FYCL # 18 – Mostly bitching.

Very little advice, but a good deal of bitching about getting ready to eat at Xmas, children who want to change their names, dealing with stink, and new developments in the whorehouse business.

FYCL #18, if you are still doing the old-fashioned-y downloading of each episode, rather than subscribing with our shiny new rss or via iTunes.

The first days of linkmas:

• Jamie Oliver’s vitello tonnato recipe.
• Dubious wizard vibrator – what is with his nose?
• One version of the anti-feminist bingo card; I am not sure if it is the original.
• New Adventures of Queen Victoria – this is the web page for the strip, and there is a strip archive at gocomics.

Music was “Who put the Spring in Springfield”; the Burlesque House song from The Simpsons episode “Bart After Dark,” which is well worth watching if you can find it on Hulu or in reruns, or similar.

A reminder: although only the most recent 3 episodes are live in iTunes, you can always access back episodes of FYCL in our archive at uppitywomen.org/media/

Got a question or a comment? Leave it here, or email us at fyclpodder at gmail dot com.

Advice for exam takers, redux.

Last year I made a list of 1o essential pieces of advice for exam takers. This year, I offer some new advices, which now means that this is an established tradition. For the close of 2009, we focus on general behaviour and examination etiquette.

1. This one came up last year, but I am forced to reiterate and expand. Do not go into an empty exam room before the invigilator arrives, and set up your camp on a desk with your 6 pencils, and your water, and your hand sanitizer and your 45 gonks, and your extra lucky eraser. Your invigilator, should he or she be a committed professional, is going to turf you out and look for the cheat notes you taped under the desk.
2. If you are one of those plan ahead people, and look up the examination room weeks ahead of time, you should double check the room the day of the examination. Yes, room changes are rare, but you know that if and when they happen, the new room will be way over the other side of campus, and now you are late. And lost.
3. Give yourself plenty of extra time, especially if the exam is in a room you have never been to before. Also, if the room numbers don’t get high enough before you get to a big door at the end of the corridor, try going THROUGH the door and checking whether they continue on the other side.
4. When you are 20 minutes late to the exam, Red Bull will not slow down time. Not even 2 cans of it. And now you have to pee, which wastes another 10 minutes.
5. Your invigilator is there to prevent cheating, not to act as a pharmacy and/or stationery store. If you need tissues, pencil sharpeners, cough drops, bottles of water or gonks,  you need to bring your own.
6. No, the person supervising the exam is not going to tell you the answer to question 7. Even if the supervisor is your professor, who wrote the exam, and who presumably knows the answer.
7. Asking again will not get you an answer, either.
8. When the invigilator writes several time intervals on the blackboard and erases them, this is to give you an indication of the passage of time. It does not create a magical digital chalk clock. Asking “is the time on the board accurate” will just confuse everyone.
9. For fuck’s sake, take a fucking shower. People are going to be locked in a closed room with you for 2 hours. BO is not going to get you bonus marks.
10. If you are going to smoke a joint before the exam, start early enough that it doesn’t make you 20 minutes late. Oh, wait. Maybe it would be better to wait until after the exam to smoke the joint.

FYCL #17 – Wildly Undisciplined.

Dubious advice on enjoying the holiday season, including dealing with family, feminist hypocrisies, and Generation Snow. Extended Dubious Sex Toy discussion is about fundamentalist Christianity and kink; we also have a non-dubious sex toy amongst our recommendations.

FYCL #17, if you are still doing the old-fashioned-y downloading of each episode, rather than subscribing with our shiny new rss or via iTunes.

Linkage:

• SJ’s post asking for readers to confess their feminist hypocrisies.
• Non-dubious sex toy this week is Gigi.
• The Marriage Bed’s surprisingly sane discussion of sexuality for straight-laced Christians.
• A selection of online marital aid vendors for the prudish or religiously averse to porn: Book22 seems to be one of the first, Wholly Love shows it is not just a USistani phenomenon, Christian Love Toys is pretty standard, while My Beloveds Garden seems more liberal (read: it has buttplugs, but not apostrophes).
• The main Christian Domestic Discipline site – hoax or real thing? The more I read, the harder it was to decide.
• Taken in Hand – same skeevy ideas, less Christian overlay.
• This blog entry really encapsulates some of the issues I have with the whole wife-disciplining movement.
• My recommendation this week was Thinkgeek, perfect for Xmas shopping for the geeks in your life.
• Amy Goodman gives the dirt on the Canadian border guards. At least she didn’t get deported to Syria.

Music at the end was “Gabriel’s Message” by Sting, an excellent advent carol, because now that it is on advent, I am on a mission to see how much Christmas music I can get in to the podder before SJ’s head asplode.

A reminder: although only the most recent 3 episodes are live in iTunes, you can always access back episodes of FYCL in our archive at uppitywomen.org/media/