Touché, Mr Shand...

Clearly, there are a few points I am going to have to clarify from my last blog...

While clearly, on some shallow but basically human level, EVERYBODY would be more pleased to have an attractive person check them out than an unattractive person, that wasn't what I was getting at.

I don't care if you're Brad Pitt (which is probably a bad example because I don't think he's attractive), if you're giving me that look when I'm not asking for it, I'm not happy with you.
The look I was referring to is a particular kind of look. There are appraising looks, and there are friendly looks, and shy looks, and coy looks. This is none of those. This is that look that is distinctly lecherous, distinctly dirty, designed to let you know that, in their mind's eye, you are not wearing any clothes and you're probably on your knees doing something that would make your mother vomit just to think about it. If a fat balding old man wants to smile at me, or give me an appraising look, you know what? That's fine. I'm actually perfectly happy with the fact that I'm attractive and that, now and then, people are going to notice. And if a fat balding old man - or any other variety of typically unattractive person, for that matter! - wants to 'check me out' casually while I'm on the dancefloor strutting my stuff (what a stupid expression), that is also fine. It's the particular attitude with which it is sometimes done - and I stress again, EVEN BY ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE - that gets to me, and this may not be something that men understand, because it may be that it isn't done with any different kind of attitude at all. I don't pretend to know everything about men. Perhaps that guy giving me the slitty eyed smirking look from the dark corner with his hand deep in his pocket is really a total sweetheart, thinking "she looks lovely, like she bakes a really nice sponge cake." You know? Who can know for sure. But it certainly doesn't feel like it so I'm guessing that's not the case.

On the other hand. If I am wearing something revealing, or tight-fitting, or otherwise sexy, I expect (well, not EXPECT, but you know) a lot of male attention; but I am not offended if not everybody giving it to me is up to my standards of attractiveness, because as Jase pointed out, that would just be unrealistic, shallow, and stupid. And I'm certainly not saying as long as you're easy on the eyes you have every right to treat me however you like. I won't put up with being looked at like I'm wearing a price tag by anyone; I wouldn't find it any less offensive coming from an attractive young man of my own age than I do coming from a much older and less conventionally attractive specimen.

And, as only one wise person picked up on when commenting on Jason's blog - it had a lot to do with the fact that I was standing in the rain after a hard day at work being stared down by some prick in a BMW. I mean, if you want to be viciously ogled by someone sitting in a warm expensive car while you stand in a puddle getting soaked to the skin and wondering whether to have a plate of plain pasta or a plate of plain noodles for your dinner, you be my guest.

In conclusion: if you think I'm pretty, I'm flattered. If you want to smile at me, I will smile back at you, regardless of your appearance.
But if you give me that look like you're imagining me gagged and blindfolded and tied to a dirty bed in some stinking basement somewhere... well. I'll blog about you and it'll be replied to by a Scottish radio presenter.
So, you know.

You have been warned.

Grr.

There is a particular look that men in cars like to give young girls standing by the side of the road while they are idling at traffic lights or waiting to go round corners, and it is a look I am fairly sick of - and not only because it is typically employed by men who are fat, old, and bald, and look like their job is to eat glazed doughnuts and drink coffee (ironically, with sweetners instead of sugar - as if it makes any difference) and have hideously inappropriate thoughts about their young secretary.

It is a look that says, "I don't necessarily think that you ARE a prostitute, but I am blatantly considering whether I would stop the car if you were."

Now. I am not a prude, and I am aware that I have boobies, and that this can be considered attractive. There are certain situations in which I would not find this look offensive; for example, if I was, in fact, a piece of steak in a butcher's shop.
However. As some of you may have noticed... I am not a piece of steak in a butcher's shop.

What I am getting at here, is DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT LOOKING AT ME LIKE YOU THINK THERE'S EVEN THE REMOTEST CHANCE THAT I'D SLEEP WITH YOU IF YOU PAID ME TO.

What gets to me more than that - because I know that men can't actually help looking at attractive women - is that, if caught in their leching, they give you this cheesy smile, as if you are going to find it funny. Well guess what.
NOT LAUGHING.

Seriously, let's think about this. There's you; an overweight suit with male pattern baldness leering at me out of the window of a shiny silver Beemer while I stand on the side of the road, in the pouring rain, with an embarassingly hot-pink umbrella, after another day being the lowest rung on the office ladder, with the fax machine malfunctioning and this somehow being perceived as my fault, and people on the phone who don't even have the common courtesy to spend two seconds of their precious, precious lives listening to me say "Good morning Blah Blah Blah Accountants, Jenny speaking, how may I help you?"
Where, exactly, is the factor in all of that that you think makes me sympathetic to your leering? You have a big shiny car. I am standing in the rain, wanting nothing more than for you to MOVE YOUR FUCKING BEEMER so I can cross the road to go home and get into my pyjamas and watch Akira in ten minute segments on YouTube. Your shiny expensive car does NOT make me feel any better about the fact that you are staring at me like a piece of meat carved into the shape of Angelina Jolie.

Also? When are you going to realise that when you 'go out with the lads' on Saturday night, you are, and always will be, the old pervs in the corner. I don't care what trendy slop you're drinking, I don't care if you bought your shirt at River Island, and I don't care if you're wearing those stupid fucking pointy leather shoes (and FYI, brown shoes and black trousers looks so fucking stupid I could choke). It's pathetic. Next week, please stay in. I like to dance with my girlfriends or my boyfriend without feeling like I'm part of some seedy 2am webcam show, thanks. Also, I can stretch to buying my own drinks, but it's nice to know you see me as some kind of charity case - or at least I hope that's what you see me as, because I'd hate to think that you honestly believe buying me an Archers and lemonade (single, to boot) is going to get you anywhere.

In conclusion, if you're looking for cheap prostitutes, I suggest next time you cruise the other end of town. They probably won't blog about you.

Or maybe they will, and it'll end up as some shitty TV program starring Billie Piper.
Ho hum.

Oh dear.

Well that was a fairly depressing way to mark my 100th blog post... but oh well. To be fair most of them have been pretty much completely irrelevant and or stupid. But hilarious! Or so I like to think.

So, still feeling crappy, but I have chocolate milk, and today I wrote a scene in which an innocent old man gets shot.
Not really. He totally deserved it.

On the other hand, writing is slowing down a little, as the big exciting scenes grow thin on the ground because... well, because I've got over-excited and written them all, leaving myself with only the piffling little filler scenes to write.
This depresses me for two reasons:

1: There should not BE any filler. If it's not important, it shouldn't be in there. That's what good writing is.

2: In my quest to write big exciting scenes, I am just coming up with more and more random plot points to facilitate said big exciting scenes. The story therefore deviates quite significantly from my original idea, and I've completely lost track of what genre - if any - it fits into.

Oh well. I wrote a scene where an old man gets shot. And a scene where people have sex in a little shed thing at Southampton Docks.

That's got to count for something, right?

Yeah I bet my parents are proud.

Blah blah shitting blah.

So who knew some rain and a bit of a chill could make you feel like you were completely pointless and hanging around in completely the wrong place, eh?

Apparently libraries and art galleries on your own aren't good for you either.

I just feel crappy.

I just want to be a writer. I want to live in a warm room that has space for all my stuff and I want an endless supply of chocolate milk and I want to be bothered to cook a decent meal for myself every day and I want to not have to wish I was at the other end of the country no matter which end of the country I'm at and I want to not bite my nails any more and I want to be a writer.

Also I wish I could play the guitar.

Is that so much to ask?

So...

"So what've you been up to?"
"Not much. You know, work... oh! Me and Amelia went to an anime convention."
"You sad fuckers."
"Fuck off!"
"You didn't get dressed up, did you?"
"... Hi I'm Jenny, have we met?"

You know what's really, really awesome? A hot shower - I mean really hot, so hot it would usually be too hot - on a really cold night. Getting out of the shower, and being FREEZING cold, but knowing that in a minute you'll be sitting nice and warm in front of an electric heater, wearing pyjamas and fluffy slippers. And knowing that your word count went UP today, instead of DOWN. (Oh yeah. I rule.)

Incidentally, my word count is currently 32,337 words, and rising. I'm going to have this finished - completely - by the end of December. The power of positive thinking.

LET'S KICK THIS PIG!

End of the Line.

Dear Internal Lady Parts.

I was hoping it wasn't going to come to this, but I think it's time we had a little talk.

I understand that maybe sometimes I'm kind of mean to you. I understand that you really are trying to kick out those hormones and make me a little bit more girly, and I know I kind of reject that and try to suppress you. But I don't mean it like that. I don't mean to belittle your ability to create midgets. I think it's a little nasty the way you've devised to extricate them from me once you've created them, but we all have our quirks, I suppose. I understand that you are just doing your job.

But that doesn't change the fact, that I have had enough.

First, your mood swings are a pain in the ass. One minute you're fine, next minute you're achy. I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHEN I'M OVULATING. Being able to feel the moment when I release another egg disturbs me more than you could possibly comprehend. Please keep it to yourself next time. It's fucking gross, and I don't need to know. Talk about a TMI moment. Sheesh.

Second, I do not appreciate the way you bloat a week before you start doing your thing, and take until several days after you're done to go down again. I eat well, and make sure to do at least a little exercise, and frankly I shouldn't have to put up with you just blowing me up like a fucking balloon for no readily apparent reason.

Third, I have had ENOUGH of that fucking mess you make. You make no contribution to the costs of cleaning it up, you are incredibly inconvenient about the timing, and you show NO regard for my property. Frankly you are inconsiderate and a fucking slob. STOP IT. NOW.

In light of all these grievances I'd just like to say, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's working out. You know, I know we have our disagreements, but I really did think maybe we'd grow old together, you know, and maybe one day you'd get to produce that little midget you've always dreamed of, and we'd sit back and laugh about the days when I told you that the day you squeezed a midget out of me would be the day a pig flew out of my fucking ears, but now I'm not so sure.

In fact, I'm going to have to just say this straight out; I want you gone. I want you to pack up all your tubes and whatever the fuck else it is you keep in there, and I want you to fuck right the fuck off. Seriously. You have one week and you'd better be out, and you CLEAN UP before you leave or I'll sue you, you see if I don't.

Regards,

Jenny.

I thought of a funny title on the loo earlier. But now it is gone.

I have that feeling. Biscuit feeling in my soul.

No, seriously, I mean it. I went to the Range this weekend just past, to make with the mad awesome and get some stuff to make my house look less like a crack den. I'm not sure quite how well a tablecloth and a bathmat fulfil this criteria. But who knows. Maybe it did just the trick. It's a pretty nice bathmat. So big and white and fluffy.
Anyhoo.
What I was trying to get to was that, while there, I bought this gigantic box of biscuits. You know the type. Those slightly retarded biscuits that get sold for cheap in bulk because they aren't as pretty as the other biscuits. But still taste exactly the fucking same. Yeah those. So. I bought some. And they have taken over my life.
And also I ate all the good ones first, so over the last three days, my biscuity time has been going steadily downhill and now I am left with the dark chocolate KitKat-esque things, which get a bit overbearing after a while, and the weird things with some kind of supersweet gross toffee stuff between some substandard chocolate and an oddly squidgy biscuit. Blergh.
In conclusion: I need to eat some fucking real food. I bought some Chinese sauce for chicken on my way home from work. Then realised I finished the chicken at lunch time. And can't be fucked to buy any more. I have realised it is pointless. You might as well eat something completely tasteless (and cheap), because ten minutes later it won't matter worth one shit whether it tasted good or not.

In other news:

Today I realised that what sets me apart from other receptionists is that most receptionists would offer a visitor a beverage and then settle back at their computers to do busy work. Whereas I offer them a beverage and then somehow end up having a highly amusing conversation with them about whether Scripture specifices if Jesus had a beard or not.
This was brought on by Georgie's discovery that the internet, in all its infinite glory, has offered up another gem: Bible fanfiction.
I shit you not.
I like to imagine it has all the same weird traits and tendencies as other fanfiction. Slash. M-preg. All those scary things that make me go, as the internet nerds would say, O.o .
I also like to imagine that it contains sentences like "Jesus thought about this, and stroked his manly beard thoughtfully whilst deep in thought."
I also also like to imagine that Jesus looks alarmingly like Chuck Norris.

We can all see where this is going.

Oh.. oh God.

You ever want to feel like you're the only person on the planet who doesn't deserve to be shot in the face? Go read the 'discussion' pages on the Sun Online. Seriously. Where do you FIND these people?! Probably sitting in their parents basements surrounded by Wotsits packets masturbating furiously to the more scantily clad players on WoW whilst at the same time spouting zealous religious bullshit at people who are patiently, and futilely, trying to point out all the many and varied ways in which they are OH SO VERY WRONG.

Actually, what amuses me most about this is that there are people on the Sun Online discussion boards trying to act rational and pretend they are normal - even intelligent! - human beings.
Let me reiterate the important bit for those of you who aren't laughing yet.
ON THE SUN ONLINE.
INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEINGS.

YA GEDDIT?

Oy.

Huh.

Wikipedia informs me that having an ovary-ectomy (actually called an oophorectomy but would ANY of you have known what that was if I said it without the retarded explanation?) reduces your risk of ovarian cancer.

Man I wish I was as smart as these fucking people.

This gives me almost the same pained expression as that BBC news report last week about how bacon and booze basically riddle you with cancer and make you die. The report which was prefaced with the sentence "a study of cancer sufferers found that..."
Found that what? That they suffer from cancer? And that most of them have eaten bacon or ingested alcohol at some point in their cancery lives? WOW THANKS. I FEEL LIKE A TOTAL DOUCHEBAG FOR NOT HAVING FIGURED THAT ONE OUT.

Excuse me while I go and stuff the empty space in my head where my brain should be with acorns for the winter.

A dubious tactic.

So, in lieu of actually writing my own blog today, I am posting a link to someone else's. They are far funnier and more awesome than me.
Mike's entry about AVP and the penguin therein.

But if I was going to write a blog today, it would be about how you know you've had a great night when you come home smelling of gunpowder and burnt pumpkins.