I'm currently watching a news channel. A tickertape is running along the bottom of the screen breaking world news as it happens.
Suicide bomber attacks security checkpoint at an airport in north-west Pakistan. Casualties feared.
No injuries reported after a Boeing 737 makes safe emergency landing in Moscow.
Pakistani Taliban claims responsibility for US Immigration Centre attack which left 13 people dead.
Man convicted of murder of British student Meredith Ketchner in Italy will give evidence today.
There's so much going on in the world right now. A crippling recession, rejuvenated terrorist threat in the Middle East, the re-emergence of the real IRA and unionists shooting people dead in Belfast, climate change, a G20 summit in London and NATO in Strasbourg as the most powerful men and women in the world convene to try and tackle all of the issues at hand. But what are Sky News giving all their live coverage to? Jade Goody's funeral parade. Live from 11 - 2.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Corporate Thanksgiving (or, my inner Native American)
When I was at work tonight, I had a strange allegorical epiphany. Me, we, us... the staff of this well-known chain bookstore, we're bonafide Native Americans. Red [polyester] Indians as it were (gosh, I'm funny.)
We were welcoming to the new settlers, new people. We embraced changes and adapted ourselves and our ways (those in which we'd become very settled) in the name of harmony and the greater good. The immigrants, the settlers were all full of smiles and promises of things being better, more positive; a future we could all enjoy.
There was the promise of us sitting down and sharing turkey together; a 10% discount on hardware.
They raped our land and defaced our realm. Everywhere, gawdy purple signs screaming that they've arrived as we indigenous folk are pushed to one side. Super Mario edges out Oscar Wilde and builds a fucking strip mall over a multimedia burial ground. Neon signs that don't match but command the most attention, video games and mindless entertainment spattered all over the walls like the blood of hundreds of thousands of authors. Austen, Hugo, Orwell, Burgess... all slaughtered at the hands of Sonic the Hedgehog. Money grabbing. Opportunist. They bulldozered our forest and filled it with Tetris towerblocks (for the Nintendo Wii, of course.)
Layer upon layer of tacky gimmicks are slapped down like the strata in sedimentary rock until the original format and form has almost disappeared entirely. Compressed and pushed down, literature becomes an outcast in its own country, it's own domain.
They call it progress.
I see this new development, and it just looks like someone has defecated in the middle of my place of work. Stupid, white Europeans ruined the North American continent, just like stupid, mindless 'gamers' are ruining my bookshop.
We were welcoming to the new settlers, new people. We embraced changes and adapted ourselves and our ways (those in which we'd become very settled) in the name of harmony and the greater good. The immigrants, the settlers were all full of smiles and promises of things being better, more positive; a future we could all enjoy.
There was the promise of us sitting down and sharing turkey together; a 10% discount on hardware.
They raped our land and defaced our realm. Everywhere, gawdy purple signs screaming that they've arrived as we indigenous folk are pushed to one side. Super Mario edges out Oscar Wilde and builds a fucking strip mall over a multimedia burial ground. Neon signs that don't match but command the most attention, video games and mindless entertainment spattered all over the walls like the blood of hundreds of thousands of authors. Austen, Hugo, Orwell, Burgess... all slaughtered at the hands of Sonic the Hedgehog. Money grabbing. Opportunist. They bulldozered our forest and filled it with Tetris towerblocks (for the Nintendo Wii, of course.)
Layer upon layer of tacky gimmicks are slapped down like the strata in sedimentary rock until the original format and form has almost disappeared entirely. Compressed and pushed down, literature becomes an outcast in its own country, it's own domain.
They call it progress.
I see this new development, and it just looks like someone has defecated in the middle of my place of work. Stupid, white Europeans ruined the North American continent, just like stupid, mindless 'gamers' are ruining my bookshop.
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Give and take
"Errr... have you seen what she's given him?" the Geordie Rat asked put-upon looking boyfriend after I'd just finished serving her equally vacuous son last night at work, and was still raw from the intense physical scars endured by merely completing a transaction with some one so shockingly devoid of any sort of manners or social skills.
Given him? What had I given him? Whatever it was, she seemed pretty indignant at her son's receipt of such an item? I was worried. To provoke such a reaction, it must have been something pretty bad...
Maybe he's a heart surgery patient in a very fragile post-operative state and I'd given him a shock?
Maybe she didn't read my lanyard properly, assumed my name was Gemma and that in touching my hand to receive his change, I'd inadvertently given him some uncomfortably embarrassing venereal disease, resulting fortnight of itching in unsightly locations before the anti-biotics kicked in?
Maybe I'd become momentarily confused; muddled betwixt the cold, harsh reality of the shop floor and my imaginary safe-haven, where I routinely dish out social justice and given him a swift smack in the mouth?
I'd given him a Scottish £5 note as part of his change.
I hate gypsies.
Given him? What had I given him? Whatever it was, she seemed pretty indignant at her son's receipt of such an item? I was worried. To provoke such a reaction, it must have been something pretty bad...
Maybe he's a heart surgery patient in a very fragile post-operative state and I'd given him a shock?
Maybe she didn't read my lanyard properly, assumed my name was Gemma and that in touching my hand to receive his change, I'd inadvertently given him some uncomfortably embarrassing venereal disease, resulting fortnight of itching in unsightly locations before the anti-biotics kicked in?
Maybe I'd become momentarily confused; muddled betwixt the cold, harsh reality of the shop floor and my imaginary safe-haven, where I routinely dish out social justice and given him a swift smack in the mouth?
I'd given him a Scottish £5 note as part of his change.
I hate gypsies.
Heart surgery
It's always the nice people, the generous ones, the ones who give their love completely and honestly, without question or expectation. They get routinely and royally fucked. Taken advantage of. Manipulated. If you've got someone, someone who loves you for who you are without any expectation, then you should really know just how lucky you are. Not a lot of people get this.
I've seen nutter boyfriends and girlfriends come and go so many times over the years, but hey - that's the point of exes, right? So you can learn from your mistakes and (theoretically) make a more informed decision next time around. If a relationship's right, then there's always a way to make it work. If not, well, you can blame whatever you want - work, distance, other people... but it comes down to the simple fact that you weren't right. I've heard it all before; just be big enough to admit that you weren't the right fit and work on finding the one who is.
It tears me up inside to see people I care about getting exploited by others, or making decisions that I know aren't healthy or sensible. Pretty much everyone I know, at some point I've had varying strength urges (depending on just how ridiculous the situation was/is) to scream at "WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?" But I guess when people are in 'relationships' (although I think a lot of the examples I'm talking about couldn't even be called that without Trading Standards getting involved...) they invest to much emotion in that other person, they don't want to see when it all starts to fall apart, buckling and shaking at the seams. I don't profess to be an expert on love and relationships and whatnot, but I've had some pretty horrendous experiences at the hands of some pretty horrendous people, and and midway through 2007 I decided to remove my silly-little-girl head and screw on a new, sensible one. Firmly. After I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, I made a conscious decision that I'd rather remain single forever than put myself through such a circus again. It sounds extreme, but I realised that I was one of those silly people, too. Maybe I'd reached the top of the learning curve, maybe I had some sort of emotional epiphany, but I decided that relationships were out of the question until I wokred out exactly what it was that I wanted and needed, and what exactly I could offer some one in return. I'm not a cynic, and when I love, I love completely, wholly and unconditionally. I'm in a very healthy place now, I'm with someone and what we feel for each other easily transcends what either of us have ever felt for another. I know because we communicate. He told me, and I told him. It might sound ridiculously simple, but a lot of couples I know hide things, shround parts of themselves in secrecy and then stumble around in genuine confusion when it all falls apart. Not healthy. It therefore might sound easy for me to judge, but I can view it objectively now, having seen and experienced both sides of the spectrum. If we can be this happy, so can you. (I know I sound like Paul McKenna here- this was not intentional, and for that, I apologise.)
I see couples every day, mutual loathing and resignation etched into their faces, held together not by adoration but desperation. Fear of loneliness; the social stigma of singledom. I love you reduced to a punctuation mark, used only as a point around sentences are hinged, because - like the full stop followed by a capital letter, they know they should. Thats how language, and love, should work. But no one feels grammatically, it's not supposed to be functional, it should be beautiful. When was the last time you got all enamored over a semi-colon? I see people desperate for affection, putting their all into unions which to me just seemed doomed, clinging to commas for dear life. The needs of their partners and themselves mutually exclusive; they invest so much and get nothing in return. I've seen someone trapped by jealousy and suspicion, checking text messages, e-mails and Facebook accounts with the precision of an MI5 hacker. Without trust, relationships rust.
I really love my boyfriend, but my bit on the side's got a really nice chin. It's alright for me to text/e-mail/ring my ex all the time, as long as my girlfriend doesn't find out. Kissing isn't cheating, really... it's not like I shagged her. Using someone so you aren't alone when you'd really rather be with someone else. Exploiting people's kindness and offering nothing in return, not even a token gesture or a heartfelt thank-you. I'm just chatting to girls online; I'm never going to meet them, so it doesn't mean anything. I'd drive the four hundred miles to see him this weekend, but I can't be arsed so I'll feed him the old 'no money' line. Drunken cliches at Christmas parties (I really love my girlfriend, though!)
Relationships are fucked; complex. You can complain about your boy/girlfriend (that makes it sound like you're dating a hermaphrodite) and the resultant situations and predicaments all you want, but as soon as someone else suggests that your relationship might be flawed, you angrily jump on the defensive. As an objective force, one can never really understand the nuances between two people when they're alone together and how they interact one-on-one. You can, however, and do, form opinions and ideas. You want to protect your friends, especially those you know have been hurt before. You want to wrap their hearts in cotton wool and bubble wrap, so when they inevitably get broken it won't hurt. You can't bear to see that crushed look again, total devastation. But, at the same time, we need to make these mistakes. If we don't ignore that little voice in our head occasionally, we won't have that point of reference, that scope to avoid the same mistakes again. Some people inevitably fall into the same trap over and over, but maybe the resultant heartbreak is the only way they'll learn. I guess all we can do, their friends, the people who love them, all we can do is be there to pick up the pieces, glue them back together and never, ever say I told you so. No matter how stupid we think (or know) they've been.
We are the surgeons who will crack the ribs and repair the broken hearts.
I've seen nutter boyfriends and girlfriends come and go so many times over the years, but hey - that's the point of exes, right? So you can learn from your mistakes and (theoretically) make a more informed decision next time around. If a relationship's right, then there's always a way to make it work. If not, well, you can blame whatever you want - work, distance, other people... but it comes down to the simple fact that you weren't right. I've heard it all before; just be big enough to admit that you weren't the right fit and work on finding the one who is.
It tears me up inside to see people I care about getting exploited by others, or making decisions that I know aren't healthy or sensible. Pretty much everyone I know, at some point I've had varying strength urges (depending on just how ridiculous the situation was/is) to scream at "WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?" But I guess when people are in 'relationships' (although I think a lot of the examples I'm talking about couldn't even be called that without Trading Standards getting involved...) they invest to much emotion in that other person, they don't want to see when it all starts to fall apart, buckling and shaking at the seams. I don't profess to be an expert on love and relationships and whatnot, but I've had some pretty horrendous experiences at the hands of some pretty horrendous people, and and midway through 2007 I decided to remove my silly-little-girl head and screw on a new, sensible one. Firmly. After I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, I made a conscious decision that I'd rather remain single forever than put myself through such a circus again. It sounds extreme, but I realised that I was one of those silly people, too. Maybe I'd reached the top of the learning curve, maybe I had some sort of emotional epiphany, but I decided that relationships were out of the question until I wokred out exactly what it was that I wanted and needed, and what exactly I could offer some one in return. I'm not a cynic, and when I love, I love completely, wholly and unconditionally. I'm in a very healthy place now, I'm with someone and what we feel for each other easily transcends what either of us have ever felt for another. I know because we communicate. He told me, and I told him. It might sound ridiculously simple, but a lot of couples I know hide things, shround parts of themselves in secrecy and then stumble around in genuine confusion when it all falls apart. Not healthy. It therefore might sound easy for me to judge, but I can view it objectively now, having seen and experienced both sides of the spectrum. If we can be this happy, so can you. (I know I sound like Paul McKenna here- this was not intentional, and for that, I apologise.)
I see couples every day, mutual loathing and resignation etched into their faces, held together not by adoration but desperation. Fear of loneliness; the social stigma of singledom. I love you reduced to a punctuation mark, used only as a point around sentences are hinged, because - like the full stop followed by a capital letter, they know they should. Thats how language, and love, should work. But no one feels grammatically, it's not supposed to be functional, it should be beautiful. When was the last time you got all enamored over a semi-colon? I see people desperate for affection, putting their all into unions which to me just seemed doomed, clinging to commas for dear life. The needs of their partners and themselves mutually exclusive; they invest so much and get nothing in return. I've seen someone trapped by jealousy and suspicion, checking text messages, e-mails and Facebook accounts with the precision of an MI5 hacker. Without trust, relationships rust.
I really love my boyfriend, but my bit on the side's got a really nice chin. It's alright for me to text/e-mail/ring my ex all the time, as long as my girlfriend doesn't find out. Kissing isn't cheating, really... it's not like I shagged her. Using someone so you aren't alone when you'd really rather be with someone else. Exploiting people's kindness and offering nothing in return, not even a token gesture or a heartfelt thank-you. I'm just chatting to girls online; I'm never going to meet them, so it doesn't mean anything. I'd drive the four hundred miles to see him this weekend, but I can't be arsed so I'll feed him the old 'no money' line. Drunken cliches at Christmas parties (I really love my girlfriend, though!)
Relationships are fucked; complex. You can complain about your boy/girlfriend (that makes it sound like you're dating a hermaphrodite) and the resultant situations and predicaments all you want, but as soon as someone else suggests that your relationship might be flawed, you angrily jump on the defensive. As an objective force, one can never really understand the nuances between two people when they're alone together and how they interact one-on-one. You can, however, and do, form opinions and ideas. You want to protect your friends, especially those you know have been hurt before. You want to wrap their hearts in cotton wool and bubble wrap, so when they inevitably get broken it won't hurt. You can't bear to see that crushed look again, total devastation. But, at the same time, we need to make these mistakes. If we don't ignore that little voice in our head occasionally, we won't have that point of reference, that scope to avoid the same mistakes again. Some people inevitably fall into the same trap over and over, but maybe the resultant heartbreak is the only way they'll learn. I guess all we can do, their friends, the people who love them, all we can do is be there to pick up the pieces, glue them back together and never, ever say I told you so. No matter how stupid we think (or know) they've been.
We are the surgeons who will crack the ribs and repair the broken hearts.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Open your mind, open a book*
Richard and Judy's bookclub, teachers at Emmanuel College of literary censorship, every woman in love with Jack Reacher, every man who wants to be Jack Reacher, anyone who looks like a condom full of wallnuts, people who live their lives on finance at the advice of Sophie Kinsella, anyone with a job in PR and a boyfriend called Luke, writers who dedicate texts to 'the Holy Spirit', crap local authors who pretend to have IRA connections, anyone who takes a strop because you can't pay for DVDs with National Book Tokens, Daily Mail readers, anyone who takes the credit for the work of a ghost writer (James Patterson, I'm looking at you), TV tie ins, Life, Death and Prizes!, designing your novel a Da Vinci rip-off cover to try and boost sales on the back of Dan Brown's wholly undeserved popularity, Katie Price's series of Pony books for children, awful pseudo-poetry about brokendownmachinetypethings, Heat magazine (and the rest), Instant Messenger users, Lee Child, Patrica Scanlan, Maeve Binchey, Ian Rankin, Jeffrey Deaver, Dean Koontz, Khaled Hosseini, James Ellory, Marian Keyes, Tess Gerritsen, Linwood Barclay, Jodi Picoult, Harlen Coben, Philippa Gregory and the rest.
A word of advice:
One should only read books which bite and sting one. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, what's the point in reading? A book must be the axe which smashes the frozen sea within us.
--- Franz Kafka
One of the most inspirational quotes literature in that it caputures the raging gulf between what it 'should be' and what it actually 'is'. There's so much more out there, and people are just blinkered, they refuse to see it. Writing is fundamentally a form of entertainment, or escapism, but it has the potential to be so much more. It has the power to make us look at things in a different way, to challenge our opinions, to educate and to comfort. It forces us to revise our viewpoints and puts us more in tune with the world.
But the majority of people can't even see it.
Open your mind, open a book.
Please?
*Copied from the original blog post viewable at www.myspace.com/girlcalledkillx
A word of advice:
One should only read books which bite and sting one. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, what's the point in reading? A book must be the axe which smashes the frozen sea within us.
--- Franz Kafka
One of the most inspirational quotes literature in that it caputures the raging gulf between what it 'should be' and what it actually 'is'. There's so much more out there, and people are just blinkered, they refuse to see it. Writing is fundamentally a form of entertainment, or escapism, but it has the potential to be so much more. It has the power to make us look at things in a different way, to challenge our opinions, to educate and to comfort. It forces us to revise our viewpoints and puts us more in tune with the world.
But the majority of people can't even see it.
Open your mind, open a book.
Please?
*Copied from the original blog post viewable at www.myspace.com/girlcalledkillx
Friday, 19 September 2008
Yarrrr me hearties!
Shiver me timbers!
Today, 19th September, is International Talk like a Pirate Day! This most important of occasions was first brought to my attention three years ago by one of my very good friends. I was driving from Edinburgh to Gateshead when I recived a completely pirated-out text message (complete with picture of Captain Jack Sparrow) to inform me of this fact.
I've celebrated it every year since, and would argue in favour of it being officially recognised as a bank holiday.
Who's with me?????????
Today, 19th September, is International Talk like a Pirate Day! This most important of occasions was first brought to my attention three years ago by one of my very good friends. I was driving from Edinburgh to Gateshead when I recived a completely pirated-out text message (complete with picture of Captain Jack Sparrow) to inform me of this fact.
I've celebrated it every year since, and would argue in favour of it being officially recognised as a bank holiday.
Who's with me?????????
Hockey Moms: an appendix
When I wrote my entry last night, I was exceptionally tired and my brain had taken leave of my skull as I'd just spent a while posting in German on my other blog. Having not studied anything Deutsch for almost for years now, I found it more difficult that I really should have done, my brain collapsed in on itself like a badly made flan and now all I have is a unicorn clomping around in my head where all of my coherent thoughts should be.
A fact about Palin I should have mentioned last night, but forgot: she opposes benefits for same sex couples, but that's alright - she's not homophobic as she's - allegedly - 'got loads of gay friends'.
For fuck's sake.
A fact about Palin I should have mentioned last night, but forgot: she opposes benefits for same sex couples, but that's alright - she's not homophobic as she's - allegedly - 'got loads of gay friends'.
For fuck's sake.
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