God and Dinosaurs

Since i'm lazy i'm going to post a good deconstruction I saw on failbook and promise to post my next rant in a few days:
Source: http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/06/10/funny-facebook-fails-thats-probably-why/

We are all Tenths of a Percentage

Beginning with the recap on last post's guinea pig panic (which incidentally is a name I am copywrighting as a possible computer game / theme park ride / cartoon franchise), we have researched and listened to sample noises, and things seem to be turning out OK. A little nipping still continues, but ultimately they have now settled into the normal social order, established social dominance and are letting us pick them up. Sometimes. The beef of this three course post is that I am approaching the end of the degree now with the crushing inevitability of Justin Bieber's next single. So how do I feel? Well, worried and relieved in equal measure. On the one hand, I no longer have to have every spare moment spoiled by the realisation that I should be working on an essay, or reading some of the set texts, or not getting 100% gamerpoints in Assassin's Creed 2 (I'm not going to lie, it was the most productive part of the weekend). And of course, once I get a job out in the real world I can hopefully afford things again. On the flip side of course, there's always the statistics. Only 55% of graduates are getting into jobs these days, the rest of the country's fucked, every job application puts you up against hundreds of other people and rent; and living costs and most likely incidences of toffs buggering the poor are all spiraling upwards like the rapture we were promised on Saturday (which made a great excuse not to go out - sorry chaps, can't join you this evening, got a bit of frantic repentance to do). I'm babbling. It's the result of several weeks of long, sleepless nights and wildly panicked procrastinating putting off the end of the old and in with the new. Not just a literal apocalypse, but a metaphorical one too. And despite my best efforts backfiring or going ignored (e.g. voting Lib Dem backfiring and the alt vote getting shot down), I enter the workplace at an all-time low. So there is that. And in the middle there's me, a human being just trying to make a decent living. But then that's the trick to modern living - people aren't individuals anymore. We're all a tenth of a percentage, or a tick in a box, or a one/zero effect on the group so that computers can tally us up and come up with group dynamics to sum up what we want. It's easy to let slip a million people losing out from policy, because the human mind can't process it. Cameron and the government aren't evil, they just can't see the people losing out from their actions as an army of miserable individuals. The population who should be protesting in outrage can't see it either. Nobody can. I make ready to venture out into this world, and if i'm honest, it scares the willies out of me. Writing, as unrealistic a goal as it is, seems to be my best option.

Oh to be a Parent

I don't think I've worried this much in my entire life. In a stunning-to-nobody-except-me lack of willpower and abundance of cuteness, we now have guinea pigs. We were supposed to just be looking at cute pets but at some point looking turned into holding and now we have two female guinea pigs, named Widget and Ezio. Yes, Ezio is a boy's name. It's not our fault, we named the little ginger fool before she was sexed by the vet, so we now have a guinea pig with gender identity issues. Onto the worrying, however. I have since found out that guinea pigs will insist on establishing dominance within a cage, and they do this usually by nudging, mounting and occasionally nipping at each other's heels. However the worrying part of the advice is the part most often repeated: "Don't separate them unless they draw blood." Great. That's sort of like telling me not to worry about cooling my pc unless it blows up. I'm fairly sure having a bleeding guinea pig is better prevented than dealt with, though at the moment they seem to be establishing dominance by just hopping and chasing. Well, Ezio is anyway. Widget still seems fairly traumatised by the taxi ride home, where she was sat in the footwell with every bump and noise it entailed, and is refusing to vocalise. This gets me thinking about what a panicker I am. I'm one of nature's great worriers; if something can conceivably go wrong, it already has in my head. Hence, I am sat at work imagining the bleeding wreck of a guinea pig I will face when I get back later. Ezio will have picked Widget's eyeball out and she'll be in incredible pain, and I'll have to take her to the vets to be put down, and then I'll return to find Ezio has developed a taste for flesh and everyone I know and love is dead, and I don't even have the receipt because she ate that as well. If I worry this much about two guinea pigs, Christ only knows what I'll be like as a parent.

Sexism

Christ, I'm glad I'm not a modern woman. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not berating the glass ceiling this time, nor am I belabouring a biological point about the inconvenience of the monthly biblical plagues they suffer in their nether regions. But what really gets me every time about 'modern women' is how unashamedly malicious they are - at least in the media - in backstabbing each other in utterly inescapable ways. I mean listen to this from a screaming mouthpiece by the name of Samhita Mukhopadhyay in the Guardian on the royal wedding:

What Middleton is known for is her perseverance and patience in waiting for her royal beau to come around and marry, her fashion choices and her lack of focus on a career. In short, from what is seen in the media, Middleton is hardly representative of a modern woman. Women today have to work (both by choice and out of necessity) and ideally, today's women don't wait around for men to shape up... Will she continue to be a living Barbie doll, most notable for her fashion choices? Or will she make a strategic effort for social change through her newfound fame? For most young, modern women, the princess fantasy might still be strong, but it's life after the ball that really matters.

It must be an absolute minefield out there, slavishly having to adhere to this nightmarish stereotype of the modern empowered woman, never daring for one moment to slip up and show the slightest moment of weakness (or god forbid, humanity). I mean, I am utterly lazy. And that's fine, because it gives feminists something to laugh at. The feminist stereotype works fine for me because they expect it. In fact, even if I took the unexpected route and became a stay-home husband doing the chores for a career focused other half, I'd probably still get more than my fair share of support from everyone for being a bit different. Except of course the hardliners, for whom men are a necessary evil humanity should be trying to somehow breed out (but then there's no pleasing some people, even orally). But god forbid any woman should decide that she wants a bit of a lazy day, or maybe take advantage of a marriage into the biggest free-ride in the history of humanity, namely the monarchy. Maybe it's just me but if I was a woman, I would see feminism as a terrible burden driving me to overwork myself for a bastard of corporations (yes that's the collective noun, I just made it up). I had assumed feminism was about empowering all women, not just a select coven of media harridans who have decided everyone needs to be as miserable and barren as them. But if what a woman wants is to enjoy the precious time on earth god gave them, or feel human emotions like love or empathy, or just not work themselves ragged to prove a point; all of a sudden they're traitors, or fools, or being manipulated by a leering, cock-wielding hierarchy men who want to drag them down.

This from the same article:

And it turns out, most young women don't want to be Middleton either. In a YouGov study, 86% of over 1000 women 18 years of age and up said they are not envious of her position. Why? Because of the tremendous scrutiny she will face and her continuing inability to live a normal life – a truly tragic side effect of being a woman in the media.

How brave of the author to take a stand against the criticism Middleton will face in the media, by criticising her in the media. I love the ability of newspaper columnists to selectively include themselves in the bracket of 'the media' - largely depending on whether they've killed someone or stand to get a free lunch out of it. Well, I say love. I mean 'get worked up and write 650 words over.' In other news, 6,097 words on the FYP, and I'm mildly ashamed of over ²/₃ of them.

1,500 to go

The next time a tutor tells me not to leave things to the last minute, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to listen to them very carefully. Then when they're done talking, I'm going to nod understandingly, gather up my notes, and then leave them in my bag, play Mass Effect 2 and leave it all until the last minute. Because let's face it, I'm an idiot. We're all idiots, for the most part. People learn by their mistakes; so really, even if you're a mature student, university is the best place to make them (mistakes that is, not students). This is the last week before FYP deadline, so my plan really was to have the work done and redrafted by this point so that I could throw myself at the dreaded 2,000 word rationale. But no. Life holds too many exciting and interesting things for that, and you're only young once. In fact I'm not even young, so there's that. Anyway, I sit 500 words away from the minimum word count, and easy 15,00 words away from a decent word count, and the rationale as well. Soon I shall be finished, and then there's just the regular essays to be getting along with. Also an icecream van turned up while I was writing this, in the middle of a student infested cul-de-sac. Devious.