First D.F. Guest Post: @Scriblit

Hello. I recently asked if anybody would like to write guest blogs here so a) I could keep this place ticking over while I work on getting Destinauts finished, and b) I could see if it worked as an experiment, judge the reaction and hopefully take the site in a slightly different direction if it works. I had a great response. Literally some of you have expressed an interest in contributing, and here I present the first of the guest blogs, a fantastic piece from @Scriblit. She's one of the wittiest people on Twitter, and if you're not following her, you really bloody should (oh, and check this site out). Enjoy (and please leave feedback!).

Like any mildly sarcastic, vaguely-disenfranchised-with-the-world-in-general, left wing, middle class, thirty year old Briton, I am one of the many thousands of sheeple who generally believes that Charlie Brooker is right about pretty much everything. I have two exceptions to this blanket agreement with each and every one of the square-faced lovegod’s dictats:

1, He seems to genuinely enjoy The Apprentice, whereas I’d rather set myself on fire than watch a bunch of knobs act knobbishly in order to impress another knob.

2, A few months back, he wrote an article in which he claimed that women should run the world, since us laydeez would, in his opinion, do it much better than the men. Which is a terribly sweet sentiment, bless his cottons, but wrong, wrong, so very wrong. Gordon Brown in a Mankini Wrong.

Let’s not even start on the ‘women are less likely to start needless wars’ element to that proposal. There’s many a dead Argentinian sailor who would laugh heartily at that one, were they not, y’know, dead, and we’ve all seen Sarah ‘I use antlers in all of my deeeecorating’ Palin giving funny looks to any country that ends in ‘-an’. It’ll be fun if she ever gets within spitting distance of The Big Red Button. Fun in an ‘Oh God, Oh God, we’re all going to die’ sort of a way. Face it. Women get into stupid fights. Anyone who’s ever seen Jeremy Kyle would be able to tell you that. Let’s pretend that war doesn’t even factor into the equation. I still don’t believe that my fellow women would do a better job at running the world than men do.

I’m not going to start spouting bollocks about how women just aren’t cut out to run things because our fluffy brains are too full of lovely thoughts about rainbows and babies to do anything proper but are capable of ironing your pants and cooking your tea at the same time and my, isn’t that clever. If you’d ever seen my pathetic attempts at multi tasking (or, for that matter, ironing) you’d know why I scoff in the face of such cobblers. But, as annoying as I find the sweeping statement that all women Lack The Will Of The Warrior on a genetic level, the opposing sweeping statement irritates me just as much – the one that states that women are naturally more sensible, more understanding, more mature than men – that we are true grown-ups, rolling our eyes in fond despair as those silly manboys of ours goon childishly around us, messing stuff up for us to patiently fix later. I’m not sure what sort of world that gender divide exists in, because it’s certainly not one where nigh-on every electronic gadget has the option of coming in hot pink. It’s not one where ‘Supernatural Romance’ warrants an entire black-and-red corner of Waterstones. And it definitely isn’t one where grown women can pay $50 to get themselves Vajazzled.

Vajazzling is something I found out about this week, and really wish I hadn’t. The latest trend in absolutely bloody pointless and ridiculous cosmetic procedures. Apparently, these days, getting your entire body from the eyebrows down waxed bald is not enough for some of us. When you are Vajazzled, you celebrate your Love Glove’s new Kojak Hairdo by gluing fucking rhinestones to it. Yes. We have started to stick sequins onto our fannies. Because that’s what sensible and mature people do. It’s harmless at least, and women, of course, have the right to adorn their genitals however they wish. I could draw a crude portrait of Compo from Last of the Summer Wine in magic marker on mine if I really wanted. Women can make their Ladygardens look like Disco Stu’s jacket if they please, and I’m sure they will. Because women, like men, are perfectly capable of being absolutely idiotic overgrown children, pretty much all of the time.

Everything has to be shiny and sparkly for us these days, you see – our skin, our hair, our clothes, our fannies, even our vampires. I bet you any money that if a tablet were formulated that could make your shit look like a Christmas tree decoration, women would start taking it – even if it caused violent stomach cramps and had a 90% chance of causing arse cancer within three years. I’d still give it only a matter of months before Grazia had a list of the best places to get your sparkly poo pills and The Guardian would have a piece in their Saturday magazine agonising over whether glitter shit was actually the last word in emancipation. We’re like cats. Show us a piece of tin foil on the end of a bit of wool & it will apparently keep us happy for fucking hours. That may seem like an unfair exaggeration, but look at the media that’s produced for women – that we consume in depressingly vast amounts. Gossip mags and their low-rent, exploitative, ghoulish ‘Real Life’ cousins, anything with Jennifer Aniston in, Loose Women, Twilight, the “Femail” supplement – the last three in that list distressingly popular despite being about as Feminist as Jack the Ripper… I may be missing some complex subtleties in these things, but they have to me as much substance as a shiny thing dancing on the end of a ribbon.

And then there’s Mamma Mia. The highest grossing UK film of all time. As a female cinephile who knows what a tough industry film is for anyone to break into, let alone women, I’d like to say I’m very proud that the highest grossing UK film of all time is a low budget, feel-good yarn made by women, about women, for women. I’d like to, but I can’t, and I can’t because Mamma Mia is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It has no plot, no conflict, no characterisation, not a single original thought seems to have gone into making it. It’s poorly shot, poorly directed, poorly scripted and poorly acted. It is, essentially, an ABBA Karaoke video where somebody’s already taken the trouble to sing all the songs out of tune so you don’t have to. And then the rest of us ladies had to go out and buy the bloody thing in phenomenal numbers, sending it whizzing up the Highest Grossing Hit Parade and leading the makers to crow about how the fact that millions of women apparently want to watch Meryl Streep bouncing on a bed singing into her hairbrush like a cartoon 8-year-old makes their cinematic face-fuck some sort of triumph for Feminism. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the sort of thing Mrs Pankhurst was fighting for. Mamma Mia is just another Shiny Thing for us ridiculous, idiot child-women.

Sometimes I wish that things like Twilight and Mamma Mia are popular due to some never-seen throng of titted morons who slink into shops and cinemas, buy all the brainless tat they can get their claws on and then scuttle back to their caves, never to be heard of again. But that’s not the case. The people consuming Sparkly Things for overgrown children are my friends, my family – perfectly normal, smart women who I love and admire. And I’m no different. Don’t let my distaste for sequinned bajing-jings and horrible, derivative musicals fool you. I’m one of the idiot children myself. The way that I play video games is shamefully revealing of my reluctance to ever grow out of playing with dollies. I am addicted to The Sims – a game which is just cyber-dollies, pure and simple. I am capable of spending hours of my precious little free time creating them, dressing them, doing their hair, building houses for them, then making sexy boyfriends for them. Hee hee! I’m making them kiss! Now they’re going to get married! Now they have a pool house! Hee hee hee! – And I’m just as bad with other games. I’m far more likely to bother with a video game if it has pretty graphics and a girl character I can play as. I have all the Lara Croft games, regardless of their patchy quality throughout the series – as far as I’m concerned, Lara is my Action Barbie. Same goes for Taki from Soul Calibur. Oooh, the excitement when I was able to change her costume and create new characters to fight each other! My Original Characters folder is packed with mermaids, witches, princesses and a rather badass looking Snow White. When I’m not playing with virtual dolls, I’m excitedly discussing favourite programmes of my childhood. I have written Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon Erotica. My main reason for joining Twitter in the first place was that some of the actors who had played my childhood heroes in Star Trek TNG were on there. I am thirty years old.

Yes, men can be utterly ridiculous, gormless oversized children en-masse. But so can women, just as regularly. Please, guys. Never assume that women are going to be capable of being any more grown up than you. Think of us as blokes with tits – haplessly stumbling through life from one distraction to the other. We can’t really trust ourselves to go into HMV without coming out with a DVD about a sassy chihuahua and Il Divo Sing The Bee Gees on a double CD – how do you expect to trust us with running the planet?

Actually, I have lots more to say on the subject, just as long as I don’t get distrac…SQUIRREL!

If you want to write a guest blog, contact me on Twitter and we'll take it from there. :)