I Will Get Back To The Picts One Day, Honest

Goodness, what a lot of work I have on at the moment, but I feel neglectful of you, lovely blog-readers.

So here for your edification is a marvellous post from io9, all about the myth that women don't like science fiction (I have been instructed under no circumstances to refer to it as 'sci-fi').

Is it just me, or is all this 'women don't write blogs', 'women don't blog about politics', 'women don't write letters to the newspapers', 'women don't like science fiction', etc. thing becoming a bit tiresome? What do people think we do all day - go shopping and talk about shoes?


Women: not all necessarily like this.

As Annalee Newitz points out, women like science fiction all right - usually when it's got good female characters in it. And for my money, you won't find a better range of female characters anywhere on television, let alone in science fiction, than in Battlestar Galactica. Why, there are so many! And so varied! And they're all proper characters, with proper, complex personalities, in a proper story, not just simpering foils, or 'token feisty woman' characters, or one-dimensional babes.

And surprise surprise, everyone seems to like it. Maybe because that's what life is actually like*.


Battlestar Galactica: advancing the cause of gender equality, one vest at a time.

Something to think about there, eh?


* Apart from the imminent threat of annihilation by sentient aliens robots disguised as humans, obviously. Although...

Public Service Announcement

Readers! Do you also have a blog? Do you want to tell all about your blog to a complete stranger, in complete confidence? Do you have the stamina and strength of mind to answer many questions about why you blog, where you blog, when you blog, and whether you've ever actually, erm, 'got jiggy' with anyone as a result of blogging?

If the answer is yes then don't wait another minute - pick up your laptop and go to Bête de Jour's. He's doing a survey of bloggers and needs another 757 replies, apparently.

Go to it!

(Unless you've already done it, of course, in which case don't go to it, or you'll pollute the sample.)

It's Probably Hormones, Isn't It?

Question: is it *very* wrong that I have a sizeable girl-crush on a 16 year-old Australian pop chanteuse?



I thought so.

The Plural Of 'Penis' Is 'Penises'

Things That Really Annoy Me, no. 819 in a potentially infinite series:

People who think it's either clever or funny (or both) to put a spurious and wrong Latin plural of a commonly used English word in brackets with a question mark after using the correct but mundane English plural.

Often applied to 'penises' (penii?), 'geniuses' (genii?), and so on.

Example spotted in the wild in today's Guardian:

'The briefest of searches reveals that there are people out there engaged in Tom Baker scarf knitalongs, swapping encouragement over those tricky colour-changing points at a woolly Dalek's "shoulders", sharing patterns for K-9 tissue holders, knitted Tardises (Tardii?) and even a truly resplendent version in cream and red wool of Peted Davison as the Fifth Doctor.'

Why, Lucy Mangan, why? You know as well as anyone that 'Tardis' is not and never has been a Latin word. It is and always has been an acronym for 'Time and Relative Distance* in Space'. It's an English word, and its plural is 'Tardises'. You had it right the first time and what's more, you knew you did. Why let yourself down like that?


* Er, or, you know, 'Dimensions'. (Thanks LizSara!) Hmm, I may have shot myself in the foot a bit there.

Bird Augury Top Trumps

Question: If a lone magpie portends sorrow, and the crow is the harbinger of doom, which one would win in a fight?

Note: This is NOT a rhetorical question. This morning I saw a magpie and a crow having a fight in a tree, and I've spent the whole rest of the day wondering which one portended more bad luck for the other, and whether any of it would rub off on me.

Sometimes this is as much intellectual engagement as I can handle in one day.


ALSO: What is the infinitive form of 'harbinger'? To harbinge? To harbing? Oh, the entire day is shot through with uncertainty.

Ranty Rant Rant

Ooh, but there are a lot of things making me angry today.

It all started quite early this morning when I read on Annie Slaminsky's blog about Boris Johnson's new sidekick saying that black boys should have black, male teachers.

I know absolutely nothing about the reality of what it's like being a teacher in inner-city London, but I'm deeply suspicious of any attempt to segregate people of different racial origins, I'm deeply suspicious of any attempt to articulate 'being black' with a propensity to commit crime (black people don't commit crime: poor people commit crime*, and if a disproportionate number of poor people are black then perhaps that ought to be the focus, just saying), and I'm deeply suspicious of any suggestion that what a given profession needs is fewer women in it.

THEN I open the newspaper to read that the Burmese junta is impounding food aid and not allowing foreign aid workers in, which just beggars belief. What are they going to do with 38 tonnes of biscuits, for fuck's sake - throw a big tea party for all their junta chums?

THEN (and I realise we are descending quite rapidly in order of importance here) I happen upon an article in the Telegraph about female bloggers who have got book deals and newspaper columns and agents and sitcom deals, which is great and all, but why must they all be either sexbloggers or mums? Are we *ever* going to get beyond the idea that our bodies and motherhood (or 'childcare and gynaecology' as our old chum Mary Dejevsky put it) is all that women are able or qualified to talk about?

And on that same note, my ongoing anally-retentive project to count how many letters published in the Guardian and the Observer are by men and how many by women is starting to really depress me too, especially as I have a sneaking suspicion that it actually over-represents the number of women who write in to the paper. And now I'm thinking that maybe the reason we don't write to the papers is because we're programmed to think that our bodies and motherhood are all we're able or qualified to talk about, no thanks to you, THE TELEGRAPH.

Crikey. I think it might be time for a little lie-down.


UPDATE: Now I've had a little lie-down and feel a bit calmer, may I say how much I enjoyed Alexis Petridis's review of the Nick Cave Hammersmith Apollo gig. 'He has developed a style of keyboard-playing that Little Richard would have rejected as slightly florid: legs splayed, knees bent, head back, one arm skyward and, at particularly dramatic moments, fist shaking at God. The overall effect is at once viscerally powerful and coolly ironic, both hilarious and utterly gripping.' Excellent. The world will be a poorer place when the boy Cave eventually pops his apocalyptic clogs.


* Anonymous pulled me up on this in the comments, quite rightly. What I meant was, if you're going to commit a crime, it's probably got more to do with your economic and social circumstances (i.e. stuff that can, theoretically, be changed) than anything else. But Anonymous reminded me that very rich people also commit crimes, and then I spent a long time thinking about all the different kinds of crimes that people commit, and the underlying reasons for them, and I accept Anonymous's charge of being ridiculously simplistic. That's the trouble with ranting; it's never very rational.

Oh Dear, Oh Dear

Evil Tim Footman has tagged me to tell lies about the Chuckle Brothers on the internet. Or more precisely, seven true facts and one lie. And only about one of the Chuckle Brothers. And you have to guess which fact is factually incorrect.

I can choose which Chuckle Brother I want to lie about, apparently, although up until a few minutes ago that was something of a moot point, since up until a few minutes ago I had no idea who the Chuckle Brothers actually are.

(I know! And me with a Masters degree in popular culture and everything! Raymond Williams would be awfully disappointed.)

All the name conjured up in my head was a rather confusing montage of Chuck Norris and those two scousers from Harry Enfield who say 'calm down calm down' and bob from side to side.

I have since established that the Chuckle Brothers are neither martial arts action heroes nor comedy Northerners from a TV sketch show. I had to find this out for myself, because Mr BC was no real help in the matter:

Me: Do you know anything about the Chuckle Brothers?

Mr BC: Hmm. I think Richard wrote an episode for them once.

Me: Anything else?

Mr BC thinks for a moment.

Mr BC: No.

Anyway, these days we are fortunate enough to have access to an oracular fount of human knowledge, namely 'the' Wikipedia. Here are some facts that I sourced from 'the' Wikipedia about Paul Chuckle, who is one of the Chuckle Brothers. One of them is factually inaccurate. Can you spot which one?

1. Paul Chuckle (real name Paul Elliot) is one of the Chuckle Brothers.

2. Paul is a comedy Northerner, but not one from a TV sketch show.

3. That's not to say that Paul isn't in a TV show, because he is. It's called Chuckle Vision, and it's meant for children, which is why I've never seen it. (This will probably change soon.)

4. Paul has a catchphrase, but it isn't 'calm down calm down'. It's the equally lexically economical 'oh dear oh dear'.

5. When Paul crashed a motorbike while on holiday in Kefalonia, he was dismayed to discover that, far from rushing to his aid, a number of onlookers had instead chosen to loiter at a distance intoning 'oh dear oh dear' in a comedy Northern accent. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the occupational hazards of showbusiness.

6. Or they might have been actual Northerners who were just saying 'oh dear oh dear' in a concerned tone, only in his disorientated state, Paul mistook them for fans. A loss of perspective regarding one's own importance in the grand scheme of things is another of the occupational hazards of showbusiness.

7. Also, this was reported in the Metro, so it might all have been made up to start with.

8. Paul and his brother Barry are very popular in Mexico, where they are known as Los Hermanos Chupacabras.


Los hermanos Chupacabras: ¡uy uy uy!

Erm...over to you.


UPDATE: Far better efforts are to be found at Slaminsky (Perkin Warbeck), First Nations (Friedrich Nietzche), Betty's Utility Room (Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) and Geoff's blog (Madame Blavatsky)...