Merry Clicks

T'is the season to be merry... and to make a list of things that I 'recently' discovered and that cheered me up tremendously.

This is when I'm quite happy that my odd habit to hop from link to link and to follow the works of artists I like turns into a very good thing.

When you start learning to fly and you look for... well, everything about planes, you wonder why there are so many things on YouTube about 'cabin pressure'. You click a link, and you start listening to an awesome radio show. Created by John Finnemore, Cabin Pressure is funny, witty, moving, and I love it... even if I do have to keep in mind that "M" is Mike, not - I repeat NOT - Molokai. ;)
Mr Finnemore is very funny, and he sounds quite nice - and he's got many other talents (I'll admit that I'm quite fond of his brain, and the man can draw, too. What's not to like? Seriously... I'd give a lot to be half as funny as he is!). [Note to self: you're good with another style. Deal with it.]

The day I was looking for info about Mark Gatiss (more films or series to watch), I discovered that he's written several novels, and I must say that I often read again his three novels featuring Lucifer Box. I highly recommend The Vesuvius Club (first in the series, and with quite a few - absolutely delicious - twists), but do read them all.

I'm definitely looking forward to some more Sherlock next year.
I did 'click' twice on that one: first, when I opened a friend's e-mail where she very strongly suggested that I watch it, and when I ordered the DVDs of Series 1 (same thing happened for Series 2, minus the e-mail: I now pre-order the DVDs).
Sherlock is so good that it rid me of depression for a few months (before another Real Life explosion made me go back to my plant pills). Just for that, I'd love it, but it's so incredibly good (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes's novels and short stories - in two huge volumes - were among the very first books I read, and they're in my brain forever) and it's made with so much love that it's become very dear to me.
Sherlock is having Holmes and Watson beamed over to our century and updated by a team of fans and devoted people who make it look astoundingly good.

Then, there's CBBC.
Completely by chance, I discovered two series that are very good. The titles caught my eyes, and it turns out that both are quite nice to watch.
Not taking things in order, the second that caught my eye is Leonardo. The plot is completely improbable, but who cares? It's entertaining and good (seriously, I wish the series had been this good when I was a teen... a few aeons ago).
And then, there's my current new addiction. The best surprise (for me) of the end of 2012 was Young Dracula.
I caught Series 4 on the telly, just because I wondered what that was about, and I thought 'Hey, why not give it a try?' (I was hooked before the end of the first episode I saw), and thanks to a cousin who'd saved her old iPlayer files, I was able to catch up on Series 1 to 3 (bless her!).
I discovered this series right after Auntie Beeb decided to release Young Dracula's Series 1 DVDs. I wasn't done watching Series 1 at my cousin's that I was already ordering the DVDs.
Now, our lovely "auntie" needs to wake up in marketing and get the other series on DVD, too; there seems to be a devoted audience - teens and older viewers (*cough* I'm not the only older viewer who finds it really good), and producers need to learn to feed the fans properly - and before the next millennium!
[Note to readers: if you've got an e-mail address to contact Auntie Beeb, share it with me. My hunt on the net was fruitless between CBBC and BBC Worldwide (which was indicated as the site to contact in order to know what DVDs are going to be released)]
So... if you like witty vampires and a stellar cast --> Young Dracula. You're welcome. Enjoy!

The Tale of the Warmongering Boy

Once upon a time, there was a boy who insinuated himself into a town guild. It wasn’t because he was interested in the activities of that particular group, but because he was planning to make himself look good and to profit from the prestige of the guild – and make fun of a few guildsmen as well.

The boy decided to pretend that he was terribly cute and charming; his strategy was to insist on those fake aspects of his personality.

For months, he worked diligently, and his act, combined with a fake exotic accent to ingratiate himself with the head of the guild, worked so well that he was soon welcome to all guild activities.

Yet, there was one member of the guild who’d always found the boy’s accent and behaviour to be suspicious.

One day, during a meeting, the member of the guild was disagreeing with the current politics of their trade, and he was pointing out that he didn’t think they were making the right choice, but he’d follow the decision of the guild.

That was when he heard the boy hiss that he should keep his words to himself because his point of view was useless.

He swirled towards the boy and growled, ‘What did you just say?’

‘Nuttin’, m’lord!’ the boy answered quickly, flustered.

‘How strange! I was under the impression that you wished me to remain silent on the topic,’ the guildsman pointed out.

The boy knew that he was trapped, and his only hope was to attack the man who could show the entire guild how petty and vain he was. He rushed to the side of the head of the guild and willed fake tears to his eyes as he mumbled, ‘Puhliz, m’lord! I was jus’ sayin’ tha’ the guildsman ough’ to tell us more on the topic. Tha’s all yar ‘ighness! I swear!’

The head of the guild looked at the guildsman and shrugged.

The guildsman turned to the boy and said, ‘All right, I’m willing to accept that you didn’t mean that. If you’ve got something to say, speak up and be clear.’

Then, the boy made a dire mistake; in his blind wish to turn the other guildsmen against the trader who was daring to call his shitehawk bluff, he went too far by using standard bullying technique: he tried to turn himself into the victim.

The boy started whimpering and pretended to cry as he wailed, ‘’Onest to Gawd, m’lord! Now it’s yous that’s picking on me because I’m so small, and I ‘asn’t ‘ad the good education that yous ‘ad. So yous’re picking on poor lil’ me. T’is unfair!’

By now, the guildsman had lost all respect for the boy, and he was ready to have him flayed for trying to make him look like a fool when all he’d done was defend himself.

‘And pray, boy! When did I pick on you?’ the guildsman inquired, his anger boiling dangerously up.

‘Right now! You said that I’m stupid!’ the boy shouted. ‘I never deserved tha’! Am a nic’ boy!’

Since all the other traders were silent, and not offering a word, for either side, the guildsman made a decision: he’d read the riot act to the boy.

‘Stop it!’ the guildsman yelled. ‘Even if I were to grant you that you did mean something different when I asked you to explain yourself, it would not change the fact that you’re trying to make me look bad, on purpose, in order to have the others say “Oh, that poor child! That adult is being so mean to him!”, but I can see through your sham. First, you should stop using that idiotic fake accent of yours! It’s childish; and sometimes, you stop using it, which shows that it’s not something natural to you. Then, I can tell a bully when I see one, and right now, you’re just playing the victim card. All bullies do that because most people are going to react to the last thing that was said, and they won’t look too far – or even stop to think!’

‘Bloody bastard! You’re a nuisance, and you should really shut your trap!’ the boy hissed.

The guildsman looked triumphantly at his fellows and said, ‘See! The boy is a bully. Now, it’s up to you all to make up your minds about him.’

The guildsman settled comfortably in his chair, whilst the boys looked daggers at him.

The moral of this story is that if you allow bullying boys to grow up into adults who still have the same mentality, they’ll end up being whingeing wankers of a variety that can start wars by twisting facts.

Think about it.

Fake Definitions: bipedhood

Disclaimer: This is obviously a fake definition.

bipedhood

Pronunciation: /ˈbʌɪpɛdhʊd/

noun

informal

[mass noun]

1 the state of acting like a warranted idiot rather than a human being: Brainless plonkers are extremely good examples of average bipedhood.

• the qualities that can nowadays be associated with stupid specimens of bipeds calling themselves humans, such as stupidity, parasitic behaviour, and complete intolerance: Most of the current nasty things on Earth are due to too many idiots being allowed to give in to their common inner bipedhood. 
• the sad members of the Homo Sapiens /ˌhəʊməʊ ˈsapɪɛnz, ˌhɒməʊ ˈsapɪɛnz/ species as a group: Apart from the fact that it makes the Latin name, 'wise man', look like a pathetic joke, or a blunder, bipedhood is characterised by the fact that its members are utterly incapable of seeing how harmful, bigoted, short-sighted, twisted and generally limited they are. 

2 splendid neologism the condition of being a twat: His bipedhood shows when he attempts to fight against human and civil rights in the 21st century.

 

Origin:
December, 11th, 2012: from Latin bipes, biped- (from bi- 'having two' + pes, ped- 'foot') + -hood

 

My E-Speakers' Corner

[Fair] WARNING: This is not a rant, just a growl. Read at your own risk.

I feel as if I've spent my whole week being angry because of tiny details, but with enough straw all backs break.

I've been annoyed by insignificant things - and yet... They are not that insignificant because, in my book, they reveal much, much deeper things, things that would make most people snort at me, but that I find important.

So, in no particular order, I give you:

-   I’ve caught several articles in Irish, British and American newspapers that were referring to the Duchess of Cambridge as “Kate Middleton”. That’s funny, because I seem to remember some big wedding months ago. 
 So, what is it? Is it that readers are too stupid (lazy?) to adapt to her new surname and title, or is it one of those sexist things where she’ll always be the commoner who married into the Royal family? 
 If you can call Miss X, “Mrs Y”, after her wedding to Mr Y, then you can do the same for the duchess. 
 I know it’s going to sound barmy, but I feel the urge to contact editors and ask them to do their jobs properly and/or volunteer my eyes to edit their papers because, Merlin! I’m not out of work soon if the current state of writing is any indication.

-         I’ve had a few problems in my classrooms this week: one student thought I was too stupid to spot that he’d copied and pasted a full page from the Internet (I’m an adult, so I must be stupid, right?); apart from the fact that he thinks that I wouldn’t notice that his first page was full of mistakes, whilst the second was almost perfect, my classroom rules clearly state that plagiarism is a thing that automatically makes a student fail. Perhaps the student will learn to spell ‘ouch’… 
 Mind you, I caught another one cheating, and the student was barely embarrassed as in ‘Oops, yea, I did that’; I didn’t even get an apology. 
 Icing on the cake, a friend of the cheating student cannot keep his mouth shut, so much that I’m left wondering if the precious one is smoking the bad lawn or inhaling some glue (seriously, there’s something odd). Well, that’s three students who’ll have to come back to class next semester for the same thing – Oh, joy of joys! *headDESK*

-         I see that our victim-blaming culture is alive and kicking. After the tragic death of the poor nurse who put the prank call through to her colleague in charge of the Duchess of Cambridge (if you want to read an excellent account of what happened, go there), I’ve seen a few people say that there was a security/privacy breach and that there was to be more to the story because no one dies because of a prank. Whatever happened to ‘Who gave these idiots the right to call the hospital for so-called fun?’? Um??? 
Let’s not forget that a young woman’s health was in the picture, too (I’ve also seen people says ‘Pfft! She’s pregnant; that’s all!’, but all these twats forget that all pregnancies are potentially lethal and that the condition that had her shipped to the hospital is quite serious). 
Perhaps I’m wrong, but if someone calls, pretending to be her Majesty at 5:30 in the morning, I’d probably go: ‘Yes, Ma’am. Whatever you want, Ma’am.’, which takes us back to the ‘Who gave them the right to do this?!’. 
And to the heartless bipeds that think there’s no reason to die over a prank, I’ll say that they’re not the victim of a callous stupidity that went virally global, that they can’t know how bad the nurse felt for falling for that prank and that they basically don’t know (or care about) how she felt after this. 
Two people thought that it was funny to make a prank call because, somehow, they think that they’re entitled to make fun of and/or profit from a charming young woman only because she’ll be a queen someday. 
Like gossipers, pranksters consider that they’ve got the right to do what they do, but they do NOT, and today the world has lost a woman (a wife and a mother) to heartless arrogance and complete stupidity.

-         On Twitter, I started following the Sea Shepherd group. 
I might have to start buying more tissues: I’m watching the preparations to dolphins’ slaughter in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, live. 
I have to take short breaks, or I’d kill my keyboard by soaking it. Dolphins are either murdered or sold to aquariums. 
In the live feed, you can hear the dolphins’ cries, and it’s so incredibly sad. I’d rather starve to death than harm a dolphin (and yes, I mean that), and I can’t understand how anyone can do that. 
I’ll go a step farther: the murderers are very lucky that I’m not over there because I’d try to stop them. Over the past minutes, I’ve been dreaming of baseball bats, and even if I dream of a Klingon ship coming to help, I know it’s unrealistic… but I do dream of snipers. Awful? Yes, but I’m on the side of dolphins.

There are days when I wonder if my DNA mutated, or something, because I really don't feel related to most of  this Earth's lazy, heartless, brainless, greedy bipeds.
I'm going to stay on my soap box for a while, if you don't mind...

Я люблю Київ

All right, my silent blog visitors, I can see quite a few clicks coming from beautiful Ukraine... and I've got "bait" to (hopefully) make you comment.

If my health allows it, I'm planning to go spend a few days in Ukraine - probably next Spring.

My main aim is going to be Kiev, but I'd like to hop by Odessa, too.

So, first, confession time: the title of this post might be an attempt at Ukrainian, but I just started Russian in fact (I'll learn Ukrainian once I've tackled more Russian, I promise). Will (very) elementary Russian, fluent English and French and bits of Spanish and German be enough for the trip?

Would you have tips? Things to see, do, eat, avoid like the plague.........

C'mon! Help a fellow Earthling.

Good Cause, Wrong (High) Horse

I can understand that when you want to see evil somewhere, you'll find it, but I'm so angry that I've got to growl a bit because of an Op-Ed I've just caught in The Advocate.

It's there... Go and read it for yourself. Perhaps you'll think that I'm the one who doesn't get it, but I've got to get this off my chest.

The author sounds pretty angry that some CSI characters deal with another character as a man, because he states that the character is clearly a transgender one. Erm... perhaps I didn't see the same thing, but it never occurred to me that this character was a transgender one. Never ever. It was clear that the character was a transvestite, and just that.

You can blame:

                         - casting

                         - wardrobe

                         - director (if you want)

BUT the writers meant to have a transvestite bloke with a broken teapot, or a medical condition, or... as it turned out, who was higher than a kite above the ISS.

There are so many real problems that it's a disservice to the cause and all transgender people who need love and protection, to see evil where there's nothing worth getting your underwear in a twist.

Perhaps the filming was really bad, and the make-up, and the dress, but once it's obvious that the character is short a few marbles, or something, the entire "I'm a woman and I'm pregnant" line takes a different turn and dimension.

Now... I surfed a bit, and until I caught the Op-Ed, no one saw the transvestite character as a transgender one being mocked. Granted, I found a few very disappointing "tranny" references, but that's all.

I'll admit that I'm angry. Not because I'm a CSI fan (I mostly lost interest when Grissom left), but because the author is directing his anger at something that doesn't deserve it.

I'll take for example the reference to the episode 8 of season 5: when the author mentions only the doctor who committed the crime that's being investigated, he doesn't say a single word about the way, throughout the entire episode, Grissom treats Mimosa, the gal who helps him find the truth. That character, Grissom, behaves like a gentleman, treats her like a lady and tries to cheer her up in the conclusion of the episode.

So, yes, the culprit was a MtF trans (for Body #1), but Body #2 was killed by her husband.

You see, between the blinkers the author seems to be fond of, and the blatant ignorance of positive points in plots, I ended up with my blood boiling.

Growling at a franchise for wrong reasons isn't going to educate the public and the happy bunch of idiots who insist on using the wrong pronoun (for whatever nutty reason) once a change is started. The trolls and thugs who physically and verbally abuse our trans brothers and sisters do so because they've got the brains of the average cavemen.

I find the CSI casting obvious and predictable and the plots are mostly going south, but the latest episode never was about a transgender character. FULL STOP.

If the author's group's been monitoring CSI, as it is said in the article, it looks as if they've never properly listened to the Grissom character, the one who told his team to look beyond the appearances.

Yes, people (viewers and various telly addicts) need to be shown good examples, but methinks someone's barking up the wrong tree...

*off the soap box*

Of Incompetent, Lying Bankers - Take 2 (Lights, Camera, Action!)

I haven't been around long enough to update the bank situation, but it's so Kafkaesque that I've got to share these adventures with you now...

Do you remember the letter that I got from Bank #3 where someone tried to charge my dead account for some current running costs? It turns out that it was perfectly "normal"... since I thought that it had been closed since last August, whilst the final step hadn't been taken, and the account was still on life support.

The advisor, who is still super nice and efficient, rectified everything in thirty seconds.

Lend me a wall, I need to crack my skull!

Oh, and now for something just as Kafkaesque: Bank #1, where I e-mailed my silent and basically uninterested advisor in order to ask her if she still had a trace of my mother's mandate on MY account and she answered about my lost mandate on my MOTHER's account. Can't people read?! [Don't bother answering, I know... I know... Or comment with barmy bank stories of your own]

Since the cherry on the icing on that frigging cake was that she'd used the wrong title to address me in her answer, I grabbed the phone, though I really had another fish to fry that day, and I told her she'd missed the plot.

She did apologize, but that doesn't change the fact that her branch has lost my mother's mandate on my account, which means that were I stuck in hospital for whatever reason, Mother could not use my account in that bank.

December quiz: Guess which account is going dormant again because of an uncaring advisor in an incompetent branch?

I can feel a tiny lil' letter for the manager taking shape in my brain: if they lose their archives that easily (and aren't bothered one bit!), why should we trust them with our hard-won money in the first place?