Have The T-Shirt’s recent post has inspired me!  With the dismal cloud of Christmas looming over us, I’m going to follow in her footsteps, and make a list for Santa!

This isn’t a list of presents I’m going to buy other people, nor is it a list of presents I’d like.  It’s a list of (mostly unrealistic!! things I would love to have for Christmas (if I had a magic lamp, and a totally hot genie)..

- I’d like a dressing room.  Yes, an actual room.  A whole, enormous room dedicated mostly to shoes.

- I’d like a disgustingly enviable collection of shoes, of which at least 60% should be made by Jimmy Choo or Gina.

- Obviously, I’d need a bigger house in which to accommodate my enormous shoe collection.

- I’d like two Shar Pei puppies, who would absolutely, definitely, not eat/bite/annoy my little bundle of fluff (that would be my erm, cat.)

- It would be wonderful to not be allergic to my little bundle of fluff, whom I love dearly, but brings me out in a bugger of a rash.

- I want an extra button in my car, which, when pressed – emits a deafening voice that says “Stop driving up my ass, you incompetent dickhead.”

- Oh, and another button which (somehow) bitch-slaps any incompetent dickheads (particularly those driving 4×4s, who seem to think they can railroad my car off the frigging road..)

- Screw it, I’d like a super fast, super speedy, kick-ass, midlife-crisis car.  I don’t know what kind…  A sexy, dirty-hot one! :)

- I’d like to actually want to give up smoking, let alone have the willpower to do it.

- I’d like to just be qualified to teach, now, without having to actually train to do it (obviously all the knowledge would be stored somewhere in my brain, without me having to learn it).

- I don’t ever want to see a child suffer.  I want all the children I teach to come to school in warm, clean clothes, after a good nights sleep and a proper breakfast. I want to see parents who actually give a shit.

- I want my own childcare business, with wonderful staff, and plenty of money behind it.

- And a great big stack of cash.

- I’d like the finances, and the guts, to travel the world.

- I’d like to put my old boss out of business, and be able to laugh a great big “fuck you, lady.” right in her face. :X (Yes, I realise that makes me a massive bitch, but she totally deserves it.)

- I’d like my best friend to just not make a massive mistake, and to either get married and have it work out, or not get married and be ok with that.  Either way would be quite satisfactory, thank you!  Oh, and if he has to get married, could I please not look like a total dickhead in my bridesmaid dress? Pleeeease?

- I’d like the prospective-mother-in-law to not be such a racist assbag.  Or, if that’s slightly impossible, to just come with a mute button, so I can stop her mouth making so much pointless noise all the time.

- I’d like to have a steamy, kinky threesome with Alan Rickman and Mel Gibson (I’m aware he’s an ass, but my God, I would totally violate that man).

- I want to no longer be reliant on medication, for anything at all – to be healthy, without help.

- I want to live in France, with a vineyard at the end of my garden, and a filthy-hot gardener with a tight little bum and some polished abs, to erm.. garden?

- I want a baby.  And for the other-half to actually want a baby. Now. Or at least in the next year or so..

- I would love multiple orgasms. On a daily, is not half-daily basis.

- I’d like someone to say ‘Thank you’ for working so hard to make a difference to childrens lives.

- I want gambling to just disappear completely.  It ruins too many lives.

- I want an apology from a whole host of people, and forgiveness from a whole host more.

- I want fifteen minutes with my Granddad, to tell him how much I love him, and to ask him if he thinks I’m doing the right thing.

- I want a Happy Christmas, this year, just once.  No tears, no arguments, no stress, no fuss.

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
- Burton Hillis.

- Oh, and I want a totally hot, six foot tall Santa to appear on my doorsteps on Christmas Eve, so I can sit on his lap and tell him what I really want for Christmas. ;-)
(That’s such a sordid fantasy, I know, haha).

What’s on your list?

Visit Have The T-Shirt – you’ll love her as much as I do (I promise!).

…Sarah Palin, and her seventeen year old daughter who’s got a proverbial bun in the oven.

Let me just make it clear – I am not interested in politics, I couldn’t really give a toss who wins the election, nor could I care less about one scandal or another.

But I do think that so what if Bristol (poor girl, what an awful name..) got pregnant before she got married?

So freaking what?

It’s 2008. People get pregnant. Sometimes, people even do it before they’re married! Infact, some people never get married at all! Oh my gosh!

Get over it, America. You discovered that your politicians lie, cheat, and have skeletons in their closet. Shouldn’t you be giving some serious thought to which muppet you’d like to rule America, rather than concerning yourself with the way in which the Palin family conducts family planning (or lack thereof)?

I agree with Obama – leave people’s families out of it. It’s not the kids fault that their parents are running for president – and if parenting skills made for a wonderful president (or not), there’d be a hell of a lot of mothers better qualified than any politician I’ve seen run for power in any country.

Some people never cease to amaze you..

I bumped into a girl I went to school with, in the pet shop this morning. I was keen to get the polite greetings over with, and just get on with buying cat litter. She, however, wanted to have a full-on recount of the past God-know-how-many years in which we hadn’t seen each other.

No, I’m not married.
Yes, she tied the knot two years ago.
No, I don’t have any children.
Yes, she has three.
No, I’m not an IT genius, I work with kids.
No, she doesn’t work, she’s currently sapping state benefits while she sits on her ass and does fuck-all else.

And isn’t it a terrible shame that I’m not married yet. And isn’t it awful for me that I haven’t had any children.. Of course, my children would be ‘half cast‘ and it would surely be really hard for me accept that my kids would be ‘coffee and cream babies’.

Excuse me?

It’s actually not a terrible shame, nor is it awful that I’m not married and don’t have kids. It’s not exactly what I’d say was my choice, but it’s hardly the end of the world. And the fact that if the other-half and I spawn some kids, they will be mixed race, really doesn’t concern me in the slightest, nor should it concern any other human being. Half Cast is a derogatory word, which yes – was used years ago to describe someone of mixed race, but is now incredibly un-PC, and is quite frankly just unac-fucking-ceptable.

I can categorically state that my children will benefit from knowing about two different cultures, two different worlds, and that will not in any way hinder them in being perfectly rounded individuals. In this day and age, how can any grown adult view a child of mixed race as any different to a child who’s parents are from the same race and/or religion?

She really pissed me off. And I made it perfectly clear that she was incredibly lucky that I hadn’t knocked her ignorant, stupid little head right off her shoulders. Coffee and cream babies.. For fuck’s sake.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can still be so ignorant, how they can still be so judgemental and narrow minded.

Sure, I worry that my children might be picked on at school, or that some people may look at them a different way because they don’t fit into some neat little category of race. But I’m 150% sure that not only will I be able to handle that in a positive way, but that I’ll be able to educate and reassure my children that anyone who treats them in a negative way does so simply because they are undereducated, ignorant, racist and small minded.

I first read the poem below when I was fifteen, and instantly fell in love with it. I chose it for my oral work and read the entire poem in dialect, much to the amusement of my idiot classmates..

To me, it perfectly explains how someone can use a word, whether innocently or not, and end up creating all sorts of insinuations about another person. It’s a piece of literary art that I’m sure I’ll read to my kids one day, so that they too can understand that every person is a whole person, no matter who they are, who their parents, or even the parents of their parents are.

John Agard is a legend. And it’s probably worth me pointing out, that the poem isn’t ’spelt wrong’ – it’s written in dialect. Just incase there are any ignorant readers out there that were about to let me know I hadn’t turned my spell check on. :-)

Half-Caste by John Agard.

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas/
explain yuself
wha u mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather/
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass
ah rass/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony/

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah looking at u wid de keen
half of mih eye
and when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
and de whole of yu mind

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story

When I woke up at 5.45am this morning, and hauled my poor ass out of bed – I was kept going by the idea that mid-afternoon I would have finished work, and would be curled up on the sofa with a pitcher of iced-coffee and a box of Green & Blacks chocolates*.

So as you can imagine, I was not exactly impressed when the doorbell went. I ignored it, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t have the good sense to peek through the window. A massively incorrect assumption. An afro of unwashed hair, with big teeth and long legs grinned through the glass at me. Reluctantly, I answered the door.

” ‘allo! My name eeez <whatever the hell he said> and I am an ARTISTE!”

To which I automatically replied, noticing the tell-tale black A2 sized folder, “I’m very busy, but thank you anyway.”, and began to close the door.

And The Great Unwashed stuck his foot in my door to stop me closing it! What an epic mistake that was.

Approximately 60 seconds later, I had verbally reduced The Great Unwashed to a gaping mouth. Obviously he hadn’t anticipated that I would tell him that seeing as I had been at work since 6.30am, I was, infact, not interested in buying one of his hand drawn attempts at earning money without actually doing any work. More importantly, that he should get his fucking foot out of my door, and use it to move him as far away from my property as he could manage, before I shoved it up his backside.

It’s not that I particularly care that this man thought it appropriate to visit my house to try and sell me something I could have drawn when I was eleven. It’s more that, when I’ve been at work all day, and had 24 children pecking consistently at my now colander-like brain – I certainly do not expect to be disturbed from my 30 minutes of peace and fucking quiet, to be asked if I can spare 5 minutes of time.

Because no, I can not spare five frigging minutes. And if you expect me to, someone better be on fucking fire.

And so when The Great Unwashed decided to assertively inform me that his foot was in my door because he desperately needed my time in order to persuade me to buy one of his drawings, as he was (wait for it…), “A struggling artiste”. A struggling artiste?! My bloody arse.. Get a proper job, a shower, and show some respect for other people’s property, you hippy fuckwit..

Ugh!

* Presents from children who are leaving our Nursery to go to ‘Big School’ are usually either stuffed teddies (ick) or expensive chocolates from their precocious parents. The latter is, for reference, usually preferable.

I’m back from a (mostly) lovely holiday – where I did pretty much nothing but sunbathe, sip cocktails and swim in the sea.  Bliss!

And as the flight home landed us back on English soil, I was kindly informed that I could no longer expect 30+ degrees, but a mere 9.  Yes, NINE.

Now, being so fabulous at forward planning, I had foreseen this change in temperature..  And so I calmly emerged from the plane wearing jeans, not one but two jumpers over my long-sleeved t-shirt, and a fleece to top it all off.  How smug did I feel waiting for my luggage, while the rest of the passengers shivered and cursed, freezing their testicles/tits off in Hawaiian shirts and/or denim shorts.

Brits abroad just baffle me.  They come in various styles, all of which are about as flattering as last season’s smock dresses (translation: How to make a skinny chick look suddenly more like a pregnant Miss Piggy).

We dress for the outbound flight in overly warm clothing, then complain that it’s too warm when we arrive at our destination.  Dress with layers, people!  It’s not rocket science!

Once we’ve arrived, complete with suitcases bursting with far too many clothes/shoes, we hit the pubs/bars.  Where we will reliably consume at least twice what we would in a week at home, in the space of two hours.  At lunchtime.  After which, we will head down the beach – forgetting suncream/sunblock in our drunken haze – and succeed at transforming from a ghostly shade of pale, to something that rather resembles a flabby, drunken lobster.

And then there’s the women (and men, believe it or not) who over-do the fake tan before their holiday.  Arriving on day one looking like they’ve been Tangoed, only to gradually get paler over the space of the holiday – arriving home with strange blotchy patches where the chlorine in the hotel pool has slowly stripped away the layers of orange shit that they trowelled onto their skin two weeks ago.

There’s the typical scum-bag families, who I usually find either sat behind me on the plane, or disturbing my peace by the pool.  They generally travel in large packs, complete with teenage children, and toddlers.  The teenage kids swear profusely, turn their iPods up full whack, dive-bomb into the pool (ensuring they soak as many innocent bystanders as possible) and repeat “whatEVER.” to any question put forward to them.  The toddlers (generally referred to as ‘brats’), will kick the back of your chair with valiant persistence, and pester their parents for sweeties until they gain the booty, and proceed to vomit all over the back of your (now probably dented) chair.  All the while the parents will argue in broad regional accents, heavily peppering their sentences with curse words that make even my ears bleed.

And then there’s the elderly couples.  Complete with bumbags (which translate amusingly to Americans as ‘fanny packs’), over sized straw hats, and the necessity to complain about “the youth of today” at any given opportunity.

Stag/Hen parties really deserve the final mention.  Responsible for ensuring that all Brits are tarred with the same brush, these delightful packs of people generally travel to lush destinations to drink themselves into pools of vomit, prance around in their underwear, and shag the slimiest barman/woman they can possibly find.

And throughout all varieties of the stereotypical British holiday maker, you will find the innate necessity for them to travel to another country, and to still hunt down the nearest Irish/British pub.  Forget the traditional bars and restaurants, your stereotypical Brit wants to go abroad to sit in a pub that is almost identical to the one at the end of their street back home.

Seriously, I don’t know why we don’t just give up.  We’d all find it far easier to just skip the costly airfares and just nip down the local pub in our tacky holiday clothing, drink our body weight in Pina Coladas while dancing (badly) to tacky eighties music and pass out on the floor of the barman’s living room.  It really would save a lot of time and money.

I had a wonderful holiday.  But if I had a penny for every British wanker I’d seen on my travels, I’d definately be able to afford to give up my day job.  Some people really do give the rest of us Brits a bad reputation!

You’ve got to be kidding, right?

An entire site dedicated to spying on Nannies, and ‘outing’ their ‘bad’ behaviour.

I Saw Your Nanny – Report Bad Nannies

If you feel you can’t completely trust the person who you place to care for your child, then maybe you should be doing it yourself. If you can afford a nanny, you can afford to take a couple of days off work and do some of the Goddamn out-of-playgroup-hours childcare yourself.

I’m not saying the world is full of wonderful Nannies who care wholeheartedly about the kids in their care. In reality, a good proportion are probably just doing it for the money (is it so hard to believe that they’re not working for you because they adore your spoilt little brats?). But spying, setting up cameras and recording devices? Is it me, or does that seem absolutely, incredibly insane?

Save yourself a few bucks, sack the Nanny, sack all the Big Brother shit you’ve installed to make sure she doesn’t feed little Genovieve anything that contains carbs after 4pm, and start being a frigging mother. If you didn’t want to care for your own kids, you should have avoided the inconvenience they’ve pressed upon you, and used contra-fucking-ception.

There’s a child in my class who very clearly has behavioural problems. He bites, kicks and pushes the other children, and sticks his tongue out at adults when they speak to him. His mother seems to think this is all perfectly normal behaviour, replying with “Oh, haha, boys will be boys!” whenever anyone mentions her son’s behaviour.

He spat at another child today, who came running to me in tears. I called the child who spat over to me, and he immediately screamed and started smacking me as hard as he could. I removed him from the group, and calmly explained that this was not acceptable behaviour, and that he should apologise for spitting at the other child, and for smacking me. Cue long explanation of why we do not spit, and why it is important to say we are sorry when we have done something wrong.. Yada yada yada.

The kid then turns to me, and at full volume screams

“I will spit if I want!”

I said, no, we do not spit, it is dirty and not how good children behave. And then it came.. Full pelt,

“I WILL SPIT IF I WANT, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!!”

Then, he LAUGHED, right in my face!

Firstly, what the fuck? Did I fall out of England straight into USA? Who says ASS?
Secondly, that kid’s mother needs to learn how to parent her little shit of a son. This isn’t a little boy being a boistrous little boy. This is a child with behavioural issues that will severe unless his retarded bitch of a mother takes some responsibility for showing him right from wrong.

The child is a nightmare. There’s absolutely no reasoning with him. But every now and again, you can see a perfectly happy and calm child in him (deep, deep inside.. Somewhere.. Maybe..).

He spent the remainder of the afternoon throwing a full scale tantrum (which was ignored) because he’d been told off for spitting at a child, for using ‘rude words’ and for shouting at a grown up.

And when I told his ‘mother’ (and I use that term loosely.. Just because she gave birth, it doesn’t make her a mother figure..), she smiled and said, “Oh, he’ll have got that from The Simpsons.”

Then, she handed him some sweeties and took him home, as though his behaviour was perfectly acceptable – leaving me open mouthed..

I’d love to kick her ass, irresponsible bitch.

It amuses me really, that the government have forbidden any body of education (schools, nurseries, etc) to (supposedly) ‘label’ children. We can’t use words like, “naughty” or phrases like, “I am cross with you” or “That is bad behaviour”. Instead, we have to say “I am very sad with you”, and “That behaviour is not good”.

There’s too much concern over how to ‘coax’ children into good behaviour through positive sentences and removing priviledges rather than giving punishments. Parents can’t even lightly smack their children, they are frowned upon for raising their voices and using non-positive verbal messages (for example, “You are being naughty” should apparently be phrased as “Please can you show me good behaviour”). And what do we end up with? A bunch of kids who are not afraid to misbehave, who do not even have an incentive to behave well. And a bunch of parents who are afraid to parent their children properly.

When I was preschool age, I wouldn’t have dared to misbehave like that. Why? Because I’d have been given a good old fashioned smacking, told I was a very naughty girl, and then been sent straight to bed.

In my opinion, what this child needs (and what most children need), is some clear discipline. Going to bed without pudding, having his toys taken away, and a very cross voice to tell him that he is being very naughty indeed. He needs an incentive to be good, and something to deter him from behaving badly. Oh, and a mother who isn’t a total dipshit would be preferable too.

I came across this post whilst browsing my WordPress tags.. It documents this post, where a white male talks about his first dating experience with a black female.

He describes how people reacted to them walking down a street together – ‘examining us for clues” [re: why they're together] – and how these reactions would differ from black males and black females. He clearly views the relationship between them as ‘out of the norm’, by not only blogging about it, but by documenting it as a ‘novel’ experience.

Why should he be suprised that other people stare, viewing the partnership as ‘unusual’ – when he does so himself?

It’s sad to think that an adult would embark on a relationship with someone who they view as ‘different’, whether that be by culture, religion, race or background – just for the experience of it. Just for the “I’ve nailed a black woman” notch on their bedpost..

Moving on from this point.. The post in question repulses me, reducing the memory of this man’s sexual relationship with a black woman, to ‘the contrast between the white jizz and black skin’:

After a while we barebacked raw dogged it (thanks, roosh) and the money shots were incredibly stimulating for me. I loved how aesthetically pleasing was the contrast between the white jizz and the black skin. Like modern art, the geometric arrangement and bold ejaculatory strokes set against the dark canvas of her smooth skin prompted me to admire my handiwork like I was pausing in front of a particularly abstruse painting in a museum to contemplate its majesty. Plus, it made finding the mess easier for cleanup.

Embracing the differences between ourselves and other people is one thing – but to degrade those differences into something so crass, is just repulsive.

The author of that post, in my opinion, is a fine example of the type of person who helps to define mixed-race relationships as socially deviant. I would be very interested to know whether he was interested in this woman as a person – or whether he wanted her because she was black.

Just to clarify – I don’t think this man is racist, I don’t think he necessarily disrespects women. I just think he’s an idiot – responsible for degrading the woman he blogs about, by using her race to define her before anything else, and by reducing her down to one thing – the first black woman he nailed, as though he had fulfilled his quest.