You Clicked. It's Not Too Late To Click Back...

Christ: I didn't notice quite how many ads there are on this site. Therefore, and because Amber seemed rather annoyed by them, follow me if you will to Livejournal, where I am setting up shop despite its rather-rubbishness. Because, mostly, no-one else I knows blogs there. Semi-originality, see? But also because that's where Joey Comeau blogs, and I do like his blog. Oh, and I think it's probably the closest site to this one, this being an outrageous rip-off et al. (LJ's not ad-free, but there are fewer. I'm not sure I'm willing on giving up the irony involved in advertisements completely. Of course, I can always buy a paid account if I do. (And, ur, if I get a lot more money from some-place.))

But, anyway: the "new" blog is called Semi-Political Linguistics (Pretentious?! A fifteen year old girl on her blog?! Never! (Sarcasm, too?! My God!)) (Sorry.), and can be found here.

It'll be rubbish until I get back into the swing of things. But isn't the theme pretty?

Farewell, O blog.co.uk. Farewell! Maybe I will see you again someday!

Actually, it was rather annoying: even when I was sitting on the side of the pool in Sicily, knee deep in cold water and in the shade of a tree that may have been a palm tree and may have been a banana tree and may have just been a tree, watching the sky with a copy of American Gods on my lap, all I could think about was how to blog it all.

I'd hate to put all that thought to waste, so I suppose I'm still blogging.

(It's almost as if I see everything as being made valid only once it's been posted. Which reminds me of an argument, actually, that I really need to lose. Do we actually have any right to space travel? Do we even need the right to? And the like.)

But, yes: the house, to clarify, had a pool, and also a pool table (and a massage chair and CCTV and a steam shower and and and) and was rather like someone who had never seen an expensive home but had read a description of one had designed it. The decor, see, didn't quite fit with the fact there was a pool table. Nor did the fact that the room I shared with Sean had neither A/C nor a window, despite the fact that every other bedroom had both. I sound bitter, but we're talking thirty-one degrees on a cool night, and my room's unopenable high-up block of glass that lets in light also let in the last of the sun.

While I'm complaining, actually, let me say this: eighty-four mosquito bites.

But apart from that, yes, it was good, it was good to watch the pile of books by my bed (eleven) shrink to none just as it was good to watch the moon rise over the ocean and to see, ha, yes, a meteor and also! My God, there were bats. Awesome, I do think.

But this could easily become a very very very long post even if I decided not to actually talk about any of the ruins or the food or the people or the, Christ, the politics. And god knows I mostly wasn't thinking about any of that: just blogging, and wondering what e-mails I was missing and whether I'd ever be able to swim properly and how long my freckles will stay out for and whether I really missed lurpack more than the internet and whether I really missed the internet more than, say, London itself, or my bookshelves or, you know, gaming, or, hey, any fellow human beings?

Or debate club?

(It is good to be home. It is very very good to be home.)

Here is a fact: yesterday, Legoland was closed due to drainage problems. And here is an opinion: that'd be bad, but yesterday was good anyway, because Kew gardens is.

And here is an aside: I was happy.

And here is something else: I very almost decided to stop blogging yesterday.

Here is an explanation: I found myself typing "I can't care, anyway: I blog and, well! Look at all those great poets, writing beautiful miserable angry things twenty years later; look at their greatly symbolic suicide attempts; look at their messed-up lives. They cared; they made monuments to their tragedies, in their poetry, and in the poetry of their day-to-day. They did it right, Saoirse, girl. Why do you get it so wrong? You are just an attention-seeking adolescent, and you know it. You really ought to shut up and try to actually feel something.", and feeling oh-so-very angry with myself on several hundred levels; guilty, too.

(Because this isn't what he wanted. But, really, what did he expect? That I could laugh it off? He's dead. Sha lalala lala la. Yeah. ((And I will never be lonely. Said I'm never gonna be, lone-ly.)) And what does it make me that I forget what he wanted? And what does it make me if I carry on?)

And a conclusion: I don't know whether I will be blogging. I may wait until I get this counselling, wait until I am not just pouring everything onto you, online, and then see if I can do it again. In any case, I am in Sicily on Friday, and I doubt I will have access to the internet there. Wait; we'll see, I suppose.

Nine months, by the way, in fifteen days; I like the analogy to pregnancy that can be found with tumours (Oh, you did not see his stomach swell.) I want to say, the birth is now, but no: the child is instead nine months old now. He may now be crawling; he may now realise he misses his parents when they leave the room and he may cry when they do so.

(I can't cry any more, did you know that?)

God: the one thing I love about the summer holidays is how normal and natural life suddenly becomes. It may be the sleep. Not having to wake up in time to be late to school means I tend to dream more, I tend to smile more, I tend to read more. (Today I finished No-One Belongs Here More Than You , by Miranda July, which I can describe only as charming.)

On to the recounting of events, I suppose:

Alice slept over the night before last (it was also her birthday, although that was mostly a coincidence. It was an excuse to celebrate, though), which was definitely nice, if tiring; I am Bad With People, and find spending so much time in company exhausting- which is entirely my fault, understand.

Anyway: I saw The Dark Knight with OtherDominic some time last week (Thursday, that was it), which was rather good, despite the rather dodgy politics of the entire film (Oh, it's an amazing film, but, Christ, you know that already). Even because of it; there's a nice argument to be had there.

Going further back into the recesses of my memory, Alice and I saw Her Naked Skin, about the women's suffrage movement, at the National Fri-or-Satur-day before last, which was good, even if the twist was rather unsurprising. Maybe it was just my boredom at some of the more tedious scenes, but I was thinking that they- yes, those two, it's obvious, isn't it?- were about to lunge at each other. Which makes it sound like a bad play; it wasn't. Far from it, it was clever, and entertaining and interesting and would have been useful if I hadn't just done the History coursework. And the rotating stage mechanics broke half-way through, so we all got free ice-cream.

What else?

I was working on Saturday, and received my First Ever Wages. (Thirty pounds, which is good, considering my age and such, and the fact I would very nearly work for free there. It feels very good to have a job, something like routine and structure and normality, which I know is a very adolescent thing to say. I'm good at it, in a way that is so utterly ordinary; I like the customers, and the pricing gun is so macho and I love putting on Pulp and chatting with communists about what Common People really means and finding out that, actually, I know how the till works and, and, God, it's so me, working in a bookshop, so much so that I never even realised).

And tonight, I will read until I realise I am not understanding the words any more, and then I will sleep until the sun is too bright, and then I will have breakfast. Maybe I will go to the exhibition on skeletons at the Wellcome Centre, or maybe I will simply take a walk to the park. It will be a good day, because there is no reason for it to be anything else.

I managed to bump my head twice today, badly, and now it hurts to raise my eyebrows. Ouch.

However, it is a good day!

It is a good day for the summer holidays are upon us; it is a good day because I went up to Bookmarks after school to combat post-school boredom and got to talk to OtherDominic again; it is a good day because today is the day I finally got to play Portal.

Wow: Valve are impressive. The last time I felt so immersed in a game was the first time I played Psychonauts, and that was, what, two years ago now?

Wednesday through Thursday were spent at work, doing a million and one things. On Friday, I played communal Solitaire; I like working the till a lot. The weekend was spent swapping e-mails with OtherDominic and trying to understand how big clouds are as I watched the sun set sitting in the park. Yesterday, I went back to the place of "education", and the debate club party (including Eliezer lip-syncing to Still Alive from Portal, and cake, which was not a lie).

I watched five movies, listened to about 139 songs , and read three books.

It was a good week.

Saoirse1: Oh, are we blogging, then?
Saoirse2: Yeah, well, it's been a week. I mean we really should have blogged on Thursday-
Saoirse1: Ah, yes, the Birthday. Are you mentioning that?
Saoirse2: Uh-huh. I thought I'd say something like: "I am now half-way to thirty; fuck."
Saoirse1: You like that line.
Saoirse2: I do. I think it's the semi-colon.
Saoirse1: I think it sounds kind of stupid, really. Crude.
Saoirse2: You middle-class snob!
Saoirse1: Do I really need to explain Marxism to you-
Saoirse2: Oh, God, no. I know about the means of production already.
Saoirse1: If you say so. Hey! Maybe we should blog that.
Saoirse2: A political blog?
Saoirse1: Yeah! Why not?
Saoirse2: Because it's boring, that's why. You just miss debate club.
Saoirse1: Yes; I do. But so do you.
Saoirse2: I miss the people. You just miss the arguments.
Saoirse1: And? As great as Bookmarks is, there's not much to argue about.
Saoirse2: God, you're obsessed.
Saoirse1: You like arguing!
Saoirse2: I like shouting. Not the same thing, you know. You're all into the way it has a logic to it. An emotional logic.
Saoirse1: Look, anyway, we're meant to be writing a coherent blog post.
Saoirse2: I hate it when people refer to commenting as "posting"... We should mention lunch with Dominic and Joshua's birthday party.
Saoirse1: Advertise the lasagna of Silva's? Sure. It was a nice meal. So was the dinner party.
Saoirse2: Oh my god, caterpillar cake!
Saoirse1: Yes, and the caterpillar cake. (Smiling)
Saoirse2: Patronising.
Saoirse1: Sorry. What else has happened? Oh! Book club!
Saoirse2: Yes, I can't believe we're in a book club. Sure is you.
Saoirse1: It was great! I mean, you liked seeing Sanna and Dominic, and don't go and tell me you hate reading now!
Saoirse2: Of course I don't. It was fun, yes.
Saoirse1: Anything else? We should probably introduce OtherDominic?
Saoirse2: Why? I've met him twice!
Saoirse1: That's true. And I guess we don't really introduce people on this blog.
Saoirse2: No, we don't.
Saoirse1: That's it, isn't it? Has anything else happened?
Saoirse2: Micheal Rosen came into the shop!!!
Saoirse1: Oh, yes.
Saoirse2: I'm still starstrucked.
Saoirse1: But that's it, right? My Week (edited edition), by Saoirse?
Saoirse2: Mm.
Saoirse3: Oh, God, now I have to make this coherent. Ah, fuck it, I'm too tired. And maybe it'll work to just literally show my thoughts.

NOTES: Not literally how I think, although I do sometimes get the two separate personalities that are me arguing. Obviously, I have not included suppressed thoughts, nor ones that aren't in words.

So! So! So!

Marxism!

Right!

(And here is the fight for coherency.)

The entire event was incredible. The meetings were great, the debate was fascinating, the people were brilliant (and even more talkative than usual, it seems). I had a great time, as I always do.

Perhaps the best thing about Marxism is that suddenly, your views are valid again. I spend the whole year arguing that Communism is possible, that it's not bloody immoral; I spend the year being told that my views are stupid, or at least that they "only work on paper". And there are some very very strong arguments against communism. They make a lot of sense. After a year of that, you begin to believe it. You begin to wonder if things can get better- or maybe you still think they can, but you wonder how. You forget, perhaps. It starts getting lonely. A lonely fight for a better world.

And then, in July, you are suddenly being reminded that capitalism is not a good system to live in. You hear people who know why, who have seen why, talk. You are told again and again that communism will work. That it has to work. And maybe it's propaganda. And maybe it doesn't really make much sense. And maybe I'm just dazzled by the singing and the conversation and the people and the life.

But it feels wonderful to be part of a movement again.

The workers, united, will never be defeated. Maybe we need Marxism to keep us united.

Seen the Discovery Channel's latest advert? Well, you should.

Other than that:

It's the last week before work experience, so everything's been crazy-busy coursework-wise while remaining pretty quiet otherwise.

So that is my blog for this week.

By the way, I think Debate Club saved my life today.

Second place is far from bad when the winning team was a grammar school. Eliezer, Miles and Pritesh were amazing. Go QPCS! Go Brent!

Damn Grammar School Zombies.