fucking shove it

You know what, Simon Mills, why don't you crawl right back in to the hole you came from. Oh and take some journalism courses while you're in there. I hear the University of Phoenix offers some excellent distance learning programs, and you seem ideally suited to them. On said course you might like to learn a little something called fact checking and research! It's this super fun concept where when you write a bullshit opinion piece for the Telegraph (to be published in the oh so prestigious fashion section) you don't just pull the contents out of your arse!

Sounds great, huh?

I was angry reading your article, I really was. Phrases such as

"It is hard to argue that any of these irrefutably beautiful women has been anything but blighted - rather than enhanced - by her rash decision to become graffitied"

(So full of assumptions! So very patronising! So incredibly subjective!) and:

Most tattoos are the cheap plumage of the attention-seeker, visual ice breakers for last-chance barflies and aspiring reality TV show contestants. They certainly aren't scary or alternative any more. Now that they have been co-opted by the masses - the squares, the mortgaged, the Volvo drivers, the wusses and the girls - we have come to accept their fairground aesthetic in much the same way we have decided to allow Gordon Ramsay's pointless swearing.

(Oh no! Women get them, they are no longer valid! Also: Making sweeping generalisations about a sizable proportion of the population is fun and not at all hackish!) made me want to spit venom. But then I realised that essentially you are another irritating little man with an axe to grind, who for some reason takes offense at what people with no connection to you whatsoever do with their own bodies. Imagine that!

So now I kind of just feel bad for you. I'd still like you to go find that hole though.

Kisses

Alex

ps. you know it is possible Pharrell Williams is having removal work done so that he can improve the tattoos he has, this is actually an incredibly common reason for laser treatment as people evolve and change and wish their artwork to do so too. (You might want to factor that in to the statistics you're so fond of.) But it's cool though, if you want to keep making assumptions about the motivations of people you've never met I won't stop you.

pps. Spur of the moment flash ripped from the wall is a leeeeetle different from custom designed artwork requiring hours of work and lashings of skill

ppps. So glad you enjoyed my article enough to really take it to heart and follow the advice within it. Maybe next week you could write a piece about how maligned the White Middle Aged Male is, I hear that's pretty topical right now.

Update: apparently I wasn't the only person the Telegraph pissed off today.

a note on the ungrateful

Many thanks to the fabulous Girl With Curious Hair for the call to arms on this issue...

So, science is inherently evil is it? You know what? Fine. I give up. There's no point arguing with a statement like that. I could cite advancements that have been life saving, revolutionary. I could point to dear friends who are currently in the care of the medical profession, people the world would be a worse place without. I could start talking about engineering allowing international travel and reliable water supplies, architecture providing us with shelter from the elements, maths and physics explaining the world around us. I could talk about space travel, genetics, communication, crops being farmed with improved yields, AIDS medication, water purification, computers, printing presses, heart bypasses, bionic limbs, cameras, telescopes, video games, sunscreen, decongestents, cars, clock-radios, MRI machines, cinema, electric lights, mass produced clothing, canned food, electric shavers, CAT scans, pencils, the notion of gravity, post-it notes, life as we know it. But I won't. Instead I'm going to say this:

All scientific discoveries are the work of Satan and we'd be much better off crawling around in the muck and dying from poisoning brought around by eating foraged food. Same goes for animal testing, that's bad and totally unnecessary. Yep. Absolutely. While we're on the subject of things that are important to me being crap I'm also totally going to admit that all feminists are evil too. That entire political movement was a pointless waste of time and should never have happened.

Just a couple of points:

re: Feminism. I'd like everyone holding the above view to raise their hands. OK, Ladies would you kindly stop voting, driving, owning property, wearing trousers, having any control over your medical care, getting an education, working, earning money, enjoying a life without violence as standard, going into pubs and bars, eating alone in restaurants and having orgasms. Gents, you're going to need to head right back out the door to work because, guess what? You have seven kids to feed (contraceptives, what? Never heard of em) and a mortgage to pay. Alone.

re: Animal testing. Please stop taking aspirin, paracetamol, morphine, vicodin... oh screw it, you know what "medicine", yeah stop taking that. Oh and could you also stop having surgery. Of any kind. Although especially heart surgery. Anything life saving. Although you can probably still have your appendix taken out. You just can't be anaesthetised while we do it. It's cool though, here's a rag to bite down on. Hope you don't get a post surgical infection cause we really can't help you with that.

re: Science. Well, if you managed to survive this far without medical care, heating, electricity, transport, living in a building, eating processed food, eating organic food, hell - eating cooked food, defending yourself or you know, having fire to provide light and warmth could you please move it out to the mountainside, possibly into a cave, you're going to have to walk there though. Barefoot. And wearing some sort garment fashioned from leaves and bits of twine that you've hand woven from tree bark. Actually "weaving" that's a bit advanced, maybe you could just sort of hold them on or something. You also might want to stay in the shade, I hear skin cancer's a bitch without access to treatment. Don't bother packing either, we all know that suitcases are the work of the devil. You won't need that laptop you write your charming anti evolutionary screeds on either, and leave that bible where it is. The printed word really isn't for folks like you. OK, now could you just sort of sit still for a while. Don't move. You might discover something. That would be bad. Sit very, very, very still.

Oh yes, and get the fuck off our internet you ignorant, anti-intellectual, narrow minded, Luddite wanker.

panic stations

I am. Freaking. The Fuck. Out.

Seriously people, this is an epic level freak out happening right now. I'm on about a level 4 on the "Alex is melting down I'm serious about this run for the hills do not stop to retrieve children or valuables well maybe that one vase as it could actually be worth something some day" scale. I'm screwed. Utterly screwed. Nobody is ever going to let me teach. Anywhere. Ever. I'm certainly not going to get on to my first choice course, the interview for which is on Thursday.

Why you ask? Well! I'll tell you.

I haven't spent the last nine years volunteering with sick children and teaching them to read. I haven't taken every day of annual leave I've had in the last two years and spent it mentoring underprivileged youths (although I wish I had). I have not spent the last six weeks rehearsing my presentation for my interview, in fact I haven't even started it. That last part? Utterly not hyperbole.

Shit.

Fuck.

I haven't spent a day in a school.

This is not my fault. It's the weirdest Easter ever right now. The schools aren't back yet. They don't answer emails. I have one possibility but I have to contact them after the school comes back in to session. On Monday. Four days after my interview. Useful. I fully intend on spending time in a school (because not to = fucking insane) I just haven't managed to yet.

This is entirely my fault. I should have started sooner. I applied too late. I'm not dedicated enough.

I made the mistake of reading message boards dedicated to applications for teaching. This was a bad idea. It made me freak out. I'm freaking out right now. Can you tell? Because, honestly? The people who visit websites dedicated to stuff are nerds and weirdos. I should know. I am one. Except I read scathing movie reviews, random sci-fi stuff, articles about sex and the evils of magazines, blogs on feminist issues and lots and lots and lots (and lots) of webcomics. I spend all day online working out exactly how many X-Men continuities I'm currently reading (three), daydreaming about my next tattoo and shoe shopping.

This does not make me a bad person. Really, it doesn't. At least I don't think it does. Shit.

And normally I wouldn't care. Because I never care. I haven't prepared for an interview in my life. I am su-freaking-perb at interviews. I kick ass at presentations (speaking of: I really should get on with that, I have about 36 hours in which to complete it - 20 of those will be spent at work and/or sleeping, hmmmmm I wonder if I can do both simultaneously), I am confident and well spoken and look fierce in a suit. But I'm freaking out. Massively. Because for once in my life I actually want something. I want this so badly. Not just because I don't handle rejection well. Not just because I want to be a student next year. Not just because I hate my current job so much it makes me want to leap out of my third floor window.

But because more and more I realise just how important it is (yes, that's my question).

I want to teach my subject. I want to be an authority figure that is always sympathetic. I want to be one of the few adults who offers a completely safe space. I want to be a role model to young women who are conditioned against science, against speaking up, against acting out. I want to explain inheritance theory and the process of natural selection. I want to see the maniacal spark in the pacifist veggie kid's eyes as she cuts into her first rat and decides on a career in pathology (hello, me at thirteen). I want this. The only other thing I've wanted this much was my place at University. I got that. I want this.

I know that I want this because I'm planning for my rejection. This doesn't happen in Alex Land. In Alex Land when you get rejected for something it takes under thirty seconds to have yourself and everyone around you convinced that you didn't want it anyways. Let thirty more seconds pass and you've already moved on to your Next Big Scheme. That doesn't happen here. I'm planning for my rejection. If I get rejected my application goes on to the next place. And then the next. And then it's June and I'm in clearing. And then the process is closed, the slots are filled. Come October I'm temping, taking a TEFL qualification in the evenings. January comes around and it's goodbye London, hello Tokyo. My application for the next year has already been sent. Interviews begin again.

And I calm down a little.

But still, there's the little voice whispering at the back of my head. They need science teachers, they are under fucking subscribed. You haven't prepared because you don't need to, why do you think they pay you ten grand tax free to train? They should be begging you to apply. You are a natural. And it's that little voice that's fucking me over because for a few minutes I believe it and start feeling confident. Then I start feeling blase. Then I start feeling cocky.

And the swing from "cocky" to "gibbering ball of panic and stress" is so steep and so terrifyingly far that it makes my stomach churn.

Bollocksing buggering bastarding fuck.

I'm going to read comics and worry myself to sleep. An activity only marginally less productive than spending half an hour ranting about my unpreparedness. Half an hour I could have been using to prepare.

Oh for fuck's sake.

what I don't understand

Why is it OK for a sixteen-year-old girl to submit herself to anaesthesia, to have her flesh cut and pulled away from the muscle, to have a foreign substance put within the walls of her body, a foreign substance that can be toxic, in order to modify her appearance - to fit in with the Western ideal of physical perfection? How is this desecration of the flesh any different from binding her feet or stretching her lip? If it makes her feel more confident, more at ease in her own skin then we have to ask ourselves why. Why is it that a child, in America still not of an age to be legally able to consent to an adult sexual relationship, should feel the need to cosmetically enlarge a part of her body that is considered a sexual symbol? Why is breast size tied in to her worth as a person? Why can she not be happy with the way she looks until her chest has been cut and stuffed and sewn?

Why is doing that more acceptable than this? Or this?

Is it because it's performed by medical professionals? Because it can look "natural"? Because someone, somewhere said so?

Help me out here.

As to what got me thinking about this: there's an interesting and (dare I say it) almost balanced article trying to understand the motivations behind body modification that was brought to my attention today via needled. Of course any sweeping generalisations concerning tattooing immediately puts my hackles up but this piece made me feel altogether less stabby than usual. It's worth a read.

Oh and if anyone could answer my plastic surgery questions I'd be really grateful. It's bugging me.

I have been here for almost two years and yet still do not have the responsibility to purchase even one box of staples without approval

Fucking temps have more authority in this building than I do. I'm not kidding. I actually discovered today that someone who's been here two motherfucking weeks has higher approval status me. I can barely walk because I have to sit on my ass all day, which incidentally is getting fatter by the second because I can't do any freaking exercise, and it still hurts. All of the above is making me tense and snappy and mean so I'm either pissing off everyone in sight or making them cry. I'm broke because I just had to hand over £150 for someone's freaking hen weekend in June. Oh and incidentally - the wedding? Over the weekend of Leeds festival so I can't go. I still haven't heard back from my teaching course and they only have a week left to get back to me, my iPod is dead, my hair is frizzy because I was over zealous with the curlers this morning and about ten minutes ago I broke a nail.

Fuck this.

I am going home to sit on my sofa, eat cheesecake and kick the ever loving crap out of endless hoardes of pixellated evil until I feel better.

Anyway, how's your day been?

Procreation? Not so much. Footnotes? Absolutely.

Two articles caught my attention today the first, over at Jezebel is a truly horrifying report of a woman in Sweden whose boyfriend fed her RU-486 without her knowledge in a bid to abort the foetus she was carrying. Even more frightening is the fact that he's not the first guy to have this stellar idea. The Jezebel article highlights some of the comments left on the original news story, which I'll reproduce here:

I find it interesting that he gets sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to get rid of the fetus and she can legally get rid of the fetus by having an abortion.

Most of the responses to this are completely in tune with my personal reaction of "The FUCK? He drugged her, that's assault you fucking moron" which is always heartening to see. It's nice to know that rampant stupidity doesn't permeate to every last corner of the internet. As far as refuting the moronic arguments like the once above goes: it all comes back (like so many things) to the "my body, my choice" philosophy. I've been reading a lot on this subject recently and I have realised something very important. This is an ideal which I will fight to the death to defend. I will also say this, melodramatic as it sounds: if abortion or emergency contraception were ever made to be completely illegal I would have myself sterilised. For real. I don't care how painful, expensive or irreversible the procedure would be there would be no way in hell I would take that chance.* I'd rather never have children at all than have them before I'm ready for them. As for abstinence? Fuck off. I mean, you have met me right?

This brings me neatly onto the second article, via Feministing, which happily put me in a much better mood. Shockingly enough some women genuinely don't want children. Why? Because they just don't. I cannot tell you how happy this and the associated comments made me feel. The second I say something such as the statement I made above I immediately get jumped on with the "oh you'll change your mind soon enough"s or the "it'll be different when it happens to you"s and I am sick to the back teeth of it**. It's part absolute fury at being told what I will and will not feel at some undetermined point in the future (which I do not like) and part repulsion at the idea that I obviously will never be able to be a complete and rounded person until I have popped out a sprog. I've stopped saying that I don't want children now, not because I suddenly and magically do but because I can't take arguing with people over it any more. It appears that the answer of "because I just don't really feel I want them" isn't good enough and I utterly despise myself when I catch me starting up with the "I can barely look after myself, what would I do with a baby? I'd probably lose it. I even kill my houseplants HA HA HA" schtick which seems to be the only verging on acceptable response. Anyway, it's not as simple as that I'm not saying I'll never have kids just that I don't want them but people can't seem to understand this distinction. It is very, very simple: if I meet someone who desperately wants a family then, yeah: I would consider it. However, I also think that if I never got around to reproducing it wouln't be any great loss - my life would be just as fulfilling and I'd be just as happy either way. Is this a wildly radical notion? Does the logic of this not compute somewhere? It's another case of people assuming that just because they get something out of a particular situation (and yes, so do billions of other people) then everyone else must do too.

Although I will say this, having gotten older and making friends with women who actually are mothers some in real life (some in a life that just feels real) my perception of motherhood has changed. Realising that parents are real people (who can get irritated with their offspring, or find them unintentionally hilarious, or have any number of any other utterly rational human responses to a completely autonomous living entity) rather than the Stepford-bot mega-mommy 3000s I grew up around (seriously, private school girls have issues 90% of them parentally induced) my horror of having spawn has been downgraded from "I'd rather jump off a bridge, oh God. Why would you even say something like that to me? What the fuck, man." to "well maybe, if I had the money and the support and someone else who promised to feed them and clean out their cages... meh, what's on TV?". So there's always that.

* This is not to say that I am anti-children (obviously, or my future career plans would be kind of stupid), or anti-anyone having children ever. I am however anti-me having children. I am also anti-bringing a child into the world into a home situation that either doesn't want it or isn't ready for it.

** This particular rant may or may not have been brought on by the fact that my baby cousin, who ok is only 9 months younger than me, moved in with her boyfriend this week highlighting the fact that in my family's terms I am officially an old maid. Seriously, being 22 and not having met/married someone yet is positively deviant - especially as my Mother was living in London when she was exactly my age and yet she still had time to find herself a husband.

mumbo jumbo for thursday

Wow. Just wow.

Slate online posted the peer review guidelines for a Creationist journal as its hot document today. And I've got to say that the concept of Creationist peer reviews fucking terrifies me. Why? It means that these nutjobs take themselves seriously. I currently work in academia and peer review is a massive part of getting any scientific paper published. It acts as an internal system to prevent wildly speculative, falsified or just plain wrong data from being published as scientific fact. The reviewers are accredited scientists, at the top of their field. They do not, however, agree with the viewpoint of the paper's author by default. Peer reviewing is an arduous (and often insanely political) process that is the bane of most serious scientists' lives.

I immediately forwarded the link to co-worker M who finds this stuff as horrendous as I do. His response was to spend the rest of the morning reading the journal and forwarding me links.

Taking a random example: Dinosaur Nests Reinterpreted

Highlights include: overusage of quotation marks around the word "nest", scientific figures drawn representing how the authour imagines how the eggs dinosaur nests were arranged, several sections citing academic(ish) evidence for stress conditions followed by the section headed "Evidence of Stress Conditions from Scripture", the entirety of the "Acknowledgements" section (including praising the Lord, classy move guy) and the entire thing being written in a style that would have gotten me kicked out of my undergraduate degree course.

Read and enjoy.

I weep for humainity...

I was flicking through the Guardian today when I came across the "notes and queries" section in the G2. One of the queries rendered me actually, literally speechless - no mean feat (I learnt to talk at the age of one and apparently "haven't stopped since"). Alas, the query isn't up on the website yet so you'll have to take my word for it:

"Evolution is now well-documented and accepted, so if people kept jumping off the roof of a tall building, how long would it take before we developed wings to fly?"

Seriously?

Ok. A deep seated hatred of the kind of people who write into newspaper editorials actually prevents me from writing in to the section in question with my response, however it doesn't stop me from passive-aggressively ranting about it in my blog. Here is a highly simplified crash course on how evolution works:

Evolution is in its simplest form "survival of the fittest". The best adapted members of a species are more likely to survive and/or be chosen as breeding partners - meaning that they are more likely to pass on their genes to the next generation. This makes those favourable genes more common in each successive generation. As the process continues through the generations the "favourable traits" that led to the first individual's evolutionary success become more and more widespread until eventually they become "normal". I'm aware that my hastily noted ramblings may be confusing so let's use a totally fictional and rather extreme disease model to simplify things:

On planet Alex there are millions of bunnies (why bunnies? Because it's planet Alex. Deal with it). The bunnies all live in harmony on planet Alex, which is plentiful in food and free from predators, and are free to interbreed at will. Because of this there is a large amount of genetic diversity. Some of the bunnies have spontaneously mutated so that they carry gene X (note the "spontaneous" part. This is random people). At the moment gene X has no general effect on the population and so it is passed on from parent bunny to baby bunny with no real consequence. Until the plague comes.

(The plague has been brought to planet Alex by evil toad overlords who came for a two week holiday and then buggered off again)

The plague is fatal to the bunnies on planet Alex, however it just so happens that gene X makes the bunnies that carry it immune to the plague. This is a total coincidence. Pretty soon the entire bunny population has been wiped out by the plague, leaving only the bunnies with gene X alive. Because they are bunnies they set about repopulating planet Alex pretty sharpish. The result? Every in bunny in the population now carries gene X.

That was a very simplistic and entirely unrealistic scenario (in actual fact there are no bunnies native to planet Alex) but the basic point I'm making here is that evolution is a process that happens by chance not by design. It is caused by the selection of existing genetic traits that have become favourable for survival due to a particular environment. It is not caused by the actions of individual members of a species over time.

Taking the above example: people continually leaping from a roof top would not cause other members of the population to sprout wings, it would merely serve to remove those idiots who jumped off of buildings from the breeding pool.

And that ladies and gents is why I'm going into science journalism.

The worst thing is when I told one of my co-workers that I'd seen something truly depressing in the newspaper our resulting conversation was as follows:

"You mean the thing I sent you?"
"Erm, what thing you sent me?"
"The thing with the scratchcards."
"What thing with the scratchcards?"
"The thing I sent you with the....Jesus, Alex. Try checking your work email."
"Ok, ok..... Oh, crap."

The little gem awaiting me in my inbox was this. My favourite line of the piece?

""I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it."

I'll be out back, researching tall buildings with roof access in my local area.

something rantish for the weekend

There is one hell of a rant up over at my tattoo blog. Note to self: avoid mentioning plans for a full back piece when out with people you've known since the age of eleven. It never ends well.

Enjoy!

wednesday geekery

I'm feeling the warm and glowy love for my subject today. Mainly because of this article. Seriously, if it were possible to marry a piece of journalistic writing it would be this one waiting for me in the registry office. The author puts into words exactly what I want to scream at some people on a daily basis. The gist of the article is this:

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable. This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

It matters when reputable accountants delude themselves into thinking that Enron-style accounting is acceptable. It matters when people are deluded into thinking that they will be rewarded in paradise for killing themselves and others. It matters when bishops attribute floods to a deity whose evident vengefulness and malevolence leave one reeling. And it matters when science teachers start to believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

It's a well written piece and well worth the read, I may be a little biased as creationists were the bane of my religious studies A-level (I did it for the ethics course which, incidentally was a super fun experience. I was the only person in the room who didn't think that aborting your heroin addicted half sibling was going to earn you a one way ticket to the land of fire and brimstone. Try teaching situational ethics to that crowd. Here's a hint: you can't.) but this is not an anti religion thing, people are perfectly capable of combining science with belief. I've seen it happen. And whether or not I see the rationale or point behind it is an entirely off-topic issue.

The way I see it the essential problem is the death of the questioning mentality. The general public isn't educated enough in the basics of science to question what the newspapers and their so called "experts" have to say. And so we live in a society where potentially famine-solving research into GM crops is put on hold because "We'd be eating DNA!!!!", people give their life savings to psychics and mothers endanger the lives of their children because they want them to be treated "naturally". It makes me ill.

Here's my dirty little secret: I own two decks of tarot cards. I can also read I-ching. I have an oracle book. But and I really must stress this I do not believe that they will answer my problems or tell me anything I don't already know. Dividing yarrow stalks or dealing cards gives me the time to think over a problem and by the time I'm done it doesn't even matter what the outcome is. I think horoscopes are a bit of fun, I read them as I flick past the page and then immediately forget them. These things are diversions at best and quite frankly anyone who thinks they're anything more needs a fucking straitjacket.

I think magazine psychics are a sick joke - especially the ones who pass on messages from dead loved ones or give life advice based on their spirit guides. Live psychics are frankly, con-artists. Anyone who's looked at cold reading will tell you so. But still this isn't where my problem lies.

My problem is when they call it science.

Skepdic makes for an enlightening read on the subject especially if you don't have a scientific background, there are some fantastic articles on the ways that studies using "scientific methodology" can be deliberately misinterpreted, skewed or simply explained away. Most people don't understand scientific terminology so if you have an agenda to push then it's easy to twist things your way by throwing out some jargon and hoping the public bites.

I honestly believe that critical thinking should be on the curriculum as standard. But what do I know?


Well now that the ranting and raving is over with I'll give you something amusing to look at while I get on with the business of packing up my soap box.



Now that's dedication to the cause. There are more tattoos for the thoroughly geeky here, and I must say: it did indeed brighten up my day.

Photos of Alex (77)

Dear Person I Went to High School/College With, Who I Added on Facebook During a Fit of Sociability and/or Irrational Insecurity About My Number Of Friends, But Now No Longer See Socially,

Hi! I see that you were out and about this weekend. You must have had a fantastic time, boy am I ever seething with jealousy right now! Seriously, I'm not kidding after all: you went to a house party. Congratulations. One minor point: you were there for five hours. Evidently they were a fun five hours as you photographed all of them. During those super fun five hours you saw the same thirty people. All your photos are of you posing with said thirty people. There are seventy of these photos. You are in at least sixty of them. None of the photographs depict a momentous or even humourous event. Call me crazy, you can even call me cynical if you really want to but your photos (all seventy of them, that is an awfully impressive number by the way - especially considering the static nature of the event and the number of people present) seem tailor made to demonstrate to the rest of the world what a brilliant time you were having. And it certainly looks like you were! Things certainly have changed, haven't they? I remember back when we were close, back in the days where we would both attend the same social events. I remember how you spent most of your evening collaring people to pose with you and the rest of it flicking through your digital camera deleting the pictures where you had four chins. Good to know that you've developed an all together more rational attitude.

Keep in touch!

Alex

ps. The little captions you add obsessively to every slitty eyed photo are just super too. "Drunk!!!!!! :)" - sheer poetry.

"Everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness." ~ Italo Calvino

I caught sight of the above quotation in the comments section for one of my favourite columnists and as well as being incredibly fitting it made me smile, hence the reproduction of it here. I am not a completely anti-photo person. I like photography. Photography took my thoroughly awful still life projects up to an A grade. Photography involves chemicals and silver and magic. It's art and it's science and nothing else combines my two favourite things so well. Photography I have no problem with. I have a problem with the endless streams of red faced people having "like, a totally amaaaaaazing time" that are clogging up my newsfeed. I hate that now whenever I go out I'm faced with the tyranny of the camera. I don't like photos of myself. I look dreadful in them: Because of the size of my pupils I will have red-eye even if everyone else in the photo survives unscathed, I also hate posing so am normally mid sentence when a photo is taken. (That sentence is usually "hurry up and take the fucking picture already".) My features are such that they're all slightly "off" my lip piercing is asymmetrical, but only slightly, my refusal to have five healthy teeth removed when there was no benefit other than a purely cosmetic one means that my teeth are out of line (actually technically it's my jaw) on the page this sounds awful. In motion my face works. I'm fine, average looking. Videos of myself do not make me cringe. Photographs however, unless they are black and white and completely candid look downright horrifying. But it's more than that, it's the fact that every time I start having a conversation someone inevitably collars me to pose for a photograph. I don't want to pose for a photograph. I want to continue discussing the decline in quality of modern British cinema. Just because every one else around me seems so determined to avoid having a good time by photographing it doesn't mean that I should be doing that too. I want to actually enjoy my evening without my conversations being interrupted by flash bulbs and I want to not be constantly panicking about the state of my eye make-up in case someone is prowling for snapshots. (Yes, I am that vain.) Is that too much to ask?


Apparently so. I blame facebook. I would attempt to rebel against it but then I wouldn't be able to stalk my ex's new girlfriend (photos: 941).

on the matter of house-hunting

Well, I'm quite frankly impressed with myself! I managed to get up on three and a half hours of sleep and spend the morning house-hunting yesterday. I should state now that I hate trying to find somewhere to live, just like every single other person on the planet, but this time I'm actually fairly hopeful about the process. Although to truly give a proper understanding of why my hopefulness is an unusual thing maybe I should explain my previous experiences in this area.

Back when we were students and hence scattered all over the country and had to make a special trip to this fine city then we only had a matter of days to find somewhere. The reasons for this ranged from the decent ("I have a biology field trip starting on Friday that's worth 15% of my second year so I kind of have to go") to the frankly insane ("Oh I can't do it on Monday or Tuesday because it's my year and seven month anniversary with my boyfriend"). Finding a four bed house in central London (where they don’t actually have families – no really, it’s a fact. I checked) on two days notice, slap bang in the middle of the time period that every other student is looking is not an easy task.

In fact such a “not easy task” that we chose to stay in our mouse infested, living room free home with the faulty boiler and a flatmate who drove us occasionally nuts (although now we don’t live with her she’s much less crazy inducing) for another year – just to avoid the pain of moving.

The second time it wasn’t so much the timing that was the issue so much as the cost. Two of us had no clue what we were even doing in the months to come (read: “or ever”) and although I knew that I’d get something semi-lucrative my other directionless friend was less sure – an ecology degree in the centre of the largest urban area in the country is actually surprisingly useless. I know: shocker. And the other is struggling on a PhD stipend. We spent weeks trudging round tower blocks (complete with pre-requisite burnt out cars and used needles), on the verge of crying before eventually saying “fuck it” and essentially selling our souls for our current flat. Sure, the rent is obscene, our land lady is batshit crazy (apparently the curtains in the living room are worth £2000 and the chandeliers in the living room and hall are supposed to be professionally cleaned on a monthly basis oh and also: no men or parties are allowed), the place is falling down (we went for a month without heating or hot water in the middle of fucking February) and I have to spend three hours a day travelling because I work on the other side of the city but it’s not so bad.

So why am I happy about the prospect of moving again (aside from the aforementioned psychopathic landlady, shitty plumbing and nightmare commute)? Well although we sacrifice one flatmate to the land of "doing a masters degree in conservation in the middle of the countryside" we gain another: in the form of my other flatmate’s boyfriend. This is fantastic news as it means that next year our rent is instantly lowered, because they’re sharing a room. Finding a two bed place is one hell of a lot easier than finding a three bed place and it means that unlike before we’re actually looking in the upper end of our price bracket so we’re not competing for places with students – and in a city where there is zero student housing this is a large bonus.


But why am I most excited? We’re moving to a cheaper area. And as we currently live in the pricey part of town (and I work in the scummy part) this means we just move closer and closer to where I need to be.

Let me explain: I currently have to wake up at 6:30 to drag myself out of bed by 7:00 so that I can get to work for 9:00am. If I’m lucky I get home by 7:30pm which gives me a grand total of three whole hours to myself before it hits half ten and I have to think about sleeping because otherwise there’s no chance I’ll even be conscious the next morning. Going out after work is completely out during the week because unless I want to be verging on the dead the next morning I have to leave early, and even if I don’t care about feeling like crap for a whole day staying out any later than midnight means it’s going to take me over three hours just to get home (which also translates into three hours of sleep that night - ace).

Moving to somewhere within a half hour journey of my work means that I save two hours every single week day on travel. And, because I don’t have to get up so early, I can actually start keeping the hours of a normal person again. Oh yes, this move potentially nets me an extra three to four hours of free time every single day. And what am I going to do with my newfound twenty hours of free time every week? Am I going to join a gym? Take up dancing again? Learn to play a musical instrument? Perhaps some form of charity work? No! There is something far more productive I can be doing with my time.

Why of course: I’m going to play video games and go to the cinema.


In other news: I actually got my application form in on time in the end so if there are any fingers to be crossed I'd appreciate it! I also managed to be moderation girl on Friday and even wake up yesterday sans my usual level of post-drinking paranoia so it appears my future predicting abilities are on the fritz. Oh and: Vive la Pajiba name formatting revolution!