My blog probably jumped the shark a little while ago, but I have no real self-control and just continued to write. In retrospect I should probably have finished up at fifty entries and called it 'Fifty First Blogs' or something witty like that. Now, though, that I'm up to 100 posts and today marks exactly six months since I started blogging I've decided to end it once and for all.
Lauren Perkins claimed that the thoughts I blogged about were always cynical and pessimistic (yes, when she did finally grasp the idea of what a blog was she was scathing) and she is kind of right. My favourite quote of all time is Janeane Garofalo's classic "The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth." So putting Perkin's constructive criticism to good use I've created a new blog which will only feature things I like (photos, music, videos and some writing). Also in lieu of my writing here I will also contribute to sick twisted nightmare, a joint blog with my second best friend Nicola Cooper, which features a collection of aesthetically challeneged ephemera.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing vague and uneducated thoughts on the cultural landmarks of 2009 (there were entries on Twilight, the financial crisis, swine flu and Michael Jackson) as well as snidely reporting the quotes and habits of my friends and co-workers (my dad thought my blog was espescially harsh on Sophie, ironic as she is my biggest, and perhaps only, fan) but in the immortal words of Nelly Furtardo 'all good things come to an end', so I'm outtie.

Next time you see an old lady or man grappling with a mobile phone, savour it. Because in ten years this scene will be non-existant as the next generation of geriatrics will be almost completely tech-savvy. The thought of seeing a senior citizen texting, tweeting and listening to an iPod is just as inevitable as it is depressing.

Hard to say exactly what I mean, but:
-In The Reader, Bernhard Schlink writes in such a way that the scenes he constructs are envisioned in my mind as if they are watercolour paintings.
-Just saw the trailer for Nora Ephron's new movie, Julie & Julia, and it looks to be another of her signature creations. All of Ephron's protagonists are perky but inoffensive, homely, well-scrubbed and unnaturally sweet; comparable to daisies. These characters used to be played by Meg Ryan, until she got too old and too involved in with the surgeon's knife. Amy Adams looks set to play them for the coming decade.

Death fuck off and stop stealing our celebrities...

I know this is a little Harold Chasen of me, but obituaries make for good reading. Says Jack Gladney, the protagonist of my favourite novel, DeLillo's White Noise, "When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead." The reading of an obituary brings our own precious mortality to the forefront, whilst simultaenously feeling like an invasion of the deceased's privacy. With celebrity obituaries there is a third dimension- the star's achievements and character are finally judged and validated and become officially imprinted into popular culture. Celebrity obituaries give the plotlines of a life in a set of polished sentences, just as any other ordinary death notice does, but they are extended by the fact that they also sum up how the deceased celebrity shaped and/or reflected the times they lived in. And this year, sadly, the passing of famous people seems to be relentless. From Jade Goody ('Goody and Princess Diana were the most prominent avatars of a wide strand of English culture, defiantly anti-intellectualy and unashamedly emotional') to John Hughes ('His universe of jocks and nerds, socialites and misfits, rockers and rebels defined what it was to be an American teenager, and influenced a generation of movie-goers and makers') to Patrick Swayze, star's obituaries not only serve us up a neat narrative, but a chance to remember how each of them had a subtle influence on our lives, how each of them was a small brick in the house of our culture.

I'd heard mixed reviews about 500 Days of Summer, but I wasn't expecting the complete atrocity that it was. Think of a really, really bad imitation of Annie Hall, but put into a warped time machine so it's all non-linear and post-modern (ie. different), and you have this film. I disliked almost everything about 500 Days of Summer- from its desperation to be an 'indie love story' (the incesscant namedropping of alternative bands was so contrived and reeked of try-hard) to its soundtrack (which got a thumbs up from most people, but to me just sounded like a lot of female moaning, and if I wanted to hear that I would watch porn, which would have better visuals and a way better storyline). My main beef, however, was with Zooey Deschanel. How did she get such a good rep in Hollywood? Elf and Yes, Man are hardly classics. And she seems to have become the alterna-girl du jour, for no apparent reason, except that she's named after a Salinger character and has huge blue eyes. Thousands of Frankie- reading hipsters drool on Zooey-porn blogs about how she's so adorable because she sings in a folky whisper and wears floral (which does not make her cool, but rather makes her look like a freakish extra from Mad Men). Until Deschanel does more than live in Laurel Canyon and profess to loving 40s films and 70s music, her indie credentials are as faux as the latest movie in which she stars.

During high school I never really cared for the weekends, but now I'm working I await them with great anticipation. Getting carried away with excitement on a Friday afternoon is just one of many habits I've attained since I began to bring home the bacon, (another habit being that I've started to use embarrassing slang such as 'bringing home the bacon'), and they all make me feel so ridiculously plebeian.

Molly Young believes we place so much importance on styling our hair because it reflects the amount of control we have over our own lives. If this is true, the above picture would indicate that my life was a complete and utter uncontrolled train wreck circa my 18th birthday.

There are certain stories that are always guaranteed to make the news because of the general public's compulsion with the low brow. The abduction of pretty, young (white) girls, psychopaths living normal lives in suburbia, unconventional sex practices, teen pregnancy and bungled police work are good examples. Each of these alone is enough to make a headline, but the story of Jaycee Lee Dugard is an American classic, because it incorporates all of the above. What makes this so signaturely American though, above all the perverse details that have become Fox News fodder, is the moral lesson of good defeating evil, and the will to never give up hope. You can almost smell the inevitable telemovie and Oprah exclusive.

Favourite headlines of the past week: 'Little Lunch Murder', 'Secrets of Suburbia'.

The best movies to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon are the ones my Grandpa lends me. Stylistically they are all quite similar: The running time of these movies is irrelevant, but the pace is always slow, and despite successful moments of humour, they are always underlined by a deep melancholy. Prime examples include Annie Hall, Places in the Heart and Scent of a Woman.

This afternoon I attentively observed what are regular winter scenes: smoke rising from chimneys in the cosy pink twilight, prim old ladies briskly walking their minituare, manicured dogs (jacketed in the latest styles of canine coats) and shoppers pushing their trolleys against the icy wind to make it across the car park to the safety of their automobiles. The afternoon smelt like chopped wood, and these sights and smells filled me with melancholy, mostly because I knew that afternoons like this are strictly seasonal and are coming to an end. In the warmer months ahead they expand and become more languid. In winter, afternoons morph into silent, ominous evenings quickly, the way a black gloved murderer's hand smothers the mouth of his innocent victim.

Observing a person's groceries on the supermarket conveyor-belt is the most intimate you can get with them without being naked.

With the economic slowdown in full kick for about a year now, we're still yet to hear any quality songs about the hard times we're in the midst of. They say that creativity thrives in tough conditions, and up until recently this would appear to be true. In the turbulent 60s Randy Newman sang 'Mr. President have pity on the working man', and during the 1980s recession middle America's musical god Bruce Springsteen (whose collar was just as blue as the denim jeans he wore on the iconic 'Born in the USA' album cover, pictured below) reached the pinnacle in his career, with a string of songs about lonely labourers and their troubles with work and women. The punk and grunge genres were famously conceived by angst ridden youth from the wrong side of the track, sick of the injustices they faced in their poverty stricken lower class. But after Kurt killed himself and the Seattle dress code of flannel and Doc Martens made it onto the high-fashion catwalks (it was at this time that grunge was officially declared 'dead'), the musical trail on our economic situations goes cold. In the midst of our financial crisis people still listen to 50 Cent rapping about his millions. If people of the future breezed over the music of today, the only troubles in our world would appear to be ones involving cheating lovers and messy break-ups, as penned by Miley and Beyonce.

One of the most contentious issues of our times seems to be that of children growing up too fast. 'Let kids be kids!' nervous parents squeal, seemingly helpless in the onslaught of skanky Bratz dolls and kiddie poll dancing classes, and terrified that their innocent offspring will morph into overdeveloped nymphettes. However, parental desire to shelter their children for as long as possible has always existed. Harking back a decade or so to when I was younger, the world seemed divided into two distinct groups- those children who were allowed to watch The Simpsons and those children who weren't. Parents who let the cartoon be aired in their homes were enviably cool, whilst those who didn't were strict to the point of dire embarrassment. (My parents were, unfortunately, the latter.) Whilst the content may have progressed since my childhood (Bart mooning his little yellow arse and howling 'Eat my shorts' now seems relatively tame in comparison with a Pussycat Dolls music vid) the principals have not- parents still try and shelter their children from what they believe are unsuitable influences, just as they have always done. However these days they might be doing it a little more often and a little more defensively.

Thought of the day: Sophie from Sophie's Books bears a resemblance to Robert Pattinson, both in looks and action, even though she's female and about thirty years older. For those who have no idea what Sophie looks like (and I presume you don't, unless you live in my hometown and have a penchant for dog-earred paperbacks) she is often compared to the actor who plays Hagrid in Harry Potter (I have no idea of his real name). Does this mean that when he's older, Robert Pattinson, if he donned the signature uniform of a battered Driza-Bone, would bear similarity to the hairy monstrosity that is Hagrid? All signs point to yes.

Roald Dahl was so ahead of his time using an acronym as a book title when he published The BFG way back in 1982. What suprises me is that there hasn't been a series of children's books in a similar vein released yet, seeing as acronyms become more and more prevelant in our txt happy society. I presume it's a only a small matter of time before The BFF and other abbreviated titles hit the shelves.

This morning I parked myself on the couch to find out once and for all about the old crime shows TV1 play on an endless loop they call 'Crime Time'. (Yes, this activity made me feel somewhat like a sad pathetic housewife, but the differences between me and them are minimal, so I don't really mind.)These shows, all set in the same much-mocked late 80s time frame, have dated badly thanks to the characters' penchants for pastel colours and obsolescent haristyles, as well as soundtracks crammed with corny saxophones, yet they fill the void for anyone too lazy to read Raymond Chandler's quintessential West Coast mystery novels (ie. me), and are so much more enjoyable than their contemporary counterparts (the seemingly infinite franchises of C.S.I. and Law and Order, Criminal Minds, Bones, Cold Case etc.) mainly for the reason that they are more subtle and pare the crime genre back to basics. Whereas today's crime shows are claustrophobic and dim, the classic crime series are set in sun soaked paradises (Dexter would later use a similar tropical location in blistering irony). Today, the emphasis on this genre is more reliant on grit, whilst back then it was wit. The storylines of Columbo et al., whilst simpler, are more clever and thankfully all occur without those crime-against-fashion laboratory glasses and a test tube in sight. With the exception of some detective noir examples (TV's Monk and film's Brick, both filled with appreciation of the detectives of yesteryear) so much current crime fiction takes place in forensics, where people use big tools and even bigger words, which leave me dumbfounded. Trying to unravel the more simplistic mysteries, such as those in Magnum P.I. and all its other dated counterparts is a lot more satisfying, and there is no better time than over breakfast. Equally as stimulating for the brain as the morning crossword or sudoku puzzle, 'Crime Time' comes with the added kitsch-laden visual delights. I was impressed.

It was unseasonably warm outside today. Kids played blithely on the streets, teenage girls wore high waisted denim shorts and watch faces refracted the sun and glistened. The feeling of the day was comparable to that of wearing no underwear, sleeping at the opposite end of your bed or looking around a room after having just rearranged the furniture- slightly titillating, but not quite right.

My grandmother sure keeps her finger on the pulse. At dinner last night she managed to keep up with every topic of conversation from emos to Facebook. To make sure she wasn't just putting on a hip, educated front, I questioned her further when talk turned to The Ivy. "What do people do at this place?" I asked. "They swan around, swim in that disgusting pool and take drugs," Grandma replied without missing a beat. She may be ageing, but her sense of perception is still so very ripe.

Just heard a hip-hop song on the radio with the lyrics 'I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful'. I almost died on the spot. Surely the singer is being ironic (highly likely, as after Googling the lyrics I discovered the song is called "Sexy Bitch") because after all, isn't hip-hop's entire premise based around the antithesis of treating women with respect?