Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Fifty Shades of Tedious Fuckery 2 (Vol. 3)

Are you ready for more Fifty Shades of Unbearable Drivel? Hooray! First of all though, I've been shortlisted in the Humour category for the Irish Blog Awards and the Wildcard category for the Blog Awards so a HUGE thank you and awkward hug to the people who nominated me. The one is decided by votes, so if you enjoy my sweary rambling, then please click here and vote for me!

(Catch up: Vol 1 and 2)

And now, this.

Christian and Ana finally get around to making that stir-fry, although I imagine Ana did most of the work on that front, seeing as Christian was bewildered by unchopped red peppers earlier. They're sitting on Kate's Persian rug, eating their noodles and drinking white wine (easy known Kate is away, otherwise I'd hope that she'd tell these jerks to stop eating on her nice rug and use the damn table, fucking pronto) and Christian is described thusly:

Christian leans against the couch, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He’s wearing his jeans and his shirt with his just-fucked hair, and that’s all.

Two things.
A - Did she have sex with his hair?
and B - He's wearing jeans and a shirt and "that's all"?
That's pretty much fully dressed, Ana.

Their conversation eventually turns back to Christian buying the company that Ana works for, when she tells him that she's still mad at him.

“I know but you being mad, baby, wouldn’t stop me.”


“If I leave and find another job, will you buy that company, too?”
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?” His expression alters, wary once more.
“Possibly. I’m not sure you’ve given me a great deal of choice.”
“Yes, I will buy that company, too.” He is adamant.

So apart from being infuriatingly condescending AND CRAZY, here's another situation where Ana has told him how she feels about his actions and he's just like "you're so cute when you're mad, and I couldn't give a fuck about what you want, remember? Let's fuck!" 

So instead of Ana being utterly horrified by the amount of control that Christian is hell-bent on having over her work life, they do some terrible, unamusing banter where they're supposedly being sarcastic with each other and then go have sex with vanilla ice cream thrown in the mix. VANILLA, GEDDIT? LIKE THE SEX THEY'RE HAVING! HA HA HA. THEY'RE SO FUNNY.

At least Ana actually uses the word vagina this time, so that's progress and a definite improvement on "down there". She also tells us really helpful things like "’s cold" when Christian eats ice cream off her boobs. Such insight. Oh and when they both come, it's described as such:


I don't know about you, but if I hear the words "sorcerer's apprentice", I immediately think of this:

Yeah, Mickey. You dirty little mouse.

After all the sticky sex and frankly, wasting of perfectly good Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Ana drifts off to sleep and has a nightmare about the girl that approached her outside work the previous night. She wakes up screaming and tells Christian about the encounter and to the surprise of exactly no-one, it turns out that it was Leila, his ex-sub.

What if she means a lot to him? Perhaps he misses her? I know so little about his, relationships. She must have had a contract, and she would have done what he wanted, given him what he needed gladly. Oh no - when I can’t. The thought makes me nauseous.

Bear in mind that Ana is talking about a girl who was bedraggled and gaunt and quite clearly in a bit of a state when she saw her, not to mention the bloodied bandage on her wrist, which would read as a suicide attempt to anyone else, but Ana's main concern is that Christian might still be into her.

On hearing this news, Christian jumps out of bed in a panic to call someone named Welch, tells them to "find her", says he'll talk to Leila and that she's in trouble. Ana follows him out to the kitchen and offers to make tea.

“Actually, I’d like to go back to bed.” His look tells me that it’s not to sleep.

AH HERE. His unstable ex-sub has been FOLLOWING Ana and he said himself that Leila is in some kind of trouble, and therefore desperate but hey, let's bone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In fairness to Ana, she says she wants to know what the fuck is going on, in so many words. Christian is all "it doesn't concern you" only, eh, the fuck it doesn't, as this girl has TRACKED HER DOWN AT HER PLACE OF WORK. It turns out that "the situation" he kept banging on about in the last book when he had to leave Georgia in a hurry, was Leila turning up at his apartment and trying to kill herself.

Christian asks Ana why she didn't tell him about Leila yesterday, but she just forgot about it apparently and now it's time for more sex.

“Forget about her. Come.” He holds out his hand.

Oh, ok then. I suppose having TWO scary stalkers isn't anything to be worried about then.

The next morning, Ana is fiddling with her hair in the mirror, but oh it's just TOO LONG. Just like how she's TOO THIN and TOO PRETTY. She asks Christian how often he works out and he tells her about his personal trainer, Claude. He says she'd like him as a trainer and that he needs her fit for what he has in mind for her. Clearly Claude is on the approved list of men that she can be around, as Christian isn't flying into a rage at the thought of him LOOKING AT HIS PRECIOUS ANA AND MAYBE TOUCHING HER ARM SOMETIME.

“Okay, I’ll meet Claude.”
“You will?” Christian’s face lights up in astounded disbelief.

Astounded disbelief. I swear to god, these people have the weirdest reactions.

His expression makes me smile. He looks like he’s won the lottery, though Christian’s probably never even bought a ticket - he has no need.


Ana says she wants to get her hair cut, lodge a cheque that Christian had given her from before (when they broke up, I think?) and buy a car. Christian then hands her the keys to the Audi he bought her for her graduation in the last book, which she had given back. Ah, no, the cheque was him reimbursing her for selling on her old VW Beetle. Something like that. Something boring. And again, way to leave people who haven't read the first book at all (or read it ages ago and can't remember all the interminable admin that went on) completely in the dark as to what the fuck is going on.

Ana tries to hand him back the cheque so she'll be buying the Audi off him instead of just being given one.

“Oh no. That’s your money.”
“No, it isn’t. I’d like to buy the car from you.”
His expression changes completely. Fury - yes, fury - sweeps across his face.

FURY x2. Again with the weird reactions. "Hello, I saw your car on DoneDeal, what's your best price?" "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK." Sounds fair.

Ana rips up the cheque, so Christian storms off into another room and makes a phonecall, depositing a heap of money into her bank account.

"How do you know my account number?”
My ire takes Christian by surprise. 

 (Because he DIDN'T think that was an insanely intrusive thing to find out, unasked?)
“I know everything about you, Anastasia,” he says quietly.


And just to be clear:

However, they're both standing there, really mad at each other, her at him for being a controlling asshole, and him at her for showing some backbone. So naturally, they end up making out up agin' a wall, but he's out of condoms so they go for breakfast instead of riding on the carpet. THANK GOD.

“Okay,” I acquiesce and just like that, our fight is over.

AGAIN. NOPE. Your fight isn't over, you're both just ignoring the glaring issues in your horrible relationship and going for pancakes instead. I mean, granted, pancakes can probably solve most problems, but I don't think a controlling, manipulative, fucking insane boyfriend would count among them.

Ana pays for breakfast, which makes Christian all grumpy, like the last time when she offered to pay for their meal in IHOP and he was TOTES EMASCULATED. Independence in women is SO UNAPPEALING.

Christian then brings Ana to a fancy salon called Esclava (which is the Spanish term for female slave, so at least EL went to the trouble of looking up at least one word in a dictionary) and we get another classic James description, like all the GLASS and STEEL of Christian's office building in the first book.

The interior is all white and leather. At the stark white reception desk sits a young blond woman in a crisp white uniform.

It's WHITE, you see, and the reception desk is WHITE and WHITE WHITE WHITE THIS WORD HAS LOST ALL MEANING. WHITE.

Ana is completely baffled by the fact that the receptionist and Christian know each other, like really really unnecessarily confused. I just thought maybe he gets his hair cut here, but I forgot about him being a super-successful super-rich super-businessman for a second, so it turns out that he owns the salon, along with three others. Suddenly, a gorgeous older woman in a black salon uniform appears  and Christian goes over to talk to her.

Ana refers to her as Platinum Blonde while describing her, which is something that Ana does constantly when she meets or sees someone whose name she doesn't know. Every time. So far in this book we've had Miss Very Short Hair and Red Lipstick (the girl who welcomed them to José's show), Blond Shock (a guy with "a shock of bright blond hair" who had the audacity to say that the portraits of Ana were nice) and Ghost Girl (Leila). It's extremely annoying.

Anyway, there's all this build-up to Ana figuring out who this foxy woman is, eventually culminating with:

Then it hits me like a wrecking ball, and I know, deep down in my gut on a visceral level, I know who it is. It’s her. Stunning, older, beautiful.

It’s Mrs. Robinson.

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN. Mrs. Robinson is what Ana has been calling Elena, a friend of Christian's who had a fling with him when he was fifteen. Well, that and Mrs. Paedo. Because Ana is a massive child.

Don't forget to vote!


Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Fifty Shades of Tedious Fuckery 2 (Vol. 2)

Heyoooo it's that time again!

Catch up with Vol. 1 here.

Christian and Ana get to the restaurant and he immediately orders steak for the two of them, without so much as looking at Ana. He's essentially the asshole character from an Eighties film that Molly Ringwald finally realises is terrible and walks out on and everyone cheers. He is the opposite of a romantic hero. But apparently an arrogant, cruel, controlling and abusive fuckface is what women are looking for in a man nowadays and if you'll excuse me, I'm off to BURN DOWN EVERYTHING.

Over dinner, Christian angrily tells Ana off for leading José on with her hug and kiss, as if his fucking planet-sized jealousy isn't actually the issue here. This is a guy who literally just bought seven giant portraits of Ana's face so OTHER PEOPLE CAN'T LOOK AT HER.

He snaps at the waiter he orders wine from (nothing gets a girl going like her date being unnecessarily rude to waiting staff) and Ana wonders what his problem is. But really, for a guy who's meant to be so WONDERFUL and MISUNDERSTOOD, he does an awful lot of snapping at and generally being an asshole to people he clearly sees as less important than he is. Would you like to know how often Christian "snaps" at people? Because I counted.

32 times. (He is CONSTANTLY SNAPPING. Although he only snarls at Ana 8 times.)

Isn't he a fucking DELIGHT?

In the meantime:

"Somewhere in the depths of my psyche, my inner goddess rises sleepily, stretches, and smiles. She's been asleep for a while."

Oh here we fucking go. Someone please shoot that bitch with a tranquiliser gun and maybe she'll go back to sleep.

They talk some stuff over, he tells her she should have used the safe word during their last encounter (which is true, although he also could have read the situation a little better) and says that he's been miserable for the past five days too, although his way of saying that is "I’m in perpetual night here".

Anyway, they eat dinner (when her steak arrives, Ana's reaction is "Holy hell. Food" because she's forgotten that she's in a restaurant, I guess?) and Christian says he has a proposition for her.

He has a proposition? What now? A couple of scenarios run through my mind: kidnap, working for him. No, nothing makes sense.

If KIDNAP is something that legitimately comes to mind when, over dinner, your ex-boyfriend says he has a proposition for you, THEN WHAT THE JAYSUS FUCK ARE YOU STILL DOING THERE?

They get into the car after dinner and Taylor drives them back to Seattle, while they discuss this proposition, which basically turns out to be something along the lines of "let's keep fucking, but this time I won't wallop you with a belt". Although Christian's opening gambit, said with an entirely straight face and without a hint of humour (because it's Christian and he's precisely zero craic) is:

"Do you want a regular vanilla relationship with no kinky fuckery at all?"

Imagine saying that and being dead serious. Imagine. Kinky fuckery, like. State of him.

They agree to do away with all the rules and punishments, but Christian still doesn't want to be touched because of his childhood, crack whore mother, etc etc, whatever. He actually calls his mother "the crack whore" in that conversation, because the writing in this is just so awesome. Also, he reveals that his mother killed herself and it took four days for her body and baby Christian to be discovered.

All that takes three pages of outrageously boring dialogue, with a few nonsensical Anastasia classics thrown in, such as:


On a completely unrelated note, MAGNITUDE IS THE KID WHO PLAYED LEE JORDAN IN THE HARRY POTTER FILMS. I discovered this fact about a month ago and still can't believe it.

"I stare at him, stunned, with no thoughts in my head at all - like a computer crash."

No thoughts in her head at all apart from the computer crash one, which isn't anything like what a computer crash actually is.

Christian drops Ana off at her place and gives her a big gift-wrapped box and says he wants to see her the following night.

“My boss wants me to go for a drink with him tomorrow.”
Christian’s face hardens. “Does he, now?” His voice is laced with latent menace.
“To celebrate my first week,” I add quickly.


He agrees to collect her after her work drinks, Ana goes inside and opens the box to find the MacBook and Blackberry she had previously given back, along with a new iPad. See, latent menace is no big deal when it's swiftly followed by expensive gifts! Yaay! Also, the iPad has a playlist of songs that Christian put on it, to tell Ana how he feeeels because he has the emotional capabilities of a grumpy teenager.

The next day after work, Ana is heading for the bar across the road where everyone from the office is having a drink. Before that however, there's an infuriating amount of emails between her and Christian, many of which are only one sentence long, so I find myself hissing Have you cunts ever heard of texting? at the page.

Ana eventually leaves the office, only to be approached by a pale, dishevelled girl who looks a bit like her and knows her name. Her clothes are too big for her, she's got a manky bloodied bandage around one wrist and sadly says things like "What do you have that I don’t?" before wandering away.

"My subconscious rears her ugly head and hisses at me - She has something to do with Christian."

Ah, subconscious. Good of you to join us. Also, thank you Captain Obvious. She may as well have had TROUBLED FORMER SUB stamped on her forehead.

Ana gets to the bar, a bit shaken, has a few beers with her colleagues and proceeds to forget about the whole thing. Even though any normal person would be like "The weirdest thing just happened!" to the first person they'd meet. She gets talking to Claire, the receptionist and because Ana is just plain rude despite her innocent virgin act, starts to absent-mindedly wonder how Kate is doing on holiday, instead of listening to what Claire is saying. Thinking of Kate then reminds her:

Oh, and Ethan her brother will be back next Tuesday, and he’ll be staying in our apartment. I can’t imagine Christian is going to be happy about that.

OH HAI RED FLAG. For God's sake, it's none of Christian's business who Kate has over to HER APARTMENT, just because Ana happens to be sponging off her, rent free. And seriously, if your stupid boyfriend is going to freak out every time you interact with a man you're not related to, then it might be time to cut your losses and, as I've previously stated, RUN THE FUCK AWAY.

Anyway, Ana ends up chatting to Jack, her boss, (UH OH, UNSANCTIONED CONVERSATION WITH A MAN WHO HAS A PENIS) and when he asks her if she has any plans for the weekend, Christian magically appears and drapes his arm around her shoulder "in a seemingly casual display of affection - but I know differently. He is staking a claim, and on this occasion, it’s very welcome." OH PHEW, CRISIS AVERTED.

So he's meeting Ana's boss for the first time and instead of introducing himself and shaking his hand like a normal human, he wordlessly drapes himself all over his girlfriend, kisses her and "stares at Jack, his expression impassive." Then when Ana does the introductions, Christian goes “I’m the boyfriend.” Dude. Calm the fuck down. He's genuinely one step away from peeing in a circle all around Ana.

They leave and head to Ana's apartment, and Christian gives her a "scorching, panty-combusting look", which sounds downright painful. On the way there, Christian starts asking if Jack Hyde is good at his job and that he'd better stay away from Ana or "he’ll find himself on his ass on the sidewalk." Ana's all like "Eh, he hasn't done anything and you don't have that kind of power."

Christian gives me his enigmatic smile.
“You’re buying the company,” I whisper in horror.


For once in her life, Ana actually has an appropriate reaction to something and is furious with him. He goes on about how he wanted to get into publishing anyway and SIP is a profitable company blah blah blah, it's clearly bollocks though, not least because his first explanation was “Because I can, Anastasia. I need you safe.” CHRIST ON A TRAMPOLINE. THE FURTHER SHE GETS AWAY FROM YOU, THE SAFER SHE IS. To her credit, she calls him an arse, although it's a wildly unlikely thing for an American to say, so well done there EL James. However, they both end up laughing, because his frightening need to control everything in Ana's life is actually hilarious, I suppose.

“Just because I have a stupid damn grin on my face doesn’t mean I’m not mad as hell at you,” I mutter breathlessly, trying to suppress my high-school-cheerleader giggling. Though I was never cheerleader - the bitter thought crosses my mind.

Really. Even with your sparkling personality. Quelle sur-fucking-prise. And surely right now you should be a little more concerned with the fact that your boyfriend is A TERRIFYING STALKER.

They get into the house and there's so much goddamn tedious conversation I can hardly stand it. He does his usual What's Ana Eaten Today? segment and when she says she hasn't eaten since lunchtime, he gets all frowny-faced, particularly when she says they'll have to go to the shop for food as there's nothing in the house and I keep thinking "Please just get a fucking takeaway and spare me a scene where you two insufferable titwipes go food shopping together."

“When was the last time you were in a supermarket?”
Christian looks out of place, but he follows me dutifully, holding a shopping basket.


Thankfully it's quick, but also completely pointless and doesn't actually move the plot along in any way, shape or form. They get back to the apartment, Ana gets started on a stir-fry and Christian says he wants to help.

I place a chopping board and some red peppers in front of him. He stares down at them in confusion.
“You’ve never chopped a vegetable?”

Oh my fucking god. CONFUSED BY A VEGETABLE. Good luck making that sexy, Jamie Dornan.

Anyway, Ana has come up with a dastardly plan to drive him wild and makes sure to brush off him constantly while moving around the kitchen. Her plan works and Christian is overcome with desire:

“I think we’ll eat later,” he says. “Put the chicken in the fridge.”
(?) and only he can make it sound hot, really hot.

Wow, "put the chicken in the fridge"? Talk dirty to me Christian. "I've finished peeling those spuds." OOHHHH. "Is there any ketchup in the press?" SOOOO SEXYYYY. Tools.

He carries her to the bedroom and says that she has to tell him exactly what she wants.

“Undress me.” I am panting already.
“Good girl,” he murmurs.

And my face does this:

Then follows an excruciating sex scene, where Ana has to repeatedly tell us how hot the entire thing is and there are terrible parts like "he then reaches down to his discarded jeans, and like a good boy scout, produces a foil packet." What the hell are boy scouts getting up to these days?

Also, while Ana is mid-blowjob, she thinks to herself "I feel like Aphrodite".

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Fifty Shades of Tedious Fuckery 2 (Vol. 1)

Alright then!

I'm going to try to post one of these a week and hopefully it won't take until this time next year. So here's Fifty Shades Darker, aka Fifty Shades of Tedious Fuckery 2, Volume One.

Let's go!

We begin with a short prologue from the immediately grating perspective of baby Christian Grey, hiding under a table while an unnamed man is shouting at and beating up his mother. Most of this prologue is taken up by the words “You are one fucked-up bitch” as the phrase is repeated six times in a row for no reason other than to fill up the word count, I suppose. Welcome back to Terrible Writing Town, kids! Haven’t you missed it?

The man turns on baby Christian Grey, at which point adult Christian wakes up with a start, for ‘twas all a dream and I guess we’re supposed to feel bad for him and his unpleasant childhood, which is nigh on impossible given what an irredeemable asshole we know him to be.

But back to sad-sack protagonist Anastasia Steele, who is balls-deep in misery since breaking up with Christian at the end of the last book, which you would have to have read before this as there’s absolutely no indication for the uninitiated as to what the fuck is going on.

Ana has started a new job at a publishing company and OF COURSE her new boss wants to bone her because every male character in this series immediately wants to have sex with Ana, despite her being completely devoid of personality.

After her first day at the office, she comes home to an empty flat as Kate is away on holiday and so she stares at a brick wall for the evening. Seriously. Then a delivery of two dozen white roses arrives with a note from Christian, congratulating her on her first day of work. A perfectly normal thing to do once you've broken up with someone, yes?

"Dutifully, I make my way into the kitchen to hunt down a vase."

Dutifully. Because even inanimate flowers can boss Ana around.

Get us some water, bitch.

Also, Ana hasn't eaten in FIVE DAYS apparently because she's SO SAD, which just seems like such utter bollocks. I just had my lunch and I'm hungry again.

Then, at work, an email from Christian arrives (he's tracked down her work email address, but this doesn't bother Ana in the slightest) and OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABOUT ALL THE PAINFUL EMAIL EXCHANGES. From, Subject, Date, Time and To ARE NOT NECESSARY EVERY FUCKING TIME.

Anyway, Christian is asking whether Ana wants a lift to José's art show opening the following night back in Portland and because she's never heard of public transport, she says yes. This takes six emails, with either "Christian Grey, CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc." or "Anastasia Steele, Assistant to Jack Hyde, Commissioning Editor, SIP" at the end of every one, because email signatures must be somehow integral to plot development.

So Ana borrows Kate's plum dress and black boots because she still doesn't own any goddamn clothes of her own, although "The dress is looser on me than it was, but I pretend not to notice."

Who is she pretending to, exactly? No one has pointed it out, she's narrating this to herself, so she HAS noticed and is trying to convince herself that she hasn't? That sentence makes no fucking sense and I hate it.

Before meeting Christian after work, Ana sadly checks out her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

"I am my usual pale self, dark circles round my too-large eyes."

Ugh, how awful for her, being a skinny white woman with large eyes. Gross.

She then wishes that she knew how to use make-up, before USING SOME MAKEUP and adjusts her hair "so that it hangs artfully down my back. I take a deep breath. This will have to do." Life is such a struggle and her hair only looks ARTFUL this evening. THE HUMANITY.

Christian's car is waiting for her outside, so Ana gets in.


Grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey.

Fun fact! The word grey (or gray for 'Merica spelling) is used 77 TIMES in this book. NOT INCLUDING HIS NAME. EVERYTHING IS GREY. SO SUBTLE. MUCH STORYTELLING.

So there she is, sitting in the car marvelling at his Greyness and guess what the first thing he says to her is? Go on, maybe something like "Hello!" or "It's nice to see you!" Right?




Take your "blazing" eyes and use them to set FIRE to your stupid fucking FACE.

Taylor drives them to Christian's helipad, he manages to calm the fuck down somewhat, there's a bit of general "wahh I've missed you" carry-on and as they're getting out of the car:

"He gives me a warm, avuncular smile that makes me feel safe."

Uh oh. EL James has been at the thesaurus again. Avuncular literally means LIKE AN UNCLE. So that's not creepy at all. And I know this because I bothered to LOOK IT UP. I have already done more research for this book than she has.

Christian straps her into the helicopter and apparently there's massive, throbbing sexual tension going on between them, even though the part of Ana could be perfectly played by a plank with a sad face drawn on it. They do that infuriating "Mr Grey", "Miss Steele" thing that makes me want to punch them both in the throat and there's also a bit of "Icarus being drawn to the sun" bollocks thrown in (twice in quick succession, in fact), because she only has the one goddamn simile.

As they're being driven to the gallery for José's show, Christian pulls on his cranky-pants and gets on Ana's case again.


They get to the gallery and for the entire evening, Christian refers to José as "the boy" in his conversations with Ana, which is both condescending and vaguely racist. WHAT A DREAMBOAT.

It turns out that part of José's show is a series of close-up portraits of Ana's face, which she didn't know about and really, it was kind of a dick move for José to include them without asking her first. Naturally, Christian is furious and buys all seven pictures.

"I don’t want some stranger ogling you in the privacy of their home.”

First of all, put your pants back on Christian, they're just photos of her face, it's not like she's got her tits out and secondly, isn't it just as well she doesn't have a Facebook profile so? Although considering how amazed she was to have an email account in the last book, the idea of Facebook might blow her tiny mind altogether.

Christian then laments the fact that Ana is never that relaxed and happy looking with him, (YA THINK?) so she quite rightly bats back with:



For fuck's sake Christian, she told you how she felt ALL THE TIME in the last book, and you just chose to ignore her, you ASS. Then, Ana lays out her exact feelings on the subject, how he tells her not to defy him, but says he loves her "smart mouth" and how generally confusing it is being with him. So there, that's her communicating, just like he says he wants. AND HE IMMEDIATELY CHANGES THE SUBJECT.

He then tells her to say goodbye to José so they can go get dinner, she wants to stay but he's having none of it. So instead of telling him to go fuck himself and that she'll get the bus home, she says goodbye to José, who she hugs and kisses on the cheek, seeing as he's her friend and all. However, Christian flies into a sex-rage and drags Ana out of the building, down a side alley and kisses her "violently". But it's totally hot, so no big deal, I guess.

“You. Are. Mine,” he snarls, emphasizing each word. He pushes away from me and bends, hands on his knees as if he’s run a marathon. “For the love of God, Ana.” (Kick him in the crotch and run the fuck away!)




This guy.

My blood pressure is not going to thank me for this.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Throwing Shade

I said I wouldn’t do it. The first time around it made me so angry, so irritated and generally brought about such a sense of despair for both humanity and reasonably decent sentence structure that I decided that would be the end of it.

But it’s been two years. And recently my curiosity woke up from beneath her fur-lined blanket, peered over her horn-rimmed glasses and poked me in the side, to borrow and paraphrase a fucking awful literary device familiar to many.

I read the first chapter of Fifty Shades Darker. And it was exactly as terrible as I expected. If not more so.

Weirdly, the very next day, the first trailer for the film was released. (Which I've already talked about over on And now I kinda feel compelled to point out, in detail, how outrageously stupid the second book is. It would seem that I can’t read about that particular horrible relationship without grabbing it and tearing it to pieces through the means of swearing and gifs and caps lock.

I know a lot of people are over Fifty Shades and all it entails and don’t want to hear any more about it, and I completely and entirely get that. However, I’m just doing this for my own amusement and if anyone wants to join me on this second little odyssey of anguish, then super. I’m going to try not to let it take over the entire blog (and my life) this time around, so I will hopefully have other things to talk about in between angry recap posts.

Fifty Shades of Tedious Fuckery 2: Coming soon.

And frequently. A lot like Ana Steele, really.

Wish me luck.

Thursday, August 07, 2014

That's Limerick City

Brief Exchange is back! And this time it's landed in Limerick, as part of the City of Culture shenanigans, so there are lovely weird posters all over the place down there, including mine!

This time around, the brief I got was:

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas Escher, Duchamp and Dali were pioneers in the art of visual manipulation. They each, using their own unique methods, mastered pieces which created illusions and took the viewer's eyes on a journey; forcing a double take. Contemporary artists, too, are digitally creating illusions which transform standard images into entertaining conundrums through a simple trick of the viewer's brain. You are invited to create a little visual trickery of your very own. Whether it's a painting or photograph that looks too surreal to be reality, or a simple graphic with a hidden image, your challenge is to design a poster which changes the familiar and causes the viewer to look twice.

Hoo boy.

I was stumped for ages and then ran off on holidays for two weeks, only to arrive back with six days to the deadline and STILL no idea what to do. However, our last day of holidays was spent in Disneyland (SUPERAMAZINGFUN), so I was on a bit of a Disney buzz when I got home and decided I wanted to do something princess-related.

The whole visual trickery thing was proving to be a difficult box to tick though and I also wanted there to be some kind of creepy element to it, because it's me. In fact, this is actually the first Brief Exchange poster I've done that doesn't have a zombie in it. I eventually came up with an idea that I was happy with, so here it is:

While I was putting it together I wasn't really sure if the underground part worked, as all I could see was the giant insect monster, but the Bear assured me that it does also look like a cave full of bunnies, like it's meant to.

However, my poster was almost immediately ripped by a passer-by (it's being replaced though - yay!) and I've decided that someone tried to steal it, rather than it being wanton destruction, so I'm taking as a big compliment from Limerick. Thanks, lads! They really went to town on it, actually.

The posters are all over Limerick city and on the Brief Exchange site, along with a map showing each one's location. There's some really brilliant design in this show, so do take a look.

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Quelque Chose #26

You guys. I know I've been woefully remiss lately in terms of posting anything. At the end of June I ran off to LA and Vegas for a super amazing holiday, had tons of fun and then came back and had a HAPE of work to do, with a bit more work on the side. But I'm here now! And I have PLANS. PLANS, I TELL YOU.

But for the moment, join me in admiring this picture of a little known 1950s pin-up girl called Hilda, created by artist Duane Bryers and one of the only plus-size pin-ups to appear on American calendars.

So gorgeous!

More here.