On people who'd be better off just not speaking.

Oh Tom Ford. You would be so much cooler if you'd just keep your mouth shut and at least give the impression of intelligence.
"Some people are physically beautiful but yet they’re completely uninteresting, and thus they’re not beautiful. I detach the two. ... That’s why I think gay men make better designers."
Well, I like chocolate ice cream, and that's why I think rabbits make the best pets. What in sweet fuck are you even talking about? Is it possible that somewhere in that incoherent mess of a quote, you were trying to argue that gay men make the best designers because unlike straight men they won't have their judgement clouded by sexual attraction to the women they design clothes for? Quick question, where do women belong in all this - you are aware that there are female designers, right? And by this logic, wouldn't asexual people make ultimate designers? Also when did you make the scientific breakthrough that creativity is inextricably linked to sexual orientation, and why did you keep it quiet until now?

On nostalgia in the form of film.

I spent tonight revisiting Cruel Intentions, the 1999 film that blew my little baby mind wide open when I was about 13. I was 8 years old when it was made. Aside from reminding me how excellent it is in every way, it made me long for the 90's.

Gone are the days of The Rachel, jelly bangles, Cindy Crawford and her glorious hair:

Children are being raised these days totally ignorant of the fact that there ever was a show called 'Pokemon'. They don't really have a clue who Princess Diana was. They missed the release of Titanic. They missed Shakespeare in Love winning Best Picture at the Oscars and confirming that the whole event is nothing more than a popularity contest. There are young people out there who probably don't realize that at one point Mariah Carey was a respectable pop artist. R.L. Stine never even got a decent chance at their early literary careers.

You remember.

The 90's saw the release of one of the greatest Disney films of all time, The Lion King. The Spice Girls, tamagotchi, the ten minutes when rollerblades were cool - who knew there could be so much to miss in the decade that produced Blink-182 and ER?

The most fun my 7-year-old self had ever had.

I intend to watch Cruel Intentions at least twice more tonight, and pretend I don't know that Ryan Philippe and Reese Witherspoon are going to break up. 

And remember kids - "Email is for geeks and pedophiles."

On my subconscious and its habit of trolling me.

So there I am, settling down for sleepytimes. It's really late at night, I can hardly keep my eyes open, my bed is warm and comfy, it's all coming together.

And then BAM. I wake up in a total panic, I have no idea why but at the time it was imperative that I sit up and try to see my attacker.
For some reason, in the pitch darkness of my room, my eyes decide to blatantly lie to me and tell me that the vacuum cleaner is sitting near my heater, watching me menacingly. And then the fucking vacuum cleaner starts moving. Of its own accord. Advancing on me, clearly intending to strangle me with its hose or some ridiculous thing. It was terrifying. It sounds stupid, but you try being stoic when you're half-asleep and convinced you're being attacked by evil cleaning appliances.
So I start telling the vacuum cleaner "no!"
Loudly.
I am sitting in bed in the middle of the night, shouting at the imaginary evil vacuum cleaner, "NO! NO!"

Whatever. I managed to turn my lamp on and see that the vacuum cleaner isn't even in my room, and I go back to sleep, my sanity restored.
Or was it?
The last dream I remember having was - from my point of view - frankly glorious, but it was the kind of glorious that means when I wake up and realize it was only a dream, I react badly.

Like this.

My glorious dream consisted of some sort of movie viewing. The only thing I recall clearly about the movie was the fact that it had paired a couple of male characters - which was cute and all, but more importantly, they were played by this man:

That's Ian Somerhalder...on a fucking motorcycle.

and this man:

Anyone who knows me knows that my ovaries just exploded.

Cillian Murphy and Ian Somerhalder. I don't even know how my dream-self witnessed it without spontaneously combusting due to sheer joy. For reasons I think I just made quite clear, my return to reality was accompanied by this sort of behavior:

Forever.

On the laws of nature.

That is my flatmate's cat, Fat Chop (so named because he is a bottomless pit of hunger, and I do not exaggerate one tiny bit when I say that). He is sharing a tender moment of friendship with my rat, Oscar (so named because Oscar Wilde, need I say more?). Using the power of teamwork, they have gotten at least half of a plastic bag they were most definitely not meant to be playing with into the rat cage. 

Fat Chop is afraid of the rats when I take them out of the cage. The rats, on the other hand, clearly do not know the Grim Squeaker is resting on the predator's shoulder, and they react to his presence by frantically attempting to bite his paws. 

Of course, that doesn't stop him stalking them when they're safely inside the cage. Small scurrying things can't expect to be ignored by lively, eternally hungry young kittens!

And that is what happened today in the life of a furry-thing owner.

In other news, Oscar nominations have been announced. I noticed "Tron: Legacy" was conspicuously absent from several categories it almost certainly should have been in - Music (Original Score), Visual Effects, maybe a nod for Costuming would have been nice - but no. As far as the Academy is concerned, that film never happened. Are they serious? All it was was Music And Visual Effects. It was essentially the world's most epic Daft Punk video. My heart aches for the score. It was excellent, innovative, engaging, I quite literally listen to it in the car, etc. I notice it was nominated for Sound Mixing, which frankly should go to "Inception" anyway. And Christopher Nolan fanboys are going to be spitting - he isn't up for Best Director, again. Maybe the Academy is trolling with this one, but it's kind of funny.

I find myself particularly interested in this year's Oscar season, possibly because I feel strongly that give King Firth an Oscar you sons of bitches. 

On the importance of history

Those who have been blessed with the opportunity to view the comedic brilliance that is Mean Girls may have thought the main character's name - Cady - was a strange choice for the lead role in a mainstream American film.

In fact it is in keeping with the film's theme of female empowerment; it shares its unusual spelling with the birth surname of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an 18th-century pioneer in the American women's rights movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Before she began her activism in the name of gender equality, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was also an abolitionist. She attended the International Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, where she and every other female present were required to sit in a roped-off section where the men in attendance would not have to look at them. This incident was partly responsible for pushing her politically active spirit towards the issue of women's rights.

The Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840

Also present at the convention, and one of the only women to be included in the painting of the event, was one Baroness Byron. The name should sound familiar; she was the long-suffering wife of the poet Lord Byron, and mother of Ada, Countess Lovelace -- a brilliant and highly educated mathematician who is now regarded as the world's first computer programmer.

Annabella Byron, 1812

And that is how Mean Girls and Lord Byron conspired to make me consider the invention of the world's first analytical engine.

On The King's Speech

This is the only coherent reaction I can give.

Colin Firth? Give that man an Oscar, so help me God.
Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were both stunning, flawless and generally perfect in every way for this film. The film itself looked fantastic - the costuming was understated and brilliant, the sets and locations elegant and beautiful - but more than that, it felt amazing. I literally had tears in my eyes not fifteen minutes in, due mainly to King Firth's mind-blowing excellence. He exuded this man's anxiety and shame, and maybe I can relate to that a little more personally than some, but it was a stunning performance nonetheless. He made a guy's stammer interesting.

I can't even imagine how immense my rage is going to be if an Oscar is not forthcoming.

Haven't seen it? Do yourself and the movie industry a favour by seeing this intelligent piece of art at a cinema and letting your money do the talking for you, because your money will be saying "The general public wants more well-written and beautifully acted films." Don't let the coins in your pocket stay silent! Cast your vote! Raise your voice! We want YOU!

On the identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

I had a sudden Thought the other night, a thought that wondrously linked all my other grand and lofty Thoughts, and that Thought was: empathy is both the greatest human attribute and the one humanity should not be striving to smother.

As I see it, empathy is a woefully undervalued skill. For a start, it's seen as 'childish' or 'girly' (these are insults because to be anything less than a man in this society is unacceptable) - people who cry when they see reports of death which is in no way related to them are pretty likely to hear "harden up", "don't be such a girl/baby", etc. This strikes me as ridiculous because most children, especially very young children, don't even seem to have a sense of empathy. It's a skill they haven't gained, because they've never been taught. It's a higher state of consciousness, and it takes a certain amount of self-awareness and intelligence, which very small children have not had the time to develop yet.

Condemnation of empathy is quite at odds with what most parents seem to want to teach their children: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule - the basis for the modern concept of human rights. Don't pull your sister's hair! Why not? Well, because you don't like it when she pulls your hair, so don't do it to her. Good. Empathy has been suggested, and with a bit of luck the child isn't just being stubborn. Perhaps the whippersnapper is being raised in a religious environment, in which case:

Buddhism
"One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter."

Christianity
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (Matthew 7:12)

Confucianism
"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself."

Hinduism
"One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one's own self."

Islam
"The most righteous of men is the one who is glad that men should have what is pleasing to himself, and who dislikes for them what is for him disagreeable."

Judaism
"You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself"

Taoism
"Regard your neighbor's pain as your own pain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss."

Wicca
"An it harm none do what ye will."

Why is it, then, that it is good and acceptable for governments of large countries with an excessive amount of firepower to throw hissy fits at one another over genuinely stupid, ultimately meaningless things and turn half the world into a battlefield? How does one find their way from such a basic and obvious ethical code that it appears in basically all of the world's major religions in one form or another, to shooting a person? It's quite bizarre that the morality our parents worked so hard to instill in us as children is later viewed as a weakness, not a strength. I can only conclude that this has something to do with the fact that if you view the world on a basically empathetic level - in terms of unnecessary hurt, and unasked for kindness - you're going to find a lot wrong with it. You might complain. You might begin pointing out to other people how avoidable and pointless the majority of human-generated evil is. This isn't good, because for a start it is much more difficult to govern a thinking mass. It is much more difficult to get them to agree to something as senseless as war if they think for two minutes about what they're doing and why. Thankfully, most people seem to lack the capability to think for two minutes about what they're doing and why, and life carries on much the same as it ever has.

And then, of course, there is the raging debate over whether this rule of reciprocation should apply only to fellow humans, or to animals as well - and if so, which animals, and why? Usually the argument that humans should be the only beneficiaries of basic morality takes the form of something along the lines of "it's just natural to look out for your own", meaning humans should only ever care for other humans and the rest of the species we coexist with be damned. There are so many things wrong with this supremely ignorant point of view that the person espousing it is likely too stupid or too uneducated to even begin to grasp why it is so painfully wrong, so let's save the step-by-step analysis of that clusterfuck for another day.

Or, a favourite of mine, "animals don't deserve the same rights as humans because humans are more intelligent". This is actually incredibly offensive and reeks of eugenics, because according to this argument, intellectually disabled people do not deserve human rights. You may want to go back to the drawing board with that one.

And then there's the wonderfully arrogant "it's a nice idea, but people/society will never accept it so it's pointless to try (because of course I can see the future)." Which is both an unrealistically fatalistic view of the world and a completely unsubstantiated one. If I could have a dollar for every time someone told every inventor of every major technological breakthrough "it's a nice idea, but it'll never take off" and subsequently was proved very very wrong, I would be quite a few dollars richer.

Add to that a dollar for every time the first wave of feminists got told they were crazy, and that women would never be allowed to work, or vote, or choose not to have children. Interestingly, there were pamphlets distributed around the time of the first wave that equated women with 'beasts' and appealed to the ridiculousness of the notion of animals having rights. Hmm...

And more dollars! - for every time anyone said this "racial equality" thing would never catch on, for everyone who claimed that it would never be a crime to murder a black man in the South - well, I would probably be a millionaire. A smug millionaire. Ultimately "people will never accept it" is one of the most short-sighted things one could ever say; basically, you've severely underestimated both what an enormous span of time the word "never" encompasses, and the power of propaganda. Being correct helps, but it's not always a requirement, hello North Korea.

Of course, it is acceptable and arguably essential to throw empathy out the window when faced with a decidedly hostile situation. If your life, family or (to a lesser extent) your worldly possessions are threatened, the only logical thing to do is fight back, figuratively or literally. Frankly I find it disappointing how often people use this excuse for things like attempting to eradicate a species that is only a pest in the sense that that person doesn't much like it. "Sharks are dangerous". This might make sense if cars, stairs, ladders, alcohol, guns, bees, dogs, snakes, fireworks and spiders were not more likely to hurt/kill you than sharks. Start at the top of the statistic probability and work your way down to the things that cause between 4 and 0 human deaths per year; I expect you'll be trying to eradicate cars, which kill 115 people per day in the United States alone.

On the f-word and why it's tragically funny that so many women are afraid of it.

So, almost all of us have at least a vague idea of what 'feminism' is, and the majority of the uninvolved public is pretty much wrong. But the best bit is women who don't seem to realize or want to acknowledge that That Dirty F-Word is the one and only reason why they aren't chained to a kitchen, running the risk of childbirth every single time they have sex, and so economically limited that they will never, ever be able to do anything they actually want to do. Unless everything they want to do takes place in the confines of the house their husband buys for them (and takes reparation for in the form of sex you legally cannot refuse even if you want to).

Sadly, most women will react to the mention of feminism with disgusted comments about armpit hair, because as women, they know that one of the foulest crimes they can commit is to utterly disregard gender roles and do something different with their bodies. They probably don't know that the only reason any of them have had it bashed into their heads that this thing is incredibly important is that in the 1920s, short-sleeved clothing for women was introduced, and Gillette saw an opportunity to sell more razors. So they ran a smear campaign against female body hair, denouncing it as revolting and ultimately undesirable. And it worked! Our consumerist great grandparents fell for it and decided that the marketing scheme was preaching holy truth, and ever since girls and women everywhere have been obligingly shearing themselves. Is this an inherently evil thing? Not necessarily, but it's pretty hilariously sad.

Having said that, fuck body policing up the ass with a splintered plank of wood. Shave, wax, grow, trim whatever the hell you want to. It's none of my damn business. Put on 20 kgs and wear the tightest clothes you can find, because people who find themselves offended by the sight need to grow the fuck up and realize it's not actually a problem. There are plenty of real problems in the world already without oversensitive judgmental shitheads taking it upon themselves to add hysterical, pretend problems. "Oh, I can't control the way that woman looks! My world is falling down around me! War is a totally acceptable fact of life that I have no problem with because there's no point arguing with it, but other people's body fat is something I'm going to take the time and effort to bitch about and loudly disapprove of!" Please. Go clutch your pearls over stupid shit somewhere else.

On Maynardism and why you can tell people you don't like how they look, but they'll think you're an asshole.

I have a friend who is simultaneously quiet and brash. He has a pronounced tendency not to bother with such things as social niceties, and I accepted this long ago as a personality quirk rather than genuine vitriol. Tonight I was introduced to the idea that not everyone is willing to overlook it as such, in the form of another friend of mine becoming heartily offended over an unflattering comment he made on her appearance.
It was the kind of comment that was terribly worded, and knowing him as long as I have I could see immediately that he did not mean it in the way it came out, but by then it was too late. It had been said, the proverbial damage dealt.
And that, children, is why it's best to consider who we are talking to before we say anything that could possibly (definitely) be seen as rude or hostile.

I also spent some time in the company of the kind of people who drink until they vomit and then continue drinking/are pretty sure there's absolutely nothing undesirable about living in a constant cloud of pot smoke/declare poorly edited cartoons with little or no coherency to be 'exactly like a bad acid trip', which makes no fucking sense because modern acid rarely if ever causes visual hallucinations. Inevitably, Bill Hicks was mentioned and adoration heaped upon His Holy Name from all sides. I left before someone could bust out the Tool albums and begin pointing out the Bill Hicks references in the Tool songs. My only response to anything along these lines will forever be best summed up in this video:

Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that these pseudo-intellectual/edgy/whateverthefuck morons have made one very basic mistake.
Say a layman strikes up a conversation about quantum physics with a physicist. There's a good chance the layman will not understand a single thing the physicist is talking about, because the physicist is extremely intelligent and knows a lot more about the subject than the layman does.
Say a useless stoner pseud strikes up a conversation about who-the-fuck-can-tell-what with an average non-idiot person. There's a good chance the non-idiot will not understand a single thing the pretentious Messiah-complex-bearer is talking about, and sadly, they seem to think that this is because - like the physicist - they are just too clever for the poor layman to follow.

It's not because they're talking utter bullshit that has no intellectual or philosophical merit whatsoever. It's just that you don't get it, man.

On female comedians and their hilarity in relation to their genitalia.

It confuses and infuriates me that there are still people in the world today who don't realize what an embarrassing thing it is to seriously claim that 'women aren't funny'.

What are you backing that up with, babe?

Because if I was that dickheaded and logic-deficient, I might conclude that men aren't funny.

"Aw man," I would say, "men aren't funny. All of their comedy is just them cracking gay/racist jokes and rambling about their ex-girlfriends and/or wives."

Which makes a similar amount of sense as "Women aren't funny, all female comedians ever talk about is their period and their kids."

This clever and obviously hilarious individual bases almost all of his acts around race or imitating the speech impediments of the mentally disabled. He's also so funny he has to steal jokes. A+

Oh good, another routine about your shit relationships. Don't men have anything better to talk about?

This one's such a pitiful attempt at comedy that even the guy filming can't force realistic-sounding laughter.

And then there's Carrot Top...the guy copying the watermelon guy and somehow managing to be even less funny.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is, your anecdotal evidence that women aren't funny sucks. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that men aren't funny, and that is an equally stupid statement. What mystifies me is where you people decided that humor is innately connected to your sexual organs. Oh right, it was right around the point where sexism and the entertainment business intersect.

On friends and therapeutic activities

I usually find baking relaxing. Tonight I learned that the key to this relaxation is not to involve people who lack a proper appreciation of muffins.

Pro-Ana?

"I'm not beautiful, my hair is ruined and I know I will never have long hair again. I've lost several teeth. My skin is dry. My breasts have fallen. No young girl wants to look like a skeleton. ... You couldn't believe anyone would want to look like that. I don't think there's any question about it." - Isabelle Caro on how nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

"Thinness leads to death and it is anything but beautiful. You start out with this feeling as if you can master everything, that you are in total control, and then little by little you fall into this hellish spiral, a spiral of death."

Jesus God, the photos of this woman break my heart. There is at best boundless stupidity and ignorance, and at worst mental illness or pure mean-spiritedness, fueling any comments that this could possibly be a positive thing. 
She died at 28 years of age. There is nothing beautiful about it.

May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan.

I have been feeling rather...wayward lately, and not necessarily in a negative way, but I hear tell that this is indeed a Bad Thing. I have friends who would argue for and against this notion, although I don't suppose any of them is really any more correct than the other.

I wonder if my problem is that I am becoming intellectually lazy. Not to the extent of The Common Person, of course - far be it from me to redirect my line of thinking so far from the hazy and unequivocally unimportant as to believe in fundamentally wrong concepts like Foreign Equals Bad, or Drugs Will Inevitably Make You Crazy, or for that matter Drugs Can Never Ever Make You Crazy. Lazy! Pure laziness. In this day and age there is no reason to automatically believe as one is told. Did I say reason? I meant excuse. At any rate, there is none of whatever it is, and that is that.

Of course, only an idiot believes in absolutes.

I feel so privileged, yet so sad, to have lived long enough to see this happen.

Someone has taken it upon themselves to create a Simpsons porn parody. To be quite honest, this looks pretty reminiscent of an episode of Jersey Shore - the Simpsons are yellow, not orange, but apparently Snooki is better than jaundice.

Stupid sexy Flanders.

Nothin' at ALL!

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Last night I dreamed that I was a lone soul in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - clearly I've been playing too much Fallout. The only interesting points of the dream were
a) the wolves were back. Again.
and
b) I stabbed a man in the throat with a large kitchen knife. He was a very nasty man and I was aided by two other young women, who similarly took out his eyes and ears with small blades.
It all seems very symbolic, although I'm not quite sure what it's meant to represent. I often swing back and forth between thinking dreams are many-layered puzzles thrown up by overactive imaginations while our too-restrictive sensible waking minds are too dormant to do anything about it, and thinking that dreams are merely images and ideas we've had over the day being sorted in a very haphazard and meaningless way by our ever-busy brains. I suppose the end product is a bit of both.

Gloomy Sunday

On Sunday a small furry member of my family became so ill I had to make the decision to have him euthanized. He was loving and smart and so affectionate that even suffering from a cancerous tumor that had started interfering with his liver and was making it difficult for him to move at all, he still made every attempt to cuddle me.
He is missed.