Caitlin Moran

This woman is amazing.

She writes a column for The Times :)

This little snippet is one reason I think I love her <3

"But what I find absolutely intolerable is people who claim that she’s [Katie Price] a feminist role model — simply because she has earned a lot of money. The reasoning is this: men still have all the power and money. But men have a weak spot — sexy women. So if what it takes to become rich and powerful is to sex-up the blokes, then so be it. That’s business, baby. You might be on all fours with your arse hanging out in “glamour” calendars — but at least you’re making the rent on your enormous pink mansion. Well, there’s a phrase for that kind of behaviour. It is, to quote Jamie, the spin doctor in The Thick of It, being a “mimsy bastard quisling f***”. Women who, in a sexist world, pander to sexism to make their fortune are Vichy France with tits. Are you 32GG, waxed to within an inch of your life and faking orgasm? You’re doing business with a decadent and corrupt regime. Calling that a feminist icon is like giving an arms dealer the Nobel Peace Prize."

Volunteering, Teaching + Plan B

I've been volunteering with a group of people at a local boys comprehensive in Coventry. It's part of an Aim Higher scheme to teach kids about further and higher education. I love going there and discussing stuff with the kids, they're in Year 9, but they're doing their GCSEs a year earlier. They're all really smart but seriously know nothing about uni. We've had a few sessions with them now and I think they're finally starting to get that uni doesn't just mean constantly working and reading and being with strangers. It's taken them quite a while to understand the huge social and extra-curricular activities involved in university life. There faces when I told them I only had 9 hours of contact time was just like this :| then this :D. They still ask the usual questions though "Can I bring my Xbox?" "Can I have a fridge in my room?" "What if everyone I live with is an idiot?" They seem to assume they are going to spend ALL their time in their rooms. Madness. Hopefully after Week 10 they shall want to go to carry on in education :). A few kids have said "My parents don't have degrees and they have good jobs" and it's so hard to answer that in a way they can understand. Saying they're a different generation and times are different now isn't really an answer to them, I just sound all pompous. I have managed to explain it in normal people terms now though :)

Volunteering has just reinforced how much I want to be teacher. Teaching someone something gives you such a sense of achievement. I seem to be good at shushing children, which is ALWAYS helpful. I think it's because I'm really chatty and I doubt any child could be bothered trying to out-chat or out-argue me. We'll see. That's probably a reason I want to teach, I'll get to talk SO much. Yeeeesss! Nice. At the moment I'm filling in the form to get some teaching experience at a local school at home, I'm hoping to maybe do it in September when school has started, as it'd probably be better to do it then, rather than mid-July when they just want the summer holidays. I'm excited and so incredibly nervous.

I've been looking for Sociology based PGCEs and my God. It is haarrddd to find one I like. So far I have Leicester. That is it. I'm just not going to anywhere I know I'll hate/strongly dislike. It's only for a year, I'm very aware of that, but shush. It's a very important year!

If all fails I'm going to try and get a job like Lil' Jon's. That is my Plan B. He just says a few words in each song he ever appears on and he must get paid a fair amount for them. I find this so weird when all his music with the Eastside boyz wasn't even that good. But whatever. Lil' Jon, your job will be mine. YEAH! WHAT?! OKAY!

Cheeky bit of music now :)

Really good song, I didn't like this even slightly at first. But it's grown on me :D



Jake Gyllenhaal is in the video, in tennis shorts. Enough said. Also look at the video for 'Cousins' if you haven't already. It's also amazing.

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No more F.R.I.E.N.D.S on E4? SAY WHAATT?!?!

I also went to see Cat's documentary on The Rotary Club this week. It was so good. I'm really proud of her :)

Ahhh, sexist little pricks. How you fill my day with anti-joy.

I feel this small, but important, rant is necessary. Fan pages on Facebook are obviously quite funny, everybody likes to join, have a laugh and never really bother about it again. However, since the change of Facebook my newsfeed is clogged with a nice bit of sexist shite :)

Reasons when it's acceptable to punch a woman in the face
If you spell 'Woman' backwards it spells 'Kitchen' (There's a lot of these "women get back in the kitchen" ones)
"Hi. I'm a girl. I don't play COD, but that's what my gash smells like." (That's just grim)

I know these are all meant to be funny and light-hearted. But when it's guys you genuinely like and are friends with, it's just a bit disheartening when they join them and are like "lol women, dey r silly n should be bringin me beer n steak whilst i watch da football den play on COD".
It pains me that some people I'm friends with think that having that attitude is funny. It's not funny, and all you do is look immature and twattish.

Also, whilst I'm ranting about the male of the species...I may as well complain about the copious amount of girls that join the following groups.
Behind every untrusting girl is a boy who made her that way. (URGH)
24 Reasons why men are happier people (This is just dim, written by someone who knows very little about life)
Hi, I'm a boy and I ignore decent girls and choose sluts instead. (Just to throw it out their...they're probably not very good guys anyway :|)

This one is beautiful. Girls should stay away from boys who have a GIRLFRIEND. I find this one funny purely because it's the whole "omg u iz tryin ta steal my bf" thing. No-one can be stolen, love. You're boyfriend has a say in the matter too, don't ya know.

I think my Facebook rant is over now. I just get angry at how many twatty things people think are funny/true. I'll shut up now. This blogging malarky is turning into something emotional and it was never meant to be that way, SORRY BLOG!

When my wardrobe looks like this, I'll shut up. (look! I like a stereotypical female thing, lolololol *sigh*)

Lent. How about no.

A couple of years ago I gave up all chocolatey goods for lent. It was suprisingly easy, but never again, thank you. This year I'm giving up nothing, I genuinely hadn't even thought about it until today...which is a day too late. It did make me think of a few things I should give up/should get round to doing for now.

1. Use facebook less.
2. Work more.
3. Get out more.
4. Be more motivated.
5. Actually care about my degree more :|
(total overuse of the word 'more' I know)

I bought this book the other day, it looks amazing.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Foucault-Reader-Introduction-Foucaults-Sciences/dp/0140124861

I'm currently in Leeds visiting Jack. I love it here, it's so nice. His housemates are all lovely and I shall definitely visit more often :) Valentine's Day was lovely too :)

 

<3

Shampoo

I was washing my hair today, and I always buy shampoo that gives me volume. I was reading the bottle in the shower and it's for "lifeless and dull" hair. It's quite offensive really. Why is hair is always referred to as being boring. I'm quite happy with my boring hair, thanks.
Even Cheryl Cole's adverts are against my supposedly "lifeless" hair, but if boring means not straightened to a crisp and not full of extensions, then I guess my hair is boring. Soz'ard.

Paperlilies <3
"Five problems, one solution. Seventeen stylists and a lot of fake hair"

...and such is life.

I'm currently listening to The Hush Sound, drinking tea and enjoying the end of my ridiculous week. I love being busy though, keeps my mind from over thinking trivial shite. I say I've been busy this week....I haven't done anything since Jack came here on Thursday evening, but from Monday to Thursday evening it was just a wee bit more than I'm used to. I'll give a nice run through of my week now :)


This week I had to do a presentation on Biotechnology and Agriculture for my Politics of Food and Nutrition seminar. Usually presentation are about 10 minutes long...this one was an hour. Oh joy. So reading and working for that took a hefty amount of time. I spent most of my Monday chatting with Cat and Danni and enjoying a cup of tea. Cat & I discussed outfits for Wednesday as we were going to the Houses of Parliament and a feminism event held by Object and we wanted to look funky. Well...smart funky.
Tuesday I made notes all day, ALL DAY. Except for the two lectures...obviously. It was so boring.


Wednesday was amazing. I got to Marylebone at 12ish and sat with Cat in a café called Paul (which I think is a weird name for a café) and discussed the days events. We got the tube to Westminster and had lunch in Portcullis House with some of Cat's politiciany family. It's such a pretty building, and there's loads of men in suits, which is always a plus point to any place. We then met up with Alan Duncan's PA and went to his office. I can't even explain how pretty it all is. There were old painting and so many books, the green couches and the green lamp on the table, the whole place was just steeped in history. When you looked out the window you could see the rest of the parliament buildings and I just felt really cool being there. Cat interviewed Alan for her documentary/dissertation on the Rotary Club (I didn't know what it was either, wiki it). We had tea and took some pictures for his website, it was all really informal. He did the odd impression of John Major and Tony Blair which I think stopped me and Cat being as nervous (well definitely me, not so sure about Cat). Oh, I forgot to mention, I was the technology girl and helped with the microphone and behind the scenes crap :). Alan then asked if we'd like a tour and we were like YES, OF COURSE. We had a wander around the rooms of the shadow cabinet, it's such a nice building, all old and pretty. We saw a few offices and lots of portraits. I was having a poltics fan girl moment.

We then dossed about London for a bit, abusing Paperchase and Oxford Street. The Paperchase toilets have these blue lights in that made them the scariest toilets ever, I know they're for people trying to shoot up (so they can't see their veins), but seriously, it was dark in there :|. After a couple of hours we made our way to the Edelman offices, but stopped for a cheeky glass of wine on the way, then headed for the feminism event which was titled "A Decade of Porn Culture: Is it Time to Put Feminism back into Public Life?" Susie Orbach (writer of Fat is a Feminist Issue), Caitlin Moran (The Times columnist), Diane Abbott (MP) were speakers at the event. It was so interesting. They were all funny women, especially Moran, she was painfully funny. She also wore the coolest outfit ever, I would quite like to be her. The talk lasted until 8ish, and I made my way back to Marylebone to get the train back to Leam only to be greeted by the joyous knowledge that I had my presentation the next day and it still had to be finished. Oh life.


Thursday my presentation went well, statistics remained all that is wrong with the world and I cleaned my room....again. I have issues.

Oh and why do little sisters have to grow up?

Why can't they just stay cute and annoying?

Oh and I watched the first episode of Glee. YES PLEASE.

It's all swings and roundabouts.

Happy New Year! I figured I should blog, as it's all go now.

Hello Term 2, Year 2.

I've started this term in a much more productive manner. I have a to-do which pains my eyes. I will be smart this term, I MUST. I didn't come to this uni just to scrape a pass. The word scrape is horrible. I think that's probably because it has the word "rape" in it....just sayin'

Anyway, more importantly. I'm in a very good mood now it's towards the end of the week. I really didn't want to come back to uni, but now I'm back in to the swing of things, it's nice :)

These pictures sum up all the millions of thoughts I'm having at the moment.

Sometimes there are just some things you need to stop moaning about and get on with.

It will all be worth it in the end.

Christmas Blog!!! :D

Yay, festive season!!!! I'm writing this as Christmas Day ends, as I'm so full of chocolate and general food stuffs that I only have the capacity to click, type and change the channel. These are the only three things I do anyway, so not to worry :D

The past week has been rather busy. A few things have been annoying; like snow...and my impetigo coming and going like the wireless signal in Forfield Place. It's generally been a good week though :D I've seen Jack a lot, as we'll be going back to the poverty long distance thing pretty soon, sad times. The snow was annoying, because it was literally just solid ice everywhere after like half an hour. I had to walk like a retard in my wellies...which split...and now have insulation tape on the inside. Urgh, I'm so cool. They did have insulation tape on the outside too, and people were proper staring at my feet and I was getting slightly too embarrassed by all the staring so decided to take the tape off :(

Today I cooked Christmas dinner. I know, me...cooking...a REALLY important dinner. I'm mental, I know. Three hours of cooking and when I sat down to eat my dinner I was so very very very sick at the sight of food, I just looked at it...ate some...and then looked at it more and decided I was full. I then filled up on chocolate whilst watching Michael McIntyre's 'Hello Wembley' DVD, it's hilarious :D. I bought it for my Dad's present, as he LOVES him, which is weird, as he usually hates stand up comedians. Successful purchase though :D THANK GOD.

I throughly enjoyed this Christmas though. It was weird not having Han with us (she was at Mum's). That's why I volunteered to make the dinner, as I would be bored without the general sibling abuse. It's been a good day though. Really busy. I'm super happy with my presents. I got through all my presents and was shocked at the lack of new PJs and socks...then I found my last couple of presents...which were PJs and socks. They never ever fail me as parents :D

Tomorrow is Boxing Day. Packing for Milton Keynes shall commence...and I'll probably keep applying that new bright red lipgloss cos it's AMAZING.

Haaaa, Jack and I were discussing how we got together and he said;
Jack: Not as though it was a job vacany like
Me: My interview would have been AMAZING
Jack: I can imagine, you're plotting it out word for word in your head right now :P
THIS IS VERY VERY TRUE. I'm just wondering what questions I would ask....urgh, it's like a cheesy Saturday night gameshow.


I less than 3 you all (<3)

Well hello :)

Okay, so those that live with me will know my (parents) house has been for sale for a  few months. Well...last week it sold, yay!!  Next time I come back from uni for the Easter holidays I will be going home to a different post code :). I shall be living in Bispham and the sea is at the end of my road :) Lovely.

There are a few things I will miss about this house though. My parents moved to this street when I was 4 years old, and even though I moved away from it when I was 8, my Dad kept a house on the street (next door but one to the house we originally stayed in) which I obviously visited a lot, and eventually moved in to. It's right near my high school, near parks I used to hang out in, near places that contain so many memories. It'll be weird to not live in this area. It's all I'm used to. I'll miss South Shore :( (I can't believe I'm actually writing that :|). On a brighter note, Nikki quite rightly pointed out that I am now an 8 minute drive from her house according to the AA route planner. Which can only be good news. Oh and that boy Jack is a lot nearer too. He shall have to bike to my house (in all weather), cos he's nice :) Speaking of Jack, it's 5 months today, waahhooo :)

Right, the other news besides moving house. I have impetigo. Gross I know. Basicallllllyy, I got home from uni, felt tired and ill, woke up and was all rashy. Thought it was an allergic reaction to the dog, it wasn't. Looked online at pictures of skin rashes (don't do it, it's DISGUSTING) and figured I had impetigo. Went to the doctors and he was like "Do you know anything about Herpes?" I was like "I know I don't have it :|". He kind of gave me a look and carried on clicking at his computer. Damn him. He finally decided I had impetigo (I rule at self diagnosis). Thhheeennn, the cheeky begger in the pharmacy was actually shouting at me "If you're on the pill it WILL be ineffective for 6 weeks when you take these antibiotics!!!" I said I knew and she wouldn't give me the bag and said a few more times "rememeber, it won't be effective! You need to take other precautions!". All I could think of was, 'have you seen my face, no one, ever, anywhere is going to want to have sex with me. I look like I've been attacked. Let me go home before it gets to a reasonable hour of the day and people are outside. I just want to watch Jeremy Kyle and wallow in my misery of face.' Grrr to you pharmacy lady, grrr.

Anyway, enough of my disgusting illness.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all :)
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