21/04/2013

5 Places on the Internet to Subdue Unwanted Feelings

When you find yourself in a state of mind where the thought of getting up and facing the world as a confident individual seems near to impossible, the internet acts as a way to tolerate human society from a safe distance and indulge in a sometimes more than necessary bout of isolation.

Here are only 5 (of the endless list of) places which exist on the internet to gently help you in your time of distraction.



Rookie is an online magazine founded by the infamous Tavi Gevinson (her fashion blog has been around since 2008). There's all kinds of scrumptious articles and stories and poetry and photography and DIYs and playlists to get lost in. I love this site to pieces. A quick pick of recent favourites: 
Tokyo Drift: Photo diary from time spent in Tokyo.
Overnight: A really simple but ridiculously sweet short story about a girl who's unsure of nighttime etiquette and has a lovely chat with a stoner.
Secret Sharers: A group of people divulge secrets about various things such as old films, abandoned New York subway stations and the acquiring of free doughnuts.

(Emma Dajska does collages for some of the articles. I'm in love with almost everything she produces with her mind and hands.)





On this site you can listen to all the music someone has ever posted on their tumblr blog. This is a great way of (re)discovering (old/)new music.




When I was about twelve years old I used to literally spend hours on this site. You can make collages with images users have saved from all over the internet (mostly clothes) and create outfits and stories and pretty pictures you can look back on later and ask yourself when you ever had time to create such goodies. Although this site isn't some kind of secret, I feel like it's often put to one side in favour of trawling through tumblr dashboards and wistfully scrolling through lookbook.nu.





This is of interest if you, like me, are suddenly confronted with the petrifying imminence of possible higher education and you, like me, seem to know next to nothing about everything.
Very useful if you, like me, are basically set on going on an adventure on your own to somewhere in the United Kingdom, where salty sea and Media and Communication courses, Topshop, concerts and fellow students await in abundance. 
I have however been avoiding this website for the past week as it has been filling me with equal amounts of anticipation and fear, which proves to be quite distracting when attempting to successfully complete the remainder of your senior year.


You already know that this website is basically boredom's cheeky affair. You will undoubtedly find yourself in this wonderland of moving images if all attempts at subduing unwanted thoughts and or boredom have failed you.
An endless array of options are laid in front of you: You could get lost in a string of pet videos, or find yourself swimming in a never-ending supply of music, and chances are you may in fact end up watching a video of a selection of people yawning.



When these finally few weeks of school are over, my mind will be so much more capable of dedicating time to this minuscule dot in the internet-verse.

When all else fails, always, always go for Morrissey and wait.









03/04/2013

Failed Cheesecake or Do it Yourself

Today I baked a delicious looking cheesecake, complete with enticing digestive biscuit base. Upon opening the oven however I remembered suddenly, that I had forgotten to add 200g of caster sugar to the mixture. I ate three digestive biscuits and threw the cake in the bin. Feel free to apply your own metaphor for anything here.

I spent my Easter weekend painting my bed and an old mirror white. It was satisfying but took (much) longer than expected. And although I locked Carl out when I started painting he has been wandering around with white spots on his back for a few days now.



Before. My mum DIYed the cover for the piano stool. This is one of the countless reasons I love her.

Masking tape. Now imagine me taking this photograph, it suddenly seems oddly ridiculous, right.


Moving, conscious, black furry thing which will remain celibate for life, called Carl.


After. It's one thing to have all these ideas in your head and another to cover your bedroom floor in newspaper and spend two days coating an ancient Ikea metal bed frame in paint. 

Also, I finally watched Perks of Being a Wallflower today. I read the book ages ago and remember not expecting it to affect me like it did. I also remember crying at the end and being dubious about the possible movie adaption.
But I really enjoyed it.
After gossiping for about two hours on my bed, a friend with excellent taste and I watched 201mins of Stephen Chbosky's creation which left me with the same warm feeling as the book. I can't find the right adjectives and nouns and verbs to string together in order to describe the book or the film, but I just hope that people in the future will read the book or failing that, watch the adaptation and feel something.
Also, I was pleasantly surprised by my realisation that Ezra Miller is more than mildly attractive.

(In German, the film is called 'Vielleicht lieber morgen' which translates roughly as: 'Perhaps tomorrow (is/will be/could be) better'. I have just realised how difficult it is to translate those three words. Nevertheless, I had to point out how amusing I find it and wonder how many people decided that that was in fact, the best possible translation of the movie title. How about 'Die Vorteile eines Mauerblümchens' which translates roughly as: 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'.)



Playlist if you fancy.