Friday, February 29, 2008

W00t

We're going away for the weekend. W00t.

What on earth does woot mean? I have a fair idea, I think, but I really shouldn't be using words I don't fully understand.

According to
Urban dictionary, it's a contraction of "wow, loot". It's funny how these phrases sneak into one's psyche. I shall be telling people they're pwned next.

Anyhow, I was just posting to say I'm off for a bit, although I don't suppose it would be noticeable anyway... but I will be back.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Gissa job

In the interests of the monitoring of equal opportunities, my application form today had the nerve to ask me about my sexuality. I preferred not to answer. How very dare it.

Application forms are truly a trial of patience and resolution. Interminably repeating the same information in black ink in little boxes and trying to fit in convincing explanations of how I'm very suitable for jobs despite my rather unimpressive list of previous experience and my several years of mostly SAH mothering. I'm also wildly over-educated in a fabulously useless field, but I feel good about that.

I particularly like the forms from government offices that want you to rate responses to potential dilemmas between 1 and 4. I feel I ought to be given a small prize, such as a Green & Blacks orange & spices or a Harley Davidson, each time I complete one of these forms.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

I am a cider drinker

We've been given a gallon of farmhouse, locally made cider which tastes just like liquid germolene.

Mmmm-mmmm.

Sweeney

Sweeney Todd was a movie M wanted to walk out of. It's usally me that feels like that. Still, I enjoyed it and that's all that matters, obviously*.

Mwhahaha.



* I am not entirely serious here.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Ashtray

I watched Ashes to Ashes for the first time last night: first the new episode and then last week's one on BBC4.

I liked what little I saw of Life on Mars: I'm not sure about this follow-on. I think part of the problem is I find the female lead incredibly annoying. Her counterpart in the '70s whose name escapes me temporarily, (and yes I could google him, but I'm not going to right now), was a lot more likeable.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Stranger in a Strange Land

I enjoyed the first half of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land very much. The latter half not so much.

I was alienated from the text by ruminations on the part of the character of Jill regarding homosexuality and also about rape, which were within a paragraph of each other: something to the effect that nine out of ten female victims brought it on themselves and ... oh I can't be bothered with explaining the other right now. Both of which rather stuck in my craw.

I wasn't sure whether Jill was speaking for Heinlein or whether she was simply a foil for the more open-minded and progressive characters. As the story continued she became less parochial in her attitudes, although I'm still pretty uncomfortable about those parts of the text. It is much clearer when Jubal speaks that he is a mouthpiece for Heinlein. The depiction of women in the book had some elements I liked: they were resourceful and strong-minded. But they were still secretaries, nurses and acolytes, submissive to men rather than independent.

Still it is a very interesting work, plenty to get your teeth into what with the take on religion, agnosticism and sexual mores. Lots to be annoyed and intrigued by in equal measure.

I shall re-read at some point.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Bedtime

My boy is in a big boy bed, or rather I finally took off the sides of his cot-bed. Which is later than books recommend, but then they recommend you take off the sides when the child starts trying to climb out. T has never considered climbing out, he just bellowed until he is released of a morning. And I'm not much of a one for parenting books. I did like Dr Christopher Green's two books: one with "Babies" in the title, startlingly enough, and Toddler Taming is the other. He seems pretty easy-going and practical and most winningly of all, sympathetic: not about military precision and target-achieving. Routine can be your friend as a parent, but not sweating the small stuff is also sanity-saving. 'Course, I've got a long way to go yet with this parenting lark. See me in a few(!) years for how it all turns out.

It's gone very well so far, the new bed arrangement. His sister fell out of bed half a dozen times when she did the change-over, but he hasn't yet, a few nights in. And he hasn't wandered in the night either. Yet.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Fathead

Fathead was on tonight. So we watched and mocked throughout, laughing at his garagantuan head. There were lots of doubles used in the film according to the credits, and we suspect at least one, possibly conjoined twins, was just for his head.

Poor old, much maligned by me, Fathead.

Although it leads one to wonder, just how did he get his foot in the movie-making door? And now he's got it there, is it just that he produces and therefore stars in his own movies that keeps him there?

After all, he's got a massive head. The possibility of a sex scene with him in it must surely make the most undiscerning shudder the Sideshow Bob shudder? He doesn't appear to do his own martial arts either, anymore. Or if he did, he magically shrank for the violence and there was room in his coat for movement: he wore this long brown leather coat throughout, but it was button-poppingly tight around his mid-riff, (apart from when two or three of his stunt-men were within it together at the same time doing the fighting scenes). Oh, I am awful! And while acting ability may not be high on the list in the action picture genre, still... I mean, c'mon!

Poor old Fathead, I'm terribly mean.

Channel 5 didn't help with their lovely chop-chop scissors. I think they just went mad and clipped out wadges of film to fit their schedule, not caring what it did to the story (if there was one, but the occasional inexplicable reference to a small blonde girl and a hospital seemed to suggest there might have been some reason for Fathead's tromping around other than just that he was Fathead.) After all, they do tend to cut Gil Grissom and the like off mid-sentence to go to ad-break, so I daresay chopping out the entire plot* to a Fathead movie wouldn't be beyond their capability.


*If there was one.

Little things...

Every time I drive to Exeter, on the way I see a sign for the Well Hung Meat Company and titter.

The end.

Clutter and oversights

Today we have put all the things that have crept into the wrong rooms back into the right rooms and the result is very nice.

After a while, having achieved rather a lot by the way of rearranging clutter, I got distracted and went through my cupboard of art, photos and scrapbooks. It was a lovely nostalgia trip, looking at our wedding photos and such. M looked through and kept exclaiming about how his ears or his head or how skinny he looked. I think he was rather saucy, and he's still pretty darned tasty now, but anyway... I was quite happy with how I looked in those photos, oh and the earlier ones of my student days and before - I wish I could have seen myself then as I see myself (as I was) now. Is that a coherent sentence? I know what I mean.

Still youth is wasted on the young, innit? (thereby aging myself by about 20 years).

There were also some scrapbooks and photobooks I had spent ages making for S when she was very small, all of her and every little thing she did. I realise I haven't done the same for T, which is dreadful isn't it? In later years he might wonder why. I ought to rectify this glaring omission, if possible. It's not that I don't feel the same about him as I do S, it's just time constraints and they use up all the glue before I get to it and ,er, other weak excuses that aren't going to hold water should a peeved child come to me in later life and demand to know where his scrapbooks are.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Village people

Small townspeople have a reputation for having nasty little minds to go with their nasty little abodes. Cities claim cosmopolitanism. I think people are pretty much the same everywhere: it's just a matter of solution strengths. The more people you have around, the easier it is to pick and choose whom you associate with and take notice of. In cities everyone does not know everyone and therefore cannot entirely have a set-in-stone opinion of all and sundry, (although no doubt some try their damnedest!) Thus the gossipmongery is watered down and it's far simpler to get away from one set of nobs to join in with another set of nobs who seem a bit nicer.

The reason I'm chuntering on about this, is because it was openly, even proudly, told to us that the previous inhabitant of our house was ostracised by the village, or a large portion thereof. They seemed happy that their behaviour at least contributed to her departure. This because she was Wiccan.

So nice that prejudice is alive and well.

When my mother moved into the area, recently widowed with a tiny baby (that was me!), she was treated abysmally by the same sort of people. They subjected her to bullying, innuendo, gossip and ostracised her. She was supremely vulnerable and they were #very bad words indeed#.

On a darkly funny note, I've discovered that the memorial tree for one of the ringleaders in this spite keeps on dying. Once it was water-logging, once it was rodents, once it was Sheffield Blight. "Not in my name!" cries the tree and carks it. Mwahahaha*.



*OK, this probably reflects badly on me to be amused by that, but... meh.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Friday, February 08, 2008

Shoot 'Em Up

I was expecting a lot of action & silliness and to have a good time watching some mad stunts and cartoonish violence from this film starring Clive Owen, (who will always be Chancer as far as I'm concerned). And on the up side, death by carrot is not usually a staple of action films.

On the down side, I was thoroughly repulsed by the misogyny in the portrayal of women: too incompetent to shoot a guy at point-blank range, too stupid to know to feed her baby - needs a man to rip open her top to demonstrate what she needs to do. Salacious garbage.

I don't think it helped that Sally Anne Bowman's murder has been on my mind so that the bad guy copping a feel of the dead woman - well, I couldn't see the ha ha humour in it.

Maybe it got better after that, I don't know, I'd had enough. Added to which the cockatiel took it into his head to attack me at that point, for no obvious reason. Vicious little git. I shall call him Bitey and he shall eat naught but human flesh.

I went to bed in a bit of a mood.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Songs I shouldn't ought to have liked

I have been ruminating on lists today, having been trolling round looking at blogs and blogging communities. "20 books I'd recommend" and "10 songs I'm embarrassed to admit I like" were two that interested me, although I like to imagine I'm long past the point of embarrassment regarding my musical tastes. I think I'll leave the book one for now and, er, enthrall you with the latter.

Well, I'm a little embarrassed by liking:

  1. Europe's "Final Countdown". Cheesy rock! I believe it was the first single I ever bought.
  2. Scouting For Girls' "She's so Lovely", which lyrically speaking is rather short on content and includes The Star style references to a "stunna" - you just know there's no -er there!
  3. Gwen Stefani's "What you Waiting for". The use of "stupid ho" bugs me and I feel like I ought to dislike the song due to that alone! But I don't.
  4. The Lazytown album. I sing along and everything. Tragic.
  5. Cher's "Gypsies, tramps and thieves". Ahem.
  6. All Saints' version of "Under the bridge". *
  7. Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne". There's nothing intrinsically wrong in liking Leonard Cohen, is there?** It's just I seem to know people who think it's odd.
  8. Christina Aguilera's "CandyMan". "He's a one-stop shop, making all the panties drop..." Heh heh.
  9. Scatman John's "Scatman" Hahahahaha. Oh dear. Erm, I see Tim Robbins' dancing to put his shoes out. That's no excuse, is it?
  10. S Club 7's "Reach".

Seems one thing most of these have in common is being relentlessly upbeat. With obvious exceptions of Mr Cohen and the Chilli song.


* Obviously the Red Hot Chilli Peppers do it better, goes without saying. But I'm saying it anyway, just in case you think I don't know that, cos I do, I just happen to like the Saints' version as well. Not as much, clearly. Have I justified myself enough yet!?

** Indeed there's nothing wrong in liking any of this, it's all a matter of taste, innit?





The version I don't feel I have to justify liking!

The r-word

Online headline today that "Accused had sex with dead Sally-Anne".

Oh fucking come on! Let's just call it what it is, shall we? There's no question that a dying/dead woman can give consent is there? Yeah, she was asking for it, lying there, all stabbed and that.

It's rape, oh journalist-scum.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Huhdddhdhdh

The Brownies wish parents to volunteer to accompany their Brownie to bag-pack at our local supermarket in order to raise funds for a trip they are planning.

Cue shuddering noise that Sideshow Bob makes.

Anything but that! Nay nay and thrice nay! I'm a good little parent, I drive Brownies places and help fundraise in other ways. Please don't make me bag-pack. I cannot stand that supermarket at the best of times.

Aieeeee!

Silver ball

The sport with the biggest pitch, goals two miles apart, hurling (the Cornish way) is being played at St Columb Major today.

If I'd had more about me, I'd be there. Darn.

Arse!

I'm at my wits end with winter. I'm topped off with 2008. I'm fed up with February. I'm sick of sickness. I've got the arse with ailments. I'm cocked off about conjunctivitis.

It seems bloody endless, the cycle of fiddle-faddling childhood complaints and cold weather-loving viruses. They can all just bloody well sod off. Chicken pox for T, followed by a round of proper man-flu flu for all, after which we succumbed to norovirus which we did tag-team style, then a couple of days clear, and T's now got conjunctivitis. Which isn't serious, but his swollen eye looks like he's gone a few rounds with Lennox Lewis, and I'm just so ticked off with it all I could cry.

I long for the summer holidays where we're all outdoors imbibing the freshness of air and the sunshiney stuff of legend; when the kids won't be cheek to jowl with other people's foul, plague-carrying children all the time, coming back with their bugs and nits and songs about poo.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Death Proof Tarantino

I get the feeling that Tarantino really really enjoyed himself making this movie. But whether its audience enjoys watching it half as much, I doubt.

It was very much a self-indulgence, this homage to exploitation and schlock of the '70s. Lots and lots of film references as you expect from the man, and lots of self-referential, getting pretty self-reverential, motifs too. Much gratuitous, salivating butt-shottery as well along with the usual visceral violence.

Apart from with regard to the butt-shots, the female characters were nominally female: all his characters speak with the same voice in his films, burbling the same kind of bilge - they could have as easily been men in the rambling dialogue scenes. I can't decide whether that's a good or bad thing. A taste for Italian fashion magazines was the main marker and that makes me want to kick Tarantino in the shins a little bit.

Did I enjoy the film? Well, it was slow and lumpen in parts and questionable in other respects, but on the whole I did enjoy it. As long as one turns off one's brain, it's entertaining.

I wouldn't buy it though, and I do think that Tarantino might like to remove his head from his rectum at some point before he makes his next film, and perhaps not spend quite so much time with his hands down his pants.