The Blankets Were The Stairs

CAUTION: CONTAINS WANK.

Twitter is an easy target. A week doesn't go by without someone making a snarky comment about the social network. Whether it is:

- A random old person in the street

- A newspaper Op/Ed columnist (technically the same as above)

- Someone on Facebook (!)

- During the "Best of Social Media" segment on the late news (!!)

- A TV Child Psychologist on the televisual rat’s nest that is Today Tonight/ACA

- Shouted from an apartment as you walk a dog.

There is no dearth of uninformed opinion being expelled from the mouths and fingers of moronic Crum Bums who don't understand what Twitter is.

Twitter is a blanket. It is a vast amorphous patchwork quilt of thoughts and people and ideas and ideologies. All you have to do is stitch the right squares together and wrap yourself up in it to feel its warmth. Like to have an itch to scratch? Sew in some scratchy material - like the stuff Xmas jumpers from Grandma are made from - to rub against. Sure there will always be those who try to sew their odd-smelling damp rag of a patch into your blanky but that can be fixed with judicious use of the block button, which in this metaphor is, I dunno, one of those thread unpicker things? Block and replace with parody felt or squares with pretty but nonsensical horses on them.

And take your blanket with you - pretend you're Linus or Arthur Dent*, always have it on you. Pull it out when you're cold or bored or when in need of an argument (though not Abuse, that's a different room) or a distraction. Do it, it's fun.

Twitter, when used correctly is warm and makes you a better person - it's like The Fonz's jacket or, for a more topical reference it's like... Fonzy's jacket. (Did you ever see a Happy Days where Arthur didn't have the jacket? He's like a more evil version of Bob from Twin Peaks or for a more topical reference, Voldemort. Now, imagine if the villain in Harry Potter was Bob.)

But Twitter is also another country. Get directions. You don't heli-drop into the Hungarian highlands without some kind of guide (unless you're Wesley Snipes, but chances are you're not. If you are reading this, Wesley, I hope you have your blanket with you. It may even be a tax write-off, if you're into that kind of thing). It has its own customs and vernacular that may be difficult to grasp at first - which can make it seem cold. Thankfully the locals speak your language and are mostly nice and know how to sew -they will help if asked, they will tell you who to follow (#FF) and they will point out the damp rags.

Join me next week when I compare tumblr to a tumble dryer (get it?)

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*: Yes, Dent had a towel not a blanket whatevs.

50 Funny Women Off The Top Of My Head

That place for grandmas and advertising, Facebook, is once again a-buzz with the Women Aren't Funny schtick - well, as a-buzz as it can be between the pay-to-win 'videogames' and iPad 'competitions'. This is quite obviously hogcock. Women are funny. This is not a debate. However, if you were to point this out even with a comment as innocuous as "What are you doing?" you’d be shouted down with cries of "White Knight is gonna White-Knight" and demands to name a funny woman.

Yeah well, here's fifty:

Lucille Ball
Katherine Parkinson
Olivia Colman
Carol Cleveland
Roseanne
Sarah Millican
Dawn French
Jennifer Saunders
Tina Fey
Julia Davis
Kitty Flanagan
Roz Hammond
Sue Perkins
Jo Brand
Betty White
Emma Thompson
Portia De Rossi
@Brocklesnitch
Judith Lucy
Lily Tomlin
Marieke Hardy
Katy Wix
Miranda Hart
Deanne Smith
Andrea Anders
Judy Greer
Connie Booth
Nina Conti
Nora Ephron
Cal Wilson
Tress MacNeille
Kat Stewart
Julia Zemiro
Amy Sherman-Palladino
Maria Bamford
Goldie Hawn
Shelley Long
Peri Gilpin
Megan Amram
Amii MacDonald
Jane Turner
Gina Riley
Lisa Kudrow
Shappi Khorsandi
Meera Syal
Jennifer Crittenden
Allison Janney
Hannah Gadsby
Kristen Schaal
Tamsin Greig
Helen Fielding
Mindy Kaling

Again, this is just off the top of my head. There are of course hundreds of other women who are professionally funny and to suggest otherwise is either incredibly disingenuous or unreasonably ignorant (there was a time when folks were rightfully ashamed to broadcast their ignorance. Sadly, that's gone the way of the dodo (or Google reader)). THERE ARE HUNDREDS of them. From all generations and in all genres. FFS some are the best in their field regardless of gender (Ball, MacNeille).

There are two kinds of men (and it is men) that think women are not funny: Those that opine that men are funnier than women then use this 'evidence' to extrapolate further to imply women aren't funny at all. Christopher Hitchens falls into this category. The other category is apes men who don't like women. The first can be corrected - I mean that in a cruel Victorian posture teacher kind of way, not a Nazi Germany way. The second group will eventually discover fire and die out from smoke inhalation.

In this time of imdb, Wikipedia and YouTube there is no excuse to be ignorant of funny women. Here’s fifty to get you started.