My little sister (thirty-two) is going out with a man who looks like Jeffrey Dahmer.
He has short blonde hair, wears rimless spectacles and way of sitting on the settee and not really focussing on anything, just like Jeffrey did in court. It’s about 80% fascinating and 20% frightening when I’m around him. My little sister is, like most normal people, not as obsessively fascinated by the serial killer as yours truly, and when I tentatively mentioned Jeffrey, in passing, she said she’d never heard of him.
I’d better leave it. It’s the kindest thing to do. I mean, if I got hold of a photo of Jeffrey and showed it to her, along with an explanation as to who he was, well, the resemblance is unmistakeable and she hasn’t had much luck with the fellows and this one is a nice chap and it would be nice if she wasn’t distressed into dumping him.
AND IT’S MY OWN, TOO
SO IT’S LESS TRUE
This wreck of a blog is getting so large it’s a little out of control, so if I’ve already posted something on this subject, well, a good subject deserves repeating.
Did you know that the Columbine school murders were due to natural selection?
And Hitler murdered millions of people due to natural selection?
And the aborigines of Tasmania were wiped out due to natural selection?
And the immoral teachings of the modern-day eduction is due to natural selection?
And that young people are more likely to top themselves, smoke, drink, and have sex, due to natural selection?
Yes, that’s right. Charles Darwin’s wonderful, challenging, dangerous discovery, evolution by natural selection, is the number one cause of all the troubles in the world over the past one hundred and fifty years.
Before natural selection exploded on the world, there was no crime, or suicide, or abortion, or hating of parents or anything really exciting at all.
Of course, the question that jostles it’s way eagerly to the front of the temple of my brain and jumps up and down and waves it’s arms about and shouts for me to notice it is;
If all this is true, does it mean natural selection isn’t true?
Oh dear, you theists, coming along waving your books written by bronze age men who thought the world was flat and held up by pillars, could only see in primary colours and had no idea what the stars were or what caused disease, whose writings were then translated, and added to, and taken away from, leaving such a confused obscurity, a total mix up, so that today there are dozens of different sects and denominations all interpreting these same words different ways all disagreeing and all insisting they are right and everyone else is doomed; oh dear. You can insist, and if it can be proven that every crime no matter how big or small committed since natural selection was introduced to the masses, was due to natural selection, it doesn’t make natural selection untrue.
Natural selection explains the whys of the living world in a way that is more logical, that makes more sense, than every other theory put forward, and all the walls pushed up, all the hysterical accusations of evil attributed to it will not alter than one millimetre.
UNBELIEVABLE, REAL
Back in 2006, in Tokyo zoo, Aochan the rat snake was off his food. His usual diet of frozen rodents wasn’t palatable any more. So his handlers had the idea of putting a live morsel in for him to enjoy. Enter Gohan, the dwarf hamster. Translating into English, her name means a rice dish, and as it implies, she was meant to be a meal for the snake.
Instead (and this is the most unbelievably wondrous part) Aochan accepted what was meant to be his dinner as a friend. Now they share a cage together and, as you can see from the video, they get on as friends.
I honestly thought it was a put-up job. I mean, they are not only two different species within the same classification, they are members of completely separate groups, one being a mammal, the other a reptile. And it definitely isn’t, as I first thought, a spoof or a short taken for sadistic fun before Aochan struck and gobbled down the hapless Gohan. There is no sign of fear or menace, or rejection or any of the expected responses that should take place between diner and dined on. People have visited them over the years and reported that they really do seem to be getting on with one another.
In case you’re wondering what Aochan is fed on, he is back to his frozen dinners.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘GOODNIGHT VIENNA’
This weekend’s song to end the weekend on is Scottish born Jack Buchanan’s wonderfully enchanting, slightly melancholy version of screenwriters Holt Marvell and George Posford’s 1934 song ‘Goodnight Vienna’, from the film of the same name. He sings it with a definite upper class English accent and listening to it, you can feel the atmosphere of a magical, mesmerising place, half real, half fantasy.
‘The world is waiting on the edge of the day,
Just waiting to say,
goodnight.’
It’s nothing to do with the song, but in the song it mentions linden trees, which of course are lime trees. My real life middle name is my Mother’s maiden name (like Jack Kennedy) and it means ‘dweller in the field of lime trees’. Lovely!
Anyhow,
As always,
Enjoy, and,
A good week, whether it’s the time to say farewell or not.
ON THE DAY
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot,
This earth,
This realm,
This England
Never mind what they say, this wounded, battered, beloved nation of ours is still the greatest!
And a happy Saint George’s Day to you all.
MISJUDGEMENT+SECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD, GONE
I am sitting here now and writing this to inform you that I have made a dreadful misjudgement.
A chap from the TV Licensing turned up earlier on, and I expected all kinds of intrusive questions. Instead, he came in, and stood in the vestibule doorway and accepted without question that my only entertainment came from my computer and my DAB digital wireless. He noted something down on a solid oblong-shaped electronic pad using an electronic pen, and then nodded and was gone. It was all over in less than five minutes. No threats, no insisting on a full search. No cautioning me. No heavy-handed behaviour at all. He wasn’t even wearing a uniform, just pants and a pink t-shirt.
It was just how I’d hoped it would be, and never expected it to be. He came in, saw I was telly-free, and wrote this down and was gone. So I was wrong, and I can admit this.
But the letters I got did make me think something challenging would happen when the TV Licensing chap turned up.
Another point, and this comes with a touch of melancholy. The Mancunian telly-watchers amongst us are going experience a big alteration when the analogue signal is finally switched off in November 2009, and everything because digital.
Which means the Winter Hill transmitter is going to be switched off for the last time.
I actually felt a tiny sob rising in my chest at the thought of this.
All the programmes from when I was a kid, still in single figures, ‘Camberwick Green’, ‘Trumpton’, ‘Andy Pandy’, were all beamed through the Winter Hill transmitter. I remember thinking of it, in my always anthromorphising way, as an old, reliable friend, standing on a Winter hill somewhere, on watch and providing me with the moving pictures and words I so loved. It used to be closed down, like go to sleep, for a couple of hours everyday, like a person. I imagined it looking like a sort of electricity pylon, all metal struts and broader at the bottom, or the RKO radio mast, like on the pictures, with beams coming out of it, standing alone on a hill surrounded by bleak cold weather. I’ve never actually seen it, and when I say the words in my head, I can mind-picture see it, a pylon-thing on a hill in a cold-white atmosphere. Now it’ll be gone for good. I feel like a piece of my childhood has been cut off and dwindled to nothing, gone forever like the brave, strong, reliable Winter Hill transmitter. I know it wouldn’t have happened if the old chap had had any say in the matter.
I’ve no idea what they’ll do with it. They should make it into a musuem of some kind, so kids and right up to my age can go and pay homage in some way. They’ll probably demolish it. The idea of that really does hurt.
I get really sentimental about animals and even inanimate objects in a way I never do about human beings.
CAN IT BE DONE?
Susan Boyle. The middle-aged spinster Scot Mummy’s girl who rocked the ‘Britian’s Got Talent’ telly programme with her allegedly* perfect rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from ‘Les Miserables’.**
She caused an even bigger sensation due to the fact she is frumpy and not glamorous (ie, not all blonde hair, teeth, tits and legs). In other words, if you look like someone’s maiden Auntie, you aren’t allowed to have any kind of artistic ability.
I’ve been thinking about her and the similarities between Miss Boyle and yours truly;
She is a middle-aged female. I am a middle-aged female.
She is a spinster. I am a spinster.
She is a Scot. I am of Scots ancestory.
She says she has never been kissed. I was in the same position once.
She lived with her Mum up to her Mum dying. I lived with my Mum up to moving out at forty-two.
She lives being amongst people and likes people in general. I am totally the opposite, and opposites attract!(?)
She hasn’t picked up a gun and imitated Howard Unruh, shooting several of her neighbours as well as passers-by and killing thirteen of them. Now, I’m just writing this for shock value.
People assume that because she lives a quiet, spinster life and stopped at home, and wasn’t always mixing with others and down the pub, she was somehow missing out on something, and she deserves to have ‘a life’ now. Same bleedin’ here.
She dresses down. I couldn’t dress up if I was given tips from all the fashion editors on earth.
She is into cats. Me too.
She looks like someone’s maiden Auntie. I AM someone’s maiden Auntie.
She is a Christian. I used to be a Christian, until I grew up and shed it like a snake shedding it’s skin.***
The only thing she can do is sing. The only thing I can do is write.
So, if Miss Boyle can find her dream and enter it, and open it up, and allow others to see it, and they react with wonder and delight, then why not me?****
I really, really, really, seriously, must find a way of getting hold of a Microsoft Word document CD-rom and getting one of my stories packed up and sent off. I was scared shitless of doing it before actually putting my word-toe in the e-water of electronically mailing part of a story to the publishers. Now, I know that I had nothing to be afraid of, and I also know that if I was allowed to play on a level playing field, my stories would be noticed and probably, published.
Best thing of all, the advisors will be hassling the mammaries off Miss Boyle to look more glamorous, to get a makeover. To change everything about herself outwardly physically. So she can ‘look the part’. Because singing isn’t enough. When she goes on stage she has to be visually attractive. Has to fit in with what people expect from someone with a heavenly voice to look like. No one hassles a writer to change their appearance, because a writer doesn’t have to look like anything in particular.***** It’s the words that attract the attention. So I don’t have to change my hair or style or anything.****** I don’t have to stop being me because a writer projects an image through their writings. So long as you can keep an audience via the words on the page, no-one notices what you wear or if you wear make-up or even if you have got the correctly designated number of limbs common to a human being.
I could do it. Given a chance, I could. . .
*I say allegedly because I haven’t heard it therefore haven’t gained enough evidence to make a verdict.
**Isn’t that about crime and criminals and the French Revolution? What a charming subject to make a musical about!
***Snakes. Members of the animal kingdom who don’t have nipples.
****Don’t you think there are too many of these damned footnotes?
*****Although looking human does give more or less the right idea.
******Unnecessary, gratuitious use of asterisks leading to footnotes that don’t say anything, or what?
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘RIDERS ON THE STORM’ BY THE DOORS
This weekend’s song to end the weekend on is the haunting ‘Riders on the Storm’ by the Doors. It is to be found on 1971 album ‘L.A. Woman’. The writer, Jim Morrison, was inspired by ‘Ghosts Riders In The Sky’, but his main inspiration, and the lyric, ‘there’s a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad’ was said to have come from reading about early nineteen-fifties spree killer Billy Cook, who, after being freed from gaol, bought a gun and went hitchhiking, killing various people who picked him up, including a family of five and a travelling salesman.
It was sung to a background that included the sound of a real storm, with the lyrics sung in normal tone and then sung again in a whisper and overlaid. It also holds the credit of being the last song recorded by the Doors, and was Jim Morrison’s final song to be released.
So,
As always,
Enjoy, and,
A good week, whether you take a long holiday or not.
JAMES GRAHAM BALLARD : 15TH NOVEMBER 1930 – 19TH APRIL 2009
J G Ballard died this morning at the age of seventy-eight. I can’t believe in. Another bright light of artistic genius has flickered and gone out.
Soon as I’ve finished I’m going to get out my copy of ‘Empire Of The Sun’ and read it until bedtime. Then ‘Vermillion Sands’. And know I know that he will live on through his accurate, slightly-off-the-wall, very challenging writings.
HOPES FOR THE FUTURE, PUT POETICALLY
I have had a cold, and soon as I got over it, I tuned my DAB digital radio into the Arrow rock station, turned up the volume, opened my computer word processing program and started typing like someone on a mission. I am all typed out at the moment, but here is a wish I wrote in poem form. (To the tune of Janis Joplin’s ‘Oh Lord Won’t You Buy Me A Mercedes-Benz?’) I wrote it a while back, but I am metaphorically dusting it off and presenting it in this blog anew. It’s called;
A GOOD PUBLISHER
Oh world, can’t you find me a good publisher?
So I can get published and be popular.
I’m always writing but I need some help here,
Oh world, can’t you find me a good publisher?
ON HER BIRTHDAY
My Grandma (Mum’s Mum) would have been ninety-six today.
Happy birthday, Grandma. You’ll live on as long as you are remembered, with love.
JEWISH HUMOUR ALWAYS DOES IT
So Mrs Abrahams and Mrs Cohen meet every week in a cafe in Prestwich for coffee and cake and a good old natter.
Anyhow, one week Mrs Abrahams doesn’t turn up, and Mrs Cohen is a bit concerned, but goes back the following week just in case and Mrs Abrahams is back. They order their usual coffee and cake and sit down and Mrs Cohen asked;
“So, you weren’t here last week. Where’ve you been, Leah?”
“Oh, Rachel, my Ben took me on a lovely romantic trip to Vatican City.”
“Vatican City? What were it like?”
“Oh it were beautiful. Just like you see on the telly. Ornate buildings and them sweet little Swiss guards in their skirt things and natty hats, holding their pikes. And. . . you know what?”
“Go on.”
“Well, me and my Ben was just standing outside the Vatican itself when a door opens and out comes the pope.”
“What. . .the pope?”
“The pope hisself.”
“Give over! He never comes out of his house on foot! He goes round in t’ pope mobile.”
“No, he come to his door, honest, and he saw me and Ben stood there and he says ‘Leah! Ben! I been waiting to see you for years! Come on in! I want to show you round!’”
“Really?”
“Aye.”
“So. . .what happened?”
“We went in, into this beautiful room. All gold and yellow. Ooh, the furniture were lovely. Only my old Dad could have stitched as good! And he sat us down and rung this little bell and got us coffee and cake and we ate it and chatted. Then he showed us round his lovely home.”
“What did you chat about?”
“You know, the world and that. Religious things, like.”
“Right. So he’s all right this pope chap is he?”
“He’s champion. Nowt were too much trouble for him. A lovely chap. But her. . . pfft!”
THE LITTLE PERSON FIGHTS BACK (SICK, ABSOLUTELY SICK, OF THE WHOLE BUSINESS)
Google Street View has mapped most of the United Kingdom. The cars have sped out across these isles and given us internet users visions of locations as if we were there. Following them have come complaints and requests to remove images from irate members of the snapped public who don’t want their business spread across the internet, close to.
But there are bits Google hasn’t reached yet with their street view. Like where I am. But I am prepared. I am making a large poster, with each letter a foot and a half high, then I am going to stick it in my window so Google’s camera-cars can get a good clear picture of the message and it’s meaning.
And the message itself?
GOOGLE SMELLS. USE DOGPILE.
I bet when it’s noticed by those down at Google who sift through the photos, my home will be removed, and therefore my privacy remain intact.
You have to fight back against the all-intrusive multi nationals somehow.
