October Blogging

Hello, my little pumpkins!

Last year I got really into the Halloween spirit on my blog. I took part in the 30 Horror Films in 30 Days challenge. I made a spooky song of the day for every day in the month. I reviewed a lot of horror films, recommended some spooky books and took part in a data-collecting project about representations of gender and race in horror films. It was one of my busiest blogging periods ever. This month I think I'm gonna take some more time for me than I did last year. Expect a few spooky posts but I think I'm going to keep it chilled out this October. I hope you're all getting in the spooky spirit - I absolutely adore this time of year.

Anne Rice Has Read This Blog!

So, I forgot to make a post about this (mainly because I was running about and squealing like a little girl) but it was honestly such a highlight of this year for me. I thought that I simply had to let you all know what happened. I wrote a little piece about the news of Universal acquiring film rights to the works of Anne Rice and how excited I was about it.

Anne Rice saw my post.
She shared it on her Facebook page.
Which means that Anne Rice, the Anne Rice, read my blog.
My favourite author, whose work ultimately shaped and was featured in my dissertation, has been on my blog.
One of my idols has read my blog.
She liked it.
She shared it on her personal page to her followers.
She knows my blog exists.
#FANGIRLING.

I'm going to get over this NEVER. 
I have so much love and respect for Anne Rice and her work so to know that she, even for a second, took the time to read my blog has brought me such joy. I cannot wait to read her next book and I cannot wait to see Universal adapt her books for the screen.

40,000 Views!

Huzzah!

We've passed another milestone. Within the last 24 hours this blog passed the 40,000 views mark. I'm still ever so impressed by this little blog and how it is still pulling in new viewers and readers from all over the world. I'm forever thankful for every one of you stopping by and taking a moment out of your day to read my words. 40,000 views is hard to even fathom and so, dear reader, since you're one of 40,000 you have my utter gratitude.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Join The Birdcage.

Are you a writer who wants their work read and reviewed?
Are you a musician or singer wanting their music featured and shared?
Do you run a blog that you want signal boosted?

If so, please feel free to get in contact as we're always interested in featuring new talent here on the blog. I think it's great to help share the talents of others and to help each other out in any way possible. Leave me a comment on this blog post or follow & tweet/DM me to get in touch.

NEW LAYOUT!

Well look at this! It would appear that the blog has a snazzy new layout. The new layout is to celebrate my soon to be published collection of short stories. I just thought that the blog had previously been so dank and dark that it needed a reboot. OK, we've only really moved from black to brown but it fits the theme. It's textured like parchment because I'm an author. It features birds because it fits in with the blog title. I think it's gorgeous. I'm still working on it so if there are any problems, glitches or issues then please let me know in the comments section of this blog.

Otherwise...

What do you think?

What Can You Expect On This Blog in 2014?

Sit down, blog-ghosts.

Let's have a chat about new features and coming articles on the blog for 2014.
2013 saw the rise of this blog from something I'd made and abandoned on the internet to something that actually garners a steady readership. I shall continue blogging through 2014. You'll still see film reviews and book reviews but my hopes are to post more in 2014. I get to see a lot of free movies now so it only makes sense that I go see movies and then write up my thoughts on them. Similarly if I'm reading a minimum of 30 books this year then I may as well review each one so expect a lot of reviews and discussions about literature and media.

After my hugely successful album review this year (yes I only did the one but it has been read by thousands of people all over the world) I suppose I had better write a few more. In this digital age it's so rare that we really go out and buy a full album but I shall certainly review a few albums just to mix things up a bit.

Similarly I shall be doing a segment called "silver linings search" where I write down and share things that I'm thankful for, things that make me happy. This way I'll be able to share and spread some positivity. Expect to see a post on "silver linings search" described in full.

Having utterly adored my blogging experience I'm going to try vlogging. I've set up a channel on YouTube  where I will hopefully be uploading regular videos to discuss and share the things I like and already vlog about. I've done a few videos already just to slip into it easily. I'll probably synch up this vlog and my YouTube so that I can share my videos here with you.

Later this year I shall be travelling around Europe with my Dad so expect some posts about our adventures and the countries that we visit. I'm not sure exactly how I'll vlog and blog those adventures yet as I don't particularly want to heave my laptop all around Europe but we'll see how it happens.

I suppose those are the only things I can think of at this moment in time.

Thanks for taking the time to read - I can't wait to share my 2014 adventure with you all.

HOW'D YOU GET HERE?

So the cool thing about blogger/blogspot as a blog hosting website is that it gives you a lot of information about the people who look at your blog. I don't know your names. I don't know how often individual people view my blog. I can however see things like which countries people have been reading my blogs in, which posts are getting the most views and... what people Google to find my blog.

Now some things are pretty standard, it'll be a certain phrase that I put in the tags that appear at the bottom of every blog post however sometimes I'm startled by the crazy things that people Google and somehow find my blog. I'm left wondering how they found my blog by Googling such crazy things or wondering what the story is behind it but I wanted to share some of them with you as an interesting look into how people access this blog and what eventually leads them here. I've found it pretty interesting. Some of them are pretty weird and I genuinely have no idea how you've managed to find my blog with these searches.

So here are just some things people have Googled that somehow lead them to this blog:

• country girls skinny dipping
• the truth about pescetarianism
• quirkysex
• super gay blogger
• is How To Train Your Dragon a horror film?
• gay super blogspot
• How to do Aaliyah's eyebrows
• geek shirt girl
• does Kavos turn you gay?
• what is a geek?
• pescetarian for beginners
• How to make a human birdcage?
• did john green do a nanowrimo?
• senteron indo hot sex (wtf?)
• nick offerman on whittling
• nip slip boys boys
• what happened to the old Wife Swap?
• welcome gay blogspot
• gay gay gay gay gay
• Is the World's End a family friendly movie?
• katie hopkins dress size
• is Samantha Brick for real?
• david wenham looks old.
• gay kavos
• addicted to hair dye
• book at the university
• and sweeping generalisations
• smile gays
• of the albums that acted as (no really, that's the whole phrase that someone Googled)

and my two favourites:

• family skinny dipping
• why women can't control lusts?

Quite frankly I want to turn "why can't women control lusts?" into the blog motto, it had me laughing so hard. You know what? I have no idea why women can't control lusts.
We're crazy.
We're crazy. lust-driven beings. 

The Birdcage wants YOU!

Well yesterday was nothing short of spectacular... After being reblogged by the wonderful Carice Van Houten my page views soared from a humble 78 to a whopping 417 page views in under 6 hours. There was so much awesomeness going on that from 7pm until midnight last night I was having an ongoing "what is air" moment.

I feel so touched that people took the time to stop by to gander at my little blog. Please bookmark me, favourite me, keep coming back - I update regularly and I'm open to suggestion.

Also if you're a writer, an artist, a musician or part of a band etc and you would like me to review your work or have an interview done I will gladly feature you on my blog, just get in touch in the comments section below or email me to discuss a collaboration. (apologies, it's the email from my old radio show, I'll set up a specific email address for my blog soon)

I already have one band lined up for an interview to appear on this blog and with regular traffic it could get your book/band/work some exposure.
Thank you to everyone stopping by to view, you make my day.

Ax

One Day More

Have I ever actually mentioned here what my dissertation is about despite rambling about it?
It's focused on the novels 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker and 'Interview with the Vampire' and using psychoanalytic theory along with philosophical theory and literary criticism to explore how representations and the exploration of desire has changed in Gothic literature.
Yeah, I guess it does sound kinda cool. 

I've used this dissertation in many ways:
- I've tried to accumulate different aspects of my time at university and the things I've learned and combine them. I wanted to use the work of theorists and critics we'd studied in various modules so that this dissertation epitomises the university education I've received.

- I wanted to bring in the notion of psychoanalysis because I never studied psychology though I always wanted to. It has always been an interest of mine, the human mind that is, and because psychology was oversubscribed at my school I couldn't take it. Instead I took both English literature and English language which then impacted what I went on to do at university. Perhaps if I had studied psychology that would have been my degree subject - who knows? I suppose I wanted to take the opportunity to include it in my dissertation in some way so that I was able to study some psychology in some way. I've had to do so much extra reading, so much new learning, and have brought it in alongside the work of other theorists. My aunt is a psychologist who works in positive, cognitive and behavioural psychology often using her skills to teach women to lead in the workplace. The works of Freud and Lacan are so often brought to examine texts. Do you know how closely intertwined Hamlet and Freud are in University English dissertations? It's practically a cliché.

- I've always loved vampires. I suppose I don't really know why. Maybe that's why all the psychoanalysis helps, huh? I suppose I was drawn to the overall tone and aesthetic of modern Gothic within literature as well as on film. I remember buying Interview with the Vampire when I was around 13. I can't remember how long I've had my copy of Dracula, but I remember my aunt gave it to me. I believe we were at Stansted Airport waiting for a flight and she gave me Dracula and Frankenstein - two of the literary loves of my life. In fact Averil has a special thanks in the acknowledgement section of my dissertation because without her I may not have ever read Dracula and then who would I be?

This time tomorrow my work will be finished, printed and ready to be marked. I'm proud of my efforts. I'll be damn proud if they hate it and I fail. I'm hoping to get a good grade but the past two weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster swooping from 'I don't even care if I fail anymore' to 'IF I FAIL I WILL DIE AND EVERYONE WILL LAUGH AT ME AND HATE ME AND NO ONE WILL EVER BE MY FRIEND AND NOT EVEN MCDONALDS WILL HIRE ME BECAUSE OF HOW BAD MY DISSERTATION WAS WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE OH GOD'

So...I guess it's time to finish this or, as I like to say, to put the final nail in the coffin.

Milestone: Huzzah!

It's not even reached noon and we've just hit 500 page views!

I find this all incredibly exciting and it's really been getting me through my dissertation.

Part of me wonders if it's just one person viewing the page every ten minutes because they just want to boost my ego. Well, even if that's so - I appreciate it.

Or maybe it was all the pictures of the cute kittens in the last post (in which case I totally understand)

However this isn't possibly true as my statistics tell me I've had hits from the UK, USA, Germany and Australia.

What else do I know of you?
I know that the majority of you use Google Chrome via a Windows Operating system whilst a hefty 29% of you visit via Internet Explorer. 14% of my views come from Linux users and people have also been reading my blog on smart phones and iPhones.
Having only really been blogging the past month and not spreading the page around as much or often as I could I find this a little overwhelming.

Anyways I have to get back to work.
Blog-ghosts, thank you for continuing to make me smile - I hope your day is awesome.

Woah!

Here I was coming in after my lunch break having worked this morning wondering if we'd hit the 400 views mark yet and we're way beyond that. So far you blog-ghosts have collectively viewed the page 51 times today and the day's not even over. I take your reading as a form of support rather than thinking you're all eccentric flaneurs critiquing everything I say (what can I say? I'm an optimist!)

Thank you for reading - you guys blow me away every day.
I can't exactly promise that the blog will be majorly interesting today as I should be putting the finishing touches on this dissertation and putting the final nail into the coffin.

Seriously though... I hope whoever marks my dissertation enjoys all the subtle vampire puns.