MySpace Archive - Essay 2 of 4

I am behind schedule and over the word limit. Also someone ate my ham. Life Sucks!

MySpace Archive - Get Naked

Do you like the attention grapping title?

It’s time for one of those late night blogs, when I really should just go to sleep, but see something I connect with and need to highlight it. Having just completed the first of 4 essays I decided to wind down with some late night viewing. A programme 'Dawn gets Naked' caught my attention on the BBCi player, think it’s being repeated several times if you’re interested…

I’m not saying that I’m ready to strip off naked and drive around London on a bus (you have to watch it), but it caught my attention. I think I’m lucky in that I’ve never been particularly self-conscious about my body, yes there are bits I don’t like, in fact I could give you a list. But I’ve never been scared about running around the beach in a bikini or wearing skimpy summer clothes, I don’t feel the need to get a fake tan and spend months on a gruelling diet and exercise regime to get the 'beach body', which you know you’ll only give up after a week and just buy one of those swim suits that holds your stomach in. One bit of the program that really struck was a part on the air brushing of photos. I read a book once, think it was called ’On Beauty’, it was crap mostly but I remember one bit stuck out. One of the main characters, the mother, was portrayed as beautiful, overweight but beautiful, she had tried to protect her daughter by not allowing magazines in the house, but that it had seeped in anyway, through the crack in the door, under the floor and through the skin and had made her daughter hate her body. We all know that photos in magazines are air brushed but we aspire to them anyway, we might think we look good, but then you only need to pick up a magazine to think 'but I’ll never look like that'. Thing is the models don’t look like that either. I hardly buy magazines anymore, mostly because they made me want clothes I couldn’t afford, but now I have another reason, almost every photo in every magazine has been touched up. It makes us aspire to something that isn’t real. Why do we do this to ourselves? Okay just thought, total hypocrite, my profile picture is one that I edited, made it lighter to make my skin look better – changing it.

We’ve probably all seen this video of the Dove advert before, but I think it makes my point better than I do

MySpace Archive - Manifestos

Election manifestos are boring! So far I've only managed to read Tony Blair's three page drivel at the start of the 2001 manifesto, which may explain the opinion I have currently formed; election manifestos are mostly meaningless rhetoric which gives little to no indication of what a government will actually do once in power. Unfortunately I can not as yet find a place for this opinion in my essay.

MySpace Archive - Time for a Little More Procrastination

I have now written 417 words of notes for the essay from my reading and the lecture. Thus I am most probably finished for the day. In the course of doing this I realised I have lost my USB stick. I then engaged myself in a long search for it, in which I discovered a lighter I didn't know I'd lost and is of very little use to me, given I have 3 others, I guess you can't really have to many. I may have left the stick at home so I won't run off to buy a new one yet, but it's going to be mighty annoying having to keep e-mailing my work to myself to back it up or keep saving it on the online submission site. I could use my MP3 player to back up my work to if I hadn't also left the cable that connects it to the computer at home.

MySpace Archive - Essaying

It is quarter to 4 and as yet I have still not started my essay. Actually I have written the title and opened my folder at the appropriate lecture. I am an expert procrastinator. I got up at 8am having experienced one of the saddest dreams of my life. It wasn't what happened in the dream that was particularly upsetting, but I woke feeling heart broken. Unable to shake the feeling I decided to go to the gym and work (or rather sweat) it out. This made me feel better for a number of reasons. Since I have enjoyed a 2 hour nap, made scrambled egg on toast for lunch, read the blog of someone I've only met once, watched Jam and Jerusalem on the BBC iplayer, and sat in the kitchen for a good hour drinking coffee and talking about horses' penises. I currently find myself writing this blog. I need to start this essay. Much panic ensued yesterday after Ed told me that it was due in on Monday, at this point I could be found rushing to my room to check my diary, course outline, and the online submission webpage. Thankfully he was wrong. I have 8 days (including today) to read for and write the thing. Usually this means that in the comfort of knowing I had written the title, I would spend the next 3 days ignoring it, and do the essay in the necessary 5 days. However on this occasion I must change my habits. In order to do this essay I need to read the 2001 and 2005 election manifesto's of the Labour Party. I was confident about this until Ed showed me just how long the things are. I am ashamed of my naivety, being a politics student I should have known how long they would be. But alas I grossly underestimated their length. No wonder the electorate doesn't bother to read them.

MySpace Archive - Work, Work, Work

Thats all I seem to be doing at the moment. Writing notes, starting essays, being an RSN, going to the gym in case I decide to be a police officer, researching jobs in case I don't. I can't fit everything in not unless I give up sleeping which is not a particularly attractive option to me. I have other concerns to but I simply haven't got the time or energy to get invovled. I shall let them run their course it's probably better than way anyway. Well that was rather cryptic.

Mind you saying all that I seem to have found time to go on the internet... funny that.