A reasoned response to this article

FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF, DAILY MAIL AND YOUR BOLLOCKS, GHOULISH SPECULATION OVER THE TRAGICALLY EARLY DEATH OF A BLAMELESS SINGER PURELY ON THE GROUNDS THAT HE WAS GAY! HEALTHY YOUNG PEOPLE DO SOMETIMES JUST DIE SUDDENLY OF UNDIAGNOSED CONDITIONS; IT HAPPENED TO A FRIEND OF MINE AT UNIVERSITY, BUT I HAVE NEVER KNOWN ANYBODY TO DIE OF A, SMOKING A SINGLE JOINT OR B, SIMPLY BEING IN A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP. YOU LOVE THAT TWO HIGH PROFILE YOUNG GAY MEN HAVE DIED OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS, DON'T YOU? YOU'RE GLEEFULLY SALIVATING OVER THE PROSPECT THAT SOMEHOW YOU CAN PIN EITHER OR BOTH OF THESE SAD CASES ONTO THEIR SEXUALITY - YOU WANT MATT LUCAS' EX TO HAVE KILLED HIMSELF OVER THEIR DIVORCE AND YOU WANT STEPHEN GATELY TO HAVE DIED IN A DRUG ORGY, DON'T YOU? DON'T YOU, YOU COMPLETE FUCKING CUNTS? OF COURSE YOU DO, BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH THIS ISN'T THE CASE FOR EITHER OF THEM, STILL YOU SPECUALTE HERE THAT THIS MIGHT SECRETLY BE THE CASE, JUST SO YOU CAN WAVE A BIG PLACARD READING 'I TOLD YOU SO' IN THE FACES OF THEIR GRIEVING LOVED ONES. YEAH - YOU'RE LIKE THAT CULT OF 'GOD HATES FAGS' HEARSE CHASERS WITH A BUNCH OF POORLY WRITTEN PLACARDS, ALL IN COMIC SANS, THE FONT OF PAEDOPHILES!

I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH! I HOPE YOUR OFFICE CATCHES FIRE WHICH SIMULTANEOUSLY SETS FIRE TO EVERY PRESENT AND PAST COPY OF YOUR RANCID RAG AND THAT THE REMAINING ASHES ARE MOULDED INTO A GIANT DOG TURD WHICH IS THEN THROWN UNDER A BUSFULL OF SEX OFFENDERS, THUS SENDING THEM AND THE MAIL-TURD CRASHING INTO THE FUCKING SEA. NOT EVEN A NICE SEA, EITHER. AAAAARRRGHHHH!!!!

Jesus Wept! Am I seeing things or does the front page of OK Magazine actually have a blurry photo of a possibly-dead-certainly-dying Jacko being bundled into the ambulance? Did I miss a meeting where it was decided that any pretence of respect for the dying or bereaved relatives is now going to be ignored in favour of ghoulish voyerurism? Whatever you think of the bloke - I've never been a big fan in particular and went off him personally around the Earthsong/Jarvisgate incident, but I enjoy his music from the 70s & 80s still - he was still a human being, splashing pictures of him dying on the front page to flog copies of your shitty downmarket gossip rag is still diabolical. Whether the family approved of it or not (and from what I've heard about them, I wouldn't put it past 'em) it's still grotesque. We really are no better than the cunts who used to pay to point and laugh at Bedlam patients, aren't we? Modern media is rubbish.

Today is not a good day, news-wise, to be full of Pregno-Rage. Nobody should have to look at Nick 'Drunk, Racist, Ranting Old Fuckwit Of An Uncle That Everybody At The Family Gathering Is Trying To Ignore' Griffin's smug fat 'Whee, I been done gots myself elected' face ever, let alone a woman who is achey and tired and constantly being punched in the bladder from the inside. Angry at the morons who voted for him, angry at the normal people who were too idle not to vote against him. Managing to focus all my anger on the one person I know who joined that Racist Facebook group, even though she might not have voted BNP and even if she had, she lives dahn sarf, so it wouldn't have contributed to either of the BNP MEPs that have been elected in the North. However, I'm picturing every BNP Voter in the land as her - thick, fat, fugly and, if Family Gossip is to believed, a shit parent. Yeah - I'm shaking my metaphorical fist at a hoard of imagined cave trolls whose approach to starting a family is just to stop the pill without telling their partner and are then so busy watching Jeremy Fucking Kyle that they forget to tell their beloved brood how to fucking talk. And they're always so ugly too, aren't they? Have you ever met an objectively aesthetically pleasing Racist - of any Race? No? Me neither. And it's like the fuglier they get the more Racialist they get. It's like there's some sort of mutually exclusive teeth-to-tolerance ratio.

Anyway. There's an interesting article in the Grauniad here, the jist of which is basically 'yes, it's shit, but let's all stop flapping our hands and look how we should go about opposing them properly, since what we're doing at the moment clearly isn't working', which made me calm down a little. And maybe once the Labour party has finally fallen to pieces (as it appears imminently about to do) it can get back to actually being the Labour Party instead of a dysfunctional mish-mash of Labour and Conservatism.

But then also in the news there's the horrible story of the pregnant young woman randomly stabbed to death in Grimsby yesterday, which is shaking and horrifying for me for so many reasons. Being heavily pregnant already makes me feel much more vulnerable than I do when not visibly pregnant. It's not just because I obviously wouldn't be as able to run from or fight against somebody who attacked me as I would otherwise... being this pregnant makes you feel so visible. You feel like you stick out like a sore thumb, and that your blatant vulnerabilities, as well as the vulnerability of the child you're carrying, makes you a glaring Nutter Target. Yes, there have only been three stories including this one of pregnant women being attacked in the street by strangers that I can think of. Compared to all the cases of violent crime against women both in the street and in the home, that's peanuts, I know. But it's still terrifying when something like that happens and reminds me what a high-visibility blimp of a potential psycho-target I am. *Sigh*.

Dearest Darling fellow shoppers of Canterbury,

You know that bit of tarmac-slash-cobblestone (for Canters is a town of many cobbles) directly in front of you? The bit of High Street where you're shortly about to tread? Well, that's a place that's commonly referred to as 'where you are going', and it's generally helpful if, while you are walking, you cast a glance in that direction every once in a blue moon. Because the thing about a busy High Street, see, is that it generally is quite busy. That is, there are other people trying to navigate it apart from your own sweet self, and it gets very annoying for a person who is looking where she's going to have to try to second-guess which way you're going to aimlessly drift while gazing gormlessly at something shiny in the middle distance off to your right and try to dodge around you, thus avoiding getting knocked into by your cattle-like self. This is particularly difficult when you veer off in one direction, then alter course again without looking and drift across to the other side.

Also, people who walk infuriatingly slowly and take up too much space on the pavement to dodge around without the person behind you having to step out into the road (basically, yer Oldies in pairs and yer great big fatties) - MUST you randomly draw to a sudden halt approximately once every ten steps, causing the human traffic jam of people trying to get past you to constantly bump into the back of you? MUST YOU?!?

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if I'm invisible, which is surely madness as I am currently bloody massive.

Oh GOD, never, ever use Royal Mail for packages. EVAR! First of all, I'm annoyed because my already expensive CafePress mugs need customs charge paying, but the bloody post has made actually paying it and picking my delivery up from their sorting office a nightmarish labyrinth of Gilliamesque red tape. I walked. In the rain. Willing to pay and pick up my sweet, pregnant self. Do I have my mugs yet? No. Do I know when I'll be getting my mugs? No. Here is the customer complain that I had to email instead of tell them BECAUSE THE CUNTS HUNG UP ON ME AFTER I HAD BEEN HOLDING FOREVER that sort-of explains why.

( In which I'm all posh when I'm outraged )
In short, Royal Mail, you have officially the most bollocks Customer Service I've come across in years. No wonder you're going down the shitter. Frankly, I hope you go to the wall. No business that inept should be able to survive in today's climate. No business that inept deserves to survive. Closing at lunchtime? Cash only payments? You're not a fucking Bring & Buy stall! Fuck off and die. But first, bring my my godammed mugs!

Facebook, eh? It's a funny old thing, innit. I've been on there for, ooohh, about 2 years now, and I've still got a not-entirely-pleasant relationship with it. Maybe it's that the gelling of my OL presence and real life troubles me a bit... I know that I often blog about my life, and that several of my RL friends read this journal - not only that, but over the years I've spent geeking around OL I've made OL friends that have become RL mates.. it doesn't change the fact that I still feel that there's a comfortable schism between my existence online as a blogger and fanficcer and that of my day-to-day life, and that just isn't the case with FB. With LJ, FF.net, Twitter and various forums and whatnot, you arrive fresh, you speak with people who don't know any details about your real life save what you care to tell them, you bond over mutual passions, sense of humour and so on. And I love that. FB has always been the polar opposite to that. It's where people contact you because they know you, or have known you, in real life. FB to me is a useful tool for getting in touch with old friends, or staying in touch with good friends/rellies who you don't live close enough to any more for regular face-to-face contact. If it were just that, I'd be comfortable with it. But then come the Vague Aquaintences.

I've always had an issue with the way that a lot of people who friend me on FB are people who a, have never really spoken to me IRL and b, once I've accepted their request - usually more out of politeness than anything else - continue to ignore me OL. I know, I know, communication goes two ways, but the sad truth that I hate to admit is, I generally have no interest whatsoever in communicating with these people. They are very vague aquaintences, I have nothing in common with them save a tenuous family bond via several marriages, having worked with them for a few months 5 years ago or having gone to the same school as them 13 years ago. But they ask to be on my FList and I'm usually too polite to refuse.

Most of the time, these people either lose interest in FB or only appear on my FB feed (a blatant ripoff of Twitter!) every once in a blue moon, so my eyes tend to just skim past their updates as I scan for news about people I'm actually interested in. They don't bother me because they may as well not be there. But a handful are very, very difficult to ignore. These are the people who seem to live their lives entirely through FB - and the constant stream of mundane life updates (goin 2 shops now lol... bak frm shop didnt hav any sugar there tho ffs lol... etc) would be slightly easier to stomach if it weren't for the addition of the details about their sex lives. I was getting to the point where half of my FB Feed was filled with updates from generally jolly ugly people (not that it would be any more palatable if they were attractive, it would just conjure up slightly less gruesome mental images) oscillating wildly between 'X wants to know why are men all such fukin bastards ffs' and 'Y cant wait 2 snuggle wiv her sexxxy man 2nite!!!' The same person could be bemoaning their rotten luck in love and then banging on about their awesome lover within about half an hour.

Another weird thing about FB (and a big problem about it as far as I'm concerned) is the lack of the usual shield of anonymity that I'm used to on the internet. People are used to getting away with more on the internet than they would in RL because nobody knows who they are, and seem to forget that on FB that's not the case. It's so weird to me... it's a place where people gladly put up all their details and then merrily contact as many people as possible to let them know what complete and utter idiots they are. The average FB comment, esp in a forum or group, is generally only mildly more sophisticated, considered and well written than the average youtube comment, and at least on youtube people have the nous to stay anonymous.

This morning I checked my FB feed and saw that one of the handful of people who friended me despite the most tenuous of links, who has never actually spoken to me OL or IRL, who constantly bombards me with love life tedium and twinkly clip art shit, has joined a Racist group on FB. Occasionally people that I know join stupid groups or idiotic causes - usually complaining about immigrants and foreigns or advocating hanging for a multitude of different crimes while happily ignoring basic spelling and grammar - and I roll my eyes and move on. But for some reason, I got really pissed off this time. I was publicly affiliating myself with people who I don't really know, whose lives I don't care about, with whom I will never have anything in common with and whose opinions revolt me. The more that I learn about many of these people through FB the more I actively dislike them.

I had my first ever FB Cull. Only three people, who fit into the 'don't really know them, never contacted me and actually really annoying' category. But it felt so good. My feed is instantly freed from most of its bullshit and sparkly crap. It's making me want to do it again. I'm probably going to adopt a personal policy that anyone joining a group or supporting a cause that's bigoted and knee-jerk gets automatically dropped.

Oh, the power - the power at my fingertips!

And the dropped ones will not give a tiny shit. They won't even notice as their FList filled with people they don't really know drops from 315 to 314. They won't be offended. They won't even remember asking to friend me in the first place. Everyone's a winner!

But in the unlikely event that you have been unfriended on FB by lil ol' me, and you've come here in search of reasons why, I can tell you now. You're excrutiatingly annoying, you're an ignorant twat and your tedious life was ruining my internet. Now go away and learn to type.

A very 'nice and sunny day', in the words of my daughter. The S-i-L was down for the morning so accompanied us to Playgym and then we had a playdate in the park with my friend who moved away before Christmas, and her twins. These are the ones who call Vi 'Captain Violet'. They are fearless and adorable. We kicked a ball about, the tots gazed in wonder at the fountain (Vi shouting 'Wet! Wet! Drip-drops!' all the time) and then made a bee-line for the bandstand, which they then couldn't be persuaded to leave. Lots of running about in it, kicking the ball around it, clambering up it and carrying things up and down its steps.

Then came an occurrence that I wouldn't have minded if it didn't happen to me or whoever takes Vi to the park pretty much every time we go - the latching on of the Idleness Orphans. Almost every time we play with Vi in the park, we will be quickly joined by somebody else's kid - two of them in this case, one about 4 or 5 and one who was probably about 1 and 1/2 - who, more than wanting to play with Vi, demand attention and care from me while whatever 'grownup' is supposed to have taken them out to the park sits barely within visibility and utterly ignores them. I'm happy for Vi to play with other kids and it's probably flattering that I'm apparently approachable, but I really fucking resent having the children of strangers foisted upon me simply because I take an active interest in playing with Vi when we're out. Plus I think it's incredibly sad for the kids that they have to latch on to any old passer-by for conversation and play. Whenever this happens, the parents never stop doing whatever it is that they're doing instead of paying attention to their kids (in this case, sitting around chatting with their mates) either to play with their children or to strike up the briefest of conversations with me, check I'm not a nutter (which I'm not) or whether I mind nannying their kids (which I do). I'm a complete stranger. I know they can see me, but I can't believe there are people so lazy they'd let their toddler run off and play with someone they don't know from Adam, rather than playing with or engaging the kids themselves.

I just think it's incredibly rude. We had our hands full as it was with three hyper two year olds pegging it around a grubby bandstand, plus we barely get to see these friends and I ended up talking more with the kids of these strangers than I did with my friend or her cutie girls. And it happens with a depressing regularity.

I am not Mary Poppins. Just because I like to play with my kid doesn't mean I want to nanny yours. Lazy Parents Of Britain: GET OFF YOUR ARSES, PUT DOWN THAT COPY OF HEAT AND ENJOY YOUR CHILDREN BEFORE THEY GROW UP AND UTTERLY RESENT YOU! ARGH!!!

Oh Susan Boyle, you have AMAZED AND ASTOUNDED US! It is literally, physically gobsmacking that a woman, over 30, who is tubby and has mad hair and eyebrows could possibly have any worth, any merit whatsoever in our society. When you opened your mouth and sang reasonably well you BLEW OUR MINDS, destroying all stereotypes we hold about what kind of person should be publicly seen doing something artistically competent, and what kind of person should only be wheeled out on the telly as a modern day freakshow... y'know, the stereotypes that shows like 'Britain's Got Talent' generally spend week after horrible week reinforcing.

When you stepped on stage the faces in the audience and judging panel said it all, and rightly so - what made a plain, older woman think you had the right to have your merits judged? You were not under 25, not under size 12, you hadn't waxed, bleached, moussed and ironed every hair on your person to perfection and you weren't plastered in so much make-up that you looked like you'd just lost a fight with Dame Barbara Cartland's ghost, so everybody naturally expected you to be worthless. I mean, that is what we're told day in, day out, isn't it? What gave you the temerity to stand in front of Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell to receive their glorious judgement? Let's really think about that panel there... Piers Morgan - a failed Tabloid editor with a pile of part-congealed cat sick where his soul should be; Amanda Holden - a woman who is only famous for courageously allowing not just Les Dennis but also Neil Morrissey within spitting distance of her sideways smile; and Simon Cowell - who apparently was once of some use as a music producer or something, but for the last decade or so has reinvented himself a the world's best paid pantomime villain, who sells himself as the new Oscar Wilde but in fact does nothing but come out with lame, obvious catty putdowns, like a bad Drag Queen trying to warm up a middle aged Hen Party. Less than that, actually - he's like a man who wanted to be be a Drag Queen but doesn't get enough work so has to do a day job at an office as an IT Support Technician, where he skulks behind his desk groaning, sneering and sniping every time somebody in the company with less technological knowhow than him asks him to do his bloody job. That's what he's like.

But you impressed those Gods Amongst Mortals! You sang a Musical Number rather well, and set their radiant faces to 'Patronising Pseudo Amazement'. Humbled. Humbled, that's what we were, having cast a million little sneering glances at our mates like background characters in Saved By The Bell whenever Screech came on and did something crazy, we are now queuing up on the youtubes to say how wonderful you are for showing us that women who don't look like Abi Fucking Titmuss are sometimes not shuffling, meaningless human detritus and are occasionally even worth celebrating.

But only if you step up in front of thousands of bitchfaced twats, TV Producers and the Unholy Trinity and turn their giggling into patronising applause through the medium of song.

And only if you go ahead with that makeover that I bet every Women's Magazine and Daytime TV Show is fighting over doing for you right now.

And we'll still all giggle about you being ugly, old and fat anyway.

Modern life is rubbish.

I saw an ad on the telly last night as I was watching Heston Wossface making pretend bangers and mash out of rice pudding, and waiting for the sublime Mad Men to start, for one of those crappity Sleb Magazines with 'a special souvenier publication chronicling the amazing life Jade led.'

'Oh,' I thought, vaguely, 'has she finally kicked the bucket, then?' But she's not even dead yet! They're bringing out obituaries for her and she's still alive! She's like that old man with the plague in Monty Python & The Holy Grail. Either that, or she did finally conk out last night and the family have requested a media blackout on it for a few days so that they can have a little privacy. Because that's so very likely to happen. I almost want someone much more famous than her to unexpectedly drop dead on the same day just for the irony of the drawn out, undignified, lurid death of a comedy racist game show contestant with a criminally violent husband to be pushed from the front pages by somebody who's actually done something to earn their notoriety. Or a member of the Royal family. Either will do.

And before anyone shrieks 'RRRAARRRR!!! THIMK OFF THA KIDDY'S!!!' at me, I am. When I lost my Dad I wanted to be alone. I didn't particularly want to share my grief with anybody but my closest family. Why should those kids have to watch their Mum's death splashed absofuckinglutely everywhere, and be forced to 'share' their loss with a load of losers who didn't even know her? I always felt the same for Diana's sons, especially at her funeral. 'Why are *you* lot weeping and wailing and stretching your arms out to these children? She was their mother, let them deal with how they want.'

Hello, cyber-chums! This is a public service announcement. Do you believe that stalking the personal Social Networking pages of people who you have never met; who have never courted fame... not only that, but have actively shunned fame and been legally protected from being publicised until the 18th Birthdays they have just reached; who have committed no crime; whose private lives have absolutely zero impact on the public's wellbeing; who are just normal, everyday teenagers as far as they're concerned - and then publishing out-of-context quotes and hyperbolic descriptions of images on those sites, coupled with reams of commentary about how the way they live is a disgrace in a national newspaper in order to publicly humiliate and discredit them, and continue a campaign of media intolerance towards children and young adults counts as Worthwhile Investigative Journalism or Bullying? What if you questioned an authority figure on a different matter and then added her answering quote to the piece, deliberately re-contextualising it so that it looks as if that authority figure is having a personal stab at the 18 year olds that you have picked out?

What if the only reason you trawled these teenagers' webpages in the first place was because when they were 5 a heavily armed Peadophile ran into the nursery they were at, murdered their teacher and classmates in front of them, shot and horribly injured them and then killed himself as they watched in agony and terror, hiding behind the corpses of their friends? Does that make them any fairer game for a journalist to spend an afternoon with a cuppa reading through their Facebook and Bebo profiles, judging their entire existence on that alone and declaring, on the front page of her newspaper, that their lives are a 'Disgrace' to their dead friends, implying, perhaps, that it might have been better for the legally armed, kiddie-fancying psychopath to have dragged them out and unloaded a few rounds into their sobbing, 5 year old faces before blowing his own brains out?

In other words, do you think this is worthy journalism? Or an incredibly tasteless, bullying, hypocritical piece of shrill, misplaced moralising? Do you think it's no more moral than tearing an embarrassing page from an orphan's diary, photocopying it a thousand times and stapling it up around a city?

If you agree with me that it's the latter, you can complain to the Press Complaints Committe here or directly to the Express here, if you can keep yourself from giggling at their claim to be the World's Greatest Newspaper for more than 5 seconds. And yes, I know it was 8 days ago now, but if it's good enough for the Sachsgate whingers, it's good enough for us!

Think about it, chaps. What Would Lynda Do?

I've unintentionally seen a lot of flashed flesh today. While walking home from the shops I was passed by a (male) jogger in the tiniest shorts imaginable. I mean, we're talking Kylie Minogue hotpants here. Weirdly, this was topped off by a thick sweater and a bobble hat. Maybe he just gets really hot legs when he runs. Anyway, some students shouted 'Who likes short shorts?' at him as they drove by. A well deserved heckle, I thought I was not in the mood to watch his hairy thighs wobbling past me. Buy some bloody jogging bottoms, man. The clue's in the name!

Second flashing was two chavvy teenagers walking down the road with their arses hanging out. Full arses, not just the 'LOL I iz 2 street 2 by a belt!!1!' builder's bum, so intentional in other words. Not a clue why. Hubs decided it was because they were both Gayists and wanted somebody to run up and sodomise them and then scamper away once more without so much as a how-do-you-do. Probably right.

Oh, and I've just discovered that (one of my many) e-Nemesis' is on bloody Twitter. Only because I was trawling through Graham Linehan's tweets for a particular one he'd done and noticed he'd replied to somebody whose online handle sounded familiar. This is the person some of you may remember from about a year back who made a largely failed attempt to 'Spork' (guh, hate using that bloody term) one of my stories. Oh yes, boys and girls, I really am that petty, and I hold grudges like you wouldn't fucking BELIEVE. The Old Testament God has got nothing on me when it comes to grudge-holding. Whenever her name comes up anywhere I check her profile to make sure that she still doesn't have any friends. She doesn't. Might have something to do with her being a humourless, anal-retentive twat. Who can say. And that's all I ever do to her. Scowl, click, check pitiful number of friends/followers, smirk. Oh, you don't want to get on the wrong side of me, my friends. I'll Passive-Aggressive you to death (which might take me a while, since it would make absolutely no impact on your life whatsoever). I am so supercool and awesome that it worries me, sometimes.

Today we went for a big fat lunch at Frankie & Benny & Joon's with the In Laws. It was goooooood. And, we did little else. Apart from wet out knickers at all the 4x4s and Beamers just swinging out from side-streets at us on the way both to and from Ashford, of course. Seriously, it was like the car had been turned into some sort of giant electromagnet for complete fucking cretins who are incapable of stopping at junctions, indicating or simply looking where they were driving. We even had a man carrying a massive sack of potatoes just slowly walking towards us as we drove. You'd think we were actually invisible.

I thought I was going to have to post a long-time-coming rant about "sporkers", nitpickers and self-proclaimed-fandom-saviours today when the STUPIDEST EVER backpedal over an unfunny 'loltypo' nitpick being pointed out to not actually be a typo occurred on one of the anal-retentive LJ Comms that I lurk on so as to scorn them from a distance. I'm not going to go into a full blown rant, though, but this really irked me.

See, my big beef with the people described above is that they tend, in my opinion, to actually be very mediocre writers. Their very public 'snarking' tends to be very frequent and without quality. I'm all for a touch of Wildean Wit in my day, but these posts are generally utterly unfunny, charmless, repetitive and dull. If this is their idea of sparkling, bitchy humour then, no. I doubt they make terrifically entertaining authors. It's not Oscar Wilde. It's not even Kim Wilde. It's like Simon Cowell taught a load of parrots how to come up with the same seven dreary puns in mildly scathing tones over and over and over and over.

Let's take the comment that annoyed me as an example. In a very unfunny 'Summary Spork' (in which, I think the point is to go through the first page of a handful of popular fandoms, select a handful of perfectly valid, coherent, interesting sounding summaries because they can't be arsed to dig for all the mental ones that are buried out there and make at best, obvious and unfunny, at worst, just plain weird jokes about them) somebody started pointing and laughing that an author had warned of 'a sombre tone'. LOL!!! SHE MISSPELLED 'SOMBER'!!!! OH THE HIGHLARITY!!! A non-American pointed out that 'sombre' is the correct way that those crazy-passported Foreign Folk across the water spell the word. Now, if you weren't a cunt, your response to that would surely be 'Wow. Really? Huh. Well, you learn something new every day. Makes sense, what with the whole 'centre/center, theatre/theater thing, now that I think of it.' If you weren't a cunt. The trouble is, that generally, people who make a big fuss and bother publicly nitpicking the fine details of other authors, usually behind said authors backs, in order, I can only assume, to make them appear better writers by comparison and to validate their own startling mediocrities, are cunts. The most usual backpedal I see when it's pointed out to one of these nitpickers (not always Americans, but usually, I'm sorry to say, my American chums) that the poor author they think they're ripping to shreds for their terrible spelling errors is actually just using British English is 'Well, it's a US Fandom so they should be using US English', which in itself is one of the most idiotic arguments I ever heard. Do you go around complaining to non-English speakers that their Harry Potter Fanfic should be in English, not German/Spanish/Whatever because it's an English Fandom? No. If you write a Spirited Away Fanfic do you do it in perfect Japanese throughout? WELL WHY NOT, MORON, IT'S SET IN JAPAN?!?!? Quick, let's all take the piss out of Shakespeare for not writing Hamlet in fucking Danish. Luckily, nobody (that I know of) has whined to me about this in my D&DC or TNG fics because if they did, seriously, they'd get a PM Box full of my uppity Limey rage. However, in this case even that stupid backpedal was invalid, since it was a Dr Who summary she was having a go at. Her answer to being pointed out that she was wrong was simply magnificent in its stupidity and arrogance. You know what it was...? Ready? 'Well, it looks stupid spelled that way'. OH NOEZ! THE AGONY!!! Seriously, I'm halfway through phoning the people at the OED right now to tell them they'd better change it to the proper American way this instant because it LOOKS STUPID!

Actually, this has turned into a rant, for which I apologise. It's just that, as a writer, while I very much value the considered constructive criticism of others, whether they be writers or not, these people drive me up the fucking wall. They don't amuse, they don't inform, they aren't constructive, their arrogance makes them impossible to have a rational discourse with, they just seem to exist to pick away at others in order to draw attention to themselves - like an inept school bully.

If you want to write, then write. If you want to read, then read. If you have feedback, that's what the fucking comments boxes and reviews boxes are for. If you genuinely think someone has room for improvement then tell them to their faces. Bitching's not funny unless you have the mental age of 11. Really. It's just shit.

Busy Busy Busy... RL has taken over for a bit what with Hubs' month off meaning we get to do lots of fun stuff. Don't really have time to blog, certainly don't have time to write and I've already fallen behind my reading schedule for Tardos. Should really go into town while Vi's napping now, although I've been online getting loads of details about nurseries since one of the mums at Playgym has put the fear into me for getting Vi a PreSchool/Nursery place for later in the year... do they even still have state PreSchools any more? Doesn't look like it from the local government list I've pulled up. Is this another reason I should be fuming at 'the Labour Party' for pretending to be different to the Conservatives and then just prancing around shutting down state education exactly like what The Bastard Tories were trying to do when we kicked the cunts to the kerb? Hmm?

Anyway, all I really wanted to post for was to show off this lovely banner for When One Door Closes.



Some lovely soul in the DDC Fandom has been making them for all the Tardos Nominations. I hope that whoever it is will reveal themselves once the voting has ended and reveal themselves so that I can thank them personally as well as credit them for their beautiful work.

Scribbles Out
xxx

Once upon a time there was a terrestrial TV channel called Channel 4, which bought the syndication rights to an interesting, aesthetically-pleasing weirdy-poo sort-of Sci-Fi show called Lost. It was one of those dramas with an ongoing story arc which relied heavily on unanswered mysteries and cliffhangers - the sort of thing that young Scribbles enjoys. The sort of thing that young Scribbles could easily get hooked on, and hooked she got. But then one day an evil Right Wing tyrant called Rupert Murdoch came and outbid Four for Lost, two series into its six series run. 'Oh well,' said Four, 'we'll just carry on making bollocks reality shows and programmes about moving house, and nobody will notice.'

But Scribbles liked the art of storytelling, and Scribbles preferred to know the resolution of a story she had invested two seasons in, but Scribbles could not, would not get Sky. So Scribbles turned to her old friend the internet. First there was Naughty Pirating, but then the Naughty Pirates turned into Spineless Snitches and started giving out the IPs of their downloaders to big bastard companies, and Scribbles' husband said that they should trust the pirates no more. Then Scribbles discovered that she could purchase Lost from iTunes, which, gleefully, she did.

But then the day came when the first episodes of the new series were up on iTunes, and Scribbles tried to purchase.
'But no,' said iTunes, 'for no reason you cannot buy this unless you have the brand new, shiny version of iTunes.'
'All right then,' said Scribbles, 'please may I have the brand new, shiny version of iTunes?'
'No,' said iTunes, 'for your Mac is now obsolete! Mwah ha ha!!!'
'How can you be obsolete?' asked Scribbles to her Mac. 'You're, what, six years old - seven, max? If you were a person you'd only be at Primary school. How is that obsolete?'
'Ah,' said the Mac, 'but you are forgetting, I was made by Apple, and everything made by Apple, no matter how expensive, is apparently as disposable as a Bic Biro. Did you learn nothing from the saga of the knackered iPod Mini? Too bad, baby. No South Pacific-set wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey hijinks for you!'
'But Mac,' cried Scribbles, 'I thought you were cool! You were personified by weird-eyed David Mitchell in them adverts, and I like him.'
'No,' replied the Mac with an air of Maclike smugness, 'David Mitchell played the PC. I was personified by Robert Webb - the one you have an irrational dislike of.'
'But how does that work?' Scribbles enquired. 'Surely Apple, the comissioners of the ads, should have been aware that David Mitchell is the one that's actually cooler, and Robert Webb comes across as too self-aware and trying too hard, like a bit of a nob?'
'Look,' replied the Mac, 'it's just an advert, all right? I don't know why we're having this discussion anyway, I'm only a machine. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to spend the next ten minutes not being able to get any internet connection for no reason until you switch everything off and on again, like I do every evening.'
'Fair enough', Scribbles replied.

In short, I can't get S5 of Lost until Hubs finally gets round to hooking New Mac upstairs up to the intertubes, which will be next week at the earliest, so I'm afraid I'll have to ask for further Radio Silence on the old spoileroonies, oh FList of mine.

This has actually been the least of my woes today, what with a very broken night's sleep coupled with a cold leaving me utterly exhausted, and having to deal with a toddler who not only is still not keen on her new bed but also shares my cold and cut the first of her back molars today ("Grumpy" is not the word for it) and whatnot.

Still, I have done some writing. Unfortunately though, even though I should be working on either the Thrilling Conclusion to the New Adventures or the next installment of Rollercoaster, I have instead been writing the first chapter of the conclusion/sequel to Rollercoaster, which I'm miles and miles away from, plotwise. It's mainly because I've recently decided how I'm going to end it, and how I'm going to fit it around a certain incident at the end of the canon, and the bunnies were gnawing away. Hopefully the first chapter will sate them for now, and it does mean that I now have not one but two future points to work towards, since I started the story off with a future flash to the end of First Contact and have since then been working to wards that - now I have an end point to head for once I'm past old Borgybitch.


What a long entry! Clearly, I needed to vent. Carry on!

The Angry Rain God (let's call him Nigel) decided to spew forth a torrent of freezing rain upon me all morning. The ducks were having a whale of a time, since all of a sudden their river had spread nicely to encompass much of the riverbank and rather a lot of Sainsbury's car park, allowing them to paddle about a whole new watery world like a bunch of little ducky Columbuses (Columbi...?) Me - not so much. I got very wet and very cold. Add to that the fact that Vi has a streaming cold and I think I'm starting to come down with it too, so I wasn't in the greatest of moods this morning.

Then along came Pushy Playgym Mum - the 'get your baby out of the way' one that I had a run-in with last year, who made me quite literally CAPSLOCK WITH RAGE. In fact, that was the only way that I could rationalise my feelings in my own mind. Those specific words - capslock with rage. I think I may spend too much time on the intartubes. Anyhoo, she introduced herself to me with the line 'My daughter's having a go on that car after your daughter is, yeah? Because they're for everybody to share, not just for one or two kids to keep hold of all the time' without apparently noticing a, the paradoxical nature of her statement or b, the fact that I was already trying to cajole Vi out of the car she was playing with since I was aware she'd been on it a while and other kids were waiting. In retrospect it might have been a passive-aggressive swipe at one of the mums of the other kids in the cars, since I'd noticed her kid get into some fisticuffs over another car shortly before, but that's beside the point. There's no way that I was going to stop other children besides her kid getting in it after Vi, so I assumed the only point of her speech was, in essence, 'get your baby out of the way'. All it did was royally put my back up and stress me out, since Vi was still ignoring my suggestions that she play elsewhere and now I had this ugly bitch breathing down my neck. In the end I pulled Violet out of the car - she'd been in it for her fair share anyway, but I wanted to get the Hell away from that woman. And then Pushy Mum was all 'Oh, you don't have to get her out of it *now*!' I told her curtly that Vi had been in it for ages, but that wasn't the point. The point was that now, her kid had run off to play with something else. As I walked away, she physically had hold of the car and was refusing to let any toddlers play with it as she tried to attract her kid's attention. i later caught her taking a badminton raquet off a little girl. Bitch. CAPSLOCK BITCH.

Anyway. It's stopped raining now, and it's Saturday tomorrow. I am still(!) doing my character plotting notes for the last New Adventure - Done all of The Seven now and it's already over 4 pages long. Just Venger and pretty much every guest character that's been in the New Adventures left, then. Oy, this is massive. Have also been writing a teensy bit of the ending to Rollercoaster... not that I'm anywhere near the end yet, I've just been thinking a lot about how I'm going to end it lately, and the bunnies need a carrot.

Had epic dreams last night - one involved a big Sleb networking function where I successfully pitched The Specials but when the guy who wanted to read the script gave me his number I couldn't get my phone to store it. Then I had another dream where I wrote about the first dream on LJ. I really am spending too much time on the internet, aren't I?

NOEZZZZZ!!! You can take Woollies, you can take MFI, but what am I going to do without Whittard's and their tasty, tasty flavoured tea and coffee?!?!

Also... Il Papa, eh? He's a card, in't he? All the trouble in the world and he's decided the really big deal is saving humanity from teh gheys and teh trannyz and them naughty wimmin types who just won't get in the kitchen and make their husbands a sarnie when they're told. Ah, you can take the man out of the Hitler Youth, but you... well, you can tell where I'm going with that. Never mind, Ratzie, you just keep on telling people in HIV and Hepatitis rife countries not to use condoms and pretty soon there won't be a humanity to worry about.

You massive twat.

So, Barnardos have launched an ad about us vilifying kiddles, using dialogue actually not that shockingly all taken from genuine comments on mainstream online news boards. I'm guessing they got about 70% off BBC's Have Your Say, and the rest from the Heil Online... although I think it's actually very possible to find 10 or so comments on the most innocuous of subjects from HYS to make us all look like a bunch of Sociopathic bastards, because HYS is peopled entirely by hateful, attention seeking cunts. Ad is here, if you want to vada.

I know I whinge about Bloody Kids from time to time, but really, the vast majority of kids and teenagers are fine. I come across far more vile adults, to be honest, and rotten adults don't seem to realise that kids are learning their behaviour off them. Kids do get unnecessarily demonised, it was the same when I was in my mid teens. I have never experienced so much sheer bloody rudeness from perfect strangers as I did when I was 16 through to 18... many of them middle aged or older. People can be really rotten to kids... usually to kids that they've weighed up will probably be too polite to do or say anything back. Bah.

Anyhoo, that over, here's a meme from davidbrider
( clickety-click - forty-five! )

Was woken up at about quarter to three this morning by the sound of smashing glass, really, really nearby. Thought it was our front window. Hubs looked out just in time to see some bloke pegging it down the street, then went and checked downstairs. Luckily, it wasn't our window, but unfortunately, it was our nice neighbours next door (the ones who'd been broken into before), who were out. Hubs tried calling them, but since it was 3am, there was no answer, then rang the police. By the time they turned up some idiot drunk student had passed by, gone 'oooh, what's that?' and decided to touch the broken window. She'd managed not to cut herself but was now concerned that her fingerprints were on it. When hubs went out to talk to the Rozzers she was attempting to give them her details, even though she was so pissed she couldn't remember her phone number or house number. Was quite impressed that the police took it on themselves to temporarily secure the window pretty much there and then (I didn't know it was them that always did that) but not so impressed when either they or whoever it was they'd called to do it were chatting away as they worked as if they weren't in a residential street at 4 in the morning. Took me ages to get back to sleep because I was so jumpy.

Seriously, since we moved here 2 and a half years ago:
Our car windscreen has been smashed twice
Our car's been walked over once
Our back windscreen wiper's been ripped off
Our wing mirrors have been ripped off countless times
We've given up leaving the bin out any day but bin day because it was forever being tipped over
Our door's been kicked or fallen against several times
So many 'hilarious' games of knock-a-door-run in the middle of the night - so much so that even in the early evening if we're not expecting anyone we won't even bother going to the door to see if anyone's there unless they knock twice
Two neighbours have had their windows smashed.

We don't want to move, because it *is* a nice house, cheap and just the right size, plus moving is a stress. But seriously, the vandalism's getting ridiculous. We really need CCTV on our street but I doubt we'd ever get it, no matter how much we complain. Not least because our Council lost all their money out of Icelandic banks. Even if these people are caught, as the ones who smashed the hairdresser's window when we lived in the old flat were, all they get is a tiny fine - not even enough to cover the re-glazing costs. How is that going to put anyone off? Nah, charge the cunts a couple of grand at the least, or a month cleaning the streets at four in the morning or something. Bastards.

Well. We were going to go to the Community Bonfire night, which was this evening... unfortunately, the weather had other ideas, and pissed it down continuously all bloody day. I think it's just about stopped now, but the field where it's held would be a swamp by now. Even if it hasn't been cancelled, it would have been very dreary and slippy, so we decided not to go. Poot. I love Bonfire Night. Plus, we usually have chums over for it and we don't this year, which is slightly depressing.

Also, I'm slightly annoyed that, on getting a whiff of the power that En-Masse whingeing over something they haven't heard and doesn't affect them can have over the pussies at the BBC, The Daily Arsefuck has decided to go after Frankie Boyle, over a silly, irreverent and bloody hilarious joke he made about our Vinegar Titted Kraut of a Monarch TWO YEARS AGO. The joke is two years old, and nobody complained about it at the time. Apparently four complaints were lodged after the repeat, at 10pm the other night - probably all from the one reporter that the Heil had got to trawl the airwaves for the next thing they could kick up a shitstorm about. There are far more terrible things going on, people!

I have decided to pander to the Daily Hate, however. I am going to see if I can get them to start a campaign of indignant complaint against this Blog, since they clearly have nothing better to do. I shall be signing off my entries with Mail-baiting soundbites for the next week, and am going to see what happens.

I fucked Margaret Thatcher, during my cocaine years. And once I've found out whichever Vampire it was that sired the Vampire that sired her, I'm going to sing him a little song all about it. Mwah-ha-ha-haaaa!!!

Well, things are looking up a bit. The Cold Straight From Satan's Sulphurous Arse (TM) now actually appears to be making a retreat... the splitting headache that it's been giving me for the last few days has now gone anyway, which is all good. Also we have discovered that we can get Dead Set off iTunes. It'll set us back about sick squid but I reckon that's worth it. We're going to wait until it's finished and then get all 5 episodes together. Woo!

I am, however, utterly sick and tired of the pointless, hysterical media circus over WossBrandSachsgate. Aren't you guys too? It was a stupid, puerile radio prank gone wrong, but then DJs are usually by their nature stupid, puerile and offensive. It was Bullying-as-entertainment, but then the great British public just laps up Bullying-as-entertainment these days, they were just pandering to us. Who are the real twats here...? That's right - everybody. Them, the BBC, the right wing media who've happily whipped up this storm over absolutely fuck all, and the general public. Yeah, we're all twats for so much as giving this stupidity the time of day. I'm a twat for wasting my time writing about it in my blog. Bah. It's so fucking depressing. Actually, I think 90s Comedian Richard Herring has a bloody good handle on this whole miserable heap of spidershit, I mean, he knows more about Da Business than I do. But I'd just like to add that the claim of '20,000 complaints' or however many it was wasn't actually the number of complaints when the show went out. That number was considerably smaller, apparently. 19,998 complaints smaller, in fact. The great however-thousand was the tally from 'Have Your Say', the BBC's miserable online 'discussion' board, on which I have made my feelings very plain. Now considering that many posters on HYS are sockpuppets, many more are Trolls and all the rest are shrill, bigoted, paranoid, Littlejohn-loving pricks who honestly believe that the Beeb is a Commie Conspiracy designed to filter out any but the most liberal, lentil-hugging opinions, and then find absolutely no irony in repeatedly posting such beliefs, along with their mouth-frothing, banner-waving thoughts on Immigration, Gay Rights and Wife Beating on... um... the BBC's website - I'd take anything submitted to HYS, even in such numbers, with more than a pinch of salt.

Not that I want to be seen as defending Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand here. I think they've both come out of this as utter turds. I just want it all to go away and for people to stop acting like it's the end of the world. I mean, both Gordon Brown and David Cameron have chipped in about this. Don't they have something better to do? Actually, Cameron probably hasn't, the pie-faced, media-fellating cunt, but I think Gordon Brown might have a country to run and an economy to stop from crashing and burning and whatnot.

Plus, it looks like Whatshername is now trying to make a career out of her Grandad's national humiliation. Classy.

Yeah, it's all pretty depressing. I almost wish the news would start banging on about how the economic apocalypse is upon us instead. It's practically heart-lifting by comparison.