Urban Leg Ends

I'm going to leave a little space there, and I want you all to flex your creative muscles and fill that space with an imaginary apology from me for not updating my blog.





Har de har. Like anyone ever reads this. Ergo, my reading material (or lack of therefore) has been reduced to a used tissue (quite what it was used for I'll let you use your creative muscles on that as well).

I'm very proud of the pun in today's title and I think it best I tell you why - You know that irritating berk in the office/college/uni/toilets that won't leave you alone? The one that peppers your fraught uncomfortable conversations with such gems as;

TWAT: "Oh, there was this one guy who works with microwaves...."
ME: "You mean a chef."
TWAT: "Yeah one of those. Anyway, he died, yeah, and at the autopsy they cut him up, yeah, and all his insides were microwaved. Yeah."

Yes, him (or her). Well, no doubt this twat will also come up with the fantastic line;

TWAT: "You break your toes ten times in your life - and you don't even notice because it doesn't even hurt!"

NEWSFLASH: It does.

Yes, well done, I've broken my toe, can't go to Uni let alone walk, and I'm bloody miserable. So go on, throw the dog a bone and write me a nice poem to cheer me up. Preferably a Limerick to indulge my Irish heritage*.

Teeny - Neety neet has an owie in her feet (see? that's already half a rhyme).


*Please note the closest I have come to Irish heritage is drinking Bailey's while wearing green.

Forty is the new Forty-Two

According to the Bible, it took Noah 40 days' and nights' labour to build his ark. For 40 days and 40 nights it rained and Noah was at sea. Jesus Christ spent 40 days and 40 nights in tribulation in the Sinai desert with Satan.

See the pattern?

No, I haven't gone all Bono on you (yet); but isn't it interesting to note? Christ himself was reputed to be alive during the reign of Emperor Julius Caesar, and the Julian calendar was not introduced until shortly before the end of his reign, let alone today's Gregorian calendar. Therefore, during the account of the Biblical stories, we can assume the phrase "40 days and 40 nights" meant a substantial period of time, perhaps ambiguously conveying a period longer than a month but shorter than two.

Where am I going with this? Christians believe God made the world in seven days, but has a day always been the same length? In the same way as the timescale may be subject to change, accounts of events the Bible will be different, written and revised by different people. In no way does this make me, as a person with Christian beliefs think that the Bible is fabricated. I am simply saying that stories (Biblical ones in particular) have a moral derivative.

I am not saying that one aught to disregard the more serious topics of the Bible. It's all there: rape, prostitution, incest, murder, blasphemy, sodomy, sin. This is why certain topics are 'glossed over' for some audiences if you like. You may remember learning the tale of the Good Samaritan in school perhaps, but not the tale of the children who mocked Elijah and were subsequently torn apart by bears. Cruel, yes. An act by a loving God? I believe, still, yes. The moral grounds are there - forsake the Lord and there are repercussions. In the same way, a murderer is breaking a commandment of God and subsequently goes to Hell. Perhaps to be torn apart by Demons (OK, I'm getting a little presumptuous here).

Think back to The Simpsons (I never thought I'd here myself say that during a theological argument), and Homer's holographic picture of God; on one side, God smiting humanity, on the other God grinning with his thumb up. As a child I was never shielded from the actions of 'vengeful God', I was encouraged to read my Bible and I did; my leaders were well aware that I would find things I didn't understand, didn't dare to imagine and perhaps didn't like. As they probably did and still do.

I can't pretend to have all the answers. I don't even think Atheists have all the answers to oppose God - "Why did God create us?" is a good example of that. In this lifetime we will never know.

Think of it this way: we will never know the secrets of life itself, any more than we will know the exact height of Goliath or whether Samson would ever endorse TresEmme. But God set out a helpful guide to show you how things roughly balance out.

For a bit of extra reading, try this: it's quite interesting:
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/12/42-its-not-gods-favorite-number.html

Ethereal Girl

Why, why, why and crashing why is there still Madonna?

Sorry to dive into a rant already and not allow you a tentative shallow comment for you to dip your toe into, but this is something I don't understand. Here's why:

• The 80s were awesome, and Madonna was a musical instituition. Then, she found the big red button labelled "SEX" and pressed it. Ladies and Gentlemen, she has had her finger holding that button down since 1986.
• One word: KABBALAH. Or Baby Kabbalah, and all its derivatives. I know its some kind of religious sect, but the very name makes you stop and go, "What is it?" and then promptly slip into a catatonic state three seconds after they start answering.
• She 'found' a mystical Kabbalah fluid that would apparently cancel out the effects of toxic waste. This was highlighted, I think, on a latest-season episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Naturally, it was knocked on its arse by Simon Amstell.
• The country house thing. She promotes Kabbalah and then goes and shoots a pheasant.
• Kudos to her because she 'appears' to have the body of a 30-year-old at 50, but there's a time and a place for a woman to wear a flesh-coloured corset and have parts of it ripped off by a man twenty five years her junior. Her latest music video is not that time or place.

Don't get me wrong. The Immaculate Collection is, just like Ronseal, exactly what it promises to be. And she was cute and fresh in the 80s. But her transfer from then to the modern world of invasive press and celebrity fanaticism seems to have robbed her of her enchantment. Everyone seems to gloss over her with a "meh, seen it all before" attitude. Either that or she's a horrid person for driving her husband away, or she's the victimised wife struggling to hold on to her family.

But isn't that the thing with celebrity women? Everything hangs in a most confusing balance: if they're with a man, he's cheating or they're about to break up, or if they're not with a man they're miserable anyway. Jennifer Aniston is allegedly 'distraught' when she's not with a man, but then when a certain male film star recently admitted to self-harm the media world collectively gasped. Apparently men are supposed to be stronger than that.

As a last thought. As I put it to my fellow blogger Az: "Would you have sex with Madonna?" His reply; "Perhaps...if she was 80s Madonna."

Tying the Not

Occasionally I like to have the odd flick through a girly magazine. Yes, you heard me right, but it does my heart and my future career good to know what's out there for young women. I would like to point out, just for good measure, that I often skip straight to the real life stories, gloss over the make-up section (if only to learn that I've been applying the incorrect eye-shadow in an incorrect manner for the past three years of my life), skip through 'This Month's Must-Haves' to check whether tie-dye is back in see if I missed anything on the bargain rail in Primark, before catching the whimsical but pointless list on the back page (this month: '15 Things He Should Do If He Really Loves You'. Etnad scored top marks, making me the smuggest bitch in Christendom) and pass a glance at the generic shirtless beefcake, realising that in my eyes he will never be as lovely as Etnad before falling asleep in a dopey position with my face stuck to the Letters Page.

So anyway. Seeing as though I abhorred any kind of 'chick lit' material until my eyes were opened by a Graphic Design course and my dearest Liz, which was roughly during my last year of College, I must say things might be looking up. Thin is no longer in. Not that I'm happy about that because I hate thin people, being a little more, ahem, voluptuous in bodily volume than your average girl, I just believe it shouldn't have taken this long for people to realise that catwalk models are starving slowly to death. So commences the nadir of the herion waifs, and perhaps a long apogee of curvy women. Fingers crossed.

But one magazine made a horrific downfall. Splashed in the middle of the mag was an article entitled something along the lines of 'How To Get Your Man To Propose'. It was a freelance piece - don't get me wrong; I intend to be one myself, I am merely pointing out that it was not to the magazine's standard - accompanied by a charming picture of a young woman in a bridal gown drawing pictures of massive diamond rings and writing sporadic bursts of marraige-related lexis on an old school blackboard.

The idea behind it: treat your man like an idiot. Abhorr marriage - whine about how you've been invited to a friends' wedding and you hate it, pretend to tie your shoe when a wedding car goes by, yawn audibly through the exchanging of vows. Do this for as long as it takes for him to get the message: you hate weddings.

Now comes the ingenious part: invent an excuse (boiler broken, plumbing being fixed, Hun invasion) to move into his place with him for a week. Then you go from the sublime to the ridiculous (much like this magazine). To paraphrase: "wear stockings and silk shirts and be seen taking a fish pie out of the oven when he comes home." I'm sorry. Fish pie? Silk shirt? Anyone with half a Y chromosome should know that when you bend down in stockings there'll be more pings than a table-tennis tournament. The idea, according to the writer, was to be the most fabulous girlfriend in the world. Which is all very well. But there is with women a certain point during every month or so when we don't want any contact with fish or stockings, we want Bridget Jones's Diary on DVD and some cotton pajamas and the only men we want intimate contact with are called Ben and Jerry. And it doesn't even have to be our 'lady time' either.

I'm just saying, why are women of a certain age assumed to be obsessed with marriage? You'd think with the popularity of Sex and The City, which points out quite well that marriage doesn't mean you waltz off into the sunset possessed with the instant urge to re-populate and everything's sunshine lollipops and rainbows from then on. In my generation, I happen to be of a very slim percentage of two-parent families who haven't yet experienced marriage crisis. A lot of my friends have a mum or a dad living elsewhere, so every day I count myself lucky. But I also dread the day my future husband and I hit our first obstacle: how will we cope?

All I'm saying is that if I can figure all this out at nineteen, why are thirty-somethings still confused? Marriage isn't everything, but it's a nice idea. A possibility, like going to University or seeing the world. I haven't doen either yet, and I don't expect to open a magazine and find someone trying to tell me how to do it the 'easy way'.

Teeny ~ "If you now have 'Sunshine, Loillipops and Rainbows' in your head, I've done my job"

Herping On

In the words of the Great Chrissie Hynde: don't get me wrong. I love my turtles. In fact, it's got to the point where I've found that the more people I meet the more I love them, but then you don't generally get turtles starting world wars or backing into each other's parking spaces (yes, turtles need to park).

However...they are a very special kind of pet. By this, I mean they require a certain amount of attention. But here's the thing (or rather things - yes, it's another list):

My mother is insane. "Of course," I hear you cry, "But what has that got to do with the turtles?" Mother has convinced herself that Soupy is incapable of eating pellets independently. i.e. she feels the need to hand-feed him. Apparently if she doesn't, he just spacks at her while George nips around eating all the food. I would understand her concern...if only I didn't believe that she has been hand-feeding him too much, and now he expects it, like the turtle equivalent of the Maha Rajah.

Turtles know full well when they are being naughty. I bought a little dried out urchin shell to decorate their tank with. Yesterday, I was approaching the tank and was startled to see Soupy 'bouncing' up and down on it. Unsurprisingly it split in two. He spotted me approaching, and instead of his normal routine of following me around, he looked directly at me and smacked one of the pieces of shells with both claws. Annoyed, I removed the lid to scoop the ruined adornment out with a net, and Soupy found it hilarious to jump into the net. Twice. He then commenced a few cheeky victory laps before smacking his brother in the face.

They like music. When they were in my room, Etnad would sit on my bed and play the guitar. You couldn't find a more precious tableau this side of the Nativity Scene: Him sat strumming gently with the turts squeezed into the corner closest to him, stock still and listening intently. I was half expecting Gabriel and all his angels to appear among the rankweed. Turn the hairdryer or vacuum cleaner on however, and watch them crap themselves and run away.

They can warm even the toughest of hearts. While away at Isle of Wight Fest, I received a text from my mother: "Dad is bonding with the turtles. He is cooing over them." So there you have it. Bear in mind the fact that I haven't known my father to coo, except when attempting to lure a pigeon into the path of his car.

Turtles smash. In pretty much the same way as their green counterpart (technically I meant Bowser, not Hulk) they have a penchant for distruction. This would be funny had their evil eye not turned to:
1) a £12:00 filter
2) several ornamental plants and shells
3) themselves, and
4) each other.

All literary, fictional and mythological turtles are cooooool. See the many 'o's? I mean think about it: in the contemporary corner you have Bowser, TMNT (both of whom have been cool since the '80s, thank you very much), Tortigar and the World Turtle from the Discworld series. Chinese culture heralds the turtle as one of it four central powerful animals (incidentally, it's the only one of the four that truly exists, the other three being a dragon, a phoenix and a unicorn). In Japan, the minogame as it is known is a symbol of longevity and felicity. We have the Mock Turtle from Alice in Wonderland, Cassiopeia and Morla from Neverending Story...I could go on. I don't really think I need to.

A pack of 10 Sidenecks can take down a flamingo. Don't ask me how - I only know it happens. Really, what more do you expect from a pink bird that stands on one leg most of the time?

So there you have it. Turtles are destructive, mischevious and difficult to care for, but they're cute and very easy to love.

Teeny ~ "Well, if Bowser can fall into a burning planet of lava and survive..."