Series: Pet Peeves #6

Pet Peeve #6: Rekindling Kindle Hate

Kindles. I fucking hate 'em.

I know I shouldn't, but every time I see someone on the bus, train or tube with a Kindle, or with one peeking deliberately from their bag, I judge them. (Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...) I know I shouldn't; I know there are perfectly valid reasons to own a Kindle, for example: you want to read an epic novel like War and Peace, but have arthritis in your hands, or you stole a Kindle last year while you were out looting, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste - but everyone else? Be ashamed of yourselves. Would it hurt you to buy a bloody book?

If the answer to that question is "Yes, yes it would. I hate books", then you, sir/madam, are everything wrong with this world. You don't feel about books the same way I do. You don't sit in a candle-lit room and gently caress the cover with your gaze; you don't fondle the spine lightly with your fingertips; you don't lean in and smell those oh-so-sweet pages the first time you get close enough to. You can't treat a book the way I treat it, and you will never love it as much as I do. All you do is simply carry your 'precious' Kindle around with you like some kind of trophy, to show off at your pretentious little Christmas office parties. "Look how smooth it is," you tell your colleagues. "I turn it on every night. Ooh yeah." They don't know what you really do. They don't know that you leave it all alone in the kitchen all night, like the chauvinist bastard you really are.

My main gripe with Kindles lies in the people they are marketed at. See for yourself:

In this advert, we are shown 17 instances of people using a Kindle (if you include the shot of someone throwing a Kindle across a table - cos throwing a book is the first thing I think to do as I come out of Waterstones with my newest purchase); in only 6 of these are the people with the Kindle actually bothering to read from it (I don't include the kid cos, let's face it, at his age he's not gonna read anything unless it's got pictures in). The other 11 instances are as followed:

1. Person picks Kindle up. Well, alright. I suppose the first step in learning to read is in picking a book up. Well done.

2. Person takes Kindle out of a drawer full of jewellery. This is just a fancy variation of the previous shot. Not impressed.

3. Person puts Kindle on passenger seat in car. Yes, because that is what we do with books. We put them on car seats. We read two sentences at a time at the traffic lights, and hope that by the end of our life we have managed to finish chapter one.

4. Person lets dog lick Kindle. Like a book, only tastes better. I see where the marketing team were going here.

5. Man gives Kindle to woman. "I don't want it anymore! You have it!" Alternatively: "What does this say? C-H-A-P-T-E-R-O-N-E. Hmmm."

6. Child randomly presses buttons on Kindle. Probably deliberately breaking it because his parents aren't paying him any attention anymore - not since they started taking their Kindle on long, romantic car rides through the countryside.

7. Person throws Kindle across table. As you do.

8. Man gives Kindle to woman as a Christmas present. She looks happy and hugs him. "Oh darling, just what I never knew I always wanted until I saw everyone else with one!"

9. Person puts Kindle in back pocket. Right. Well.

10. Person throws their breakfast over Kindle. We must feed our Kindles, make sure they never go hungry. Y'see, Kindles aren't just for Christmas - they're for life.

11. Woman takes Kindle on quiet bike ride on a hot summer's day. I only hope she remembered to put some sunblock on the Kindle!

All this is played along to a chirpy little happy tune, and everyone looks like they're having a really good time. But the thing is, folks, we're not being sold a product here, we're being sold a lifestyle. That's why it annoys the crap out of me when I see people brandishing their Kindles all over public transport. I see them as someone who was never that keen on reading, who was taken in by a simple capitalist marketing scam; they were told that if they bought a Kindle, they would enjoy a chirpy little happy life, with sunshine and flowers and smiles all round. The reality for most of them (note, I said most), as they sit there on the train reading some generic novel about some war veteran having an affair with the general's wife (don't they all seem to do that?), is they're bored out of their fucking skulls.

You know I'm right.

A Case For "Ms"

I am going to give the world the benefit of the doubt, and go on the assumption that, like the woman I was speaking to a few days ago, the majority of people don't really know what Ms means. The alternative is to put everyone down as misogynistic bastards with values in line with that of a prehistoric dinosaur. No offence to dinosaurs.

The way I see it, Master and Miss are for boys and girls under the age of 18, respectively; Mr and Ms are for men and women over the age of 18, respectively. I don't see why we need to start defining women by their marital status, as if, somehow, being a Mrs makes you more or less important. I imagine that back in the day it was a way of branding women, of saying to other men, "She's mine, assholes. Back off." Much like the engagement ring, it's like whipping out your piece and taking a piss on someone, just so everyone knows "Bob woz ere" - and if a dude is gonna piss on you ladies, then you need to piss back. When he gives you an engagement ring, give him one back. When you change your title to Mrs, he should be changing his to Msr (or something more phonetically feasible; I dunno, I haven't really given the technicalities a huge amount of thought yet).

A few weeks ago, I was filling in a CRB application and, as I always do, I checked the box Ms. When I got to the end of the application and tried submitting it, it wouldn't let me - not until I had filled in the box Previous surname. Of course, I couldn't do this, because I have only ever had the one surname. Reluctantly, I had to check the box Miss instead.

Even when, bureaucratically, a system allows you to choose between Miss and Ms or Mrs and Ms, very often the reality is that you can only be a Ms if you are married, divorced or widowed - in which case, we are still defining women by their marital status. In what world is that OK? In what world are men men, and women simply accessories to men?

In this world, apparently.

LOL

Politicians are out of touch with the youth of today. They've tried to bridge the gap with their Hug A Hoodie campaign, but if they knew anything at all about hoodies, they would know that hoodies don't like to be hugged, and especially not by David Cameron. I suspect David Cameron has absolutely no intention of trying to get intimate with a hoodie, and until he appears on Prime Minister's Questions with a black eye and a bunch of missing teeth, I will continue to presume this to be the case... and actually, even if he does turn up with a black eye and a bunch of missing teeth, there's every possibility Rebekah Brooks just got a little slap-happy again.

David Cameron's sordid (yes, it is sordid; two Tories talking to one another is always sordid) little text messages to Rebekah Brooks are only further evidence that he doesn't have a clue. LOL? No, David. Just no. And Rebekah Brooks doesn't know much better, either. LOL does not mean "laugh out loud". Perhaps it did, once upon a time, in a faraway land full of leprechauns and skipping bunnies, where everyone was happy all the time and laughed just because the sun shone and the rainbows emitted Skittles, but no longer is this the case in the real world. Now, LOL serves five primary functions:

1. To communicate that you are joking, even if what you happen to be saying isn't very funny. E.g. Yes, I did my homework as soon as I got home on Friday lol.

2. To soften the blow when you insult someone, because actually you're a little wuss who can dish it out but can't take it back. E.g. You're fat and ugly lol.

3. To indicate that you have a low IQ. E.g. Hi bb lol.

4. To communicate that what you just read was mildly amusing. This is the nearest variant of 'lol' to the original 'lol'. E.g. Wow, what you just said almost made the corners of my mouth turn up lol.

5. To indicate that the conversation is over, go away and leave me alone now. E.g. Person 1: Yeah. Person 2: Lol.

David Cameron, if you are reading this now, I suggest you think very long and hard before using LOL again. And if you do choose to use it again, I suspect it will be for the second function, when you are making your next speech on all these 'necessary' cuts: "We're all in this together. That's why I'm using taxpayer money to pay for my second home while you rot away in your crummy little council estates, you useless working-class bastards lol." Come to think of it, "Mwahaha" works just as well.

A-Z of Emotions

A-Z of Emotions I Have Felt Since I Last Blogged

I did one of these awhile ago, and now I think it's time to do another. Are you keen to find out whether I found actual emotions beginning X and Z? Here we go...

A - Awkward. You know when you need to say something to someone, but you don't know how to go about it? Usually when I need to say something difficult to someone, I start off with, "Um, I've been thinking er, that er..." and I finish with, "If that makes any sense."

B - Brave. But I overcame the awkwardness and came out with it in the end, as followed: "Um, I've been thinking er, that er... hi. If that makes any sense."

C - Childish. I was watching one of my favourite videos yesterday, as found below:

D - Disgusted. Yesterday I was in the Disney Store (feeling childish again, yes), telling my friend that it's OK for me to be seen in the Disney Store because I only look about 15. Then she says to me, "You know that old man standing behind you was just checking you out." I know I am a legal adult, but he doesn't know that!

E - Earthly. I was standing next to some hippie white dude with blond dreads yesterday in the supermarket, checking out the vegetarian food in the freezer section. We both reached for a packet of quorn "chicken" burgers at the same time. Saving the world, one burger at a time.

F - Fantastic. I really did. Honestly.

G - Growly. Rather, my belly was feeling growly. I woke up yesterday morning, grabbed a banana (not the same banana in the video - a different banana) and left the house, and didn't consider re-filling my stomach until about 3 o'clock. The belly was not very happy.

H - Hopeful. I hoped that it would not rain, as I did not take an umbrella out with me. My hopes were answered.

I - Irritated. A couple of days ago I got FRIGGING BITTEN BY A SODDING MOSQUITO ON MY LEG! It itched, so I went to go get my Witch Hazel cream from where I usually keep it. It was not there. So I looked in the baskets of skin cream I keep under my bed, thinking maybe I put it there when I was tidying up the day before. Nope, not there. I looked in every drawer. NOT. SODDING. THERE. In the end I put up with an itchy bite for the rest of the day.

J - Jealous. Last weekend I went to the park. I was, literally, the whitest person there. I don't get it.

K - Kung-fu-ish. Alright, alright: I suck at thinking of words beginning with K. But at least it's better than Kit-Kat-ish, which is what I was originally considering putting down.

L - Lethargic. The sun makes me sleepy.

M - Moody. Piss off.

N - Naked. Yes, this is an emotion; it's similar to feeling exposed and vulnerable. I had a dream last night that I got naked and looked at myself in the mirror, and realised I had grown a petticoat made out of flesh around my hips, and that it made me look somewhat like an Elizabethan dinosaur (I know you didn't get dinosaurs in the Elizabethan era, but just go with me on this one). Thankfully, it was a removable petticoat. My jeans fit a lot better once I'd taken it off, and made me look less like MC Hammer.

O - Optimistic. The world is at my feet, it truly is.

P - Proud. I did three kick-ups on Wednesday. Three.

Q - Quixotic. I still only have one emotion beginning with Q. However, I now know what quixotic means, and I was feeling quioxtic the other day when I set my alarm clock for 6:30. Ha.

R - Relaxed. There I was: chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool, and all shooting some b-ball outside of the school... Oh wait. I think this happened to someone else.

S - Serene. A day spent in the sun without nothing else to do can make you feel serene. The migraine that soon follows it? Not so much.

T - Tender. I am a tender individual.

U - Understanding. I am also very understanding.

V - VIP-y. Now I'm just bullshitting, clearly.

W - Weird. I am always weird, though. My friend said "You're a weirdo" to me so many times yesterday that I lost count.

X - X-treme. Hell yeah.

Y - Young. In spite of the fact that I don't particularly identify with all these songs out at the moment about being young (i.e. Tulisa and that Indie band), I do still look about 15. I need to slap on more makeup, obviously.

Z - Zumba-y. I might, y'know. I just might.

I think there was a film about this once. It had a happy ending.

Being a woman is hard.

That isn't to say that I think men have it easy. I would hate to live life knowing that if I were to have a bad day and as a result broke down crying in the middle of the office at work, that everyone's level of respect for me would hit the ground and never get back up. I would hate to live life knowing that if I ever had a child, I would be assumed to be the secondary caregiver, and that the school would always contact "Mum" before "Dad", regardless of the fact that "Mum" might be out of town on a business meeting, and "Dad" might be at home making the beds and fixing dinner. I would hate to live life knowing that if I took time out to be a dad, when people asked me what I did and I answered, "I'm a stay-at-home dad", the looks I would receive would be different to if a woman answered the same question with, "I'm a stay-at-home mum." I would hate to live life knowing that I must shave my face every morning or else risk looking like sasquatch, though I suspect I might have to anyway once the menopause hits. I would hate to live life with testicles. Those things look like they get in the way.

But I do think that women have it harder. Just sayin'.

There's biology, for a start: hormonal rollercoasters every month, blood gushing out from between the legs, doctors shoving things inside you every few years to check for pre-cancerous cells, childbirth, saggy stretch-mark ridden skin that will never be the same ever again, swollen milky boobs that are destined to wind up pointing south, the capacity to be a parent having a time limit, hot flushes, to-HRT or to-not-HRT... From the onset of puberty until we leave the world, we put up with regular shit, and that's just biology. There's also society, and society is, if anything, the biggest bastard of them all.

We live in a world where women are all of the above, and yet we are told to be something else entirely different, or at least to pretend to be. We are hormonal and suffer from occasional (and sometimes constant) low self-esteem, yet we are told to be confident and beautiful, or else we are crazy and high-maintenance. We have periods every month (sometimes more frequently), which more often than not come equipped with debilitating pain, yet we are told to get on and go to work, look yummy and not speak about it - and don't let anyone see your tampons! Our bodies are put through massive rapid changes during and after pregnancy, and yet we are told that we are meant to "glow" when pregnant, and are expected to look like these celebrity mums who personal-trainer their way to anorexia six weeks after giving birth. We are told breast is best, and yet the length of maternity leave in this country doesn't really allow for the government's current recommendation of two years, nor do people feel comfortable seeing a woman breastfeed in public, because apparently breasts are not breasts, they are tits. We are told we can achieve the same high-paid professions as men, and yet can we? Or do we have to choose between babies and career? Or do we wait, and run the risk of finding out that our eggs have gone bad and it's now too little, too late? We are expected, as "sexi ladiez", to fill the bars and clubs while filling our stomachs with cheap promotion alcohol, and yet are told not to travel home late at night by ourselves because we might get raped - and if we do then it's actually kinda our fault because we shouldn't have been wearing that dress, and really - what do we expect? When we hit 40, we have to choose to become either "past it" or "a MILF", because for some reason the option to be a "silver fox" or "distinguished" is reserved solely for men.

The world wants us to be confident, beautiful, intelligent, classy... and up for it. There is something intrinsically wrong with us if we're not. Apparently.

Every time I walk into a newsagents these days I see women's magazines with eye-catching headlines like "HOW TO GET THE PERFECT SUMMER BODY" and "HOW TO TURN HIM ON" and "HOW TO GET FLAWLESS SKIN". You know what I would really love? I would really love it if we stopped asking ourselves the question "How do I do this?" and instead start asking ourselves "Why the hell should I?"

Welcome back.

When I was younger, like a lot of kids, I had a debilitating fear of death. I know you're probably thinking that a fear of death can't debilitate a nine-year-old, and that perhaps the only person it can debilitate is maybe a funeral director, or the person who puts makeup on dead people to make them look less... well, dead. But it debilitated me. I stopped going to church, I ducked out on a few funerals (I know, I know) and I used to lie in bed at night staring up at the ceiling, thinking to myself, "It's gonna happen. One day, it's gonna happen."

Around this time, I was taken on a family outing to Highgate Cemetery (if you're not familiar, it's a pretty famous burial spot, where the likes of Karl Marx and George Eliot have taken their final resting place). Confronting a fear head-on? Maybe. The thunderstorm didn't particularly help, though - nor did the fact that as we ran towards the gates of the cemetery, our shoes slipping on the wet ground and the thunder crashing in the dark grey sky above us, we found that the gates were shut. And thus ensued my first ever panic attack.

I was remembering this moment yesterday, and wondering what it is, exactly, that makes cemeteries and all things relating to death so terrifying. No one really wants to die, and if they do then either they have lived a full life and feel their time is now, or something is very, very wrong. If we did all want to die, we'd be jumping off cliffs left, right and centre and our species as we know it now would simply cease to exist - so of course a fear of death and a fear of the unknown is perfectly normal, and I accept that now. I just don't understand the tingling sensation that creeps up and down your spine when you walk into a cemetery or a morgue, and why that is feared by so many. Why don't we feel the same way about the remote control when the batteries run out? Just imagine the scenario:

John lounges on his sofa late at night, flicking through the channels. As he reaches E4, he notices the volume button becomes unresponsive, but he assumes it's a problem over at 4, and nothing to do with him, and so he keeps flicking.

He reaches the music channels and stumbles upon his favourite band, Steps (yes, John like Steps). He happily watches their old hit 'Tragedy', even joining in on the dance moves he remembers - but then the song ends and the video fades into darkness, and the presenter introduces the next video: 'Oops I Did It Again', by Britney Spears. Ugh (John doesn't think much of Britney; he prefers Christina)! He goes to change the channel.

Nothing happens.

He presses the button again.

Still nothing.

He tries different buttons, even the eject button even though he hasn't watched a DVD in months, but nothing, no matter how hard he pushes and no matter how he angles the remote control, works. It is then that he realises that the remote control has died. The thing inside it that makes the remote control work has stopped, it's reached the end of its life. He glances up at the clock: Time of death, 20:34. He lays the remote control down on the sofa, takes one final glance at it and exits the room, closing the door behind him.

He goes to the kitchen. He sits down, thinks. Then he stands up again, paces to the cupboard and pulls out a glass, filling it high with whiskey. He downs it at once and slams the empty glass down on the counter, wincing and glancing back towards the living room, where lies the dead remote control. He suddenly feels a sense of panic rising over his spine. What if...?

No. He musn't think those things! The remote control is dead - remote controls cannot rise from the dead. And even if they could, what would they do, exactly? Float into the room in an eerie fashion, making "Wooo" noises, and try to eat his brain? No. No, that simply does not happen. It can't happen.

Two hours later, John's flatmate Sylvia arrives home, back late from a crap date. She slams the door behind her, fuming at her date's sheer audacity in trying to kiss her. How very dare he! She walks into the kitchen and finds John sitting there at the table, dark circles under his eyes, cradling himself and rocking backwards and forwards in his chair.

"John?"

John can't look at her. He opens his mouth, and the stench of alcohol creeps out.

"John, have you been crying?"

John's head hurt. He can't even concentrate on the tiled pattern on the floor. Sylvia touches the nape of his neck with her cold hand, and he jumps a mile.

"What the..." Sylvia says. "What's wrong?"

John stands on the other side of the room, still holding himself. Slowly, he lifts his gaze to meet Sylvia's eye.

"The remote control..." He begins. "It... I was just... I don't know what happened. It just..."

"John?"

"It died, Sylvia. It's in there now, dead. I can't even... What if..."

Sylvia takes one good, long look at John, and then asks him to kindly pack his bags and leave. Quite frankly, he's starting to give her the creeps. Then she fetches a pair of batteries out of the cupboard and inserts them into the remote control, which lives again.

Yes, there WERE 29 days in February

It took only two months into 2012 before I became ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY RIGHT about one of my 2012 predictions: there were indeed 29 days in February. So put that in your pipe and don't smoke it, because smoking is gross and, let's face it: it kills.

At the time of writing the above blog post, I suggested that perhaps I might propose to some lucky fella this year. Cos, y'know, us women are allowed to do that on 29th February. We've been given permission. The mighty men at the top of the hierarchy have decided that damage will be minimal and we deserve a treat for being such good women the last four years. So I did it, guys and gals. I decided to propose to someone.*

@Afobe I will propose to you TOMORROW. Not today. I do things in my own sweet time.
— Martha Everitt (@Maaarfer) February 29, 2012

Unfortunately, quite a few ladies got there before me, and while Mr Afobe did not accept any of these proposals (as far as I am aware), I am not one to be overshadowed, and so I chose not to propose to the young Arsenal player the following day, after all. Sorry, matey. So close, yet so far.


* This was following @Afobe's request that a bunch of people propose to him on Twitter. I think he was bored.