Saturday Morning's Friday Five Time

These questions were written by whatistoday.

1. Do you like children?
Children are fine. I have zero-to-low expectations of them up to the 'tween' age years, so while young kids having tantrums is one of the most annoying sounds in the world, I mostly blame the parents for allowing things to get to the point where the kid goes into meltdown. This is the legacy of my upbringing, when I was rigorously taught that tantrums/screaming/general petulance in a public place was completely unacceptable & there would be consequences later... See also: running amok in restaurants - the child should be taught right from the first trip to McDonald's that you sit in your seat until it's time to leave. Restaurants/cafés/food courts etc are not playgrounds. So... do I like children? Sure, but I hate lazy or bad parenting

2. How many children would you like to have in the future?
From the age when I was first biologically capable of contributing to the population, I've known I didn't want children. People have been telling me for decades that I'd change my mind "soon", but it's never happened. I'm now in my mid-50s & even if I did change my mind, I'm pretty sure that dealing with a teenage child when I'm in my 70s would lead to one of us getting arrested

3. What if you were expecting sextuplets?
I'd be having serious words with the urologist who performed my vasectomy about a decade ago!!!

4. If TLC offered to share your life on TV, would you accept the offer?
'You & Me & Cat Bella Makes Three'? With cameo appearances from my annoying family & from Long-Suffering Partner's family (who have become my preferred family unit). It would probably be a crossbreed of 'GoggleBox', 'Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud' & 'Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares'... with not even the slightest hint of a Kardashian lifestyle. That sounds like real reality TV to me!!!

5. What would you name the sextuplets?
Beki (short for Uzbekistan), Zak (short for Kazakhstan), Bodi (Cambodia), Nia, Sia (Lithuania & Indonesia) & Bob... Or maybe Bob, Hannah, Anna, Gig, Llewell & Solomon (Islands)

'Fans'...

Not that it's of any personal interest to me, but I was intrigued by this headline on a not-really-news story...

Surprise Holly Valance sighting shocks fans

Interesting that the 'news' site should refer to, or indeed imply, that Holly Valance has any 'fans'... She was, at a generous best, a 2-hit pop music wonder back in the 00s, after completely failing to set the acting world alight with her stint on the recently, mercifully deceased Aussie soap opera 'Neighbours'... then married a rich property developer & left the business of show, with barely a whimper, let alone a backward glance. I would be amazed if anyone in the USA, or Asia, or Africa, or about 95% of Europe has ever heard of her, let alone ever been a 'fan'

For those of us who remember her at all, it's mostly for the vacuous pop she fronted the music videos for, her not-cute-but-actually-a-little-disturbing shtick about living in 'Hollyworld' &, more recently, her support for an anti- Covid vaccination group. So to see her in a photo with Trump & Nigel Farage is only surprising in that somehow, her billionaire husband wangled a photo-op after some dinner thing for similarly right-(wing)minded delusionals... & certainly not any kind of 'shock' to either those who have heard of her, or those who wonder who the hell she is

Still... click-bait is click-bait & even though my intention was only to shine a light, once again, on the First World's obsession with vacuity & the bottom-rung media's role in creating & sustaining it, in the end I still clicked on the article, so they win

I feel hollow... & a little dirty after all that