All posts in category General waffle

Heroes, & the Chemical Fall Out

So Fall Out Boy are back, and My Chemical Romance are history.

Hurrah, and boo respectively.

Fall Out Boy are a band I’ve liked for a long time, and have the dubious honour of being one whose lyrics I listen to intently. There’s an interesting way with words there that – basically – I envy.

My Chemical Romance are… were… a band with whom I have history; empathy. I’ve never been particularly worried about hiding the fact I’ve long had what (for the sake of brevity) we’ll call “issues”, and I found something in My Chem that I connected with at the exact time I desperately needed it.

It sounds trite and about as far from cool as it’s possible to be (although, let’s face it, “cool” isn’t exactly the first word that comes to mind when you think of me, I know) but they were a band who made a difference to me. And that’s what art is supposed to do, isn’t it? It’s supposed to connect with you. This did.

The thing is, I was broken.

I was broken and I was feeling alone and afraid and then I realised that the music I was listening to, the music I was connecting to on so many levels, was made by people who were broken too. That mattered. It mattered because suddenly, it was okay to be broken. It was okay to be broken and scarred and afraid and flawed, because you could be all these things and you could still make… that.

It helped, and it gave me hope.

So Fall Out Boy are back, and My Chemical Romance are history, and Wentz and Way with all their scars and all their flaws are still two of my heroes.

 

1 Comment
by loummorgan on March 29, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in General waffle, Music
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Posted by loummorgan on March 29, 2013

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/heroes-the-chemical-fall-out/

Bring the Joy

I have flu. Yay. I made it as far as the afternoon of Christmas Day, and then it sideswiped me. By ten o’clock, I was hunched in the corner of the sofa, wrapped in three blankets and making pathetic “meep” noises. I was also watching THE BOURNE LEGACY, and I can tell you I have never empathised so deeply with a character as I did with Aaron Cross, sweating his virus-mojo out in Manilla. Brother, I was right there with you.

Anyway. Viruses and chems and festive woes aside, I wanted to say thank you.

Just before Christmas, I went all serious and emotional for a bit and wrote a blog about depression and therapy and medication and… stuff.  And I put it online and assumed that most people would be far too busy doing Christmassy things to notice it, but that maybe one or two would see it – and that maybe it would be helpful.

As it turned out, rather a lot of people saw it.

And rather a lot of people got in touch – many of them privately – about it.

I wouldn’t dream of directly repeating what anyone said, but I heard from far more of you than I expected. People who’ve been on medication. People just starting it. People just coming off it. People who’ve had long-term treatment. People who’ve had short-term treatment. People who’ve had, are starting or are undergoing therapy.

So many people.

While their stories and their experiences are their own – each as individual as the person sharing them – it proved one very important thing: if you are suffering from depression, if you are undergoing treatment or think you might need it… you are not alone.

Bearing that in mind, here’s an idea.

Like pretty much everyone else with a blog, I was planning on writing an end-of-year post. You know the sort of thing: this happened in this month, and I did this, and went there and… yadda yadda yadda.

But I’m kind of tired of talking about me. (I know, right? It’s the flu talking. Must be.) I’d like to talk about you. About us. So tell me about your year.

Tell me something good that happened to you this year. Something that brought you joy. It can be a big thing, or a little thing or anywhere in between. Personal, professional, sensible, silly… it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it made you happy.

Tell me what it was, and who you are, and I’ll include it in that end of year post. You can leave a comment on this entry, or mail me via the contact form, or tweet me (and if you can include #bringthejoy, that would be super-helpful). I warn you, if there aren’t enough, I’m just going to have to go ahead and talk about me anyway – and no-one wants that, do they?

You have until the morning of New Year’s Eve.

So let’s end the year the same way we start the new one.

With joy. With optimism. With hope…

… And with each other.

1 Comment
by loummorgan on December 28, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in General waffle
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Posted by loummorgan on December 28, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/bring-the-joy/

Ink-redible

I had a teacher at school who would refuse to mark anything not written in blue ink. Fountain pen, mind: never ballpoint. Biros were banished – I can still remember trying to get to grips with changing the cartridge in my first fountain pen during my first week there. I was six years old, and it did not end well.

Likewise, at university we had a lecturer who was philosophically opposed to black ink; it reminded him, he said, of a “geriatric spider, crawling to its death”. He may or may not have been the lecturer who took charge of the “Gothic literature” part of the course. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Green ink, of course, is famously connected with MI6, and particularly “C”, and is also regarded as the favourite of nutty-letter writers the world over.

There’s Dragon’s Blood ink, Stark’s ink (no, not that one) and soy ink, but the one I’ve most recently discovered (and of which I’m almost certain my various teachers and lecturers would have approved) is pact ink.

Because, after all, if you’re going to make a deal with the Devil, you might as well do it right. And make sure you use a fountain pen, while you’re at it….

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by loummorgan on October 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dark & twisty, Geekery, General waffle, Writing
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Posted by loummorgan on October 18, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/ink-redible/

The Lightning Tree

So here’s what I’m reading about today: Lichtenberg figures.

I never realised that when they’re left on people, as scars resulting from lightning strikes, they’re also known as “lightning flowers”.

Seems pretty apt, really: utterly terrifying… but somehow incredibly beautiful.

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by loummorgan on August 14, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dark & twisty, Geekery, General waffle, Links, Science, Weird
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Posted by loummorgan on August 14, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/the-lightning-tree/

Blinded by (sparkling) science

Stephanie Kwolek. Sophie Germain. Gillian Bates. Lise Meitner.

Marie-fucking-Curie.

And this is how we’re planning to attract young women into the field of science?

I wasn’t that keen on science at school. My little heart sank at the prospect of double chemistry, almost as much as it did before PE. I wasn’t as good at it as I wanted to be, and – to be honest – that frustrated me. I also found it boring.

However, it bored me because I wanted to be in English class, reading Faustus or Hamlet (true).

Saying I wasn’t as good at it as I wanted to be was not because I’m a girl and am therefore only interested in lipstick and poncing round in a pair of sunglasses: it’s because I’m Thicky McThick when it comes to science and I still can’t do a simple titration or explain how a blast furnace works*. I can, however, quote you chunks of Shakespeare and Marlowe, and tell you exactly why they have the effect on us that they do. I can read Anglo Saxon, I can give you a detailed (and mind-numbingly dull) description of the differences between the Insular and Continental traditions of early Arthurian literature.

I did not need a pink-tinted video to entice me into this.

Neither did the women whose names I’ve given above.

Like me, they chose to study and work in the fields which interested them; the fields in which they felt their talents lay. I chose arts and humanities, they chose sciences. End of debate. Boys do it too, but apparently we don’t need to try and entice them to become doctors by showing a bunch of consultants knocking back the beers or playing football, do we? And yes, that’s just as mindless a stereotype as the one in the video.

My younger cousin is about to go to university, hoping to study genetics. She spends her free time shopping with her friends and (if her Facebook page is anything to go by) making innuendo-laden comments about Justin Bieber. She goes to parties. She has an unhealthy obsession with Primark. She’s also an Air Cadet. She’s probably one of the coolest people I know, and I imagine if you asked whether her choice of future career had been influenced by that video, she would laugh at you.

And then punch you. (Because we do share some genes, after all…)

We don’t need to Barbie-ise science to get girls interested.

We don’t need to pinkify it, sprinkle it with unicorns and glitter, or insist that yes, women in science can wear heels zomgwtfkthnxbai.

We just need to tell them that they can do anything they put their minds to.

Because they can.

Marie Curie.
Scientist; woman.

*Incidentally, my physics, chemistry and biology teachers were all women…

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by loummorgan on June 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in General waffle, Rants, Science, Uncategorized, Women
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Posted by loummorgan on June 23, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/blinded-by-sparkling-science/

Doomtown

Stumbled across on Youtube: a civil defence film made by the US government… including utterly terrifying footage of an A-bomb test site in Nevada.

 

If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hide under the desk with a tin helmet on…

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by loummorgan on June 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dark & twisty, General waffle, History
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Posted by loummorgan on June 18, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/doomtown/

Skyline

Warning: this is going to be super-spoilery. There’s just no way round it, so if you want to be… *surprised* by its eccentricities, then you might want to sit this one out. As blogs go, it’s also a bit long.

Make no bones about it, Skyline is not a good film. It’s not. I’m not even going to try and pretend it is… and yet, as I watched it, I found I rather liked it. I just don’t know why.

It’s hugely, hopelessly, massively flawed and there are several aspects of it which are just downright awful… and yet.

(If the trailer won’t load, by the way, you can watch it directly on Youtube here.)

We open with blue lights streaming down from the sky into Los Angeles. In a bedroom, a couple are asleep; disturbed by the lights, they wake up, she rushes to the bathroom to throw up (the first of the film’s subtle nods at character: have you guessed that she’s pregnant?) and off we go. There’s screaming from the next room as Charlie’s-Brother-From-Lost steps into the light, gets a bit sort of burned and then vanishes…

Our protagonist, Jarrod (who is genuinely the only character I can remember the name of, and that’s largely down to the fact I spent much of the film admiring variously his hair, his necklace or his tattoo, and that he’s Jesse from Buffy…) decides that yes, the clever thing is to step into the light too, at which point he also starts doing the weird burny-thing… and suddenly we cut to a tedious flashback of 15 hours ago.

The only purpose of this seems to be to establish that everyone in this film is pretty much a failure as a human being – with the exception of Jarrod, who’s really too bland to count as anything, and who has a habit of stroking his girlfriend’s nose to show his affection. (Remember that: we’ll be needing it later). Girlfriend is prone to bursting into tears and being a bit, well, beige.

Jarrod’s friend, who they’re in town to see, is supposedly a huge success (and lives in a penthouse which somehow later turns into an apartment on a floor of many…) but we never know quite what he does – however, it’s clearly enough to get him a Ferrari and an assistant with whom he’s cheating on his girlfriend. He’s also played by Turk-From-Scrubs. Assistant’s only purpose seems to be to give away the infidelity, and to scream a bit. Not-Turk’s Girlfriend is given a wasted kick-the-cat moment (“Get me a drink!” she snaps. And that’s it) and then sulks and pouts a bit. She smokes, too, which is clearly Hollywood modern-speak for A Bad Person.

Random helicopters fly overhead. “Homeland Security,” says Not-Turk. How the hell does he know? Why is no-one bothered by this? There’s a party. There’s a telescope hooked up to the television in the apartment, which is used to spy on the gay neighbours who are shocking because, y’know, gay, right? Charlie’s-Brother-From-Lost ponces about a bit; passes out. And then we need to meet the building manager-slash-concierge who comes to complain about the noise. The blinds covering the windows are electric. And everyone goes to bed. So. Got that? Awful people, tedious flashback, blah blah blah.

Back to the blue lights.

(more…)

1 Comment
by loummorgan on June 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Dark & twisty, Film, General waffle, Rants
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Posted by loummorgan on June 15, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/skyline/

Lizards & baseball & witches. Oh my.

I said I’d do a catch-up kind of post, didn’t I? Best laid plans and all that.

Have a picture of a lizard, by way of apology.

That’s admittedly not the one which fell on my head while I was on holiday – but I can assure you that one did. It made a sort of rubbery, splatty noise, and I’m not sure which one of us was more startled. We both went on to make a full recovery.

And yes. I went on holiday. To what I can only describe as a version of the Lost island without the Others or the Smoke Monster.

Sadly, no Sawyer either. Boo. I know. I was as disappointed as you are.

What it did have, though, was a lot of sunshine – and a proper beach and a ridiculously clear sea: the kind you always imagine is made up. (Put it this way: the sea around Brighton Pier doesn’t look quite like that, more’s the pity…)

We were staying on the wrong side of the island to see the sunset (this place is a nature reserve, with only a small village of about 130 people all of whom are involved in protecting the biodiversity of the the island, and a hotel – the rooms spread along the beach in individual villas) but the skies were still pretty impressive.

You can see the next island to the north in that photo.

I basically had to be removed from the porch of the hotel kicking, screaming and shouting “I don’t want to leeeeeave!” at the end of the holiday. Because I didn’t. I could’ve stayed there forever, especially given my joy at discovering there’s nothing about Creole food I don’t like.

Also, my poor husband had to put up with me merrily singing the Red Dwarf theme most mornings at breakfast, from behind a glass of mango juice. Because I am an enormous geek.

Anyway. The important bit is what I read while I was there – which boiled down to the second and third books of The Dark Tower (yes, I still love Roland. Hush now), The Art of Fielding, Hollow Pike and The Testimony.

The Dark Tower books need no introduction – and nor does my response to them – so I’ll leave it at saying my devotion to the series and the characters is still going strong… and I’m onto book 4.

I’d been looking forward to “The Art of Fielding” for a while. It’s a little-known fact that I’m actually a fan of baseball. I don’t follow it much these days, so I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on or who’s who, but I used to be crazy about it when I was in my early teens, and your first loves leave a lasting impression. (Chicago White Sox, thanks for asking. I know, I know.) So imagine my joy: a baseball novel which requires me to bring nothing in terms of knowledge to the table other than the slightly iffy, second-hand snippets I managed to glean half a lifetime ago, and have largely forgotten… and my affection. Because the book’s not about baseball at all. Well – that’s an overstatement. It is about baseball, but it’s also about hope and despair and family and relationships and friendships and ambition and… things.

I think we rather take this kind of novel for granted in the genre world: we tend to expect that yes, Book A says it’s about dragons, but technically, it’s about the War on Terror. Or something. We expect books to be metaphorical, to a degree. But that’s another story – literally.

Another of my holiday reads was “Hollow Pike” by James Dawson, which I absolutely flew through. It’s a pacy YA book involving witches and the creepy local woods, and it’s really quite unsettling at times. It’s also tremendous fun, and has some great characters and a lot of atmosphere. Also, I want to live in the house that Lis, the protagonist, moves to. Preferably without all the nightmares and the murder and stuff, though. Just saying.

“The Testimony” took me longer, partly because the narrative structure’s more challenging. As the title implies, it’s a testimony – different people all telling their version of the same event – the burst of static and a voice which is heard by (almost) all of humanity one day – and what comes after. I’ve always been a sucker for a big-scale disaster movie (things like The Towering Inferno) and in a lot of ways, that’s what “The Testimony” reminded me of as it wove different characters and plot threads together. It’s fantastic. And terrifying, in the best possible way.

Any of those books, if you’re looking for some holiday reading, will see you right. Although if you’re reading book 2 of The Dark Tower, I advise you give the seafood a miss (I’ll be regarding lobster with a slightly cautious eye for a while, I think), and if you give “The Testimony” a whirl, you may well find yourself freaking out when someone accidentally switches on the PA in the airport and transmits a load of white noise. Hypothetically speaking. Because I totally didn’t freak out. Not a bit. Uh-uh. Nope.

God help me if I have to go through a forest any time soon…

2 Comments
by loummorgan on June 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Dark & twisty, General waffle, Travel
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Posted by loummorgan on June 6, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/lizards-baseball-witches-oh-my/

Missed

Ha! Yes. I’m still alive. This is me, running in and waving before I run out again, hands over my head to avoid the flying shrapnel.

It’s been a ludicrously busy few weeks (hence my notable absence) which has included – but not been limited to… [deep breath]

copy edits, Clarke Award, Time Attack racing, holiday, writing stuff, Kapow!

[and collapse]

All of which I will talk about, at least a bit, and including the now-traditional “What I Read On My Holiday” post (spoilers: will include some Dark Tower. Shocking, I know).

However, none of this is going to happen today because of, well, stuff.

So instead, I leave you with the awesome Awesome People Reading tumblr.

Hand me that flak jacket, would you?

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by loummorgan on May 21, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in General waffle

Posted by loummorgan on May 21, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/missed/

Rookie

I just discovered the amazing thing that is Rookie Magazine. A website aimed at teenage girls, it makes me wish broadband had been around when I was somewhat younger.

Streets ahead of the progression through Smash Hits, Just 17 and NME (look, we all know I wasn’t really a girly-girl. OK?) which was so central to my own early adolescence, Rookie features articles for teens, by teens. Updated three times a day, its topics range from Live Through This to Eye Candy via a pretty impressive Books & Comics section.

Each month, articles are themed: next month’s is “power”.

Please send any photos, articles, illustrations, or anything else you might’ve made related to power (duh), strength, weakness, relationship dynamics, politics and activism, and, on the aesthetic side, ’80s goths, New Romantics, or a John Hughes prom…

And even though I’m far, far too old to be in their core demographic, I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

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by loummorgan on April 27, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in General waffle, Links, Uncategorized, Women
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Posted by loummorgan on April 27, 2012

http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/rookie/

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