Wednesday, 2 August 2017

A-Post-Rophe Post, & Burston At The Seams

Be alarmed.  Be very, very alarmed.  Read this Facebook post by Senator Brian Burston of One Nation:


Right.  Taken the time to read it?  Absorbed its content?  Picked yourself up off the floor after you collapsed in shock and fright?  Applied an icepack to the bump you sustained  to your head in said collapse?  Located your missing socks which were knocked clean off?  

Now that those actions have been taken, take a deep breath.  It's true.  I'm just as worried as you are.  Yes, I know what it means, if this post is anything to go by.  And if it IS anything to go by, it means Government is being overrun by sub-literate arse-clowns! Senator, who taught you English?  He or she should be barred from the profession.  Or is it the case you were sitting up the back of the classroom squashing flies with your ruler, and didn't listen?

Anyway, I'm going to type this nice and slow for you.  When a noun is in possessive context, ie, 'owning' something, put an apostrophe before the 's' at the end.  DO NOT put an apostrophe in a plural noun before the 's', because that's a no-no.  But in the 'possessive', put an apostrophe.  What you're saying here is Labor 'owns' Husic, Aly et al.  Also the Greens 'own' Faruqi.  So you should have written 'Labor's' and 'Green's'.  The exception to this rule is on the possessive form of 'its'.  For example, 'The dog buried its bone in the yard'.  Apostrophes belong in possessive nouns (except 'its'), and contractions such as 'Ed Husic's a Muslim', instead of saying 'Ed Husic is a Muslim'.  

And another thing: your penultimate sentence.  I'm quite confident 'Muslims' and 'Govt' (can't you spell 'government'?) in this context are proper nouns, and should therefore be capitalised.  

Seriously, man, reading that post hurt my eyeballs.

Okay, now that I have that out of the way, I am going to address the question folks are asking, and that is: is it appropriate to ask a potential female prime minister whether she plans to have children.  This question was put to New Zealand Opposition leader Jacinda Ardern, who responded to the journalist the question was inappropriate.  I agree with her.  Well, put it this way: if a man has been elected to a high parliamentary position, and is in the possible running to lead the country, would he be asked whether he planned on procreating.  I'm guessing no, he would not be asked such an impertinent question.

Listen, peeps, it's (see what I did there, Burston?) not actually impossible for a woman to have a leadership role and have children.  Sure, some home help might be required, but it's not impossible.  The Queen popped out a couple of kids after she ascended the throne (I've left this a lower case 't' because I'm not sure if it's a proper noun in this context).  Lordy-me, what about Boudicca, Queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe?  She became the queen of the tribe following the death of her husband, whereupon she led an uprising against the occupying Roman empire.  She had daughters.  The fact that her uprising was unsuccessful is unfortunate, but I don't think it's a gender related thing.  Here's an artist's depiction of the long gone (60 or 61 AD) Queen of the Iceni:


She looks to have been a fiery ranga.  I like her. Maybe there's a kindred spirit?  Anyway, if this depiction is in any way accurate, she looks to have been the type of warrior leader with which one should not be messing.  I would put her file in the drawer marked 'Not To Be Fucked With'.

And whilst we are on the subject of female empowerment, Sofia Vergara (one of my girl-crushes) has posed nude in Women's Health magazine.  I haven't included any of those pictures of Sofia because I suspect they might be subject to the photographer's and/or magazine's copyright.  This matters not, because I am certain you can Google the images for yourself.  She is a woman I admire for her honesty, humour and warmth.  She is also a woman I kind of envy because, well, LOOK at her! My point is it's easy for Sofia Vergara to feel empowered and comfortable in her own forty-five year old body because, well, LOOK at her!  At the risk of bragging a little, I'm not too badly constructed for a woman of fifty-one.  However, I am not Sofia Vergara.  I wonder do some women find the concept of being comfortable in the body with which they are blessed a struggle when they're not Sofia Vergara.  After all, LOOK at her!

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