MonaKitten's blog: "I Need My Ink Injection!"

Barbie may not be the best role model for young girls - I read somewhere that if she was real, she'd be over six foot, 44DD boobs and a 24 inch waist - but she's a helluva lot better than Bratz. The store where I work stocks equal amounts of Bratz and Barbie toys but Bratz is a lot more popular. I don't have any kids but if I did, I'd rather she had Barbie than a Brat. Barbie can do anything - be a teacher, vet, doctor, pilot - as well as be a model, mermaid or singer. Bratz on the other hand, live to shop and be popular. There are no career dolls and they seem to chase after boys and clothes rather than actually do anything. Bratz are the toy industry's answer to Paris Hilton et al. Even the Bratz Babyz (sic) wear make up, uber skimpy clothing and writhe around at the touch of a button. Barbie may be a twinkie but at least she's harmless...

Not a deviant sexual practise, just a recipe. Serves 4. Serve with vegetables and gravy. Ingredients: 450g sausages 100g plain flour 1 large egg pinch of salt 1 tsp mustard powder 300 ml semi-skimmed milk 1. Preheat oven to 220 deg. C (425 deg. F) 2. Place sausages in a shallow baking tin and cook for 10 mins. 3. Mix flour, salt and mustard powder in a basin. Make a hollow in the centre and drop in the egg. 4. Add milk gradually to the basin, stirring well. 5. Add the remaining milk to the batter and stir briskly until smooth. 6. Transfer sausages in the a ceramic or glass dish. Pour batter over and cook for a further 30 mins.

As my saving-up-for-America type job, I work as a till monkey at Woolworths, a general retailer. In the past week, I've been covering the toy area and my god, children (at least children who come to my shop) are spoilt. I had one kid asking his mum if he already had a £20 batman toy. When she said no, he asked if he could have it and she bought it for him. If the kid can't even remember whether he already owns the thing, why are you buying it for him?!? And another little girl threw a tantrum because her dad had been putting sweets he liked into her pick and mix bag (which is done by weight not volume) yet he still bought her an ideologically unsound Bratz doll. Throws tanrum ---> gets toy? You're setting up some poor bloke for a wonderful wife 15 years down the line.... Gaaa! Maybe it's just me - my mum would've smacked me if I threw a tantrum in a shop - but I get so mad. There are kids here in the UK whose parents can barely afford to buy them nutritious meals and better off families think nothing to buying needlessly expensive toys for no apparent occasion. Or perhaps the whining and tantrums just sound more severe in an East Scots accent....

I cried my way through the final quarter of this book. But I still wholeheartedly recommend it! Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books were originally a serial in a San Francisco newspaper and centre around a group of housemates, friends and co-workers in San Francisco starting in the 70s and continuing through to the 1980s. As a child of the 80s, some references sailed past me but a few have introduced me to some wonderful films, books and TV programmes from those years. Michael Tolliver Lives shows what has happened to the best-loved character in the series, who is now heading towards 60. Finding out what has happened in the intervening years to characters who I have known and loved was quite a bizarre experience. Obviously people change and Maupin is to be commended in that he hasn't kept the characters the same personality-wise as before but it can be a little unsettling. His bravery extended to killing off my namesake (boo! and sob!) but not to killing off the octagenarian transsexual landlady who, to be honest, I'm amazed was still alive at the end. It was a good ending but I hope that there are no more - after all, one wouldn't expect a character with HIV to make it to 60, never mind beyond. If you've read the Night Watcher roman a clef, you'll find more than a few similarities which slightly ticked me off (£13-worth of ticking off!). I couldn't make it to the book signing in Edinburgh but in a way, I am glad. Meeting one's heroes may turn out to be very anti-climactic!

As an English person living in Scotland, there are times when I feel a little... awkward. I'm fairly lucky that people are lovely to me due to my being from the North of England (apparently this makes you more Scottish - personally I think that's a load of pish, but never mind) and due to my Dad being Scots. Now, Gordon Brown (British PM) has announced that although all public buildings in the UK are to fly the Union Flag (flag of Great Britain), Scotland are exempt and are only expected to fly this on special days such as the Queen's Birthday. To me, this is dumb as hell. It would make sense in Northern Ireland, where people can die for hanging the "wrong" flag, but Scotland? It just reeks of petty Nationalism. Alex Salmond (Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party) has said that this ruling is sensibles as the sense of Britishness in Scotland died a long time ago. Really? I wonder if his political agenda of an independent Scotland has anything to do about it... Oil won't last forever, and currentl;y Scots receive £1.20 in public spending for every £1 spent on the rest of the UK paid for... by the rest of the UK. Independence won't work without serious economic development (a la Celtic Tiger in Eire) and if the only way to get people onside is to be anti-GB and anti-English, then these voters probably aren't the type of people with whom I'd like to share a country!