bennet_7

Earlier today I was at the petrol station, filling up my car, when I saw one of the attendants sitting on the curb not three metres away from the nearest pump. They were smoking a cigarette.

I guess they'd seen neither Zoolander nor the numerous signs around their place of work which clearly state "NO SMOKING!"

They'd finished and gone inside by the time I went into pay and I was seriously thinking about saying something. But then they complimented me on my Ants playing Tetris t-shirt and I blushed and said thank you and that was the end of that.

So if anyone every catches you doing something that could potentially jeopardise the lives of a suburban block, just say nice things about their clothes: they won't complain.

I've been busy trying to balance work and university lately. Right now I'm tutoring a bunch of high school kids in various subjects, including helping one girl in a period of history that I myself have never formally studied. So I have to spend time teaching myself so that I can then teach her. It's nuts.

And it's not like I don't already have more than enough material to study for my honours as it is. I'm so busy researching the short essays that I haven't really touched my thesis for the last four weeks. But I'm starting to get a good handle on it so hopefully I'll be able to work on it soon. As long as I stick to my schedule I should be ok.

Having said that, I had intended to start an essay or at least plan it out today and I didn't get round to it. But I did a whole bunch of stuff around the house so that's ok-ish. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

(Not a reference that really works in this context but it is late. I apologise.)

I still find time to watch TV and you know what I quite like? 10 Things I Hate About You. It's proved to be charming and quite clever at times. And I really like Kat. She decides to do things based on how feminist it will be and how it will impact on the environment. She's probably the most feminist character on TV right now. I find Bianca kind of irritating, think Cameron and Michael are just creepy, and Patrick just needs to talk more, but Kat's pretty awesome and I wish more female characters were depicted as actually being feminist and caring about these issues.

On the weekend I talked my mother out of seeing The Ugly Truth because I was kind of disgusted just by the trailer. I'm really sick of Hollywood portraying successful business women as cold abrasive shrews (last month there was another such character in The Proposal too) incapable of forming romantic relationships without a man to teach them how. A well done mentor/lover or opposites attract story can be very entertaining but when you rely on lazy characterisation, no matter how charming the actors, you are still perpetuating a stereotype. And not only is that bad for women, but it's damn boring too.

You can say that I'm taking something that's meant to be light entertainment too seriously. I do do that sometimes. But this issue gets my hackles up.

Sometimes I think I should have done Media Studies.