Casual sexism?

I'm under no illusions about my favourite genre of television. I love a mystery, but I don't really believe that if I was suddenly found dead in suspicious circumstances, a team of astonishingly attractive young people would turn up and stop at nothing to solve the case, working through the night to analyse every scrap of dirt and hair in the house to identify my killer. However, I was watching Numb3rs the other day (are the Boy Wonder and I the only ones who pronounce it 'Num-three-errs'? I'm always vaguely surprised that the inter programme announcers don't say it that way!), which was the story of a primary school teacher who had been shot dead whilst attempting to collect a ransom for a kidnapping. After the post mortem, when they were still trying to identify the body, the only regular female on the case for the FBI said something along the lines of 'Well, her breasts were real, but thank God her nose wasn't the one God gave her or I'd be really depressed right now'. I have never heard any of the men in the show saying anything comparable - in fact they are all so caught up in their work that they rarely stray into personal feelings outside of the prescribed 'home' and 'university' scenes where feelings are played out. I just wonder at the assumption that a woman would not only exhibit jealousy at any woman she considers more attractive than herself, regardless of whether she is actually alive or not, but that she would express it so casually, despite the fact that the woman was only shot that morning and they still didn't even know who she was! This is the kind of thing which takes up so much room in my head - I am frequently annoyed by the suggestion, mostly made in adverts, that women cannot function without chocolate, celebrity gossip, uneccesarilty expensive shoes and opportunities to share details with their bowel habits with one another over a cosy lunch. As someone who has come to hate shopping in all its forms, doesn't like ice-cream or cake, and has only a few female friends, I wonder whether I am genuinely an aberration, whether I have just never noticed that most other women do fit this stereotype, or whether we are just supposed to believe that they do because Sex in the City has told us that this is how women behave, and God knows, if you're a woman who hates Sex in the City it must be because you have no ovaries or a long term addiction to steroids worthy of the highest quality shot putter! Being able to see that another woman is attractive is considered out of the question - you must be either brimming with envy, or smugly enjoying your superior looks and pitying her for being so plain. Exhibiting no sign of jealousy is rarely considered a sign of evolved emotional development, rather as a sign that you are 'hiding it well', and every protesting word is considered to be further evidence that you are secretly burning up with an urge to scratch another woman's eyes out. So, instead of ranting to the poor Boy Wonder (who, incidentally finds himself unable to conform to stereotypes either, having as he does no interest in 'Nuts' magazine, cars or football) I shall now come here to vent my frustration at the world of lazy sterotypes. Like this.

I had a dream, I had an awesome dream...

There's generally no excuse for quoting Lionel Ritchie unless in the context of The Commodores, and particularly this song, but I am making an exception because such was the awesome nature of my dream last night it outweighs any negative feelings I have about Vinyl Lionel ruining precisely half the tracks the Commodores did by stifling their funky and writing songs himself. Now, I generally have pretty rubbish dreams, sometimes distressing (like the one in which my older brother gave me my own dead body as a birthday present, after some weird out-of-body experience, and I entertained myself happily by cutting off one arm and sewing it onto the other side of my body before panicking that someone was going to think I was responsible for a murder), sometimes actively tiring (like the night before last when I had to find homes for a snake, a lizard, several types of fish and some worms all of which required separate habitats which had to be made of things I had lying around at home, and all of which had to be constructed before I ended up being late to leave for work), and very occasionally just weird (like the one where the Boy Wonder and I were out looking for some ear-rings for his grandad and he got distracted by wanting to buy a waistcoat with snooker balls all over it). You get it - lots of weird stuff goes on in my head once I'm asleep, probably a Freudian's idea of a lifelong project, although I never attach much importance to the content. But my dream last night, as previously stated, was awesome! There were still elements of my normal panic dreams, but with one important difference - last night I dreamt that my boss had hired Stephen Colbert to work at our office! I was so stoked, so even though I was supposed to be delivering a presentation that nobody had told me about, I didn't care because it was to Stephen Colbert! I was just sitting in the meeting grinning at him and hoping he didn't know anything about what I do because I wanted to impress him. Half way through the meeting my boss did a trick he does in real life and just wandered out and Stephen leant forward and said 'Who do you have to dry-hump around here to get a marijuana cigarette' proving that my subconscious also has a healthy respect for the man! This was one of the few dreams I have ever had, particularly in my adult life, from which I awoke thinking 'That would be so cool if it was true' and because it happens so rarely I thought I should preserve the memory. Life has been a much more entertaining place since we got the Colbert Report on these shores - my favourite thing about America is now available in the corner of my living room, and apparently in the recesses of my mind. Now if I can just get a reliable supply Pepperidge Farm goldfish, I will never want for anything again...

Wild success

Well, the advent of my blog in February was supposed to herald a new era of organisation and dedication to the cause of marking the important, and not so important, moments of my life. Clearly, the six month break between posts demonstrates that I may well have been in bit hasty in declaring this a success (or that I have lead a very boring life over the last half a year. However, I feel as though I have been thwarted by...well...my lack of organisation really, but mostly the fact that I got really confused about which account I was using, and kept thinking 'I really must sort this out soon' every time I failed to post on here due to not being able to remember either my password or my e-mail address. Now that I am back, I am using this as an outlet for all the stuff in my head which has been allowed to fester, send out spores and create a kind of soup. These things can be roughly divided into categories: 1. The wedding This is not really a source of stress - things are not as complicated as everyone makes them out to be, but there are certain things I need to do for it which I am apparently only capable of thinking about when there is nothing I can do about them, which just clutters up brain space which could be chilling out. 2. The day-to-day admin crap of life Have the people who owe me money put it into my account, or have they just gone silent on me in the hope I won't notice the thousands of pounds worth of missing money? Why didn't Tesco give me my 5p off a litre of fuel voucher with my last delivery? That kind of crap that just needs sorting out and only takes a few seconds to do, but keeps getting put off because I can't be arsed to ring up/check/argue with someone etc. 3. Maintaining my social life This is a two parter - one the one hand, the physical side of actually seeing people, inviting them round, going out etc. The problem with being part of a couple who are generally quite chilled out and disorganised is that we tend to only realise we have no plans for the weekend on Thursday night at the earliest. By this point, it is not unreasonable to expect everyone else to have already made plans, meaning we end up staying in. This is not a problem - there are few things I would rather do than stay in with the Boy Wonder - but it does feel a little bit like every other night that we sit on the sofa watching CSI (or the celebrated FX channel which we have sporadically), meaning that a weekend can slip by like an extended weeknight with big breakfasts in between. The other aspect of this is my personal friendships with people that I don't see frequently. I am terribly unreliable, and blessed with friends who are tolerant of this, but it doesn't make me feel good to always start every e-mail with an apology for getting back to them so late. I am such a natural talker that even the convenience of an e-mail doesn't really do it for me, making me slow to respond, and then I don't say half of what I wanted because I think it's cheeky to leave it so long and then send a whopper and expect someone to be interested for three pages (c.f this blog). This does weigh on my mind and I feel guilty for it, but apparently not enough to do anything about it. I know that it is stupid to have a night where I answer every e-mail I have and then a month before I get round to responding to the replies! 4. The World On my more hippy days I think 'Live a good life - that's all you can do' but on the occasional bad day I feel as though my anger at the money-hungry, oil grabbing, morally bankrupt idiots who are allowed to be in charge is just an echo of everyone who has ever been in my position railing at the tyrants and bigots of their day, and wonder whether it is human nature to be so self-destructive as a species and things will never change, just the issues. I'm sure there are probably more categories of things that are in my head, but these are the only ones I can identify at the moment. I will be back soon...