bnf is moving!

in marking my return after the relatively short hiatus i am finally making the move to wordpress, although they have so far dissatisfied me with their inability to import posts from blogger beta - which is just silly.

i have some post topics stored up in my head but as both my time and my bandwidth have become significantly restricted of late, getting back into the swing of things will be a slow process!

The new blog has been created anyway:

brand new feminist on wordpress

haytch tee tee pee colon fwd slash fwd slash graceneedshelp dot wordpress dot com

hiatus (too much going on for Grace to handle)

(pic found at Circadian Shift)

Hello readers!

This is Katie, Grace's alter-ego - she would like me to let you know that she is taking a short (couple of weeks or so) hiatus from blogging because I am under a lot of stress from work at the moment, what with the 'whacked' schedule, and assignment deadlines, and suddenly needing to know more than is possible at this point about who to refer to what, and she is feeling a bit bogged down, and rather saddened by the constant normalisation of shit that she can't stand in the media (lots of "what am I going to do...? it will never go away...I am never going to get over this" from Grace's corner). The third person thing, the separating of me from Grace is necessary at this present time in order to keep on top of the above, but it will pass and Grace will be back with the following:

• How women MADE the pen industry and made Birmingham the pen capital of the world
• Ugly Betty - the phenomenon that is
• Recently acquired music, mostly by women
• T3 and Stuff...grrr
  

*grace comes back for a sec* Just ran in quickly to tell you that Sainsbury's in Oldbury, West Midlands is also covering their lads mags with blue things so we don't have to look at the covers! Grand! Although I was perplexed to see a 'sealed' insert with Company magazine all about breasts, do you want them smaller, bigger, perkier? And some real women who bravely show us theirs...in a sealed section in a magazine meant for people who have such body parts...but for people who have opposing parts - free for all the gaze and dribble at whether you want to or not! Bye!

*door slams shut*

bbs everyone! *waves*

fat cat!

Okay, yes it didn't take me long to get into the cat blogging, here I am with the first one.

I don't have a cat and I want one and I miss the cat in Norwich so much, so reading about cats is the best I can do!

FAT CAT CRIMINAL VIDEO ON REUTERS

I want to actually put the video on here but I have to wait for Reuters to approve me!

I just think this little story is so amusing because the cat is SO big and in the end it let to his demise!

hmmm...request successful but I think all i've actually got is a rubbish general Reuters news player thing, not like youtube...so here's a screen grab!

A bit Short from Clare

Well, she replied at least, but I don't think it was even her who wrote that! I understand that she's probably very busy and so couldn't reply herself, at least I hope in a way because someone who is as anti-porn as she is would have more to say on the subject than that - especially as I detailed some of the stuff from Reader's Wives that Charliegrrl was talking about and also linked her to the post! AND I also asked her if I thought anything could be done, but that wasn't addressed. Charliegrrl's post is here but you've probably already read it!

The link that 'Clare Short' gave was this

The book looks interesting although I haven't read the whole body of text on the page yet as I am busy busy busy stressing over 3 assignments, and I saw my first offender today so i'm in shock! Nah not really, it was okay!

What a girl wants, what a girl needs

He does the ironing! He tells you that you look beautiful ALL the time!

This was in Boots. Boots, which I have grown to realise doesn't do much other than reinforce stereotypes of women needing to primp and preen themselves with endless shelves of products and electrical appliances. While men have the odd 'male grooming kit'. I'm not going to lie, I like Boots generally, and I like 'pampering' myself from time to time, because hey i'm worth it (ha ha), but it's hardly balanced, and why shouldn't men feel the same?

Anyway, the point is - this DVD - yuk. Where would women be without a man to them how fantastic they are? There is no way that they could feel this of themselves through their achievements and have natural pride in themselves without some designer man in a vest telling them, is there? While it's nice to receive positive words of encouragement from one's other half, this DVD (the text on the back which unfortunately couldn't be seen) is marketed as what every woman needs. Like any woman who doesn't have a metro-sexual-in-touch-with-their-feelings-and-does-ironing male partner, has an incomplete life without said partner!

Okay maybe i'm being a bit serious about it, but again it's misogyny and dependence on men marketed as a 'bit of fun'. And I am sick to the back teeth of everything being a 'bit of fun' personally. By everything obviously I mean the sex (or rather 'sexual liberation') that's shoved in my face, and the 'jokey' oppression of women, and other such annoyance/disturbance triggers which are masked in innocence and fun...like playboy products!

bagged

I purchased this bag yesterday. It says goddess on it! Well actually it says mambo goddess, and I must confess i've never done mambo although i've done my fair share of Latin American dancing - 14 exam certificates thank you very much - but i liked this bag because it says goddess on it and I like the design. I wish I knew more about all the goddess stuff (that sentence in itself displaying my thickery) because a lot of people mention/blog/post about it and it seems very interesting. Yeah Grace, take on ANOTHER thing to fill your life reading about...i'm sure it would be worth it though!

Another great thing about this bag is that some silly people who go in Selfridge's all the time and pride themselves on having stupidly expensive stuff probably bought this bag for £27.50, I got it for £9.99. Oh yes.

Sometimes I think i'm a bit shallow with consuming. Wish I could just keep my eyes closed while walking past Ann Summers, 4front, Clinton Cards, HMV, Virgin Megastore, WHSmiths, etc though!

moan moan moan

Nothing of substance to say at the moment even though I know I have things to blog about but the events are getting further and further into the past (i.e. Christmas with Dee's family and discussing my supposed 'feminist manifesto' with men who i've known since the ages of 3 and 11) but i'm rather tired of late so i'm going for the old fashioned 'this is what i'm up to' post tonight.

::: Was supposed to go to a parole board hearing today but it was canceled yesterday (yeah they're really considerate like that) so instead I sat in the office trying to do my assignment and feeling ill and trying not to fall asleep. Later in the day I observed a supervision with this really cocky offender, just a real lad, and I was thinking "how am I going to deal with someone like that?" because as of next week I will have at least one person to supervise weekly.

::: Then the woman I observed with chatted to me about offenders generally and serious offenders, and rapists and murderers and I read some things, and it was kind of grim but I have to get used to it. Some of the things she told me that I can't really say because of confidentiality though made my skin crawl, and I think it's supposed to to be honest. I'd worry if I was desensitised to it - one of our lecturers told us of someone he knew who was seeing a prisoner who detailed his offence to him and the guy ran out of the room and was sick right over the balcony because of what he heard.

::: Going to leicester tomorrow for the student rep forum, which will probably be pointless but i'm doing my part for my colleagues.

::: Been reading a lot of my usual blogs and seeing that there is tension between bloggers and I feel like i've missed the boat on it all because i'm generally quite oblivious to things and I don't know so much if i've established myself as part of a community, if one exists, where I would be aware. I suppose I should just spend less time working and more time reading...oops no can't do that! Need this job!

::: We're going to look at a house next week, as our lease will be up in a couple of months and really we want a house because we have too much stuff, so if we can find somewhere ASAP and give notice it should be fine - not that they should quibble "You want to move out after you asked us to extend your lease for 3 months, when you've had no hot water for the last 2 and no one has lifted a finger to help you despite the fact that you don't actually own the property or any of it's fixtures/fittings/furniture? Preposterous!"

It looks really nice from the picture of the front of it though which is saying something because rented properties often look shabby compared to their 'for sale' friends. Also I really just want to not live in the city anymore because I feel like a pseudo-yuppy when people say "ooh powsh" when I tell them where I live. I want a house with my own furniture and my random kooky ornaments on proud display!

::: I WILL STOP GOING ON ABOUT MY LACK OF HOT WATER I PROMISE! I'm just generally a warm person and get hot and flustered easily so my skin, especially in the mornings after getting of bed, is usually really really warm so cold water feels even colder and i'm a big wimp!

::: Feel a lot like i'm going to fall asleep all day lately, probably because my neighbours listen to rubbish music between the hours of 9pm and 1 am ish and around 7am some mornings - i'm up anyway but not in the mood for so good ol' R N B (which I detest anyway for the fact that the B now stands for Base instead of Blues and Rhythm and Blues is so much better).

::: So I had a little look at wikipedia's long list of feminist factions - didn't make things any clearer. i sound like a radical but I feel like a fake saying that because i don't really feel good enough to call myself that, it's what I aspire to if I have to aspire to a label, but I don't know enough! i haven't read enough - my attention span and general guilt for not doing work have thus far prevented me from becoming a fountain of womanly knowledge. I'll just stick to me-feminism. It's worked so far!

So that was entirely uninteresting wasn't it! Well, it's my blog! To save the day, here's some xkcd (http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/youtube.png)

home sweet home office?

This is from page 15 of "Rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of the law-abiding majority Cutting crime, reducing reoffending and protecting the public: Home Office July 2006" Produced by COI on behalf of the Home Office, July 2006. Ref: 275921

Now all we've got to do is get the bastards convicted!

I'm going to be remain ambivalent about this until I see the fruits of it, call me pessimistic.

House of Hefner

Went for a little perusal round the shops yesterday as it was quiet and I wanted to go to the haberdashery section in House of Fraser (haberdashery is a great word!) and look what I came across! The biggest fucking display of the Playboy bunny I have ever seen!

Forget notebooks and pencils...what about...

HAIRDRYERS!!

CD PLAYERS (...Cuddly Toy!! well there is something above that looks cuddly)
FAIRY LIGHTS (yes, really)
a lovely CHAIR to straddle...
and guild the entrance to your boudoir...

*sigh*

In better news, managed to cover all the displays of T3 (tech-porn) magazine with knitting and what mortgage? magazines in Borders, Birmingham as well as a stack of m8 (clubbing magazine with a 'seductive' looking woman on the front, nipples covered only by green sparkles) with an NME. Also covered the 'golden globes' cover of loaded with a kerrang! (why do music magazines that were once so good and are now such a waste of money keep being the obvious choice for covering misogyny?) - and even got a couple of cover ups in in the bigger Tesco where the ladsmags are opposite the tills - a little moment of pride for me because Dee actually suggested which magazines I could use to cover them up - actual involvement is not far off!