Neda travels the world.

Remember 500 years ago? When the Catholics and Protestants were torturing, murdering and generally kicking the sh** out of each other in the name of ‘state’ Christianity? Well the Islamic religion is 500 years younger than Christianity. This raises a question in my mind. Is 1,500 years, you do the maths, a difficult age for a religion? Just old enough for the state to get its grubby hands on it and turn it to its own uses but not old enough for rationality to temper its extremes. History is set to repeat itself. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a cruel religious dictatorship backed up by respected Muslim leaders. Ayatollah Khomeini sanctioned the repression of the recent protests in the name of Islam, as did Mary1st in the name of Catholicism. It was also supported by the US who shipped arms via Israel during the Iran/Iraq war and sent the profits to the Contras in Nicaragua. Said double-dealing precipitated Oliver North and other CIA top guns to jail who were then mercifully pardoned and re-employed into the Bush administration. But that’s another five-gallon drum of stale fish. In the ensuing repression a young woman demonstrator, Neda agha Soltan is caught on You Tube bleeding to death. Which they didn’t have in Tudor England. She is beautiful and has caught the heart of the world. A heart that will see the deceits of the Ayatollahs and the corruption and cruelty of the regime they uphold in the name of Islam. May her death move mountains.

The X Factor election.

Continual electronic convergence is coalescing our numerous gadgets into one multifunctional pocket sized record player, radio, phone, TV, map of the world, encyclopaedia and restaurant bill calculator. Interesting that such human ingenuity can’t then divide £44.44 by 4. It’s even likely we will soon be able to whip out our handheld electronic matter transporter, dial the postcode for a restaurant in San Francisco and still get chased out by the waiter for getting the tip wrong. There is no end to convergence. And not only in electronics. Once popular music was made by a disparate array of motley crews making sounds as different as Beach Boys from Dylan. Now as band names move from disparate to the distinctly desperate the music has converged to minor variations of overproduced mush. And cars. Remember the Austin Metropolitan? You may have needed to be so visually impaired as to be unworthy of a driving licence to appreciate it but there was no arguing it was different. So as all things converge it shouldn’t be surprising that the X Factor and the forthcoming general election bear a striking similarity. Can you slide a fag paper between Gordon Brown and Susan Boyle or Cameron/Osborne and Jedward? No. Except that the former hasn’t resorted to Camborne or the rather unsettling Osberon. Yet. Brown/Boyle have faces like over cellulited bums and wouldn’t look out of place if painted into the foreground of ‘Monarch of the Glen’, and the twin twins popularity is squarely based on the fact that their naive incompetent unawareness flatters 99% of the public in comparison. I wouldn’t trust Osborne with my kid’s dinner money, even if I were a staunch conservative. Soon the Queen, aerodynamically restyled, will resemble a Renault Scenic and sound like Lady Ga Ga, and no doubt smell like a multi fragranced Glade air freshener. You will be like me and the understanding of the divine will come to pass, that we are all one.

Frightened by reality.

As the film fades to black the vampires, the bad ones at least, have been vanquished, the ogres slain, the flesh eating super bugs conquered, and the psychotic digital universe banished to another dimension. Phew! Next program. The murderers have been caught, the psychotic blonds taken away, the pimps, pushers and gun runners have met their sticky ends. Next program. Meanwhile at home Mary is fatigued by emptying the dishwasher, Clair is afraid of climbing a ladder, John is terrified by the sight of a mouse and Brian is confused by a plug.
It seems the younger generation are being well prepared to tackle all manner of fictitious evil characters, well equipped to deal with the extremely unlikely yet dissolve like wet paper at the thought of changing a tyre or doing the washing up. But they’re young, impressionable; they’re our children, let them have fun. Surely the days of eight year olds working down the mine are over.
Now I don’t wish to appear like a character from a Dickens novel but shouldn’t we be preparing them for the real world?

Artificial resuscitation school.

Teacher enters. Kids hyper. He calms their frantic minds to something approaching calm. He hands out 10 copies of Heat magazine, 8 of OK and 14 of Nuts. “Read these, I’ve got stuff to do.” The kids, sorry, students are stunned, joyful and the class falls into rapt star gazing silence. Fashion, football, ads, cosmetics, tits and bums are being absorbed in a hum of concentration. The teacher relaxes, leans back and flicks through his own copies of said magazines. A half hour passes.
“OK Y3B what have you just been doing?” A voice gives the obvious answer, “Skiving Sir.”
“No, you’ve been learning. That’s what learning feels like.” 30 confused faces. “What we’ve been doing this past year has not been you learning, it’s been me teaching. So, now you know what learning feels like do you want to do some more?” With the prospect of swapping mags and carrying on they joyfully agree.
“OK so what do you want, how do you want your life to be? What are your dreams?” The teacher gets many suggestions. He chooses one and asks for more detail. “So what will you need to learn to make that happen?” 30 brains balk at trying to make the transition from easy dreaming to challenging reality. They ache at the thought of it.
“Come on, you’ve just experienced learning, how absorbing and fun it is.” They reluctantly agree on some practical necessities if one is to become a film director or whatever.
“OK, now you learn it and I’ll help you if you need it.”
The teacher sits back and reads a book.
I find it interesting that the one skill all youngsters are outstanding at is typing, a skill that is not taught. Also that schools are quite toxic places.
The brain in a sense breaths in information through a mouth of curiosity driven by a need to know. Schools nowadays are the equivalent of a single teacher trying to practice artificial resuscitation on 30 patients all at the same time who see no point in breathing. The patients are dieing and the teachers are worn out.

Remembrance Sunday.

They were once like us, remembering.
They were once like us, not imagining they would be taken.
Taken in a wink or as in a casual breath.
We are only different by a trick of time and circumstance, and those will find us too between our breathing soon enough.
What must we in our memories of brave men remember?
So easy to say their sacrifice for they are not here to say they would not have chosen it.
So hard to say that now the mantle of bravery falls to us and we must dance our turn with what we might not choose.
For there is something in piety that lays responsibility with the dead and in solemnity lets that mantle fall that we in our turn make histories mistakes.
No, let these brave men be with us, blazing in our heart the fire that made them brave that we may warm and chat with them around it, for they, in death are wiser now than we.

A Troll’s oh yes!

If you watched the last two episodes of Merlin you’ll no doubt be aware of the fetching Troll featured therein. Though full of fart and disgusting habits her intense enjoyment of rotten fruit and dung, and her gleeful pursuance of self-interest made for a strangely appealing character. So much so that, as I was in the house on my own, I found myself muttering, Troll-like at the washing up and grunting at the settee as I shambled, Troll like past. This was fun. Here was a female that Photoshop could do nothing for. She was happy with her warts. Nor could any finishing school remove her enjoyment of bad habits. As my wife missed the episode we watched it the following evening and she too, being a woman who enjoys her windy noises, found the idea of Trolling fun and such a merciful release from doing what one should do and considering what one aught to consider. Where muttering obscenities, snorting and pfwarting and one’s heart felt ugliness goes un-judged. I look forward to many happy evenings so doing. In fact my mind is now moving on to Troll sex. Two half bent slobbering figures in a dimly lit bedroom grunting enjoyment at every touch, deep growl mutterings, slaps and scratchings, and all in blissful ignorance of consideration, decorum, judgment and “how was that for you?” More, “Cumear you beauty, pfarp, scratch. Ere, snort, mumbly sort of snort, nuzzle, luv this, aahhh, slobber, root. I’s got you a chocolate moose wiv raisins in, slurp, mutual slurp, enjoyment snort. Slap, geroff. Pfaaaaaaarp. Lovely.” That sort of thing.

The Speck.

As we speak, not that we are, Stiffdog is in Hollywood selling the script to Stiffmouse Productions latest thriller, The Speck. It’s a dark disturbing horror movie about a young man with a strange troubling illness. As the list of adjectives grows we know we are in for a bizarre, frightening journey into the weird unsettling world of, OCD. A young man has OCD, or more longly known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We’ve had Aliens, Elephant Man, psychotic chain saws and Dracula so we thought the time was the right for something more nuanced. But OCD is no less frightening. Imagine that your life could change, be devastated in some unforeseeable way by the merest speck getting past your defences. Cloths must be utterly clean, and if touched or brushed against by someone or something, must be cleaned and cleaned again. A mind caught between the unknowable, the un-see-able and unfathomable. The mother who told me this story was at her whit’s end, as was her washing machine. She had done everything to satisfy her sons OCD to no avail. As we talked it became clear she was in fact confirming her sons obsession. If she did all that cleaning she too must believe her son’s obsession was appropriate behaviour.
The Speck gives us entry into this strange world of obsession, where the slightest misdemeanour, the slightest slip of the tongue, the slightest fashion error, facial blemish or bad expression will ruin a career and taint all connected with it. Love turns to hate, desire to rejection, admiration to disgust in the wink of an eye. In response the unfortunate prostrates him or her self in apologies confirming our obsession with the jot. Welcome to the weird world of ‘The Speck’ where everything is obsession.