Obsessive shoppers

Moping around on the net can lead to some weird places. I found myself on a particularly famous money saving website, by some famous expert person. Click on a link and you find yourself in one place, follow another and you're somewhere completely different. I found myself on a message board about glitches in the system at Tesco. People were going crazy, doing their shopping for random things they didn't seem to need, and almost obsessively noting down all prices and watching them as they go through the till, going "aha!" to the cashier when a price doesn't match. There was a whole board of people reporting these issues, because you get double the difference refunded to you if the price doesn't match the sticker on the shelf. Which is insane because people were buying items simply to get the difference back, regardless of whether or not they needed the item. It kind of makes me wonder if this is part of the reason why the "I'm in debt" board exists on this website. So you've got the people who are buying things because it makes them feel good, getting into debt. And you've got the people who are buying things to be able to save or get freebies, because that makes them feel good but then leads them to be in debt. I can just imagine that one poster, who saw a difference between the till price and shelf sticker of the Futurama DVDs of £3 and proceeded to "grab" several of them wading around in box sets. One post elsewhere on the site was about someone buying 6 large meals at McDonald's to get free glasses, and becoming angry when there were no glasses left for them. Just buy glasses if you need them. This is an important lesson to me. Quit buying things you don't need. Quit buying things to get free things. Quit trying to save money by buying things you wouldn't otherwise. Silly stuff.

Lols.

.alpine says (23:05):
but moths are all like DURR HURR LIGHT HURR DURR COMPUTAR SCREEN
.alpine says (23:05):
*flap flap flap dink*
.alpine says (23:06):
repeat ad infinitum

Cookies!

Well no not cookies, more shortbread biscuits. So today I made my first attempt at single-handedly making biscuits, on my own with no supervision. This shouldn't be a big deal at my age, but I truly suck at cooking. I learned the following the hard way during my great culinary adventure:

1. The table and the rolling pin need to be floured, because the dough sticks to them! Who'd have thought it?
2. You don't just slam the cookie cutter down onto the table, you push it in and twist it, or you get little jagged edges.
3. Making biscuits is messy.
4. You have to flour your hands if you're gonna stick them into the mixture, otherwise you are going to have to bake your hands.
5. Stick the sprinkles on as soon as the icing is on, otherwise the icing dries and the sprinkles fall off.

Well really, let's be honest, I cheated, using a pre-packed shortbread mixture, all I had to add was butter, but I totally made the icing and iced them myself and added the sprinkles and everything. Nobody's had the privilege of tasting them yet, and I have this nagging feeling they might taste yucky, especially as I always proclaim, the store that I bought the mix from sells nothing but below standard yucky food. I'm not allowed to name them since they post warnings to their employees about blogging about them. Penalty of death termination of contract.

Cheerleader.

That girl's in Heroes right? Well I only just realised she isn't actually called Hayden Pattiserie. Shes called Hayden Panettiere. Very different. Doh.

The Amaloli Idol

I reached the 800 mark for friend numbers on the amaloli profile on myspace today. For those who don't know what that is, amaloli was originally meant to be the English source of Lolita style jewellery and accessories (i.e. frilly, cute, bows with a little goth... google it). It never really got there to be honest, and I just sell regular kinds of jewellery mostly. Anyway, I haven't been making any money from it for the past year which kind of sucks. So why have 800 friends? Does this mean 800 people actually appreciate the designs? Not necessarily, since myspace is home to girls who simply want to be loved, modelling for their myspace shots in what can be as little as a pair of pants (in the English sense of the word). I click through the browse function with my target being female between the ages of 18 and 30 and living in the UK, and start adding away. I'm still getting the steady flow of compliments for the jewellery, but the market on myspace is a too saturated.

Look at my photography, and not that I'm being big-headed or anything but my pictures are just so much better than your average myspace jewellery seller. Not a blur to be seen for miles. But the perfectionist I am (not saying that I get things perfect, just that it makes me itch not to have things perfect) I don't think it's up to scratch.

There is something I notice about the profiles of those girls that fit into that stereotypical group I mentioned earlier, the one with the pants. These girls add randoms like I do, yet get a hell of a lot more comments and a hell of a lot more attention. These girls could sell stuff. Which makes me think, what's the difference between my product (jewellery) and their product (ass). Ahhaaaa.... there is the answer. The girl in the picture is so popular with other girl users because she looks perfect, something to aspire to, something that you could become. Put a piece of jewellery on the perfect looking girl, and the jewellery becomes the route to perfectness. She is perfect, she wears the jewellery, one must wear the jewellery to look the same.

So... where to find a perfect looking girl? Simply put they don't exist. The recent event of the tagged picture on myspace is a window to what the girls look like windswept, oily faced or with not quite the right lighting. These are the pictures posted without their consent by their friends, at times when they weren't quite ready to have their picture taken. These girls are created perfect by the clothes, the makeup, the setting and the shot. So I intend to create one. And oh yes, anyone that knows me will become a target for the amaloli idol. Hehe.

ooosakaaaaa

I wouldn't say I always wanted to go to Japan. I always wanted to go to China, because they had pretty dresses. I don't think I quite knew the existence of Japan when I was a kid. Anyway, ever since I was say... 15 I was really into learning languages. I went from Spanish to Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, Farsi, Chinese, Japanese then nothing. Until last September when I sucked up my nerves and dragged Shelley to a night time college course in Wolverhampton. I can't really say I'm too brilliant at Japanese still, I can't seem to spout out random conversation when people ask me to. But ask me something in Japanese and it will ring this vaguely familiar bell. Anyway, it looks like I should be going to Osaka next August with Tom, which could be utterly cool or completely scary. I'd love to go in a largish group of friends and rent out a huge apartment for a couple of weeks, but I'm all too aware that it's a costly trip. £500 at least for the flight, £300 at least for the accomodation and then there's all the food and kawaii stuff that needs to be paid for. Budgeting for about £2k is going to be tough going for the next year, but it will be well worth it in the end. I'm slightly nervous about speaking Japanese, in Japan, to actual Japanese people because I do remember the giggles that used to come from my teacher Eiko whenever I'd say something not-so-right. I think I'd like to get it perfect first time I ever said something to someone, but that can't really happen. I remember sitting in 6th form with my Iranian friend Sahar, every now and then we'd launch into a discussion about the meaning of the various slang terms we often used, and being unable to tell her what they meant. I was never really gifted when it came to describing things, speaking in general, which actually makes blog writing extremely difficult.

I Have Made it Big

I hadn't been on my Amaloli profile on Myspace for a hell of a long time, having neglected it in favour of... I really haven't a clue. So I decided to check, see if I still had all my friends, see if anyone had said anything. I saw a new email, which I thought was unusual, and opened it up.

Subject:

bye bye

Body:

it's not just your photography that sucks shit, it's your jewellery too.
i am removing you from my friends list and blocking you.
what a pile of crap it all is, i could do better myself.
good luck selling that pile of poop.

My first reaction was to laugh, especially when I found out that the sender was 27 years of age and should know better than to send hate mail. I thought about it long and hard and compared myself to the likes of Fall Out Boy and Avril Lavigne. See, I'm sure these guys were popular with all who discovered them and when they made it big people began to tell them they sucked. So I guess I finally made it huh?

The Land Without Kawaii

England has no kawaii stuffs. Therefore I have this theory that we are in fact as serious as everyone else in the world thinks. We should just continue to wear tophats and use parasols. But that would be too cute. I think this is why people stopped wearing them. If you go into a shop where you are in danger of encountering cute, you're usually met with bear ornaments. Or VW Beetle money boxes. Not a single cat-in-a-burger to be seen for miles around.