The DNA of Names.

I know a rock guitarist and lover of Bob Marley whose name is Kevin. Why is that funny? One can only assume he was a terrible disappointment to his parents. Well it serves them right, what were they thinking? Everyone knows Kevins are only good for replacing toner cartridges and library assistants. It’s like there’s a long chain of DNA behind a name, the result of a spiral of parental pairs stretching back into history. Who for example when named Mr and Mrs Pipe would call their progeny Dwain? (true, I didn’t believe it either) But there are some names that carry a heavy burden. Brian for example. Brians are bumbling out of their depth simpletons, honest to the point of naivety, forgetful daydreamers yet in some deep recess having a somewhat confusing resolve. Monty Python could not have named their film, “The Life of Robert” or Richard or Christopher, maybe Kevin, but no Brian fitted the bill exactly. When GoCompare wanted a name for their bewildered C3PO variant, “mmm what shall we call him? I know ‘Brian’.” Brian the snail in Magic Roundabout, Brian May the token golly in Queen, and last night ‘The adventures of Brian Gulliver’ on radio 4. It’s the go to name for befuddlement. Professor Brian Cox has reclaimed some credibility but even he knows more about the Great Grablion Cluster than his local high street and probably get lost going for a pint of milk. I’m just glad I’m called Stiffmouse, but even that’s got unfortunate connotations according to the Russian gay community.  

50 Shades of Grim.

I was not blessed with good teeth. It may well have been the radioactive paint my mum used painting glow in the dark bomber dials during the war and my own struggle to get here. Nobody told her not to suck the brush. So this morning’s dentist check up, though few remain, runs to multiple pages; front right three occlusal, dada missing, buckle, amalgam and so it goes on. Like the book, now film, my mouth is a catalogue of human miscreance. My school dentist, a Hitler of the gob, extracted four healthy teeth in an attempt to avoid me looking like a squirrel. Unfortunately it only reduced my chin to the proportions of a Bullingdon Club member. Looking back his constant harassment about teeth cleaning was well meant but at the time I just took it to mean he didn’t like me. In my twenties I had a season ticket for fillings and when I finally had my front teeth capped they looked like two milk bottles amongst the rusting remains of a Vauxhall Cresta front wing. Twenty years on I encountered a woman dentist with a partiality for surgery. Everything required sadomasochistic

gum scalpelling. Another ten years and another woman. She charged me £700 for a top plate on account of my front teeth were now missing altogether. All went well with the hot squidgy impression taking but for some inexplicable reason she retired between visits. That thrust me into the arms of my current dentist who is the best ever. Our first appointment was to fit the plate organised by the retired dentist. Whilst it fitted my front four missing teeth had been reinterpreted into three. That meant my beautiful and to be honest expected human symmetry was replaced by a single middle tooth reminiscent of a genetically modified white trash redneck. Though amusing we decided this wasn’t comely and my best ever dentist made a best ever new one. So over the years my mouth has experienced abduction, perfidy, sadomasochism and being jilted, the dentistry equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey if ever there was one. Without the sex. 

9/11 Is Falling Down.

Unlike the three building’s that fell on 9/11 it’s taking a lot longer for the official version of events to collapse. From day one there have been inconvenient facts conveniently dismissed as conspiracy theories. Why did Building 7 collapse at free fall speed? (heat from burning office furniture) Why did the twin towers collapse? (explained by the NIST inquiry) Why didn’t the US air force scramble? (on a training mission) Why weren’t there wings on the outside of the Pentagon and nobody saw the plane? (nobody was looking) Why did firemen hear sequential explosions inside the building? (they were mistaken) etc etc.  But getting back to the NIST enquiry. Though people found thermite in the steel residues, though NASA showed satellite pictures of intense heat in the ruins, again etc etc, they did not investigate the possibility of demolition deeming it ‘too improbable.’ Over the years that followed various structural engineers have evaluated the NIST findings. Why were plates wrongly sized and structural elements left out in their calculations, why did they underestimate structural strength and overestimate kinetic energies? In 2014 Tony Szamboti published a white paper, "Areas of Specific Concern in the NIST WTC Reports". It lists 25 areas where NIST made errors in their calculations to ‘prove’ the official explanation. If NIST can’t refute these findings where does that leave us? If building 7 couldn’t be brought down by their calculations it can only have been a controlled demolition. (that would take weeks to prepare) If their pancake explanation of the twin towers collapse is proved technically impossible then the only other explanation is a manufactured collapse. If so who ordered it? Who had the influence to direct NIST to pursue their erroneous conclusions? Who might then be found responsible for the thousands that died and the false wars in the Middle East? In the end it will all come down to the meticulous calculations of structural engineers working outside NIST, and they’re gaining ground. There’s a lot to play for. 

Listen here http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/2014/590-int-67 

TJ’s Q-tips.

Mothermouse lost her nose diamond and went down the pub for the quiz. As general knowledge is something I look up when I need it and not before I’m as useful as a pristine notebook at quizzing and chose to nap and ponder the whereabouts of the missing item. As washing one’s face seemed a likely activity for losing it I decided to examine the U bend beneath the bathroom sink. Can I say at this point the bathroom sink has required frequent plungering for the last fifteen years or more, which I’d put down to insufficient fall in the waste pipe. On removing the U bend and carefully shaking it over the bath I did not find jewellery but rather the remains of around forty neatly stacked Q-tips, enough to almost fill the pipe. Mothermouse, Bethmouse and I viewed the rank mess and postulated. Who could it be if not one of us? Britney was mentioned as she does like a Q-tip now and then but hardly forty! Then it all became clear. Long before Tommouse, TJ to his friends, left for university, roamed Brazil and moved to Barcelona, in fact probably before he went to big boys school he was concerned with ear wax or ‘ear whack’ as he used to call it, which is when he developed a fondness for Q-tips. We postulated that being a boy at that particular developmental stage and having a particular concern for personal grooming he would wish to dispose of them quickly and efficiently, but not in the bin as that required the extra effort of bending down. He would note the holes in the plughole were slightly larger than a Q-tip’s diameter wherein they would disappear as if by magic. Having no inkling of the geometry of a U bend or that they even existed the thought of a straight Q-tip not being able to negotiate a U bend was as foreign as the Large Hadron Collider would be to a Neanderthal. So no nose diamond but a free flowing sink, a small victory. One can only hope the habit passed and that sinks all over the world aren’t blocked up with Q-tips. 

Goggleboxers.

OK don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting Goggleboxers are chimpanzees but that after watching a million episodes of Monkey World humans in their natural habitat are just as curious, joyous, spontaneous, creative and warm and infinitely captivating. Gogglebox proves you don’t need a million humans or monkeys, or politicians and TV producers for that matter, to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare, Miller and Pinter. Each individual is a fractal of the whole and each Goggleboxer has as firm a grasp on the whole as any chimp with a banana. In fact the chumps, as opposed to chimps, are the Nigel Farages of this world driven mad by eating the postulations embedded in their own faeces. Anarchy is an interesting word. I have a definition here: “a state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government)” It’s usually interpreted as when a ‘good’ government is overthrown by ‘bad’ anarchists but that’s not necessarily the case. Anarchy can just as easily be a government that fails to deliver good governance, in which case the government themselves are the anarchists: Michael Gove for example. Compared with the clarity of Goggleboxer perceptions the machinations of our faeces eaters are disturbingly anarchic, en-railed by postulations digested and excreted so many times as to become their truth and our future. So long live Gogglebox and Monkey World; they are rare glimpses into a world free of anarchists. 

Eastern Block Cleaning.

Russian lorries are wild beasts. They lurch through obstacles with a giant’s tremble under black clouds of diesel breath. Close up they exude a primordial fear. It’s no wonder eastern Europeans are made of sterner stuff than us who grew up with Ford Transits. I realise now how this explains our Slovakian cleaner. She works harder than a Polish plumber, is as honest as a summers day in Finland, as reliable as the BBC pips, and brutal. Our lily livered western possessions are no match for her vacuum cleaner the size of a Humvee. I’m sure she uses an angle grinder on stubborn stains: I don’t know for sure because I retreat for fear of being cleaned. I’ve mended Mothermouse’s fragile American Indian figurine numerous times after an unfortunate duster whiplash. I think the first was our front room carpet, red Persian type. “The carpet is very dirty, I take it home and clean it.” I don’t know what she did to it but it came back dispirited, broken by the Slovakian inquisition. It’s now limper than a damp j-cloth. She moved on to the curtains, “They are very dirty Mr B. I take them home….” These Cole Brothers items came back four inches shorter with the lining a further two inches, clean and convenient for the cats but not as curtains should be. Luckily the oven withstood her attempts to purge its uncleanliness, protected by years of baked on food, but last week the hob got it. It comes up fine with gentle rubbing but obviously not clean enough. The coating on the knobs is now worn through in places thanks no doubt to the afore mentioned angle grinder. It’s difficult to know what to do with this cultural mismatch. How would Peter Crouch deal with a Russian wrestler? For sure it’s not the cleanest house in the world but it’s suffering from not being a rugged Russian lorry. Try saying that fast. 

My BAFTA Speech.

I find the most difficult thing about preparing a BAFTA speech is deciding which category to win: Actor, writer, director or lifetime achievement? I did that last year but it had a hint of has-been about it so this year I’ll be winning… Well actually I first thought best actress but as it’s become androgynous and I only wanted it for the dress I’ve gone for best actor, in a dress. Well I say dress but that’s tranny, I just mean not a black bloody suit. I like red. I’d say blue but it’s a difficult colour. It goes straight from too dark to wishy-washy, so it’s red, bright but on the deep side. Tight full length sleeves on a lose jacket over a tight burgundy, no make that charcoal, t-shirt, close neck probably with a zip at the back to get it on. Below, thigh length matching trouser-ets over charcoal leggings and dark blue plain shoes, possibly converse. Now the role? OK I’m a guitarist in a little know seventies glam rock group who around thirty, I’ll need makeup, realises everything is. He tells people this amazing revelation but they just say yeh and smile. He says, “No everything is, get it?” Still nothing. Anyway it goes on like that bla bla. It’s shot in Hamburg. Then the speech. The usual thanks, I might do a twirl at some point, and then say doing the part opened my eyes to the fact that everything is. OK there’s a little laughter but on the whole I think they get it. That would be amazing. I walk off clutching my award arm in arm with Jessie J, who I know is a lezzy but what the hell I love her. Then back to my seat next to Robert Downey Jr. He says, “You’re right everything is just is isn’t it.” Always thought he was a bright guy.

Sic Soc & the NHS.

I heard a startling fact, that it would pay the NHS to fit insulation and new boilers into the homes of asthma sufferers: £1,000 for house improvements as opposed to £2,000 for the inevitable spell in hospital. It’s equally likely it would save on their mental health budget to provide pay-day loans at realistic interest rates, but they’re not into loans and building work. There is a glaringly obvious conclusion, that all the injustices of our society in one way or another result in physical or mental ill health and this un-health of masses of people ends up in the NHS. Poor housing, work stress and poor wages, poor diets, poor benefits even poor education all lead ultimately to an NHS bed, yet this systemic view of society is not even acknowledged. When NHS costs go through the roof it’s viewed as a problem within the NHS not the growing levels of sickness creation in other aspects of society. Quite simply a sick society will require more hospitals, doctors, beds and nurses. The beginning example beautifully illustrates that money skimped elsewhere is far outweighed by the cost of picking up the pieces. And that’s not even taking into account the misery of all that illness. Unfortunately politicians are responders not creative thinkers, they think after the event rather than before it because there’s a greater fear in an unknown improvement than the known ineffective. So save the NHS at all costs, it’s the final barometer of the governments performance and the only way it can be held to account for its wider social mismanagement.