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Friday, November 6th, 2009
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1:11 pm - Heavy Words, Lightly Thrown
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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1:39 pm - nolite te bastardes carborundorum
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Maybe it's the unemployment, but I've been finding myself getting very jealous of students. Silly, really, since we talk intellectual toot all the time at home and I wasn't a very good student on the first place, but I do really miss talking about literature. So today I had the idea of starting a feminist fiction reading group online. It'd have safe-space rules similar to those of sites like Girl Wonder and the focus would be on female contributions to literature and representations of gender within fiction, opening the field to books by men which examine those themes.
Reading is an expensive hobby, so I think I'd stick to classics and broadly known books that you'd be able to find cheaply second-hand or in the library. I was thinking that a book per week would be a good target, but then I remembered that people have lives to live and I want people to actually read the books rather than just skim them, so maybe each fortnight would be better. There would be a post for each book with comment threads underneath.
There are so many books I've wanted to discuss with people for ages and some that go together really well. I was thinking Jane Eyre for the first fortnight, followed by Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (something of a curve-ball, maybe, but they follow on perfectly.) And then that leads naturally to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Throw in a bit of Angela Carter and the sainted Margaret Atwood and we got ourselves a stew going! It'd also be cool to open the floor to suggestions. My field is literary fiction, but I'd love to hear suggestions of books from other genres to discuss. It's the spirit of caring and sharing.
current music: Electrelane
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, October 17th, 2009
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2:30 pm
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| Thursday, October 8th, 2009
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12:33 pm - Motivational Speaking
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Yoga instructor-
"You need to stop fighting the pain. Embrace it. Accept it. If you cannot cope with a stretch like this, how can you expect to survive in a city like London."
Dentist-
"So, it's taken you a while to get here."
Me- "Yeah, I recently moved to London."
Dentist- "Oh yes? What are you doing down there?"
Me- "Mostly looking for work at the moment."
Dentist- "What area do you want to work in?"
Me- "Film, eventually."
Dentist- "That's a tough field to get into."
Me- "I know. I'll have to start off working for free, runing and such."
Dentist- "I had a few friends who wanted to do that. They all ended up in recruitment. Open wide."
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
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4:13 pm - Fat! So?
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This is still a thought in progress, and very disjointed, so I'd like some input from people in the know.
A while ago, a friend posted a link to a journal post where a woman who identified as fat expressed her wish for friends to stop bitching about their weight in front of her. I liked it, a lot. It reminded me of something I saw somewhere else (likely Jezebel, you know how I do) in which the writer suggested that women not complain about their bodies in front of each other, because it just re-enforces and internalises the notion that our bodies are things to be judged. These things got me thinking about a couple of issues, one being about body image and self expression and the other about what we mean when we use the word fat.
( So long, my friend )
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, September 27th, 2009
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12:54 pm - Letters to the Patriarchy
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Dear The Patriarchy,
Hi! How are you? Still putting it about that women have all the real power? Hilarious!
Well, another Fashion Week has been and gone and with it the still-not-getting-old debate about how size zero models are destroying our nations teen girls and whether "large" models can walk properly. Naturally, you like to offer your opinion on the subject, as you do in all things, and I can really see how you are trying to help. That said, I am really not sure that endlessly carping on about how skinny women look "weird" and how you would rather have a "real" woman is actually improving the situation as much as you think it is. It may surprise you to learn, patriarchy, that not all issues about the female body are directly connected to your collective penis. As it transpires, while you get to have a crazy amount of influence in the way we girls see our bodies, you don't actually dictate every aspect of our self image. I know!
The fashion industry cares little about whether you get your rocks off over their models. A huge, vapid, global behemoth with a largely female client base gets to define beauty any way it likes, for better or worse. The way it currently stands, I'm leaning towards worse, but not because you find double-A cups and jutting collar bones to be a bonerkiller. Yeah, sure, you want to do Cristal Renn. Who doesn't? But her story and her success in the fashion world has implications that transcend your groin. And blaming a secret "gay fashion mafia" for making flat chests and slim hips into an ideal body shape is not only daft and hand-waving a whole set of complex societal issues, it also makes you seem like homophobic as well as simply misogynist. Your dazzling resistance to believe that any concept of female attractiveness simply has to be about your desires almost makes me admire the fashion industry. Please do not make me admire the fashion industry, patriarchy!
While we are on the subject of body image, I feel I should point out that eating disorders are a far more complex psychological issue than "wanting to look like Kate Moss", a cliche that never gets old, by the way. Sometimes, it's not about wanting to please you, either, or wanting to conform to some unattainable standard of beauty. You know, the kind perpetuated by the magazines and films you like so much. Sometimes, it's about self-destruction and about control, and this is a state of mind that transcends gender. So when a man admits to this particular self-destructive urge, how about not giving it a funny name like "manorexia" or taking the piss or adding little emasculating comments of your own, as if the stigma of mental illness were not enough. There are other ways of hating your body than punishing yourself at the gym, patriarchy. Or crying yourself to sleep at night wondering how Don Draper makes it all look so easy.
So, patriarchy, I see what you're trying to do for us poor, poor ladies. But this is one time (among thousands) that you should maybe butt out. I know it's hard to accept that sometimes your judgment of our bodies is neither wanted, needed or appreciated, but it's time to realise that your desires don't get a say in everything we do. It's time to move on. Get a hobby maybe. Have you thought about knitting?
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| Monday, July 13th, 2009
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8:31 pm - Hey dudes
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Rockaoke at the Nelson this Wednesday. It'll be like old times.
And if we get more than 10 people, I'll sing journey. Hell I might just sing Journey anyway.
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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12:54 pm - Heckle-raising
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I recently bought a copy of Glamour magazine (yeah shut up they were giving away my favourite brand of mascara) and, among all the body snarking, unflattering clothes and general feminist-baiting nonsense, I noticed this golden nugget-
Hey, it's OK...
...to secretly enjoy a construction worker's wolf-whistle, but give him the death stare anyway.
Heh, yeah. You know what else I secretly love, ladies? When an old guy is chasing me around the park when I'm in my underwear and we disappear behind a bush and when we come out the other side, I'm chasing him! So funny.
But something interesting happened yesterday. I was out in my short shorts and boots and my route took me past a building site. I braced myself for the usual nonsense when I got looked over, but then this builder did something different- he smiled at me. And, partly out of surprise, I smiled back. Obviously the guy only thought I was attractive; having never layed eyes on me before he clearly wasn't interested in my sparkling personality. But instead of reducing me to parts, he chose to treat me like a human being. I'm always going to respond better to a smile than a hurled comment like "Show us your beaver" (tragically genuine).
I've had a lot of nasty, abusive supposed come-ones hurled at me and I'm not sure how anyone expects me to respond positively to "Nice legs love, you want to wrap em around me." It took me a disturbingly long time to realise that these weren't supposed to work like that. These men didn't want to get me into bed, they wanted me to know my place. They wanted me to know that I didn't have the freedom to just walk down the street in an outfit I look good in and expect not to get hassled.
That said, I do believe that it is possible to come on to a stranger without completely objectifying them. The "humourless feminist" trope is often used to label women who resist objectification as anti-fun and anti-sex, but I know the difference between being hit on and dehumanised. The builder who smiled at me, or the man in Boston who yelled "Girl, you're looking good! Are you feeling good", were making an effort to engage with me as a person rather than just tits and ass for their viewing pleasure. And I check people out, I think many of us do. We all know where to draw the line, it's just that some of us choose not to. Like I keep saying, men are not animals. Men have control and the ability to make decisions. We just need to kick away this frame-work that allows many to make bad ones.*
There is still a problem with even the most well-intentioned heckles, though. We are so used to being accused of leading men on and this being used to defend crimes against our minds and bodies that it shouldn't be a surprise when we don't smile back. I have had pleasant conversations turn unexpectedly to forceful demands for my number, or coffee, or insistent offers of a ride, so I stopped conversing with strangers. I guy on a bus leered at me hitching my tights and after I expressed my disinterest, he loudly conversed at a girl who clearly didn't speak English well, shouting about how "nice" it was to meet a "nice girl" on a bus for once. Why should we be game and giggly when the fact of "being nice" may be taken down and used as evidence against us?
Obviously, a lot needs to change and so much of it is out of our power. The pick-up culture needs to go, the culture of disrespect, the culture of expectation and objectification. It's so ingrained and needs to be whittled down over generations as we teach our children to respect their minds and bodies and the minds and bodies of others. In the short term, we have to try to be less afraid of being called boring or frigid or no fun. Smile back or don't smile back, but don't be scared.
*There is a thought provoking comment about this article- http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/asking-for-it/- which suggests that, if men are such uncontrollable primal creatures, then why the hell do they have all the global positions of power? You can't have it both ways, Berlusconi. I recommend this article, and indeed the site, if you like science and hate misuse of it to further unpleasant personal aims. Thanks to Paul for the link.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
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10:34 am - On Not Getting Married
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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9:48 pm - Thai-style pumpkin soup
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I can't do recipes the way Alex does recipes, partly because I honestly can't remember how I came up with this. I was just desperate to stop the quickly greening/blue-ing/white fuzz-ing pumpkin form getting thrown away after last Halloween.
- one large butternut squash/half a pumpkin, skinned and diced
- vegetable or light olive oil
- 1 large onion
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 birdseye chilli (de-seed or add more to taste)
- 1 tsp each paprika, cumin, coriander seeds
- 1 "thumb" of ginger
- 250ml vegetable stock
- 1 tin of coconut milk
- 1 large handful fresh coriander
Cut the squash into dice (saving the seeds for roasting if you can be bothered) and toss in a couple of tablespoons of oil. Spread across a baking tray and put into a preheated over (about 200 degrees) for 20mins or until soft. Gently heat 3 tbsp of oil in a deep, heavy bottomed pan. Grind the spices in a pestle and mortar and ad to the oil. Mix well. Throw in finely chopped onion, garlic and chilli and stir until the onion is soft. Add finely chopped ginger immediately before stirring in your roasted squash. Cover with the stock and leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Poor in coconut milk and bring back to simmer for five minutes. I think this soup is best smooth, so I like to stick it in a blender, but you can use a masher for something more textured. Serve with fresh coriander, roasted seeds if you've made them, slices of fresh red chilli, swirls of coconut milk or any combination of the above.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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12:25 pm
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So some doctors want to be allowed to offer to pray for their patients.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8116497.stm
Now obviously, they are already allowed to pray for their patients, it not being particularly enforceable or necessary to legislate agianst it. But this is not enough! What these medics really want is the right to foist their faith on vulnerable captive audiences without fear of legal consequence. Don't we all.
Cancer specialist Dr Bernadette Birtwhistle, who works in hospitals across Yorkshire and is a member of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: "I think it is getting to the point where many of us feel we cannot talk to patients about their spiritual or religious needs or ask them about praying.
"Christianity is being seen as something that is unhelpful."
And she added: "Freedom of speech is being curtailed too much and I don't think that is always in the benefit of patients."
Oh good old freedom of speech and people not understanding what the fuck it means. Medics have every right to express their faith but what they are not entitled to is freedom of platform. And there are already platforms to express one's faith. These are called churches. Patients have a right not to be exposed to someone else's beliefs when they are bound to a hospital bed and, as Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, points out, afraid that they won't receive the same standard of care if they are not Christian.
Now, I've been hospitalised myself a few times with an undiagnosed condition. I was terrified, I was lonely and I was in terrible pain. If some well-intentioned nurse or doctor offered to pray for me in the dead of night, I would have burst in to tears, assuming that a) my mysterious condition was life-threatening and b) beyond the realms of actual scientific cure. They might as well nail wreathes of garlic around my bed to keep away the spirits.
Joyce Robins, co-director of Patient Concern said: "Most complaints from patients are about being on a conveyor belt of care. They don't rate with staff as real people.
"Offering to say a prayer is a warm and kind thought. Most patients will accept it as such. It is no more offensive than being offered a sleeping pill. You can say thanks but that sort of thing isn't my cup of tea."
The difference here being that a sleeping pill is scientifically proven to bloody work. There are many ways of treating a patient as a human being, and not least among these is not assuming that they will appreciate Christian intervention. If a patient wants spiritual guidance while in hospital, it can be provided. Hospitals offer multi-faith chaplains who can visit the patient if they are too sick to go to the designated prayer rooms. Hospitals should make the effort to let patients know that this service is available, but that is as far as it goes.
Finally, why is it so important to let patients know that they are being prayed for? Surely, if prayer works as intended, then no-one should need to know that they are being prayed for to be healed. If they do, then that would suggest a placebo effect, which undermines the whole concept. And why are the prayed-for better favoured by god than the un-prayed-for, if they are equally sick and god is all-knowing? Can a busy nurse with a ward full of sick patients be expected to answer these questions on a five-minute check beside a hospital bed? Until they are, then there is no place for religion to be pushed on to people who don't seek it.
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| Thursday, June 25th, 2009
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3:53 pm - Big Bag of Wool Day.
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I have just come into a large quantity of wool of various kinds, meaning that I have several times more wool than the ability to do a damn thing with it. I would normally offer this to Mary first, but I have already swamped her with so much wool that she could knit herself a little fort, so who wants an enormous bag of wool (plus some needles)?
It's come from the charity shop down the road where my mum and sister are volunteering, so I would like to ask for a small donation for Dove Cottage hospice, since they do great work and helped to look after my grandfather when he got really ill.
I've also got a purple beaded hanging tea-light holder that has Sheffield written all over it, figuratively speaking. I'm sure I'll unearth more and more stuff as I prepare to move and mum and Alf keep bringing home freebies.
EDIT- Which reminds me! Please to be browsing my quality items on auction here http://shop.ebay.co.uk/merchant/lulubell1985_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZ, including! My sister's clothes, books about Wicca, some H.R. Giger tarot cards, an Oz from Buffy figurine, a silk dice-bag...
AND MANY MORE!!!!1!!
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| Friday, May 29th, 2009
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11:47 am - Oh barf
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Check it out, married friends! This conservative guy thinks your statement of love and commitment is actually about controlling a ladies precious, precious virginity and child bearing and that that is why gays should not be allowed to have the same right.
http://jezebel.com/5271544/how-social-conservatives-are-ruining-marriage
Dude sure makes it sound fun.
I've been working on my Big Marriage Essay for time now but it may surprise some of you to learn that my motives for deciding not to marry are not (by and large) feminist. This is for the reasons at the conclusion of the Big Porn Essay, being steadily researched currently. I don't believe that either institution is necessarily sexist. In the hands of assholes like Schulman (of which, sadly, there are many) and general social expectations which are hard to shake (household duties become much more the purview of the wife post-marriage, for example) then yes, it still has the taint of misogyny. The anthropological origins of marriage have been posited as the control of women's reproduction or the ownership of children. But we don't live in that time anymore. Marriage need not be sexist and many people show that it can be an equal and satisfying partnership, which is a lot more civilised than what Schulman posits.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 7th, 2009
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7:36 pm - FYI
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I've got a new blog at http://throughthetalltrees.blogspot.com/, which will function as a public-friendly dumping ground/workspace for my creative projects. It means I can keep the more personal stuff here. I've already added the stuff from LJ, Route 57 and Quirky Nomads and am now exhausted.
I'll be adding old bits of writing I've found in my archives, the better and/or scanable pieces of art I do and some SFW modelling shots. Creating a public face, you know? Something I won't be afraid of potential employers stumbling across.
Speaking of potential employers, does anybody know any? Like, in London maybe? Soho? Anything? Because I could do with a job. Something to bring in the cash and stop me from making pointless new blogs.
F.A.O. Paul and people who cook-
Spaghetti with spinach, chilli and vodka
Slice up some garlic and little green chillis and saute them gently in a good amount of olive oil, say 4 tbsp. Don't let them burn. If you're using frozen spinach, add the lumps to the pan and defrost gently, tunring constantly, while slowly adding two shots of vodka. If using fresh, cook the lot really quickly to keep it green. If so inclined, add cream. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and season with salt. Stir into cooked long pasta, such as spaghetti ot linguine, and serve with parmesan and the rest of the lemon.
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, May 1st, 2009
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11:13 am - Hair "there" and everywhere.
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| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
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6:17 pm - space
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Back in paris, we used to sneak on to the RER from St Michel and go to Cite Universitaire for dinner because they didn't check your student cards, so we could eat a full meal for 2 euro 60. I got caught once by the transport police having followed a friend through the barriers. Once, Kalem says that he was going to walk back to the bookshop. This was odd, because we always took the train. St Michel and Cite U felt completely discreet from each other. I couldn't fathom the distance between. When I moved to the fourteenth, I discovered Cite U on the other side of Parc Montsouris where I went jogging. I could walk the entire distance in an hour, it turned out. I could cycle it in half. In between were the Jardins du Luxembourg, and Port Royal where I could see all the way to the Sacre Couer on a good day, and the Boul Miche where I could free wheel alomst all the way to Shakespeare's.
Today I went walking in the fields. I took a route I had never been on before, connecting unfamiliar yellow posts in the familiar valley. I came to a lane that went in the direction of Stathern. I was half way down it when I recognised it as one of the walks I took with my grandparents after weekend lunches when I was small. I didn't like the walk, because it was one of the ones where you have to turn around and go back; I preferred circuits. I had no idea you could get to there from this way. I had never made the connection. It's only now that I can see how close we always were.
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, March 29th, 2009
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11:36 pm - Looking at a Thing in a bag.
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| Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
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11:02 pm - Recipe time
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Hey. I'm back online. Figured I'd post a recipe of my own to encourage this mini-trend of food blogging.
Thai-style pumpkin soup:
(I say pumpkin, most squashes would work, the legendary butternut squash in particular.)
Peel and de-seed a butternut squash or half a pumpkin and cut into small cubes. In a large heavy-bottomed pan, gently heat a generous amount of vegetable oil then then throw in three chopped cloves of garlic and a thumb of chopped galangal (ginger is fine). Don't let them brown. Add the pumpkin cubes and get them nice and oily before covering and sweating the crap out of them. It's going to take a good 20 minutes. Once it's tender, add your prefered quantity of fresh chopped chilli (keeping some back to decorate later) and two tablespoons of nam-pla fish sauce (or soy if you're veggie). Up the heat and stir for a couple of mins before adding the contents of a tin of coconut milk including all the yummy cream that gets stuck to the inside. Bring it to the boil and then down to a simmer for five minutes, then blend it in batches until totally smooth. I guess you could hold back some coconut milk to stir in on serving to do that swirly effect, but I think that's a bit naff and Fanny Cradock. Instead, throw on some roasted salted pumpkin seeds (wash, dry, stick under the grill/fry til they pop), decorate with some nice big slices of fresh chilli or, best of all, fry some Thai basil leaves until crispy and place on the top of each bowl. Serve with soy (for salt fans) or chilli sauce (for those with something to prove).
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
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9:46 am - Like an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, smothered in chocolate.
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I'm killing time at Sean's before I take the train back to the countryside, so here's a meme V tagged me with to further my contribution to our generation's culture of over-sharing. If you fancy doing it, do! If you don't, don't!
( If you don't know me by now... )
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, February 27th, 2009
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12:34 am - It turns out I'm 24...
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...it also turns out that I ate a fish tank and drank half a bottle of red in a hot tub. Go figure.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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