Glowing

“Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow.”
My boss hums.

By chuff it’s warm. The office here was designed for Scott of the Antarctic a time before Global Warming had come into the lexicon. So it’s got one whole wall of glass, pointing directly into the sun. With no air-conditioning, and double-glazed windows. Calcutta would be proud of this particular black hole.

Of course, the thing that really tops it off is that it’s warm, and so Stinky™ is sweating like a polar bear in a solarium. Skunk is apparently the perfume of the day. Luckily, I have a fan, so some of it is being blown in other directions, rather than just coagulating into a festering miasma of hum.

Don’t you all just wish you were me?

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

In today’s Media Guardian, Roy Hattersley writes a very good piece on perceptions about homosexuality using the current scenarios on Coronation Street. I can’t say overly much, as I’d rather put cocktails sticks in my eyeballs than watch Corrie, but I can’t find much wrong with the piece either.

Soaps in general love to promote stereotypes (while continuing to have one fucking huge paradox within them anyway^*) and anything that’ll reflect and reinforce the probable stereotypes of the viewing audience. With the big two in particular, it seems that reality, and positive role models are really the purview of Serious Drama, rather than Popular Entertainment. (I hope you can hear the cynicism going into the pronunciation of Popular there) So it’s “OK” to propagate the same things, without too much hope of reality or diversification entering into the mix.

^* The paradox at the centre of soaps is that while they purportedly portray “real life”™, no-one ever comments about anything happening in the other soap.

“In the four weeks to May 11, EastEnders averaged 11.7 million viewers and a 55% audience share on Tuesdays.”

“The three episodes of Coronation Street that featured Todd’s revelations to his pregnant fiancee Sarah Louise Platt averaged 12.2 million at 7.30pm, 12.2 million at 8.30pm and 11.5 million at 10pm – an average audience share across the three instalments of 54%.”

both quotes ©Guardian Newspapers

So 12million viewers each, and yet not one of them lives on Coronation Street or in Albert Square. What’re the odds? It wouldn’t take much for that kind of reality, just the odd conversation about “Did you see what happened in {name of other soap} last night?” But no, they’ll never do it. And that’s the Soap Paradox.

Envy

There are times where I really hate WVS. A perfect example is the photo he posted yesterday. All of a sudden I don’t feel like posting up my own stuff any more… (I will, but – well – *sigh*)

Common Sense…

is obviously something I lack. Having been blah and tired all day, a three hour train-ride home seemed to perk me up. (And Oh, I do like having a laptop that can manage two journeys like that without a recharge in between, and still have 40% battery life by the end of it</smug>) So of course, with work looming in the morning, and being knackered for most of the day, finally going to bed at 2am was probably something of a Very Bad Idea^®. One day I’ll learn.

Anyway, I’ve got a CD of the photos from the concert with me, so during my time *cough* “working hard” today I’ll probably get the chance to knock up a photo page. More news as and when.

Braindead

Blah. A quiet day – no hangover,but a definite feeling of letheragy. Not going to get back home til late tonight, so photos from Friday’s concert won’t be online ’til Monday. Sorry and all that,but them’s the perils of drink…

Ticketmaster

Oh, and amazingly the duplicate tickets were at the box office, and there was no hassle with anything aboutit. My cynicism was, for once, wrong. You’ve no idea how much that actually pleased me. And, by extension, saved me about £100