(no subject)

Sign an online petition in support of the NSW Animals (Regulation of Sale) Bill, which will stop pet shops from selling cats and dogs unless they come from pounds and shelters. This will cut down on animals bought on impulse being dumped and will cut the profits out from under the kitten mills and puppy farms where animals are bred for profit, often under cruel conditions. There's a link to further info at the petition site.

Scum British press update

Dickensian London, Cybermen and two Doctor Whos: Russell T Davies reveals the secrets of this year's Christmas special.

Yes, it's the Mail. What's he going to do, turn down an opportunity to pimp the Xmas special to two million potential viewers? My excuse is that I only found that 'cos I was looking at this: Britain's most UNLIKELY male sex symbols. In a shock result entirely unrelated to an evil fannish campaign, ye Jeremy Clarkson was voted Heat magazine's 'Weird Crush of the Year' for 2008. (His response to this on Top Gear appeared to be genuine discombobulation.)

Quoth women's magazine editor Maureen Rice: "Jeremy Clarkson is very much the choice for women who prefer the ‘retrosexual’ man. He doesn’t pander to women, but neither is he a misogynist — he appreciates women in an old-fashioned way and there is something appealing about his unreconstructed sense of humour and the fact that he only likes cars, in the way blokes used to do." Cf Gene Hunt. Hmmm. I wonder how much of this is that women don't have to guess at their opinions or attitudes, worrying that sensitivity or whatever may be mere lip service.

James May also made the Heat magazine list (Hammond of course won it a while back, although exactly what's "weird" at all about having a crush on a fit doe-eyed bloke with a tent full of hair products is beyond my ken). Comments Rice: "In the testosterone-fuelled surroundings of Top Gear, James May is an oasis of surprising and appealing gentleness. He is also charmingly unkempt with particularly flyaway hair — the kind of man that women want to mother." Ah, but he has a distinct evil streak, which is why I wasn't quite satisfied with the parody of him in BF's Max Warp. (Graeme Garden enjoys himself waaaaaay too much taking the piss out of Clarkson, but the character's just not witty or self-aware enough to be an accurate mockery.)

ETA: hysterically funny comments from fans, plus a priceless pic of Clarkson, at the Auto Trader Blog discussion of the Heat results.

(no subject)

I'm skim-reading parts of a 2002 book Catfight: Why Women Compete With Each Other by Leora Tanenbaum, and it's breaking my heart. The book is feminist through and through, but it painfully describes the results of sexism when it comes to women's relationships with men but especially with each other: the resentment, the envy, the passive aggressive bullshit, the cliques, the terror of not being liked or not being included, the self-effacement, the self-erasure, the silence ("How many times have I said 'I totally agree' even when I couldn't have disagreed more?"). Dear gods, what has been done to us? What are we doing to ourselves, and each other?