Most of what i write here is friends only. If I'm having a rant about politics, or saying nothing particularly personal, that'll be public, but if you want the angsting and the whinging, friend me. I don't really have a policy; add me and comment here, and I'll add you right back. If I've added you, it's because I think you look interesting, or I know you in another internet incarnation.

And I really, really liked it.

( Haters to the left, Spoilers under the cut )

Now can we all please, please shut up about the mystic blue wang of Dr. Manhattan? It's there, it's blue. More interesting things happen on other parts of the screen.

As I lay in bed last night, teetering on the edge of the Gutter of Fear, it finally got through my skull that, in a matter of days, America is going to have a black president. And that that is quite a big deal.

I don't mean this in a pretentious way, because of course I see race and of course I knew all along that it was a huge factor in the campaign. But the full significance of the world's most powerful man not being old, white and rich, and not being called Ronald, George or William, didn't really hit me. And now it has.

Rejoice!

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that I have not been reduces to a quivering wreck handing in my extended essay at a minute to midday on Friday, nor eviscerated for my lack of knowledge about what the thesis of my thesis in a meeting with my tutor at 5pm. Let us assume that I make it alive all the way to Saturday afternoon.

Come! Come to the Duke of Cambridge in Jericho, where I will park myself from 6pm, and proceed to get disgustingly drunk. It is happy hour, the drinks will merely be a bit pricey as opposed to horrifically expensive. I may then force you to move onto the other pubs of Oxford, until midnight, when I will become a real and proper grown-up.

In short. A will be 21. I want you all to celebrate this with me. C'mon c'mon c'mon. It's the start of term, I'm about to start sliding down a slide of doom, despair and dissertations, and so are many of you.

When I worked in a guitar shop during my teenage years, walking back to the train station with twenty five fresh pounds clutched in my fist was a death trap, artfully constructed out of second hand books. It is why I have a 'to read' pile which would probably take me a good two years to get through. When I wanted a particular book, when I'd had it recommended to me by a friend or the books section in the Saturday Times and knew I simply could not rest until I'd read it, I would hold it in my mind before going into one of the charity shops lining my route. I'd say that about seventy per cent of the time, I'd find what I wanted.

Today, Oxfam has rendered unto me Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon for the princely sum of two quid. Booyah.

Also in Good News, I have hit my stride with my extended essay. I am a point making, interpreting, footnoting missile into the heart of art historical Truth. I'm sure it's all a load of shite but I'm reasonably confident that once I get rid of the sarcasm, it's 2.i worthy shite.

This not a particular pointful post, it's just I haven't said anything for a while, and I'd rather not talk about the finalsthesisbeast and the Extended Essay Swirling Vortex Of Doom.

jacinthsong pointed this out today - due to low uptake of the MMR vaccine caused by an idiotic and hysterical media hoax, cases of measles in the UK have risen dramatically.It struck a chord with a conversation I had with rosepetal_trail last week about vaccination and healthcare. I'm aware that there are downsides and risks to inoculation, and in a vague and uninformed way, aware that certain people object to them from a 'holistic' point of view. I don't know what there arguments are, so I can't comment on them; I will, however, venture that I'd rather have a slightly unnatural immune system than tuberculosis. I say this as someone who swears by valerian root for insomnia, so i'll be keeping that hippie badge.

She argued that it's really up to the individual, or their parents, whether they receive vaccinations, and that the arguments against them are worth considering. I'm sure they are, she isn't stupid and, oh god Laura, please don't read this and think I'm taking the piss. While I agree that it's a personal choice in principle, I think individuals have a far greater responsibility to society at large than to testing out some fairly marginal and unproven theories. I'm not a medical student, and I'm not entirely sure if this is accurate, but my basic understanding is that vaccines are not 100% effective, but they keep the 'herd immunity' high enough to limit the spread of the disease. Amirite? So, in choosing not to get little baby whatever vaccinated, individual parents have collectively put the wider population at risk. I had the MMR as a child - after I'd already had rubella/German measles - yet still contracted mumps a couple of years ago, nearly passed out in the doctor's waiting room*, and spent a miserable week in bed feeling like I'd grown an extra breast on my face.

It's one of those things where I really think people should have the good sense and the understanding that no man is an island, and so on. I mean, while few people die of measles, mumps and rubella these days, they still present a risk to pregnant women, and they just aren't very nice to have. But it's quite another thing when we get onto things like polio, diphtheria and tuberculosis. It seems to me to be utterly stupid that there are children dying all over the world of easily preventable diseases, and yet because of one crackpot scientist and an irresponsible press, affluent people are rejecting it; they just don't see the wider impact of their decisions. Yet, at the same time, I don't see how anyone can stop them, and I have troub;e thinking they should. Yesterday I told slasheuse that I'd be prepared to go to prison in protest rather than carry a compulsory ID card, and while I may have been exaggerating for effect, I have massive problems with the governmnet's current policies and their interference with freedom of choice and the right to privacy. I dont think the two are entirely unrelated; even if, as far as I can tell, making the vaccines compulsory would actually reduce death and suffering, while all ID cards would really do is lead to more fun and games with data being lost or stolen and hasten Britain's course into becoming a police state, that Gordon Brown is just like Mugabe, or Hitler. Yeah, Hitler.

What do people think? Am I implying that it's okay for me to decide when the state can force us to do something for our own good? I don't think vaccines should be compulsory, but, then again, I don't think people should blow up the Tube, either. Not that ID cards would have stopped them. I've just been thinking a lot about what the role of the state should be lately, due to an entirely unanticipated and inexplicable recent obsession with the American War of Independence. They are different issues, but I don't know where I stand on either of them, and so, those of you who've hung on through the waffling, I don't think I'll be voting Labour in the next election.




* The wrong waiting room. I had a fever, got on the wrong bus and ended up going into an entirely different surgery to the one I'm registered at. Fun and games.

As most of you know, one of my preferred genres of music involves beardy Scandinavian blokes who spent the majority of their adolescences sitting in their room learning how to play the guitar really really fast, and working out if they could best shock their parents more by singing about Satan, or by burning down twelfth century stave churches. I like metal. It's not always the most female friendly space to be, but hey, it's a lot more fun than emo.

Within the scene, Roadrunner Records have a reputation as a decent label. Though they may be directly responsible for Trivium, they also bring us Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Megadeth, Soulfly and lots of other great bands. When I saw that The Dresden Dolls were signed to them, I thought it was cool that they were enlarging the tent. They're also the label for Amanda Palmer's solo stuff. I've always been a bit ambivalent about these two; while there are some Dresden Dolls songs I love, I usually end up skipping quite a lot of it. I really don't like her new single, Leeds United, at all. However, I think the video is kind of cool, and that she looks hot in it.

...Apparently, Roadrunner Records don't agree. Apparently, Palmer's belly is too fat for her to be sexy, and we all know there's no place in music for women who aren't thin.

This just depresses me more than I can say. On my thankfully now deleted old journal, I made a few maudlin posts every once in a while about how irritated I was by the lack of women in metal, and the fact that women who did manage to get some kind of profile were usually judged almost entirely by their looks. I mean, I'll be the first person to admit that Cristina Scabbia is hot. However, she also has a fabulous voice, and when I'm in the mood for overblown Italian goth metal, they're my first choice. Angela Gossow was an icon to me a few years ago. I'm not saying that Amanda Palmer is playing in the same league as them, but she's at least economically speaking associated with the metal scene, and I do think Roadrunner's actions are a huge slap in the face to female metal fans, even the ones who don't want to be associated with all that piano bashing.

I know rock music has usually been a guy thing, and few subgenres are more about the cock than metal. But for one of the most successful businesses in what claims to be a subversive genre of music to do something like this really pisses me off. I honestly couldn't tell you how I got into metal - it was a combination of going along with what my friends liked, and finding a nice little niche in the proggier end of death metal. But I do think the fact that it was an excuse to get my eyebrow pierced and lounge around in baggy jeans and a t-shirt instead of a babydoll dress was probably a big part of it. Incidentally, that phase didn't last very long - I was probably the only person at Wacken Open Air in 2006 and 2007 floating about in broderie anglaise and flowery skirts. But there was always very much a sense that I was being allowed in by the boys, somehow. For every nice young man pulled me out of a moshpit that got a bit too heavy, there was usually some twat to sneer at me or cop a feel in the crowd. I don't think that guys who like metal are inherently more or less sexist than the rest of the general population, but for a subgroup that claims to be part of the counterculture, it's very much a male defined space, and with certain exceptions, it's an overwhelmingly heteronormative one. It tends to idealise 'masculine' aggression and rage, which is ironic given most of the guys I've known who are drawn to it have been sweet, thoughtful guys who are well aware of the possible implications of shirtless men in leather trousers waving phallic objects at one another.

I'm not a huge fan of Amanda Palmer, but for Roadrunner to have someone on their label who belts out some of the most stridently feminist lyrics in contemporary music did used to make me very happy. And now this comes along, and I just feel so... disappointed. For all the naivety this may show, I honestly believe in music as a vehicle of political protest and social change. Every woman who made it in metal or on a metal label seems to me like a strike against the patriarchy, as much as childcare legislation, because it shows a huge shift in a comically hypermasculine business, and it shows women kicking the doors off an area which has always been culturally rather than legally suspicious of them. You only have to look at the media interest generated by AccoLade, an all-girl Saudi Arabian metal band, to see how vital this sort of thing is for women, not just in the West. While Raped By The Light Of Christ by At The Gates is hardly The Times They Are A Changin', they are linked to the same sort of questioning of authority. Oh, shut up, it's on a continuum! While they aren't really like the Roadrunner stable, bands like Tool and System of a Down, and especially Rage Against The Machine can be consciousness raising voices for progress and dissent while what passes for the hippie movement disappears into a cloud of smoke.

Music should be fun and inclusive, and this sort of shit just really wrecks the party. If metalheads were as subversive and dissatisfied with Judeo-Christain mainstream values as they claim to be, they should be supporting female artists, irrespective of their real or imaginary stomach fat. But its easy to posture and pose than it is to actually engage with the real issues. I'm not saying metal has ever claimed to be revolutionary - Iron Maiden waving a union jack at a gig in Dublin in the 1980s was hardly a model of political sensitivity. But this kind of misogynistic horseshit shouldn't have a place anywhere, and all power to Amanda Palmer for telling them to fuck right off.

So, fuck you, Roadrunner. It's fuckers like you who are Just Not Metal. Sophie is more metal than you.