I really can't stop thinking about light. Light so sexy.

From where I’m looking the clouds are moving quickly, thick dark clusters are breaking up for white to shine through. I was thinking how the contrast would be illustrated on a video histogram. It’s a habit now. I can only see through a tiny crack in the curtains covering one bay window, even then the sky looks vast. Everything is very small.

http://www.dailymotion.com/neriedes/video/x6upg3_anicca_shortfilms

My friend and I just finished making this for one of those 'no longer than minute' film competition.

The closing date was the 23rd and we submitted at 23:50 so hopefully it got through. BUt even if it doesn't qualify it was good just to get off my bottom and shoot something again.

General updateness: Came back from dirtbagging through California, Oregon and Washington on a summer road trip including a wonderful seven day trip floating down the Grande Ronde River starting with forest and ending with desert and rattle snakes.

Then went to visit the Findhorn community and spent some time staying in an old converted school house in Aberlour. Very relaxing, lovely walks and the best honey I've ever tasted infused with single malt whiskey. And on the way way back a visit to the magical waterfall in Glen Lyon.

Next week responsibility starts again.

this is a reliable site to donate towards helping relieve the crisis in Burma

www.dec.org.uk

Please have a look

I was walking back home through Arthur’s Seat and got to imagining what I’d do if I won £50,000 on a scratch card. I thought about how I’d arrange a dinner for my family; sending them all invites urging them to give the soonest date possible for some important news. Then for dessert I’d give them an envelope each with a thousand pounds cash in it just to begin with. Then I fantasised about winning millions off the actual lottery and how I’d tell my family. I'd send a text to my mum saying "mum don't go into work tomorrow, you don't need to ever again". I laughed at myself when I wondered about the many millions of other people that have had and were having the same fantasy as me. It was amusing and depressing all at once. I never buy the lottery, but full of fancy I walked passed a little newsagent and thought that this could be that one time… Another part of my mind was even getting ready to laugh imagining myself scratching it off. I went in and suddenly felt a bit embarrassed about looking like a hopeful and hopeless fool that pins all her dreams on to a one pound coin. I walked round the shop pretending to browse and came full circle. The shopkeeper asked if he could help. I casually asked if he sold “those scratch card things” in a way that tried to suggest that this was a non eventful indulgence of mine that means nothing whenever I have a quid or two to spare. He didn’t sell any. I made to go and he said, “you know they’re a big con” I made what I hoped to look like a, well of course I know face but it obviously didn’t read that way. “yeah, didn’t you read about it in the paper? Whenever the big cash prize is won they still keep selling them. Yup total con. Don’t buy them”.

“I was just after some change anyway”.

He gave me change of a £20 and I left a non sucker to the lottery. I don’t know what is worse: fantasy smashed by reality when you scratch off the last un matching symbol or a fantasy untested by thinking realistically. But still, with the latter, a part of your mind remembers the perspicaciously marketed slogan It Could Be You

Hmm this is funny because I'm sure the messages will be somewhat less friendly than last year


( my valentine postbox )

I keep putting off doing anything with this film because I don’t have a final edit of it yet. I don't like showing things with errors, but what's the point of letting things get dusty on the shelf. I must add a disclaimer though: it’s bad quality and my friend that posted it had to reduce it to 10 minutes and, as an over precious director, I feel he hacked the film to bits and killed my baby. But the general feel of the piece is still intact (hopefully).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Lo1POf7g8

I had this romantic vision of my classmates before I started college – the tragic thespian, the brooding writer, perhaps the studious classical musician where perfect is never good enough and me the demure filmmaker, watching and loving them all. Well I like them all, but I don’t exactly feel as if I have found kindred spirits, they are quite young and bar a small handful, somewhat uncurious creatures. I have this awful tendency to shrink off back into dark corners when things don’t turn out to be the way I imagined them. My New Year’s resolution is to stop submitting to reality and start re-creating it.

I’ve turned into an owl. Working at the club for most of the holidays has made me completely nocturnal. Being awake at night leaves my head kind of fuzzy even though I’ve slept all day. I get this fuzzy feeling between never really being asleep and never really feeling awake. I start school in a few hours. I’m going to spend today shaking off coffee and spitting and hissing and biting the heads off any number of undeserving and unwitting classmates.

I like this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEU3XlWXVyc
It's kind of sexy.

Fantastic music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Ma4BvMUwU

I ought to try and sleep an hour or so before turning into the incredibly grouchy woman of doom.

Ahhh Freedom (sort of)

argh! Dammit Harry is out 5 hours earlier in Britain. I wish I was home

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought:In their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with another species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principal that might is right

Isaac Bashevis Singer, From the book Enemies: A Love Story

I think this sums up why I am vegetarian. It’s the objectification of animals that I can’t stand. And the way post industrialised society has turned farming of animals into the ‘manufacturing’ of animals. And it’s not just the way we treat animals that makes me so sad and disappointed: it’s air pollution, tree cutting, landfill, waste, it’s the whole lack of respect for the Earth that houses and sustains us.

I don’t want to be a food fascist and so I don’t tell people what to eat. In fact, I’m often subjected to unwelcome and intrusive arguments and demands about what I should eat from people who have assumed my reasons for vegetarianism. I do, however attempt to make people aware about what they are eating and the history of their food. Animal products didn’t just spring into being fully packaged. That was patronising right? Well, this statement may as well be applied so some of my friends, who do not know where their food comes from. Who do not know that, ‘battery farming’ isn’t just confined to chickens, or cows, and who are not aware of the sheer level of exploitation of animals for our connivance and for profit, or the incredible wastage from the excess of animals killed. Some of my friends are very ignorant of what happens and some are less so and either, don’t care or bury their heads in the sand. Now that does annoy me. I can’t stand people who don’t want to know the history of their food because it is unpleasant for them. I simply can not respect people who deny to themselves the fact that buying these products makes them complicit in the whole process.

I almost feel like apologising for the moral lecture/rant because I try to leave people be. But the linked film below has brought tears from anger to me, that I feel so hostile right now.

‘Earthlings’ narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, is a propagandistic film but it is also true. It is not an easy film to watch.

http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/earthlings.htm

http://www.knockengorroch.org.uk/knock07/index.html

Here is a link for the knockengorroch festival, which starts May 20th. It’s a kind of folk/hippie festival that has all things wonderful and fun like fire shows, workshops, ethical shopping, CABARET!, storytelling etc and lots of music and bands of course. I think a few of you on my friends list would enjoy this and if you can’t afford to buy a ticket but want to go then click on the ‘get involved’ tab and do just that. Volunteer crew get in for free and are provided with three meals a day. There is separate camping for staff but you’ll need your own tent. Hopefully see some people there :)

Soz been inflicted by a sudden surge of self esteem. And I have nothing to say. I’m not sure anyone actually reads this anyway

We all have things about our friends that make us slightly envious. Not in a bad way, but in a 'Wow! I wish I had that person's hair/eyes/money/relationship/toenails/whatever.'

So tell me what about me makes you envy me. . . then post this in your LJ and see what makes me envious of you.

I’ve been reading some essays by Eisenstein. He writes so well, I think I could have fallen in love with him. I tried to construct my essay on Soviet art using montage principles after reading Eisenstein on montage and poetry. My goodness I wish I’d known him. This update is pointless, I’m very blank today. White Woman training is giving me muscles. And I’ve put on weight, I’m now closer to 8 stone than to 7 and a half, which is both *yay* and *boo* in fluctuating measure. Feel very positive about white and Beltane this year – have a lot more room in my head to embrace it. Summer plans are taking shape and 3 months in America is looking more likely. Next step is a police check. I’m only slightly worried that my details are stored on an anarchist police database somewhere. Paranoid? 1984 here we come.

30 minutes ago I was overtaken by a sudden enthusiasm for some culinary improvisation - to convert a chocolate brownie recipe into a vegan version to be precise. Well I’m not exactly Delia Smith but I guessed that the primary function of the egg is to bind the mixture together so I just chuck in more vegetable oil to compensate. Then I fish out the dusty old scales that are older than I am and tipped in the flour and then some more until I realised that the scales hadn’t budged from zero. But that’s ok, I wouldn’t let some decrepit old scales take me down, I can just estimate the amount of each ingredient, how accurate does it have to be right? So in went the sugar and the carob powder, which isn’t sweetened so in goes some more sugar. I had a jug to measure the rice milk accurately but everything else was an approximate so obviously the best thing to do was to pour it in ‘til it looked right. After a little stirring the mixture was looking a bit watery so I tipped in some more flour but then it seemed a bit lumpy but only a bit. Lastly I add just a bit more sugar because surely nothing can be that bad if it’s sweet enough. I take my little cake tin with my little brownie mixture to my preheated oven only to realise that it wasn’t preheated in the slightest. I turn it off then turn it on again, but no go. Will I let a broken oven stop me? Ha! This is an experiment right? Why not put it in the microwave and see what happens, that’s a great idea! High power and lets say five minutes and see what happens. Two and Half minutes later I realised I’d forgotten the vanilla essence. I opened the door and get my first thoughts of doubt that this whole venture might just be a disaster when I see that I’d forgotten to cover the bowl and the microwave is kind of splattered. I grabbed the bowl out the microwave and you know that kind of delayed pain you get when you don’t realise until a few seconds later? Well I got that and then it hurt, really hurt. I dropped the scolding hot bowl of vegan spodge on to my feet and floor.

It’s now airing on the compost heap, though I guess I could try and pass it off as feminist art.

well why not

( my valentine postbox )

Oh wow, here I was feeling all sorry for myself because I had no presents to wake up to and unwrap on my birthday and there goes a knock on the door, which I decide to ignore since I’m all unwashed and smelly and only wearing tights and a vest. But it knocks again, so I get up to answer and peak my head round the door and there’s this little old lady holding a vase of the most beautiful lilies you ever saw and a bottle of wine. And inside a little card from my friend saying, “Hey Anna, Just thought I’d do something nice for your birthday”.

I love everybody again. Think I’ll eat cheesecake.

*giggles*

According to the infallible wisdom of online screening tests I seem to be inflicted with a sexual disorder. This is due to checking the ‘almost never’ boxes for, “do you think/fantasize/enjoy/desire/want sex”. Oh well hermit scary bag lady here I come. Thinking about spinsterhood I want to splash out on a yummy and very indulgent cocktail for my birthday since I hardly ever drink anymore or have the money to, but the day in question is on a school night and I’d much prefer this drink of decadence in my own home with my hot water bottle and a rented copy of Little Miss Sunshine than in a noisy unfamiliar pub. A sure sign of increased age I guess, how fitting.

Important.
Please have a read, there's a petition too. http://www.helpnazanin.com/

A girl's being sentenced to death for defending herself against three men attempting to rape her and her niece. She had a knife and stabbed out in self defence.

Dare I say it.. that I went out last night and actually enjoyed myself. And enjoyed everybody who was there and drank way too much. And didn't wake up with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach accompanied with thoughts of what's the point? though that might just have been over shadowed by a sickly feeling in my stomach and thoughts of ouch my head hurts