New beatbritish podcast!

For anyone who has listened before (who no longer read the site because it has moved addresses... ho hum)

There is a new BeatBritish podcast on which I guest, there are no sounds of eating on this one (or there may be for the first ten seconds)

Huzzah! Go, listen, enjoy the geekery.

[BeatBritish]

Bets on how long this lasts....

While we're waiting for me to suck and quit blogging again

The creative process

The Fabulous Miss Odd says:
as for what the creature looks like
The Fabulous Miss Odd says:
imagine the giant mole in City of ember
The Fabulous Miss Odd says:
instead of the star thing that always freaks me the fuck out on moles it has nine mouths
The Fabulous Miss Odd says:
shaggy brown bear fur, non seeing eyes and oversized claws
The Fabulous Miss Odd says:
like a really, really, really angry badger. As painted by Dali.

Mininouncement

While I'm blogging here's some stuff that happened recently:

My father tried to get in touch and it was whiny.
My ex managed to get in touch and it was passive aggressive.
I got engaged and was awesome.
My fiancee is getting sent to Afghanistan which was, and remains, the epitome of suck.

My Fuck-It List

A list of things I feel absolutely zero compulsion to do before I die.

1. Enter a marathon
2. Weigh 120lbs
3. Learn to do things ahead of time
4. Spend more time outdoors
5. Own a playsuit
6. Wear a playsuit
7. Have a subcription to Cosmo
8. Watch Sex and The City
9. Meet my siblings
10. Teach in an all boys school
11. Fix my clothes rather than throwing them out
12. Learn when to keep my mouth shut
13. Get highlights
14. Mend my bridges
15. Store all my shoes properly
16. Do my washing before I run out of clothes
17. Have sex with an ex boyfriend
18. Finish playing Enchanted Arms
19. Own a horse or pony
20. Read anything by Dean Koontz

Idea totally stolen from Shapely Prose and Feministe.

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.

hear me speak

I guested (along with MrOdd) on the latest BeatBritish podcast run by the irrepressible Paris. It's massively long and contains incredibly fast talking on my part and some actual sense on the others' parts. Clocking in at a whopping 2 hours it's something of a marathon listen but worth it if you feel like hearing five people rant about games (with occasional sidebars into Spanish horror movies, the works of Murakami and some philosophy).

Listen to it, and my incredibly British voice, here. Let me know if you do in the comments!

happy birthday, darling

The first time we kissed, when he was free to kiss me, it wasn’t a case of something exploding in my head, no fireworks, my knees didn’t turn to jelly beneath me, it was just “oh, I see.” It wasn’t that my entire life fell into place, nothing so simple as tha but I was certain of the way one bit of it would go. It’s a strange feeling, this certainty, this absolute lack of doubt. I’ll always feel, deep down, that I should be chastising myself for being the way I am about it, this, us, him but I can’t bring myself to. By the time he’d finished kissing me, that three second kiss hello, I knew I loved him. Until then I’d thought that I must be mistaken, assigning meaning to something I couldn’t figure out but soon I realised that wasn’t important, it never was.

And so I throw myself into this, entirely, because I don’t have a choice in the matter. I am honest with him; find myself blurting out the things that I don’t want to say. Things I thought I couldn’t tell him, empty fragments of dreams filled with terror, telling him with tearful eyes that he caused the fear in me, of the crippling paranoia, fears that I would start loving him more, lose my interest. He knew all my secrets before he ever woke up beside me. Confessed in the dark to a computer screen he knew me better than anyone, even those who had shared my bed. His analysis was so painful that I avoided it, avoided him, convinced myself that it was melodramatic and did not apply. He’s always right when it comes to me. He takes every piece I give to him and he treats it as precious.

And it sometimes it takes all my effort to not feel subservient, to not feel like I’m scrabbling for approval like I have done so many times before, I fear becoming a shell again. But every time it creeps up I’m met with sweetness, whispered words or halting admissions of fear from the other side. I understand in him the things I could never reconcile in me and seeing myself in him makes me better. I see myself as he does and it’s something occasionally beautiful, patched up but with none of the cracks glossed over.

It seems strange to say but my world is brighter now, the edges are less keen and the knocks don’t come as hard, not with him there to pick me up. His love for me tints everything, my every moment is colourised by the hue of it. It’s always there – an underlying thread that ties the fragments of my mind together and keeps me grounded.

He is my safety and my security, my thrill and my adventure, my newest discovery and my oldest urge.

He was a gift to me. I didn’t fall in love with the boy, I am in love with the man, the man and the words he writes.

on hollywood

How I feel about the world today[Subnormality]

A three month or so teaching recap

So, as it turns out being a student teacher fucking sucks.

Like, really, really, really sucks.

For instance: I do not plan things. I know my shit, I get up and I do my thing. This is the way I work. I do not, nay cannot, plan an hour down to three minute intervals. But unfortunately that's what I have to do, no choice in the matter. And even more unfortunately I suck if I don't.

Every single lesson I teach is watched by the classroom teacher, which is fine except when the CT is a neurotic overly professional perfectionist something which makes for being a fabulous teacher (and she is) but is something that I'll never achieve. Her lessons in particular scare the living hell out of me, I had nightmares about not being able to photocopy the worksheets I needed to for her class (which I will be taking in a freaking week's time, not tomorrow - in a week) last night and I woke up in a cold sweat (of course then I had bizarre dreams about a class reunion with a random group of people none of whom I actually went to school with). I spend twelve times as long planning for her lessons than I do for anyone else's which then makes me nervous in the rest. It's a vicious cycle.

Of course, I had the entire Christmas holidays to plan, really get on top of things so that I could go back stress free.

Yeah, I'm guessing a couple of people know exactly how well that went.

I spent my day yesterday, my first day back at home when I was free to work, hunting lizard warriors on my 360 (sweet, shiny 360. Evil 360 in that can't copy bloody saved games over between profiles so can only play Fable 2 on Mr Odd's machine)

On top of that I was in bed and ill for my entire last week of school so I have no idea what any of the staff members did with my classes so I don't have a clue what to plan. Except for one teacher's class.

Can you guess which one?

I know EXACTLY what I need to do for those, so they are the only ones I can plan.

And yesterday I managed to plan 3/4 of a lesson. I also put up 1/5 of a book case, cooked yummy pasta, watched stand-up comedy, tried to revise Physics GCSE, decided it was too hard, got into panic because I actually have to teach it, then decided I would get job teaching in specialist school where teachers only teach their actual specialism and I would be incredibly nice and teach both chem and bio, then realised that I actually teach physics better than the other two because I don't understand it myself, then panicked about the fact that I can't decide where I want to teach next year and apply for jobs because I don't know what country I'll be living in (long story, although should find out in a couple of weeks, crossing fingers for somewhere in UK) so have to wait again.

Frustration leads to lizard slaying.

Surprisingly the best part of the job is the kids. And I know, I know, teachers are supposed to love children but I honestly think that it sometimes helps if you don't... I can pretty much take or leave the anonymous faces of my top set year 8 who are mostly adorable but terrify me because of their teacher. They are used to very good quality teaching, they do not get this with me. But I love my delinquent bottom set (not my bratty over privileged middle set who are constantly annoying, hate the subject and make it completely obvious but are terrified of their parents and so behave creepily well when there is a threat of a phonecall on the cards), it's a smaller class and I share it so I actually have time to wander round and chat to the kids and get to know them, which is the part I love.

Which was... surprising to say the least.

So yeah, that's teaching for you, I only have three more weeks left in this school and then I move on. Which I am looking forwards to massively, I love the department and have got amazing levels of support from everyone there but there is one tiny problem with the school that makes me uncomfortable teaching there.

It's all boys.

And I hate teenage boys in large quantities. I hated them when I was a teenage girl, I hate them now. Everything just has to be so bloody boisterous all the time, everything has to have an element of competition to get things done. They can't sit still, can't keep their hands off one another, can't be quiet. And because of the environment, it's wrong to want or expect any other kind of behaviour from them. And I do understand the importance for an entirely male environment that they have strong female teachers who can turn around and say "look how many things I am better at than you" but as a trainee it's exhausting. Because of the way they feed into one another you can't allow any kind of relaxing of discipline because you can't get them back - I honestly thought it would be hard to stand up for an hour and continually be a bitch to little kids aged 11, turns out it really, really isn't. Because they're so damned annoying.

Bring on next year when I might actually get to teach A level!

Next placement should be good though, I'm paired again which I'm not supposed to be but that actually works in my favour as the girl I'm placed with is a whirlwind of awesomeness and fun and always up for going to the pub which is great. My new school is mixed and massive which is daunting cause I'm crap at learning names and get lost very easily within large buildings (not on streets though, I have an excellent sense of direction honed by years of waking up at 6am going "oh fuck" and then desperately searching for the nearest bus stop).

The hardest part is over now though, it's the point before Christmas where you feel lowest apparently - crazy deadlines and you're just so tired. I just have that extra hurdle of having been off sick at the end of term, it is making it slightly nerve wracking to go back - I'll get over it though, I always do.

So for the rest of today I have a plan: 2 hours of working, break to go buy screwdriver, more working until friend (also teacher, not on my course or in my school - most helpful person for reassurance ever) comes over, cook dinner, put up remaining 4/5 of bookcase with wine, watch Dark Knight on DVD with more wine and home made Italian food.

Then tomorrow I'm fucking off the work and getting my ass on a train to spend new year well away from all things work related. Huzzah!

whispering into the void

I'm back.

The reason there are practically no teaching blogs

So I've just finished my first full week of college, the week before I spent working in a primary school, observing lessons and helping out with IT when the teachers couldn't work the new computer suite they'd had installed.

Anyways, Friday was our keynote lecture on teachers' legal responsibilities. It was a really interesting half hour but it really hammered home what I'd been suspecting all week:

Unless they are completely anonymous teachers cannot have blogs.

Because of my Father and various other superfun ex stalkerish people my facebook profile is super private unless you are an accepted friend of mine, which is fine. When it comes to my blog however, this isn't the case.

I have always blogged under my own name and there are plenty of identifying details throughout these pages that make my identity completely obvious to anyone who has ever met me. That's fine. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done with my life and hence anything blogged about but the fact remains that most of the content is stuff that I would not want any pupils to see. Which is a shame, because I've loved running this place and running it under my real name too.

But kids are not only massively inventive but also incredibly persistent and I know from experience that if there's anything out there about you to find they will find it.

So now I have a decision to make, do I go back and edit my content to make this place completely anonymous or do I close it down entirey? To be honest, with the workload I'm facing even as a student and the other writing projects I have going on at the moment, keeping a blog up and running is kind of low down on my list of things I'd like to do when I have a spare moment (another reason there are practically no teaching blogs - they're too fucking tired to keep them going).

So that's why there aren't any new posts going up at the moment, I'm thinking it over for the time being.

Rocknrolla

I have a new review up at Pajiba, you muppet.

Go read and be my, be me little rock n roll queen.