Tuesday 30 March 2010

Bloody Gorgeous 2 (and some things involving me)

That's it: Bloody Gorgeous is going to be a regular feature. And by regular I mean, "I will do it more than twice", not "I will post at regular intervals" because as you know, dear reader, I will never do that. Anyway, late one night the channel-hopping-fairy had a treat in store to cheer me up, the end of Danny Boyle's lovely not-quite-zombie gore fest 28 Days Later, starring the exquisitely handsome Mr Cillian Murphy. I had quite forgotten that the climax of the film involves Mr Murphy running about with no shirt on covered in arterial spatter. Always good, don't you think?



On a more serious and less perverted note, remember if you're based in the Hampshire area to buy your tickets for West Side Story at the Kings Theatre. And on a more serious and less shameless note, I'm afraid I'm not all that well at the moment, so posts will be even more erratic than usual. I may go into what's wrong with me in a later post... or not, I haven't yet decided.

Still, to end this little ramble on something more positive: good news everyone! The dreaded novel is complete! Well, I say complete, I'll keep tinkering with the minor details, but the bulk is done. I have written three different versions of the synopsis to suit agents of different tastes and now all that stands between me and the agent best suited to me (whether that agent deals with mainstream publishers, small press or ebooks is in the lap of the gods) is an elegant-sounding cover letter. I'll let you know how things go. I'm not expecting anyone to take me on, to be honest, but I think I should at least get an ebook out of it. There's no harm in trying, right?

Sunday 21 March 2010

Bloody Gorgeous

Remember a while back when I joked about starting a regular feature based around pictures of pretty people covered in fake blood? Well I might have to actually start that properly. This evening I was watching that thoroughly silly piece of horror trash, Hannibal Rising, and I couldn't help thinking that the lovely Mr Gaspard Ulliel looks rather tasty done up as Doctor Lecter.What do you think?

He's certainly better looking than Anthony Hopkins. Anyway, I'm going to start searching for more pictures of young men and red syrup. I promise I'll post something slightly more...well I'll post something soon anyway. Sadly work is still eating into my spare time and the novel is still very-very-very-nearly done. Again.

Tuesday 16 March 2010

Beans

I realise I haven't posted anything in a long time, so here's a picture of Siouxsie Sioux with some beans on toast from last week's Guardian. Apparently she's really keen on beans.


I promise I'll be back with something more substantial (although I suppose beans are fairly substantail as snack foods go) shortly. I'm currently buried under piles of work. Not literally, mind you, that would be uncomfortable.

Thursday 4 March 2010

Crafty links and suchlike

First of all, a big hello to new follower person number five, Goth Girl who runs a very pretty jewellery shop.

Right, now onto some links.

Mookychick have a very cute knitting pattern for a funny looking toy cat which I am definitely going to make at some point.

Also in cute toys, why not knit a dinosaur?
For those good with electronics, Evil Mad Scientist Labs have a cool how-to for a fake seven-segment display
And in not-really-crafty-but-sod-it-I'll-post-it-here-anyway, the Brothers Brick have feature this awesome Cthulhu lego diarama, proof if ever it was needed that geeky people are amazing people.

And lastly, in completely-irrelevant, here's a page showing any lads out there how to do their hair and makeup like a Japanese pop star and very pretty it is too.

That's all the random links you're getting today, folks. I'll go back to failing to finish the novel.

On being a feminist

When I was a little girl, I thought I didn't want to be a little girl. None of the little girls I read about or saw on television were anything like the way I wanted to be. When I played, I was Peter Pan, Aladdin, Batman, or, more often than not, a character I had created who was a sort of Victorian urchin boy. I had some female role models too; Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Minnie the Minx, but I never played at being them. For a while I thought I wanted to be a boy.

It was many years later when I first heard about suffragettes, women's lib, feminism and all the things that went with it, and I realised that I didn't want to be a boy, I just didn't want to be feminine in the way that a thousand television shows, dolls and books portrayed. I wanted to be a girl but to do all the things boys did in stories: to be the hero, to lead armies, to climb trees, catch the bad guys. And who wouldn't? Catching bad guys is far more interesting than being a frilly pink love-interest.

And that's part of the reason I consider myself I feminist and insist on rallying against sexism: women of all ages shouldn't feel restricted by their gender (and nor should men, for that matter). In recent years there seems to have been a backlash against the feminism of the 70s and 80s, and with the world falling on hard times people are falling back into those comfortably constrictive cliches, letting women become attractive but vacuous sex-objects and little girls become frilly pink princesses, neither of which is particularly healthy. Most of the women presented as role models today are just as dull as the women I refused to look up to as a child: miniskirted pop stars who sing someone else's songs; footballer's wives; it-girls. Even serious and respected sportswomen, actresses and other ladies in the public-eye are expected to appear in pretty frocks and racy underwear when interviewed in magazines (not that there's anything wrong with wanting to look nice or whatever, it's just it gets rather tedious when every woman has to be fashionable when very few men feel the need to).

I know I'm not what many people would think of as a feminist, or even a tomboy for that matter. I wear skirts a lot and very rarely wear trousers, I wear far too much eyeliner, I like violent horror movies (even the ones where most of the victims are women), I like burlesque, I wear low-cut tops. But that's the thing; I dress the way I do because I like it, because I want to look a certain way, not because I want to be "beautiful". I also credit myself with the intelligence to know the difference between trashy catharsis and what is genuinely damaging. To my mind slasher movies are far less dangerous than the "harmless" female cliches in romantic comedies, for example.

Anyway, I realise I'm rambling aimlessly, so I'll point you towards some people who address these problems far more eloquently than I do. PinkStinks is a fabulous campaign that aims to highlight and eradicate the "world of pink" created for young girls. They have nothing against the colour pink, incidentally, just the way it's used. They regularly link to interesting newspaper articles on the subject, so it's well worth checking back regularly.

The F-Word is probably my favourite feminist blog, closely followed by feministing. Also lovely, though not solely feminist, is the UK magazine Filament, a sex-positive girl's mag full of pretty pictures of pretty men.

And, just because I'm not above self promotion, you might be interested in my article about women and pornography and my article about a dreadful romantic comedy film and why it's sexist.