I must make this very clear to you. Shopping makes me very uncomfortable. I'm not a typical female. Whenever I shop, be it because of a conscious decision that I need a new jacket, or to kill time, or to calm me down when I'm stressed, it just flusters me incredibly. I don't know why I shop to try to calm myself down, it does the opposite. I actually feel physically uncomfortable: I get hot and fidgety. I do not enjoy making decisions - when I go out for a meal my stomach sinks if there are more than 6 dishes on the menu.

And if I start spending money, the floodgates open. I'm not going to add up how much money I spend last time I went clothes shopping because I'm ashamed to find out. I actually blanked a lot of that experience out, I got home and could barely remember what I'd bought. That's how traumatising it is for me. Online shopping is almost as bad, bar one thing:

Helpful shop assistants.

Now, I'm a Saturday girl for a big-brand shop selling CDs and DVDs and games (and various related accessories). And part of my job role involves 'floorwalking', or 'personal shopping'. This involves approaching customers and asking if they need any help. I don't enjoy doing this for a number of reasons: one, nobody ever accepts my help; and two, I know how much I hate it when it happens to me. But I get paid to do it, and it's usually only for an hour at the most, so if I can't find a reason for hiding in the stockroom instead then I'll put up with it.

The reason I bring this up now is because yesterday I had an encounter with a "helpful" shop assistant that was too much for my oddball brain to cope with.

I have the afternoon off college on Wednesdays so yesterday on my way back I decide to stop in the local department store where they have a great trendy make-up counter with brightly coloured eyeliners and things. I'm pleased to spot that the counter is unguarded; the lady on the payroll of my chosen brand is off chatting to her friends over by a distant perfume counter. So I begin browsing, dabbing things on the back of my hand, trying not to get foundation powder on my jacket sleeves.

But less than five minutes later, She appears. Hovering over me in her gaudy red lipstick, she is pretty and intimidating. So I carry on browsing, now feeling faintly embarrassed.

"We have liquid foundation down here too," she says. I do not know what the appropriate response to a comment like this is. Do I carry on looking at the powder, or do I look at what she suggests? Do I ignore her or do I say something?

"Uh... thanks." That's a safe reply, right? I carry on around the display, hoping that was enough for her, but she hangs around, cleaning the lipstick stand or some other task which keeps her less than a yard from me. A minute or so later:

"These matte eyeshadows are actually being discontinued soon, so if you want them you'll have to get them soon."

"Ok." I want to sound more assertive than I feel. I don't look at the matte eyeshadows straight away because I feel that if she gains any control over what I'm looking at, she'll have me hooked and she'll somehow manipulate me into having a full-blown makeover right there in the window of the department store when all I want to do is maybe buy some purple mascara, get the Number 7 bus home and eat my chicken fajita wrap.

As I dip my fingers into the luxury compact eyeshadows, desperately wishing that they provided tissues in this place so the back of my hand could have space left on it, she tries again. "Have you had a look at the powder eyeshadows?"

I'm a rabbit in the headlights. "No?" I don't know why it's a question, I really don't.

"They blend really well together and come in some really nice shades."

By this point I felt so awkward I could have cried. I have never wanted somebody to not do their job as much as I did at that moment. I think I nodded, I can't be sure by this point. I knew I had to make a dash for it, and, stammering a "Thank you", headed for the exit as fast as I could without breaking into a jog.

Now I'm stuck, because I want to buy my nice make-up, and that's the only place that in the area sells it. I'll buy lots of things online, make-up isn't one of those things. What do I do? It's horrific, I'm just a wreck. Maybe I have a phobia of make-up-counter-ladies. This is problematic, as I don't know how to work around it.

My friends page looked so empty without ONTD, it seriously freaked me out. I never realised how much I relied on those guys, I would have nothing relevent to talk to anybody about otherwise. Who wants to hear me talk about A-Level physics? Whereas everybody is interested in the Lady GaGa/Paris Hilton saga, even if the people I'm talking about it to hate them.

In other news, you may or may not know, I'm been pretty ill for about a month now, with complaints such as recurring tonsilitis. Antibiotics couldn't clear it entirely (and in fact aggravated the condition of my overall health). My mother sees a homeopath and she made an appointment for a phone consultation with her.

Now, as a rule, I oppose everything alternative and holistic therapy stands for. I'm a subscriber of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast, I totally stand behind what these guys are doing, if you're interested in scepticism and/or science check them out.

Not a lot of people understand what homeopathy is. I got the impression to start that it was basically eating vegetables and plant-based remedies, and I can understand plant-based remedies; modern medicine is based upon observations within the natural world, it's synthesised replications of plant and animal enzymes. I understand why people could potentially have a problem with synthetic drugs and want to use natural versions of them. But that's not what homeopathy is.

An overview: If you give a healthy person belladonna, they'll come up with symptoms similar to acute tonsilitis. When a person is suffering from acute tonsilitis, a homeopath will treat them with belladonna. Extremely dilute belladonna. In fact, some homeopathic remedies don't contain any of what it says on the bottle, they contain water with the "memory" of belladonna. This, apparently, will help the body heal itself and cure the underlying cause instead of (they claim) supressing the syptoms they way conventional medicine does.

It's actually been proven that echinacea doesn't work, but people still buy it. My mother still tries to give it to me whenever I have a cold. They proved scientifically that it doesn't work. Whenever I argue this with her, she blindly refuses to understand what that even means. They tested it, it makes no difference whether you take it or not. No mother, it doesn't work with you, you just think it does because you want to believe it.

So I was on the phone to the witch doctor homeopath (who, for starters, was trying to treat me for a medical condition over the phone) for about 45 minutes. She asked about the various symptoms, then she asked me to describe my personality to her. How would my friends describe me? What am I afraid of? What films do I like to watch?

I got off the phone to her. "It's a bit like a therapy session, isn't it?" beams my mother.

So I've been put on a hypoallergenic diet. This means no sugar, no dairy, no wheat, no yeast, no mushrooms, no red meat, no alcohol, no peanuts, no caffeine. You don't realise how difficult it is until you try. I can't eat toast. I can't eat a burger. I can't eat a sandwich. I can't eat pasta. I can't eat have a biscuit and a cup of coffee. I can't eat pizza. I can't have a gravy dinner. I can't eat coleslaw. For a month.

I can understand the probiotics (even though soya yoghurt is disgusting), I can almost understand the diet even if I can't forgive it. I've also got a couple of useless homeopathic pills to take (which are effectively worse than placebos because I'm not even expecting them to do anything).

But as I mentioned at the start, I've been ill for over a month now, and it's been adversely affecting my mood (the week I spent off college was a very dark week). So I'm getting desperate. Desperate enough to try these homeopathetic remedies. Cross your fingers for me.

So, I was having a conversation with my stepdad about this the other day about this. My main use for the iPod is to keep me occupied on the hour and a quarter to and from college on the bus every day. Most of the kids who go to the college come from the other direction (I'm going up the valley, they're coming down it), so a lot of days I don't see anybody on the bus that I know. This is the simplest situation, you put in your headphones and you're set all the way. All you have to worry about is if your headphones leak sound and a loud song comes on that makes people look at you strangely. Last week I bought some £30 Sennheiser earbuds (reduced + discount), so that's that problem pretty much sorted out. I guess it's everybody else's loss that they can't hear my awesome music now.

Next: when you're listening to your portable music player of choice when you see a friend. My reaction in this situation is to turn off the music altogether, take out the earphones and strike up a conversation.

What about when you see an acquaintance? For example, a friend's girlfriend, a classmate who you aren't close with, or somebody you recently attended a maths competition with. This is much more difficult. There are several options:
a) Pretend you haven't seen them.
b) Nod at them, possibly adding a perfunctory greeting. Don't remove the headphones or adjust the volume. After this, pretend you don't see them.
c) Turn the volume down or remove one headphone. Say hello.
d) Turn off the music and take the headphones out altogether. Say hello.

There are problems with all of these. For a), obviously, if it's not believable that you haven't seen them, like if you've made eye contact or they sit down next to you, then you're going to come off as rude. To maximise believability I find staring in the opposite direction simple but effective. Of course, that's only going to work up to a point.

With b) it depends heavily on how much the other person wants to talk to you. Sometimes you'll both just nod and then be content to just ignore each other. If the other person speaks to you, however, you're in trouble, especially if you couldn't hear what they said. This means you have to take out one or both headphones and politely ask them what they said, which puts us in the same position as c) and d). (If they speak and you don't react or remove the phones, this can also seem rude).

Option c) and d)'s main problem is that you have to wait for the exchange with the acquaintance to finish before you put your headphones back in, and it can be very difficult to tell when that is. If you put them back in and then they say something else to you, you have to take them back out again. Once this happens, you're reluctant to put them back in again, which tends to lead to awkward silences. Several times I've gotten stuck wanting to put my music back in but feeling too awkward to do anything except stand there and be awkward.

This is even worse when someone you don't know starts speaking to you on the bus. These are generally older people, who'll remark to you about the weather, insist on touching you on the arm when they talk to you, and tell you about their prescription and their pets that have died. They don't understand about headphones and don't seem to realise when I have them in it means I'm listening to noise. And as soon as you think they've talked themselves out and put the headphones back on, they start talking again. Don't get me wrong, I give up my seat for an elderly people on the bus, I'm cool with old people, I'm just not big on talking to people I don't know on the bus, especially when I just wanted an hour to myself to listen to You Look Nice Today to cheer myself up.

So what do you do? Man, the sooner I learn to drive the better, it's going to solve all manner of problems.

Also, space was in the news today. I like it when that happens.

Happy Bonfire/Fireworks/Guy Fawkes Night/Diwali, everybody!

Guy Fawkes Night will always remind me to rebel. I'm sure that's the opposite of what the British Government intended when they decided to make Guy Fawkes infamous by burning him every year on a pile of old furniture, but that's the message I've ultimately taken away from it. As Stephen Fry once said:

"I think to live at the summation of human achievement in everything from computing to the internal combustion engine is a wonderful thing because we've got the past age, you can imagine you're that a Victorian, but if you're a Victorian you couldn't imagine you lived in the 1970s, you couldn't imagine you lived in the 1990s. The beauty of it is we are at the absolute peak of everything, as we speak this minute is the most modern minute that ever happened."

So make the most of it.

Also, my faith in humanity has increased for the first time in a long while. Thank you, America, for voting Barack Obama as your president.

So, I decided what I want on my gravestone:

"In extreme circumstances, the assailants can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain."

You know, just in case.


And in national news, that chick that Russel Brand joked about sleeping with to her grandfather on BBC2 Radio 2 (Georgina Baillie, the grandaughter of Andrew Sachs, a.k.a. Manuel from Fawlty Towers), has now done a kiss and tell. Surely that makes all complaints null and void? She also belongs to a burlesque dance troupe called 'Satanic Sluts'. I'm not making this up. And Jonathon Ross may lose his job over this. More eyerolling could not be affected than is right now.

Dead Set is amazing. It's Big Brother with zombies and everybody must watch it.

I had a dream once about the zombie apocalypse. It's the only dream I've ever had that has felt like it's lasted for days, which convinced me that it wasn't a dream and that life as I knew it really was over. But I lasted for days before I woke up, and even then I didn't wake up because I was eaten, it was just because my alarm went off. So I'm quite confident that when that day does come, I'll get by ok.

But I'm getting a little paranoid about it now, because I can't stop making mental preparations. I'm beginning to feel sure that there's going to be an outbreak while I'm in London.

Also, I just lost the game again damnit!

Lot of sleepless nights recently, and difficulty eating. Which if you knew me, would seriously worry you. And walking around with this big stupid smile plastered over my face, even though that's the reverse of how I should be reacting to. It can only end in trouble. But I'm chilling out maxin relaxin this week, gwanin off to meet some friends and catch up on old times, and seeing a band and stuff, not doing my homework or learning my songs. So should be a cool kinda week.

And finally, I decided that I want to be an astronaut. So you'll be hearing some more about that in the future I reckon

Wow. Picture this. You're on the best online comic in the world, xkcd, when you chance upon this strip, entitled 'Listen To Yourself':



Now imagine, barely a fortnight after that particular panel was released, that you venture onto the youtube and happen upon an 'Audio Response' button in the comment box.

Youtube

I almost had a heartattack of awesome.


In other news, I can't move my neck, I have many strange circular bruise all over my limbs, and I'm half deaf. No, I'm not having a stroke. I went to a Glamour of the Kill gig last night and had a freaking awesome time, they were even better than last time. And discovered a new band! The Hotel Ambush. Man, I love the music scene in South Wales. Or, as I like to call it, Old South Wales.


Lordy, Christmas is coming and it's terrifying. I do not enjoy singing Christmas carols in September. But Halloween is also coming, which means brand new cinema! Woohoo. Although that means I'll soon know what it feels like to go to the pictures alone.

Yo ho, me hearties! I haven't been able to get this song out of my head all day. So I thought I'd share.

Okay, normally I don't enjoy reposting memes, but this one isn't one of those generic Q&As and I can actually waffle on a bit, so I'll give it a bash. Jacked from cleolinda (who, by the way, I am a massive fangirl of).

So, I need to come up with 10 things that probably only I have done. Here... we... go.
( Wanna know how I got these scars? )


Another fun fact about me: I don't pronounce my own name correctly.


And in world news, J. K. Rowling won her case again the Lexicon! The world didn't end! (Well, not for another couple of weeks at least.) And I discovered free podcasts, and my disk space has been decreasing ever since...

So, I just found out that my Austrian e-pal, who I met on holiday and is in the army, is going to Georgia to help the people there. He told me that he hopes he'll come back.

Ugh, what a great end to a great day. I though that that awful iced caramel machiatto on the way home was the icing on the cake, but this is the multi-coloured super-sprinkles.


"This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers." True say man, true say.


Oh, and I didn't see one interesting-looking person when I enrolled at college on Tuesday. I know I'm judging books by their covers but that's what I do; I have a library card which allows me to do so on a regular basis and I'm quite good at it. I kinda don't want to go back to school now.


I wish my icon was true.

If
P = Probability of spending money (as a fraction)

Then P is directly proportional to t, as denoted
P α t

As t approaches 24, P approaches 1
Or, as t → 24, P → 1

Demonstrated by the equation:
P = (1/24)t
or
P = t/24

For example, if I spent 1 hour on the internet yesterday (t  = 1)
P = 1/24

Roughly speaking, that translates as if I went on 24 shopping websites, I would have made a purchase from 1 of them.

If I spend 4 hours on the internet today (t = 4)
P = 4/24
Therefore P = 1/6

Which means I will buy something from a sixth of all of the shopping websites I visit.

As proof, I offer you this:

Today's History
Waterstones.com
hmv.com
play.com
etsy.com
xkcd.com store
ebay.com

Today I bought 5 books ebay.

Q.E.D.

The scary part is, this equation is trufax. I'm gonna be so poor if I don't reduce t.

I KNEW IT!

"You would never know it from the way he plays Quidditch, but Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has revealed he suffers from dyspraxia – often associated with clumsiness.

The condition means the 19-year-old still has trouble tying his shoelaces.

It can affect any or all areas of development, including intellectual, physical and language, and can impair a person’s normal process of learning.

In adults, it can affect a person’s ability to perform in stressful or challenging situations and make tasks such as driving difficult.

‘I was having a hard time at school in terms of being c**p at everything, with no discernible talent,’ he says."

No discernible talent? Well, they're his words, not mine. I'm sure everybody who watched the crying scene in Prisoner of Azkaban wouldn't like to disagree with you there, Dan.


And in other news, Warner Brothers are cold heartless bastards and they can writhe in terrific agony in hell for the rest of time as far as I'm concerned.

"The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 percent on schedule, on time. There were no delays. I've seen the movie. It is fabulous. We would have been perfectly able to have it out in November."

And that, friends, makes me sick to my stomach. Because they chose not to, just so that they could maximise the earning potential of the film.


[Disclaimer: Dan Radcliffe still does a better job at Harry than I could probably do. I know I'm harsh, it's just my style of humour. Take what I say with a pinch of salt.]


So, I'm off now to go run on the treadmill until I collapse into a heap. I'm forcing myself to enjoy running again, and there's no better way to do that than run until you want to stab yourself to make your lungs stop hurting. I'm okay with the running; it's the stopping that I hate, because that's when I can no longer breathe.

You know what my new favourite thing to do when I feel depressed is, to cheer myself up? Smoke a cigarette Read Cannibal Corpse's song titles.

Me and a coworker were going through the tracklists' to their albums yesterday. I was almost crying with laughter. Leave Tomb of the Mutilated til the end. ('Addicted to... oh my word!' and 'I... You know, I hear that he does. And there's a live version, so you can listen to it twice!')

Here's a sample of the delights in store for you:

Brain Removal Device - Kill
Blunt Force Castration - The Wretched Spawn
Sanded Faceless - Gore Obsessed

...

There's 10 albums of it! Love it.


And Batman was crazily awesome. We got into the cinema a little bit too late; we were the second row from the very front. So to see the action onscreen, you actually had to move your head from side to side. But oh my daisies, it was good. So good it left me incoherent. And I'm usually 'that person' who goes on and on about all the nuances of the film. I'm so going to see it again.

I mean, do you have to look so fucking depressed all the time?



I think the Houses of Parliament should hold a fancy dress party. Now that would be awesome beyond words.

And the state of the nation isn't so bad. You just believe too much you read in the Sun, Mr Brown. If I was a Cabinet Minister, things would be so awesome. We'd be the happiest nation ever. I mean, in a country where the MPs skip and give their colleagues cake, what could ever go wrong?

Re: The Dark Knight. I've so far managed to get 2 days past the UK release date (a week and a half or so past the US one?) without picking up any major spoilers. I've heard so little about Two-Face it's unreal, to the point of not knowing if he's even in it. I mean, obviously Harvey Dent is in it. (If you dont want to know who Two-Face is, don't highlight.) I'm not complaining though, the less I hear about the plot the happier I am as far as I'm concerned.

But I'm going a little bit bat crazy. To the point where I have a Batman logo T-shirt, a Batgirl T-shirt, a pair of bat earrings, a pair of Batman knickers, 3 badges, a bag, 2 Joker posters, a Batman poster and a 3D Dark Knight poster. The Burton/Schumacher box set. And the Batman Begins/Gotham Knight box - the play.com exclusive with a USB with movie stills.

And also, the OMG BAT LIVING IN MY ROOF.

Well. It may not be a bat. It might be some sparrows, or a rat, or a demon waiting to posess me (see 'Come Closer' by Sara Gran). If it's a bat, we aren't even allowed to move it because it's endangered. How badass is that? A bat living in my room?

Finally, Austria was awesome. In a few words: sunburn, beer, singing, hot choir/army/photographer guys from other countries, awesome graffiti (who knew?!). Good times. Except for the stupid costume. And the choir that had a song that was 7 minutes of fart noises.

Ingredients

100g plain chocolate
100g plain flour*
100g butter**
250g caster sugar
2 eggs
Half a teaspoon of baking powder***
Pinch of salt
Optional: 100g chocolate chips

*If you have wholemeal flour just sieve it. Nobody will know.
**If you're cheap like me, use margerine. Again, nobody will know.
***If you have no baking powder, use a sprinkle of bicarbonate of soda. Or just leave it out, whatever.


Method

1. Preheat the oven to normal cooking temperature. For us that's between 180 and 200 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt the chocolate and the butter together. I do this the old fashioned way by putting the mixing bowl on top of a saucepan of boiling water (making sure that the water doesn't touch the mixing bowl). If you're lazy, use the microwave.
3. Take the bowl off the heat (be careful and don't burn your kitchen-top!) (unless of course you used the microwave, then you just remove it from the microwave oven).
4. Add the sugar. Mix.
5. Add the flour. Mix. Don't be worried, it's supposed to be all sticky and gooey and really doughy like that.
6. Break the eggs. Add the eggs (minus shells). There you go, that's more like what you expected it to look like, right?
7. Add the salt and the baking powder.
8. Add the optional chocolate chips, if you really think there isn't enough sugar in there already.
9. Grease a tin/dish with a little extra butter. I actually use a glass dish which I'm not entirely sure is supposed to be used in an oven and is probably just supposed to be for serving food in, but it works.
10. Pour brownie misture into dish. Scrape.
    
11. Place in oven.
12. This should take roughly 30 minutes to cook, but this SERIOUSLY depends on your oven. Keep checking it. Use a knife or something to check it's cooked all the way through (hint: if when you withdraw the knife there's still liquid, it's not done. Always check in the centre of the mixture.)
13. If cracks form in the top, don't worry. That always happens to me. And it might rise a little bit. Don't worry about that either, it normally sinks back down when you open the oven door or when the brownies are cooling at the end. Only worry if the mixture spills out into your oven because then you'll have to clean it up, and that's unenviable. Also, if it looks really dark on top don't worry, it's not as burnt as you think. Unless it smells really quite burnt, then it is. But possibly still edible.
    
14. Take it out once it's cooked and OMG LET IT COOL DOWN. Please.
15. Cut up into squares.
16. Yummalicious. Your brownies are done!

It sounds sad, but my favourite part of my Lara Croft outfit for the sale event tomorrow is the long hair. I haven't had long hair since I was 7 years old, and I bought this cheap long hairpiece from Peacocks so that I could plait it, and it's lovely. I don't know how I'm going to manage my lunch hour though. I'm gonna have to hide under a large coat.

Today is supposed to be the longest day of the year. And it's miserable, overcast and spitting with rain. It's pretty depressing, from here on in the days are going to be getting shorter again.

I know I make inappropriate comments but I can't stop myself saying them. I've picked that up from my stepdad or something. Except, you know, he has mild Tourette's Syndrome. Which means I don't really have an excuse like he does, I just have no self-restraint.

But, you know, it's all about how you present yourself in the end.

And in world news, a police helicopter chased after a UFO from Cardiff to Devon, before turning back to refuel. It doesn't say whether or not they stopped off in Devon for a house party, but I have my suspicions.

I thought my issues were getting better. Evidently not.

'Life's not fair, get over it!'

Ehm yeah. Because you know all about life not being fair, with your gymkhanas and your friends and your parties and your first place fucking rosettes.

And that was the real reason I was down today.

Ehm, I almost snapped my *pause* left foot off today on my way home. Damn steep stairs by ASDA... and my inability to look were I was going...



FAIL. It doesn't even look so bad in that photo. But it's now about the size of half a tennis ball glued to my foot.

My family have a history of breaking their bones. I swear, if I've broken anything I am going to go mental. I refuse to have it put in a cast. I  really refuse. I walked home on it, for goodness sake. It's fine.

For example, in the last years and a half or so:

• My sister broke her leg riding a horse after going over a jump (so badly that she had to have metal pins put into her leg)
• My nan fell on her face and broke her foot, messed up her cornea (luckily temporarily) and cracked some ribs
• The horse stood on my Mum's foot and broke it (er, yeah, I think the horse is evil. I stay away from it now)
• My brother fell in the playground and broke his arm

Oh, and my ear got messed up by an ear piercing too. That earned me a week and a half in hospital, thanks.

I know I was thinking today that I need more happy accidents, but this isn't a happy accident. This is an injurous accident. I don't like injurous accidents. And to add insult to injury, my mp3 player ran out of battery on my way home. So I had to limp home in silence

First off, I got a major scare earlier hearing about the fire at Universal studios and that 40,000 to 50,000 master reels had been destroyed in the blaze. Luckily they're saying that all of the masters they had there have been copied so nothing has been lost forever, but for about an hour I was seriously bummed out about it. But it kinda sucks quite badly that the Back to the Future, To Kill a Mockingbird and King Kong sets have been damaged. That picture of the fire though looks like something out of a film, doesn't it?

Is it lame I got worried about that?

Ehm, and in other news, I keep buying DVDs that I have no time to watch. But then as I said to my Nan the other day, nobody buys DVDs to watch anymore, they buy them to say that they have lots of iconic films in their movie collection so they can look cool.


And also if somebody could punch me in the head I would probably quite enjoy that right now. My head is buzzing again.