Inside No. 9 S6E2: Simon Says
Can I just say one thing? God, I am so glad that we’re finally culturally ready to start roasting the utter fuck out of Game of Thrones again.
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The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House
May 12, 2021
Why I Won’t Shut Up About Mental Health
You know, back when this blog first started, it was a quaint little place, wasn’t it? Moaning about TV shows, books, the occasional Deadpool movie. And since I’ve started it (nine years ago this year, somehow), I’ve changed so much of the direction of the content here – and a lot of it now revolves around mental health and mental illness.
Read the rest of this entry »May 1, 2021
Toxic Masculinity, Femicide, and the Cowardly Abuser
“It is cowardice to hit a woman,” reads one of the ten commandents vs violence against women, as released by the administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. These rules, released last year after a series of protests that followed the brutal murder of Ingrid Escamilla in Ciudad Juarez, followed a sharp rise in femicides (the murder of a woman primarily driven by her gender) in Mexico – of nearly 137% percent in the few years leading up to this particular murder. Nearly 1,000 women were murdered in cases classified as femicide in Mexico last year; seems like calling the people who did it cowards didn’t do much to change things.
Read the rest of this entry »April 29, 2021
Stop Skipping Nine, You Fools
I do not wish to alarm thee, dear and darling readers, but I have some news that you may find distressing. Are you sitting down? If you’re not, do you read this blog on the rowing machine or something? Power walking? I have questions. Anyway: let me get right to the point. Some people, I have discovered, have decided that, in order to watch the rebooted seasons of Doctor Who, that a new viewer may skip the first season and jump straight into the David Tennant era with nary the merest thought of Christopher Eccleston’s run.
Read the rest of this entry »April 23, 2021
Sex and the City S1E3/4: Bay of Married Pigs/Valley of the Twenty-Something Guys
Look, there’s one thing that I need to get out of the way right upfront here, and that’s this: the wrap-up to this week’s first episode, Bay of Married Pigs, involves Carrie comparing the divide between married and unmarried people to the ongoing Troubles in Northern Ireland. You know, The Troubles: the Northern Irish Conflict, the thirty-year conflict that left more than three thousand people dead and more than a hundred thousand injured, a conflict that would not even begin to be considered over till the Good Friday Agreement, which happened the year that this episode came out. What kind of deranged, America-centric, insultingly minimizing bullshit is this? I can honestly say that I rewound the episode, certain that I had misheard this particular I-couldn’t-help-but-wonder, but no, there it is: Carrie’s dating troubles are comparable to the actual Troubles, apparently. There’s hyperbole for effect, and then there’s straight-up jaw-dropping ignoramity. I couldn’t help but wonder: what the fuck?
Read the rest of this entry »April 19, 2021
Too Close and the Iceberg of Mental Illness in the Media
When it comes to psychosis, and mental illness in general, TV has one thing to say – and that’s go big, or go home.
Read the rest of this entry »April 17, 2021
Book Review: Right Guy, Wrong Time by Louise MacGregor
Thanks for this awesome review of my latest novel!
Title: Right Guy, Wrong Time: A #MeToo Love Story
Author: Louise MacGregor
Publisher: Frayed Edge Press
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Book format: Digital pre-release proof
Sweet Strawberries: 
Description: Edie has what seems like an almost-perfect life: awesome friends, a comfortable apartment she shares with the world’s greatest cat, and a dream job as a record label talent scout. But all is not what it seems. Conflicts are heating up in her life and at work, and things take a serious turn for the worse when she is raped while on a date. Navigating pleasure, work, friends, and her forever-changed mental state after her assault is hard enough. But when the perfect guy turns up at the worst possible time, Edie has to figure out what romance and sex mean to her in the aftermath of rape. This offbeat feminist romance moves beyond “girl meets guy,” dealing empathetically with sexual dysfunction, the…
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April 8, 2021
Jericho S1E21/22: Coalition of the Willing/Why We Fight
Well, here we are, Jerichodes, at the end of my first-season recaps! It’s been such fun having the chance to look back over this season as a whole with you all, so thank you for giving me the space to do this (and reading/watching along with me!).
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The Cutprice Guignol 