Brecht and Einaudi!

Oh gosh, I'm already failing at blogging. It just seems like not a lot worth blogging about happens in my life. However, I had a wonderful day on Saturday and thought I would share its events with you.

I went home for the weekend and my family and I went to London together. My mum and I went shopping, then we had lunch, then my brother and dad joined us and we went to a play, then we had dinner, and then we went to a concert. Music, literature, food and clothes...ah, it was almost a perfect day.

I'll tell you about the play first. It was Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children at the National Theatre. I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it, as almost all the plays I go to see are by Shakespeare, but I thought it was brilliant. Mother Courage is, to describe it very basically, a condemnation of war, which is portrayed as a never-ending cycle that produces nothing but death and misery. Courage, with her three children in tow, follows the army in a wagon in the hope to profit from the war by selling them provisions. She is determined to see the war through the eyes of a businesswoman and never to be caught up emotionally in its atrocities. Throughout the course of the play all of her children are lost to the war. Though of course any mother would be traumatised by this, Courage refuses to give up after each loss and continues to drag her wagon around Poland until all her children are gone. After she sings a lullaby to the corpse of Kattrin, her final child, her final words are, "I've got to get back into business."

Then she hauls her wagon around the stage all by herself, representing the endless and futile cycle of war.

Brecht makes a point of making his plays very self-referential - as in, making it obvious it's a play - which he calls the Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect"). In Mother Courage there isn't really a set, just big banners with the setting scrawled across them. There are no lighting effects, just cold, harsh white light; you can see the tech crew as they move around props to change the scene; the actors change costume in front of your eyes. This didn't really stop me from feeling involved in the events of the play, but I felt I was being invited to be an objective spectator, to evaluate whether I thought what Courage was doing was right or not. It's hard to consider war without being emotionally involved, which is why I think Brecht tries to alienate us.

The play is also frequently broken up by musical numbers. I didn't realise Brecht actually intended music to be a part of the play until afterwards - I thought the director had just randomly shoved it in to make it more entertaining. Anyway, the music was excellent. They got a guy named Duke Special to compose it; a funny little Irish guy with dreadlocks and eyeliner. He and his band would suddenly appear on stage and begin to sing. I'd never heard of him before, but he was actually very talented (he played loads of instruments), and I thought his voice was beautiful. At the end, after Courage had dragged the wagon offstage, all that remained was Duke Special banging a drum and singing. I can't remember what the song was called, but in it he sung about war. The final few lines really resonated with me. The exact words escape me but he sung something about how at least when we die we will finally be free from war.

And then he sung the final line: Unless the war goes on in hell. And then the lights went out. Amaaaaaaaazing.

***

So. In the evening we went to a piano concert at the Barbican: Ludovico Einaudi performing songs from his new album, Nightbook. I'd never been to a classical concert before so I didn't know what to expect, but it was amazing. Einaudi's music is contemporary and minimalist. He blends the piano with strings, percussion and also live electronics, and though he repeats the same motifs a lot, it just sounds amazing. When I sat in there and closed my eyes, it sounded like I was listening to a CD - then I opened my eyes and saw that there were actual people making these beautiful sounds, and more astonishingly, they weren't messing up. I can't even play two bars in front of my mum without hitting the wrong key, crying out in frustration/embarrassment and giving up. Oh, and there was this guy who had some serious skills on the tambourine. He was going mental. It was incredible.

I often use Einaudi as a backing track for my writing. I wish more people could appreciate classical music. It really annoys me how Cheryl Cole can whine 'we gotta fightFIGHTfightFIGHTfight for this love!' over a synthesized beat and everyone will buy it and it will get to number one, and yet incredibly talented people like Einaudi are stuck in this niche. People say they find classical music 'boring', which usually means they can't dance to it in a club. I understand that people connect music to memories, such as a good night in a club. But classical music is so atmospheric. Add a classical soundtrack to a film and it makes it ten times better...I mean, listen to the soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings films, for example. They are amazing. People don't even realise that when they enjoy these films they are appreciating classical music. They call it boring. Grr.

Anyway, check out this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB3wgiaOOvA. It's Nightbook, probably my favourite song from Einaudi's album so far, though I haven't fully listened to all the tracks yet. The song just conjures so many beautiful images in my mind. I don't need to connect it to a concrete event in my life because it inspires my imagination. That's what crap people like Cheryl Cole and Tinchey Strider and whoever else fail to do. They make songs that drunk people can dance to in clubs but that's about it. Sorry, bit of an angry, 'the young people are rotting their minds! Get off the grass!' diatribe there.

Hmm, okay. Time to do work now!

Back at uni.

I've been living in my student house for a week and although term doesn't technically start until tomorrow, I have been so busy that I haven't been able to write or update my blog. Now is the first chance I have had to sit down properly.

I'm not doing brilliantly on the resolutions, but not for want of trying. I applied for a job but they never got back to me about interviews, which took place yesterday with a few more this evening. I am not joining the gym because they have put the price up and it's too expensive for me. However, I will be doing a lot of tap dancing this year, which will be good exercise. I haven't been able to write every day but I plan on starting tomorrow.

On the plus side, I enrolled in German classes and have been put in the advanced class! It's two hours a week. I'm a bit concerned because I haven't spoken the language in so long, but the tutor said I would be surprised at how quickly I will pick it up again. I have been eating much healthier - no pizza, pasta or frozen chicken kievs yet! I made an immense toad in the hole yesterday. As for being nicer to people, that is going very well. We had a house party last night which I will tell you about now.

If you've come here from my FictionPress profile, you might have read my story the Healing Properties of Tea. In one of the chapters I describe the 'typical' student house party, in which people dance with kettles on their heads, punch holes in the walls and fall asleep on piles of shoes covered in ketchup. This, I admit, was a bit of an exaggeration for the purpose of humour. Things like that happen sometimes, but when they do it's a big deal, and everyone laughs at the person involved for about a month afterwards. It's not the norm.

Our house party was very busy: my housemate O invited a lot of people (it was her birthday), and it turned out to be a lot more than our little house could actually hold! We tried to herd people down to our creepy cellar, which we decorated with cheap Ikea rugs (now ruined) and fairy lights, but it was too damp and cold and no one liked to stay down there. Instead everyone tried to cram into the living room and kitchen, to the extent that you basically couldn't see the floor/move, and there was a massive queue for the toilet. Most people just chatted, so drunken antics were to a minimum. There was only one horrendously drunk boy who stumbled in uninvited, already pretty much gone, and proceeded to spend most of the night standing in the kitchen with his torso slumped across the kitchen worktop, throwing up in our sink every ten minutes. I honestly have no idea how so much sick can come out of one person. His shirt was covered in stains - it was so humiliating. Why would you let yourself get like that? Even worse, we couldn't find anyone who knew him. At about 2am one of his housemates appeared and dragged him out of the house, at which point everyone cheered. He's not invited back, that's for sure.

Nothing much else happened, but I talked to so many new people, where usually I would have sat in a corner with people I already knew. You find yourself getting into such strange conversations ("Yeah, my friend's cat has cat AIDs, it's not allowed out the house!" and "I dropped my phone down the toilet...PRE-FLUSH!") but it's very entertaining. We invented a new code which enables you to talk about someone at the party without them realising, basically by referring to them as Frank Sinatra the whole time. I have no idea how this came about, but I must have received some strange looks when people overheard me saying, "Guys, Frank Sinatra fancies me but I don't fancy him back, what do I do?" They must have thought I was delusional. Oh my gosh, the aftermath though. We had three friends from home over to stay, and this morning I was the only person who woke up in the correct bed, in my pajamas; everyone else fell asleep fully clothed. There were bottles, cans and popped balloons everywhere, and our kitchen floor was black with dirt. We put on S Club 7 and danced around cleaning, and now our house looks presentable again.

Overall, I've been at uni for a week and it feels like so much longer. Already I've made several new friends, caught up with old ones and grown closer to people I didn't know that well last year. My housemates and I (O, M and A, the only boy) have become like a family. We'll huddle in my double bed watching TV, sit around the table eating fajitas, pop down to the shops or even go ice-skating together. I hope this continues throughout the year, even when people start to get bogged down by lectures and workloads, because it's really helping me to come out of my shell. At school I was basically the Invisible Girl, but uni is really starting to change that. It's an amazing experience.

Well, I have to go, because I'm going to see Fame with my friend from tap. I'll update this blog with something writing-related soon - and hopefully get around to some writing too!

New Term Resolutions!

Summer is well and truly over now. We never have great summer weather in England, but now the weather really is herald to the autumn: every day is of the kind I love, chill and crisp with blue skies and sunshine. It's cold enough to wrap up in boots and jackets and scarves and go for long walks preceded by hot chocolate, but it's warm if you find a patch of sunlight and huddle in it.

The other exciting thing about autumn is that I start university again. I'm moving into my house the day after tomorrow. I will then spend a week sorting things out for the new term/going to house parties/sleeping until midday, and then lectures start the next week. I have such good intentions for this year, and plan to better myself in many ways. Of course, I know we all think like this, and that after about two weeks all our plans to transform ourselves into lifestyle gurus with superhero-like powers of organisation and infallible work ethics fall down in a pile of cataclysmic smoking ruin - but there's no harm in trying, is there?

Thus I present:

Emma's list of New Term Resolutions

1. Get a term-time job. Progress: I have managed to force myself to download and look at the application form for waitressing at the on-campus bistro. This was very mentally taxing, which leads me to wonder how I will cope with 10-12 hours a week minimum serving people ciabattas and freshly squeezed orange juice, but all I need do to negate such lazy feelings is to look at the moth-balls and spiderwebs currently gathering in my purse/bank account.
2. Get German lessons. Yes, I already speak German, but I have forgotten most of it in the past year, and if I went to Germany pretty much the only thing I'd be able to do is wander around panic-stricken accosting strangers with generic phrases such as, "Could you help me please, my camera is broken!" and "Excuse me, where is the youth hostel?" which would not get me very far. Progress: I have discovered that I must go to the Language Centre on a certain date to speak to a tutor about which class to be put in. I also have to pay about £150, thus increasing the necessity of Resolution 1. The biggest task, however, is not being too pathetic and shy to actually turn up at the Language Centre.
3. Write every day. Even if it's just for half an hour. Even if all I can manage is to write the words "Chapter Seven" and then stare mindlessly at the screen for twenty-nine more minutes. Blogging, Facebook and creating abusive signs to stick on my housemates' doors do not count as 'writing'.
   
4. Successfully complete NaNoWriMo. I did in in 2006 so I know it's possible. This is probably the worst year ever to start doing it again, since this year actually counts towards my degree, but I've made an account now and am an 'official participant' so I've already signed my own death warrant, really.
5. Work harder. Progress: I have got off to a good start because I have read several of my course books over the summer. This year I am going to read all my books, do all my work, actually speak in seminars, spend time in the library, and attend lectures and seminars rather than deciding I have a cold and then going into town to buy cookies and milkshakes.
   
6. Be nicer to people. I have been described as an ice queen far too many times in the past few years. This is, in fact, just a front I put on to hide my crippling shyness; I'd rather people think I don't want to talk to them than have them realise I am boring and have nothing to say to them. Well, I do have things to say, as this blog proves, but I assume they won't be interested. This year I am going to be open and friendly to everyone and if they aren't interested it doesn't matter. In particular I will be nicer to random strangers who approach me in bars/clubs. I always assume that if a guy approaches me he must be a sleaze. Well, my housemate O talks to loads of random people when we're out, and though they do sometimes turn out to be not very nice, she has met plenty of perfectly normal people and made some great friends. I must follow her example.
   
7. Eat healthy food. No more surviving on a diet of soup, toast, baked beans and cereal, thus giving myself scurvy and rickets. I play to buy loads of interesting fruit and vegetables so I can make myself smoothies and casseroles and be a domestic goddess in general.
   
8. Go to the gym regularly. Is three times a week too ambitious? Probably. My friend Pip and I have decided we are going to run a marathon (Is the London Marathon too ambitious? Probably.) which means I need to hit the running machine hard.
   

I will update you on the progress of these resolutions as term begins. Hopefully lots of interesting things will happen to me and I will be able to update this blog more frequently. I will also have lots of interesting literary things to talk about - since that was the original purpose of this blog I should really include some of it. English is, after all, awesome.

To the new term!

Mundanity.

I haven't had time to post in a while because I have been insanely busy. I haven't been doing anything that important; just lots of mundane little things, which I will now relate to you, because I'm in that kind of mood.

I went to see We Will Rock You for the third time with my parents and aunt. We saw it in Birmingham because it's easier for my aunt to get there. Birmingham has almost become a home-from-home city for me, what with it being so easy to get to from university. It was nice to go back there and reminisce about university times: shopping trips, eating cake in Druckers, haggling with a very insistent man in the market over the sale of eight umbrellas (don't ask). It was nice to see my aunt, whom I haven't seen in years. We're very different: she lives in the country, where she has no car, computer, satellite TV or even a shower, while I'm a suburbs girl a stone's throw from London. So we don't have a lot in common, and I was worried it would be awkward, but it wasn't. She was lovely and she bought me a top with a big shiny gold owl on it I have been coveting for ages. Score. WWRY was good as always.

What else? I went to see a dance show in London with a friend. I also hung out with my friend who's just come back from travelling in Asia, and we chatted for ages. She had some pretty scary experiences, including being bitten by a venomous spider about the size of my head (I am still traumatized from the photos).

We also drew up The Oath. We both want to get fit before we go back to university, so we decided that for three weeks and three days we're going to do exercise every day and only eat healthy food. It's pretty strict: forbidden items include alcohol, chocolate, cakes, biscuits, sweets, crisps, white bread, cheese, coffee, potatoes, pasta, rice and any snacks between meals. If we eat any of these we have to do double the exercise. When I tell people about it I always hear cries of, "What? But you're so skinny!", but it's not about losing weight. It's just about being healthy. When I stuff my face with cake and drink about four cups of tea a day, as I usually do, I always feel tired and sluggish. It's been five days and I'm already feeling more alive.

I did have a nasty run-in with a bar of chocolate at my friend's house on day three, though. It literally shoved itself in my mouth. I don't know how that happened! Anyway, I did the forfeit, so it's fine.

My friend from university came to stay the next day and I showed her the joys of my village. We went to the park and had a picnic on one of the piers overlooking the lake. The weather was beautiful and the geese didn't try to kill us for our food. Then we watched an entire series of Peep Show and two movies. It was a lovely day! On Sunday I had a very successful shopping trip with my mum. We got a load of CDs, including a Rachmaninov CD for me, which made me very happy. Then I got some boots that I am so pleased with. I have been looking for some good quality leather black ankle boots, as well as some brown mid-calf ones with buckles, for ages, and then they both came along at once. They are gorgeous, and they were both bargains! The black ankle boots were £15 down from £100. I am actually in love with the brown boots. They are Kurt Geiger, originally £230, down to £71! It was still a lot of money but considering what good quality they are I am really pleased. Especially since I can never find shoes to fit my ridiculously small feet.

That probably bored the life out of you, didn't it?

Amongst doing all this stuff, I have just realised how much I need to do before returning to university, and it's making me panic a bit. I have a pile of at least fifteen books on my shelf, all of which need to be read at some point in the next three weeks. I just finished Anita and Me by Meera Syal (very good), The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe (unremarkable), and have managed to plough most of the way through Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Next up is Scarlet and Black by Stendhal, which looks like the most unexciting read ever. I really don't think I'm going to get through all these books.

On top of that I'm trying to write two stories, and my friends keep phoning me and asking me to do things in the little free time I have left. I know it's terrible, but sometimes I feel almost resentful when people snap up all of my free time. I should be grateful that I have wonderful friends who want to spend time with me, and I love spending time with them, but often all I want to do is turn off my phone and curl up in bed with a book. I get really stressed. It's a weird metaphor, but this is how I feel when there are too many things demanding my time and attention: I feel like the centrepiece of a Sunday roast. I'm sitting there in the middle of the table, trying to mind my own business, but people keep on tearing strips off me until I'm just a pile of bones.

Is that too melancholy?

Ah well, I'm off to Portugal with some friends from university in two weeks. Three girls, three guys and one undoubtedly very messy apartment. Most importantly, a beach and a swimming pool. There will be plenty of time to relax there!

Crime and Punishment.

So I just finished reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Wow, that was heavy going.

I know pretty much nothing about Russian literature. I read Tolstoy's Anna Karenin and then I read this, and that's the extent of my reading in that particular area. I have to read War and Peace for one of my modules next year, but I probably won't be conscious after finishing that, one so I thought I'd better write a blog entry now.

I'm not going to even attempt to adopt a scholarly tone for this, so here we go: Crime and Punishment is absolutely mental.

Seriously. Not a single character in the book is sane. Where do I begin? There's the main character, Raskolnikov, who murders an old woman with an axe, the reason given to justify this deed being that he thinks he's some kind of revolutionary Napoleon, from what I gather. He's poor and wanders around in filthy rags and lives in a cupboard which he can't pay the rent for, and this woman is wealthy due to being a greedy old witch, and yet he doesn't kill her for the money. He hides everything he steals from her under a rock. Oh, and when people give him money, which they do quite often, he either gives it to someone else or throws it off a bridge. I wanted to yell at him to keep the money and go buy himself a nice meal, since he never seems to eat anything, leaving me to wonder how he survives to the end of the book. He gets very ill, raves deliriously in his bed, broods a lot, wanders around the slums falling asleep in bushes, abuses all his friends and family, and then finally turns himself in to the police. Then he goes to jail, decides he's in love with a prostitute, and that's the happy ending.

Who else is there? He has this friend, Razumikhin, who's also completely off his rocker. He's basically permanantly excited and follows Raskolnikov around like an overexcited spaniel, despite the fact Raskolnikov tells him to get lost on numerous occasions. Then there's Svidrigailov, this weird old lecher who has a creepy obsession with Raskolnikov's sister and flings money at everyone who comes within ten metres of him, before announcing he's going to America and then shooting himself in the head. Porfiry is the clever detective who knows that Raskolnikov murdered the old woman, but he never tells anyone because he has no concrete evidence. Instead he constantly torments Raskolnikov and makes long rambling speeches in which he says "tee-hee-hee!" a lot. There are lots of other characters, but it would take too long to go through them all, and I can't pronounce let alone remember any of their names.

I'll briefly mention the female characters though, because they don't fare much better. Sonya is the prostitute who 'offers Raskolnikov redemption'. I think this is because she is the only person he feels able to confess the murder to. And she loves him and he loves her and she gives him the New Testament and at the end he considers maybe thinking about reading it. Which is good, I guess. Anyway, Sonya spends most of the book trembling and crying and wailing, "Oh merciful Lord!" which was very sweet at first but just got a bit pathetic after a while. The other woman worth mentioning is Katerina Ivanova, Sonya's stepmother, who is consumptive and runs around going "cahuh-cahuh-cahuh!" a lot, and thinks she is a noblewoman despite living in absolute squalor, and goes raving mad when her permanently drunk husband dies, and then forces her children to wear ridiculous hats and dance in the streets. And then dies. Yeah. I do feel a bit sorry for her, but she is mental like the rest of them.

So you've got all these crazy characters wandering around St. Petersburg trying to have conversations with each other, but failing since none of them is on the same page as any of the others. Most of them spout two-page long monologues in which there is no logical line of thought, and which are usually misunderstood by the other characters. Everything is so...disconnected. I suppose it's the real world seen through a framework of poverty and exggerated ten times over. It's a grotesque, gloomy, clownish fantasy world, full of charicatured figures, where nothing feels real and nothing quite makes sense. It completely threw me out of my prim and proper middle-class English Home Counties comfort zone. No one did what I expected them to do, what I would have done, and it frustrated me a lot. By the end of it, I'd stopped expecting anything to make sense.

But then, there was a suggestion at the end that order might be restored - that Raskolnikov will repent of his crime and lead a happy life with Sonya when he is released from jail. Wikipedia tells me that Dostoyevsky was an Orthodox Christian (though I suspect it's more complicated than Wikipedia suggests), which I suppose makes sense of that.

Anyway, I know I have spoken irreverently about Crime and Punishment and its general craziness. But you know what? I thought it was brilliant. Who says literature has to make sense?

I love Hamlet.

If it were possible to marry an inanimate object, I would probably marry a copy of Hamlet. I love Hamlet to the point that it is almost disturbing.

I am obsessed with it: it is one of the very few things in this world that make me cry every time without fail (the other things being Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto and Norrington's death in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie - I have a devastatingly massive crush on Jack Davenport) and I consider it to be the best thing ever written EVER. I can't explain why I love it so much. There's a huge debate about whether Hamlet is feigning madness or whether he is actually mad, but I think that even in his madness he is the sanest character in any play. The way he responds to his tragic circumstances is so convincing - I think I'd go crazy if my uncle killed my father and then married my mother. All of the other characters (except Horatio) betray or totally misunderstand Hamlet, but as the audience you feel like the only people who see who he really is. Every time I watch it I feel like I go a bit mad with him.

I was obviously delighted when my friend offered me very cheap tickets to see Jude Law play Hamlet in London last night. I'm not such a big fan of Law, but I thought it would be interesting to see him attempt the ultimate role when I'm accustomed to seing him in awful romcoms. I mean, The Holiday is pretty much the Bad Movie I compare all other bad movies to. That one really set the bar. My friends and I watched it last Christmas and we rewinded back to the bit where the little girl looks at Cameron Diaz and goes YOU SMELL LOVELY...I LIKE YOUR LIPS! about five times because at the time it was the funniest thing we'd ever seen. Anyway, I'm off on another tangent. Sorry.

Last year I was also lucky enough to get tickets to see David Tennant in the Royal Shakespeare Company production. We drove up to Stratford-upon-Avon and combined it with a visit to Shakespeare's birthplace. Tennant was so good that I left fancying him a bit, despite his not being particularly attractive and my not being a fan of Doctor Who. I didn't expect Law to better his performance and I was right. So now, like everyone else who has had the good fortune to see both productions, I am going to compare them.

Tennant was far more witty and charismatic. He was excellent at being mad, which isn't surprising considering the quirky, barmy way he played Doctor Who. However, when it came to the soliloquys, the moments when Hamlet is consumed by grief and the desire for revenge, he was surprisingly touching. One minute I was laughing, the next I had to hide the fact my eyes were watering pathetically from the people sitting around me. Law on the other hand went down the angry, brooding, shouty route, which he did pull off well, but at times I felt it lacked any emotional content and he was just speaking lines. He substitued emotion for over-the-top hand gestures, such as pointing to the sky when he said the word 'sky'. Thanks, Jude, I had no idea in which direction the sky was located. At points he was very over the top...but I feel I'm being a bit mean to him. He spoke the lines very well whereas Tennant had a tendency to garble, and he grated on me a lot less in the second half. His portrayal was consistent, he drew laughter from the audience in all the right places, and by the end he had really pulled me into the story.

Hm, what else? My friend and I both agreed that Ophelia in last night's production was unbearable. I just read a review that described her as 'touching'. Ugh. The only thing she touched was my suppressed desire to scream and break things. She was stiff and dull and just reeled off the lines robotically. Her version of madness was wandering around the stage singing in a pretty voice. In the Tennant production Ophelia was running around the stage, shouting, flinging flowers at people, tearing off her clothes. The ghost wasn't, er, ghost-like enough for me last night, and Horatio didn't really do it for me. It's not Hamlet's actual death that always sends me into floods of tears, it's when Horatio says "Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest" that I begin to bawl like a five-year-old, because Horatio loves Hamlet and stays loyal to him to the end. But this Horatio didn't particularly seem to care, and I only experienced a bit of mild eye-watering (and for some reason nose running, which was very attractive).

Both productions went for the whole gloomy set, everyone wears dark colours vibe, which is probably the best way to go with Hamlet. In the Tennant production it was chilling and atmospheric, but last night's set was a bit...blah. When Law spoke the "to be or not to be" line he was standing in the snow framed by a set of massive doors. I suppose it was a little hackneyed but I quite liked it. Oh, and the scene of Polonius' death was excellent. Hamlet and Gertrude were behind a sheer curtain and Polonius was on the side of the audience listening. Hamlet then stabbed him through the curtain and he tore it down as he died. He ruined this a bit by falling onto his front and then suddenly flopping over onto his back with a massive thud. It made me laugh but no one else found it funny. It was like one of those moments when someone sneezes in a silent exam hall and you are the only person trying to hold back hysterical laughter.

Oh, and apparently Kevin R. Mcnally played Claudius, and I had absolutely no idea until I got home and looked it up online! I didn't recognise him because the only thing I've seen him in is Pirates of the Caribbean as Gibbs, and so I always picture him covered in muck and swigging a bottle of rum (Pirates is another one of my obsessions if you hadn't guessed).

Overall it was a very good performance and I now have a lot more respect for Jude Law - he did very well, though not as well as David Tennant, who is awesome. Law proved that he can act more than one type of character. I read somewhere that Tennant and co. are going to create a film version of the RSC performance to release on DVD, which I am so buying and watching over and over again (and you should too). I suppose the point of this massive blog post is to say that if you've never seen or read Hamlet, please do so. It will make your life better. It might even make you sob like a baby. Then again, that might just be me.

BASIC GRAMMAR FOR IDIOTS

Okay, so I don't expect much from Fictionpress. It is a site predominantly for angsty pre-teens, and at nineteen years old I am basically a veteran. But here's what baffles and angers me about it: it's supposed to be a site for people who love writing. How can you love writing and yet have no knowledge, let alone respect, for the very basics of the English language? I know grammar at nineteen years old, and I knew it when I was thirteen years old, too. Age is no excuse. I am appalled by the quite frankly embarrassing butchering of English I see on Fictionpress on a daily basis.

Here is a guide to grammar for idiots. I know that the people who read my blog are generally lovely, intelligent people who can spell, and so this is not directed at you. It is more of a generic angry rant.

Emma's guide to basic grammar for idiots

1. "It's" is a contraction. It means IT IS. If you write, "the cat licked it's paw", you are in fact saying, "the cat licked it is paw". THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
2. On a similar note, you can't just shove apostrophes into random plurals. Egg's. Dvd's. Pillow's. Sorry, the pillow's what? These are the only two functions of an apostrophe: to signify a contraction, or to denote possession. Stop using them for other things. Apostrophes are not like sugar, which you can sprinkle randomly all over something to make it nicer.
3. You're = YOU ARE. Your = POSSESSIVE PRONOUN. Learn the difference. It's really not hard. I'm not asking you to memorise the periodic table here.
   
4. Capitalising Every Word In a Sentence Does Not Constitute Formal Writing. It Is In Fact Incredibly Irritating And Makes You Sound Like You Are Talking Like a Robot. Please Stop it Now.
5. You must always capitalise 'I'. I learnt this in Year One. If you are still writing "and then i went to the shops", I think you have a lot of catching up to do and perhaps need to be demoted to aforementioned year. In fact, please remember to start your sentences with capital letters in general.
   
6. You can't just randomly change tenses halfway through a paragraph or sentence. If you don't understand why this is, I wash my hands of you, but let me get the ball rolling by telling you that we do not live in a completely incoherent time-warped world where the present can become the past in an instant. This is one of the basic facts of existence, let alone grammar.
   
7. Why do some people not realise that if you pose a question you must end it with a question mark or else it will sound like you are an unbearable person who talks in a monotone all the time.
8. I don't understand why people seem to hate question marks, and yet they love exclamation marks - so much that they deem it acceptable to either make every sentence an exclamatory one, or to use six all in one go. You cannot write, "And I couldn't believe how handsome he was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" without sounding like a squealing fangirl at her very first boyband concert.
   
9. Okay, I apologise for the caps lock, and I am aware that this in itself is bad grammar, but I need to use it to express my sheer outrage at this last point. Here goes: YOU CANNOT SPEAK IN INTERNET SLANG IN YOUR WRITING. THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. YOU ARE CREATING A PIECE OF ART, NOT CHATTING TO YOUR BEST BUDDY ON MSN. IF YOU THINK CREATIVE WRITING IS SUCH A WASTE OF YOUR TIME THAT YOU FEEL THE NEED TO CONTRACT "YOU", A SIMPLE THREE LETTER WORD, TO "U", THEN YOU SHOULD NOT BE WRITING, AND SHOULD ACTUALLY BE BANNED FROM BEING NEAR A KEYBOARD OR ANY KIND OF WRITING IMPLEMENT EVER AGAIN IN YOUR LIFE. THIS IS THE ULTIMATE DISRESPECT TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND I DIE QUITE A LOT INSIDE EVERY TIME I SEE ANYONE DOING IT.
   

Breathe, Emma, breathe...