Chilli Sauces

It's so hard to find the perfect chilli sauce, Here is some that I have tried and reviewed in no particular order... I have also included Chilli Oils.


MAGGI CHILLI AND GARLIC SAUCE
This sauce is not too spicy, maybe not spicy enough in fact! It starts off as quite addictive but soon becomes sickly, It's the exact consistency of ketchup. I think it is thinkened with some kind of starch, too much filler in other words not enough chilli. Works with Chips. Also too SWEET! 5/10






UNBRANDED CHINESE CHILLI OIL (picture may not be accurate)
I bought this at a Chinese supermarket in china town.
it was unbranded and didnt have ingredients the first time
I bought it, it's very chinese tasting, only works with chinese food.
Later I found out the ingredients included Shrimp, Sesame oil and MSG.
the MSG made it addictive, sesame oil made it chinesey and the Shrimp made it not suitable for Vegetarians/Vegans. 6/10

VEGETARIAN CHILLI OIL (picture may not be accurate)
I got this from a foreign foods stall at a car boot sale, it is a vegetarian version of the above, was really nice but still only works with chinese food.
7/10





ENCONA WEST INDIAN ORIGINAL HOT PEPPER SAUCE
This is really tasty chilli sauce but sometimes too hot to handle, i don't think
it's important for chilli sauce to be VERY hot. I'm not in it for the macho kudos alright? I want that tasty chilli taste, I like to be able to taste the chilli but not be in pain, that puts me in a bad mood when I'm trying to eat. For some reason the taste of this chilli sauce reminds me of the smell of freshly baked bread, really nice, really wholesome tasting. Works with everything! 8.5/10

CHOLULA HOT SAUCE
This chilli sauce, imported from Mexico is hot but bearable it really only works with Mexican foods like burritos and bean chili because of the spices used.
My parents bought it for me from America for $6.45, later I saw it at the aforementioned imported foods stall at a boot sale and it was £9!! I thought, wow they got a bargain! but.... last week... I saw it in Morrisons SuperMarket
for like 99p so go out and buy it if you like mexican food. 6/10




NANDOS PERI PERI SAUCE
This hot sauce is delicious, works with all foods, Italian, Chinese, Indian,
English (Potato Products ahah), ....Portuguese!
I buy Medium cos I love the taste so I always put loads on (AND BTW I DONT EAT CHICKEN!). I think it's the onions that make it so addictive! 9/10




DILITA AFRIKANA PERI-PERI HOT SAUCE
I was hoping to find slightly cheaper alternative to the Nandos equivalent....
but.... I dont know WHO could like this sauce, I've paid money for it so I TRIED to make myself eat it but can't stop SPITTING IT OUT on reflex. It says it contains 'lemons' on the ingredients, the lemon taste is overwhelming, and I wouldnt mind if it actually tasted like lemon, it tastes like lemon sherbets (those boiled sweets) or like Flash Lemon Fresh floor cleaner. it's not natural!!! there might be SOME recipe this goes with but I havent found it yet. 1/10
[NO PICTURE] DILITA MEXIAN RED JALAPENO SAUCE
This chilli sauce was a pale translucent colour which was a bit suspicious, cos sometimes it means it'll be too sweet, only the chinese can do sweet chilli sauce okay? but that's another story. Well it didnt taste like sweet chilli sauce and it certainly didnt taste mexican. REALLY! It tastes exactly like that sweet mint/ chilli/ coriander chutney you get with samosas from indian restaurants or shops (which would be ok but it came in a small bottle so you can only have a tiny bit, unlike at Indian food shops where you get a whole cup!). So... good with samosas and pakoras, not with mexican food. It has mint in the ingredients.
4/10
THAI KITCHEN SWEET CHILLI SAUCE
A lot of sweet chilli sauces are very similar, this one was very nice!
and comes in a really big squeezy bottle. But some sweet chilli sauces taste different.... like Asda's own, which is alright but doesnt have that special... something so... in conclusion, Thai Kitchen sweet chilli sauce is a safe bet, tastes great with noodles and also potato wedges or chips. 8/10




[no picture] CHILLI INFUSED OLIVE OIL
I think... that tesco's chilli infused olive oil is the best, cant really remember cos I havent bought it for ages. but the problem I came across with sainsbury's chilli oil was that it had 'chilli extract' instead of just 'chilli' on the ingredients. so the tesco one tasted more of fresh chilli it came in a bottle with a black lable with a picture of a chilli pepper. Great on Pasta, Pizza and...wedges... 8/10

I have tried other chilli sauces but cant remember if they were any good, dont really think much of tobasco, too vinegary, cant taste the chilli, if you know of any really good chilli sauces let me know!!!

I hate logging in

yeah I hate logging in to things, having to type your password and shit.... so annoying, I especially hate how after I've logged into the new MSN Messenger, I click on my e-mail and I have to log in AGAIN! it never remembers me...
I resent all these security checks being a person who has never once had any account hacked from phishing scams or whatever, who falls for that shit, loads of ppl I know have had their e-mail, facebook and myspace hacked. Not really 'Hacked' since no hacking was really involved they basically gave their password away to some window that popped up and asked for it. haha.

I bet I get hacked now I've said that. :P

Just in case you think I havent been doing anything

I've been making some things sometimes when I have time out of stuff lying around.

this is a fascinator made from the trim from a top Harriet doesnt want anymore and a
skull made from plaster of paris finished with pearl coloured nail varnish.
When I have made 100 things I will consider doing something with them, for now I'll just put em on this here blog.

RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO

Haven't blogged for a while, Kathleen Hanna seems to say it best for me at the moment, here is her 'riot grrrl manifesto'

KATHLEEN HANNA'S RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.

BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.

BECAUSE we want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can't play our instruments, in the face of "authorities" who say our bands/zines/etc are the worst in the US and

BECAUSE we don't wanna assimilate to someone else's (boy) standards of what is or isn't.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary "reverse sexists" AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCKSOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW we really are.

BECAUSE we know that life is much more than physical survival and are patently aware that the punk rock "you can do anything" idea is crucial to the coming angry grrrl rock revolution which seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, according to their own terms, not ours.

BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.

BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.

BECAUSE we see fostering and supporting girl scenes and girl artists of all kinds as integral to this process.

BECAUSE we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits of being cool according to traditional standards.

BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl=Dumb, Girl=Bad, Girl=Weak.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousism and self defeating girltype behaviors.

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

hmmm

They are showing me how to make FAKE POO on blue peter. It really has gone downhill if all they can teach kids to make now is a brown blob. lol!

Pssh Capitalists

It may be an obvious point but I find it very irritating how much time and suggested compassion the news gives to failing corporations. These corporations do not provide a public service, they do not survive on welfare funding out of taxes. They are companies designed to offer something in exchange for profit. Now, they either were overly greedy and gambled all their money away or people just don't want to buy their product anymore.

Recently, the US government bailed out the car manufacturer GM. This is an example of a capitalist organisation working under the principles of the 'free market' floundering. Again, they do not offer a service to anyone, they sell cars. People don't want their cars right now so they aren't making profit. They wanted to work under a free market because it means unregulated free-for-all i.e. 'We'll try to make money however we can, independently, we don't need to help anyone and in exchange we don't need any help from anyone'. They have failed at this and that means putting lots of jobs at risk, suddenly someone has to be accountable, so here comes the government bail-out.

In this country, the news reports lament the gradual death of the Pub. A British institution? Not so much. The NHS is a British institution. The Pub is just a shop, like any other, designed to sell you over-priced and ineffective drugs along with the general 'traditional' pub experience. So pubs aren't making profit, how can they survive? They live mostly on nostalgia and social pressure without offering many other services. The ones that will survive will be the ones that offer alternative services, the ones that act as gig venues, or the ones that are aimed at students who like to drink publicly. In a recession people become pragmatic, so the myths of 'going down the pub' or wearing 'high-status' clothing go out the window (the fashion industry is also suffering).
Make the connection between intangible 'myth' and intangible 'brand' and you'll see why the UK is going to suffer in this downturn. In the Thatcher years, many of our manufacturing and exporting companies were shut down or moved overseas. Capitalist organisations put more emphasis on 'branding', 'brand identity', 'brand image' etc. rather than the product which was secondary. Many of the products we now consume were made in sweatshops and factories overseas, this method of production is down-played as poverty and worker-abuse do not do much for one's 'brand image'.
So, with very few exports and few jobs in manufacturing or skilled trades beyond the service industry, the UK has a lot of money in intangible fields, think of the stock market bubble.

There are those who believed that capitalism was the epitome of equal opportunity. That the free market gave everyone a fair shot if you were willing to work hard (conveniently forgetting the underpaid third world workers who made the clothes on their back, also forgetting that currency is finite and to make money is to take it from someone else) but to see the flaw in any system we have to imagine its ultimate manifestation or its extreme incarnation. People existing purely for profit, organisations fuelled by growth eventually leaves no room for human compassion, no room for failure, no room for sick days, no room for anything unless it is profitable.

So where do we draw the line or, more importantly, who draws the line? In the free market there is, in theory, no one to draw the line, the government does not regulate a corporation's activity so it can technically do anything it deems to be profitable. The other force here is the consumer. A believer in the free market may have previously said that the organisations are regulated by consumer interest, they offer products and they rely on the consumers to buy them. There is truth in this, so if we follow this logic, if consumers are not interested in keeping a corporation afloat by buying its products, why should the consumer still have to bail the company out through taxes when they fail?

We can only conclude that the free market doesn't work unless its ideals are followed through. Meaning: no government regulation and no government handouts, if you fail then you fail if that's how you want to play it. But we know that wouldn't work, and we can see that it isn't working, things like pubs will suffer and no amount of mourning will ever be as important as profit. When profit is put before people, you have to expect that Sipson Village will be tarmacked over to make way for a profitable third runway you also have to expect that corporations will continue to pollute the planet undeterred while it is profitable to do so.

I get the appeal

I totally get the appeal now... (of twitter)... at least I think I do. In the case of celebrities, such as Slavoj Zizek, or Russell Brand, who I am following, they are saying such trivial things, it feels really personal, and they said it so RECENTLY you have instant access to talk to them. This blog nearly turned out as brief as a Tweet. I will elaborate... at the moment I feel a bit blinkered by it, I can see what people have written, sometimes in response to someone else's tweet but it doesn't immediately show you the other half of the conversation, I also have no one following me, so it really does feel like eavesdropping... to half of a conversation. In conclusion, appealing but limited. esp. without a blackberry.

EDIT: (Zizek and Brand are terrible examples of triviality as Zizek actually sparks intellectual debate and Brand is always trivial :P )

I joined twitter

mainly because I want to follow Charlie Brooker. Tho I don't see the point (other than to stalk CB), it's just like facebook statuses isnt it?
It's in the media a lot for some reason...? Just because it's new? That gives plenty people an arbitrary reason to hate it... I'm not into that.

There's a lot of that around, hating things cos they are new, I guess people can't be bothered to actually choose what they like and hate based on any kind of real analysis so they just go with the impulse to hate/fear the different/new. You gotta hate something right? I think I wrote a blog similar to this on LiveJournal, about how people distribute their 'liking of things' as if it was a finite thing, actually ((I think I called it 'limiting sympathy' back then when I used big words cos it was before the long long uni holidays melted my brain.)) An example (I always talk about Helen lol) is Helen Meragi, who got myspace, and then a couple of years later myspace introduced photoalbums but Helen didn't want to get photo-albums because she Quote: 'felt like [she] would be betraying [her] old self'. Eventually she got them tho, after Hat convinced her! :P
Anyway, this is a small group of young people... most people that will hate Twitter are OLDDD and they just don't really know what it is and they think as people who are younger than them use it it must be shallow and immature, but also a threat because they are OLD so won't have the power to supress new media forever.

I think young people need a revolution, I personally have had enough of, every time I turn on the TV, hearing a middle-aged, middle-class person calling me stupid because I use a computer, because I write to my friends in e-mails instead of telegrams or face-to-face on a pic-nic blanket eating scones with lashings of strawberry jam and hand-whipped cream or whatever.
This rant is mainly brought on by Baroness Greenfield, a 'professor of neuroscience' who is given regular slots on TV shows, quoted in Newspapers and featured in radio programs with her ridiculous claims that Q: 'these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights'. She also believes that in a few years children won't recognise blood, yes, blood, because they've been desensitised by Youtube... I am not joking she said children will go: 'what's that red stuff pouring out of him?'. She believes that in the old days kids read books which taught them to empathise whereas facebook turns kids into unfeeling robots...yeah... doesn't make much sense to me either!

If the mainstream media only allows these conservative "scientists" in these kinds of forums then they are shooting themselves in the foot because anyone with a different opinion (such as any young person) will air their views on... the internet and this will reduce the relevence of these old media such as TV, Radio and Newspapers. It also perpetuates class divides, typical of the BBC to respect such hierarchies, and continues this attack on the working classes which has been prevalent in the media recently (see: Benefit Fraud adverts starring chavvy looking people.) ITV, of course is supposedly less uptight and middle-class but still perpetuates this hierarchy as its 'factual' programs stir up tabloid-like fear and hatred of young people and working class people and its fiction does nothing to question the status-quo , Coronation Street, for example, has very unambitious working-class characters with low self-esteem who marry the people who live nearest to them (before changing their mind and sleeping with someone 2 doors down), the young people are all scheming or stupid or lazy or shallow, its characters rarely read books or use computers, just sit in the pub all day (though its creators are very aware of this format). ITV's american imports are all aspirational, let's-admire-rich-people programs.
You'd think Channel 4 would be better but (like the BBC) that's full of cooking shows which encourage people to cook expensively, eat fatteningly, all in the name of high-brow dining which is supposedly the antithesis to fast-food and other things favoured by the working-classes. Or there's 'grand designs' where rich people get to build their ugly barbie dream houses because they deserve it cos they are so rich. Channel five is just a magazine channel with very cheap TV shows often about other TV shows on other channels but at least it has Neighbours. And don't get me started on the Digital Channels.

Anyway, anyone want to join my revolution?

Number One, I live in my momma house

I pulled a dead flattened mouse out of the bottom of my trainer the other day.
I thought maybe it was a sock or something I'd left in the end of the shoe but I when I pulled it out it was all stiff and spikey then I saw it was a flattened curled up mouse in my hand I screamed and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands a few hundred times. I can only blog about it now cos the memory of the HORROR has faded.

Anyway, lots of gigs coming up, I wish I had more charisma...
Yesterday me and Sam and a girl called Markella gave away cakes for art... students at uni could have free cakes if they did a piece of art on a postcard. It's for Sam's exhibition People Planet
Where anyone can submit artwork or perform, it opens on the 19th March.

Apparently... Harriet wants to move away to go to uni (cos she's a traitor and she hates me) and my mum wants to turn her room into a kitchen and wants me and Sam to live in the cabin instead of moving out and pay her rent n stuff... Sam wants to paint the living room off-white. I prefer pure white tho. and we'll need a wardrobe.

Learning is Hard

I'm so bad at singing and playing ukulele at the same time. I can play it so good when I'm not singin, then as soon as I start to sing- spaz hands!
Actually I can play and song some songs pretty good, it's just the ones with syncopated strumming that get me. As soon as I start to concentrate on the strumming, my words trail off and go quiet, I need to re-wire my brain.

I'm so hungry right now but I don't know what to eat.

Anyway, back on topic... I really like our new songs, I've been practising them and they are so cooool! aaah, I'm sounding really fake and positive (like those people who say everything they did 'today' was 'awesome') but I'm just really excited.

Another thought I just had is sometimes I wish I lived in New York. Okay I reaaallly don't like those people that idolise everything that is American just cos it's on TV and it appears to be glamourous... and I probably have a little of that in me but the music scene just seems really great, I love so many bands that live there and when me and Sam went there we went to this great gig in a squat with the bands Ghost Mice and Japanther. In a lot of ways it's very similar to London, I'm just sick of London, sick of all the fucking expensive preppy clothing shops and sick of the tourist shops, sick of the beer company/phone company sponsored/owned gig venues that hike the prices up and make you wait around for hours for the band to start, at which point you're about 5 metres away cos they have barriers and sick of the shit chinese buffets and the adverts for musicals and the free 'news'papers full of right wing propaganda and sick of pretentious cafes and wine bars and middle class families with their middle class little kids and sick of everyone trying to rip you off all the time including Transport for London.
But there are plenty of things that annoy me about New York too.

I think I'll have a sandwich.

Things that happened yesterday and today

Okay, my normal blogging style is one of openness and honesty. I assure you, reader, this has not changed. A thing you may notice, however, is that in this particular blog, my tone is a lot less... negative? self-critical? World-weary? This is not because I have let the lord Jesus Christ into my heart, oh no, not this time. This is because I have just had a very good 24 hours! Possibly, 24 hours I will remember forever!


Yesterday I went out, to Marylebone campus to a meeting about the third runway, in which I didn't alienate anyone (unlike SOMEONE I know) and had a lot of things to say (you forget how much you know about a topic). And Helen came so that was great!

Then me and Sam went to Brixton to see Bomb the Music Industry! at the Windmill which is a great venue with loads of stickers everywhere and posters, I even put a colour me wednesday sticker up above the bar.
Anyway, during one of the support acts I asked Jeff Rosenstock (of bomb the music industry fame, oh yes) if I could sing 'yesterday's lunch'(a Lemuria song) with him, Sheena's part. And he said yeah and then he went and started his set and the crowd went wild, well it seemed wild cos it's such a tiny venue but it was all positive and lovely.
And then he called me up on stage and everyone started chanting:
'Jennifer! Jennifer! Jennifer! Go Jennifer! GO JENNIFER! WOO JENNIFER! I love your hat.'
(this is sounding like some crazy hallucination where I'm queen of the world brought on by over exposure to dissertation, but no!)
So I got up on stage and sang the song, there weren't any monitors so I couldn't hear myself at all but Sam says I sounded good.
It was so great, when I think of it now it's like some kind of escapist fantasy... like when you've had a really happy dream and you just want to stay asleep. Then when the song was over everyone was like:

'Wooo! WE LOVE YOU JENNIFER! JENNIFER! JENNIFER! WOOO JENNIFER!'

and it was wonderful, I wasn't even nervous really cos everyone was so nice, even the guy that threw up on the stage! :P

anyway, today, I woke up and finished my dissertation WOOO!

And then me and Sam went to Tesco and bought a Gazette because Colour Me Wednesday is in it!! And the article actually isn't that bad, I mean they misquoted us a bit, and got us mixed up but that's inevitable. It's just a nice thing to have, it's kinda surreal and funny! Like it's not us, it's the media version of us... the mediation...
Anyway, it promotes our next gig and doesn't make us look like corporate bastards.

HATS HATS HATS

Here is a beautiful hat my nan made me. I said I wanted one with little flaps to keep my ears warm.

Sorry, it's sunday, so I havent brushed my hair.

BUTTON BUTTON BUTTON!

At Sophie's request, here are some

pictures of my hairclip-button creations, also some pics of the gig which we went to the day I made them which I think was Helen's b-day or near Helen's B-day, The gig was the Pipettes new lineup free gig at the Fly.

Also some pictures of my nan's curtains taken by Harrietta. Very nice!

Teenagers wish they were charismatic enough to be this obnoxious!

(I've decided, as I have a quote in this one I'll put it at the top like Harrietta does :) you'll find out who said it later in this post)

'oh sure, he'll tell us when he's had sex or taken drugs but why doesn't he tell us about his poos? hmm? hmm?'

Okay. Helen made me actually sit down and watch skins series one over summer because she liked it and I thought it was a cringey piece of poo. After getting into it a bit I realised that it was quite a well written cringey piece of poo, the problem lies in the 'teenage' characters.
The characters are formed around the way the 'actual' teenagers that supposedly 'contributed' to the show see themselves and how the writers see them. This 'ideal' teenager becomes an embarrassing look into the fantasies of many teenagers and people we assume were once teenagers. :P All the main (non-comedy) characters were glaringly middle class which, in series one, had to be offset with comedy posh characters with over-the-top accents which almost almost made the main cast sound like they could actually come from 'Roundview Sixth Form College' rather than from stage school. They all go to parties and go totally wild man... like have really sexy sex and do sexy dances and snogs and there's always music playing so there's never a moment where they have to feel awkward or embarrassed like actual teenagers do. Any characters that do suffer from actual human feelings such as self-doubt or whateverrr are seen as a bit weak or odd. In series one this was treated quite sensitively at times, the only virgin character, Sid, was in many ways the main character and to be sympathised with, but the burden of his virginity keeps him from sharing the glamourous status of the other characters.
Anyway, there's a new series which I just saw the first episode of. The previously acceptableish writing has gone out the window, replaced by fart jokes and overacted caricatures of clueless non-teenagers. The main character, Effy is unburdened by things like... A SOUL and just stares vacantly with her joyless, kohl'd eyes occasionally making pseudo-wise or world-weary comments to prove how stupid everyone else is. All 'normal' the boys have ridiculous surfer-boy hairstyles and not a trace of fucking humility, an 'abnormal' boy called JJ is practically autistic (well on the spectrum!) and lacks the ability to wow girls with his obnoxiousness, instead he is portrayed as sexually repressed (to the point of... trauma?!?) because he won't or can't look at some tacky porn mag. The girls are drawn in similar ways, either sexually experienced and confident or inexperienced and therefore either ditzy or cripplingly shy. The whole show from begining to end made me cringe so much I think my face is stuck in a grimace. It's weak sensationalist writing, especially that over-glamourised sex scene, why didn't they just fucking put a soft focus on, light some candles and play some porn-groove, it was so contrived. Teenagers wish they could have sex like that, and dare I exaggerate a little: because of this show, teenagers who have rubbish awkward normal teenage sex are gonna feel like freaks. Yeah that's right freaks! But they're all gonna pretend to their friends that it was just like on Skins, happy land where the only emotions anyone has are fundamentally narcissistic and any rebellion is completely meaningless and all sex was shot from flattering angles! Let the myths just keep on coming.'"$%$%^.

Anyway, it's just a tv show, but I just wish there was a good tv drama in the uk for young people... it's this or Hollyoaks. I don't think Skins relates to young people, I think it's alienating unless you assimilate it. Either that or just recognise it as a complete fiction... like I do...

Anyway, I'm doing a kind of exploration into showing things that are supposedly to be ignored or embarrassed about, I thought about how my new art video embarrasses me because it contains things that I said just in everyday conversation, it isn't edited or censored by me. This is the antithesis of skins for me, showing just life, it doesn't matter if it's boring either because it's an art video. hahah. When people say they are revealing things about themselves they are only revealing what they want you to know anyway which is often carefully chosen. (lol, I think Sam and Hat will remember this quote from me! talking about someone we know 'oh sure, he'll tell us when he's had sex or taken drugs but why doesn't he tell us about his poos? hmm? hmm?')
The problem with my video is that I knew I was recording myself so it affected what I said. This in a way makes it funnier for me because when I know people are listening to me, stuff I want to say that is maybe intellectual, I really dumb down because I'm so scared of either sounding pretentious or saying something incorrect whilst being pretentious. lol how verrry embarassing, the thing is, if you reveal yourself to people as much as you can, they can only understand you better surely? Isn't that a good thing?

sky larkin

I'm going to see sky larkin next thursday... for freeeee!

I can play I will never love you more by Soko on my ukelele... not that it's particularly hard but still fun!!

I'm 21 and what have I bloody achieved???

Yeah okay 21 isn't that old but...
I envy those people who create amazing things while they are still teenagers... you know... I'm not talking about those self-conscious over-worked emo creations wrought with anguish/self pity/fanboy song lyrics. I'm talking about stuff that I'm only just feeling like I could maybe do now. Like actually write a piece of critical writing that isn't just for uni or college... or write song lyrics that are self aware but that won't make me cringe in five years.
People like Laura Marling for example make me feel old and a bit stupid... cos she's the age of my teenage younger sister but her debut album comes close to genius at times. The perfect balance of songs based on experience and wonderful storytelling which is folky without being uncool... and gothic (in the strictest sense) without being overindulgent.
I'm trying to think of other examples outside of music but you know what I mean. Some musicians do just find success because of their youthful engery and attractivenesss but it's often shortlived or becomes embarassing.
I conclusion, I suppose I wish I was some kind of child genius or hot housed myself. Well not really. I feel like I haven't changed, I've always been like this, partially I can't really be bothered but mainly I'm terribly afraid. Anyway, I'll check back in in five years and let you know if I've done anything with my life, like written an opera or something.