Media I have consumed in the past 48 hours.

Books: Fresh Apples, Rachel Trezise.
Hung over on Sunday morning, with the taste of tsatsziki lingering in my mouth and my hair smelling of other people's cigarettes, there was nothing for it but to go back to bed with a cup of tea and read a book from start to finish. I'd nicked Fresh Apples from the office where it was sent to us as promo. Andrew Davies, of no particular publication, is quoted in the frontispiece as saying that FA "can easily be compared to Jame's Joyce's Dubliners", which... lets not go nuts here. Some of the stories, 'Chickens' and 'Jigsaws' in particular, are cute, but mainly it's unrequited love, drug use, Welsh vernacular and plot 'twists' you can see a mile away. Trifling and decorously gritty = perfect for my sleazy tsatsziki Sunday morning hangover brain.

Hama beads.
Perhaps technically not media in and of themselves, but I used them to make some media-related bits and pieces, so maybe by some sketchy and tenuous graphic design association? What the hell - craft as media, kids. Anyway, the most fun I've had in yonks. I also made some lurid technicolour fruit to string on a necklace, and Helen made me a little penguin to turn into a brooch, so that we can be just like the hipster coolsie kids who buy their Hama masterpieces for far too much and miss out on the tea-drinking, chocolate-eating, Hama-ironing fun in the process. Suckas.

TV: The Mighty Boosh, Season One.
There are no words.

Film: The Science of Sleep, dir. Michel Gondry.
Hallucinatory and sweet. I kept trying not to compare this to Eternal Sunshine, since without Charlia Kaufman Gondry is a very different beast. In any case, since the comparison is inevitable anyway, it lacked the emotional coherance of Sunshine and amped up the visual innovation. Had a few cute bits about relationships that rang true; had a few that were creepy and unsettling, and a little too close to comfort to the Hollywood 'stalking = quirky and cute' schema for my taste, but probably any analysis of this film in terms of narrative or character development is futile. Watch it instead as an innovative and visceral take on the videoclip as cinema - a two-hour punch to the cerebellum. And maybe don't take any actual hallucinogens before you go in.

Music: Back to Black, Amy Winehouse.
This was impulse-bought at (shudder) Borders after the film, when my cinema companion rushed off to do countless important things and I wandered in looking for a specific CD and came out an hour and a half later in a sort of media coma. I saw this CD and had one of those moments when I couldn't remember whether I heard one of the songs and really liked it, or heard one and hated it. You know when you sometimes remember the extremity of the response but the accompanying emotion?... To be totally superficial, I was almost put of this CD because AMy Winehouse herself is so terrifyingly bony. Seriously, I thought that her clavicles would cut there way through the CD case and free her, whereupon she would devour me whole because she hasn't eaten anything in a year. Girl is thin. But it turns out three-quarters of her body mass is pipes, and the CD is really growing on me... especially the more uptempo ones like 'Rehab' and Tears Dry On Their Own'. Music to pump up and play while lying in the sun drinking gin and eating cupcakes. And offer Amy a cupcake while you're at it.

Magazines: Yen and Acclaim.
Bought for research purposes. No, really. Acclaim isn't normally my scene, but the layout is interesting and they had a good interview about tattoos. Yen I am saving for after dinner, as a nice sweet media dessert. Stay tuned!... or not! Either way.