BECAUSE IT’S IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY

For some reason, the page ‘Who I Am And Why I Do This’ has stopped functioning, so this intro is going to be at the head of my blog, probably for as long as the blog lasts. Newer rubbish will from now on be posted below it.
Now. . .
An update dedicated to ME!!!
I am a middle-aged female deist Mancunian, an oddball loner with misanthropic tendencies.
I live in a terraced house with cats Domino Basset and Lyra Tab in a small town on the East Lancs (Greater Manchester) border of the Manchester conurbation.

THE CATS

DOMINO BASSET

LYRA TAB

This blog is for my entertainment only.
The motto of my blog is ‘There is no god, so don’t worry about it’, which just about says it all, for as soon as we can shake off the idea that some being in the sky is watching us and wants us to live our lives according to his word, whatever it is, and we have only ourselves to rely on, the better it will be. For everyone.
I have no problem with believers believing in their chapels and temples and things, but when they put it out on the street, and try and make or alter laws according to the tenets of whatever fairy tale they follow, then I have a problem.
But then I have a problem with human beings in general.
I has have mentioned already, I am an irredeemable misanthrope, with a low opinion of my fellow humans (this, of course, includes myself.) and an endearing, unusually powerful respect for members of other species. I’ve never had any other reason to be any other way. Because, where human beings have harmed me, other species haven’t.
If you’re still around by this point, that means you are interested enough in my mumbling on to maybe want to send me fan e-mail. In that case, then here’s the place to send it;
jessica9909(AT)hotmail(DOT)co(DOT)uk

MORE RUBBISH BELOW

THOUGHTS ON 11th NOVEMBER

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below…

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields…

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields…

Written in 1915 by the Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, allegedly the inspiration for the wearing of poppies as a tribute to the dead of the Great War and subsequent wars.
And men today are still falling ninety years and three thousand miles away from Flanders, and where the poppies still blow.

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : DUCLE ET DECORUM EST

For this Remembrance Sunday I am breaking with tradition and instead of a song, it’s a poem. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, by Great War poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed on the forth of November 1918, just a week before the Armistice, at the age of twenty five.
Here he is, reading it himself, thanks to the clever animation of Jim Clark, from his poetry animations YouTube channel.

Like all Owen’s poetry, it tells of the brutal stupidity of war. Dulce Et Decorum Est is part of what Owen calls ‘the old lie’, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, from Roman poet Horace’s Odes, and can be translated ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’.
As always,
Enjoy and,
A good week,
Whether you honestly believe the war in Afghanistan is actually achieving anything, except bloody mass murder, or not.

A LETTER FROM A SERIAL KILLER

Dear Madam,
Thank you for your letter dated the 4th November. As you can imagine I receive hundreds of letters per week, the number of which has gone up ever since the book about me was published. The majority of these letters come in two categories. Either they show their love of humanity by describing exactly what should be done to me, including, but not limited to, hanging, electrocution and being tied naked to a metal bed frame and candles lit under me until I stop moving. The other category comes from people who are more than sympathetic as to my reasons for what I did, and are only too willing to dump their husbands and families and come and enjoy all manner of sexual congress with me. (I consider myself a man of the world, but some of the thing they want to do to me I’ve never come across in my long and varied career). Because of the subject matter of these missives, I find it more prudent to ignore the vast majority of correspondence to my cell.
But you letter has struck a chord in me. I sense a soul that is sympathetic without being overbearing, and your reasoning as to what is the best way to prevent people like me ending up where I am makes a great deal of sense. This is one reason why I chose to respond by putting pen to paper and writing back to you.
I say one reason, as the aforementioned reason is not the main reason why I am willing to correspond with you.
What you must understand is that my freedom is, inevitably, very limited. Due to the nature of my crimes I am unable to mix with the general population, out of fear of what may happen if I come across someone else who is not able to defend themselves. Most of the time, I enjoy repose in my ten by eight foot cell which will be my home for, if the Home Secretary has their way, the rest of my natural life. The only time I leave my current accommodation is for my daily shower and then two officers escort me there and back. I only see the outside once every day for an hour, under a caged roof, flanked by four officers. So, it is with the utmost regret that I return the list you enclosed with the understanding it is lack of opportunity and not lack of enthusiasm that stops me from fulfilling your request.

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS IN OLD SONGS

You’d be so nice to come home to,
You’d be so nice by the fire,
While the breeze on high sang a lullaby,
You’d be all that I could desire,
Under stars chilled by the Winter,
Under an August moon burning above,
You’d be so nice,
You’d be paradise,
To come home to and love.

Ladies and gentleman, we have a perfect example of necrophilia in this song. Read it! Read how the object of desire doesn’t do anything, except ‘be so nice. . .by the fire. . .so nice. . .to come home to and love’.
Necrophilia!

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : CHORUS OF THE HEBREW SLAVES

This weekend’s song is a true classic. ‘The Chorus of The Hebrew Slaves’, from the 1842 opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar) written by Giuseppe Verdi with lyrics by Temistocle Solera. The opera told the story of the Hebrews being overpowered and taken into servitude by the Babylonians, and the song itself is inspired by the 137th Psalm.

Listen for the sections starting at 1:06 and 3:57. It was my Dad’s favourite and he was always whistling it. I’m flooded with a teary sweet sorrow as I remember.
So,
As always,
Enjoy, and
A good week whether you speak of times gone by or not.

EXTREME MISANTHROPY

Suppose someone used genetic modification to create a virus with the kill power of Ebola and the gestation period of AIDS? And it was an air borne virus. Someone with the virus riding on bus could infect all the other passengers and the driver by just breathing and everyone breathes. Just imagine. With the long gestation period it would have taken ahold on most of the human race before people started showing symptoms. Doctors and scientists would be dropping dead before they could find out where the virus came from. We wouldn’t stand a chance. And best of all, it would have no effect on other species. Maybe some of the higher primates with their similar DNA would be infected but because of the small, vital genetic difference the worst it could do was give them a bad cold.
Of course, there are some with a natural immunity to AIDS and Ebola. They would have to be immune to both and then they would live on, watching their family dying off, helpless. But they couldn’t reproduce because a carrier of the virus would pass it on to the baby in the womb, resulting in infections or bloody miscarriage.
No other living thing would be touched by it.
When it was realised that this was cutting a swathe through the human population unhindered, imagine the terror, seeing people dying and not knowing if you’d got the infection or not, not for years. Everyone would become anarchists, putting themselves and their own first. People are dying, daily so why waste time being kind and putting others first? Everyone would fight for their own survival. The social, legal and economic systems would come apart and we would be reduced to lower than cavemen, helplessly trying to survive, maybe out of jealousy attacking and killing those with a proven immunity, or even those who didn’t show symptoms due to not being infected. Smaller and smaller groups would wander the wastelands fighting over every scrap of food, using guns and knives to gain the upper hand before succumbing to the effects of the virus. Apocalyptic religions would take ahold. Small fiefdoms, policed by ruthless soldiers in the pay of the local monarch would spring up. Mass suicides would be the order of the day. And over it all the bloody spectre of the virus that brought low the human race.

Told you. Total misanthrope, me.

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : KIDDIO

This weekend’s song to end the weekend on is from 1960; ‘Kiddio’ sung masterfully by Brook Benton. It was his forth number one hit in the Rhythm and Blues charts in the US, two of the four being a duet alongside Dinah Washington.

His smooth voice and the opening strings always take me back twenty years, pinning me to a special point in time long gone, but very alive in memory. I’m an odd bugger, me. I don’t allow everyday worries and concerns to effect me, but sometimes something happens and everything stop making sense, stops rhyming, and it can last for months and I always concentrate on music to get me through and twenty years ago, after the death of my truest friend, my Alsatian dog, this song was there for me, keeping my head just above the agitated waters of mental anguish. I’ll never forget the dog, nor how this song buoyed me up.
Anyhow,
As always,
Enjoy and,
A good week, whether you start talking about the weather or not.

OF CLOCKS

Remember, clocks go back one hour at two am this morning.

AND WHY NOT SAY IT?

I’ve been thinking about BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on BBC’s ‘Question Time’. I didn’t see it, but apparently the other panellists ganged up on Mr Griffin and the Unite Against Facists picketed outside Broadcasting House in London.
In other words, those UAF members who are supposed to defend the rights of minorities and stop facism were using very facist Nazi tactics against the minority BNP; I don’t like what you’re saying so I’m going to stifle you and deny your right to say it. Everyone hates the BNP, but they do have a right to freedom of speech without being threatend to be smashed for having an opinion different than the UAF.
Did you know that there is only one race? The human race. Human beings are all the same, and I dislike them all equally irrespective of height, colour, age, sex, sexuality, background, etc. The only way we are going to end this stupid divide and conquer I’m-from-here-so-I’m-better-than-you-from-there is to bring all the borders down. We share one big round planet and at the moment it’s carved up into different sections within which people are supposed to stay, and if they wander across an imaginary line on a map they are entering someone else’s country. This has to end. Apart from the influences of the religions, this seperating of peoples is the biggest cause of war and persecution.
We have to be taught we need to work together to save the planet not hate our neighbour because he is across the line over there.
Just imagine if the nations had decided to bring the borders down at the turn of the last century? Would there have been a Great war? That was all about nationalism, and would the Jews had been persecuted if it was not seperate countries but one planet? The Hutu and Tutsi people would not have been the hacked and hackers if there had been no need to divide them on behalf of their named origins. Ethnic cleasning in Eastern Europe would not have entered the minds of people if there had been no ethnic differences, just one large nation. And the Soviet Union. Red China and the Khmer Rouge would not have existed if there had just been one vast planet.
See, the only way we can prevent more massacres is to stop this indentifying with one section of the planet and bring the borders down, to make it one planet.
Just imagine how much wildlife would not be persecuted if people could just uproot and move away instead of having to hack into the territory and invade the land of other species for space.
Just imagine how people would work together to help heal the wounds caused by humanity once they woke up to the fact that this planet, and not just a bit of it, was their responsibility.
All right, yes, at first, there would be thousand coming West and North from the Middle Eastern and Southern bit of the planet, but once things had settled down, people would be able to live, with equal rights, where they wanted.
Imagine if it was decided, mutually, without coercion, for the planet’s salvation, (it’s the only one we’ve got) that all the borders were brought down at say midnight (depending where it was for you) on 31st December 2009. There would be breathing space for all. There would be no need for wars over land, which after religious difference is the biggest reason for war.
If you wanted to move to another part of the planet, you could. I doubt I would see the full benefit in my lifetime but my nieces and nephew would be able to say, proudly, they were not residents of a certain nation but, as they are in reality, citizens of the planet earth.
It would certainly end the chronic stupid of racism than would shouting down someone on a BBC programme.

A LOCAL EVENT

I suppose it’s my fault, as I’m not really into local history, but today is the first I’d heard of this disaster. Actually, I noticed, and was attracted to, the commemoration sculpture and it was this that led my to finding the plaque.
The area today? It’s factories and rows of compact flats, with wide roads that contain very little traffic, at the back of a main road.

AND SO IT’S OVER

Howard Barton Unruh: 21st January 1921 – 19th October 2009.
Died at the age of eighty eight after a prolonged illness in the nursing facility of Trenton State hospital where he had been, on a diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia, since shooting his way into the record books back in September 1949. Said to be ‘no longer lucid’, his last visitor, a fellow world war two veteran, died in 2001. His family are all gone, as are most of those who were around on that late summer day in Camden, New Jersey when the deeply troubled Howard finally snapped and killed thirteen people on a twelve minute walk down main street.
The man whose surname meant ‘unrest’ is at rest now.
RIP, Howard.

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : BEI MIR BIST DU SCHOEN

This weekend’s song is the Al Bowlly classic ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen’, (To Me You’re Beautiful) a song originally written in 1932 for a Yiddish musical by Sholom Secunda, with lyrics by Jacob Jacobs. The musical itself ‘Men Ken Lebn Nor Men Lost Nisht’, or You could live, if they would let you, closed after one season, but the song itself caught the ear of Sammy Cahn who bought the rights for $30 and with his partner Saul Chaplin re wrote the song with English lyrics, but kept the title. It was first sung by the Andrew’s Sisters in 1937, and Al didn’t record his version (I think the best) until January 1938.

No one on earth could sing like Mozambique born Albert Allick Bowlly, the original crooner, and no one ever will.
So,
As always,
Enjoy, and
A good week, whether your heart grows light, or not.

UNCHRISTIAN CHRISTIANITY+

Everyone’s favourite New Zealand born evangelical Christian, Ray Comfort, and his pal Kirk Cameron, who in his younger days was an actor, have really shown their true colours by putting out their own version of ‘The Origin of Species’.
What do I mean, their own version?
Well, it’s exactly the same as it was first published, one hundred and fifty years ago, but with a special addition. At the front, before you actually get to the book, is a sort of preface, fifty pages of it, written by Ray Comfort, listing the mistakes of evolution, (Piltdown man, anyone?) how evolution tempted Hitler into his own brand of hateful racism, how Charles Darwin was a racist and a misogynist, etc.
In other words, it’s the book with a load of anti-Darwinist propaganda stuck at the front.
Now, putting aside the fact a few (corrected by other scientists, who after all are only human) mistakes, doesn’t make evolution less true in itself. For every Piltdown man there is a Darwinopterus, which is a genuine, perfect example of what Creationists would call the (a) missing link. And that fact that Hitler was (he wasn’t) a rabid evolutionist who massacred millions of Jews in the name of Darwinian purity, doesn’t make evolution fiction. Neither does what Darwin himself thought of other races and females. Darwin’s ideas about other nationalities does not detract from the fact evolution explained the diversity of life on earth and still does after one hundred and fifty years. But don’t worry about that.
Instead, concentrate on what Comfort and his pal Cameron are doing. Now, I used to be a Christian, and I was taught by many old saints, that charitable works, cheerful giving, being kind to those you can’t stand, loving service, is what Christianity is all about. Because when non believers see your example, they will want to know more about this Christian business and might even get saved themselves. But no. Western Christians like Comfort and Cameron are too busy pedalling propaganda to go out and serve in the name of Christ. If you go and do an old person’s shopping for them, or babysit to give a harassed single mother a few hours off, or help build a shed or make a bed, and do it for Jesus, that’s Christianity. There is nothing in the Bible that says ‘write a load of stuff to turn people to me’. Actions, not words, make the Christian. That’s what makes people like Comfort and Cameron unchristian.

As to the job and my efforts in getting one front; I’m not going to post postings(?) as to my daily job-finding efforts. There are few things more boring than having to put up with an on-going autobiography concerning what a body gets up to. I will only mention it again when (if) I manage to get work.