Why a pregnant man really isn't that weird...

I am a little bit concerned.

I've just read The Accidental Scientist's post about a father and daughter in Australia who have just gone public about their relationship and have a 9 month old healthy baby together (full story on The Guardian). Yep, sick and wrong wrong wrong.

But there's something else that's worrying me. After collecting myself and recovering from the shock and uncontrollable cringing, I realised something far more alarming. I was more shocked by this story than the one about the pregnant man! Does that mean I think incest is more unacceptable than a man being pregnant?!

Clearly both stories are socially unacceptable at this point in time - but why was I less gobsmacked by a man carrying a baby? Surely a man and a woman conceiving a child (even if they are father and daughter) is more natural, and hence a smidge more tolerable? Maybe it's because the pregnant man was once a woman, but never fully got rid of his (her?) female reproductive organs. So 'his' pregnancy is not entirely as unnatural as we might have originally thought - he has a uterus!

Look!


(Pregnant man on Oprah)

The pregnant man who used to be a woman is also married to a woman. But they're not a lesbian couple as the transexual man is legally recognised as a male. Ah my head hurts.

So you see, I should be more shocked by this story. Shouldn't I?

But I'm not. A father and a daughter having a baby together still disturbs me more. Maybe it's because a few years ago, gay and lesbian couples getting married, having babies, changing sex etc were no where near as socially acceptable as they are now. And like The Accidental Scientist says, maybe incestuous relationships are heading in this direction too? They're just not there yet.

Big greedy banks

I just got a call from one of the banks I have an account with. A sales call. I think a Monday evening is probably the worst time to make a sales call. Not only are you pissed off that it's Monday and that you barely blinked and the weekend's over - it's also the furthest day away from Friday (Saturdays and Sundays don't really count).

And although a certain part of you feels sorry for telesales people having to meet their targets and get ranted at by annoyed customers who've already received 9 sales calls so far that day - that part of you just isn't that big.

Especially when, like today, the salesperson tells you that due to your being a loyal customer, you are being rewarded with the chance to apply for a new Mastercard credit card. Yes, rewarded!!!



Thank you big greedy bank for giving me the chance to let you take more money from me. No really, thank you.

Together for London

If you're a Londoner, you've probably noticed these friendly faces dotted around the Underground:



Aren't they cheery.

These characters are part of TFL's 'Together for London' campaign which was launched in Feb earlier this year.

TFL is asking us to stop and think about how considerate we are as passengers. I can save you some time pondering, if you do any of these things - you're not.

To be honest, I'm not too sure how effective this campaign's going to be. I mean, if you're the kind of person who won't offer your seat to a pregnant lady, you must be pretty mean. Is a little cartoon character with a big smiley face and a t-shirt saying 'I will offer you my seat', really going to make you see the error of your ways? I think not.

Bring back tomato throwing that's what I say.

"All I want is your cheapest cab, innit"

This clipping was doing the rounds in the office yesterday:



Cockney slang dictionary

Apples and pears = stairs
Dog and bone = phone
Joe Baxi = taxi?!

I'm not really up to date on my cockney slang, and it seems the nice people at directory enquiries aren't either. Joe Baxi, it's a cab innit?

Regular dictionary

Cab innit = cabinet

So that's what the caller got delivered at 10am the next day. Not a cab to Bristol Airport. But an office cabinet.

Just in case you're still confused:



You can't make this stuff up.

Read the full story in The Sun.

Art by StickGirl

A round up of Stuff

The last time I blogged it was March. Now it's April. Where is the time going?! Before you know it, it'll be crimbo again - although it has been a bit confusing what with the snow and it being officially British summer time and all. Let's get this global warming show on the road people.

A lot of things have happened since the last time I blogged, so it's time for a quick round up:

• The BBC discovered that penguins can fly.


• Virgin and Google joined forces, to become...yep, Virgle (nice). And in a joint effort, gave us the opportunity to become a 'Virgle Pioneer' and set up home on Mars.


• The second episode of the Apprentice was on. But unfortunately I didn't get to watch it because Grand Designs was on at the same time, and a certain person, whom we shall call 'StickBoy', wanted to watch it. I'm not bitter.


• A Glass and a Half Full of Happiness has brought us the next Cadbury's TV ad full of airport truck fun. Oh to be an airport truck...
  
  
  
  If I have to have Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' permanently stuck in my head, so do you.


• The tube strike was on. Then it was off. Leaving us all disappointed that we couldn't 'work from home' in our PJs with Trisha and Jeremy Kyle on in the background to remind us that it's really not that bad having a job.


• Channel 4's Vanity Lair is now over. Genius reality TV: put a bunch of 'beautiful people' in a house and get them to vote on who's most attractive. Ten gripping weeks of 'I'm more beautiful', 'No I'M more beautiful'. I only caught one episode, but I think it was the best one. The housemates decided to strip themselves of all make up and hair products to show just how beautiful they really are. In one contestant's words, 'to push themselves to the max of attractiveness'. Hahaha, like I said, genius.


• And of course loads of other important stuff too.

The Apprentice

The new season of The Apprentice started last night. A with it brought the two most annoying people IN THE WORLD (yes, even more annoying than Car Giant Man and Kerry Katona - combined. urgh.)

I'm talking about Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and Raef Bjayou. They've obviously been cast in the show to provide some 'good TV' - there really can't be any other reason. They're both pompous, arrogant, whiny mummy's boys, in desperate need of a haircut. Look:


Nicholas de Lacy-Brown


Raef Bjayou

Thankfully, Nicholas was fired last night - hooray! I really don't think I could stand watching two floppy-haired ponces every week.

I'm not just being mean, they really are a joke. Nicholas for example, was born Nicholas Brown. But he decided to add the 'de Lacy' bit because 'he felt it sounded more sophisticated'. He also listed one of his interests as 'reading in the bath surrounded by candles'. Wouldn't just 'reading' have been enough? It's The Apprentice not a lonely hearts ad.

And as for Raef. He used to be an estate agent. Enough said.

Find out more at www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice. For a run down of yesterday's episode, read Tre's Column (good old Tre, he's back!)

Bring back the milkman

When was the last time you saw one of these?



(it's a milk float)

This morning I was staring out my bedroom window in that glazed 'oh but didn't I just go to sleep?' kind of way - when I saw a milk float go by. Yes, a MILK FLOAT (caps make things seem more real). I think I may have even done a cartoon double take (and obviously the milk float was still there - they're not really that fast are they? aw).

I can't remember the last time I saw a milk float...maybe well over 10 years ago?! And then along came the Tesco type giants with their cheap pints of milk and it was bye bye to Mr Milkman (to the delight of paranoid husbands throughout the land).

But let's face it, supermarket milk may be less expensive, but it's just not quite the same when you have to go and get it yourself...

Stick Girl in Another City

I'm tired. (But still find time to blog. That's dedication for you).

Today I travelled, in total, about 8 hours. For a 3 hour meeting. Meaning my meeting wasn't even HALF the time I spent travelling. Humph. No wait - HUMPH.

But actually, I've accomplished quite a lot today on my return trip to Manchester:

1. I finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha.


2. I had a productive meeting.


3. I watched two episodes of Sex & the City.


4. I developed a muscle in my right arm from lugging around my MacBook in my handbag, along with all my other necessary bits (like my meeting notes, Sex & the City DVDs etc).

So all in all, a productive day.

Don't you just love John Mayer

Don't forget to visit www.youtube.com/mayermusic

Man presents

It's my dad's birthday this week - and that means picking out a 'man present' (I think it's safe to blog about this, my dad isn't too web savvy. The other day he referred to our wireless internet router as 'the box where the internet comes from').

Exciting man presents are really difficult to find, especially when they're for your dad. Especially when Christmas wasn't that long ago. Especially when you repeatedly ask him what he'd like and get the follow alternate answers:

a) "nothing"
b) "a new car"



That's really not helpful. Although I did follow up option b), but when asking what car he'd like, he reverted back to option a). Older not wiser as they say...

In the end I went for the good old trusty jumper. Not very exciting I know. But it is a silk/wool mix - which is preeeeetty exciting when it comes to jumpers!

Point made.

Facebook stalking

Ok I'm sure we've all done our fair share of facebook stalking over the years. Be it an ex, your other half's ex, your best friend's ex...pretty much, wherever there's some sort of ex involved. I think I was at my facebook stalking prime in my last year of uni - but that was mainly a result of my regular revision 'breaks'.



Facebook's really not that fun anymore, mainly because I keep getting invited to find out what type of flower/underwear/drink/desperate housewife I am (The Accidental Scientist tells it like it is). Luckily, I already know that I'm none of those things - so don't need to take the quiz (phew). But aside from that, I've found everyone I want to find. And if I want to know how someone's doing, I'd rather just pick up the phone or drop them an email - rather than scrolling down about a miles worth of application boxes and a funwall filled with obscene videos of obese people in the middle of sexual acts (why?) to write on someone's wall.

But anyway, every once in a while you'll stumble across an old classmate that you haven't seen in about 10 years, so will inevitably end up nosying around on their profile. Which is what happened to me today. Only to see this:



Yep, that's me, in an 'anti stalker' box, on the side of said classmate's facebook profile. Even though I wasn't actually stalking at the time (*ahem* my stalking days are long behind me), I can confirm that my heart did speed up a little, and I almost clicked the 'back' button out of worry that one of my facebook friends would KNOW that I was looking at her profile. SHOCK HORROR. Then I realised how stupid this actually was, and decided to find out what all this anti stalker malarchy is actually about.

Turns out, the Anti Stalker app is just designed to freak out your friends and can't actually tell people who has visited their page. Evil geniusness...

To be honest, the only people who need to be worried about facebook stalkers, are the facebook whores. And so far, the facebook privacy settings seem to the best anti stalker device out there yet...

Tumbleweed times

Lately I've felt lucky if I can blog once a week. Enter tumbleweed:



I feel like I'm wandering around like a bit of a stick girl zombie. It's getting serious, I don't even get that mad on the tube anymore. The other day, the two people either side of me were BOTH leaning over the armrests into my seat, and I didn't even let out a tut. And if that's not worrying enough, I settled down the other night to watch my Sex and the City DVD box set - AND ONLY MANAGED ONE AND A HALF EPISODES (although it was season 6 which isn't that great).

Maybe it's because our winter has been dragging on for about 3 seasons now. In case you didn't know, it's officially spring. I'm really hoping that global warming starts kicking soon.

On a brighter note, we have a four day weekend coming up soon - hooray! It really makes me have second thoughts about the whole 'work 5 days, take 2 days off' thing. Who came up with that bright idea anyway? I mean I know God made the world in 6 days and then rested on the 7th - but I bet he didn't have to go shopping and do the laundry and clean the bathroom - so it's really not the same is it?

Mean Photo Booths

As far as I'm concerned, renewing my passport comes around much sooner than I'd like. I'm sure I was about 15 or 16 when I got my last passport photo done...and well, let's be honest, I just look the same (stick girls generally don't age that much). So you see it's really not fair that I had to brave the photo booth today...

Nonetheless, along I popped to the Post Office to confront [cue: scary music] The Photo Booth. Where I had to give up 4 precious pounds to receive a set of four terrible photos that on average make people look far worse than they do in real life.

Plus, no matter how many times I kept spinning the seat, it wasn't getting any higher.

And that's just mean.

Beware of dentists with 'too perfect' teeth

Don't you think there's something not quite right with dentists? Aside from the whole disgusting, 'looking in peoples mouths and having a good old dig around' thing - dentists with too perfect teeth always set off little alarm bells in my head.

Yes, I went to the dentist today. An annoying young 'up and coming' dentist with too perfect teeth and a spring in his step. I remember my old dentist who I used to go to when I was small (ok, smaller) refused to go private and stayed with the NHS all the way. Now that's true dedication to the cause.



But not only did this new dentist not give me any stickers of giant teeth with smiley faces (hum), he also tried to charge me for absolutely every little thing you can think of. Like trying to sneak in an expensive hygenist appointment at the end, or getting me to cosmetically whiten one (yes, just one) little tiny tooth that no one can even see (and I have pretty white teeth to begin with, but I think it's genetic), or trying to get me to spend £70 on a white filling instead of £40 for an NHS filling. The sneaky, sneaky bastad.

All while smiling at me with his creepily white and unusually straight teeth.

No wonder the last time I went to the dentist was two years ago. Don't be fooled, you don't need to go every 6 months (unless you can't commit to brushing twice a day - but let's face it, you're just a bit gross if you don't), they're just trying to make more money out of you!