Writing: the struggle

I don't know about you, but as a writer I find writer's block a complete and utter pain. For those of you not in the know about what it is, just picture a train hitting a brick wall. Even if you have ideas they just can't seem to jump onto the page. This, of course, makes writing to a deadline near impossible.

One cannot choose to write, the words will come when they're good and ready. Just as you cannot force a composer to compose or an artist to make something beautiful, forced writing is dull with no real structure or charm of its own.

For those of you who see my train image as too much, picture the times you did homework and spent the first hour so stuck that even the label on your water bottle was more interesting than the task at hand.

For me, the only thing harder than writing about writing with writer's block, is writing about writing with writer's block with writer's block. You know the ideas are endless, yet processing them is like trying to think of the name of something you haven't heard of in years.

My only advice in times like these is to clear your working space of any distractions, turn the TV off, close the curtains if the view distracts you. Let yourself concentrate without forcing yourself to write. It's meant to be relaxing, not strenuous.

Is it ethical to feed your pets live food?

Is it ethical to feed your pets live food?
By Roxy Green

I suppose that this is just another leg to the 'should we eat meat?' campaign really.

Both reptile keepers and animal nutritionalists alike stress the importance of animals getting the same nutrition they would get in their natural habitat. I mean, you can't feed a snake bread and expect it to live long, right?

However, scientists have developed a line of lizard pellets that have the same, if not more, of the vitamins your pet needs that aren't always present in the bugs you buy. They've been fed nothing but cardboard for hours, if not days. Examples of this are by Zoo Med and Exo Terra, who promise "Exo Terra Bearded Dragon food is a delicious reptile diet, carefully formulated to ensure proper growth and health by providing complete and balanced nutrition. Exo Terra Bearded Dragon food is fortified with optimal levels of vitamins, minerals and amino acids so no other food supplements are required.".Does this take lizards out of the argument? No, I personally have two and only one of them would ever eat the pellets, opting instead for live food whenever she was givien the choice.

If taught to eat pellets as soon as they're on to proper food, they probably would eat them. Many lizard owners stress that they are only interested in food that moves because it's a natural instinct, so the pellets won't really work.

For snake owners there are two options, live mice or frozen mice. If you don't like the idea of either it pretty much prohibits you from keeping one at all. Known for their bad eyesight, snakes wouldn't be able to find a pellet even if one was developed, unless perhaps it either stank or moved.

There's not only the ethics of your pet to consider, but the ethics of the food itself as, after all, it is alive too. It's not always a quick death for them, I've seen my lizards only eat the tail of a worm and drop the head, leaning it to crawl away in what I assume to be agony.

These animals are bred just to be bought, sold and fed alive to reptiles. Is that right?

Well, it's what would have been done in the wild anyway so surely stopping our pets from doing what they do naturally is playing God? The bugs are bred especially for it so if the market wasn't there they'd have never lived at all.

Drugs?

Drugs?
An informative rant
By Roxy Green

Someone tell me, are people cool and interesting because they take drugs? or do they take drugs because they're cool and interesting? I don't get why they're linked.

I mean the band onstage haven't taken anything, yet they still get people stuck to them like magnets, with their girlfriends waiting loyally at the side of the stage. It's easy to tell those who are high and those who aren't, mostly because they're either staring at the strobe lights like a baby at a mobile, or they're actually watching what's going on around them. Somehow someone out there found the crazed, wide eyed teens on MDMA (or whatever the hell they're taking now) attractive and it's become a 'cool thing to do'.

Unlike smokers, who will sit you down and tell you what a bad idea smoking is, these teen wannabe junkies try to tell you how great it is and how it makes them feel, even though you've already seen how it looks, and that's bad enough. Kids, snorting MDMA off your mum's washing machine is not cool, it does not give you that 'rock star' lifestyle. In honesty, it actually just makes you look a bit of a twat.

For you older readers who don't know what MDMA (or Molly) is, it's basically what the kids are calling Ecstasy now. The chemical name is 3,4,-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, and if you've watched Breaking Bad, you probably know it's a bad idea to take anything with a name that similar to that of Methamphetamine, or crystal meth. But hey, that's just logic.

Yes, you will dance for hours after taking it. But the drug isn't safe for a reason, it will cause you to overheat to death. Your heart rate and body temperature will increase to the extent that your body just can't take it and packs out. So those of you who take it and jump straight into the crowd where it's sweaty and hot without all the dancing or the stimulant, think again. It's popular at gigs, parties, festivals and nightclubs as a 'fun drug' that picks you up and keeps you going for the entire four to six hours it's in your body, but in reality it brings depressive states once it's worn off and causes addiction. The cases of people accidentally taking similar drug PMMA and dying is increasing at a staggering rate, according to drug help charity Talk To Frank.

So yes, the cool and interesting kids are usually the ones that start off these trends, but just you watch as they start to slip and lose their grasp of reality. Their grades will slip, their attendance will go to pot (excuse the pun) and they'll get thinner and thinner, resembling regular users of pretty much any drug ever. Meeting the same fate too if they carry on.

If you or anyone you know is suffering from drug abuse or addiction, help is just a click away at http://www.talktofrank.com/

Restaurant review

This restaurant promises to be a 'New York Italian Restaurant & Bar' but the only contribution that the American side has made is putting BBQ in front of the all the meals and covering the thick, sickly, sticky sauce all over everything. Even though they're more spread out than your every-street-corner McDonalds, I'd still say that it's more quantity than quality with these places. At least I was shown to my table straight away by my waiter, Kevin.

My starter (once it finally arrived) which promised 'shredded crab' turned out to be a chewy, salty lump that hadn't been cut properly, as if it had been based on a toast rack. The menu promised it to be  "served over toasted ciabatta" but in honesty they should have written 'served over over-toasted ciabatta' and saved my teeth the surprise. I don't know where any of my Basil went either, must have been caught in the wind during Kevin's short trip to my table.

Round 2. The main. Of course here the American obsession with 'BBQ' came into play, with only one main on the menu without the thick brown tar smothering it. I went for the pulled pork pasta bake, the pork and the cheese were a bit sparse, as expected from a stingy, chain restaurant such as this, but it tasted fine considering the cheap few-quid-a-tub sauce. Unfortunately my companion's experience with her main wasn't quite so pleasant, what with her 'crispy bacon' being half-raw and stringy from being cooked on too low a heat.

 All hope was gone by the time Kevin came back for the final round. Dessert. I went for the cheesecake (which originates from Greece, but we won't get started on that.). I was most happy when the menu promised me 'real dairy vanilla ice cream' as if I'd been expecting some impostor this whole time. The ice cream was smooth, tasted fine but it was already starting to melt by the time Kevin arrived, so I was eating against time.

Overall, Kevin was pleasant and seemed to apologize every time my pencil hit my notepad as if it was him personally that I was reviewing. Most of the savory food should be labelled 'not fit for human consumption' but the desserts certainly made up for it. So to this 'New York Italian' joint I say, mai Più!

My Book Recommendation

Hey everyone!
I'm going to recommend a book by one of my favourite authors, Bret Easton Ellis. I'm currently reading his second novel, Rules of Attraction. Published in 1987.

It was made into a film in 2002.

The blurb is as follows:

Incisive, controversial and startlingly funny, The Rules of Attraction examines a group of affluent students at a small, self-consciously bohemian, liberal-arts college on America’s East Coast.

Lauren, who changes the man in her bed even more often than she changes course, is dating Victor but sleeping with Sean. Sean – cool, ambivalent and deeply cynical – might be in love with Lauren, but he’s not going to let that stop him from bedding Paul. Paul, as shrewd as he is passionate, is Lauren’s ex-lover and the final point in this curious triangle. This is a breathtaking tale of sex, expectation, desire and frustration.

‘A tour of the heart of darkness, a moral armageddon’ The Times

‘Compelling . . . sympathetic to his “lost generation” the way only Fitzgerald was about his’Vanity Fair

‘One of the primary inside sources in upper-middle-class America’s continuing investigation of what has happened to its children’ New York Times

‘Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel’ Gore Vidal

Place prose- Asylum

Tick tock. Tick tock.... it was all I could hear from my cot, solitary confinement makes me very lonely. I was put in here because the Lord told me that Sister Agatha was the Devil incarnate and not to take the pills she gives me. I always obey the Lord.

Sometimes I am bad, that's when they start to take my things away, it was my blanket first, then my pillow and tonight they went for the mattress. I didn't care. The Lord would save me. When I pray I like to huddle in the corner and rock back and forth, mostly because I am scared the Sisters will see me. The Sisters are bad people.

The first week I was here they took away my hairbrush, I don't know why, all I did was hit someone with it. My hair is now in matted clumps, Sister Mabel told me not even getting in the bath will fix it. My arms are covered in red marks and silvery scars, I don't know why. It must be the Devil.

The Sisters have exorcised me twice, the Priest was a nice man, but I tried to tell them that I had no demon, it was the Sisters who did. That's what got me put in here.

My feet are cold; I'm not allowed shoes or socks. My arms are cold; my sleeves are too short and my blanket is gone. Sometimes I am sad; the other people here are scary and like to shout things at me. I begged for my things back, but Sister Mary said that the Lord told her not to give them to me, she's a liar. She's just angry because I found the lipstick she wasn't supposed to have and used it to write on the wall. I didn't write anything that wasn't true, so I don't know why she's upset. It was a very nice red colour and my wall looks a lot better now. I wish I had a window, but the Sisters won't let me out of my cell. I hate it here. I hate them. The Lord will save me.

Place prose

A chill spread through me, I felt like I had interrupted something. The tree seemed to pause in mid-step over the old house. Roots, perched like tentacles, spilled down onto the ground, pooling at my feet.

The whole place smelled of rot, damp and moss, as if touching anything would cause it to decompose and be lost forever. Everything within the house had long since rotted away, including, I would guess, its past inhabitants. Woodland creatures took refuge between its walls, like something out of a fairy tale. I wanted to stay, but it wasn't safe, and I'd read enough fairy tales to know that the giant would probably be on its way soon.

The wind whistled, something was on its way here, I ran to the house and jumped in through one of the windows with no glass, spooking rats, squirrels and bats to name but a few. Empty bed frames and an old oak table were all that remained of the past owners, apart from an old net curtain, which lay torn and half rotten on the floor, its former glorious white colour had gone to the dirty grey of dust. Once I decided it was safe I was gone, never looking back at the tentacled tree, which had probably moved on its way to wherever it had been going before. I wiped it from my mind like a dead bug on a car windscreen, pulling up my hood and running along to grandma's house.