Episode 109. In which I discuss current affairs.

The fact is I haven’t blogged in a long time.  I don’t even know how long.  But a long time.  The other day something happened that I had an opinion of that I thought was blogworthy, and I thought I’d fire this monster up and get it going again.  Then more things happened, so this is a combination post.  Two deaths and an assault.

It has not been a nice news week.

So here it is.  Chronologically.

Perez Hilton.

Perez Hilton has made his career out of being nasty about people, making snide, petty comments about people, about their looks or their careers or their talents or their social lives, being judgmental and generally horrible about people.  This week, after quite some time spent being horrible about the Black Eyed Peas, he was at an event they were at, some things were said, and some guy with the BEP crowd punched Perez.

Perez called the police, they didn’t come quickly enough so Perez tweeted that he’d been assaulted, posted pictures online, and now he’s suing for assault and, I believe, humiliation.

I have a problem with this.

Assault is not OK.  Nobody should get hit.  I’m a firm believer in people having done unto them what they’ve done unto others, particularly where the victim was innocent and/or defenceless and/or smaller and/or had reason to expect better of the attacker, but in an ideal world nobody would get hit in the first place and therefore nobody would need to get hit back.

However, humiliation?  Really?  You’re going to sue someone for humiliating you, when the reason the whole world is aware of what happened is because you told them?  When you posted pictures on the internet so everyone could look at you?  When everything that you have achieved in the last however many years was done on the back of humiliating other people?  I don’t think so.  You can take that and shove it, Perez, you’re a publicity hound.

Apparently he actually said he didn’t tweet for the publicity.  Who on earth is fooled by that?  If you text your friends, that’s one thing.  If you tweet your X thousand followers (I do not care enough to check how many he actually has, I’m not one of them) knowing full well that amongst those followers are (at least) several journalists, then it is your fault when people find out about the fact that you got twatted as a direct result of your bullying.

In conclusion, if Perez Hilton gets any damages out of the humiliation side of this law suit, then the law’s an ass.

Hilton’s a hypocrite regardless of the outcome.

Farrah Fawcett.

Farrah Fawcett passed away on Thursday, after a long battle with anal cancer.  I don’t know anything about this woman at all, I know of a couple of roles she played as an actress and that her hairstyle was iconic.  However, knowing so little about her makes it all the more tragic to me, somehow.  Any death is awful, of course, and the sooner someone finds a way to stop people dying of cancer, which is a vicious disease, the better.  But in Farrah Fawcett, I’m not mourning an actress, because I wasn’t a fan of her work.  I’m not mourning a fashion icon, because I never actually liked her hairstyle.  I’m mourning a woman who, despite being massively famous, I never heard anything about other than the two things I just mentioned.  Famous people who are famous these days without being scandalous, or publicity whores, who are just well-known without coming across as desperate for attention, are rare.  And it makes me respect all the more those who maintain a life in the real world, or at least not in the tabloids.

Don’t get me wrong, not being a massive fan I’m not in actual mourning.  But I can respect her as a human being who went through something awful and she is in my thoughts.

Michael Jackson.

On Thursday, Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest, seemingly without warning, at the age of 50.  And now half the world’s gone all weird.

I was never a Michael Jackson fan.  I did not like his music, and I thought he danced like a twat.  If, right now, you’re thinking anything that starts with the word ‘but’ then I would ask you to just stop right there.  Whatever you’re about to finish with, whatever achievement or memory or innovation you’re about to spit out, that’s what he was to YOU, not to ME, and this being the internet, I’ve just as much right to an opinion as anyone else.  You may think I’m wrong but then I think you chose a role model based on weirdness.

I have no idea whether Michael Jackson was guilty or innocent of the things he was accused of.  I do know, however, that he was seemingly incapable of living in the real world.  He was lucky, privileged, talented if you were a fan, he had everything he could have wanted, and instead of making himself a life anyone would be envious of, he insisted on constructing a fantasy world to live in.  Not content with being too good to spend his life in an office or on a building site or in a call centre, he decided he was too good to breathe our air.

He had his troubles recently and he leaves behind him three small children, who will now have to learn what the real world is in the absence of the father who prevented them from having to live in it while he was around.  I am not happy he died, I do not laugh at his death, I do not take this opportunity to accuse him of the most horrific of crimes, because I genuinely do not know whether he was accused justly or whether his own lack of ability to handle reality was turned against an innocent man by opportunists.

Neither am I wearing sack cloth and ashes, wailing in the street, crying on NBC or holding a vigil in his honour.

I did not know the man.  Let’s be honest, nobody knew the man.  To put a definition on ‘knowing Michael Jackson’, if you never met him and he never called you by name, or remembered your existence when you were out of earshot without being reminded of it, then you didn’t know him either.  He was utterly unique and he constructed a world around himself that few can comprehend in itself, never mind translate what was on the other side of it into the terminology of the life that the vast majority of us know.

I read an interview this week with a man who claimed to have known Michael Jackson, and he said they’d sneaked him out of his hotel to wander around shops and suchlike, because he was so eager to know how it felt to be normal.  He had every opportunity to feel normal.  Britney Spears is huge, she used to be massive for her music, then her scandalous lifestyle, now her efforts to get back on the straight and narrow, but she still goes to Starbucks.  The Queen still goes to Ascot and holds hands with her husband to sing Auld Lang Syne and breathes the same air as her subjects.  Michael Jackson wore a surgical mask, and allegedly slept in an oxygen tank, and called all three of his children after himself.

I do not mourn Michael Jackson for the things he did which people have interpreted as the miracles required for his sanctification.  His children are in my thoughts, and I am not happy he died, but I am not capable of putting either his life or his death into a context that relates even vaguely to my own sphere of reference, and so the outpourings of grief strike me as ridiculous.

That’s just my opinion.
And that’s the kind of week it takes to get me to blog again.

Diabetic moment of the day

Today I had a caramel frappucino from Starbucks.  It was sugary, but it was icy and it was lovely.  Today was a hot day and I am sunburned.  But I am not sunstroked, because I had my caramel frappucino.  And I’d do it again.

Episode 108. In which I get jetlagged without going anywhere.

The clocks changed on Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Society is now trying to convince me that it’s half past eight, when in fact it’s half past seven.  We sprung forward, that’s what we did.

For some reason, I have not taken to this well At All.  I have a splitting headache, and my brain is just mashed, I am out of my gourd right now, not thinking straight, or even wobbly, not even zigzag, my thought patterns are just everywhere.

A few years ago I went to New York on holiday.  The jetlag hit me very hard, I did not take to it well, I was wrecked for about 20 hours of every day I was away.  I think I’m a bit vulnerable to time changes.  It’s never hit me this hard before, but My Man’s had a horrible cold and felt rough all week, so I think I might have a wee touch of that, not enough to actually make me ill, just enough to bitchslap me upside the head so I lose my place in the space-time continuum.

I hope you all sprang forward with a little more grace than I did.

Diabetic moment of the day

I don’t have time for diabetes today.  I need to go to bed.

Episode 108. In which we do a little bit of gardening.

Our new flat has a little bit of a garden out front, so we’re growing vegetables in it.  This is quite exciting so My Man has also bought a potato planter bin thing (god knows what it’s actually called), and I’m pretty sure he wants a wormery for his birthday.  This inference I got from his subtle discussion of where he’s going to put his wormery.  Which, granted, he might be willing to buy for himself, but we’re both really rubbish people to buy presents for so I hijacked this and demanded that I be allowed to get it for his birthday.  Now all that remains to be seen is whether he can wait til then.

It was nice and sunny today, a little bit nippy but pleasant, not like the rest of the week, which has been sneaky with all the rain.  So we were both out in the garden, digging a trench to plant some tatties, and then I took some pictures.  Not very good pictures, you understand, I’m just not a natural photographer, but green things are pretty.

Other than that I haven’t done too much really, just a ridiculous amount of washing up.  I was so proud of how clean the kitchen was yesterday, then I made the chilli for last night’s dinner, and by the time we’d eaten and everything somehow most of our crockery needed washed up again.  It’s alright though, I hate washing up cutlery and mugs and classes, they’re just annoying, but plates and bowls and saucepans and things, nice big straightforward things, they’re OK.  And if you make the water hot enough, they evaporate dry really quickly.

My only other achievement of today was that I watched a ridiculous amount of Supernatural on my laptop.  We had a friend round last night so that he and My Man could watch the Grand Prix this morning.  I don’t like F1 because I find it boring and it takes ages and it means I can’t watch the telly.  But now I’ve got a couple of Supernatural box sets I don’t care, I can stay in bed and watch what I want.  This morning was a cheat, of course, because it was the Australian GP and it was over before I even woke up, but still.  For future reference, there’s nothing else on telly on a Sunday anyway, so as long as I’ve got DVDs and my laptop, I’ll survive.

Diabetic moment of the day

Today we watched Heston Blumenthal’s Roman Feast, which included an ejaculating cake.  It was a chocolate cake, ejaculating saffron custard.  Oh My God did I want to eat that cake.  It is depressing to know that even if Heston Blumenthal cooked for me, I couldn’t eat that cake.  Boo.

Episode 107. In which yo no soy española.

Today I have achieved a lot, I think.  I don’t feel massively exhausted by it, which is a risk when you do a lot after a hard week.

I am sitting in my living room, which is clearer since I finished a lot of unpacking, looks nicer since I sorted out the stuff that had been dumped on top of the DVD unit and the DVDs themselves, and is nice and lightbecause it’s a bright evening, in spite of the rain.  I can smell the chilli con carne I made from scratch, which has been simmering away in the slow cooker for the last four hours, ensuring it’ll be well and truly infused by the time we eat in another hour or two.  If I can wait that long.  I am just home from a refreshing stroll through the drizzle to the shops, where I bought the finishing touches for dinner (rice and freshly baked pitta bread), and so much San Miguel that the guy in the off licence asked if I was Spanish.
Yo no soy española.

Diabetic moment of the day

I haven’t had one today.  Which makes me suspicious.

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Episode 106. In which I forget what I was going to say.

Sorry.  All I can remember is my diabetic moment of the day.

Diabetic moment of the day

I’ve been taking insulin at breakfast time again, I didn’t for a long time but more recently (since the cold really) I’ve been back on it.  It’s been going fine, back to normal, and even when my blood sugars came down again from the cold I still needed a bit of the good stuff with breakfast.

Today, however, mid-morning a massive hypo hit me hard.  It came out of nowhere, first I knew of it I got the shakes so badly I had to open my emergency bag of jelly babies with scissors.  I couldn’t make my hands open the packet.  It was pretty scary.  My sugars, when I got all the kit together, were at 2.7.  I’ve seen lower.  But not very often.

Creepy.

Episode 105. In which shit happens.

Today I have had one of those days.  By ‘one of those days’ I mean one of those days that makes you question your abilities.  I have questioned my ability to do my job.  I have questioned my ability to manage my time.  I have questioned my ability to find my way home.

However, with hindsight, I was just being blue.  I rock my job, and I rock it hard.  I don’t have any problem with time management other than not enough time in the day.  And I can get home just fine, if I just sit still and let the train take me there.

I intend to wake up tomorrow bright as a freakin’ button.  Wish me luck.

Diabetic moment of the day

I had a bit of a shaky moment today.  Luckily it was right before someone’s leaving do, which was tea and cakes.  I had a tiny little square (seriously, like half an inch squared) of millionaire shortbread, which sorted me right out.

Episode 104. In which is it bedtime yet?

Sometimes a girl just needs an early night, you know?

The thing is, I am sleepy and yawning and drifting and dozing, and if I don’t go to bed now then what will happen is that I will become very giggly and idiotic and say even more stupid things than usual, and then when My Man goes to bed I will stay up and watch Grey’s Anatomy or some such bullshit.

Bullshit, I might add, that I do watch regularly, but usually watch on a Sunday afternoon when My Man’s at the pub.  I’m not dissing the Anatomy, especially not since Denny came back, I’m just saying, it’s nonsense and I really shouldn’t be staying up til midnight watching it.  Especially not when I’m having a hard time staying awake at 9am.

So the plan is I am going to eat my banana and go to bed.

Banana’s not a bad craving to have at suppertime, I’m quite proud of that.

Diabetic moment of the day

None.  I did have a lovely lovely lunch today.  Macaroni cheese at a pub really close to where I work, that I’d never even considered going into before.  Finding good macaroni cheese is excellent.  It has inspired me to put more mustard powder in my own cheese sauce.  Damn it was good.

Episode 103. In which it’s always just firefighting

I stayed late at work tonight, I thought I could get a lot done.  I’m slowly clearing my desk, the piles build up again of course but a little less each time.  So today I thought, I can get a lot done in an extra hour, maybe clear a little bit of space that I can keep clear and maybe add to another day.

What did I manage to do in my extra hour in the office?

I managed to find an hour’s worth of problems I didn’t know about before, so I made no headway whatsoever in the backlog I’m pushing to get through.

This is what happens every time I work late, it seems.  Maybe I need to stay two hours late, so I can spend an hour doing what I need to do and the second hour on the firefighting.

Or maybe then I would just find twice as many problems.

Maybe I should just stop looking so closely.

Diabetic moment of the day

None, again, look at me, I rock.

Episode 102. In which stop spamming me

It seems like every day now I’m deleting comments from my spam queue.  Don’t get me wrong, I love comments on my blog, especially from people I know (handbag suggestions very welcome) but strangers are very welcome too.  But there’s always something in my spam queue.

The WordPress spam queue is pretty much perfect to be honest, I don’t think anything’s been caught by the filter that hasn’t actually been spam.  I just don’t understand, really, what it’s all about.  I assume there’s some kind of automated nonsense that just finds my blog and the random bullshit just appears there.  But if you’re advertising diets, or knitting, or whatever, I’m not interested.

Just leave me alone, spamface.

Diabetic moment of the day

I want marmalade on toast.  I didn’t have any, though.  That would be cheating.

Episode 101. In which I fail to find a handbag.

I want a new handbag.  I have a lot of bags but I want one that’s more grown-up, that’s big enough to hold all my stuff (purse, book, insulin kit etc) but not big enough to be considered comically oversized.  I saw one in Monsoon that was quite nice but I didn’t buy it, it wasn’t in the sale.  And now I need to find something similar but affordable.

Today I looked in a few places but didn’t see anything that came close.  I saw a bag I really liked but then realised it fell under the comically oversized category.  I have a business lunch later this week so I might have a look around the shops near work on Monday.

I did have a really pleasant walk around today with My Man, the sun was shining and although it was a bit nippy it was lovely to be out.  I stayed in bed for a long time this morning, just for the sake of being lazy, I watched loads of Supernatural on my laptop.

Diabetic moment of the day

Not that I can think of.  I really want a bowl of ice cream though.