain. Mostly the latter. Occasionally they'll talk about the world around them, but it's mostly about them. Blogging in any format generally doesn't include "the world" but instead "_____'s world" and the world begins to revolve around them. Hey, I'm not sitting in a large chair on a high mountain laughing at these people. I'm fairly sure I'm like that too.
 
I said vlogging is a strange thing, and it expands out to the entire internet. My Chemistry class, for example. I wouldn't dream of telling them that I have such an addiction to tea that I don't feel I can go abroad. However, I told you this last December. In vlogging, blogging, internetting (Is that a word? It is now.), we all share things, sometimes deeply personal things, that we'd never think of telling a stranger in person.
 
It's easy to forget that we're talking to strangers. In vlogging, when people film a video they're talking for 6-7 minutes, sometimes longer, about their lives. You, as a viewer, are actually sitting there and listening to these people witter on about their financial lives, or their sex lives, or their social lives or just lives in general. In your local pub, how many times have you sat next to someone and willingly listened to them talking about them having a cold for over five minutes? Probably none (And if you have then you must have incredibly social skills and I would like advice within the next thirty seconds cheers). How many times have you watched this on YouTube? I have. Twice.
 
A friend of mine tried vlogging and found it so strange she never did it again. Another does it regularly. And a third has created a joint YouTube account with me and we're going to make this work. We've already posted a video, not a vlog, mind. But we will, eventually.
And yes, we are both teenagers. Predictably.

 I know it isn't Friday, or two weeks since my last post. But it snowed overnight, and I thought it'd be a shame to miss the photo opportunity!

Familiarity

Last Sunday, I was woken late at night by the sound of my mother breaking her ashtray. I was distraught. I don't smoke, although I was rather fond of that ashtray. She bought it when I was about four, when we went to Ibiza. It was a simple ashtray, a little piece of pottery painted with an old style of flowers. I have no idea what exactly possessed her to buy such a thing, it's horribly ugly and in a place like Ibiza, it couldn't have been incredibly cheap either.
 
So, it's ugly, possibly expensive and abnormally large. But now it's broken, and we feel like a great loss has befallen us. It was such a minor thing in our life, mine particularly. Every afternoon I would come home and it'd be there, in the kitchen next to the sink. I'd wake up on Saturday morning and there was the ashtray on the coffee table. The ashtray was a reliable staple in the home, like our microwave (which sadly had to be replaced recently, to the discovery that it was actually filled with water and at risk of exploding at any point).
 
My mum has recently ordered a like replacement off Amazon, but it just won't be the same. It won't have been bought in Ibiza, with euros (I think). It also won't have "Portugal '98" etched in the underside of the pot. In short, it would be a dull mass-market ashtray, rather than a mass-market ashtray bought in a tourist trap of a shop.
 
It's strange, how the smallest of things can be so greatly missed. I don't want to go all wax-lyrical about it, it was just an ashtray. But it was a nice ashtray, one that's been around longer than our residence of the flat in which we inhabit. It's outlived my mum's surname, the television, the sofa and the boiler (twice). As I said, I was quite fond of the ashtray.
I like familiarity. Before now, I've spend hours stitching up the end of the legs of jeans because I didn't want to let them go. Recently I allowed my school shoes to be so ill-fitting they gave me multiple blisters, and were pretty much shredding my feet. Yet I kept them for nearly half a year because they were familiar. Something dependable.
 
Actually, when this ashtray was broken, I offered to glue it back together. It had shattered into a thousand pieces, and yet I still offered to glue it back together. I'm going to miss that ashtray.

Movies

On New Year's Day, Sherlock came back for its second series. It was shown in the UK at 8;10pm, fifty minutes before the official watershed. Naturally, the Daily Mail complained about this show because it existed. Before the 9pm watershed, Lara Pulver (who I know more from Spooks) played Irene Adler... and not much else. She was stark naked, although you couldn't see that. Of the ten million people who watched it, one hundred people complained. Save you doing the maths, that's 0.001% of viewers who had a problem with it.
I personally loved it. Having read the books (well, two), I found the show quite interesting, and subplots were tied into it to keep it interesting. Not only this, the way it was filmed was incredible, especially the texts sent. I also believed it to be cast well, written well and just generally be good.
 
However, not all book-to-movie/tv shows are not this brilliant. I personally thought the Harry Potter movies were badly done. Although the acting was good in places, written well in places, it could have been done better.
Eragon. I watched the last half or so, and it was awful. Yes, the book wasn't incredible, but the ending was just... incorrect.
 
And then there are the successes
A Clockwork Orange. Haven't watched the movie, but it was banned for years, so they must be doing something right.
Stardust. I thought the book and movie was very similar (although Neil Gaiman did help with the screenplay, I've heard)
 
When you watch a book-to-screen conversion, there's always that gamble. One choice, of course, is to never watch the movie (I refused to watch The Spiderwick Chronicles because of how much I love the books), or to never read the book (...yep, I don't have an example to give you). But you always find a sense of emptiness, not being able to enjoy a book on every platform.
This all leads to the release of The Hunger Games in March. I haven't read the book, and don't really intend to (my understanding is that it's a romance novel), however the concept of the movie sounds interesting, and one that I shall most likely see.