Sweet Like The Devil.

Does this not look like the most sinfully delicious thing you have ever seen in your life? These cupcakes that have appeared on campus, available in pink (strawberry), green (vanilla) and brown (chocolate), have become the stuff of legends. I know people who go to the cafes just to buy one of these pieces of heaven that cost a pound. With frosting that tastes like ice cream, candy hearts and glitter sprinkled over the top, these cupcakes would have been my downfall. Now I'm convinced they are nothing but torture devices, sent to test my willpower and make me miss cake just that little bit more. Knowing I can't have one, makes me want it more.

Combining two of my favourite things (being pink in colour and being covered in glitter) I feel angry at these cakes every time I see them. How dare they look so amazing when I can't have one? It's not fair.

Of course, this is the general rule of anything in life. If you can't have it, you want it. If it's bad for you, despite your best efforts, you'll still want it, even though you are fully aware that it's bad for you.

It's simple enough, really.

Delicious, wrong in more ways than one and potentially fatal.

A perfect sin.

♥

Sort It Out.

There is a lot of work I could be doing right now, but instead of settling down with the unappealing textbook that is sitting next to me and preparing for tomorrow's seminar, I am sat on the internet, browsing various websites and doing everything I can to avoid what needs to be done.

The thing is, I love being a student and everything that comes with it. Even the work. I'm not an intense 24 hour, never-leaves-my-room type but it gets done. I want the experience, sure, but I also want a good degree at the end. And so my bookshelf (in the picture above) is crammed with books and I've started going to the library a lot more often, but I will always make time to do something stupid. Like running away from a friend down the corridor and locking her out of my room. (May not seem amazing, but when her keys are inside, the door isn't really locked and she's screaming at you to let her in, you can't help but laugh.)

Today, I emptied my bag for the first time in about a week. I have this tendency to just throw things in there without paying much attention. Which is fine, except that when I emptied it today, as well as the normal things you might expect to find (folders, pens, paper, purse, receipts, umbrella), I found a ring I've been trying to find for weeks, a pen I spent ten minutes searching for during my lecture and a belt. The explanation for the belt is pretty simple: I was running late and took it with me to put on when I had the chance. Clearly that chance never arose, and that was last Thursday. I should probably start leaving more time to get ready, and I should definitely start sorting my bag out more often.

To quote every student, ever: "I need to sort my life out."

Almost Midnight

I'm sat in front of my window, staring at the sky, slightly disappointed by the lack of stars. I find there's something calming in looking at the stars, as well as finding them thought invoking. On the phone the other night, I was told to look out the window, and tell my friend what I saw. I saw stars. They asked what I thought and I started to talk about how stars made me feel insignificant, not necessarily in a bad way, in a way that makes you realise that all of these problems you think you're having, they're not really important. Everything pales in comparison when you consider the universe. Nothing is signficant and nothing stands out, because nothing is amazing enough to make an impact.

"Wouldn't it be nice to think that we might be the stars someday? That lasting light?"

Maybe. But maybe that thought is nice because it's as fictional as a fairy tale.

I used to spend a lot of time staring at the stars. I wanted to fly, be able to reach out and touch them, find the magical lands that hid away within them, those places where you never had to grow up and things were always perfect. There was always an element of magic about stars, these little bright shining lights that looked so close and yet were so far away. The older I got and the more I learnt about them, the more I was fascinated with them. We see it, but it might not even be there anymore. And in a way, with the mindset and knowledge we have, that's as close to magic as we're ever going to get.

"Stars are beautiful, but they must not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was."

-J.M Barrie (Peter Pan)

One Very Distraught Child

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2L8ggFIiEE

For some reason I cannot understand, the code for embedding this video won't work. However, after watching it twice today, I cannot decide whether this mother's recording of her child is simply cruel or hilarious. Overall, I think it must be a strange combination of the two; at times this torment seems entirely false and at others she seems extremely distressed. The one conclusion I have drawn from this video is this:

No good can come from loving Justin Bieber.

A Trip To The Lake

Nothing exciting. Not by far. But still, it was an opportunity to act like five year olds, take pictures and talk. Although we may have come to the conclusion (we being Fryn and myself) that we spend WAY too much time together.

Fryn likes trees :)

I'm sitting on the floor and I look about five...Go go me :)

I also like trees :)

I call this 'Fryn in Wonderland'. I just really like it.

The best of about 4082309430294392 attempts.



This walk lasted all of an hour but it was FUN. More than anything this semester I have learnt that you don't need money or alcohol to have a good time. I know that at times it might seem like they may help but I've realised that some of the best times you'll have and the best memories you'll make come from just being around people who make you smile, whether that's out drinking and dancing or sitting in someone's room until gone 3.30 am. At the moment, my preference is the latter. Because I may be exhausted the next day, but I also won't be throwing up, declaring that I will never drink again and I'll sure as hell remember everything I got up to.

♥

"...'cause I'm Mr Brightside."

"Jealousy, turning saints into the sea,

Swimming through sick lullabies..."

- The Killers, "Mr Brightside".

After almost an hour and a half of intense note making, I decided to give in and take a break, the main reason being because I am finding it absolutely impossible to concentrate. There are way too many ideas bouncing around my head, too many emotions trying to battle each other for the prize of deciding on my mood. It’s all a bit much when you’re trying to wade through the masses of work that needs to be done.

Jealousy. It’s one of those things that no one ever likes to admit to feeling. It’s an ugly feeling for one, bringing out the worst in people, whether the worst is irrational hatred or bitching or, to go to the other extreme, murder. It’s not cute. It’s understandable, but it’s not logical. Being pragmatic and feeling jealous are two things that don’t really do hand in hand. It becomes this whole complex argument, a battle between head and heart, a fight to see which will be the dominant force in what you do next. I believe I’ve made my decision. Of course, there’s a problem with that for anyone. Listen to your head and you’ll run the risk of breaking your own heart. Listen to your heart and you’ll find yourself calling yourself an idiot for a very long time.

The problem with jealousy is that it’s not like other emotions. Happiness is brightening and wonderful, anger is dangerous and sadness is just horrible. But these are all emotions seem to be much more logical. Jealousy is a poison that runs through your veins and begins to consume you, body and mind. All of your focus gets put on this thing that you can’t have. And it’s not like a little tug of jealousy, like when you see someone enjoying a strawberry cupcake and you are annoyed that you can’t have one. No, this is something that takes over your entire life and makes you want to hurt people. The very worst of you will emerge when you’re jealous. You start to realise what you’re really capable of. And you begin to learn how intense your imagination really can be. You paint pictures of what it is that bothers you, ones that are probably far and beyond reality, and you believe that they’re true and then you want to break everything in sight. Think of those few lines in 'Mr Brightside'; it's all in your head and yet, it's killing you and 'taking control...'

Or maybe that’s just me.

But before you think I’m crazy, consider being in this situation. You want something, more than you’ve ever wanted anything else ever in the world, but you know that you can never have it. Then you’re told you’re can. You’re not quite promised it, but the intention of you getting it is always there. And then it’s taken away from you, without warning and you’re left with even less than you have before. And then you’re offered it again. You’re not trusting in it so much this time but it’s taken again anyway and now you’re the idiot who made the decision with their heart. And to make matters worse, someone else has the thing you want. And you still want it, more than anything else in the world. Now you’re certain you’re not going to get it. Your head knows it’s true and your heart wishes it wasn’t. Underneath it all, you’re angry and want to smash something. And then you say those three words, that special little lie you use because you’re ashamed or something:

“I don’t care.”

Liar. You do. I do. I really, really do.

Store-Bought Beauty

The idea of beauty is one that always fascinates me, and quite often a topic of conversation between me and my friends, these friends being both male and female. Which celebrities do we think are beautiful? What is it that makes someone beautiful? And what about the word beautiful itself; when is it okay to use it? In reference to a building, a person, words written or spoken? So many questions about something that people never seem to agree on.

It is my personal opinion that the word ‘beautiful’ is powerful. To use it to describe someone is completely different to describing them using other adjectives: nice, pretty, attractive, gorgeous, all of them synonyms of beautiful and yet none of them the same. Not even close. Take beautiful and gorgeous: to be gorgeous seems to be much more fleeting than being beautiful. Things of beauty last for a long time, whereas something that is gorgeous does not have a lasting effect. It catches your attention for a while, whether a few minutes or a few months, but it’s almost as if something beautiful will stay with you forever.

The quest for perfection in regards to beauty is beginning to frighten me. Pictures of Heidi Montag that appeared in the media last month both shocked and revolted me. At the young age of 23, she has had so much surgery that she no longer looks human; her resemblance to a mannequin is uncanny. Whatever she was trying to achieve has failed dramatically. She looks like a middle aged woman trying to recapture her youth. I am not against plastic surgery. I’m an 18 year old girl and I can more than sympathise with the insecurities one would feel about whatever imperfections they may have, whether real or in their head. But 10 surgeries in one day? More than $30,000 dollars on procedures? That is something I cannot understand. There is more to beauty than just a pretty face.

Surgery can buy you a smaller nose, bigger breasts, less wrinkles and many more besides, but how you look is only a small part of what makes you attractive. Having the kind of physical attractiveness that makes people look at you twice can be easily counteracted by an ugly personality. Cruelty, selfishness, and all of those unattractive qualities that people can have cannot be ignored just because you look good. In fact, the more attractive you are, the quicker you lose that attractiveness when you’re personality is unattractive. The most beautiful people I know are note just attractive; they have something else about them that makes them beautiful. It comes from within; a combination of kindness, confidence and a general well-rounded personality. I don’t mean, of course, that there are not parts of everyone’s personality that can be seen as ugly, but they don’t try and make the way they look out-shadow the person that they are. They want people to like them for them, not their face or their body. In doing this, they just make themselves more attractive without even meaning to.

Make-up, surgery, a desperate need to wear the latest fashion...I can understand the contribution these things make to being attractive, and why to some they are so important, but when things get drastic, and people start getting addicted to surgery, you have to ask yourself why this has happened. Where has this pressure come from? I know some would plan the media, or the fashion industry, but I don’t believe that it is fair to put the blame on either of these institutions. The pressure comes from you. Not being happy with yourself and not being able to accept yourself for who you are. There is no such thing as universal perfection, what appeals to one will not necessarily appeal to another, and so this quest is a pointless one to undertake as you will never prevail. Have faith in the belief that one day someone will see you for more than just your face and will not only think you are beautiful, but make you believe it too. End the search. What it is you’re looking for just doesn’t exist.