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.

Place piece (draft)- The Library

The computing section. Silence. Volumes untouched by student hands, pages without a crease. Game Coding gathers dust, last taken out in January 2010 by a boy who just wanted to see the pictures. Under every librarian's "shush" one can hear the desperate cries of books unread, having never been enjoyed or appreciated by the eyes of a reader, screams muffled by dust, no one hears them. How To Program Java flies from its shelf, as if setting itself up to trap a reader between its 1580 pages, only for it to be roughly shoved back in the right place.

Other volumes lay beneath shelves, left by students intending to return for them. They stay silent, waiting for their rescue, but they'll be waiting for a long time, those students to longer go here.

Place piece- To all the Unfortunates in G Block

It had gotten warmer since the beginning, heat created from the friction of pens to notebooks as ideas flowed from the mind to the wrist. Chairs pulled wonky and tables pulled in close, as if the creativity will rub off on one another. Fingers pull thick hair aside, clearing the way for eyes to read back over paragraphs and pages. The clock, displaying the total wrong time, daren't tick for fear of breaking the flow. Ideas run out, dripping like a leaky tap before returning to the previous stream. So much goes on yet nothing happens. It's silent. The world outside goes on, unable to see the ideas fly like sparks around the room. The air is thick, trembling with energy. The abandoned technology is all exiled into one corner, where it may distract no one. 'Twas just a room in a creaky old shack, an annexe with a name as welcoming as the place was pleasant 'G Block'. Only the Unfortunates are left here, with its creaky door and corridor with no lights and a phone with no dial tone, to give the illusion that one could call for help. G2, fallen posters on the ground and a door linking each room to the next, urging Unfortunates to watch one another. It wasn't all bad, the radiatorworked at least, caged to prevent theft, and the adjustment of the settings. Parabulas stain the board, from the Unfortunates who were here before, no one bothered wondering what had happened to them, after all, they were already gone.

Book Recommendation

Hey there
So out of the thousands of books we've read between us we have to recommend something, I'm going to choose  The Silence Of The Lambs series, it's a crime/thriller that's been made into a huge movie franchise.

Serial Killer+ Awesome Detective guy= Epic tale

There's a reason it's so famous, just saying :P

Place- Drill

Left, right, left right left. Left, right, left right left....
The unity of our boots hitting the floor in perfect time seemed to spur on Serge, who was dripping from the heavy rain which pounded down on us all.

"Harry, arms up higher!" He called, marching us through mud and other substances I'm glad I couldn't identify. Our shirts stuck to us, epaulettes swollen like sponges and the boys hats soaked through. The only advantage to the ugly female bowler hat was it didn't have a soft top, and so didn't drink up every drop of rain like a thirsty camel.

Serge and Staff Tweed surveyed us, noting every millisecond someone was out of time, until every step was executed with military precision. Everyone longed for their jumpers and coats, both of which were standard issue but still not to be worn during drill. The calling of warmth and dryness seemed to be the biggest incentive to us, and we'd have followed it like the Bisto kids if we could.

"Halt!" Serge shouted, forcing us all to stop on the next clunk of heavy boots. "Atten-tion!" thumbs hit the seam of trousers and backs were straight as nails on exactly his command, hopefully we were good enough this time.

After four and a half hours in vile rain and thick mud, Serge finally let us stop to eat and get dry, only to continue at dawn. We daren't groan, we had to do an extra half hour last time we did. We had to take what we were told without complaint (or any reaction at all if we're at attention) and treat everything with the most serious manner. This was the big boy league.

Poser- (experiment with slang and swearing)

Bang bang, you're dead
The poem started, and he wished that could be the case. Oh how he wished that the pain deep in his chest would just go, even feeling nothing would be better than this.

Fifty bullets in your head
He wasn't greedy, he just wanted the one. But he didn't have a gun, and no contacts from which to borrow one. It was another bad day for Dene, after forcing down his Prozac dose for the day he dragged his feet to work, serving ungrateful fucks at the till of the corner shop, before getting sent home for being his boss' idea of 'too drunk'. His dented and scuffed hip flask tucked well away in his jeans, he denied being drunk at all, but his pissy-pants, politically correct, fucktard boss sent him home anyway. His mother had warned against people like that, who judge you for no reason, it's what everyone seemed to do to him.

He wished everyone would just leave him alone, but then the only one he didn't want gone was the first to give up on him, calling him a "lost cause" and pissing off with some prick in a shark tooth necklace. But that's okay, his mother hadn't approved of her anyway.

Sometimes he missed his car, other times he was glad it was gone. It meant he didn't have to pay parking to stay home all day. He pumped Drop Dead Cynical by Amaranthe out of his stereo at full volume, mainly to piss off the old bitch who lived in the flat below. Once she hit her ceiling so hard the broom handle went straight through it, she expected Dene to pay, but he of course just pretended not to have any clue who she was. He figured one of these days she'd be put in a home, then someone hot could move in there instead. "I wouldn't mind if it was a hot woman under me." He'd joked with his friends, before they'd gone too of course. No one lasted forever, so he shrugged them off like an oversized coat. He didn't need them to hold him back anyway. Those pricks were going anywhere, and Dene knew he was destined for more, perhaps just on the Other Side.

He settled for another smoke, not caring about the dangers of it, he'd likely be dead before cancer even decided to develop.

He decided to update his Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, keeping everyone updated on his suicidal status. Flicking through his news feeds, everyone seemed to be depressed today.

'Spoken' Youth poem

My Darling
Under the apple tree
Freckled cheeks red with sun
Swell into a smile
She sees me

I am the wind in her hair
The chime in her laughter
 The shine in her eyes
The smile through her tears

I am the strength when she trips
The goodnight kiss
The new speech lisp

My Darling
Under the apple tree
Eyes full of sorrow
Grow with tears
She sees me
No longer

I'm the abandoned swing
The dust
On an old photograph
Hanging wonky on the wall

I am life before the truth
Before the Change
The box of toys in the attic
The crayon stain on the dresser

Remember me as I was
Not as you see me now
Return to me
My Darling
Under that old apple tree

Random thing I found

Rain. More rain seemed to fall every day. Surely the sky would run out of water soon? Drops splattered against the window, before running down and grouping in my now empty flower boxes. I was relieved about having saved my plants a few nights previously.

I looked down at his ring, it was just too big to fit on my finger properly so during the day I wear it on one of the chains he left behind. The ring was silver, a snake wrapped around my finger with a pair of tiny rubies for eyes. Running my finger over it I felt the detail of every scale, the metal cool beneath the warmth of my fingertips. I looked again out of the window, wishing, half hoping to see him walk up the driveway, dripping wet from the rain. I'd run out to meet him, not worrying about the wet or cold. I felt his phantom arms wrap tightly around my waist, thinner now than when I last saw him. His phantom face nuzzle into my neck. His phantom voice lulled my ears and I closed my eyes to take in the illusion my mind had created. Though I knew it was an illusion, it comforted me still. I longed for his presence overall. I wished to know when I might see him again.

We'd had no contact in days. I often read through our past messages just to remind myself on how he typed, how he spoke. I shook my head at the memory of how I'd always correct his grammar, but he never changed it. I guessed that I'd liked that about him.

Childhood Memory Poem

____________________

Choking and spluttering out angry black smoke
the thick vibrations of the great machine
hid my shakes of fear as he
jumped out, leaving me stranded in motion.

Alone in the metal match box
the four year old me screamed, not noticing
the one who left me
was merely walking alongside
chuckling at his version of a joke.

The red box of death continued
up the field it went.
Until he jumped back in
pushing me aside
and so my deserter became my rescuer.