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Friday 16 December 2011

Dictionary Corner

I don’t know when it is that the list comes out detailing the words that have been added to the dictionary this year. It must be around now. After all we get bombarded with all other kinds of cack, Sports Personality of the Year, greatest moments of 2011 (good luck, it’s hardly been a cheerful year news wise – they’ll have to keep showing that clip of the Panda’s arriving at Edinburgh zoo to try and balance out the economy) and the reviews of the year, where you sit around going ‘Thora Hird is dead? When did that happen and why wasn’t I informed’. I have my own traditions, I go to my Mum and Dad’s house and read all the Christmas letters they have been sent and frantically try and piece together the lives of families I have never really met. I then set the freeview + to record everything I want to watch over Christmas and then delete it all come January. This all gives me an enormous sense of joy to counteract the usual force of my natural ennui.

Yes do note the use of ennui for it cunningly links back to the first sentence of this beautifully crafted piece. I find ennui sums up the trials of life neatly and there is not really the equivalent in English. Roughly translated (you’ll have to excuse me, my French is a little rough, my google skills however are second to none) it means “Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest”. Now consider it used in a sentence: “listening to Bernard talk about the traffic on the north circular gave me an enormous sense of ennui”. Sounds slightly more poetic than ‘Bernie bored the tits off me” doesn’t it?

In the same way ‘Bunga Bunga’ parties conjure up just the kind of ‘What the...’ image that is required to imagine Silvio Burlesconi’s party habits. Do we have anything that could quite vividly paint such a word picture? I think not. This is why we are so often reduced to exclaiming ‘They’re just so ..UGHHHHAGHDHGHHHHHHHHHHH”. I did fashion a word that totally summed up the vilest person I have ever met but sadly it’s so foul I can not use it in public, let alone write it down. I sometimes say it when I am alone just for the sheer pleasure it gives me as it trips off the tongue. It sounds a bit like ‘Benedict Cumberbatch’ and I am constantly amazed that people haven’t accidently called him Benedict ***********. Until I remember the filth only exists in my own head.

I remember a friend of mine once winning a game of Balderdash by claiming that a certain word (I forget what) was ‘A Dutch word meaning a kind of empty sadness’. The beauty of that phrase has stayed with me despite the fact I have forgotten both the word and it’s actual meaning.

However my favourite new word is Kummerspeck. A German word meaning excess weight gained by emotional over eating. It literally translates as ‘grief bacon’. This could be the finest word in existence. There is nothing that compares in the English language. I am thinking of creating a word that sums up the feeling you have as an adult that you really should like olives but still think they are vile. Answers on a postcard

Monday 5 December 2011

Power of a Woman

Kelly Rowland performed her new single on the X Factor last night. As is traditional in these cases she was stripped backstage and then forced to perform a strenuous aerobics routine whilst huffing and puffing about how she wants to have sex on the floor. I think the exact words are ‘I’m Down for Whatever, down for whatever, baby for you I’d make love on the floor’. Which as we all know is how you judge your life partner. She experimented with the lyrics, ‘I think I can see a long term future with you, you treat me like an equal and I could perhaps imagine a joint bank account’ but it didn’t scan so she went with the humping on the lino. This is hot on the heels of Nicole Scherzinger performing her latest single ‘Be my Baby’ which was basically her making sex noises and then occasionally whooping ‘C’mon UK’. She too had had 90% of her clothes removed and been sprayed with some kind of glitter hose.

Oh course it’s not just the women, when Justin Beiber performed he had his lad out and sung about how he’d like to be taken over a kitchen bar stool. And Olly Murs, he leapt around lunging and bending in just a jock strap like he was having an internal cavity search and sung a song which seemed to be entirely comprised of pre-ejaculation sounds. Oh did you miss that episode? That’s because it never happened. Boys are allowed to sing normal songs (even if they are crap – Beiber I’m looking at you), wear clothes and even shock horror, play instruments. Girls can’t. Girls must be naked and sing about what they want boys to do with them. And why is this?

Why it’s because we’re so empowered. Think about it. Some days you think ‘Wow it would be nice to have equal pay with men, to see an equal number of women in the cabinet, perhaps see a woman on a comedy panel show. To not have to pay VAT on tampax.” And then you think again, how could I bemoan these things. I have equal rights, I am empowered, I have the right to dance around like a page 3 girl on acid singing the sound track to a porn film – because I am empowered! I am not appealing to a male tabloid readers idea of a what a woman should be because some how, some how, it has become the norm that women WANT to do this. Female celebrities give interviews about their sex lives, pose in their pants, if they are incredibly empowered they’ll go fully nude. Truly we are equal. Except you don’t see Take That completely naked, on all fours, biting their finger and looking back over their shoulder. The Kaiser Chiefs don’t have to give interviews about what they like in bed. We are treated like second class sexual objects and some how we’ve been convinced it’s a great idea!

Women: grow up. Put your clothes on, get some self respect. Talking graphically about your sex lives doesn’t make you liberated it makes you a whore. And I’m not talking about a sexual whore (do what you like away from the cameras, I really don’t care) it makes you are a media whore. Your records and talent aren’t good enough to make the papers on their own merits so you strip. Perhaps up your game and make it on your own terms (like the boys).

You’re making us go backwards. Girls these days want to be pop stars. Kids of 6 and 7 dance in a way which would make a lap dancer blush because they are copying what they see on TV. The X factor is so called family viewing. Well come on little girl, dance for the boys. After all it’s all you’re good for. Famous women, You have an opportunity. Make it OK to be a woman, a funny, opinionated, intelligent woman. Who is able to compete equally with men. With our trousers on.