Full of it

The joy of spring that is. My garden has a lot of colour at the moment, though beyond the single daffodil and a gnarled up rose I have no idea what they’re called. It was all good until today but now I am also full of hay-fever. Poopies.

I have been spending all my free time with writerly friends, partaking of writerly activities like writing envelopes to agencies (on behalf of my friend), sitting in coffee shops and criticising popular novels and their writers. And buying shoes, but I needed shoes because my last pair came apart slightly and made me fall down in two seperate train stations, causing great concern to the general public.

I’m still hopeful of a slow but steady rise in progress as I now have a new writing aid…

Though progress may be hindered by general rage for StinkyHouseFolk who seems to have replaced his casual racism with active sexism and has been particularly obnoxious (as well as physically noxious) all week to everybody.

Holiday hangover

Quote of the Day:

The Pussycat Dolls do not represent feminism. It’s consumerism appropriating the rhetoric of feminism to sell sexism to young women.

Courtesy of thefword.org.uk

I’m not actually hungover – the title refers to my inability to concentrate on work after my week off. I’m on my fifth coffee and it doesn’t seem to be helping. I’m also worried about my cat who is having lung tests today.

The clocks changed so we have evenings again. Like any change I am desperately hoping it will stimulate productivity. One day I will accept that only I can change my activity levels but today is not that day.

Woe (times are changing)

I’m in a deep, dark, emo funk. It’s bad. It’s a blend of recession blues, personal dissatisfaction and general disgust for humanity.

The recession may see me joining the ranks of the boomerang generation I fought so hard to avoid (oh who am I kidding? I sat pretty and was glad of my lucky escape) and moving back to my parents house. This would only be tolerable if I could keep my job and work online.

I am personally dissatisfied with my person. The blues have been killing the delicate orchid of my motivation and every act is becoming a chore. If left to my own devices, with no watchers or responsibilities, I am certain I would be living in a pile of fetid blankets, reading book after book, eating from a can and refusing to shower so I didn’t have to go outside.

This is actually a pretty good mentality for me to start my novel redrafting. A little drop of self-loathing is good for my creative process; stops me getting too distracted.

General disgust for humanity is not something I like to feel but it’s almost always there. There always seems to be something: like the latest reports on the insanely high level of domestic violence, or overhearing people talk about the criteria they simply must have for their second car. Or their beach holiday (hmm, Mauritius or Dubai?).  And that thing about the Brazilian girl (age 9) who really shouldn’t have had an abortion (of twins) because now God won’t love her.

Anyway…

I went to see Watchmen at the weekend. My favourite part was the opening montage, soundtracked by “the Times, They are a-Changing” where they all started so young and happy and full of pride, optimism and self-belief and gradually got torn apart. Despite having read the comic and knowing all their fates I still had a tear in my eye when I saw Silhouette and her girlfriend murdered. That montage was a high-calorie viewing experience in itself.

Sometimes I look at people and think they’re hurting. It’s not true though; they’re just waiting for someone to talk to.

Queer Musings

Me and that guy were talking the other day about queer people on TV. I was explaining to him how falsely constructed the super-camp gay male presenter stereotype was and we hit on something: where are all the lesbians? Not just TV presenters – anywhere on UK television? 

We even spent some time googling to see if anyone we recognised came up. The winner: Sue Perkins.

Icon of the week: David Bowie

No one can deny that David Bowie is cool, and in this picture also rather hot:

I realised while looking for this picture that all the people on my list so far have been devastatingly attractive. Even Virginia Woolf was considered a great beauty in her day. The debate is open as to whether this makes me shallow or bisexuals unnaturally gorgeous…

David Bowie came out to the media in the 80s but later regretted it when the American press focused on that above and beyond his creative endevours. I can understand the irritation of sexuality becoming a defining feature – it’s something that doesn’t effect most of what you do most of the time. Bowie wanted to be known for his music, his acting and art. His art is awesome by the way: http://www.bowieart.com/ My art teacher told me that he spent a lot of his time in the art studios after they refused to let him do music.

Bowie has always been around in the background of my life. From childhood with cult movie Labyrinth to finding out that he went to my school there has been an aura of undeniable, demigod-like awesomeness. To find out that someone of this stature is part of the bi-club pleases me muchly.

Icon of Last Week

I do somewhat suck for not posting this at the weekend like I said I would. It’s typical of my disordered function. And also my home computer isn’t ready yet so it’s still hard to get online at home.

Drumroll please: tstststststststststststststststststsah!

Bisexual icon: Amanda Palmer

taken by Beth Hommel

In the full glory of her performance outfit, taken when she was still intact. When I saw her she was a bit damaged with her foot in plaster. And freezing her ass off. She looked so small at the signing table after the show, huddled over her pen with her foot on a stool. On stage she was fucking amazing. The woman has presence like I’ve never seen, she’s a born performer, and the show she’s put together with her friends raises the bar for live performance.

She shared the stage with Zoe Keating, supercellist, and Jason Webley accordion-hobo. They were equally engaging and completely contrasting in style and execution – she looped phrases through her laptop, he brought a maraca made of a plastic bottle full of coins. Between us me and partner bought their CDs and got them signed, took their pictures and joined their mailing lists. Taking little bits of them to keep for ourselves.

My favourite souvenir is the stem of flowers Amanda threw into the crowd that I caught. I’m going to press one of the flowers under my book mountain. I’ll probably forget about it for 2 years then rediscover it and relive some Amanda-based joy. At the moment I’m looking up lyrics as it’s the way she writes about things and the choice of subject matter that gives her punk caberet style the extra layer of depth missing from a lot of music.

~*New Feature*~

I’m sure you are amazed by my misuse of random characters. What could it be, this new feature that requires such juvenile decor? It is:

Virginia’s Bisexual Icon of the Week!ta da!

In light of one of my recent posts about how I missed out on a significant event in my life because I didn’t know bisexual was an option, I have decided to start compiling a list of prominent bisexual people. How dull monosexualism will seem in comparison!

First up: Virginia Woolf

As a woman so awesome I named my blog after her Virginia Woolf has to come first. She was an intelligent and sensitive woman and born into the privilege of literary high society. It was a natural progression that surrounded by creative people on all sides she should become a novelist herself, pioneering modernist styles with strong psychological development of her characters.

Virginia was a feminist and advocated that women have the potential to be equal to men in creativity given the time, space and freedom from financial worry to do so. In her upper class Bloomsbury group and creative circles it was common to take a lover in addition to marriage, so although she was devoted to her husband Leonard she simultaneously had another long term partner, Vita Sackville-West.

It is thought that childhood abuse from her half brothers and deaths of many significant family members in her youth triggered fragile mental health for the rest of Virginia’s life. She had multiple breakdowns and it has been theorised that she may have been bipolar. At the age of 59 she drowned herself.

I think Virginia Woolf means something to me because I empathise with the way she writes about things. I know what it feels like to dissociate from the world because I’m so tangled in a web of my own thoughts (albeit less well constructed thoughts than hers). I understand how emotion can be there beneath the surface without being acknowledged, and what it feels like to be torn by something you refuse to admit exists. Virginia speaks to a side of my character that very few people do.

Personal Truths

Goddamn. Random emotional turmoil is for teenagers. It would be so much easier to be emotionally dead. I’ve been thrown off since an emotional sex session when I looked into his eyes as he was coming but when it was my turn he shut his eyes and I couldn’t speak. I’ve been exposed and vulnerable since. I find myself trying to take responsibility for every bad thing that happens to him, pretending to myself that it was in my power to have prevented it and feeling bad for not doing.

Totally irrational. Completely unfounded. Really friggin irritating. I’m trying not to let it bring me down.

Aside from this I’ve had a good weekend with friends. We went to the awesome Cafe Soya and did meditations together. My spirit animal is a ladybird and it took me to stand in a blue fire. I have a guide that’s really tiny and easy to lose track of: what does that say about me? I also found it by falling flat out into some brambles (in the meditation). I think this symbolises how difficult I perceive it to be to get useful things out of my head. I make things hard for myself.

Also really friggin irritating.

I might start a page to make a list of bisexual icons. The biggest regret of my life was caused by not knowing that sexuality wasn’t a binary, and that liking boys didn’t have to get in the way of kissing a really amazing girl who was probably the first person I ever loved and who I probably really hurt with my unfounded rejection.

My other regret (anything else has apparently been forgotten or healed by time) was caused by alcohol. I offered to lend the same book to two people – poaching from the first person to give to the second who then disappeared with it forever. It was a couple of years ago but it still bothers me. I’m going to redress it by buying a new copy and giving it to the person I should have left it with in the first place.

A criticism of Lush…

Surely not! Surely my most favouritest of brands is squeaky clean and above all suspicion? Sadly not.

As much as I love them for selling me a solid block of cocoa butter with which to oil my scales I can’t keep to myself my disappointment in their latest catalogue. They have a system of symbols they use to help you catagorise certain products, eg if it’s good for waking you up or making you sleepy. My problem is with the symbol that looks like a little blue man in a t-shirt and jeans. They apply it to products that are suitable for men. Not just the products that are designed for men, like stubble softening shaving soap, but any product in any other range that is either blue or green in colour.

Why Lush? We don’t need anyone else telling us that men can’t have pink things, we already have the whole rest of the world for that. And I know that the non-blue things work just as well on men because they all have the same stuff in them. And because I know men who use them. And because the man in the shop told me his favourite shampoo was the white glittery one (without being camp, which I hate to justify but I don’t think his opinion should be discounted by people thinking he might be a queen). So if men are already happily using the supposedly girlie products Lush is in fact putting them off using things rather than encouraging them to start.

Lush catalogue: you win Fail of the Day.

PS: my shampoo is green – I hope I don’t have a confused gender identity (/snarcasm)

Do women taste their own virginia?

This is one of the searches someone typed in that found my blog yesterday. Do women taste their own Virginia? I think Virginia Woolf’s prose would taste of semicolons. I think her corpse would taste dry and old and leathery.

But I’m sure that’s not what the questioner really meant, though the absurdity of their malapropism detracts from the offensiveness of the question. It’s not the kind of thing you can find a conclusive answer to on google, and I doubt there is a wikipedia page about it. It reminds me of yesterday afternoon when I am certain I heard a guy say something about tits as he drove past me. That was intimidating as well though, and reminded me that it has been a long time since I went anywhere other than to work and back by myself.

Trying to find out if women like the taste of their vaginas is just weird. It implies that all women will have the same opinion on the matter. It implies that the questioner is planning a sexual encounter with a woman and while on the one hand it may be seen as considerate to do some research first it isn’t going to help in the slightest as it won’t take her preferences into account. I sigh at the hopelessness of this misguided individual and hope that if things start getting daft in the bedroom they have a little laugh over it and have a good time.

I will assume the questioner is not a woman, otherwise she could just taste her own juices without the aid of a search engine (unless she was checking if it was a good idea first). I’m guessing he is young, shy and inexperienced from the typo and … well the need to ask the question at all. I’m hoping he was researching in order to avoid a faux pas while getting creative in the bedroom and wants to please his female friend(s) genuinely and earnestly.

I am really hoping he is not a creep, looking for weird descriptions of finger-licking fun because his web-browser is banned from accessing the pr0n. Access the pr0n elsewhere, my dear, you’ll not be finding it here.