>:(

"No, I am not going to punch you in the uterus. However much I'd like to."

Today has been alternately lovely and fucking awful. Corin and I were going to celebrate the end of essaygate by getting up early and going to Tropical World, but we ended up sleeping until about two because it turns out that, when you've been solidly stressing and working for seemingly forever, all you really want to do is lie in your girlfriend's bed dozing as much as physically possible. So that happened instead, then she got up and made the BEST BRUNCH EVER. I mean, I have literally never been cooked anything better at the start of my day. It had fakon, Cauldron sausages, scrambled egg, FRIED HALLOUMI, and lots of other tasty things. Omg. I was very happy. I now look back on those simple times with an overwhelming ache in my ruined heart, not to mention other organs.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself. We watched lots of Buffy which, after seeing the poster in my room and dismissing my passion as 'ridiculous' and the programme as 'crap' without having ever actually watched it, then being forced to watch the first couple of episodes whilst stoned and therefore slightly more incapacitated than normal, Corin is now obsessed with (hooray!). UNfortunately, despite the joy this afforded us, this is when my problems began, i.e. my period started. Thus followed a fucking excruciating day. I mean, my first day is always The Painful One, but this one's been much worse than any in recent memory. I decided at length to have a boiling hot bath and read some Frankenstein (apparently I work every day now, what is that?!), which was quite nice, particularly given the disturbingly noisy but ultimately pleasing jacuzzi function in Corin's bath (seriously, what kind of fucking student accommodation is this). Also, I really like Frankenstein. While I was in the bath Corin went out to buy me nice things, like painkillers and rum to have with hot milk and honey and Greek yoghurt and Really Light Ribena and a Galaxy bar and also some surprise icecream, because she is lovely. But then my period pains started again, and I spent about fifteen minutes on the toilet, before flumping downstairs and writhing around in agony for a bit. Corin suggested I lie on my back with my feet against the wall, which made me feel better for a bit, until The Agony Returned to such an extent that I started crying on her. Ludicrous. I am now in the aftermath of this - the pain is still here, but not so bad, and I now have more rum and hot milk, and Corin is drawing graffitis for her friends on Facebook while we listen to Metric. (Omg can't wait to see them in May omg omg omg so excited. Actually, on a sidenote, I am going to have the best April/May EVAR - Men and Evelyn Evelyn in April, and She & Him and Metric in May. What? Oh, yes, that's just my amazing life there. ANYWAY.) The problem is, today I have had a 500mg paracetamol and two Nurofen Expresses and I have yet to be freed from the vice in my womb, and I wanted to go to a femsoc-orientated partay this evening that I very much doubt I will make now. Ugh.

douche

This week (slash by Friday at 4pm) I have to write an essay about the problem of 'female beauty' in Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' and another essay about the relationship between adulthood and childhood in Songs of Innocence and Experience (I think - I have yet to plan this essay so it is, helpfully, subject to change). So far today I have set my alarm for eleven, woken up at one, faffed around since one, and continued to faff by writing this post. I need to be in uni by quarter to seven at the latest this evening to be in charge of a FemSoc film night. Afterwards I will probably eschew continued social contact on the grounds of work then come home and faff around then go to bed late. Tomorrow I have two lectures and a seminar for which I need to do a buttload of reading. The day after I have CBT, which is early, but draining; the following day the English department is on strike, which is nice, but makes Friday hell because I have to do the lectures/seminars I missed as well as the ones I am scheduled for. One of the ones I am scheduled for requires that I read Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark beforehand. Once again, I hate myself for leaving everything too late and sacrificing my creative freedom for what only amounts to a grotesque lack of discipline. Obviously I am doing nothing to help the matter by whining on here. Argghhh. ARG.

I love another, and thus I hate myself

LOOK AT HER

LOOK AT MY FUTURE WIFE

(she is all I can think about)
(I finished TEDTWOF and now my life is over)

The point of this song would have to be so long

My humours are EXTREMELY imbalanced; it feels at the moment like I am spending most of my time ejecting phlegm from my body, and it's horrible. Corin tried to convince me that actually it was cool 'because you get to look at your phlegm after you've coughed it up' but, frankly, I don't think that makes my situation okay. On the plus side, I am also spending a lot of time reading The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For, which she got me for Christmas, and watching True Blood (I recently bought a subscription to Megavideo premium and, without wanting to sound like I'm practising product placement, I don't really understand how I used to survive without it?). Naturally, in spite of examgate being over, I have a shitload of things to do that I am not doing. Mostly I try to justify it by telling myself I'm too ill to pen an impressive CV or make a start on this semester's reading list or work on emotionally-draining emails. Which, to be fair, might be salient? Possibly? Just a bit?

In Other News, I'm grumpy about Herbal Essences. Despite resisting buying any of their products for some time because apparently they test on animals (even though the shampoo I was using instead was made by Dove who also apparently test on animals - I am a shit vegetarian and even worse human being) and also because I'm wary of any overwhelming product smells becoming affixed to the way in which people around me experience my presence, I was shopping the other day (read: throwing all my money away in a soulless bid to compensate for the massive stretch of time since the last time I 'went shopping') and saw some that was specifically for curly hair and decided on an impulse that this would definitely be a good thing for me to invest in. Having felt a bit uneasy about it every time I go for a slash and am confronted by the frankly gargantuan purple tubs slumped on the edge of the bath, things came to a head this morning when I decided to read them. Error. HE had chosen for their consumers' intellectual stimulation to comment on the MASSIVE DIFFERENCE between men and women; today I discovered that, not only do women, when in the bathroom, spend far more time than men washing their hands, but also that the average groom is 5.3 years older than the average bride. I'm aware that my recent overdose of DTWOF may have prompted me to be more neurotic about world issues etc, but wtf? Seriously, everyone. Forcing expectations of heteronormative practice much. What is WRONG with people? Imagine the board meeting in which suggestions for these 'fun facts' were invited. Do they think, perhaps, that if the 'difference' between men and women is exaggerated enough, then we're less likely to mind the cavernous gap between the rights that we can expect to enjoy? Or the inadequacies of assuming a gender binary? UGH. I hate that this shit is read as normal by most people. On Monday, I went to see Men, which was, by and large, the greatest experience of my recent life (amazing queerfun danceparty lifeaffirming omg, plus I *met* JD Samson omger). However, it was slightly marred by the fact that not everyone around me was not a twat; I became distracted by this guy behind me and his friend who repeatedly asked each other 'is that a man or a girl?' about JD. I turned around and told them she identified as a woman, to which they responded with 'OH, it's a GIRL'. I said, 'no, SHE'S a WOMAN', and they looked confused and nonplussed by my vehemence, and I decided it was not the best time to launch into knowingly-futile-attempt-at-education mode, so turned back to the AMAZING ONSTAGE SPECTACLE and tried not to let myself be more angry than inspired. Later on in the set, a woman leant over to the men behind me and squealed, 'I just found out that's a woman!', and they were like 'I KNOW!', and I just wanted to die/punch everyone. Why is it so important to be able to place people? Why can't people take anything that even slightly bucks their perceptions of gender normality? Why does there have to be a gender normality? Why don't people consider listening to accounts of gender that differ from what they're comfortable with? Why do people have to put up with this shit? It's a horrible way to have to live.

I am obviously meant to be revising, but

Today I discovered that, in the seventeenth-century, 'hell' was slang for 'vagina'.

Let's dance as though it were easy for you to lead me

Yesterday, I was alerted to something on Twitter which, on the plus side, demonstrated to me something of the supportive strength of the queer community but, overall, continues to make me extremely upset. Katy Perry, not that I would expect any better of her, posted a picture of a transman to her feed and encouraged her followers to insult and dehumanise him (if I have anything resembling a reader and you want to see, it's http://twitpic.com/sdf45). Since previous comments appear to be made inaccessible by new ones most of what's there is defence; when I commented it yesterday afternoon it was about half and half with ignorant kneejerk wank. This whole thing makes me feel really vulnerable: I spend practically all my time in Leeds (which is where I spend practically all my time) socialising with queers - in fact, I only ever see other people when I am in seminars or lectures - and I think I forget what the outside world is like. I won't refer to it as the 'real world' because it isn't more valid just because it's bigger; it's just more people's reality than mine, I suppose. The notion that I should be more pragmatic by sticking my neck out of my comfort zone more often is worth considering but I don't think it's any kind of 'solution': whoever I associate with these problems will still exist, and I think it's their existence in the wider world that is more the problem than my direct awareness that not everybody is willing to refrain from participating in gender oppression. Besides, the very fact of the queer community is, as demonstrated in this case, pretty much essential to effectively present outside parties with the sorts of ideas that, for us, are second nature.

But, even though that's obviously positive, I'm still really fucked off. I know I have the privilege of education about these issues, but is it really that difficult to treat people like human beings? Maybe it's pack mentality. Maybe they think they're defending something worth hurting people over.

I know it's a lie; I want it to be true.

I'm listening to 'Fantasies' by Metric for the first time in at least a month - most of my recent attention has been on Amanda Palmer-related enterprises - and once again I'm struggling to pinpoint why exactly I find the line 'I'm not suicidal/I just can't get out of bed' in Satellite Mind so fucking liberating. I expect it has a lot to do with the trajectory of the notes but it's more than that. If a line can be described as an anthem it felt like an anthem for my house over the summer; depression effects many of our friends, including me, so this was a personal response to the lyrics as well as gelling with the tune. But there's more to it than that; there's a reason everyone yelled along to it from other rooms, and a reason it makes me shiver now. I feel like I'm not explaining this as eloquently as I'd like but, then, that's a constant concern, so it probably doesn't matter since it isn't going to change any time soon. Perhaps it can be reduced to something as simple as the lyrics themselves - the urge to stay in bed does not equate to a life that doesn't ever feel worth living and, after all, it is nice to be able to not only say but sing that you aren't suicidal. Perhaps it's as simple as that. Today was surprising in one of the best ways possible. We were meant to have an Amazon Molly band practice in preparation for a last-minute gig slot on Wednesday, but Sof was asleep and Tom was at a performance and Nat had realised she couldn't commit to playing with us, so I tromped down to Staffy's house to tell Mr. Danni the news, to find him and Staffy jamming in the basement. A beer and some previously very latent confidence later, we were Penis Colada and we were going to play our first gig on Wednesday. To be fair they do most of it - singing and guitaring while I fuck about on the keyboard, less badly than I thought I would but still hardly spectacularly - but it's still pretty exciting. I'm most proud of the fact that I took a risk and allowed myself to realise that I am actually better at Playing Instruments than I thought I was; obviously I want to be miles better than I am, but what means other than practice is going to get me there? Exactly. It's a bit cobbled together but I think it's going to be fun. Also, since Staffy vetoed Penis Colada we are for the time being Period Drama (she didn't really go for that, either, but Danni had to email the dude organising the gig to let him know who exactly was playing so said, unless she could think of a better name before he did it, that was what we were going to be, at least for the time being). I, obviously, intend to rhyme the two if we ever get 'round to writing our own songs. For now, we are covering songs by Staffy, Tiny Tin Lady, Dolly Parton, and others. I am pleased.