jayseven

I just got a bunch of module results and it pretty much figures that i can coast to get my place at Sheffield Hallam Uni.. which ROCKS because I kept on freaking out about making the grades. All my offers are through, and financial forms have arrived, so it's beginning to take shape! To think I won't be living at home anymore in under 6 months... Fucking fantastic! Can't wait :P

Just finished Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, one of the better books so far; The Time Traveller's wife by Audrey Niffenegger - a brilliant book that marries schi-fi to romance in a compelling way; The Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a few short stories displaying his idea of the Jazz age, On Suicide by David Hume - one of those pocket philosophy penguin book things; A Million Peices by James Frey, a memoir about a guy kicking his addictions, with a great scene involving a dentists chair, pain, and no medication. Studying Catcher In The Rye, Othello, The Outsider by Albert Camus (Athriller must've read this?) and some Blake poetry for english. Currently reading Better Than Sex by Hunter S Thompson, which isn't really any good besides HST's unique voice; The importance of being ernest by oscar wilde, and The view from nowhere by Thomas Nagel. My friend just gave me a Feist novel - Magician. I used to read Discworld but i'm not really into fantasy any more, so we'll see. I really like short stories and want to read way more. Phillip K Dick is someone i want to look into, and i really like Chuck palahniuk, roald dahl, isaac asimov. About to read aesops' tales tonight on a 4 hour train journey. Anyone you guys think i should read?

I was going to say the same thing - except I didn't know the title of the track. Yeah, i'd agree, it's disturbing. Emo, then? Brand New - The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot The Used - Poetic Tragedy And non-emo - mewithoutyou - Gentlemen. Sorta.

I never really thought about it. If you just bring the girl home, explain it then, she'll get pissed but hide it with the overwhelming need to look after this girl. Your problems would only start the next day after the girl went home (of after the weekend, whatever), and the problem size hinges on how cool your parents are. All my mum said to me was "Don't make a habit of this, ok?"... And i've been bring that girl home with me for as many nights as i've been able since then. 8 months ago. But that really was due to unforseen consequences. YOU have notice, and the longer you take to share your knowledge with parents, the more they will question your reasons for covering it up. By withholding this dilemma you risk upsetting everyone involved by hinging all bets on the last race. Think! Parents are generally reasonable. They were once your age too, dude. And judging by the fact that they have kids they have probably messed around a hell of a lot more than you ever have. respect!

I've posted Guts on here before. Just finished Survivor last week, it's my favourite so far, along with Lullaby. Survivor also has a 'hidden ending' and a movie in teh works, like a lot of his books. Fight Club is Gay. It's all an analogy for coming out! Yes indeed.

When i saw this i thought of the Matrix posters. I think the picture is just a dark picture of the normal suit - but suggesting that things in the movie get darker, suggesting that spidey himself gets darker. So maybe the suit changes - but i'd bet that a changed suit would look fairly different. WHO KNOWSETH!

In response to the first post; you'll have a hard time finding a sequel that doesn't do that. It works two ways - one it gives the viewer the satisfaction of knowing something - you won't be able to help smirking when you recognise something in a sequel from a previous film. Similarities are used to ensure the film will appeal to the same people. But! The similarities are often the reasons why a sequel is rarely better than the original - A film falling on these moments that remind you of the original film are relying on external factors which personally I think should be considered when rating a movie. Anyway... Yeah. You won't find many sequels that don't follow teh formula of the first movie - I can't think of any. But that's why they're a sequence of movies i guess.

REM is the key in sleep. there are 5 stages (according to my a-level learning, which is at risk of being over-simplified) of which the other key one is Slow-Wave Sleep. The others all play their own roles in releases of hormones and what-not, but generally they're phases that the brain goes through in working up-to and down-from. I guess this drug would kick the brain into REM sleep bypassing the other phases, which in general would seem ok (you'd still get your dreams so it's cool!), but there will be side effects, and the possibility that teh brain itself becomes dependant on the drug. .. but i think the main point is who on earth wants to sleep only 2 hours a night every night?!

Wikipedia is your bestest friend everrrr! In short; yeah, sure, go for it. Why not? Anything is possible in dreams, really.

Brand New - Deja Entendu The Used - Maybe Memories Finch - What It Is To Burn - The front doesn't do it justice - I love the art theme throughout the CD. Senses Fail - Let It Enfold You - I agree! Blur - Best Of The Coral Green Day - Insomniac The Beatles - Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - .. Moments that make up the dull day.. doo doo doo... .. So yeah. There is a certain style that I really like, sort of senses fail/brand new, but these were all I could think of/find. I also like simple almost symbolic ones, like the pink floyd cover and Coldplay's, and I love it when a band uniforms their entire discography - kinda like coldplay too. Nice thread. Could do the same for movie posters, dvd covers, etc. Would make sense to just add them to this thread.

it is fierce link. I live in Brighton, have a few mates who go to Sussex. it's a well-respected uni for a lot of things and that's counting for more and more these days. I'd gladly say "come to sussex!' because Brighton's a nice enough place to live for students. But also I'm not a huge fan of London in general. I've applied for Sheffield Hallam and Roehampton (yes, i know, London...) among others, and really want to go to sheffield to do English Studies. 280 points, B in english literature.. Should be in the bag really.. Points for sure but grade? Who knows what might happen.

yeah, the door's real - and no, I didn't open it. No idea what's behind it! I've seen enough horror movies to know that you're Not To Open Blocked Doors. Thanks for the feedback Konfucious. You highlighted something I noticed too, it's definately something I need to work on. Yeah, the basic truths in that story are that I saw a ghost, I saw blood then later I saw a door. The footprint is a little big though, isn't it?

oh but it was! THe gost story itself is true. The stuff I made up is pretty much the padding to the story - the proverbs, the chinese stuff, the stuff about the kids - But the core to the sory happened.

Dreams are essential to live! It's not directly confounding on deaths, but there's definately a corrolation. Stopping your brain from dreaming means reducing brain activity, which people can only theorise about. Most people agree that the brain is doing something necessary when you're dreaming, that it can't really do when you're awake as it's too busy processing new information all teh time. It's been shown that alcohol inflicts upon REM's occurance, which can explain why you don't seem to get a good night's sleep after drinking, and why you're tired when you're hung-over - because you never got teh REM sleep you needed. If your dreams are seriously worrying you, either stop taking teh cheese or go see your doctor. And lucid dreams? Waking Life, man! Greatest film evar. GO SEE NOW. And MunKy... I've never been able to stop watching any of my Scrubs DVD's before the disc stops. Series 3's out fairly soon WOoooo... ... Now to get back to the revision! Sleep well dudes.

Read my story. ... I've written up something that happened to me with some stuff that didn't happen to me. There's a header image I made and some pictures i took in the story too. I hope some people actually read it as I want some sort of feedback - what bits suck, any glaring errors, any tips... Anything. Thanks to retro-lover who commented on the story already. :P

.. woo! more sleep stuff. Jav; you can get alarm clocks that you put under your pillow that just vibrate instead of making noises. They're awesome, I have one because i can't hear alarms. Ash; Pills are not good. Your body comes to rely on them, stops producing the melotonin that you need in your system, so without the pills you'd find it harder to sleep. The way sleep works! Inside your brain lives the suprachiasmatic nucleus - the SCN. In here live some tasty glands which like to release some hormones from time to time. Our sleep/waking cycle is a circadian biological rhythm; it's a cycle that lasts roughly a day (surprise, surprise!), with the sleep cycle itself being an ultradian cycle; less than a day. By default, our sleep/wake cycle is around 25 hours. Everyones is different, but most are above 24 hours. This is why we rely on zeitgebers to reset our clock daily. This rhythm can be reset by internal (endogeneous) and external factors (exogeneous). The external factors are, pretty much, light. Light gets to the internal one, the SCN via the optic chiasm. When light levels are a lower, the SCN then sends a signal to the Pineal gland and says "hey, let's have some of that Melatonin jizz!" and thus, you begin to feel sleepy. You are usually asleep 2 hours after the release. If you're not sleepy, this is being screwed. Now, being internet geeks, the problem could be due to a resistance to darkness; you spend so much time indoors online that your body adapts. It becomes resiliant to the external cue for 'sleep' - the lack of light. Thus, your body finds it harder to know when to release the hormones. Poor diet maybe. Perhaps your body is lacking in protiens that it needs during tissue-rebuiding that occurs when you're asleep. Going for a Run every day, or just being generlaly active, helps sleep, perhaps because your body realises it needs the protein synthesis to occur and thus requests some melatonin to be administered. Seratonin, the HAPPY HAPPY hormone, is the antangonist to melatonin. Too high a level of this and you'll have difficulty sleeping. However, the two hormones are linked in production levels; if the body senses too much seratonin it will release more melatonin, which could explain why exercise helps sleep. It also explains why I have this period every night, just before i get real tired, where i get a little hyper. JET LAG! Jet lag is worse when you travel east because making your body clock go faster to catch up is harder than making it pause, to slow down. IT's suggested taht it takes a day per time zone travelled eastwards to recover sleep patterns properly. SHIFT WORK! god, you guys are awesome at testing me. Shift work. It's better to have constantly rotating shifts than long periods of mornings then la long period of nights then a long period of mornings... Because the faster you change it the less chance the body has to adapt. That may sound bad, but it's better because rotating shifts slowly means your clock is constantly being disrupted. We do need sleep to live, but we can survive for ages without it, with some not-hugely bothersome side effects. Lack of concentration, paranoia, delusions, micro-sleep, etc. THe last one is cool - it's those little 3-second phase-outs you get which are actually short bursts of REM sleep type brain activity, which is your breain catching up on lost sleep. After a long period of no sleep, it's relatively easy to catch up on lost sleep. You do not need to catch up on the total number of hours of lost sleep, instead your brain dedicates more sleep time to the REM stage of sleep.There ar 5 stages of sleep and throughout the night you are constantly moving through them. SO yeah, i think that's enough. Get out more, quit messing with your cycle and drink less coke! sorted.

wow a weird dream?! NO FUCKING WAY MAN. THAT'S SO IRONIC. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, dreams are never not weird. They just vary in coolness. There are several explanations for dreaming according to my A-level training, either neuro-physiological or psychological. The neuro-physiological ones are, like Dawn said, just random firings of the brain while it does stuff - dreams are your brain making sense of it because, according to the theory, the brain has a quest for knowledge, a drive to understand everything. Hmm. That's the activation synthesis theory. There's also the reverse-learning idea. We only remember between 5-15% of our dreams. The theory suggests that dreaming is the filing of memories and experiences, getting rid of unnecessary stuff - which explains why we don't remember all of our dreams. The brain is almost just as active during the REM stage of sleep (stage 5) as it is when you're awake. Most dreams occur during this stage, but sometimes they occur during SWS - Short Wave sleep. This is the period of sleep where sleepwalkers get on up and boogie, because the nervous system is still fully functioning. The reason you can still have a conversation with a sleepwalker (or a sleeptalker) is because the body doesn't switch off it's input signals, it's supposed to switch off the output ones - the ones which make you move. This is to stop you acting out your dreams, but it doesn't happen quite during SWS. You can influence people's dreams by talking to them during REM. It's cool. The psychological theories are a little more interesting. Of course, Freud's top of the list with his Wish Fulfilment idea; your dreams are the acting out of what you wish was real - Freud came up with this theory when he dreamt that another doctor injected one of his patients (Irma i think?) with a dirty needle, which meant that it wasn't Freud's problem that she was crazy. Wish fulfilment! Modern Dream dictionaries are exactly what freud hates. Although he believed that there were some universal symbols that occur in dreams, namely those of a phallic nature - riding horses, dancing, weilding swords, etc - most symbols in dreams are personal. Crawling through a tunnel may well be rebirth, but it might be linked to something the dreamer experienced once. To understand this dream, Freud would be asking Jordan questions about his life rather than telling him what everythinig means. Problem was that Freud was notoriously hooked on sexual undertones on everything (but with jordan.. maybe it wouldn't be so wrong...) There's also a couple of other theories, the problem solving one (sleeping on a problem, waking up knowing the answer - there's plenty of evidence to show that this is true), and the survival strategy theory - which is the idea that dreams are analysing your new experiences with old ones, attempting to work out what would be the best way to deal with similar experiences in the future. Of course, Freud's one is everyone's favourite. Personally, I think it's likely to be a mixture of a few of them. But that's always going to be the case with a-level psychology theories. ... Sorry,but i've got an exam on monday on this stuff (as well as comparative and anti-/pro-social behaviour...) and wanted to see what i knew before i started revising this :P I don't think I did too bad. Perhaps I sent a few of you to sleep but hey, whatever. I think dreams like that are often fantasies about what a 'worst-case scenario' is for you. Don't worry about it. At least you're getting your REM sleep.

http://heartbite.livejournal.com ... I've written up something that happened to me with some stuff that didn't happen to me. There's a header image I made and some pictures i took in the story too. I hope some people actually read it as I want some sort of feedback - what bits suck, any glaring errors, any tips... Anything. Don't make me regret not posting it in Gen Chit-Chat. I know it would have been moved but even moving it gives it some publicity. Thanked if you do, damned if you don't.

goddammit :P I've got Wild Zero and wanted to be cool and mention it first in here. It has aliens, zombies, rock and roll and transvestites. It's not a great film but i genuinely think that people who think it's utter cack just don't get it. I like it. Felt like a George A. Romero movie with some guy ritchie/tarantino influence too - closer to ritchie in terms of quality for sure, but the movie isn't all bad. A great film to get smashed on cider with a few mates, it really is. I got it in a box-set of two jap zombie films, the other one is atrocious, only good for a few boobies. Can't remember the name of it.

i have also a ghostly bathroom tale to tell. One night I woke up. I needed to whizz. This isn't normally a character-shattering performance, I'll hasten to add, but nonetheless the scene has been set. I start my story with a quick game of hide-and-seek with my slippers which nearly results in a quick game of let's-headbut-the-wall-shall-we? A cold May's night, as dark as it ever gets when you're half-asleep and half-naked... My dressing gown met me half way out of the room. In my dreary state I wandered down the hall, in that state of mind where your brain's still rebooting, on autopilot. Sort of like in the terminator when you see through the machines eyes and all that data is flicking up the screen - but seemingly making no difference to arnold's progress. It felt like that, like I was watching my own life unreel from the cool darkness of the cinema. light switch... red carpet... walls... ceiling... gliding six year old... radiator... Washing horse... Wait... For a moment it was like watching a movie in reverse. I stood for a few heartbeats, to let the adrenaline hit me, to feel the kick of seratonin as my chest pounded me into a wide awake, non-vegetated state. Watching the end credits roll back up again. It was almost an unconscious feeling, and although it was brief i knew exactly what had happened. She was clearly a dead person. It felt more like instinct than rational deduction, but it all made sense. She looked like she had just floated straight out of The Others, or an old photograph of a relative who would probably be dead today anyway. Her hair was made up like it was the first body through the parlour on a busy sunday - long curls with a bow holding it together, and a sombre look that would make a party out of any funeral. Except hers, probably. I didn't even turn around, I sort of knew that she wouldn't be there, and if she was i sort of knew that i didn't want to see it. There's no canned laughter in real life, but there's this sort of soundtrack of fear that every once in a while you tune into. Autopilot took over again and guided me to another interval in the moment - The bathroom. The reason why some of cinema's most frightning scenes occur in these places is because of their uniform serenity. The generic appearance of the stainless ceramics, off-white decor combined with the lack of furnishings to cushion sound gives the place an eerie sound. Silence is different in bathrooms. Psycho, Final Destination, The Shining. The rooms are almost interchangable. Stepping into this shit-hole is close to stepping into a portal to every other bathroom out there. It's one of those rooms which amplify your emotion that you enter with. Feel secure and the room will seem protective, strong and secure. Feeling fragile and it can seem grating, offensive. The sharp edges visually attack you. My bathroom was in the middle of being done-up. This meant several layers of old wallpaper had peeled through. The only thing that can be more frightening than a generic toilet is one that just freaks you the fuck out. Even if you were the most unparanoid guy on the planet, right then that bathroom would have had you shitting clowns. The floor was so cold, my slippers felt like they wre walking on glass thousands of miles above the world. Perhaps it was all in my head, but I was feeling a little freaked out about now. Then I started noticing things. Out of the corner of my eye, for just the tiniest split of a second, I could see something runny and glistening. It looked like a red puddle coming from under my bath. It felt like I had taken a wrong turn on the way to waking life and ended up... In a bathroom. As soon as i noticed it I experienced one of those panging fears, like a bad radio ad with a catchy jingle I almost enjoyed it. That'll be the anti-fear dope my pituary gland was shitting into my bloodstream. My eyes darted towards the bath but before they got there they noticed some more crimson shimmering from under the radiator. The fear was deafening. The silence was echoing off the cold walls. What the fuck was going on? My bladder didn't care. I got on with the job in hand, suddenly realising that it's only like 3am and i'm going to have to try get some more sleep after this. I'm going to have to walk back down that fucking corridor. The last drips came and, as I re-zipped, I noticed this. The floor was covered in newspapers. And this. A footprint. Facing exactly the way I hadn't faced yet. Did I mention that I was staying home alone that night? No, I wouldn't have, because that heart-sinking fact only hit me around now. I decided I'd do what any other sensible teenager in my position would have done. I made a course of action - to get underneath my bedsheets and stay there shrieking until the morning. I kept sensing blood oozing from those two places, the feeling would intensify if i looked directly at them - at the empty, bloodless regions. If there was actually blood there, I don't think I would have been too freaked out. At least I'd be able to take a cool picture of it and show all my friends that - see! I'm not crazy anymore. ... I don't remember the rest of that night. Nothing like that has happened since. Perhaps because I tend to not go to the bathroom at three in the morning anymore, but i don't think that matters. I'm not sure what I saw, not sure what I believe. All I know is that I now have a ghost story to tell. A few days later, we had some builder's come to finish the bathroom. They tore away a fake wall behind the radiator in order to provide a more secure base for the tiles to adhere to. Check out what they found. Needless to say, I didn't open the door.

For me! aw thanks, you shouldn't have! ... No really.. No. JustNo. mewithoutyou - January 1979 jimmy eat world - For Me This Is Heaven AFI - This Time Imperfect The Used - Blue and Yellow.. I think Poetic Tragedy would be better suited though. Brand New - Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't Motion City Soundtrack - Let's Get Fucked Up and Die just for her... Dixie Chicks - Travelling Soldier, Maximo Park - Going Missing and Kings Of Leon - King Of The Rodeo. .. And shorty will say "Bright Eyes - No Lies, Just Love" :P

how was your exam rizz? I had my AS psych unit 1 today. started revision 2 days ago and it definately helped. The effort i put in paid off at least a little - the good news is that if you've actually been to your lessons quite often teh revision really is just that - a refresher. I've got an english AS retake next week, an AS philosophy teh same day and the following week i've got my A2 psychology unit 4. I'm in the mood for revising now i know how easy it actually is, and i've convinced two mates to come over tonight to make some revision cards for philosophy. Once you realise that teh smaller picture is a lot nicer to look at, you'll be floating along. Last-minute revision is handy but limits what you'll know. GCSE's really aren't that big a deal - i'm sorry but in order to get into colleges you don't really need that much, and A-levels are much more of a step up. So my advice is break it down and look at it as seperate exams. If you are going to revise then don't bother spreading it too thinly over too many subjects, concentrate on your first couple first. Don't give yourself too much work to do or you'll just give up. Maybe just concentrate on teh subjects you want to do for a-levels and cram all the others. Whatever you do, you may as well try. You won't believe how easy it is to get into a pattern of helplessness. Revising now a little means you're more likely to revise a little more next time. And lastly; don't worry! it's always easier said than done, but it's true. You are not your grades. Happiness is not on a piece of paper. TAKE DRUGS. The end!

You know you're going to the wrong board when everyone is addicted to kid's drinks. That's more like it! Forgive me, as I delve. *renames R-E Emo-E* she is the needle in the vein that my life calls my dreams Take her away from me and i taste despair Take her away, and I bleed She is my perfect answer keeping her near lets me know She's the lies in the bible She's the "me, o me" in emo. She's the sun, the moon and the winter She's the reason anything grows She is the part of me i could never let go. She will undress my destruction Show me where to go I do not fear the journey I do not need to know. She's my name to swear by The name to make me sing. She's the pain that numbs me So gently, deep within. I am hers to keep. lol.

.. Ah. So what were the first two as we've heard that one and Dancefloor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish RE: That Memory Thing.. Perhaps they have a cery short attention span but clearly they have a long term memory store which lasts longer than 3 seconds. Memory is a complex thing to talk about, and doing so in time units is kind of overlooking the whole point of memory. I think of memory more as a mass teeming bundle of connections. Associations you've made - most often unconsciously. For example, a fish may make a link between "food" and "flakes". You may make a link between "Smell of Smirnoff Ice" and "beach parties aged 13" - Of course I don't believe that memory works in this labelling way either, but that's a complicated step i'm not going to take right now. A fish's memory is going to be limited first of all by capacity for sure - think of the size of your average tanked fish - a few inches? Even though it is generally believed that our human brains have an unlimited capacity for storage, I like to believe that it is limited by other things, mostly in regard to the idea that it takes energy to create a memory (seeing as it's an electrical process.. ok well any process would agree with that statement..) then the amount of memories stored must surely be limited by the amount of energy used, the amount of energy available? Slightly tangentated, let's go back a step - A fish has a small teeny brain, so can't remember all that much. The fish is, therefore, not going to remember whatever it wants, like how many times it's swum around the bowl or what you were wearing yesterday. By no actual mental choice of it's own, it will only remember essential things, like what not to eat. In psychology, that's Classical conditioning. So in summary; who gives a crap. Even if animals have feelings they do not have the ability (or at least, goldfish do not!) to take another perspective - they are unable to think "well that fish over there has a bigger tank, more food and a nicer hat than me. I will feel sad now because this is unfair." It's the theory of mind, an idea that there are certain tick-boxes a species needs to fulfil in order to be considered intelligent. Think of it as empathy, and self-awareness. I don't really think a goldfish is aware enough to say "i could be better off". It's like the idea that good cannot exist without evil. Well it works both ways, surely. Not knowing any better means you don't know the full extent to just how bad things are. And ignorance is bliss! Nice little trail of phrases i've found there. This topic is way more philosophical than it seems, y'know. What is memory? What is the mind? How does an animal learn? how do we[/] learn? Do we have a right to limit another creature? Where does the line end? STUFF LIKE THAT. I will shup now.