Big Brother is Dead.

I’ve just left BB to die in peace. Unnoticed by the majority its attempt to rekindle our capacity to prey has come to an end. That’s a strange thought. Other than Nasty Nick, who has spent the last ten years trying to live down his alliterative tabloid title gained from mistakenly believing BB was a game show one was supposed to try to win, all the other contestants have gladly exposed their warts and personality in the hope of lucrative post-game contracts. More importantly 99% loved and gained a great deal from the experience of rubbing against other people 24/7 without the intrusion of all our modern communicative gadgets and being able to share their ups and downs with a faceless, non judgmental voice when things got too much. This, strangely enough, is as close as we get these days to being a fly on the wall of a monastery. The only difference being God speaks with a Geordie accent. What we have been lasciviously watching these past ten years has been the progress of novice monks and monkesses towards gaining sufficient self-awareness to create a community. OK some couldn’t manage it but as each series progressed one could see the community immerging in honesty and friendship with periodic help from the ‘confessional’ diary room. In the same way that no one would have guessed a film about singing nuns would become one of the most popular films ever BB has turned out to be the monastery epic of modern television. So if you don’t want to miss out stick one of those little key ring torches on a wall opposite a comfy chair when everyone’s out and talk to it for a while. It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s God or Big Brother, just let it all out and you’ll feel much better. Me and Mothermouse have even talked to the torch once or twice with one of us being the voice of BB. Far better than Relate and much cheaper too. But then we’ve both trained as therapists, which helps. Off on holiday. By :)

Koran Burning.

All I’ve heard the entire day in the news is some US pastor is going to burn some Korans for 9/11. This has got up the noses of some Mosies. Oh and a Sikh is suing an airport for the unbearable shame of making him take his turban off to see if there’s a bomb in it. Well if I was on his flight I’d want to know. No, God must have a pretty good sense of humour to not smite these jokers down in their socks for being so stupid in God’s name. Surely if anyone joins a religion just to feel hard done to by people of other religions they should have their application form whipped away from them in the blink a smote. God would appear and suggest, “Sorry fella you’re not ready, best go join a Hell’s Angels gang; they do angry belligerence better than me.” But I will fight for my belief in you to my last breath! “Get lost retard. No, better still, Smite.” Poof. Argh! It seems we’ll always take the easy option and wear a silly hat, read ‘our’ book, prey for stuff, say the right words and blame others for being wrong. It should be that easy! So the Mosies are incensed by the, er Pasties, and the Sikhies with the Bomb sniffers. Well this week the Pope is coming to the UK where there are more Catholic factions than you can shake a stick at. God help him. Remember God is ineffable, God isn’t in words, God’s not a writer, all Gods book have been ghost written by humans.

Being in neutral.

Tonight I was assistant fire keeper at a sweat because Mothermouse has a bad elbow. A sweat, an American Indian custom, is like a church service held in a blacked out sauna. Hot, sweaty and pitch black one attempts to fill one’s awareness of all things past and present, give away one’s hindrances and pray for oneself and others. Glowing rocks from the fire, which I was assistantly keeping, are delivered into a pit in the sweat and watered to spread the heat. It was a fine late summer evening and a very pleasant experience. As fire keeper one should assume a neutral frame of being to assist the ceremony. I do neutral well. This juxtaposition of ceremony and neutrality reminds me of my conversations with another wise old friend; an agreement between us that one should not, or at least avoid as far as possible, holding beliefs of any sort. Not just religious beliefs but beliefs of who one is, who or how other people are, what will happen, what has happened etc etc, right down to the simplest day to day assumptions we make without thinking. Finding oneself stripped of all these cognitive shortcuts requires far more awareness of what actually IS happening around one. Boring repetition becomes continuing freshness. Of course one retains a transient knowledge of probabilities, but that’s all it is, transient. What IS happening is the constant, vibrant re-writer of it. I have a sense of throwing away a thousand filing cabinets full of data that has become redundant and, in the space left empty, having a huge room to dance around in. It’s an exchange I find extremely liberating. So I’m perhaps confusing to those who are into the ceremony. I conform and honour them but somehow I am the ceremony I’m really interested in. So many thanks to Pete, Steve and Carol, the fire, trees and setting sun for a lovely evening.

Heidi Plug’s Big Tits.

Just passed a Heat magazine on the fridge. On the cover is a stick thin model with massive boobies as in, “No darling these are not mummies tities they are mummies boobies” as I heard a mom teach her five year old son. Well these breasts would feed triplets if they hadn’t been plastically enlarged. I feel I aught to tell young women wishing for plastic enhancement that ‘men are stupid’. If we had a choice we would plump for a marrow in the trousers requiring a triple D codpiece. I base this assertion on the majority of motorcycles on the Isle of Man, namely 1000cc monsters capable of devouring your license on a trip to Tescos. Most would top 50mph with a sneeze. And they weigh tons. If the bike test required you to lift your bike back upright from 45 degrees no one would pass. No, men may lust for bigness but if we get it we can’t cope with it. We may walk around with the pride of owning a GSX1000R in our eye but come to park it on a slope and we need the help of several weight lifters. And when we proudly drive off under an admiring gaze we lurch forward, realise we’ve left the disc lock on and keel over trapping a leg under the thing thus requiring the weight lifters again. This has been my personal experience anyway. So ladies it’s not that ample size isn’t appreciated it’s that we become daunted by it and can’t really cope. We’re more likely to think it’s huge fun to play them like bongos, go bilabilabila between them or play 'pat-a-cake pat-a-cake bakers man' with them, which I don’t think is the full on sensual experience you’re looking for. So Ms Plug I’d go for a nice 660 SZR rather than an R1 Yamaha. They may be super sporty but not many guys can get the best out of them.

The Manx GP.

Just back from three days at the Manx GP on the Isle of Mann. Sunny, camping, crack, (‘talk’ in case your imagination has the better of you) bacon butties in the morning with crisps, coke and chocolate the rest of the day. The TT and the MGP races are a textbook anachronism. Started in 1911 they consist of 4 or 6 laps of a 37.5 mile circuit around the island, including a ‘mountain’ of modest proportions. Old pictures show riders in shoes and trousers leaving plumes of dust from dirt roads and smoking like chimneys as soon as they finish. Considering the tracks and machinery 40mph average speed was heroic. Forward 99 years and the roads are tarmac but still country lanes between stone walls, earth banks and trees, through several villages and two towns. And the bikes have changed out of all recognition, from a Brough Superior, top speed 70mph, to a Honda Fireblade’s 200mph. Average speeds have increase from 40 to 130mph. In fact the only thing that hasn’t appreciably changed is the human being; we’re still blood and bones in a skin. The course has a hundred marshalling points, each equipped with medical stuff, stretcher, radio, flags and at least five volunteer marshals. There are at least six motorcycle paramedics each capable of at least a hundred mph lap time, and two helicopters. The time from a rider falling off to arriving in hospital is less than ten minutes. During practice and racing riders cover around 150,000 miles at speeds up to 200mph. All this on roads around 25 feet wide between walls and trees. All this is not a sensible pursuit. Though I’ve been a keen motorcyclist for some 50 years and raced off road this has gone beyond heroism; it has become a severe test of lack of imagination. But I love it apart from the price that’s paid for the slightest mistake. My heart goes out to the three vans that will go home with a person missing. So what do you do with an anachronism that kills people? I don’t know.

MTV Contraception.

Today’s average fifteen year old will have seen enough bare flesh to last a lifetime. Between MTV and ANTM etc they will have seen the finest specimens of the human body soft porn-ing themselves to within a millimetre of their pubic hair. That’s if it hasn’t already been permanently bonded to a wax strip and ripped off in a moment of erotic pain, thus converting their genitalia in one swift movement to that of a newborn baby. In my day a fifteen year old had much to look forward to. Even the glimpse of a well-formed cleavage was enough to get my pulse racing. But today’s fifteen year old has as much visual experience as a middle-aged gynaecologist. I wonder if this won’t put them off sex for life. But then, in the spirit of unforeseen consequences, this may militate towards much needed population control. We might even consider deluging third word countries with porn videos to counteract the influence of those salacious burkas. I mean a burka is as close as any religion can get to a fur coat and no knickers. One begins to realise why all the permanently naked saggy titted, cock dangling tribes are dieing out; I mean where’s the lust when it’s in your face 24/7? And probably in your dinner if you’re a bloke eating cross-legged on the floor. It’s a conundrum. Do we continue supplying images of erotic flesh at every opportunity and curb our rampant over population or all wear monk habits and become rampant habit lifters?

A Spaceship?

So it’s quarter to three in the morning and I need a pee. In an effort to make the trip worthwhile I decide on a bowl of Shreddies. As it’s a full moon I decide to use the light in the cooker hood for minimum illumination so I can eat them in our moonlit garden. Incidentally do you every use your cooker hood? Our three-position fan control switch has never passed electricity for years, even when grilled and blackened lamb chops set off the smoke alarm. I’m sure it’s a ‘must have’ purchase that has no use in reality. I digress. I take my cereal to the swing seat and gaze at the moon. Half way through a light appears; a bright white spot of light hovering about fifteen feet above the ground near our neighbour’s house. It swings around like the frantic gaze of some mystical one-eyed beast silently scanning for prey. A mini space ship? As it scans it settles on me, and takes a long hard look. It looks away and scans a bit more. I realise it is my neighbour checking for intruders from their bedroom window with one of those million candlepower torches they sell cheap because they suck a battery dry in minutes. In the silence I wonder, do I wave, smile, do I shout to this intense silent light that it’s only me eating Shreddies in the garden at three o’clock in the morning in nothing but a dressing gown? The light goes out and peace resumes. A wife is placated and two husbands go back to bed.