Modern Day Dilemmas – No.27. When it comes to being ill I’m just a man

I’m not very good at being ill.  I’m rubbish at it.  I’m a woman, I should be great at it but I’m not, I’m pathetic.  You always hear the common myth of men milking a cold for all it’s  worth, well what about me?  I’m letting my fellow women down.  I can’t stand having a cold or flu.  For about 10 days now I’ve been feeling really shitty, needing extra hugs and kisses.  I am such a saddo.  I can’t take it any more I tell you,  I need to be saved.  I can cope with my usual ailments o.k – my back pain, constipation, headaches – anything but this coughing, sneezing and fuzzy head.

My World of Dreams – No.21. What do Madonna’s armpits smell of?

On way to supermarket I realise I have forgotten my purse.  I start walking back, jump in a kind of cab, reach destination, driver stops.  I say, “how did you know this is where I needed to be?  He says, “I didn’t, this is Marks and Spencers.”  Stop!  Other celeb in cab with us.  Is Jennifer Hudson the driver or the celeb?  Driver says, “Your stop is just here round other side of the building.”  What, the huge tower block across the road from my flat?  When we get out I realise I do not have my shoes on.  I start to go back to the cab but realise I left them in the other cab I took earlier with the same driver.  I have to do without them.  Inside this venue Madonna is sat on a bar stool with a man.  She has cheap blue and white label Tesco roll-on deodorant.  She puts some on her underarm and tells her male companion to smell  it ’cause it smells like p***y.

I’m sorry I dreamt it but I now seem to have a complete inability to write that word.   Madonna wouldn’t be so bashful would she?  The whole affair seems to be totally distasteful and what the hell does it have to do with lost shoes?  Do they symbolise my virginity (which has been long since lost, by the way).  Does Jennifer Hudson symbolise my weight gain and does my disgust at p***y deodorant signify a kind of sexual repression.  Just at this moment when I am writing about virginity I am kind of half listening to a new show from Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell called Lipstick Jungle which focuses on the friendship between 3 career women.  Right at the end of the first episode Brooke Shield’s character says, “I was wearing mocasins when I lost my virginity.”  At this point I had to call my long suffering boyfriend from the kitchen complaining that I could not remember when I lost my virginity.  Having been the one who shared in the experience I thought he might provide me with the slightest of clues.  He thought about it for many moments after which he declared, “I dunno…1995?”  The fool.  “You’re such an idiot,” I say.  “I don’t mean the year.  I mean where we were, what were the circumstances.”  But who am I to chastise him.  I’m the one dreaming about eau de p***y.  It seems that in age both my morals and my memory are failing me.

Now, my boyfriend’s questioning me to find out who i know whose armpit smell’s of p***y?  What the hell kind of question is that?  I don’t exactly go round smelling other people’s armpits do I?

My World of Dreams – No.20. Charlie’s Angels

I’m  a Charlie’s Angel but pre-occupied with pulling some curtains down in my old family home.  I pull what I think is my gun out of my bag in a panic.  It turns out to be a flip-top mobile phone and I wait for the bad guy to come round the corner.  Is this because I wish to be an independent woman but am a little confused by technology or perhaps just a little bit too pre-occupied with chores and duty.

Modern Day Dilemmas – No.26. Proof that fruit and veg is bad for you

Would you go into a supermarket, take a plum from the shelf, eat it then spit the stone back out into the cucumbers.  No?  I should bloody well hope not.  But this is what my other half witnessed a few weeks ago and out of the goodness of his heart he came home and told me all about it.  Is this what we’re doing nowadays?  Is this acceptable behaviour?  I’m quite accustomed to seeing people stroll through supermarkets with a certain sense of entitlement; nibbling at grapes, indiscriminately handing out snacks to their kids and neglecting to pay for any of the goods that they consume.  Is there some rule that I don’t know about which says anything consumed pre-checkout is free to the customer.  It’s as if they think that everybody else is obliged to subsidise their gluttony.  Do we really need to open a packet of chocolate chip cookies and eat half the packet before we decide that we don’t want to buy them after all?  I don’t mind people who give their hungry howling kid something from the shelves and then save the wrapper so that it can be scanned, that’s alright but everything else is just pure theft.  As for the woman who picks something up, eats it then spits the pip back into the fresh produce – she just belongs in a bloody zoo.  The signs do not say ‘buy one, get saliva free’.

Modern Day Dilemmas – No. 25. Belly-flopping with Britney

How much mileage is there in the whole ‘Britney cut her hair off thing’?  We’ve seen it replayed in the whole whatever went wrong with Britney/Britney’s worst year ever/Britney gone wild/Britney’s fall from Grace. The whole Britney Shears thing is getting a bit old now.  She’s not the only woman to have done it you know.  Frida Kahlo did it (admittedly she was guilty of greater crimes – a mustache and a unibrow).  Now we see the whole scene aped over and over again even repackaged  and re-sold to us as prime time drama in the T.V series Dirt.  I’ve cut my own hair down to size several times during my life but no-one’s ever captured it on film, perhaps I’m just jealous.  There are only 2 things to take into consideration before going for the chop;

1. What is your hairline like and can you survive without even the hint of a fringe .  Too low and you look like early man, too high and you look like receding man.

2. How ugly are you?  Remember, it’s quite hard to hide any embarrassing features behind 1cm of hedge.

I’m tired of seeing Britney’s public belly flopping in the treacherous seas of stardom.  I’m about to join the  ‘lay off Britney’ campaign.  Re-shape, re-invent, re-shape, re-invent – we’re all just walking topiaries anyway seeking to free ourselves from our past lives.  In a court of law we may plead guilty to temporary insanity but I’d rather be this kind of nutter than the kind who goes temporarily ballistic and shoots a whole heap of people before allowing a bullet to put a final finish on his militarily bald head.  Here again we will ask ‘where oh where did it all go wrong?’.  perhaps when we started to neglect real stories for the sake of celebrity belly flops.

Frida Kahlo - The original Britney

Modern Day Dilemmas – No.24. Friends and their nipples

I saw an episode of Friends last night and Rachel’s nipples were showing through a T-shirt, a woolen jumper and presumably a bra because no woman’s chest stands as erect as that without some form of support.  I often watch the re-runs because really Friends was the only US sitcom that I ever liked.  Now that they’ve stopped making episodes of course they’ll still ‘be there for you’ several times a day… on every other channel.  Most episodes I have seen umpteen times and I am ashamed to say that I know some of the lines even before they’re spoken but last week I saw an episode that was truly new to me.  I don’t know how the hell that one managed to escape me.  My boyfriend, who has always been very patient with me, supporting me through this affliction, had on the odd occasion pointed out the nipple phenomenon.  I have a vague recollection of him asking me if they use fake nipples (as if I’m part of the wardrobe team and would be privy to those kinds of details).  This woolen sweater episode – well all I can say is that Rachel’s nipples hit me square between the eyes and now that I’ve been alerted to the nipple situation I think I am subconciously always on nipple watch.  Making your actors wear false nipples is hugely cynical and I do hope that Jennifer Aniston was not a vitim of such tactics but what other explanation could there be?  that her nipples are just particularly prominent, that it was very very cold on set perhaps.  And what do fake nipples look like?  At this moment I have a worrying flashback to my breast feeding days when I was introduced to nipple protectors (which, by the way, were about as much use as a baggy condom.  They never ever stay in place.  Do false nipples look the same and do they have similar placement problems.  If so, it could give rise to an unfortunate 3rd nipple situation or as Chandler might say ‘nubbin’ situation.  I’d rather have a pair of real substandard nipples than 2 real nipples and a 3rd rogue nipple escaping down my chest and gravitating towards my belly button; no-one wants that do they?

The World of Children – No.11. The evolution of play-fighting

We are cordially informed that our child wants to punch his father’s booby and take it away and put it on the wall. Just what is a parent to say. Last week he got his dad in a headlock; the result? His father could not move his head properly for a week. Of course this is all part of his play fighting but it is becoming apparent that we cannot compete with outside influences. Our 3 year old does not spend all day watching the T.V (as we are well aware that experts say that any longer than 3mins of viewing a day could be detrimental to a child’s development) but the watershed seems to be non-existent and so if we dare switch it on during the day there’s a good chance that we will find scenes of people getting their heads pummelled or people being chased by monsters. I fully expect to sustain further injuries as our son’s toddlerhood progresses.

Modern Day Dilemmas – No.23. No No No, New Kids on The Block

A few days ago I saw something really wrong. I switched on the music channel and saw some middle aged looking men cavorting with bikini clad jail-bait. I vaguely remember a show last year where random members of oldskool boy bands were plucked from the brink of celebrity death, shoved in a nouveau shite group and resurrected for all to see; Totally Boyband I think it was called. What I just saw was truly cringe-worthy and I thought it was part of the mad reality show music machine. Then oh my God…could it be..? that guy looks vaguely familiar, he bears a striking resemblance to that now well respected actor Mark Wahlberg (AKA Marky Mark). Does that mean that this man trying to imitate cool is in fact his brother, Donnie? And who were these other blokes who i should have recognised (save for a few years of plastic surgery or lack thereof). As Janice would say, “Oh…my…God!!!” As the name flashed across the screen I could deny it no longer. ‘New Kids on the Block’?. You have got to be kidding me. Since when did old become the new ‘new’? I used to love New Kids on the Block. Why in the hell did some stupid music fool have to go and ruin things? Leave the 90s as they were -a sweet memory. Resurrecting old pop is like going to your Grandad’s funeral and then realising that he faked his own death; it’s HORRIBLE. Had they changed the name I might have had more respect for them. Might I be so bold as to make some suggestions? How about ‘Old Guys Who Have Been Around The Block (a few too many times)’? What next? Long Johns and beer bellies as 40somethings play out their mid life crises in song on screen gyrating with teen playthings? Madonna in soft focus is enough. Leave it alone (respect to her for longevity, muscle tone and flexibility though). At least she’s had the decency to stick around and evolve. Having a 15 year break is just cruel. If you see someone every day you don’t so much notice when they grow the odd nostril hair or gradually gain a few pounds, it’s not so much of a shock. But when you haven’t seen someone for a few years and then they come back into your life your mouth is saying, “It’s so good to see you. You look well,” when in fact your mind is saying, “Fuck!!! What happened to you?”. I’m not saying boybands shouldn’t change I’m just saying perhaps we shouldn’t have to see it. If your music hasn’t evolved then why bother? And what’s the backwards styling all about? They made them wear waistcoats when they were young and now their old we get bare chest under jackets and skin tight t-shirts. This isn’t even a WTF moment it’s a What The Fuck! moment. That shit needs to be fully stated.

Even with the dungarees and dodgy leopard print jackets these were solid times.

Now? Not so much

Have just watched the video again. The song and them are actually growing on me. Oh harsh harsh world.

My World of Dreams – No.19. The pussy, the penis and the fighting dog

In my flat we all are; an Asian family with 3 children and their pet. I feel anxious about this funny looking bony dog which is the colour of red dust or clay and keeps coming at me. The wife tries to stop it but the husband does not seem to care. Does this dog represent the devil or am I developing some kind of persecution complex. I don’t like dogs anyway and especially when they are used as an extension of a man’s penis. You know who you are, all of you out there who are walking round with your Pitbulls, Rottweilers and Staffordshire Bull Terriers, giving dogs a bad name. I never had a problem with dogs until the 90s when summer dog attacks seemed to be all the rage. Now, I’m seeing a lot of young girls being walked by these dogs. My other half assures me that these are women whose boyfriends have sent them out to walk their mutts. Is this true? Are some men using their women as dog walkers? What the hell is going on? Is this some kind of way of asserting your masculinity even further? Some kind of double extension of the penis? What’s more, a lot of these girls find themselves getting mugged for these valuable hounds. What good is that? In these cases it only goes to prove that you, your dog and your girlfriend are all pussies.

My World of Dreams – No.18. My boyfriend should marry Vanilla Ice

I’m planning my dream wedding – registry office then immediate party afterwards. I worry about not having enough space for all the guests. I think about having a really nice time with my pink trainers hidden beneath a long wedding dress with the main aim being a good time for all. Isn’t it how all weddings should be though? a good time for all. Clearly I’m never getting married though. I’ve just told my man to go and marry Vanilla Ice. He’s always going on about him; about how everybody loved ‘Ice Ice Baby’ until we found out he was a white guy and now that the Ice one just flashed across our T.V in one of those 90’s nostalgia shows he’s just assured me that “He’s actually a really good looking man.” Perhaps I’ll marry my pink trainers instead then that’ll leave him free to go after the Vanilla one.