More Randomosity

I really miss this show. 

You may or may not know that USPS has increased their shipping prices from January 27, and in the case of international shipping, it’s a massive increase – in some cases almost double. This is a bad, bad thing for those of us who don’t live in the US but buy the majority of our online purchases from there. It’s also a bad, bad thing for little guys on places like Etsy who do a lot of their business internationally (such as indie perfumeries, as we don’t have much of that available to us here), because a lot of us will have to severely limit our purchasing from now on. In short – it’s sucktacular all round.  BOOURNS!

Speaking of perfume, I learned something interesting the other day. Apparently grapeseed oil only has a shelf life of 6-9 months, so beware of buying perfumes that use it as a carrier. Unless you’re someone who is going to use it up in that amount of time, you might find they go off. I have never used a perfume in that time in my life, so it’s certainly something I’ll be watching out for.

And speaking of using makeup (do you like my smooth segueways there?) I have recently had discussions with a few people (Natalie and Jacquie to name two) about our habit of buying beautiful products that we are coveting, and then either not wanting to use them because we don’t want to upset the beauty of it, or saving it for ‘best’ and only using it a couple of times a year. When you think about it, that’s insane. I mean, if you own, say, two lipsticks and you wear one every day and save the other one for special occasions like weddings and parties, then fine. You have a case. But if you’re like us and you have lipsticks in the dozens and you’re saving some of them for special occasions, you’re just wasting all the money you spent to have this beautiful product in the first place. So whether it’s lipsticks, a gorgeous eyeshadow palette, or a bottle of perfume, if you love it, USE IT. Enjoy it and make every day a ‘special occasion’. Eventually whatever it is will go off, and if you’ve barely touched it, then what was the point? So that’s my goal for this year – use all those things I put aside as special. If I use them up and I can’t get another exactly the same, at least I will have had the enjoyment of it while it lasted.

Speaking of goals for this year (oh wow – I’m so good at this), another one of mine is to learn to wear necklaces. As a young’un I always wore necklaces of one kind or another, but as I’ve gotten older (and let’s be real, porkier), I’ve found that I hate wearing anything around my neck – it just feels uncomfortable. I carry my work pass around in my hand because I hate the lanyard thing it hangs from. But I love the look of necklaces, and I own a few of them, so I want to relearn to love wearing them.

I had mentioned I was doing a No Buy for January, and that was going pretty well until I found out about the international shipping increases, at which point I decided to suspend the No Buy and get all the stuff I could manage from my wishlists while I could for a reasonable shipping cost. The No Buy is back on from now until my birthday in May. As a consequence I have  A LOT of little packages on the way to me:

Twyla Perfumes (20% off – how could I not?)

Possets Perfumes

Alchemic Muse

Midnight Gypsy

Solstice Scents

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Various Etsy purchases such as earrings, a necklace, a lip scrub , posters for Noodles and a purse for my mum.

I love acapella. I know it’s cheesy but I really admire people who can do talented things like that. I especially like Matthias Harris and Mike Tompkins.

While you’re checking them out on YouTube, you should also watch this 10 minute documentary about a group of people with a lot of time on their hands at work, who spent it perfecting their strategy in the event of a zombie apocalypse. There are a couple of questionable comments about women, but consider the source, let it slide and enjoy the show. It’s pretty good. 

And finally, a slight whinge – I hate it when people have blogs with no ‘follow’ button on them. If it’s not a private blog, why would you make it difficult for people to follow (and bloglovin’ doesn’t count because that sucks)? Also, captcha on comments – I need new glasses, so trying to read captcha words is REALLY hard. I am sure that 99% of people don’t even realise when they have it on there, so it should be something that you have to opt in to rather than opt out of. Get on to that, Blogger!

Okay, I’m done now. 

Randomosity

One of my favourite pictures of Noodles, from about 10 years ago. 

1. 2012 was an awful year for respect towards women, in so much as there was very little of it. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons - I'll just get angry all over again, and you all know them anyway. Suffice to say I will not be shedding a tear if Alan Jones finally shuffles off this mortal coil in 2013. What I'd love to see this year is more positive support, both from men and from each other. Let's stop bagging out women who don't fit the Hollywood norm of 'beauty' and yet still have the nerve to be on our screens. Let's stop blaming women who are attacked for being out and about in the first place. Let's stop making ourselves miserable and boring everyone else shitless with our diet obsessions. Let's stop judging mothers for not meeting whatever our own lofty standards of perfection are. Starving a child = abuse. Formula feeding =/= abuse. And so on. In short, let's just be nice.

2. I am really enjoying my perfume a day reviews. I've found a handful of perfume oil fans who also have blogs I'm enjoying reading, such as La Domna, Liber Vix, Brightest Star of All, and Iris Handmade Soaps, and it's so nice to be back into one of my longstanding hobbies again. My only problem is that my wishlist won't stop growing.

3. TV shows I'm hanging out for the return of this year:

• Breaking Bad (of course)
• Mad Men 
• Game of Thrones 
• The Walking Dead. 

      TV shows I've well and truly given up on in 2012 and no longer care about:

• Grimm 
• Once Upon A Time 
• Glee (ugh) 
• How I Met Your Mother.

4. I'm on holiday at the moment and I've been home for a week. I had plans to get up early every morning and do all sorts of useful things. Very little of that has happened. I have another week off, so maybe I can get started on all that tomorrow...


5. I'm finding myself increasingly distracted by overly botoxed and derma-filled faces on TV these days. Both men and women from about 26 onward have these ridiculously smooth, unlined, expressionless foreheads and frankly, it's just creepy. If you're in your 40s, it is OKAY to look like you're in your 40s. Check out Connie Britton. She looks like a 40-something woman, but she's still gorgeous.

6. Don't forget to check out Twyla's generous 20% off for readers of this blog! The code is PRISSYPERFUME and it will run until 12 Feb.

You Like Different Things From Me? You Suck!

 

Michelle wrote a post the other say having a bit of a rant about judgements from people when you tell them you're a beauty blogger. I love a good rant, and she has a valid point (though speaking personally I have to admit I detest the term 'beauty blogger' and never, ever use it to refer to myself). If I'm ever in a position of having to explain this blogging thing, the conversation is usually something like:

"You have a blog? What's it about?" 

"Oh, you know... makeup and shit. Nothing you'd be interested in..."  and trailing away into an embarrassed mumble. 

I don't deliberately keep it a secret, but I don't go out of my way to tell people either. On the few occasions I have, I've regretted it, because the other person has either been completely disinterested and doesn't even have the manners to say, "Oh, how nice for you!" or words to that effect, or they look at me like I'm crazy, which I think is what Michelle is complaining about, and (I would venture to guess) exactly what most of the people reading this have experienced. I feel like I'm being looked down on for what I choose to spend my money on.
 
However, I've noticed lately that there's a bit of an all-round trend toward intolerance of other people's hobbies, regardless of what they are (and full disclosure, I side-eyed Harriet Archer when she delved into scrapbooking). I attend regular work-related meetings with a woman who prides herself on not owning a TV, not having internet, and not having the vaguest idea of anything related to pop culture. In the first few minutes when everyone is shooting the breeze waiting for the stragglers to turn up, conversation inevitably turns to trivial things like television, especially if there's some big thing that everyone's watching (more likely to be Masterchef than Game of Thrones with this crowd). This woman literally gets angered by people talking about these sorts of things, because she has no interest and can't relate to any of it. (I have no interest in Masterchef either, but I just tune out of the conversation.) Yet, at the end of the meetings when the discussion turns to 'what's everyone doing on the weekend', she will happily hold forth for 10 minutes about her weird, obscure hobbies that only about 5 people in the entire world have even the most passing interest in. She likes some odd stuff, and if that makes her happy, good on her. If I have to sit there and listen to her bang on about it, I'm not that thrilled, but I'm polite and I understand that we live in a society (as a wise man once said), and these are the things one does when one is forced to interact with people they wouldn't normally cross paths with. On the other hand, she seems to be insulted if anyone dares to spend a minute or so talking about something she doesn't like, and makes it quite clear that she disapproves.
 
I was listening to a podcast yesterday where two guys were talking about a segment on one of those chat shows (The View, The Talk, whatevs) in which several older women and a middle-aged guy were sitting around talking about how men over 30 playing video games were weird. Again, this is the same sort of thing - people who don't have any interest in, or understanding of, video games looking down their noses at people who do enjoy them. These guys are avid gamers and devote a lot of their podcast to the discussion of various game-oriented topics, and one of them is in his mid-30s while the other is only a few years younger. Not surprisingly, they took great offence to a bunch of non-gamers judging them, and as they pointed out, it's no more weird than men in their 30s seeing a couple of movies a week, or watching a few hours of TV, or going to watch a football game.
 
I think it's human nature to judge other people and feel superior to them, and in most cases we can only do that by picking at trivial things like what hobbies they enjoy. I know I'm guilty of it (adults reading Harry Potter, people who like car races, the above-mentioned scrapbookers), but really - if they're not doing any harm, what business is it of mine how anyone else chooses to entertain themselves and spend their money?
 
Challenge: think about the people you judge who are enjoying totally harmless activities that have no effect on you, and make an effort to change that thinking. You'll be a better person for it.