... in which we welcome you to Ranting Request Live
We just had a really awesome thunderstorm. I love them - with the thunder booming and the rain going like it's the end of the world, it's suddenly really easy to understand why people once made up gods. I love reading Agatha Christie while listening to the rain, even if it does mean running around closing all the windows first. (This would be where having warped sleeping patterns comes in handy, too.) Thunderstorms are cool.
Unlike the temperature. Heh. It's hopefully going to be cooler now, but yesterday was, according to all the papers, The Hottest July Since Records Began. (Which is 36 degrees celcius for those of you mocking us at home.) Eugh. I know I tend to go on about this every time it gets hot, but I do not deal well with heat.
And I kind of randomly feel the need to explain that Britain doesn't deal well with heat, and that it's not our fault. The Londer Underground doesn't have air conditioning - and there's all sorts of people, like here are expressing surprise and "OMG is everybody so stupid there?" and things. I kind of want to go, shut up, actually, it really is that mild here that we don't need it. People dying from exposure makes the news here - it just doesn't get either very hot or very cold. Below zero or above twenty is extreme here, generally. And this, to us really hot, weather is new. It isn't us being stupid, it's that we haven't had to deal with this before. Our buildings aren't made for air conditioning. Most people don't own fans, and wouldn't know where to buy one, because they never needed one before. (Do they do fans at Argos? I don't know. They probably do. But otherwise, I'd only know where to go for a small, portable hand-fan.) Funnily enough, it never occured to anybody go round ripping up old buildings to install air conditioning that nobody thought would ever get used.
It also never seemed apparant that spending all that money and energy on more fuel-guzzling contraptions (which will make the problem worse) was the solution. Not that I don't appreciate the current necessity of air conditioning in really hot places, or sometimes wish for it here, but seriously. In what universe is it sane to go "let's use more oil!" during a freaking energy crisis? Is the phrase "peak oil" really that outlandish over there?
(I mean seriously, this kind of thing makes me feel physically sick. God, people can be fucking disgusting.)
And secondarily, last night I made a mistake. You see, I forgot that walking around my neighbourhood by yourself is a sin if you're wearing a skirt.
And it pisses me off, because OK, it's baking fucking hot. I felt like drinking something other than water, and we only had milk or lemonade, and neither of those particularly appealed either. So I decided to go to the shop, because there is one that's open til 11 and I bloody well can if I want a drink when it's hot. So off I go, and I didn't even think about the wearing a skirt issue because hi, I'm not getting changed into trousers just to go to the shop when I'm perfectly decent and, as already mentioned a bazillion times, it's way too fucking hot.
And I forgot, I honestly did, that if you're in a skirt, even if it's in no way provoative or anything (skirt and a Penzance t-shirt is hardly revealing, and seriously, sticky and sweaty and grouchy is SUCH good look), this means you're asking to be talked to. I'm OK, usually - I wear jeans 99% of the time and that does me fine and so getting randomly talked to by strange men is a relatively infrequent occurance. But hey, skirt on, and suddenly two seperate skeevy guys (one by himself, one with two friends) both started talking to me. Out of the fucking blue.
And not just talking, either. It's all "hey, where are you going?" and "stay and talk to us" and "you need anyone to carry your shopping?" and crap. And then when I ignored it, one of them got all "Hey, talk to me, I was only asking!" about it. I really, really wish I'd gone "So learn some fucking respect for women, then" or something, but actually I just said "sorry, no" back at them over my shoulder and carried on.
And why the fuck should I feel the need to apologise? I didn't do anything to those guys. The rude people, the insulting people, are the guys who honestly don't see anything wrong about shouting at a woman walking down the street at night - enough that they don't even seem to get why that might not garner good responses.
It makes me sad, it really does. Either these guys have so little imagination that they honestly are not capable of thinking "hey, maybe most people would take shouting as a threatening gesture", let alone "maybe that woman knows somebody who was a raped in a situation like this". Or... they're so fucking repellant that they get off on making women feel threatened, they honestly think that women are there for them and their amusement, like dolls. That they honestly and truly think that somebody wearing a skirt is doing so for their benefit, that it's in any way their business. I think that's probably it, actually, and it makes me mad because that is a whole lot of men. It's not all men, but it's not an isolated phenomenon by any means, and it kind of skeeves me out that some of the men I know, men I can't avoid for whatever reason, think like that. Statistically speaking, it's almost certain, and urgh urgh urgh that is the kind of thing that makes women want to never associate with men ever again. Euughhhhhh.
And it makes me mad that this shit works, that it really does mean that just being a woman is something that gets punished: either you don't go out, or you specifically plan to wear clothes that will lessen (although not eliminate) the liklihood of shit happening, or you get heckled. There aren't any 'good' answers. And god, that makes me want to kick things.
Other stuff you should see:
Lebanese Bloggers is written by a bunch of people actually living right in the middle of the war zone. Up-to-the-minute discussion.
More cheerfully, Rough Riders (The None More Black Remix) is Spinal Tap fanfic. Apocalyptic fanfic. That still manages to be cute, funny, and only a bit more slashy than the rockumentary itself. I love this fic and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who knows the band. (And if you don't, you need to see This Is Spinal Tap, like, right now. Trust me.)
Unlike the temperature. Heh. It's hopefully going to be cooler now, but yesterday was, according to all the papers, The Hottest July Since Records Began. (Which is 36 degrees celcius for those of you mocking us at home.) Eugh. I know I tend to go on about this every time it gets hot, but I do not deal well with heat.
And I kind of randomly feel the need to explain that Britain doesn't deal well with heat, and that it's not our fault. The Londer Underground doesn't have air conditioning - and there's all sorts of people, like here are expressing surprise and "OMG is everybody so stupid there?" and things. I kind of want to go, shut up, actually, it really is that mild here that we don't need it. People dying from exposure makes the news here - it just doesn't get either very hot or very cold. Below zero or above twenty is extreme here, generally. And this, to us really hot, weather is new. It isn't us being stupid, it's that we haven't had to deal with this before. Our buildings aren't made for air conditioning. Most people don't own fans, and wouldn't know where to buy one, because they never needed one before. (Do they do fans at Argos? I don't know. They probably do. But otherwise, I'd only know where to go for a small, portable hand-fan.) Funnily enough, it never occured to anybody go round ripping up old buildings to install air conditioning that nobody thought would ever get used.
It also never seemed apparant that spending all that money and energy on more fuel-guzzling contraptions (which will make the problem worse) was the solution. Not that I don't appreciate the current necessity of air conditioning in really hot places, or sometimes wish for it here, but seriously. In what universe is it sane to go "let's use more oil!" during a freaking energy crisis? Is the phrase "peak oil" really that outlandish over there?
(I mean seriously, this kind of thing makes me feel physically sick. God, people can be fucking disgusting.)
And secondarily, last night I made a mistake. You see, I forgot that walking around my neighbourhood by yourself is a sin if you're wearing a skirt.
And it pisses me off, because OK, it's baking fucking hot. I felt like drinking something other than water, and we only had milk or lemonade, and neither of those particularly appealed either. So I decided to go to the shop, because there is one that's open til 11 and I bloody well can if I want a drink when it's hot. So off I go, and I didn't even think about the wearing a skirt issue because hi, I'm not getting changed into trousers just to go to the shop when I'm perfectly decent and, as already mentioned a bazillion times, it's way too fucking hot.
And I forgot, I honestly did, that if you're in a skirt, even if it's in no way provoative or anything (skirt and a Penzance t-shirt is hardly revealing, and seriously, sticky and sweaty and grouchy is SUCH good look), this means you're asking to be talked to. I'm OK, usually - I wear jeans 99% of the time and that does me fine and so getting randomly talked to by strange men is a relatively infrequent occurance. But hey, skirt on, and suddenly two seperate skeevy guys (one by himself, one with two friends) both started talking to me. Out of the fucking blue.
And not just talking, either. It's all "hey, where are you going?" and "stay and talk to us" and "you need anyone to carry your shopping?" and crap. And then when I ignored it, one of them got all "Hey, talk to me, I was only asking!" about it. I really, really wish I'd gone "So learn some fucking respect for women, then" or something, but actually I just said "sorry, no" back at them over my shoulder and carried on.
And why the fuck should I feel the need to apologise? I didn't do anything to those guys. The rude people, the insulting people, are the guys who honestly don't see anything wrong about shouting at a woman walking down the street at night - enough that they don't even seem to get why that might not garner good responses.
It makes me sad, it really does. Either these guys have so little imagination that they honestly are not capable of thinking "hey, maybe most people would take shouting as a threatening gesture", let alone "maybe that woman knows somebody who was a raped in a situation like this". Or... they're so fucking repellant that they get off on making women feel threatened, they honestly think that women are there for them and their amusement, like dolls. That they honestly and truly think that somebody wearing a skirt is doing so for their benefit, that it's in any way their business. I think that's probably it, actually, and it makes me mad because that is a whole lot of men. It's not all men, but it's not an isolated phenomenon by any means, and it kind of skeeves me out that some of the men I know, men I can't avoid for whatever reason, think like that. Statistically speaking, it's almost certain, and urgh urgh urgh that is the kind of thing that makes women want to never associate with men ever again. Euughhhhhh.
And it makes me mad that this shit works, that it really does mean that just being a woman is something that gets punished: either you don't go out, or you specifically plan to wear clothes that will lessen (although not eliminate) the liklihood of shit happening, or you get heckled. There aren't any 'good' answers. And god, that makes me want to kick things.
Other stuff you should see:
Lebanese Bloggers is written by a bunch of people actually living right in the middle of the war zone. Up-to-the-minute discussion.
More cheerfully, Rough Riders (The None More Black Remix) is Spinal Tap fanfic. Apocalyptic fanfic. That still manages to be cute, funny, and only a bit more slashy than the rockumentary itself. I love this fic and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who knows the band. (And if you don't, you need to see This Is Spinal Tap, like, right now. Trust me.)