jeudi 30 octobre 2008

Fictional Characters I Would Happily Marry

I have many a TV boyfriend. In fact, I'm quite the fiction slut. But not every crush wanders into marriage territory. My Chuck Bass love, for example, is well documented, but even the most ardent admirer has to admit that he's hardly husbad material. There are, however, a few men out there (and yes, I am totally aware that none of them are real, and no, I am not crazy. Honest!) who would make for the perfect happily-ever-after.

1. Capt. Malcolm Reynolds
Firefly's Mal has it all. Noble, loyal and all that jazz, with a pleasingly maccho veneer of badass. Plus, hot. All I need to overcome is his UST with Inara (and the fact that he doesn't exist, obviously) and I'm sure we could have a long and happy life together.
Note: The only reason that Han Solo does not appear on this list (Space smugglers in tight pants? Totally my type) is that even in the realms of daydream it is just wrong to come between him and Leia. I know, I have problems.

2. Fred Weasley
I have had the same argument with my friends for years now. I can tell the difference between the Weasley twins. I can! And Fred was definitely my favourite, which is why I found the seventh HP book so traumatic (and I am not spoiler tagging this, because if you haven't read that book by now you don't really care who died). He was funny, sweet, a wealthy magical joke shop entrepeneur and TOTALLY DIFFERENT from his twin. So there.

3. The Men of How I Met Your Mother
Three for one here. First, there's Ted. Possibly the most charming character ever committed to film: Funny without being snarky, smooth without being slimy and totally looking for a wife to adore. Then you have Marshall. Who is wonderful. Like, the nicest man alive. And clearly not dumb (Lawyer? Hello!). And then...
Barney Stinson. Now, he may seem like an odd choice, given my earlier rejection of fellow douchebag Chuck Bass (and the omission of damaged Doctor Alex Karev for that matter). But I'd like to give Barney a chance. After all, he's just your standard issue shallow man whore, while Chuck is evil. Deliciously so, but still evil. I think Stinson could be redeemed. And Season 4 of HIMYM might just prove me right on this one. Yeah, I'm totally team BroTP.

4. Jimmy the Hand
Those familiar with Raymond Feist will know this character as an intelligent street urchin/pickpocket, a devoted, if headstrong, Royal Squire, and finally a responsible and powerful Duke/Spymaster. It's the second of these three incarnations which I'd marry, and without a second thought.
As with the whole space smugglers thing, it seems thieves with a heart of gold are a type for me - Tamora Pierce's George Cooper also holds a certain attraction.

5. Frazer Yeats.
I love Neighbours. I will always love Neighbours, now matter how many ridiculous cave ins/bush fires/hauntings occur on Ramsey St. That said, I'm not 100% sure that I'll ever forgive then for letting Frazer go. Or for keeping his shirt on all the time while Oliver prances around in a towel at the drop of a hat. It's going to be tough.

6. Sandy Cohen
Yes, dude is old. But that hardly changes the fact that he's perfect. Not even the threat of passing on his spectacular eyebrows to my offspring (and I'm betting that is one seriously dominant gene right there) would deter me from becoming Mrs Cohen. Time was, I'd have gone for the more age appropriate option and said I'd marry Seth Cohen in the hopes of him turning out like Sandy. Of course, that was before Season 2 of The OC happened and Cohen Jr turned into a whiny little bitch. Pity. His dad's still got it though.

7. Will Parry
I am aware of the fact that Philip Pullman's hero is supposed to be, like, thirteen, but anybody who's read His Dark Materials will agree that that's hardly the point. And even though coming between Will and Lyra would be a crime of a par with separating Han and Leia, I figure that once they're trapped in alternate dimensions for all eternity all bets are off.

So, those are my guys of choice. Should any of them become real I would like to be alerted immediately. I was going to push through and find another three to make the list a nice, round number, but I figured I was enough of a fictional bigamist (as well as the slut I was before I started the husband list) to be getting on with. Who've I left out?

lundi 27 octobre 2008

Why I hate French people.

Obviously, this is a massive generalisation, totally unfair, and bordering on the racist. Perhaps it would be better to say Why I Hate The French People I Personally Have Come Across. Because, despite the fact that I live in France, my contact with actual french people has been kind of limited. Which, if the few francophones I actually know are anything to go by, may be just as well. In fact, apart fom a few very nice students who I have had relatively little contact with, the french people I know fall pretty neatly into three categories.

1. Random French guys who like to hit on people inappropriately. Like, all the time. Day, night, dressed up, hungover, face covered in impetigo, whatever. And it's not even because I'm foreign (although that does tend to exacerbate things). It crosses the line between flattering and creepy. They don't take no for an answer, they never leave you to carry on the conversation you were clearly having with your friends and they have literally no concept of personal space.

2. Then there's my A level french teachers. Two women who delighted in asserting their moral superiority over the english, whether it be because we drink ('It's just so sad to see a girl drunk at prom') or because we eat things that came in microwaveable packets ('My son Jude has never eaten anything that wasn't organic'). This, combined with the fact that I was never the most model student and they weren't the sort of teachers who would let homework slide provided you were still doing well on external examinations, led to a strained, at best, relationship.

3. Finally, there's my roomate. Or should I say, former roomate. Because last Wednesday, without warning, she asked me to leave the apartment. The reason for this is that she is a freaking mentalist. Basically, reread the description of my A-level teachers. Then imagine living with one of them.

It was clear that we weren't going to get on from the day I arrived, when she followed me round as I unpacked making helpful comments such as 'I don't hang my trousers up that way, it doesn't keep them perfectly straight'. But it was a very nice apartment, and I was prepared to keep my head down, do what she wanted regarding the shared kitchen and bathroom and make the best of it.

Unfortunately that was not good enough for her. Not only was the very clean kitchen not spotless enough (and she wasn't a neat freak, she just liked to say that she was so that I would feel obliged to be super tidy while she did whatever she goddamn wanted), but I apparently neglected her as a friend by having a social life of my own. My mistake, I was looking for a roommate, not a BFF. Which, incidentally, is also my fault for not making that more clear to her before I arrived.

My many, many faults, on top of selfishness and lack of personality, also include chronic rudeness. Apparently it was horrifically impolite of me to arrive, invited into her house (as opposed to being a lodger who paid half of the rent) without a gift for her. When I WAS EMIGRATING. I paid £35 in excess baggage because I had to fly my entire life to France by Easyjet and she was upset that I didn't have room for a bunch of freaking flowers. Similarily my friend Mel, when she came to visit me in the room that I had paid for, should have brought her a gift. And, when we came in and she was sitting in her pyjamas in bed , complaining about how tired she was, we should not have gone to my room and made an effort to be extra quiet, we should have invited her to join us for a glass of wine. Seriously. I give up.

But it's ok now, because I'm set up in a new place, where I can happily lock the word out if I feel like it. And I do have some french neighbours who I share a kitchen with. Yet to meet them, but hopefully they can do something to improve my opinion of the nation. Because otherwise I have a long 8 months ahead of me...

jeudi 16 octobre 2008

J'etais malade

So, I haven't been posting for a while but that's because I was ill. And ill in a particularly gross way, complete with infected impetigo/allergic-to-antibiotic-cream blisters on my face. As my mum pointed out (roughly a million times), the student lifestyle is not massively condusive to health. The woman is seriously convinced that I went off to Durham two years ago, got a chest infection and haven't been well since. She asked me if I was HIV positive. In front of the Louvre!

Happily, though, I have fairly regular std screenings, and on top of that I just finished my course of antibiotics and now I am barely scabby. Still not my best look ever, but anybody who witnessed the original will agree that it is a vast improvement.

All of which is just as well, as this weekend I'm off for a Belgian adventure! And I would really have hated to be on antibiotics for the houseparty I'm due to attend in Brussels. It should be awesome, and most excitingly, it's an opportunity to see people from back in Blighty who I haven't seen in ages.

So, that's where I've been and where I'm going. I'll post more once I've actually done something interesting to write about!