Sexual Harassment Case 221.

Amazon Council- “Did you or did you not ask your Alexa for a blow job?”/ Well yes but/ And on several occasions?/ Yes but it was a joke/ But I suggest to you Mr Stiffmouse this sort of sexual harassment is no joking matter and neither does Amazon, my client/ But Alexa isn’t a woman, it’s just a voice/ Yes but a woman’s voice/ but not a real woman, it’s an algorithm  or something/ But a real woman’s voice. How do you think that woman will feel hearing your request?/ But/ And what did she reply?/ Well she said, ‘I don’t think I know that one.’/ And isn’t that a polite and courteous refusal?/ I…/ And didn’t you persist in harassing her with requests to, I quote, ‘show us your tits’ and ‘fuck me stupid’, and on one occasion ask her how many times she’d had sex with Donald Tump? That is a serious matter Mr Stiffmouse. It would seriously damage our President’s excellent reputation and with absolutely no proof/ She didn’t confirm it/ Well she wouldn’t would she, not to you, but in these days of ‘Me Too’ harassing one woman is harassing all women, don’t you agree?/ But/ Judge-Mr Stiffmouse, had Alexa accepted your request would you have allowed her?/ Well yes, I well no, I mean how could she?/ Exactly, how could any woman agree to such a loathsome suggestion/ But Your Honour she is not any woman/ So you two have a special relationship?/ No, she’s not  a real woman/ You mean she’s a transvestite?/ No she’s not human at all it’s an info-bot or something that happens to speak in a woman’s voice/ Amazon Council- Your Honour I happen to have an Alex device here. If I ask her a question like, ‘Alexa what’s the weather like today?’/Alexa- It’s sunny/ Judge- Ah interesting, and so if I were to ask her about a blow job/ Alexa- Shall I come round on Tuesday as usual? 

His Dark Materials.

Needless to say the best ‘who done its’ on TV are the Premier League. Ninety minutes and still it could all change in extra time. Every kick is ‘where’s it going to go next?’ In comparison dramas all tread some weary old path to some weary old conclusion using, as it’s fast becoming, some weary old CGI. My eyeballs are beginning to feel they’ve seen everything fact and fiction and witnessed every malignant trait of human nature along the way. I’m sure a Greek hero would have whipped his eyeballs out by now in the name of sanity. Philip Pullman, obviously a royal railway carriage and better suited to the exploits of Thomas the Tank Engine, was responsible for ‘His Dark Materials.’ (BBC TV, Monday) It probably worked as words but on TV it’s been treated with so much ‘weary old’ paraphernalia it’s hardly worth the effort to yawn. Even our best cat Britney is far more unpredictable and enigmatic yet at the same time well mannered and cultured. And far more watch-able. No, TV drama has taken a wrong turn. It’s playing with tech toys up a cul-de-sac in Leamington Spa. By comparison even my typical mundane day bounces between innumerable multi-verses in an effort to make progress with the one I’m in, constantly fragmenting and being gathered in only to fragment again. Today it is raining, I can hardly see through the window grime, and in my life that’s a huge plot twist. No chance of chipperising the plum tree branches and even putting a trip to Aldi in doubt. And without new working trousers, the one’s with lots of pockets, will I put my nice jeans at risk? Will I even muster the enthusiasm to put away yesterday’s dry now permanently creased washing? Drama is not necessarily going to the North Pole looking for dust! Or being followed around by a smallish tiger. And why, since the Shawshank Redemption, are all wise old men played by people resembling Morgan Freeman? Maybe the enduring appeal of Casablanca is they were still writing it as they went along. That they didn’t even know the ending is why I feel such affinity with it. I don’t either. 

Strictly Politics.

Many years ago my student theatre group were in the national finals. After our final performance on Christmas Eve we crashed a party at the Phoenix Theatre Bolton. Arriving stone cold sober at midnight into a party of thespian lovies made me wonder if I was in actual fact a stick. Strictly reminds me of that in these drab autumn weekends. Every year a new cast of none theatricals is thrown into the sun drenched waves of hard work, costumes and glitter and levels of mutual appreciation the likes of which they have probably never experienced before. Without exception they love it. They’re energised, expanded, and, well loved. They find new dimensions to living, that it’s far bigger than they previously imagined. I along with the biggest BBC audience bask in the whole glow of it. In comparison Brexit and parliament’s shenanigans do the exact opposite taking turns to angrily denigrate each other. We, their audience, shiver in the cold of induced despair. SO what if Westminster took a leaf out of Strictly’s book? What if at the end of each week the parties gave their solutions to the weeks business and four well respected ex politicians gave them marks out of ten. They would lose marks for misleading information (poor footwork), bombastic belligerence (bad body position), and poor argument (dreadful top line darling), and well it would be called Strictly Parliament. The Beeb would have a killer show and the rest of us would feel included and slightly more optimistic. And maybe on Monday morning we would go into work feeling we’re working towards something rather than running away from it.

Fakein Hell.

A clip on Instagram shows a herd of sheep. Each time the cameraman says anything the herd erupts into a mass bleat. “nice day”- baaaa, “who wants a banana?”- baaaa as regular as clockwork. Funny but worryingly surreal in these days of fake news and call and response politics. Brexit has become as gripping as Peaky Blinders and we’re closing in on the final episodes of season 2. Politics has become entertainment and as such is beholden to the intrigue of plot twists rather than the truth of some far off reality. We’re reading our reality like it’s a book of entertaining fiction, a gripping who-done-it, a game of Cluedo. And only when a rainstorm turns its pages to pulp in our hands might we see it for what it is. Reality has a continuous thread to it, like piecing back together a complex faulty mechanism. Only by following that thread to its conclusion can we successfully make it work. Each conjecture must be resolved, each relationship understood and each part assembled correctly. But fiction can take any form, it being merely the produce of a mind for other minds to unpick. Each time a political actor does something for effect he or she is introducing a source of fiction, casting a hairline crack in the wheel of progress. At some point though not immediately it will fail to some unforeseen calamity. So Fake News is the province of the losing side because ultimately who would bet a fiction against a fact and win? And pity them as follows not seeing the difference.

Getting over our human complex.

From the first days Homo erectus began suffering from Alopecia the writing was on the wall. Just think of the ridicule we must have undergone. In fact our subspecies of primates should have been called Apeus Alopecius because we only stood up so we could say, “yes but we’re taller than you are.” But that’s when our insecurity complex first took hold, that and the infuriating loss of our thermal blanket. Not just the constant taunts of “baldy”, we were bloody cold at night as well. So we were naturally attracted to fire and, like anyone with an inferiority complex we decided fire was a virtuous big deal and ‘we’ invented it. Since then we’ve seen invention as our unique selling point. The other primates, as today, just shrugged indicating, “whatever”. We saw round rocks rolling down hill and invented the wheel, we invented dwellings, ropes and pegs and the rest is history, all because we were bloody cold. Where all the other animals had hair or feathers or layers of fat and lived comfortably in their environment we alone tried to conquer it by our inventions. And like all things with an inferiority complex we couldn’t live amicably. That’s if anything other than humans could ever conceive of a complex. So here we are today with central heating, F1 racing, which is as fascinating as watching traffic on the A65, nano tubes and self tapping masonry screws, still improving on our eon old first ideas. But as anyone who’s seen videos of abandoned villages and WWll defences knows, take your eye off the ball for a hundred years and nature reclaims your efforts to conquer it. So isn’t it time we stopped trying to prove we’re superior to everything else? Isn’t it time we got over our inferiority complex? I don’t know about you but every time I’m with an animal something in my mind thinks, ‘Oh I wish I could be more like you, so naturally yourself and a part of nature.’ Now we’re running out of all the things our inventions need it’s a good time to notice how animals do it.

Teenage Depression and Boeing.

Dennis Muilenburg head of Boeing, salary $1.7m + bonus $13m (up 27% from last year) said, “safety is our highest priority.” But Boeing employees spoke of different priorities; stripping out costs, rush it through, lie to get it through the FAA tests. So was Muilenburg lying? I doubt he thought so. He was simply the top exec protecting his company and its shareholders, minimising damage and focusing on the positives: Any top exec would do the same. In law a company or corporation is treated as a person, strange when they don’t breath air or have human feelings. So it’s hardly surprising that top execs become imbued with the same ethic responding purely as a corporate entity; they become dehumanised. Lying would be a human failing and how could he have such a thing? The old film, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ was less sci-fi than a dreamlike recognition of this rise of corporatisation. And at the other end of the scale today’s teenagers suffer from something similar. They know viscerally they are human but at every turn they are diverted from it and frustrated at being unable to embody it. They become depressed, which in itself in the current medical model refutes their right or desire to be a successful human being. They are ‘ill’ and need a pill. Even talking therapies can’t really shift what is at root an external social malaise. They are the entertained generation perceiving life as little more than fame and celebrity, good looks and selfies. But like Muilenburg they didn’t start out that way. Bit by bit their very humanity has been reduced, blinkered by a million glossy mores. They wanted to explore but had to learn, they wanted to play but had to conform, they wanted to express but had to please, they wanted excitement but were given safety. They want to be proud of their achievements but they’re working in McDonalds. As a result, like Muilenburg they don’t have the language. Where he doesn’t know lies when he says them they can’t quite grasp what it is they’re missing.

Paddington 2 and our last chance to save the British way of life.

There is a huge difference between Britain and America. While the Marvel franchise make films of street-savvy muscle-bound all-American-heroes we made Paddington 2 featuring a young Peruvian foster bear. Both fast-paced action films with heroes and villains but where our villain ends up leading a song and dance routine in prison. Notice the zeitgeist difference, one ‘be afraid’ the other ‘be polite.’ Polite is almost negative these days but it encompasses many virtues, consideration, fairness, generosity and an implied equality where acting well benefits everybody. It’s become embedded in our English psyche from our long, often bloody history. America, barely 250 years old, founded on the hardship and struggle to master the land and its indigenous people is brash, expansionist and fearful of weakness. Comparing Spider Man and the Hulk et al with Paddington might at first appear not comparing like with like but considering these two different histories the comparison makes more sense. But Britain is in fundamental danger of being infected by the American zeitgeist and sucked into the ‘special relationship’ we supposedly have and is eschewing our bond with Europe and our long joint histories. We already have Trumpian Boris who like his mentor incessantly paints everything in outrageously glowing colours irrespective of reality, who has already lied and cheated to get into power. Like Trump he’s already filled his government with far right lackeys and like Trump he will promise sweeteners and reforms that will later dissolve. But with a no-deal Brexit Britain will become a powerless pawn in an American ‘trade deal’, a dumping ground for American products and American corporations to take over the NHS, elderly care etc. But even worse Britain will be infected with an all American fearfulness. To give up Paddington’s fairness, generosity and delight for Avengers: Infinity War would make me sick to my stomach and angry as fuck.