One morning last week, Terry and I returned home from the gym to discover the light on the answerphone flashing. Amongst the usual work-related messages that had been left (for Terry, obviously, not for me. Because I don’t actually “do” phone calls.) was a message from a Mystery Woman. “Please call me back,” said the Mystery Woman, in heavily accented English, before giving her number and then hanging up. It was actually quite thrilling, to be honest, like the start of an adventure novel which sees our intrepid, titian haired heroine travel the world, battling against the clock to solve the Mystery of the Mysterious Caller. Oh no, wait… I’m confusing myself with Nancy Drew again. Sorry. Where was I?

So, the Mystery Woman left her number.  And that was it. No salutation, no indication of who she was, or what she was calling about – nothing to even tell us which one of us she was trying to reach. I mean, it could have been Rubin for all we knew. He gets a lot of calls like that: some of his friends have no manners AT ALL, really.

Well, Terry and I thought about this for about two seconds (and I Twittered about it, obviously), and decided that, nah, if it was THAT important to her, she’d surely call back. And she did. And do you know who our Mystery Caller was?

She was a telemarketer.

Yes, she wanted US to call HER, so she could try and talk us into buying something we didn’t want or need. Seriously, how cheeky is that? Very cheeky, I’d say. It’s bad enough that they call us all day long (Yes, we signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, but it doesn’t apply to business numbers, which ours is, and it also doesn’t stop people calling you from foreign call centres.) but  expecting us to call them back? Seriously?

I thought this was a one off. But then yesterday night, an email flooded in. The subject line said “Can you call XXXXX?” (Company name removed to protect the very guilty) The body of the email contained… well, nothing, actually, other than the email signature of the person who sent it, which included the person’s phone number.

Well, of course I COULD phone that company. But the thing is, I didn’t want to. Not with my new knowledge of the way certain telemarketers have apparently started to operate, anyway, and actually, not before then either, to be honest, because I think it’s just horribly rude for a complete stranger to demand that you call them without saying why. No?

Instead, I emailed the person back to ask why they wanted to speak to me. This one turned out NOT to be a telemarketer. He was, however, a journalist who wanted my help (in the form of some quotes) for an article he was writing, and he went about asking for this help in just about the rudest way possible – and I say this as a former journalist myself. My rule of thumb when dealing with people like this is that if they can’t be bothered to be even reasonably polite when they’re asking for my help I can’t be bothered to help them. So I stopped replying to his emails, and when I got home from the gym this morning, I discovered that he had tried to call me no less than nine times. NINE. TIMES. Because, as we all know, if someone is out when you call them, phoning back repeatedly, at three minute intervals, is the best way to make them magically re-appear. Only not really, obviously.

The lesson in all of this? It pays to be polite. Also, if we didn’t have to have a phone for business reasons, I’d throw ours out of the window.  Twice.

Last week Terry and I were in the car, on the way to the gym, when we saw a woman with brown hair jogging along by the side of the road.

So we rolled down the car windows and shouted, “HEY! BRUNETTE! F&^%^*$ BRUNETTE! YOU’RE UGLY!” And then we jeered a bit more and drove on. If we see her again, we’ll try and kick her, though, because that would be even more awesome.

Hee! Honestly, it was so funny, you should’ve seen the look on her face! I don’t know why she was annoyed, though. I mean, has she not got a sense of humour? And the fact is, there was absolutely nothing wrong with what Terry and I did, because brown hair IS ugly. It just is. (Especially on men. It can sometimes look OK on women, but on men it’s just butt-ugly. I’d never date a brunette man, never. I would rather eat glass.) Everyone knows it, so why shouldn’t we say it? It’s just a plain fact, isn’t it? Brunettes are ugly. It’s funny to tease them. If they don’t like it, they should either:

a) Get a sense of humour

b) Dye their hair

Actually, come to think of it, they should probably dye their hair anyway. Why wouldn’t they? If I was a brunette I would dye it. Terry’s hair is black, but sometimes I think it can look a bit brunette in certain lights. I worry about it. It’s why we don’t have children, actually: who’d want to risk the chance of having a brunette? It wouldn’t be fair to the child and I just don’t think I could love a brunette anyway. Thank goodness they’re dying out, eh?

Just in case it’s not obvious, I’m being sarcastic here. And of course,  Terry and I didn’t hurl abuse at anyone from our car just because they happened to have a certain hair colour – or for any other reason, obviously. Because that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? And cruel. And it would make us a couple of assholes. Really.

(more…)

I’ve mentioned here before that while the street Terry and I live in is as pleasant and suburban as it gets, some of the areas around us… aren’t. Well, they don’t call our part of town “Bandit Country” for nothing, put it that way.

Where we're livin'

Just yesterday, for instance, I met a group of the local Bandits while I was out walking Rubin. The Bandits in question were mostly in their late teens/early twenties, and they were sitting in a little huddle outside the Ghetto Superstore, drinking. You’d think it would be too much of a cliché for me to say they were drinking Buckfast, wouldn’t you?

People, they were drinking Buckfast.

You’d also think it was too much of a cliché for me to say they had a pit bull terrier with them, no?

*Deep sigh*

As soon as the pit bull laid eyes on Rubin, of course, it went crazy.  In fact, before I knew what had happened, it was over beside us “worrying” at Rubin. Now, I should say here that it wasn’t barking or growling, or anything like that. For all I know, this might’ve been the friendliest pit bull in all the land, but I didn’t really want to take the chance on that, and because Rubin likes to think he’s a wolf (he completely ignores small dogs, but will often bark ferociously at larger ones, because… well, because he was born without a brain, obviously), I was frightened enough by the dog’s attentions that when it still hadn’t left us alone a few minutes later, I snatched Rubin into my arms and… ran off like a girl.

Only at this point did the Youth of Today dispatch a Junior Bandito (about 8 years old, I’d say) to call off the hound.

So, that’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with.

Because I never learn, though, I decided to take Rubin on the exact same walk today.  In my defence, it’s pretty much the only place I CAN walk him without having to get in the car and drive somewhere, and I rarely have time for that, so Bandit Country it is. I was about ten minutes into the walk, Rubin almost hysterical with joy by my side, when I became aware of the sound of a bicycle, directly behind me.

I was on a footpath at this point, and there were no actual roads nearby, but people often cycle on the footpaths round here, so I thought nothing of this, and moved to the side of the (wide) footpath to let it pass.

The bike moved with me.

I moved even closer to the side, until my arm was brushing the branches of the trees which grow along the pathway.

The bike moved too.

At this point it struck me that this bicycle was moving very, very slowly, given that it was able to stay behind me, at my slow walking pace.  It could also have passed me at any time: the path is a wide one, and I hadn’t exactly been filling it up even before I moved.

Clearly, then, it was following me.  Great.

I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, there he was: another Junior Bandito (not the Pitt Bull handler,  this time), grinning unpleasantly as the front tyre of his bike almost brushed my heels. I’m no good at estimating people’s ages, but I’d say he was probably 10 or 11. Young, but old enough to know better than to harass people in the street, I’d say.

I decided the best thing to do here would be to ignore him, so I looked away and continued walking.

“HEY! UGLY!” the bandit called.

At this point all I can say is that something snapped in my head. Because, honestly, I’ve HAD IT with people thinking it’s perfectly OK to insult and harass each other. ENOUGH.

So I stopped dead in my tracks (he almost ran into me) and turned round to face him.

“Did you say something? ” I asked pleasantly.

Well, the bandit almost fell off his bike. The look that crossed his face was almost comical as his brain struggled to register the fact that the worm had apparently turned.

“No,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “I didn’t say a thing.”

“That’s strange,” I said, still calm. “I’m sure I heard you say something to me. What was it?”

The kid quaked. He clearly had no idea how to deal with this, so he decided to go with denial. Nope, he’d said nothing, not him. Why, he was just riding along on his bike, minding his own business!

“Well, there’s no one else here,” I said, “So I’m pretty sure it was you. What did you say?”

“I just said hello,” blurted the bandit.  “That was it.”

“Really?” I said, puzzled. “That’s funny: you just told me you didn’t say anything. So now you’re telling me you DID say something: is that right?”

Silence.  Pinned into a corner by his lies (I should totally be a crime writer, right?), the bandit had no choice but to get on his hoss bike and get out of town.  Unfortunately for me, he managed to do the first bit OK, but, once on his bike (he’d jumped off for our “chat”) he decided to go back to following me, albeit at a slightly further distance this time.

“GINGER!” he shouted this time.

So I turned round and karate chopped him. No, OK, I didn’t. But I did turn round, and, once again, the kid almost fell off his bike in fright. You’d think he’d have learned the first time, no?

“Ah, so you DO have something to say to me!” I beamed. “I thought so! But I didn’t quite hear you. Tell you what, why don’t you come and say it to my face, rather than waiting until my back’s turned? That would be the brave thing to do, don’t you think?”

No, I have no idea why I was talking like this to a child. I mean, clearly it wasn’t exactly my finest hour, and equally clearly, I wouldn’t have been nearly so brave had he been just a little bit older. Of if he’d had The Friendliest Pit Bull in All The Land with him.  But, like I said, I’m absolutely sick of not being able to walk my dog close to my own home without being taunted and harassed by idiot kids.  This has happened several times now, the worst time being when I was held at branch-point in the woods, and had to phone the police. And although this was a young ‘un, I still think he was old enough to learn that following strange women in the street and calling them names is not a pleasant thing to do. And that sometimes, when you choose to do this, you just might get yourself in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the words themselves that bother me. I am not so insecure that a child calling me “ugly” will make me feel I actually AM ugly (Sorry, blog commenters who say more or less the same thing!), and the “ginger” thing is just stupid. It’s the fact that people today apparently think it’s OK to taunt strangers in the street IN ANY WAY that makes my blood boil. To follow people, and call them names, and to then try to deny it is stupid and cowardly in the extreme, and I don’t care if you’re eleven or eleventy-one: if you behave like that towards someone, you should expect to get called on it.

I know lots of people would give the old, “Ah, but they’re only kids!” argument, here, but that one won’t wash with me, sorry. If they’re old enough to be out in public unsupervised, then they’re old enough to be taught that it’s not nice to follow people and be rude to them. If your kid ISN’T old enough to understand that message, then you keep him under supervision until he is: simple. Quite apart from anything else, it’s pretty damn dangerous for kids to do this kind of thing, because while the worst thing I’d ever do would be to tell them off, if they pick on someone a little more aggressive, they could end up in some serious trouble.

So I told the bandito all of this. At length.  And … he turned and ran away. “Leave me alone!” he sobbed, jumping off his bike a few metres down the path.

“I don’t really see why I should,” I said, reasonably. “I mean, you haven’t been leaving ME alone, have you? You’ve been following me and calling me names, so maybe I’ll just follow YOU now, and call you some names, how would you like that?”

He wouldn’t, was the answer. And he agreed to stop following me if I just stopped talking. So I did. And you know, that little Bandit was as good as his word. I like to think he will grow up to be a better Bandit now: a Bandit with a basic understanding of how to behave in public, and why it’s Not Nice to follow people and shout names at them. And thus, a new era of peace will be forged between the Banditos and the ordinary people of Bandit Country, all thanks to me.

Actually, I know I’ll just be lucky if my windows don’t get broken next time I’m out. Such is life.

(ETA : not that it particularly matters, but in the interests of accuracy, this all actually happened on Saturday -I wrote the post then, but then totally forgot to publish it. Ooops.)

Dear Charity Collectors,

I already give to charity every month. I give to charities I have chosen, and I do it by direct debit. As much as I’d love to give more money, to more charities, if I gave to everyone who came knocking on my door begging for money, I’d end up in need of charity myself, pretty damn soon. Also, I don’t keep money in the house anyway.

This is why I really dislike it when you come to my home to ask for money. It’s nothing personal, and I understand why you do it, but I don’t like people intruding into my time uninvited, no matter how good they feel their cause may be.  I will decide who I give my money to. I will decide when and how I give it, and I don’t really enjoy feeling like I have to justify myself to random strangers who come knocking on my door.

I don’t like it, but of course I put up with it, as long as the charity collectors in question aren’t pushy about it and  as long as they clear off when I ask them to.

When you do knock on my door, though, and I send you away empty handed (or when Terry does it, as the case may be), I expect you to STAY AWAY. I do not expect you to turn up again an hour later and repeat your request for money. And I certainly don’t expect you to say, “Oh, are you still watching TV?” when you’re told once again that your presence on the doorstep is not welcome.

Oh, and when the TV show I’m watching is something important, like, say, the inauguration of the new leader of the free world, I REALLY don’t appreciate your presence on my doorstep for the second time in one day.

This is why if you show up at my door one more time, I will be contacting the charity you represent and making a complaint.  And my dog will bite your bum. Just FYI.

Yours,

The Girl Who Will Never Give You Any Money Now

Lately I’ve started to notice that the Internet has ruined some words for me. These are perfectly good words (well, some of them are, anyway…); words I’ve even used myself, and probably still do from time to time. But their use on the Internet has totally ruined them, to the extent that a little part of me dies every time I see them used. (And a little part of me exaggerates every chance it gets, clearly. Sorry about that.) For instance:

“LOL”

OK, so my very first example and it’s not even a word. I know. But this is actually my point: “LOL” has started to be used on the Internet almost as if it was one. In fact, I bet there are kids out there now who don’t even know that “LOL” used to mean “laughing out loud.” Seriously. And it’s not like it’s often used these days to indicate that the person is actually laughing out loud, is it? No, it’s used almost as a kind of punctuation. Like, people will write, “I’m off to bed now, lol!” Or “I’m looking forward to eating dinner tonight, lol!”  Or, “I’m really tired, lol!”

WHY? Why are they laughing out loud at these things? Oh, that’s right, they’re NOT. They’re just saying it. For no reason.  I AM NOT LAUGHING. OUT LOUD OR OTHERWISE.

Note: Yes, I know I’ve done this too, so no need to go through my archives and point it out to me, lol!

“Cute”

I write about fashion for a living. This means that I also READ a lot about fashion. I’ve noticed that most people use the word “cute” a lot to describe items of clothing and shoes. This is perfectly fine, of course, but they use it almost as if there were no other words available to them. Seriously, I’ve had comments on The Fashion Police from people who’ve said stuff like, “Today I’m wearing a cute skirt with a cute sweater, some cute shoes and this really cute handbag. I think I look really cute!” And EVERYONE does this. If I post a picture of something that’s… er…beautiful, say, I will get twenty comments, all saying that the thing is “cute!”. (I’ll also get half a dozen saying I need to die now, but that’s another post altogether…)

I’m aware that this is irrational of me, but I’ve now started to cringe every time I see or hear the word “cute”. I have banned myself from using it. LOL!

“Sorry”

GOD.  This word is currently my Public Enemy Number 1.  Now, don’t get me wrong: “sorry” is absolutely fine, as long as the person IS ACTUALLY SORRY. And most of the time? They freaking aren’t. Yes, I’m talking about the good old “Sorry, but…” I think I may have mentioned this before. When someone starts a sentence with the words “Sorry, but…”  you instantly know that they ARE NOT SORRY and are just  going to try and make you feel bad.  There are some days when almost ALL the comments I get at The Fashion Police start with the word “sorry”.  And I don’t understand why, either, because often the people are actually agreeing with me. Like, I’ll post a picture of an ugly dress, and describe it as an “ugly dress” in the title.  It will be filed in the “ugly dress” category and I’ll probably say something in the post to the effect of, “Hey, this is not very cute.” And then I’ll get a bunch of comments from people, all saying, “Sorry, but I think this dress is ugly.” Um, yeah, so do I. Why are you sorry?

Anyway.  I probably shouldn’t have mentioned this, because when I mentioned my irritation with the misuse of “LOL” to Terry a few weeks ago, I suddenly started getting a bunch of text messages and emails. They all purported to be from Rubin, and they would all say things like, “Amber, I need a pee, lol!” Or “Amber, is time for my dinner yet, lol!” Sometimes they would just say, “LOL!” Today I received this:

lol!

And last month, when it snowed? Terry took the rubbish out one night, and when I looked out of the window afterwards, I saw this:

Which, actually, isn’t so bad, is it?

Tell me then, which words should I add to my Hate List?

Despite having been born with red hair, I’ve actually been pretty lucky in that I’ve never been physically attacked because of my universally reviled appearance.  And come to think of it, although my mum got a lot of “don’t worry, she might grow out of it!” comments when I was a small baby, few people have been rude enough – or brave enough – to tell me to my face that they think my hair is ugly, either. Or, indeed, to kick me on the ass because of it. 

(Note: one time in the shopping mall, a teenager did grab me by the collar, thrust his acne-ridden face into mine and scream, “You’re SO fucking ugly!” at me.  I don’t know if that was because of my hair specifically, or just a more general observation, though, so I can’t really count it.)

No, most people tend to go for the more subtle, but just as offensive, method of telling me that hey, I’m not bad looking “for a redhead”. Or they’ll try to “comfort” me by reassuring me that I’m not actually a redhead at all, “it’s more of an auburn colour!” (This actually REALLY offends me because I don’t WANT to be “more of an auburn colour”, thanks – I’m happy with the colour I have and I don’t really need people trying to convince me I’m delusional, ya know?) Or, the all-time winner: “it’s OK on you, I guess, but when I see men with red hair I’m physically sick!” Yeah. Good job I’m not planning to breed then, or my offspring might really upset you…

So I’ve been lucky. Much luckier than the kid in this story, anyway, who was assaulted by a group of 13 teenagers, all  taking part in “National Kick a Ginger Day”.

Let’s just take a minute to digest that. National. Kick. A. Ginger. Day. Doesn’t that sound fun? I mean, we already know that redheads have no soul so it stands to reason they have no feelings either, and therefore it’s perfectly acceptable to abuse them – whether physically or verbally – and expect them to just take the joke, isn’t it?

Because this is the thing. Almost every time I indulge in a rant about the hatred directed towards people with red hair in this country (or, in this case, in Canada, which surprised me, because it’s normally the UK that abuses its “gingers”), some bright spark comes along and tells me to “lighten up” or “get a sense of humour”.

A quote from the article I linked to above:

“Student Ken Logel said: “I have a few buddies with red hair, you just kind of kick them lightly just as a joke but when it gets carried away that’s not cool.”

No, that’s not “cool”, is it? I mean, a “light kick” is just fine, obviously. Because it’s SO FUNNY when people call you ugly and maybe leave you bruised and battered because of the colour of your hair, isn’t it? And that’s not AT ALL like abusing someone for the colour of their skin, or their religion or race, now, is it? On no, my mistake: IT IS.  It is the same. And every time I write about prejudice against redheads, and compare it to prejudice against black people, or Jewish people, or < insert abused mimority group here > I’m told that I’m doing a disservice to victims of racism because what I’m talking about is SO MUCH LESS IMPORTANT, and is a JOKE, and doesn’t actually matter because for crying out loud it’s JUST HAIR.

Yes, it is. But now people are actually being physically attacked because of it. Now there are Facebook groups inciting violence against people with a certain colour of hair. How is this different from inciting violence against people with a certain colour of skin? Oh yeah: it isn’t. It really isn’t. And now I find myself wondering how many more attacks like this there will have to be before people start to admit that no, it’s really not cool. It’s not cool to beat people up for ANY REASON, be it skin colour, race, religion, or even hair colour. The fact that people think the first three are unacceptable (which they are) and the last is “just a joke” absolutely boggles my mind, it really does.

(Oh, and the “you can dye your hair - people can’t change the colour of their skin” argument? I SHOUDLN’T HAVE TO dye my hair to avoid abuse, any more than people with black skin should be forced to try and lighten it, or hide themselves away. People just shouldn’t abuse others, end of story.)

I’m glad to see that the police seem to be taking this incident seriously at least. But I can’t help wondering how much more of an outcry there would be if there was a “National Kick a Black Day” or a “National Kick a Jew Day”.

(Thanks to Emma for sending me the link to the story)

So, for the past couple of years, Terry and I have been doing our grocery shopping online, and having it delivered. Because we are lazy, basically. And actually, I say, “Terry and I”, but really, Terry does ALL of it by himself. That’s how lazy I am, and why, to this day, my parents thank their lucky stars each night that they somehow managed to pay him enough to take me of their hands.

Anyway, we get the shopping delivered, and this not only helps us in our quest to never leave the house, ever, it also helps us avoid The Others, who are always at their absolute worst at the supermarket, indulging in their usual behaviour of stopping randomly in the middle of aisles without warning, wielding screaming children like weapons, ramming shopping carts into the back of your legs, that sort of thing. Basically, the supermarket is like the seventh circle of hell to us, and that’s why we get the shopping delivered. That and the fact that I have that rare, incurable condition that forces me to buy a new pair of shoes or item of clothing every time I go near an actual shop. But I digress.

For most of the time we’ve been having the shopping delivered, we’ve been having it delivered by Asda. (Asda being Wal*Mart, for the benefit of those of you in the States) We’ve had a few brief flirtations with Tesco, but it’s just never really worked out with them for various reasons that are too boring to go into here. Yes, even more boring than an entire blog entry about grocery shopping. Look, I don’t get out much, OK?

For the most part, Asda have been OK at delivering our shopping. Sure, they’ve messed up. There was that time they brought us someone else’s shopping, and gave someone else most of our shopping, for instance. There was that other time they… did exactly the same thing. There have been times when they’ve forgotten things, brought things we didn’t order (if anyone needs a pack of baby wipes and some allergy tablets, by the way, we got them in stock. We’re keeping the 12 pack of quilted loo roll though. Swanky!), and just basically sucked, to be honest, but we have kept with them because, well, it’s better the devil you know, sometimes, and also because they do a really nice turkey and stuffing sandwich filler that I really like.

This month, though, Asda randomly decided to start sucking big time. They mostly did this by just not bothering to turn up when they said they would, leaving us starving to death and gnawing the furniture in hunger until they finally rolled up. Then on Friday? They just didn’t turn up at all. AT ALL, people. Of course, Terry called them. They apologised and said they’d bring us our shopping on Saturday afternoon instead. Then they just didn’t bother with that, either. So Terry called them again. “Sunday!” said Asda. “We will bring your shopping on Sunday! Until then, we will stick it in the freezer and hope it doesn’t reach its sell-by date in the meantime!” Actually, they didn’t say that last bit, but that IS what they did – we could tell by the way all the food was FREEZING COLD, and about to go out of date.

Not that we got the food when they said we would, mind you. Oh, they did turn up that time, which was very nice of them. But they only brought half our shopping with them. The rest, they said, would be right along – in fact, was leaving the store on a van RIGHT THAT SECOND! The store is a 20 minute drive from our house. (Told you we were lazy). It took them two and a half hours, and OK, they did send us a huge box of Quality Street by way of apology, but it was too late because by then I’d eaten the dog. Sorry, Rubin.

Yes, you’re right, we should totally just have jumped in the car and gone and picked up the shopping ourselves, only we couldn’t because a) lazy! b) we’d already paid for it, and it was on a van in some unspecified location and c) still lazy! So, basically, our ENTIRE WEEKEND was spent sitting around the house waiting for our time-saving online grocery delivery. Top tip: NEVER DO THAT. Try Tesco. Because even if they don’t have the turkey stuffing sandwich filler, they can’t possibly suck that hard, can they?

The phone rings.  I happen to be standing next to it at the time and Terry is downstairs, so I have no option but to answer the stupid ringy thing (See Phones, Amber’s Irrational Hatred Of for more info on this). I glare at it it for a couple of seconds, hoping it will somehow sense my hatred and stop ringing, but of course this doesn’t happen, so I heave a heavy sigh and pick it up.

Only to be greeted by a freaking ROBOT.

GOD. I hate this. Why are recorded messages allowed to call me in my home? Why is this not illegal? (Actually, come to think of it: is this illegal? And if so, what happens to the robot-voices when they’re caught? Is there some kind of Robot Jail they all go to? What if there was a mass breakout from the Robot Jail? WHAT IF, people? See, now I really wish I hadn’t set my imagination off down this track. Anyway…)

Now, the robot that calls us most frequently is a Stepford-sounding American woman who calls us up regularly and says, “CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve just won a… ” And actually, I have no idea what it is we’re supposed to have won because these days she only ever gets as far as “CONGRA….” before it’s a case of handset: meet cradle!

(Yes, we are signed up for the TPS. No, it does not stop The Robots. Nothing stops The Robots.)

Anyway, this time it wasn’t the Congratulating Woman.  This time it was a rather gravelly-voiced Robot Voice who informed me that she was the BT Text Messaging Service, and that someone had sent a text message to my land line. A text message that I would get to hear simply by pressing “1″.

Now, we all know that you never, ever obey the commands of a Robot Voice, especially when you’re 99.8% sure it’s some kind of scam, don’t we? So I’m sure you can all guess what I did, can’t you?

I pressed “1″. No, I have no idea why.  I mean, I don’t even like text messages. They confuse and panic me, making me feel like a pensioner as I am forced to take 30 minutes at a time away from my Important Work in order to battle with the predictive texting on my phone to produce a message that invariably says something like, “Ai! Aku dujk, aber!” But I digress.

I pressed “1″. And for my trouble, I got yet another robotic voice who informed me that the call had cost 12p (!), and that this amount could easily feed a small child in Afghanistan for a week. (Which kinda begged the question, why did they not just send the 12p to a small child in Afghanistan instead of using it to phone-spam me? Or did it cost me 12p? So many questions… Well, two.) And that I should now press another button to forward the robotic message on to seven of my friends (Why seven, I wonder? Lucky number, perhaps?) or else the small child in Afghanistan? Would DIE.

Eeek!

The upshot of all of this? I have inadvertently caused the death of a small child in Afghanistan. So sorry. SO going to hell. SO not answering the phone EVER again, lest I kill someone else without meaning to.

Let this be a lesson to you all, folks.  Telephones = danger. Especially if you’re a small child in Afghanistan…

There’s a full moon tonight. Can you tell? I can. I can always tell, though, and I don’t even need the little “moon” symbol in my diary. No, I can tell when there’s a full moon because of the absolute 100% batshit craziness that goes down on my blogs at around this time every month. (Note: not this one, though! The people who comment on this blog are all lovely and totally non-crazy! Please don’t shout at me!)

Seriously, this happens without fail every month, and mostly involves the comments section over at The Fashion Police (Which was two years old today, by the way. I almost didn’t post about that over there because after the comments I’ve been getting lately, I was pretty sure some bright spark would use it as an excuse to comment saying, “Oh, the blog’s two today? That’s two whole years of SUCK, bitch!” or something. Because really, nothing would surprise me now. Not when the moon is full, anyway.) although the other blogs attract their fair share of Crazies too.

Now, fair enough, The Fashion Police is a blog which gives and solicits opinions on clothes, so it’s always going to be a little bit controversial. In so far as clothes can actually be controversial, that is. I mean, seriously: I enjoy fashion enough to write about it for a living, but jeez, they’re just clothes, folks. That you wear. Does it really matter so much if someone doesn’t share your exact opinion on them? Well, apparently it does. On Friday? I was called a “douchebag” in my comments section, just because I said I liked a certain hat. A HAT, people. That’s so messed up it’s almost beyond comprehension to me. I mean, what must it be like to get so angry over the fact that some random stranger on the Internet likes a freakin’ HAT that you find yourself verbally amusing them?  Honestly, there are people out there killing puppies and torturing kittens, and yet I’m a douchebag because I like a HAT? For real? What must these people be like when they read something really  upsetting? And how has their stupidity not killed them yet?

(Weirdly, it’s always the things I like that get the most abuse.  I don’t really know why. I can say I hate a certain item and that’ll be fine, but as soon as I say I like something I get people telling me I should be shot in the head and calling me a “f&*^%&g bitch”. And those are example of real comments, by the way…)

This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. All weekend I’ve been dealing with this kind of crap. And sure, the site is getting around 10,000 visitors per day, so there’s always a good chance that at least some of them are going to be assholes, but it’s the Full Moon Effect that makes it so hard to deal with, because, for the most part, everything is fine. People are nice. They’re polite. Even when they disagree with me, they do it in a reasonable, measured kind of way. All month, things coast along just fine, and then suddenly, WHAM! Full Moon Fever! Suddenly every second comment is abuse. Suddenly everyone’s an idiot. Suddenly I’m spending so much time deleting comments and wondering if I actually DO deserve to die because I said I liked a certain dress that I don’t have time to actually write. And even although I know the wave of awfulness will pass, and tomorrow things will (hopefully) be back to normal… it’s hard. It hurts. It really puts a downer on things, and makes me want to crawl back into bed until sanity is restored once more. Oh, the humanity!

I don’t think there can be many jobs in the world which involve opening yourself up to such hatred and abuse every day. Other than call centres, obviously. (I speak as the voice of experience here, by the way: I used to work in a call centre, and we could always tell when there was a full moon there, too, because that’s what people would start threatening to kill us, rather than just threatening to break our legs. Again, not making this up…)  Sadly, there is no intelligence test people must pass to be able to use the Internet, which means that growing a thick skin is one of the main requirements of blogging for a living.  And I’m not quite there, yet. Oh, my skin is a helluva lot thicker than it used to be – today I was able to just laugh off the email from the person who said he “wouldn’t be able to live with himself” without ranting in all lowercase for a few hundred words, and to roll my eyes at the fellow blogger who commented on Dollface (a beauty blog, let me remind you) to tell me that I shouldn’t be writing about hairstyles and should be focusing on “actual news” instead, namely dresses and celebrity anorexia rumours. (Er, yeah, because that’s totally “actual news”. And it’s not AT ALL unfair to criticize a beauty blog for not being a fashion/celebrity gossip blog, is it now? )

So my skin is getting thicker, but it’s not quite thick enough, and sometimes, when there’s a full moon, it feels very thin indeed. Which is why, just this once, I felt the need to stamp my little feet and have a bit of a rant. Sorry. I’ll stop now.

I still get to have the last laugh, though because the sites are growing all the time, and yesterday was our best day ever, which means that I get to keep on working from my spare room, and earning a living from looking at pictures of shoes on the Internet. Not bad for a complete freaking douchebag, no?

OK, so after my last post I’m glad to see we’re all in agreement: I get to rule the world. I promise to be a fair and benevolent ruler, and to only occasionally be totally freaking irrational and despotic, but there’s just one thing: can I start next week?

Because this week, I’m too busy dying.

Yes, on Sunday morning I woke up feeling like I had a bunch of really sharp knives in my throat. As knife-swallowing hadn’t been part of Saturday night’s entertainment, I quickly deduced that I was getting the cold, and this was Very Bad News because, as anyone who knows me will testify, I don’t get normal colds. No, I get them worse than everyone else. Worse than you, for sure. My head colds are more like mini bouts of pneumonia, which is why I’ve been feeling very sorry for myself over the last few days. Sadly, the "illness" wasn’t bad enough to stop me working, but it did stop me going to the gym so, you know, every cloud, silver lining and all that.

Anyway, your responses to my post about Word Domination reminded me of a few other things I want to ban, kicking off with a suggestion from Anne-Marie:

Public spitters – BANNED

I mean, WHY? Why do people feel the need to do this? Just last month, for instance, I was standing at the ATM getting some cash to pay for my Ghetto Haircut, on account of the Hammer House of Hairdressing Horrors not actually accepting debit or credit cards, and… DIGRESSION! DIGRESSION! INCOMING!…

Shops that don’t accept plastic – BANNED

Seriously, this shows you just how much of a backwater we live in: THERE ARE STORES THAT DON’T ACCEPT PLASTIC. Which totally boggles my mind, because really, I am like the Queen, and by that I don’t mean I’m in my 80s and mother to some slightly strange looking toffs, but that I don’t carry cash. Ever. Because… actually, I don’t really know why. I think it’s because I hate it when I have to take out £10 just to buy something that costs £2, and I end up with a whole bunch of change that will burn a hole in my pocket, and then I’ll walk around thinking, "OMG, I must find something that costs £8 and buy it! Because I CAN!" Basically, if I have cash, I WILL spend it, so I just use plastic all the time. (Yes, I am one of those people who uses a debit card for small amounts. I expect lots of you will want to ban me for that, so let me just remind you that I RULE THE WORLD, not you, mwahaha!.)

So, anyway, I’m standing there getting my cash out of the ATM, when suddenly a car pulls up next to me and a man in a tracksuit gets out.

(Men in tracksuits – BANNED!)

Now, this gave me some cause for concern anyway because I felt sure he would come and stand in line behind me, and would stand as close behind me as he could possibly get, breathing down my neck and looking on with interest as I typed in my PIN. I felt sure he would do this because EVERYONE DOES THIS IN LINE FOR THE ATM. Seriously, they do, don’t they? And in the line for everything else too, come to think of it. They do it to me, anyway. Time and time again, there I’ll be, standing there minding my own business when I suddenly become aware of warm breath on the back of my neck, I turn round and – yup – there’s a pensioner stuck to my back.

People who stand too close to you at the ATM, and in other places too, but mostly at the ATM – BANNED

I don’t know why it’s normally pensioners that do this. Maybe because pensioners have a reduced awareness of the concept of "personal space" or something? ("Ooh, when I were a lass we didn’t have no newfangled ‘personal space’, young ‘un! In fact, there were 35 of us all living in a shoebox and it didn’t do me no harm! Aaar!") (I have no idea why I made my fictional pensioner say "aaar" there, by the way. Maybe a pirate pensioner?)

Anyway, pensioners tend to be the biggest culprits when it comes to personal space-invading but other people do it too, which is why I experienced a prickle of fear as I saw Tracksuit Man approach the ATM. Remember where I live, here, folks. The Buckfast bottles, the locals howling at the moon – I’m pretty sure "mugging a girl at the ATM" wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for some of these people, especially given that most ATMs round here make that handy "BEEP! BEEP!" sound when your cash is ready, which, really, they’d be as well just replacing with a recording of someone shouting, "ATTENTION ALL MUGGERS! CASH STICKING OUT OF HOLE IN WALL HERE! VULNERABLE WEAKLING STANDING IN FRONT OF IT! NOW’S YOUR CHANCE!"

ATMs that make loud noises when your cash is ready – BANNED

Where was I? Oh yeah, so Tracksuit man gets out of his car, walks towards me, positions himself just a few centimeters away from my back, and then…

…makes a disgusting "hawking" noise (gag!) and spits a mouthful of… frothy phlegm… onto the pavement. Right next to my shoe. AAARRGH! Gag, gah, gag!

I seriously almost threw up. Once I’d brought the gagging impulse under control, though, I’m afraid to say I took my life in both hands, turned around and shot the idiot in the head.

Whoops, sorry, no, that was how the scenario played out in my own head. In real life, I just shot him with one of my Death Ray stares. Which was dangerous because remember where we live, people. If real life was anything like my imagination, though, that glare would have incinerated Tracksuit Man where he stood. All that would’ve been left of him would’ve been a football top, a pair of "trackie" bottoms and some expensive trainers. That I would’ve… spat on. Because, actually? Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right. And sometimes I would like to go round the houses of all the people who spit on the street, and spit on their floors. Or on their widescreen TVs or something. The fact that I can’t actually spit (Seriously. I can’t spit. I did try, out of curiosity, and I have no idea how they manage to get that much phlegm out of their systems. How do they do it? ) would clearly be An Issue here, but I’d find a way around it. Maybe I’d just let Rubin pee on their washing machines, instead.

Yes, it’s a strange kind of justice that will operate in the world with me as Supreme Ruler, but I totally think it will work, no?

So yes, basically the entire point of this entry was for me to give my wholehearted approval to the suggestion that people who spit in the street be BANNED. Clearly that annoys me much more than I had realised, maybe because the scenario above is actually all too common, and I seem to see men doing this ALL THE FREAKING TIME.

Also banned: bloggers who start out with the intention of writing a couple of simple paragraphs, and end up writing long, whiny rants filled with multiple digressions. Because seriously, what is WRONG with those people?