Now I'm going to ruin it totally

One of the aspects of blogging that I have long enjoyed is how accepting the blogosphere is. You can hear the taboos tumbling, as bloggers admit to behaviours and attitudes they've previously considered outrageous. Confessions are usually met with variations on the following responses:

Aw, Hon, don't worry. We love you anyway! And in answer to your question, yes, you're totally normal.

I'm SO glad you wrote this post. I'm not alone! I've felt the same for years, but I've never been brave enough to say so out loud. Thank you!

Bloggers are commended for their honesty, sympathy is offered, and the blogosphere absorbs the revelation of this drossy bit of human life, and moves on.

But there must be a limit. There must be things which bloggers confess to, that other people can't condone. There must be moments when lines are crossed, sensibilities offended beyond forgiveness. Moments when bloggers turn their faces... Bloggy Friends, I fear this may be one such.

I don't like the film It's a Wonderful Life. There. I've said it. And there's worse. Not only do I not like it, I really hate it. I've only seen it all the way through once, and then tedious snippets on various other unavoidable occasions. When I did sit all the way through it, I found it boring, pointless, and downright irritating. I thought the central character was dull, and at points a bit creepy. I thought his self-assessment was right, actually. He should have left that insipid and dreary town, and found himself a more interesting life. At the crucial point, he needed Barbie, in one of her many cinematic incarnations, to appear and warble on about following his dreams, believing in himself, trusting his heart. That might have got him moving. As for the angel, he annoyed me immensely. Angels should not be bland. I believe the word "mawkish" was invented for films like this one. It's 130 minutes long, which is approximately 129 minutes too much.

I've heard TWO discussions in the past 24 hours, one on Radio 4 and one on Radio Scotland, about the remake, or sequel, that is imminent. Those radio people were loving it. Lapping it up, they were. "I go every year, with my family, to see it on the big screen, and we're all weeping by the end." "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without it." "'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings' - that line gets me every time!" I must have heard the word "heart-warming" as many times as is physically possible in the course of a radio segment. The only good thing was the aging actress from Vancouver, who played the daughter in the original film, and is playing an auntie in the sequel, who managed to give away huge chunks of the plot, before the interviewer could intervene. Ha! I enjoyed that bit, thinking of all you It's a Wonderful Life devotees speedily clamping your hands over your ears, but not speedily enough, and howling with distress at having caught a half-sentence too much of what she was saying. Ruined it for you, did she? Ha! (See, I have a dark side...)

Please don't judge me. I can't help it. It's a genetic condition. It's in my DNA. My sister hates the film too. We only have to sing "Buffalo Girls, won't you come out tonight?" to each other, in the knowledge that we are the only two people on the planet who feel this way about the film, to experience a Christmas bonding moment so magical, that I have only one word to describe it. Yes, you guessed it - "heart-warming".

Can you forgive me for my aberrance?

"Darling, you were right first time. Your life has been pointless and meaningless, and no amount of my smiling at you in black and white can make it better.

.

Bleueueueugh

OK, so on Saturday, I'm going to join in this fabulous blogging worldwide expat carnival thingy (it's here, in case you want to join in too), for which I need to write a post all about a marvelous aspect of my life in America - of which there are many. Trouble is, there is this really angry bleueueueueueueuegh feeling in me struggling to get out into a blog post, so I've got to let it free quickly, in time for normal 'not wrong, just different, yay for living in America' service to be resumed.

Here goes, then, with the bleueueueueueueueuegh Incredible Hulk anti-my-life-in-America bursting forth from my neatly buttoned oh-isn't-the-Midwest-just-the-place-to-be shirt.

STOP getting excited about St Patrick's day. You're not Irish. None of you. You might have ancestors who were Irish. That's not the same thing. And it's silly. If you don't wear green to school, other kids come up to you and pinch you. If you have a green dinosaur on your blue underpants, it doesn't count (looking at you, here, 10-yo - unless you really did show your underpants to all your fellow fourth graders, but I doubt you did). STOP selling green cookies, green chocolate, green everything, having people greeting customers at the door of the supermarket wearing green. It's silly. Stop it.

Stop being so competitive about sports. My daughter is 6. She wants to play soccer. I want her to have fun. I don't need her to be in a competitive league. I don't need her to have a team photo on 'picture day'. I don't want her to have a training session each week, and then a match at a variable time on a Saturday or Sunday. I don't want to build our week-ends round those matches. I don't want her to think that her soccer team is the be all and end all. I see that other people living here do want to do those things. What can I say? Bleueueueueueuueuegh!

You! Mr Sports Director of the local sports centre! Yes, I'm talking to YOU! When you have 16 girls aged 6 or 7 signed up for soccer, can't you SEE that it doesn't make sense to run a league? You are insisting on having 4 teams with 4 players in each. I have, politely and nicely, discussed with you on the phone how this isn't going to make for a successful experience. Kids get ill. Kids have other commitments at week-ends. Families have other priorities (well, some do). So sometimes there will be a team of 3 players or even 2 players. Can't you agree with me (and my daughter's team coach) that it would make a whole lot more sense to get the 16 girls together one evening a week, do training all together, split them into two teams, and play a game there and then. That way, we don't all have to trek out twice a week. That way, they will get a game, rather than turn out, only to find that the game is cancelled because not enough players have shown up. Four kids is not enough kids for five-a-side soccer. That isn't rocket science. I know you love leagues. I know you love competitive play. I know this is thinking outside the box in a very challenging and enormous way for you. But please, please, can't we just try my suggestion? Just once? You never know... it might work well. If it doesn't, then you can go back to your competitive league, where the coach is king, and picture day happens, and we end up with a winning team which gets a trophy, and runners up who get medals. But just this once, couldn't you just think a little sideyways?

Next rant point. Doughnuts are NOT breakfast food. Luckily, none of my children have breakfast at school. I see you have cereal and fruit on the menu, but I wouldn't trust my children not to go for the doughnuts. I wouldn't. Nor the 'strawberry toaster pastry'. I have to put that in quotation marks. Sorry. I just do.

And on the subject of school food, please don't make my 6 year old stand in the lunch line (what am I saying? the lunch QUEUE QUEUE QUEUE!) for half the allotted time, and then make her tip half her food in the trash because there isn't enough time left to eat it. Please. That one isn't rocket science either.

Bleueueueueueuegh. I had other things to say, but I just hit publish by mistake, so let's call it a day. A bleueueueueueueueueugh day.