Tantalising

I am exceedingly pleased with today's progress. French class was back up to full strength which meant I didn't have to answer every question. My supervisor has come back - she was away due to some personal matters, of which it is not my place to talk. And I've literally just finished Thursday's homework, so tomorrow afternoon will be dedicated to researching how best to teach two small children English. My mother has already given me spades of useful advice, so I strongly suspect that tomorrow after about 3.30 I shall be sticking, cutting, and writing in big letters with pens that are both colourful and highly addictive, if one gets one's nose too close to them.

I was up nice and early to watch my internet slow down to the approximate speed of a snail in treacle, and so instead I cracked on with the French work that I have just completed. If you have a desire to see a small and - most likely - badly written insight into my imagination, you may find it just here. If you don't speak French, I'm afraid it will be mostly useless, but if five people ask for it in English I shall gather the energy and do so.

This morning was actually full of false starts, now I think about it, because when I got in I sat in the office for a good hour by myself waiting for my supervisors, both of whom live out of town, to come in. As my door to door commute is about five minutes, including checking-myself-out-in-the-windows time, I didn't know that the road into town was absolutely blocked. So I kicked my heels for an hour with nothing to do; one of the dangers of working too efficiently. It leaves one with nothing on which one can work independently.

After lunch my colleague and I coached one of the administrative staff who's a main point of call for all international students and therefore has a pressing need to improve her English. We were interrupted several times, which was really good - it gave us a chance to see her in full flow with students. Remember that we have students who come from Russia, China, Iran...all over the world, and they bring a distinctly different cultural flavour - and English accent. Our colleague dealt with everything beautifully, and it was a real joy to watch her use phrases we'd literally just taught her.

The French class, as I say, was much better, and everyone seemed really energised. Perhaps the break that some of my classmates had taken had recharged their batteries. In any case, it's great to be back, though I think my teacher was less than overjoyed with the two page essay I turned in. I have absolutely got to learn how to edit.

A brief goodbye to my colleagues and classmates and I am home, having passed by the bank to drop off my hard-earned money. The BDE is having a party on Thursday in an ice bar, and three different students have insisted I come. The paranoid part of me has gone full Ackbar:

But the paranoid part of me can get stuffed. I'm excited about chilling with the students.

If that joke caught you by surprise then you have not read enough of this blog.

Oh, yesterday I asked you a question and nobody got the answer right. This is proof that I am making links that are far too far-fetched, even for the great minds who read this. The answer, by the way, was Lancelot, because a golf bag is where one keeps one's clubs. Lancelot is another name for the knave, or the Jack, of Clubs. Like all riddles it's annoyingly simple once you get it, and like all riddle-setters I am a smug twerp whose hat you'd pinch if you saw him.

It won't make me less smug, but at least you'll have a nice hat.

My shoes got less sacred today

They've got less sole than yesterday.

People tell me I'm too serious, so I thought I'd lay my best joke out at the start so that it's clear I have a fun side.

In other news, today has been a total bust. I got up nice and early and spoke to someone in Australia and went through my emails (I'm getting to that exciting point where the novelty of receiving thirty emails overnight is no longer ego-inflating and is instead tiresome and frustrating). I've started using two apps which have changed my approach to working, and since nothing of any great interest happened today I'm going to talk about them.

I appreciate that this may not be what you came here for, so here's another video for you, and especially for +Sheila Bennett who requested the excellent piece in question.

For anyone still here, I've started using a sleep tracking app (Sleep as Android, 14-day free trial) to see if it can clear the groggy sensation caused by re-entry into this world from Morpheus' and an organising app (Astrid, free) to ensure I stop forgetting things. Sleep as Android has massively improved the way I get up, and for that I am deeply indebted to it and its creators. It has some way of tracking sleep and wakes me up at the moment that it will hurt the least, and does so gently. It could only be kinder if it made tea at the same time, and I am sure someone is working on that now.

What it has also done - and this is one of the negative points - is shattered one of the illusions I had about myself: it turns out I snore. Various girlfriends have mentioned this to me, and I have laughingly agreed with them, knowing that their tiny brains can not possibly the difference between fantasy and reality and that they were probably dreaming. I cannot so easily dismiss an android. The evidence is irrefutable, and the worst sort of embarrassment.

If you've ever listened to your voice played back to you then you have at least experienced some measure of this hideous phenomenon. It turns out that how we hear ourselves is not how other people hear us, and the voice that to you is as dark and rich as 80% cocoa solids is in fact very much more like the noise produced by stretching the neck of a balloon and letting the air out.

Now imagine the cultured and refined image you maintain day to day by plucking, brushing, shaving and bathing in asses milk. Fix that image solidly in your mind. Now let it shatter into a thousand pieces like a dropped wine glass as a snore, a throaty, meaty, dear-god-he's-trying-to-swallow-his-own-tonsils-snore, drills all the way through it. Nothing prepared me for this. I was still weeping in the shower twenty minutes later and giving serious thought to becoming a permanent bachelor, purely to ensure no unfortunate member of society should have to suffer through it.

Never record yourself sleeping. There is something deeply unsettling about the odd way bodies have a mind all of their own, and it is at night when that mind comes out and just messes about. I have learnt my lesson. Hideous.

The final low point of the day came during my French lesson, when I got my homework back and found it replete with awful, simple errors. There's nothing more frustrating, but I shall be triple checking future work to avoid them. It was only myself and one other student, and she's not as confident as me - her grammar is probably better (looking at my homework, I would be willing to put money on it) but she barely says anything, and so before long it was the Jonathan Kerr show - a show that is exciting and full of facts but helps no-one improve their French.

I bought some new shoes, I recorded two videos - one you see above, the other needs editing. Otherwise, as I said, this day has been a bust. On the other hand, I've my two lovely students tomorrow and teaching methods to research - so perhaps I shall do something useful after all.

Holy frack!

The first order of business is to congratulate +Sheila Bennett, a friend and my intellectual superior by a factor of about ten thousand. She was the only one to tweet me the correct answer to yesterday's question, so she gets a big shiny mention at the top of the blog. She also brews a wonderful coffee. That's neither here nor there, but it's a skill that sadly very few people actually have.

(As a side note, and because I absolutely know I'll get a message in angry Spanish if I don't, my beautiful but absent friend Paula also got it right, because she's smart, but forgot to tweet me, because you can't be the beautiful and notice all the details.)

The reason this blog is entitled Holy frack is because it passed the 10 000 view mark sometime today, and quite frankly I couldn't be more humbled. I enjoy writing enormously, and this has just encouraged me to keep doing it, so thanks. You guys rock.

As a token of my appreciation, I would like to offer you guys a chance to be the boss. Tweet me (@jonodrew), or leave a comment, give me a monologue or dialogue or, in fact, anything at all and I shall record it and put it on this blog. Any requests received in the next 24 hours only will be performed to the best of my ability. Any.

So: this morning I went in early and absolutely smashed through the translation I was given at the last moment. Seriously chuffed with myself for that; it was only a page and not too hard but the credit I now have with my colleague (who comes in at eight) should stand me in good stead in the future. In any case, I've started getting up a little earlier; I actually find that on four hours sleep I work just as well as on six, and since time is limited and I have a lot of stuff to read I've just started waking up earlier. There are less people using up the bandwidth as well, so I can watch the French news as I read.

I'd not had time to pick up breakfast yesterday so this morning I whipped up a two-egg omelette, which I highly recommend as a day-starter. Went in at 8.30, translation was completed by 9.30. There was more administration to take care of, and before very long it was midday. I went down to my poor, empty, hollowed out mediatheque and spent the day with sleeves rolled up, packing away the last few books and video cassettes and transporting things to my new office on the 2nd floor.

Oh yes. I have a new office, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I have it for exactly 8 weeks. I must learn not to fall for it; ours will be a short love, but a passionate one.

I paid my weekend wages into the bank today at last, so with any luck my little travelling fund will swell a little tomorrow morning. This evening's French lesson was frustrating, the other students seemed completely uninspired and as a result the atmosphere was leaden. Everyone has days like that, and the teacher did her best, but it takes a great teacher to make the subjunctive "mood" exciting.

I want you to meet my very good friend Mary-Lyne. She's normally quite scary. Honest.



She just doesn't seem that way. She just seems kind of cute. However, once you're past the intro, she tells the story really well and with a lot of humour. Good storytelling.

So: once again, all requests for dramatic readings will be honoured, new office (groovy), subjunctive tense (not groovy) and my friend who pretends to terror but is really just terrifically cute.

Year Abroad winning again.

Briefly:

I've written quite a long explanation of what I learned in my French class today and realised that you're probably not here for the French grammar lessons that I am. If you're interested in reading then by all means, it's over here, but otherwise my day was as follows:

Going into the office to discover that I had made two small errors the previous evening both, unfortunately, to the same person. Having finished a minor proofread and edit I sent the editor a cheery email, explaining that I'd only found some very small errors and that with my enclosed corrections the piece was ready to be published. As I sent it I realised I'd forgotten to attach the document, and shot off another quick message, apologising for the first and reaffirming that with my attached correction the piece could be published. I then went home.

You're all laughing, because you can see where this is going, but I couldn't and didn't.

So when I came in this morning I settled into my desk, opened my inbox, and got an understandably irritated message and, shortly after, a phone call. All was fixed in minutes, but the editor had a point - without the article he'd been left twiddling his thumbs. I try not to err, as it only reminds me that I'm human, but I do think that all email systems in the world could do with something like this from +Gmail:

I did! Thanks, Google!

Aside from that, however, my morning progressed as normal - I took some phone bookings for the cultural events we run for alumni and my supervisor and I adjusted the plan I've done for my old office. Since it's now finished with, I'm going to share it with you, because I think it's awesome and I hope you'll appreciate the huge number of hours I poured into it.

Isn't it glorious?

It's also a 3D model. Even as I type that I can hear the appreciative susurrations of future friends and acquaintances.

In the afternoon I discovered two things; one, that dates for the next TOEIC session had already been set - a fact I discovered by opening my inbox and watching 120 inquiring messages come in - and that someone high above me had given the order for my office to be moved, bypassing both my colleague and my supervisor. I suspect this is a danger in many large organisations; it's hard to ensure that right and left hand both know what they're doing at the same time. After sorting out a more suitable date for them to deconstruct everything the foreman and I had a pleasant chat about my internship and he congratulated me on my French. Happy days.

Last thing today was French class, which was interesting. I've done preceding direct object pronouns before but one thing caught me out; preceding indirect objects which, as it turns out, don't agree. The lessons are really helping with vocabulary and to clear up little grammar points I've always been a little shaky on and, as I love teaching, the professor puts up with my chattering as I try to nudge my classmates in the right direction. I really like this particular professor, although the fact that he's never read Calvin and Hobbes may prove to be a source of serious contention. 

In fact, here. Have some Calvin and Hobbes to warm your heart.

Bill Waterson, you magnificent, genius son of a gun. Come back.

Ce que j'ai appris aujourd'hui

French is an exceptionally complex language. I offer here a brief summary of my French lesson today, in the hope that it will help anyone struggling with agreements.

Let's break it down.

J'ai cassé mes lunettes. - I have broken my glasses.
No agreement at all. Lunettes is a feminine plural noun. (This will be important later.)

Mes lunettes sont cassées. - My glasses are broken.
The part participle agrees with the subject! An extra e and an extra s are added because lunettes is feminine plural. (I told you it would be important later.) Notice that the verb in this case is être.

So far, so good.

Now, there are a few irregular verbs in French that use être instead of avoir because of reasons that are really exciting if you're a linguistic nerd like me.

Working on the assumption that you're not, we'll move on.

Those few verbs that do take être also need to agree with their subject. Thus Je suis venu, because I am a chap, but elle est venue, because she is not. And elles sont venues because elles are all ladies and there is more than one of them, hence the addition of both e and s.

So far so good.

However, if we move the direct object of the verb in front of the verb, we agree the part participle. But not with the subject. With the object.

So let's imagine Yoko and John are talking.

J'ai cassé mes lunettes, she says.
Où sont les lunettes que tu as cassées? he asks in response. Where are the glasses that you broke?

First sentence: Avoir, object after verb, no agreement.
Second sentence: Avoir, object before verb, agreement.

Remember that sometimes we can replace the whole object with an object pronoun:

Où sont mes lunettes? - Where are my glasses?
Je les ai cassées. - I broke them.

Once again, object before the verb, agreement - even though it's avoir.

Now let's move onto way more exciting things.

Reflexive verbs!

Yoko and John are talking again, and Yoko's been in an accident.

Je me suis cassée la main. - I've broken my hand.

Poor Yoko. Note that cassé has an extra e not because la main is feminine but because Yoko is. Notice also that in French our body is not really ours: we hold it, as it were, at arms' length. See also je me brosse les dents, je me lave les pieds, and je me brosse les cheveux.

The conversation continues before dinner:

Est-ce que tu t'es lavée les mains? - Have you washed your hands?
Oui, je me les suis lavées! - Yes, I washed them!

John's kind of a controlling douche.

But: in the first we have an agreement with the subject, tu, who's Yoko and a girl. In the second, the agreement is with the preceding direct object les, which stands for les mains. 

I've added direct to my litany because there's one more stop on the grammar train, and it involves direct and indirect verbs. Indirect verbs take a preposition, direct verbs just get straight up in your grill. Most communication in French is indirect: je parle à, elle téléphone à, ils montrent à while receiving sensory information and doing things is more direct.

We've only worked with direct verbs so far, so let's add in some indirects. Yoko, John?

As-tu parlé à ta mère? - Have you called your mother?
Oui, je lui ai parlé plus tôt. - Yes, I called her earlier.

What the what? Preceding object but no agreement. French is a funny old language.

The reason is because lui is not a direct object pronoun. It's indirect. Preceding indirect objects get no agreements, but preceding direct objects do.

So: Never agree verbs with an avoir auxiliary, unless the object comes before the verb - in which case agree the past participle with the object - unless that object is indirect, in which case do not agree with anyone, do not pass Go, do not collect £200. Unless it's Sunday, in which case all rules are reversed and we'll all play Mornington Crescent until someone wins.

Now just for fun, translate the following sentence: I washed my hands. I washed them and scrubbed them, spoke to them and broke them. 

The Guardians

Do we have "gardien(ne)(s)" in English? I'm sure if we did they'd be "building managers" or "block supervisors,"  because we seem to love over-complicating our jobs in English. This was the subject of our French lesson this evening, and it was quite fun. Apparently there's a stereotype, or cliché in French. I'm not being facetious; according to the excellent (and, for its excellence, incredibly cheap) book The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through The Hidden Connections of the English Language, cliché is "a technical word in printer's jargon for stereotype."

I much prefer Thursday lessons, and being partnered with an Indian guy is great - his accent is really, really peculiar and I have to pay attention when he talks. Although I probably won't meet any other Indian people whose only other language is French, the fact remains that not all French people have a Parisian accent, and being able to understand those who normally have difficulty will make me friends.

This morning was, I confess, like something out of my nightmares - my colleague came into the office sounding as though she was not only at Death's door but had married Death and was being carried across the threshold by the same. She could barely even speak.

While maintaining my distance as artfully as I could, I tried to convince her to go home. It worked, thank goodness, but I suspect I didn't manage it soon enough - I can already feel the tickle in my throat that indicates approaching sickness.

However, I have been cheered enormously by a package that arrived today from my family. Behold:

With the address blacked out, I'm lucky I got it at all.

At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking I was excited about a box. But it's not just a box. Inside:

That's right. They sent me a box of spices. I love spices, they make cooking more exciting and can turn any dish into a masterpiece. So imagine how upset I was when it turned out my mother had played a cruel trick on me, and sent me only old newspapers:

But wait! What's that, hiding underneath?

BAZINGA

Dark chocolate Lindt Lindor balls. Green & Blacks selection. An InterRail book, because I'm tempted to go adventuring and two tailor-made shirts my brother brought back from Hong Kong.

My family are awesome. 

Thank you for sticking with me through that, by the way, it was long-winded but I feel it was worth it.

Tomorrow is Friday; the weekend beckons with lessons aplenty to give. And possibly a frog to gut.

I should have eaten before writing that...

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

Work has blossomed like love - right when I'm in the middle of something else. My room plan is utterly complete with tables, shelves and other paraphernalia one finds in a library. It looks perfect and uncluttered, unlike my desk, which is straining under the repeated assault from translations in varying states of draft. Most of the actual resources one would expect to find have been moved to other parts of the building, and my office now needs a revolving door as students line up to ask the same question, apparently hoping that for them I shall leap out of my chair and say "YES! I sent everyone to another part of the building but YOU, random student whose acquaintance I have only just made! I have been waiting all day for YOU! Take the resources I have cunningly hidden! Go forth and learn!"

That does not happen very often.

However, I've also now got three translations to finish for tomorrow afternoon and two pieces of English work from students to check over, as well as learning some piece of theatre or sketch for my French class on Tuesday and writing a one-side piece on old people in Britain, which is going to be quite good fun now I think about it. Le boo and le hiss to the Tories.

I've also done all my laundry and met a chap from America who's come equipped with five sentences and assures me that it will be enough. The arrogance of anyone who goes to live in a foreign country and doesn't bother learning the language is so enormous that I never know whether to laugh or weep. Is getting by enough? I'd understand if he'd come for a week. But six months, on an English-only programme - what cultural benefit could he gain?

I don't know. Maybe a lot; maybe I'm being a language snob.

An urgent email punctuated an exciting 4.30 meeting; a friend of mine seeking help with revision who knows that flattery is the surest way to wrap me around son doigt. So at some point tomorrow I shall be dredging my brain for Economics information, which means tonight I'll need to go over my notes.

I'm still really energised from my French class, where I was helping the friendliest guy in the world. He struggles a bit with French but speaks fluent Spanish and English, so go figure, he's already way ahead of me. Class was huge fun, because we have a professor who, like me, loves tangents. We were reading a short article in which there was a Chinese name so I asked my friend Adeline how to pronounce it.

She did. We repeated it back. She shook her head and repeated it again. We tried it once more. Some of us got it, but the rest of us didn't, and it led to a good ten minute debate in very flowing French about languages and their roots and relative difficulties. The spelling rules of English (a phrase which is ironically demonstrative, as I had to rewrite it to avoid "English's"because I'm really not sure it's right) came up as a large hazard, but the Chinese way of writing a different character for every different word trumped it. Persian apparently lent the Arabic world their alphabet, but a few letters were lost on the way, and Russian, like its semi-automatic rifles, hasn't changed in years and sounds astonishing.

I also got the chance to share some very useless knowledge, courtesy of QI - we were discussing menu, a Middle-French word that cropped up in La Fontaine and in the article that we were reading today and means small or little. I have a theory that menu being a synonym for carte came from food served à la française - whereby every course would appear together as an enormous display of opulent and stupid power, since nobody could eat it all at once and so most of it would be cold before it could be eaten. Thus un menu, a little card displaying a smaller selection, could be offered to patrons who actually wanted to enjoy their meal.  Service à la française is no longer truly practiced because, as previously stated, wasteful and stupid. It still exists in the form of the buffet but is, hopefully, dying out.

It was surpassed by service à la Russe, which may be more familiar to you - I don't know how often you eat 14 course meals. At its most basic it is the form of service we know whereby food is served in courses, thus ensuring optimum temperature and avoiding melted ice cream and cold soup. In true Russian style, you are given an empty plate, and staff circulate and serve precisely as much as you wish - a host who serves you a full plate risks either seriously underestimating you, leaving you irritable, or overestimating you, leaving you insulted and unpleasantly bloated.

Bloating is acceptable among the upper classes, but insults - never.

Work - and love - is calling my name. I'll leave you with a beautiful Chinese poem.



Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.


Or, in pinyin (the way of writing Chinese in Roman script):

Shī Shì shí shī shǐ


Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.


And she tells me English is difficult.

Girls, girls, girls

This morning was stressful. Soon my shiny new office will be ready and we will be able to start welcoming students to the new médiathèque. It may also be getting a rebranding, so that's really exciting - names are important, but not as important as the thing, as Juliet was so keen to point out - a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It's true; if you have a friend called Rose, ask her to pretend to be Jennifer for a day, and you'll notice she still smells of rainforests and sunlight. And sweat. Just a bit. She's human. We all are.

The problem with a shiny new office, however, is that it needs shiny new fittings and shiny new lights and that means shiny new drills need to be used to bore holes in walls, which would be absolutely top-hole and spiffing if my new office were not next to my current office. Making phone calls while a workman kicks his power drill up to 11 and goes to town on the poor wall is impossible, and conversation in the office became a little strained. Still, I powered through the tasks that needed doing, and before long I was ready to head into my basement to measure more things. My supervisor wants a plan ready for the new occupants of my basement office, and so I'm measuring and teaching myself Sketchup and very frequently cursing under my breath because I've accidentally spent twenty minutes making a gorgeous desk and only just realised it's floating two metres off the floor. And I have no idea how to get it to obey gravity, so for the moment whoever moves in next will need to make do with an anti-grav desk.

We also finally sorted out the books that we're keeping and the books that we're giving to anyone who wants them along with a load of VHS tapes and cassettes, in case Doc Brown turns up.

Not the Doc Brown from yesterday's blog. (Although thank you for reading so regularly.) The other one. Big hair. Owns a Delorean.

That's the bunny.

Incidentally, did you recognise him the first time you saw him as that destroyer of childhoods Judge Doom, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I did, and it was not a pleasant moment. I kept expecting him to do this:

And he didn't. I got to the end of Back To The Future and was so tense I couldn't stand up. My mother actually used me as a doorstop for an hour before I relaxed. Sensible women, my mother.

All of that was a lot of verbiage for the joke that we have VHS tapes and they're old fashioned, but I am quite sure you'll agree it was worth it. If you are a student in the place in which I work and, for some reason, have a VHS tape player, you may come and see me and help yourself at lunchtime.

I had my first French class today, which was interesting. We focussed on the future simple tense, which was quite fun. The teacher is very animated and the exercises are quite fun, so I may well appropriate them for my own classes because plagiarism is the highest form of flattery. I would say without boasting that I am one of two students with an already good level, but it's really interesting to see how I've gotten rusty through needing only relatively basic French and tenses. Several times I found myself struggling for words that I really ought to know, but it was nice to get back into the swing of speaking French with a variety of people.

It's also interesting to see where I've changed; I've not been in a classroom setting (as a pupil) for quite some time, and so I was surprised to find myself encouraging my classmates to answer and pushing them to take centre stage. Those who remember me from shared classrooms in the hazy days of youth will attest to the fact that I was an insufferable know-it-all, a boy whose arm was the greatest short-twitch muscle ever seen. I could answer a question the teacher hadn't finished asking. Hell, sometimes I even answered questions they hadn't planned on asking. I was the uncool kind of disruptive kid, the one the teacher and the rest of the students hate.

I am now a thoroughly more chilled out chappy, though that's not to say I don't get a bit cross when things like this

Taken from artist's Tumblr, http://roseaposey.tumblr.com/post/39795409283/judgments

(which, by the way, is a piece of art criticising the slut-shaming, it's-your-fault-because-you-dress-like-that attitude which is way too fucking pervasive) appear on my feed titled "Use this as a reference guide." I'm bound to get a tiny bit irritated with anyone who is so apparently unable to control their animal instincts, so stuck in the Stone Age that they need women to cover up from neck to ankle. What utter twattery.

Do you know how to tell if a woman is asking for it?

She opens her mouth and she asks for it. 

She can be as naked as the day she was born and if she isn't asking then you need to man the fuck up and walk on.

Gorram, we live in a world where we have instant access to all humanity's knowledge, we live longer, we can fucking fly through the air and I still have dumbasses posting this as a "reference guide" like we're still living in caves and hunting saber-toothed-tigers and are literally only prevented from committing sexual assault because our potential victims cover themselves up. 

Gor-ram.

It's not my place to lecture anyone on feminism but: if you're a girl or a woman and you agree with that picture then think about what that means. It means you think guys should have the right to decide how you dress. It means that sexual assault is partly your fault.

And they don't. And it isn't.