Shaken, not stirred

So I am finally succumbing to Bond Mania and shall be at the cinema later today.

I'm really not that fussed about Bond, and I preferred Daniel Craig in Our Friends in the North, but I do like a bit of crime/spy/drama, so it shoddy be an entirely terrible film, surely?

Thanks to The Guardian, I have just spent a happy half hour nosing through other people's bookshelves. 

Share Your Shelf invites people to send in pictures of their bookshelves, and for someone as nosy curious as me, its a brilliant site.

There are small shelves, tall shelves, wall-to-wall shelves and shelves that are actually just piles of books.  Its the filing systems people use that really interest me - why would romantic fiction be right next to a modern art book?  how do you even begin to find anyhthing if it's not in alphabetical order?

My own shelves have recently been brutally reduced (leading me to discover that some charity shops just won't accept donations of books anymore), and relocated from living room to hallway.  My good intentions and alphabetisation have come under attack from random stray books placed here and there, wherever I can find a space, and often just lying horizontal at the front of the shelf.

Ideally, I'd like an actual library, but in a 2-bed flat in central london, that's never really likely to happen, so I shall content myself with other people's books, and keep dreaming of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, pages and pages of lovely lovely books.

so much for blogging resolve

All my big assertions about getting back into blogging, and where am i?  only eight posts in after a month or two, and some of them are just pseudo-inspirational poster quotes.

dammit.

its the whole thing about not really knowing what to blog about.  or rather, just wanting to spout my usual guff and then getting cold feet in case anyone i actually know stumbles across this. 

i could do that whole thing of giving everyone coded names, but with my memory, i'd forget what aliases i'd assigned, and folk would end up with about six different names and that would just be super-confusing.  mainly for me, but also for my one or two random visitors.

and that's something i'm not too keen on either.  the not having anyone read this.  i used to have a nice, regular little group of people who would read and comment.  mainly people that i read an commented on, but damn my iphone for its double-edged sword that on the one hand keeps me up to date with any new posts on the blogs I  like, but which also makes it harder to comment because i read via a reader, rather than going into the sites themselves.

*sigh*

it's all such a hard life.  which is another thing.  because it's not really that hard a life.  its all just a little bit angsty, and a little bit post-teen-drama.  and as my not-a-girlfriend keeps telling me, i'm almost 40, surely this shit should all be sorted so i can get on with the whole being a grown-up thing.  My very-much-perfected eyebrow raise will tell you all you need to know about my thoughts on that one.  particularly because 37 is still mid-thirties.

presto change-o

Well I managed all of three weeks or so on Wordpress, before coming back to Blogger.  It was the fact that i couldn't embed a video into a post that did it.  Not sure if I was just being techno-illiterate, or if they really do want you to pay $60 a year for the privilege of embedding a video rather than just linking to it, but hey-ho, it was enough to get me to switch.

I always used to use blogger anyways, until i was lured by the custom domain name and it's wordpress installation.  it all looks a little fancier on the dashboard these days, but its a bit like coming back to a favourite old place and struggling to remember why you stopped coming here.

Truly Horrifying

I am slightly horrified to find myself enjoying the olympics.  more than slightly horrified actually, and bordering on aghast. 

I'm not a great lover of sport generally, other than stuff that seems to fall under the heading of sport by default (synchronised swimming, rhythmic gymnastics).  But I find myself actively watching the olympics at any given moment.  not only watching, but enjoying.

This weekend alone I've seen judo, rowing, synchronised diving, archery, dressage, hockey, football, boxing, cycling and beach volleyball.  And with the exception of the volleyball and the dressage, none of it was for the purpose of a sneaky bit of pervery.  What is happening to me?  Is it another step on the road of turning into my mother (who is *obsessed* with the olympics)? Is it because I myself am actually participating in (and even enjoying) exercise these days?  Is it just because i'm in london and the atmosphere is rubbing off on me?

Whatever, I'm enjoying it.  And for everyone's enjoyment, I give you Zara Phillips <swoon>

The 'lympics are here!

So, the London Olympics has finally started, and despite all my expectations, I find myself loving it.  All of it, not even just the synchronised swimming and the rhythmic gymnastics.

What I'm not loving is how it is highlighting the small-mindedness of the UK media.  Danny Boyle's amazing opening ceremony (you can still catch it on iPlayer if you somehow managed to miss it) has been criticised for being "too multi-cultural".  seriously, some wanker in the Daily Fail actually said that having a non-white face in every segment was a bad thing.  Fuck me, why is it even an issue?   London is probably one of the most multi-cultural multi-ethnic cities in the world, never mind in the UK.

And it's not just the seemingly acceptable face of racism that is on show.  There's misogyny aplenty too.  From the (kind-of) subtle  - the fact that male athletes are referred to as men, whereas female athletes are all girls, to the downright blatant - Frankie Boyle (and many many others) insulting Rebecca Adlington on the basis of her looks.  Seriously, we're talking about a woman who has won Olympic gold medals in her sport (and a bronze tonight, yay!).  What the fuck does how she looks have to do with this?  why is it even relevant?  *and* attractiveness is so personal and arbitrary anyway, so even if it *was* relevant, your ugly might well be my swoon-inducing.

Can the media please just focus on the sport?