Blog Years/Dog Years: Fun Indifferent Ignorance-Based Activities for Your Half Term

Tomorrow is four years to the day that I started Indifferent Ignorance, which makes her a decade older than me in dog (and, I think, Internet) years.

Yes, she is a “she”.

Halloween isn’t traditionally a time for reflection, but we’re at the point now where this site is A Part of My Life. As in, I cite her (okay it is weird) on job applications since I’ve spent most of my teenage years doing Interwebz stuff. Ah, the joys of youth.

Anyway, snowflakes, this is not a time to be sitting idle. Well it sort of is because it’s half term and I’m tired – but one must not rest on one’s blogging laurels, even if they are pretty damn shiny. So, some news:

There are custom email addresses for this site! If you want to email me about a potential blog topic, such as a story for The Six O’clock News, or if you think you’d like to utilise my knack of typing way too much, email transmissions@indifferentignorance.com. If you’d like to send me marriage requests, cutesy photos of small animals, letters detailing the positive impact my site has made on your wellbeing, etc., email tobequitefrank@indifferentignorance.com. I’ll reply unless you come under the category of “fucking creepy” and/or “fucking irritating”, and of course will never share your private details (unless you’re so fucking creepy that I think you ought to be investigated by Operation Yew Tree).
Some of my more art-based, er, art, is now for sale on Etsy! The money raised will go back into Indifferent Ignorance for its upkeep since I am dirt poor. Hopefully in the future I will be able to make physical site merchandise and/or art available, but until then some of my stuff’s available for digital download for about half the price of the average coffee. Please let me know what you think about the products and price, since there’s not much point in the whole venture if you lot don’t care!
I have acquired an Instagram account so I can pretend to be MCR and tease y’all with sometimes-filtered images pertaining to projects I’m doing. I’m only sixty per cent sure how Instagram works so it’ll be… interesting.
Formspring has rebranded itself Spring.me and since I’m too lazy to make an ask.fm account I’ve revamped my ‘Spring’ profile. Let’s get philosophical, snowflakes.
I’ve got a new semi-serious story up on FictionPress. It’s in its very, very early stages – as in, I’m already working out how to edit the published chapters – but I would really, really appreciate it if you could take the time to have a read and leave a review. It can be anonymous and you can leave a review per chapter or just one when you’ve finished, but this means more to me than Etsy or email addresses or anything like that, because I’m only going to improve as a writer if people leave feedback. Art is a two-way street and all that…

Happy Halloween!

It’s, Like, a Musical, About, Like, God. Or Something.

This has been a week of mythology.

School has been hard lately and I’ve had to be careful about my arm so when Waterstones outdid themselves and delivered House of Hades a day before its official release, I spent most of the afternoon reading (it counts as independent study for Latin, yes?).

Uncle Rick, you are a genius. A trolling, cliffhanger-creating genius. Between Annabeth, Piper, Hazel, Reyna and Hermione Granger, I don’t know how young girls even consider looking up to bikini-clad airheads. I even warmed to Jason. I love Bob too – and Nico… was Nico always Nico or…?

Argh.

Last night (well ‘tonight’ in terms of writing this because I’m bored on the train) I saw Jesus Christ Superstar at the O2. Before I start chatting let me get one thing clear:

I like Jesus. I am also, until further notice, an atheist (or agnostic if I’ve not watched the news). I also like politics and a good theatrical rock show.

Jesus Christ Superstar is a secular-theatrical-colourful-rock ‘n’ roll-interpretation of the Passion of the Christ and I love it. C’mon, man, there’s sparkles and dancing girls and everyone’s favourite atheist comic musician and did I mention it’s just as relevant now as it was in 1973 as it was in 90AD when John wrote his gospel?

Yep, I’m calling a trip to London Religious Studies work. Anyway. The centrum of the matter is that you don’t have to like ITV to be grateful that they found a dude who can sing like this. You don’t have to believe in the proposed divinity of a story to learn from it and if you wear your second-highest heels to London then your feet will hate you the next day.

Hallelujah!

Yesterday’s version of Gethsemane was better than that, by the way. As in, my ears hurt it was so good. Ah. I’m off to write about the downsides of globalisation. Do you think I could get this in there somewhere?

The Six O’Clock News: Some Men Still Live in 1800-and-Something. Happily, Some Don’t

The Case Against Female Self-Esteem

So there’s a man named Matt who has a blog and on it he likes to be rude to people. In this particular post was recommended to me by Chloe (who did some guest blogging a few weeks ago). It’s hard to see through the bullshit and work out what he’s actually saying, but I think essentially he wants all women to a) pander to his every need, including matters of “banging” and b) pander to all men. Apparently there is not a single woman on the entire planet who secretly wants to be told what to do by men, because secretly all women know that men are superior in every way to women.

This dude is a serious contender for the Ignorant Fuck Award this year.

I think if I met him I’d be all “sorry, can’t talk to you because I’m not insecure enough to sleep with you or pretend that you’re not a fucking tosser.” Or I’d make him say to my face the things he’s written, and then I’d let all the ladies within a two-mile radius do their thing. He also censors the comments on his site. I feel really quite sorry for the women in his life.

Ah, the crosses we must bear to uphold freedom of speech.

Anyway, the day I read it I went on the BBC site and saw this:

100 Women: What chance does a young girl have?

Ah, the irony.

I’m a male feminist. No, seriously

There’s hope though. Yay!

Please

The Six O’Clock News: Miley Cyrus. Just… Miley Cyrus.

In retrospect I should have listened to Gerard and just not know what it is that Miley Cyrus gets up to these days, but before I read Gerard’s Tweet I went on Twitter, so it was impossible. I’ve managed to not see her entire VMA performance, however, or her Wrecking Ball video, although I did end up watching a bit on an interview on Chatty Man a few Fridays ago when I’d exhausted my Friday DVD binge allowance.

So I may or may not be qualified to talk about her.

Much like the rest of the Internet.

Miley Cyrus is Punk as Fuck

This Noisey/Vice piece was posted on Twitter and Frank RT’d it, or something, which was interesting in itself since he spent twelve years in a sort-of punk band (although we all know that they were the most punk of all punk bands so maybe the lack of MCR in the universe has in some way allowed for Miley to be considered punk in the first place?). Anyway, the article is basically suggesting that Miley is more punk rock than certified punk rock bands because she actually does not care about Hannah Montana or what it says about a woman when she dances next to Robin Thicke while he’s singing that song… she does it because she wants to and she can.

I think I’m okay with that. I mean, she’s perfectly within her rights to live how she chooses, weed laws aside, and she doesn’t owe anybody anything – not least those Hannah fans who are probably my age now anyway and have almost certainly spent more Saturday nights getting wasted than I have. So should parents just turn off the TV when she starts dancing half-naked like they would when any other half-naked lady starts dancing? Are people just pissy because she used to be all cutsie and Disneyfied? Have people not noticed that Zac Effron and Demi Lovato have been to rehab and that One Direction look like LA Ink clients? Children growing up isn’t a new thing, and she’s not going to be the last teenager who sticks two fingers up at her elders, publically or otherwise.

Then came this:

Sinéad O’Connor’s open letter to Miley Cyrus

I found this on The Guardian‘s site via Twitter because Sinead’s website is down – surprise! I also agree with it. The entertainment industry does not give a shit. That really shouldn’t be news to most of us, not after Amanda Bynes/Lindsay Lohan/insert fallen star here ended up in rehab/in a mental illness facility/dead etc. I’m really glad that someone who has been aged twenty-something in the music industry and is now forty-something and still in the music industry, mostly intact, has taken the time to point this out. Just as a stark reminder that if you’re in a magazine and you’re halfway attractive, people will buy that magazine because they want to get off, and they’ll read the article if you’re lucky. That’s the way the world works and until all parents teach their children that it’s not cool to look at a person and judge them purely on their underwear size or something, that’s the way it’s going to continue to work.

I think Miley probably knows that. Maybe that’s why she’s so punk rock. I mean, we all know what happens to the punk dudes who don’t clean up their act, right?

I might edit/continue this later. Not sure whether or not I’ve found a new soapbox.