shoddy journalism: John Prescott

Is this headline the Times' words, or Prescott's? I think the Times'. Hence the outrage that follows.

What an appalling way to characterise an eating disorder. I'm not particularly bothered by the inference that men aren't supposed to have bulimia. Of course that is a fairly crap and crass thing to believe, but at least that fuck-up is immediately noticeable.

Look at the title again. The juxtaposition of 'big man' and 'girl's illness' - how utterly, utterly atrocious. The obvious point is that they've used the dominant 'man' for the male, and the submissive 'girl's' to refer to the female. If you have this disease, you are automatically demoted to the apparently weaker sex. Why are they allowed to do this?

The underlying implied message that this 'girl's illness' (and I'm not sure about that apostrophe, actually, Times) is acceptable in young women. The article, read in conjunction with the headline, makes bulimia sounds like viable relief for stressed-out females, even adding Princess Diana to the mix as a role model in the pursuit of thinness.

Kudos to John Prescott for speaking out. I don't necessarily agree with the way he presents his experience - masculinising it with vodka, for example - but everyone works through it in a different way. I could say a lot more. I'm totally overreacting.

Fuck the Times for that headline.

because we didn't know this already

You May Be a Bit Borderline...

Your mood swings make a roller coaster look tame! When you're up, you're a little bit crazy... And when you're down, your whole world is crashing Scary thing is, these moods can change by the minute!

What Personality Disorder Are You?

hangover cure

I'm a touch hungover after a much-needed night out in my highest heels. Anticipating a need for comfort food I bought the ingredients for a Greek dish that reminds me of visits to grandparents. In the memories I am seven or eight, crowded around the long dark table with cousins, aunts, uncles. The two Alsatian dogs are nuzzling young knees and everyone over the age of fifteen is smoking. My grandmother serves us meat and potatoes, slow cooked for six hours and still the only way I will ever eat lamb willingly.

We call it tavar. It probably isn't spelt like that. You put lamb chops or chicken thighs in a large casserole dish with peeled and chopped white potatoes, a couple of chopped onions and enough tins of tomatoes to cover the whole lot. I add half a tin of water and some bay leaves as well. The meat falls off the bones when its done. I bite the ends off and suck the marrow, a bad habit learnt from those smoke filled nights with family.

Really quite tired now but very content. Also content to not read the outbox on my phone. Cocktails not necessarily conducive to making any sense.

things in my life that aren't my dissertation

1. The bruise on the back of my right hand. No idea how it got there. It looks like a grab mark, but it's a little quiet on that front.
2. That bloody Bon Iver song I was listening to yesterday. I do own steal crap music.
3. Two dreams, in two successive nights, about two different man-types who featured in the daytime world once upon a time.
4. Jugs of Pimms with the girls, drunk man telling us we shouldn't be in the pub if we didn't want to be "bothered".
5. Son of Rambow. Yeah, cute enough.
6. New platform sandals that may get an outing with obnoxious coloured tights and too much eyeliner tonight. The lovely Miss McG calls my dress sense "trashy" and I take it as a compliment.
7. Seriously. Bon Iver? You're meant to say it like it's French as well, but isn't 'winter' 'hiver', not 'iver'? It's bothering me.
8. Really shit TV programmes, like the Channel 4 documentary about the Ark of the Covenant. I didn't watch the end but I looked up what happened. The chap reckons the Ark is in a storeroom in Zimbabwe.
9. Another shit TV programme: Channel 5's knock-off of 4's 'Bodyshock' series. The man that looked like a tree was quite alarming. The shows are just excuses to stare. Doesn't mean I stop, though.
10. Chocolate. A lot of chocolate.

Basically, my life? Full of nonsense.

unposted

I keep writing entries that I subsequently don't post. This is because I worry that they may be taken the wrong way, which I realise is totally narcissistic as it assumes a readership that would actually care. In that spirit, have some me me me.

I'm in the library. Sorry, the fucking library. I can see two people I know without moving my head. I feel like I know the rest of them because apparently everyone is as anal as I am about sitting in the same place every day. There is a guy who nearly always sits in my line of sight and he tends to stare. He's not staring at me but it reminds me, when my eyes flicker up, that typing is so monotonously absorbing that you forget people are able to see you. I've always enjoyed repetition. I find folding napkins at the end of a shift soothing.

I'm listening to Bon Iver's 'Skinny Love' on repeat but I can still hear the girl behind me chatting to a tall boy, awkward scruffy hair and a stupid t-shirt. She's eating something fake strawberry flavoured, perhaps my favourite flavour for sweets and icecream ever. Everything, the music, the smell, is nauseatingly sweet (and a guilty pleasure). I chew gum constantly when I'm writing so I expect the smell of Extra is just as imposing.

Bon Iver is being bitter in my ears. The music sounds like his lovechild with Kimya Dawson, except it isn't really tangible, it's just this rancid fondness that exists between two people who once meant everything to each other. It's also something that everyone on this earth thinks is personal to them but really, who doesn't wreck something precious at least once in their life? Sometimes it's necessary. If things ended well, they wouldn't end at all.

I know I'm pretentious most of the time anyway, but I get worse when I'm working hard. Introvert by nature, 12000 words wraps the world tighter. Time to finish this thing.

nostalgic distractions

Dissertation is due three weeks from yesterday. It will be Done. On earth, as it is in heaven. Yeah, whatever. It's in my blood now.

I haven't worked this continuously since my A Levels. They were four years - FOUR YEARS - ago. I heard that Lost Prophets song 'Last Summer' on the radio this morning and was sad, for a moment, quiet and sad. So much loss.

I am nostalgic before the fact, often. Cold snap April air as I walk to the gym brings regret that these weeks will be the last time I make the early morning journey. Funny, to miss the little things, the nuts and bolts of life. Missing people is a given, but they are always there, somewhere. I can call those friends, they move on with you, but I will never recapture exactly how this city, this life makes me feel.

To work.

what I did on my holiday

A list. Because I am tired.

1. Got rained on.
2. Did not get a tan.
3. Woke up one morning with a transfer tattoo on my left breast. Remembered vaguely, through the hangover, weird barman putting it there.
4. Did not remember - still a touch unsure - how we got back to the boat the same night of the transfer tattoo debacle.
(Sister assures me it had something to do with a bloke named Bill.)
5. Reacquainted myself with the unattractive lumpy rash I get on my hands and joints every time I go sailing.
6. Got several mosquito bites, despite it being cold.
7. Listened to Black and Gold by Sam Sparro many many many times.
8. Did not do the dissertation work I took with me.
9. Only dropped the warp when throwing it once. Still embarrassing.
10. Read This Book Will Save Your Life, by AM Homes. And it was the best novel I have read in years.

More, maybe, at some point. Maybe even with proper sentence structures.