divalicious
thank you, shooshoofication, for today’s word: divalicious
as anyone who is anyone knows, the word was actually invented to describe me. and i was pleasantly surprised and rather flattered to see that it has made an entrance into the urban dictionary. i was, however, somewhat dismayed at the references to beyonce in relation to being divalicious. i will be contacting my lawyers, if they ever recover from their seemingly endless hangovers, in the very near future.
being divalicious is not as easy as you might think. much thought and endless pampering goes into this state of being. one does not wake up in the morning looking as fabulous as a hot fudge sundae. no, dear four readers (my goodness, this blog is getting popular!), i am old mature enough to admit to having risen from my bed looking as if i’ve been dragged through several hedges. backwards and forwards. on more than one occasion. as you ab fab fans will know already, it’s not easy to maintain a divalicious life when you don’t actually do what the peasants call “an honest days work”. vodka and fags don’t come cheap.
celebrities are always whining about the paparazzi who follow them around wherever they go. they should be thanking their lucky, lucky stars. imagine being the original fabulous diva, spending hours getting ready for a trip to the supermarket, opening the front door and finding not a single photographer or screaming fan lying in wait. how far the mighty fall. i blame the publicity department for this obvious and devastating case of extreme laziness. you’d think that they could find one national newspaper, or even a local rag, who would be interested in my rubbish bin.
on the one hand, i can honestly say that i do enjoy the fact that i can now leave the house in plastic flip-flops and tracky bottoms that are a tad short but i would appreciate a little interest when i’ve spent 5 hours and several thousand pounds on myself. is that too much to ask? i think not.
i leave you with the words of patsy stone, who sums up the problems faced by us divalicious beings, who have been cast aside for the younger, talentless, gaudy versions of everything we hold dear:
she tried to crowd surf and the tide went out
bold
thank you franco, for today’s word: bold
many things sprang to mind when i saw this word. being an intellectual, my first thought was (of course) washing powder. my mum has always extolled the virtues of a good detergent, usually meaning expensive and smelling of mountain flowers or some such nonsense. i am more of the school of thinking that desires clothes that smell as if they have been hung out on a mountain on a blustery day. remember that smell ? i think it’s called fresh air.
my second thought was “oooh, i can do lots of fun things with fonts” like
this is bold
this is boldthis is bold
and so is this
but that’s just silly.
bold was also the name of:
- an american thoroughbred racehorse that is best remembered for winning the 1951 preakness stakes in a long shot victory and for being struck by lightning at the age of four while pastured at his upperville, virginia farm (1948-1952)
- a late 1980s youth crew hardcore band from upstate new york,, which along with bands like youth of today and side by side were a part of the youth crew, and an influence in the late 80’s straight edge hardcore scene. the band progressed to a more rock-oriented sound in its later years.
- a fictional character from the animated children’s television series “the animals of farthing wood” based on the books of the same name by author colin dann. bold is a fox
don’t say you never learn anything useful here on the blog.
then i realised that my readers are much more discerning than the average bloke or blokette and would want to read an intelligent insight into the word as described in the dictionary:
1 a : fearless before danger b : showing or requiring a fearless daring spirit
well, what a load of old bollocks that characteristic is for a human being. why on earth would we want to ignore the natural “fight or flight” instinct and do stupid things like jump out of aeroplanes or bungee jump? the proper reaction would be to cower in a corner until the person who was persuading you to do it had either gone away or done something really bold and was killed in the process. it’s a totally overrated “virtue”, not to be confused with being brave or courageous.
brave people can be scared pooless but go ahead and do things. like going on stage. crazy scary but you’re not going to die doing it unless there’s some lethally faulty wiring, you have taken a little too much of your secret stash or someone throws a cash and carry sized tin of tomatoes at you. normally, the worse that can happen is you get booed off stage. humiliating, yes. will make you feel like you want to curl up and die, yes. but you are not in mortal danger.
i’m sure all you bold parachutists and bungee jumpers will be screaming at your monitors right now and giving me all kinds of reasons why it’s ok to jump out of an aeroplane with a piece of material strapped to your back or leap off bridges with your legs tied to a bit of elastic. you’ll be seriously explaining the safety precautions and the extremely low risk of being killed. but i will remain steadfast in my opinion that doing such activities is against human nature and insane.
i am very happy to be somewhat brave and not remotely bold.
not to mention, alive.
schadenfreude
so here’s the first word in the challenge the diva competition: schadenfreude.
the popularity of youtube videos showing people falling, smashing into things and generally being broken, indicates a steep rise in schadenfreude in the modern world of the internets. or perhaps we have always taken perverted pleasure in seeing people crash and burn but now we have access 24/7. some of these hideous clips are viewed millions of times. i was sent one once that i really do wish i hadn’t seen. i won’t divulge what it was because i would hate for you to have the image in your head too. i can think of nothing more sickening that seeing other human beings (or animals, my pet loving readers) actually being hurt.
having said that, i have been known to have a titter when celebrities have fallen flat on their faces. not literally you understand but when they have produced a particularly large brain fart and presented it as creative work. as in britney spears at the video music awards or amy winehouse’s sad drunken “performances”. but the rich and famous are fair game aren’t they? it’s the public that buy their bloody records and sit through their, sometimes, bloody awful films and made them famous. so i think we’ve earned the right to have a jolly good laugh when they fuck up.
i am sure there must be a fairly large contingent of people who have experienced large dollops of schadenfreude in my presence (or behind my back as the case may be). i distinctly heard my personal assistant cackle when she caught me in lidl a short while ago. i sacked her for being generally incompetent but she did know how to shop.
my ex-personal trainer must have split his sides at the last gig. well, it’s hard to get motivated when you don’t have a 7 foot totty yelling at you to do 50 more press-ups but i had to sack him for being cuter than me.
and my former maid is in a world of trouble for uploading pictures of me wearing rubber gloves and a pinny but that’s another story…
i find it particularly abhorrent and unacceptable that my current misfortune is the source of malicious enjoyment for some people. they should bear in mind that we, who are more worthy because of our unlimited talents, have resources at our fingertips to bite them back. and then it’ll be our turn for a bit of schadenfreude.
challenge the diva
a short while back, i was struggling to come up with a subject to write about, so i asked our demented delicious bass player and web master, aka the management™, also known as bmfru s3 (bad mathematics fast reaction unit, section 3), vishy to come up with a word for inspiration. in all his infinite wisdom, he gave me mendacity. i wrote a post and then thought, there’s an idea! i will challenge my three readers to come up with words as fodder for blog posts. of course, i see the immediate flaw in the idea. that this will be an ideal excuse for yet another descent into silliness and nonsense. but what the hell. life’s too short to sit here and do any real work. so here’s the challenge…
in the comments under this post, send me a favourite word or one that you think i couldn’t possibly write anything about and i will try and come up with a post. if you beat the diva, you win the fabulous prize of being on the guest list at the next gig and indulging in all the backstage frolics that is bad mathematics. your word will be the title of the post, so you can check in and read my drivel. i will set a few rules for myself for winning:
- i must write the post within one week of the word being submitted.
- i must refer specifically to the word and not simply write a diatribe about it being crap or not knowing what it means (that’s what google is for, isn’t it?)
- the post must have an accompanying picture that has some relevance to the word itself. (again…,that’s what google is for, isn’t it?)
so get your dictionaries out and challenge the diva…