people, personal

Just Another Day

Today, at least in the annals of history is just another day. Very little of great substance has happened over the years on 11 January; about the best being:

  • First recorded lottery in England was drawn at St Paul’s Cathedral, 1569
  • James Paget, surgeon, born 1814
  • HG Selfridge (yes, founder of Selfridges) born 1858
  • Charing Cross Station opened, 1864
  • Maurice Durufle, composer, born 1902
  • Ambrose Bierce, writer, died, 1914
  • First use of insulin to treat diabetes, 1922
  • Mick McMannus, wrestler, born 1928
  • Thomas Hardy, novelist, died 1928
  • Arthur Scargill, Miner’s leader and UK politician, born 1938
  • Ben Crenshaw, golfer, born 1952
  • John Sessions, Scottish actor, born 1953
  • Bryan Robson, English footballer, born 1957
  • Brian Moore, England rugby player, born 1962
  • Richmal Crompton, writer, died, 1969
  • Barbara Pym, novelist, died, 1980

For me today is a strange day as I have to come to terms with the fact that I am now officially a granny. For, yes, today we are 60! Eeekkkkk!

Many thanks to all those of you who have sent me birthday greetings. I am truly touched (yes, in the head!) by all your kind thoughts.

beliefs, freedom of speech

Freedom of Blasphemy

2 Comments

I don’t normally delve into international politics, but this situation – see also here, here and here – is an absolute disgrace.

  • A Christian woman (Asia Bibi) is in jail, pending appeal against a death sentence for alleged blasphemy against Islam.
    [And yet Islam is supposed to be a tolerant religion.]
  • Her death sentence is being endorsed by the Pakistani media, and by implication if not in fact, by the government.
  • Her case cannot properly be tried in open court because to do so would mean repeating the alleged blasphemy, thus compounding the offence.
    [Clearly contrary to all the accepted rules of justice.]
  • A senior politician has been murdered by his bodyguard for supporting her.
    [Islam, just like Christianity, forbids murder.]
  • The murderer is being fêted by the Islamic community as a hero.
    [Is this not a sinful as the actual murder?]

That any country, or any (supposedly tolerant) religion, can allow such a state of affairs to come to pass is, at the very least outrageous. And every right-thinking government must surely put the utmost pressure on Pakistan to not just resolve this particular situation but to put in place safeguards against any repeats.** I just don’t know what more I can say and preserve some semblance of normal blood pressure and dignity.

As Heresy Corner says: What we are seeing in Pakistan – established under Jinnah as a secular country, but one explicitly for Muslims – is precisely what happens when you let religion (above all this particular religion) form the basis of political organisation.

And also, to quote Inayat: The truth is that Muslims in power are every bit as prone to abusing that power as non-Muslims. Only, most ‘Islamic states’ or ‘Islamic republics’ do not have anywhere near the same legal safeguards and restrictions on power that most modern secular states do. (And, heaven knows, ours are far from foolproof.) Inayat also describes it as the moral collapse of a nation.

Much as I am personally areligious, I would never deny anyone their right to believe and worship as they wish providing they live within the moral precepts agreed by society at large (which in this day and age means globally!). Should the state, therefore, not be a mechanism for living together rather than promoting or securing an ideology? Thus it seems to me all this whole situation does is to reinforce the argument for secularism of both state and individual.

Wither now free speech and justice?

** Note I do not say “It must never happen again” because whatever safeguards are put in place cannot ensure 100% effectiveness. That, my friends, is life.

memes, personal

Ten Things – January

This is the first of a monthly series “Ten Things” which I plan will run all year. Each month I’m going to list one thing from each of ten categories which will remain the same each month. So at the end of the year you have ten lists of twelve things.

  1. Something I Like: Sex
  2. Something I Won’t Do: Play Golf
  3. Something I Want To Do: Visit Japan
  4. A Blog I Like: Katyboo
  5. A Book I Like: Anthony Powell; A Dance to the Music of Time (Well you knew I’d say that,didn’t you? And anyway it’s 12 books really!)
  6. Some Music I Like: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
  7. A Food I Like: Curry
  8. A Food or Drink I Dislike: Egg Custard
  9. A Word I Like: Cunt
  10. A Quote I Like: If you don’t concern yourself with your wife’s cat, you will lose something irretrievable between you. [Haruki Murakami]
books

In which I Convince You I'm a Philistine

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:– Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
[Shelley; Ozymandias of Egypt]

I know there are a number of first class literarists who read this blog, so can any one of you please explain to me, in words I stand a chance of understanding, why this piece of Shelly is supposedly great poetry? For apart from the one line which is always quoted, it seems to me that it says little, if anything, of any interest or ornament. I understand the words and I see the symbolism, but I get not the point. Can anyone convince me otherwise?

amusements, beliefs, books, history, sexuality

Quotes of the Week

Lots and lots to choose from this week, mainly because I’ve been reading Brad Warner’s books on Zen as well as his website and lots else besides …

Imagine, for a moment, what the world would be like if we took the same approach to money as we do to sex. Imagine trying to hide all evidence of money from children, telling them that it’s not something they should know about. Imagine shaming them for asking questions about it, for expressing an interest in it, and for wanting to experiment with it. Imagine that you never explained how budgets work, or how to balance a checkbook, or how to pay for anything. Then, imagine that when they turn 18, handing them a credit card and saying “good luck with that.”

In essence, that’s what we do with sex.

Would you be surprised if those young adults didn’t know how to responsibly handle money? Would you be shocked if they ended up in crisis because they didn’t have the skills to take care of themselves? Would you think that their parents and schools had done their job?

If you answered “no” to these questions, then maybe you can also ask yourself why it should be any different when it comes to sex.
[http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/scarleteen_guest_author/2010/10/22/why_we_need_scarleteen]

Albert R Shadle was the world’s foremost expert on the sexuality of small woodland creatures.
[This could easily be the opening of a Douglas Adams or a Terry Pratchett novel, but it’s actually from Mary Roach, Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Sex and Science]

Our life is just action at the present moment. The past is nothing more than memory, and the future is nothing but dreams. At best, past and future are no more than reference material for the eternal now. The only real facts are those at the present moment. You cannot go back and correct the mistakes you made in your past, so you better be very careful right now. You can dream about your future, but no matter how well you construct that dream, your future will not be precisely as you envisioned it. The world where we live is existence in the present moment.
[Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Treasury of Right Dharma Eye]

The Paris Peace Conference [of 1919] dispensed recipes for war. The powerful nations dished out independence: which meant it was not independence. Something which has been given you through the benevolence of a higher power is not true independence: it is a sign that you are not strong enough to stand on your own.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]

Virginia Woolf’s prose was as beautiful as her face, but like many twentieth-century English writers, she had nothing to write about.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
[Andre Gide]

These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
[Borges; Essay: “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”]

Action and its results are one and the same. Time, the thing which makes us see them as separate matters, is the illusion. Time is no more than a clever fiction we humans have invented to help organize stuff in our brains.
[Brad Warner; ]

Boredom is important. Most of your life is dull, tasteless and boring.
[Brad Warner; ]

I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities.
[Whoopi Goldberg]

amusements, arts, pleasures

DE Graffiti

Nice one Klaus!

Confusing graffiti on Deutsche Bahn
Graffiti artists in Germany have painted part of a carriage side so that one entrance doorway looks like a wide window and the adjacent wide window looks just like a pair of plug doors! The painting is realistic enough to confuse passengers.

[Railway Magazine; February 2011]

memes, personal, photography, science, topographical

1/52 Solar Eclipse, London Style


Solar Eclipse, London Style [2011 week 1], originally uploaded by kcm76.

This is the view of the solar eclipse just after sunrise yesterday (Tuesday 04/01/2011) from my study window. Like what eclipse? Typical of the UK to cock it up; can’t this country get anything right? Bah Humbug!

This is also my first photo for the “52 weeks” (ie. a photo a week) I’m doing this year. I hope I can keep up the standard of getting something off-beat each week. Watch this space.

personal, thoughts

My 2010

I decided to do this survey I found to summarise my engagement (or lack of it) with 2010. If it works I may do it again in a year’s time.

1. What did you do that you’d never done before?
Retire
Be hypnotised

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t make New Year resolutions (see here); but I did have some goals most of which I failed to achieve

3. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
More sex
£1M

4. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory?
Sunday 14 February
Saturday 5 June
Friday 27 August

5. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No more than normal: the usual couple of vile colds etc.

6. What was the best thing you bought?
New digital SLR camera

7. Where did most of your money go?
Fuck knows, and he ain’t telling me

8. What did you get really, really excited about?
Nothing; I waste effort on excitement or panic

9. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a. happier or sadder? Definitely happier and less depressed, at least at the moment
b. thinner or fatter? Fatter
c. richer or poorer? Poorer

10. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Photography
Cooking
Swimming
Seeing friends

11. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating
Wasting time

12. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Moving my mother into a good care home
Retirement
Starting hypnotherapy

13. What was your biggest failure?
Putting weight back on when I’d been slowly losing it

14. How many one-night stands?
None

15. What was your favourite TV program?
I watch so little TV I really haven’t got a clue

16. What was the best book you read?
Brad Warner; Sex, Sin and Zen
Ben Goldacre; Bad Science

17. What did you want and get?
New digital SLR camera
Amazon Kindle

18. What did you want and not get?
New bathroom
£1M

19. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
£1M – it won’t solve all the problems but it won’t half help you cope with them

20. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Nude when possible, clothed when necessary

21. What kept you sane?
Noreen
Hypnotherapy

22. Who did you miss?
Surprisingly some former colleagues

23. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
Life happens, deal with it

24. A quote or song lyric that sums up your year:

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organised. [Terry Pratchett]

No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. [unknown]

Mr Spock … We’re trapped in an eerie, brain numbing madhouse! Any answers? [unknown]

25. Your hopes for 2011
– Successful Anthony Powell conference in September
– Catch up with the backlog of Anthony Powell Society work
– Achieve financial security for life (well I can dream!)
– More sex
– Less depression
– Lose weight
– Be a better husband
– Society normalises sex and nudity rather than being disgusted/frightened by it

beliefs, sexuality, thoughts

The Smart Dutch Take on Teen Sex

A while ago I came across this article in the 7 September 2010 issue of Salon.

The smart Dutch take on teen sex
Despite parents’ allowing romantic sleepovers, the Netherlands has one of the lowest youth pregnancy rates
by Tracy Clark-Flory

I’m not going to reproduce it here as it’s available online. The article also references this study by Amy Schalet. I commend you all to go read both for yourselves. Amazingly Clark-Flory (an American) actually recognises that the Dutch have their attitudes to teen sex right and the Americans don’t. Which is what I’ve been saying for years. Society, especially politicians and the religious please note!