Laziness

A quick introduction before I start the main post. Yes, I forgot to post last week and I'm sorry. Two hours of French fits badly with having to write afterwards. Also, this post is a tad lazy as it's a speech I'm forced to write for English. The topic's Things I would put in Room 101. Enjoy, see you in a fortnight.

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"Above all, I wouldn't hesitate to put paranormal romance novels in Room 101. There are very few things I hate more.

Do I really care about some unconnected, 2D characters fall in love with a pale, muscle-y bloke who reinforces a bad image of masculinity? I wouldn't mind if I didn't have to wade through a pathetic slush pile to get to any kind of quality.

It's getting too popular for its own good. Some nearly-author sends off their paranormal romance manuscript and of course it's going to get published. An agent receives a half-legible story and they just know they'll be bathing in money by the end of the week.

Paranormal romance falls, sadly, under the umbrella of sci-fi/fantasy. I search for fantasy novels and young adult romance novels always come up. I see a book about the Devil. Brilliant! Always wanted to know to what Lucifer gets up to on a day-to-day basis. Yet no. It's a bleeding love story. I don't care about his love life, I care about his general evilness. He is Devil, after all.
One thing that gets me, though, is the readers of it. The fangirls, and I can assure you that 90% of them shall be female, are possibly the second most abhorrent type of fangirl. They shall squeal and scream, metaphorically, at every twist of the book. Boring, lifeless character A snogs boring, lifeless character B. Big deal!

It's not how they read, and subsequently share on the internet, the books. It's how they buy them. Fellow sf/f fans shall agree that being an sf/f fan is like being in Fight Club. You don't talk about it. The idea is you walk into the bookshop, hunched over and silent. You paw through a few books, although it's more likely you'll know what you're looking for, find one that looks nice and buy it, then go home. I find para-romance readers go to the section with an entourage of friends. They giggle loudly as they talk about dud pararomance book number eight and how it's just come out, smugly hinting to the world they've read the whole series. Congratulations, you can read!

Once they've finally bought it, after half an hour of talking about who has decided to play hard to get more or which character had his shirt off the most in the last book, their pompousness doesn't stop. They decide to continue to talk about every minor detail to all their friends as they walk out of the store. Who is going to sleep with who, how great it would be as a movie (tip: it wouldn't) and how many more books they can buy. Must I refer back to my Fight Club analogy? You can talk about the book in a highly detailed and legible review, and that's it. Discussing out of the house, and out of sci-fi conventions, is a major no-no.

So, as a message to every reader of Meyer, Clare and whoever else you care to name. Think about what you're about to read, think really hard. And then go read something better."

Personal Injury Claims

This morning, I discovered that I would be allowed to go on a school trip. Nothing much interesting in itself, although it's actually intended for students about a year older than me. A main concern was that because all the health and safety forms had been filled in for "older" students, the insurance wouldn't cover GCSE-age ones. And there's my buzzword. Health and Safety.
 
After the recent cold snap, half my school was cornered off with "exposed electrical wire" tape (well, it was bright yellow...), so nobody would slip on the ice. This meant that anyone who would have normally gone around there was forced to go through the corridors. And trying to get over one thousand students through the tiniest piece of corridor in a five minute time frame... let's just say it isn't pretty. Here's a better idea: Salt the heck out of the "dangerous" areas, instead of throwing kids in isolation set them to digging up the ice, and get the whole thing clear within a day or so. However, you should never apply logic when it comes to my school.
 
Years ago, many, many years ago, I was wearing Heeleys (wheels in heels, heels with wheels). Being about nine years old, I was wheeling along, clinging onto my mother's arm when we got stopped by a bloke. Apparently, I wasn't allowed to wheel along because of "health and safety reasons". Of course, my mother ignored him and we carried on as normal.
 
My mother then recently was involved in a minor car accident. And by minor I mean minor - her car was shunted from behind hard enough to leave a scuff. The offending car's owner immediately ran out of his car, scared to death of having a personal injury claim placed against him.
Why? She didn't have whiplash, why should she claim on it?
 
Adverts all the time say that we should claim on the broken arm we recieved last week and so on. Sure, you may get a payout now for the whiplash you don't really suffer from, but it'll only cause a letter to come through your door announcing a rise in car insurance. Risk assessments and "health and safety reasons" are becoming more about eliminating risks than managing it. If this continues on in this fashion, it may become harder for students to cheekily go on trips that are offered to older years. But then, do I really care about younger years?