Advent calendar day 13

After yesterday's drama, it's back to what passes for normal here with day 13 of my Kissmas Kountdown. Again, nothing momentous to report.
I was having a wee discussion on Twitter about these "Best of the Year" round-ups they have everywhere and I am mulling over mine. I don't want to do the usual - I can't pick a favourite film and I'm doing a wee selection of music already. I'm looking for ideas - what "best" things should I include? Leave a comment here or on Twitter and I'll start compiling a list.

Today's musical offering comes from Villagers, an Irish band with frontman Conor J. O'Brien. You may know of their song "Becoming a Jackal" but here is one of my favourites from them xxx

FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCKNESS

What is the number one rule of the Interwebs?

In all my years of using the net to interact with people, be it via e-mail, online forums, Facebook and Twitter, I have managed to avoid being trolled (from Wikipedia In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.). Until now. And I am really, really angry. Not so much with the troll - she has been blocked - but with myself. I feel really awful that for one moment I even questioned that malicious gossip about someone I interact with on Twitter on a regular basis may have substance. I asked for more info and what I received in tardy reply was badly punctuated and worded with no reasons given and that was enough for me.
What really irks me is that the basis of the gossip was around whether someone was ill or not. As someone who has diseases that continue to be discounted as malingering, just having a low tolerance for pain and symptoms of "modern living" I know how it is to be made to feel like a fraud. I try to be even handed and nice so I gave someone the floor when I should have heard alarm bells. Believe me, I have kicked myself up the arse for that.
I know full well that the Internet is filled with tiger-pits and illusions - that people are seldom what they seem. We all put on a mask to some degree - there is only so much you can say on Twitter for example in 140 characters. With the black and white of type and no facial interaction, it is easy to misconstrue and take offence and come across as insincere. With Twitter however, I was beginning to feel that among my wee Twibe (I can't get my head around "followers" and especially the thought of 900+ people wanting to read my witterings and ravings, so I try to make it seem less threatening, if only in my mind) there were a few good souls that I could have some great chats with.
And do you know what - I still believe that! In the past I would have snuck off and licked my wounds, leaving the group and cutting off my nose to spite my face. But I have learned that all I get from that is a metallic taste in my mouth, that my glasses fall off and that if I do that the trolls have won. So FUCK YOU TROLLS, I'm staying on Twitter.
I am who I say I am and how I come across - I DO care about people, my hugs are genuine. I am mad, I can be moody (never Mad-Eye Moody though!) but by turn be annoyingly Pollyanna-ish, trying to see the best of things and attempting to cheer folks up by playing the fool or being a bawdy old mare. That's who I am. See you in the Twitterverse, armed with my own wee Elvish blade Sting to stab anyone who tries that again xxx

Advent calendar day 12

Nothing exciting to report from Middle-Aged Earth today. Vee is mired in her prelim exams and Gee is looking for work. Gee and I were on the bus today and witnessed the rudest man we have perhaps seen in a long time. This old git got up from his window seat and pushed past the man sitting next to him at the aisle. The man on the outer seat remarked "An excuse me would be nice" to which the old bugger replied " How about a 'get out of my fuckin' way'?" and continued to push past. Had there not been people standing in the aisle, my foot would have been stuck out to trip this cunt up. I watched him exit the bus and, as he passed the window, he gave the traditional 2-fingered salute. Nice.
Also, as we were leaving the Forge today the automatic doors failed (they had jumped their track) so we had to walk over and use the other ones. As we stood waiting for the bus, we watched mystified as people approached the doors, found them not to be working and just stood like stunned mullets waiting for someone to do something. And I see lots of broken umberellas just lying on the pavement, along with the other detritus of life. Do people think that we are aleady living on the spaceship Axiom where little servo-robots will come along and clear up for us? Gee has started referring to this as "purple lights" as he is convinced that people are receiving subliminal message via the flashing purple lights that are ever present on reality shows. I feel that we are moving more towards a "Brazil"-like world, where everything is met with a cheerful bureaucracy designed to move us no further forward.

Anyway, as we hurtle towards oblivion, here is another wee song. Today, it's a cut from the latest album (can you still call it that?) by the master himself, the incomparable Tom Waits xxx

Advent calendar day 11

I jokingly make reference to my hair in my Twitter bio and folks seems to have picked up on that in a good way. To be honest though, I'm thinking about cutting it all off. You see, the reason I take pictures of myself in black and white is because my hair is a weird combination of white, dark brown (at the back, underneath), with strange blonde strands and yellowing at the edges, making me look like what Billy Connolly refers to as "a Turkish hooker". I don't know at what age I started dyeing my hair to hide the grey hairs as opposed to giving it some highlights, probably in my 30s. My own natural hair colour before it started to fade was a very dark brown, almost black. When I was growing up, my mother was paranoid about things like body odour and bodily functions (my dad used to say her nose was too close to her arse) and the prospect of us having nits/ hair lice would have sent her apopleptic so she never let me have my hair long. I have family snaps of me that look like a boy or a wee pixie.
I (pardon the pun) longed for long hair that I could wear bunches and plaits so when I was older I grew my hair very long. When I was pregnant with Vee I used to wear it in a long single braid that I could sit on - however once she was old enough to sit in the backpack carier, the fun of having her yanking it soon worse off and it was trimmed. My hair is really thick (a lot like me) and grows very quickly so I found that even if I cut it, it would be back to the same length in a year or two. I do hate having my hair cut though - in my dark and distant past i did a college course in hairdressing abd beauty therapy and was always told off for not chatting to the clients - but I can't stand all the small talk "Are you going somewhere nice tonight? Where are you going on holiday?" - I'd prefer to be anaesthetised and wake up with my hair all finished (and knowing my luck - my knicker son back to front!). One of the downsides of my maladies is that I was finding it too sore to manage colouring my roots so about 4 1/2 years ago I took clippers to it and cut it "down to the wood" and have so far let it grow in to what it is now.
In my head I imagine I look like Emmylou Harris but I have caught glimpses of myself where, especially after I have taken it out of braids I look more like the Steward of Gondor.Part of me fancies getting it cut again and maybe colouring it something like red or a proper blonde but the cost of that upkeep is beyond my reach just now, physically as well as financilly. I also have daft notions to dye over the grey in one of those "old lady" shades that you used to see in the 1970s where women tinted their shampooed and set hair with purple or blue rinses - if I say "Mrs Slocombe"
UK folks will know what I mean. Another reason I don't colour my hair though is that I shudder to think how many gallons of toxic chemicals I must have been pouring down the plughole all those years and my wee eco-warrior heart (the same one that moans about lights being left on in our house "It's like the bloody Blackpool Illuminations in here - think of the poor polar bears") couldn't stand it. So I guess I'll just keep my mad old lady hair and keep on loving it, even though it gets everywhere.

Today's song is from the only band I have seen play live this year - it was at the opening show of the Glasgow Comedy Festival and I had won tickets to the O2 Academy. This band, The View are from Dundee and I hope you'll give them a listen. Look out for Scottish actor Martin Compson from "Sweet Sixteen" and "A Guide To recognising Your Saints" xxx

Advent calendar day 10

Another day, another door on our advent calendar creaks open to reveal a picture.
Yes, I watched "Jarhead" last night but for goodness' sake don't ask me what it was about. The combination of Captain Morgan rum Cuba Libres and the sight of the Jakester running around half-naked then almost totally, apart from a Santa hat and thong was enough to give yours truly one helluva girl-boner. We were watching this DVD (craftily spotted by Gee in a charidee shop for a quid!) not only to satisfy this old mare's Gyllenhaal obsession but because Vee is now in rehearsals for a play called "Grandfathers" about a group of young people fighting in a war in the Middle East. She'll hear today which role - her first named role and speaking part - she is to play. I'm excited in a sort of proud-mummy way and maybe a wee bit in a Rosalind-Russell-in-Gypsy
way as my only role on the stage was as Reuben in an almost all-female production of "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" when I was about Vee's age. I had to sing a song on my own - "Canaan Days" - and in typically supportive fashion my mother doubted my ability until the opening night when she ran up to me afterwards exclaiming "You can sing!". I know that I can be a better cheerleader to our Vee.

Anyway, enough of this guff - you're here for the songs and todays' is a doozie. Kyla La Grange is a young woman from London who puts me in mind of Melanie or Marianne Faithfull but a bit more grindcore (ooh look who's down with the kids!). As ever, much love and enjoy xxx

Advent calendar day 9

Boy, the days are fairly flying in now. I woke up to a sunny Glasgow with blue skies and nary a breeze. What a difference from yesterday when I wouldn't have been surprised to have looked out of the door to see a load of Munchkins singing outside next to a yellow brick road.
I see that "Dishface Dave" (as Fleet Street Fox has so aptly named him on Twitter)is taking on the might of the 2 headed beast that is Merkozy at the European summit like Corporal Jones from "Dad's Army". I keep expecting to hear him say - "they don't like it up 'em."
To my friends south of the border, I say come and live here in Scotland. Okay, we may not have the weather but unless you live in Devon/ Cornwall/ Dorset/ Kent who does? And we do have the shittiest football team in the world but then yours isn't much better these days so you can give up reliving past glories (1966 anyone?) and get behind Andy Murray because someone should. You can get away from all the hype around the Olympics and join us in preparing for the Commonwealth Games in 2014 instead and marvel at what in hell the people of the East End are going to do with a velodrome afterwards - probably let wee neds on tiny motorbikes race round it when the rollergirls have a night off - although you do have to agree to make sandwiches and put up an athlete in your spare room! Being realistic, you'll have free prescriptions, your kids at university won't have to pay tuition fees and when you're older you don't have to sell your home if you need to be looked after. But best of all, the Sensational Alex Salmond Gastric Band are getting rid of Trident, bringing an airforce and jobs back to places like Lossiemouth and Kinloss and because they see being part of Europe meaning closer ties with our Scandinavian neighbours, we have a deal to get "Forbrydelsen" and "Wallander" before you do.

Today's tune comes from Bon Iver,from the French bon hiver meaning "have a good winter", which I think is nicely appropriate. So I wish you un bon hiver and Happy Friday xxx

Advent calendar day 8

Greetings from a windswept and interesting Glasgow!
The schools are off so we have Vee moping around the house, pretending to do revision and avoiding attempts to get her to do housework. Before we battened down the hatches, Gee finally went up to Asda to exchange our broker vacuum cleaner for a new one so I took the opportunity to tidy up and get the Winter tree up. I'm resisting calling it an Xmas tree as it doesn't have a star or fairy on top. We also brought out Sparkle the reindeer - maybe we should put her on the tree?

Coincidentally, last night we watched Terrence Malick's film "The Tree Of Life". It's not for the faint-hearted as it requires you to just sit and let it wash over you, making of it what you will. We all enjoyed it and took away different things from it. As a fledgeling screenwriter, I think it's a very bold move to make a point-of-view family story with few words combined with visual effects of space by Douglas Trumbull who did the effects for "2001". Brad Pitt is fast becoming one of my favourite actors, even though I still can't see what gets other gals hot under the collar and keep an eye out for Hunter McCracken who played the younger version of Sean Penn's character - a really intense young man with an unfortunate name. And yes, we liked the dinosaurs!

Today's musical delight comes from Christina Perri. It's not "Jar Of Hearts" which surprised me and shattered my cool by getting to the top of the old Hit Parade but I hope you like it xxx