The Old Curiosity Shop

Dolores O'Riordan (not pictured here) has been on our radio a lot recently. She used to be with The Cranberries, but has now made a solo album. I can't say I was ever a fan, apart from that one song, Zombie.
But since she's been on the radio a lot recently, I have been trying to analyse what exactly it is about the southern Irish accent from around Cork that makes some of them so incomprehensible.
Dolores has one of those accents. She would pronounce 'Irish' as 'Oirish'.
At first I thought it was because they barely pronounce the consonants. Then the next time she spoke I realised that in fact, most of the vowel sounds were completely different from the way anyone else pronounces them.
So, just to recap, I've narrowed it down to just the vowels and the consonants.
Good.
Dolores did, I must say, do a superb 'unplugged' version of Zombie for CBC.

Ok, so as promised, the curious world of feminism according to Schnee.
Firstly, I have been reading books. Old books.

Alex got me to buy and to read 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin. It seems so gentle and subtle, but the feminist message in it, of the awakening of a woman to how restricted her life is because women at the time were regarded as some sort of accessory to their husbands, and her casting off of this role, was so revolutionary that the book ended her writing career.

And I had meant for a long time to read Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman', which I have obtained from the Book Depository, but that's not it. I also have, and am reading, her 'Maria and the Wrongs of Woman', which is fiction, but with a very heavy feminist message. Bear in mind that she died in 1797. I think what I am finding the most fascinating about this book though, is the history, because it's not someone from our own age looking back and writing about the conditions, it's someone who was actually around at that time, so it's real. Dire, but real.

I was amazed at how the theme of the first book, The Awakening, was similar to the theme of the film, (500) Days of Summer, described here as 'a masterpiece of passive-aggressive misogyny.'

The National Lottery fund in Britain has awarded 400,000 pounds to a charity that combats homophobic bullying.
So who could possibly object to that?
Oh, well, the same bunch of self-righteous pricks who object to the EU trying to promote gender-neutral language. Why yes, Tories! (Bet you thought I was going to say Jeremy Clarkson huh?) Like Clarkson, they hate 'political correctness'.
Cretins.

So, again to recap, passive-aggressive misogyny has survived intact and the Tories may be the party of Britain's future, but they are still, ooh, to be fair, more not at all passive, just aggressive misogynists and homophobes.
Business as usual then.
Phew.