Schedenfreude: The Soundtracks of Our Emotions

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“Take your passion & make it happen”
Flashdance, Irene Cara
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Yes, Irene Cara off of the Flashdance song, having passion can drive you to success, well done you. But sometimes it takes slightly more to achieve your life ambition than just having self-belief doesn’t it, Irene Cara off of the Flashdance song? And soppy lyrics like yours sometimes gives us false hopes of being able to smash our goals with nothing more than a bit of confidence don’t they, Irene Cara off of the Flashdance song?

My apologies, Irene Cara off of the Flashdance song, I don’t mean to make an example of you. I actually really like you & your Flashdance song when I’m drunk. It’s nothing personal, Irene Cara off of the Flashdance song, it’s just ridiculous that so many poor souls have been lead to believe that having faith in themselves is all they need to succeed in life when, in truth, it takes way more.

Sure, it’s absolutely amazing when people do have the strength to make their dreams reality through their own self belief & a never-give-up attitude &, even as cynical as I am, I still feel a strange sense of pride when others do achieve. But what if someone’s aim in life was, say, to become a parent?

No amount of faith in yourself can get you pregnant or help you start a family. Obviously a positive attitude could maybe help you find the pieces need to start a family, such as finding a partner or taking yourself to see a fertility specialist, but the point I make is that more than just a positive attitude is needed to succeed in many cases.

Sometimes reaching our goals are beyond our control & regardless of how badly we want them, our success quite often relies wholly on other people. Be as Beyonce as we like with the Independent “you go grrrryfreeeeynd” Woman attitude that her songs fill us with but these things unfortunately depend on somebody else.

Even in a seemingly more achievable goal like working a specific job role takes more than the hope these uplifting songs fill us with.

Regardless of how confident we are, how hard we try, how much we prepare, how skilled we are in that area, if the fat cat sitting at the other side of the desk doesn’t like the cut of our jib when he interviews us, we aren’t getting that dream job.

We can take Aaliyah’s advice & fill our heads with that “if at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off & try again” spirit but that won’t make the holder of the key to our dream like us any more than they already do(n't). If anything, they’ll probably just think we’re stupid for seeming to beg for the position they so blatently rejected us from.

But, on the flip side, we have our not-so-uplifting songs with negative narratives & angry choruses that just need to be sung along with. Badly. And loudly. With feeling.  

And, surprisingly, the feelings we belt out these songs with (off key, naturally!) are not negative ones but positive feelings of relief, understanding, gratitude, hope & – if nothing else – that uplifting feeling of screaming at the top of your lungs & getting “it” all off your chest.

Schadenfreude is a wonderful thing & simply knowing that the warblers singing these songs are struggling in the same way as we are instantly makes us feel better.
 

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“Gary: Right now you are down & out
And feeling really crappy.
And when I see how sad you are
It sort of makes me... Happy?
Sorry, Nicky, human nature
There’s nothing I can do.
It’s Schadenfreude
Making me feel glad that I’m not you.

Nicky: Well, that’s not very nice, Gary.

Gary: I didn’t say it was nice... But everybody does it!”
Schadenfreude, Avenue Q
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How many chick flicks (inc. spoofs, as this is the most cliched scenario ever in the entire world ever) have we seen a woman getting drunk alone, eating ice cream in her pjyamas & screaming All By Myself into a hair brush before then picking herself up by the end of the film?

Answer: fuckloads.

That depressing song of loneliness allowed Miss Cliched Loner to accept her sorry situation, get it all out of her system & allow her to move on to become Mrs Typically Swept Off Her Feet Before the End Credits.  It also, more importantly, has allowed us to do the same thing to that same song in that schadenfruede way by reminding us of the tragic spinster-turned-superwoman in the film; we might be feeling low but we’ll never feel that low, bitch.

If nothing else, the very fact that somebody must’ve been “all by themself” to have even written All By Myself in the first place can instantly make her, me, us feel instantly better by simply knowing that we’re not the only person to have ever felt this alone. And singing along at the top of our voices makes us understand that & makes us feel better.

I told you that Schadenfreude is a wonderful thing, kids! So wonderful, in fact, that it even works in a selfless way that doesn’t make us feel like we’re gonna go to hell by taking pleasure in the misfortune of others, as it lets other sad cases feel better because they’re simply not us:
 

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“The world needs people like you & me
Who’ve been knocked around by fate
‘Cause when people see us,
They don’t wanna be us,
And that makes them feel great.
We provide a vital service to society, you & me.
Schadenfreude, making the world a better place to be”
Schadenfreude, Avenue Q
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So, next time you have one of those days & look for that song to listen to, ditch the typical reach-for-the-sky-and-fall-into-the-stars-if-you-don’t-make-it-because-stars-are-still-proper-ace song, because it will only make you feel worse when you discover that you probably can't achieve your goal so easily. 

Instead, go for the classic sulks of Alannis Morrisette’s Ironic.

Don’t trouble yourself with the gramatical “but, Alannis Morrisette off of the Ironic song, this is all just unfortunate, not ironic!” argument, just revel in the fact that she too is having a bad day & just sing along without giving a single fuck about anything else. We'll find our positivity in our own way without being patronised by cheesy lyrics.

Whoopass' Proper Nice Food Blog

As someone whose diet largely consists of takeaways, microwave meals & emergency packet snacks from inside my handbag, I feel somewhat of a fraud writing a food blog but my style of “cooking” is a recent talking point. Observe.

I get easily confused by small things like zest Vs rind & I never know which pan things should correctly be cooked in, yet somehow I still manage to dazzle my diners with my creative knack for whipping up strangely tasty concoctions from the dregs of my fridge.

Well, I say “diners”, I obviously mean myself, the lovely lardy ladies at Fat Club who listen to the menu behind this week’s weight loss/gain & the friends who read my Facebook moans (hi, Melanie off of the wrestlings!) as I never have any actual human people to dine with, but that doesn’t make my bodge job recipes any less edible.

This odd style of cooking I have is a combination of me being frugal enough to put my leftovers to good use, thrifty enough to use up the contents of my cupboards before re-stocking it, determined enough to cook “healthily” without having to live on rabbit food & greedy enough to eat any ol’ shite.

It mostly occurs on those weeks just before payday when my remaining pennies can’t even muster up a pint of milk or when I feel strong enough to stick to my Slimming World Food Optimising plan yet not strong enough to face grilled chicken & steamed brown rice for every meal.  So, they’re generally very cheap & cheerful meals that often make plenty more than a couple of servings so get put into Tupperware boxes & frozen to be defrosted as emergency supplies on those “can’t be arsed” days. Everyone’s a winner!

One of my better, more satisfying, less “I had to do this because I was too skint for anything else” recipes is a Slimming World friendly rehash of my favourite Frankie & Benny’s pasta dish, the Philly Steak Bake. The original is full of everything that makes the life of a dieter a living hell but it’s just too much of the noms no disregard from my diet for the rest of my life. Introducing my lower Syn (that’s Fat Club talk for naughty food), lower cost, bodge job version:

 

A Normal Woman's Normal Weight- Watch

I always thought that I was more creative & complex than to sum up my views with a line from an advertising campaign, but it would appear that I’m unfortunately not so original. As it turns out, I’m just a normal & slightly dull woman whose feelings can indeed be condensed into one tagline, which is purely this: “Lose weight for the last time”.

Ever since I was an angsty teenager with the fastest mood swings this side of the Pennines, I’ve constantly been on one fad diet or another that has promised to make me so firm that I actually become a stone statue; Atkins, Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, that sodding Special K cereal diet, & more successfully, the Slimming World Food Optimising plan.

My handfuls of squish have got smaller, my handfuls of squish have got bigger, but now – after a few half-arsed months of being back at Fat Club & only managing to shift a measly 6.5lbs since July (I hear every one of your “I shit a pound!” comments. I know, I know) – I have put my foot down & have decided to “lose weight for the last time” just like the skinny tarts in the clichéd Weight Watchers ads told me to...

Only this time I’m going to do it the normal way.

Now, I know that “normal” could mean a million & one different things & to a million & one different people – especially when it comes to weight issues – so I’d like us all to agree that normal simply means standard, usual, average, typical, & more to the point, real.

Unlike many bigfatfatties as I affectionately call the lardy ladies I am one of,  I’ve never had an illness that had caused me to gain weight, I’ve never had a demanding career that had meant having unhealthy eating patterns, I’ve never had any family traumas that had caused me to comfort eat more than the regular sulker (hi there!) does, & I’ve never had children that had left me with the acceptable excuse of “baby weight”. Basically, I’ve never had a reason to justify my curves; I just got squishy the normal way by being human & having bad habits. My bum grew because I ate too much & exercised too little like any normal bum would under these conditions, & this very same bum is going to shrink back down the normal way too.

Similarly, my weight gain/loss/re-gain/re-loss/re-gain & body confidence issues are quite normal too. I don't have the weight the equivalent of an entire person to lose like those Jerry Springer cases we’ve all seen, so, although I do have a good few stone to shift to reach a “healthy” BMI, my weight loss goals are pretty normal. And as I'm not so shy that I do the whole hiding my flesh beneath unflatteringly baggy black clothing thing, the body hang-ups I have are also very normal.

My current aim is to simply drop a dress size to get myself out of the “plus size” bracket, & my ultimate aim is for my enormous wrestler-like arms to become slim & feminine once again so as I don’t have to hide them under shapeless shrugs while I’m wearing my otherwise rather flattering shapewear – both fairly normal targets to reach.

As it stands, I don’t know whether it’ll take me 7lbs or 7 stone to achieve these goals but I know that if I want to hit them realistically without making myself & those around me miserable with my cravings for grease & excuses of “I can’t, I’m on a diet”, I’ve got to be honest with myself. Something that many dieters – myself included – usually prefer not to do. (No, love. The scales are not wrong).

When I’ve started diets in the past I’ve tried to become a perfect weight-watching Super(wo)man who has no reason for being other than to exercise & who certainly doesn’t have any Sunday Morning McBreakfasts habits to kick. Needless to say, after a week or so, I’ve almost always thrown in the towel because my life had become nothing more than a set of restrictive rules that had left me feeling thoroughly rotten... And hungry! But now that I’m an official Slimming World (*cough* for the second time after re-gaining the two stone I originally lost there the first time *cough*) weight-watcher with a relatively realistic diet to follow, I plan to do it properly: I plan to do it normally.

No longer will I kid myself that I’ll exercise every day, because sometimes I just can’t be arsed to. Never again will I claim to throw away the take-away menus, because that craving for beautifully calorific pizza will still remain. Not once more will I turn down a perfectly good pudding for fruit just because “I’m on a diet”, because fruit never has been & never will be an adequate dessert replacement, a fact that I am willing to fight to the death about.

This time I will embrace my faults & accept that I’m only human, then maybe this time I’ll truly be happy & healthy in my (hopefully permanent?) weight loss with a normal attitude towards my diet & my body. Sure, I’ll have Superhero days that see me actually eating my 5-a-day of fruit & veg rather than five custard creams with every mug of tea I glug, but when I don’t at least I’ll be able to tell myself that this is normal, for I am normal & this is just a Normal Woman’s Normal Weight-Watch.

...Now can someone play me some heroic sounding music & turn on a wind machine to glamorously swish my hair while I make my dramatic exit to go & cockdrop some lard right in it’s cock? Thanks.

A (Cyber) Friend In Need is a (Cyber) Friend Indeed

Once upon a time, not so long ago we lived in a technophobic land of strong mistrust that seems almost mythical in today’s social networking life of, well, social networks.

If I wasn’t being warned at school that the 12 year old boyband fangirl I was talking to on MSN messenger was really a 50 year old man trying to groom me, I was hearing horror stories from my mum of how I would be cyber mugged by the fraudy internet monsters if I ever bought anything from eBay. The message given to myself & every other born-in-the-late-80s-but-grew-up-in-the-90s child was that the internet was the root of all evil & nobody on the entire World Wide Web should ever be trusted. Ever.

But now, in 2013, that whole notion has been forgotten. And rightly so because being in a constant state of paranoia every time you log on is an unhealthy way for anyone to live but when – like me – you spend so much time alone, having that online “company” is an absolute god send... Even if everyone you chat to is a fraudulent paedophile, as warned.

I’m one of the lucky ones; everyone I have spoken to online has always been genuine. People from my early chat room use, through my Street Teaming fan forum days, right up to my current Twitter addiction have always been who they said they were. And not only have they been true to their A/S/Ls, but some have grown to be amongst the best friends I have ever had, whose paths I would never have crossed if it hadn’t been for the wonder of the internet.

There is very little I can bring to the table when it comes to meeting new “real life” people as I’ve always been somewhat of a loner who never has any interesting answers to the ice breaking “what are you into?/What have you been up to?”, but I’ve always had keen interests in things that quite handily come complete with their own little online community of like-minded, let’s say, “enthusiasts”.

My first love was boybands & when I was old enough to have my own computer, I threw myself into making internet fan groups for others to gather in & share with me their love of boybands & boybanders. This turned into me being recruited as the Junior Assistant Leader of Busted’s official, record company lead Street Team, which saw me being head hunted (yes, I was still a 15 year old internet loner at this point) by the management of another boyband I followed to create & maintain a Street Team for them.

I spent every spare minute sitting on an arse-numbingly uncomfortable computer chair with these projects & through them I became a surprising social whirlwind! Granted, I spoke to computer screens via my hands as opposed to verbally speaking audible words to actual human people, but I chatted to so many new people from so many different walks of life & even made friends with many of them, all through a shared love of the borderline stalking of cheesy boybands.

 

Busted-lovin', Spice Girl posin' adventures
over the years with Frankie

Some of the friends I’d made online were such good friends that they – shock horror! – became real people beyond their usernames & became part of my personal, offline life. Online socialising became real life socialising & these online geeks became genuine friends who I loved the bones of, who shared amazing experiences with me, who were there for me, who I would never have had the pleasure of ever getting to know had it not been for the big bad world of the evil internet.

I’m proud to say that a small handful of these shameless boyband lovers who I made friends with when I was 14 years old are still two of my closest friends today in my adult life. So what if I only see them once in a blue moon? They’ve still been two of the best friends who have been there for me through first boyfriends, going to university, moving into my first house, cancelling my wedding (that’s another story for another time...!), getting ridiculously drunk & even sharing hotel rooms with me while I have noisy one night stands. Yes, true friendships!

 

From boybands to wrestlings to out-of-hours
hotelling with Lise

 

 

And as I’ve grown up & fallen in love with other hobbies such as burlesque & wrestling, this whole online-acquaintence-met-via-shared-interest-becoming-genuine-real-life-friend thing has grown too with even more true friendships blossoming from even more obscure walks of life.

 

Burly girlies from all of the everywheres, as seen on t'internets.

 

In my “real” life I would never associate with an arrogant, promiscuous, semi-professional boxer who has manicures even more regularly than I do, yet I find this very person being a great friend with whom I’ve had some hilarious experiences thanks to a shared interest as discovered via the internet.

I would never have encountered a bi-polar, mother-of-one who is a metalhead of a handcrafter if it hadn’t been for social media & I would never have been lucky enough to meet her in person to form such a treasured friendship with if it hadn’t been for live shows... That had been promoted to us via social media!

Parents & teachers always like to think they’re always right in everything they have ever said & done but they couldn’t have been any more wrong in their warnings about the dangers of the internet to me, because without the wonder of the internet I wouldn’t have as many cherished & sincere friends (with whom I actually have so little in common with!) as I do today. Some of them can be absolute twats & sometimes I wish I’d never even typed that first “hello” to after the heartache they cause through meaningless text, but I love them dearly. I’m honoured to call the people behind the display photos my friends & wouldn’t be without any of them. Ever.

 

Booby snuggles with Anna

 

NB: Yes. Yes I know there are still cases of online fraud & grooming & they are truly awful but, gimme a break! This is a gushy blog about the beauties I’ve befriended via the internet, not a controversial discussion about politics & society. Pfffft!