Sweep it all up
"judge whether hit SH @ same time not only UBL"
"hard to put a good case"
"go massive sweep it all up things related & not"
Why the big deal? The 9/11 Commission somehow forgot to notice the killer line.
"I feel passionately that animal experiments have benefited mankind enormously"
I have a simple view on that. Get the monkey to agree it's worth dying for and I'll support it.
If I express my opinion on this blog that a person, X, is a thief, X may take action at law against me and would, if I could not prove him to be a thief, win his case. In some jurisdictions, even that it was true would not be a sure defence.
If I express my opinion on this blog that a person, Y, did a thing they did not do, and this damages her reputation, Y may take action at law against me and would, if I could not prove her to have done it, win her case.
We accept that the freedom to give one's opinion has certain limits. It's possible to argue that the laws on defamation infringe the right to freedom of speech but very few of us believe that a/ all rights are absolute and unbounded and b/ the right to freedom of speech in particular does not have some bounds. For instance, few would agree that shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre, to give that old chestnut, is an expression of that right, nor are certain forms of threatening and abusive behaviour. You may well have the freedom to describe your neighbour as a fucking arsehole, but you are probably not free to do so at the top of your voice in the high street.
I accept that the principle of disallowing defamation is sound. I'm not a huge fan of the libel laws as they stand, either here or in the UK, nor of the means of taking action, which of course favours the rich and powerful. But I do believe that a person should not be exposed to sometimes very painful damage to their reputation, not to mention their feelings, by the telling of lies.
Because I accept that, I cannot disallow that defamation of a people is equally an expression of opinion that should be disallowed.
I have some difficulty with hate speech provisions, such as those aimed at Abu Hamza recently. There would be in my view a fine line between expressions of hatred, which I would certainly permit, and incitements to hurt, which I feel are debatable at best. If I heard men in the street yelling "Kill the nigger", do I feel their speech should be protected? No, I do not. My gut feeling is that they should be punished. I feel that our society should more strongly protect the victim's right not to be hurt, and not to have others incite his or her hurt, than the perpetrator's right to express themselves.
It is a fine line. Fall on the wrong side and you are not protecting some forms of political speech that definitely should be permitted. "Blair out!" could be seen as an incitement. "Smash the system!" could be too. I would want both to be protected.
When I consider Holocaust denial, I think it achieves at least three ends: first, it defames a people. In my example, person Y could sue me for claiming they did a thing. In Holocaust denial, Jews are defamed by those who say they did not do a thing: namely, die in huge numbers.
Which they did. Six million Jews, and maybe the same number of others. That is a fact, a truth.
Second, it expresses hatred. What does it say to deny the murder of millions of a people? It says you believe the people are worth nothing, that you quibble over their deaths because you wish to minimise them and maximise those who killed them. By denying a fact you know to be true, you are expressing your hatred of the people who were killed. I cannot understand Holocaust denial in any other way. I cannot understand that you could deny the facts that are so clear unless your aim is to dismiss the murder as in some way trivial.
Third, it incites others to that hatred. Because we all know the fact, we understand that denying it is not an expression of an opinion but an expression of hatred. We know that the person denying the Holocaust is saying to us that we should also hate Jews enough not to care that they were murdered in their millions by people like us. By people like us! Here is the key to my understanding. We are incited to feel the murder was nothing, unimportant, and in doing so, the inciter is trying to create, helping to create, the conditions in which the murder could happen again.
I do not know whether I would put Holocaust denial on the statute books as a crime. I would certainly permit suits for defamation against those who denied it, and I would not consider this an infringement of anyone's right to free speech.
Do I think David Irving deserved what he got
? He had a fair trial and was convicted in accordance with the laws of a free country. That's more than can be said for the millions he said didn't die.
By the time it gets dark
I'm listening to
Dead Can Dance. Yes, I'm a closet goff. I have always had a penchant for dark, rich music. It's not so much the sombre lyrics (and certainly not the black clothes: I'm more of a blue and green person, to be honest, although yes, I wore a fair bit of black as a yoof) as the deep, plangent voices. I adore Brendan Perry's stylings: the man is the Sinatra of postpunk. As DCD became more world musicky, I went off them. I like world music but when the world does it, not when it's a thread in a pretentious band's tapestry.
I've also been listening to Yo La Tengo. It's fine, off-kilter pop, so good that you scratch your head that kids would rather listen to Atomic Kitten. Their cover of Before it gets dark brings tears to my eyes. I like them because they remind me of me. I'd sound like that if I were a record.
At least I hope so. In darker moments, I fear I sound like Coldplay.I'm reading
Pride and Prejudice. I have been avoiding fiction strenuously and I thought it was time to return to it. I read P&P as a young man. I suppose I'm curious whether I'm as starry-eyed about it with more experience. I'm not looking to dislike it, just to try to see where I am as a reader. And more importantly, I think I'll enjoy it. I haven't enjoyed reading in a long time.
Poker forums. I'm trying to learn poker so I read a lot of threads in the 2+2 forums
. Why not? I'm trying to put my brains and card sense to good use. I'll tire of it long before I actually get any good of course but beginning on the learning curve always makes me happy.
My own self talking. Far too much. I have logorrhoea right now. But all to no good purpose. I'm heavily trolling a forum
just for the joy of having my fingers on the keys. And the usual peacock emotions, of course. I know that it's wrong to point fingers and screech with laughter at the foolish, but when you are confronted with so many buffoons, it's hard to bite your tongue. I know, I could return some emails. I could write some uplifting prose. But all that involves thinking. Flaming fuckwits who don't know better than to ask for it involves nothing beyond access to a keyboard.
Management and financial copy. I am going fucking mental with it. I have far too much work. I know, it's not something to complain about, but here I am at 8.30 and I'm still working (well, I've been out and back in but still, here I am). Why bother? Well, I need to keep clients happy. The downside of freelancing is that it's hard to judge how much value you have to clients. I did a book for a woman before Xmas. I'd come to her highly recommended and I did a good job. I clashed a bit with the author but it was all him (no, really, I don't have flamefests with my authors) and she was cool with that. But she was highly critical. I put it down to a need to look as though she actually had a purpose and I said, yeah, yeah, no, no, like you do. But I've bust out with her. No further project. She's Asian and my experience is that they like more deference than Westerners. She was much ruder to the author than I would have considered reasonable, particularly as he was paying for the imprint (no, I'm not working for a vanity publisher; this is a type of trade publishing). I am quite pissed off because she's in Singapore and the work is portable. I'm looking to shift all my income to portable sources, which isn't easy. My main client, my bread and butter, is not portable, but I can't piss them off because without them, my family starves. My number two client is portable but doesn't supply regular work, except recently they have been pushing a lot my way, and I can't turn them down because I accepted a particular role, which I want them to formalise and make permanent. They are giving me 12 hours work a week. I need 30 for an income. I have a new client that I haven't worked for. It's portable but the work is not likely to be all that regular. I get something from them next month. Rapid turnaround; the whole project done in a month, maybe 40 hours of work all up. I want to keep them sweet. A book every two months from them would be sweet.
Why do I want portable work? I want to go home. It's as simple as that. And the way things are, I need not to be unemployed if and when I do. It's not easy to get work as an editor. The work's far too easy and far too many people want to do it.I'm thinking about
A holiday. I am thinking about going to Malaysia for a few weeks. It was going to be China but I just couldn't get the money together. I bought furniture instead. I have a real yearning to travel around for a bit. Just a couple of weeks, three. I thought about going to England but really, it's too much money. I have the money to go to Malaysia and not hurt my family budget, but England is way more. Emotionally, I'd love to go to England. If money were no object... but money always is an object. Money and responsibility. I fear sometimes that I will never again eat a pasty from Philp's or walk on the seafront at Penzance; sometimes, when a show on TV features the streets of London, I have to look away. It deeply saddens me in a way I can't describe or explain because I can't understand it.
Footprints in the sand. Sometimes I hear an echo of laughter, fun, excitement. I wonder whether I just dreamed it or it was really there. Time passes, wind and tide shift the sand, and you are left wondering whether there really are footprints to be seen or are you just wanting there to be?
Hard girls. I don't understand them. I don't understand why they don't understand that the world is there for them if they are just themselves. The layer of bullshit just makes it harder for them. I would never turn away a soft girl. I wonder whether that's actually a good thing.
The point. I know, there isn't one. But what you know doesn't always fill you with glee, does it? I know it's pointless to care about how shit the world is, but that doesn't make it any less shit. It's just a matter of saying, I'll care, but I won't smash myself to pieces over it.
No, no, yes I will. I can't pretend to be cooler than I am. I'm at war within myself. There's a cool guy who has it *snap* sorted and there's this complete fucking idiot who is running around knowing nothing and screaming "I know nothing and I'm afraid". You try sorting them out. I've had no joy.
Cask wine. It's the best thing for a man who needs to get drunk. Five litres for 15 dollars. It's almost drinkable and easier on the throat than meths.
"Light up your face, baby, let's get going
Want to see a change in those weary eyes
We'll have some fun, take a boat out rowing
Why on earth should life be so serious?
And maybe, by the evening we'll be laughing
Just wait and see
All the changes there'll be
By the time it gets dark."
I'm still hoping.
Free to vote for us
Sadly, America and Israel have shown their commitment to democracy
Meanwhile, Israel continues with plans to annex the Jordan Valley, which will make whatever shattered remnants of a Palestinian state entirely encircled by Israel.
And America continues to occupy a country whose people largely want it gone, claiming to be spreading "freedom" and "democracy". But not freedom to vote for who you want. And not democracy that does not elect its clients. Why not start saying what we mean? Do what we want or suffer. Do what we want or be attacked.
I note that Hamas are turning to Iran for funding. I am surely not alone in believing this to be the aim of the Israeli action. Drive Hamas towards Iran and away from moderation. What nutters would do that? Nutters who are not interested in negotiation, only in Palestinian surrender, bantustanisation and, secretly, transfer. Does it not look like the Sharon party want to make life untenable for the Palestinians? Hasn't that been the aim of their policy? Am I missing something?
Call and burn
Emotion is your enemy at the poker table. I learned a hard lesson in that last night.
I've never played a live Hold'em game before. Draw, stud and other bits and pieces when I was younger, but not for a while and not this game. But I was confident enough. I've played online and I know the ropes.
The other players were local guys, mostly novices like me, friendly and open. One was a calling station -- in for a lot of hands with whatever he had but not aggressive enough to make his wins big enough to offset his losses; another a weak aggressive type, who won the night but shouldn't have; another a bit too loose but unlucky to get blown away on a big hand; the next a tight, fairly good player; the next a loose player who was too aggressive for his cards. And me. I played it tight, throwing away a lot of hands. I've been playing limit online but this was NL, and they're different games. I would have taken the table to the cleaners at limit, particularly given that the only guy who knew what pot odds were couldn't calculate them for a flush and would be giving me money as a consequence.
So I'm nervous as hell, wanting not to embarrass myself, and the game feels different in the flesh. I can't read players as well as I can online because I have so much more information. I played tight. I had to; I simply didn't get a decent hand all night. I was dealt ATs early in the game, but didn't hit the flop and dropped a grand (of my 4000 -- not real money, obviously); a KQo was my only other half-decent hand, and I played it to a good pot. I semibluffed one of the more aggressive players with trip 2s, ace kicker. I reckon he had more and had me on something monster. I had bet it aggressively enough to give that impression. But you can't go mad on weak cards. Betting up trip 2s against a guy who you think has a stronger hand is a semibluff, if that. Chances are he has less and you're a winner anyway.
So I had a couple of orbits of throwing away the blinds. No cards and other players betting into me, or I check, get nothing on the flop and have to fold it because others bet their cards aggressively.
This is when the emotion struck. I began to question my whole game. Was I just too tight for NL? The other tight guy had made a fair bit of money. Was he a lot better than me? He'd had some cards but he'd won a couple of decent pots without having to show his cards, and he'd played some questionable hands and got away with it, hitting good flops. Did the aggro guy at the top of the table have me pegged as a rock, who he could simply bluff out of every hand? I'd bet him out of one bluff already -- making him fold a hand by showing him more aggro than he could handle. (Interestingly, I'd also taken him to within a card of being eliminated, and he'd been very lucky. Needing a Q or higher on the river to split a pot when I was way ahead, he scored it, a big turnaround for him at about 8/1 against.)
So I am sitting in the big blind with Q8o. I should throw it away. It's rubbish. It's raised into me, so I have to bet on top of my blind to stay in. So I'm thinking, maybe I'm too tight for this game. Maybe I've got it all wrong.
I have 7000ish in chips. I've put 500 in as my blind, I think it was, and I need to call a 500 buck bet on top of that. So I reraise another 500. I am thinking, I will reraise and see whether the raiser has anything or is just pumping it up. The raiser has nothing and folds but the aggro guy takes me on.
I am 1500 in to see a flop. If I hit, I might get away from it okay. If I miss, I'm going to be able to walk away without getting creamed.
So I miss and I check it. A mistake, straight away. What was the point of that? I had to bet it into him, pay five hundred more to see whether he hit the flop or had nothing too, or muck it right there and then. He calls it, I'm maybe still alive. I'm convinced he had nothing before the flop. But I've let emotion take over. I bet 1500 on hitting the flop and I missed. I have to muck it and walk away without a backward glance. He raises 1000. I'm thinking, he may have hit something in the flop but he won't have much, or more likely he's bluffing, trying to blow me away from it. I'd made him fold one bluff. Now I'd do it again. I didn't just call the bet. I reraised him. A decent player would have called it a day right there and folded. A tight player reraising you at the flop is going to have something. You've just been checkraised as well! But he didn't know the decent play. He went all-in.
I should fold. I know I don't have it and while the first raise might have been a bluff, this isn't. He's hit something at least and I have nada. I need to walk away. Okay, I've dropped some money but careful play can get it back. I'll be short stack but not by much (I'm around it even with 7ish thousand and that's part of why I'm worried). I'll be okay.
But I have 3000 in that pot. A lot of folding equity. But the odds say drop it. The head says drop it.
I call. He hit a J for a pair. That's all. Turn and river are rags and I'm down to 1000 after paying him off. My night is over soon enough after that. I'm not good enough to play a stack that short and the cards still don't help me.
The aggro guy goes on to win. It's very painful because his heads-up strategy is unbelievably poor but the tight guy doesn't know how to play it. The aggro guy either folds or goes all in. It's obvious. You let him steal your blinds, all of them, until you hit big. It's going to happen. You might make smallish bets against his big blind when you have a good but not brilliant hand. The tight guy starts doing that but he calls the aggro guy down when he is holding only A6s. Not strong enough. He could have played an hour if he had to, waiting for a monster. He wasn't patient enough. Neither was I though and I can't be critical: he made it to the heads-up; I burned my chance on a bullshit hand, letting the need to be seen as a bold player overcome good sense.
Keys to heaven
I believe in the value of education. I come from a fairly humble background, and my best chance of a good life was to be as well educated as was possible. I think that is true for my children too.
More broadly, I believe that universal education is one of the pinnacle achievements of the Enlightenment, an expression of a fundamental belief that all should share in knowledge (and, as a consequence, power). One of the chief problems with the Islamist vision, as expressed by the Taliban, is that it seeks to restrict access to knowledge so severely, and in particular, that it seeks to exclude women from obtaining it. The Taliban, simply put, understand the threat to their power that educated women would pose. They fail to see the opportunity in it. Failing to see the opportunity is plain ignorant. And I am an enemy of ignorance, above all.
My view of education is secular. I do not believe that education whose bounds are set by religion can ever be useful, again chiefly because I believe that restricting knowledge disempowers. You can pretend things do not exist, and refuse to teach them, but by doing so, you do not make them actually not exist, and those who are aware of them will be able to use their information advantage over you and your children, who you have disempowered by creating the gap in knowledge.
That is not to say that I do not believe children should receive a religious education. Of course, I do. So although I thought it curious that Zenella should receive a class in religious education in her first year, I wasn't against it. I was uncomfortable, because it seems to me that educating a child in religion at a young age poses conceptual difficulties. But part of allowing your child to receive a public education is trusting that those you are allowing to do it are competent to do so.
I was taken aback though to learn that the religious education was to be given by a volunteer from a local church. The antennae more than twitched. They shrieked. I found this out only because I was asked to contribute to the cost of the materials. Had there been none, I wonder whether I would have even been informed. So I refused to allow Zenella to take the class, which upset her, so I talked to her teacher, in case I had been hasty. I asked what the curriculum looked like and what supervision the volunteer would have.
The teacher showed me the materials. The children are taught from a book called "Beginning with God", whose first lesson is a quote from somewhere in the Bible about God's love falling on us from heaven. One of the pages featured reasons to love Jesus.
Hang the fuck on! This is not religious education
. This is religious instruction, at best. Indoctrination would probably be the better word.
It happens everywhere, apparently. They are all volunteers, said the teacher. Yes, I bet, I said. It's like the keys to these children's minds have been delivered to proselytisers.
Kids of five are credulous. They will believe, quite literally, anything. They all believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy; what is it to them that they have one more myth to add to their treasury? They are incredibly impressionable. It is not for nothing the Jesuits said that given a child until they were seven, they would show you the man.
But it's voluntary, the teacher said. Yes, I said, but I must opt out. Opt out! You don't say, who wants their kids to learn all about Jesus from a minister of X church; you say, who doesn't want their kids to have religious education classes? In school time. A timetabled lesson. Those Americans who read this will be shaking their heads. I'll bet your minister would like to be able to come into school and tell the kids they should love Jesus.
Whatever next? They allow a paedophile to volunteer to do the sex ed classes?
Nothing hurts like unrequited love. When I was a youngster, still at school, I had a crush on a girl called Sally. A very distant crush: I didn't know her well but I saw her every day as she walked past my form room to reach hers. She had curly hair and a sulky face. I'm a sucker for sulky girls who are hard to please; if you want to win my heart, pouting and carrying on make a sure route.
I used to write poems about Sally, whom I considered my secret love. I had an entire drama going on that no one else knew about and certainly no one else would have cared about.
I have a problem, a phobia, a desire to avoid confrontation and embarrassment. (I don't suffer from it so much when I'm anonymous, in case you were wondering how I could manage to so actively seek it -- and junior Freuds out there, yes, okay, I probably am making up for it in the cyberworld but so what? Isn't that what the cyberworld is for? Like many people, I'm freer online. I don't ever really think about why because I am confident it's a good thing, all in all.)
Even then I had it, although perhaps it wasn't so bad. Certainly, I didn't make a habit of asking girls out. Not that I didn't think they should be pleased to have me. I did, and I still do.
She said no, of course. Worse, she didn't say anything. She shook her head and ran away. I stopped writing the poems. I was hurt but that wasn't the thing. The thing was, I had ruined my own secret thing. I couldn't any longer fantasise about Sally. I had sold my secret out for the hope of a date and I realised, only after it was gone, that it was worth more in itself.
What use is a dream if you need someone else to make it come true? It is only any use as a dream. Eventually, you have to learn to stop empowering people who care less about you than you want them to by allowing them to shatter your dreams.
But I still write poems about Sally. She's just changed faces, changed names, changed bodies, but the spirit's the same.
Queensland Roar 2 Central Coast Mariners 2
The Roar brought their season to a close with a good draw against a decent Central Coast side, who, although unheralded, play to their strengths sufficiently well to have made the final four.
Which can't be said for Queensland, sadly, and the word on the street is that Bleiberg is going to pay the price. He ought to. As I've been noting almost all season, unless you have good reason, 442 remains the best way to play football. So it's proved for the Roar. The players look more comfortable with it and do not find themselves pulled all over the pitch, struggling to work out where exactly they're meant to be.
The Roar played bright football to begin with and grabbed an early goal. Their play deserved more and would have had it but for the woodwork and some very solid defending by the Mariners. They scored a decent equaliser but the Roar could count themselves -- once again -- unlucky, having had far the better of the play.
Up to that point, I thought I might for the first time have a referee to applaud. He'd handled the game well with an unfussy approach. The Mariners are robust but not out-and-out kickers in the Melbourne mould. However, the referee didn't let me down, sending off Dilevski, who had been having a good game on the left wing, for a nudge that wouldn't even start a fight in the pub. O'Sullivan outraged the crowd by flinging himself to the ground and giving a performance that would give pork products a bad name. He was rightly booed for the rest of the match. Fans will not tolerate simulators. We know when someone isn't really hurt and in this case the gap between nudge and collapse was wide enough for O'Sullivan to have had a good think about whether he really was all that hurt. And to have a cup of tea while thinking about it. The referee lost it after that, afraid to take the correct measures against players who transgressed: McClaren can think himself lucky to have seen out the match, and Beauchamp could have been dismissed for raising his hands to Buess.
Still, it didn't deter Queensland much. They didn't retreat into their shell but kept pushing forward. Their football became a little more direct and suffered for it but they gained the deserved reward of another goal. They tired as the second half went on and Central Coast probably deserved the equaliser. Certainly they looked a decent sort of side, nothing flash, but willing to play nice, constructive football.
Several Queensland players had good games. The standout was McKay, who ran himself ragged making up for the lack of a leftsided midfielder. Murdocca also had another good game. Seo was his customary excellent self, although his distribution lacked a little. Richter tried hard, as did Baird when he came on for the second half. Reinaldo was disappointing, mostly off the pace and surprisingly ineffective in the air, where he's previously done well. Central Coast had a couple of tall, strong centre backs though, so maybe credit is due to them, particularly to Beauchamp, who looked solid throughout the game. Brosque flattered to deceive but you can't really knock a striker who scores.
Exciting prospect David Williams took the field towards the end and showed some very nice footwork in a couple of runs. This guy must start games next season. He is a star in the making. His touch and intelligence stand out.
So there are pluses for Queensland. We have some outstanding players. Dilevski and Brosque have both been called up to the Socceroos squad for the Asian Cup. We should be trying to hang on to Brosque. A better coach would have used him more wisely. Seo is excellent, McCloughan and Buess also among the best in the league in their positions. Gibson is flawed but even so, a good player. McKay is capable enough in the centre of midfield. He could do with someone to pass to who can use the ball, because it's not his forte. Up front, our problems have solved themselves, if a coach is bold enough to pick the right players. A combination of Reinaldo and Williams would be lethal. It's the classic big target man, quick fox partnership. Brosque has laboured away as a second target man, only really looking effective when he's dropped deep. A good coach wouldn't make the same mistake next season, if we hang on to him. Reinaldo must learn not to be lazy, to chase and harass, and must compete for everything. With a quick, clever partner, he'll be more than useful. Brosque, who has not been able to feed from Reinaldo, could and should play in midfield. I've often thought that he'd be effective on the lefthand side but if Dilevski is played wide left, Brosque could take a creative role in midfield. He'd probably grab just as many goals.
So this week's best player was McKay, who definitely left it all out on the pitch. Best player for the Mariners, despite his simulation, was O'Sullivan, who was bright and effective all over the pitch, particularly down the righthand side, having a hand in both goals. He wasn't the only Central Coast player to mug the referee, who had a shitter.
I am tired of rules. I will have only one rule. Be who you are. That is what I'm interested in. Nothing else. And I will be who I am. That's not always huggable but I think it's more than most. If I didn't, I would be conforming. If I felt I had nothing better to offer, I would not be on offer.
I am tired of ideas. They weigh us down. We forget all too easily that actions speak louder than words. I know I do. I know I want those who know they forget it too to know me. I am kind enough to forget injured pride, harsh words, stupid things and remember that we only have each other between here and the void. I want those who are that kind to know me.
I am tired of trying to please, although I want to please. If I'm not pleasing, then maybe it's you who should relent, because I have a good heart, and I know I want to use it. Maybe you're the problem. And maybe I'm the reason your good heart is shrivelling too. I am unafraid of accepting that I am going wrong. I want those who are unafraid of accepting that to know me.
But those who will not; you are already perfect and do not need me. I wish you well on your way.
The moon is blue
I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get you all
It's a pink moon
It's a pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.
It's hard to believe a person willing to die over a cartoon has really understood the value he should put on his life. They are things to be cherished, our lives, because anything else we think is coming to us is something we are gambling on. All we are sure of is right here, right now. Sometimes you have to gather it in, the strands, the trailing ends, close to yourself, whatever you think your self is, and realise what you are risking if you risk it.
But isn't risking parts of your life risking it all? If you change parts that change the whole, have you not given your life away just the same? Well no, you're still breathing. I've always thought slavery was preferable to death because you can hope for an end to slavery. Perhaps this is because I have always been far more prone to vanity than to pride.
What is the difference? Pride is conceit about oneself as a being and vanity conceit about one's accomplishments and accoutrements, if I can call them that. Obviously, they overlap. You can exemplify the difference, as I see it, by considering that some are proud that they speak English but I am vain about my writing. It's a fine line sometimes though. Writing well is a natural thing, not wholly an accomplishment. If I were vainer still, I would doubtless be a better writer. But possibly to no better end because I would simply be more the peacock, singing ever more prettily but with no more involving or interesting melody.
It is interesting that vanity is also uselessness. Although vanity is not entirely useless. For someone like me, who is shy of projecting themselves into the world, the need to be admired can provide a route to touching others and being touched by them -- something I could not live without.
A vanitas is also a painting that serves as a memento mori, a reminder that life is ultimately vain. Ultimately useless! It's a sobering thought but many do not draw the right conclusion from it, which is that it is pointless to spend it in pursuit of purpose, when its purpose is no more than to be here, be now.
Should it not humble us then? Should it not make us feel small? It's a curious thing but I don't believe so. How can we think that? Yes, the world is much bigger than us but we are too small for the world to be our concern; time continues without us but we are too shortlived to worry about the length of all things. Our lives are as big as we are, no bigger, no smaller. We are not small because the universe is big; it is big because we are small. Only pride, excessive and unwarranted, leads us to believe it can be any other way.
Don’t tell me the moon is blue
(Now you’ve let me down)
Because the night is over
Now the pain’s in the dust
And you can’t find your blue moon
Now it’s over
ooooh Tonight it’s over
Top ten trivia facts about Dr Zen
1. If you drop Dr Zen from more than three metres above ground level, he will always land feet-first.
2. More people are killed by Dr Zen each year than die in aeroplane accidents.
3. Ninety-six percent of all candles sold are purchased by Dr Zen.
4. Dr Zen can sleep with one eye open!
5. The average human spends about 30 days during their life in Dr Zen.
6. Dr Zen can only be destroyed by intense heat, and is impermeable even to acid!
7. The first toy product ever advertised on television was Mr Dr Zen Head.
8. When provoked, Dr Zen will swivel the tip of his abdomen and shoot a jet of boiling chemicals at his attacker!
9. Dr Zen can turn his stomach inside out.
10. Dr Zen cannot jump.Facts supplied by a Vaguely Surrealist Manifesto
. Cap doffed to Tom
Friday night in a cold bright store. Everything looks more buyable under the lights.
I am listening to Explosions in the Sky, slow-motion rock as I watch my feet one after the other pushing myself around the aisles.
Seven thirty on Friday night in a temple to consumerism. I am jostled by a fat woman. This is Mt Gravatt. Even in a deserted store, fat women jostle me. I imagine that one day I will meet an interesting woman in the canned vegetables aisle but no one looks twice at me.
No one ever thinks, he might be the solution to my problem. But I probably am. Because all you need is love, and I have plenty. Love, a big cock and a certain ability to find the clitoris. What else could you want in a man? I even do poetry.
Eight in the PM in the fruit section. Most of the fruit is a bit tatty, some rotten. It would have been good to eat a while ago. Hey, a metaphor. Next I will be talking about crushing the juice out of the orange and throwing the useless peel away and...
The girl on the checkout looks tired and unhappy. She tries a wan smile. I smile back. I am thinking about unbuttoning her blouse. She is thinking about the homework she still has to do.
The Smegma is alone in a carpark with a hundred spaces. I drive into a dark warm night. I blink away tiredness, dazzled by the lights of oncoming cars. It is starting to rain. On Creek Road, an old woman is crossing the street without looking, her head bowed, shutting out a world that can kill you in an instant if it's not looking where it's driving.
My fantasy is small. Just me and you on a lonely beach. Nothing wild, but the sea. Just you and me.
My fantasy is tiny. We tell the world lies and escape for a few moments.
My fantasy is so minuscule you could look past it and not even see it's there. But it's there.
Work, rest, die
Sometimes, right now, I feel they could replace me with a robot. Everything becomes a task and I fear that dealing with me is a task for others. I take no delight in anything and no one delights in me. I begin to doubt I have any point.
Why do I feel like that? I could enjoy things. Others are not trying to make things hard to enjoy for me. They are not even really thinking about whether I will enjoy what they are doing. But that is what drives me further and further into my shell, the belief that no one cares about what I feel about it, the belief that no one wants to hear my voice, know me, be touched by me. I become convinced that I am entirely marginal -- and doubtless I am -- and that they will say they care for whatever small thing they can wring out of it, while in truth it means nothing. I start to fear that they have some other purpose in having anything to do with me, because it doesn't feel like it's for me. It's wrong, I know, to think that everything must be for
something. It's irrational because so many things are pointless. We just do them because we have 24 hours in a day and limited imaginations.
I am drowning. I can swim but I'm pretending I can't. I want someone to come by and throw me a line but everyone who sees me in the water thinks I'm splashing around for fun. What if I stopped? What if I just went under, calm and still. They'd say, we used to see him around, bathing, and now we just don't.
I am not jealous. I do not fear a woman's finding someone new, or cheating on me, or anything. I realise desire is not something that can be prescribed, circumscribed or controlled. I know I can be what is needed and not be at the same time, and it doesn't bother me. That my lover should go unfulfilled bothers me more, that they should make themselves unhappy because of an obligation to me saddens me, because I am not trying to make them beholden. I know that my not feeling jealous in this way can make people unhappy because they feel it is part of love that I ought to but I cannot love like that. Maybe it is because I fear the demon in me that would possess you utterly that I fear possessing you at all.
But jealous also has a sense of envious, and besides vanity, envy is my worst fault (lack of time precludes a listing of the others but most of the things that are said about me are true and some pretty nasty things are said about me; actually, let's just say it's among my worst faults). And I am envious. When I think about S, I am jealous. I am jealous of every man who has had sex with her, every boy who kissed her when she was at school, jealous of her time, her energy, her love, when any of it is wasted by being spent anywhere but on me. I have no right to it but still I feel it. I am jealous of the people that please her, who see her smile, of those who make her laugh and those whom she talks to, thinks of, gives to and cares for. And of course, a prisoner of the hours, the miles between us, the impossibility of ever possessing her at all, I am doubly jealous of those who talk to, think of, give to and care for her.
Bless the 'net
My iPod died. I swear, I was right on the verge of tears. It's just about my only friend, seeing me through hours of need, cutting out the world, which is particularly valuable in supermarkets, in which I spend two hours of my life each week, give or take a few minutes.
But thank the living Jaysus for the interwebnet. Without it, I would never have known that you can resurrect dead iPods by pressing the Menu and Select buttons together for a mere ten seconds. Now I am listening to 2 rights don't make a wrong by the mighty Mogwai and I'm as happy as a pig in shit.
I seem always to have a complaint. I know that this is more a symptom of my being wrong than the world's but the world seems easier to put to rights.
People want to talk to me about things I don't want to talk about and don't want to talk about what matters to me. They either want to know what I'm thinking or don't want to know what I'm thinking. The problem is, I do a lot of thinking and it's not all for sharing. And the audience for what is can sometimes lack. It's frustrating when you think that it will exist, or ought to exist, but how can you convince people that they ought to give a shit about how you feel about things, particularly when what they want is for you to feel something else?
Someone said to me the other day that they would drag me to a gig if I were close enough to them geographically. But I wouldn't need dragging. I'd go in a shot if I had company to do it with. If I think about how I've managed to live a life that has left me entirely bereft of people who share my interests, I really am scratching my head. I really must be doing something wrong because I don't come across them.
Look, I know I'm a fucking idiot. I don't need telling. I've made way too many choices that even at the time I knew were only longshots of coming out well not to be all too aware of it. Sometimes it's as though I have a destructive jockey. When he's in the saddle, I am sure to fuck up. I think a lot of us are like that. If you have a broad capacity for unhappiness, something about you will help you find a way to be unhappy. I don't mean that you'll look on the dark side or that you'll be unhappy about things you should be happy about. I mean you'll fuck up so that happiness is not even possible.
Even the things that make me happy don't work out for me because there is no way to structure my life to make them fit. Partly that's because of who I am and partly because of who other people are. I sometimes wonder whether it just doesn't go because I'm doing something wrong, like when I stuff up a gear change and there's a shrieking noise.
A low moaning. It's more like a low moaning. It's the part of me that knows it has to die and thinks it's going to be shortchanged. It's the other jockey, who rarely gets his chance to ride, the one who has the capability to drive me to better, or at least more, things. We keep that fucker down. It would be impossible to maintain low self-esteem if that guy was doing the driving.
And without low self-esteem, I would be just too human to live with.