Ladies, I have bad news

We are directly responsible for the global financial crisis. Yup, us uppity bitches and our outrageous and irresponsible desire for jobs has caused the entire planet to go into meltdown.

Well, not me. I mean, I'm a teacher which according to Newton Emerson is a proper job for a woman as it is "too demeaning for men". Phew.

Louise Livesy at The F-Word says it far better than I do so if you have the time I suggest you go and read her response to this piece of shit article.

I'll be over in the corner, sobbing and bashing my head against something pointy.

Alex's Acting Masterclass

A tip for all female actresses who may or may not have been born with an English accent but are using one regardless*:

If you are playing an icy and/or professional woman whose lines read fairly levelly** (or if you have limited talent and this is how every reading you do ends up) and the script calls for you to use the word "damn"... don't. Seriously, it sounds terrible.

Luckily for you there is a quick fix, in the form of two very common letters. Observe the following examples.

Example***:

If the line is:

"I don't want any of your damn excuses"

then you should replace it with

"I don't want any of your damned excuses"

It sounds far better.


* Yes, I paused the movie I was watching (Babylon A.D. it's actually not the worst film I've seen today which tells you something about the unending and life changing horror of my afternoon cinema trip with my Mother) to make this point because it's been annoying me for days. See also Olivia Williams in Dollhouse. Which you should be watching.
** Note this does not apply to anyone with the following accents: Cockney, Geordie, Liverpudlian, Yorkshire or Scottish which, coincidentally is not an English accent anyways or if you sound like Drusilla from BtVS, as that's not an English accent either.
*** To be read out loud in the appropriate accent.

actually, fuck it.

What I wanted to say was this:

The body of a nineteen year old girl you have never met is not your public fucking property no matter who her parents are. The world does not give one solitary shit about whether or not you consider someone's personal choice to be "tacky", and how she will feel about that choice in X number of years' time is not your concern. You are not one of her friends, you are not a member of her family. Your moral outrage is condecending and uninvited.

You may have a right to hold your opinion on the subject, you may even feel the need to voice it - out loud or in print - but let me get this one thing straight: you do not hold the moral responsibility to inform the rest of the world as to what a mistake someone is making.

Don't agree with someone's life choices? Fine. Feel you have to contribute to the ongoing debate about the social issues concerning a particular topic? Spiffy. Doing so by posting a two line comment about a specific person's appearance on a newspaper site that offers nothing new or original the the discussion? Fuck you.

Her body is not your public property, you do not have a right to discuss her skin or the lines inked on it. You do not have a right to discuss how fat someone is, how thin they are or how veiny their arms may look. The size of a person's ass, or nose or piercing is not your problem, and does not provide a jumping off point for you to spout your own personal philosophy of bullshit.

The amount someone else eats is not your concern unless you are a health professional with a personal relationship to your patient. Your "well meaning" comments are bullshit. The world does not need another self important asshole who feels they have a right to dictate how the human body should look, feel or function. Your indignation and outrage is pathetic. The world doesn't give a shit how its actions affect your insignificant little life.

Now kindly fuck off.

re: Peaches

Dear Daily Mail,

Why is this news?

Are we short on "OH MY GOD THE IMMIGRANT MUSLIMZ R DESTROYING THE ECONOMY!!!! DIANA WAS MURDERED, KNIFECRIME CAUSES CANCER!!!!" stories this week?

While I do understand that you had some fabulous pictures of a bikini clad 19 year old to accompany the story may I humby suggest you find something better to write about?

Hugs and Kisses,

Alex
(your biggest fan)

ps. Thanks also to the commenters! As always, they broke my brain.

saturday morning sweetness

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

I can't say anything that the video doesn't say beautifully itself. Just go here and sign. Donate if you can.

500 million years old? Damned whippersnapper, get off my lawn!

So scientists have found evidence (ie. chemical traces) of animal life which existed earlier than ever previously discovered. Primitive sponges which lived around 635million years ago. Highly awesome. One thing that struck me though was the following quote from the article in the Guardian:

Charles Darwin was famously sceptical of the idea that creatures could have materialised fully formed out of nowhere, a view shared by some experts today.

Emphasis mine. Seriously, "some" experts? I would like to meet the "experts" who fully agree with the "hey things just appear by magic, dude let's go have a beer" theory, cause they sound awesome.

[The Guardian]

Edit: Also, those with a fear of snakes probably shouldn't read this, although the article gets an automatic A+ for featuring a quote from an eminent scientist referencing Jennifer Lopez's performance in Anaconda. Amazing.

*chatterchatterchatter*

This is the text I got at 9am this morning:

Ah! The boiler has decided to stop working! Oh my god I just can't be bothered with stuff like this - why? oh god why?

Apparently a long, long time ago my flatmate B and I pissed off the god of Boilers most severely. We have NEVER lived in a house without a boiler packing up on us.

Our first house had a boiler that had to be completely ripped out and repaired, although that was nothing compared to the mouse infestation (actually it was a really nice house, there were just a LOT of mice). In our second flat, the one with the mental landlady who tried to forbid us from having men in the flat, we went without heat or hot water for an entire month. That entire month was February. I actually started casually dating someone purely so I could use his shower. True story. In the last flat we lived in we had a boiler that didn't understand thermostat control and thus had two settings: full blast or OMG I'm going to die from cold someone put the goddamned heating on!

And now our boiler has spluttered and died. Marvellous!

This fucks up my school visit for tomorrow, as even if I do go home to the ice box I will have to spend all day waiting in for a plumber. I'm sorely tempted to beg the boy for a warm bed to sleep in for another night and possibly a lift to town so that I can clothes shop.

Damn, enforced shopping. What a horrible state of affairs! Actually, I'd probably just end up buying school appropriate clothing anyways - Salisbury does not have the most dynamic and exciting of clothing options available.

Also - being in a room in the Mess all day (even if it is the decently sized Officer's quarters) is really, really boring. I've spent my morning killing zombies, reading my new werewolf book and writing random snippits of fiction about superheroes (also, listening to songs about monkeys - I just need to do something with ninjas and I will officially have reached the level of ubergeek) but I'm still bored. Hence all the blogging.

It's more fun than I remembered! And now I have permission to blog whatever I like about Mr Odd (didn't want to before as it feels like talking about him behind his back - turns out he kind of likes it. Right, hon?) there's a wider scope of things I can chatter about. If resolutions made in Feb count then blogging again is my New Month's Resolutiony Thing.

SNOW!

So I came down to stay with Mr Odd for the weekend... and I'm still here.

The UK is currently experiencing "record snowfall" if, of course, by "record" you mean "since the 7th of Feb 1991" which apparently most major news outlets do. Across the country schools are closed and train links are completely shut down, because a country on the same latitude as Moscow is not built to deal with a few tiny flecks of snow.

Ok so maybe tiny is a bit of an understatement as my God it's been snowing like fucking crazy and doesn't look to be stopping.

So, I'm stuck at the boy's place.

It's not a massively bad state of affairs: I will have seen Mr Odd every day this week (as even if I manage to leave tomorrow I'm coming BACK on Thursday evening because I have a day off on Friday) which is unheard of seeing as we live 2 hours away from one another, I've finally bloody started Mass Effect and Left 4 Dead (both of which I love with a strong and burny passion - gamertag Alex the Odd btw, add me if ye wish) as a result of which I have officially gotten over my decade-and-a-half long terror of FPS games and I'm meant to be at college this week (which has pretty much been cancelled cause of the snow - London doesn't work in the snow either) so I'm not missing anything important. But I still get a little uneasy feeling because of the following reasons:

a) I'm meant to go and visit my next placement school on Thursday, of course in my melodramatic mind by then we're going to be completely snowed in and possibly eating the weaker members of the group for sustenance so it may not be the most pressing thing on my mind

b)i) I intended to stay for two days, which means I have enough clothing for two days. Yeah. So far I've been stealing rugby shirts and wrapping up in dressing gowns, tomorrow a wash will be done if we need it.

b)ii) We're meant to be going out to dinner with Mr Odd's colleagues on Friday - currently all I have with me to wear is ripped skinny jeans, a couple of tshirts and a pair of converses that have, frankly, only a distant memory of what "better days" were like. Although, Mr Odd does understand this dilemma and has agreed to take me clothes shopping if I need to stay.

All this makes it sound like I'm currently in Russia (in 1942) but planning makes for a saner Alex.

Speaking of planning, and Alex going insane (and cause I haven't blogged about anything lifewise in bloody ages and once I get started it's kinda cathartic so I don't really want to stop as such) I may be moving to Germany next year. Or the North of England, or the Seaside or possibly the Middle of Bloody Nowhere. I do not know where yet as we're not entirely sure where Mr Odd is going to be (yes, yes, I'm going too - I'm as shocked as you are). Anyways there's a chance we might hear more tomorrow so fingers crossed (although personally I'm pulling for Germany, skiing every weekend and Oktoberfest - yeah baby!)

So yes, that's where my life's at now.