C word

After going all X-rated, I feel I have to up the controversy stakes here at Slaminsky. What else gets people all riled up? Ah yes, class. I am watching some stupid match-making programme with half an eye. An Indian woman from a dating agency is meeting a sloaney blond woman who has decided she's in the Last Chance Saloon. She's giving responsibility for her romantic future over to her friends, family (chills!) and a formal match-making service. As the Indian woman interviews her, she asks about her past relationships and asks were they professional, were they middle-class... the blond woman gets quite agitated when she says the C word. 'That doesn't matter to me, and I'm getting quite annoyed.' (Though she confesses that she's only ever been out with middle-class, professional men. ) The Indian woman says gently that this is the first thing that an Indian match-maker would establish.

I reckon this woman was in deep denial. Because we're SO hung up on class in this country and it cuts very, very deep. (I'm a big fan of Nancy Mitford and not much seems to have changed since the 30s & Noblesse Oblige. The toffs look down on the middle classes, the working class despise them, everyone else fears and patronises the working class, and the middle class are in perpetual guilt and anxiety, all is in its natural order...)

Which wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't so taboo. Can't we just admit it? We don't want to be like the Americans - they pretend they're all Horatio Alger, classless types, and anyone can make it to the President, but who invented the concept of trailer trash, hey?

(In case you're wondering... I'd class myself as working class... as my old sociology teacher Mr Connolly used to say, if you have to work for a living, you're working class...)

Pimping Schmap

Hi Annie,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released fourth edition of our Schmap Barcelona Guide:

Estació de França
www.schmap.com/barcelona/sights_barceloneta/p=71519/i=71519_5.jpg

If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal page, then please also check out our schmapplets - customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap Barcelona Guide, complete with your published photo:

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Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

What do I get?

Musical theme tune/mood for the day: What Do I Get? - The Buzzcocks

Food for the day: Roast chestnuts, all burnt and black on the outside, off a street stall. Tis the season.

Mood for the day: Frustration

Thought of the day: Why, why, why is EVERYBODY, regardless of religions, belief, etc, forced to acknowledge Christmas? There's no opting out. I would like to plan a little civil disobedience.

Consolation of the day: Cough going after a mere 9 months, can celebrate with a ciggie.

Crush of the day: Ian McKellen (interviewed in the Guardian). Yes, I know it's perverse, I can't help it. Le coeur a ses raisons...

And you?

How far you going? About 30 years...

Back to the Future is one of my guilty pleasures. It doesn't stand up too badly to the passage of time and I think it's because it's not just a comedy, it's a very potent fantasy. Marty McFly is a happy, popular teenager, the only thing holding him back is an unhappy, dysfunctional family. He gets a chance to travel back in time and fix his family history - the potential Freudian nightmare of this scenario is boldly dealt with, head-on in fact when his mum gets on a teenage crush on him (though when she kisses him she says it feels 'all wrong, like kissing my brother.' So that's all okay then and the incest taboo is dispatched forthwith.)

He shows his dad how to stand up for himself, not be such a nerd, how to chat up women - a twist on the expression 'the child is father to the man.' He models his dad in his own image. And when he returns back to the future, he finds his dysfunctional, miserable family has been transformed by his own actions into a successful, happy one that he can be proud of. The family of his dreams. It must have touched a chord with teenagers everywhere.

And there can hardly be a person alive who wouldn't go back and change things if they had the option.

Nice car, too.

Your name's not down...

... you're not coming in.

Sorry if you were barred, it's all fixed now. Thank you for the emails, my friends.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you missed all the excitement, and should come round here more often.

Will pay cash for words

I will pay you, yes I will, to do the pre-date emailing flirty business required to get an actual date out of the online dating, for me. Does anyone actually enjoy this bit of it? (And if so, I'll sub-contract.)

(Finding it especially difficult as I can't implement Tim's useful suggestion of 'getting my baps out' in the photo, because they inhumanely block photos until you've exchanged emails.)

I hate it.

So boring.

Can't be arsed.

It is not fun. It is like trying to make polite conversation with other people's parents. (Last one I found myself typing, in classic hairdresser stylee, 'Where did you last go on holiday?' On this evidence I wouldn't want to date me either. )

In this service culture, there must surely be someone somewhere you can pay to do it for you?

Dysphemism

There are plenty of friendly, and fairly neutral, if not particularly sexy, words we can use about men's bits - dick, johnson, etc etc etc - I could go on.

But women do not have this luxury. Either their words are ridiculous and faintly reminiscent of phone-line chat, like pussy, (in Spanish it's conejo, or bunny) or starkly Victorian and medical-sounding, like vagina. Or else the worst swear word you can use in the English language - sisters, let us reclaim the word cunt from swearitude! Cuntcuntcuntcuntcunt! There, I feel a lot better.

(The Spaniards must think we are ludicrously repressed or hopelessly misogynistic, as their translation of this word is a mild term which I have heard old ladies blithely using, eg 'Que coño es ese?' I heard one saying, to my delight and admiration - English translation; what the hell is that? or as they say in Spain, what the cunt is that?)

Or else they get called by coy and foolish names, like fu-fu or, as it was growing up in our house, nu-nu. This is no way to think of your family jewels, and surely will warp your sexuality in later life. So I throw the gauntlet down to you, reader - somewhere out there, you must have heard a friendly, neutral, non-medical non-misogynistic non-porn sounding word for it?

The world has gone mad. I'm not talking about crime, violence, war, disease, famine - I'm not talking about social injustice, the polar caps melting, the hole in the ozone layer, about meteors crash-landing on the earth, nuclear armageddon, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - oh no. It's something much, much worse.

Click here go on, just click, I double dare you.

Blondie - the musical

No no no no no no. No. Nonononono.

Just NO.

On feeling too old to go and see bands anymore

Bonde do Role, anybody? Anybody?

More meta

When we were bored in school, Claire and I would doodle. She would doodle a chicken, I doodled a snail. Eventually this evolved into our famous chicken and snail comic strip in which the duo would have fabulous adventures, very very far from our dull comprehensive classroom in leafy Southgate, which roped in as characters anybody we liked at the time - not just boys but also the members of Queen (except for John Deacon, he was too boring) or Led Zeppelin maybe, or bikers on Harley Davidsons, or perhaps Thor the God of Thunder and several Viking berserkers. (We liked long hair at the time.)

She'd draw a speech bubble, I'd draw another one, all under cover of our text books, and thus would the story progress and the boring lesson speed past. Our aim was to make each other laugh (LOL in fact?) though this was precarious, because it would land you in trouble with the teacher, so we'd usually be sniggering away in the corner. (Now I'm a teacher myself I'd like to apologise for how very annoying we must have been, I'd have wanted to slam our heads against the desk repeatedly. Maybe it's karma working itself out.)

Anyway, blogging's like writing notes in class isn't it?

It's hard to explain the appeal to people who don't do it, especially without comparing it with something else. I invite you to tell us what you think blogging is like.

(and while you're at it, read Treespotter's marvellous post on it. 'On the blog, I am a supreme being...')

Increasingly desperate

I have broken Google. Or it has failed me, one or the other. I just typed in 'jobs for ex-teachers' - nothing, nada, zip. Nobody wants to employ us. (This is why they dump us in school, where no adult in their right mind wants to be. )

I tried subscribing to a jobs email, and am drawn to one which curiously no one seems to have applied for yet. The job involves working for something called 'Good Vibrations - Gamelan in Prisons.'

What else can I do? What?*

* Nothing that requires retraining. No no no. I have qualifications coming out of my ears, and the scars on my bank balance to prove it.

Oh, and tell me about your WORST job, to cheer me up.

Cassette afterlife

This is the kind of eccentric, barking mad art 'happening' that makes me like living around here. Tatty Devine (jewellery) and Prick Your Finger (craft shop) are having an 'Analogue Amnesty' - they will take your old video & music cassettes and weave them into a yarn for you. I guess I'll never listen to my tapes again - I have nothing to play them on, for one - but can I bring myself to turn them into yarn? So many memories wrapped up in those C90s...

Caption the kitteh

And help Carlos achieve Lolcat nirvana.

I am very poor at captions, but it's my life's ambition to get a cat photo on I Can Has Cheezburger. Undeterred by the fact that I have no cat, I have borrowed Carlos, a somewhat dim but very affectionate & amiable tomcat belonging to friends, for this purpose. I challenge you, dear reader, to come up with a caption.

Fig. 1.














Fig. 2.














Update: Ooh! If you leave comments on I can has cheezburger, other people give you votes! I got 5 votes. I've never had this much affirmation before in my life.

How I narrowly avoided social shame & humiliation in the Tate

I am having a very special day - have been given funding to watch artists working with secondary school kids in the Tate. Have arisen at a luxurious 8.00 am and rode on the bus to the Millenium Bridge, enjoyed a coffee in the cafe and am just meeting up with the students and the artists when I suddenly become aware that my usual natural fragrance of rose petals is less, how shall we say, fragrant than usual. The jumper I picked up in a hurry this morning was not all freshly laundered! In short, it reeks. How could I have not noticed? I am not totally engaged in observing the artists at work, or the fabulous art works on the wall - I am anxiously edging away from people so they don't stand downwind of me. 'Eurrrgh... who was that smelly cow?' I imagine the secondary school students saying of me back at school (and didn't everyone have a smelly teacher you would dread leaning over you to look at your work? I have become that person!)

Brainwave! The shop must sell T-shirts. And it does. Louise Bourgeois t-shirts that say 'Art is a guaranty [sic] of sanity', David Shrigley t-shirts that say 'Your pizza has arrived', Guerilla Girls' 'The Advantage of Being A Woman Artist' t-shirts, t-shirts that say 'Arty' 'Keep It Surreal' and 'Tony Hart'. They all cost £25.00 and surely someone will notice that I have changed into a slogan. So I end up in a kid's t-shirt that costs £12.50. I had to turn it inside out though; it looks like this.

Brand London

As I get sucked deeper into the quicksand that is the teaching profession, I sometimes take a desperate look at jobs websites. I know that Ken is not popular with everyone, and has an arrogance bordering on insanity, plus he got rid of the Routemaster, which is a hanging offence in my book. But I am quite fond of him (for the brilliant speech he gave about 7th July, and I like the way he has opened the city up to cool things like the Thames Festival and the Sultan's Elephant which serve no particular purpose except that they're celebratory and fun), and I love my city, so I glanced at the jobs on the London Assembly website, and came across this one.

I would like to work on promoting London to India, China, Russia, and Brazil - who wouldn't? (Job Spec: Duties include walking down Copacabana Beach in a bearskin hat and a Union Jack bikini, perhaps?) But something about the phrase 'Brand London' chills the blood. And you can't help thinking it exists purely for the Mayor to be able to say to himself 'Where do I fancy visiting this year?'

I am not a spam robot

Last time I quoted spam I got barred from my blog, as Blogger thought I was a Spam Robot, yet I could not resist sharing the arresting subject of this email with you:

This way your penis will only fit in a pelican's mouth.

A niche market, I would have thought...

Teacher humour

In the playground

Small child: Miss! Miss! I heard him say the 'R' word.
Teacher: The 'R' word?
Small child: (whispers) Arsehole.


Bonus link: Uptown Girl, as seen by Go Fug Yourself

Sometimes clever can be very stupid

Michio Kaku (co-founder of string field theory) discussing the ethics of cloning in Metro magazine:
There are some things we just have to accept. Cloning, for example. One day, rich people will start cloning themselves. How can you stop them? You can legislate against it but look at the drug trade today – people have got used to a certain fraction of society being heroin addicts. It’s the same with cloning.

Nice comparison, Michio. Clearly, heroin addicts are commensurate with rich people who clone themselves. (Actually, I'm quite grateful at the mind-boggling lack of understanding of the ethical issues that this comparison suggests, because it makes me feel intellectually superior to a string field theorist. Hurrah!)

Fireworks night snapshots

I meet a Barbadian. We're crossing the road, I'm saying that we need to let my friends know we're going to the bar first for a drink, before we head back to mine. 'Text them' he says, 'they won't mind buying a drink first - unless they're Jews'.

I'm not putting up with that. I poke him in the arm. Jokingly, but quite hard. 'I'm Jewish, so be careful what you say...' He says something wholy unconvincing about his best friend being Israeli...

Later we're in Marie's flat, all slaughtered on whisky and coke followed by mulled wine chasers. 'I don't like gay bars' says James 'or gay clubs - and I just recently realised that all my friends are girls - so how am I ever going to meet someone?'
I'm transported somewhat guiltily into a parallel universe where all the girls are saying 'all my friends are gay, when do I ever meet anyone straight?'



Fireworks night in Victoria Park

Golddiggers

Nobody likes Lady Mills McCartney, and I've got to admit she doesn't do herself any favours, but I genuinely feel sorry for her. Everyone assumes she married Paul McCartney for his money, which is insulting for both of them surely - isn't it possible that they actually, like, fancied each other and fell in love? (I'm sure his money wasn't a turn-off, but I reckon she was more impressed by his fame anyway.Plus there's surely got to be a better way of making money than shagging Paul McCartney, who is long past his cute days.)*
I guess I just find it very, very hard to believe in the idea of golddiggers, in this day and age. Unless you are very very desperate, and marrying a rich man is the only possible way out of life of a)starvation or b) prostitution, and you live in a culture where there aren't that many options open to women, I just don't believe it's that common.

This idea of women as greedy grasping cupiditous gold-diggers, it doesn't reflect in any way my experience, or any woman I know or have ever met. Au contraire. Every woman I know is a grafter. They bring up the kids, they go out to work and pay the rent or the mortgage and all the bills. They are self-reliant, and usually have dependents relying on them. Whereas, it pains me to say, many of the men I have known or still know are layabouts and wasters, acting like they are still teenagers with a sense of entitlement, living off their girlfriends, accepting drinks and holidays paid for, or even in some cases still accepting handouts from their parents. Women make the world go round - I think the myth of the gold-digger obscures this fact.



* The Beatles may have been ground-breaking, earth-shattering, towering god-like geniuses of music, but they were pure poison when it came to women weren't they? They unleashed quite terrifying forces of misogyny upon poor Yoko Ono and now on Heather Mills - Jane Asher was dead lucky to escape gratefully to a life of cake-decorating. Hey Tim, maybe this is the angle you could take in your next book.

Matt

I had a wicked crush on Matt. He was a public school boy, when we started hanging around with them aged about 15 all they seemed to have in common was a massive self-confidence, not to say arrogance, which could be attractive or obnoxious depending on how charming they were. It helped that he had the same killer cheekbones and icy blue eyes as that bloke out of Bauhaus.
'He's a bit pretentious' said Janine, who introduced us.
'Yes' I agreed.
'But kind of sexy.'
'Definitely.'

He wanted to get into film school and had begged borrowed or stolen a little Arriflex camera from the local audiovisual shop and was making short films, being writer, producer, director and cameraman. He'd heard I was interested in film-making and asked if I wanted to be the focus puller (yes yes stop sniggering at the back.) Hell, yes. We met up in St Paul's one Sunday with Janine and David, our stars, and filmed Dave chasing Janine in psycho-killer fashion all around the quiet City. It was looking good, kind of Hitchcock meets The Third Man meets Benny Hill, even if none of us could think of a decent ending.

I guess there's no moral to this story, or any point at all, just that it was a premiere moment in my adolescence - getting to hang out with someone I fancied a lot, doing something I was passionately interested in at the time. I wish I'd had a bit more of their arrogance, looking back he was clearly interested - did he desperately need someone to pull his focus? - but I wondered then why someone older, so cool and so good-looking would be bothering with me. It was a life lesson from which I took 3 things

• - no one ever minds if you fancy them.
• - you should just give it a whirl. They can only reject you.
  
• - 'I can make you famous, baby' is usually a come-on
  

He started going out with a beautiful exotic older Swedish girl who played guitar in a riot grrl band shortly after, who probably had no problems with self-esteem.