1 & 1/2 bits of good news and an example of how awkward I find life.

1- I've been asked to guest post! These are available at the links below if you want to read them, I'm personally just really excited about the fact that they're even there, and it's just crazy that something I wrote would ever look that good and professional.

http://www.sdmmovies.com/2012/11/23/taken-2-movie-2012-review-more-of-the-same-in-a-good-way/

http://www.sdmmovies.com/2012/11/23/28-days-later-2002-film-review/

...and 1/2 - The lovely people at Expatica wanted to advertise with me, unfortunately because of the way Wordpress is (i.e. free) I can't change the HTML set-up etc. etc. so this wasn't possible (it's like a you can live here but you can't paint the walls kind of deal), but it was very sweet of them to ask and I hope I get the chance to work with them in the future.

And the example of how awkward I find life:

This happened when I was going to a gig last Tuesday (discovered an awesome band, there will be a video below).

So I don't um, pay for public transport here, basically they just have machines on the street/metro stations where you can buy tickets but they don't actually check if you have them and it's expensive and I'm poor blah blah. I'm going to defend myself here by saying that I can only use public transport about 3 times a week max. and I walk everywhere else I need to go every other time. Although realistically I don't actually feel that guilty about it because I watch basically everyone else who gets on the bus/tram/metro do exactly the same thing. Sorry STIB/the Belgian economy.

But sometimes they do have people that check tickets, and I thought I'd spotted one of these people, so I stood up to get off hoping he wouldn't check me if I was leaving the bus, but whilst I was stood up it came to my attention he wasn't checking tickets, just asking people where they were going to so the bus company could improve their services. However, because I have absolutely no control over my social awkwardness I obviously felt compelled to get off the bus anyway because I'd been stood by the doors for so long that if I just sat back down it would look weird. So I travelled about 20 metres and had to walk the rest of the way, for no reason other than not wanting to look weird in front of all of about 5 people. I guess that's what you get for cheating the system whilst also having no social skills.

This is the band I was talking about, I'm not really a fan of the bees myself, but almost everyone I've shown this to (and apparently everyone on YouTube) has disagreed with me, so enjoy.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/a_bAQZATCTM]

Also a lot of people have been sharing this around but it's so good I feel I should do it too.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/8nif01WZ9aI]

Have a lovely last week of November :)

xx

I was ill, but then I got better. So it was fine.

Private Jones: Mitch, I fucking got one!

Corporal Mitchell: What you want a fucking sweetie? Keep shooting you cunt!

This is why all horror films should be British; none of the ridiculous puns of American films, just lots of swearing. That's basically all I've done whilst I've been ill, I watched The Exorcist on Friday for about the 100th time, and no matter how many times I see it I can't help but feel a little annoyed that it kind of has a happy ending. Not that I'm against happiness, it's just not how horror films should be. Definitely not as annoyed as I am at The Texas Chainsaw Massacre though, in which every character is so irritating, I'm actually rooting for the silent serial killer. Seriously if you start walking when the killer is within grabbing distance of you, you deserve to be chainsawed(?) to death.

It's also come to my attention lately, that I have really weird taste in fictional men. Just stay with me on this, this isn't going to be about how hot the cast of 90210 are, I promise.

I've already proclaimed my love for Ryan Howard from The Office, and I know, I know he's emotionally void and he kind of goes crazy when he gets promoted and starts doing shit loads of drugs and embezzling money...but in the 'Grief Counselling' episode instead of telling a story about the death of someone close to him, he tells the story of how Mufasa dies in The Lion King -  and if your approach to grief counselling is to tell part of a Disney story, then we need to get married.

Nathan from Misfits is another one, because apparently if your one goal is to annoy other people and make ridiculously inappropriate jokes, then I will think you're the best thing that's ever happened to the world. He has completely irrational reactions to everything, and is therefore the love of my life.

Nathan: Are you asking me out on a date?
Simon: No... I meant all of us.
Nathan: Did you? ... I am not your whore!

Guy Secretan from Green Wing is probably the most prominent and unreasonable adorations:

Dr.  Dear: It is for a good cause.

Dr.  Secretan: I don't do good causes, OK? A charity shag maybe, but certainly not to raise fucking money for medical equipment.

It's not like I don't know what terrible 'real life' partners these people would make, they basically live to be infuriating and find it impossible to take anything seriously and/or be emotionally capable, and to be honest that's really not what I should be looking for. BUT, they are about 20 million times more interesting than Edward Cullen/any male lead in those films where the someone dies/I don't even want to talk about (500) Days of Summer.

In other news, the key that has the comma on it fell off my keyboard, so I keep accidentally typing full stops instead, I've tried to correct all these grammatical errors, but sorry just in case. Oh and I broke a mug, fused the lights in my room, and spilt tea on my floor. The last two I did within the space of like an hour. I expect a serious injury within the week.

And I'm more than a little frustrated with living here right now; all I've wanted is blueberries and cookies from a supermarket bakery, but to afford the former I'd have to sell my organs and the latter just don't exist apparently. Way to go Belgium, way to go.

But good stuff has happened too! I received confirmation that I'm getting my Erasmus grant at some point in time so I'll be able to afford food (but still not blueberries) and stuff which will be a nice change. I successfully changed the light bulb in my room and overall everyone's been really nice whilst I've recovered from being poisoned by some food. So that's nice :)

I went to a lovely event hosted by my friends at CBI, and today I went to a seminar where the John Harris, editor of Politico, spoke. Politico is basically the nearest Washington gets to un-partisan journalism, so that was pretty cool. And I was persuaded to go out on Saturday night, so we danced on tables for a bit and the learned played chess in a bar until it closed.

I haven't really chatted about work so far, and just as a warning that's probably not going to change because I'm absolutely convinced I'm going to accidentally let something really important slip and initiate a crisis/lose my job.

Au revoir!

xx