I'm probably a bit late on this one but I have a couple of thoughts about Mel Gibson's latest sadistic epic.
Leaving aside that Gibson considers the current Pope to be a trendy liberal and overlooking for the moment his Holocaust-denying father, if he wants to promote the message of Christ, if he wishes to bring home the meaning of Christianity then this film seems a funny way to go about it.
Jesus's death is not the kernel of Christianity although it is an important element. Good Friday is not the major Feast day of the Christian calendar. Easter Sunday is. Mel, if you want to tell us what it all means then show us the Ressurection for 126 minutes.
Similarly it seems worth pointing out that Christ's death came after his Ministry, a period of radicalism which so often seems to get short shrift from the authoritarian tendencies in the major churches. One of the least appealing aspects of Roman Catholicism is a taste for vivid depictions of Christ Suffering. The Greeks prefer Christ Risen and the Protestants prefer Christ's teaching.
Having not seen it myself I don't know if the film is antisemitic. If it is possible to read the Passion story as antisemitic then surely this film can be read in similar fashion, if one wishes to do so. Doubtless it will appeal to the same hatreds in certain viewers.
To me Gibson stands accused of exploitative sadism, and not for the first time. I would like to remind you of that final scene in Braveheart in which William Wallace (Gibson) is about to be executed by the English for treason. The penalty for such was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. That he died that terrible death is quite true and happened in flesh history.
Not good enough for Gibson, though, who turned the execution scene into a prolonged public torture of Wallace, who was repeatedly racked by a team of horses to try to extract a recantation of his Scottish 'patriotism', in return for which he would be granted an easier, more merciful death. As a combination of Hollywood ahistoricality and prurience I think this scene takes some beating. Ridiculous but at the same time really horrible. Naturally the image stays with me as it was intended to, despite the fact that I know the whole scene is pure invention and as history is utterly risible. I’m sure The Passion Of Christ will be stuffed with similarly crafted and enduring images.
Gibson's Passion? A mixture of ultra-religious tunnel vision and a proven link in his life between elaborate celluloid sadism and real money. I for one will not be attending. I have no wish to encourage him further down this road.
Mike is prepared to start blogging again if we all show enough interest. I think that’s a pretty good deal. He's had three days off blogging in between assembling the spectacular Troubled Diva Annual and the massive Troubled Diva Lazarus Quiz so he'll be fully refreshed. Just imagine what goodies he has stored up for us. Go there I urge you, search, and supply one of the (currently) 44 missing answers.
Bring back Mike, 'cos it feels so empty without him'.
Also check out the World Star Gazette. Great fun and a wonderful source of good reading.
We don't 'do' conflict in our house generally - I consider it an admission of failure - but a new gender-based stand-off looms chez nous. On the one hand there has been a certain amount of rather unfair commentary on how my inability to multitask leads me to cook dishes that arrive on the table in one pot. My grievance on the other hand is that Mel's struggle with Spatial Awareness still leads her to get half as much crockery in the dishwasher as will actually fit.
This I find unacceptable partly for environmental reasons, partly for the amount of time (my time) it takes to repack it but also on aesthetic grounds. A row of neatly parallel plates or a rack of bowls organised in descending size leading the eye gently from left to right is deeply pleasing in a way that any student of art or any amateur lover of proportion would instantly recognise.
If someone puts small side plates in all the large slots which are ideally sized for bowls then “Where, oh where are we to put the bowls?” I ask, and on an all too regular basis. A saucepan lid probably takes twenty seconds to clean under a tap. When placed in a dishwasher it takes 94 minutes and occupies enough space for approximately seven mugs (I've counted). I defy anyone to wash seven mugs in twenty seconds.
To labour under a sense of injustice is a terrible thing, particularly in one's own home - a home let it be said where one didn't even get to choose the colour of one's own living room carpet. A feeling of outrage and unstructured anger is unfamiliar to me as I prefer to leave that sort of thing to right wing reactionaries and Guardian columnists. However remedy must be sought and supplied.
As of last week I think I may have found a way out that feels both rational and non-judgmental and in addition reduces confrontation to a minimum. I am considering instituting a forum for debate based on the very best of best practice, the Mother of Parliaments herself. I would like to institute Dishwasher Question Time. 10 pm, nightly.
Civilities would be observed to save feelings from being hurt. Main and Supplementary questions would be allowed.
Examples: “Would my Rt Hon friend agree with me when I say that loading the dishwasher once a night is a desirable aim and in line with stated policy?”
or
“Is the Rt Hon Lady intending to visit the kitchen in the next week?”
The Supplementaries would then follow, allowing me to raise the possibility of the relocation of the side plates into the little slots and the repositioning of the cereal bowls into the wide ones. Feathers will remain unruffled, lessons can be subtly woven into the discourse. This way I may even be able to broach the subject of relocating the horrible asparagus plates into the shed.
I think it could work quite well if we allow a little time to get used to it.
recharging+solar+calculators
I came 109th. No help wih the problem found in the previous 108 sites then.
I wasn't aware this was a tricky area. It is addressed to some degree in the product title and I imagine it's covered in the instructions too. Maybe this particular calculator owner had stopped reading before they reached the bit saying 'Do Not Attempt To Recharge During Hours Of Darkness'. The searcher's local time was 10:22 pm so maybe that's it.
Googling for advice of this nature suggests a familiarity with technology that sits uneasily with the search terms. Perhaps there is a learning curve here and the seeker will soon be moving on to searches like “painting+with+paintbrush” or “walking+in+trousers”.
I haven't covered those topics here so I guess I'll never know.
Half Term last week was fairly peaceful. The highlight for me was a trip to Tate Modern and the Weather Project. The highlight for the chldn was the sleepover we had on the Fri night, our first.
The one thing I didn't appreciate about sleepovers was how little sleep they actually involve. For anyone. Zoe had been away for a couple and seemed to enjoy them but now it was our turn to play host.
Tactically speaking I think we blundered early on and never really recovered. Zoe was to play host to her multipurpose classmate Scarlett, who serves variously as friend, rival and enemy in Z's life. This threatened to exclude Jake so we invited his friend Oscar to balance the whole thing up, which meant we had four overcharged cherubs swarming all over the house, only two of whom (Team Preene) seemed amenable to reasonable persuasion.
Teatime involved cooking to cater for four different faddy appetites. Bathtime probably took about an hour and a half but by then too much Pays D'Oc had flowed under the bridge for rigorous clockwatching.
Arguments broke out over who would have the Just William tape about the 'val'able and highly nervous cat' for soothing bedtime listening. So much unpleasantness ensued that the 'val'able cat' tape was denied to all. Order was eventually restored, tapes were started and adults withdrew.
Arguments broke out over the loudness of other people's tape machines. Tape machines were adjusted.
About an hour later a deputation appeared claiming wakefulness induced by hunger. A midnight feast was demanded and provided, in an exasperated but tolerant manner. Half an hour later more lemonade was demanded. Half a second after that a midnight toothbrushing was demanded and was supervised in a manner that flirted with the intolerant.
Cherubs were repacified and peace seemed to descend, but about twenty minutes after we grown-ups had gone to bed the boys appeared complaining of funny noises in the garden. Wind was identifed and reassurances were given that it was not potentially harmful.
Ten minutes later Oscar fell off the ladder to Jake's bunk and cut his lip leading to wild and imaginative sobs on his part. Zoe and Scarlett complained of funny noises in Jake's bedroom. Oscar was beyond comforting so we had to ring his parents who came to get him after which exhaustion seemed to overtake all principal parties.
There has been an enquiry; val'able lessons have been learned.
Next up: the Dishwasher.
I have just looked back over my last few posts and I can see that I am becoming the Angry Man of the Blogs. I apologise. I did warn you all a few weeks ago that there were things I wanted to say, and you did all say 'Go ahead', but it does look like there's a balance that needs to be redressed here. More considered and constructive material will follow.
There's the whole of Half Term to write about when I find the time. There's the Play, the Bathtime Listening Reform, the Sleepover and the whole Dishwasher situation for starters.
I'm on to it.
Sat morning they were back at it on the Today Programme. Grammar, and who knows how to use it properly. Slack news day again, I suppose.
I don't buy in to all this Language Police business. Certainly I am in favour of excellence and education, but I am also in favour of progress, humanity and the encouragement of debate and self-expression.
I ask this. At what point does the language stop developing? At what point does the language cease to serve us and we begin to serve it?
The Victorians seriously contended that the British Constitution had reached such a state of perfection that no improvement was possible and that all alterations were therefore necessarily bad. As a belief this is now self-evidently barmy and it's clear that no one who was not a direct beneficiary of that state of affairs could ever have argued anything of the sort. Nobody has tried the same line ever again about our political structures, but it strikes me that this whole 'Less vs Fewer' business resonates with a similar lofty note.
All great literature is crammed with neologisms and grammar bending non-standard uses of English. Would these Enforcer johnnies have tapped Shakespeare on the shoulder as he scratched his way through Macbeth and said:
“Will, old boy. 'Multitudinous seas' is terrific but 'incarnadine' simply won't do. It can't be a verb because it's at the end of the sentence and it's not a proper adjective because you've just made it up. There'll be a sackload of letters complaining, generations of schoolchildren will hate you and actors will spit on your grave because they won't know how to pronounce it. Just put 'redden' before the 'multitudinous'. Trust me, I'm an educated person. I have a degree in Theology.”
Really it's just the old “Change is all right until I say it's not” argument. It's the “Magna Carta was all right but that's because King John was bad and in no way does it establish a general principle about challenging people in authority” argument. It's the old “What we are opposed to is Bad Things (Terms and Conditions apply)” argument.
Stop intimidating us all, please. Let the people speak.
Oh dear, oh dear. Is truth stranger than what I write on this site?
Last week I put up a modest offering wondering if the Guardian had lost its marbles, or at least its commitment to liberal values. I speculated whether a letter in the Weekend section requesting a nasty piece about dog owners would be heeded. I thought not, but offered an opening paragraph of my own on the subject, inviting contributions to continue on this theme. Quite sensibly none of you wasted a second of your time providing any such contributions.
What do I find in this Sat’s supplement? A hate article aimed at dog owners.
This from the Big G, the paper that earned my undying loyalty for slaying the ogre Aitken in a display of desperate courage worthy of any character in Tolkien. But gone are the days when overmighty Governments or greedy and arrogant ministers were its targets. Now it's fluffy little pets.
"Gerbils? Send them back to Africa! Dogs? Cull 'em. Taking money away from our old folk, smelly bastards." I promised myself I would never ever buy or read the Sunday Telegraph again after they ran a front page headline stating directly that Albanian immigrants were preventing 'your' granny from having a hip replacement. Not that I bought or read it anyway, but I crossed it off my list of 'Things To Do In My Lifetime' pretty smartish. If I want the views of a cab driver I'll hail a taxi, thanks.
Easy targets; false distinctions. Do you know any history JB3? Do you not know that animal rights preceded human rights as a concept and as legislation by lifetimes? There is a continuum here. And what is your subtext? Is it that pet owners are from the lower classes and that they and their animals are therefore naturally irritating and intrusive? Or is it that any bond with a nonspeaking creature is proof of congenital feeble mindedness?
Yes, there are too many stray animals, particularly cats, in our towns. Would abolishing the RSPCA accomplish this? No. The RSPCA actually destroys strays if they cannot find a home for them. Own goal, Joanna.
Let's see you grapple with subjects a little more challenging than dog lovers or women bitching about female celebs. As a middle class vegetarian animal hater, where do you stand on Hunting, JB3?
I wasn't going to mention football but I was tickled into thinking about it by this.
They seem still to be agonising at Southampton FC about having Glenn Hoddle back. For what it's worth my advice to them is “‘Don't”.
It's not the prospect of mid-table finishes, lack of silverware, a demoralised squad, or the lack of loyalty. No. It's the inability of the man to spend money wisely. Ferguson and Wenger may not be infallible in transfer dealings but their records inspire a mixture of envy and respect. Whether for a pittance or a fortune they regularly bring in good players. And Hoddle?
Imagine the scene in the Hoddle home as Glenn arrives back from doing the family supermarket run.
Mrs Hod: Hello dear.
Hod: Hello, obviously.
Mrs Hod: Did they have what I put on the list?
Hod: Well, I got some wax for the car.
Mrs Hod: Any olive oil?
Hod: No, but my car will look nice.
Mrs Hod: You did remember the rice didn't you?
Hod: I got some picture hooks.
Mrs Hod: How am I supposed to make risotto with those, Glenn?
Hod: They've shown a lot of promise in my opinion, and I'm keen to work with them. If we all put in some hard work the results will come.
Mrs Hod: And the marrow?
Hod: I got some courgettes. They should have cost £3.45 but I managed to get them for £6!
Mrs Hod: Do you ever listen to a word I say, Glenn?
Hod: Wives can be replaced y'know, Gary.
Think on, Saints.
In the interests of balance I feel compelled to speak up on behalf of Duran Duran who have been widely derided for their Outstanding Contribution to Music award at the Brits.
For those of you who find it incomprehensible that a bunch of debauched old clotheshorses could possibly get an award like that, let me explain. DD represent a very powerful myth for the suits in the industry, namely that the job of a record exec is to go out and find talented, good looking young people, put them in a studio and sell the results to every corner of the world. Duran Duran are the last example of anyone ever actually having done that from the UK. Like Bob Geldof’s knighthood their award is best understood as a relic of Empire.
It’s true that their time in the centre of the biz only lasted about four years (1981-1985) but those were years packed with gloriously catchy, current sounding singles, magazine covers, glamorous videos and huge profits all round. They wrote the songs, they looked great, they turned up on time, they cracked the States. Compare at this point their contemporaries Spandau Ballet who nominally had most of the same advantages, including a silly name and a singer with a voice no one would have chosen.
All comparable contenders since, and it’s a cringemaking list topped by Oasis and Take That, have failed to achieve anything like the same profile. An honourable exception might be George Michael - watch for an award in the near future.
The reason it all seems so laughable now is that DD, though outstanding candidates at O level, never made the transition to their student phase. They never defended the rain forests, they never criticised American foreign policy. Instead they variously retired, married supermodels and pursued self-indulgent side projects as their looks faded and tastes changed. Improbably, but greatly to their credit, they rallied for one glorious epitaph. Ordinary World (1993), which stands comparison with any pop record of the last 20 years.
The perfect moment comes and the quick can grasp it, but once it passes then what once seemed mighty looks merely ridiculous. Ask Ozymandias; ask Adam Ant.
It's half term this week and there's been much excitement round the house as we're due to host a sleepover on Fri night. However school matters have also been much discussed. This term Zoe's year are doing a play written by the Head of English. It's a musical about the Ancient Britons called 'Hit The Woad, Jack' and she has been cast as one of Boudicca's daughters. Unfortunately she only has two lines (“Never!” and “We shall drive them into the sea!”) and she is not happy about it. At all.
I wanted to tell her not to worry and that it was only a school play, not the West End, but something stopped me. Some instinct told me that her pain was real and that to downscale the situation was not appropriate.
I remembered the time three years ago when she was cast as a tree in an adaptation of Aesop's Fables. On that occasion I spent some time explaining why this was a special part, central to the plot, on stage throughout etc etc. I said that with a little research she could be the best tree ever and pioneer a whole new area of dramatic skill. (I did perhaps get a little carried away but excellence always excites me.) Then, as now, I was brought back to earth by the sad, crumpled look on her face which had not only refused to budge but seemed somehow to have got crumpledier.
So what to do? I've never quite understood the concept of taking arms against a sea of troubles. Anyone who has thought about it will realise that weaponry is useless against water in general, especially when you've let a bath overflow and it's coming through the ceiling. Anyway we are currently debating whether to:
complain and demand a recasting:
accept the part but rewrite it:
withdraw in protest.
Part of me thinks that this is the price we pay as parents for selecting certain after-school clubs and activities and not others. Over the years Zoe has done French, Art, Kumon Maths, Philosophy, Chess and the short lived Origami Club. The children who get the lead parts have usually been going to Ballet, Vocal Coaching, Jazz and Tap, Drama and Stagecraft, Music Technology etc.
One way or another I'm going to have to have a word with Z's Form teacher.
I'm getting the unfamiliar smell of humble pie wafting toward me and I may soon have to down a plateful. The current crop of singles on the radio is actually rather good. I'm not sure whether it's a sea change or just the absence of any record that I absolutely can't bear but I've got a strong impression that a burst of creativity has been going on.
Maroon 5, Snow Patrol, Gary Jules, Basement Jaxx have all delivered excellent listening recently. Britney Spears has made her most groundbreaking record ever and I feel I haven't heard it quite enough yet. How different from the awful 'I Love Rock and Roll' which was probably the highest profile lie in the Poposphere last year. Meanwhile they're still playing Will Young's 'Leave Right Now' which for me was the best original pop record of late 2003 by some way, effortless throughout and devoid of gimmickry.
There's more. The Scissor Sisters' version of 'Comfortably Numb' still astonishes me and under the rules of the complex Preene Weighting System they will be at Number One in my Revised Chart for the next three weeks. This is partly because it's one of those cover versions that is entirely stamped with the personality of the coveror not a blatant attempt to steal the status of the coveree, but mostly because I have never seen a picture of the Sisters, nor a video so I have no idea whether they are male or female or how many they might number. This supplies that rare quality of mystery and yields very high marks for them. The record speaks for itself and well done, say I.
Also this month Nelly Furtado gets an award for Best Use OF A Banjo and Kelis walks away with the Longest Running Multilayered Metaphor Prize (sponsored by Google) for 'Milkshake'.
Maybe I'm going soft but I think that even Blazin' Squad have made their best record yet. They've come a long way from the lame pap of a year ago. I might even like 'Here 4 One' if it weren't for the fact that the lyrics make it quite clear that the one thing that they are here 4 is not something that their fans, who are all girls below the age of sixteen, are allowed to do with them under statute law.
I dare say my optimistic mood will be shattered by the Brits tonight, but until then a man can dream, can't he?
I thought that this Sat's offering in Julie Burchill's old slot at the front of the Weekend Guardian was much better and a great improvement on last week's effort by Julie Bindel (JB 2) which I considered nasty, brutish and a bit too long.
This week the clomp of hobnail boots was replaced by the shuffle of fluffy mules as the new occupant, Joanna Briscoe (JB 3), gave us an entertaining piece about women being unpleasant to each other. More of a change in tone than content then, but welcome nonetheless.
So who will get the front seat next? I'm now expecting a column from Jennie Bond (JB 4) who might be a high profile contender for the honour, straight out of the jungle and as flushed with success as a newly fixed toilet.
On a slight tangent I'm wondering whether Guardian readers are developing a taste for abusive journalism because the letters page contained a request for a piece by Julie Bindel attacking dog owners. I'm not sure this is a healthy development so to test the Big G's ongoing commitment to liberal values I'm tempted to submit one myself.
I've got this far:
Dog owners? Pah! Smug, gutless parasites they are, the lot of them. My local park has a so-called dog's toilet and is there one for me? No! Just some patronising, oversubsidised swings.
Feel free to contribute a paragraph of your own below. I'll compile the results and submit it under the name 'Juliette Binoche'. If they take it then maybe we can all earn a few bob out of the Grauni.
“...and the relief of the Tunisians was palatable.“ BBC World Service.
Ah, the sweet taste of victory.
I've been writing recently about something that has long interested me, namely What Men Think. This may, in the long run, be no easier to work out than questions like “Why do they make White Maltesers now?”
Perhaps unwise of me to embark on an examination of male attitudes, but nevertheless I feel that it is an important subject worth addressing and that I'm qualified to discuss it, being a man.
To my surprise men have started to show up here and tell me What Women Think.
If ever I needed a reason to go on...
Big excitement. It's Fri and that means football to Jake. The last two weeks' fixtures have been cancelled because of snow and rain so he's bursting to get back to the hurly burly and the smack of boot on leg.
The brief flirtation with rugby which began after England's World Cup win has now run its course, much like Zoe's interest in the battery powered hamster she bought last year that does a little dance and sings 'Walk Like an Egyptian'.
The Jonny Wilkinson factor was pretty high round here for a while and our Sat morning trips to the park temporarily became classes in place kicking. J managed all the pacing backwards and strange hand clutching moves pretty well and he could hardly have tried harder, but to no avail. His kicks invariably travelled forward but they did so at an invariable altitude of zero feet zero inches.
His real downfall though was that he simply couldn’t master the drop kick at all. We tried over several weekends to recreate ‘that’ winning kick but the technicalities defeated us (him) in the end. More drops than kicks, and a creeping demoralisation have brought us back to the familiar round ball.
Frankly it's much easier for him to imagine he's recreating goals by van Nistelrooy or Henry, especially when it comes to the celebrating, an area in which JW seriously lacks imagination from an eight-year-old's perspective. The posts that the Council provides are the right shape too. While all this remains so I'm confident that Rugby Union will retain its exclusive cachet, the potential loss of which was troubling at least one of our more pompous sports journalists recently. Sleep easy there.
Had a search request from Yahoo for 'serial+adultery+behaviour'. I decided to check how highly I was rated in this field. I came 41st which produced mixed feelings.
I read several of the articles selected by the search and was impressed at the unanimity among them that the world is in moral decline but was equally struck by the complete lack of unanimity as to either why this is or what to do about it.
There was plenty of what I would have expected to find, namely Biblically based fulminations about sin and laxity but the Number 1 slot contained a rare gem. It was a US site entirely devoted to the contention that marriage is to be avoided at all costs because American women are impossibly demanding and only have sex with their boyfriends until they hook them as husbands at which point they abandon the practice. I won't link because he's selling a book and I have no wish to do an advert for him and his opinions, beyond this general summary.
Apart from being completely unscientific and unsupported this whole line betrays a world view of utter despair. Do all men want to be running around after young girls in their 50s? Of course the priapics out there will shout “Yes!” and this may be a real fantasy for some men, so I would like to examine it more closely than the author in question saw fit.
His argument runs as follows. Marriage is about reproducing. Children are awful. Everyone knows this but no one will say it. He knows it, despite never having had any. Women in America are all money grabbing frigid bitches on medication, obsessed with material possessions. Therefore the thing to do is to work hard, never marry, and have lots of girlfriends throughout. A strategy for constant sex supply. Which is what life is all about down his way.
Having never been married nor had children should we take his views as authoritative? Being such an expert on the unknown I'm surprised he doesn't tip horses instead. NASA could have asked him about what Mars was like and saved everyone a lot of money.
I ask our man this. Why will girls want anything to do with you when you are 50? There's a one word answer to that, and it won't be fun or looks. Money is the word. So you escape from money grabbing women your own age and swap them for money grabbers who are half your age. And that's progress? I think if your solution to a problem ends up permanently incorporating that problem into your life then your self help book should really be cheaper than $9.95.
In his world men want sex and women want material goods. Marriage only provides one party with their objective. So avoid marriage is the advice, stick to being an oversexed couple. If that doesn't work out then change partner as often as necessary.
This is truly a philosophy for those men who feel no attachment to others, or if they do they see living within such attachments as like living surrounded by police 'Do Not Cross' tapes keeping them away from their fun. The ideal planet for a man such as this would be entirely populated by women with no long term aims of their own other than to please a succession of walking dead wood like himself.
Fast forward from his current age of 32. He visualises himself with no commitments or ties and the leisure to enjoy an endless stream of available and willing beauties, who don't want his money, just the stimulating pleasure of his company and his fund of funny stories about nights out with the boys. This scene will need to repeat itself many times, but with one cast change per repeat. Do I detect a teeny unwillingness to accept change here?
Because he has built his life around his sexual requirements he needs women to be fulfilled. This would be a lot easier for him if the women he met were a bit more cooperative. Unfortunately the modern American women is too self-centred. Marvellously inattentive reasoning that. He stands somewhat vulnerable to the same accusation, I would contend.
And my point is...(skip this bit if you don't like self help pontificating)
If you care for no one then no one will care for you. That is an unwritten text running through all our experience. Enrichment of our lives is available to all. It quite literally starts at home. It is a ball we can all start rolling. Selfishness is a hell you will always carry with you.
No charge.
... As Clumsy Metaphor For Some Aspects Of This World.
When I arrived in Blogworld it seemed to have an air of permanence about it which I see now was a deep misunderstanding on my part. Bloggers and blogs come and go faster than a posse of Karma Chameleons on scooters, and a blogroll is more of a work in progress than an imperishable text. It was as if I had been looking at a bus queue without having grasped the concept of a bus.
I hope that dipping in and out is still working for you Hg and that the water takes your fancy again soon.
I have been v busy so far this week and have only managed to post by slinging stuff together. Undoubtedly it shows. My referrals log is telling me that what the world really wants from me right now is an explanation of the lyrics to Kelis's Milkshake, but guys, go figure. Clue - it's not about heroin.
Having told Zed in a comment that I had forgotten why I started this blog she then went and reminded me the very next day. I should like to assemble some thoughts. No chance.
So today I ask: what would you as blogreader prefer - a blank page or something less than the polished, well considered discourse of a life-affirming sort that we would all like to produce on a regular basis but don't seem to manage quite as often as we should?
I heard on the radio last night that there is to be a new Thunderbirds film in cinemas this summer. Bravo, say I.
I've always drawn inspiration from the career of Thunderbirds supremo Jeff Tracy. His is the story of a determined man who first made a fortune then hid himself away behind impenetrable security, far removed from the ordinary distractions of the world. Next he invested massive sums in the most awesome flying machines and space hardware in order to keep watch over the planet, alert to every danger. All in pursuit of a dream he had; he named that dream 'International Rescue'.
What a stark contrast to the inner circle of the current US administration who did much the same thing but whose dream would appear to be titled 'International Sod-ue'.
7.25 Sports News: Today Programme, Radio 4.
1. Scarcely believable I know but Southampton FC are currently considering RE-appointing Glenn Hoddle as their manager. Why? Has he got a couple of spare weeks in his diary before the next better offer is expected? Have you forgotten what happened last time, Rupert Lowe?
Get over it Glenn. David Beckham exists, he's got more money than you and he's a better all round player than you ever were. Retire, please, your point is beyond proving by now.
Glenn Hoddle, this is, whose managerial career has yielded no silverware, just promotion for Swindon Town followed by a nine year monopoly of the award for Mid-table Mediocrity of the Season for the years 1994-2003. Ask the supporters of the clubs he has managed, and dumped. GH the man whose fault it never ever has been.
Go for it Saints! that 11th position beckons.
2. “Rusedski left his hearing last night in Canada without making a comment.”
Maybe he wasn't being rude, perhaps he just didn't catch the question.
I opened my Guardian Weekend on Sat morning to find unfocused, inchoate rage of the kind you would more usually encounter in the darker, more ignorant corners of the net. And yet there it was in the light-wielding, shadow-banishing Guardian. I refer to an article by one Julie Bindel excoriating the people who ruin her life by wanting to put themselves through parenthood. I know little about her but I gave her the privilege accorded to good writers, namely I judged her by what I found on the page.
What I found was feeble, poorly supported tosh of the kind I would expect to hear in a pub or read on the letters page of the Daily Mail. Attacking people in a general and aimless way while openly professing to be unable to understand them is generally called bigotry. You might be welcomed in many parts of the world from Belfast to Mumbai but you are not welcome in my kitchen with your grubby hatreds.
Awful stuff. One minute you're hacking at the middle classes, the next at people educating their children out of your wages. You slash at the class of latte drinkers in one para and the next you're queueing in Starbucks. Duh. Sharpen up there. If you just hate everyone who is not yourself I don't think we need listen. Would you?
To imagine you are being despised by people you have never met is the wellspring of bigotry. What next, Julie? Let's get stuck into the gippoes, y'know, stealing the washing off our clotheslines. You pillory people you admit you don't understand. That’s a good general principle for someone who wants to see a better world, isn't it?
She seems to be saying that if the number of children in care could be brought to equal the number of adoption requests then we would all be fine. Jonathan Swift had a similar idea to solve Ireland's problems with hunger a few years back. But he was being funny, a route that has escaped JB2 in the darkness of her rage.
We all start as children and we all 'put further strain on the world's resources' from that moment on. And your point is...?
What a poor effort all round. Misdirected rage fluffed up with hypocrisy, lacking in humanity, deficient in constructive ideas. Jerky, bilious, nasty.
Oh Grauny, once mighty and now brought so low! My loyalty is hanging by a thread. You have lost Julie Burchill whose delicacy and timing made her the David Gower of the bitchy swipe, and you have instead put Devon Malcolm at the crease. And this on top of putting cricket writer David Hoppa onto writing about football where he has shown irritatingly little sense of how football attenders feel about their clubs.
And don't get me started about the silly, silly men that gave Belle her prize and in the process went out of their way to insult the many fine writers of interesting, entertaining and relevant blogs. “She is in a league by herself as a blogger.” Quite. Bruce, if you read this I would like to know your thoughts about BdJ on 21 Dec and 8 Jan. Award winning stuff? No. Just lazy, shallow nonsense.
Oh, sorry. That seems to be somewhat of an editorial policy with you guys at the moment.
As the snow started to fall last Thurs Jake demanded to see a snowflake under the microscope we bought him two years ago for his birthday. He had shown little interest in it on the day and none in the intervening years but now he reminded me forcefully of how I had told him how brilliant it was and how it would reveal a whole new world to him. I was delighted at his sudden enthusiasm and promptly sent him out to the garden with a baking tray while I ran up to his room and located the microscope.
The bottom of the tray was soon covered in a pile of large sticky snowflakes and we dashed back inside exultant, a word Jake chose himself. He knows it well from the Just William stories, in which William and the Outlaws are frequently so described, though not generally as they stood teetering on the threshold of a career in science.
(He has also learned 'countenance' from the same stories, a word he spotted recently in the hymn 'Jerusalem'. Unfortunately Richmal Crompton is rather more selective in her use of this noun than William Blake and she only ever uses it for comic effect, generally when William's countenance is anything but divine. I fear that Jake may have been left with a less than transcendant image of Christ surveying the verdant Albion with chocolate cake on his face.)
Anyway, we placed the tin full of snow on the kitchen table and I carefully spooned some out onto a blank slide which I then slotted under the microscope lens. Jake stood on a chair to take a look but seemed unimpressed with the minature wonders I had promised below. Upon looking for myself I realised that the poor child was examining a slide of some water, the snow having melted.
There followed a moment of crisis. I thought to myself : “If you don't awaken the scientist in that boy then you will never forgive yourself!”
Despite the tension my mind remained crystal clear and I saw immediately that carrying the microscope into the garden was the only way forward. A while later and after some experimentation I was able, with the aid of a torch, to show J some real snow magnified twenty or so times. It didn't quite look like the beautiful, spacious renderings of the unique beauty of snowflakes that I had seen over the years in books, and nearer resembled a close up of woodchip wallpaper. I thought I disguised my disappointment pretty well as I invited him to kneel down and take a look but he had rather gone off the boil by then and seemed more interested in throwing snowballs at the cat scarer.
It is not quite as sharp as a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child but it is pretty annoying, especially when your hands are that cold.
For the last few months I have been casually collecting wars from history which were started for stated reasons but fought for others.
149 BC. The Third Punic War. The first war for oil: olive oil. To protect various business and trading interests in the Mediterranean area, the Romans provoked the Carthaginians into a border violation in North Africa, declared war and utterly destroyed the city of Carthage.
1739. The War of Jenkins' Ear. Britain went to war with Spain after a British sea captain had produced in the House of Commons what he claimed was his own ear, severed eight years earlier by a Spanish coastguard. The advancement of British trading rights in the New World was of course a secondary consideration.
1757. In India the British took over the Mughal province of Bengal, citing the deaths of 170 men, women and children in the Black Hole of Calcutta as justification. Many now believe this event never took place. The British commander Clive becomes fabulously wealthy and the British state eventually becomes responsible for the administration of Indian territory.
1812. Napoleon invaded his nominal ally Russia because Russia was trading with Britain in defiance of his Continental System. Sources close to Napoleon hint that it was actually because complete domination of Europe would not be his until he had defeated the Tsar. The French Emperor lost nine tenths of his army, the war and eventually his throne.
1898. The US, though officially neutral, had been supporting the Cuban independence movement but then started its own war with Spain after the USS Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana harbour. The war was short. The US annexed Hawaii, bought the Phillipines and was ceded Guantanamo Bay, Puerto Rico and Guam. Cuba did get its independence, though the Cubans were not invited to the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which granted it to them.
1964. The US fabricated an attack on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson went to war and got re-elected.
So will Bush and Blair come out of all this like Napoleon or like Johnson?
Enquiries into Gulf War 2 are busting out all over. Here's mine, which I think will be cheaper, quicker and more to the point.
Gulf War 2 was one of the few wars in history fought not because someone had done something but specifically because someone had failed to do something. The commitment of men and munitions that followed was intended to stop Saddam not doing anything ever again. This much at least is clear.
It is also clear to me that the Iraq War of 2003 was Bush's war, fought for Bush's reasons and to Bush's schedule. Blair's main contribution was to choose to fall into step beside him, for Blair's reasons. Chief among these seems to be the calculation that being on Bush's side in principle overrode any practical details of policy.
Did Bush explain his reasons to Blair or did the President feel it unnecessary to do so, having detected the Prime Minister's willingness to help out in all events? Enquiries into Britain's involvement are overelaborate if they address more than this one basic issue.
That's all.
Discussed organ donation over supper last night. More specifically we discussed George Best and how horrible it must be for someone somewhere to be thinking what poor use he has made of a pre-owned liver.
The conversation rather trailed away as we addressed the vegetable soufflé that Mel had prepared. As a dish I don't think it could really be declared a great success. It brought to mind those unkind remarks about how only a mother can love certain children.
“I haven't made soufflé before,” she said, by way of explanation.
“Nor yet,” I quipped, by way of not being able to resist a razor sharp reply.
The conversation swung back to organ donation with dizzying speed. I pointed out that the idea was that you could only donate your own organs and that no matter how strongly held her opinions, my innards were mine to keep until I had finished using them.
Pogo has quietly announced that he is blogging again. In a muted, casual sort of a way. Welcome back, Pogo.
