Hi you,
Happy Sunday! Or Monday! Or any day you’re reading this. Unless you’re not? Idk. No time to waste.
Weeeeeeeee
🗣 SWEETIE RATES 🗣
Gwyneth Paltrow sponcon
Gwyneth Paltrow, queen of bone broth and vaginas, has achieved an accolade far greater than her Academy Award — she has officially made my favourite bit of celeb sponcon ever. I never thought anyone would beat Nikki Blonski’s tour of a West Virginia hotel room, but here we are.
Probiotics brand Seed commissioned Gwyneth for what appears to be a simple, short piece to camera talking about the product. Dressed down and with a droll tone, Gwyneth sounds off on her script with as little effort as humanly possible. Then, the pièce de résistance, the serene scene is interrupted by what seems to be the loudest coffee steamer in the world. She barely turns her head. “Moses is steaming some milk,” she says, plainly. Cue an eight minute standing ovation at Cannes.
One take is all you’re getting from Gwyneth. Unbothered queen. This woman can’t even pretend to care about anything except being blonde, rich and skinny as hell. Moses is steaming some milk. I might start using this in my everyday life as my go-to excuse.
“Sorry I missed your call, mum, Moses is steaming some milk.”
“FYI I’m not going to be able to get those deliverables done on time, Moses is steaming some milk.”
“Hey Australian Tax Office, I know I forgot to pay my HELP debt for a year but…” You get the gist.
Anytime someone (probably rightfully) criticises Gwyneth I can’t help but feel the need to defend her. We literally need celebrities who are chronically out of touch. I’d rather enjoy pop culture icons that are upfront about being utterly detached from the real world opposed to fake-woke celebs who espouse altruistic beliefs but still stack up their yaper in secret.
Vitamin D
From the woman who brought you “You should take magnesium” comes “You should take vitamin d.” Call me Lisa Rinna the way I love to pop these pills!
If there’s one piece of advice you ever take from me, apart from to make a tomato salad, it’s to take both magnesium and vitamin d simultaneously. I don’t know what this gorgeous concoction is doing to my body, but I practically skipped into my kitchen the other morning. I’m so happy! Someone at work said I was “brighter” and they were NOT talking about my intellect. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is.
Starbs
I like to pretend I’m some kind of coffee snob sometimes, but I’m not. I’m a liar. I’m a fake. I love Starbs! I’m on the Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso. Try and say really fast in rush hour to the barista in one go!!! They love it!!! I love it!!! I had one today and I think they have about four shots of coffee!!!
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~Gentle parenting~
I was walking along the street the other day, listening to an episode of Where Should We Begin by Esther Perel and minding my own business, when I was assaulted by a small child. It all happened so fast. First I heard the mimicked sound of an aeroplane, then the footfalls of a running child, then I felt the blow of a tiny fist, punching me square in the butt. Finally, where insult meets injury, I heard the mock sound of an explosion. I turned around. A little boy of around five was, quite literally, on my tail.
I was taken aback, and not knowing how to respond, I immediately recalled what it was like to be a little kid and making a faux pas. I thought about how abjectly humiliating it was to mistake a stranger for an adult you know. “He must think he knows me.” I thought. He and I made eye contact, I smiled gamely, and continued walking, willing to let bygones be bygones. But before I knew it, his imitation of an aeroplane had started again, his fist was extended outwards like Superman, and he once again ran up and punched me on my hiney. “Well,” I thought, “I don’t like that.”
Befuddled, I looked around for his parents and noticed two women and a similarly aged boy chatting outside of a house just ahead. The two women, the boy’s mother and her friend, were the kind of artsy, well-to-do East London mums in their 40’s who run a hybrid yoga studio and pottery class space and wear oversized L.F Markey linens. The friend of the punching boy’s mother had noticed the incident and was chuckling off the whole affair.
Desperate, I gave the group a look that said “Please notice that this child is punching my derrière, but also note that I am being very chill about it.” It was to no avail. The mother kept mindlessly chatting, and the child returned for a third blow, once again, on my ass. I looked helplessly at the group. The mother finally took notice. “Jeremy*",” she said, “Don’t do that.”
She said this with the kind of gentle tone you’d reserve for asking a cat to move off a dining chair, not for your child who had just struck a perfect stranger, not once, not twice, but thrice in a sensitive area. There was no, “Say sorry to the lady.” There was not even an embarrassed “I’m sorry about him!” At a loss, I pretended to box violent little Jeremy, a very cool thing to do indeed. I fake-laughed along with them. And then I walked away, feeling like a confused fool, nervous about being punched a fourth time. What the hell just happened?
But I knew what happened. I am placing the blame on gentle parenting. I’m not a parent, and I doubt I ever will be, but I have a lot of empathy for parents. Child rearing is hard, exhausting and mostly thankless, plus there’s so much shit and piss and vomit to deal with, so I get it. But really, when it comes to behaviour, I find a lot of children’s manners LACKING these days, ok? I’m no Emily Post, but I am well-behaved at least 80% of the time. Unless I’ve had rum. That’s more than I can say for the…
If Jeremy had been two or three years old, I would have been more understanding. If your child no longer needs a booster seat, however, your child is too old to be hitting strangers on the butt. I think you’re allowed to make your child feel bad in the moment if it means he doesn’t touch strange women on the ass anymore. Otherwise, Jeremy is looking at a one-way ticket to Juvie.
I think there is something to being a little scared of your parents, of being just a little worried about facing consequences for untoward actions. I think feeling heard, affirmed and valued, the cornerstones of gentle parenting, are important things for children to experience. We don’t need to repeat what our parents went through, and then put us through, but baby, actions have consequences! Just not from me, because I’m terrified of being the bad guy.
*Not his name. He looked like a Jeremy though. Trust me.
A freak algorithm
Recently, I was scrolling through TikTok in bed and decided to watch just one more video before I retired the app for the night. I scrolled to my last video for the evening, it was one of those CapCut composite videos people make to show off their eclectic and ~wild~ lives through short snippets.
Within about five seconds of this admittedly boring video that had thousands of likes, I saw something I never expected to see in a stranger’s video — myself.
In the background of one quickfire video snippet, I noticed someone I had met through a friend just once at a gig, and thought, “Whoa! That’s ***! He must really like wearing that outfit.” Then I noticed the curly blonde hair of the woman next to him, and realised it was my housemate Laura, who had also been there on the night we’d met. Then, with horror, I noticed a woman mostly obscured, except for the top half of her face. But I would recognize that five-head anywhere. That woman was me.
A vague horror washed over me. I went to the TikToker’s profile and realised I didn’t know them in the slightest. I sent the video to Laura, my co-star in the video, panicked. I felt very, very weird. Was it just a coincidence, or did the TikTok algorithm somehow just… know? The video had been posted a month before I saw it, why was it coming up now? I just don’t understand.
The whole thing was profoundly unsettling. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It did make me feel kind of famous though…
Burning Man
I was going to mock everyone who went to Burning Man and got stuck in the rain and mud while on peyote, molly and polyamory, but unfortunately someone has died and I am not a terribly cruel person.
Instead, I’ll tell you an embarrassing story about myself. A few years ago I went on a date with a man who told me about his journey to Burning Man. As he described his experience, he started crying. In a wine bar, over extortionately-priced cocktails, I tried to extend some kind of comfort to this man, but it was no use. I’m ok with crying, but I’m NOT ok with someone attending Burning Man.
The embarrassing part? Despite giving me the ick with his choice of festival, I went out with him again. He’s married now. To me! Just kidding.
See ya later alligator 🙂