Virtual Insanity

Today I kind of went insane. Like, more than usual. Well, actually last night I actually went insane and nearly text my gay to tell him off about a comment he'd made earlier in the night but I didn't adequately respond to at the time but stopped when I realised it might be the cider talking and not 'me' but man, was I maaaaaad! What was scary is that I thought I was stone(ish) cold(ish) sober(ish) until I could feel my heart beating out of my chest and having a conversation to thin air after I'd got in my jimmy-jammies and climbed into bed: having conversations with someone not in the room is always a super good way of knowing that your mental well-being is in tip top shape. Anyway, suffice it to say, I didn't text him and start a text battle over a comment he probs wouldn't even remember making so I think that's a good thing. Sort of.

BUT. Yes. Insane. Me. Today. Marks and Spencers and I have this ongoing love/hate thing in that I love their carrot chutney and wensleydale sandwiches and pretty much hate everything else (that is so not true - for a start their underwear for the bigger chested lady is THE BOMB but it makes a funnier joke the way I originally put it so I'm keeping it in). But on my back from their delicious sandwich section and past the Per Una bit (which, in this store, is like one rack which says 'Limited Edition - Buy While Stocks Last' - basically a Sazz beacon: 'What? What was that? I might miss out on something?!?!?!?!? GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!!!!!1!') and spied the sleeve of what looked like a coat that had distinct potential to look totally cute on me. I plunged into the racks and tried it on and it fit - just. But oh my god, it was LUSH. Dark green tweedy material with brown buttons arranged in a double breasted military style and to the knees and just TO DIE FOR. HOWEVER! It was a size too small and had a too big price tag. I reluctantly returned it to its snug little rack and carried on to the coffee shop outside where I met my mama and papa mikey.

'I've found the one coat in the world that's going to make me happy' said I as a conversation opener. They lolled quite hard because I'm a bit coat mad in that I am on a permanent quest to find coats that makes my entire life complete (I have replaced men with coats). I was sure this, this, was the one. The one that would finally end the quest. They thought that was bullshit as I've said it before about other coats so would I just learn to accept my coat collection as it is and stop talking about coats already jeez! (I, on the other hand, do not think 3 new coats in six months is overly excessive and rarely does one coat synchronise with ever outfit in one's wardrobe especially when you're like me and wear a lot of wacky shit). To shut me up Papa Mikey said he would buy it for me for Christmas because he is awesome and knows how to shut me up. This would mean driving to the store 30 minutes away because it was hella bigger and bound to have a luxurious selection of sizes and sizes of the dream coat hanging from well spaced hangers with acres of room around me to twirl and twirl in as the coat and I began our tentative first steps to a long and happy union. So that's exactly what we did. BUT! When we got there they only had the coat of my dreams in a size up from the one I wanted! Twist! So we left, I feeling dejected and lost because I was in love with the coat of my dreams and the only thing in the entire universe that would make me happy would be the coat of my dreams. I did the only thing a girl of my stature and time could do - I went home and looked online. ANd do you know what? They only had it in fucking Purple!! Purple! Pah! Gross! I spit on you purple you fucking whore! Where is my beautiful green, purple?! YOU KILLED HIM DIDN'T YOU???! I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!

So, naturally, I drove the 30 minutes back to the store and bought the green coat in a size bigger than what I wanted. That is what I did today. Drove around Hampshire looking for a green coat that fits and then settling for one that basically fits but not as well as it could do. Yes.

Dear Diary...

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write:

I hate Duncan from Blue an ounce or so less today than I did yesterday.

Saturday evening I went to bed having been soaked to the skin by lashings upon lashings of rain after watching an outside performance by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the walls of a castle. Pretty standard Saturday night stuff y'know? Nothing unusual about that*.

I unpeeled my wet jeans (akin to squeezing a sausage out of its skin), jumped in the shower, sang La Roux, put my hair in plaits and went to sleep. I dreamt of supermarkets and a fat Ronaldo Cristiano. It was nice.

The next morning I awoke (as I am wont to do) and went about my normal morning ablutions. Nothing about any of this seemed strange or unusal. Nothing about it suggested that today an event would occur that would change me forever. But then, but then, I glanced at the Sunday papers and read the following:

'Duncan James: 'I'm bisexual''

And a teeny tiny miniture mini bit of the hate I feel for the man slid away. This seemingly normal summer's day had become the 'dear diary' moment to end all dear diary moments. To understand why this is such a momentous occasion you first have to comprehend the unending years of repugnance I have solely reserved for this individual. The torrents of unrelenting loathing I have let flow his way (more so than the others from the musical outfit that has plagued me longer than I care to remember). Where Duncan from Blue is concerned, love and hate are not two sides of the same coin; the coin is made up only of hate in a wallet stitched together with revulsion and placed into a pocket of scorn.

But now? Not so much. I mean, I still hate him a lot but just not as violently as I did before.

I think this means I'm prejudiced against heterosexuals.

Having said that, the signs were there, anyone with frosted tips cannot be straight. That is a scientific fact. Do these boys scream aggressive heterosexuality to you?

[Via Videogum]

No, they do not.

They might talk the talk about how many 'ladieez' they have 'nailed' but I can assure you the height of their sexual prowess is awakened, not when faced with a woman's vagina, but when Mikey is tooling around in the showers and every now and then he'll throw a look, (not even a look, a passing glance), but a knowledge is shared, a secret is passed, and they glance away - embarrassed but not knowing why. It's not a feeling they'd ever admit to, they're not even sure they know what this feeling is exactly. They just know that sometimes the light will hit Mikey just so and they get this warm glow in their stomachs. Kinda like when they used to have to climb the rope in gym class.

Anyway, that means I'm in the market for a new (one-sided) celebrity feud. If you have any candidates in mind let me know and I'll get my PA to review them.

*Actually, although I'm being facetious, (for a change) the same thing happened on Tuesday when I went to see an outside performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral. I'm so cultured I'm basically a big pot of natural yogurt at this point yo.

Equality and Diversity

I had to do an training course entitled 'Exploring Equality and Diversity' yesterday. All day. For six hours. For six hours, all day. Did I mention it was scheduled to last all day? I wasn't looking forward to it much as I figured the following would do just as well and would mean I didn't have to get up earlier than usual and then drive for 40 minutes through traffic jam after traffic jam and then have a nightmare finding somewhere to park and then realise I didn't have the right change so the motherbastarding machine took 30p more than it rightly deserved:

'Don't be racist'
'Ok'
'Don't be homophobic'
'... Allllright'
'Don't make fun of people in wheelchairs'
Tut. Sigh. Eye roll. 'Fine' [belligerence]

The end. That's all that is really required; 'be an adult instead of being a total dick '. Oh right. Be an ADULT, NOT a dick! It all seems so simple now!

However, despite me pouting from about 8pm the night before because GOD! I don't want to go do this piece of shit 'training' that I don't even need because I'm only homophobic when gays are around and am hardly ever racist and rarely openly mock the differently-abled and I've got work that I actually could be doing it turned out to be not nearly as awful as I thought it was going to be.

I got there half an hour early because, hello, I'm me. Although I berated myself for being such a loser eager beaver it turned out to be a good thing because I got to hear the most tragic-slash-hilarious story I've ever heard in my entire life.

I entered a room full of the trainers (as in people that do the training, not the Nike shop). One was chuckling at every sentence that left his mouth and I immediately didn't like him. There was a lady who looked like Anne Diamond (Nick Owen-era) and another man who had the very definition of 'wide-boy' down pat. He was not-so-subtly needling the chuckling man about all manner of things which only made Chuckles laugh more. It culminated in:
'Well you can see why his wife tried to kill him'. Chuckles chuckled. 'It's true!' said the younger Del Boy.
At this point, although I had been sat at the back of the room trying to studiously avoid being drawn in to the conversation my ears suddenly pricked up.

It would seem that Chuckles lived in a house with his second wife which had a trap door to the basement just past the front door. One day she unscrewed the trap door from its hinges, relaid the carpet and awaited his arrival home. He stepped into his house, fell through the floor but got stuck in the carpet.

I know it's awful that someone would try and kill their partner but all I could think of was this:


And I lolled (silently, whilst pretending to read a book).

He then revealed that this had happened before he married her. And at the time he was a cop. And her dad was in prison. For stabbing a cop. And at the wedding, just after the dad had got out, someone made a lol-worthy comment about the plastic knives and forks at the buffet being plastic because the dad couldn't be trusted. So dada got out his flick knife and stabbed lollerboy.

'I guess I should have known then that it wasn't going to work out'. Yes. That might have tipped you off had her attempting to kill you TWICE (oh yeah, she tried again but we didn't find out how) hadn't tipped you off previously. Chuckles was, quite frankly, a sap. And I warmed to him.

All this knowledge was acquired before 9.30am. That is the start of a good day. Anything that begins with juicy, juicy gossip of a tragic nature is great. I'm happy from that point on. Eventually everyone else filed in and the training commenced, this is where things took a downturn because treating people with respect apparently is:
'political correctness gone mad'
and
'well we're bending over backwards too much nowadays for them all don't you think' (emphasis mine. Who? WHO IS 'THEM'?)

I love the phrase 'political correctness gone mad'. It' second only to 'I'm not racist but...' in phrases I just ADORE to hear tripping off other people's tongues. Because, pretty much, no and no. So you can't go to work and call someone a poof anymore? Good. So you can't refer to people as 'golliwogs' anymore? Good. So you can't regale the office with your learned-off-by-heart Bernard Manning routine anymore? GOOD! These are good things! It is not 'mad', it is something that was required all along. I'm sorry that you now have to start taking other people's feelings into account when you walk into work and not be a dick anymore. That must be so tragic for you, to have to behave like a decent human being during the hours of 9 to 5. It's awful, I know. BUT (and here's the kicker) you're a dick. I am all for freedom of speech but you modify your behaviour depending on your audience. We all do it, all the time. People have the right to feel safe that they won't be discriminated against when they walk into their place of work. If that means you have to leave your Bernard Manning jokes at home then boo freaking hoo but they're there waiting for you when you get home just in time for you to don your white hoods and go stand round a bonfire somewhere. If you so choose.

Anyway, yeah, that got me a little riled. I said my piece and everyone nodded and 'mmm-hmmed' in agreement (because no one wants direct confrontation and was agreeing with everything said in that room. People are funny) and that was that. Lunchtime. I always like to discuss my thought and feelings about Carol Thatcher before lunch. Gets me hungry. For blood. Anyway, when we came back we had a talk from a guy from the Ethnic Minority something something service. He works with gypsies and travelers basically. The council effing LOVES giving ridiculously long titles to jobs, it loves it so much it wants to make sweet sweet love to long job title names all day long (my full job title is 'Children's Information Service Outreach Worker - Parent Information' for example). So yeah, although I had not thought that attending this training was going to do more than bore me, this guy completely reinvented my views about gypsies and travelers. Although I've never gone out of my way to badmouth travelers and Daily Mail coverage on them has always made me vaguely uncomfortable (Daily Mail coverage on anything makes me vaguely uncomfortable to be fair) I'd never thought about how our opinion (as a society I mean, but also yours and mine individual opinions I would wager) is comparable to how black people were treated in the American deep South in the 1960's. Or that comments made by Himmler about gypsies were not a million miles away from comments made by Jack Straw just 10 years ago on the same topic. This sort of 'they're dirty, they steal, I wouldn't want them living near me' has only one end point and it's not good. It's the sort of end point that ends up with 2 million people gassed to death just because of their heritage. I had never, ever thought of it like that before. It freaked me out I was so happy to implicitly condone such racist attitudes and hadn't realised how sick it was. So I got juicy gossip, a chance to soapbox and then had my mind blown all in the course of one day.

I guess the moral of the story is always keep an open mind. And don't be a dick.

Nemesis

Monday nights are great for doing the 'big shop'. The superstore is practically empty of other customers, the shelves are generally well stocked (I'm guessing Monday is a delivery day as they wouldn't have any on a Sunday... Maybe?), it's quiet and peaceful. I don't have to ram anyone or fight over the tomatoes or stab anyone in the eye for the last pack of falafels. It makes, what I find to be, quite a stressful experience into something a little less of a chore.

All fine and dandy indeed, all apart from that is, my nemesis.

My nemesis, were you to pass him on some sunny southern English street would probably not look like the sort of person that deserved to have his shins kicked in. He is middle-aged, greying round the temples (which is all that is left of the hair on his head as the rest has left him, presumably some time ago). Wiry of body, he wears Cosby sweaters and shorts and sandles and socks. He looks like any good Daily Mail reading member of the middle classes. He also, and I don't say this kind of thing lightly, must be destroyed.

I don't know how we time it, week after week, it must be that he sits in wait for me; louchely chillaxing by the hand whisks and Il Divo CDs, just flicking through a copy of 'For Crying Out Loud' by Jeremy Clarkson, blending in to his surroundings and making no sudden moments biding his time, waiting for me to approach the tills with my trolley, at which point he jumps into action and secures the spot behind me. He will allow me the courtusey of piling around 70-80% of my goods upon the conveyor belt. Each week I am lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that I've got most of the bits up there and he wouldn't possibly cross me again. But he does. He does the oddest and most infuriating thing. He reaches over to get the customer goods separator thing (I have no idea what's it's actually called) and puts it on the belt and STARTS PUTTING HIS THINGS ON. Before I've finished putting my stuff up there! Leaving me no space to finish getting my items checked through the till! WHICH SLOWS THE WHOLE PROCESS DOWN! I do not understand. The only explanation is that he is encouraging me to shoplift for some reason, trying to get me to join his Fagin-esque 'Cosby sweater' gang. Otherwise, I'm stumped. There are RULES and REGULATIONS. They are unspoken but they exist. Rule number one of supermarket etiquette is let the person in front of you unload their trolley before you start unloading your trolley. Rule number two of supermarket etiquette is LET THE PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU UNLOAD THEIR TROLLEY BEFORE YOU START UNLOADING YOUR TROLLEY. It is not hard. It makes sense to have this order. It does not speed the process up to do it simultaneously IT SLOWS IT DOWN. SO WHY ARE YOU SO RETARDED COSBY SWEATERED FAGIN?!?! WHY?!

To be fair, it's only happened once before today and I'm not even sure it was the same dude (but who else does that shit? Really?) and today he was with his wife and as soon as he put the separator thing down she must have seen my face and jumped in to move it off the belt almost immediately. She understands the primal, territorial language of supermarket shopping. Regardless, I still am seething now that he would attempt such a manoeuvre a second time. I went the whole way home replying the event in my head, thinking of how I could have cut that bitch up good by smashing a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry and used the pieces for some good ol' fashioned shiv practice. Or, just, you know, said something. So, Cosby sweater Fagin - watch out. I've thought of some really good zings for our next encounter that'll have you cowering in fear (example no#1: 'What are you doing?' TAKE THAT (and party) BITCH!)

Recluse Wisdom

I haven't meaningfully left my abode for the best part of two weeks. Two trips to the cinema, work stuff and food shopping doesn't count. This leaves me with very little to write about given that all I have to occupy me are my thoughts, some books, humous, and downloaded American televisual programs. None of which anyone really needs to know anything about beyond the fact they exist. Which they all do. (I think).

So what can I teach you, what wisdom can I impart despite my current recluse status? I mean, Emily Dickinson wrote insightfully and beautifully about life and love without ever really leaving the house, maybe I can attempt the same thing?

Or, and more likely, maybe I can just tell you the following:

- Middle-aged women in groups of three or more are terrifying. Completely terri-fy-ing. I don't know why, when individually they are merely intimidating, if they group up they scare me shitless. I'm not sure how they manage to be so unassuming in their nice cardigans and flowery-print tops (I don't mean this as a criticism, I wear similar garb for work. It's called 'being a do-gooder for the Council') and yet so fear inducing at the same time. Nothing is more likely to give me a panic attack than an invite for a coffee with six middle aged ladies. Not even thoughts of the inevitable zombie apocalypse (brother has cultivated a vegetable patch to allow us to cope for at least a few weeks after this occurs - it's called 'planning for the future', maybe you want to look it up some time?). Zombies just eat your flesh, middle-aged ladies have dark powers far exceeding mere reanimated corpses - they intimidate and subtly criticise in ways where you're not sure they actually criticised you but you feel slighted nonetheless up until there is nothing left but a quivering mess of quarter aged girl. If you were wondering whether or not I have a complex relationship with my mother then yes, why do you ask?

- The Hampshire Dyslexic Society uses Lee from Blue as a reason you shouldn't be ashamed of having dyslexia.

Seriously.

So, ok, long gone are the days when I could legitimately carry around a hatred for the R'n'B boy band Blue with their frosted tips and cargo pants and duets with Stevie Wonder that made me want to shoot myself in the face. I have had to accept they existed and move on (though I will say in the new 'we sell, we buy' music shop in Southampton 76% of their stock seems to be exclusively made up of Blue albums. There are more people wishing to forget Blue existed and part with their precious 'One Love' than we previously thought, which gives me a sliver of hope for the human race) but really, you are using Lee from Blue to make dyslexia seem ok? You, and don't take this the wrong way, you know who he is right? Here are some choice 'Lee from Blue' quotes just in case they passed you by the first time:

After 9/11:
"Who gives a fuck about New York when whales and elephants are being killed?"
[Everyone? I think everyone gave a fuck. If your point is that there are other things going on on our planet that are abhorrent then I do not disagree Sir but your point is diluted slightly when thousands of people were killed in an unparalleled act of aggression and destruction that changed the face and direction of the entire human race. Just slightly though.]

On seduction techniques:
"If I fancy a girl, I'll tell her. I'll say: 'You're fit'"
[And I'm sure they've been waiting their life to hear such words of beauty spoken by a man with the heart of a poet such as yourself.]

"I try not to sleep with every girl I see, but it's hard!"
[Obviously.]

Existential Musings:
"I still have imaginary friends who I talk to in my head."
[Actually, so do I.]

"There is something really mysterious about lions. They could rip you apart if they wanted to, but at the same time they look so cuddly. Can you imagine what humans look like to animals? They must think we're so weird."
[Mustn't they just?]

"To be honest everything goes over my head a bit."
[STOP THE PRESSES! THIS JUST IN!]

So... yeeeeah. That's your role model. Um... Congratulations?

- My skin radiates with (pasty) goodness up until I set one foot out of the door, at which point I have a breakout so severe children are afraid to look at me. I think that's God's way of telling me I shouldn't leave the house.

- Snog, Marry, Avoid is the greatest.

Emily Dickinson has got shit on me. This recluse-wisdom thing is a piece of piss.

This guy

Oh christ, this guy.

He's like everywhere. He haunts my dreams.

When I drink water, which I do, I'm not knocking the water drinking, but when I do drink water (FROM A TAP - who am I, Scrooge McDuck?) I rarely get a camera crew to film me doing it. And even then, even without the camera crew, I'm not all nonchalant about how normal and fun and refreshing it is to be drinking water. I drink my water and shut the fuck up (and then I drink your milkshake, I drink it up).

And yes, I know he's an actor paid to perform some lines written by some Non Draper guy (I'm totally copyrighting 'Non Draper' btw) with a faux-hawk and an increasing cocaine addiction, but why does he have to perform them so annoyingly? It's particularly grating because their last ad campaign had a talking volcano and a dinosaur called Tyrannosaurus Alan. That's the kind of shit I can can get behind. (Or at least smirk to myself whenever it comes on and never admit to anyone that I've been so easily manipulated by advertising when I reach for a Volvic water bottle in the queue at the petrol station when I wasn't even thirsty in the first place). I ain't impressed by some hipster loser who works in a restaurant and takes his breaks OUTSIDE so he can DRINK HIS WATER (?!) with his overly relaxed talking-to-camera demeanor and patchy facial hair and hairstyle that was last popular around the time Kurt Cobain was blowing his brains onto a wall.

Which is maybe something this guy needs to consider. That's all I'm sayin'.

Tip of the day: Do not get me started on the Orange cinema adverts.

Empty

You're sat there, in an all-you-can-eat restaurant looking around at your family, or the family you've known since you were 13, all because your mother happened to start dating a man who was chubby with a beard and came equipped with four children of his own. Four children who turned your world upside down, who made you a stranger in your own house, who made the experience of growing up even harder than it already had been.

Not that teenage years are easy for anyone; the awkwardness in your own body - the way it bends and twists differently than before and doesn't sit right on your frame; the isolation - the feeling that no-one has ever felt the things that you do, has never thought the thoughts that you have (though of course they do and of course they have; you just don't realise that till much, much later); the hormone surges; the unknowingness of life, of yourself... it all combines so that no matter where you sit on the social scale, teenage years are hard. No matter the state of your family life, teenage years are hard. No matter how comfortable you are with yourself, teenage years are hard.

For one thing, it's unjust. Adults win continuously just because they are adults. The unfair things that teachers say to you have to be accepted because they are your teachers. The unfair things your parents say to you have to be accepted because they are your parents. You are not allowed to fight for yourself because you are a child and they are the adults and they know best (they do not know best). Rebellion doesn't run through your blood like it does for others. You bide your time and hope that it gets better.

You carry around an anger for many years that things were made harder than they needed to be. You learn not to reveal emotion - it was something that came naturally anyway but you honed that instinct and made it a part of you. You remember back in the distant past your father screaming at you to stop crying and when you claim to him that you can't just stop crying he loses all respect for you in that moment, (you both know it but don't acknowledge it) because of course you can. Even though you are seven.

You learned a lot that day.

You now don't reveal much of yourself to people. Your closest friends don't know half the thoughts that run through your head. You do your best to disguise your pain in front of them. You are there to make other people feel better, that's the role you've assigned yourself; the one who gets told the secrets, not the one who reveals them. You wonder if you've isolated yourself too much. There was a time when it seemed honesty was the only way forward but the words get stuck in your throat these days. They sit behind your tongue, they formulate at night and invade your dreams, but when it comes to letting them out during daylight hours they get caught and stay trapped within you. They weigh you down, make it harder to breathe, make it harder to fly. You remember a time when those things were second nature, a time when you had managed to burn off what wasn't working. But you have found yourself laden with baggage again. The one thing you hadn't wanted to happen.

You try and tell people how you feel, try and not become sulky. They hear you but they do nothing or they don't hear you and pretend there is no problem - I haven't noticed you being a bitch they say. They are lying. (Or just so adept at pretending it's become second nature to ignore problems). You want someone to sit there and beat the truth out of you. You know that's the only way the words will start spilling out; you've got too much control over the words to let them tumble from your lips of their own accord. You sit with your feet tucked under a cushion, your arms wrapped around your knees, on a sofa with the boy who was supposed to be simple and uncomplicated and make you feel better and he makes you feel worse. The antidote to the messy and serious situation you were just in is not having the desired effect. What now? You calmly explain in what manner he has hurt you with no malice attached (but perhaps heavy with sarcasm). You unfurl yourself from the sofa and sit in a chair on the other side of the room and slowly zip up your boots. You pick up your coat and push your arms through the sleeves one at a time. You tuck your hair into your hat in that way that makes it look like you've been preening in front of the mirror for hours to get it just so but seems to just happen naturally. I'll text you tomorrow he says I am sorry for being a twat. You mutter indecipherable words under your breath as you pull the front door shut. Standing up for yourself was supposed to feel more empowering than this.

You just feel empty.

And then a day later you're sat there, in an all-you-can-eat restaurant looking around at your family, or the family you've known since you were 13, and you realise the anger you've been carrying around for years has gone. It doesn't seem to matter anymore. Other events have occurred that have taught you what is important and what isn't and this particular anger just isn't. Losing this anger was supposed to feel more empowering than this.

You just feel empty.

No place left to hide

I've had nightmares the past two nights and it's freaking me out.

The first, I'd rather not talk about but let's just say it's not too difficult to work out its genesis as people have been RUINING my denial mantras by discussing my ex on facebook and making these discussions appear in front of my eyes where my eyes INSIST on reading them. Stupid facebook and it's stupid smug facebook face needs a good face punching and needs it fast. Thinks it knows what's best for me by sending me email notifications about stuff I DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT. I guess I could turn these notifications off but that would mean logging on to facebook which leaves me with a vague feeling of self-disgust at the best of times. But anyway, icky dream with obvious characters being icky I can work out. That's fine. But the second dream is horrific BEYOND BELIEF*.

I was having a normal, fairly enjoyable dream. Sex had been involved at one point. It was nice. It bordered on lucid without it being completely lucid which is the best balance I can have as my lucid dreams make me more exhausted than when I went to sleep. After a bit of adventuring through the streets of not-London-but-London (you've had dreams, you know what I mean), I found myself walking along in a shopping centre with my mother and suddenly a flock of pigeons flew towards us (this would normally be bad enough on it's own but wait, there's more). She ducked and pulled her jumper over her head and, for whatever reason, this made me the target of the pigeon's wrath and they attacked my lower back with their ugly pigeon beaks (!) and then wouldn't let go (!!!!!) despite me trying to beat them off as best I could. I had to wake myself up to get out of that one and my back really hurt. It felt like I'd been pinched loads of times and every time I've closed my eyes since then I've felt the pigeon beaks grabbing hold of my back fat and refusing to let go. Leaving me to ponder, WHY DOES MY BRAIN HATE ME? This is what it conjures up when I'm not there to keep an eye on it. You've got pigeons (my mortal enemy), pain, and back fat. The three things I would rather live without were I given the choice. I don't even get where the pain came from, I was sleeping alone on a soft mattress. I'm not even a princess so, even if there were a packet of Birds Eye Petit Pois underneath aforementioned mattress (and I'm obviously not ruling that out), sleeping on top of them wouldn't cause me to bruise my delicate princess skin. Because I'm not a princess (just a bitch).

I wouldn't mind so much were dreams not one of my favourite things ever. I love going on dream adventures, or watching my dream movies (I have seen both There Is No Blood and Milk in my sleeping head before getting to view them at the cinema), or getting to have dream sex (I seem to have quite a lot of dream sex. My dream brain is even more of a slut than my waking brain). My dreams are always really vivid and I always remember them really well. It was one of the few joys I have left in life. And now I can't even close my eyes without feeling like a pigeon has a chunk of my lower back clamped between it's pigeon jaws.

The pigeons have invaded my dreams. There is no place left to hide.

* Not to be confused with 'Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction' presented by 'Commander William T Riker'** aka Johnathan Frakes
** I swear on Paris Hilton's chihuahua I had to look that name up. But then, if I'm honest, it was just to double check he was a commander and not a lieutenant so maybe I'll just shut up.

Burn this motherfugger down

So here's a thing I learned today: the well respected medical institution John Hopkins closed down it's gender reassignment clinic because they didn't believe people who had had the surgery were any happier afterwards than they had been before. Apparently all the issues these people thought would be relieved by finally being in the 'right' body, remained and John Hopkins (in their infinite wisdom) figured that 'meh, what's the point of going through all that faff when it doesn't do any good?'


I may have condensed the actual decision making process that went into that quite considerably but that is, for the most part, for realz.

If we ignore the whole chunk of stuff about how our heterocentric society disregards any break from 'the norm' with, at best, suspicion and, at worst, outright hostility which may in fact maybe perhaps possibly still make life difficult after the op in similar ways to before due to secondary sex characteristics that aren't changed such as hand size ( I would be fine as a female-to-male transsexual thanks to my giant man hands, which is a small comfort should I ever realise this is an issue for me) then I think we can get to the core of something that is a universal problem. Not a problem in the literal sense of millions of people being born as the wrong gender (though there could be - I don't know, and am too lazy to look up, the statistics) but more the metaphorical idea that we all have to go on a journey to accept ourselves as we truly are - and do we do this to be 'happy' or do we do this because there is no other option?

Firstly, what is 'happy'? I would be interested to see how the John Hopkins crowd define it. Having done a psychology degree I know that a great many people interested in the human brain and behaviour have developed tests and score cards and the like in order to measure happiness. Nothing I ever saw in this regard ever struck me as defining happy in the way I understood it. For a start, 'happy' is a transitory emotion that we shouldn't expect to last any longer than any other emotion. Happy is me sitting in an audience watching Richard Herring tell jokes about wanking, but, for better or worse, I don't sit in an audience watching Richard Herring tell jokes about wanking on a permanent basis. Happy exists but somewhere along the line we've skewed the interpretation of it to mean something different. Just as sad is now a synonym for depression (one is healthy, one is not. One is transitory, one is not), happy has become a synonym for content. It's important we make the distinction because one state of being is achievable and the other isn't. If the John Hopkins people are looking for 'happy' post-op transsexuals they are going to find as many of them as they would find 'happy' non-transsexuals; not a lot. That has nothing to do with whether you cut their bits off or not.

Which, in turn, leads us to another point. Is it worth doing something if you don't experience pure positivity from doing it? And should that matter if, as in the case of transsexuals, it's surely not about a happy/sad dichotomy but is just people going on a very literal journey to become more of themselves than they were before? Is it not just an outward manifestation of what we all go through if we're to live our lives the way we want to. It's a painful, horrible, heart wrenching process but, in the end, you find out what and who you are. This isn't about 'happy' it's about living life the best way you can.

I've always been interested in this type of thing - the journey we take to become human. Physically we may be born as human but mentally it takes a lot of effort to get to where we need to go. Girls who were born boys (and vice versa) just have to deal with the physical and the mental journey to become human. The first step in all these journeys is destruction as a form of creation. We have to break apart ourselves and the world we've been led to believe exists if we want to put it all back together again in a way that suits us.

If John Hopkins think this is (or should be) a process ending in unwavering joy it would appear they've fallen into the trap that seduces a lot of us: the journey to become human doesn't stop, it's a continuing adventure with continuing pitfalls and indeed, continuing wonderment. It's only by taking step after step that we can approach anywhere we need to go. I am still learning this now but it's becoming more and more apparent the things I need to do to find contentment. In times past, having gone through the things I have gone through in the last few months , I would have allowed myself a wallow, a time-out from dealing with life.

I now know how useless that is.

What I have to do is engage, and keep engaging, with life. Whether that means writing every day, going to see a play, reading books, spending quality time with friends, painting a picture, doesn't matter. I know how to give myself a shot at contentment and it's not by doing nothing. It might not be easy engaging and doing these things that I do when I don't want to, or I'm too tired, or I'm feeling a bit poorly, but it's not meant to be easy all the time - you just have to keep doing it anyway. It's the only chance you've got.

I have been in love with both an alcoholic and a gay man. Although very different issues, both these things deal with the person in question facing up to truths that they would have ideally liked to ignore, or not to exist in the first place. They both continuously make allusions to this; one talks about how he will never have kids because he would feel bad when it's so hard growing up anyway to lumber him/her with homosexual parents (I think this is bullshit for all the reasons just stated - life isn't easy whatever and as long as you can give a child a safe and loving home then they're about ten steps of everyone else who haven't been given that luxury. There's a lot more in the latter category than we would like to admit), the other gave up completely because he just found it all too fucking hard. I have no time for that way of thinking anymore. It is hard being truthful, it is hard becoming human, but guess what; it's meant to be, and it doesn't suddenly become easy because of one event (whether that be having your gender reassigned to what it should be, admitting to yourself that your sexuality is one that doesn't comply with the norm, or very suddenly finding yourself coming to terms with the fact that your reliance on alcohol has got out of control). Life carries on after these events and it's your responsibility to keep living as truthfully as you did in that moment after your moment of clarity has passed. In fact, you now owe it to yourself even more - that is hard to keep up. But you fucking do it because taking the blue pill when you've already taken the red pill isn't an option.

So, basically what I'm saying is, fuck the John Hopkins psychology department. Burn this motherfucker down.

Who's Afraid of the Stuffed Animal?

As a general rule, if I am frightened of doing something then I take that as a good indication that I need to be doing it. I do not let fear rule me, confronting your fears is the only way you'll ever grow and learn everything you to about yourself.

Unless it comes to stuffed animals that are too smug or babies who have CGI mouths*.

I was trying to explain my fears to my beau the other day. He insists this is one of the (myriad of) reasons I am a crazy person and why I will end up living in an abandoned railway carriage surrounded by piles upon piles of old newspapers and a bunch of feral cats my only company.

So, here for anyone that requires it, is a handy guide on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the name of stuffed animals. The key things to remember are that:
- The animal can't look as if it knows more than you do;
- The animal can't look as if it is judging you in some way;
- The animal can't have the cold black eyes of a serial killer.

It's really quite simple but here are some illustrations of my point:

This monkey knows too much. Any monkey who has eyebrows that can lift that far knows too much. His smile is smug and he is clearly patronising me whilst quietly plotting my destruction.

He must be destroyed.


On the other hand, this monkey is clearly a dumbass. I do not mind this when it comes to stuffed animals. He does not know more than me. He does not want me dead. He knows all what a stuffed monkey should know: n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

This bear has judged, not just me, but all my brethren aswell. Fucking bear can shit off. He's wearing a baseball tee with 'Dusty & Swifty' the cats on it (a t-shirt I clearly want more than anything). His arms and legs akimbo, trying to draw you into his world of evil so he can stab you in the back with a 7" kitchen knife when you least expect it. I am not falling for it. I know when I've been judged harshly and this bear is doing it.



This giraffe on the other hand looks like my red dog when I enquire if she wants puppy dinner or a walk. Her head goes to one side and she says with her eyes 'Did you just say what I think you did?'. That's what this giraffe is saying. It judges not, merely exists. This is acceptable stuffed animal behaviour.



Finally we have the most evil thing my eyes have ever seen:


Do NOT go anywhere alone with this koala. Do NOT do anything he asks of you. He wants to slaughter, not just you, but the entire human race. What scares me is that I think he may succeed. He has the cold, detached look of a determined creature hellbent on destruction. This is the stuffed animal version of Dick Cheney. STAY. AWAY.

When it comes to babies with CGI mouths there is no real explanation needed. According to some, it's 'funny' and 'cute'.

It is neither funny, nor cute.

[But this is a man who laughs at the Orange mobile phone adverts in the cinema and thinks tickle-me-Elmo is adorable. He is not qualified to give any opinions on what is 'funny' or what is 'cute'. Remind me why I'm with him again...]

This advert is an abomination against all the laws of God and man. Firstly, WHO ALLOWED A BABY TO BECOME TO C.E.O OF A FACTORY?! Which Board Execs voted him in? What qualifications did he have that made him the obvious choice to run a regional toilet paper making operation? Has he any other experience that made him the suitable candidate from the many others who must have applied? He doesn't even use toilet paper BEING A BABY AND ALL so what unique perspective is he bringing to the company not even having a basic understanding of what consumers may be looking for in their toilet paper needs? Plus, HE'S A BABY WITH A CGI MOUTH! DON'T LET HIM BE IN CHARGE OF ANYTHING! IT IS SICK AND WRONG!

Anyways, yes, my feelings on this are genuinely this strong. But a 40 second advert is one thing, thanks to my new obsession with Videogum I have discovered that my biggest fear has been realised in a 1999 movie called 'Baby Geniuses'** (and then again in 2004 with 'SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2'). Literally everything in my world crumbled when I read about this. 97 minutes (IN A ROW) of babies with CGI mouths being sassy. I have been throwing up since I found out and have not been able to stop. This thing exists in the world. Kathleen Turner and Doc Brown were involved in its production. I can't watch Romancing the Stone or Back to the Future ever again without thinking, in the very far back of my mind, 'Christ, they allowed 97 minutes of babies with CGI mouths to exist. I have to go throw up now'.

It's basically going to put a big dampner on those movies from now on.

Now let us all forget our woes with this song about Beyonce in Burger King and concentrating our engergies on finding where we can purchase a Kid 'n' Play t-shirt.


* I'd like to point out that I like babies who do not have CGI mouths. They are fine. In small doses.
**At least I now know for sure that the culturally accepted plural of 'genius' is 'geniuses' and less 'genii'. A movie about baby geniuses taught me that. Shoot me in the head now. Seriously.

We're going backwards, not forwards

Doesn't this just make your blood boil? Doesn't it make you want to punch and scream and yell at how unfair the world is? Doesn't it just make you want to raise up as a collective consciousness and completely reinvent the way the world is run?

Because it does for me. Am I doing anything about it? No. In this particular instance I can't think of anything I can do. I don't live in California so I can't vote, I don't know anyone in California so I can't tell them to vote, I do remember being three years old and experiencing an earthquake in California but I don't think that's got much to do with this issue and nor does it allow me any voting powers. What I can do is write and let these words escape into the atmosphere. It won't change nuthin' but at least they'll be there nonetheless. (For those that didn't get the memo; words are very powerful).

Why do I even care? Well, let's see. Firstly, does it not scare you shitless that they ushered in this progressive act and the 'powers that be' are now threatening to take it away? It scares me SHITLESS. If it can happen in California then it can happen A-N-Y-W-H-E-R-E. I don't want to wake up one day and find I'm a character in a Margaret Atwood novel whose only purpose is to provide offspring to the upper classes with no rights over my own body and only having one choice about the way I live my life; be this person and nothing else. I don't want that, neither should you, neither should any free-thinking, right-minded person. But if this Prop 8 goes through then that takes a step along a path where that dystopian future lays. All these rights that women and minorities and homosexuals have now, have had to be fought for in the past. People have died to make sure we have more choices on offer. If this goes, what's to say everything else won't follow? These 'rights' we have now, and the laws that protect those rights, are not immovable objects. They are formed within and around the societies that created them in the first place. They reflect the state of mind of everyone that lives within the reality we all inhabit. They can be changed and they will be changed if everyone doesn't make a conscious decision here-and-now to keep chipping away at inequality and restrictions of freedom.

Allowing a step backwards, allowing a past equality to be overwritten TERRIFIES me. Even more than Amy Winehouse's crackface terrifies me (which is a lot).

Secondly, I don't understand homophobia and I mean I genuinely don't understand it. There are some concepts in this world that completely pass me by and other people seem to 'get' implicitly and this is one of them. I think maybe this can be filed under the kind of thing that makes me awesome and sucky at the same time. I simply DO NOT CARE what other people do as long as it doesn't affect me. Even if you are my bestest best friend in the world, unless you are stood in front of me crying or bleeding or begging for my help then... I don't care. I'm far too wrapped up thinking about me. I have a shitload of introspection and over-analysis on myself to perform. This is not to say I don't love my friends or family and I don't want them to be happy - because I do - but, I'm far to bothered about me to waste time bothering about you (so, you know, see above as to why this riles me so... It could, one day, affect me!) I mean, I'm being kind of glib and you shouldn't take this too literally but, there is a kernel of truth there; I just don't give a fuck a lot of the time. For instance, I am the LAST person in the world that the silent treatment works on because I just keep on living my life whilst you are quietly harbouring a grudge and tending to it and making it grow. I might wonder why someone hasn't been in contact if something reminds me of them but, other than that, out of sight; out of mind. I think a lot of the world's problems could be solved by that mindset. Why can't everyone just wish for everything to be awesome all of the time? Like, I want you all to happy and I will help you achieve that if you ask or if you are in front of my face crying or bleeding but, other than that, you worry about you and I'll worry about me. You go off and find your happy and I'll go off and I'll find mine and we'll have adventures and overcome adversity and all that shit and as long as getting to that happy doesn't negatively impact other humans then... just do it. Don't worry that this person whom you don't know is fucking this other person whom you don't know, they're consenting adults both off finding their own happy. You're finding your happy remember? It doesn't (shouldn't) matter to you what these guys over here are doing. And yeah, I know, they've fucked each other sufficiently to decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives dedicated to fucking each other and arguing about who is hotter in Gossip Girl and whose turn it is to wash up. And yes, I see they've stood up in front of all their friends and signed bits of paper making the fucking and Gossip Girl and washing up arguments official but that's got nothing to do with you or your happy. They've gone off and found their own happy by themselves. You were too busy observing all this from the safe distance of your judgy deck through the lenses of your accusatorial binoculars and forgot that YOU had your OWN happy to find. Jeez, that's super lame and I feel kind of bad for you but WHY ARE YOU STILL STOOD THERE JUDGING AND CARING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T REALLY AFFECT YOU?!

For seriousballs (this is my new favourite, very irritating, catchphrase) y'all... Explain it to me.

I do get that there's two general types of homophobics in this world; the first type are people who have this book written, however many years ago, within which it says that homosexuality is unnatural and even evil. They chose to believe the words written in these books as literal truth for a myriad of reasons and ok, that's fine. I've sort of come to an acceptance and peace with the idea of religion - religion and I have never got on but I've been furious with it for far too long. I'm letting it go. I'm even thinking that some of this stuff might be kinda, sorta, useful as a metaphor for the human condition (goooo Gnostics!) but you will never get me to understand why you follow one bit and not other bits. Why you think Roman 1:26-32 is worthy and Leviticus 19:15-17 is arguable I will never know. That's up to you I guess. I'm off finding my own happy. I suggest you do the same.

Then there are those who just find the idea of homosexuality abhorrent and disgusting. These people... I understand even less. Mostly because of, you know, the whole 'I don't give a fuck so why do rest of y'all' thing. This is where I start to fall out again with religion because if it wasn't for that then these people wouldn't have been conditioned to think this way in the first place. Although, having said that, I think that's a bit of a cop-out as I remember having a conversation with my mother when I was around 10 or 11 about this very topic (it just exasperated me that being accused of 'gaydom' on the playground was acceptable) and getting really riled up because she couldn't explain it to me. Why are people homophobic? Seriously? And she finally admitted that she sometimes felt uncomfortable being around this lesbian she worked with so she did kind of understand partly where the prejudice came from. This is a moment that stands out very clearly in my mind - not least because a little of the idolatry that I held for my mum died that day (don't get me wrong, I still think she's awesome and weird and funny and whatnot but this is actually quite an important step in anyone's development so, it's sad and vital all at the same time) but what mostly remains from that story is that I. Do. Not. Get. It. and everyone else seems to. Even brought up in a house where, even if prejudice wasn't championed exactly it was still something that existed, however undercurrent and non-verbalised that existence was - I'm not homophobic. So why are other people?

Equal marriage rights for girls who are boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys just seems logical to me. The whole homophobia thing is just OLD now, I'm so bored of it. It's not logical or useful in any way, shape or form. People have been gay since people existed. Outlawing it didn't stop it from happening, giving marriage rights to all those that want them will NOT ruin the institution of marriage. Surely it only strengthens it? Makes it about love and life as we know it now rather than something that was invented to just strengthen family ties and solidify existing pacts between different families? It makes it relevant. It makes it something that we all have to accept even if some of us don't want to. You know what else? Genuinely, it KILLS me that Gay Boy said, when he first came out, that if he could choose he would be straight because it's easier. He is as perfect a person as you will ever find. Just reconnecting with him over the last year has made me a better person. Everyone falls in love with him wherever he goes (case in point: 15 out of 19 people ticked him on his first foray into speed dating! I mean, come ON!) and the world we live in has made him feel bad for this huge part of his identity! It made him feel so bad he felt required to hide it for 25 years. That shit? Is bananas (side note: 'Hollaback Girl' taught me how to spell 'bananas' at the first attempt which is something I was never able to do before that song. True story.) Identity is an intense interest of mine and I will talk your ear OFF about how 'coming out' is a great metaphor for accepting you as you and, if you load me up on a little vino rouge and ask me nicely, I will probably admit that I was a bit jealous of Gay Boy's coming out because he has this tangible thing that PROVES he's accepted himself and I have to make do with just adding bits and pieces to myself and my identity as I go along. There's no date stamp on me accepting me as me. But, you know, regardless, it all happened at the right time as far as I was concerned anyway because I was dealing with a different boy who was feeding me half-truths and illusions of honesty and I had neared the end of my tether on it all and along comes this person who just sets the truth free right in front of my eyes. Once I saw how it was done I was able to go off and find my own happy which is something I, and he, continue to do. I cannot envision any way in which honesty - the good kind of honesty, the kind of honesty that sets you free - could be bad. For any of us. Life has very few guarantees but I truly believe that the more you allow people to be themselves (and that's all 'coming out' is - and why it works as a metaphor for coming to terms with your own self generally - he's now free to be more of himself than he was before), the better this world is going to be.

So why are they trying to deny the rights of people that want to celebrate honesty and love and being as much of themselves as they can be? How does that ruin anything? These are the tenents we should be teaching our kids to follow. Why go backwards (we've been there! It's well-chartered territory! It DOESN'T WORK!) when you can go forwards?