some terribly brilliant advice given by a career woman in an english broadsheet

"my advice to career women is to get into the habit of rubbing really expensive body cream in after a bath."

and that, i expect, will solve everything.

shelf life

it must be brooding season. a female columnist in "the sunday times"—putting a spring in every woman's step, i'm sure—urges women everywhere to "settle" for whatever they can get husband-wise (see article here). a proper cheerupper.

relationship frogger

one of the more curious dating phenoms are those people who, though clearly dissatisfied with their other halves, won't abandon ship until someone better comes along. and so they stick it out, joylessly, all the while scanning the horizon for something propitious. it's rather like the frog in frogger who won't cross the river unless there's another log or bunch of turtles to jump on. makes no sense to me. frogs can swim after all.

exemplary

in a command performance of queenbeeism demi moore told david letterman her beauty regimen involved bathing in turpentine and, afterwards, having leeches applied to herself. what, not impressed? "these aren't just swamp leeches though," she assured letterman, "we are talking about highly trained medical leeches." (i wonder where these leeches did their residency? johns hopkins?) anyway, hats off to old ms. moore.

as women are the most mimetic of creatures, copying whatever diet or health fad the stars du jour are reported to be doing, we can realistically expect to see oodles of women inspired by moore's example. hopefully teenage girls are right now making the necessary appointments to be feasted on by leeches, stung by jellyfish, or bitten by fruit bats in the expectation of acquiring glamorous looks and perfect well-being.

did someone mention david beckham?

something for hannah

my first experience of stingy gender politics

occurred in music class when the slacking teacher, bless her, decided to let us listen to some recorded music of our choice. naturally there was no consensus choice. no one could agree. soon enough though the girls coalesced around duran duran. and by staking out such an extremist position they showed they had no interest in compromise. this naturally radicalised the boys into a solid voting bloc—the boys weren't going to listen to music performed by boys who looked like girls—who sought something equally offensive to the other side. so we pushed for iron maiden. not many of us liked iron maiden, but we felt we had to meet extreme provocation in kind. i forget how the thing ended up. but the experience was instructive. salient lessons struck home. the unbridgeable gap which often separates the sexes. and, ominously, how ruthless girls can be in negotiations.

eh, what's that?

i often hear women say of men, by way of commendation, "he's a good listener". such small praise. anyone can listen (to paraphrase stephen sondheim). it's the good talkers who are few and far between.

drying out

what is it about women that makes them so susceptible to dehydration? why do they need such constant constant moisturizing? is it a chemical imbalance?

stealing outside

in a sunny moment for a coffee when a woman pulled up alongside the café. she had a large, strategically-placed tear in her jeans. so that when she bent over to prize junior out of the back of the car, the whole left side of her arse fell out. (she was wearing a thong, naturally.)

but why? i guess it's something to do with being a newish mother. and wanting people to think she's still hot. (or not).

it's like the major said in fawlty towers: "strange creatures, women".

because i can

saw a film recently with the fetching title "she couldn't say no". sounded promising. but proved a disappointment. it wasn't about 'that' subject at all. it never mentioned chocolate. once. what is it about that stuff? why can't women say no? to it?

as you can see it's piling up around here. uneaten. that box at the back arrived at christmas. it's destined for re-gifting elsewhere. (i always pass on pralines.) the egg arrived at easter. it still hasn't hatched out of its box. and the slab of koko is an intended gift. i still can't believe that stuff is $75 a kilo.

how come it's still here? how come i haven't eaten it? because i can. say no. that's the essential difference between the sexes. men aren't easy.

maybe in the next world?

something i'd very much like to see is international gender-behaviour swap day. one day a year where men have to behave like women, and women have to behave like men. and where only the clothes remain the same. a reversal of customary rôles just for the fun of it.

women could do most of the flirting, the leering, make the crass comments, remain supine on the couch with the remote, and eat whatever they wanted without concern for the calorific consequences. in the bedroom women could finish first. and leave immediately. and not call the next day. or ever. and completely ignore you in public. most of all, women could just enjoy the sheer freedom of not worrying about anything, at all. not their appearance, their wardrobe, their weight, their relationships, their diets, their age, or those toxic star-signs.

meanwhile men could turn this and way while looking searchingly in the mirror, and whisper vicious things about each other, and endlessly check their machine for messages, and go without food all day so that when they get home they can eat mounds of ice-cream while watching television, and enjoy saying things like "not unless you take me out to dinner first", and have the last word. and use sex as a reward for pliant behaviour. and after finding some man who is "perfect" try and change him anyway.

sorry to be a spoilsport, but there is one caveat. the bi craze will not be in effect. as much as it would amuse-or-excite some women to see it, it won't be happening. not on my watch anyway.

that's gold, jerry!

it took me a while. thirty-something years, in fact. but i have just discovered what it means when a man asks "what's wrong?" and a woman says "nothing". it simply means she's not going to tell him. because she's saving her 'a' material - her whines, complaints, frustrations, grievances - for her blog. that's all.

when

did it become de rigueur for women to be bi? how did i miss that announcement? was i in a meeting or something? i wonder how they got that one through parliament?

islam won't win

because women, bless them, love their hair far too much to stow it away under some stupid veil, where no one can delight in it. a veiled world: how utterly sad would that be? how would oscar night work if all the actresses turned up and all you could see were their eyes? that won't help the ratings. won't happen. this war will be won by women. and their love of grooming products. give up mosque-dwellers, you're outnumbered.

impulsively perhaps, this woman just tinted her hair. tell me the world isn't a better place for it. made me smile.

unless

she's talking about astrology, or dieting, or feminism, any woman is more interesting than watching a game of football.

i wish

women would be more publicly expressive about what they like about men's bodies. saying "he's cute" or "he's hot" gets us nowhere.

it's a woman's world

yesterday as i was traipsing through other people's blogs i realised the best ones, by far the most interesting ones, were all written by women. should i be surprised? after all, talking is what women like to do most. and complain. usually about men. and it's terrific. and touching. and confiding. and frequently funny in an eeyore-ish way.

the trouble with men is most of them (unlike our coffeesnob) only have four subjects they can talk readily and fluently about: work, sport, sex, and how marvellous they are. and nowadays who's happy with just four channels?