Why was Storm surrounded by people dressed as Greendale’s mascot? Is Louis a Community fan?

Buggin'

So my bro comes home the other day to chillax from all the nerding out he's been doing for his Nerd MSc-ing (or like 'physics' if you want to call it by it's proper name) (actually if you want to call it by it's proper name then you'll have to ask him cos I don't flipping know) and he tells me this story about the people who live in his halls that has actually been keeping me awake at night.

Get this: Two (boyf and girlf) TWO! of them! Wash up dishes (acceptable) and then put the dishes away WET (unacceptable). TWO OF THEM! Two human beings think this is a good idea! To wash dishes and then immediately put those dishes back in the cupboard without even allowing them to drip dry first! They do this! All the time!

W-H-A-T T-H-E F-L-I-P?????

I don't... I can't... On every level this baffles me. Utterly baffles me. So first off, who in their right mind (someone of a university educated level lest we forget) doesn't at some point go 'hang on, it might be better if these items are dry next time I want to use them' and then, from that point take a fanciful leap of imagination and go 'maybe stacking these items in the cupboard is not the best way of ensuring their dryness next time I want to use them' and then power walk (in their mind) to the conclusion with all the flashing lights and giant neon arrow that's pointing towards a sign saying 'WASH UP, THEN DRY UP, THEN PUT AWAY'.

But, ok. Let's say this person, when they were little, their dad left their mum. Their mum became a total wreck. This person (who was, lest we forget, preciously young at the time) thought 'I want to do something to help mummy' and because the house was a bit of a mess as mum desperately tried to hold things together and failed, and they were still a bit too small to use the hoover, didn't really understand what the dust cloth was for, they thought 'I'll do the washing up for mummy'. And then they dragged the big blue box from the playroom into the kitchen and stood on it and did the best job they could; scrubbing away at pots and pans, swooping the dishcloth over the plates and watching the muck dissolve into the bubbles. Finally the kitchen, whilst not spotless, started to look more like it had when mummy and daddy were still living in the same house. And because this child was so young they then assumed that because these things were clean they could immediately go back in the cupboards so even though they weren't sure of where things lived they put everything away. Mummy came downstairs after her nap (third of the day and it was still only 3pm) and looked at the kitchen in amazement 'I can't believe you did this!' she exclaimed as a dawning realisation that she had to do better for the both of them, had to stop feeling sorry for herself, started to kick in. 'This is amazing!*'. This person had never seen their mum look so happy and sad at the same time. They knew they'd done some momentous. It was a landmark moment in both their lives. And because of this she never mentioned that you're supposed to dry the dishes before putting them away. Even as time went on and this person would sometimes help out after their mum had cooked a delicious meal for everyone and still continued to wash-but-not-dry, their mum never said anything as it reminded her of that cold day in April when she'd walked into the kitchen and been kicked into getting her life back togther. It had meant she was ready and willing to accept love from Mr Barfield three years later and had never been happier since.

THAT IS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE REASON NO ONE HAD EVER THOUGHT TO MENTION IT'S STUPID TO WASH BUT NOT DRY YOUR DISHES. THE ONLY ONE. But there's two people doing this. TWO! So you would have thought one person would have mentioned to the other 'this really isn't how you're supposed to do this'. But they haven't! SO I JUST DON'T GET IT. I hate when I don't get stuff. It bugs me. I'm totally buggin' right now because of this.

*My mum would have been 'what the fuck have you done??!'**
**This is a woman who lost her shit because I put a teabag and a teaspoon of coffee into the same mug cos I wanted to see what that tasted like*** 'WHAT A WASTE! WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY!' she screamed when I told her what I'd done which I still don't really get cos a) I drank it and b) it was a teabag or a teaspoon of coffee extraneously used. Not like I'd poured diamonds down the drain.
*** Gross fyi

Dilemma

Ordered a Cat Stevens baseball tee off the interweb:



(as you do. That's basically why Al Gore invented the internet in the first place - for me to find it easier to purchase Cat Stevens and Devo tees with my tax rebate money) and it came and it was awesome (NO DUH) but then I saw this little bitching label and I'm not sure if I can wear it as I feel morally reprehensible even uttering the words "A******* A******".


Which is weird in itself as both you and I would imagine that a shop that deals so liberally in clothes made in gold or silver lamé would be my fav place in the world but seeing as you have to have thighs that are the circumference measurement of my upper arms to fit into anything and all their ads look like underage gymnast porn for balding middle-aged overweight guys I just ain't, ya dig?

Will still probs be rocking the C.S. t-shirt though because: Have you seen it? Ok then, let's be real. My morals aren't even that important to me anyway.

In all seriousness...

What the fuck is Gary Lucy doing with his hair? Is he just at that awkward 'growing it out' stage? I hate that stage almost as much as I hate Gary Lucy!


There is no reason for a man with that hairstyle to look so smug.



Yet smug he is. It genuinely bothers me!

Having said that, this is no better:


Poor lamb can't really win. I'll want to punch him in the throat whatever his hair looks like.

What with this and spending an inordinate amount of energy getting annoyed with how much of a dick Charlie in Party of Five is (CBS Drama, Saturday's 6pm) I've barely got enough time to listen to Savage Garden and cross stitch!

What?

No, really, WHAT?

So, um, RZA is a fine artist now? When did it become opposite day? Does that mean my rap career is finally gonna take off?

Reassurance

In case you are worried that the latest cold snap spells the beginning of the end of the world via global warming (cooling?) then please DO NOT BE ALARMED. It has been proven that if ice is chasing you, you can just run faster than ice and then close the door in ice's face.

HOW D'YA LIKE THEM APPLES SNOW?!

SNOW!

My car looks like a white-haired Mr T. (If Mr T looked like a car.)



In other news it took my bud 6 hours to get home last night. SIX HOURS to do a half hour trip! HOME AT MIDNIGHT IS UNACCEPTABLE WHEN YOU LEAVE WORK AT SIX. That's to Cardiff and back without getting to stop at Leigh Delamere! And she needed a wee!

Which makes me kinda glad I work at home.

Why now exactly?

Err... the internet has suddenly started freaking out that Andrew WK is not real? Or, he is real (in that he's not a hologram/robot from the future) but he was designed as an elaborate hoax by Dave Grohl? Um, one question... WHAT?



Y'all got too much time on yo' hands. Need to spend less time THINKIN' and more time PARTYING HARD if you know what I'm sayin'

[Via]

Pub pun fun

The number of lol beans this pub name is responsible for is almost incalculable. Unless you've got some kind of super computer to figure it out on, in which case NERD!

Colby

David Lynch made a short film about a Christian computer starring a young Biff Tannen.

Get ready for your soul to cry.



[Via]

Fire fighting

Listening to the radios and the blogs today, all of a quiver about racial tensions and strikes, and you'd be forgiven for thinking we were actually living in 1989 NOT 2009. Can't be though cos if it was I'd be wearing leggings and a sweater dress (*looks down slowly* O. M. G. !!!) (as long as that weird new kid starts playing Johnny B. Goode before the end of the night then we know we're gonna be ok). My internet blog colleague P.D. Shawaddywaddy has written a much more eloquent and thoughtful post on this particular topic but the comment I started writing in response to it turned longer than a comment has any right to be (Blog comments! Know your place!) so I'm going to witter here rather than there, as I am wont to do.

So. Yes. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away lived a girl called Sazz who just so happened to be part of the Anti-Nazi League. She was one of those girls who has purple dipped hair and wears purple Doc Martins (there was more purple than is strictly necessary. Kinda like the grunge this guy in fact) and goes to clubs where they play Faith No More and S.O.A.D and The Smiths rather than fun things that people ACTUALLY want to listen to (like Britney and more Britney). ANYWAY. God she was annoyingly earnest. I hated that chick, for one thing there was no revelry in her inner dorkness AT ALL. For another, she saw the world as depressingly black and white. It was so lame. Like, one time, she stopped talking to a work colleague because someone else told her (AS A JOKE it subsequently turned out) they'd voted for the BNP. She didn't try and engage that person to a) find out if it was true or b) work out, even if they had done that, why that might have done that. Because there was right and there was wrong and nothing in between. So she just ceased talking to them full stop. She sure felt awful silly when it turned out to be a 'joke' (an hilarious, hilarious joke). Now, I think we can agree that racism is, like homophobia and sexism, so totally gay. It just is ok? Let's not quibble over that point. HOWEVER, with that in mind, how do you think we go about eradicating racism in the hearts of all those scampy racists? Because although you or I might objectively not get it (like, AT ALL!), they do. They might start sentences with the phrase 'I'm not racist but...' BUT don't be fooled! They are defo racist. Even if they then go on to insist that some of their 'best friends are black' again THIS IS JUST TRICKING YOU. Now, you might think, giving a platform to people who hold these views, not just in the secret squirrel 'I'm not racist but' way but in the flag-waving 'I'm totes a racist, here's my card to prove it' way, is counter-productive when what we (you and I, I mean) want is for there to be LESS racists and more NOT racists. Letting them have a voice legitimizes their arguments and makes the on-the-fencers more racist than before and makes skinheads go out looking for people to beat up etc etc. Well, maybe, but actually perhaps not...

I eventually quit the anti-nazi league because someone pointed out to me that it was kind of fascist to not let people have the opinions they want to have. Being 'anti' an opinion is inherently fascist. Don't get me wrong, kicking anyone out of the country with skin a darker shade than what St Tropez spray-on tan can give you kind of top trumps the thought-police side of fascism that the ANL have but basically what I'm saying is that fighting fire with fire doesn't work (unless it's in a forest). Just like how Georgey Porgey Bush fought people determinedly flying planes into skyscrapers by turning a free country into a phone-tapped, torture-happy, police state just made everyone go - See! U.S.A is SUCK.S.A! The only way forward is to fight abhorrent ideas with logic. Not censorship. Putting your hands over your ears and shouting NOT LISTENING! doesn't make those ideas any less real in the minds of those that hold them. If you are in the right then your ideas will hold up when being debated with rational thought and logic. THAT'S how you fight racism: reason. It might not change anyone's opinions there and then but if it sows some seeds of doubt in some of those 'I'm not racist but' crowd then that in itself can be counted as a victory. If you shine a light on the disgusting, vile opinions held by Griffin and his ilk then we will all just see a little clearer the extent of how disgusting and vile they are. Of course, it might stir up racial tensions and incite racial violence but if it means we discuss, in greater depth, why those tensions exist in the first place (and then, you know, do something about it) it's the first step to seeing them melt away (for precedent please see Brixton and Stonewall riots which lead to the Scarman Report and kickstarted the gay rights movement respectively - neither of those battles are won yet exactly but things are better now then they were before). A more harmonious society doesn't happen overnight and sometimes something bad is needed in order to push something good into occurring out of it. That's why I think the BBC are right to let him appear. Let us all see how stupid and contradictory and confused and evil the opinions of this man are - and not just suspect it but see it, and hear it, and argue with it so everyone knows it's wrong. Just like with that Jan Moir thing. She didn't write something that she thought was wrong (and I bet plenty of Daily Mail-ers read that with nary a hmm of dissent). It was only by other people pointing out the inherent flaws in her, frankly bizarre, argument that we could all reach a general consensus that The Daily Mail is a force for evil and must be stopped (that's what we all agreed right? Oh. Well, Old habits die hard I guess).

However, in all honesty, my sky plus is making me choose between watching this and Fearne Cotten interviewing Paris Hilton on ITV2. I think we all know where my allegiances lie.

In other news, today an old man saluted me, I saw a dude wearing a 'Choose MILF' t-shirt (for realz!) and I got stopped by the census squad twice! With the same man conducting the survey! It was kind of awkward and I don't know why really!

Men are from Earth, Women are also from Earth

From now on I'm taking all my dating advice from these guys. They seem to have it all figured out better than I do.

Oh hi!

I need to start dating in the 80's like, yesterday (except I was a child in the 80's so that's wrong on a number of levels but with a handy DeLorean and no roads* it shouldn't be an ish)


*Where we're going we don't need roads see? Because we have dating videos and they are awesome enough to handle our infrastructure requirements.

MyZombie

Visiting myspace now is visiting a relic of ye olde times gone by. It's like wondering through the streets of Pompeii or ducking in and out of the Pyramids - this is how we used to live it says isn't that strange? Yes, you reply (to myspace) (I don't know why you like talking to the internet so much and I've been meaning to tell you - it makes you a little weird) it is strange. What once was a thriving community full of top 8 battles and ever increasing pride at one's comments reaching into and beyond the thousand mark (really, these things used to seem important, not to me obviously, but to a... erm... friend of mine. Called Bazzlalish. Bazzalish is crazy) is now dead. No one comments, no top 8s change. The facebook bomb went off and left it stuck in 2006. It's eerie because everything looks the same as when you left it, the only tip off that the world has moved on is that you can see where the weeds have started to grow up between the cracks in the pavement. People referencing Howling Bells and being in awe of Heroes (no one is in awe of Heroes anymore. Let's be clear on this). It's the cyber-equivalent of Chernobyl (and that actually works quite well because facebook is just as dangerous as - if not more so - a soviet nuclear power plant. That is science and the science is tight). It depresses the hell out of me, not because I miss myspace (I am nearing 27, I might happily spend an afternoon making up voices of fluffly penguins for my nephews enjoyment - and my enjoyment. Ok, you weedled it out of me. Congrats - but I have matured sufficiently to care not about social networking anymore. Much) but just as a reminder of the past. That ol 'nostalgia/you were a loser' dynamic rearing it's ugly head once again. Proustian rushes of you sat for hours following the conversations of people you didn't even know because they were friends of a friend of a guy that you spoke to once in a One Stop and had spent 13 hours of your life tracking down in the virtual kingdom of myspace. Facebook doesn't really allow for this level of cyber stalking to take place. You are able to more easily view conversation threads but only of people you KNOW. And who gives a shit about them? (Kidding guys, kidding. Sorta). You can't sniff around a person's friends to find out more about them, you can't find out what happened when that girl's friend snogged her ex boyfriend when he already had a new girlfriend and GOD! she was mad! How could they! But oh they were sorry and now, 2 months later, it's all fine again and do you guys want to go to the pub tonight lol?

Oh it was the best. Nipping in and out of people's lives without them ever knowing you were there. A thief in the night stealing a glimpse at their diary that they kept open for other people to read and allowed their friends to write in and probably knew, to some degree, that people they'd never met was reading all along.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, what is it a girl has to do to work up a good stalk nowadays? Clearly I'm going to have to invest in one of these. That is if I could ever be bothered to leave the house.

[Post Script. Oh god. I just realised that if I ever put half as much energy worrying about myself as I do about other people I'd be like, a gazillionaire by now and be flying on my private jet to Tahiti to meet Chuck Bass and discuss our wedding plans. This is disturbing to me but not enough for me to make any radical changes so let's let it slide.]

Big Yellow Taxi

My internet connection has been a bit wonky of late. It connects for a good two minutes at a time then goes cold, then starts up again. My broadband is such an internet tease it deserves everything it gets (especially looking like that). This shouldn’t really be a problem except for the times (and it is a lot of times) when I am suddenly attacked by an overwhelming urge to check on trivia about the actress who plays Julie Cooper (happens more often than you would think) or check to see whether or not I have Swine Flu (apparently if you don’t have any flu-like symptoms you probably don’t have swine flu. Who knew? Certainly not the trained medical professionals who are not adverse to proscribing Tamiflu: ‘the miracle cure that makes swine flu go away at least a day earlier than it would have done anyway! Just like magic!’, to anyone who decides they might want it and flat out lie to get it. Is it just me or does that seem counterproductive in the long run what with the annoying little habit viruses have of mutating and whatnot. Like my man Jeff Goldblum says; ‘life finds a way’. The government should be made aware that that applies to both man-eating dinosaurs and man-killing flu bugs.)

This is a problem. Not indulging every whim. Every thought left unchecked. If I can't look at pictures of David Cross and Amber Tamblyn then what can I do with my down time? Literally nothing. There is nothing else. I've checked. You might suggest I get out in to the sunshine (I retort; 'what sunshine?' and we all Lots of Love until the tears are streaming down our very British weather-chat loving faces), or go see a movie (I retort 'what movies?' and you look at me like I'm a retarted 4 year old and say 'any movie, Pick one' and I say, with the slightest hint of hope in my voice, 'G-Force?' and you go 'Sure. G-Force. I'm sure you'll love that' and I'll smile and start quietly humming to myself because I am too stupid to understand sarcasm and you walk away shaking your head slowly and rolling your eyes).

I just can't really remember what I did before the internet was there. Even if I'm just lounging and want to have a gander at Martin Amis's wikipedia entry and I can't it feels like a little piece of my basic human rights have been denied*. Not that I'm saying I'm like a Burmese political prisoner or anything but, basically, I'm like a Burmese political prisoner. Me and those guys (and girls! Sexist!) have so much in common it's unreal - they're not allowed to watch youtube videos of sharks with penises in their mouths either!) (No-one should be allowed to look at that). I don't remember randomly flicking through the encyclopedia (that is such a lie but I don't want you guys to think I'm a nerd - OMGs you guys don't think I'm a nerd do you? That's it, my life is officially over) (these things are so important) so, how am I supposed to get my random trivia fix? I guess I could read a book (you guys know I can't read!) but what else informs me where I know Rachel from The OC from? (Mona from Friends! How could I forget you?!) I guess, in the words of the world's foremost poet Sandi Thom, 'you don't know what you got till it's gone' (kidding I know that was by Amy Grant really).

*France agrees with me

Bop to the Top

I'm not really sure they should be selling this to children... Or me.



[For those unaware of such devises it's a HSM multicoloured pen. The best in other words. It looked a lot more innocent in its packaging*]

*That is what she said.

Goodbye to the past

The trouble with reliving your past is that , however much you want things to stay the same, they don't. Going back to a past lover, visiting an old stomping ground, doing the things you used to do when you yourself have moved on is nice but, due to it being tinged with a dewy-eyed nostalgia, is almost always a little melancholic as all that nostalgia is eroded almost immediately when confronted with the reality of now rather than being kept in a pretty little box with bows on it labeled 'The Past' in practice calligraphy script (shut up. You did for all of five minutes when you were 9 too) in your head. You remember what you used to be and know for certain that you are not that any more. However much you like yourself now you will always feel a certain affection for the person you once were - knowing that person is now dead hurts (it'd be weird if it didn't).

As such when I watch beloved tv shows (oh yeah, btw, this is all about teen tv shows - paddling in the shallow pools of pop culture is as deep as this chick gets) that spoke to me the first, or even second, time round - now? Not so much. Not in the same way. Recently E4 has gone cuckoo for the tv programming that I once had to illegally procure from our wonderful world wide interweb. Namely Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars and it's been causing me no end of heartache as the way I analyse the relationships and think about the characters now (compared to then) is so different it's like sitting there with my (pretend) grandmother and my (non existent) daughter both giving a simultaneous DVD commentary that I myself don't remember selecting when pressing play on the sky remote. These ladies may have been born from the same kind of place but their opinions on it are so diametrically opposed they may as well have brought up on different planets.

If nothing else, there's just something undeniably sad about remembering the past version of yourself watching these things and being moved by it; feelings things, thinking things, that you yourself, now, would never think or feel. Believing the sarcastic 'psychopathic jackass' Logan in Veronica Mars is the dreamiest dreamboat that ever did dream, wishing and hoping that Jess (aka Peter Petrelli) and Rory from the Gilmore Girls are meant to be when he was actually a total dick to her the entire length of their relationship. I knew I'd changed but I didn't have any way of measuring it before - it's clear I think and feel differently now (at least about tv shows). I get why all those posters at TWoP (I was a student alright! We have time on our hands when finding increasingly creative ways of not writing essays) hated these characters so much now. Because they were/are (it's difficult to define past and present tense when discussing fictional peeps) dicks. No doubt about it. Back then it was incomprehensible to me - couldn't they see that these boys were hurting and just needed the right sort of love and affection to make them right? I love and loathe the girl that saw and loved this way. She felt and thought hopelessly differently to me. It's like I've lost a friend I sort of put up with for a number of years even though I found her endlessly irritating but I know I'll never get her back. I miss her, but also, she was an idiot.

There is also, perhap, something undeniably sad about getting this melancholy about tv shows they transmit from E4 towers. I dunno, what am I? A tv scientist? (I am not a tv scientist) (But I kind of wish I was...)

The Rules

I spent a long time trying to be ok.

(I wasn't ok for a long time.)

Longer than I probably care to admit but, in this case, there was a particular reason for it and I can pinpoint it's genesis and evolution. I went through my five stages, not in a clear cut manner and not exactly in sequence but I think that's normal. Each was difficult in their own way but, weirdly (and something no one ever talks about that I can remember), each with their own pluses.

Denial was probably the worst but made me manic (as it has a tendency to do) and meant I got loads done. I didn't need more than 5 hours of sleep a night, I achieved everything I wanted to each day at work, I didn't really need food, and I exercised every day and lost a stone and a half in about a month. That was good. What was bad was sleeping with a guy that had treated me very badly in the past and feeling completely disconnected from every one and every thing. That wasn't so fun. But it did, as I said, have it plus points.

Anger was awesome and frightening. As anger is wont to be. As every middle class white girl will tell you, anger is something we are taught to fear rather than utilise. Which, ironically, makes me kind of angry. Anger is one of the best tools you have for changing things. It is necessary but that is never made clear. You're never taught have to use it effectively. It's always, pretend everything is fine, act like you're normal, never access your golden goddess and bring down a reign of fire which leaves you in a no-mans land of nothingness. Which sucks. Because when your golden goddess is rising everyone is telling you to stay quiet and sit down and don't be any trouble (if there is one piece of advise I wish I could impart to the teenage me it is that you should always, always be trouble and stand up and scream). Anger is so important (do not let anyone tell you different). The trick is (as always), to make sure it's directed at the right targets. This is where I fell down. I was angry at him, sure, but mostly I angry at me for not being there for him, I was angry at my friends and family for not being there for me (they kinda were but when you do your golden goddess shit no one knows where to look or how to act, and to be fair I didn't know where people should be looking or how I wanted them to act but I know I fucking hated them for not looking or acting in a way that made me feel better). I was angry at boys from the past that meant something to me, I was angry at God, I was angry at it all. Everyone fucking pissed me off and I wanted them to disappear. Anger might galvanise you but it also makes you fucking terrifying to yourself and everyone else. It continues to linger now but it's not at the top of tree anymore which is good because it's also, amongst other things, it's fucking exhausting.

Bargaining came and went pretty quickly. I prayed often to a God I don't believe in. I said to myself a number of times 'I'm ok as long as he's ok, so he has to be ok' and then he wasn't. He nearly died more times than I probably know. Which made the whole bargaining thing out to be a fool. (It was a fool but I didn't want bargaining to know that). 'I won't talk to him ever again if he's ok' 'I'll fall out of love with him if makes him ok', 'I don't care what it takes just please make him ok' but no matter what I did or didn't do everything was so random and chaotic that it seriously freaked me the fuck out. It made a total mockery of the God I didn't believe in. Although religion has always fascinated and repulsed me in equal measure (if you feel the same then it's Joseph Campbell all the way baby fyi) there was always this tiny part of me that thought I controlled it all. That I had power far exceeding the power you have. That I could influence the outcome of things. If I really, really wish for Barack Obama to become president then he will. If I really, really hope for Alexander to win X-Factor then she will. If I really, really wish for tis job then I'll get it. It always worked before, why not now? Turns out, that's just not how things operate. Life is random and chaotic.

Depression meant one thing and one thing only: Tuc biscuits. A lot of them. God I love Tuc biscuits. I love them when that's all that'll love me back. During this time I didn't exercise, I didn't write, I didn't do anything but stuff my face with Tuc biscuits. And they were delicious (they would have been had I tasted them but I was too busy stuffing my face to taste anything). Depression hurt like a motherlover but it did mean I got to eat a lot of Tuc biscuits. Everything has its upside.

The one thing I didn't get was that slight thrill from it all. You know that thrill? That thing where there's this part of you that's actually kind of enjoying it all. Watching from a distance and thinking 'well, what's wrong with a little destruction?'

I didn't feel that. I gleaned no joy from any of it, no matter the pluses. It was all horrible. I felt horrible.

You know what though, anyone else I would have cut them a lot more slack for what they went through than I did for myself. I fell in love and carried our baby (for a bit) and he nearly died. That's a lot of fucking stuff to cope with and I did cope with it. I needed professional help for a while but that's ok, sometimes asking for help is the only way to cope. So that's what I did.

I'm here, a few months later feeling, well, not good exactly but I'm not cutting my wrists either. I've processed. I've reached acceptance. I've worked out what I want and what I don't want. I feel strong. Which is when he contacts me:

'I'm home for the weekend. Shall I call you?' says the text message Shall I call you? Four words, all of them containing a lot of power in a sentence that he writes from him to me. 'That's good news!' I reply with a stupid exclamation mark I would never use in real life 'Yeah, you can call me whenever'. I continue. 'Ok.' he says. And then I wait, and then I forget I'm waiting, and then I check my phone when I remember I'm supposed to be waiting. And so on and so forth.

What happened to acceptance? What happened to me moving on and doing better? Why did they say something about this on The Hills the other day and it made me laugh and go on a 'YEAH! boys always DO contact you when you've just forgot about them! ALWAYS!' rant for about five minutes without ever thinking it would apply to me ever again? Just... all of it... why?

Oh no he di'int

[Via Videogum]

Got me looking so crazy right now

I've never given much credence to the idea that men are from Mars, women are from Venus. That we stand on two separate planets gazing at each other in wonderment and disgust sending out smoke signals that spell 'WTF?!?!!'.

It's a nice idea but, much like communism, it works better in theory than in practice.

See, women and men are groups. You and I are individuals. I may have many of the characteristics associated with a female but I also have many characteristics associated with males; a penis, facial hair, an appreciation of women's boobs (I'm kidding, I'm kidding. About the penis thing). It seems a curiously modern idea that separateness exists in such neat packages. Light and dark, good and evil, man and god; in ancient philosophies are all one and the same. You don't have one without the other. Once Osiris crosses to the underworld he realises 'My phallus is the phallus of Osiris*. My loins are the loins of the Lords of Kher-ba. My chest is the chest of the Mighty One of Terror... There is no member of my body that is not the member of some God'. Krisha declares 'I am the self seated in the hearts of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all beings'. I am god, I am man, I am woman (hear me roar). Admittedly the dividing lines we've set up between god/man, light/dark, man/woman may be helpful in some respects. For one thing they help us save time, it's tidier that way. Neater. Clears up confusion straight away; 'here's the list of preconceived notions I have about you based on your height, weight, skin colour, age and gender. If you could make sure you just stick to everything EVERYTHING! on this list and do not deviate from it AT ALL then we will get along swimmingly because if you do DARE to deviate then it makes things messy and that complicates the situation for me so, like I say, stick to the list and we'll be fine'. Which, is fine, as long as you're someone that ticks all the boxes that you're supposed to based on your height, weight, age, skin colour, and gender (hint: no one ticks all the boxes on that list). It's got my goat (not literally. I keep my goats very safe) as I was discussing with a young man the other day about the relationship issues of some of his work colleagues. It was all going well until he ended it with 'but then, women be crazy I suppose' and I was like 'umm... no' (although, to be fair to him, women do be crazy). It just doesn't seem helpful to me to classify problems from this standpoint (the sweeping generalisation standpoint). That's why you should really try and treat everyone as an individual and take them on their individual merits; no-one fits that box you have made for them and you're going to REALLY stress yourself out trying to fit them into those boxes - it's like me trying to fit into a pair of size 8 jeans: Not gonna happen.

But, worryingly, it extends further; you can't be a fan of The Wire AND of The Hills, you can't like opera AND playing sniper in a castle but, here's the kicker, you can be a fan of The Wire and The Hills and opera and snipering, I am living proof of this. But! But! STAY IN YOUR BOX! DO AS WE SAY! THIS DOESN'T FIT WITH MY PRECONCEIVED NOTION OF WHAT IT IS YOU REPRESENT!

No shit sherlock. Meet the other six billion or so individuals who also confound your expectations at every turn.

I wouldn't want to spend time with anyone who solely read Dostoevsky anymore than I'd want to hang out with someone who solely read Heat magazine. It's just the idea that you always have to be one thing or the other and can never be both simultaneously. Frankly, it's bullshit. We are all things to all people, playing all sorts of roles throughout our lives. Changing and adapting to suit our environment as all living organisms are wont to do. The costumes 'Man' and 'Woman' inform our character but they do not define our character. So although women be crazy, men be crazy too. We just don't talk about that as much because it doesn't appear on the checklist. We all be crazy basically. I like it that way. Don't you? Doesn't that make it more fun?

Having said that I'm more excited than anything with my new chaise lounge (only downside? It makes me feel a little bit like Jabba the Hut, I just need to put an ankle chain on Carrie Fisher and tie Harrison Ford to my wall and I'm set). There's not many boys that could get away with that sentence. Not unless they're a 'pledgee'

[Via Videogum]

*I sure am obsessed with phallus's tonight huh? Best not analyse that one too hard**
**That is what she said.