Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

I can’t be exactly sure how many times I’ve watched Weapons Grade Y-Fronts now. The problem is I keep going to my favourite scenes and then end up watching the rest because there’s always another scene after which I also like and it’d waste time skipping ahead to it, ironically enough. I particularly love Eddie’s entrance. The best parts are when they go off script and you know it, especially when Richie is supposed to me frozen in time but keeps moving when Eddie’s back is turned. It’s even greater when they try to hide their laughing. You can usually tell when they’ve gone off script due to the swearing and when they reference previous performances. If you like violent slapstick and aren’t offended by swearing and the like then I’d advise watching it, just like Guest House Paradiso. I wish I could’ve seen them live but at least I have the next best thing, the video .
Now then, before I start watching my favourite scenes again, I told you I had some good news earlier. It was two days ago so I can’t really recall the little details to build up suspense, which you’ll probably be relieved to read .
Anyway, on Wednesday I had to go and collect my work. The work that I got so upset about because I handed it in late, I banged my head on the wall for about half an hour. Yup, that’s the one. Anyway, I went to collect it. I hung around to have a word with her about it. Apparently 63, 64 is quite good for a first year’s notebook and essay. She said she thought the essay was good, but then again it was just a write up really, explaining my role in the presentation. She’s not as evil as I’d imagined at all. I feel so silly that I got so worried about it now. And you don't get marked down for handing it in half an hour late, not yet at least, so that's a relief. And, I get to keep the notebook to keep working in, so it’s a shame I took 50 pages out of it thinking it’d be scrutinised, especially seeing as I’m opposed to tearing perfectly good pages out of perfectly good notebooks. Bugger it. But anyway, it all turned out good and I was happy, until I realised that this is week 9 and my Jane Eyre essay (Which I hadn’t even started was due in Thursday, yesterday but it was tomorrow then) 2000 words and I hadn’t even started it. Stupid me, you see, thought that week 9 was next week. It’s only because I jotted the weeks down in a little calendar in a notepad I haven’t used yet that I realised. So I sent an email to the only person in my literature class who’s email address I have and asked if it was due in the next day. He said it was. I couldn’t believe it. How could I have screwed up so badly twice with two essays in two weeks? And this essay will be scrutinised. I tried to read Jane Eyre but I’m just too slow and eventually I thought get on with the bloody essay. Oddly enough I’d watched Weapons Grade Y-Fronts a second, or it could’ve been a third, time that day too and I think I also watched the first Bottom Live show too, where Richie decides to kill himself. It’s great because they go right off script at that point and end up insulting each other, and Rik Mayall’s laughing while trying to say “I’ve got some sad and tragic news” and Adrian Edmondson says “You looked a lot sadder in rehearsals” .
Anyway, I set about the essay. I tried my hardest not to paraphrase the text but I know I did. How are you supposed to fill out 2000 words in one night without paraphrasing the bloody text? It’d help if someone had actually sat me down and taught me how to lay out an essay properly instead of just saying this in an e, you need to mention this and put in that and find some god damned bloody critics to back up your point and no matter ho hard you look you can’t seem to find anything to back up what you’re trying to say because you don’t even know what you’re trying to say anymore. There was actually a class about writing critical essays today (The creative writing department put on this thing with a load of stuff in, I’m being deliberately vague) but I missed it because I had Critical Skills. Anyway, I worked on it until about 7 am, as you’ll know from my last entry. It was nearly daylight when I looked out of my window. I only had about three hours before I had to get myself up to try and finish it so I could hand it in on time and collect a poetry book I was supposed to have read by 2pm (I didn’t read it in the end but I book marked all of the poems we were supposed to have read so I could at least find the right page). I didn’t get any sleep, though I think I came close because I remember thinking weird stuff that I wouldn’t normally think that I can’t remember, just verging on dreaming. Then I had to get up and try and find critics to pad out my essay. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t get it up to the word count, I was quite a way below the word count but I thought to myself it’s better to hand in this piece of **** and get some kind of mark, even though it really is absolutely atrocious, really you can’t sugar coat this one, I was about 500 words below the flipping word count and I’m so angry about it. It was due in by 12pm. I figured better to hand it in and get something, even I it’s just advice on how to do it properly than to hand in nothing and get a big fat zero. So, disappointed but too tired to care anymore I filled in the coversheet, printed it out and bunged it in the relevant slot where I found that the actual deadline was 6 bloody pm. But it was too late by then, the essay was in the box and I couldn’t retrieve it so I just thought sod it. There’s nothing I can do now. It’s done, it’s handed in, now it’s up to my tutor, I picked up my poetry book. By that time I wasn’t feeling so tired, not in that kind of my eyes sting and my eyelids keep drooping and if I closed them for a moment I’m sure I’d fall asleep way. But the second I got to my seminar I felt drained and the lecture drained me further. I wasn’t really taking it in, something about roses and how they appeared in a load of stuff, but they were just an example of something. As soon as I got back I went to bed, fully dressed and had a bit of a sleep. Therefore I mised the PS2 clup which usualy ores me silly anyway. I don’t think it was very long though, but a few hours later I decided to get up because if I had a full sleep I’d probably have woken up early and not been able to sleep again and then be tired for my 11:30am seminar this morning, so I ended up watching Weapons Grade Y-Fronts again and the first four episodes of the Young Ones, because that’s all I have unfortunately. Afterwards I tought it’s still a bit early but you’re feeling tired now, which is good, but if you try and go straight to bed you won’t sleep because you’ve been on the computer until now. Is there anything you can do just to pass half an hour or so at least, let your head cool down a bit? So I wrote a couple of pages of bad short stories (I made a note of all the days I missed my story a day. It’s nearly 2 weeks now. I managed to finish one and write another and then look back and realised I’d already done another back dated one, so I was able to cross 3 off my list, only 11 more to go, including today). I’m determined to keep this up though. I’m not going to quit this little project so soon. It’s vital that I get more practice if I want to be a decent writer. My choice of titles needs great improvement. My last one, titled ‘Pants’ was originally based on the ending song of Weapons Grade Y-Fronts where Richie and Eddie are trying to encourage the audience to take off their pants, especially the birds as it’s very important religiously, and offer them to the Mother Pants It’s great. I was very tired by that time so I had to try and fill in the page before I went to sleep. It didn’t quite go in the direction I wanted I moved the action along a bit too fast I think and ended up having to come up with some gibberish. That’s another thing I’m hoping this little project will help me with. I always move the plot along in my head faster than I write it and thin I think of a killer event/incident that’ll be greater to add at a later date but then the flow of the plot freezes and I can’t move it and there’s no way I’ll get up to that point that I can’t stop thinking about because it’s so far ahead. So, to try and move the plot along, and so I don’t forget the brilliant idea, I throw it in then and there, the plot flows for a very short time and then stops dead because I’m all out of ideas. My logic here is that if I have a killer idea now I can write it out in my story a day and then go back to it at a later date, so it’s not forgotten but not shoved in so quick that it clogs up the plot, giving my mind a chance to clear out that idea and think of a newer one to move the plot along again. That’s my plan anyway. I haven’t got around to editing them yet, I want to catch up on my back dated ones before I try that.
Well, I think I’m out of things to say. Thanks for reading and sticking with me.

Bluebiird out