And now for some more well justified hate.... Phil Hilton and Hans Seeburg

I was looking for a picture to illustrate a previous post. This comment in particular :-

'This TV channel and its advertising makes me want to surgically remove my breasts and then stitch them (without aneasthetic) to the naked chest of the current editor, before bending him over, penetrating him anally and taking a few pictures.'

I thought a picture of the man was just what I needed to bring it to life. Though I admit, I was concerned that seeing his face might make me feel some sort of guilt at the harsh nature of my above comment. I came accross this picture and now believe my words to be far too forgiving.

This is Phil Hilton - previous editor.


Some say 'don't judge a book by its cover' - but I think the sneering arrogance of this man's pathetic balding head is surely enough to put the whole book in some kind of shredder. I looked for some biographical detail but found very little. Probably he doesn't want the readership to find out which public school he went to.

This is the deputy. Hans Seeburg.


Is that not the face of someone who deserves to have every hair on his body removed with tweezers, before being forced to engage in a painful sex act with a man to whom he is not attracted, before a live audience and a camera crew? or should he be put on to a starvation diet, with daily vomiting induced by the forced insertion of a rolled up copy of Nuts magazine?

I just can't decide!

10 things I like about Castleford

Hello there. I notice that, with the exception of adding pointless Gorky's videos, my posts often have a negative character. This is probably due the horrendous nature of the world and the pathetic existence of humanity within it. I am generally a happy person, this might not always seem obvious, but I am. To prove it I thought I would attempt to think of 10 things I like about Castleford; in no particular order of significance.

1. My family. The Elys have lived in Cas for about a million years or something, we have a lot of cool history, we have been members of the Salvation Army since it started, are brass banding folk, worked in factories ( particularly the Rowntrees factory which was bought by Nestle). Castleford is a big part of my family, and also me, even though I don't live there and hopefully never will.

2. Pronunciation of the word won't as 'waint' as in 'I'm off t't shops, ah waint be long'

3. On sundays when there is a rugby match, and whole families walk to the ground in orange and black Cas Tigers paraphanalia.

4. Yvette Cooper is our MP, and she is really rather cool.

5. Castleford will never vote Conservative.

6. cocker spadge as a term of affection.



7. The old fashioned sweet shop in the market. The pic and mix that used to be in Woolworths.

8. My junior school, a cool Victorian building which has these wooden boards which we painted with representations of ourselves when I was at school. They picture of me with my trombone and Salvation Army tambourine which is still up there more than a decade after it was painted.

9. The fact that old men like my granddad really do wear flat caps.

10. The library. It used to have a competition where you won a prize if you read 10 books in your summer holidays ( yup I won that one every time). I used to rent britpop albums there and then put them on tape( and later minidisc). Their cd section formed my music taste. the fact that there was little all else to do but read probably made me an English Lit student. It's also a fantastic building.



There you are - balance.

Worthiness

I am heartened to learn that I have been linked in someone's blog under the heading 'worthy'.

This is the blog.

http://teaformeandteaforyouisteafortwo.blogspot.com/

Ok so I know the guy, he is a friend, not an admiring stranger - but it's a start. Anyone who wishes to link to me with the word 'worthy' or indeed higher praise is encouraged to do so.

Here are some videos about the main worthy thing, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.





And look, a sense of humour too...

Home sweet Home

Here I am, Castleford West Yorkshire, Cas Vegas - Cas. I was looking forward to coming home, I love my family, I enjoy spending time with my cat. It's nice to be in a relatively tidy house which has carpets.
Every time I come home I have different feelings about the place. My first visits home from University were unsettling - as if a part of me wasn't quite sure that I had left, as if somehow University might be cancelled and I would have to come home and take a job in the bank and then spend all my saturdays in B and Q before slumping brain dead in front of strictly come dancing, waiting to die.
Now I am pretty sure I have moved, to a city and a different class. I will probably wait to die with too much wine in my liver and too much blue cheese in my arteries, in front of some dvd hoping that my children ignite the revolution that I never got around to.
So now coming home is something else. There is good family stuff, (my family are hilariously wonderful, will probably write more about that some other time). There are also trips to this place.




This is a promotional picture which doesn't show off quite how much it is a box of hell. There is a cinema, a bowling alley, a ski slope and chain resteraunts. Everything you need to ignore the world outside and receive some uniform does of funtertainment. I sometimes wonder if it is snobbish of me to detest the place; which after all, is easy enough when you live in easy walking distance from art-house cinema, cute shops and cafes. Still though, by removing entertainment from the centre it sounds a death knell for evening life in Cas town. Fair enough, it's not like pre-Xscape it was thriving, but I am told there was a sense of community. Obviously it is simplistic to say that Xscape has killed 'community' in Castleford, particularly if this 'community' was founded in poverty.
Who cares, it's still a box of hell.

Within 5 minutes from my house there are 3 billboards for Nuts TV, there was a man selling playboy towels in the market - just playboy towels. I went to buy some underwear and I overheard a girl of 10 ( ish) shout 'oooh playboy !!!' which made me feel like ripping off my ears and setting them on fire (sod bras, that's not enough of a statement). I bought underwear and the saleswoman had a playboy bracelet, the other woman had a shirt which read 'golddigga'.



Nuts TV, because apparently 9pm to 1am is 'man time' - and men own sport, cars, comedy and of course girls. This TV channel and its advertising makes me want to surgically remove my breasts and then stitch them (without aneasthetic) to the naked chest of the current editor, before bending him over, penetrating him anally and taking a few pictures.

I look at people and I think why are we standing for this? Things are shit in quite a fundamental way; coming to Castleford really heightens my awareness of this. I am so cocooned in Edinburgh, I fill my life with educated people. I watch films that challenge me and ponce around thinking about the nature of life. University provides me with personal and intellectual advancement in a great variety of ways. Reality is that things are shit, unfair, bland and boring.

It has been put to me that 'people might be happy with the banal, it wouldn't do for everyone to be like you now would it'.
If people peddle bullshit to you all day long and you are surrounded by hideous crap, and the choice is 'like it or shut up' then yeah I guess people will be happy with the banal. If banal is what surrounds you, and is what you can afford then yes. I can accept that some people are just boring, or just stupid but I refuse that this is the case for the majority.

Anyway it's after 2am and I should be in bed, my mind has lost track of my thoughts somewhat. I decided to post my above comment about Nuts on their forum for shits and giggles. Am sure it won't make it up there, or do any good, but what the hell some moron will read it - even if it's just a moderator.

Apologies for any incoherence, more Castleford related thoughts are sure to follow soon.

Racism in the Times

Was flicking around on the times website today and came accross this comment

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/12/in-the-latest-i.html

The title that flashed up on the website was 'The great IQ and Race debate', and I felt angered at just how racist that title actually is.
Race is an invention by colonialists, it doesn't actually exist. Race 'science' was greated to justify domination of Black by White.
So calling a post 'A great debate' even if the word 'great' is meant ironically or quantitively is really just abhorrent. To say that there is a debate about whether intelligence could be founded in race, creates a space for 2 sides of an argument with a mythical central ground.The whole 'debate' is nonsense which completely ignores the history of race.
It is also a 'debate' which gives racism a platform under the banner of 'debate', which is played out in the comments below.Most come out in condemnation of the debate, and the post, but there are a few ( perhaps 3 or 4) which are incredibley racist. It says below that comments are 'moderated' - which means someone has to read these before putting them on the internet. Logic follows that the moderater him/herself upholds racism, by publishing these comments they make the statement that it is ok for these comments to exist.

The post itself does not condemn or mention racism, which is not an 'objective position', it is an inherently racist one.

The Times by publishing this material does not take an 'objective' position, but one which is both subjective and racist.

Then again, what are we to expect from a newspaper owned by satan himself?

(also the picture chosen for this objectionable post is 2 male students, nicely keeping men as normative, a nice illustrator of how sexism and racism go hand in hand.)

Yay Amelie and Yay Feminism

Liz likes prawns with heads on, idealistic conversations which explore the possibility of a better world and looking up information about rabies on the internet . Liz does not like it when people use the word 'gay' to mean anything other than homosexual, or happy. She does not like to use anything other than a soup spoon for breakfast cereal.
As I write this post I kind of think I would like my world to be in a green and red colourset, or perhaps an orange and purple one.
Just spent a wonderful evening re-aqcuainting myself with an old favourite movie of mine ( and probably everyone). I must have seen Amelie dozens of times and it never fails to move me. It always breaks through whatever cynacism and disillusion I am barackaded in. It's wonderful for so many reasons which I won't go into, but tonight I realised that another reason that it is wonderful is that it wins many feminist points ( feminist points being the best kind of points you can earn, worth at least 50 of any other kind of points).
Lately have been trying to think of movies which are 'yay feminism', and it's actually quite difficult. Even films near to my heart are generally ambiguous,( or if I am completely honest a bit anti). Star Wars for example, loved this move as a child and yes Leah is quite a hero,it's shame she is the only woman in the entire universe (with the exception of the woman on the ship in Return of the Jedi - between them it's any wonder they get time to do anything if it's up to them to repopulate the galaxy)
I am sure it would be completely possible to point out numerous ways which Amelie is anti feminist, it's very white, lots of things are hetero-normative etc etc. However this is a hooray saying post so ...

Feminist points !!!
1. Central character is a woman, most interesting characters are women and narrative is almost entirely female driven.
2. Though Tatou is attractive she is not particularly sexualised toward a male gaze.
3. Amelie seeks out her man, he does not come to her - and he plays the role usually played by female love interests in movies ( ie being a relatively 2 dimensional character who fits around the more interesting central character)
4. Moves away from conventional portrayals of sexuality , very nice shot of Amelie at the end sat upright in bed as her beautiful man sleeps below her. In this shot the status is hers, he is nestled up to her, not the other way around. She occupies a dominant higher status physical position. One shot - but it's wonderful and says a lot.
5. She is brought up by her Father - atypical family, man takes on 'women's' role BUT without a big fuss being made of it. Hurrah.


Yay.

Suggestions for House

I have written the following letter. I intend to send it to the producers of House MD tommorrow and I look forward to a response.
When I am on my deathbed* I will no doubt remember this and think ' I wish I had spent that time having sex'.



Dear Paul Attanasio,Katie Jacobs,David Shore,Bryan Singer

I would first like to say I am a MASSIVE FAN of House MD – big enough for me to press the ‘caps lock’ key on my keypad, and add multiple exclamation marks !!!!!!!
Watching episode after episode with my housemates is something I look forward to after a long day. How do you come up with such exciting and complex medical storylines? Man, they make my brain work so hard I sometimes think I might need a neurologist. L.O.L ☺

I very much enjoy the way that you use lengthy shots of Dr House in contemplation, it’s incredible the way in which you give the audience a precious glimpse into his soul. Insightful!

Have you ever thought of a storyline that could include zombies? One of my favourite episodes is the one where there is a little boy who thinks he is being abducted. What if a patient had a disease like rabies (which is my all time favourite disease!!!) that made them act like a zombie. It could be a girl, and her boyfriend could be a comic ‘nerd’ - he could think that she has become a zombie? Perhaps some shots of him watching too many zombie films at the start of the show? I think that would be very interesting.

Thank you so much for such a great show! If you need someone to help with the storylines don’t hesitate to get in touch, I have seen a lot of doctors.

Lizzie

Ps What is Gregory House’s all time favourite disease?

* Deathbed and also perhaps my actual bed

Fork It !!

This is a spectacularly pointless post, however sometime long ago I acquired a reputation as someone who doesn't wash up.
This is our sink as of 10am this morning - shot in black and white to give it a kind of Withnail and I artistry - unfortunately we are not alcoholic out of work actors, just lazy women. Thus perhaps not cool.

This is the sink an less than an hour later.

Wow.