The Day I Was Humped By A Red Panda

So today is the day after that day we shall call Spend-Money-On-Me-Cause-I'm-Awesome-And-Society-Tells-You-That-You-Should-If-You-Want-To-Show-Me-That-You-Care-Dammit Day. Not that I want to belittle it entirely, because I'm very grateful for the stuff that Jim got me, and it was nice to give him some presents (read: cheese-based items) too. But then, we got each other stuff that actually kinda meant something, and was personal, as opposed to the queues of men I saw outside the flower shop rushing to buy roses for their girlfriends, or the women wearily selected cards saying "To My Special Husband" from WHS Smith in their lunchbreak. That kind of stuff seems utterly pointless, and slightly sickening. I have no issues with people showing affection through consumerism (what a surprise...), so long as they are actually showing affection, not just doing it because they feel they have to. In short: my boyfriend is better than yours, na na na-na naaa.

No, of course I am sure that other people have wonderful boyfriends, and that many many other people gave each other presents that genuinely showed they cared, or in fact will wait until a random day when they see something that they think their loved one will like (as our taxi driver said last night: "if you love someone, every day should be Valentines Day." Wise words) Nevertheless, Jim is pretty damn cool. Evidence A: he took me on my first proper date, to ASK, and we ate tasty food. Evidence B: he bought me Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice-cream. Evidence C: he is generally awesome. Evidence D: he bought me a red panda toy =D

This toy is called Red Panda, and his accent is undecided. Chinese or Bristolian would make most sense, but personally I think he looks a little bit Irish. He also humped my face quite a bit, although I have a feeling he was being egged on by Jim, and is in fact not a particularly rapey red panda.

Aside from all this romantic shizz, today I have been learning about the pluralist and elitist approaches in political science, and how they are both a bit shit. It seems like your dream, Jen, of an over-reaching theory that has been properly thought-through and actually works, is unfortunately going to be a mere dream for a while yet. My thoughts on the subject, poorly backed-up though they may be, is that people try and get too specific with their theories, trying to find some magical formula that applies to everyone everywhere and explains things in this precise way; when common sense suggests that there will be lots of different ways that things happen and for lots of different reasons, and that the best approach is probably to try and combine all the existing theories into one big theory, or just give up.

Sigh. Reading is hard. So is writing blogs; I think it's impossible to write one without sounding a bit pretentious and lame. Oh well!

Toodles