Love Letters

I have posted before with other blogs I adore, but this one has something special about it.

Letters of Note is a collection of papers that have nothing in common except being in some way funny, touching or extraordinary. It frequently fills my eyes with tears of laughter or emotion (beware, desk readers), two recent examples being this hilarious response to a botched speeding ticket and this gorgeous reply to a small boy from a children's TV star.

I have always been fascinated with letters. By the time I engaged in any sort of correspondence beyond the birthday thank-you note, mobiles, texting, email and instant messaging were all at their height. But so many of my favourite novels were filled with scribbling heroines, sisters swapping revelations via telegrams delivered on horseback and true love exquisitely expressed with only pen and paper, that I wished I had some reason to write to someone. My diaries may have provided a physical written outlet, but there's nothing quite like receiving a letter just for you. 

Email and Facebook messaging are too instantly gratifying, too quickly back and forth, to replace the feeling of a long-awaited, carefully thought out reply on paper. During my first year at university I rather pathetically tried to resurrect the letter, demanding siblings and friends write to me in my pokey little halls room, but it never caught on. By the time the information had arrived, it was no longer relevant - everyone within reach of Facebook and text already knew. But as such I do have a few lovingly preserved missives from my sisters, mum and boyfriend at the time, so much lovelier to look at than a hastily-typed email.

Letters of Note is a treasure because it is a sort of online museum of correspondence. People bother to write and mail a letter for all sorts of reasons - gratitude, anger, sadness and usually, love. There is a letter from a man, dying of Leukemia, saying goodbye to his three-year-old son and one from a 26-year-old on death row thanking a reporter for believing in him (as well as lighter reading - see this fake memo from an irate Disney executive.)

What I love most about this blog is that what makes letters 'notable' is not simply their place in history or fame, but the sentiment within and the honesty or eloquence used to express it. It has inspired me to write more of my communications down on paper. Letters can be cherished, re-read and passed on to future generations and it seems a shame to lose that simply because I was born in the wrong century.

Bitchin'

A massive tee hee to this blog that posts weekly reviews of The X Factor with a strong all-bitching stance. I got hooked on the same anonymous reality-show bloggers during the last Andrew Lloyd Webber casting series Over the Rainbow (where their blog Over the Rainbitch provided a scathing critique of the girls’ performances and conduct.) It’s best to start early on these blogs as the in-jokes and references to the loved and hated judges/contestants do build up. If you’ve been a fan of the ALW shows from the start, you will still enjoy their I’d Bitch Anything blog in retrospect, especially their annoyance at Pirate Jessie and her frequent use of ‘sidegob’. Whatever your poison, there’s a blog for you: Strictly Come Bitching, Bitching on Ice, Bitchwood, The Apprent-bitch and even Bitching’s Next Top Model. One of the reasons these blogs work is because they’re reported by several people, with the others chipping in occasionally. They often have different opinions on the contestants, injecting a bit of banter into the proceedings. Some of my favourite snippets below:


…but what’s this? He has another song you say? The ‘sing another song’ gimmick is this year’s WHO IS DEAD and I am so, so over it already. The Bitch Factor

[Lauren] just makes me wonder if she can do any extreme emotion other than VERY ANGRY. I do enjoy her face on the word "confused", though, which denotes confusion in a Joey Tribbiani style. Over the Rainbitch

Jessie's Cockney accent is even worse; Dick van Dyke is watching this and sighing with relief that the worst Cockney accent committed to celluloid will no longer be his. I’d Bitch Anything

Ads. Cheryl tells us we’re worth it. Alexandra tells us her deodorant keeps working for 48 hours, the shower-avoiding weirdo. The Bitch Factor

Backstage, Jessica reminded us that she's just so privileged to be here, because she is REALLY REALLY NORMAL. Expect to see her running up a mountain and showing us her bra any day now. Over the Rainbitch

Olivia is next, and her zombie picture is hideous, in a good way. Elle loves it because "I haven't seen you look like this!" Well, yes, because this isn't Britain's Next Top Zombie (although I would watch the shit out of that show if it existed). Bitching’s Next Top Model


Do have a read, especially if you are a closet trash-TV lover like myself. Some others rocking my blogosphere at the moment:

My New Favourite Thing
Olivia writes about all things beautiful and quirky, from fashion and cupcakes to travel and teen crushes. This gives me regular bag envy but it’s worth it for the stunning photographs and our shared love of Dolly Parton.

West End Whingers
In their own words, ‘Phil and Andrew begrudgingly cut into their wine time to tell you whether it’s worth missing the Merlot for the Marlowe.’ A cross between the Muppets’ Statler and Waldorf and Sex and the City’s Anthony Marentino, these two go to see West End shows and report back scathingly or excitably on their findings.

Style Bubble
Susanna ‘Susie Bubble’ Lau takes us on a whirlwind tour of the catwalk, her shopping adventures, street style and anything she thinks is cute. What started off as an underground consumer blog is now an established comment on the fashion world.

PostSecret
One of the best blogging concepts out there, PostSecret is a project where people anonymously send in their secrets (some funny, some shocking, some sombre) and they are posted here for all the world to see. Fascinating.

TwitPick

I follow a great many wise and witty Tweeters, but this week's pick of the bunch has got to be the inimitable Dolly Parton. Yes, a lot of it is clearly run by her 'people', but Dolly has long been a fascination of mine - not just that voice and those songwriting skills, but the deft combination of everything I usually detest in a woman (fake blonde, cartoonish surgery) and everything I adore (self-deprecating wit, straight-talkin' savvy, one's own theme park.)


Some recent Dollyisms include:

I hope people realize that there is a brain underneath the hair and a heart underneath the boobs.

Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.

Some of my dreams are so big they would scare you!

Smile, it enhances your face value!

and my personal favourite,

Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.


Even if you think this sort of mantra just puts the twee into tweeting, I implore you to stick a bit of '9 to 5' on your iPod and just feel it erase all the tension of even the vilest working day. Dolly, I salute you.

Miss Write: Unplugged

This article made me so sad. And not just a brief moment of tut-tut-what-is-the-world-coming-to sad, but strong-desire-to-throw-my-laptop-out-of-the-window-and-drown-my-mobile-in-the-nearest-beverage sort of sad. Technology has been a part of my entire adult life – I got my first brick-like Nokia 3110 at about 13, way behind most teens at my streetwise school, and joined the dark cult of texting, instant messaging and constant miscommunication. I suppose when we flippantly say ‘technology’ we suppose it to be internet and mobile phone based ‘extras’, when of course the original landline phone is a piece of technology in itself. But it is the extras, seemingly endless, that are causing problems in my social sphere. Blackberries, iPhones, laptops and Wifi mean everyone is online everywhere they go; it is incredibly liberating in the sense that if you send someone a query via Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry messaging, voicemail or a good old fashioned text, you are pretty much guaranteed a response within minutes or hours. But on the other hand, it is incredibly frustrating if people don't or can't use one of these nifty mediums to get back to you. The basic assumption is that everyone is connected now, 24-7. No one is out of touch. Re-read that sentence. Is it a positive one? Are we even allowed to be out of touch?

I would describe myself as a technophobe, yet I am a Tweeter, a Facebooker, I have both webmail and Outlook accounts, an abandoned MySpace page, a Blackberry and a touchscreen phone. I had to be bullied into the latter as I was solemnly told by the 3Mobile goblins that only the touchscreens, Blackberries and ‘smartphones’ (the basic Nokia evidently the D student of the class) were compatible with the best contract deals. I stubbornly resisted for some time, until being coerced into purchasing a touchscreen LG this summer. This phone and I haven’t really settled into a honeymoon period yet; it sends blank and unfinished texts, its predictive dictionary is bizarrely devoid of any useable words and most unsettlingly, the display flips over into landscape from portrait if you so much as tilt the handset. I am clearly not as smart as my smartphone. If it even qualifies as a smartphone, which I suspect it does not. iPhones make me slightly queasy, and although I have a freebie BlackBerry which is very useful for free instant messaging and things like the GoogleMap application, it still has roughly four thousand logos standing for functions I can’t even begin to comprehend. So maybe I am just a technophobe by my generation’s standards.

I often come home from work to find three or four family members and friends perched on our sofas, each engrossed in the laptop in front of them. This remarkable combination of companionship and isolation is surreal to look at, but I know I have joined in on more than one occasion. My own laptop is no longer with us, having hung on admirably through six years, several knocks and drops, and resurrected itself more than once. It lasted its final months with the screen half hanging off, lots of amateur sellotape surgery holding it together and a tendency to simply switch off mid task. So now I watch people’s close relationships with their laptops with a certain detachment, before I rejoin their ranks in a month or so with a much-needed replacement for my impending student year. This woman’s description of her text and email-based relationship with her sons was a bit of a wake-up call, although it’s something I’ve been gradually coming round to for a while. How on earth do you break the cycle of cyber communication?

A couple of my friends have managed it; I may have to call them up via the alien device that is the landline phone and ask them if there is some sort of nirvana at the end of the process. The unfortunate fact is, for those who can’t bear to be out of the loop (and by the loop I mean recent photos of great days and nights out, invitations to future ones, and the general stream of wit and banter that Facebook has to offer) it is a huge step to remove oneself from a social networking site. I fear for my monastic ambitions to really take root, all of my favourite people would have to similarly shun the good ‘book and make a profound pact to call each other or, in a maverick twist, actually MEET UP to share conversation or pictures. There are people I haven’t seen for actual plural years who I consider myself ‘in touch’ with. Would the removal of myself from social cyberspace encourage more real-life contact and more tangible memories? Once something moves down the endless feed of Facebook debate and exhibitionism, it is forgotten. I’m just not sure what these endless options for instant communication are doing for our friendships.

Of course, there are so many advantages, logically speaking. With a Facebook message I can put out an idea of an outing, get everyone’s feedback (visible to all other guests) and summarise with the actual plan. Events are a fine way to get a head count and for people to RSVP easily, and I can’t say seeing people’s feedback on your photos is entirely disagreeable. But it brings out the worst in me and so many others. Trying to get over a break up in dignified silence? The temptation to make him feel bad and elicit sympathy from your friends will prove too much to resist. Getting married/having a baby/moving house? Boring people with the daily details is always a risk. Enraged by an acquaintance? Why not passive-aggressively bash out a generalized rant about ‘certain people’? Because if you drag your gaze away from the screen and glance in the mirror, you will see the distinct glaze of crazy in your eyes, that’s why.

So I’m considering the neo-Luddite route; Lily Allen’s done it twice (or thrice, it’s hard to keep track) but however much she tries, La Allen finds it just too damn simple to announce something like a pregnancy or a ‘retirement’ through a press release or an interview alone. Where’s the fanfare? There’s something deliciously controlling about reporting constantly on your own movements and actions. Even our parents are getting in on the act, if not seamlessly (my mum still asks us to ‘send’ her photos on Facebook, the tagging process continuing to elude her). The UK’s eldest Twitterer, Ivy Bean, recently passed away at the age of 103; greatly missed, if only for the quaint concept of being on Twitter at such a grand age. But I don’t like the fact that if someone’s busy, they can still be ‘in touch’ without having to actually see you. It is harder than it should be to explain why twelve texts and a funny wall post doesn’t constitute having seen someone, but maybe we don’t feel who is really there for us with this bizarre set-up of communication from all angles. Equally, maybe we are not really being there for a friend if we ask them what’s up on Facebook chat or respond to their Tweet. My biggest problems with the world of technology at the moment are the misunderstandings, the unread messages, and the odd frustration at those who are not as communicatively wired up as we are. It is easy to ‘overhear’ other friends planning or discussing a recent meet up on these mediums, and be offended at your exclusion. And in the event of heartbreak, the breaker is maddeningly visible to the breakee if they are not strong enough to hit that ‘remove’ button. Perhaps if we signed off, retired the mobiles and returned to a traditional phone call at least, we might get on a little better, move on a little faster, and say what actually needs to be said.

Of course, the major flaw is that I wouldn't be able to blog (or promote it in any way.) But I also wouldn't care who was reading, what they thought or if I was offending anybody. Today it feels infuriating that I want to do something so entangled in communication and self-marketing. In another life, or maybe a few years down the line, I would unplug everything, get away somewhere less polluted with the buzzing of phones and the pinging of emails, and do something very simple with my time. And maybe have clearer relationships as a result.

Twitter gets bitter

A few people have asked me lately about Twitter, and why people bother using it in the Facebook-dominated world of social networking. A year ago I probably would have agreed that it was a pointless addition to our modern obsession with constant communication and self-exhibition, but I became curious after I began reading the Tweet Beat posts on the brilliant blog Jezebel. These bizarre and funny snippets from people in the public eye were very entertaining, and I thought I’d give it a go. So I joined in September, following the few people I was interested in: some journalists, publications, news feeds, comedians and the odd celebrity. Twitter for me is not for connecting with friends, but a tailored feed of witty banter, breaking news and insider information. If you’re into theatre or music, you can follow venues and artists and get the earliest offers and news of gigs and shows. If you’re an avid reader of Heat, you can follow drunk, indiscreet and scandalous celebrities and chart their highs and lows. If you’re a journalist you can follow a variety of news sources, PRs and public figures to get the speediest and most accurate information. I don’t tweet my own thoughts and movements that much, often just re-posting great links and recommending people to follow, but I go on to catch up on things once in a while and end up reading articles and finding out about things I never would have via standard print or online news. Plus, most people tend to be quite witty. And unlike Facebook, you can cull your ‘following’ list guilt-free and pare it down to only the very best tweeters. However, unlike Facebook, when too many people converge on the Twitterverse one is often confronted with the Whale of Doom – meaning ‘come back later’, but an image both irritating and distressing.

However, it does have a nasty side. Once you’re used to people getting sucked into rows it becomes merely boring, but the impersonal side of this sort of blind networking means that people find it very easy to hit out at others. A while back a friend of mine made a benign comment about a flavour-of-the-month popstar, and some deranged fans started hurling very explicit abuse at her and anyone who tried to defuse the situation. This was my first encounter with the saddos that use the site for stalkery and mischief; before then it was all Stephen Fry musings and Ed Byrne chuckles. There is a lot of Outrage on Twitter as well, which can become wearisome – usually Jan Moir related (chill out and stop reading the Mail, people!), at one point leading to people trying to post the writer’s personal details and home address so people could admonish her directly. This is the kind of mob mentality that has started to show a nastier side to the innocent-birdie-fronted website. Obsessive fans gather and start huge campaigns against people; Stephen Fry - one of the site’s most popular celebs - once mentioned that a user had referred to his tweets as boring, and it wasn’t long before his followers were baying for blood. Fry had to swiftly follow up his comment by asking people not to harass the poor guy.

Today Dom Joly, usually fairly jovial or at most a little acerbic, started a row when he dropped in a casual allusion to Keith Chegwin’s joke-stealing ways to his Independent column last Sunday. From the look of Joly’s war of words with his unimpressed followers since then, Chegwin has a crazed army of tweeting fans ready to take down anyone who makes him the butt of their (original) joke. Instead of maintaining a dignified silence, Joly has argued with, insulted and re-tweeted his least literate and most indignant followers, despite constant claims of being ‘bored’ with the furore. This is the fascinating thing about a constant stream of activity available for all to see; reading Joly’s tweets back, it is evident that he is more than a little riled by the negative reaction, not finding it ‘hilarious’ as insisted. Obviously I’m team Dom here – Cheggers is an pilfering little twerp who would clearly sell his granny or sleep with Susan Boyle to cling on to his waning fame. But the ensuing row showed an ugly side of a funny guy for a while there. Perhaps the Twitter backlash is beginning as celebs begin to see the dark side of the public having unfettered access to them. Equally, if you slag someone off on Twitter, you’ll likely use their ‘@’ identity to refer to them, and thus send the criticism in their direction as well as your followers’. This makes every bit of negative feeling public and aggressive, rather than privately aired in frustration.

There are moments of genius though; after Jeremy Clarkson’s book came out with the testosterone-packed tagline ‘Read Clarkson. Think Clarkson. Act Clarkson’, writer Caitlin Moran poked fun at the PR machine by inviting her followers to ACT CLARKSON that day and tell her about. The resulting hashtag (creating a separate feed of tweets on that subject) was pure brilliance. When a large event is happening – the world cup for example, or the final of a reality show – Twitter is filled by witty commentary on the events unfolding. When the BP spill happened, someone took the name ‘BPGlobalPR’ (since taken down) and tweeted tongue-in-cheek ‘official’ comment from the corporation’s HQ. Some genius is posing as the Queen, and flits between describing their gin-induced hangovers, Prince Edward’s cross-dressing and changing song lyrics to include the word ‘one’ (One wants to ride one’s bicycle, one wants to ride one’s bike…)

It’s a funny old invention, really – excellent for raising awareness (my sister’s charity have had their messages and links re-tweeted by the likes of Bill Bailey, Sarah Brown and Lorraine Kelly to their thousands of followers), PR, arts & culture recommendations and instant reviews, as well as just making your daily reading material more diverse. But I don’t enjoy the speed at which criticism of one person can build up and spread, resulting in a sort of grown-up cyber bullying of an individual. I hope anyone who becomes a Twitter convert uses it to educate and entertain themselves, rather than combating their own insecurity and frustration by belittling others (I wonder if my own Anonymous is on there?) But I think it’s essentially A Good Thing as it’s put people’s PR into their own hands and sped up things for the media and communications industries. Let me know if you are pro or anti-Twitter, I find it to be a bit of a cultural Marmite.

IntimiDating

Ok, so I took the plunge and had my first MySingleFriend date last night. I was practically hyperventilating for the 24 hours preceding it, which is unusual for me. It just seemed such a strange medium to show up at a discussed time and place to spend an evening with, essentially, a stranger. Although I knew all this when I signed up, the reality was truly daunting. What if I couldn't think of anything to say? What if he took one look at me and quietly left? How would I escape if he looked like a gremlin and dressed like Jimmy Saville? All these questions and many crazier ones flitted through my mind during my work day.

Luckily Date 1 was great company, very sweet and had fabulous taste. A gorgeous specialist wine bar in South London, Artisan and Vine (highly recommended) a bottle of crisp white outside on a hot evening, and ceaseless conversation. I definitely talked about myself too much, but he had that 'good listener' air, so I fully blame him. No more to report as I certainly would never kiss and tell, but possible MSF Date 2 next week, so the saga continues.

Oh, and I looked nice I think. Skinny jeans, epic heels - he's basically twice my height - and a subtly curve-flattering top. I hope. I also didn't drink to much and overshare. I hope. Survived it though, and that's all we can expect when I was running on adrenaline, fear and alcohol alone. I must be a passable actress though as I certainly don't think that came over - although admittedly this could have been the glow of vino rather than actual success.

I feel like my glory days of dating are over a bit - at university I dated all the time and it was no more significant a mark in my calendar than heading to the pub with friends. I don't know where the nerves come from (apart from the Stranger Danger aspect), as I have been told I'm a good date - polite, interesting, hopefully not too self-involved or rambly, offer to chip in etc. But maybe my little heart has been thrown around a little too much in the last couple of years, and my attitude has changed. But if I break it down to the basics, the whole process shouldn't be too traumatic: I essentially like sharing food and drinks with people and finding out a bit about them, all the good or bad impressions are just surplus. So that's how I'm going to try and see it from now on. No strings (heart or otherwise) to tangle up.

UpDate...

I've officially been online dating for a whole week now. Well, I haven't really in the sense that I haven't been on a date yet (the ettiquette appears to be a lot of back and forth messaging and covert sizing up of people first), but I'm out there and it's a work in progress. Maybe three or four interests so far, all with fairly interesting degrees and quirky profiles. I've mainly gone for mid-twenties, good looking (but not scarily adonis-like) cuties with a hint of geekiness and wit to their profile. Only one has already asked me out for a drink outright, but I'm happy with a bit of web chat for a while. I suddenly feel a bit self-conscious about the whole blind (well, I've seen a picture - visually impaired?) date thing. What if I'm not very interesting? What if they're nothing like they say? What if it's a total clash of peace-loving, unwashed barefoot hippie and high-maintenance me looking for a nice cocktail and a great view? I know I'll be employing my failsafe 911 tactic of having a friend on call to text if I need them to call me with 'bad news' so I have to dash out of there. In some ways you've got nothing to lose by going on such a date because you haven't had a chance to get excited about them as a person, but I also haven't had one in about a year and a half, so I feel rusty and useless.

Out of the 32 messages I've received from guys on the site, only four were from people I'd added as favourites, and the range of email subjects ranged from the standard 'Hi' to the more bizarre 'sup, fellow aspiring writer' and 'fancy taking the kitkat challenge?' I didn't stop to find out what the challenge was but I'm pretty sure it was a bit unsavoury. Lots of people have got the big comedy thumbs down (sorry overly sensitive readers,* but I'm not on there to be nice to weird strangers.) I haven't recieved any thumbs down but I have had a couple of my messages go unanswered (worse, I think). So it's not like I've whooshed in there and stolen lots of hearts, but it's ticking along quite well; it's heartening to log in now and again and see messages waiting. I'm still surprised by how great some of the men on there seem, very funny and successful - I think a lot of people are just there looking for a bit of a flirt in a city where much of your out of work time is spent wedged in a train with someone's armpit in your face, or being heckled by tramps. It's not the most romantic way I've been wooed, and it's fairly businesslike keeping on top of your mails and who's added you as a favourite, but there's something to be said for organised fun. Less painful uncertainty and less at stake, in some ways. I'd be interested to hear anyone's experiences of internet dating, all romances and horror stories welcome...


Ones to keep at bargepole distance:

Anyone! Who uses too much! Punctuation!!! Just sounds desperate/amphetamine-laced.

Or an overload of smiley faces. :) ;) :P Be a man.

The seriously, no-way-on-this-earth-are-you-a-day-under-forty thirty year old who just messaged me saying I had great pictures, but 'hope you don't run screaming from mine!' Sign me up.

Someone who wrote a boring three-liner about not knowing what to say in these messages, trying out the weather and plans for the weekend, before concluding that both approaches were rubbish. Yup.

Anything with too much self conscious LOLing at their own sentences. Nothing that funny - this is a weird pick-up scenario, so just try to sound as normal as possible. Shouldn't be too hard. Haha. Lol. Rofl.


*For the record, I am aware that I'm not perfection personified myself, but I don't think I should be agreeing to a date with people who come across as awkward, basement-dwelling or psychopathic just because it's nice to be nice. A couple of people have pulled me up on this, but I don't settle for average in my normal dating life, so I haven't lowered my standards for this approach. Plus so many males (the gender most critical of my attitude in this respect) treat women they're dating far worse when they do know them. I see it as being smart and assertive to be straight about what I'm looking for. I'm not just hunting for a perfect Action Man type, I'm scanning for a glimmer of humour and intellect, so it's not entirely superficial. If you've got a nice face and don't LOL your way through life, you've got a shot. Over and out.

D is for Dating

We don't really date, as a nation, and I think that's a shame. There is a bit of a suburban culture of one-at-a-time, orderly queue relationships, where it's considered somewhat exotic and experimental if you have a drink with more than one of the opposite sex in the same month. If us Brits did as the Yanks do and shop around a bit for a significant other (with no confusion about the casual nature of a single date) I think we would have better relationships and less painful break-ups. Due to the city pressures of careers, commuting and the sheer volume of human traffic, London in particular has started to embrace singles events, speed dating and the like in last couple of years. In the spirit of this new urban date market, I have decided to cast aside my closing-in-on-5 months of wallowing singledom and join a dating website.

Online dating? I hear you gasp. Surely this is for painfully awkward folk, those almost clinically inept at attracting a mate, or merely specimens with unnervingly lopsided faces? Well yes it is, in some ways - of which more later. But I've jumped on the bandwagon anyway. I felt my attitude towards online dating change gradually this year as I kept finding myself chatting to very normal, attractive, charming people who had given it a whirl and reported back with mixed, but often positive, experiences. A particularly attractive male acquaintance confided that he had tried most of the big sites, and admitted it was awkward at first but on the whole, great fun. A good female friend (who is a dating dream: bright, successful, pretty & interesting) was giving it a go and feeling boosted by the assertive nature of the process, and even one of the most straight-talking, no-nonsense girls I know was nosing into cyberspace in search of a hottie. Maybe it's the facebook revolution or perhaps people are just bored with pretending that we meet fantastic potential life partners every day, but it's no longer weird to approach your lovelife as you would an ASOS spree. So as a single, slightly bored blogger, I felt I needed a slice of the action too.

I plumped for MySingleFriend.com, highly recommended as the least intimidating and most relaxed UK dating site. Instead of trying to match you intensely based on life values and pet preferences, MSF aims to be more like a large online pub - you scout around for faces you think look nice, get the insider info on them from their friend, and 'favouritise' them much like a facebook poke. The idea to have a friend write your description is a stroke of genius - there are no cheesy 'I like walks on the beach, sunsets and a nice glass of Merlot' spiels, as well as it hugely taking the pressure off creating your profile. As a result of the recommend-a-friend system, there are no GSOHs or 'free-spirits', just a lot of quirky descriptions and jokey speculation as to why their single pal hasn't met the right person yet. On my first man search (a heady experience, shopping online for cute boys) I was surprised by the amount of passionately bromance-y descriptions by male friends, even more so by the amount of older sisters giving their hapless little bro a nudge onto the market, but most of all by how many friendly faces and witty profiles I actually came across.

Now, don't get me wrong, MSF is no Cosmo centrefold; there are plenty of nice guy/hopelessly lopsided face scenarios, and even a few tanned and waxed Adonises who appear to have clicked 'seeking a female' by mistake. But now and again you come across an interesting description, a lighthearted picture and a hook of some sort, be it an Anchorman quote, a PhD or a winning closing sentence. Considering I don't tend to go for muscley dreamboats so much as funny geeks, I was quite relieved to see the focus was firmly on personality. If nothing else comes of this experiment, it has proved a huge ego boost with minimal effort from me. I asked a friend to back up that I was not a psycho or a misanthrope, came clean about my musical theatre habit and lust for Greek food, stuck a couple of pictures up and went about my own business. On returning to my inbox 24 hours later, I had 30+ notifications that people had added me to their favourites, and even a few messages were coming in (some concise and witty, others stilted and cliche-ridden). So it's good to know I am not hideously malformed or tragically invisible. Granted, some of the aforementioned facial landslides were among those singling me out as a possible match, but as part of the well-organised wonder that is MSF, you can send a delightfully crisp and cruel 'Thanks, but no thanks' message to any real Quasimodos. It's actually a bit nicer than it sounds, more 'I don't think we're a good match but good luck with your search and all that', but it does mark the rejected party's messages with a cartoon thumbs down sign, clearly separating the tasty wheat from the dating chaff.

So what have I learned in part one of the saga? A good male friend took the time to say that I'm quite a nice person (I blushed a little), 60 random males took the time to click on my profile and liked what they saw enough to add me as a favourite (woo-ha) and I learned just what my bizarre and fairly shallow manhunting criteria are, doing it as I was sober and from the comfort of my sofa. In short, nice face - tick, good smile - tick, too much sport - no thanks (they'll only be disappointed at my lack of ineffectual berating of little men on TV), too much travelling/skydiving/shark-wrestling - next, any mention of food loving - on the right track, bad spelling - chaff, chaff, chaff, and any admission of guilty pleasure films or TV are also surprisingly attractive amongst hundreds desperate to look cultured. I am being a little brutal, but that's the great thing - you never have to meet these people or worry about crushing their feelings so you can judge away on first glance. Knowing how to sell yourself (and having a witty friend) goes a long way on this site, so it will be very interesting to see how profiles compare with the real product... if I ever stop hiding behind my laptop and actually accept a date with any of these virtual suitors.

My top tip so far would be ALWAYS look at the 'secondary' pictures as well as the one on the profile. Some people just have one very flattering shot (or have gone for black and white, moody lighting or a good angle) and their further shots are nothing short of horrifying. I'm also watching out for anyone who has 'possible marriage material' selected as one of their personality traits; I don't care if their friend ticked it, it's totally weird for a man not to appear shrouded in commitment-phobia at first and it actually isn't what women want to be hit with before they've even met the bloke. There are also a few 'thirty year olds' who have either spent a large proportion of those years chain-smoking in bright sunlight, or are in fact not thirty at all. No one said it wouldn't be a minefield, but just like a Wetherspoons on a Friday night you have to dodge the old creepies, sidestep the court jesters and keep an eye out for the cute advertising exec at the bar with a nice glass of red. Next stop: testing out the actual dating bit...

Picture This

I read the news every day, partly to generate blog ideas and partly just because I like to keep up. I do buy papers but I tend to promiscuously read all of their websites on weekdays (Buy papers! Jobless journos and failing publications everywhere!) and they are very useful when it comes to getting up-to-the-minute news on current events. In an intriguing and macabre fashion, you could follow the hunt for Cumbria killer Derrick Bird last Wednesday, as the news sites kept a moment to moment account of any police information. Similarly political announcements, such as the first coalition press conference and today's speech on the budget deficit, are reported live online. I'm a bit of a comments freak (as you may be aware, I do read my own ;) and I tend to scroll down, particularly on opinion pieces, to see what people have to say. It's interesting as it provides an insight into a site's readership, general public opinion and the reasons people have for commenting at all. If it's a lighthearted article, the wit of the readers can add to or even surpass it, whereas on serious news stories you get the vitriol or the sympathy of the public and often the debate between them.

Recently, I have started to notice a real distaste for the way some of the more respected papers have published particularly grim stories on their websites. Not the words chosen, though - the pictures. Last week, the breaking news of shootings in Cumbria was accompanied by a picture of a concerned policeman radioing information while a blanket-covered body lay just visible in the background, behind crime scene tape. Immediately the comments began, demanding to know why Sky News were putting up a picture of a victim. It was distasteful, heartless and tacky, they cried. People seemed more distressed by the pictures than the unfolding events. People seemed to be saying they had opened a news page only to read and imagine the information, and that the visual evidence was a step too far.* As far as I remember, there have always been appalling images to accompany alarming news reports, from desperate businessmen jumping from the smouldering twin towers to the footage of teenager Neda Soltani dying in the street after being hit by a bullet during the Iranian protests last year.

Today's sad news that twin baby girls had been mauled by a fox that had managed to get into their house was met with dismay, not only because of the essential tragedy of the story, but due to The Times' leading picture of their mother's face, crumpled with devastation. I do think this picture, like the innocent victim's body, is uncomfortable to look at, but sometimes the world is an uncomfortable place. There were no pictures of the infants' injuries, obviously, and no tabloid-sensationalist description save a few clinical comments on the sites of the wounds (face, arms). The only visual they could go for was presumably a shot of the family house, the hospital they are being treated at, or the parents. As the story centred around the mother's comment on her daughters' condition and the incident itself, I don't think this was an invasion of her private grief - just a shocking image to summarise a shocking story. She obviously felt ready to express her worry and sadness to the press, and I find it hard to see how a visual confirmation of her quoted statement could offend. Perhaps I am oddly resilient; I didn't feel disgusted at Sky's use of the Cumbria photo - which was also used on either the Guardian or Times website, it's near impossible to find archived 'breaking news' - as I felt it summed up the serious nature of the case and was probably one of the first or only images from the scene. What were they supposed to have, a Sun-style 'this is what a gun looks like, folks' illustration? I remember first learning the word propaganda in high school history, and spending hours analysing the choice of pictures in home and foreign press in the past. A picture can hit you with the story much faster than the text, and it is an important part of the story in my opinion, far more than being simply decorative.

I would be interested to hear if you think a certain level of unpleasant image should be left out of the news. Maybe some people read the 'highbrow' publications to hear only very brisk, factual accounts of current affairs, and avoid the emotive nature of tabloid fare. Even if this were so, I fail to see what could be more factual and straight from the source than a photograph. What of the war, genocide, violence and natural disaster that happen all over the world? Maybe we wouldn't feel the full weight of the story or attempt to help in some way without being faced with the grim pictoral evidence. When I was working at a tabloid around the time of the Haiti earthquake, they filled a two-page spread with the image of a child's body being thrown on a pile of corpses as locals attempted to to clear the streets, along with a moving first-hand report of the devastation. This is probably one of the more horrific photos I've seen used, but I bet it stopped a few fatcats from wealthier countries in their tracks. When people die from drug abuse or drink driving, relatives sometimes have the strength to give a photo of their dying or dead loved one to the papers in the hope that it might make people think twice and prevent more needless deaths. I don't believe it's a sick voyeurism that puts these images online and in print, but the media's basic function as a transmitter of information. We are very lucky to have an uncensored press, and I for one don't think the desire of a few people to bury their heads in the sand during dark times is reason enough to remove the important aspect of photography from our news.



*Incidentally, if I search the original news stories I cannot find the image I am referring to - perhaps the voice of the people won in this case? There is a similar shot on the NY Daily News site as the of the shockwaves of the shootings continue to be reported.

Spellbound

To make my desk days whizz by, I often browse around for funny sites that are a great read, so I don't just find myself tweeting constantly like some chronic oversharer [note to some... if you find yourself tweeting the words 'Note to self', stop and think for a moment. You have misunderstood the basic function of Twitter.] Some recent gems I have found include Over the Rainbitch - an endlessly spot-on critique of the Andrew Lloyd Webber casting show - the deliciously dark confessional Postsecret, and the latest, AwkwardFamilyPhotos. This last one is utter genius; people send in anonymous family photos that range from the bizarre to the heavily posed, and we all laugh at them. They are excellently captioned (although the messy blog-style site could do with a makeover) and accompanied by a thread of awkward stories. The stories are more hit and miss, but several, including an intense set of instructions for a family Thanksgiving meal and an equally asphyxiating birthday celebration itinerary, are just brilliant. Although quite America-specific, they celebrate the weirdness of families and their unintentional hilarity.

AFP's creators posted an email a while ago from a reader named Greg, who had sent them some fairly constructive criticism about the website. Unfortunately he had done so with very few words spelt correctly and, unforgivably, even suggested that they re-think their 'righting'. This sparked an epic surge of comments, many mocking the hapless Greg for his idiocy (often ironically in cackhanded online 'righting' themselves) some defending him, lots finding the colossal reaction to a little mispelling completely baffling. I do agree that lots of people suspend accuracy for their internet comments, tweets and statuses, but this was an email, and a formal critique at that. Shouldn't that have warranted a little care? I feel bad for him (and a little admiring, reading his razor-sharp follow-up), but I also feel that even the most valid point is dented when spelling and grammar is abandoned. Not only did the Gregster fail to see the comic potential of his email, but he sounded like a raving hypocrite. Emphasis on the raving.

Spelling and grammar are slipping ever closer to extinction - I read Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves recently and sympathised with her exasperation. I know the wily pair don't come naturally to everyone, so some people have to put more time in and check their writing a little more carefully, but essentially, it's practice. I don't like overly pedantic people [especially vicious little anonymous twerps who comment on my every slip - yes you, arseface] but if we all stopped caring and thought, 'They'll know what I mean", no one would ever write anything compelling. I'm immediately turned off by writing with mistakes in it, from national newspapers to short online comments, and it inevitably undermines the writer's core message because it screams laziness if not stupidity. The immediacy of the internet is a wonderful thing, but how are younger generations going to learn to read and write correctly if such breezy inaccuracy is the norm online? It is vital to most jobs, especially when securing deals and seducing clients via email. In many a magazine office I've worked in, journalists either laugh at or swiftly discard badly spelt or nonsensical press releases; I know PR is a fast-paced environment, but you're selling something - at least run it by the spellcheck.

I would be interested to know which camp people are in: is it only us hardcore language fans still devoted to the preservation of the correctly-placed apostrophe? Do we need to chill out, or do the spelling culprits need to sharpen up? I'm not sure, but I do know I'll be proofreading this one to death.