Only men can do feminism

If you’re looking for some giggles today (and Lord knows I am), and know anything at all about feminism/ the feminist movement, read this Onion piece.

After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace, the feminist movement underwent a high-level shake-up last month, when 53-year-old management consultant Peter “Buck” McGowan took over as new chief of the worldwide initiative for women’s rights.

…

“You can’t waste time pussyfooting around with protests and getting all emotional about a bunch of irrelevant details,” McGowan said. “If you want to enjoy equal rights, you have to have a real man-to-man chat with the people in charge until you can hammer out some more equitable custody laws.”

Sometimes satire doesn’t get it right, but this time it’s just bang on.

A Brief History of Corporate Whining

Via Alas, a blog.

It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Naughty little peers, they are

I’m only really posting this because it makes me laugh. Not because I care enormously about it one way or t’other.

Peers respond to cash allegations

Two of the Labour peers at the centre of claims they were ready to take cash to change legislation have responded to the allegations in the House of Lords.

If there was ever a reason to reconsider the effectiveness of the structure of Parliament in this country, then surely this is it. You don’t need a moral conscience when you’ve got vaguely royal blood, it seems.

On the way home this evening, I heard Radio 4 play a recording of Lord Taylor’s conversation with the Times in which he discussed a bribe, followed by Lord Taylor telling the House of Lords that he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. The juxtaposition was priceless.

In his defence, he did sound a bit dottery. Well, when he was addressing the Lords anyway. Less so when he was talking cold hard cash. Frankly, I feel he was selling himself cheap for a grand. Apparently, he often gets offered £25,000 to pull a few strings. Marvellous!

Who wants to bet me 20p that the Lords in question get away with it? That’s how it rolls here, no?

If you don’t fancy that game, play this one instead. Get more metaphors into one paragraph than Lord Strathclyde does here. I don’t think it’s possible, myself.

“This House has been mired in a grim torrent of criticism about a culture of sleaze,” he told peers. “If these allegations are true those involved have shamed this House,” he said, adding there were no “grey areas in the paid advocacy rules”.

I love politics.

Protected: Attention whoring and delete

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Moments of madness

Radio 4 recently reported an interesting story about new Internet billing software which disables your machine by issuing so many pop-up reminders about your outstanding payments that your computer becomes unusable. It’s currently being tried by the developers, MBS, and is used mostly on, unsurprisingly, porn sites. From what I can gather – I don’t remember all the details – it asks you to check a box indicating that you would like a free trial period on the site, but in doing so, you agree to the terms and conditions that you will receive the pop-ups. Of course, that clause is on page 20 of the terms and conditions which no one ever reads anyway. And these pop-ups aren’t those we were all too familiar with in the pre-Firefox days, either; they’re the type, apparently, that you can’t close and that are so memory intensive, your computer can’t function. Until you agree to pay, that is. My thoughts on this are predictable – that such things really should be more closely regulated – but they are not the point of this post.

The point is this: one lady interviewed by Radio 4 was complaining about this software because it had disabled her husband’s computer. She and he were obviously very upset by what had happened, but I was both embarrassed and amused by the way she told her story. Her husband had had a five minute moment of madness, apparently, when he decided that he would like to seek out some pictures of ‘nude women’ on the internet. He went to this site in what really must have been a moment of madness (she repeated), and checked the text box agreeing to the terms and conditions. She just doesn’t know what he was thinking! (I do!) He was plagued by pop-ups and eventually had to come clean to both his wife and his employer (he was using his work computer). Bless!

Now seriously! In what world does Mrs. Moment of Madness think that this is the first time that Mr. Moment of Madness has looked at porn. It’s not! It’s the first time he’s been ‘caught’ by you, but it is not the first time he’s accessed porn. I would stake my life, and yours, on this. It was so obvious from her voice that she absolutely wanted to believe what she was saying, and that she wanted the listener to believe it too, but her doubt was evident. She’s hurt, angry and probably a little humiliated at what she’s discovered, and I’m sure that she wants to believe her husband was possessed by something shocking at the time, but we all know that’s not true. I feel bad for her, but she’s not fooling anyone, including herself.

The moral of the tale: Middle England ain’t ready for porn. And it certainly ain’t ready for an MBS billing system. (Oh, and always read the terms and conditions!)

I do hope that Mr. and Mrs. Moment of Madness get through this, but I dare say he’s in the spare room for now. Possibly along with his laptop.

Miguel from Edinburgh seeking unstable woman for drama driven love/hate relationship

Miguel, here, sounds like great craic! The ‘ad’ is copied from Gumtree Edinburgh. I’m not sure I meet Miguel’s rather stringent criteria (thankfully) but I’m sure I have friends who do. Man, who doesn’t! I want to reply to him to congratulate him for being so fantastically ironic and tongue-in-cheek, but I think I’ll refrain. Perhaps you’ll do it for me. I wonder if anyone will actually reply with serious intentions? I do hope so!

Quote:

Hi there,

I’m seeking a like-minded woman to share a disastrous 3-9 month relationship with, ending in acrimony, emotional chaos, and possibly legal proceedings.

My name is Miguel , I live in Edinburgh , I’m 25 years old, Fairly well educated, I hold down a good job and am pretty stable. I’m told I’m fairly good looking, but I’ll let you be the judge of that – I’m generally caring and very honest.

I am looking for an attractive female who will at first give me obsessive love, praise and devotion – but whose paranoia, self-loathing and fear of rejection and abandonment will eventually lead her to alternately push me away and pull me closer in a love/hate cycle that will lead to infidelity, consensual sexual violence, and the eventual emotional breakdown of one or other party – or if we’re lucky – both!

You should:

* be 20 to 35 years old;
* have a history of short, intense, drama-driven relationships;
* enjoy degrading and dehumanising sex;
* have undergone negative psychiatric evaluations in the past; and
* be willing to threaten self-harm and/or annihilation as a weapon to control your partner and make them stay with you and care for you.

Although not completely necessary, I would prefer women:

* with nice smiles;
* that have larger than average breasts;
* who are married or already in unstable relationships;
* that drink to forget; and
* who have had a previous established diagnosis of Borderline or Dependent Personality Disorder or Bi-Polar Affective Disorder – or who are currently taking Lithium Carbonate, SSRIs, or Tri-cyclic antidepressants

If you think you meet these requirements (and wow, I’m getting excited just writing them!), please don’t hesitate to get back to me as soon as possible. In the meantime, thank you for reading my advert, and do take care.

All the best,

Miguel x

ps This advert is in recognition of the big neon sign on my forehead that everyone else can see except me.

End quote. Tee hee.

Hannibal 4eva

Silence of the Lambs was one of my favourite films back in the day. When I read the book later, I appreciated it for what it was: a well written and engaging thriller. I never did read Red Dragon (which is about Lector during his pre-Lambs days, I think) but I believe the film was passable if you’d nothing better to do of an evening. I was intrigued, however, when I heard about Hannibal (Lector in his post-Lambs days) and I decided that I would give it a go. I’d even been told by a few people that they’d finished all 576 pages of it in a week! I think someone I know polished it off in four days! To say that it was the worst book I’ve ever read (second only to the The Da Vinci Crap) doesn’t do the awfulness of this book enough justice. I battled through it for six whole months, determined to reach the end of it, and read countless other books in the meantime. It was simply dreadful, and I’ve made a point since of telling that to anyone who’ll listen. So, you can imagine my delight when I read this review in the Guardian of Hannibal Rising (Lector as a kid I think, although surely they’ve run out of decades by now!) which contained such gems as:

The fall, as the French don’t call autumn, was late that year as Lady Murasaki nursed Hannibal back to speech. First, a farting flubber sound; then fully formed words.

Notice how the text switches to italics and the present tense. Recognise the hand of a master storyteller with no editor.

“We have reached that random point in the plot where I need to introduce some looted art treasures,” said Popil. “So I need your help tracking down your family’s long-lost Leonardos and Titians.”

“Ah, good,” laughed Hannibal. “I expect the looters are the same people who killed my family. That will give me an excuse to go to Lithuania and kill a few of them in graphic detail.”

Hannibal smiled. He had got away with his greatest crime to date. A bestselling thriller with no thrills at all.

It’s been a while since I’ve read such a disparaging book review, and although I will never, ever turn a page in the book, I’m absolutely certain that none of it’s unfair.