A bit of laughter for your day

Hope you're all rugged up and staying warm today! I saw this on Sarah Wilson's blog and it made me laugh.

Practical theories: The Law of Attraction

I've been busying my time on my study break not studying, but reading blogs. It started with food blogs, then I got onto Gala Darling's brilliant site again, and a link from that onto Sarah Wilson's blog... its all happening, and I'm enjoying it.

I'm going to admit, I'm pretty skeptical about all those new-agey, The Secret-toting ideologies. I read about three pages of The Secret and thought, this is just what everyone's parents have been telling them for years about the power of positive thinking. Unless someone I know can vouch for something like that, I'm not going to believe it. So, in order to get rid of my inner skeptic, I'm going to try to work out if these theories can actually be applied to my life. Let us proceed with

The "law of attraction" hoopla

The theory: Thoughts attract like thoughts. If you think happy thoughts, happy things will happen. If you're negative, negative things happen. You get the idea.

Practicalities: We actually developed this theory when I was fifteen about one of the girls in my group, who was just really depressing and whingey and horrible. We called it a "vortex of doom", that when she was upset everyone else got sucked in to feeling upset as well. Which maybe is a different theory about associating yourself with people. I digress. Generally, I haven't had this apply to actual events, but I think tangible things.

First example: Capers. I used to work at a splendid little Italian cafe, and the exported Italian staff would cook for us. One of the baristas made risotto with capers one night, and I had no idea what they were. Then I saw them in the supermaket. Then they were in another dish I had when I went out. It was like, as soon as I had capers, they were EVERYWHERE.

The same thing happened with Vampire Weekend, although over a longer period of time. The first time I went out on the town, in May last year, one of the "eight great songs they played at Amps" (more on this later) was A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. Of course, after half a bottle of wine with dinner, I couldn't remember the song the next day. Although I did remember the other seven.

ANYWAY - I got to Reading Festival in August, and Alice dragged us to Vampire Weekend amidst protests that we didn't even know who they were. Of course, they played A-Punk, and I realised - THIS WAS THE EIGHTH GREAT SONG! Then, recovering at the house two days later with a cold, it was on the advertisment for 500 Days of Summer. And The Inbetweeners, I believe. Once I knew what the song was, it was everywhere.

I was there! I saw him in that shirt!

Verdict: The jury's still out. I'm not sure if its just that when you're positive, you see the positives in everything whereas when you're negative, you ignore other possibilities. And my Vampire Weekend capers (See what I did there?!) could just be coincidence.

What do you think, fellas? Exponents of the theory? Or think its a load of hogwash?

Reblog: Tetris Philosophy

Possibly the best thing I've read all week, and not just because it says I'm wise :D

You can find the original article at Levi's Last Word on Tumblr.

A very wise girl said to me today: (and i miss-qoute this) “I like Tetris because it all fits together” and this simple statement sparked a deep philosophical debate in my head in which our lives are a living game of Tetris.

1. The pieces falling down are the events and plans we have to do in our lives: easy pieces such as lines, mean easy tasks such as driving to the shops, hard shapes like those annoying z’s means harder activities such as…someone hitting our car on the way to shops.
2. Depending on the difficulty of the game we play depends on whether we see what is comeing up or not. e.g. on an easy level the nice little Tetris gods tell us we have a nice square comeing up, which is like a rostered shift at work, but then when on a higher difficutly the tetris gods pick fun at us, and throw in the unexpected Z’s and T’s of the reall life world…e.g. Sudden need to use mental mathmatics!!!!
3. Now we get on to the clearing of lines! (hold on to your hats kiddos this is where shit gets heavy!) Clearing lines is the goal of both tetris and life, well metaphorical lines in lifes case. When all is going well and we plan ahead or deal with the unexpected Z’s of life, somehow depsite our foolish nature we manage to clear a line. Through planning and clever thought we are able to complete the herculean tasks that we must face everyday and shove that T inbetween the I and the Square, and ultimately come out with a blank slate, A tabula rasa of every day. We have succeeded in completing our everyday tasks and come out with more room to grow and build our next adventure of our Tetris/life.
4. But life isnt so simple…oh no! We all love Tetris, Tetris would never betray us, it wants us to come out on top and always have an empty screen, WRONG! Tetris likes to fuck with us, give use shaped that wont fit in with your planning no matter how well you have planned. It gives you a line when you need a square, just when you though you couldn't go wrong with a line it happens. Shitopia! Theres gaps everywhere, unfinished lines all over the place, you life is going to hell, nothing is going right, You’ve lost an arm, you rent out Spanglish because you couldnt find Taxi Driver, and get so pissed off about wasting your time watching a film about a confused American try to pound a Spanish Nanny it emotionally cripples you and you end up abusing your boss at work, These my friends…are the times when Tetris betrays us and we just cant organise our 4 blocked friends together. These are the shit times in our life!
5. But, every so often a miracle happens. Tetris pulls out a Jesus on us and everything works out well. Everything seems more aerodynamic and streamline, shapes are fitting in which you thought they could never fit in before, AND BANG! You have tetris, 4 lines gone at once. Pure bliss, this is rare and hard to accomplish but when you pull it off, its worth it. Bonuses fly through the roof, you cant control the endorphin high you get, you cant lose now your unstopable, you just finished work half an hour early and get to go home and sneak in an extra episode of How I Met Your Mother before you have to go out. These moments, are the Tetris’ of life, and its what we live and play for!

Web love: F-Stop Magazine

The other day, trying to find my DVD of Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog (more on this later!), Levi went "Em? Why do you have three cameras in your bag?".

And I thought, INDEED. Why do I? I have the Lomo fisheye camera I bought in London (and, sadly, only just finished my first roll of film about two months later, which I was told will cost $50 to get developed! Stupid slide film), the disposable camera we bought in Windsor when we realised that someone (probably me) forgot the digital*, and my digital camera.

*This one made it safely out the back of the camera shop with minimal fuss. I shall pick it up tomorrow :D

So considering I don't really take a lot of photos, that seemed a bit illogical. But I actually do really like photography, so I found this photography magazine again last night and luckily they have a superb archive so I could find my FAVOURITEST EVER series of photos!



Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida were the featured artists in the Jul/Aug 2006 issue and I love the detail in the pictures!







More things of theirs can be found here, and F-Stop magazine is available here