This Christmas (including all the pre events) has come a tad earlier than I’d rallied myself up for, hence finding myself unusually not with it mellow... albeit in the good fortune of having a great many friends who's suggestions are quite enough to fill the calendar! Besides the usual clubs and throw around dates of others, I am looking forward to a housewarming, a Christmas lunch, arranging a girls’ dinner on my boat, celebrate Jenn’s birthday (twice no less; the real day a full on event!) and pack to go home to a snowy Sweden! :-D

~ but to just throw in the whats and whereabouts of this weekend:

Faticeira & I will be found @ Blacklist tonight, joined by others later. And naturally @ Slimelight Saturday as it seems several of my friends are having their gigs there that night (both prior to + at the club night), and even more of other friends are showing up!

Surviving that, Sunday a small group is rallying up to do Hyde Park 'Christmas market'. Forecast remains a bit dodgy so we’ve only pencilled it in ~ but should the weather be blissfully clear we’ll be there from around 2pm to sample some steaming mulled wine & peruse stalls. Feel totally free to bump into us & join the fun (gently... we wouldn't want to spill our precious contents!) www.hydeparkwinterwonderland.com/food.html

*I was very temped to go to Antichrist, merely because the flyer this time was pretty novel & inspiring! Logistics tempered this fancy though (and the sober realisation that, really, it is still the same venue and same club and I was completely falling for the pr of nice art work).

But for those that have missed the flyer (I actually only came across it once?) & want some steampunk inspiration (or even go), it’s here (and do please tell me what it was like!):

Faticeira has introduced me to the US comedian Chris Rock via this quote:

"Women would rule the world if it wasn’t for one thing. Women hate women.

Guys actually think that there are other fish in the sea. If a guy introduces his boy to his new girlfriend, his boy goes, "Oh man, she's nice, I gotta get me a girl like that." If a woman introduces her new man to her girlfriend, her girlfriend goes, "I gotta get him, and I will slit that bitch's throat to do it." Every girl in here got a girlfriend they don't trust around their man."

I was watching his show at her place & the audience was in tears from laughing as it hit home to everyone there. But, really, this is a sad truth about women: we are so wary of each other.

This not to say that there aren’t guys above making sly moves to split a couple (I’ve known at least two who attempted to break a past relationship of mine) ~ or that there aren't PLENTY golden-souled women I know who would never touch a friend’s man, not even a friend’s remote exes (without checking with the friend first).

But as an overview on women who are not friends to start with – this point holds its ground. And I think the only analysis I have managed to make as to why we have become like this is the gender difference in acquiring status. In short:

Men are still brought up in the conviction their status and worth is through professional means. They will get attention and admiration if they do something important – this, in our scene, of course translates as running a club, dj’ing or being in a band.

Women however remain to this day, somehow (be it by society, media or hapless parents) brought up to believe their self worth is in how they look & how the success of this look will get them a successful man. The successful man (this even sadder) is not necessarily who the girl decides fits her personal criteria, but what others around her admire. In our scene, no brownie points for getting this right: that’s the guy that… runs a club, dj’s or is in a band. Or just has the prominent look of someone that should/could be.

This is not to say that women in a relationship with a ‘high status’ guy did not come together with him due to love, but that if they did: the woman will more often than not find herself facing girls who pretends to be her friend, pretends to be her partner’s friend, pretends right about anything just in order to get close enough to cause some damage. It is extremely tiresome. Mainly because it’s hard to tell someone who on the surface is friendly (but gives off lots of underhand signals) to fuck off. The girl looks innocent – you (the girlfriend) look like a trouble maker.

When you have a solid relation this is ignorable. But every single relation has its sensitive spells, and God Damn if the hyena instinct isn’t so developed in these females that that is exactly when they put the wedge in (or perhaps it’s just pure luck). I’ve recently watched one of my friends suffer this from another woman & the moves are so obvious I feel like going up and punching the intruding other female in the face. Yet: and this is the crunch of it – her moves are not so obvious, you can corner the person & hash it out. Hell, no wonder women are known as sly! The amount of little gestures I’ve seen in the shape of finding moment for a girl-friend-free exchange, having a private giggle, coming up a little bit too close, touching the guy in a way that is just a tad bit too intimate. Exaggerations? Let’s be honest, guys: when a woman picks you up, how many of you know her to say so? She doesn’t. She indicates her interest, encourages you to take initiative. You know this - and yet, many guys I see in relationships suddenly seem not to notice this at all, when it’s a ‘third’ woman coming up with the same signals - although their very own girlfriend did when they got together.

And at the bottom of it: masses of insecurity. Women who chase another woman’s man, rarely cares about the man ~ it’s the ‘victory’ this man preferred her that she craves.

I’m heartily tired of this in my gender. It is so true: we could fucking rule this world. We could help each other along, support one another’s relationships, conquer this entire globe – weren’t so many still so insecure they can’t raise their gaze from the immediate need to feel confirmed, mostly through what they hope to be a ‘superior’ attraction.

What do we aspire to in the scene? Goth models (even dj’ing pays better; let’s face it); or burlesque dancers. For pity’s sake… is that all we can accomplish? Take our clothes off, hoping to be Dita? No offence, but how high risks are being taken by girls exposing their bodies & swinging those nipple tassles with a less than perfect 40’s cool, just in the name of feeling a ‘somebody’. What is this craving? No, actually, stop the press: How STUPID are we?

Vanity is enjoyable. End of. It’s there to enjoy the good parts of ourselves, the creative way in which to bring them out to the best. Celebrate that by all means; love yourself. But as a means to compete…. All women: hold it right there. Hold that notion in your head you have to rival, win, prove something. What have you proven? only the deep seated need to prove something.

Let’s bring the scene back to having fun. It may be a small part of the world, but I’d like to think in the small part I am in, I am doing my Goddamn best to bring the best out of women around me - and cut very short those women who don’t.

I wish everyone would read Mitch Albom’s ‘The five people you meet in heaven’. It’s the quickest remedy I can think of for people who feel their life is failures because they haven’t swung a tassle/deejayed/run a club ~ let’s live the good life we actually have.

I keep having repeated problems creating cuts on my posts (it changes typeface and removes the order) ~ am I the only one with this problem?

Not to mention I can never create LJ-id's for people, highlighting names in blue instead. Getting a bit fed up...