Freud was right.

I've been in a really immature mood all day.

I think it began when I woke up and saw my (suddenly rather phallic) phone charger plugged into the wall.




I have one thing to say:

LOL.

Ok, I'm done now. Sorry.

Perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever read.

Japanese railway turns to feline 'stationmaster' for help

By Toru Yamanaka AFP
Sunday, May 25 04:07 am

KINOKAWA, Japan (AFP) - In times of need, Japanese say they can even ask the cat for help. In this town in western Japan, people look to Tama, a nine-year-old cat working as master of an unmanned train station.

The tortoiseshell coloured creature, born and raised at Kishi Station on the provincial Kishigawa Line, wears a formal uniform cap of Wakayama Electric Railway and calmly watches passing passengers who greet her.

There are 10 train stations on the 14.3-kilometre (8.9-mile) line.

"Tama is the only stationmaster as we have to reduce personnel costs. You say you could ask for the cat's help, but she is actually bringing luck to us," Wakayama Electric spokeswoman Keiko Yamaki said.

The company feeds her in lieu of salary.

Tama was born from a stray cat brought to the station by a cleaner and kept by Toshiko Koyama, a local who runs a grocery store next door.

The station went unmanned in April 2006 as the line was losing money. But Tama stuck around.
She rose to national stardom in January 2007 as the railway company formally appointed her as "stationmaster".

Her appointment had an immediately positive effect, boosting the number of passengers using the line in January by 17 percent from a year earlier.

For the year to March 2007, the number of passengers rose to 2.1 million, up 10 percent from the previous 12 months, according to Yamaki.

Happy with her successful job as stationmaster, the company promoted Tama to "super-stationmaster" in January this year, making her "the only female in a managerial position" in the company's 36-strong workforce.

"She now holds the fifth highest position in the company," Yamaki joked.

In reward for the promotion, Tama got a new "office".

The stationmaster's office, a renovated former ticket booth at the station, opened in April with the attendance of Kinokawa Mayor Shinji Nakamura and Wakayama Electric president Mitsunobu Kojima.

The office guarantees her some privacy.

"She declines to relieve herself when passengers are looking. We set the toilet where passengers can't see," Yamaki said.

Those who want to greet her must be careful so as not to miss her.

"She works nine to five and takes Sundays off," Yamaki said.

Tama commutes with Koyama, the grocery store operator, from a shed next to the station. As Koyama tells her, "Ms Stationmaster, it's time to work," Tama comes along to the station, Yamaki said.

The stationmaster is set to appear in a French documentary film, being directed by Myriam Tonelotto, about wonder cats from around the world.

My Grandma's take on 'Mean Girls'.

"This is a stupid film, that would never happen in real life."

You'd be surprised, Grandma. You'd be surprised.

In other news, instead of going to prom last night, I spent the entirity of my Friday evening eating pizza and watching Drake & Josh with George. Bring on next week, when my Dad goes away, and we shall be "playing house" (as George's mother calls it) once again.

Movie marathons, midnight Tesco trips... I actually cannot wait.

The "Leaving School" Blog.

Tomorrow is officially my last full day as a student at Newlands Girls School.

Sure, it's been an interesting two years. We've had some laughs, some tears, sat through a whole lot of boring lessons and a few good ones. But now it's over, and we're moving on, and everyone who we want to keep in touch with, we will.

So why on earth is there so much fuss, stress, and effort concerned with this week?!

The building itself is a wreck. I, for one, will not miss walking down the tiny, packed corridors, only just avoiding the strange cleaners who make me feel nervous, only to go into the library to find there's no space. The common room is dark and cold (although boiling in the summer), and my form room is full of lab technicians constantly complaining about, well, everything. Most of the teachers are either ridiculously boring or ridiculously rude.

After all of this has been pointed out, will someone please tell me why I am expected to dress up every day this week, go to a leavers' picnic, go to a leavers' breakfast (I kid you not), have 3845 pictures taken of me, sign shirts, have parties in every lesson, buy a hoodie, buy a yearbook and go to prom?

I'm probably being very insensitive about all this, but really, is it necessary?!
"Goodbye, good luck." I'm done.

You know when you've been Tangoed.

If you are the kind of person I discuss my worries with, especially regarding my appearance, you will notice that I have been talking about the paleness of my skin for the past couple of weeks, what with the impending long summer almost upon us.

Upon us - but not upon my legs, or arms, or back, or any of me really. I look like a human milk bottle. Well, looked.

This weekend, seeing as Bekah gave me a lovely discount voucher for Superdrug (and it was BOGOF anyway), I decided to purchase a bottle of Johnson's 'Holiday Skin' body lotion.

The bottle itself reads:

New improved

As natural as your own tan

• Gradually builds a flawless, even tan
• 24 hour moisturisation
• Improved fragrance

I don't know which planet Mr. Johnson has been living on, but most people's 'natural tan' is not orange. This morning, I woke up looking like I'd had a knee transplant with an oompa loompa, and with more yellowish patches than a giraffe. Gradual? I think not. Flawless and even? I seriously think not!

Because of this, I had to go into school wearing leggings with my long, floaty skirt. Maybe next time I'll think before applying anything with the word 'tan' on the bottle.

Give It A Name.

This weekend was Give It A Name festival - my annual opportunity to join the UK's scene kid population in fringe flicking, bobbing about to largely unheard of pop punk bands, and drinking ridiculous amounts of Diet Coke.

Aside from chilling out on a lot of very dirty floors and eating a lot of overpriced hot dogs, I spent the majority of my time singing along to Meg & Dia, Mayday Parade (ace), MC Lars (incredible as per usual) and Glassjaw (not my kinda thing, but Daryl can do no wrong in my eyes.) Also got to see Finch and Alkaline Trio who are back after their brief hiatuses (hiati? I dunno) which was a definite plus.

I feel like I must mention a few of the most amusing moments from my chaotic weekend.

1) Girl? Boy? Whatever.

So I'm standing in the pit for Billy Talent when George and I stumble upon his friend Jimmy and some of his little friends (obviously much younger than us.) After speaking to a charming little girl for a good while I realised she was topless, bra-less, and... oh, a boy.

2) 'Easy on the couch'.

George and I are hanging around by the merch booth, trying to work out which bands hadn't been on yet based on the names on the t-shirts for sale. George proudly announces that Easy on the couch haven't played yet. Uh, it's 'Envy on the coast', dear... where are your glasses?

3) Lamest. Circle pit. Ever.

I'm not sure if this picture can sum up the lameness of the giant circle pit which appeared during Glassjaw's set. If you look closely you can see a total of... uh... two people flailing in the middle of the 10m wide space in between us and the rest of the scene kids who were probably crying to 'Ape Dos Mil'. I wouldn't know, because I couldn't see them - the circle was literally that huge.

4) Emo flood

Seeing as George and I don't particularly like Paramore (aka Parabore - Hayley Williams running around shaking her hair is not entertaining) we decided to just stand back as they began to appear on stage. All of the kids who had been at the merch stand or getting drinks suddenly realised that they were going to miss the first few moments of... well... Hayley Williams running around shaking her hair... and legged it as fast as they could to the front of the stage, thus creating... the emo flood.

Overall a crazy and tiring weekend. Now I'm off to learn some songs for open mic - if I don't fall asleep first...

She's driving a taxi.

I am the girl who cries at gigs.
I am the girl who has a favourite poem.
I am the girl who shakes PostSecret books to see if any cards fall out.
I am the girl who has inspirational quotes stuck to her bedroom wall.
I am the girl who reads FOUND magazine.
I am the girl who loves finding pointless... stuff.

So you can probably imagine the joy I felt when this little card appeared inside the book I'm currently reading ('Invisible Monsters' by Chuck Palahniuk, in case you were interested.)

I wonder who it belongs to, who "she" is, and why she's driving a taxi.
In fact, thinking about it, I don't think I've ever even seen a female taxi driver.
Odd.

Quote of the day.

Obviously paraphrased because, funnily enough, I didn't add this to my Psychology notes.

'Now girls, don't all shuffle and look around... you've got to admit it. Sometimes, it feels really good when you do a great big crap. And you think to yourself "That was just what I needed!"'

- Dr Cav

Whose shoes?

When clearing out My Documents earlier, I found many, many pictures of shoes (despite the fact that I don't have a foot fetish and would not consider myself that scene.)

Let's play guess whose shoes - prize for the winner!

Update: Hands are pretty cool, too.

No, YOU'RE pathetic!

Last night was Jo and Hally's 18th birthday party - theme: 60's, 70's and 80's. Fancy dress, of course (about a 50/50 split between hippies and punks until Freddie Mercury and the Blues Brothers turned up - guess which side we were on) and one of the most hilarious nights I've had in months.

Highlights included Nick's costume (Google Hyde from That '70s Show if you don't watch it), raving to music which I don't like (Brooke's music collection > Pendulum) and falling asleep on George on a park bench only to find my best friend from primary school (who I haven't seen since) standing over me - and all I could bring myself to say was "Huh? Oh, hi".

You would've thought I was drunk, aside from that fact that I don't drink.

Woke up at 12pm next to George (who still had black smudgy eyes) to find a lack of anything edible for breakfast, and a lovely comment on my Facebook honesty box simply reading "You're pathetic." - apparently from a girl, which is bizarre seeing as girls generally don't have an issue with me. Also loving the fact that someone went to the liberty of telling me I'm pathetic on my honesty box as opposed to making an effort to constructively criticise me to my face. Pathetic or what?

Blogworthiness.

You really have to worry about yourself (and your English teacher's teaching methods) when you're sitting in your lesson and feel compelled to turn to the person next to you (Fi, not just some random,) and say "For some reason, this feels blogworthy."

The reason it was so blogworthy is that it consisted of six of us (seven if you count Rosie, who wandered in half way through the lesson - and I'm gonna make the mental note I make every time I see Rosie - LOSE WEIGHT BROOKE! You could look like that!) sitting around, discussing structures for commentaries, which I cannot bring myself to stick to anyway. And all The Beave could do was to write on the board helpful things such as "Grammar. Audience. Purpose." I mean, c'mon, does she want to be taken seriously or not?

Funny, ironic, ridiculously lame - I'd say any situation which you could label with one of these words can be classed as blogworthy. The label for today in general would be "ridiculously lame" seeing as it's 2:44, I should be in ICT, I have an ICT exam next Friday, and I'm at home.

I'd like to pretend that I'm concerned about the cancellation of our lesson, but a) I've come to expect it, and b) I'm lazy. I'm actually quite glad of this opportunity to bum around listening to Lit and texting George instead of revising Management Information Systems.

In other news, my friend Ali (also an open mic-er) was given Nic's spare Matchbox Twenty ticket last night so I don't feel so bad about not going.

Incense and wood polish.

The current atmosphere in my bedroom has been created by a combination of incense and wood polish. My Dad looked at me like I'd been smoking some kind of crazy hippie drugs earlier.

I am annoyed, as you'd probably gathered by the hint that I've been cleaning.

My friend Nic who plays insane piano at open mics (I'd say his fingers move at approximately 380 mph) just offered me a ticket to the Matchbox Twenty show in London which Superdan flew over for yesterday.

The gig is tonight, and I'm ill.
Do you know how difficult declining Matchbox Twenty tickets is?
Do you know how difficult declining Matchbox Twenty tickets is when your not-related-by-blood big brother is gonna be there?

Today sucks!