Why the Internet Makes Me Sad

Don't get me wrong I love the internet- how else could you spend hours and hours in the same position, seemingly doing very little but actually giving your brain a total workout? Ok, sure, reading, I guess. But tell me this- where else could you meet people from your very favourite place in the world that you don't live at all near (i.e. America), and who one day might invite you to stay with them and then you'll actually be able to afford to go there again? Exactly. Nowhere.

But, amongst all the undeniable good of the internet (this blog being, of course, the shiniest of all shiny points!) there is one thing about it that makes me sad. And that is this. When you have, more or less all the information in the world and about the world, at your fingertips and quicker than you can say google or wikipedia, you've lost a lot of the joy of discovering rare and wonderful things. There is of course, always the chance of finding an amazing blog, or someone so exactly on your wavelength that you mourn the fact that you don't live near them, but the challenge of being obsessed with something has long gone, to be replaced with basically more information than you can handle.

Here's what I'm getting at. When I was 14 (nearly 15) I had recently gotten satellite TV, and had music channels for the first time. Correlating with this was the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, and the combination of the two meant that, for the first time in my life, I was introduced to music that reached right through my ears into my soul, and it was fucking amazing. So, from this time I was obsessed with Nirvana- I wanted to watch, read, consume anything I could about the band, about Kurt, about the whole of the 90s grunge scene- basically everything short of building a time machine and going back there. But, in a pre-youtube time, I had to be extremely well organised and tactical about this. This meant, checking TV schedules to find out when there would be programmes about Nirvana on, setting up the video to record shows on too late, watching music channels for hours just hoping they'd play Smells Like Teen Spirit one more time. It was all consuming, and it was amazing.

If this had happened just a few years later, I know exactly how it would have gone down, because it's been a curb of obsessions ever since for me. I'd have gone onto youtube, watched a few videos, read the wikipedia entry for Nirvana, and Kurt, google-imaged the band, and then pretty much have lost interest. And, while that's probably a much healthier way to enjoy something, it's so not the same as having an all consuming obsession, and I have to ask if anything is as good this way around. I'm kind of reminded by something that Kurt himself said- that, having money made him happy to begin with, but in the end it feels kind of hollow, and for him, going to a thrift store and finding something really good for very little money was a lot more exciting, because he didn't know that he was going to have it, whereas with money, he knew he could have anything, and so wanted it less. Isn't that true of the internet as well- before, when MTV2 randomly did a Nirvana night, it was the most exciting thing in the world because I didn't know it was going to happen. Now, I know that I can go onto youtube and watch pretty much every recorded thing that Nirvana ever did, and that's great, but it's not the same.

I guess that, in order to have something as wonderful as the internet (and the internet truly is wonderful, don't get me wrong) we have to make some sacrifices as to having the excitement of something that isn't always available to you. As for me, I still remember the heady obsessions of my teenage years, so I'm fine, but I just feel sad for discoveries of old bands by new teenagers- sure, they'll be able to find all recorded mention of them with the click of a mouse, but somehow, because they can have it all, it's a bit hollow. The benefits of the internet far outweigh the negatives, but this all still makes me sad- there's no replacement for the high of an unexpected Nirvana night on BBC4, and even though we've now got everything at our fingertips, sometimes, I'd like to have a little less.

Devouring: Vegan Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting

Christmas is coming nearer and nearer, and my absolute favourite thing about the festive season? The amount of gingerbread things I can make and eat. Last year, I kid you not, I made gingerbread men, gingerbread biscotti, ginger nuts, and these, my absolute favourite gingerbread product of all. These gingerbread cupcakes are SO GOOD, and it's honestly worth buying Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for this recipe alone (I'm so not posting the recipe here because, 1) I kind of think it's stealing, and 2) Don't you massively want to make cruelty free cupcakes that taste disturbingly good?!) But I will tell you that the reason I think it's so good is because it's basically made up of liquid sugars (molasses and maple syrup) so the texture is AMAZING. So, I'm just going to stop going on about them right now and show you one instead!

First of all, can I just get some appreciation for my pretty bowl? It's a flower, I like it a lot and want to eat all foods out of it. And, moving on from that, why yes, those are teeny gingerbread men sprinkles! Amazing, I know. And just look at it when you've taken a bite:

I literally did take a bite out of that cake so sorry if that grosses you out, but, believe me, you wouldn't have been able to resist either! I'm not even sure this picture does it justice- it's sort of sticky in a perfect way that means its neither too dry or too moist- it's perfect, and basically impossible to screw up. Seriously. I also have to strongly recommend the lemon frosting on top because what's gingerbread without lemon frosting? I had some Starbucks ginger loaf the other day (Starbucks cakes are never really recommended because there's always something wrong with them) and it just had vanilla frosting on top, and I was not at all impressed. It's just not right! To make this frosting I genuinely didn't measure anything out- I just used pretty much equal amounts of cream cheese and unsalted butter (I had cream cheese and butter left over, otherwise I would have made vegan frosting too) then kept adding icing sugar until it tasted sweet enough, and added lemon zest until it was zesty enough. Simple.

To be honest, if you don't make these cupcakes over Christmas, I'll be personally let down. Unless you don't like ginger, and then I just feel sorry for you. Either way, buy Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! It will serve you well in the long run, and Oh! The cupcakes you'll make!

Devouring Books: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

After I've written this review, I don't want to talk about this book ever again, because the more I think about it, the more annoyed I am about its shortcomings. It should probably be illegal for books to have such great titles and to not deliver on the content. The punishment should probably be a life sentence if that great title involves the word cake, because HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO RESIST IT?! Oh, the cruelty of the world!

Moving on... This book is supposed to be about this girl who, just before her ninth birthday, discovers she has an odd kind of synesthesia, where, when she tastes food, she feels the emotions that whoever has made the dish was feeling at the time. I thought this was an interesting enough concept, but here's the thing- Bender literally does nothing with it. I was waiting and waiting for something to arise out of Rose's 'special talent', but all I got was repetitive descriptions of factories foods came from, the fact that the school dinner lady was sad and whatnot, and I was pretty much like 'okayyy... but where's the story?'

More interesting than Rose's yawny skill was her creepy older brother who keeps disappearing and, whilst at this point I literally didn't care where he was disappearing to, it did freak me out because I was reading this at about half two in the morning, and, you know, things are scarier at night. Suffice to say, what was happening wasn't in the slightest bit scary, and was, in fact, ridiculous. Honestly. I mean, I kind of want to tell you all what happens, because, obviously I am your god(dess) and you want to do everything I say, but I'll restrain myself. Just, believe me, it's really really stupid, not at all explained, and a bigger part of the story than Rose's thing; but much more obscure. At this point, I was just going ARGH in my brain and trying not to die at the patheticness of it all.

Ahem. So I'm sure there were other things in it apart from these two ridiculousities, but I was in a severe sleep deprived state when I was reading it and so can't really remember much else about it. That is, except for this really really crappy failed romance thing between Rose and her brother's (only) friend (don't you enjoy that I can't be bothered to look up anyone's name) which basically consisted of her going 'omg, I've got this weird condition and I don't think I can have a boyfriend' and him going 'ok', not coming back and marrying some other woman. And there was literally no point to any of this at all! I couldn't cope with trailing off storylines and just general badness and oh my god what was the point of any of it?!

I'm going to slightly ruin the end for you now, but in the end Rose decides that the right thing for her to do is to work with food. Now, I don't know about you, but if I had this incredibly upsetting condition where eating food meant feeling the emotions of others, I'd pretty much avoid food as much as I could, and basically be an optician or something. There's no proper explanation for this decision, or pretty much anything in the book, and I'm now dubious of choosing books for their titles. Thanks a lot Bender. Thanks. A. Lot.

Revisiting Films: The Kids Are All Right

The first time I watched The Kids Are All Right, I didn't really like it. I thought about it in the same way that some (incredibly nasty small minded) people think about American Beauty- that not very much happens and it was really slow and annoying, and not even that dramatic. I love Mark Ruffalo and Annette Bening, and I'm not adverse to Julianne Moore, so I was really disappointed that I didn't like it more. In the words of Mia Wasikowska "I thought you'd be... better."

I don't really know why I watched it again, other than, because it was on Sky Movies, and I have quite the crush on Ruffalo, but this time I was much more pleased with it (it's possible that when I watched it before, it was poor quality and on a computer screen, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it!) I just felt like I 'got' it a lot more, and understood really, fundamentally, what the writer/director Lisa Cholodenko was trying to say. Although, I have to say, I still don't understand why Annette Bening got to be nominated for Best Leading Actress for it, since, seriously, I think Moore was in it more than her. I'm not going to bitch about it though because, 1) I love her, and 2) she sings Joni Mitchell? With the Ruffalo? Amazing!

Anyway, the fundamental thing I think I missed about The Kids Are All Right the first time around is the role Ruffalo plays in all of this. As the sperm donor dad of the kids of two lesbians, when I first watched this, I kind of thought it was unfair that they expected anything from him, and basically just thought of him as a guy who was trying to do his best. I was SO wrong. The thing about Ruffalo's character is, that he's continually just playing at being part of this family- the decisions he makes have no real impact on his life, and so he is able to make them without regret or even thinking at all about how they might affect other people. He's intrinsically selfish, but he thinks that he's trying out a role, seeing if he could be any good at being an effective father. This is why his presence pisses off Annette Bening so much (because she sees him as trying to usurp her role in the family, which he quite literally is) and, to be honest, upon a second viewing, he pissed me off too. There's this look that he continually gets on his face, like the situations he finds himself in are amusing, rather than the serious things that they obviously mean to the family. He attempts to work his way into the family, but the truth is, he doesn't even know how to be part of one.

I don't know if all of this means I should feel sorry for Ruffalo (I actually can't be bothered to look up his character name at all. But it might be Paul. And it might not be...) but I really don't because I think that, after this whole experience is over, he will go back to how his life was before, and it won't really have affected him that much, whereas his actions almost ripped that lovely little family apart. Hence the not really feeling sorry for him. What I do feel right now though, is grateful for my Ruffalo-love because, without it, I wouldn't have gotten a whole new perspective on this film and its beautiful subtleties. This isn't the first time thinking with my pants has given me unexpected results (see also: naked Patrick Wilson in Little Children) and hopefully it won't be the last!

Challenges Are Very Challenging...

Since everyone's signing up for challenges and stuff and I don't like to be left behind with things, I'll tell you all about the challenge I'm going to be doing next year, which is the Back to the Classics 2012 Challenge. I'm taking part in it essentially because everyone I love and respect in a blogging way is doing it, and I thought I'd try being a sheep for once in my life (also because I want to read more classics, and I can obviously only do that if being forced to, but it's mainly the sheep thing). Soooo, the Challenge has nine categories, and they are (with the tentative books I'm going to read for each of them):

Any Nineteenth Century classic- The Awakening by Kate Chopin OR Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery

Any Twentieth Century classic- The Plumed Serpent by D H Lawrence

Re-read a Classic of your choice- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A Classic Play- Othello by William Shakespeare

Classic mystery/horror/crime fiction- Armadale by Wilkie Collins

Classic romance- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Read a classic that has been translated from its official language to your language- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky OR Dangerous Liasons by Choderlos de Laclos

Classic Award Winner- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (I might have to change this because I'm not sure The Grapes of Wrath did win any awards, and I might be thinking of Steinbeck's Nobel Prize... But I would like to read a Steinbeck, so if anyone knows of any that did win awards, let me know, yeah?)

Classic set in a country you realistically won't visit in your lifetime- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria- although it's fictional Nigeria, so if I find myself in Nigeria at some point in my life, I won't be a liar!)

I am excited, because these are all books that I've had for far too long, and which inevitably get pushed aside for books that are easier because, you know, they're not classics! So yay for self improvement in 2012! Plus, if the world ends, I'll at least be able to say I've read Othello...

I'm sure I'll sign up for more challenges when I see some I like (if you're hosting something awesome, tell me about it in the comments and I'll check it out and have a think about it) but to end out this year, I'm taking part in the Advent with Austen event (not so much a challenge as an opportunity to read me some Austen) which I highly recommend signing up for because, who doesn't love Jane?! At the moment, I'm thinking I'm going to join in the readalong of Sense and Sensibility (because I always forget the plot of it which disturbs me), read Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sandition, because I have it and I haven't read it, blog about my visit to Jane Austen's house/Chawton (where I got to touch rare books, and enjoy one of those rare perks about living in England) AND I might watch Clueless as well because it clearly counts as being related to Austen, and, you know, I wanna. By my calculations, this will give me a score that makes me Mr Bingley, about which I am extremely meh. Although- if I count the three short books separately, that will make me Captain Wentworth, which is a much more pleasing result if you ask me! So, we'll see. But go sign up and we can be Austen buddies! Go on!

The Help, Chapters 1-9

So, I'm taking part in Alice over at Reading Rambo's readalong of The Help, and for the first time EVER am following the instructions exactly, which means posting about various chapters in various weeks and stuff, and Alice better feel proud that I'm stopping every 10 chapters or so and writing stuff rather than carrying on reading like a slightly deranged reading obsessed person (yeah, that's me...)

Anyway, the first 10 chapters of The Help. I don't really know what to think yet. There are some things I know- Hilly and Elizabeth need good swift kickings, Skeeter needs to find some new friends (seriously, hers SUCK- although actually they act like human beings around her, because, guess what, she's white! Yay?) and I want to give Aibileen a big hug because she doesn't deserve any of the bad things that happen to her. Also, Minny is my personal hero, and oh MY do I want to know what was in that pie she served Hilly...

So I have feelings about characters already, which is good, and keeps me entertained thinking 'I wonder what Minny's going to do next' while Skeeter's going on about wanting to be a writer and blah blah blah, my life's so hard and my mum tries to tell me what to do whine whine bitch bitch, while Aibileen has, you know, legitimate grief and does Skeeter's job as well as her own. I don't exactly hate Skeeter, but I don't really like her either. I mean, obviously she's better than any other white woman in the novel, but that's not really saying much, you know? We'll see how her character develops throughout though, and I'll decide at the end whether I actually like her or not, based more or less on whether or not she ditches her friends.

I don't have a whole lot more to say about The Help so far, and I really want to get back to reading it (say what you like about it, it sure is readable) BUT I just have to point out how laughably clear it is that Skeeter's date with that guy whose name escapes me right now is definitely not going to be the end of their association, and that fact is about as subtle as a bag of bricks in the face. Not cool Stockett. Not cool at all.

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday! I am back, after that one week I was away, and oh my how I missed you. Actually, I didn't that much because I had no input for last week's top ten, so really, I'm ok. I can't be bothered to think of a good preamble for this week's list because I'm writing this on Monday afternoon when in mere hours I'll be going to see Red Hot Chili Peppers at the O2 in London, so I'm too excited to even type properly! Be jealous as you peruse the books I read that were uncomfortable...

Top Ten Books I Read That Were Outside My Comfort Zone


1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy- Let's just say, Russian literature, 800 odd pages long and half as many characters as it seems like there are because they all have at least 2 names. I was not at all prepared to read a novel of such grand scope, and nor was I prepared for how fantastic it would be. Anna Karenina, above all other books, is one which encourages me to step out of my comfort zone more and more, because the discoveries such books promise far exceed the difficulty of reading them.

2. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne- Talk about outside my comfort zone- I could hardly understand this book. At all. In any way. It didn't exactly help that I had to read it in my second week at university, when I didn't know what the fuck was going on anyway! Attached to it was one of the most amusing lectures I've ever been to, but unfortunately that didn't even make this book palatable.

3. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf- This was beyond my comfort zone because it has a narrative that I definitely wasn't used to, but it was really great. I can only vaguely remember it now so it definitely requires a re-read, but I know that it was really good.

4. Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson- I think I might be being kind by describing this book as being outside of my comfort zone, when I fear that, actually, it might just have been crap, but nonetheless, I did feel out of my depth when I was reading pretty much most of it, and I was hugely relieved when it was over. A highly uncomfortable experience, so does that make it outside of my comfort zone?

5. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis- So the style of this book was fine and I had no problems with it, but it turns out I'm uncomfortable with minutely described murders of unsuspecting homeless people, prostitutes, children...

6. Pamela by Samuel Richardson- Published in 17-somthing, this was always going to be outside of my comfort zone because it was written before anyone knew how to write novels. This means that Pamela is overlong, whiny, and quite frankly just dreadful (most annoyingly of all, SPOILER Pamela marries her would be rapist and then falls quite dramatically in love with him because... they're married. Honestly, it's just appalling.) Pamela was, in fact, part of a University unit composed of books outside of my comfort zone, which made that 2 hour seminar on a Friday really fun, let me tell you!

7. Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J R R Tolkein- When I read these books, they were outside of my comfort zone because I just hadn't really encountered adventure/fantasy stories of such magnificent scope before. They are, of course, awesome, and kind of encouraged a widening of my comfort zone, opening the door to stuff like The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, which is really the best consequence of venturing outside ones own comfort zone.

8. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood- Again, I'm not really sure if this was outside of my comfort zone because I enjoy a good dystopia, but it certainly made me uncomfortable just with the concept of the world that was created in it. In fact, it made me cry about it. More than once. I still highly recommend it though.

9. Perfume by Patrick Suskind- I have to assume that this book is outside everyone's comfort zone because it's just so... strange feeling, good as I thought it was. Another one of those Anna Karenina types, in that it fully encouraged me to push the boundaries of what I was willing to read.

10. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs- So far beyond my comfort zone that I had to put it down after about 4 pages. I just can't... there's no... it's so... See, I can't even describe it, yet alone read it. It has defeated me, for now, but I will read it one day because, you know, I own it and it wouldn't be good not to read it... right?

So there are my uncomfortable books, how about you? Do you now think I'm a pleb for having such a crappy comfort zone? Or has my bravery in reading these books astounded you? Do let me know!