I feel like the web has been awfully sleepy this week! I think this means people have real lives. Like, they’re actually doing stuff IRL.  Oh dear. I am alone in here? COOOEEEE?!

Here’s what’s got my gears going this week.

Misery loves company. So do bitches. Wouldn’t it be fan-freakin-tastic if we bonded more over stuff we were over the moon about? If we all just grabbed some glow-sticks and jumped up and down squeeling about what ever is making us feel too fucking good to contain? Nay to negativity!

Super sparkly motivational thinkers Pace and Kyeli talk about connectivity vs control. What exactly are they on about? Basically, they suggest we help co-workers, rather than manage, that we make suggestions rather than convince or manipulate people, and that we nurture children rather than raise them. I think this philosophy is 101 different kinds of amazing, and can be applied to all areas of life. Have a read – it’s quite short, and consider it a taster for the other amazing things they write about. High fives and low tens for this awesome super duo.

Jane Martinson talks about the ultimate form of self-love – Whilst I’m all for being good to your body and getting down with your bad self, I do think that we have a right to choose to talk about masturbation or to not talk about masturbation. Whilst I applaud the Guardian’s efforts for trying to get a dialogue going on the taboo of women openly enjoying sexual pleasure, I personally don’t like to talk about such intimate acts. Why? Because like I said, it’s intimate. Just as I wouldn’t want to walk in on a friend having sex or masturbating, I expect the same sort of respect for myself. It’s something between just myself and another person, or occasionally myself and my right hand.

Heaps of cool free shit over at Yes and Yes! Instant pick me us, play lists and more!

And once more, with feeling, from Courtney Love. Read this hilarious interview. If you have the time, that is. Not for the TL;DR crowd.

I have a really good story to tell. I’m  honest. I’ve seen a lot. A lot of people feel like they know me—they see me as a drunk and a show-off and a mess, but that’s really not the truth.

I had this intensely fucked up childhood: my mother abandoned me when I was a teenager. I lived through my husband’s suicide. There was a period when drugs completely took over my life. But I also went out with Edward Norton for four years and didn’t do any drugs or walk a single red carpet in all that time.

There’s no denying that I’ve done a lot of dumb things. I’ve been wasted and written emails and texts that were really hurtful to a lot of people. Sometimes I can be a bit self-obsessed. But contrary to public opinion, I’ve never had a drinking problem.

I hate that people still stereotype me as a junkie or a crackhead. The truth is, I did heroin for a while and weaned myself off it. I did crack for six months straight and then I stopped.

I don’t particularly like Courtney as a person. Whilst she is slightly crazy (ok, she’s insane), I admire how outspoken she is and her courage to slam all that wrong her.

Seema Dugall over at Mamma Mia talks about her experiences with depression, and how basically trying to reach out to other people is like describing childbirth to a man.

I confided in one other person – someone I considered a best friend – but she simply told me to “toughen up”, and reminded me that the hell I was in was of my own making.

She was partly right – my thoughts were the culprits of my torture, and I couldn’t blame anyone else for them. I couldn’t blame the boss who had been sexually harassing me, or God for taking away the woman who raised me, or the fashion industry for giving me no real friends, or my businesses for inflicting more pressure than I knew how to cope with. My feelings were my own reactions to those things, and I had to take responsibility for them.

But in other ways, she was wrong. I needed her to listen to me and to tell me that everything would be okay, even though my depression lasted a long time and, as she described it later, I began to sound like the boy who cried wolf. I needed her to tell me that she would know and care if I died, not that she would check my Facebook to find out. I needed her to understand that I couldn’t be as happy for her as I liked, because I had forgotten how to be happy and her good news made me feel my own unhappiness intensified. I needed her to call me and to pick up her phone, but she cut me off because I was in “such a foul mood”. I was, but her avoidance made me so much worse.

I  touched on this issue in a previous blog entry. I feel that a lot of people don’t realise that depression is a disease. Because the mind is not a physical body part, the symptoms of depression aren’t tangible. You can empathise with someone with a rash, or a runny, red nose, but you can’t visualise how a person is suffering on the inside. I probably can’t describe it as eloquently as Elizabeth Wurtzel, but imagine you’re taking a shower, and it’s really fucking hard to pull yourself out of there. Not because you enjoy it, and definitely not because a mental disease can be likened to the warm and delicious feeling of hot jets of water on your bare skin, but because actually making that first step requires so much more determination and effort than just standing right where you are. It’s not a switch you can flick off an on, and it’s certainly much more than being ‘sad’. It takes more than a conciliatory pat on the head and a simple ‘there, there’. I could go on.

Elly of Quiet Riot Girl writes about the fine line between being a metro male or bisexual. Girl+Girl=sexy, edgy. Boy+Boy=gay. Girl+makeup=social norm. Girl=object. Boy=objectifier. Double standards, no?

But I find that wherever I look there are discussions about ‘‘the objectification of women’s bodies” or “sexual violence against women and girls” or “pornography and women”. It has reached a point where I have to ask, without irony, “what about the men?”

“The rise of male behaviors, practices and tastes characterised as metrosexual are made possible in large part by the decline of stigma attached to male homosexuality. While this stigma made life difficult for homosexual men, it also had an instructive, not to say repressive, effect on all men.” In contrast metrosexuality means masculinity is no longer black and white, “no longer always heterosexual and never homosexual or always active never passive, always desiring never desired, always looking never looked at,” says Simpson.

Since movin’ over to tha WEST SIDE and away from the crazy hectic lifestyle of Sydney, I’ve become super addicted to amazing sparkly people. People who are dedicated to making their bodies sing. I discovered Gabrielle Bernstein via Christine Arylo, whom I discovered via Tranquility Du Jour. All women are bound to charm your panties off with their guidance to making life your bitch.

Speaking of radical rabble-rousers and full-time spirituality hustlers, Alexandra Franzen has created a fairly bombastic list for living life like it’s yo 21st birthday part-ay everyday of the week. Check it!

Mia Freeman on pretend shopping, spending spree guilt, and the semantics of ‘need’. Oddly enough, whilst most girls are only too eager to share their purchases with their friends and spend hours squeeing over new shoes, I usually down-play my disposable income (most females only do this with their partners). I feel like ever since 2008, people give you the stink eye if you spend more than $100 on a single purchase. Doesn’t a lot of this relate to the idea than females are frivolous spenders? It’s all about where you get the most gratitude. If I find that purchasing new pajamas improves my comfort and thus my happiness, then by Joe will my wallet get a sucker-punch. Whereas my father’s need for a new monitor/CPU/computer-what’sit seems unnessecary to me, but it makes him happy (and me too. The man has serious techno-aggravation and spends far too long swearing at machines).

Zine Making 101 for Riot Grrrlll dummies! I usually just use InDesign, but I get the feeling I’m committing feminist blasephemy. Or something.

And now I leave you with new music from The Grates! These guys always put me in a super yummy happy mood.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7C52UlwiNI]

p.s: just found this gem. Glorious kookiness!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rwbzwp_Z3k&feature=relmfu]