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Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Academy Awards.
2007-02-27 10:24:01
I wish they'd shut up on the news about tonight's Oscars.I've heard so much about them I'm starting to actually care :-S---Technorati tags: oscars; incurable_hippie.
More About: Awards , Academy , Academy Awards , War , Academy Award

In Bits. That's the post (and me).
2007-02-24 10:22:02
So, it's been a while. It's been an awful time in my real life and struggle has been the defining word of the last few weeks. I've wanted to post here but have been in that particular state of mind where nothing I could ever say was worth the effort, and certainly I shouldn't imagine that others would want to read it. I'm here, mainly referencing others' stuff, of which there are some really amazing sights and sites.I'm trying to be well. I'm trying to feel ok. I'm trying to 'get it together'. I'm trying. And if you say 'yes, very trying' I will probably cry.Anyway, on to the more interesting bits of this post...Excitement of the week ---> hippie blog indirectly linked to from Time Magazine - you can read the article in question here: A Time Limit on Rape.Take action!Power to the Patients, see also Patient OpinionFreebies:Don't know how long it will be up there, but for now you can download 10 mp3s of mandarin lessons. Cool!Free Antique ClipartBig 'YOU TOTALLY MISSED...
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Guardian Toon...
2007-02-10 10:11:02
by Steve Bell at the Guard ian .---Technorati tags: guardian; cartoon; incurable_hippie; UK Politics.
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How to *really* prevent rape.
2007-02-05 10:07:02
A while ago, those of us sick of being sent emails about how to not be raped (no ponytails, girls!), posted and emailed a lot about those awful 'rape prevention advice' emails which go round. My response at the time is here.I was very glad to be sent a link to the following article today. We need more of this stuff.One violent crime and the female victim by Emily Maguire.If you're a woman, chances are you've received at least one version of the "how to not get raped" email. Even if you haven't, you will be familiar with the contents, because it's the same stuff you read in the newspaper whenever there's a known sex-attacker on the loose. It's the same stuff the women's magazines publish under headings like "How to stay safe".Again and again, women are told that we can avoid rape if we don't go out alone, don't get drunk, carry our car keys as a weapon, take self-defence classes, don't dress revealingly, don't talk to strangers, and on and on. We get it. We live it. And ...
More About: Event , How To , Real , Rape , Vent

To Shave or Not To Shave.
2007-02-04 10:06:02
Shazia Mirza, a comedian who has long made me giggle, was on Woman's Hour yesterday, talking about her decision to stop removing her body hair. You can listen to the interview here for a few more days at least.She is not doing this for overtly feminist reasons, she is tired of all the time it takes to maintain unnaturally hair-free legs, underarms, and anywhere else. Not to mention the money - the amount she said she had previously spent on all this was quite obscene!One of the weirdest arguments against women having body hair is that it is 'not natural' and 'not feminine'. Well, it *is* natural - it's the shaving and waxing and bleaching and dissolving that adds the somewhat unnatural element to things. Similarly as to whether it's 'feminine' or not (whatever that means anyway), if feminine means how women are supposed to be, then, well, read the previous sentence again.I stopped shaving various bodily areas some years ago. Partly for 'raar' feminist reasons, partly beca...
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Things You Need to See.
2007-02-01 10:04:02
From my email:* Petition to allow people on psychiatric wards to smoke.* 17th May - International Day Against HomophobiaInternational Day Against HomophobiaMAKE MAY 17 2007 A DAY TO REMEMBER.UK campaigners are gearing up for the 3rd International Day AgainstHomophobia on May 17th. Last year there were over 40 events in the UKto mark the day in 1990 when the World Health Organisation removed?homosexuality? from its list of mental disorders. Internationally, 50countries are now involved in the campaign for LGBT rights to berecognised as human rights across the globe. IDAHO organisers areasking all those who support the campaign to organise events on andaround May 17th.One of the themes of this year?s campaign is ?No to homophobia-yes toeducation?. Students at the University of the Arts in London will bedesigning two sets of posters that focus on challenging homophobia,and celebrating LGBT people, both contemporary and figures fromhistory. The four winning posters will be displayed at ...
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Movement Photography Assignment.
2007-01-25 22:00:05
Passing TrafficZooming to HospitalGhostly PeopleMorris DancersFire SpinningSeagull Takes FlightThe six photos I submitted for my Motion Photo graphy college assignment.---Technorati tags: photography; motion photography; incurable_hippie; movement.
More About: Photography , Men , Sign , Move

Gabcast! incurable hippie's musings and rants #3 ...
2007-01-25 22:00:05
Gabcast! incurable hippie's musings and rants #3---Technorati tags: audio; audio blogging; incurable_hippie; rambling.
More About: Rants , Musings , Rant , Cast , Sing

Blog For Choice Day.
2007-01-22 21:58:02
Today is Blog for Choi ce Day, as organised by Bush v. Choice annually. This year they want bloggers to post on this day, telling readers why we are pro-choice.I wasn't always. A very Catholic upbringing and much emotional blackmail sucked me into the belief that abortion was very, very wrong. It was so drilled into my head that abortion kills babies that how could I *not* be against it? Who wouldn't oppose killing babies?!In school they showed us a film where we saw abortions taking place, we saw the 'products of conception' (in Catholic-ese, the unborn baby) in bin liners, and we were told and showed the full goryness of terminations.Strangely though, watching that awful film was where I first began to question my 'pro-life' beliefs. I wondered why the filmmakers had to show us those things, to prove their point. Was argument and discussion not enough? Sure, there was blood and gore, but opposing abortion on the basis of it being gory and making you feel a bit squeamish would...
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Night Photography
2007-01-03 21:46:06
The six photographs I submitted for the 'night photography' assignment in my course.====night photography; photos; photography; incurable hippie.
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Result!
2006-12-28 09:42:01
I emailed The World Tonight:I listened to your programme yesterday evening in frustration. Please stop referring to the women killed in Ipswich and Suffolk as 'girls'. I presume this is because they are in prostitution but there is no need for this patronising and offensive term. These are not children, they are women. Please call them that..They replied:Dear Ms Willitts, Thank you for your email and your interest in The World Tonight. There has been a lot of discussion among both our editorial teams and our audiences about the use of language in relation to the murder victims in Ipswich. As a whole, BBC News decided they should be described as 'women' on first reference and where relevant we also say they worked as 'prostitutes' or were 'sex workers'. 'Girls' is clearly inappropriate and we have reminded reporters and presenters to avoid this description when they have done so. Thank you again for your email and your interest in The World Tonight. Yours sincerely, Alista...
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Result!
2006-12-28 09:42:01
I emailed The World Tonight:I listened to your programme yesterday evening in frustration. Please stop referring to the women killed in Ipswich and Suffolk as 'girls'. I presume this is because they are in prostitution but there is no need for this patronising and offensive term. These are not children, they are women. Please call them that..They replied:Dear Ms Willitts, Thank you for your email and your interest in The World Tonight. There has been a lot of discussion among both our editorial teams and our audiences about the use of language in relation to the murder victims in Ipswich. As a whole, BBC News decided they should be described as 'women' on first reference and where relevant we also say they worked as 'prostitutes' or were 'sex workers'. 'Girls' is clearly inappropriate and we have reminded reporters and presenters to avoid this description when they have done so. Thank you again for your email and your interest in The World Tonight. Yours sincerely, Alista...
More About: Result

A few days' catch-up.
2006-12-25 09:40:02
You may be able to download most of the Christmas CD I made for last year. It may equally not work, I've no idea. Do let me know.I've had a stressed and not entirely pleasant week, but with a few high points. Including bumping into, and hearing from, several people who I thought were totally lost from my life years ago. So, so good.Things to read:Maggie O'Kane investigates violence against prostitutes - while I don't agree necessarily with her conclusions, she tells us some useful and disturbing facts, figures and information.Marksman called in to kill Kingston's Pigeons - not for the article itself (fascinating though it is), but for the most fabulous string of comments below. Love it.Ministers deny it, but the truth is out there my Mary O'Hara, about the cuts to mental health services, and how they have been disproportionately affected.Things to see:150 worst album covers, discovered thanks to slow afternoon.Special mention to Heino, there.The 29th Carnival of Feminists - ma...
More About: Cat , Days , Catch

Nearest Book Meme
2006-12-25 09:40:02
I was tagged by v at reSISTERance:apparently this works by:1. Get the nearest book in your reach and turn to page 123.2. Go to the fifth sentence of that page.3. Copy the next three sentences, then tag three people.He spent his days making me tapes and writing love letters. He spent the family's money developing the photographs we had taken and telephoning England long-distance. At the airport, his big hands pressed against the glass.from Strangeland by Tracey EminI tag: McBeth, Anne and Yehovah Yireh.---Technorati tags: book meme; tracey emin; incurable_hippie; books; memes.
More About: Meme , Book , Near , Rest , Book M

Who are the mad ones?
2006-12-18 21:36:03
So, the news is that £7 million is going to be cut from the budgets of mental health services in Sheffield. To 'balance the books', of course.Losing 1/4 of the inpatient beds doesn't sound like a good plan to me. I intend to never be an inpatient on a psychiatric ward again, and I wouldn't wish it on others, but the wards are always chock full and people on 'leave' come back to the ward to find their bed has gone to someone else. Admission over. People who may want or need to be on a ward already can't always get a bed. And by my calculations, a quarter of the beds means one of the four acute wards. Closing one ward within two years, when all four are virtually always overfull, is ridiculous.And, as if it wasn't ridiculous enough, Proposals include reducing the number of hospital beds for mental health patients by a quarter, whilst at the same time delaying investment in community-based services intended to avoid expensive treatments such as hospital admissions.So, get rid o...

You Can Get Anything on Ebay.
2006-12-15 09:33:01
I had to take a screen shot of hippie blog when I saw this in my right side column. How fucked up is that?! I'm not a huge fan of ads on my blog but for various reasons they're there at the mo. Clicks get me minute amounts of pennies. Kind of. But buying battered women on ebay? Fuck.---Technorati tags: screen shot; incurable_hippie.
More About: Ebay , Thing , Anything

Googlebomb Gains?
2006-12-13 21:31:02
Maybe this googlebomb business works. Two of my most recent referrers were the first pages of search engine results for Britney Spears crotch shot:and www.free extreme porn:You'll notice on the second one that we've got an anti-porn essay in the top ten results as well. Shame that in between hippie blog at #8 and the essay at #10 there's a forum for incest porn.The link there is of course to my post, not the fucked-up forum. As many links to the porn post as possible will only help. If you want to see, or join in the porn googlebomb, do it here!Enough links already?!---Technorati tags: free porn; porn; incurable_hippie; pornography; anti-porn; Britney; googlebomb; porn googlebomb; feminism.
More About: Google , Bomb , Googl

Terror on our streets
2006-12-13 15:30:01
From The GuardianThe Ipswich murders have raised disturbing parallels with the Yorkshire Ripper case, writes Julie Bindel Wednesday December 13, 2006The GuardianThe news barely registered at first - just a passing story in a local newspaper. The naked body of a woman had been found in a brook in Ipswich, Suffolk, on December 2. Her name was Gemma Adams. She was 25. She had been working as a street prostitute. Few seem to have been too worried by this story - apart from those who loved Adams, of course, and the other women left working on the cold Ipswich streets. Many people still wrongly believe, just as they did during the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe (the so-called Yorkshire Ripper) that men who harm and kill women in prostitution are no danger to "respectable women". The reasoning goes that these killers simply have a pathological hatred for prostitutes, despite the overwhelming evidence that they have a pathological hatred for women in general.It wasn't until it emerged that a fr...
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Ipswich.
2006-12-12 21:28:01
Two more women have been found dead in Ipswich. This is a fucking emergency.They haven't confirmed yet that it is the two prostituted women who were reported missing, but it is looking likely.Where are we? What can we do?And why are the police telling women not to go out at night. Let's actually put a curfew on men going out at night. Any men out in the dark are suspected of wrongdoing - for a while at least - NOT any women out at night are asking for trouble.If men can't be trusted to not be mass murderers, let's keep *them* inside, not us.Angry? Yes.(yesterday's post).Murder Police Find Two More Dead - BBCTwo more bodies have been found by police investigating the murders of three prostitutes.A woodland area around the village of Levington, near Ipswich, in Suffolk has been sealed off by officers.Police said it is likely the two bodies are those of two missing women - Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.The area is close to where the body of Anneli Alderton was found on Sunda...

Go0g1e8omb PORN.
2006-12-12 09:27:02
(NB the most important thing with these things is to reproduce them often and click the links a lot)rape pornpornpornorgasm pornpornoutdoor pornpornpornpornographypornpornpornHustle r pornviolent porncruel pornpornpornographyviolent pornpornteen pornpornstreet pornviolent pornpornpornpornpornpornporn downloadsextreme pornpussy pornpornographypornasian bridesfree porn!pornpornpussy pornpornpornographypornasian bridespornpornpornfree pornpornpornographyclick for sexpornpornographypussy picspornIf you would like to join in the googlebomb, then highlight all the red text below, click 'copy' then 'paste' into your livejournal, blog, website, or anywhere where you want to stand up for women. And divert men ;)<a href="http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/& quot;>rape porn</a><br><a href="http://feministantipornography movement.org/">porn</a>< br><a href="http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACL U/dworkin/WomanHating.html">porn& lt;/a><br...

Women On a Continuum.
2006-12-12 09:27:02
Possibly four prostituted women have been murdered in the last few days. Two women were found naked in the same stream, one woman was found in woodland a few miles away, and a fourth woman has not been seen since Saturday. from the BBC.Police have appealed to prostitutes to stay off the streets of Ipswich after three women were found dead and a fourth reported missing from the town.The naked bodies of Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol and a third woman have been found near the town in the past eight days.Suffolk Police said they were now looking for prostitute Paula Clennell, 24, last seen late on Saturday.Assistant Chief Constable Jacqui Cheer urged women, particularly in the party season, not to go out at night alone.'Come home together'In a direct appeal to prostitutes, she said: "Please stay off the streets, if you are out alone at night you are putting yourself in danger."We are coming up to the party season and up to Christmas."There will be groups of women going out and I would say ...
More About: Women , Men , Conti , Continuum

Bits and Bobs and Campaigns and Carnivals and Poles and Phot
2006-12-07 21:25:02
hippie blog has been mentioned in the 12th Carnival Against Sexual Violence. There are some amazing and inspiring links from that post which you should read. Now!Also, I want to draw your attentionto an anti-lads' mags action from Stormy. I'm definitely going to take part, not least for the sneaky photographing involved ;)From The Guardian's Northerner:A Polish restaurant in Sheffield, meanwhile, has been basking in akind of fame it could never have expected. The Polonium restauranthas been doing a roaring trade ever since it became apparent thatAlexander Litvinenko was poisoned with Polonium 210. The SheffieldStar reported the restaurant's fame in its diary column and has sincewatched the story go round the world."Polish TV and newspapers want to fly me and my wife Jolanta out therefor interviews," the owner Boguslaw Sidorowicz told the Star. "Thestory has really caught people's imagination. It's unfortunatebecause someone has died, but the story has made it a veryinteresting...
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Chesterfields for Christmas!
2006-12-04 09:22:01
See more disturbing vintage ads!---Technorati tags: vintage; vintage advertising; incurable_hippie; smoking.
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"I tend to think that if God wanted us to believe ...
2006-12-02 15:19:09
"I tend to think that if God wanted us to believe in him, he'd exist"Linda Smith.---Technorati tags: quotation; quotes; incurable_hippie; religion.
More About: Hat , Tend , Think , Want

Happy 60th Birthday
2006-12-02 15:19:09
Woman's Hour. Here's to 60 more (and a bit more politics please)...Woman's Hour is great. There are the odd, predictable, whining complaints along the line of 'Why can't we have a Man's Hour?'. Well, the other 23 hours of the day are Man's Hour, ok? Deal with it!Anyway, a good proportion of Woman's Hour listeners are reportedly men, so maybe there is some hope.---Technorati tags: woman's hour; radio 4; incurable_hippie; bbc; women.
More About: Happy , Birthday , Birth

Recipe Exchange.
2006-12-02 15:19:09
This is a recipe exchange. Here's the deal. You post a comment to this entry, with a recipe for me. Ideally something simple, cheap and very tasty. You also include your blog URL in the comment, then reproduce this text in your blog and I will reply to your post with a recipe also.Have fun, hope you get some great recipes!---Technorati tags: Recipe Exchange ; recipes; incurable_hippie.
More About: Change , Chang , Chan

A Petition For You to Sign
2006-12-02 15:19:09
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stand on his head and juggle ice-cream.Sign atures: 403If he's not going to resign, the least he can do is provide us with some entertainment.---Technorati tags: petition; anti-Blair; incurable_hippie.
More About: Petition , Petit

I'm not ok.
2006-12-02 15:19:09
The horrible realisation that in only 3 weeks time, it will be the first anniversary of my Dad's death.It's a real, physical pain in my chest and it hurts like nothing else.I read last night in a novel that the only things humans need to survive are water and hope. I think when the doctors told Dad that they couldn't make him better, his hope evaporated and that was that. I think that's why it was so much quicker than anyone had thought.I miss him always. I'm doing a photography course, using his camera. It makes me feel closer to him, but it adds to the pain when each and every week there are more things that I need to tell him. Snippets of info and tips and facts. Same with my OU short course. There's so much in there that he'd love to know. And that I can't ever tell him.I don't know how many times a day I scream inside my head, 'I want him back'. And I do. I cry so often, nearly always alone, and missing him seems to get bigger the longer it is since I saw him. I stil...

Quiet Just Now...
2006-12-02 15:19:09
My Quiet Just Now list in my blog roll to the right was getting ridiculously long. It's where I list blogs I have once read and loved, but which closed or stopped or faded or disappeared or flitted.The list will now live in this post. For the foreseeable future, links may be added again to the right side bar, to be merged into one post again later should that become necessary.But the list, up to now, is:QUIET JUST NOW le blog de Tryo A Frenchman in England Albion: mes tribulations outre-Manche Rob Manuel 1 maZine Wherever You Are mercuryfern Little Brown Dress Journal Got Scurvy? The Black Dove amhainn The Blackboard Jungle Demob Happy Teacher Nahdendee The Girl Behind Election 2005 blog from the Guardian 2Queens Just Zip It The Lefty Directory M.J.'s Blagh Blagh Blagh My Karma Just Ran Over Your Dogma Don't Bomb Us - a blog by Al Jazeera staffers Dolly Dimple 3 Dolly Dimple 2 Blog...

Alas, a Bastard.
2006-12-02 15:19:09
So alas, a blog (I won't do him the dignity of providing a link), a supposedly pro-feminist male, has sold out to pornographers. Great.See Fuckery and Betrayal, Alas, a sell-out, The Revolution will be Commodified, No, really, I'm a feminist, Alas, an eruption, alas, a blog, sold out to pimp my ride and many, many, many more.You probably don't want to see what he has done, but if you do an example is here. Needless to say, he has been 'de-linked' from my right sidebar. I don't want to be partial to funding any of this shit by links from hippie blog.What is it they call men who profit from women's sexual exploitation? Oh yeah, a pimp.---Technorati tags: anti-porn; angry; incurable_hippie; sell-outs.
More About: Star , Bastard