The Book Thief

Okay, I'm going to be a little lazy because it's the summer holidays and my brain has gone to mush. This'll probably be short and it's a glorified review. Basically, a friend of mine would like to sell some things on Etsy (if it ever gets done I'll let you know) and so we've been racking our brains for quotes etc. One line in question is a line from The Book Thief - "I am haunted by humans". It gave me a chance to revisit this book, and I'll talk about it a little bit this week.

If you exist you've probably heard of this book, The Book Theif by Markus Zusak. It follows a little girl, named Liesel Meminger, who is growing up during WWII in Germany. She was "given up" by her mother as a little girl and lives with a loving, if poor, family on Himmel Street. On the train to meet this new family, her brother dies. It is then that Liesel steals The Gravedigger's Handbook. This is the first of many books she shall eventually steal.

What makes this book different is the fact it's narrated by Death. It's a piece of experimental literature, obviously. The chapters are littered with sub-titles and pictures, at one point the pages are taken up by a story that one character writes to Liesel with. Death comes across as a strange character. He often distances himself from the fact he has to collect the dead souls, talking of it as if it is nothing but a job. Yet other times he focuses on nothing but the fact he has to collect the dead souls, and will spend many pages talking about it. Death, in a way, acts exactly as you would expect him to.

The Book Thief is a rich book, one that I read like fluid yet took in every word. It's a beautiful one, a book that some might find to gimmicky and difficult to read. If you ever get the chance to read it, I'd advise it without a pause. See you in a fortnight.

Paralympics

If you're a person with a basic grasp of maths, you've probably gathered by now that the Olympic Games are this year. And, if you've got an even better grasp of current affairs, you'll know they're happening in London. And if you've been gifted with knowledge of geography and my life, you'll know that I happen to reside in the same country as the Olympics.

I've put up with the hoohah. Read the newspaper every night as yet another scandal of minor proportions breaks out. Laughed at the sheer accuracy of Twenty Twelve. Watched with interest at the multiple documentaries. Clapped with a small amount of interest as the Olympic Torch was run around my school's astro turf. Done my bit, basically.

But today, I'm not going to talk about the Olympics. I'm going to talk about the Paralympics.

It's a little like women's football, isn't it? We say we should care more about it, that you can get all the same enjoyment from a women's football game than a men's, yet as I sit here watching the GB/Sweden game, I can do little but feel a little downtrodden at the fact the stadium is near-empty.

Recently, I watched a documentary called Murderball. It's the story about the US wheelchair rugby team and their intense rivalries between the Canadian team. It was very good and I'd advise that you all try to watch it at some point. So when the Paralympic tickets were released, I looked into getting tickets to watch wheelchair rugby.

I expected them to be around £60/£70 each, and was fairly shocked to find they were only £15. Although they're sold out, I looked up the Men's Final (and award ceremony) tickets prices. Some tickets were £30, but the rest all £15. I looked also for Wheelchair Fencing, which has the similar prices. All the tickets on sale for Wheelchair Fencing, including the finals and awards ceremonies, are £15 a pop.

Lies, I cried to myself. I knew some tickets were cheap, but surely the award ceremonies are not that cheap! Maybe it's a system glitch? Should I check back later?

I wondered if this pattern continued in the Olympics. I checked Fencing. Not a single ticket cost as low as £15. Yes, one or two could be found for £20, but on the whole they'd cost between £30-£60. The only difference I can see is the Paralympics are a few weeks later and the players aren't standing. They've still worked for this for years. They're still elites.

This also occurs in the Opening/Closing Ceremonies. Olympics: Opening - £20.12-£2,012 Closing - £20.12-£1,500. Paralympics: Opening - £20.12-£500 Closing - £20.12-£350.

So in a week's time, when the Olympics open, I won't be cheering on our athletes. They've got enough support already. I'll hold on until the 29th August, when the Paralympics open. Because they'll probably be forgotten about.

This is you. This is you on Art.

A small roundup of things that have irritated me over the past fortnight, as I can't be bothered to do a full blog post on them:
- House of Lords reforms
- Benefits reforms
- NHS reforms (I don't care which ones, but they're bound to annoy me)
- The pointing out of the bleedin' bloody obvious (50% of youth crimes happen by just 5% of youth! Oh, really?)
- The difficulty in reading The Colour of Magic
- The fact CERN found the Higgs' boson before I had a chance to visit.
- Coursework
- My school's concern with the colour of the bins versus disrespectful and rude supply teachers.
- My school's concern with litter versus the leaks, cracks and general disrepair of the school itself.

Well, Coursework is something I'm going to talk about, but I needed to put it on that list.
I'm coming to the end of my first year of GCSE now, and now is the time for coursework. Now, I've been doing BTEC in Art all year, so I'm conditioned to coursework. But what's taken me by surprise is the sheer amount of coursework. Once I spent a good three weeks staying after school in catch-up in order to finish one piece of bloody work. I took Art as my relaxing subject, and it's taking the bulk of my time! To add to that, I've lost many weekends catching up with acrylic painting.

This week, I've had to do four catch-ups in a row (Tuesday - Friday). French coursework, followed by IT and double English, all in the name of coursework. To add to that, I've had to go to many coursework-y lessons which generally incurs lots of homework.

It's a sludge that never ends. This English coursework is my seventh (and eighth) piece this year alone. One piece would end, another would begin. Actually, having two teachers means I'm doing two pieces at a time. It's just so much work.

And so this brings me to the title. Take a look at yourself. Hopefully, you'll look clean, awake and happy. Now remove most of your sleep time, cover yourself in paint (and/or Indian Ink) and replace that smile with a worn-down look of frustration. This is you on Art.

A Tory Government

If you'd like a bit of trivia that I'm likely to bring up time and time again, it's that the constituency I live in and the surrounding ones (mostly ones heading North into Kent) are the most comfortable Tory seats in the country. I hate the Conservatives. I'm a middle class white British citizen living in Sussex with siblings in private schools, and I hate the Conservatives. With fear of parroting every journalist in the world at the moment, I've always felt that the Conservatives only have interests with making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Of course, being neither, it would be safe to assume that I would remain unaffected by either of these polar ends. Sadly not.

One of the great joys of teenage life is the GCSE/A level/Early Uni years time. This is mostly what this fortnight's post is about. I had to take my Physics GCSE exam a few hours ago, and the exam barrage will get worse next year. I don't really care about taking all these exams. They're what, 50/60% of my exam? The rest is taken with coursework ('cept for my BTEC, which is of course all coursework).

But it sounds like this is going to not happen as much. Mike Gove (Gotta love that man*) is planning to change both the GCSE and A level courses. For those not in the know, he wants to lesson the pressure of coursework and rely more on the end-of-year exams. He also wants to rely more on the end of two-years for A levels, meaning fewer or even no more AS Levels. Finally, he wants to abolish the seperate exam boards and have one per subject.

What he wants is harder exams that "really challenge bright pupils" or something to that effect. This is twinned with the removal of many practical subjects, known by their BTEC Level 1/2/3 tag. A small problem with that is, walk into an average secondary school and you have pupils who are disruptive. They often aren't the "bright pupils" that Gove wants to "really challenge". Often they can't sit still through a one hour lesson, let alone a three hour exam. These are the pupils that the practical subjects were made for. If they do manage to sit through their GCSE's, they're probably going to be D's or lower. Chances are they'll wind up jobless and be a strain on the benefit system. At least with the practical subjects they can prove they have skills in something like plumbing and get work. Yes, they're not about to be accepted into Oxford with these qualifications, but it's better than nothing.

However, as a "bright pupil" (I've had my time on a Gifted + Talented register before now), I'm not mad about the removal of practical subjects. I'm angrier about the possible demise of AS levels. When I go to my sixth form, I want to take a French AS. I'm not great at French, but I want more than a GCSE in it. So many people choose to do this, in fact, that my intended sixth form rarely run the full French A level. The AS is a great way to just get a little extra in the way of languages while not over-stretching yourself. My life is roughly planned around this AS level. I wouldn't be surprised if this format copied itself around the country. The Government are forever complaining about the lack of take-up of languages by students. Are they seriously so stupid as to not realise that the loss of AS levels could mean the demise of good French, German and Spanish speakers among Brits?

Alas, when I finally calm myself down about my future, the Tories find another way to fuck it up again. Way to go, Mike. Way to go, Dave.
And Nick, don't think the £9k limit has been forgotten about.

*that was sarcasm, by the way.

Fanfiction

Recently, I started playing Final Fantasy (FF XIII, if you must know). And this morning, I was debating painting a scene from it. Fanart in it's purest form. I always paint things I like.

I also debated writing some fanfiction of it. People who know me well know I'm not a fanfiction kind of person. I wrote one or two pieces a couple of years ago, and I read a piece or so when specifically asked to. So I think the desire to write fanfiction surprised me.

It's funny how these kind of things pan out. Until about eighteen months ago, I wasn't aware any browser but Internet Explorer existed (still use IE), while many other people stopped using IE the second they were able to. While some write nothing but fanfiction and that's all they've done for ages, I just can't write it at times. Like, I sit down and I'm just embarrased to write.

Fanfiction is something I've only recently heard of, so I probably just need more footing in it. Yet it seems to be gaining more ground, but I don't know whether that's always been the case. By "more ground" I mean the Fifty Shades series being a Twilight fanfiction, and major similarities (bordering on plagarism, I'd say) between Carrier of the Mark (Leigh Farron) and Twilight.

I asked, is fanfiction going to become popular enough for it to be published in the mainstream? I already know of a Panic! At the Disco fanfiction (The Heart Rate of a Mouse) that's over 300,000 words, I think as far as twice that length. You can actually buy copies of it off the internet. Of course, it's self-published. But if you think through fandoms, if you belong to one, there's always "that fanfic". Sometimes it's just a one-shot, or it's very short, and others it's as long as THRoaM. How many of them could be available to get online in time?

Fanfiction is the way into writing for some writers. All I'm thinking is, it could be a way into reading for some readers.

And as for that fanart, I decided with a scene from Palumpolum.

8 - 12 Age Range

This was going to be another angry week. But then I had ice cream and I started hallucinating about unicorns or something so I'm going to talk about my History GCSE.

Well, not specifically my History GCSE, but that topic shall come up. Right now, in fact. In the GCSE course my school runs (and so, I take) a topic about Medicine through Time. For the past year, I have had to suffer my mixed-ability class ("Miss, I know you've been teaching us this for the past six weeks, but can you repeat everything because I have the memory of a goldfish?" ¬_¬), as we learnt about Galen etc.

I have also started watching Horrible Histories, because at heart I am five years old. Recently, I've discovered as I plough through the series, it is pretty much teaching me my course. Yes, I am only scraping by in History because I watch a show for eight to twelve-year olds.

It's shown on the CBBC channel, which was roughly my life until I was about... eleven. I would spend hours watching The Story of Tracy Beaker, Young Dracula and Blue Peter, to the point where I was banned from watching TSoTB because "my attitude was suffering". Now, they show CBBC on BBC One until 5;15, but back when I was younger and had only four channels on my telly it wasn't, and I watched The Weakest Link instead.

What brought on my little trip into my past? Recently, in the paper, they announced the removal of various programmes from CBBC while it aired on the BBC One channel. This includes Blue Peter.

Not Blue Peter! The glorious show that most people under the age of fifty have spent a childhood watching Blue Peter. And I'm fairly sure that because it's on BBC One many adults still watch it too. By moving it solely to CBBC, the chance is it'll lose many of it's viewers. Why? I'm going to answer this in the form of something I once yelled at one of their continuity presenters.

"Why are you here, and not on the CBBC channel?!"
"BECAUSE I AM NOT BETWEEN THE RECOMMENDED EIGHT TO TWELVE AGE RANGE!"

Community

I was going to talk about something or other that came under the title "Advertising". However something happened recently that made me so bloody angry that I'm going to leave that for another time, and talk of this instead.

There are many things that annoy me about my town, the lack of rail links, lack of decent shops, lack of any form of life. I can't change these, and don't particularly care enough about my town to try. Despite this, I am on my school's council, so we can raise important issues for them to politely ignore.

Now, in one part of the school there is a gate and a path, next to a couple-of-tennis-courts size space of grass, which was next to two tennis courts. The majority of students who attend my school go through this side path (there are only three other ways into the school). This gate looks onto a main road, ten minutes one way and you're through the town centre, half an hour the other and you're at the train station. So you can imagine at school run time, with kids for my school and two close by, the road gets pretty busy. Past the area my school grounds cover and past the adjoining school, is a set of traffic lights. I use these traffic lights every day to get home.

In the morning, the road is blocked up with cars dropping children off to school. Yet this does not mean that the cars go slowly. Kids being kids, they'll happily run straight across the road without looking. I can't move for times I've seen near-misses and skids of cars as they struggle to brake. This happens to the ones who are too lazy to walk to the traffic lights and cross there. It's worse after school, when parents have queued up outside for half an hour or so (my step dad once needed to pick me up, he got there half an hour early and it was already full with waiting parents). The same children who go to run across the road in the morning do the same in the afternoon, only this time from behind parked cars. The braking and such gets much, much worse.

Bear with me, I'm getting to the point. So I went to a school council meeting yesterday, where we began discussing a new hydrotherapy pool that's been built on the grounds (my school grounds are actually two schools, one is for special needs children. As a result, we have strange doors in walls that lead to the second school. Think Coraline). This pool sits on this couple-of-tennis-courts size space of grass. In this conversation, the leader of this meeting admitted that this space was actually going to become a roundabout, so we didn't get the backlog of cars in the afternoon. What happened? The local residents, the people who live across the road, refused to allow it.

And now I'm at the point. Surely it would not be better to allow the roundabout and stop the traffic? Stop the children running out from between parked cars? Quite a few of the local residents would have bought their house knowing there was three school in a very close-knit block. They would have known things like this would prop up. Why would they be so selfish as to prevent the building of something that would help hundreds of people, every day, to the possible minor inconvenience of themselves? The same argument goes to the proposed creation of a zebra crossing just outside this gate.

I may not be an active member of community, but if I needed, I would take a small amount of time from my day to help the greater good. These people would only have to bear with -shock horror- a slightly different method of traffic for about an hour five days a week. They need to stop being so bloody selfish, grow up and help many schoolchildren get home slightly safer every day.