Galloping is the time is Brownian

 How is it September? (inevitable passage of time etc, yes yes). 

I read somewhere that if you do the same boring things, time will pass faster. Fine. FINE.

I've slowly started to feel (since I've made a little addition to my financial goals), that my life is lacking purpose. This always happens when I meet friends who have (some) purpose. I hate it.

There is an essay lurking around somewhere on the tribulations of authenticity - those who make it, those who bear it, those who look for it, and this essay splutters into life in couplets, haikus and late night switch pauses when I look around at my living room.

Who lives here? A person with kids, a person who reads, a person who likes interesting geometric art and moody perspective-shift pictures. A person who likes clean lines, and the odd burst of colour. But mainly, the person who lives here is a mom to kids and a very hairy very sheddy Labrador? (and a dad, don't forget DH). And mainly, the people who really use the space are the kids? Is there a me that is not subsumed by the mom-piece?

In watercolour painting, there is this concept of a wash, and how you add water to an area and gently let the colour seep around and watch Brownian motion. A darker wash next to a lighter area means you're in for some osmosis. Is this me? Is the mom piece the darker wash? Which piece in my life is lighter? Or is it like salt solution, a pinch means the glass is forever slightly salty? Or sugar, or lime juice, but you get my drift? (Why did I put salt first there's a story).

I've been wondering why I haven't been wondering. Why I haven't been getting itchy feet. Why I'm just being. I put it down to being physically numb, exhausted, a bone-crushing weariness that is the foreverness of child-rearing. There isn't space for clarity (or any really) of thought, but when that does come. What will those winds bring? Will it be more being, or more movement?

I've been reading:
1. Dragons love Tacos (and boy what a hoot it is!) + sequel
2. All of Sharon King-Chai's books - they're so delicious, the first thing I said to bigsmol was I want to eat each page
3. Every single Tom Norman book on FEELINGS of which we are seeing a lot
4. A bunch more of touch and feel books.
5. Babel by RF Kuange moved me in a real and rough way more than anything I've read recently and I liked it - I liked how intense it made me feel. I enjoyed it, much like slight bondage. Its rasping and uncomfortable but only slightly and in that space you find new things to look at (also exactly like Pilates?)

I met someone recently who has unsettled my life slightly, like a miniscule BLUE paintbrush splittersplatter spot in a wash of gentle azure sky. Its there, you can see it, you're trying to ignore it, and you can, but its there. I don't like it. 

I've been listening to a lot of Rafi - I sang it to smolsmol who was so unwell, he's better now, but I am forever bent and slightly broken in the way one is, when you leave your heart with someone and then they throw themselves off a bridge and ok now they're all fine and dandy but you never forget that one moment of heartstopping vomit inducing panic when they leapt. Don't jump you try to say, but you can't because first its I want to walk no matter I'll fall back and hit my head on the floor and you'll have to see it over and over and drink tea the 30th time it happens, and then its, I'll jump two stairs when you're not looking and before you know it, you're making peace with all the peace you've relinquished and all the control you've carefully divvied up.

  God, please can I have no more drama? Just love and forehead kisses. And more tea.

Sorkin of Life/Title Groove

I saw the newroom. I dont like the newsroom. I used to love Josh and I wanted to be him. The Newsroom has no Josh. I don't like the Newsroom.

Also, gender bias. No Sorkin, not this time. I wanted a female news lead. One female EP/ VP and econ anchor does not a mountain make. There can be no Sorites paradox (one of my favorite paradoxes) when it comes to female casting. You failed me. You failed Hillary - you failed all of us vags.

***

On that note, this delightful snarky piece in the Slate by Caitlin Moran re her new book - 'How to be a Woman' (excerpt below).

 It’s not sexiness that bothers her—rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be hot—it’s the lack of variety, the soul-numbing repetition of one, wildly unrealistic porn-inflected ideal for women. “Adele is the only woman for years whose been allowed to get to No. 1 wearing sleeves,” Moran said. For awhile her politics bumped uncomfortably up against her passions. Then she found the funny. “What I finally came down to is that we would pity Rihanna,” she said. “I told my girls, ‘Look at Rihanna: She’s one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She’s really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We’ll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.’ ”


I want to point out that Lagerfeld called Adele fat and I tore materialism from my heart forever and buried it deep down with my imitation Jimmy Choos. Bloggy and I do not endorse fattism. 

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Righto.

1) Firstly, I'm really sorry if you have me on Google Reader (why, why would you do that when this header and bloggy design are so pretty?) and I've 'published' about 131 posts today and you missed out on the important news-bloggy stories out there.

Anyway, calm down. I, even I, am not that prolific. They're re-posts (as you already know).

2) Secondly, I know I went away, but I couldn't write on my new secret blog on wordpress. It was a short-lived affair but I am back to my current and usual true love - blogspot bloggy.
(Also, I like tinkering around here better). Also, I heard you missed me. I missed me. So I had to come back by popular demand. Sigh - fandom.


3) Thirdly, like, have you been reading the news? What an AWFUL world we seem to live in. There's been way too much abuse and grief and sadness on the news for my liking. Only the Higgsteria made up for it. And Aung San Suu Kyi. And Santorum withdrawing (horrid man obssessed with vaginas and foetuses and uteruses). America - don't become the Knife of Never Letting Go.
(shudder)

4) Fourthly, I have been reading a lot. Feed by MT Anderson was brutal and honest in a way that little else I've read recently. Except Charles Stross's science fiction which I liked and then immediately unliked and you'll see why.

5) Fifthly, I have had a lot of time to think. Serious think. Like, I read Saturn's Children and I was like wtf is it with female sex robots and why tf do sci-fi writers write semi-porno-sadistic-abuse crap about them? (See below). I mean, is it because you won't be respectable if you write about semi-porno-sadistic abuse crap of male sex robots?  Why dude, why? And The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Why talk about their perfect breasts and mango smooth skin and perpetuate body imagery that is patently illogical. WTF is mango smooth skin? And these books are insanely famous. Promethues, Hugo, Locus, Nebula - you name it they've been nominated.
This is not fiction. This is Cosmo + Fifty Shades of Grey.

And lets not even get into gaming and quizzing.

From Wiki, a little intro:

"Emiko is a Japanese-designed windup girl (a humanoid GM organism, used as a slave, and programmed to seek a master and obey him; windups call themselves "New People") abandoned by her Japanese master. As such, she is illegal in Thailand. Raleigh, a sex club owner, gives her some measure of safety by bribing the police to let her live, but at the price of forcing her to work in his club, where she is routinely abused and sexually humiliated." - The Windup Girl


 6) Sixthly, the internet is a wonderful place because there are so many important ways to say what you can about the issues that anger you. Like, you can ready about the Bechdel Test and then say: I will legally only own copies of stuff that passes the Bechdel Test. And you can tell people about it on-the-line :). How wonderful a place is the internet. Also I am now a wiki editor. And a news junkie; seriously, I've read SO much news in the past few months. I've also completely STOPPED buying hard copy books. Ok, if I go on in this rein, this blogpost will not end.

7) Seventhly, I have not been shoe-shopping at all. I have disavowed the excessive materialism which characterised my life for the past couple of years. I like my simple (non shoe-shopping life now). I thought I should tell you this, in case you thought I was buying every pair of flat happy open-toed shoes I could find here

8) Eightly, I am in Singapore - did you already know this? I can never go back to living in a non-sun non-swimming pool place anymore. There is also less Asian vegetarian food in Singapore than in London (also less cupcakes - sigh) so I have been cooking more and I am an excellent chef. Really truly. I am on a new crazy eating and exercise plan though so I haven't eaten a cupcake in about four months. I didn't even eat one when I found out about my new job - though I skipped the gym for 8 days in celebration.

9) Ninthly, I am going to need to make new friends because I will be moving to Delhi.
(Sad face * 453867)

10) Tenthly, hey, hello, gentle reader!!!! Are you well?

Girls rule the world so shut up already

Maybe it’s the spate of dystopicky novels I’ve been reading, or the validly sci-fi ones which tend towards dystopic otherworld, or maybe it’s just Rick Santorum, I don’t know which – but everyone has an opinion about what women can or can’t do. I wouldn’t care much for talk like this, you know, the whole, you can’t kill people, you can’t nuke Palestine, you can’t move the Jews to Mexico (as Sheldon suggested) or the whole, yes you can, can, can can, side of things. Mostly I am plodding along in my own shell.

Very hypocritical, I know, but that’s what I do. I make mental adjustments to my ‘how to rule the world manual’ and then move along (and since I don’t even blog regularly anymore, I can’t even rage about it on bloggy!)

Except. Except. This week. This week. Its making me reiterate heavily, and splutter more than I have in months. And it made me angry. Yeah, that’s a big deal. I’ve been on this whole nothing, not even you Rush Limbaugh, can make me angry phase.

It’s been a beautiful few months – stop spoiling it by telling the world what you think women can and can’t do. Go fix your own life.