Always Raining

Y'know, for all that people always talk about how much it rains in Scotland, I haven't find it rains that much here. Perhaps they are just having an atypical year, but it definitely rained more in Sackville than it has here thus far - and the sun makes much more frequent appearances. Even when it is raining a lot, there will still be sunny days mixed in, whereas in Sackville it would rain for two weeks straight with nothing but grey skies in sight (which was incredibly depressing). 

My current theory is that it rains at night here all the time and thats why their annual rainfall is so high. This theory is supported by the fact that though it will not have rained the day before, the streets are pretty much always wet when I leave my flat in the morning. 

Though I did get caught in the start of a particularly vicious rainstorm on my way home from school the other day, I was on my way home so I didn't really mind that much. It also snowed for like five seconds last saturday, so who even knows whats going on with the weather here (we didn't have snow stick to the ground all winter - just a five second flurry here and there). 

kitten

This poem actually got published in Mount Allison's student creative writing and photography journal my last year of school!

-

Whatever is alive in the wind hates me,
Pinching me with its tricky spiny little fingers
Splintering like twigs against pale blue skin stretched too thin
Pointed teeth nipping at the bruised tips of skeleton hands
Leaves crunching like the snap of bird’s bones in a cat’s jaw.

The steps of the building crumble into the street below
Roots of trees older than the concrete rising like the spine of some ancient corpse
Ruination perfected by time, arched and twisted.

Under the eroding fluorescents, she was green skinned
Sickly and ephemeral with beads of sweat trailing between pale breasts
Smell of antiseptic thick and cloying, static of stale air surrounding us
Arsenic green wallpaper peeling at the edges as we met
Diagnosis: immedicable.
She smelt like rotting fruit and decaying teeth, sweet and choking
I gagged with the taste of her on my tongue
Thick and viscous she moved into me, curling inside my pores
Scraping her way down my throat into my veins and womb
I knit her a scarf and she wrapped it around me,
Squeezing until black spots dance around the glitter of her smile.

Cat got the canary.

Mini-Goal: Success!

I have an essay due next Wednesday that I wasn't feeling that enthusiastic about writing, so when I got about half-way done today and didn't have any new loads of laundry to distract me, I decided to go for a run (my favourite kind of procrastination: the kind that makes you feel like you are actually still being productive, and are thus a guilt-free way to avoid work for a bit!).

I look much cuter pre-run than post run.

Mostly I just really enjoy my shoes - they are new as of this summer, and, besides looking absolutely fabulous, are like running on little clouds - such good suppoooooooorrrrrrrt.

Going for a run today also finally gave me a chance to try out this mini-fanny pack type thing I bought from H&M at the beginning of the year, fresh off of making my run-more resolution.

Its just big enough to fit my keys and either my phone or ipod, so is really just perfect because it saves me having to a) tie my keys into my shoelaces and b) hold my ipod the entire time I am running, which were my two previous methods of dealing with those objects while running (oh, for the heady days of Sackville when we never locked our house and I didn't have to figure out what to do with my keys while running).

Butt pic! Side note about the term "fanny pack" - while in Canada I don't think many people use the word 'fanny' for anything outside of the super fashionable accessory, in America some people will use it to refer to butts. However, in the UK, fanny is slang for vagina, and what we would call a fanny pack, they call a 'bum bag' which, quite frankly, is an awful name.

Bum bag.

Just let that sink in.

And back from my run, all gross, sweaty, and splotchy. I ran between 5 and 10 min (I didn't bother to time myself because I knew it was going to be bad) and I definitely could have used another puff of my inhaler, because the cold air left me with that lovely asthmatic cough that makes you sound like you may vomit up a lung.

But I went for a run! Whooo!

New Years Resolutions: Three Months In

I know there is still a couple days left in March, but I thought, since it is almost three months into 2014, it would be a good time to take stock of my New Year's resolutions and see how I am doing. So, for 2014, my new years resolutions were:

1. Lose weight

Yeah, I've gained like two pounds, so that one isn't going so well, something to focus on going forward, as well as...

2. Run regularly

Nope. Though I do keep meaning to. Its going to be easier now that I've cut my hair, so my ability to go for a run is less dependent upon whether or not my hair will be able to dry after my post-run shower in enough time for me to style it for whatever else is going on. I really need to focus on actually running, even though I am busy and it is kind of difficult. My friend Maya is moving just up the block from me, and she's been meaning to start running to, so hopefully we can start running together and motivating each other to actually run. But, for now, a mini-goal: run tomorrow!

3. Up my eyebrow game

Check! Obviously this is an ongoing process, but I've been experimenting with different shapes as well as filling them in with a couple of different pencils (best pencil so far: a £1 one from Primark - who knew?). Also might go and get them done at the Benefit brow bar before London Book Fair, because both Melissa and Maya swear by it and it might be nice to get them professionally shaped for that event.

4. Read 50 books

Well on my way! While I haven't read much these last couple of weeks, since the start of 2014 I have read 14 books (Fingersmith by Sarah Waters; Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; Catching Fire and Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins; Looking for Alaska by John Green; Breed by Chase Novak; City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, and City of Fallen Angels, all by Cassandra Claire; Divergent and Insurgent, by Veronica Roth; Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levathan; Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman).

5. Practice French more (use Duolingo every day!)

Also going very well! I have used Duolingo (and thus practiced) French for every 67 days of 2014 that have passed so far! French club has also been meeting (nearly) every week, and Alix, who is the fluent French-speaker of the group, has told me that she has noticed me getting better since we started meeting - while I knew I was getting better, its really great to have a native speaker tell you that! 

6. Graduate and get a real life job (maybe even get a flat without roommates…)

Ongoing, obviously, but hopefully also on track! I've just applied for a job down in London today, so thats all very real-life-y! 

Edinburgh

"This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again" - Alexander McCall Smith

"This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect" - Alexander McCall Smith

"If London was an alien city, Edinburgh was another planet" - Jess Walter

I've been living in Edinburgh for almost seven months now, and while a lot of my wonder over living in a city so old and filled with history had faded quite a bit, it has been reemerging quite a bit lately (perhaps because it is warming up and my walks are no longer determined marches from one warm inside place to another warm inside place). My friends were making fun of me the other day for taking the below photo while we were walking through Grassmarket, saying that I've been here for ages now, I shouldn't be taking pictures all the time anymore. But I feel like there is so much of this city that I haven't captured. And I will probably never be able to capture it through photographs, as they are, while an amazing and wonderful medium, inherently limited in what they can convey. And there is so much of Edinburgh to convey. 

There's so much of Edinburgh that I love, and while I sometimes wish to peel the modernity off its surface (particularly the stupid parking meters which are always getting in my photos of amazing old streets and buildings) there is something simultaneously compelling about that collusion of old and new, the mixing of then and now in an endless stream of history, a reminder that what we are and what we do will one day be rendered obsolete.

And, no matter how many trappings of modernity are plastered to Edinburgh's surface, the history rises from beneath, inescapable and undeniable.

No matter how long I am here, no matter how much I explore, there is always another corner to turn, another street unwalked which will suddenly and without warning present you with a view which you were not prepared for, and which is unlike anything else you've seen before in the city.

100 POSTS

Thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog since it started in September, and to those who just stop in every once in a while. I appreciate it so much that y'all take the time to read whatever random stuff I throw up here... though some commenting never goes amiss *hint HINT*

Seriously though. Thanks for reading :)

Style & Narrative Voice

A warning: I would like to apologize in advance if this post is rather rambling or doesn't make much sense - I'm attempting to talk about something that I rarely articulate to others.

As I've been posting more of my poetry on here, I've had a couple of people express concern about the themes and tones expressed in my writing. I sometimes forget how dark my writing is, especially for people less familiar with my writing, since those who usually read what I write have been reading it for years, and know how I tend to write, and which themes I return to. 

First, I wanted to draw a distinction between my own, personal voice, and my narrative voice. Out of all the poems which I've put up under the 'Poetry' page on this blog, only one, "Rain" is actually written from my perspective. For the rest, the narrative voice, even when written in the first person, is not actually me. I'm not sure whether or not this is exactly a common thing in poetry, but generally, I write a lot of my poetry in the first person, but rarely from a narrator that I would describe as myself. 

Second, while I consider myself a generally upbeat and optimistic person, my writing, and even my visual art, my drawings, have always tended towards very dark themes and imagery (my Dad's constant response in high school when I showed him my art projects was "where are the bunnies?" - my attempt to draw a bunny for him resulted in the creepiest bunny I've ever seen, which probably says more about my ability to draw bunnies than any intentional adherence to my main artistic voice). I'd have a hard time articulating why - it certainly is something that I'm drawn to in the media that I consume, from books to television shows. Its also not a new thing - while those elements are certainly less... well articulated, or perhaps just less graphically described in my earlier poetry, its certainly there. Judeo-Christian imagery, ideas of evil, sin, and redemption, as well as imagery involving the grotesque, body horror, and psychological discontent are themes which draw me back again and again. I remember having a conversation with my creative writing group in 2012 where everyone was talking about how they used to write poem after poem about nature, and, thinking back, that has never been something that I've written about except when, by external assignment or internal desire to expand, I did (and it was usually fairly awful, and felt disingenuous and unnatural to write). Writing about things such as nature is just not something that comes naturally (heh) to me. Why I find these themes so fascinating is not something that I want to get into right now (or necessarily entirely understand in some cases), but it does not mean that my view on the world external to my writing is based on those ideas. 

Its interesting, I think, to look back on my really old writing, because even in my poetry from middle school, you can see those themes beginning to emerge, though in a much less evolved state. I think I've reached a relatively stable place in terms of my writing as of second year of university, not that my writing isn't still evolving (it really is) but I think that was the time in which my writing really concentrated down into what interests me the most, what continues to fascinate me, and was also the time where my narrative voice really begin to solidify. Its from that point on that I've begun working on poems for years, sometimes going back to things I've written years previously and editing them, but still being able to work with the content and sentence structures, something which I certainly couldn't do with my poetry earlier than that point. For example. one of the poems I've posted, "Burn", which I am immensely proud of and think it is one of the most solid poems in terms of being really true to my voice, and tightly edited in addition to that, was edited from a poem titled "Skeleton" that I had written two years prior, and is utterly unrecognizable from that original poem (which was awful) but kept a lot of the same images and phrasings such as "toppling our frames like houses" (I don't have a digital copy of that poem anymore - no real loss - so I can't do any sort of interesting comparison between the two). 

I do realize that my style of writing certainly isn't for everyone. But this is what I write, this is the way that I love to craft words, and it is in this way that words just pour out, shaping and creating themselves, and while I would love to write more cheerful poems to stop freaking out so many people (literally, everyone in my creative writing group (one of them once told me my poetry was disgusting), people on facebook, family, friends...), I would rather stick to what I feel passionate about, rather than what I would have to force. However, I will be reevaluating whether or not I want to keep posting them on here, or just restrict my poem sharing to the 'Poetry' page. 

This has been long and not altogether coherent, so, in conclusion, I'm going to share a couple of poems from a very long time ago, which are... kind of embarrassing. 

While I don't have a date for this first set, I'm pretty sure they are from middle school sometime:

Haunting

Distain rang clear in her cold gaze,

Penetrating his mind’s cloudy haze.

As night draws near, the shadows wake,

Echoing hearts fires, destined to take,

The life from love and the love of life.

Piercing hope with a subtle knife.

A Death of Regret

A word, a thought, a rhyme unspoken.

Lives and dreams, shattered and broken.

A wisp, a ghost, a silver token.

Dying and drowning in the darkest ocean.

Well, that was... I sure was trying real hard... 0_0  This last set would have been written in 2007:

Insanity

The roaring cacophony of a million dying stars screaming out in pain.

Washes away the dreary drip of life.

And you cackle as you dip into the sweet realms of insanity.

The floating flotilla of life, death, and reason disappears.

And you dive under, embracing the madness of it all.

Weaving in and out of the stars and moon.

Haunting your dreams; following lovers in and out of nothing.

Lost in the world weary moaning of a thousand chained souls.

A rebel without a cause, a heaven without a hell, an angel without a soul.

A man without a god.

Drip

Drip

Drip

And find.

Alone.

Abandoned.

Unwanted.

That you can no longer understand the simple words which form our tongues.

So you turn to them.

Swallowing their lies like the sweet nectar of the gods.

Until all you think is order.

Life, in General

The night: revelers dance the street,

pounding to the savage beat.

Glittering glass, shattered shreads,

petticoats and torn threads.

Masks hide your grotesque face,

devils wrapped in delicate lace.

The beat, the song, the drink, the night,

shining creatures of delight.

The blood, the booze, the bourgeoisie,

insanity warping cold reality.

Pounding, churning, whirling,

strangers dance, couples twirling.

Disease, death, pain, forgot,

memories left to rot.

The raging torrent; life below,

forgotten mans enraged glow.

The Art Assignment

The Art Assignment is a weekly video series produced by PBS Digital Studios and hosted by curator Sarah Urist Green. We take you around the U.S. to meet artists and solicit assignments from them that we can all complete. Watch our videos (http://www.youtube.com/theartassignment), and then post your responses with #theartassignment.

I've been wanting to participate in The Art Assignment for a while, and while I still really want to do the first one (which involves figuring out the exact, literal middle between you and another person, and not communicating at all between deciding to meet and the date/time you have set for your meeting... oh, and one person brings lunch, the other drinks).

However, the third episode of The Art Assignment, which asked viewers to think of something that was intimate and indispensable to you, and depict it in gif format, was one that I immediately wanted to do.

Despite the immediate swirl of ideas (eyes for reading and seeing the world, my family, my friends, my home back in Canada), I kept coming back around to the same thing - books. I am currently living overseas and am thus away from the vast majority of my personal library (just ask my brother, who had to move it all for me - its not exactly a small library), but have nonetheless gathered a small, but significant collection of books in the short months since I moved to Scotland. I have an ereader, which was bought at least partially so I wouldn’t need to buy physical books while on another continent, however, there is something so immediate and comforting about physical books, and I find myself unable to stop myself from filling my surroundings with my favourite things in the world, despite the impracticality of them.

Sorry for the quality, I’ve never made a gif before, so I just used a free online tool.

the lucidity of cordate words

If I say I love you while I slit your throat
Will it still be a homicide? Or will it be a love affair,
Wrapped up in clean sheets and drying dishes
And all the other pieces of our unrelieved lives?

If I kiss you while you’re dying,
Will they check the lipstick for a fingerprint?
Or will they assume it is a stain, announcing my infatuation,
Bruise-black and smeared across your skin,
An old postmark marking ‘return to sender’?

If I leave you while you’re living
Will you follow me while I wander to hell? Or will you stay,
Slowly crawling alone in circles in your apartment
Eating the worn pages of fairy tales?

I can’t listen to your words that fall like rain,
Stinging like chunks of ice in a late winter blizzard.
I have watched you sit by the fire enough times to know
My heat won’t blister your skin.

The cacophony of my broken-down mind never sounded so sweet
Till you joined me there
And at the centre is a twist of the heart that is nothing short of dying
And nothing close to love.
The way you looked at me in the summer
Left nothing but temptation leading into the fall.

The heart that wins is soaked in blood
And I never lose an unfair fight
With fists in my heart and bones of steel
This contest will be won by the one who loses most.
I will say I love you when I slit your throat.

Update about school

So I haven't really talked about how things are going with my course for a while, mostly because everything that is happening is really internal issues. BUT last week we did get the first couple of actual illustrations from our illustrator, Julie for The Day Boy and The Night Girl - you can see the front cover illustration over here. The production team is currently working on cover designs using those illustrations, which is really fun. We also hit our minimum crowdfunding goal for Ah Dinnae Ken, which is really awesome - while we are of course hoping to be able to hit our overall goal, just hitting our minimum goal means we are going to be able to basically double our print run. 

Overall, though it is both challenging and stressful, school is still going quite well - I've got a really great team for the live projects, which is helping making them fun even as they are busy!

It was really sunny the other day, so some of us ended up on the front steps during our lunch break (if you are wondering why there are so many girls - Jonny is actually the only guy in our 18-person team). 

(Top, left) Sophie, Mairi, me, Annemarie, Camille, Kate (Bottom, left) Maya and Giulia

Haircut!!

So as you may or may not have been aware, I was trying to grow out my hair. I figured, this would be it - I would stick with it this time, actually manage to get past the incredibly awkward middle stage, and see if I liked having long hair slash could deal with the time suck that is doing my hair when it is long, and if not, that would be it - I would cut it off and never try again because I would know I couldn't deal with it.

That.. didn't exactly work out. I was just feeling really gross and unkept looking all the time, and since I'm going to be trying to get a real life job soon, I didn't really want to go around with a haircut that just makes me grumpy and like my head is twice as big as it actually is. So I read some reviews on the web and Friday afternoon I headed off to a hairdresser that I hoped would listen to what I wanted. The first shop I went to didn't have any openings (I decided to cut my hair Thursday night, so I didn't really have time to try and make an appointment and decided to just wing it). Luckily, I had picked out three possibilities, and, undaunted, headed off to the next one - who did have space, and could actually take me at noon (it was 11:58). I had several photos on my phone, and was very prepared to argue very clearly for what I wanted, but Jonathan totally got what I wanted right off (the last time I got my hair cut, way back in November, the girl didn't seem to believe me when I said I wanted a sharp, straight divide between the buzzed hair and the long hair on top and kept blending it). Jonathan was great, he let me know what he was doing (he even cut my hair with no.4s first, so as not to 'shock me' with the no.2s I asked for - though said to the girl who once buzzed off all her hair on an impulse, I'm not too likely to get freaked out by some hair coming off). Anyways, long story short, LOVE my haircut, it was a great experience, and he suggested the triangle shape on the back, where I usually get it blended just in the shape of the crown, which looks awesome.

I also loved the way he styled it, though I will probably not be doing that very often (there was a lot of blowdrying, combing, straightening, and product involved to get it up like that) - altogether, I was in there for and hour and forty minutes, and not a lot of those involved actual hair-cutting. The other hairdressers also really liked the cut, and kept commenting on it, and afterwards they had me pose for pictures, so that was cool :)

From the salons instagram:

In other news, the city (?) has been planting daffodils EVERYWHERE in the meadows, and I just keep taking pictures of them - they're so yellow!!

Jealous, Canada?

Yeah you are.

Magical Origin Story

So if you have been looking through the links in my sidebar for the rest of my social media, you may have noticed that, on the occasions in which I am not identified simply by my name, I go by edenburned (for those who are wondering why I am Kyra Jensine Jones in everything, it is because a) there are a surprisingly large number of Kyra Jones' out there and b) I just really love my middle name and don't really get to use it enough). *deep breath* Anyways, while edenburned might seem like a slightly random choice, there is actually a story behind it, and thus, today I bring you the *magical origin story* behind my social media handle. A year or two ago, I was looking for a handle to use across all my social media (those which were not simply my name). I wanted something that I could use across everything easily, that was really pretty, but also wasn't tied to any trends or to something I was really into at the time (forever regretting vampire_kisses9 and the fact that you literally cannot change your YouTube user name unless you delete your entire google+ profile - if you were wondering, I ended up making an entirely new email for the express purpose of being able to have a new YouTube account where my username was not dictated by what my 15-year-old self thought was cool). Anyways, in my quest for a good, long lasting username that I would not end up hating, I was looking back through my writing to see if I could find a phrase or wording that I really liked. Though the actual phrase 'eden burned' isn't used in the below poem, it was from this poem that I derived the name "edenburned" which is now ubiquitous across my entire online presence, save the URL for this blog, which will change once my year abroad for school comes to its close (just so you're forewarned).

Also, you may have noticed that there are now two more pages available in my sidebar, one of which is the design portfolio I mentioned before, the other one of which is just my poetry (though I will probably continue putting poems up on here, as at some point I am going to have to start writing new ones, and its good to have some pressure when writing).

So, a poem, which has shaped my entire social media presence:


Eden

There’s a whisper in the red of nails drawn across skin
Something so innocent, like a diseased fruit of Eden
Something so profane, like black lace slithering down
It sits hunched and ugly on the bathroom counter in July
Watching with disinterest as I shiver on the cracked floor
It follows me from place to place.

She sits in the dirty diner like she owns the place
The tattoo on her neck a vulgar sigil etched into her skin
Legs stretched out as brown biker boots dig into grey floor
There’s a forest in her eyes like a burnt Eden
The flies buzzing past my head remind me of the choke of July
And I can’t stop myself from sliding down.

I know that there’s nowhere left for me to go but down
But I still ask if there’s a better place
The sign cheerfully states that the bathroom was last cleaned in July
And she tastes like smoke and rain and dry, chapped skin
And there’s a lost paradise in that burnt and broken Eden
Dragging heavy soles back across that gunmetal floor.

The air stretches solid like ice from the roof to the floor
And I can’t help but let myself sink and shiver down
Wishing for the world before the morning star rose over Eden
So that I could stand to stay for more than a minute in a place
Without feeling like I was growing and stretching out of my skin
And the sun would always be soft and hazy like it was July.

There’s cold lips that press against those black teeth in July
The walls have peeled and the blood never got washed off this floor
And there’s something crawling under my skin
Though there’s nothing to be done but swallow it down
And I know that there’s no way back to that place
All that’s lost could be named a kind of Eden.

Her name is thick on my tongue as we approached Eden
Grating in my throat like the fires that burn down July
And like a dutiful daughter I take my place
Screwing my feet into my designated spot on this dance floor
Letting my arms rise and my jaw dip down
As shivers rip and tremble across blue skin.

It emerged the moment I found Eden on the dirty white floor
It followed me from that July day, letting me dance further down
Leading me screaming to my place, hollow inside my own skin.

Panic & Design

In a moment which is a rather accurate summation of my entire approach to, like, school and life, I decided to start applying for jobs only to come to the realization that a) I'm really interested in the design and production side of book publishing, over the editorial side, and that b) I didn't really have any portfolio to speak of to show employers and say 'see, I can do things!' And thus this weekend I ended up spending an incredible 16 hours at the school doing design stuff (the school's computers have Adobe Creative Suite, including InDesign and Photoshop, and while I would love to have those tools on my computer, I'm afraid that *might* kill the poor thing). While you can see all of the things I did this weekend in the 'design portfolio' page in the sidebar (over thataway ---------------> ), I'm going to post some of my favourite pages here.

My totally bad-ass setup Saturday

I have to say, though designing things does that a lot of time (like, I spent 2.5 hours redesigning my CV, and each magazine layout takes 1-2 hours), I absolutely love doing it, and even though I spent 16 hours at school on my days off, I really enjoyed it, and am not even a little bit upset about having done so. Which bodes well for my career choice (hooray!).

Also, except for Alix on Saturday afternoon, I had the mac lab to myself, and was thus blasting my jams while I was working, which was pretty awesome. I went and saw the Lego movie the other week with Kate, which was awesome, and it is a really good movie, but I've had the main song stuck in my head ever since, so I played that a couple times (Alix sung along with me though so its cool, I wasn't annoying her too much).

In other news, I still suck at photoshop. Happily, Alix was there Saturday afternoon to help me when things began to go awry.

Another note: while the page layout and photographs of all the spreads below were generated entierly by my brain, the mock magazine and book cover designs, which were photoshop files, I actually downloaded from graphicburger, which is a really great resource for designers, and is also were I got all the nifty wood backgrounds. Also, I wouldn't bother trying to squint and read the text - besides the title and quotes, all of the text is lorem ipsum, although a very special and awesome kind called cupcake ipsum that I got from this text generator (and which Alix introduced me to). While my lecturer made the argument for getting text such as Kafka from this generator, as it more closely mimics the spacing and flow of ordinary English text than lorem ipsum, I can't help but feel that since cupcake ipsum is basically the best thing ever, and makes placing holder text far more entertaining than it ever is usually, I'm probably going to keep using it.

Oh, actually, the text on the book reviews layout is real text, but its just reviews copy-and-pasted from Alix and I's goodreads, and aren't necessarily very good (Alix's were so long that they actually cut off - so actually, hers are pretty good. Mine are mostly snarky - the one for Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis reads "This book had so many genuinely terrifying moments, its really a shame it was written by Bret Easton Ellis and not a less pretentious and egotistical author." ... if you can't tell, I really don't like Bret Easton Ellis.

And without further ado...

The book cover is a WIP, but I got tired earlier Saturday than Sunday and stopped.

French Club (but really, more book covers)

Edit: this post has been shoved back in my schedule several times, and as such is now from absolutely ages ago. Sorry about that. 

Last Sunday I headed to school in the morning in the hopes that I would be able to spend some time designing covers in InDesign for our anthology. Unfortunately, they do not seem to heat the computer room on the weekends, so, when, after an hour and a half, I could no longer feel my fingers, I elected to leave and find somewhere else to hang out until french club convened at two. Rather than hop from coffee shop to coffee shop, I decided to just head to Waterstones, where I drank tea and read Good Omens for several hours. 

Which is really just a lovely way to spend any day. I don't know if it was just the copy of Good Omens that I got from that rather large (and no altogether legal) book download, but it was typographically frustrating. Which is so nerdy. However, I finished Good Omens a couple of days later, and I have to say, it lives up to its reputation - fantastically absurd, funny, and incredibly British. So English it hurts. I recently read a review which summed up Good Omens, which went something like this (SPOILERS) "Six billion people almost die, and it is FUNNY" - I think thats a fairly succinct analysis.

In more nerdy-ness, after French Club, Alix and Rachel and I participated in our weekly tradition of wandering around Waterstones, critiquing book covers.

This cover for 'The Returned', while I really liked the idea behind it, I really did not like the spacing of the type - I thought that both the boy should be lowered slightly, as well as the tagline. I don't like the layout, basically, though I do like the fundamental design elements that they are working with.

It was a rather gloomy and rainy day, but as I left Waterstones, I was again struck by how incredible it is to live here, and to exit a bookshop to be struck by the view of a castle atop a hill, dominating the modern cityscape I was a part of, a strange mix of new and old.

Crowdfunding & Stop Motion

Edit: like tomorrows post, this post ended up being pushed from the week it was written for, and thus all dates mentioned are actually more like two weeks in the past. Sorry about that. 

Last monday we got together at 10 to practice our presentation on Wednesday, but we didn't have class after that until 3, so Laura, Maya, Lindsey, Becca, and myself headed down to The Treehouse for lunch - I seriously love that place. After that, I went to Starbucks and read for a couple of hours. I've been reading a lot this last couple of weeks - I took a bit of a break after finishing the first three books in Cassandra Claire's Mortal Instruments series, before reading the fourth one (which I did not really like, while I really liked the first three). Then I read Veronica Roth's Divergent, which was amazing (another occasion of me staying up to 3am to finish a book because I couldn't stop reading), read John Green and David Leviathan's Will Grayson Will Grayson, and am currently reading Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens. There are two more books in Roth's series, but, as amazing as they are, I decided I needed a break from YA sci-fi and fantasy, and when Will Grayson Will Grayson wasn't enough of a departure from that, I decided to go for an actual adult book.

In other news, last week I *finally* managed to finish editing the video for Ah Dinnae Ken's crowdfunding efforts. There were a couple of delays in getting it done - while Laura and Lindsey and I got together a couple of Tuesdays ago and managed to take all the photos and write the script for the video, there were a couple of delays in getting the voiceover recorded and finding music, but it finally came together last Wednesday! If you haven't seen it yet, our crowdfunding is now live, and if you'd like to go and have a look and support our efforts if you are interested, you can find it here.

These are some "stills" from the video. While we were going to simply film myself drawing and then speed it up, we couldn't figure out how (or if) you can film on my DSLR, and so decided to simply photograph myself drawing, and then edit them together in a stop motion video (it was quite the set up, with the camera in a tripod on the table, facing downwards, with me awkwardly drawing between the legs of the tripod while Laura clicked the shutter).

Some of the pictures ended up being cut to make the video more brief and succinct, and also to help it line up with the script, so while the little guy above is still in the video, the speech bubble got cut - a good aspect of doing stop motion is that it makes it very easy to do things like cut certain scenes or aspects. 

Rain

I never see the rain

It falls in fits and starts

Leaving behind wet sidewalks

And full gutters

Sometimes I am asleep

And wake to a world come undone

Filled with the sharp smell

Of water fallen

And worms risen

Most of the time though

I am simply not looking

Cast in pale blue

Under florescent’s toxic glow

Eyelashes slow to part

Molasses sticky grip

Of chunky black mascara

By the time I open them

The clouds have passed beyond my view

World scrubbed grey

Never able to turn the corner

Quick enough to catch the colour

That you can hear just ahead

The pitter-patter of heavy rain

On a red tin roof.

Book Cake

Last Wednesday was pretty busy, and started with our presentation, but it was also Jade's 27th birthday, and Becca brought her a book-shaped cake, which was delicious (it had like three layers with jam). 

So happy birthday Jade!

This week we also started working on cover designs for Ah Dinnae Ken, which is exciting because I love doing cover designs, though my total lack of photoshop skills does limit me somewhat (luckily I'm a total boss at InDesign). I'm thinking I might try and find some sort of short class on Photoshop at a local college or something after this course. That, or when I've gotten some money and can get a new computer, just buy it and play with it until I understand it better (I would get it now, but I think that might actually be the final straw for my poor laptop).

Pizza Party

Last Friday I had some spare time, for once, so I decided to film a whole bunch of YouTube videos for my channel, so I could post them over the next couple of weeks when I am again really busy. I was just about to start editing when I got a text from Kate saying that some of them were at The Merlin, which is about two minuets from my flat, so I went out to meet them. My flat then got volunteered for a pizza party (which I was totally okay with). 

"And what was your name?"
"Kyra Jones?"
"Sorry?"
"K-y-r-a Jones"
"So thats K-i-r-a J-e-r-m-s?"
"... yes."

After getting our pizza, Keira, Ali, Eve, Kate, Becky and I headed back to my flat, where Jack later joined us. Ali again brought his set of Cards Against Humanity, and we played that and ate a lot of pizza.

Just to give you some idea of what sorts of things are written on the white cards - I'm not kidding when I say this is a game for terrible people. It is fun, but also incredibly horrifying.

Eve and Becky were threatening to never leave my flat - they really liked how cozy my blanket is.

 In the end, Kate and I tied for the win with ten cards each.

Half of these I can't remember what I put down, and the other half I'm not telling. "I drink to forget" was "sea of troubles". There. Thats one.

Another fun night in with friends :)