New Years, New me?

'You don't make resolution when the new year starts, the new year starts when you make your resolutions...'
No idea who said the above, but to some extent it's true. However, the New year is a time to consider what would make your next year even better. It pushes into your consciousness an awareness of things you could or should've done differently.
I don't regret anything I've ever done, even when I cut my fringe so short it wouldn't stay flat or when I went running head to toe in Lycra. Because that is what has led me to who I am now. And I like who I am now. :-)
Two weeks of illness and absence from uni haven't means I haven't had the greatest start, but it has meant I get to spend an extra week with my family, and not in a sleep-deprived stupor in halls (which I love by the way)
Anyway, a few resolutions I have made...
1. Go to my lectures (umm...haven't been to any last week! But to be fair I had flu :-p)
2. Spend less time napping in the middle of the day (I have spent the last two weeks asleep at all hours of the day)
3. Stay away from relationships which are bad for me. (umm..this is mostly working..small victories!!)
4. Spend more time in 'constructive' pursuits such as reading, writing..on here and for my paper and stories, in preparation for my hopefully future career.
So I'm not doing so well, but I have written on here so watch this space!!!

So what else have I been up to?
I wrote an exceptionally long essay on Sense and Sensibility and Oranges are not the only fruit.
Oranges is an exceptionally good book, by Jeanette Winterson and if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do. It's about a girl discovering her sexuality whilst growing up in a deeply religious background. Winterson claims it isn't autobiographical but there are massive parallells between the two.
I recently had a similar experience with my friend, who is a lesbian was blanked by a girl, on old friend, she had known since childhood. It made me exceptionally angry at the hypocrisy of some Christian's, because it is a religion that should be helping people to be more accepting, even if you don't agree with what people believe doesn't mean that you should reject them, you reject their beliefs, but ignoring someone you've known and were friends with because of a tiny part of their whole identity is shocking and upset me.
Anyway, what else have I read?
Grace Notes-is a book on a similar keel to some extent, it's about a woman who has left her Catholic family in Northern Ireland and returned for her father's funeral five years later, to find the Ireland the IRA left. She has also had a child in this time, again something her mother finds hard to deal with. The title Grace Notes is my favourite thing though, because the idea is about living life between the main stages, 'the notes', life is the bits inbetween the stages in the same way Grace notes are the bits between the notes.





Also, the Lost Symbol is excellent. I hate the intellectual snobbery surrounding Dan Brown, he creates fantastic stories as long as you remember not everything in it is as true as he suggests. But I think the main objection is that they do teach people to question, governments, religions, economic systems and that's why people don't like them. The intellectuals want to stay elite, they do not like bringing any ideas to the 'masses' and reject and mass culture through fear it will some how 'dumb them down'.

Also, WATCH AVATAR!
A brilliant film! It illustrates way humans deal with cultures they don't understand, through destroying and changing it. How greed leads to a desire for ignorance.
It has an important message for today's society, it is ignorance that breeds the hatred between cultures, it was ignorance and greed that led to the British empire deciding all other cultures were savage and basic. The thing they didn't realise is that it is our intrusion that made them savage. They weren't the primitive culture, WE were. It also has cool blue people in it. And an amazing setting, or 'graphics' (I dunno, this is why I do an arts degree!!)
I had a dream the other day about the weird 6 legged flying bird horse things, someone was arguing weird flying horse rights because they get attcked...but I also had a dream a baby was trying to eat me...so really odd...
Anyway, sure I've bored you enough...Xx