Women

We´ve all been to one of those 'couples' parties arguably a little inappropriately clad - perhaps a little too much thigh or cleavage, or marketing as I like to call it - where we´ve been given the icies by the wives or baby mothers. But let´s face it, who´s to blame here?

Having children doesn´t mean that one has to go all frump on it; and if one´s husband can´t keep his eyes off my cleavage, well isn´t that just a little message from god telling one to up the anti on the wardrobe and at least splash out on a push up bra?

They say that the titty loses some of it's erotic appeal once it's been used as a life support system for a baby, but one sure way to get your husband's roving eyes off everyone else's cleavage is to draw some attention to your own...even if he´s not the first man to notice, he soon will, and he will no doubt rise to the challenge once he realises that everybody else is copping a look.

Being the only single at a party isn´t an easy ride. It´s hard to come out on top, unless you mean that kind of on top, which certainly is never on the agenda but sometimes the power of the paranoid thought projection from the jealous wives brigade can take its toll.

Whatever way you look at it, you´re fair game. The men all think you must be gagging for it because you´re single, the women all think that you´re there to crack on to their partners - why else would you attend such a drab family event if not for some kind of ulterior motive? Especially when there´s a whole world full of hot young things out there gagging for a ride on a cougar.

Whilst it´s true that the social options are both appealing and in abundance, it´s disheartening to see that some women actually lose their self confidence and ability to see that you´re at their party by choice, not pity. I wouldn´t trade my footloose and fancy-free lifestyle for monogomy (sounds too much like montony to me) for quids. So to think that I might be desperate enough to want their sloppy seconds is a little delusional - perhaps the poor darlings are just trying to reassure themselves that they snared a half decent partner/life/compromise/whatever. Who knows. What these women can´t seem to get their heads around is that not every woman wants a conventional life, some are single by choice and enjoying the true benefits of living in a liberated society. But that needn´t make us all homebreakers.

Alas, it´s true, there are single women out there not only intent, but actually dependant on the fairytale marriage & 2.2 children for their future happiness, who have no qualms in targeting other women´s men. But I´m sure they will be punished and that true happiness will ultimately evade them...remember the ten commandments...thou shalt not covet that which is not thine, thou shalt not commit adultery...the woman who lives and loves life's pleasures should never drink from the cup of her fellow sister. I´d love the think the vast majority don´t. But I don´t know. And if I´m to listen to the male take on this, I´m just further confused.

Women. A complicated species. How can we expect men to love us if we can´t even love and respect ourselves or each other? I´m sure if we all try a little harder we can be happy, secure, fulfilled paragons of women who inspire our fellow sisters to reach great heights of womanly bliss without foul play. Love your sisters ladies! Save your hating for the men, you just might need it one day ;-)

But seriously, ideally, don´t be hating on anybody. God did not make women to be haters, she made us to be lovers. Love on sisters, love on.

Up The Duff

For some people, watching that little blue ink marker that starts as a negative morph into a positive symbol is the very meaning of their existence. And good for them I say; it´s a dirty, nappy filled, expensive and thankless job, but someone´s gotta do it. I´m talking about being up the duff.

Maybe you don´t believe me, but really, for some people, life is just not worth living without the sound of a screaming baby. Or five. These days there´s big bucks involved. You can sell your eggs online. It´s still illegal, but people are all over it, there´s not really any proper policing going on. Especially young women in their early to mid twenties with a few degrees and some kind of pedigree (arian preferably) in the genes. They can rake it in. Up to €12,000 a pop, apparently a 'good breeder' can drop up to 5 eggs at a time...that´s only just over 2 grand per egg and with five in the turkey baster, who knows? One could end up with twins; blond, blue eyed, MBA gened twins. Super!

Whatever, whether you think paying for donors or using the public health system for free (whilst cancer & organ donor seeking patients wait for you to curtail to your egocentric needs) is moral or not is not for me to pass comment or judgement on.

But you can see the appeal of controling the evolutionary process. Imagine how gutting it must be to be a man with two daughters. It must have been disappointing enough to see the first one come out as a girl. But to wait another 9 months before you could touch the mrs again, then another 9 for gestation...nearly two years....and then to end up with another bloody girl. Je-sus. That´s just not cricket.

Or imagine if you were the poor woman who carried three...not 1, not 2, but 3...sons! Fuck. What else would you say? Sure, if you were nice wifey, demure, accommodating...a total doormat basically...you would just smile sweetly at your testerone laden xy cromosone sperm shooting husband and congratulate him that you´re almost half way to your own in-house 7 aside rugby team.

What else could you do? Without looking like a poor sport that is. Sweet FA really. The only possible solution could be to go the Samoan fafafine route. That is, to make the youngest one a girl. Dress him like a girl from infancy, treat him like a girl, basically, turn your boy into a girl of sorts.

This isn´t a concept that works for the men who end up with a tribe of daughters, it only works for the mothers with sons. And rightly so. You would expect something after all that pain and pushing. A daugther at least. Three sons? Plus a husband (or an ongoing string of unsuitable suitors)? All that testosterone? No, no. Really, I mean no. That´s just plain unreasonable by anybody´s standards.

Anyway, my point is, if you´re up the duff thanks to mother nature and if that´s what you want, then good for you. If you´re chucking loads of money towards forcing nature to do freaky shit, then screw you, your doctors and your selfish ego for fucking with evolution.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TaX9rQr8Fc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=46R4afqRRI

Is There A God?

Sometimes I think that maybe there is a god. Like when I´m walking home in the sun and there hasn´t been a cloud for weeks and suddenly, like a gift from god, there´s a great big giant cloud. It seemingly appears from nowhere to shelter me from the evil sun's rays as I zigzag my way home seeking solus and shade every 500metres in some bar.

Let it be known that I live some 3km from the centre and one can't stay out in the sun for extended periods when carrying fresh fish and other produce. Well that´s my story and I´m sticking to it. Nonetheless, such natural phenomena does make me wonder about whether or not there is an almighty one pushing a few buttons upstairs. In this example, not only have I been spared the risk of exposure to the sun's cancerous rays, but my liver and various other organs have also been spared. You do the maths, 3km/500m...6 bars...

And just to fuel the fire of my catholic rooted need to question divinity, there´s the incredible genius of nature...or god...that I´m not a boy. Somebody knew what they were doing when they decided to make me a girl. If I was a boy, or let´s say a man, I would be the worst possible type of man. Every stereotypical nightmare of a man that you can think of, all rolled into one, that would be me.

I´ll start with sex, as really, even without being a man, that´s the first thing that comes to mind.

I´ve just read Russell Brand´s My Booky Wook and I have to say, if I were a bloke, I´d make Russell Brand look like Peter Pan. His trips to Asian whorehouses and Hackney orgys, what-eva! I´d get some kind of passport and travel the brothels of the world, getting the 'ho's to autograph-time-date-place each encounter. Maybe they could issue it like a receipt so that one day if I ever wrote my own booky wooky about all my filthy experiences with the whores of the world, I could claim it all back under research in my tax return.

See what I mean, I would be a multi-faceted cunt of a man. Not just a womaniser, I would be a tight bastard, a ruthless businessman, and ideally, bloody good looking - and well aware of it - to boot. The kind of guy who turns up to the party and all the other guys think 'oh fuck, here he is, guess I should save my energy chatting up any of these birds here til he´s decided which ones he´s taking home'. Or to the bathroom/garden/car/alley/hotel suite.

I´d have some level of decorum. For example, I wouldn´t do animals or children, and I´d never cum in a bird´s mouth if she didn't want me to. Not unless I was paying for it, in which case it'd already be part of the deal, coz of course you don´t wanna be messing with those pimps.

Yeah, but as for returning phonecalls or acknowledging them in public, that´s another matter. They can be bloody pesky so the best thing to do is ignore them, they get the message sooner or later. Any signs of stalking I´d get the cops involved. I think that's probably the woman coming out in my man, as a real man might feel a bit gay doing that. But I reckon that'd be the way forward, get those bitches off your back quicksmart, none of them wanna be in the paper on stalking charges.

Orgys, swingers parties, I´d go to them too. I´d have a whole harem of fit bitches on rotate so that none of them started getting any ideas that they meant anything to me. Keep 'em guessing I say. At these gigs, I´d meet more chicks to keep my little harem turning over nicely. Like a vicious cycle that you never get tired of.

OK, so that´s the sex. What else? Shit, it´s hard to think of anything else when you´re a man. Um...business I guess. Well, basically I´d be a tight, exploitative corporate genius of some description. I doubt I´d have much compassion, I would be out for everything I could get. One foot wrong, I´d fire you without batting an eyelid. I´d do dodgy contracts, I´d employ no women of childbearing age, I´d have an accountant who knew how to diddle the books, a fuck off gas guzzling RV. And of course I´d shag the secretaries, accounts clerks, or any woman that wanted to climb the corporate ladder. Or keep her job for that matter.

Thinking about sex again, I'd be up for the occassional George Michael type of encounter, smoke a bit of crack in the Hamstead Heath dunnies and see what happens. Couldn´t see myself making a habit of it, you never know who might see you at it. More just to see how the other half live, can´t knock it til you´ve tried it I say. And threesomes, an obligation of sleeping with me more than once would involve having to bring a girlfriend or family member (twin sister ideally) along for the ride. And what a ride it would be, because as a man, I would have the perfect apendage that was capable of marathon stints without the aid of viagra.

I would do my best to treat women as equals, but I am afraid that sooner or later I would resort to seeing a pair of tits and a pair of legs with a head stuck on top. But you´d have to give me points for having a crack...oops, there I go again...you see, I´d never get it off my mind.

I would have some drinking buddies to go out on the pull with. Sometimes hunting in packs can be effective, it gives the other blokes a chance to cop off with somebody. I'd go in for the kill leaving the ladies at least one down, providing a perfect opportunity for my boys to strike up a conversation with the leftovers. I´d be a good mate like that, try and set my mates up. And always happy to share if it looked like I might pull more than one at a time, 4 way action, woo hoo!

Anyway, where was I? Trying to justify my question of god. The probability of there being some kind of god definitely has a ring to it when I think about how lucky the world is that I'm not a man. What a prick I´d be. A complete class A wanker. Speaking of which, that´d be another problem...I´d never keep my hands off it.

I´d probably be arrested for indecent exposure in a public place. God, I could end up in jail for a string of offences...the crack in the dunnies, the inappropriate touching in public, nicked in some illegal underage brothel raid...shit, the more I think about it, the more sure I am that there is a god who had bigger plans for me. Thank god I´m not a man!

Kids

I love kids, they´re great fun. So long as they´re not crying or cramping my lifestyle in any way. Which is why I don´t have any, because realistically they´re gonna do all of the above. Think the wife´s a handbrake? Wait´ll you have kids! Handbrakes personafied. Or personalised handbrakes as it were, as opposed to personalised numberplates, which at least you can sell down the line and maybe even make a tidy profit from. You can´t do that with your kids; not unless you´re living in Asia. Or pretty sick.

Economically speaking, kids are expensive to run. A foolish investment really when you consider that no matter how much you spend on them, you´ve still not got control over how they´ll turn out or whether they´ll be capable or even interested in keeping you in the style you´re accustomed to when you´re old and fucked. So really there´s no point. I think it´s much cheaper and less debilitating to keep them at arm's length - let friends and family do the hard yakka of popping them out & maintaining them, stepping up to spoil them rotten every once in a while to keep yourself in the favourite aunty stakes.

Inconsistency in this regard gives you some serious cut through. Don´t make the mistake of being too timely with birthdays and christmas, you just get lost in the clutter. Every man and his dog are dishing out the goodies at these times, so unless you want to break the bank and splash out on an ipod or playstation, you´re just going to disappear into a void of gifts. Pointless.

It´s much smarter to disappoint the little fuckers with complete disregard for their special day then come through with the goods when they least expect it. At this late stage, you can get away with a chuppa chup if you like (suck on this kid!), it´s out there on it´s own and will hence be warmly received thanks to not having to compete with the barrage of shit that´s being hurled at the kid from every which way on the day.

A phonecall is a great way to get a double hit on the brownie points scale. A day before or a day after is best, once again so as to get that cut through factor. On the day itself, they´re usually too busy prepping for their party or unwrapping presents to be interested in fielding phonecalls from wellwishers anyway, ungrateful little bastards. So, call the day before or day after, or you can even stretch it out to 2-3 days either side. It´s failsafe. And if they´re wondering why they haven´t received a gift from you, you can just blame the postie. Off the hook easy peasy.

Having planted the seed of anticipation, you can hit them with the slam dunk a few weeks-months-whenever you get round to it later by finally sending them something. And like I said, you can get away with murder on the budget front because you´ve got total top of mind! But the lollipop won´t really work, you´ve got to represent with something half decent...here´s the trick. Wait for the sales then score them something ubercool that´s been marked down by 80%. Badabum badabang, favourite aunty status safely in the bag.

Actually this is the only way to shop for kids these days, the spoilt little fuckers demand all the latest gadgetry as though it´s their godgiven right that you to slave your ring off bringing home the bacon for their retail pleasure. I blame the tele. If I had kids I wouldn´t let them watch it. Or if I did, it would be taped and played back upon completion of household chores. I would edit out the advertising, hereby saving my fragile ears and headspace from their relentless harping on at me to acquire them all and sundry.

I would take them back to basics, for example, they would make their own toys. Mud pies, sticks for guns, home made bows and arrows that we could terroise neighbours pets with...and I would teach them to design and make their own clothes. I would discourage them from following fashion and encourage them to be weird and individualistic, even if wearing crazy ensembles of opshop-hand me down-self tailored meant alienating themselves from their classroom peers.

I really wouldn´t care if the kids got a hard time for being a bit freaky. It´s character building. No biggie, just because you´ve got no tele, make your own clothes and toys doesn´t mean you should have the piss taken out of you. Bring it on I say, fuck with my kids and you fuck with me you little fuckers. That probably adds to the freak factor, a hardcore loopy mother prepared to give kids the bash if they mess with her brood. You see, nobody would mess with them with this in mind.

That´s the point, build respect through fear. They´d all be clamouring over each other to get an invite to a sleepover at our place. Getting down with the freak family that nobody dares to fuck with. Imagine the feelings of power, security, exclusivity, social standing generated by having access to our exclusive world. I mean what kid do you know that wants to be in a normal nuclear family? Huh? Give 'em half a chance and they all want out, break the mould. Freedom! That´s what draws them to my family, the poor little fuckers never get half a chance to express themselves or dare to be different within the confines of their own white picket fence world.

The parents would be another story, they´d be as nervous as all hell. Worrying that the source of our creativity was coming from a world of drugs or religious/satanic rituals or the like. I would play on their fears by having lots of low red lighting, candles and allow my kids to wear black. Why not, it´s my favourite colour, why can´t it be theirs too? I would let them run riot in my makeup kit from an early age. They would all develop their own individual styles, from christina ricci in the Adams Family through to Edward Scissorhands and everything in between. There would be no sheepish wallflower behaviour from my kids, they would be encouraged to explore and express their every creative whim.

If they didn´t have any such creative whims, they would be coerced into having them. No food until they´ve come up with something rad. There would be deadlines involved and all manner of stimulus to aid and abet the cause. Nothing like a bit of acid in your smoothie to jumpstart the imagination. I would never give these smoothies to other people's kids though, well not without their approval or unless I realised that they were in dire need of some kind of jump start in the personality department.

My kids would have great work ethic and a natural survival instinct. Natural because they would know no other way. If they were cute enough, I´d pimp them out for modeling so they could start paying their own way. The less easy on the eye kids would have to settle for standard jobs such as paper runs or whatever the modern day equivalent might be. Whatever, by the time they were of school going age, my kids would be able to pull their own weight as sure as hell I'm not going to be the one entertaining them during the school holidays. I´ll be focusing on maintaining my sanity having to have them around me for all those extra hours. They'll be needing to get out of my hair and get to work, hell I´ve done my time for those unindurable first 5 years of hell. Yep, my kids would begin their journey into self sufficiency and automony young; by the time they hit high school they´d be capable of running the show. Or for parliament for that matter. They´d be off the hook my kids, if not a little weird.

But weird is good, it´s like the presents thing, cut through. Better to stand out than to be in their with all the bog standard wallpaper, a homoginised sheep. A sheep. Imagine. Who in their right mind would want their kids to be sheep?

I would teach my kids to have their own point of view and if that conflicted with that of their peers, teachers or guardians, that they should buck the system. Mash shit up, see what happens. They might get expelled, too bad. I would home school them, or better still, send them offshore and step things up a little. It would take them a while to get kicked out again, they´d have to learn a whole new language in order to figure out what they´re dealing with. Then if that day ever came, I would play the cultural differences card to buy a little more time and tolerance. If that didn´t work I´d break out the learning disabilities and go for the sympathy vote. A few white lies to keep the kids out of my hair never did anyone no harm, except for maybe the teachers.

I guess you could summise that the reason I´m not a mother is because I would break the mould. Raise the bar. Invoke fear and jealousy among all the traditionalists who would then go on to copy my style of mothering. I would hate that. My kids would no longer be special nor would I. We would be the new sheep. I would have to start all over again and perhaps have to resort to current day mothering standards. How bloody tedious. All those ballet classes, sports practices, brownies, cubs, piano lessons, lord have mercy! How did kids end up being kings?

It´s incredible, kids these days have busier agendas than their parents. The parents are basically slaves being rinsed out, ridiculed and ultimately ruined by the poisonous fruit of their very loins. It kills them in the end, yes, you heard me, they eventually die. Not a normal death like mine will be; rather a long, slow, painful death that ultimately manifests itself in the form of some drastic illness right towards the end, by which time it´s far too late to avert. Or sometimes they just drop dead, it just nips them in the bud before they´ve even had a chance to tell anyone of all the years of pain, suffering, heartache, career and financial ruin they´ve endured at the hands of their children. Yes, I know, it´s dreadfully sad. But what can you do? Other than wise up and don´t go there!

Aside from the fact that I´m clearly not interested in having children, I´m sure you can see why I wouldn´t want to share my awesome maternal skills with the world for fear I would end up like a cheap Chinese copy bag, once a classy original faded into a mass produced shadow of its former self.

Yes people, you have the children and I´ll be favourite aunty. As they grow, I´ll get to know them better than you. They´ll tell me stuff they would never tell their parents. If you´re real nice to me, maybe I´ll share it with you...just like your kids, I too can be bought!

In the meantime, I´ll enjoy my lie-ins, my income, my space, my peace, my freedom, my shopping trips to Paris, my wholly selfish existence as much as you´ll enjoy your important role of parenting. And I won´t envy you one little bit. And you´ll feel sorry for me and think I´m missing out on something really amazing. And I´ll think you´re wrong. And we´ll agree to disagree on everything but one thing; that it´s really probably just as well I don´t have kids. That would be really mean. Mean as in mean, not as in awesome.

Big Brother Returns!

Well, what can I say. My best line is the one about the fact that I had ten years without TV. But that's not really good enough. There are very few excuses for watching trainwreck tele like this. But that´s the point. That´s what´s so fantastic about it! The whole 'where do they get these people from' factor, then watching the whole Lord of the Flies thing play out.

It was rough last night, flicking between the Katie & Peter reality show, watching their relationship disintegrate before my eyes with all the fevor of a junkie sorting out their next fix; and the inaugural 2009 Big Brother show. At least there were non simultaneous ad breaks, but every time I thought it can´t get any better than this with the house line-up, they´d roll out another spectacularly unique-stereotype-trainwreck-freak contestant. It was remote control dilemna hell.

I am going to do my utmost to stay away from the live broadcasts, but since my CNN has disappeared & I now have two channels of Bloomberg...and as there´s only so much BBC or Sky News one can take...E4 just might have to become my default channel. Ouch. But hey, it's making up for not going to university and studying anthropology...kind of...

Aside from the spectacularly egocentric pretty boys and girls, whose sense of selfworth is something we could all do with a little dose of; my favourite so far is the Iranian socialite for his remarkably frank answer to the question regarding his biggest regret. His answer...that he wasn´t born with a bigger penis. Bless.

I think this is a strategy. Create an element of mystery, wonder...I mean what is an Iranian's view of adequacy? 6inches? 8inches? What´s small? 4? 6? 8? TEN?? I want to know. I don´t fancy the guy for a minute, but I´m completely fascinated as to why he would admit to having this regret on national television. Hence, for the sake of my anthropology studies, I must see this guy's penis. At all costs! I would like to expose his scam to save hundreds of over-curious women from falling for this clever strategy the world over. It's brilliant. Paint oneself as a victim, immediately eliminating any other barriers based on your sincerity factor with a bit of the pity card thrown in for good measure. Raise the curiosity bar. Bingo! Another notch on the belt.

Genius. And that´s why everybody should watch Big Brother, not for anthropological reasons, but to learn sexual predator strategies or any of the other myriad of survival tips that are bound to manifest over the next few weeks.

Bring it on Big Brother!

The Taming of the Stalker

I´ve never had a stalker. A flasher, yes. When I was a teenager, working in my first advertising agency, I would walk home from work to my flat and regularly encounter a tall, thin, redhead standing in front of his first story flat's floor-to-ceiling windows tugging away as though he was trying to beat the Guiness Book of Records.

But a stalker, never. Well, not that I noticed. I am usually pretty good at obliterating any unwanted attention in its early stages by becoming cold, distant and impossibly unavailable. I mean, I play the Ice Queen so well, it´s worth adorning the title with capital letters. There are probably men, all over the world, in therapy to this day having been on the receiving end of my cold shoulder.

I'm not trying to codone this kind of behaviour, it´s definitely a last resort. But sometimes it's the only thing that will work. Turning yourself from an object of desire into somebody that could possibly be a bunny boiler is one that works for me.

Unfortunately these desperate measures aren´t always appropriate. Sometimes, it´s delicate. Your stalker is a psycho. Hmn, at what stage do you bring in the police without putting your safety at risk...especially if they don´t hear you out...we´ve all read about those murder victims who had non molestation orders on their perpertrators.

Or your stalker suffers from depression or is bi-polar, i mean who wants to be responsible for suicide? And heavens forbid that your stalker is the local drug dealer or dj and you will never again be hooked up on the social front; afterall, you live in buttfuck-nowheresville. Can you afford to cut off your nose to spite your face? Or even if your stalker is a perfectly nice, reasonable man (if not a little stalker-ish) that you're just not interested in. Ever. What do you do?

Ummmmmmm. Thinking. Thinking. He knows where you live. He has your phone number. Sadly, he never calls so that you can make up an excuse, he just turns up. This makes it that much more difficult because it´s plainly obvious to the entire world as to whether or not you´re at home. My house is a goldfish bowl. If i´m in, the ranchsliders are open. If I´m not, the 'persianas' are down & it´s clearly all locked up. One of my stalkers likes to go fishing, hence it´s completely reasonable that he should 'happen' to be passing by my bay.

So, can´t hide, can´t not pick up the phone, this has to be dealt with face to face. So far I have managed to buy myself some freedom via a few trips abroad and have blamed my current lack of form on sheer exhaustion & and deflected the question of social engagement thanks to an impending family visit. But these little white lies are going to give me about a week's grace, max. Because his sidekick, who is a little younger and much more of a 'player', has started to catch on and usher his lovestruck mate out of my place in record time. Which is great on the surface, but...

Here´s where you start to walk the fine line. You don´t want the mate getting all protective and attempting to help the stalker avoid heartache by starting to portray you as a cold-hearted, using bitch who isn´t interested in anything other than his guestlist or cartel connections. Nor do you want to actually hurt or offend the stalker, you just need to recuperate your energy levels and make a concerted effort to appear at a social occasion where there´s safety in numbers. In this manner, you are showing your commitment to the friendship by turning up. Even if he is delusional and sees it that you´ve turned up to see him, that´s his problem. As any magician will tell you, it´s all about the illusion.

So, if you happen to get a little tipsy and end up going home with the security guard or one of stalker's football team colleagues, he's not going to like it but your slate is still gonna be clean. Well, cleanish. But due to the nature of this strategy, it can bring on the whole new problem of you appearing to be too easy. He might start to think that if you'll nail a stranger, the only thing that's been holding him back has been his own inability to ask you directly to turn it up.

At this point, perhaps your best bet is to confess to suffering from alcoholism or drug abuse and a complete lack of control over your life and explain that you can´t possibly be in any kind of relationship with anybody until such time as you have successfully completed the 12 step programme and have the permission of your sponsor to maintain relations of any description with anybody other than your fellow AA's.

Stalkers are annoying and scary. Ideally they don´t happen. But when they do, they need to be dealt with quickly and efficiently in order to minimise any negative repercussions. It would be wonderful if people would just take the signals or guidance we try to communicate, but we all know love...or lust...is blind. And deaf and dumb. Wish me luck!

Random Thoughts (as opposed to 'what's on your mind?')

11.05.09
The wind has come up and the punters are leaving the beach. This is a breeze, not real wind. It´s clear these people are obviously not from Wellington, home to the mother of all winds, nor are they from the UK whereby it would take a category 3 storm to get them off the beach here. The UK punters blow my mind, they consider anything above 14degrees as sunbathing weather. In fact, you can pretty much dish them up anything so long as it´s not rain. Which is good I s'pose, coz when all the locals pack up their picnics at the slightest breeze or drop in temperature, the tourism industry can rely on the staunch determination of the Brits to hang in there soaking up their annual intake of vitamin D. Did you know there´s a ricketts epidemic sweeping the UK and that truely and honestly it´s due to a lack of sun? Scary.

06.06.09
What´s up with the people who don´t answer their phones? Or ignore emails...or those who generally tune out when it suits them. These people have their art downpat. They know who they are and exactly what they´re doing. But they´re not bothered. The thing I often wonder though, is do they know that we know who they are? Or do they perhaps think that because they´re ever so important, that we believe they are actually genuinely busy and have been unable to take our calls or reply to our emails? Or, heavens to murgatroid, do they want us to get the hint that they are purposely blanking us?



This is where the lines get blurry. Because it could be either. But generally, as I mentioned before, these people are artists of this cold form of pyschological manipulation and abuse. They deliver those slam dunks of silence knowing full well that we are going to be genuinely confused and therefore somewhat reluctant to give them a gentle nudge. They know that they are rendering us limpid with self doubt and that this is the most effective way to avoid communication with us. As we retreat into a world of paranoia they calmly go about their days making their 'natural selection' of worthy communiques. And when your ship comes in and that excuse & apology laden email hits your inbox, mama mia, how good are they at washing away those self doubts and restoring your faith in both them & their twisted manipulative ways and mankind in general. Oh the power that these maestros wield!

But one must ask the questions...just what is their game? What happened to them to make them behave like this? Were they beaten as children & now they´re sadomasochists? Are they actually proper fraudsters? Who or what are they hiding from?

Sometimes it´s a partner who is the real enemy, and it´s easier to distance you rather than have to honour your friendship under the jealous, watchful eye of an odious partner. Or is it just you? Really, if push came to shove, they don´t actually like you and want as little as possible to do with you.

Ideally, you should wake up and smell the roses and give up on your lameass attempts at contact with them. They live in hope that the penny will drop for you, whilst you live in hope that they will acknowledge your existence. And then they feel guilty and acknowledge you. And so it goes on, in a vicious little circle.

But really, bollox to the perpetrators & bless to the victims. If honesty and integrity are too much to ask, good manners will always suffice. Please try and be polite.