Day known as One

Hello chums!

In a break with tradition, I've decided to do a bit of serious blogging for the next wee while. A thought occurred to me today as I sat puzzling over what to give up for Lent. Having already gorged on sweets and having used Facebook and my phone just as much as usual, I thought, "Hey Marianne (which is my real name for those of you who don't know me - fun fact #1, this is the first time I've said it...on this blog, not ever in my life), why give something up, when you could in fact TAKE something up, like writing a new poem on your blog every day for 40 days? You know, it might help you in your plight to become a serious poet. Or it might alienate all your avid followers who only tune in to hear you mock and belittle this wonderful world we live in, but isn't that what Lent is all about?" And I thought, "Yes, Lent IS all about alienation and poetry! I WILL write a poem every day on my blog and try to force people to read them!"

So there you have it folks, for the next 40 days I'm going to -try- and post a new poem here on the Rattle Bag (fun fact #2: The Rattle Bag is a 1982 anthology of poetry edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney and is obviously where I took the name for my beloved blog all those years ago. See, I AM really into poetry after all). There may or may not be drawings photographs along the way, only time will tell. Right now, my graphics tablet camera and I have been separated, so you'll be gettin' a whole lotta nuthin' for the next wee while at least.

Anyway, HERE IS POEM NUMBER 1. Appreciate it, or else.

On Going Back

I have found patterns

woven on these pages

enough to paper a wall

and call it nouveau.

I’ve been hiding amongst them.

I sit, lonely as a bowl of trifle

after all the children have vomited

and gone home.

I don’t want anyone to see me

like this; a cherry pip

with its flesh chewed off.

History has planed away my armour,

and every vein in every finger

lies open now like some ancient burial ground

uncovered by diggers

and optioned for a show on Discovery UK.

A Banner May Advance

Okay, I'm going to clear this up right off the bat: anyone who is thinking about proposing to me had better be Eddie Redmayne, otherwise it's pretty unlikely that I'll say yes. Eddie Redmayne, if you're reading this, you will find me at 55 Rue Plumet (points to anyone who gets this without Groogling it).

As you may have guessed from my concise introduction, I'M REVIEWING LES MISÉRABLES. I'm doing this because I bloody love musicals, so it will obviously be completely unbiased.

I REALLY LOVED THIS FILM FOR ALL OF THE REASONS. That's about all you need to know. However, I'll pick out some of my most favourite bits to encourage you to see it too.

1) IT'S A MOVIE MUSICAL OF THE STAGE SHOW "LES MISÉRABLES". This means it's automatically awesome. For anyone that doesn't know, Les Misérables is a stage musical in which many people are miserable. They sing about their enveloping misery with a tremulous consistency. Most of them (spoiler alert) die.

2) All the actors sing live. This means you really feel them feeling the songs. It also means that you get to see the beautiful, weaving patterns of their veins under their skin as they strive to hold the long, hard notes.

3) Eddie Redmayne having his sweet-ass face and hot posh-boy bod all up in Revolutionary France's face. (NB, terms like "sweet-ass face" and "hot posh-boy bod" generally do not enter my vocabulary, but Eddie, if  because you're reading this, I just want to impress you loads, and this is a trendy way to speak.)

4) I'll only mention it briefly and I'll veil it in a tight code, but THAT rendition of THAT song WAS extremely good. Anne Hathaway can really turn up the pain when she wants to #Oscarinthebag #unbreakablecode. I did however feel a *bit* sorry for Samantha Barks, whose rainy wailings through the streets of down town Paris paled in comparison to their emotional forerunner. But only a bit sorry...I still remember finding Samantha Barks really irritating on the BBC reality TV show "I'd Do Anything" a few years back. Yeah, Samantha, some of us never forget.

5) Anne Hathaway's emotional journey. She's come a real long way since the Princess Diaries, but I'd wager Julie Andrews taught her everything she knows. Here's a photograph of her singing her wonderful version of I Dreamed a Dream:

6) Lovely lil' cameo from a total legend...and no, I won't spoiler this one. But it really did please me NO END.

Obviously, nothing is perfect (except Eddie Redmayne's totes gorge eyeballs, amaright? (NB, the phrase "totes gorge" just made me sick up my Whispa Gold...)), so here are the very few things I didn't like about the film.

1) Russell Crowe. Okay, okay, he really wasn't as bad as I thought he would be and imo, no one can do Stars the same justice Philip Quast did it. However, he was still less than zero.

2) Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I'm sure you're all like OMMMMMMG, and I can totally admit his acting was fantastic. Jean Valjean, however, he is not. But who else were they going to get to put on their big ol' bus posters?

3) Amanda Seyfried kissing Eddie Redmayne. But whatevz.

Aaaaaaaand that's my review. I give this film 86 hearts full of love out of 47 beggars at the feast.

Countin' Flowers on the Wall

Good evening, this is the news.

Just like everybody else in Britain, I recently went to see the latest James Bond biopic, Skyfall. If you haven't heard of James Bond, he's a very old schizophrenic who is quite good at shooting henchmen, but very bad at shooting masterminds, which isn't very helpful because masterminds are constantly trying to ruin his life. 

His latest personality has manifested itself as a man called Daniel Craig. His blue eyes are sharp enough to piece right through your soul, so be careful when he looks at you. The photograph below illustrates his stunning good looks.

As you may have noted, he has very large shoulders. He is currently engaged in talks with the African government who would like to build schools for blind children there. Daniel Craig will probably say yes because this is the kind of thing James Bond would do as a means of forgiving himself for things that happened in the past that he had no control over.

The film also stars Dame Judi Dench. As everyone knows, Dame Judi Dench, along with Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Julie Andrews, is the best bit of cream offered by a crop of corn when it comes to acting, which means she is out of this world because there is no cream in a crop of corn - at least not on this planet. Here she is being photographed on the red carpet, as usual.

The main plot of the film centres around Daniel Craig trying to find out why Adele wrote a song called Skyfall. I think what Adele meant to write was a song called Piefall, because she is a Londoner and Londoners bloody love pie and mash and jellied eels, NOT because she's fat, which is what you all expected me to say. Tut. 

In the end, we do find out, which makes for a good film. If we didn't find out, there wouldn't be a lot of point to it, would there?

I really enjoyed this film for a number of reasons. You'll find them all out when you go and see it. I give it 9 Michael Caines out of 8 Ray Winstons.

The Culture Section

Today I've been really cultural, having gone to the cinema AND the theatre, as well as having a yoghurt drink. While the yoghurt drink was disappointing - basically just yoghurt with a bit of water in it, my other cultural excursions were fabulous, darling! (Now that I'm cultured, I have to say things like "excursion" and "darling". It is the law and while I may be a bad ass, I will not let Lady Justice down.)

Firstly, I saw ParaNorman at the movie cinema picture screen house. If you haven't seen it, DO. It starts off with me desperately trying to find the toilets in the underground caverns of the cinema. I then battle with the hand dryer for a good 3 minutes because it keeps switching itself off and I MUST have dry hands before I can leave the toilet. 

When I get back to my seat, I find out Norman has been sat watching a zombie movie with his nanna but it turns out NANNA IS DEAD. Now I'm comfortable, I see Norman's dad chastising Norman for pretending to talk to dead people. But the twist is, he really CAN talk to the deads among us!  

Obviously a storyline follows from this initial set up, but after a series of complaints and letters of fiery hatred pertaining to my lack of spoiler alerts when discussing films I've seen, I won't go into it. What I will say is, Bruce Willis is a ghost. But that's all I'm going to say. 

The film is really well shot, a super mixture of stop motion (which EVERYONE should love because it's AWESOME) and CGI. The good thing is that the CGI doesn't look *too* CGI, because that would detract from the roughness of the stop motion. So for this I say, well done Gavin Bumhorner (<< A genuine name I spotted in the credits*) and the rest of the team! I give this film 7 corpses out of 11 graves.

Then I drank my yoghurt. 

My final bit of culture today came in the form of The Phantom of the Opera. Because I'm a major blogebrity**, I got free tickets. Anyone who knows me knows musical theatre is  my one true love****, so getting free tickets to see the Phantom is definitely up there with my wedding day and the birth of my children*****. 

The sets were fabulous, darling and the performances were, for the most part, excellent. However, I came to the conclusion after many years of research, if I were Christine, I would NOT have chosen Raoul. He's pushy and possessive and has an -extremely- nasal singing voice. Songs that he doesn't even write for himself. The Phantom is all kidnap and romance. I mean, isn't it every girl's dream to be abducted by a deformed, obsessive stalker who lives in the sewers where he writes very sexually charged music and sits clapping along with a monkey music box?****** I know it's mine!

High points included: 

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again - the girl playing Christine (let's call her Lucy Bumhorner) belted that mother out and brought the glimmer of a tear to my stone cold eye.

The Phantom's weep-sing voice. It was very emotional for us all.

Low points included:

The idiot bitches sat behind us, talking the ENTIRE way through the first half. But don't worry, I sorted them out.

(Insert one of my classic photographs that I can't quite be bothered to draw I mean take at this hour of night. It depicts me shooting the bitches in the tits.)

WOW, I've really gone on here! Well...I guess you should stop reading about six paragraphs ago if you're bored by now.

Peace out.

x

*This is not a real name, though very similar to one I genuinely did spot in the credits, a name in which the word BUM strongly featured.

**Celebrity blogger.***

***I'm not a blogebrity in any way. I just made that word up. And no one reads my blog.

****For any lovers reading this, firstly, thanks for tuning in. Secondly, I'm not going to apologise for this statement, you knew the situation when you signed up for this.

*****I've had neither a wedding nor a childen. Until those things happen I'm totally allowed to claim that any minor but lovely event in my life is on a par of excellence with them.

******BTW, spoiler alert!

Islands in the Stream

Oh Aunty M G! Hasn't it been a long time since last my words crept across your eyeballs like the death that creeps across us all? Yes. Yes it has. And do you know why? Well I'll tell you.

A few months ago I went to the doctor.

“It would seem your personality is in remission. I genuinely hate having to tell you that,” the doctor said, smiling.                  

“I see,” I said. “Is there anything to be done?”

“Negative. If I bleed you, it would finish you. Best to make what little time count and all that.”

I left the surgery feeling like wool unravelling. At home I lay on the sofa. The sun licked its way across the carpet, enveloping the extension of my foot with a scar of honey. Before too long, my legs were entirely ablaze. I thought about how fast I'd be able to run if my legs were on fire. Probably really fast.

Sleep ate me.

I found myself standing in a maze of pavements holding an artisan roll shaped like my face (yes, it was really massive). The baker who had made it was standing in front of me. I took a bite.

“Your chewing sounds like an alien invasion, dear, but that doesn't mean I love you any less than I did this morning. Far from it,” the baker said.

“How far?” I asked.

“Walk with me and I’ll show you.” We set off down the street, the houses leering like rowdy workmen. The doors wolf whistled as they opened and closed.

“You could wear this day, dear,” said the baker. “It’s just your colour.”

I wasn't sure whether he was speaking in flattery or foolery, but I tittered like a lady in waiting nonetheless.

We crossed a golf course. The place had been abandoned for years. The ghosts of golf balls winged over our heads. Children sat in the bunkers building sand châteaux.

“If a chateau is not old, it must be grand,” he said impatiently. “Children can be so juvenile sometimes.”

We walked to the pier. The baker slotted a clean 50p into the mouth of the binocular viewer and invited me to take a look.

As was to be expected, an island loomed. It was made out of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.

They relied entirely on one another to stay afloat.

Distracted as I was, I didn't notice the baker pushing me into the water. I woke up, drowning.

There’s nothing quite like a near death experience to cure all ills. After that I was fine, but then I had to do my dissertation and a Fringe show, so I've been really quite busy. I did have another thing I wanted to talk to you about, but I'll save that for next time since my true life story has already taken up so much of your precious time << LOLJKS! You clearly don't count time as a worthy commodity if you're browsing the internet at this time of night...loser.

LOTS of Real Love!

A Brief Excerpt

Good evening one and all.

Just a quick one here because I don't have anything exciting to say, which is highly unusual, as I'm sure you are by now aware. I've got a little poem for you instead. ENJOY!

It's called


Mr P


Mr P crawled up into his bumhole
and made it a home for himself.
From there he sent out his letters,
asking everyone to act a little nicer.

"If you could all be more like me;
if you could all journey inside yourselves
as I have done,
you could look your spirit right in the face
and the world would be a better place."

When I received my letter from Mr P,
I replied with a brief note scrawled on a napkin:
"Mr P, your spirit is a bolus of turd,
and the eye with which it looks
is a nubbin of stinky corn.
While I agree that corn is probably the answer
to the Third World Starvation crisis,
I think somebody should point out,
you're living in an anus."

A few weeks later, Mr P replied stating that,
"A man's home is his asshole."

"Dear Mr P," I said.
"You're full of shit."


---FINI---

Back in the Rattle

HIYA LOVE!

It's been a while since I last done a blog, so this will be a mash-up recap of all the insignificant, completely awesome things that have happened in my life that I would normally blog about but just haven't had chance.

First things first, I just found a pound. Literally just this minute. It was laid on my bedroom floor and no doubt delivered by the pound fairy last night. In fact it definitely was, because here is a photo of her dropping it off:

It's probably a reward for all the good deeds I've done like sticking with Grey's Anatomy throughout season 8 despite it being ridiculous and verging on boring.

Second things second, I went and gone and saw the H'Avengers! The H'Avengers are a really nice family with three dads and one mum and a family friend called Hawkley One Eye (who is an amalgamation of Samuel L Jackson and Jeremy Renner) and an obese green child called The 'Ulk. Here is a photograph of them being happy together:

Normally I would do a full film review, but because this is a quick recap I'm not allowed. I am however allowed to say "it was really good", and "I give it ten muscles out of ten arms", which are things that I would probably have said if I'd done a full film review.

Moving on. I was walking down the road the other day and found a secret note. Here's what it said:

Being a spy I was able to deduce that all of these things added together would equal a horrendous curry bomb likely to engulf Edinburgh in a fragrant river of chickens and sauce. I compiled my own list of potential suspects:

As you can see, they are all known terrorists. Fear not, however! I sent my findings to Scotland Yard and they're working to arrest all of these people so they can torture them mercilessly until they spill their guts, both figuratively and literally - they'll be torturing them with slightly off cheese - listeria abounds!

And that's all I have to say right now because nothing else that is equal to or more interesting than these things has happened to me since my last blog.

BYE! x