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Queen of Liars

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Blog Entries posted by Queen of Liars

  3. Queen of Liars

    Life Update

    By Queen of Liars,

    Right, following up on the last entry, I guess I figured out the gender identity thing to some degree. Which means that I will now identify as female.
     
    Again, I spoke about it in detail on my Tumblr, but ultimately I am now ready to be myself and this is the first step towards that. So that's nice, I guess.
  4. Queen of Liars
    I got a ridiculous amount of work to do for tomorrow and it looks like it will take me the night to do it...
    Well, that's what I get for so foolishly leaving it off until now. At least I have an empty timetable for tomorrow, so I'll just turn up, hand in the work, go home and sleep.
     
    Looks like I'll need some coffee for this one...
  5. Queen of Liars
    At last, the unbearable heat has ended and it is raining. The best kind of weather. Well, second best. Nothing beats snow.
     
    Maybe now my brain will function well enough to get some work done
  6. Queen of Liars
    Well, the first of the albums that I ordered arrived today and it's so good that I had to change my wallpaper.
    It'll be nice having this guy staring at me everytime I close a window.
     
    ...And just changed it again after finding this one. I have been listening to Unto The Locust a lot lately and this one looks nice. Maybe I'll just have it cycle between those two.
  7. Queen of Liars
    So, my cat swallowed a sewing needle that my mum left lying around in her room. Fortunately, it got stuck in the cat's throat and didn't enter the digestive system, so it should be alright as the vet removes it overnight. Close call though, hope my mum learns a lesson from that. It's not cool to leave needles lying around whether there are pets or not >.>
     
    On the upside, my book, The New Criminology, arrived today. It's supposed to be an approach towards crime and deviance that combines Marxist and Interactionist approaches, which sounds close to what I think about it, although I lean much more towards Marxism.. Hopefully I can finish it before my Sociology exam so that I can quote it there, as it was a cutting edge piece of work on criminology when it was first published
  8. Queen of Liars

    Computer Troubles

    By Queen of Liars,

    Well, my laptop might be screwed, which would be rather unfortunate. And just as I started to get a bit more back into gaming too.
     
    For those curious, basically I restarted it last night, and then it simply failed to boot up. It would get to the welcome screen, flash blue and restart again. If I try doing start up repair, it gets stuck on a black screen with a movable cursor and nothing else. After lots of Googling, didn't really find all that much. As you might be able to guess, start up repair isn't meant to do that.
    I went inside the latop to try reseating the RAM and whatnot, and none of the components are obviously damaged, as in nothing's on fire, but that doesn't mean much. Based on the information I've gathered, the hard drive is my main suspect, but right now I've got neither another laptop sized hard drive, nor anywhere else to stick this hard drive into, so I can't confirm it. The next step is to try and get it working with a Windows repair/install disc, which I am in the process of downloading and burning, but somehow I'm not feeling too optimistic.
     
    Fortunately I back up my stuff fairly regularly, though it has been a little while since the last time, so I would end up losing a bit of stuff in the worst case scenario. Nothing too important though. I'm more concerned with simply not having a computer for who knows how long if I can't fix it. Oh well, here's hoping, I guess.
  9. Queen of Liars
    Well, I am now 19. Which is quite a boring age really. Nothing of much significance comes with it, but I am getting to the point where birthdays are becoming mundane.
     
    Ah well, I'll go listen to I'm Eighteen by Alice Cooper now, and pretend that I'm still 18 and that song is still the perfect fit for celebrating my birthday.
  10. Queen of Liars
    So I decided to get myself a copy of the 20th anniversary special edition of Rage Against The Machine's debut album. Although usually I try to avoid reissues, especially of albums I already own, the demos and unreleased tracks included on the second CD were enough for me to get this one.
     
    I'm quite happy with it. As you can see, the packaging is great and includes some good pictures of the band, although more liner notes from the band members themselves would have been nice. The remaster of the album barely sounds different, which is good as the original was absolutely fine. It's the same ten songs that still sound as fresh, relevant and hard-hitting today as they did in 1992. I do believe this to be one of the finest rock records of the last 20 years. From that iconic guitar and bass riff which opens the album with Bombtrack, to Zack de la Rocha's last calls for freedom on the record's closer, Freedom, this is a relentless onslaught of revolution which just doesn't get old.
    The extra stuff on the second CD is also very nice for a big Rage fan like me. The unreleased songs are very good, and the demos are interesting to listen to as well. There's also a DVD with some live performances, although I haven't watched it yet.
    So yeah, a good purchase, I think.
     
     
    Oh, and I also managed to get a used limited edition copy of Paradise Lost's 1997 album, One Second, for just a few pounds. I just can't resist limited editions if they're a good price.
  11. Queen of Liars
    These bloody stickers on the top of the case.
     

     
    I don't know if it's just me, but I can never take them off without them tearing and they always leave marks on the case.
    It's becoming my biggest pet peeve in terms of CDs. I mean, why are they even there, other than to be annoying? The bar code is already on the back of the CD, and new CDs are wrapped anyway
  12. Queen of Liars
    Seriously, life would be so much easier.
    Revising for my final Sociology exam tomorrow and decided to refresh a bit on phenomenology, which is not in the book, just somewhere in my notes. Good luck to me in trying to find it.
     
    But yeah, last exam tomorrow, and feeling pretty nervous. I need to get an A in it, and I think I know everything I need to, and extra stuff from my additional reading, but still pretty stressful. I just hope the big questions allow to discuss Marxism in detail, as that is right in my comfort zone more than any other theory or approach.
     
    But I am looking forward to having it done and just having the rest of the summer off with no worries about education at all, maybe except for finding books for university. Almost there...
  15. Queen of Liars
    Since I now have a blog, I thought I might as well start doing occasional short album reviews.
    And since Tragic Idol - the thirteenth album from the founders of Gothic Metal, Paradise Lost - comes out in a week's time, I thought I'd review it's predecessor: 2009's Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us.
     

     
    This was Paradise Lost's twelfth album, and is my favourite by them. It actually also is one of my favourite albums of all time.
    In comparison to their previous albums, it continues the darker and heavier side of Paradise Lost established by 2007's In Requiem, but steps it up a notch, while also taking bits from all of their previous eras of sound and using them as inspiration.
    The opening track, As Horizons End, tells you exactly what you're in for: a melodic, melancholic and atmospheric, yet very heavy and guitar-driven Gothic Metal record. There are a few variations in pace throughout the album, with some slower songs like the title track or In Truth but the whole record flows very well and the mood is never broken.
    Gregor Mackintosh is my favourite guitarist and this album is a great showcase as to why: his songwriting is fantastic. This album is full of great guitar playing with brilliant riffs and and solos, all of which serve to create a powerful melancholic atmosphere, which is something I've always loved Paradise Lost for doing. An epic atmosphere which is further strengthened by Nick Holmes' powerful vocals.
    There is really nothing negative I can say about this album. It pushes all the right buttons for me and I am happy to be a die-hard fan of the band.
    Also worth noting is that I bought the 2 CD limited edition of this album on its release day, which came with three bonus tracks - Cardinal Zero, which is a very strong track that could have easily been on the regular album, and different versions of the title track and Last Regret, with the music performed by the Lost In Prague orchestra. Let me tell you, the orchestra versions are very epic indeed, although I do prefer the originals.
     
    Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us is the fathers of Gothic Metal showing everyone how it's done.
  16. Queen of Liars
    Never quite paid attention at how expensive university accommodation can be until I started applying for it for my first choice university today.
    The cheapest self-catered option is £97.86 weekly or £3914.40 annually, as a 40-week contract...
    That's a lot of money for a student ;_;
  17. Queen of Liars
    I've spoken enough about how much I hate those barcode stickers that get put on new CDs from the US, so here's another pet peeve I was reminded of today:
     

     
    It's rare, but every once in a while when I order a used CD online I'll get something like this.
    I don't know if I even want to commit the effort to trying to remove that cleanly.
     
    I takes a bit of the joy out of the purchase. I know it's not the seller's fault. It's the fault of some record store employee who decided to put a sticker straight on the case back in 1992 for some reason. Maybe they had a grudge against the latest KMFDM album for going in a slightly more rock direction. Who knows, but it's still annoying me 23 years later.
     
    The worst part is that it's only the remains of a sticker, so I can't even get any interesting information about the history of this particular copy of the CD.
     
    Like that one time I got a Pitchshifter album, and upon examining the stickers I found that it was not in its original case, and that the new case it was occupying in fact once belonged to a Coldplay album. Kinda felt tainted after that, being tricked into touching something to do with Coldplay.
  18. Queen of Liars
    Going into school for 4-5 hours of English revision before my exam on Monday. Should be some quality Hamlet time.
     
    And after that, I'll be going to the cinema with a couple of friends to see MIB III, which I'm really looking forward to, having been a fan of the first two since I was a kid.
     
    Might also go down to HMV to pick up some new albums, if they have them. I really need The Hunt by Grand Magus. The only problem is that it's a long trip, as the one closest to me closed down.
  21. Queen of Liars

    Moving Out

    By Queen of Liars,

    Well, tomorrow morning I'll be moving out of my university accommodation and back home to London for the summer.
    I guess I'll kinda miss this room, even if it's not all that great, and thus I decided to take a few pictures of it before I started packing my things: [1] [2] [3] [4]
  22. Queen of Liars
    Recently acquired a copy of the second volume of the Ghost in the Shell manga, so now I have this little collection:
     

     
    DVDs: Ghost in the Shell and Innocence boxset (plus the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 remaster of the original movie); Stand Alone Complex 1st GIG boxset; Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG boxset; Stand Alone Complex: The Laughing Man; Stand Alone Complex: Individual Eleven; Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society
    Manga: Ghost in the Shell; Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface; Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor
     
    Which - apart from the soundtracks - is pretty much everything that I think is worth owning. There's also a Stand Alone Complex manga, but from what I understand it's basically the equivalent of a novelisation of the anime series rather than something unique, so I'm not really interested in it.
     
    Now I'm just waiting for Ghost in the Shell: Arise to get DVD releases over here. The first two parts will be released on the 24th of November, but I don't believe parts 3 and 4 have a release date yet.
  23. Queen of Liars
    Why can't it just be rainy and miserable like England's supposed to be? The heat was bad enough yesterday to get in the way of enjoying The Dark Knight Rises, but today it's just horrible. Won't be able to do anything worthwhile at all.
    I really hate the heat >.>
  24. Queen of Liars
    Well, had my first exam today. English Language and Literature, and it went fairly good. Although it turns out mild insomnia and exams don't go together too well in terms of how you feel. Who would have thought?
     
    The Hamlet bit was interesting, as our teacher assured us that there is very little chance that we would be given a scene that doesn't have Hamlet in it. Well lo and behold, we got the scene where Claudius and Laertes were crafting their plan to kill Hamlet, and we had to talk about how Claudius manipulates Laertes. Which was actually quite a nice question, and went pretty good.
    The talk in life and literature part wasn't as great. We get two unseen texts, one a transcript of a real-life conversation and the other an extract of talk in literature, and to my dismay, the second unseen text was a poem. Those really suck when you have to compare them to real talk. However, I think I did alright.
    Overall, I'm feeling a strong B to a light A on this one, which is exactly what I need for English.
     
    Tomorrow is history, which should be a piece of cake.
  25. Queen of Liars

    Results Day

    By Queen of Liars,

    Well, tomorrow is A-Level results day and for the first time, I'm genuinely terrified of results, as these will determine whether I get into university or not. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.
     
    Not really sure where the summer went. Hardly did anything, and did pretty much nothing of what I was planning to do. Why does that always happen?
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