There are days when I wonder why any full fledged, six-sided woman would abide the nonsense of ever messing with grown men who regularly bend over backwards reaching for that place when their mommas still washed out their stained percale and senior cheerleaders filled every dream.

When man talk goes simpleminded and any decent sense they may have acquired over the decades is lost in some adolescent romp across the land of bizarre fantasy and pure damn foolishness, I lose patience. At the moment, I’m watching several bright men discuss the merits of tapping Flo, the Progressive Insurance ad chick, along with her potential fine qualities as a life partner. My head is slowly shaking back and forth, I’ve cut my eyes more than twice reading their happy horseshit and I feel like smacking all of them upside the back of their balding heads.

Any woman of substance understands she’s getting some boy with her man, appreciates that place of innocence they all manage to retain well into old age, it adds a swift kick of playfulness to a long term gig and alleviates the serious business of raising kids and getting ahead in life. But sometimes you men give me pause, I’m left wondering if you’ve taken complete leave of your natural senses and abandoned any sense of dignity when you’re having semi-serious discussions about nailing cartoon characters and mediocre ad shills. I get movie stars, porn stars and centerfolds, perfectly understandable descents into lust and adolescent discussions. Anime and Progressive Flo? No sir, I’m not tolerating this peculiar brand of foolishness.

…again. My inactive profile still occupies a not-so-lonely corner of the dating internets, and men still send me messages from time to time. Silly men! Let’s take a little look at some selected highlights and see if we can’t learn something from their plaintive missives.

How to render yourself entirely unattractive in one easy sentence:
“However, I’d much rather curl up with you, and a DVD of ‘Sex and the City.’ Go Samantha ! ;o).”

How to make me exhale coffee through my nose:
Intuitively, I like your vibe.

How to make me think you’re very, very superficial, and wrong:
…aesthetically, you’re very much my type – I find you exceptionally cute and sexy.

How to sound like a mildly retarded child describing an ugly vase:
From your profile I got how unique and special you are.

How to accidently describe me reasonably well when outlining your ‘ideal match’:
Cello-playing good cook…

How to describe yourself in a way that isn’t shit:
I work well individually, or as part of a team.
I do not like bloody salsa dancing.

Incidentally, that last gentleman’s friends have described him as “odd, arrogant, solipsistic, frequently annoying, unreliable, ginger, borderline-anarchist” and he’s probably the most entertaining one I’ve heard from. Of course, I won’t be contacting any of them. Sorry, men.

ME!!! I was at the mall with a couple of my best friends yesterday, enjoying the first day of our long weekend, and I was surprised to find an awesome pair of shorts. Ever since I saw this picture I’ve been dying to get my hands on some. These ones are completely different when it comes to wash and style, but the main thing is that they’re highwaisted and I love them!

The funniest part is the hilarious amount of honks/whistles I get while wearing them. I always forget how long my legs are/how much older I look then I actually am until I attempt to wear shorts out for the first couple times every year! Shorts that would look like a reasonable length on anyone else look way shorter on me. Oh well…if you’ve got it, flaunt it? And I do love these shorts. I wore them to go thrifting today with my little brother (I’m his stylist, heh heh heh) so I’ll post my haul after I take a nice cool shower.

In order to maintain anonymity and keep this relatively brief, here’s a three line synopsis of Friday and why men are silly.

1. I want to take my time getting into my next relationship.  If the nice-ex didn’t teach me patience, the asshole certainly did.
2. He wanted to either move forward or just be friends, even though he doesn’t know where he’ll be in the next three months or so.  I don’t mean in terms of a job.  I mean no idea which continent he’s on.
3. Given that we had the awkward discussion, which btw isn’t always awkward but was for some reason, why would he still try to move forward with his game plan?

I only really have two theories.  Either he’s just really silly… or so many women give into men that it’s now become an expectation.  Now, I wish the latter wasn’t true, but I know that for T and [redacted], I’ve definitely done that before.  Especially for [redacted].

Makes me wonder.  How do you change that expectation, if it were set?

Caption: See how silly men act when they think a cute blonde might be interested.

I guess there was a time in the not too distant Victorian era when the extent of women gardening would have probably limited itself to delicately weeding the pansy bed whilst kneeling on a silken kneepad. For the middle classes of course, but that’s another story.

You see, Sparks & Co have been doing a spot of minor landscape gardening – in public. Yes, “public” is the problem here – even though we often partake in landscape ventures they are usually hidden from the civic gaze. So, more often than not these are typically concealed projects, where we are usually left in peace to poodle around laying paths in secret gardens, or rearranging decorative stones and pots around a pond. We also do occasional work for an “estate,” (the landed gentry that is – not Scotswood Barbed Wire Hoystey Car* Estate) you know where Tories say “hoyce”** for house and you hear the occasional ‘the hunt’ mentioned as in yes the FOX sort. It’s fine actually, no bother to be had and there is a definite lack of sight seekers on their extensive ’estate’ So I guess what I’m saying is that apart from some visiting members of the public, medical / herbalist students and other various minor assortments to our main project, we don’t really do humans.

Anyway, this new venture – located next to a busy car park and serving a rather large rural town involved full public scrutiny. Raised up from ground level due to the steep incline of the road the garden served as a sort of ’stage’ for the ’oddities’ also known as women doing hard manual graft.

Every five to ten minutes a passer by (disproportionately male I may add) felt forced to offer some paragon of advice, disbelief, encouragement or hails of “can you do my place next pet?” These ranged from “Ha Ha you two will never get all of that cleared” or “sure you can manage those paving stones?” to “ He He have you buried him under there” (at this stage we did have a grave size heap of earth in the centre of the plot so I got the joke – for the fiftieth time)

Now let me introduce the electricians who worked in side the house doing electric things while we outside got on with garden things, all trying to pull the practicalities of an expanding business together (the client also owns next door and this is the point – the gardens have to match) Three of them in the team and the apprentice was definitely about twelve. It’s undeniably symbolic that this work is taking place at the offices of a child psychologist (who is also a friend of my colleague – yes nepotism is cool)

Mr boss lecci is fine and asks serious questions regarding which sort of plants would grow best in this terrain and what sort of membrane would we be using for the ‘decorative stones’ and so forth. However, little greenhorn insists in repeating that we should have used a rotavator. As if we were too dense to weigh up hire cost and cast a jaundiced eye on the freaking minuscule-ness of it all and not forgetting the quaint twisty steps needed for access…while he clutches his Zoo magazine.

While he clutches his Zoo magazine…

So, after about the fifth delivery of his superior dudely wisdom I reply “well yeah maybe you should read the Beano or maybe even the Dandy but yanno I‘m not in your face suggesting it” says she while calmly rolling another Golden Virginia feminine allusion destroyer. Young lad and his repeated suggestion scurry indoors never to be seen again while his mates laugh in a cruel manner. Poor boy.

Now colleague and I afforded no conclusive societal analysis as to how or why two women gardening in public should generate such interest from all sexes across an age range of about four*** to ninety. However, we did come to the decision that when heavy graft is involved men assume superior knowledge and cannot wait to dispense advice and wisdom whether it is asked for or not. On the other hand, as much as some of the ’suggestions’ deeply vexed my last nerve***** we did have some good banter and a few laughs. However, one important lesson was learnt by a barely out of adolescence lad… do not offer advice to Sparks when you are clutching a Zoo magazine.

Now that is just asking for trouble.

* Hoyce is different from Hoystey. The former is “house” in upper-middle class English language dialect. See ** for latter.

** Stolen car chase.

***Young boy of about four wanted to know if we were making a fishpond. No? Oh well, could he still come back tomorrow to watch.

**** “last nerve” – Twisty. No plagiarism here folks

Last night while driving home in the dark, I experienced a run in (almost literally) with a bipedal Lesser-Spotted Runt. Negotiating my way down a windy country lane a bloke suddenly appeared in my headlights waving furiously for me to stop. As the road was extremely narrow, I needed to slow down in order to navigate my way around him without ploughing the idiot over. Then – when the wanker realised that I was not going to stop – he PUNCHED my car! Chrrist what did he think I was going to do? Stop and give a lift to some strange geezer who just happened to leap out of the freaking bushes and then jump in front of my car because that is just – you know – normal behaviour?!

Ha! It had just started snowing and it rapidly deteriorated into a full on blizzard a few minutes later, so I hope he got bloody wet!

All becomes clear, while I sit pondering as from where the hits and MRA style comments (which of course remain locked in Spark’s evol oubliette of inequity) descend pestilent and plague like upon this radical feminist blog.

Guess what? It’s Johnny & Co. and he has found solace in menarebetterthanwomen where he and his chums attempt to claim “masculine” justice by raining locusts and pox, gender specific insults, tales of Godly penetration and other, more general aspects of woman hatred onto me, the women, and man of this on-line community – who dare – to challenge their manly err manliness.

Think we have proved a point wimmin?

What they don’t get is the – “give a shit” bit…

Sparks & Collective. Present the Banana Dance.