Just to reassure myself it could be worse!

Ok, so I don’t blog for a week and then make two posts in one day, there’s nothing like inconsistency!

I’m still vaguely obsessed with Christmas and organising the work Christmas party and remembered an email I had received from Student Nutty Nurse some time last year.

I obviously haven’t saved it, but finally tracked it down on Boreme.com. You’ve got to love the internet!

Anyway, urban myth or not, I’m so glad that I don’t have to organise a Christmas party on a large scale, else I think I’d have the same reaction as this woman!

Enjoy.

Public dancing solution!

Some of you are aware that my sense of rhythm is sorely lacking. I have made some progress recently thanks to dancing in Best Friend’s kitchen and embarrassing small children, but there is still vast room for improvement (though I did manage a Burlesque-like shimmy type thing the other day!).

I will not dance in public, unless I am under the influence of a serious amount of alcohol, and even then it’s pushing it. But I think I may have found a solution!

I have recently heard about these things called Headphone disco's. It seems that when you enter the venue, you are immediately issued with wireless headphones. Two different DJ’s play at the same time and you can choose which one you listen to. There is no music pumped into the club, it only comes through the headphones. So if you take them off, all you will see are people dancing to…nothing.

I guess it looks a little odd at first, a bit like a Mime’s disco, but imagine the potential. No one would be able to tell if you were a bad dancer as they would just think you were dancing to different music to them. However, I guess it could also make a good dancer look bad, but I don’t really care about that!

I need to find somewhere where they are using these. Not only could I dance in public without embarrassing myself or anyone who knows me, I would willingly pay good money to see those that think they can dance look as silly as me!

The things they say

What did you used to believe as a kid? I’m not talking about Father Christmas, The Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, but the seemingly random things that you used to believe.

I came across this website the other day. It’s a place where you can submit all those things that you used to believe; either the things your parents told you or the things that made perfect sense in your head but no one else seemed to get. You can now find out you were not alone!

My Mum and Dad were just like any other parents in that they took great pleasure in telling me things, just to be entertained by my reaction. It seems to be a perk of the job which can provide many hours (or sometimes months!) of entertainment.

There seem to be standard things that ALL parents tell their kids; crusts make your hair curly, carrots help you see in the dark, you’ll stay that way if the wind changes and if you swallow chewing gum it will take 7 years for it to digest. The ones they were probably told as a kid too.

Then there are the ones that parents make up themselves. My parents had two, both of which I believed for quite a while.

In the town where I lived as a kid, there was a huge statue of Issac Newton which stood outside the town hall. My parents used to tell me that at night he would get down of his stand and roam about the town. I was never clear about what he was doing on his nightly trips, but it all sounded very realistic to me and I used to lay awake at night, waiting for him to come down our street. Part of me would be wishing that he would come, so I could see for myself what he was doing. The other part was terrified; convinced he was some kind of relation to the more scary giants in the BFG!

I was quite a gullible kid and also believed them when they told me that the cat’s eyes in the middle of the road were actually cat’s eyes! The story was that this was how the cats made their living and if I looked very carefully at dusk, I would see all the cats walking down the road to their station, where they would then lay in bed for the night, just looking into the road, to help drivers stay on the right side of the road. I never saw the cats.

I don’t believe either of those things now. My only concern is that I can’t find anyone else on the site who believed anything even remotely similar…

Here comes the bride (with a remote control!)

Now, I know there are some crap TV programmes out there and there are some odd TV channels, but I have come across one that just seems weird. We’re all used to things such as the shopping channels, the god bothering squad and the ‘community’ channels but this is different. I have seen an advert for a station dedicated to weddings.

Amazingly, and imaginatively, it is called Weddingtv. The advert informed me that ‘what every girl needs is an excuse to grab the remote control’ and tried to sell weddingtv as the place where I will find ‘relationships, celebrities, glamour …and everything about weddings’. Sounds…umm, nice.

I’m sure that there must be a market for this kind of thing, but I can only imagine that their core group of viewers will be made up of wedding planners, Bridezilla’s and little girls feeding their dreams of their own weddings.

Disturbingly, I spent quite a while trying to think how they would fill 24 hours of TV, 365 days a year of stuff about weddings. Not being the type that has ever wanted to get married (no, not even as a kid) my knowledge of weddings is limited to the ones I have been to, which tend to be of the get pissed and fight variety, so I struggled a lot with this.

Conveniently they had a handy website to help me. There I discovered programmes such as World’s Greatest Spas, Rich Bride Poor Bride and Weird Weddings to entertain and advise the bride to be. There also appeared to be all sorts of essential information, but by this time I was slightly scared and didn’t understand what I was reading, so I left.

I can vaguely see the point of stations such as QVC (I’ve even been known to watch it when I’ve been in the depths of insomnia and BBC 24 just isn’t making sense anymore!) but a station dedicated to weddings? Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t get it.

I mean, their viewers must only stay for the duration until their wedding is over. I know there is a never ending supply of brides, but surely it’s only relevant to watch this before you get married. But it seems they have thought about this. On their website, there is a nifty feature called ‘My Wedding Album’. Yes, it is now possible to store your beloved wedding photos on a TV website – doesn’t that just seem slightly wrong? They obviously don’t think so. It takes pride of place in their advert, I guess that is their unique selling point and this is their proud parent moment.

It’s the blokes and friends of the bride that I feel sorry for. Up to now, there had just been the magazines to contend with and they weren’t too bad, it’s easy to hide something of that size. But, what do you do about a TV channel? I can see Sky subscriptions being cancelled all over the place…

Bloggers Against Abuse

Whilst I was looking around the web at all the different blogging communities, I came across this. Blogcatalog are running a 'Blogging for a Great Cause Challenge', on September 27th, they are hoping that 1000’s of bloggers will blog about stopping abuse. For full details look here, but basically they are asking people to blog about putting an end toany form of abuse. It is up to each person what they blog about, whatever you're most passionate about. I’ll be taking part; I think it’s a great way to get a message across.

From cyber to reality.

I think most of us would agree that the internet is basically a good thing. Yes, there are some negative sides to it, but its part of our everyday life. For me, one of the best things is being able to keep in touch with friends I don’t see very often and also for making new friends; usually those in other places that I would never get the chance to talk to in real life. And that’s the thing; the web connects so many people together, so what if you decide that you are going to meet someone from the internet in real life?

I’ve met two people that I originally met on the internet, both were certainly interesting experiences! Enter Mr Chickens and Charm and Mr Takeaway Tears. Mr C and C was a charming, older man who seduced me in real life with pet chickens and home cooking. After talking to him for a while online, I agreed to meet him. He turned out to be very different from his online alter ego, but I was attracted to who I met and ended up having a brief and intense affair, with some of the best sex I’ve ever had. It’s not something I regret at all and have some very fond memories; even now chickens always make me smile.

Mr TT was a very different experience. We met during my short lived dalliance with the world of internet dating. We had been exchanging messages for a few weeks, had spoken on the phone and got on. Our conversations had got more heated and it was clear what we both wanted to happen when we met. He came up to see me for a weekend and off I went to meet him, horny and full of expectations. Yet again, I met a very different person. Instead of the tall, long haired, sexy bloke in all the photos I had seen, I was greeted by the exact opposite. We went for a coffee, where he started to tell me that he felt he was stringing me along as he was still in love with his ex. I wasn’t that concerned by this. On seeing him in reality, I’m afraid that I was instantly turned off and was now wondering what I could do with him. I had decided that even though I was no longer interested, it didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends. Throughout the day he regaled me with stories about ex Mrs TT, getting more and more upset, whilst I alternated between trying to both comfort and entertain him. The night ended with us in his hotel room, him sobbing over a Chinese takeaway, my friends only laughing at my ‘rescue me’ texts, whilst I fantasised about escaping through the window rather than swinging from the chandelier!

And that’s the thing about the internet. It gives us a space to be who we want to be, act how we want to act and become our alter ego’s. It also allows us to escape from our own reality and enter someone else’s. Unfortunately, two different realities rarely mix well. I don’t know if I will ever meet anyone from the internet in real life again. If I do, I’ll keep in mind that I don’t really know who’s on the other end of the modem.

On the record.

Funny thing this blogging lark. There are millions of blogs out there, whatever you can think of someone, somewhere has blogged about it. Some people use their blog to keep in touch with friends and family, others blog for anyone who cares to read and then there are those who choose to keep their blog private. It doesn’t seem to matter why or how we do it, we all seem to want to record our thoughts. I guess in some ways, blogging is the same as keeping a diary or writing letters to people, it’s a form of communication and a way of preserving ourselves, saying, we were here.

I used to blog a few years ago. I tended to use it as place to try and sort things out in my head. I guess it was a form of therapy for me, but I didn’t keep it up. I’m not sure why I started up again this time; it’s certainly a different style. Now I seem to blog about things I see or just put down my opinions about things. I don’t really mind if anyone else is reading it, though it would be nice if they were.

I didn’t write an entry last night, I was so tired when I got in from work, but I kept thinking about it in bed and realised that I missed writing something. It would appear that blogging can be an addictive thing. I’m not sure what I’m addicted to, it’s only been just over a week since I started, but I definitely felt funny not having posted an entry. Maybe it’s the basic human need to be heard and have our thoughts considered important.

43things - goals and ambitions.

Goals. Ambitions. Dreams. Wants. Desires. Whatever you want to call them we’ve all got them. Even the people that I meet that say they have no goals have them, they just haven’t been able to put a name to them yet.

I’ve always been aware of what I want from life. Sometimes I’ve got a bit confused or I’ve been side tracked, but they’ve always been there. The problem I’ve had is to keep up the motivation to do anything about it, or just be able to put a plan together. Well, all this has changed in the last month or so. I stumbled across a site called 43things and it has really changed how I go about achieving things. When I first read about it I thought ‘yeah, right, it’s just another way to procrastinate or spend more time talking about what you want to do rather than doing it’. I was very wrong. What I found was a site that really helped me to focus on what I want and how to get there, as well as a group of people who are friendly and encouraging. I have to admit there is a feeling of being accountable to other people, though there is no pressure at all, just support and no one thinks anything about it when you give up on a goal for some reason. My list is ever changing as I edit goals, complete them and add new ones. There are big goals (buy a house) and small, fun ones (learn to juggle) and I find this works best for me. I also add ones I know I will be able to complete quickly. The act of being able to tick something off always encourages me to move on with the rest.

One thing that helps is the encouragement from other people. And I’m always surprised at the number of people who have the same goals. Sometimes you stumble across a goal that you hadn’t thought about before and decide to give it a go; 43things can open up new possibilities, which can only be a good thing. The only thing that concerns me is the amount of people that have the goals ‘I want to commit suicide’ or ‘I want to be anorexic’, there is something disturbing about it, though there is part of me that feels that subconsciously they must desire some form of help as they would be aware of what kind of response they will get – though maybe it is just the attention they need.

For anyone who likes lists and needs something to help them maintain motivation and focus have a look and see if it’s for you.

Music moves on.

So, today is the day that Prince has released his new album by giving it away in The Mail on Sunday, and what a reaction this has got! The outrage this has caused in some people is really quite shocking. There are ultimately two winners in this situation - Prince and the Mail. They've certainly created an event that has generated more publicity than either party could have hoped for. I switched on BBC News 24 this morning only to find myself watching an item about it. Now, I had expected a brief mention, especially due to the reaction to the release by the music industry, in particular that of the likes of HMV. However, I did not expect it to be one of the main stories, though maybe that was quite naive of me!

The Mail will more than certainly receive one of it's highest level of purchases today. I bought it and I never read the Mail as it does not sit well with my own personal views, so I only bought it for the CD, which I suspect many, many people will be doing. Who will refuse an album that costs £1.40? The Mail may well win a few new readers, which I guess is their ultimate aim. Prince has managed to create a huge amount of publicity for himself, mainly through free PR. He has been paid by the paper and will undoubtedly earn even more through tours and the trappings that come with that.

Some of the music industry and those selling CD's have joined forces in expressing their dislike for Prince's actions. They are shouting about the rapid decline of sales of CD's, which is very true. However, maybe they need to accept and recognize that the way in which we buy and listen to music has changed considerably over the last few years. The internet means that many people now download their music (legally or otherwise), whether it's singles or whole albums. Certainly many artists recognize this themselves. Ash have announced that they will no longer be producing albums, but will be releasing individual tracks. Gnarls Barkley shot to number one with 'crazy', through downloads alone. Many artists release a single for download quite a while before the physical single itself hits the shops. There are also those artists who hit mainstream listeners through popularity on the internet - think Sandi Thorn (though there are those that argue this was just a very clever, planned PR stunt!).

HMV have taken the decison to sell the Mail in their stores today. They claim this is the only way they can make the album available to their customers, though they seem to have missed the point. In this case we are not HMV's customers, we are in fact customers of the Mail. I can only imagine that they are hoping that if people buy their copy of the Mail in their stores, they will be enticed to buy more music whilst they are there. This is an acceptable retail trick, but please do not insult us by dressing it up with the 'we care about you getting this album' talk!

It also has to be noted that newspapers have been giving away CD's and DVD's for a long time now. True, the CD's tend to be of older artists and of complilations (I also bought the Mirror today and got a Jerry Lee Lewis CD!), but the principle is still the same. It is just that in this case an artist has decided to release his new album through this avenue. Maybe music retailers need to keep up with their customers and work with us, rather than struggling against the inevitable. CD's will never disappear completely, that was the fear for vinyl, which is increasing in popularity again. Yes, it is convenient to be able to download music, but there is something very satisfying about looking at a healthy collection of CD's!!