M.P. Sharma's Blog, page 23

Dear Winter,

You could have just said you weren’t a fan of my writing.

I mean, you didn’t have to inflict your rage on my poor unsuspecting (now curled up crooked) fingers so I couldn’t type.

Please just ask nicely next time before unleashing frostbite on them, I promise to relent and refrain from the act completely.

There is no such thing as a bad experience, because every...

There is no such thing as a bad experience, because every experience, whether good or bad, presents you with a potentially life altering opportunity to learn from it.

I did an Elmo this morning …

If you’re clicking here thinking double meanings, get your minds out of the gutter now! :)

This is just how I get out of bed every Friday morning, because the weekend is here baby!!! I mean, doesn’t everyone?

What’s Irresistibly Sexy in Guys for Girls?

I’ve come across innumerable blogs that meticulously list out what guys find attractive in girls but (maybe I’ve been living under a rock for some time) rarely find the opposite and I have no idea why. As a girl, I can attest to the fact that we too, shock horror, have standards on what’s a turn on and what’s a turn-off and thought I’d make a start in levelling out the playing field a little. Just a couple of points to make before I barge into my onslaught:

- I am prepared for the hate mail I may receive after this post and am adequately armoured up. I am also secretly glad that my contact details aren’t listed on here for this very reason. I’m just kidding; I’ll just choose whether I approve your horrendously wicked comments. No, I promise I’ll approve them all unless they’re downright stalker-ish, tinkering on the “I’m going to slice you open” type.

- Girls, like boys (I presume) are unique and I am in no way suggesting that the following is the norm for all of us! After discussions with my female friends and family, this is just a general consensus on what drives us stark mad, both in a good and a bad way.

1. I like lean (not anorexic, so you look like you could hold my weight if I fall on you because I tend to trip a lot), muscular (I like defined abs and biceps to hold onto, shoot me) guys. Girls’ definition of lean and muscular seems to be exactly the opposite of guys it would seem, what most of us don’t want is for guys to look like that Action Figurine that fell out of my cereal box this morning, they’re scary – even when they are pint sized. A good rule of thumb is that anything more than a six pack is a no go zone because now boys, you look like an alien to me. I have enough trouble dealing with human males (as I am sure males do with human females) and unless you can do extra-terrestrial things that are good to me, like Superman does for Lois Lane, I’m not interested.

2. If you have a girlfriend, I am not in the least bit intrigued with you. No, even if you did think you caught me going all goo-goo eyes over you and are absolutely positive you overheard me going gaga over your suave self, you hottie. Nope, not interested; if you think it’s bros before hoes and we girls don’t have a snazzy little metaphor ourselves for you cheating, lying bastards, you’ve got another thing coming. Because now I think you have issues, and I have enough issues of my own to have to deal with yours. You like me, please be single and only interested in pursuing the matter with me. I’m not asking for marriage or anything (please don’t even think this, because now I think you have stalking tendencies and I have my last copy of a restraining order with a blank space ready to ink your name on it), but I seriously don’t think I’m asking too much for you to be interested in one girl at a time, that’s just normal.

3. Let’s get one thing straight, girls can never, and I mean never ever, have too many shoes, clothes, makeup, jewellery or diamonds. And no, diamonds are not jewellery; they’re too magnificently marvellous to be clubbed in with any other inanimate objects. We’re not really that different, it’s just our tastes vary; we have to live with the fact that you can never have too many PlayStation thing-ame-jigs, cars, beer, etc. – basically, so do you.

4. Please understand that though you may say you like the “natural” look, it ain’t natural in the literal sense. The natural look often takes more work than the done up look, so please don’t think this is how we wake up every morning. Though it may surprise you, we aren’t naturally tweezed, waxed & preened, so yes, at all times, it is going to take us more than five minutes to get dressed.

5. We like guys who look like guys. I don’t know when men got it into their heads that hair is a turn-off. What’s really off-putting is when I have to double book my waxer for you too, seriously WTF?!

6. If you’re a guy, please understand that your arrogance levels don’t have to directly correlate with how good looking you are. So you’re hot, big deal! Not to burst your bubble or anything, there are quite a few of you around. Yes, your good looks will get you in, but not for long. I’m interested for a certain amount of time, and you get lucky maybe sometimes, as long as you don’t open your mouth, but this is definitely not going to be a long term thing.

7. Please guys, don’t think that point 6 means that you don’t have to take care of yourself. If I have to at least try and look good, so do you because I want to feel proud hanging on your arm when I’m out with you. The fact is that I need you to have a brain, this is not “a good to have”, this is a necessity, but come on, Darwinism applies to my gender as well. Natural selection does come into play and if you don’t turn me on at a physical level, let’s not kid ourselves – it’s just not going to happen.

8. We understand that you guys love your mama’s who love their boys and seriously, we aren’t jealous. We understand that there are things only your mama can do for you if you’re a son and truthfully we’re happy because that means we don’t have to do it for you, so no stepping on anyone’s toes here. But please understand that we love our Daddy’s just as much and if they’re a little harsh because they know what you’re thinking because they’ve been there and done that, just deal with it because we were Daddy’s little girls before we became yours.

9. I once heard someone say that when he wakes up in the morning and sees his partner lying besides him, he doesn’t exclaim “wow, what a beautiful brain you have!” Guess what? Neither do we; but I tend to understand that your looks and associated body parts are likely to wane and sag in the not too distant future, so all I have is your personality for the rest of my life (and if you’re Hindu like me, for about seven lifetimes!) so yes, I need something between your ears to retain my already short attention span.

10. Hmm, though the above is a good blueprint for me, there are some aspects of a guy’s personality that are an absolute killer. Ethics, loyalty, sensitivity, humanitarian and overall being a good human being is what bowls me over all the time, every time. If a guy is a decent person who seriously cares, and I mean actually cares for me, he could be skimpy on most of the above and I’m hooked. Contrary to popular belief,  most girls don’t need money, or jewellery, or any other materialistic lifeless object  – seriously, a stroll in the park followed by a picnic that has nothing more than a couple of slices of bread and butter with water for our parched throats are going to suffice to keep me in love for forever.

Not too much to ask for, right? That’s what I keep on saying! So prospective hate mailers – bring it on! :)

Dear Boyfriends/Girlfriends of Writers’ …

Please note that no matter what you do, be it a first date, a proposal, an argument, a punch up, anything really, it is always, yes, I mean always, going to play out better in my head.

It’s not you, it’s me. Well more specifically, it’s my wonderfully overactive, imagination enamoured cranium, so don’t take this look of disappointment personally – it’s just the way the cookie crumbles. My condolences by the way.

My spin instructor told me this morning that she’s after ...

My spin instructor told me this morning that she’s after my soul!

If I had any lingering doubts before, they were finally eradicated. She’s definitely the Devil :/ But, it turned out that she was actually talking about my sole, so now I feel stupid. And paranoid -_-

I still think she’s the Devil though.

Monday should be a mandatory day off so you can recover f...

Monday should be a mandatory day off so you can recover from the weekend. Australian Government – I hope you’re listening.

I’m thinking of channelling the New Zealand All Blacks to...

I’m thinking of channelling the New Zealand All Blacks to scare my boss (my alter ego) from making me work over the weekend by doing the Haka. Here’s hoping it works! :D

 

You need to shut up sometimes

I am a big supporter of the age old adage of keeping your mouth shut if you have nothing worthwhile to say. Often, just because you can say something doesn’t necessarily mean you should go ahead and let it rip! I was never made more aware of this philosophy than in my first year of Journalism studies.

In the famous words of Stan Lee, “with great power there must also come great responsibility”, it is terrifyingly easy for those of us in journalism and the media to forget that we are in a very fortunate, but dangerous position of influencing a lot of people reading and/or listening to our work.

Our audiences are often poles apart – from the aged to the very informative young, those that blotch an entire spectrum of social status & class, and those who (though it may be a little disrespectful to admit, but how we journalists at times dissect our readership/listener base) vary in intelligence and simple, good old fashioned common sense (an increasing rarity in modern times unfortunately!).

Journalists wield a great amount of power that is directly correlated to the magazines, television stations, newspapers and other forms of media we work for. The freedom of speech act is a card pimped around a lot by journalists who often try to cover up what we write/say and as a human rights activist, I strongly agree with the ability to give a voice to those of us who are more often than not, ignored. But what about when that speech is treacherously bordering on inciting hate, discrimination, negativity and the blatant ability to bully an individual/organisation because they clearly aren’t in a position to provide a comeback?

I have been a part of very large Australian based publishing houses (as well as the number one arguably) and as much as I hate to admit it, I cringe at the “stories” that have been reported by some of the big guns I have written/worked for. It would seem that our media outlets are so brazenly deciding what is Gospel now, we no longer have to cloak our “opinions” as “newsworthy stories” for the greater good, because now what we say is what goes, similar to the common bullying antics repeated in the murky corners of the school playground of “it’s right because I say so”.

But it isn’t, is it? Journalism evolved from a noble concept, a strong belief that the people had the right to know, where events were presented as objectively and unbiasedly as humanely possible, where we trusted the integrity and intellect of our audience to shape their own perspectives and viewpoints. What changed? Why do we in the media feel the need to dictate what others think and who/what they should support in a world we pride ourselves on as democratic?

Are our viewers no longer knowledgeable enough to make up their own minds? I would strongly disagree. What I do believe however is that we in the media have, as all humans regretfully eventually do at the first sniff of it, become power crazy, hungry for more, devouring the possibility of ruling those who we can as much as we can.

History is testament to exploitation failing and that is the real reason I believe news is a dying phenomenon, not the reality television shows wrapping their tentacles over unsuspecting viewers’ minds the way some would have us believe.

The cancer attacking “real news” is the need to control, not the diminishing rationality of our potential audience. I would suggest that if we start presenting “real news” the way our virtuous profession set out to do when it started all those centuries ago, news will become cool again.

And until we can do that, could we please learn to think before we write/speak? There is no shame in shutting up sometimes.

For writers there are two paths to insanity. One is to wr...

For writers there are two paths to insanity. One is to write and the other is to stop.