The truth about Penguins...

I have been rather neglectful of this blog recently due to other writing projects that are taking over my life; I went from having almost life-threatening writer's block in January to writing an average of 5000 words a day.  Call me butter, 'cause I'm on a roll!  Anyway, I'd like to let you all know that I'm still a duck, I'm still singing, and I am, most importantly, alive.

Just before Christmas I discovered something quite amazing called 'Omegle' which is an online chatting service where you can talk to strangers.  To make this easier you can be matched with another stranger and, together, answer a question that has been posed by another user.  After having a rather fruitless argument with a 12-year-old girl about how feminism could be incorporated into Islam for over 45 minutes, I decided to ask some questions of my own.  Some were ignored entirely, but one question I asked got many, and varied, responses:

"What", I asked, "do you hate most about penguins?"

Penguins are, by nature and appearance, loveable, awkward little things, and, apart from a few fish, could never have been said to have caused any harm to anything.  (And who cares about fish anyway? JOKE, I love fish.)

Anyway...I was sure that people could come leaping to their defense, and was rather surprised at the almost violent and sudden reaction I got from most of the strangers.  It seemed that I opened a whole can of worms.  You may notice that a couple of them have been slightly altered with paint- this was because some of the comments made were a little too obscene even for me and rather took away the humour from the rest of what was being said! Having said that, a lot of these people have used quite naughty language that I've kept in, like the F word and stuff, so if you are of a sensitive nature be careful when reading lest your eyes melt out of your sockets in sheer alarm.

Of course, some people didn't care in the least about penguins and were, quite frankly, wasting my time and theirs:

But those people aside, probably the most common reason why people hate penguins is the fact that they are flightless.  I think it's a little unfair to blame this on the birds themselves, but people on the internet are notoriously unreasonable.

Stranger 2 brings up an interesting point here which is shared by, it seems, a fairly large number of people going by some of the other responses.  Have I totally missed the fact that penguins are going to destroy the world? I'd never thought about it before, but perhaps there is something quite menacing about them.  Their cold, dead eyes for a start, and the fact that they kind of fly, but through water, and are all wet and slimy a lot of the time.  I could quite easily imagine an Emperor penguin being the villain in a Bond film, and after initially seeing the new character on screen, I think that the public would accept it completely and forget after a while that there was anything odd about it being there.  Most people, however, were not so much fearful of penguins, but thought that they were a little big for their boots:

Again, I think it is a little unfair for humans to imagine that penguins are stuck up just because they look like they are wearing suits.  Firstly, we have surely learnt by now not to judge others on their appearances, but, more importantly, we don't automatically assume that humans wearing suits are smug either.  I can't imagine being on the London Underground and shouting at all the people going to work- "Look at you all!" I'd say, "You're so smug in your fancy, fancy suits!"  Also, I'm not entirely sure where people get the impression from that penguins think they know everything.  From what I know of penguins, they are perfectly happy making crazy noises, fishing, and mating for life.  There is very little about them for me that constitutes smugness. One pair of strangers seemed to have a whole scheme planned to overthrow them:

I rather like the idea of a newly-wed couple coming home to 101 penguins already in their house- sounds like my perfect life! The idea of monochromacity (if that is a word, which it isn't) came up rather a few times, but I didn't include any of them here because it often dissolved into some rather unnecessary use of quite offensive racial slurs.  In fact, I would have thought that penguins, being monochromatic, would have been looked on as quite trendy and 'hipster' these days.  Those penguins were wearing black and white before it was cool.

I don't quite know why one of the penguins is wearing sunglasses, but it's probably quite sunny in the South Pole sometimes and their eyes may get tired.  I know they have already coped fairly well for thousands of years, but perhaps such a scheme could be introduced for the future.  Some people, it seems, have perfect grounds to hate penguins if what they are saying is true:

There were also quite a few that made utterly no sense whatsoever:

I'm upset that Stranger 2 disconnected here, as I was curious to hear the rest of the story, but this next one, out of all of them, was my personal favourite:

As it transpired, this person thought I was talking about the Penguins American Football team, but at first I found it hilarious that he answered immediately with something so completely random.  I had an image of him sitting at home watching a nature documentary, getting more and more angry as penguin after penguin dived into the sea, until he eventually explodes with rage:

In conclusion, I don't think I've learnt anything in particular about penguins that I didn't know before, but I've certainly learnt that some people are very strange.

Funny things I have seen on my tour

One of the few pleasures I get from travelling round foreign countries is by laughing at foreign things.  This is grossly unfair seeing as I am not nearly as versed in other languages as much as most foreigners are in English, but I don't really care.  Funny things are funny, and I do hope tourists visiting Britain find as much joy in British weirdness as I do when I travel.  Some of these funny things come from misuse of the English language, and some are just there because they are funny.  This is a prime example of both:

Whoever made the tissues is correct; they are, in fact, funny, which is a weird paradox as they wouldn't have been funny if they hadn't been declared to be 'funny.'

Some of the amusing things are apparently just normal things that Germans would find in shops:

I'm not even sure myself why the last one is so funny- I think it's because I can imagine the dog saying- "Ja!" and it would please me greatly if a dog were to say that.  The exclamation mark just adds to the urgency of the golden Labrador's happiness.

A couple of the things aren't German at all, but I just found them hilarious:

The door handle, quite obviously, looks like a very alarmed face which caused me to practically wet myself when I first saw, and the second amused me because I didn't notice the crazy donkey in the background at first and it took me by surprise later.

The next few are things that I just found very WEIRD, yet brilliant:

I am struck, here, by the astounding amount of detail that has gone into re-creating the act of a dog defecating.

This was just an incidence of very poor positioning of a Children's DVD.

There was a whole series of these chicken pictures in one of the hotels we were staying in.  I found it a little disturbing that as well as the chickens wearing business suits and ballgowns, they were accompanied, in each picture, by ACTUAL CHICKENS, one of which, in this case, seems to be intent on dive-bombing the chicken-head humans enjoying their wine.  The whole series was utterly superb.

The following are in English but are still hilarious.

You see that? Outside is 'out of order'- that isn't good at all!

Apologies for the lack of rotation here- I hope the act of turning your head slightly to the left won't put you off my blog for good.  I liked this one because I can't help but notice a slight bitterness to the tone of it, as if they were exhausted with having to deal with air conditioning malfunctions and whenever anyone opens their window a crack loads of alarms and bells start going off and lights flashing crazily and all the staff going mental- "WE WARNED YOU!" They would say, brandishing knives in our faces.  "NOW LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENED!!!!"

Flawless logic here!

Why, thank you! I spent almost 2 solid hours chuckling at the over-use of punctuation this person used.  They really want you to take their sacks!

Lastly, here are some of my personal favourites:

Ha ha! Poo.

One day, when I'm old and tired, I'm going to take my husband and my ducks and llamas and we'll settle down in Wankdorf.

There are several things l like about this picture.  Firstly, the exclamation marks designed to stop someone going in, as if without them they would have proceeded anyway and died from shock at the sight of a broken toilet.  Secondly, their decision to include a picture of a toilet as if to further establish in the mind of the reader that it is the TOILET that is broken, not something else, like the door, for example.  Somebody, somewhere, will have gone through the trouble of finding a picture of a toilet and gracefully fading the picture into the white background.  Perhaps this is actually quite an easy thing to do, but it looks like too much effort to me.  Thirdly, the story behind taking this picture is almost funnier than the picture itself.  The first time I went in, I didn't have my camera, so I rushed back to the van to get my phone.  However, when I returned there was a girl in the toilet washing her hands.  Rather than allowing her to think that I had come into the bathroom to take a picture of this sign, I went into a cubicle and gathered a roll of tissue, and pretended to blow my nose for good measure when she looked over at me.  Five painful seconds passed before she left the room and I was able to take the picture, along with losing any shred of dignity that I was still in possession of.

This, we found in Luxembourg, and is probably the best way of describing nuts and crisps I could ever imagine.

I hope you have enjoyed my funnies as much as I have, however I am very much aware that the sophistication of some of these is far above the level that most of my readers are used to, so don't worry if you don't understand all of them.

Why I choose to put stuff on my face

A friend of mine recently raised some money for charity by going a day without wearing make-up.  As she was a make-up ‘connoisseur’, if you will, this was pretty traumatic for her, especially since the day she went without make up involved a fancy ball.  It’s been a while since this event and it’s just occurred to me that I have no idea what went on.  I hope she didn’t die.

Anyway, it got me thinking a little about why it is that girls wear make up in the first place, and how BLOODY ANNOYING it is when men think that girls only put it on because we are terrified of being seen as we really are, or something.  There was a meme going around a while back that followed this kind of theme; I will replicate it here (though it is obviously by no means original):

And it was met with various responses along these lines:

Almost all my past boyfriends have said to me that I actually look BETTER without make-up on than with it.  I don’t know if this is because I’m terrible at applying make-up or if they are being genuine, but, while I know they mean well, it can actually get a wee bit annoying, especially when I've made an extra effort to look nice on a special occasion.

The thing is, I like wearing make-up.  It’s fun.  Just the same as I like wearing pretty clothes and doing my hair all nice.  A lot of men seem to believe that when girls dress up and put their faces on, it is purely for their benefit.  They then, because of their utter benevolence, think it appropriate to assure us that we don’t need to make an effort.  “You’re beautiful as you are,” they’ll say, as if we’re some crippled butterfly that needs 24 hour self-esteem maintenance.

I have got into a few arguments about this with men; I assure them that the reasons girls like to dress up and such are far more numerous and complicated than simply getting a man; we may want to look smart, for example, if we’re going to work and having a massive spot in the middle of my face just looks a bit messy.  When I’m on stage I need to accentuate my eyes.  Often we want to show off in front of other girls, or, most likely for me, it’s because I think there may be people taking photos and I want to look good in them so I can look back at them in 40 years and say- “CRUMBS I was a stunner in those days!” And laugh fondly at the memories.  Apparently, though, this is all just in our heads, and really, subconsciously, unless we’re lesbians, it all comes down to impressing the opposite sex.  “Duck…” I’ve had said to me several times, “that’s may be why you THINK you’re doing it, but, subconsciously, it’s all about impressing men.”

This argument is especially frustrating because there’s no possible counter to it.  Perhaps they’re right and it all is just subconscious, but if we’re saying that, it reduces almost every human behaviour to being sexually, or, at least, romantically motivated.  A lot of cynics actually do believe this, and perhaps they are right; again, there is no possible argument against it, but by GUM I hope they are wrong.  Humans are special and wonderful beings, regardless if you believe in a higher being or not; the amount of  things we have created and understood in our relatively short stay on this earth, is utterly staggering.  Perhaps all this behaviour can be reduced to sexual foreplay, but that is utterly depressing and I’d rather not believe it.  Surely we are more advanced than animals, as cute and as fluffy as they are? Surely?

Which gets me back to make-up again.  We have a wonderful gift in this day and age in that it is not necessary for us to go about dressed in dirty sheets and only washing at weekends.  We have the tools that allow us to be creative; not only in things like art and music, but with ourselves…we can make over our bodies and minds and we have the luxury of having time to do this; at least, the luckiest of us do.  Why throw all of that away for the sake of appearing insecure? Of course, when people have about 26 separate operations in order to make themselves look like a cat (which HAS been done) I am inclined to believe there is a line somewhere, but I would not try to define this line myself.

So when I walk past a group of men wearing a colourful minidress with my hair in curls because I want to look FABULOUS for the sake of looking fabulous, I don’t expect to be received with rudeness when I don’t thank them profusely for the whistling and cat-calls I hear.  Don’t get me wrong; compliments are great- it’s always nice to know that any effort I have put in has been observed, not necessarily because I want to impress anyone, but simply in virtue of me having put in an effort.  It’s very difficult, however, to react when you’re whistled at; usually I just smile weakly and carry on walking, but I have no idea what the men actually want me to say and do.  Once, as an experiment, I did the following:

This was proof to me that, at least sometimes, when girls are whistled at, it’s not for the benefit of the girl, but in order to look a certain way to other males.  It, surely, can't be about sex at all, because they must know it’s not particularly endearing to girls and can sometimes make them feel very uncomfortable.  One could argue that it all essentially boils down to sex because the men want to assert dominance in their ‘pack’ in order to attract the best women, but, again, this is a wee bit depressing.  These men seem affronted when a girl doesn’t accept the ‘compliment’ they have given, but if they DO accept the compliment, the men are utterly bemused.  It’s a great tip for confusing people, and I’d advise everyone to have a go.

Just in case I get accused of being sexist, let me tell you that I don’t enjoy women whistling or yelling at men, either, and would certain not partake in that kind of activity myself.  As a girl, my experiences will be restricted to having experiences that girls have, so my writing may seem a little biased at times. Whistling or cat-calling is not something positive, but something pretty negative in my opinion, and, rather than making me feel empowered, it generally makes me feel insecure, as if because I’ve managed to dress in a certain way, do my hair and maintain my weight, the people qualified to judge whether or not I have achieved this to a certain standard are congratulating me, assuring me of my worth as a human being, as if I didn’t know I had worth already.

The issue of girls wearing ‘sexually provocative’ clothing is a whole other kettle of fish; do girls ‘ask for it’ if they wear a low-cut top? I don’t think so.  Often, girls WILL wear low cut tops and short skirts to show themselves off to the opposite sex, as men might do with certain clothes as well to show off to women.  I’m not denying that at all.  What I object to is the notion that you can tell EXACTLY what a girl is thinking and what she wants by the clothes she is wearing.  We are much more complicated than that.  Besides, even if we DO wear clothes purely to attract the opposite sex, we're not necessarily saying that EVERY MAN/WOMAN WILL SUFFICE, we could just be saying- "hey; I may be looking to get lucky tonight, but not necessarily with YOU." Or alternatively, "I am poor and the only top I own has shrunk in the wash, and someone spilt orange juice on my skirt which is why I turned it up to make it shorter."  There could be a whole host of reasons.  Today, for example, even though the only person I talked to was somebody in McDonalds, I spent a large proportion of my afternoon walking around my room and sitting on my bed with the bottom of my jumper twisted and pulled through the neck (you know, like we used to always do at Primary school…) so as to reveal a healthy dosage of tummy to anyone looking.  Nobody, apart from a couple of my soft toys, noticed my fashion statement, and I couldn’t care less.  I did it for fun.  Sometimes people do things because they are fun, as unbelievable as that is.

The trouble with make-up and particularly extravagant clothes is that they appear to be some kind of mask; in the case of make-up, that is almost literal.  I admit that if I were to see a girl plastered in fake tan with massive false breasts I would be the first to assume that she ‘must have some kind of insecurity in order to do that to herself.’ The fact is, though, humans are ridiculous creatures and the reasons why we do what we do are a total mystery.  Perhaps the girl is incredibly insecure about her looks, or perhaps she wants to look that way because it’s fun.  Perhaps she fell into a vat of gravy and absorbed a pair of melons into her chest; we will never know.  I will endeavour not to judge people for the way they look, but this is a hard task when our minds naturally want to find similarities between people and perhaps notice patterns of human behaviour when there aren't any.  There doesn’t need to be a reason for me choosing to wear neon pink make-up and a wedding dress to McDonalds; if I want to do it, I jolly well will.

Probably the most racist post I'm ever going to write

Let me tell you a small tale.

A couple of years hence, I performed on a cruise ship for just over three weeks.  In those three weeks, I ate like some kind of Roman Emperor/pig hybrid; there were cheese-covered potatoes, more tuna and mayonaise than I'd ever seen in my life, an almost inexhaustible supply of 'Daim' bars, a huge cheese platter and creamy, chocolatey gateaux, and my sole exercise was stepping from side to side for a couple of hours every night while singing about walking on sunshine, getting my kicks on Route 66 and various other things. The rest of my time was spent sitting down or lying down when even sitting became too taxing.  In those three weeks, I lost three quarters of a stone.

Just before Christmas of this year, I was on my tour of Europe (which was almost entirely in Germany).  At the beginning of November, for six weeks, I went on a grueling health-kick.  I stopped eating chips and crisps, I did a 2-3 minute plank most days (2 planks on some days), I had no fizzy drinks and, most importantly, I was taking part in an incredibly physical show that sometimes involved about 5 hours of constant exercise a day.  In those six weeks, I PUT ON three quarters of a stone.

After racking my brains, (not too hard, to be honest, as I was already aware of the problem,) I realised that the only difference between my time on tour and my time on the cruise was BREAD.  On the cruise, I ate none of it; none at all.  In Germany, I am forced to eat about a loaf a day, because it is ALL THEY HAVE.
In many of our hotels, breakfast was typically a choice of 8 different kinds of bread and some cheese to go with them, accompanied by a single bowl of (sometimes mouldy) fruit, and maybe some yoghurt.  If we were lucky, there would be croissants.  In one hotel there was no buffet, and they just sat us down and brought us each a plate with three MASSIVE bread rolls with butter and jam to go with them.  We were mystified.  Now I'm slightly weird when it comes to breakfast as it is, but I like to have at least a small amount of choice.  This would be my perfect breakfast:

I mean, it's not perfectly healthy, but this would be my dream breakfast.  In Germany they usually have barely any of these components; one time they had baked beans.  I practically cried with joy when I saw them.  In any case, it's a damn sight better than a plate of nothing but BREAD.

I don't understand it, I really don't.  Germans are not fat; in fact, they are probably much healthier as a country than Britain is, but I don't get how they manage to stay slim with all the food available; I just had to walk a mile from my hotel to find some fresh fruit, and even then it was in a 'Lidl'.  On my way to the shop, I counted nineteen bakeries, and they were only the ones I could see- there were probably plenty more down side-streets.  In the same mile I spotted one 'to go' food establishment that was not a bakery.  It sold raw fish and meat, and also some sandwiches.  I suppose it must be easy to eat healthily if you actually live in Germany and can drive to supermarkets out of town, but that is no good for me, as I am not German, I haven't got a car, and I haven't passed my driving test.

I suppose it must be the stress of being on tour for so long making this seem worse than it is, but it actually makes me ANGRY.  When I walk past my fifth bakery in ten metres, I think to myself- why did you build this here? Was there a demand for it? Did you just think one day- "hey, you know what this town needs? ANOTHER bakery." I look in the inviting windows and see the effort that has gone into these lovingly-created bread products; the gentle sprinkling of cheese on the Käse brot, the colourfully painted doughnuts and the croissants covered in what I think are poppy-seeds, and it just makes me SO CROSS how they imagine themselves as providing such a good service to the public when the bakery two doors down is offering exactly the same stuff. I can imagine a board meeting:

The thing is, their logic works, because all of these bakeries were full of people! How many bakeries do people need?!? Are Germans actually 60% bread instead of 60% water and need it to survive? Why are they healthier than us? Is it purely exercise and lack of binge drinking? It makes me FURIOUS!!!!

To be fair, bread is not entirely bad;

 In fact, in moderation, wholegrain bread is a very good and healthy thing to eat.  However, it should only fill one quarter of our plates at mealtimes, not EVERY quarter of the plate, perhaps with a sausage squeezed in somewhere, which often seems to be the German way of thinking. 

As racist posts go, this one is pretty tame, but nonetheless I must stress that I'm sure the Germans have a much healthier overall lifestyle than I do and it is silly of me to get cross over something like this, plus if 'too much bread' is the worst thing about Germany, that makes it a pretty amazing country really, but when I have absolutely no control over almost every aspect of my life, e.g. what time I get up, what I wear, where I go, how I get there, the amount of sleep I get, whether I can wash my clothes or not, whether or not I can connect to the internet... the little things, like simply going into town to choose something to eat, become incredibly meaningful, and when I come across nothing but bread and bread-related products, it takes its toll on me, mentally and physically.  I want to be healthy.  I want to look after my body and treat myself well.  It's frustrating when something out of my control is preventing me from doing this.

At least we get to go to Switzerland next week.  With any luck, there will be nothing but chocolate there, and if I get fat, it will be absolutely worth it.

'King John's Christmas' by A. A. Milne

Guten tag! Ich heisse Singen Enten. Ich bin im Antwerp im Belgium mit mein freunden Puffin und Kleine grau Rabbit.  Mein noch freunden, kleine kleine hund und kleine kleine ente, sind im Reading im England mit Giraffe. Ich liebe deutsch trincken- Gluhwein ist sehr gut, ja? Ja.  I'm going to stop speaking in German now, but, as you can see, I am now fluent.

Merry Christmas! 

Due to idiocy (my own and John Lewis's) I did not have a computer over the Christmas period, but due to amazingness (my dad's and John Lewis's again) I now have a borrowed computer and can, once more, blog unto the interweb.  Unfortunately, the first entry I planned to write was supposed to come out before Christmas and not after, but I don't wish to wait a whole year to post it, so here it is:

while I was in Germany, I took it upon myself to make a recording of my favourite poem,  seeing as it was relevant to the time of year. (Even if it is, now, almost offensively Chriss-massy.)  As you can see, I am wearing my beautiful Bavarian dress- if you go to Bavaria and you are not wearing one of these dresses, you will look very stupid, especially if you're a man. 

Here is the poem- enjoy!

Dog names

There have been no posts from me recently; this is partly because all my days are just merging into one big van ride across Germany so there is very little to write about, and partly because I don't really have the energy to be funny at the moment due to said van rides across Germany and having to dance and shout stuff at hundreds of people every day.  The tour has been taking its toll on all of us- after a particularly busy day one of my colleagues had what seemed to be a complete mental breakdown at the sight of a closed Burger King restaurant, and I have been living off Tuc biscuits and Marzipan potatoes.

I thought I'd write a quick post to cheer myself up:

I find it utterly hilarious the way that some people talk to their dogs, as if they are fully rational agents that understand language and complex feelings like guilt and shame.  I also find it strangely amazing when people give their dogs really ordinary names that would usually be given to people.  I saw this in St. Andrews once:

I mean, there was no butterfly, but the rest is true.  It got me thinking what other names it would be amusing for dogs to have; whenever I'm a little bit sad I just picture these scenarios in my head: