Midweek Music Meh-ness

I don’t know what the hell is going on this week but I am uncharacteristically ambivalent regarding new music so far. I know it’s only Wednesday but I’m starting to freak out a bit. I went to Wendy Roby’s singles reviews on DiS on Monday = she was good as always but the tunes… wasn’t really feeling it. I’ve trawled my Twitter feed, listened to Grimmy in the evening (he’s still amaze obvs)… and don’t even get me started on the wave of apathy that was so strong I almost feared it was a narcoleptic fit when M.I.A’s video got tweeted this afternoon. I really just didn’t care.

 

To be fair, I’m a bit over M.I.A at the moment with the publicity and mass conspiracy theories overkill. The tracks I’ve heard have NOT got me particularly excited and that’s what it comes down to, even if she was stitched up by a bad journalist lady. Weirdly, Sleigh Bells who are on her label and widely described as being heavily influenced by her stuff  = AWESOME. So essentially, they’re out M.I.A-ing M.I.A. Weird.

 

I realise on the grand scale of things that this is a trivial dilemma, for goodness sake there are people getting murdered in Pakistan over arranged marriages, Naomi Campbell’s having trouble remembering whether a bunch of blokes came to her in the middle of the night with a load of dirty diamonds in court (errr how would you forget something like that???) and Neil the smug actor is STILL in Celebrity Masterchef but this is the first week in … well AGES that this has happened.

 

And if that doesn’t bring a bunch of wicked-cool tracks to my attention tomorrow, well, I’ll have to post a bunch of movie trailers again and have LINK HELL on Friday cos the ol’ WordPress will conk out. Yeeeah, cross everything Twitter/Hype Machine are flooded tomorrow lunchtime…

No Lobotomy Required

I’ve been thinking about setting up a new blog specifically about dealing with crap stuff but in a straight-talking, humorous at times manner as opposed to the condescending, fluff that appears to be everywhere. I figured I’ve been through a fair bit of not-so-amazing stuff that a LOT of other people experience every day. At the time,  when these things happened, I wish I’d read something that suggested I wasn’t alone with dealing with this sort of crap and was written in a way that addressed me like a normal person rather than one with a lobotomy/two heads.

It’s weird, though – I guess cos the stuff concerned isn’t exactly fun-times, it’s hard to write about it in an irreverent, breezy fashion. Amongst the things I wanted to write about was the subject of mental health but from the opinion that it really doesn’t have to be treated with the hysteria and the fear that it so frequently is. It’s not all badly acted Hollyoaks plot-lines; mental illness is like any other illness – with a certain set of circumstances it’s in full reach of any of us. You just have to look at the fuzzy lines that already exist as far as categorising the subject – eating disorders are so commonplace they’re practically on the GCSE syllabus these days, post-natal depression or the baby blues – accepted as a probability, senile dementure – inevitable – these are all strands of mental illness but no one thinks of them as that, they think of them as part of life. That’s what mental illness is – it’s life with the volume turned up to 11 and it could happen to any of you.

In my teens in particular – I had a rough time, I went through the system and amazingly came out the other end ‘functioning’ which, astoundingly, every time I come into contact with a health professional, I am congratulated on. For real. This is utterly ridiculous and why I want to write about stuff that is crap but without the self-congratulatory or self-pitying tone. I Googled ‘mental health blogs’ and was shocked at the majority I came across being solely focussed on their illness and found this really quite bizarre and deeply saddening. I have fought since my teens against any diagnosis or illness defining my life and struggle understanding why someone would carve their identity from such a thing when there is so much more to a person than what label they’ve been stamped with by their doctor. Being patronised by the ignorant has been a source of irritation for over a decade for me so I thought I’d write about crap stuff from the point of view of acknowledging it, dealing with it and moving forward from someone that actually has experienced this stuff. And not sound patronising or earnest or whatever. Hopefully it’ll be a refreshing, enlightening experience for all concerned, including me, will keep you posted.

 

Oh, oh I see…

Some not very ground-breaking pennies that dropped today:

It is possible to write about stuff going on further below the surface without sounding like a) Carrie Bradshaw, b) a ranting, bitter old harpie or c) Bridget Jones.

It’s alright to be p*ssed off and stroppy after a day of doing data-entry, possibly the least suitable activity for my particular brain-wiring and makes me feel like my wings have been clipped. BIG TIME.

I’m starting to wonder if it’s okay to not be madly desperate for a full-time other half, in fact ideally I think I might just quite fancy having someone I spend my Sundays going to the cinema and having sex with (not at the same time, the smell of popcorn is not sexual in any way), the rest of the week would be quite nice catching up with the odd phone call/text conversation but then having the rest of my life as it is. So technically both of us Off The Market but Still Having A Life. Is this the antithesis of romance if I don’t want to spend all my time with whoever I end up with or is this an okay form of Taking It Slow?

As I watch Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors out of the corner of my eye as I type this, she’s really not as annoying as I remember her being purely on sight, it’s just her accent reminds me of a lot of really annoying English women that I encounter (on public transport mostly)all the time. So the accent isn’t as bad as I originally slated it when I watched the film the first time round, in fact it’s disturbingly accurate. Which I suppose makes Gwyneth possibly a good actress. Possibly. Shame that Chris Martin hasn’t had a decent hairdo since they hooked up, I’m afraid I still blame her for that.

I really shouldn’t drink tequila again, it always seems to result in injuries that linger for some time afterwards & the general feeling of being an alcoholic disgrace. Which I’m not. No really, I’m not.