This just proves something that I, and all disabled people, have always known.
That we are not a special breed, set out for martyrdom by our genetic make up, that we don’t all bare our conditions, no matter what their cause, with sweet smiles and never get upset or annoyed or cheat and lie and commit crimes of fraud to get more illegally and not pay our dues.
We are human, just like the rest of you, and ‘disabled’ doesn’t mean you can patronise us, just like up to recently a woman committing a crime of violence was more likely to be found ‘mad’ than ‘bad’. an aberration, a mistake of nature caused by upbringing or genes or getting involved with a bad man. We are perfectly capable of doing things that most people would believe were beyond us just because we are burdened with a disability.
Leonard Cheshire VC, the late, great night-time fighter pilot and disabled advocate, tried to get a campaign going that describes the disabled as ‘other abled’ but didn’t catch on, which is a shame, because it’s true.
Only the dead and those in a coma have nothing to offer to society, so long as it moves up a bit and allows us our place.
And the next time you feel the need to pat that wheelchair user on the head, make sure she isn’t taking the opportunity to pinch your wallet.
REVERSE DISCRIMINATION PAYBACK!
DARWIN HAD IT RIGHT AND A FUNDIE ADMITS IT.
I’ve been thinking about the another of the Fundie’s reasoning why gayness is wrong. Not because it’s a sin but because, as one loveable Fundie Christian red neck put it, pointing to his heavily pregnant wife,
“They can’t do THAT!”
Which is a delightfully honest celebration of the most basic and base reasoning for sex; reproduction. Not love, companionship, just having someone to hold when you’ve had enough, but getting down to it get-the-heck-out-of-here free fornication (so long as you’ve got a bit of paper and done the church service stuff anything goes) leading to the procreation of another of the species.
Now, I’m not being funny but don’t the Christian Fundies basically believe in the bible, word for word, and that which says that human beings are special in the sight of their creator biblegod? The only beings made in his image and above the lesser species with which they share this planet? And doesn’t the idea of sex to make more vehicles to carry on the genetic process that we are simply animals, driven by the need to carry on the species, and yet who can talk and reason? (reason! Ha, ha, ha!)
If we use the excuse that gayness is wrong because it doesn’t lead to making more vehicles, then surely it proves that we are on the side of the Richard Dawkins school of Darwinian evolutionists who reckon that the only reason sex happens is to propagate the species, or make more vehicles for the gene to spread out and continue down the line for ever.
I’d like to ask someone who reckons that gayness is wrong because it’s sterile, put this question to them and add, in the words of the late, great comedic people’s philosopher Eric Morecambe;
“Get out of that!”
(Although as a writer myself, I must acknowledge that the line was actually written by Eddie Braben, as was most of the Morecambe and Wise stuff).
Self pitying up-date; I’ve not added anything to this place for a bit because I’ve had a spell of the blues (I love that phrase, first heard it in the film ‘Ed Gein’ by Tartan Terror productions, said by lady tavern owner and late victim Mary Hogan to our lad himself.) and not felt like doing anything much. I hate stopping in and can’t afford to go anywhere and have to cut down on net time to save money to pay bills and have read everything in the house like three times each and can’t afford to buy any new reading matter, so no wonder I’m fed up most of the time.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE
Because the weekend is coming to an end, no matter what you do with the rest of the week. . .
We have the latest in my occasional series, Song to End The Weekend On, and the song is ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire‘.
The whole presentation is a short film a studenty attempt at humour with lots of photos that relate to the original song itself, played as a soundtrack. If you’re not into graphics, which I’m not. then keep the page (or tab) minimized and. . .
as always. . .
Best week possible, given the whole thing is slowly going down the toilet and. . .
Enjoy.
And I’m getting back to my story writing.
(One final note: One day I’m going to write my own version of this song, same tune, different words, relating to events with a UK slant, from 1963 to 2003, but I’m not going to rush, one line per year, through the last half of the forty years as Mr Joel does. Plus, and I’m adding this for sheer devilment, I wonder if I’m the only person who, on listening to this, pictures Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris (neither of who were first-borns) singing this, taking alternate lines. Or maybe I’m just in a norm-baiting mood.)
GOD SUED :NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT
It’s this kind of thing that gives an old misanthropic non-Theist (Deist isn’t Theist) like yours truly a reason to go on.
God not a person in the eyes of the law, or what? There should be more of these types in our courts in the UK.(when my Mother went to give evidence in a court a bit back, (something to do with being a witness to the activities of my youngest sister’s waste of space ex-boyfriend and his miserable family) she was insulted and it was insinuated she was untrustworthy because she openly admitted that she couldn’t hypocritically swear on a bible which she didn’t believe counted for anything.)
Shame this Italian fellow lost out and has to pay money himself. Still, he has the necessary gonads to try in the first place, going into the heart of the enemy and standing up to them, after all, no one knows if Jesus really existed, as it says in the bible, and although they can’t auto-de-fe folk any more they can still ruin you, and the Mother Church needs to recoup the lost funds that they had to pay out in compo recently somehow.
At least they can’t blame the litigious-happy Western world for this one.
AGE RELATED?
You know when you hear old folk talking about ‘the past’ and how great it was compared to today?
Well, I’ve started doing it.
I know I’m not old. I’m not even forty-four (not long to go now, though) and yet I recall my past life with a sort of sweet sorrow, a gentle pain of misery at it’s passing.
My younger sister left home in 1994, (my middle sister had been gone almost ten years by then) and between then and my Dad’s death, there was just the four of us at home, me, my Mum and my Dad, and our fat little Staffie cross doggie Sally (who died three months after my Dad almost to the day, at eleven). My Dad died suddenly, without warning, (he was perfectly healthy and showed no signs of what was going on inside him til literally the last hour) so there was no build up. I would go to work and my Mum would go out to the shops (she’d retired by then, and spent most of the day using up the vast tracts time she once spent on honest toil) Dad would sit around the house. (He’d given up the drink by then, and yet the fear of picking it up again made him stop in an alcoholic and therefore temptation free atmosphere.) We didn’t spend massive amounts of time as ‘a family’, but in the evenings we’d sit round the table to eat our tea, always a special occasion. The telly would go off and I’d be called out of my bedroom or wherever and we’d sit and eat then after clear up and sit down and watch a bit of telly again.
(The teatime ritual carried on after my Dad’s death, when my Mum felt up to resuming her life again. Up to me leaving home, the telly would go off, and she’d have me come into the kitchen and later first switching my compy off, and we’d lay the table and eat together. Today, when I just eat when I’m hungry and make no special preparation, I feel a bit of a pull of guilt. And of course, if my Mum comes here, or I go to her, the ritual is resumed.)
My Dad would have a newspaper, and his reading specs, in his chair. and my Mum be sat on the settee with Sally beside her, her eyes partly shut, while my Mother was engrossed in the doing on the telly, and I’d sit at the living room table behind the settee with a book and occasionally we’d chat about something and then one of us (my Mum or me) would get up say;
“Come on, Sally.”
And Sally, who’d had her fat sandy body stretched out by my Mum would get up and it would be her last walk of the night and when we came back, she would settle in and then it was almost bedtime and it wasn’t just that, it was the whole atmosphere, the lighting and everything. And I was happy, that kind of deep down happiness/contentment that’s just THERE, as total and yet as undetectable as the air we breath, and which you don’t notice til it’s gone.
And I now understand, for the first time, what the old people mean when they compare ‘today’ with ‘then’ and how ‘today’ loses out.
I do miss those times so much, the worse because they’ve gone for ever.
AN EXAMPLE OF A SUCCESFUL MISGUIDED POLICY
I’ve been told by someone in the know (a lady who runs a local shop) that the reason why I can’t get a flat from a housing association is because of queue jumping.
The idea is, a person can get on a waiting list, and because of all the immigrants, ex-prisoners and pregnant girls who need a place, that person (unless, of course, they are an immigrant, ex-prisoner or a pregnant girl) is forced down to the back of the queue while the aforementioned groups get to the front and therefore get their key to their own place first.
And of course, her solution (which is the solution of a lot of people I’ve mentioned it to, as a sort of social experiment) is that immigrants, etc, should be refused places til everyone else has been settled, and it’s up to the ‘everyone else’ to do see to it that their rights are put before ex-prisoners et al.
You know what that is?
A perfect, living example of the policy known as ‘divide and rule’.
Those in authority and some of the larger housing associations, are selling off houses to private owners, and are not getting any in return. They are not building any. Therefore, the smaller number of available rented dwellings have to be carefully rationed out. Instead of admitting this, instead of admitting that these parasite, comfortably housed, name badge waste of space bastards are GREEDY AND WANT MONEY and sod everyone else, they are putting it about that certain groups of people are put first.
If asked about it, to their faces (well, to the face of a low-tiered representative of the said authority) they either deny it in such a way that makes you know they’re lying, or just mutter about it being ‘policy’ to accept pregnant girls, and there isn’t much they can do about it. (Just obeying orders was an excuse used by a certain group of ultra authoritative types from history). Or they sometimes politely suggest you leave and then mutter something about ‘getting security’ if you don’t.
And instead of shouting, and rallying people round, and showing that this divide and rule policy is working, and shouldn’t be, that the poor ordinary sods are all in the same boat, those turned away, with threats of arrest vibrating humiliatingly through them, because they are not a member of the so-called privileged classes, will go out and verbally abuse or physically harm a member of such classes. (Attacks on immigrant communities and vicious verbal abuse of pregnant girls are examples of this. Not so much ex-cons. Ex-cons usually go off their reputation and get away with almost anything, unless they are child abusers then they too are fair game.)
You know what I think? I think instead of playing the authorities games, instead of allowing them to herd us and put us in a situation and allow us to fight it out, for their entertainment, like a sort of more refined and less bloody version of the gladiatorial games of old, when the better off paid to laugh at and cheer when the poor ordinary sods murdered one another, instead of helping them provide the entertainment by turning on and turning in others, we should rally round. Of course there are enough homes to go round. Of course there are no need to obey petty, pathetic, pointless rules. (Like if I wanted to swap my home for a flat, but that flat was owned by a different association, it couldn’t be. Even if both parties were willing. Even if that association had a policy of accepting pets in flats, where my own association hasn’t, and those who want to swap are a couple and want a terraced house without waiting years.) We should band together, all of us, and march on the bastions of authority and MAKE them listen.
I’m going to have to shut up now, even though it’s only words, as I am getting into dangerous, and probably illegal territory, and if I’m going to have my collar felt and led away by the plod, it’s not going to be for some subversive writing.
I’m sorry, it’s just that the whole business annoys me. We are all human beings, and all equal, but, in the paraphrased words (the most chilling words written in fiction, in my opinion) of the philosopher and elephant killer George Orwell, some of us are more equal than others. As long as the minority can herd us and tell us what to do, and then make out certain members of us poor ordinary sods are getting more consideration, and we accept it, like babies being spoon fed, and any attempt at dissent is made illegal, there will be some more equal than others and we will accept it. For our own good. After all, we don’t want to be arrested, do we? And those immigrants, ex-cons and pregnant girls ARE jumping the queue. ‘Cause that is the only allowed explanation.
As my Dad (dead ten years this January coming up) used to put it, whenever the news gave an example of pointless cruelty and violence, a use of blind unreasoning against any species, used to put it, in a sarcastic tone;
“Man, the superior animal.”
HELL FOR EVERYONE!
Did you know I’m going to go to hell?
But I’m not the only one. I’m in good (bad) company and for once, and proudly, part of the majority.
My Dad will be there, and my grandparents and well, almost everyone who I know and cared for. As well as better known (but equally dead) human beings, like Tom Paine and Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and Charles Darwin and (more than likely) Richard Dawkins, Galileo, David Hume and Gandhi and all the previous Dalai Lamas.
But you know who won’t be joining us in hell? Who won’t be gracing us with their presence?
Ted Bundy. Michael Ross. David Berkowitz. (More than likely not) Aileen Wornous. All the usual suspects.
And you know why? You know why hell will be stacked up with philosophers and scientists and reasoning, thinking human beings? Why all the gentle do-gooders who would have (and sometimes did) given their lives for others, to show they meant business with their own particular brand of looking at the world, will be suffering an eternity with the thermostat turned to ‘high’? And you know why most of the nasty types, the serial murderers, will be partying in heaven?
Because of a tiny clause that biblegod invented when the world was a few months old.
Anyone who disobeys him by going their own way will be stained by sin, and like a genetic disease, this sin is inherited by their descendants, and the only cure is to believe that Jesus died a bloody, painful death to heal us. This believing (and that’s all you need to do, hold a certain thought in your mind) will wipe out the stain of sin and catapult you off to heaven.
It’s right. It is. Read your bible. It doesn’t say anything about doing good deeds that get you into heaven. Good deeds sort of rack up your position, and make you stand out so when people ask you ‘why?’ it gives a great opening for evangelising, that is, making more Christians. But you don’t need to do anything useful and helpless and altruistic at all. Just tell others about how god will open the gates of heaven for you if you just believe, and then tell others, that Jesus died for us.
And almost all the serial killers, when faced with their impending own doom suddenly realise how important life is, and they escape the only way they can, by falling on their knees and saying the sinners prayers.
All the philosophers, scientists, have rejected biblegod and his word because, on reading it, and reading other books, they have, in all honesty, come to the well-reasoned conclusion that the bible is just another way of looking at the world, a book of fairy tales, of men, with no value beyond (maybe) a moral tract. But then you can find exhortations to kindness and gentleness in almost all the books of philosophy. Even the great story teller Hans Anderson has a moral to live by. Aesop was doing the same three thousand years before, with his fables.
I know I did. I was a member of the Evangelical born-again Christian movement for many years, til I picked up a copy of Bishop John Robinson’s ‘Honest to God’ (published, by the way, in the year I came to be. A lot of great things happened in 1963.) And on reading it, I found questions that the bible couldn’t answer.
So I did more reading. I did more praying. The sky was empty, unresponsive. So I decided, as I’d been taught, god is testing me. And he only tests those he loves. So I read and learnt to try and refute Robinson and his unmoved mover deist god.
And I couldn’t.
If god exists, he is too big, too important, to even know we are alive. He certainly isn’t so human and petty and vindictive to punish us for ever because we can’t believe on his word, which, given the objective lack of evidence, (he said his piece then cleared off and has remained silent on the right way since) and given the competing collection of other religions and philosophies, some of which look at salvation from a different angle and claim to be the only way, how can we really know which one is right if god himself won’t put us on the right road? He certainly wouldn’t send us to hell because it would be like a mega-brained scientist condemning an ant to eternal punishment for not waggling her antenna in a certain, unclear, ambiguous way, one of many competing, conflicting ways, transferred to her through the eyes of other, fallible ants, with no corrections as to the truth from the scientist himself.
That’s why I turned it all in. Because if the words of the bible themselves can be interpreted in a variety of ways and those who follow each different interpretation form groups and say they are right and everyone else is off to hell, how on earth can we say any religion or philosophy is the way to eternal salvation? And god isn’t certainly putting everyone else right personally.
That’s why I’m off to hell.
Because I have to say it;
biblegod doesn’t exist. He’s just the main, monotheistic star, of a certain collection of folk tales that caught on.
There is no heaven or hell. Just this life, which can be heaven or hell according to our circumstances and what we do with them.
Jesus isn’t going to come back and part the sheep from the goats.
We have only got ourselves to rely upon.
There is no other way to look at it, if you honestly consider the facts.
And if I’m right (and I am) then hell doesn’t exist, so you don’t have to worry about going there.
There you are. Being a Freethinker is a lot less upsetting than being in constant fear, slavishly following the contradictory rules, exhausting yourself trying to please (and trying to pass laws intrusive, pointless, victimless crime non-laws, to makes others please) an imaginary god.
Come on, it is, isn’t it? Admit it.
RELIGION – AGAIN!
Last weekend, Glasgow airport was attacked by a couple of men trying to do a smaller, British version of 9/11. Crashing into the doors using a flaming car.
Within the same 24 period, a car in London attracted the attention of various members of the authorities, and an attempt to take our several party goers in a night club district diffused along with a bomb.
Now, after a world-wide round up, several men have been arrested, and several of them seem to be doctors working for the NHS.
Think of that. Now, I’ve never been a student (never got the exams needed to go to college, and if I had my parents wouldn’t have allowed me out of their sight for long periods due to the fear of my condition acting up) but from what I’ve heard (from people who actually attended the various universities) it seems that student life is a carnival of experiencing life from various angles, which means unless these doctors trained in the same place and never mixed with anyone else, which would have drawn attention, they would have received quite a decent education in life as well as in medicine. They would have had to go out into the world and see a bit of it.
And yet, their conditioning, their religious beliefs, kept them on this path to trying to wipe out, at least in London, members of a group which they once were. Whatever they learned as students had no effect on them, and they carried on with their Koranic ideas and ended up attempting mass murder.
And you still get people saying religion is a force for good, and (no matter what colour or flavour) belief in a god can broaden the human experience and heal the wounded soul and broken mind.
And all I can say is;
“Glasgow and London, early July 2007, the latest in a whole catalogue of centuries old and planet width attempts, of various success, of those single-minded followers of religion, believers, to impose their ideas on the rest of us.”
And why this blogger rejects unreasoning faith no matter what book it comes from.
Just in case there’s any wonder as to why, I’ve not added anything to this place for a bit because I’ve not added anything to anywhere for a bit.
I fell downstairs one day last week because my right leg stiffened up at an awkward moment and in an attempt to straighten it, I lost my balance. Fortunately, I came down like a bob-sleigh on the Cresta run, didn’t impact on any stair, and the only part of me that was harmed was my left arm. (All the muscles pulled at the bit where it touches my shoulder) and since my left arm is THE arm, then that’s why I haven’t been able to contribute anything.
One good thing (two, actually. My arm is almost better, which means back to typing) is that the accident has got my doctor to volunteer to write a covering letter to various housing groups as to why I need everything on one level ie a flat, which will probably get their attention and might even get me on a waiting list without having to fork out at least £800 as a guarantee which they collectively insist upon if you are DSS. ( The logic being; If you have £800 then you can’t be REALLY DSS, therefore we can do business with you. Or something.)
AND WHY HE IS AS HE IS
I’ve recovered enough from my insane bout of typing last weekend to actually manage to reconsider my position and add a bit more to my Ed Davies story.
And, because of this, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve written and how I’ve written it and where it’s leading.
(In case you’re wondering what I’m mumbling on about now, Ed Davies is the main protagonist in ‘Nothing Rhymed’, the serial killer episode in my ‘Because It Is Bitter’ trilogy, which, when I’ve finished them all, will consist of three separate books, and if you want to be a pedant, it’s technically not a trilogy, as one doesn’t carry on from the other, it’s just all three are covered by one title ‘Because It Is Bitter’ and they’re about the three main anti-social or thrill killer types, as portrayed by fictional killers; (Anti-social or thrill killers is a rough description-term of those who do it for the heck of it, for fun or sport or sex, instead of for financial gain or to get someone out of the way. No ‘Columbo’ killers here.)
The three;
‘Because It Is Bitter’, or ‘For Comfort In The Cold’ is about the killer couple. (I’ve already written that one.)
‘Nothing Rhymed’ is about the serial killer.
and the third one, about the mass/spree killer, the title of which I haven’t settled upon yet.
(For more on the psychology behind the three different types, I suggest you put each phrase into your search engine and press go and see what comes up.)
But to get back to my point;
I’ve noticed where Ed seems to be heading (and I swear that my characters, anti-social or otherwise, take on a life of their own, and can go in a completely unexpected direction., it’s just almost as if they are deciding what happens to them and I have to follow them. I know it’s nothing supernatural, no spooks controlling or automatic writing rubbish, it’s just that if I wilfully get a character into a situation, it’s up to me to get them out of it in a logical way, not involving anything impossible, and sometimes my creating a character’s earlier responses leave me having to carry on taking that character to a certain place, or a certain outcome. Otherwise it’s illogical and unreasonable. They can’t behave out-of-character and a slight twist from me, an idea for a character, builds them up and hence that’s why they have to be allowed to go their own way. If you’re a writer of fiction you’ll get I mean.) And Ed is not developing as I expected.
What I wanted, my original idea, was for him to set off after the death of his Mother, looking for people to kill for relief and for company. But his first killing was not for that, and as he has grown I have noticed that there is no sexual component to his murders at all. And the only thing I can do is take it all the way; Going back across the years of his character, the only conclusion can be is;
Edwin Davies is asexual.
He has no sexual compotent to him at all. No interest in bedding anyone dead or alive. No sexual kinks, no paraphilias. He murders for his own reasons which I’m not going to go into, but there is nothing sexual in the murders. It’s the only way that makes true sense, fitting the whole picture together.
In case anyone out there is asexual, please don’t think I’m getting at you. Just like when a telly programme is on which shows rat catchers or lamp lighters or barrage balloon testers or gay people or folk with moustaches or shaven headed white folk in a rotten light, has them performing anti-social or violent actions, there is always a deluge of letters from members of the various groups complaining;
“I’m a fan of Manchester City and I certainly wouldn’t hit someone over the head, bring them home, hang them upside down, drain their blood from them, then drink it under the full moon.”
Or whatever. His asexuality has nothing to do with it. Neither is the fact he is a newsagent or lived with his Mam til she died or his parents were Welsh. It’s just where the whole plot it taking me.
Having said that, I stand by my protest about the treatment of misanthropic/eccentric loners from the media in general, and the assumptions that grow from it. The fact that Ed is asexual has nothing to do with his killings, he doesn’t kill because he has no interest in sex, a bit like Stalin didn’t kill because he was an Atheist, but then no one has ever been described as a killer because they are asexual, or a newsagent or Welsh. Misanthropic loners are persecuted, and legally, because they ARE misanthropic loners. Ed just happens to be asexual and no one is out there blaming killings and assaults on asexuals or newsagents.
