Lovey Dovey Ghetto Princess.

I have loved Scissor Sisters since, like, forever. There's just something about their music that makes me want to eat a handful of glitter, jump on a train to Vienna and buy a herd of wild pugs.

All whilst singing at an only-dogs-can-hear pitch and thrusting rhythmically.

After writing that pretty graphic (yet realistic) description of me dancing, I realised I didn't really know what else to write about this. So, I'm going to list my favourite of Scissor Sisters' songs and give a brief insight into why they make me so happy.

5. I Don't Feel Like Dancin'.

This goes without saying, really. I just find it so great that the one song professing not dancing is the single best song at making you want to dance. Also, literally nobody knows the words to the rest of the song except the line 'I don't feel like dancing, no sir, no dancing today'. Personally, I like to sing the first line as 'Wake up in the morning and the mojo's in the place, my heart can take a chance but I don't whither either way'. According to azlyrics.com (reliable source, I know), the actual lyric is 'Wake up in the morning with a head like ‘what ya done?’ This used to be the life but I don’t need another one'. Let down. To be perfectly honest, I don't even think Scissor Sisters know what the actual words are to this song. They just shimmy gracefully through the song, trying to make it rhyme.

4. Skin Tight.

Lesser known, but a classic. Well technically it's not a classic for exactly the reason I just highlighted, but it sounded like I knew what I was talking about. I love this song because the lyrics are like properly beautiful and emotional yet they choose to put them to a rave-worthy bass and make it a groove, rather than a ballad. I don't know about you, but I love a groove. This is the sort of song I can imagine dancing to in the rain.

3. Filthy / Gorgeous.

 Can we just take a moment to appreciate the genius of this song. I can pretty much guarantee that every single one of you will have at least one memory of listening to this song. And that memory will either be excruciatingly painful to recall or will make you smile reading this. It's just one of those songs. Personally, I have countless memories of dancing to this at parties, generally with my parents and their friends. Yes, that means that 6 year old me used to innocently sing the words to this song (or at least some version of the words) with adults that knew perfectly well what the lyrics meant but let me belt them out to crowds of strangers anyway.

2. Invisible Light.

I don't know why I love this song so much, but I really do. I can just imagine the chorus being the soundtrack to almost every single good moment in my life. I listen to it when I'm sad or grumpy or bored (or any other mood that requires me to wear extra eyeliner). Just listen to it, and hopefully you'll understand.

1. Fire with Fire.

This is my favourite song of all time, not just of the Scissor Sisters collection. I cry almost every single time I listen to it, or I energetically dance solidly for the entire song. My moods vary a lot. I think it's a combination of the piano riff at the beginning, Jake Shears' shameless vocals, and probably my favourite lyrics ever written. If there was ever a song that came close enough to describing me, it would be this one. Fire with fire. It's practically my motto now. Not that I'm validating 'revenge'; I'm a firm believer in the 'if someone hits you, turn the other cheek' party line. But 'turning the other cheek', to me, doesn't mean forgetting about it. If someone hurts you, or something you care about, you have a right to question it and to stand up for what you believe in. So even if your fire is a huge bonfire, or the tiny flame hiding underneath the coal, you're still fighting.

So, at the end of that rather long 'list', I hope you have something to take away from it. Even if it's just that I had a slightly dysfunctional childhood. At least you now know a little bit about why I am, well, the way that I am.

#bornthisway #cheesyinspirationalmetaphorsforlife

Fueled on Anger and Glitter.

So I'm in an eclectic mood. That's a fancy way of saying I can't think of one thing to write about and I keep having random thought processes so need to write it all down.

Firstly, who's psyched about the Fifty Shades of Grey film? Not me. Honestly, until like a week ago I was avidly watching the trailers (mainly to catch glimpses of Jamie Dornan topless) and didn't really see the harm in a kinda-porn-y film being released (did I mention Jamie Dornan?!). But then I read an article quoting all the dodgy stuff in it and was like 'Ohmygosh ew what is this'.*

*I was probably less American schoolgirl-y but that was the general drift.

Basically, the books (who knew it was a trilogy?) are about a supposed 'love' story between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. The inverted comments refer to the fact that Christian literally rapes Anastasia. That's not a love story, that's sexual (and emotional) abuse. Sorry for the crudeness but it makes me so angry that books like this are allowed to exist. I'm not condemning the entire genre of 'erotic fiction' (ew, writing that makes me squirm) because I understand that appeals to some people, but a book promoting rape and abuse is not right. Neither am I judging BDSM practitioners (that's the official term, in case you thought I was being weirdly formal) because a true BDSM relationship is based on consent, which the 'relationship' in Fifty Shades of Grey is not. 

Urgh, rant over.*

*Well I'll probably continue to rant about it to anyone that will listen.

Moving on. So, I have this friend who is a walking contradiction. I've literally never met someone so internally (and externally) at conflict. For example, she loves Ariana Grande (don't shoot her please guys) and wears pretty bows in her hair and is like seriously hot, but also has some crazy obsession with seeing a dead person, has no qualms about killing animals (I've only ever witnessed her flushing zebrafish eggs and water fleas down the sink so maybe that isn't a very good example) and thinks mothers can kill their children if they want to. Of course, I'm kinda hypocritical considering I love pink but will destroy anyone who assumes I like pink because I'm a girl, and I want to be a doctor but have a full-on phobia of injections. I think this is why we get on so well. Neither of us are what we appear to be, which is good, because why should we have to live up to what other people expect us to be? I think I may have just turned her (fairly innocent but still heartless) personality into a feminist rant. Typical. Anyway, I just wanted to mention her because I think she's great (but she does suck at biology experiments).

I want to pick a little bit of what I just said and expand upon it, because it's kind of important. Just because I like pink, sparkles and James Blunt, does not mean I'm naive, or think girls can't kickass as much as any other gender out there. Just because I wear makeup, does not mean I think girls should base their self-worth on how attractive other people think they are. Stop stereotyping and generalising 50% of the population. And while we're at it, stop stereotyping any group in society because...well, just because. 

So, that's about it. Well it's not really, I'd say that's about 1/3 of the stuff going through my brain right now, but that was the write-down-able third. Here's a little crazy contradiction-y fact for you to end your day with:

Marilyn Monroe had a higher IQ than Albert Einstein.

You've got a cold? Write a will.

Do you think people who don't agree with animal testing should be allowed to take paracetamol?

I have asked so many people this question in the last month and no-one has given me a straight answer. I asked some meat-eaters and they all grunted, shrugged and limbo-ed under the question; I asked a vegan and she grunted, shrugged and promptly stepped around the limbo pole; and then I asked myself, to which I replied by grunting, shrugging to no-one in particular and despairing at the awful metaphors I come up with.

I'd never thought about it until I heard someone give a presentation about animal testing. Not from an animals-are-people-too, burn-the-zoos perspective, but from a scientific perspective.


I'm sure all of you have heard the horrible facts about the living conditions of animals in laboratories. I'm sure most of you have read the news about PETA's regular stunts. I'm even sure some of you have seen Legally Blonde II.

And as much as those facts horrify me, as much as I admire PETA's passion, and as much as I love Legally Blonde, I still think animal testing is necessary sometimes.

Don't shoot me, don't shoot me, don't shoot me.

I say sometimes with honesty. Testing cosmetics on animals is cruel, unnecessary and barbaric. But testing medicines, treatments and new medical equipment is completely justified. Without animal testing, billions of people would have died from malaria, 235 million people would currently be struggling to breath on a day-to-day basis because of asthma, and every single cancer patient that has survived purely because of medical treatment, would be dead.

Granted, a vaccination for malaria may have been created eventually, but countless lives would have been expended during the failed clinical trials. The majority of the 235 million people living with asthma will never be hospitalised because of asthma attacks but many of them will, and they wouldn't survive without the medicines we have today. And perhaps some of those cancer patients could have fought it off eventually, or found a homeopathic cure, but without chemotherapy, radiotherapy and all the other scary sounding therapies, the cancer survival rate would be down by ten fold, maybe more.

That means, in less number-y terms, the 'one child dies of malaria every minute' advert would be a whole lot scarier; I probably wouldn't be alive, and if I was, I would be hospitalised all my life (being treated with what medicines I don't know); and cancer would be an even bigger threat than it already is.

Without animal research, the human population wouldn't have survived the epidemic of the common cold. 

I googled about some animal research alternatives and there are some, but they are impractical and very, very time consuming. For example, you can synthesise skin cells in a petri dish and test on them but then you can't know how the treatment affects bodily functions. Kinda pointless, seeing as the reason most drugs never reach the drugstore is not because they don't work, but because they do extra stuff that you don't really want happening.

So, after that fact (and perhaps emotion) overload, let's do a U-turn back to the beginning of this post. I chose paracetamol because I can almost guarantee that all of you have used it at least once, and most of you on a regular basis. But I could have asked:

Do you think people who don't agree with animal testing should be allowed to take paracetamol, receive any hospital treatment, or even give their pets medicine?*

*You never really think about the benefit of animal testing on animals, but animals need painkillers (large animals during child birth), insulin for diabetes and vaccines for diseases too.

Why should people who are so vehemently against something, reap all the benefits from it?

At the end of the day, you can't tell someone they're 'not allowed' to take medicine, or that they can't have an x-ray for their broken leg, but I just want people to really think about the implications of living in an animal-testing free society. We wouldn't have hospitals (what's the point without the treatments?), and if we did have some sort of care centre, we'd all be in it.

But then again, technically humans are parasites on Earth, stripping it of life and resources. And if we all die at some point, why not sooner rather than later?

As you can tell, the internal debates in my head are endless.