Censorship

Do we love or hate censorship? I guess as a writer, although up to this point in time, never have I really worried about censoring my writing, I guess it's something I should start to think about.

I think I'm mostly against censorship, contradictory to what I said about computer games needing to be censored, but that's a little different. As far as I know books never have a sticker on the front with 15 or 18. I can't imagine Waterstones asking people for I.D before they can buy The Fermata, though perhaps it would be appropriate. I'm not sure a child would chose that book, it's hardly going to be on their primary school reading list.

In some catholic schools, science books are censored, the images of the sex organs in the biology books are completely blanked out with all the information removed. That's just senseless, is it not? Do they have to cover themselves up when they take a bath or a shower?

I know where I stand on writing being censored. I think everybody has the right to write and publish whatever they want where they want. I'm sure that writing would offend people, there would be homophobic writing for instance. If I can say how proud I am to be gay, somebody else can say how much it sickens them that i'm gay, can't they?

As long as they're not verbally or physically personally assaulting people I don't see the issue. I wouldn't have to read what they wrote and if I did I would probably just counter argue it on here. As I usually do. Remember when Newsweek were being homophobic? Then again, I'm not sure I would tolerate it, maybe I would be one of the ones complaining? Freedom of speech can never be that simple and I personally can't make up my mind whether or not everything is fair game.

Where I cannot make my decision mostly is over image censorship. Nudity in films often makes the film more powerful and usually is left in. Having a watershed in place helps tackle that. I see no reason to censor any nudity there may be in a magazine.
Okay, yes, a child may pick it up and see it, which would be inappropriate. Then again, many newsagents have pornography on their top shelves. Children can tilt their heads upwards, you know. I'm not talking about pornography, i'm talking about artistic nudity. For whatever reason it might be, if there is need for a character to be naked, on screen, in a book, or in a magazine then put it in.

Let's just not put naked men and women on every page. Having them pointlessly on every page 3 is irritating enough.

It's a difficult subject. You decide. Censorship, or no censorship?


Did anybody notice the maths problem in that photo?

No, I thought not.

Cheerleading

Yesterday, my editor type friend forced me to go cheerleading. She put me in a women's cheerleading outfit and everything.

I'm not going to tell you about it though. You'll have to somehow get a copy of this month's Dusted to read about it. It comes out 25th October, sorry none Derby readers. If there's an online issue i'll put the link here!

Shmoolio Foolio.

“You’re interviewing Aled Jones tomorrow aren’t you.” My editor type friend said to me at midnight. “Who? What? When?” I asked confused and suddenly worried.
“I told you this weeks ago!”
“Did you?”

I’m not convinced she did. I got up early the next day to listen to the Chris Moyles Show and do some research into Aled Jones. Within 12 hours I loved him. “Be there at 9.15” we were told. So we arrived early. 9 hit and I was told I would be interviewing let’s call him Shmoolio (so i don't get in trouble for defamation of character) as well. I knew nothing about him and we had no Google at our disposal. We quickly rustled up a few generic, but thought out, questions. 9:10. “We’ve lost the Aled interview.”

“Oh.” Disappointed face.
“But you can still do the Foolio interview.”
“Great…”

After aimlessly standing around for a good hour we were ushered down some corridors up to some offices where we found Toolio. He handed my editor type friend a lint roller. She uncomfortably rollered his back. He sat down and I asked my first question.

“Why do you care?” He answered. I made up some bollocks about how I enjoyed his music and a lot of students enjoy his music too. He looked at me blankly. I asked another question and got a similar response. I asked a third question, to which he span around in his chair and turned on a nearby computer.

I watched him dumbstruck; I looked to my editor type friend who mimed. “Carry on asking questions.” So I did, I carried on asking questions, with his back turned to me as he tried to hack into some poor soul’s computer. “I want to get on the internet.” He said. At this point I was pretty sick of flattering tired old Shmoolio and was uncomfortable playing to his ego. I carried on. He still tapped away at the keyboard with his back to me. “It’s time for you to go on Foolio.” A woman called from the corridor and he left without so much as a thanks, g’bye.

The second he left the room the only words that could escape my mouth were.
Oh. My. God.

It gave me some sordid satisfaction to see as we went downstairs not a button was interested in hearing him perform though. I think I would have left angry, though some G-Star models with their pristine abs out helped cheer me up.

Nothing like some hot men to take your mind off washed up talentless rappers.

Life Story

"Hiya!" I said to the passing attractive boys, "Would you like to..." they had already blanked me. I saw a well dressed girl wandering around on her own. I preyed on her. "Hi! Are you interested in contributing to the student magazine?"
"Oh hi. Sorry I look so rough, you see, I'm not feeling all that well to be honest with you. What happened was I think I picked up that, what do you call it? That fresher's flu! You know what with being surrounded by freshers for a fortnight, you're bound to get ill aren't you! The thing is, I'm thinking about having a party, wouldn't that be great? My Birthday is coming up so I thought I could invite everybody from the University and have them all dress up. We could have a theme and everything. Have you seen my earings by the way? Do you think they're nice? I went into Zara today and they had all these new earrings so I thought i'd get a pair. Nice? Oh and have you seen that man over there? He's quite good looking, isn't he? He's going to get me a t-shirt. Well, it's not for me. It's for my little sister. Well, I say little sister. She's 16! I'll always see her as a little five year old though. You know what I mean?"
"Uh huh." I said with bewilderment. "And do you want to write for the student magazine?"
"Oh. No, but could you put that in the bin." she said handing me some rubbish, taking a handful of compliementary sweets and walking away.

It was no surprise that we gave up five minutes later. "We're going to get pizza" we chorused in unison and left our friend to man the magazine desk on her own. "Don't be long!" she called back. We were gone less than 30 seconds when we were distracted by a smiling lady with scissors. "Would you like to make something to put on the love tree?" She handed me some scissors. I looked back at our friend, stood on her own, waiting for us to come back. I looked at the pizza stand. I looked at the scissors.

Ten minutes later, as I was attempting to cut a love heart out of brown fur, my friend turned to me and said. "Cal. I think we're off task."

No Such Thing as a Selfless Good Deed.

As you may have read, yesterday I decided to do my best to be overly generous towards the world. I tossed every item of clothing I’ve not worn in the past 6 months into two big bags and put them by the front door, ready to be donated to the charity shop when it opened on Monday. I found my change jar and counted out the, 1ps, 2ps, 5ps and 10ps. £5.80 total. I decided I would bring it to the church, after I did inadvertently steal 30p when I was 5, I felt with interest that was probably about how much I owed them.

I did the usual things, made Lee breakfast in bed, nipped out to buy him some chocolate and pain killers to nurse his hangover, but these things were nothing out of the ordinary. I was trying to think of a selfless good deed. As I racked my mind I began to realise that there really isn't such a thing. Giving clothes to charity, freed up my wardrobe, I had some of the chocolate I bought Lee, as well as making myself breakfast and bringing money to the church would make me feel good, or so I thought.

I left the flat and went to the church on my street. Closed. I walked to the City Church. Closed. I walked to the church in town. Closed. Sundays aren't what they used to be. I could hear church bells in the distance coming from the cathedral so I followed them and surely enough people were queuing outside to go in.

I waited patiently behind the masses of slow moving elderly people until I got inside. A smiling woman greeted everybody and handed them a booklet of some description. "What do you want!?" she said infuriated as I reached the front of the queue. "Oh, sorry. Am I doing something wrong?" I asked, out of natural instinct, like a child being told off. She said nothing. "I've just come to give a small donation." She shook her head and waved me away.
"It's over there." Her choice of words confused me. The box was next to her, she was touching it in fact. I looked at the box, the slot in the top looked like it was for notes only. "Excuse me, is this for notes or coins?" She didn't answer. I waited patiently as she greeted more church-goers. "Why are you just standing there?!" she practically screamed, getting really irate with me. "This looks like it's just for notes, is there anywhere I can leave this."
"Just put it down, put it down!" she turned her back on me again. I left the money on the side and went to leave. "Oi! What are you doing?"
"I just left it on the side." I said puzzled.
"WELL CAN'T YOU EMPTY IT!?" she bellowed, frightening the elderly people at the front of the queue. It made me feel so small. Never has anybody treated me with such disrespect in my entire life. I stood at the donation box, forcing 10ps into a slot that was far too small. I felt like a fool. I finished emptying the coins and went to leave. "Thanks very much." I said with a smile as I left. The woman dropped her arms down at her side and rolled her eyes in forfeit.

I left the church with a feeling of sadness and depression. Not the happy feeling I was hoping for. Never will I donate money to the church again. I guess I must remember that the money doesn't go into that woman's pocket and it will go on to help in some small way. That's a wonderful thing. Thinking of it makes me pleased.

Sadly, this proves there really is no such thing as a good deed. Or is there? Let me know your thoughts. I hope yesterday's readers were inspired to do something generous. If you did, leave a comment.

For every comment on this post I'll donate an extra 10p to http://www.stonewall.org.uk/.

Forever Young

I do wonder what the big excitement around youth is about, I feel it myself, of course. But why? A gay barman, who thought my name was Hayden (a story for another time), once told me that a gay man's mid-life crisis is at 21. That leaves me only 8 months. Ouch. I don't consider myself old though, i'm not that naiive and blind. 20 is young, 29 is young in my books.

So, what is the secret behind youth? What is it that we all desire in youth? When we have it we don't want it; when it's gone, we do. Youth is perception, you really are as young as you feel, your Grandma is telling the truth. She can pull some hot tricks on the trampolene.

Not only do we desire to be young ourselves, we desire young partners. Last night's X Factor evening proved this. The five of us gathered around the T.V lusting after the barely legal singing, dancing, bags of hormones. It's a very rare occasion that I find a 16 year old attractive, they would have to look old for their age, 19-21 is my preference at this point in time. If you are sitting at home right now judging me. He's legal, what do I care what you think?
*swoons*

It's not the same for all of us though, I do know a choice few people, my age, who find Richard Nixon and Richard Madeley sexy. Ew. Just ew. I should hope that as I age myself, my taste in men will age with me. I can't ever imagine finding a middle aged man attractive though. Urgh.

I guess we should always look forward, no matter what your age. 16, 20, 29, 40, 60, 122. We're always going to be looking back and reminscing. Those memories keep us young. No matter how much you wish it, you will never be able to go back and live them. That's why they're memories. A film is never as good the second time around, so what makes you think life would be?

I know what some of my older readers must be thinking right now. Yeah, right o, Cal. Give it twenty years and then say that. They're probably right.

I look back sometimes to when I was a child and wonder how I was so ridiculously, in lack of a better word, stupid. When I was about five I was sat in church on a Sunday as the collection plate was being passed around. The woman next to me passed it to me and said. "Do you have any pocket money?" I looked up at her slightly puzzled, said "No, thank you." and took 30p from the plate. I wish I still had that same understanding of life. Then again, I guess when you're young it's all about taking and not giving, that changes with age. Adults love to give, not take(there's a joke in there somewhere), which is undeniably a desirable trait. A reason we should appreciate our age and not always want to go backwards.

In honour of that thought, today is a day for giving. I'd like you to join me in being generous today, small or little.

First thing on my list is to return 30p I unknowingly stole 15 years ago. I'll let you know how I get on.

Watch this space!

Paper Trails

As tempting as it is to write about snail trails rather than paper trails, I think that would be an incredibly shallow thing to do.

*cough*

This world is full of lies, it's unavoidable. However, with modern technology where there is a lie there is always a trail. We all tell our little white lies, "No! You don't look fat in that dress, don't buy it though. You ought to save your money." Some of us tell black lies too. "No, i don't have a girlfriend. Come back to mine!" Those are the types I'm here today to talk about.

Why do people feel the need to lie? Why can't people be more open and honest? I'd like to think I'm pretty open about every part of my life. I'd like to think. But come on guys, if you are going to go off and do something terrible, (No judgement here!) could you at least try to cover it up propperly?

There's facebook and emails and texts and call histories. There's friends who will keep it 'secret' and eyes in every corner. We hear things from friends of friends, we find a suspicious receipt, a questionable red wine stain on your jeans, or lip stick on your colar. Regardless of what you say or do, we are going to find out.

So why do people cheat? We look in the celebrity world and we find they're no better for it. LeAnn Rhymes, Britney and J-Lo. Brad Pitt, Jude Law and Ryan Phillipe.
Why can't they keep it in their pants for five minutes? Have they not looked at their husbands/wives?


Oh yeah, I'm married to an underwear model, but look, that boy is wearing a hat. *gets distracted and has sex with him*

... Have a little self respect people!

Oh and BTW - For those of you who have alarm bells shooting off. Lee and I are fine, this was spurred on by a conversation about celebrities last night.

Now be good.



I don't care how big he tells you it is. You have a boyfriend. Behave!

Homosexuals Are Possesed By Demons... Apparantly.

Today, I was editing a short story about gay adoption. I tend to steer clear of writing about homosexuals and homosexual issues, I feel it prohibits me and puts me into one box. On occasion though, as it is quite a large part of my life, I do.

I was googling some things out of research to make the story believable and layered. I inadvertantly stumbled across this picture of a young boy's funeral.


It sickens me that a protest of this nature would happen at all, but at a funeral... I feel for the boy's family, I can only imagine unncecessary untold ammounts of stress and grief must have been caused. I feel lost for words, I was aware that these things were happening but these images really inforce the gravity of the situation in some areas of the world.




Of all the pictures, there was only one I could respect and show tolerance towards. As much as I disagree, obviously, I am a strong believer of freedom of speech. This woman appears to be protesting out of genuine worry, isn't intending to offend, and just wants to voice her opinion. In an ideal world I would wish for world wide acceptance and tolerance, but this isn't an ideal world.


All of these pictures deeply disturb me and are greatly upsetting. The top picture especially makes my heart wretch. But where this is bad, there is always good.


I don't know what to say. All I can do is be grateful I live in a community where homosexuality is generally accepted. I have felt no serious persecution and have felt free to be who I want to be. I have the freedom to write about my experiences as a gay man, I am grateful for that.

The Boys @ Abecrombie & Fitch

I opened up my wallet to find a crisp five pound note. The remainder of our combined money after the bills, rent and fresher's week had hit. The phone rang.

"I thought i'd pop round for a cup of tea!" our friend chortled.
"You'll be lucky to get a cup of tea..." I answered.
"I'll bring the milk, tea and biscuits then." From the tone of her voice I detected she rolled her eyes as she said this. But in a nice, sort of, the gays have got no milk in, what a surprise kind of way.

We bumped into her in the supermarket. "I thought you had no money." she declared.
"We have a fiver" I said holding it up to show her.
"And you're spending that on cigarettes and strawberry flavoured water?"
"Yep."
"Smart move."

Today, however, was pay day/loan day. I'm revelling in the fact that I have temporary financial security til Christmas now. It's taking all the power I can muster to stop myself going to Abecrombie and Fitch to buy something pretty though. £18 for some boxers? I think not... Then I see the models.



Oh. Hi Isaac. Hi Justin.
You want £18? Sure, let me just get my credit card.

Oh Really?

We had barely been at The House of Pastelle five minutes when our good friend Jessy managed to open a jar of jalapeño peppers into her lap. She laughed "That's the second time I’ve done tha.... AHHH! MY VAGINA, MY VAGINA, IT'S BURNING MY VAGINA!" she screamed and ran to her bedroom.

Half an hour later, after a quick shower, she emerged again and sat down at the kitchen table. We were creating our 'editor profiles' for the student magazine. She read out the questions and reached 'Embarrassing moment'.

"I don't have any embarrassing moments." she said scratching her head.

Oh really Jessy, Oh really?

The First Day of The Rest of My Life.

As some of you may have read, dear readers, yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life. I decided to act upon this tired out saying and find out where the good will of the Universe would take me. I minimised all those nasty procrastinating habits, instead of dancing to Kylie Minogue and Katy Perry in the kitchen pointlessly, I combined this must needed five minutes with eating my lunch. This was fruit. Fruit. I know. God. I want to live a healthy life, you see?

I looked at the dirty dishes in the sink and I skimmed right past them back to my laptop where I wouldn't distract myself by learning about the exciting world of anal douching (possibly because I already did this with my dear friend Grandma the night before - it's not as rambunctious as it might seem. Did I just make the word up? Nope dictionary says it's a real word, and it fits... Moving on swiftly) I would work and not play.

I received texts telling me there was a good looking guy in the library who looked sort of like a good looking guy I knew, Okay, I replied to one. Just one! Then I stopped. I opened up my ‘To Do’ list and cut it in half. I scribbled this, I typed that, I even contacted the DRS girls and gave them the quick interview that my new Editor boss type lady (a.k.a my good friend Jessy) had asked me to do some weeks back.

I googled jobs, writing competitions and various opportunities, I revamped my C.V and applied for jobs, I read emails saying I had been declined from jobs. It was all very morale boosting. "Soz you've not got the job lol". But seriously the fact that I could write a C.V, apply for a job and hear back within the same day (even if it is to say I’ve not got the job) is something I didn't realise was accomplishable until now.

I popped round to The House of Pastelle to converse with like minded ambitious friends, to give me that extra boost.

"What do you mean you're busy? Why aren't we doing a radio show." My dear friend Grandma said to me with confusion. "I've got nothing to do, I've got two lectures a week. I need a radio show so I don't just fill ALL my spare time with masturbation." she told me without hesitation. As it turns out we have pretty much exactly the same schedule yet she considers it 'nothing to do', whereas I consider it 'the most I’ve ever had to do in my ENTIRE life'. That's the difference between me and her, I guess.

I scurried back home, transcribed an interview, wrote two articles and a short story and sent them whizzing out of my inbox like there was no tomorrow and then went BACK to The House of Pastelle for Veggie Lasagne Tuesday.

Our dear friend Grandma served us up the finest (and only) vegetarian lasagne I've ever eaten and then tossed a book of theatre productions at me. She had put a little star next to all of the ones we could go to see FOR FREE! and a little love heart next to the ones she wanted to go and see. I looked through the book, instructed to initial any that I wanted to go and see with her, there was a love heart next to every God damned thing. "WHY IS NOBODY COMING TO SEE THE TAKE THAT TRIBUTE ACT WITH ME?!" she boomed as she noticed nobody, but nobody, had put their initials down next to it. It was the only thing I didn't put my name down for.

So, although, on the first day of the rest of my life, I didn't secure a job or anything wonderfully exciting, which would have been an amazing conclusion to this whole fiasco, I did manage to secure 750 theatre tickets.

Then we drank wine and I forgot I was meant to be doing something with my life, we inappropriately discussed the issue of "Does fisting make child birth easier" with people we had known for less than 78 hours. Then I drew this on my editor type boss lady's door.



Oops.

Oh and we're going to find the Loch Ness Monster apparently. I'll let you know how that one goes.

Bent Boy

The Universe is a complicated thing, that goes without saying, sometimes things happen by extrordinary coinsidence; so much so that we do contemplate the existance of a greater power. Today as I was wittling away the early morning hours on facebook I was asked to verify that I was human before posting.

It's a regular occurance, nothing unusual. The perculiar thing however was that today the random word generator had decided to put two words side by side. Two words that stand alone unoffensive, two words together that are just the opposite.

Bent Boy.

Please type out the words you see in the box to verify you are human.

This got me thinking, what have I done to that beardy man in the sky to deserve such an insult. Perhaps it's my lack of doing anything that spurred him on to send this my way. I pondered for a moment and decided it was out of good intentions. The cosmos is being nice to me today, the cosmos is trying to send me a message. Believe what you want, cosmos or no cosmos, god or no god, these little moments have a lot of power to push us forwards. That time old saying "Live everyday as if it is your last." I always found that quite a harmful expression. If today was my last day, I would probably be utterly irresponsible and I most certainly wouldn't be putting things in place for the development of my future. Instead, I prefer "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." It's entirely cliché but I guess from time to time it's helpful.

If we thought this way every single day though we would be exhausted. I find it helpful to remember this expression once a month. It helps get things done.

So today, although I've already pointlessly wittled away the majority of my morning, I am going to do just that.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Impertinently Bold; Impudent and Saucy.

I've not met many Americans in my life, the first American girl I ever met was named Ashley. I was around 12 at the time and within a few months of knowing her I found myself hanging from a cliff edge with her holding the rope, declaring "I don't wanna hold the rope anymore." That's what you get with residential trips. Surprisingly enough that left a rather bitter taste in my mouth.

Last night, over a bottle of vodka, I met my brand new American friend. It took some time to establish that bread rolls were biscuits and biscuits were cookies; crisps were chips, and chips were fries; jam was jelly and jelly was jello, but once that confusion was out of the way it was our turn to try our best to bestow our minimal knowledge of British culture upon our new American friend.

"Don't you guys ever say fries?"
"Only in McDonalds."
"Why?"
"It says it on the menu"

"What's cheeky?" she asked puzzled. I pointed to my drink (a cheeky Vimto) to confuse matters. Lee was the first to tackle the question. "If a kid shouts piss off to an old lady, then she might call him a cheeky bastard."
"So over here children and old people swear at each other?"
"It's like when an attractive boy pinches your bum in a night club, you might turn around, waggle your finger and say Oi cheeky." I interjected. "And the vodka in our Vimto and lemonade, is cheeky." She didn't look convinced. I like the definition I later found in the dictionary. "Impertinently bold; impudent and saucy." Perfect. If I had said that I would have definitely scored bonus points for my finesse. Instead of showing off my way with words (or lack of) I went on to try and explain what 'cheers' means.

"When you guys say cheers, you mean thanks, right?"
"Yeah, I only ever say it when I feel intimidated by attractive straight men though. Cheers mate. It's a very manly way of speaking I guess."

I'm incredibly in awe of my our new American friend, she slipped into our bizarre regimes very quickly. The fact that she was flabbergasted by the amount of slutty girls showing more skin than necessary amused me. She explained that in America, that only happens on Halloween.

I guess when Lindsay Lohan said "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it." in Mean Girls, she had a very good point. It's the same here though, even for the boys. Have you seen my potential Halloween costume?



The worrying thing is, it wouldn't surprise me if I did go out like this and somebody asked me why I was so overdressed.

The pinnacle of our bad influence had to be explaining the British way of the drunken take away. "Yeah you buy some god awful kebab meat and chips, eat half of it and then throw it at a nearby window."
Not that I would ever dream of doing such a thing! That's what we told her. I've seen it done many a time. She accepted it in an instant and even offered me her half eaten chips so I could toss them at a window. She looked puzzled as I put them into the bin.

This morning, whilst nursing my hangover, I imagined her hurling chips (fries) at a nearby charity shop and being dragged away by police. I hope we haven't emotionally damaged her too much.

Much love to my new American friend. (Insert appropriate love hearts here)

I Wanna See Your Peacock.. Cock..Cock..Cock.

Today was one of those days where there is a feeling of excitement in the air, a feeling of possibility, a feeling of change. I can't explain why these days come about, but they do from time to time, just like those pesky bad days.

With this feeling comes a certain degree of ambition and with ambition we have a responsibility to ourselves to use this ambition for good.


So what have I decided to do?

1: Blog Make-Over.

Eep, I might need help with this one.

2: Blog Adverts!?

I think it's about time. An extra 15p in my bank account every month would be nice. I can buy myself a chomp. Oh, wait. Yeah I forgot about the failure that is the Britih economic climate... Chomps are no longer 15p. - Sadness.

3: A Blog a Day (keeps the doctor away?)

I'm going to try harder to write every day. This may involve me telling you about the soup I had for lunch... I hope you don't mind.

So, to round things off. Here's a little something to enjoy. It combines my love of Katy Perry and my love of overly flamboyant gays. It's a shame I only find one of them attractive, care to guess which?



Possibly the gayest thing since the Bearforce1 megamix. Youtube if you dare!

Taking Away The Doors.

So what if it's rated 18, it's a computer game!

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Buy your 8 year old a game rated 18 and you may as well give them a swear word dictionary and a gun. These things are rated that way for a reason. I remember when I was in primary school we weren't allowed to watch the Toy Story video somebody brought in at Christmas because it was rated PG and not U. Things have changed it would seem.

I first began to realise how bad it had gotten when Lee brought home a game he borrowed from his 7 year old brother about a year ago. "This game's a bit dark for a seven year old" he told me as he started playing it. "It's about drugs mostly." As I half heartedly paid attention I began to notice an awful lot of swearing, See You Next Tuesday included. Then the protagonist raped a prostitute while swearing into her face and stole her money. (this was the 'good guy' by the way) It was extremely graphic. A little too graphic for me even.

I'm not saying that kids need to be entirely sheltered, the things they hear on the playground these days are getting worse and worse, it's not uncommon for children who have only just learned to speak to be shouting fuck off and similar to their mothers - five minutes of watching Supernanny will tell you that.

Wait, Cal, why are you watching Supernanny? - There's nothing else on on a Sunday morning. Okay?

I wouldn't have liked to have played any of these games when I was younger, I remember specifically my Mum calling me sick and twisted for setting fire to The Sims. But come on, that was practically the objective of the game. Making them happy got boring after about 13 seconds. "You could at least give them a chance to escape. Taking away the doors is just sick."



Okay, maybe she was right. Maybe taking away the doors was a little sick but I've not met anyone who's played The Sims and not done exactly the same.

Then there's Grand Theft Auto, probably what started this bombardment of inappropriate material in computer games. I'm not complaining about the games themselves, I played the first few and really enjoyed them. Okay, maybe running after a granny with a chainsaw isn't a very productive use of my time, but it's fun. It just is. I probably played my first Grand Theft Auto game when I was about 14, four years below the 18 certificate. Thinking back it didn't seem bad back then, I didn't see anything or hear anything I hadn't heard or seen anywhere else but if a kid a few years younger got hold of those games you might have a problem on your hands.

There's enough teenagers who think they're gangsters around as it is without Grand Theft Auto encouraging it. I was sickened a few months back as I was scrolling down my facebook news feed. Scrolling past the usual "lol last nyt was mynt!!!!" and such and stumbled upon something a long the lines of. "I hope that woman was okay last night, I can't believe that happened in front of us." I read the long chain of comments underneath wanting to know what had happened. Turned out some woman had been run down by a speeding car outside a gig. The disturbing thing was the long chain of people (who were there) finding the whole thing hilarious. I remember one of them said "10 points to the driver for that hit! If she dies he gets another 10 points, it's a shame he didn't get out and rape her, he would have got a full 100 for that." - Not his exact words, but that's the context of what he said. It made me sick I had to say something and when I did I got a long stream of comments defending this person. I don't understand people sometimes. I really don't. They seem to have been so desensitised by life and death that they make a game out of it.

So that brings me finally onto the worst of the worst. I stopped playing console games some years back so I didn't really know what was out there anymore. After watching the video at this link http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103423-72-Percent-of-Adults-Support-California-Game-Law-UPDATED I realised how bad it was.

In one clip of a game called Postal 2 a man chases down a woman who says "Please don't kill me i'm a virgin" beats her, pisses on her, then kicks her down a flight of stairs.

Oh please Mummy, please buy me Postal 2.

You're getting Hello Kitty Island Adventure and that's that.

Gingernut.

Never ever will I:
Drink.
Dye my hair.
Take drugs.

I'm such a hypocrital liar sometimes. Today I decided to go ginger. Well "Light copper mahogany" as the packet would have me believe. I sat, cocktail in hand, as Lee coloured, blow dried and styled my hair. We played salon. It was ever so much fun. We even did a Gok 'How to look good naked'-esque reveal with the mirror at the end.

And to top the whole thing off we did a fashion show and a photo shoot! Yes thank you, we're reinforcing negative gay stereotypes. Whatever, there's nothing negative about looking fabulous. Did you even read the title of this blog? Second word, if you ignore the parenthesis. Fabulous.

I'm taking the top back though. I kindly asked Lee if I looked fat in it and he said "Yes, from the side." How rude! If i was a woman his gonads would be in a jar on my mantle right about now. Cheeky bastard.

So anyway, enough chit chat. Back to the 'How to look good naked'-esque reveal.

Ta-da!



I quite like being ever so slightly ginger.

Not Perfect

Whilst trying to think of something to write about this morning I thought I’d distract myself by playing the piano. That’s right – I didn’t just make that up in my about me, which somebody asked me if I did the other day – I actually do play.

As I sat there I thought, hey, why not put a video of me playing a song on my blog. Why not? I first went to play Clair De Lune, the first and only Grade 8 piece I learned to play. I was quite sad when I couldn’t remember how to play it past the first page and couldn’t find the sheet music so decided to do something else instead.

I remember when I first moved away from home and to University, my mother said the thing she will miss most is being able to hear me practise the piano. With their being no piano in Spain it must have been at least 2 years since she last heard me play. So this is partially for her, partially for my dear friend LJW (www.mynameislaurajanewilliams.blogspot.com), who said when she first heard me play "Oh! I didn't think you actually had depth!" and partially for those nay sayers who have little faith in my about me section!

It’s a quite simple piece, but it’s a favourite of mine. It’s called Not Perfect. Which is rather fitting since I most certainly don’t play it with perfection. Hopefully you won’t notice the 1000 mistakes and the lack of a sustain pedal (Ours broke when Lee decided to take it apart to see how it worked). As one does in the ‘biz’ I’ll just pass off any mistakes as rubato or jazz. I did play it twice but on the other one a barrage of fire engines and ambulances decided to drive past making as much noise as possible. So that one was out.

Enjoy.



Edit: Just read this back and it sort of sounds like 'Not Perfect' is my own song, as much as I'd like to take credit for it it's not. It is however my own arrangement.
This is the original.