Sex doesn’t get worse than this…

Those of you who are writers will know that one of the most challenging things you ever have to face is the dreaded sex scene. Writing something that doesn’t inspire your reader’s cringe (or even worse, gag) reflex is a special talent that not everyone possesses and, dare I say, not everyone can learn.

It is comforting to know that not just amateur writers struggle with describing the “act of love” (I’m already cringing). In fact, some pro-writers have created scenes of such horror that The Literary Review now does an annual Bad Sex Awards, where the dodgiest sex scene from an actual published work of fiction is awarded the title.

I have been following the Literary Reviews tweets at @lit_review and I have some concerns as to whether some of the writers have actually ever had sex. With that in mind, below are some of my very favourite entries.

“Now he realised that he was inside [her], ejaculating toward her uterus.” – Grim

“He poked her now from the front and now from the back and now from the side.” – The side? What shape are this woman’s bits?

“she felt as though she were melting into a pool of delight, as his hand reached the soft fur of her mound” – brings new meaning to the phrase “panty hamster”

“She gave him this particular sign, this clear permission, and he began a careful prodding of her perineum.” – Prodding… PRODDING???

“His manhood had swelled to its fullness and strove for release.” – Mind of its own, it has!

“It surged up, until with volcanic release, it engulfed them.” – Engulfed them? Must have been some time since he, er, released prior to this.

“His middle fingertip settled on the no-man’s-land between her ‘front parlor’ and ‘back door’.” – Double grim!

“He kissed her again, slowly, felt the inside of her mouth with his tongue, then her neck.” –There seems to be a physical impossibility here…

“He came, standing, with both hands thrown high up over his head” – Waiting for a score from the judges?

“Where is my semen going? [His] garbled mind wondered.” – Um… really?

The prize will be awarded tomorrow, so make sure you check out the Lit Review’s website to find out who the “lucky” winner is…

Is the giant slipper the furniture of the future…

I know I’ve been going on about this on facebook and twitter but it’s literally one of the top 5 coolest things I have ever seen. This guy, Tom Boddington, ordered some slippers from Hong Kong… where you can order slippers in two different sizes. He wanted a 14 and a 14.5 but some kind of “clerical error” was made and instead Tom got a 14 and a 1,450.  This is him sitting in and next to his two slippers.

So there are two very obvious questions here:

1. When the people who made this slipper were constructing it, did they turn to each other at any point and say, “This seems a little out of the ordinary. Maybe we should check it.” Then after that when some poor soul was packaging it for shipping (at a meagre cost of £15.50) did they think, “My, that’s a lot of bubble wrap. Maybe we should check it.” I suppose I’m quite glad none of them work for me.
2. More importantly, have they actually come up with the greatest piece of furniture ever invented? Tell me you wouldn’t want to watch TV sitting in that in the middle of winter! You could make a double one for couples or even a family size one for mormons people with kids. If I could order one with a slightly more grown-up fabric and minus the toes I’d be on the phone to Hong Kong right now!

And if that doesn’t excite you… why not read this article proving that John Travolta and Nicolas Cage are vampire who have been alive at least since the 1800s. As if being a scientologist wasn’t dodgy enough…

Panic on the streets of London

Anyone who has been watching the news will know that London has spent three nights under siege by rioters and looters. The violence kicked off after the shooting of a man called Mark Duggan, during an arrest in Tottenham on Thursday. It appears there are questions around whether the shooting of Duggan was lawful and members of the family and community where protesting peacefully and demanding answers from the police on Saturday. Unfortunately the protest did not remain peaceful and Tottenham High Road was the first area where widespread destruction and looting took place.

Following this numerous other areas including Enfield, Ealing, Croydon, and the frighteningly close to my home, Clapham Junction, have been targeted by bands of youths in balaclavas smashing in shop windows, helping themselves to electronics and sports goods and setting things on fire.

As a London resident, this is all pretty scary. I personally have managed to avoid all riot activity but Paul watched out of his office window as the riot police chased troublemakers down the Soho street he works on and many of my colleagues and acquaintances have been close enough to smell the smoke and hear the sirens.

Of course there is mass debate over why this has happened and who is to blame. I don’t in any way profess to have a deep insight into society but you have to wonder how we’ve gotten to a place where people are this angry. While there is absolutely no excuse for destroying property and taking things that are not yours, there is a large part of the population who appear to feel like this is their way of “sticking it to the man.” Unfortunately a lot of the time they don’t appear to realise that burning down small local business is just sticking it to your own community but that’s just a symptom of the lack of big picture thinking that’s going on.

A lot of people are looking back at past immigration policy, past police interaction with communities and past education policy and saying well if we had have done this or done that we wouldn’t be in this situation. But we are in this situation and we need leadership who will find a way to engage people, who are unable to see the effect that what they are doing is having and how much they are hurting themselves. These are people who don’t think what they are doing is wrong and believe that there won’t be consequences to their actions. That’s the bit that needs addressing. It doesn’t matter if it’s pure greedy opportunism or a result of a disconnection between the state and the disenfranchised youth, or something else entirely. What matters is making it stop and preventing it from happening again.

Have a little listen of this to get an idea of the mentality…

The saddest thing is that most Londoners are law-abiding citizens, who work hard for a better future for themselves, their families and communities, but the actions of the opportunistic few is likely to lead to the further demonization of the British youth… and that’s just not fair.

UKBA set to further tighten the immigration noose

It appears that the UK Border Agency is about to crack down on granting indefinite leave to remain to migrants who have been in the country for five years. According to an article on BBC News, the government wants to “”break the automatic link between coming to the UK to work and settling here permanently”. However ministers are saying, “they could make exceptions for workers earning more than £150,000 or if they were in economically important jobs” and further to this, “Clearly employers need skilled labour from overseas but in principle our view is that should be temporary, while British workers are trained for those jobs.”

So let me get this straight… first of all there seems to be a perception that you arrive, you stay for five years and then they just hand you a residence permit? Have any of these government ministers ever attempted to go through the process of getting indefinite leave to remain? I won’t bore you with the details of the process I went through to get mine again. You can read about it here, if you’re interested. But I will say the level of expense and hoop-jumping that those of us who have decided to settle here go through means that choosing to settle really is a commitment to being a permanent UK resident rather than an “automatic” right!

Secondly there appears to be an undercurrent here of the UK intending to get whatever it can out of migrant workers and then boot them out as soon as possible… well unless they’re uber rich of course. As it stands permission to work is only granted for jobs where there are no British workers able or willing to take these roles so I’d like to know who is busy training the British workers who are going to replace the working migrants?

Adding insult to injury, this comes after the very recent revelation that the UKBA is incapable of managing the asylum cases that it is flooded with and that it’s often easier just to let asylum seekers stay rather than even bothering to assess their cases.

Now, I understand that some people face terrible persecution for things that are not their fault in the countries that they were born in and in these genuine cases any country that is able to grant them asylum should be morally obliged to do so. These cases do need to be assessed though!

I also think that you should have to work hard to get your residency because it’s a privilege and in some ways an honour. While it was tough paying for mine and annoying writing the test and sometimes frustrating being subject to rules about how long I could be in the country and who I could work for, I didn’t feel like I was being treated unfairly.

And I do understand the UK’s need to manage sustainable immigration… but why punish professional migrants who pay taxes, follow immigration laws and are not a drain on the system. Is that really the logical place to start managing immigration or is it just the easiest place? If the real fear is that people go from indefinite leave to citizenship where they can then claim benefits and a UK pension one day why not reform the laws around naturalisation instead.

At the moment you can apply to be become a naturalised citizen one year after achieving indefinite leave to remain. Although it works in my favour right now, I think it’s too quick. Why not extend that time considerably for anyone who is not able to provide strong ties to the UK (strong ties being things like marriage and ancestry or possibly children born in the UK who have reached a certain age).  That way you keep only those people in the country who are wholly able to sustain themselves, while reaping the benefits of their taxes and expertise but allowing them the freedom to live without immigration controls.

I love living in the UK but there are days when I wonder why I am trying so hard to settle in a country that seems to hate me so much!

The Really Free School squatters move house… to opposite my office

If anyone is wondering where the squatters who set up the Really Free School in Guy Ritchie’s house have gone, I can tell you they have set up camp in the vacant pub across the road from my office bringing all kinds of chaos with them including a scuffle with some bailiffs. Of course all us media types who work around here have had our faces pressed to the glass all day (in between serious work of course) watching The Really Free School take over the Black Horse (or the Black Hole as we affectionately used to call it).

I’m not going to wax lyrical about whether squatting is good or bad… it’s a bit beyond my comprehension really. I like having a job and paying rent so I can have a hot shower everyday but some people don’t and well… good for them if they want to attempt to make a life that way.

What is interesting though is how organised this lot are. Not only do they have a website, which is being updated by the minute, but they have a full programme of classes on the go that you can attend, including feminist porn, reproductive justice, life drawing, Indonesian, crochet and the Gospel of Mark. So if any of that sounds exciting it might be worth coming down for a lesson however they have stated on the site that they are full up and you can’t stay overnight. Not sure if that is in the spirit of squatting. Surely if you don’t want people to keep you out of their property you can’t keep other people out of your “borrowed” property but then I don’t know the rules. At least if you can’t stay though you can follow them on twitter for blow by blow accounts of the bailiffs and the Old Bill attempting to eject them! And if their cause is close to your heart you can help out. There is a wish list on the website where they catalogue their desires including an 18V drill, cushions, sponges and coffee (but only real, not instant). I assume these things would have had to be bought by people who have jobs… but you know… why split hairs. In the words of Itch from The King Blues, “I’m all for workers rights and that, as long as I don’t have to work“.

Oh well let the entertainment begin… there really is never a dull moment in Soho…