Free of the After-life

(or, Why I Enjoy Being Agnostic)

Religious belief is a source of comfort to a huge number of people across Ye Globe. The mysterious (some might say questionable) nature of faith and the fervent self-sacrifice of devotion are not only interesting, but (I would venture to say), downright appealing to the remote eye.

Why people turn to religion, and why they have Faith, is not an easy matter to determine, resting as it does on several things. One of these is the classic existential crisis; people get tired of having to exercise their free will all the time, and turn towards organised religion in search of a framework upon which they may base their decisions. It gives them a context in which they exist; they are no longer alone, they have relations of shared faith and a history and genealogy of worship and devotion. I have heard it said of the Koran, for instance, that it is like 'a guidebook on how to live life.' Fair enough.

The second reason is equally classic; the ol' 'I don't know what's going to happen after I die!' panic. Religious people insulate themselves from the all-too-human fear of death, and in most cases, effectively acknowledge their mortality by, er, acknowledging their immortality. They will die in order to ascend to a better life; or they will be reborn until they can prove themselves worthy of Heaven. There are the views that you may be chosen to go to Heaven before you were even born, and that you might just be beyond saving and go to hell, but these have become unfashionable for obvious reasons...

This is where I intervene to say that, funnily enough, I do not see the after-life as particularly comforting - but nor do I find the atheist view of 'Ah, you'll just be eaten by maggots. Or fire' much better. No, I am a Shifty One - I subscribe to the middle view, that of agnosticism. I sit perched on the fence like a Christmas-card robin, proclaiming that all I really know is that I DON'T KNOW.

The idea of an after-life presents an enslavement and a fundamental denial of human nature, it seems to me. Whether we like it or not, we are firmly programmed to want to survive at all costs. No doubt ascetics and religious folk see their view of the world as a transcendance of this notion; a sort of reclaiming-in-nihilism of death as something to not only not fear, but desire even.

Yet the irony! This manifestation of an after-life is simply a distortion of that biological view, if you ask me; a hypocritical continuation, not a divergence. You want to survive - you will survive at all costs! You will be reborn in order to live beyond the decay of your mortal body! People force themselves to 'do good works' in order to increase their divine brownie points (some don't have to, admittedly), letting their fear of death fester even as they try to put the inevitable off, with good intent.

You don't know what comes next. I find that liberating. We have so many great and small worries in our lives, and assorted tidbits of new knowledge escaping through all the time. Death is a painful process for the ones left behind, but it is also a process of maturation for humanity. It serves to make us appreciate life and our behaviour towards one another more. Why can we not respect this? Why must we undermine it as a stepping-stone to something else, or by viewing it only in its biological function?

I am not enslaved to the notion of an after-life where everything will be how I want it, or however I need it, or whatever (seeing as how we humans can't even reconcile what we want and what we need half the time, I find the suicide-bomber version of Heaven particularly amusing). I would venture even to say that the few unknowable areas of existence - like the aftermath of Death - make us appreciate the knowledge we do have even more.

So, I don't want to think of myself as a greying corpse, mouldering slowly in the ground; nor do I want to think of the 'essence' or 'spirit' of myself flying off to infuse itself in someone/thing else. I choose unknowability. For God's sake (;-)), I've got enough to worry about as it is!

The Verdict

She laid her hand to one side as the first drop landed. Like a tiny, fluid bomb, it detonated upon the page, leaving a cornflower-blue crater in the prose. Another followed. Then the next... and the next...

The sheet of paper before her was now pockmarked with the fruits of her frustration. Teeth gritted, face hardened and reddening, eyes huge and maddened, she cried silently. Inside their sockets, the balls twitched and strained terrifyingly, as if the blood vessels threatened to break free. Her lips were pulled taut and dry, even as her chest fluttered in a gruesome parody of grace.

She tried to fling the page away from her, but it simply drifted about arm's length away, settling mockingly on the ground seconds later.

And here she was, simply proving everything that prowled in the back of her skull. The emotion had overcome her, and this realisation made her angrier still. From somewhere came a howl, dying softly as she caved in to hyperventilatory gasps. The heat rising from inside her head was drying the tears on her cheeks now. She could yield no more liquid.

Aiode put a hand to her head, rubbing in the drying tears against her cheeks. The crying had worn her out. As she bent to retrieve the paper, her heart continued to thrum. She read over the sheet of paper again.

'I think that the critic is incorrect in making this judgement because the writer has after all written and published a story, so is it not paradoxical to say that this is a novel extensively treating the failure of language to convey powerful emotion, especially given that the novel deals with such themes as trauma and guilt?'

She laughed. Her eyes blurred. She looked at the question on the bottom of the sheet again. The words disintegrated before her eyes. She saw movement – very, very slow – and ruptured; as though witnessing the action of dynamite in slow-motion.

They curled up, like maggots trying to roll themselves onto non-existent feet. She blinked again – it would not stop. She screamed as some broke themselves off from the rest, rising up, up, upwards. She could see them – just about – rising, rising, rising –

They loomed over her –

PARADOXICAL. POWERFUL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL.

Again and again and again.

She screamed more, but it was hurting her as they closed in.

PARADOXICAL. POWERFUL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL.

They threw her to the ground and then they began to work together.

PARADOXICAL. POWERFUL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL.

So many minute insertions! Tiny, perfectly formed hands that tore out the strands of her hair!

PARADOXICAL. POWERFUL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL.

The skin beneath her eye throbbed pathetically as they kicked her face, again and again.

PARADOXICAL. POWERFUL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL. LANGUAGE. NOVEL.

LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE.

They were climbing the stairs. She sat up, bleeding.

'Where are you going?' her mouth asked. From her throat came a burst of unshaped air. Something stamped, hard and deep, embedding itself in her stomach. Her eyes grew out of her head, seeking heaven. The thought came over her that no sound had left her this whole time and yet her mouth had been opening... each and every time...

LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE.

The piece of paper with her writing on crackled briefly before her, intruding upon her moment of epiphany, applying itself over her mouth, her nose. She saw them pause at the top of the stairs, all interlinked.

LANGUAGE.

A leap.

LANGUAGE.

Understanding.

LANGUAGE.

Holding each other tight, they landed – square on her face. It wasn't enough. Her tears and blood flowered over the paper as they applied themselves to her skull once more with vigour.

LANGUAGE!

'So arbitrary. So arbitrary. Will you ever learn?'

LANGUAGE!

Acceptance set in, almost like peace but not enough, as the life began to leave her.

LANGUAGE!

The blood pooling around her head paused, arrested at her wrist, where a tattoo was slightly raised, on reddened skin, as if recently done.

'Like a dog!' it read.

The Delicate Parent-Child Relationship

I said I would discuss headscarved girls in a forthcoming post; once I can remember what on Earth I might have been out to say, I will get round to it.

Greetings, dear readers. I apologise for my habitual flakiness and my prolonged absences, but the Real World does call me forth for most of the week, so unfortunately my blog doesn't always get the love it needs. The upshot of all this is that y'all don't have to hear me bitching about work and career quite so much any more. I have decided to yield to nature and am hoping to become either an academic or a teacher. If I become an academic, I'll consider becoming a lecturer too.

I must just briefly highlight a blog post which has inspired this very post. It occurred to me that after 'the death of God,' many have been looking to replace (or perhaps, supplement) the notion of a Supreme Being by falling back onto other models. I will venture to say that this has happened more so in the Western world than in Africa or Asia or the Middle East. However, I am not making any judgements there. I am not trying to cheerlead for any part of the world.

The reason I stipulate this is because I am wary of falling into the trap of sounding like my father. 'Oh, the West had its advantages and it progressed, but now look at it, it's all coming to nothing, people want things to be how they were in the good old days.' Trans: They done gone and lost their values! Followed by: 'India is becoming a superpower, China is becoming a superpower, America is going to stop being so powerful. Just like when the British Empire came to an end - nothing lasts forever!' Add 'It's India's turn now!' to finish. The common sense and logic in this, which I agree with - that nothing lasts forever - gets unfortunately drowned in patriotism, a hint of racism and some good ol' conservatism. The West thought it knew best, but WE have values because we're still religious and we have shame, and so soon we'll make up for all those years of Whitey's rule!

That kind of thing makes me uncomfortable for so many reasons, which should be fairly apparent to anyone who's read me more than twice. Life is NOT simple, and the sooner the people of the world get that, the better. I'm aware I sound patronising, but I really could give less of a fuck. The older we get, the lazier we get, wishing to regress back to the times when our lives broke down into simply-moralistic narratives of 'good' and 'bad'. We often conveniently forget that even in childhood, we were being fed those narratives. Children are not 'little angels,' they can be perfectly cruel and thoughtless. That's because we human beings are flawed and complex (I would dare to say, thankfully so).

So on to challenge one of society's last-remaining bastions of respectability. I am a believer in D.H Lawrence, as I believe I might already have said, in the notion of challenging ideals. Ideals and institutions can be instructive in the sense of offering an 'Average' - a yardstick to measure conditions of material need by - Lawrence argues, but we must remember that the Average is just that - a fiction created to assess need. When this Average is taken to be representative of real people, we have a problem, because everybody is different and their individuality needs to be accepted. Lawrence doesn't think we need to celebrate or explain it in any way - just accept the fact of our 'otherness' to everybody outside of ourselves.

Now, I find that eminently sensible. The problem is that Lawrence was startlingly visionary, because the Average DID come to be seen as representative of more than just material need. We (humanity), began to take the beast known as Aspiration further and further. Aspiration is not essentially bad when it comes from within. However, with the 'Average' - it came from without and that was just the problem. It has been happening since before Lawrence realised it. When people talk about our 'broken society,' and cite any number of bullshit reasons, I just want to laugh in their face and tell them to read 'Democracy.'

A lot of all our problems - and this is the whole world over - come from this very tendency to hold ourselves up to others and judge unfavourably; to see what they have and think to ourselves: 'the grass is greener' or 'Must do better.' Nobody's immune, and it covers all areas of life! It's been used to keep people in check for years, from any number of religious texts to 19th-century America to the modern day.

So, I am going to make a daring proposition. If we're always judging people anyway (and come off it, we all bloody well are all the time), then why do we stop at the family? Why do we have such a reluctance to enter into that arena? 'It's a question of people's private lives,' you cry. 'We can't tell them what to do with their children.'

Errr... yes, we can. Groups of people have been (tacitly or otherwise) trying to control or influence the actions of others for absolutely forever. So let's stop with the hypocrisy, shall we? I am going to suggest here that the sort of people involved in Puritan Neighbourhood Watch (another delightful feature of 19th-C America where you could report your (married) neighbours for having had sex) are generally the sort of people who gravitate towards religion. The sort of people who need a Supreme Being, aka a giant authority figure, to complete them in some way.

(Not that all religious people are crazy or bad, mind).

For these religious people, the irony is not apparent. I'm speaking of the irony of the omnscience of God. God really is everywhere for them - because they put God everywhere. They attempt to give a sacred veneer to many parts of human life, causing a great amount of damage in the process. It is terrifying because these people with their conservatism, become God. They exercise the Supreme Will of the mob mentality, and then it almost doesn't matter what God might think of things because they have sat in judgement and delivered their verdict. 'God' might as well be the name they give to their ego, because they are busy assigning sacredness and profanity right, left and centre.

Talk about missing the point. It makes me laugh, but the way I see it: that's religion for you! I'll explain myself a bit more. In an increasingly cynical modern world, conservatives and the religious (I might as well change that to 'religious conservatives,' mightn't I?) have created a series of 'lesser gods' to which they lend the tint of holiness in a bid to stave off the ugly reality of change and progress. DO NOT BLASPHEME, or you will repent.

One of these 'lesser gods' is parenthood. There have thankfully been some writers such as Lionel Shriver who have attempted to humanise parenthood to some degree by revealing that it's not all unconditional love all the way and that parents ARE people too, you know, prone to resentment and frustration. However, much of the religious brigade HATE that kind of thing. My own parents told me that 'Your parents are a form of God'. Errr... no, thanks.

Why can we not admit this reluctance to accept that families are, after all, composed of human beings? I don't buy all that 'there has to be a mother and a father' crap either. Generally if the child has a male or female role model of some sort to help them through adolescence and plenty of love and support, why should there be a problem? It is reluctance to accuse families of being in the wrong that leads to situations such as that of the 'British Josef Fritzl' (the article I link to is highly recommended, particularly the last section of it, which probably partly inspired this). The family, and especially the nuclear family, is not 'untouchable,' the more this is clung to, the less people want to intervene when such things happen, because it makes the ugly truth resurface before us.

In seven out ten instances of rape, for example, it's committed by someone you know. Apparently, it came out in 2005 that it's most likely to be someone you know stealing your identity. Yet again, the narrative doesn't split easily into 'us' (family) and 'them' (rest of the world). Even if crimes aren't committed, your family can still emotionally abuse you, control you and mar your confidence for life. Trying to speak up about that and gain some perspective can be even more difficult, in fact, if your family were bad to you but not in a easily-stereotypable pantomime-villain way. Think about how bad it must be for women who suddenly become 'honour'-killing victims or get forced into marriage as a result of this last taboo, that of speaking against your family.

'Don't go telling your friends about what happens in the family,' my parents used to say to me every now and again. I think now that somewhere subconsciously, they had acknowledged that they weren't behaving in a totally acceptable way, and hence the guilt made them try to keep me in check, even when I wasn't telling anybody.

Despicable situations such as incest, abuse and domestic violence occur because we want to persist in keeping an aura of respectability about the families. Nothing else is left! the likes of the Mail-deluge cry. Nothing is sacred any more!

Quite right, and as I've said before, why should it be? Until we can come up with absolute, conclusive proof of God, the only thing that we can be sure of is that the ludicrous ideal standards being applied are our own - i.e. human. Even if they don't begin as our own, they become so in time!

It is your so-called loved ones who can hurt and manipulate you worse than anyone else, and that is why the familiar becoming unfamiliar (Das Unheimliche) continues to haunt us even though Freud has been and gone. Look at Fritzl and his 'British equivalent', look at Baby P, you morons, and get some perspective. I especially loved the nebula of hypocrisy surrounding the latter, where the social workers were essentially blamed for the parents' negligence while no-one mentioned that the sort of 'AARGH, NANNY-STATE POKING ITS NOSE INTO ALL OUR LIVES' screech was probably partly responsible for the social workers not intervening sooner. Oh wait, a dude on the Telegraph did (shock shock, horror horror, shock shock horror!) as did Liberal Conspiracy (unsurprisingly).

(See? The Telegraph talking sense. The world ain't simple fo' sho).

Speaking of fear, rearrange the second and third letters of 'sacred' as I often do in error, and there you have a diagnosis of carping Mail/Sun/Express-types worthy of a Freudian slip :-D. 'Scared' is all they ultimately are, like pathetic children in the grown bodies of adults. Children trying to play at paternalism, wresting the freedom of others away in their chubby snatching at authority! Freud would have had a field day, especially with the likes of Comstock (whom I can imagine hitting it off with Paul Dacre). I would say give them a slap and send them home crying, but they'd probably find a way to blame 'ZaNuLab' for this not happening... ;-D

(Il me semble que j'aie trouvé un mari futur! Scary or wot?!).

To quote the man MF Grimm: 'I love you all, till we meet again / My weapon is the pen / Same agenda, no snakes alive in the end'. (I don't take myself that seriously, but his anger is eloquently, elegantly infectious).

The Politics of Dress Sense?

I think something is wrong with me. There's a type of (usually) white person that drives me insane. I don't altogether know why. This 'type' is perhaps best summarised as the sort of people who tend to be Drama students my age. I say 'white person,' but that is purely by-the-by. The fact of their being white may simply arise from the fact that my university is a Muslim hub - and hence virtually everyone studying an Arts subject seems to be white.

When I say my university is a Muslim hub, I mean it. Let the words be taken at face value, with no extra layers of prejudice or analysis. It is filled with girls wearing hijabs - a garment so expressive of a certain attitude (particularly towards faith) that even having a sports commentator strapped to one's skull could not compete. There are also a few guys with the little prayer-caps (sorry, I don't know what they're called) and the large beards. Need I characterise the mindset that accompanies such an overt expression of faith? - I think not. Suffice it to say that girls draped chin-to-ankle in carefully concealing fabric are REALLY unlikely to be doing Drama - a subject that requires costume changes, flexibility of appearance and even nudity.

No, (not unlike many South Asians...) most of these girls and boys will be studying things like Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. Chances are that if they're in Languages, they plan on teaching afterwards. In a lot of cases, it's not really their fault - they'd have to fight big-time in order to diverge. Much as I did. So when I see the sort of university sweatshirt and Ugg-boot-wearing blonde-haired guffawing girls (or their tight-jean and striped-cardigan-sporting male equivalent), a powerful and irrational dislike fills my heart.

I think it is their uniformity that annoys me. That universal uniform of the undeservedly comfortable. Ugg boots don't come cheap, and neither does make-up, good-quality or no (I don't even want to think about how much MAC, beloved of two of my mates and probably more people, costs on a regular basis). It is a uniform of aspiration, based on aping people like fucking Alexa Chung and Sloane Ranger-type girls. It is a uniform that says: 'I don't have to worry about getting a real job, because I am white and middle-class, and ultimately I rule this country.' A sense of entitlement radiates from the whole bloody thing.

I hate tribalism, and seeing it signalled in a common 'uniform' makes me uneasy. I feel similarly oppressed around 'typical Asians' - girls with their love of black, tiny-skinny bodies and coloured contact lenses, guys with their oh-so-enterprising minor designer/sportswear brand-blending and gelled-porcupine heads. The way you dress is a statement, I suppose. Some people balk at 'chavvy' sportswear, gold hoop earrings and Burberry sportswear - well, I balk at the cut-off denim minis with black footless tights! I balk at the 'ethnic' scarves and the proliferation of black, brown, denim and if you're lucky, monochrome!

For me, it represents the ugly delusion of the youth of today. Here are all these girls and boys who (to me), are emblematic of an increasingly apathetic and anti-intellectual society. Why do you keep blindly taking what the celebrities, celebrity-worshipping sites, shops and magazines dole out to you? Why in the fuck do you want to look like the ever-vacuous Peaches Geldof? Why don't you descend on the shops and ask them why they keep making clothes for the likes of Agyness Deyn and Alice Dellal? There are plenty of boys and girls - white and non-white - who don't fit the fashionable norm, and instead of trying to bridge reality a little, Fashion simply pounces upon girls like Jourdan Dunn, who, although beautiful, still represent Europeanised ideas of beauty and the ideal shape.

Why on Earth am I getting so worked up over what people wear? - because it matters! In a heavily-mediatised, visually-obsessed age such as is ours, it MATTERS more than ever! Perhaps because the speed of change is so great these days, that young people dress safer and more formal because they start having to 'grow up' sooner. Or maybe they can't be bothered to rebel. Maybe I sound like a fashion-fascist, but I think it's a shame. Why? Your youth is supposed to be a time of experimentation and craziness! Maybe it is simply a sign of the times; maybe people are so sick of gnawing upon their future prospects amid The Impending End of The World (aka the never-ending financial crisis) that risk is (and has been) dying out in the search for stability...

Or maybe the amount of introspection, analysis and obsessive-symbol-seeking of my degree is driving me insane, and I need to get a life?

I will probably post some related thing at some point soon, trying to explain a bit more why I feel this way. In the meantime, I will let VICE sum it up for me (replacing 'New York' with 'London', of course).

No Minds To Make Up

This post on Pickled Politics is making me really mad. I can't blog when I'm this mad, and I have a lot of work to do already, so I'm posting this (somewhat) in response. I suppose it expresses my viewpoint on a lot of other things too. Although I have mellowed since I wrote this (3 years ago)!

(When I see such things, I feel like going 'Oh, oh, OK, can I just pop over there and shoot and bury you, since it's part of MY 'Bastards will not be tolerated' tradition?').

Calm down, calm down self!


No Minds To Make Up
The stereotypes are everywhere,
there’s lack of imagination and
fear and knee-jerk reactions
and all that I hate –

I need a magnifying glass
to look into these hideous
sub-cultures without wincing;
ah, the narrow-mindedness hurts –

Hard to believe that people
will fight tooth-and-nail
to avoid reality wherever possible,
to stop it encroaching on their trails –

On their tails, it follows
ready to poach the misconceptions
that keep them feeling
so safe and protected –

Ignorance is fucking bliss,
when the intelligent refuse
to claim responsibility for their
brains and the poor struggle –

To be noticed, or disdain
their intelligence, or recycle clichés
for their fellows; a challenge
is only fun if you take it –

We frame ourselves in contexts
and place God and Science
just outside of the box
for “intellectuals” to debate on –

Miserable, pessimistic pricks who
can’t handle their thoughts – well,
let them destroy you and
give us a break at last –

We need a predator to
snap us free of these lazy
cocoons of deluded
self-belief; we’ve put change

Too far back on the
agenda for far too long;
let the truth come and
claim its victims from among us –

Your minds and eyes and
minds’ eyes tightly closed; now
even music is a breeding-ground
for dull conformity and suffocation

Of shared opinion, unless there’s no
substance behind it; you need some
personality to have your own minds,
but you don’t have minds to make up.

Reclaiming Feminism.

I have had enough. I HAVE HAD ABOUT FUCKING ENOUGH. Why the fuck are people so fucking dumb? How did the misogynists come to win so easily? Feminism was somehow ascribed the signification 'of female supremacy' and now women everywhere are shirking it if possible, having to explain and/or mediate it (as I do: 'I'm a feminist-egalitarian... Well, I'm a feminist, but people generally get the wrong idea so I have to say I'm a feminist-egalitarian... I want everyone to be equal, but feel that we need to deal with the oppression of women first and foremost... do you get what I mean?!') or, worst yet, they proudly proclaim themselves as not feminist, as anti-feminist even.

The reason I'm so irritated is because of this interview with one of the Loose Women presenters, Carol McGiffin. Is it just me, or does she look decidedly Satanic in the picture? Maybe I'm ascribing Satanicity (my coinage!) to her based on what she said. I am going to quote it so that I can do my nut accordingly:

Are you a feminist?

Deep down, yes I am. But I have to really question what feminism is now. If being a feminist means I want to be totally equal and the same as men, I don't. I don't want to compete with men, I've got no problem with certain things that a lot of staunch feminists have problems with - the fact that men should share household chores and things like that. I don't buy that line. I don't mind if blokes want to help out, but if they don't and they can't, then I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor. So if that makes me a non-feminist, then I'm a non-feminist.

Are there really any men who "can't" pick up laundry from the floor?

Yes, I know ... unless they're completely unable to move, or they've got no arms. But the damaging thing about feminism is that the man's role is completely confused - women want them to take on certain women's roles.

What is a woman's role?

Traditional women's roles: looking after a family, men and children. We argue at work about this: Denise and Andrea [Welch and McLean, McGiffin's co-stars] get blue in the face trying to make [their partners] Tim or Steve do things that they're never going to do, and I say to them, "Why don't you just do it, because your life would be so much easier?" Why can't they just accept that they are men? Yes, they're lazy and they're rubbish, but they married them, now stop trying to change them. So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.

*weeps* You stupid, stupid, FUCKING STUPID BITCH. I'm sorry, I know it's terrible to swear so much, and probably none too indicative of a 'shared feminine spirit' or whatever, but... Christ. What really hurts me is that there are loads of ignorant women like Carol McGiffin, who don't really know jackshit. I must hand it to her for saying 'I have to really question what feminism is now.'

This woman could be my mother. This woman IS my mother - hence my classifying her, too, as Satan. What kind of passive bullshit is that, anyway? 'I have no problem with men helping, but actually I don't think they should, because then they'll be taking on women's roles and then we'll get confused OMG OH NOES HERE COMES THE SEXUAL APOCALYPSE.'

We live in an age where our understanding of transvestism and
transsexuality has developed to the point where enough outrage occurs at a lesbofeminazi (sorry, I really wanted to use that just once!) who attacks transfolk to spur 150 protesters at the Stonewall awards and where a transsexual gets on to America's Next Top Model. We have a long way to go, sure, but you'd think those little things would show people that gender roles are not sacred and set in concrete. Like pretty much everything else that makes up humanity, they are *gasp* able to be changed and destabilised!

So, Carol McGiffin, I'm sure people like yourself (and oh, I do fear that there are quite a few of them out there) find it hard to wrap their tiny minds around this, but: BULLSHIT to traditional women's roles. How about the traditional role of the bitch-goddess, huh, Kali Ma and her equivalents? The notion of the fertile-yet-destructive pagan matriarch? THAT'S a 'role' that's been around almost as long, and funnily enough you don't hear anyone trumpeting that to us. I also really hate the myth that she and many many others perpetuate, which is that feminism and compromise are somehow separate and/or incompatible: 'I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor.' Well, neither have I, love, but I won't stand for being told that I 'should' do it because it's 'my role'. Especially not by you. And yes, there will be be days when he will bloody well do it himself - that's what I call compromise - being flexible and having each other's backs.

This bit was great too, and I feel, comprehensively disqualifies CM for 'feminist' status: 'Why can't they just accept that they are men?'

Well, honey, by turning around and making the mistake that a lot of women do - of saying 'Boys will be boys,' like my mother always did - you're not only insulting feminists and disempowering yourself, but doing the 'men' a disservice too. All men are not the 'lazy,' 'rubbish' figure perpetuated by Hollywood slacker movies, disenchanted mid-life divorcees and the likes of *ahem* Loose Women. I happen to think that by saying things like that, you are being as unfair as if you turned around and said that all women are hysterical and have a father-fixation (Oh wait, somebody did, and it was a man - Freud, that light of illumination who prescribed 'cocaine therapy' and advanced the ingenious theory that non-white cultures were a primitive, 'savage' form of Western culture - a view inherited from the 19th-C colonial romance and R.L. Stevenson...).

Men and women are supposed to be equal under feminism, and the only sense in which they are equal for McGiffin is in her dismissal of both by reducing them to one-tack performers of a gender role. Get a clue, people! The clue's in the word itself: role. A word tied up with theatre, loaded with performative connotations. If you really want to try and assert your views as if they're law, you could at least try and be a bit more scientific about it and say 'function' instead...!

Granted, her point about expecting people you've married to change (and that too, after years upon years of marriage) is fair. This bit, though: 'I don't want to compete with men.' Biatch, it's a bit late for that. See, if everyone thought like you, you wouldn't be on TV on a show like that right now. That's because people used to think that a woman's role precluded any entry whatsoever into the 'public sphere.' You wouldn't BE on ITV, somehow eking out your 15 minutes of fame (I had never heard of her before this, and I looked her up to find out she was a radio DJ or something...?) without feminism. Yet there you are.

'So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.'

As Michael Kyle from My Wife and Kids would say: 'Ah... nah.' You're not, dear - you're just a product of the same mindset that spawns WAG-wannabes and tabloid kiss-and-tells. That would be the 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to work, so I'm going to exploit gender stereotypes to my advantage and find myself a rich man.' Then, when you break up, you think you're leaving with half? Bitch, you trippin'. Except that ol' Carole is of the much more common 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to think, so I'm going to claim the advantages won by a previous generation while simultaneously undermining said advantages by implying that everyone should just shut up and do as they're told' breed.

See, at this point, if I were a Mail/Express reader, I would start pulling out my hair and screaming that the end is nigh. Instead, I'll go right on and make it a Julie Bindel bumper special by drawing your attention to this interview with Sheila Jeffreys about prostitution. Such an interesting read that my faith in humanity was revived (by Julie Bindel an' all! Imagine!). I didn't know who this Sheila Jeffreys was, but I wanted to marry her! (pun intentional...).

Another bitch is necessary, however. In an interview with ballet dancer Natasha Oughtred, the interviewee says:

[Do you have any style icons?]

No one in particular jumps out. Audrey Hepburn looked beautiful - everyone says that about her. When you think of that era, the stars were all so flawless and they never had a bad day.

What utterly banal rubbish! It makes me burst out laughing when you see this kind of mindless 'soft' conservatism, a thought-free, easy idealising of the past. Of course they were fucking flawless - the gossip industry, if it could even be viably considered an 'industry' back then, wasn't able to insinuate itself into the minutest details of slebs' lives like it does now. Of course people had bad days, they just didn't get papped! Whereas now, it seems that if people want to maintain any measure of privacy, they have to disappear from public life for large chunks of time at a pop, like Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe.

I'm not trying to say that we should rein in the paparazzi or anything (or maybe we should, who knows?), but people need to stop being so fucking facile. Don't go bewailing the lack of demigods when you're daily falling upon the pantheon of performers and associated hangers-on and ripping the shit out of them. People with brains know far better in this age of ever-penetrating inquiry. When the whole point of performance is to act a role, why would you want to risk placing your own person within the gladiatorial arena?

By all means, throw us the scraps - the Peaches Geldofs and the Cory Kennedys (hey, I'm British, I'm susceptible to the underdog and sceptical of people who don't seem to have any job! :P ;)) - but models, actresses etc... the whole point of these people is to be unreal. This bullshit about looking at them in Heat when they're having a bad day and feeling better in yourself is just that - bullshit. It's a temporary fix, not a long-term solution, and it only feeds the ludicrous comparison-culture which is (in my view anyway) what will probably bring about the end of the world. So women of the world, though I know you won't listen, I entreat you to STOP reading Closer and Heat, Star and OK! and so forth, and GET OUT of the gossip matrix.

Feck me, I'm tired! I leave you with this rather amusing selection of quotes from Sienna Miller, who seems like a fun sort if you ask me, and the simultaneously heartwarming ('Yay! Yay for the still-single guy! You're no freak AT ALL!') and depressing Private Lives section (next week's problem made me want to cry and give the lady in question a big hug and take all her pain away, but sadly I'm not God...). I think I was partial to the bloke because he sounds a lot like my man might have done, had he ever written to the Guardian and not been snapped up by me (or some other exceedingly lucky girl) before reaching his late twenties... Mwahaha.

Finally... sleeping around from Chaucer to Castro and a really interesting piece on sex and 'our culture of excess' (which I will read tomorrow because I am really tired). HAPPY WEEKEND, ALL!

C'est un de ces jours-là

Didn't sleep much, woke up shattered and permitted myself an extra 15 minutes, which, if anything, may have made things worse. Spent the first 2 hours drooping in a melancholy muffledness, forcibly insulated from the tide of idea-exchange by fatigue.

Did a little more work (but not much) on my exposé this morning. French III washed over me like a particularly cold and hateful wave. I clung to the barest rock of wakefulness, conscious of a faint strain of panic that grew in me all day.

Evening time came, and the strain of panic had taken on a life of its own. It stepped out of my subconscious and sat, flat and square upon my chest, now shifting to smother my mouth just a little. I thought of jobs, I thought of friendship, I thought of the interminable tide of research, reading and writing upon which I am but bobbing currently. My back pressed harder against the wall. Listlessly, I went to my bed, hoping this pessimism, this universal disdain would fade after a little rest. I slept, for 15 minutes if not more. It wasn't enough.

When I got up, I decided to make dinner, which took almost 40 minutes and pulled myself back to working, firmly removing my mind from forward planning and returning it only to that which is conceivable in this instant.

I am almost certain it will get the better of me anyway. I want to go to a gig on the 29th, but in this hermit state, trailing unfinished work everywhere in my wake, I fear it will not happen. This too will pass - I know it will - but the coldness, the hardness, is unnatural and almost painful.

C'est la blessure même de m'occuper de 'tout ce qu'il faut', seulement d'arriver à en faire la moindre partie... tellement j'ai envie de dire que je m'en fiche, qu'il n'y a rien d'utile, et qu'on tue en moi même l'amour de la chose, tout en me dirant qu'en faisant tout ce travail (ce qui me semble supplémentaire), cela me fera bon!

'Be glad you're not working yet,' everyone cries. Yes, that is all very well, but at least I will hopefully reach a point while working where I become sufficiently 'mechanised' so as to be no longer aware of my inner stifledness. Also, I will have time simply to exist. The joy of simply sitting, for example. Not so at the moment. I have no real wish to do the wife-and-kids thing, so I'm not going to idolise this year any more than I must.

Thursday Night Poetry Corner

'Well!' you cry. 'Seven o'five p.m., that's hardly 'night,' now, is it?'

I am sorry. I am sorry indeed. However, when you are seated, facing out to a matte sky lurking beneath the rain-tear-stained window - punctured sporadically by street-lamps, room lights and the glowing-strip-base of Canary Wharf's pyramid point - 'night' is what encapsulates it in your hungry, unwilling mind. The thought of dinner almost pains me physically though I appear to be constantly hungry. MOODSWINGS! PAIN! IRRITABILITY! SEMI-QUASI PSYCHOSIS! Hoo boy, it's so enjoyable being a girl. Virginia Woolf has made me come over all idiosyncratic and contemplative, but she exacted a heavy price from me first. I spent the whole day, more or less, reading her and T.S. Eliot - occasionally bursting out laughing at her. Though Eliot irritates me somewhat, I do enjoy the cut-glass conciseness of his critical writing. Boy's such a Libra ;-D.

I feel filthy and unclean and slightly wild, like I could run out into whatever remnants of the rain may resurface and wash there. Instead I will settle for putting up this, which I wrote early this afternoon, and attending to my hungry frustration.


Natural (As The Coming Of Age)
Quivering lightly -
oh, so tenderly! -
here I am

A little soap-
bubble perched upon
your lap, so

Fragile, so apt
to be lost
at any moment -

There I dance,
safely couched between
the slight curves

Of your dream-
shell; breathe me
In and hold

Me safe at
the back of
your throat, only

Releasing me in
small, half-munched,
lip-smacking murmurs -

Not smashed between
your palms; not
flattened like road-

Kill; I pray,
if you will,
kill me softly -

Let it seem as
natural as the
coming of age.


Song of the moment, for anyone feeling similarly grandiose and combative: Terri Walker - This Is My Time. Ironically enough, though, (consider the song's title!), it was cancelled before it could really get anywhere. Damn shame, since it's MARVELLOUS.

Oh. My. God.

I'm sorry. This is just a quick blog post to express my sheer fucking amazement at my parents. I am currently trying to plan my Proust commentary, and my mum started talking to me about my cousin, who was/is apparently back home as well. I told her that I had rung her and received no reply. She asked whether she was/is (back home) or not. I replied that I didn't know because I had rung her and received no reply.

My mother then went on to say how my cousin's parents must be very worried about her and that they are 'overprotective' of her. 'How so?' I asked, sceptical, seeing as how I am actually in my cousin's confidence and have some real idea of her relationship with her parents. My mother went blithely on to say how her parents driving down to see her and give her food - like my parents do with my brother - was 'overprotectiveness.'

Nice to see that she's missed the irony there. What would you call what you do for my brother, then, Mater? And why is it 'overprotectiveness'? Might that be because she's a girl and 'can cook for herself' and she doesn't 'need' it like my brother does? Is it 'common sense' when my parents do it for my brother? Mater attempted to rope me in to her cooking up something for my brother yesterday, while my dad simultaneously seemed to be packing up the whole week's worth of shopping, toiletries and all, to drive to him. I asked why on earth she was making Vegemince for him (and getting into a flap) when, last time I asked, she said that the people my brother lives with were 'really nice. And they are all cooking together.'

'I thought they were cooking together?' I asked, bemused.
'No...,' in an increasingly panicked tone as she mediated the addition of the stock to the Vegemince mix, 'he heats up his pizza... and they have their pizza... They just have freezer food, waffles and things, you know how he is!'
My dad came in. 'I found the thing he was asking for... Got his Right Guard... and he needs the waffles he forgot last time.'

My mum asked me for mushrooms, and in a fit of confusion, I dived into the freezer which I had just got the Vegemince from. 'You seem to have a lot of pizza.'
'Yes... Some of it's for G------...'


Hmmm! To get back to the anecdote at hand, my mum, after hypocritically labelling my cousin's family's behaviour as 'overprotectiveness,' then went on to say that they were more like that since the death of my little cousin last year (of course...).
'Well, P----'s death has brought them closer together as a family,' I remarked, suspicious.

Then, Mater followed up her one-two combo with the 'lucky strike.' Note that this is what she said, put in a perhaps slightly shortened form, but the sense of it has been preserved firmly:
'It's no wonder that P------- never learned to cross the road properly then, is it? Because they were overprotective, she never learned to cross the road properly.'
'Mum - I'm sure she learned to cross the road properly,' I said - almost in reflex. Perhaps it was the sheer, farcical disbelief. I always seem to end up in this position where I'm 'testing' what she says, not quite able to believe my ears.
'She wasn't street-wise. She wasn't aware of when to cross the road. See, we scolded and checked you lot, and so you got a bit smarter than that.'

Oh. My. God. Oh. My. God.

I'm sorry, but when my bezzi said the other day that my mother is Satan, and 'I'm sorry, --, but you are the spawn of Satan!' I laughingly agreed with her. Now, I'm thinking agreement but without the laughing.

What kind of person manages, a year after somebody's death in a tragic accident, to blame them for it by saying they weren't 'streetwise' all while assigning secondary blame to their family for 'overprotectiveness'? Not to mention taking the whole sorry incident as a way of fucking GIVING YOURSELF UNDESERVED PARENTING KUDOS?

I don't know whether to cry or scream. On the plus side, I found my photo album from when I was a baby today, and it was a huge relief. It would have been too much for me if I had lost it. It would have felt as though besides being the 'disposable' one of the children, my past - a time when I was cute and carefree and everyone loved me because they had to - had ceased to exist altogether.

But no, I found it. I was so thankful. I hugged it to my chest and I ran into my room with it, lifting it to my lips. I flipped through rapidly, and came to a picture of me on the swing, my lower lip protruding, skirt of my little dress billowing. I was about maybe 1-3, and inches from crying. I kissed my picture-self (protected by the plastic covering) and said 'I love you, even if no-one else does.'

I was, in effect, making a promise to that angry, little curly-haired girl. I will be there for her if nobody else is. At times when I feel like I can't give myself the love and respect I deserve, I will have to reach out to others for help, but I'm in the equation now. I have entered the arena of the battle for my soul. My family will make me cry and doubt myself, and try to rein me in with their insidious game-playing and guilt-based headfucking. Yet I can see it now. I am standing in for myself. There will be no more proxies - it used to be my ex and my parents locked in battle for me. Passivity no more - my current guy is a wonderful person who will be there for me, and keep me centred, but I have me now.

And even if I'm alone in my family, at least I know there are two of my cousins in my extended family who understand. My best friend. A sort-of cousin who I've recently adopted. The whole network of 'less-close' friends, acquaintances etc., who will play their parts. Y'see, I took a lesson from the death of my cousin too. And it was this: People are stupid fucks who will turn even the defining events of human existence into a soapbox for their prejudices and posturing. Someone's always missing the point. (I will probably write more on my cousin's funeral at some point, provided it doesn't freak anyone out).

Life is short. I loved her. I should've spent more time with her. We should've cooked together. Now that she's gone, I have a renewed need to hold onto those that are 'still here.' It's not always easy to maintain regular contact with those you love, but so what? Good things always take some work. I love you, P----, I promise I will never use your death as a way to shore up my own fucking prejudices and I'll never forget you. Thank you for everything. I'm trying to let your sister know I love her all the time. And finally, fuck the haters!

GSH Endorses Obama (+ Comedy Gold)

... not!

I'm just taking the piss out of Sunny on PP, seeing as how he keeps telling us that progressively more and more of the Western world is supporting Barack Obama in the US elections. Well, so they should, especially when his opponent has not much more to his name, than similarities to a certain frozen-food-product-brand and a head like a potato that's been under the peeler too long.

It's my Reading Week, and I'm back home. I have to write an essay on Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way) by Marcel Proust. I have read about 76 pages of 420. I'll have to go for broke this weekend, won't I? I'm pretty scared and stressed, but I'm resolutely avoiding thinking about it too much, reasoning to myself that I'm allowed my Friday and Saturday before I go hard on the work.

So yeah... in the hopes of a resounding Obama victory, I'm going to post this up, with lyrics. For those of you wondering who the heck GSH was, I mean Gil Scott-Heron, a man whose velvet voice I always fall in love with, and who has apparently been described as the 'Godfather of rap'. Wait... come back! It's not how it looks! His is an angry eloquence that transcends the change of time. He takes no shit, and I'm delighted to see that despite being a 51-year-old HIV-positive former-heroin-addict, he's still alive. I haven't heard anything about what he makes of Obama, but I think he would say 'ye' to a first black President...

Listen and read for a fully interactive experience! OBAMAMESSIAH, SIR, THIS IS FOR YOU! BEST OF LUCK IN 3 DAYS' TIME!

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.


For anyone who doesn't know all the people in the song (I don't), here's a helpful guide. And for anyone else feeling even slightly melancholy, I'm going to post the lyrics to this song, which I love so much it hurts.

Lady Day and John Coltrane
Ever feel kinda down and out, you don’t know just what to do
Livin’ all of your days in darkness let the sun shine through
Ever feel that somehow, somewhere you've lost your way
And if you don’t get help quick you won’t make it through the day
Could you call on Lady Day, could you call on John Coltrane?
Now ‘cause they'll, they’ll wash your troubles, your troubles, your troubles away

Plastic people with plastic minds are on their way to plastic homes
No beginning there ain’t no ending just on and on and on and on and on, it’s
All because they’re so afraid to say that they’re alone
Until our hero rides in, rides in on his saxophone
Could you call on Lady Day, could you call on John Coltrane?
Now ‘cause they'll, they’ll wash your troubles, your troubles,
your troubles away


POETRY 4-EVARRR...


And here is the comedy gold as promised... a sex survey on 'What lefties do in bed'.

I found this through A Very Public Sociologist... yay! Hilarious.

Round-Up of the N00z...

First off, Indonesia has banned porn. Read about it on the BBC website. I particularly love this tidbit:

"This law will ensure that Islam is preserved and guaranteed," said Hakim Sori Muda Borhan, a member of parliament from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party.

"It is also not in the interest of any specific religion. The law is also meant to preserve arts and culture and not destroy them."

Er... huh?! DIRECT discrepancy, I'd say, mate.


Meanwhile, the Catholic Church continues to try to project an image of 'modernity' without making any fundamentally important changes. See what SNAP had to say for my thoughts... I DO like the picture of Benedict though, he looks a lot like Red Robot from Diesel Sweeties... (see the third panel of the comic strip for an idea of what I'm talking about...).

For anybody feeling low about their writing talent, for the love of God, read this pile of steaming horseshit 'written' by Peaches Geldof, the monumentally annoying wastrel who dabbles in many occupations without being even remotely good at any of them and has thankfully fucked off to America. I don't like to indulge in pointless sleb-hating for the sake of it, but PG really really irritates me because she exemplifies for me the trend of people who are famous for fame's sake (and because their parents are/were famous). People often lump her with the likes of Lily Allen and Daisy Lowe (or whoever she's currently been seen partying with...) but I do think Lily Allen is smart, talented and witty in her own way (see her response to Marina Hyde's attack on her here!) and Daisy Lowe is actually a model. She doesn't 'pretend' to be one when the mood takes her (or when her friends decide to get her off her idle ass...). This is, to paraphrase Peaches, a 'patchwork quilt' of clangingly obvious cliches, blithe and breathless arrogance, celebration of sartorial cheapskatery (she paid a dollar for someone's family heirloom?!) and painfully obvious attempts to be Michael Palin. My bezzi called my attention to it, and I found myself ACTUALLY HOWLING in a sort of wounded shriek/laugh/weep/growl. So banal it's offensive.

The 'dark side' of joining the EU, for Romania? Really quite depressing reading, and not least because the article shows that a) we're not all as 'globalised' as one might think and b) it suggests that dictatorships (i.e. China and Romania under Ceausescu) are the only way to make construction happen fast these days... I could be ODing on the doom-and-gloom there, though.

The sort of story that tends to give France a bad name. Wine! Football-team comparisons! Bitter feuding! Utter pettiness.

Last but most definitely not least, the Daily Mash's absolutely excellent take on the bloody Brand/Ross BBC fiasco, which anyone with half a brain cell doesn't really give a crap about. They express my own feelings on the matter better than I ever could (and this just durn well tickles me pink too, as a perhaps-inadvertent satire of the type of people who tend to watch things like Strictly Come Dancing religiously. Absolutely brilliant). That most excellent man of mine turned me on to le Mash, and I thank him for't.

ONE MORE LINK! A necessary piece of tasty, sexy disco to see you through till Monday morning. This song has so effectively seduced me that I can't listen to the rest of the (not bad at all) album.

Well, this blogger is heading off for a good seeing-to this weekend... Eeeee! Catch y'all later and have a great evening/weekend/week ahead/whatever!

How To...

Make an article of yours run and run without ever stopping? Take notes from el presidente of Pickled Politics, the one and only Sunny Hundal - put 'anti-Muslim' in the title, and I swear it's like a Pavlovian dog to the 'intelligentsia' that frequent the site. I use quotation marks because there are (inevitably) some nuts, and I am on it too... :-P

So yeah, for all you 'lovers, haters and anticipators' (own coinage! :-P), this is the 'How-To' post. It's not your usual 'How To,' so don't expect to see me dancing about with a monkey wrench (yes, I linked to it just in case you, like me, had utterly no idea what the hell it is. Terrifying looking thing, and to top it all off, it comes from a site called 'Manic Collector'. Brilliant). Nor will I be dancing about with any monkeys, though I may well dance at an unspecified future point of this evening.

Other things I will not be telling you how to do:
- Bake a stained-glass window biscuit (though I would LOVE to do that)
- How to fix your temperamental heating (set the neighbourhood poltergeist on it?)
- Be graceful and ladylike when farting (absolutely, scientifically bloody impossible. If you do not even let a giggle slip, you are qu. clearly an android. Pity my poor man :-P).

Now that I am done with eating my apple-that-tasted-like-mushrooms and a curiously pleasantly artificial-tasting bag of mini 'Snack-a-Jacks', I will proceed to the main 'How To' of this post.


How to... reconcile Julie Bindel and Laurie Penny?

Most of y'all (except for Rumbold) will probably be wondering 'what de haile' I am talking about (sorry, I couldn't resist... The DOs & DON'Ts crack me up).

I am referring to this:

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/10/25/pantomime-dames

That's right. So important is this link that I refer to that I have actually abstained from insinuating it snugly within my text, and displayed it brazen and bold. I will understand if some of the comments bore you, but verily there are quite a few of those fascinatingly bitchy Internet-car-crash moments that make you wonder why the hell everyone is taking all dis shit so SERIUSS, man, iss juss da Internet, innit?

(Sorry, I've obviously been too long without going home / being woken up by 'rudebwoi' freshers and evidently I'm hankering. OMG, maybe I miss my brother!).

What is of interest (to me, anyway) here is how the author, the lovely Laurie, presents a distance between herself and Julie Bindel (it must be said that the version of the article posted on Laurie's own blog is much more complete and better articulates her viewpoint). Cath Elliott took her to task over her attacks on JB in the article, but as somebody who views themselves as a 'feminist', I'm going to be uber-patronising and try to join the dots between the two... hence the 'reconciliation.'

Firstly, in partially echoing CE, I would say: if you, Laurie, judge JB on comments she made over a year ago and has since apparently expressed regret for, are you not as bad as her (and her ilk), who attack transfolk because they see only biologically-determined sex and refuse the mutability of gender?

Secondly, assuming that JB should be accepting of transfolk is highly naive. Many gays and lesbians have fought to define themselves beyond the frequent and narrow societal dismissals of 'effeminate' or 'butch'. Hence the term 'queer' being 'reclaimed' from its 'hetero' context and being applied to (for just one example) 'Queer Studies', which seeks to revisit history from a LGBT perspective, providing a more nuanced view of history in the process I would say. Acceptance has much more to do with personal politics (i.e. your outlook on life, whether liberal, conservative or whatever) and security in oneself - both of which are entirely subjective. I think there may be a little 'liberal assumption' occurring on Laurie's part here. 'Gay' does not mean 'open-minded' or 'liberal', even though it often seems like it should.

JB, as a renowned militant-feminist-lesbian, has obviously defined herself (and thus carved out a career!) on very specific (some might say absolute) terms. Hence, the performative element that comes with transfolk - performance of a gender - is presumably problematic for her and her ilk. I suspect they see it as inauthenticity, as betrayal. Looking at her picture, I would point out some hypocrisy - is she, in refusing to wear obvious make-up and having short hair, not simply seeking to enact the same image rebellion? The only difference with her is that she happens to be 'shored up' by biological sex.

Laurie expresses near-identical sentiments to these with more eloquence towards the end of her own blog post (as I mentioned earlier). JB and co. need to remember that transfolk 'challenge' not just their own gender identity but that of heterosexuals too. I will refer here to Isis, the ANTM hopeful. Note the snarky comment about 'packing (Hint, Hint)a few more goods than the rest of this season’s competitors' and that too from a site that I initially thought was less bitchy than most!

Why this continual reduction of transfolk to an object of amusement or ridicule? Given what I learned in QS last year (:-D), it is because they are easier to handle that way. You can brush 'em off without thinking about it. Yet even within the most blatantly satirical depictions of femininity or masculinity by drag queens and kings, is a questioning of our gender norms. That's the point of all satire, after all, isn't it? If you react badly to it, then you're missing the point. You're stuck on the corner of the bigger picture.

Referring to what drag kings and queens do as 'satire,' by the way, is not meant to be in the least detrimental. Rather, I think, unwittingly or not, there's something ingenious about the whole thing. In a world which often feels like it's getting blacker-and-whiter by the day, transfolk and their reality are a much-needed burst of grey. I personally see them as mirrors - mirrors of the fact that life is not fixed and stable as we would like it to be, but fluid and perpetually in flux. Sex and gender are a part of life and are thus equally subject to change. 'Is nothing sacred any more?' Don't think so, and why should it bloody well be, anyway? :-D Surely that is a message that would unite Laurie and Julie!

The real Q here is: on what grounds did Stonewall choose Bindel for their Journalist of The Year award? And how was she selected? Perhaps there was a shortage of sufficiently trans-friendly journalists? I'd say that rather than attacking the nominee, it might be more fruitful to turn our attention upon those who nominated her...?


(Seriously) Recommended Reading:

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/10/incitement_to_r
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2008/09/uglies
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2008/09/the_perfect_vag

(Warning: the last one is really rather graphic).


This week, yours truly has been listening to Helicopter Girl - How To Steal The World (but only tracks 1-4 and 10!), Alphabeat - Boyfriend (oh, the cringeworthy joy of simultaneously: oddly Christmas-bell infectious music matched with utterly teenage self-indulgent lyrics, and Swedes with perfect diction innocently singing lyrics such as 'Oh yeah, we run away from private eyes / To privacy' (I think you meant 'prying eyes,' love?) and Santogold. Her whole album is good, but the pulsating religiosity of Anne has had me absolutely bewitched. There appears to be a tension between the lyrics ('My name is Anne, I got a plan / I may lack virtue / But I'm penitent' and the chorus 'J,j,jesus Pieces / Rescue me / The more I try / The more it gets too complicated') and the oddness of the backing music.

I really recommend watching the Alphabeat video (because it's really cool - it features the notion of the illustrator as God! C'mon, that's always fun!) and I recommend Anne because I'm so fucking in love with it. However, read the lyrics first! Along with Unstoppable, it's become my 'coping anthem' of late. Oooh, just realised that the HG album title also contains a 'How To' - IT'S FATE! *runs screaming and glassy-eyed into the woods*

Cheers, thanks and goodnight :-D.


A little 'hidden' How -To for anyone who is even remotely culinarily-inclined (own coinage again! o_^b ). It is both easy and fun, since I am not the most patient, even though I love food :

Catalan Bread

Bread (crusty is better, but you can use regular bog-standard white or wholemeal as long as you toast it crisp first)
A ripe tomato, halved (just-ripe isn't as good, though it does work)
A clove of garlic, cut in half
Some olive oil


Take one of your half-cloves of garlic and rub the exposed end thoroughly over the bread (it should end up smelling of garlic and may look a bit shiny in the light).

Take half your tomato and rub its innards all over your bread.

Drizzle over olive oil, and if you are anything like me, spread it with a knife to ensure even coverage (perfectionist freak!)

Enjoy.


In Barcelona, this is the standard preparation for sandwiches - you do this and then put whatever else, probably because Barça is the Catalan heartland of Spain. Fancy that!

'Higher Education'

Uh... I just wrote this.

He was a fish out of water. Or so it seemed. Walking slightly haggardly along, clutching his green M&S plastic bag – the single, firm burst of colour against his greying hair, his grey-brown fake-leather coat and his grey-black trousers. Even his eyebrows lingered between black and white. He lifted the bag slightly, as if he would shoulder it, the sudden burst of movement threatening his balance and making him undulate – ever so slightly – like Jessica Rabbit. This thought made him laugh out loud suddenly as he sloped along, heading to his room in a hall of residence.

Hall of residence! Nobody called them that now, he had to check himself constantly and remember that in fact, he lived ‘on campus.’ Perhaps the specificity of ‘hall of residence’ was passé and no longer needed; perhaps it was almost like a waste of time, a slight against the intelligence of others to spell it out for them: h-a-l-l o-f r-e-s-i-d-e-n-c-e.

After all, time was what always mattered most, wasn’t it? Going against time. Saving time. ‘Giving’ yourself more time to do more things by doing more things in less time. His head reeled, and he hunched briefly against a bench. All these students, swarming upon this site, living whole lives here in the tiny microcosm of the course-assigned buildings and the Student Village – what did they want from time? Arriving late to lessons dressed as if they would then head to London Fashion Week... the slew of panicking final-years, complaining how the world of work encroached upon them suddenly, of the few months in which to decide the trajectory of their future lives... Then there were the many that seemed to have come for apparently social reasons, for the ‘fresher experience’ and perhaps also to learn some independence...

Were they saving time? Was this channelled progression towards a ‘higher pay scale’, towards the ‘job market’? In spending three – or four, or perhaps even more than that – years of their lives, were they ‘buying back time’? He had worked ever since he was 16 and had saved steadily, only deciding to ‘complete his education’ now, at the age of 39. Even a lot of the lecturers looked younger than him, and at times when he hovered awkwardly outside the doors of seminar rooms, watching fellow students who were 22, but could easily pass for 15 in some cases, he felt singularly wrong. Out of place. This isn’t the joint for you, Grandpa.

Yet he had made enough money to take this break. He was able to be here simply for the reason that he wanted to be and that he could afford to finance himself. What, then, of the others on his Comparative Literature course? Were they ‘saving time’? Nobody was particularly unfriendly, but the huge age difference was obviously something they were not completely able to surmount. Both he, and they, felt it. It also begged a question which seemed to dance repeatedly and infuriatingly in the back of his mind. Whose way is the right way?

They were younger, less ‘formed’ by life, perhaps of a greater mental acuity. Yet, it seemed to him that underlying it all was the knowledge that they were relevant no more. In itself, they could not (or could only rarely) apply the fruits of their labour to the world without translation. No, they would have to be translated into the language of the modern ‘job market’, of ‘transferable skills’ and of ‘selling oneself.’

What of himself, who had traversed all that and taken the inverse route? Perhaps he would be less able to immediately grasp the abstract notions and subtle inter-cultural references. Yet he had had time. It seemed to him that they were as berries, crushed fast and solid against the bottom of a bowl to make one of those smoothies that everybody drank nowadays. Innocent smoothies, weren’t they called? The name made him smile. There was nothing innocent about a lot of these young ‘uns. Even in their dress, they were always looking to make statements, to sell or express themselves... ‘Palestinian’ scarves bought from giant global companies and worn with tight T-shirts that were ‘sweatshop free’.

Yet the question bothered him insistently: were they really saving time? Or had he beaten them at that game? Who was right? He checked his watch and sighed: half an hour lost in simple, mind-twisting reflection. Should he be feeling bad for having let himself go so? He shrugged and peered through the hole in his plastic bag. He would go on with his degree and then maybe find a woman who he could ‘talk books’ with. This made him laugh for a full three minutes. His printing business was there, would always be there. And yet the more insidious question persisted in pecking angrily as if at the very softness of his cerebral membrane. Why was he here? Why were any of them here? What was the point of this ‘higher education’, really?

The wind suddenly mussed his hair, cold cool fingers provoking him to stiffen and yank up his jacket collar. He turned, defiant, looking towards the canal and the road. Something in him felt that he was victorious. Bouncing his shoulders against the sudden frigidity, he set off brisk, up the path to Basle House.

The Smallest Torrent of Bitterness...

I would like to think that I am not altogether unaware of the ways of the world. Having lived abroad, travelled somewhat (not extensively, but I have been to at least four other countries!) and had a not inconsiderable share of eye-opening experiences (both positive and negative), I must admit something now.

I have said this repeatedly - but I feel at an absolute loss at the moment. It is half-past one in the morning, and my Advanced Oral Competence class looms over me in the morning. I read through the homework sheet, feeling as always, a heavy sheet of dread settle and line the bottom of my stomach. Transcribe a clip on 'youth speak', it crowed. Go on the France 5 website and find news topics which:

a) interest you
b) are of a suitably elevated linguistic register
c) could be discussed in a parliamentary debate in Strasbourg...

Then: Looking to use an interesting context, write complete sentences using the 16 action words we used today and which were attached to the last homework. And finally, Edit your oral presentation which you had to give today in class.

I forgot to mention that we were supposed to look up every word of the aforementioned list of 'action words' and translate them, for last week. There were oh, I don't know, over 100 of them? This too while having to transcribe 3 clips on the writer Georges Simenon (which I think took me about an hour and a half at least) and writing this stupid oral presentation in order to sell ourselves to an employer using our Year Abroad experience, while using as many of the action words as we possibly could.

This is a course which is supposed to develop our oral competence in French. Why don't we do something useful and interesting, such as have regular debates on political issues? Why the FUCK am I being forced to transcribe a list of fucking ACTION WORDS which I will never use in real life and most of which are synonyms of each other, while having to read Women In Love by D.H. Lawrence, his essay on Democracy, plan a commentary on an article about 'Happiness in medication?' and write a 'dissertation' on whether or not justice exists?

I am a hard worker. The term constantly applied to me in secondary school was 'conscientious.' I know I can be plenty flaky, I am changeable and moody and sometimes I will set things in motion and then struggle to maintain them, but by God. Last year abroad has made it difficult for me. Ending a five-and-a-half-year relationship with a man I thought I was going to marry has made it hard for me. Having the torrent of imminent graduation and entry into the professional world has made it hard for me. The death of my cousin and the drama of starting a new relationship HAVE - MADE - IT - HARD - FOR ME.

I am trying. I am striving. Constant lack of sleep through trying to get it done only slows me down. Brief naps revive me for a short while, and then soon I am drooping again. I will throw my hands up and confess that I end up wasting time because:

- often, very little goes into my head when I am so tired, and
- in the haze of utter isolation that develops when I have been stuck in my room for so long, the allure of MSN, Facebook and Google Chat is oh-so-inevitable. I am hungry and desperate for human contact, being as I am without any TV or radio (and without the time to watch/listen), no books of my own and all my friends in the same position as me, working non-stop or glumly job-seeking, I will talk to anyone.


Of course, such a cocktail is only going to inculculate anger and frustration. The sheer, fucking futility of it all hurts me. The reason we are doing all this stuff for AOC is to better prepare us for the world of work, while in French III, the seminar leaders obsess over our translating huge bits of text with utterly obsolete language and teaching us to write an essay French-style. Apparently, our two-hour sessions are meant to prepare us for the exam. Real nice interactivity between courses you got going there, especially considering the prof in the former is also one of the main seminar leaders in the latter! Again: the sheer, fucking futility.

If they want to help us get on in the world of work, why don't they give us more business and economics-oriented translations? How about teaching us some idioms, so that we can become more suitably 'native' in the language? A structured revision of grammar would be nice too, instead of this vague laxity that occurs with correcting translations in class. For fuck's sake, a translation is subjective at the end of the day. It's a set of choices. With literary translations especially, there's going to be myriad interpretations that fit. I'm not too sure how that is meant to help us - when we're 'out in the real world', we'll more often than not be forced to translate on the spot, and that involves going for what's simplest. What use will knowing how to say 'She hosed it up and down with her eyes' be then?! And why are we being driven to insane amounts of stress 'preparing for the exam' when:

a) the exam will be stressful enough
b) normal standards will be considerably relaxed, thus making it much easier for us to do well, and effectively making all this bollocks pointless?

Also, I think we know how to write essays by now, bitches!


French is not useless at all, but the near-desperate way that things like 'action words' and that stupid YA presentation (there was a meeting before that too!) are being shoehorned in feels like a tacit admission from the SLLF: 'Yes, what we are teaching you is bollocks. Here's some box-ticking, quota-filling claptrap so that you too can go and work for a call-centre... in French, of course.' The fact remains that unless you have a directly saleable skill that happens to be always in demand - like being an accountant or doctor - you're going to struggle somewhat, especially at a belt-tightening time like this. In all these initiatives, I see very little point; ultimately the things most desired of us - leadership, commercial awareness and risk-taking - can only really be demonstrably gained outside of your degree. I mean sure, if you're one of those super-people who is head of everything, or you have a management role at work or something, you can show evidence of that sooner than others. However, I don't think everyone is that precocious (I sure as hell hope not...!).

Meanwhile, in English, my Modernism & Democracy course continues to introduce me to books full of Big Ideas, books so invariably long and provocative that they bring me to a mental breakdown almost every week. I am not stupid and I am not a particularly slow reader, but I have spent the last two weeks (or so it feels) reading Women In Love. It took 4 days of non-stop reading to finish Howards End before that, with the result that I was weak-brained and could barely remember where certain key passages were afterwards. I never even got round to finishing Nietzsche's On The Genealogy of Morals, and I'm probably going to end up writing on him, so that means yet more steaming shit piled upon me for Reading Week. Oh, joy.

Back to French. I do actually love the Proust module, being taught as it is by the most gently-eccentric, mildly sardonic Irishman there is in Professor Hughes, who often pauses - as if for effect - just a little too long, while the class watch him uneasily. (I don't know how old he is, but I bet he doesn't look it). Then, blue eyes shining with a downright childlike joy, he will articulate the remainder of his half-completed thought, bringing the sudden tension out of the class in a chuckle.

Proust himself isn't bad either, although if I had to read all the volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu, he would be added to the 'shake-n-slap' list, methinks. In my fatalist manner, I am always seeking connections between texts (that's what makes me such a good English student!) and my strangely powerful recollection of literary texts means I can often trace the unembroidered lines in the great tapestry that is Literature to me, seeing the intertextuality that isn't always overtly stated. Proust is the major influence on many early 20th-C writers... yep, that means most of 'em on my Modernism & Democracy course - and I realised today that much of what Lawrence is doing in Women In Love and later works is rebelling quite furiously against this influence. Sorry, I know not everyone else finds the previously-unseen links between formerly completely different ideas and authors interesting like I do. :-D

I love to think on things. It is ironic, since I have just complained about how my degree is apparently unsuitable for the 'world of work', but this year, it is readying us for the world of work in the bleakest possible way. It is teaching us how to slave, slave without having the time to actually stop and reflect properly on what exactly it is we are accomplishing. I asked the most diligent student I know, a fella by the name of Tom N-, how he was finding his workload. 'Mad,' he replied succinctly, his big brown eyes earnest and slightly innocent. 'I'm doing so much work, but I find I don't actually have the time to think about what I'm doing!'

'Do you feel like you're just churning things out?' I asked, feeling horribly like a 'detached observer' (especially since my work turned me into a hermit with faltering social skills).
'Yes,' he nodded definitively and graciously, like one conclusively approving a military inspection of his own conciseness. Satisfied, I turned away, staring awkwardly into space. Yet D.H. Lawrence's terrifying 'visionaryness' in Women In Love has rattled me. All the talk of selling oneself, of the 'job market', of deciding one's future now - even as we wrestle with our work, like crocodiles struggling with ostriches, unwieldy and ferocious - all of it has made me realise a few things.

I am not cut out for the 'job market'. I can work in a team of people, and I have the barest administrative skills. I am not a thief or particularly aggressive. Hell, I can be decisive and pragmatic, even! What I hate is the naked submission of it all. For every job I apply to, no matter how lowly the post, I will have to abase myself, simulating being a person who is sunny and personable and non-existent. I will focus tightly on saying the right thing, projecting the right image and essentially pretending to be of a kind with my brother. Inside, I will feel myself twisting with impotent rage and resentment. Why do I have to lick this person's arse repeatedly just to prove (not even that I am worthy, since that is often decided in advance), but that I am likable? How has it got to the stage that employers are more impressed by your use of buzzwords than by your plain, no-nonsense English?

Why must I break myself up over the most arbitrary of decisions that more often than not, will hang upon a tiny, unpredictable caprice? People can take whatever reason they fancy to reject you, and unless you ask specifically for feedback, you will never be certain why. Yet even that in itself irks me - why should you ask for feedback, as if you are somehow wrong as a human being? And why is ambition always taken as some sort of evidence of vitality, why is the ruthless desire for power something to emulate? Having direction is one thing. Having ambition is quite another. I think people can do as they wish, but why the hell do we all have to come up to their level, just because they scare us and they're pushy?

I know I have far too much pride and arrogance, to be challenging something so monolithic and long-established. I know too that not all situations are like this. It's more retail positions and part-time work that's like that - but please, can we get a grip on ourselves already? It appears that work has become so fundamental to our very existence - we are such 'self-alienated' figures now - that any kind of work is preferable to not working. So even doing something that leaves you numb with monotony, that kills any spiritual, philosophical or creative tendencies you have with its sheer, exhausting repetitiveness, is preferable to doing nothing.

Yet 'doing nothing' leaves you some time to actually live. This is what I want, and this is why I'm thinking of taking a year to do some rubbish job and allow myself to write and reflect a bit, instead of diving straight into the stream of Professional Ambition. I do not have any major professional ambition! I do not want to boss anyone else around, show off my achievements or accept the false god of labour-routine.

Lawrence brilliantly diagnoses our current present in Women In Love, in the chapter 'The Industrial Magnate'. He presents the character Gerald as a kind of uber-capitalist before we even had people like Tim Parker, people known for ruthlessly reforming companies and systems to cut costs and make themselves rich. The whole chapter is a frankly disturbing premonition of Thatcherism and the whole destructive 'greed-is-good' philosophy of the '80s that we are still suffering from, but all seen about 60 years in advance (I have linked to the specific chapter in Google Books for anyone who's even remotely interested...).

You can infer that Lawrence feels, in a way, that work is coming to occupy the role of religion. And I think this has become all too true. People always love religion for the organised little rituals that it provides them with, to frame their life and their time with a sense of 'higher purpose' and rightness. Now, though, if you don't automatically love the (very similar) structure that comes with having a full-time job (or jobs!), you're wrong. And the punishment has shifted from going to hell to dying of hunger. Really, though, we work really long hours and at the end of it, what is the point? We tell ourselves it is just to survive, just to get by, but there must be a cheaper way to survive without being in that position.

Working all the time is deadening. You take yourself and everything around you for granted. Thus families and marriages disintegrate, and we get talk of 'broken societies' and the like. I think that a certain amount of work is good, no doubt. Yet, I do not understand why there is so much pressure on me to get into work straight away after I graduate, to start going to fairs now, to apply for work experience placements a year in advance... No! I don't need that. I admit, that as a fairly middle-class child, it is easier for me than it is for others - and what? I am going to take the time out to work out what exactly my strengths are, to reconcile myself with my 'poor' future (c'mon, you knew it as well as I did - somebody like me's never going to be commanding a lot!) and trying to balance want and need. All I need is the time and freedom to be able to think and write.

It must be said though, that much to my horror, I am afraid I may end up being a lecturer in English (although French is an option I am forced to consider also). I don't know what it is that has made me reconsider this. Maybe it's the fact that I am such a painfully academic personality, patently made for the ivory tower. Maybe it's the growing realisation that I'm actually far more in tune with my lecturers than my fellow students (and have been even since my first year...). I don't know. If any of ye faithful remains among my readers - if you have made it this far - can you tell me what you think, please? You probably just think I am a child who doesn't want to enter the adult world, and you wouldn't be wrong there.

It doesn't help that I find myself shaking off the old, dusty moth-eaten blanket of love that surrounds my ex in my memory, while being almost fatally drawn to the adult who is currently deigning to 'take me out' :-D. The development of feelings between myself and him was quite steadily surreal as it was, without the ex-messiness turning my life into a Truffaut film. My sweetheart is like a vision sprung from the pages of a romance novel, but with a very healthy sense of humour and a kindness that frequently almost either moves me to tears, or makes me fulminate and gape like some chicken/goldfish hybrid. He keeps threatening to move into my head permanently (I see him twice a week), and I constantly find myself spread-eagled, frightened, within the drawer that reads 'Head over heels'. What should I do? See him less? See him more? How can I resolve this feeling that doesn't want to be resolved, so that I may train myself more freely on work?

A little note to anyone I haven't yet replied to, i.e. Fabien and Andy: I am v. sorry but as you can see, I have been losing my mind. So please, bear with me. As of about 2 a.m., your dear authoress decided to strike a blow for truancy and is, rather unwillingly, it must be said, skipping Advanced Oral Competence tomorrow in the hopes of getting ahead with work and getting a full night's sleep.Wish me luck...