Another lonely traveller through the blue nowhere…

Ten to nine on a Monday morning, the lift-lobby of my office completely deserted, I call a lift, board and push “14” - and THEN twenty other people arrive, all stopping at floors one through thirteen. The claustrophobic at the back (me) takes a deep breath, grits his teeth and closes his eyes. This is all made worse by the lift doors, which are broken and take fully thirty seconds to open and another thirty to close, the sheer density of the crowd, which precludes any idea of escaping to wait for another lift and the weather, which is a balmy 29 centigrade outside and a stifling 38 in the airless, enclosed, crowded lift…

Is this a familiar story to you, too? Welcome to my working days.

I don’t understand the lack of manners that causes people to cram into lifts when they are already overcrowded.

You know the scenario: You’re going down to the lobby to collect a visitor. The lift is stopping at every floor on the way down to be filled with smelly smokers desperate to escape for their next cancer-stick. It gets crowded. Then, you stop on a floor about halfway down, and there it is – The Behemoth.

The lift is crammed. You have an anonymous nicotine addict wedged into each armpit, a midget’s elbow crushing your testicles and a sweat-stained back in your face. You look at The Behemoth. You survey the lift. You can see the lazy, chubby, fat-arsed, androgynous blob surveying the lift. You see the light of decision in its eyes. You think “You must be fucking joking!”, then realise you’ve said it out loud. The Behemoth advances like a fleshy snow-plough, crushing helpless passengers even further into the steel walls of the lift as it advance… At this point, it’s not uncommon for claustrophobes like myself to pass out, but to be unable to fall due to the density of the crowd in the lift. Personally, I normally wake up about halfway between standing and prone (heading rapidly for the latter) as the lift empties on the ground floor.

I have to wonder: Is it just me who thinks that when the lift is clearly full already you should just smile and wait for the next one? I understand the demands of nicotine, I smoked for fifteen years. I know that sometimes you’re running late and need to get to your desk. I concede that there are all kinds of reasons while you might be in a rush. I don’t, however, see any of them as reasons to completely abandon all manners and niceties and cause a lift full of people to suffer even more than they already are.

Welcome to the 1968 abortion-law debate. 40 years later. Parliament is scheduled to vote on the Human Embryology Bill next week, which includes a whole raft of laws from allowing parents to artificially create a foetus to produce donor cells for a sick sibling, to using the empty shells of animal eggs to grow human tissue from cell nuclei (avoiding the need to fertilise human eggs with human sperm – bizarrely enough to appease the religious right). The most divisive part of the Bill, however, is a proposal to slash the time limit for a woman to have an abortion from 24 weeks of pregnancy to 20 weeks. The basis of the argument for this is that anti-abortionists believe that premature babies can and do now survive from 20 weeks onwards. Let’s examine that belief, shall we?

A gentleman by the name of Professor David Field, a consultant neo-natal paediatrician from the neo-natal unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary carried out two studies, the first between 1994 and 1999, and the second between 2000 and 2005. The study was over a huge population with no pre-selection of candidates – all premature births in the study’s catchment were included.

What those studies showed was this: only 18% of babies born at 23 weeks survived – in BOTH periods. Survivability of super-premature (pre 24 week) babies has not improved at all. The study went further: of all the babies born at 22 weeks or earlier, none survived. Not a single solitary one, in either study.

What’s the counter argument?

Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP sums it up: “…this report insults the intelligence of the public and MPs…. Where has all the money that has been pumped into neonatal services gone, then? [the report is] tosh produced by the pro choice lobby”

Um…. The money’s gone to trying to improve survivability? Trying takes money – it doesn’t, however, guarantee success. And…. Her opinion is more valid than a ton of evidence? Why? Sorry, but bullshit!

What should we believe? Two peer-reviewed, published studies carried out over large populations and several years by a highly qualified doctor in the field? Or a neo-conservative, religious zealot’s unqualified rantings?

This is a real no-brainer if you examine it: “pro-lifers” know that they can’t get abortion banned – it has 76% public support in the UK – but that isn’t going to stop them trying to erode it over time: Drop it to 20 weeks…. Now 18…. Now 15…. Now 12…. Now 4 weeks…. Now ban the morning-after pill…

It’s regressive and it’s harmful to force women to bear children which they’re incapable of raising, which they do not want, which will be severely disabled by genetic disorders or the mother’s drug or alcohol use, which are the result of a rape, which are incestuous…

Religious right-whingers: Your day has been and it has gone in the UK. Your ridiculous beliefs are not relevant to our lives, and people resent your constant interference and attention seeking. Fuck off and grow up, learn to take responsibility for the world yourself instead of blaming the mythical sky-daddy, and stop fucking with everybody else’s lives and freedoms on the basis of your own ignorant beliefs. In short, just fuck off.

I make no secret of the fact that I’ve never been a massive fan of Hillary Clinton. I’m not an American, but if I was I’d be a Democrat, and I do like Bill Clinton as a person. I also think that his presidency did a massive amount of good in the US versus the Republican administrations either side of him. He seems like a genuinely warm and intelligent person. I say all of this because I don’t want to be accused of being a neo-con having a rant when I say:

Hillary Clinton IS The Terminator. With less natural charm and warmth.

She comes across as very insincere and try-hard anyway in the way that she speaks; you just get the impression that she’s desperate to make her mark in history as the first female President of the United States, regardless of what it costs, what she has to do to achieve it, the damage she’s doing to the Democratic party or whether she’s actually the best person for the job. She just doesn’t seem to care at all; it’s all about getting that nomination, and to hell with the consequences – inconvenient little things like her dirty-tricks and slander campaign against Barrack Obama alienating all of his supporters to the extent that, if she does get the Democratic nomination, a majority of his supporters are likely to boycott the polls and hand victory to John McCain anyway.

This whole lack of integrity annoys the hell out of me; we’ve had 8 years of George W Bush stealing votes to gain power and the massive fallout which that created – now, it seems, Reverend Mother Hillary and her Death Commando Cult of Blind Faith are determined to do the same thing:

“Count Florida!” They say – Sorry guys, but there are rules, and Florida broke them.

“Count Michigan!” They say – Hold on, Obama didn’t even run in Michigan because he knew it wouldn’t be counted! If he had run, on current form he might well have won it and have already secured the nomination.

What annoys me the most about Hillary is, paradoxically, what would the situation be if the roles were reversed between Clinton and Obama?

Obama has so much integrity that you just know he’d bow out gracefully for the good of the party – and if he didn’t, Hillary is such a harridan that you just know she’d be screeching for his blood.

Hillary, get a grip. Time to take a Valium, calm the hell down and do what’s right for the US – and that does NOT include continuing your ridiculous campaign.

PS - To those of you who think that, as a Brit, this is none of my business: You underestimate the impact which your Presidential election has on the 52nd state (the 51st state being Israel, of course).

Reports in this morning’s papers say that 10,000 have been killed in Indonesia by a cyclone and that it has left 1,000,000 people homeless. In an unprecedented move, the Indonesian government have said that they will accept international aid in this, their time of need.

So… Having resisted (read: ignored) international pressure over their corrupt military dictatorship, appalling human rights abuses and their political prisoners, now they want help…

Folks, it’s like this: When you give money to corrupt regimes in “aid”, a large chunk of it magically sticks to the hands of the rulers of said corrupt regimes. That part of it which actually goes where it was meant to go keeps the population just well fed enough that they won’t overthrow their government themselves. Zimbabwe, anybody? How do you think Robert Mugabe is a US dollar multi-billionaire in a country with 6000% inflation? And why do you think that a population with 85% unemployment hasn’t overthrown him yet?

Easy: “The people are always only three meals from revolution” – that’s true in any society in the world. So, what I want to know is this: Why are we providing the three meals which prevent the people of oppressed third-world regimes from deposing rulers who are morally abhorrent and who we don’t want in power anyway?

My take on the Indonesian cyclone is easy: Allow the UN to station troops in Indonesia, arrange for democratic elections, free ALL of their political prisoners, and THEN we’ll help to feed the people. Quid pro quo.

Only it never works like that does it? “Why should the people suffer because of their rulers?” – because those same rulers bleed Western aid dry at the same time as making us pariahs and scapegoats for all of their countries’ ills, and the bottom line is that the people are the only people who can change it. We need to remove their motivation for tolerating the status-quo.

Having finally admitted to myself that spending 95% of my time sitting behind a desk is doing nothing but destroying my soul and growing my arse, I have decided to change careers. So far in my working life I have been trained as an investigator, an interviewer, an enforcer, an administrator, a bookkeeper, a risk analyst, a financial analyst and a tax expert. The truth is that I hate all of it. It bores me to the point where I am genuinely worried about losing intellectual capacity through lack of use. I’m not challenged. My employer does not value me. I’m stuck in a deep rut of soullessness and tedium.

What really scares me about this is: I’ve probably just described how 90% of office workers in the UK feel! What does that tell us about ourselves as a society? Personally, I think we’re screwed!

So… What to do? The answer for me is (hopefully) nursing. I’ve applied to go back to university and do a degree in nursing. I’ve also applied for a severance package from my employer to help fund it.

I’m surprised at how normal it feels to have made this decision and taken these actions. I’m not frightened or worried that I might be making a mistake – I’m just relieved to be finally moving forwards with my professional life and giving myself hope for a way out of the rut. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to do this, but now it’s in progress, I feel good about it. There’s no fear left, only anticipation.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: Don’t be afraid to admit that you’re not happy with your life, and don’t be afraid to change it!

I think that, before I launch into a tirade, I should give you a little background.

 I’m a country boy. The pace of life where I grew up has two sppeds, and they’re both really slow. It’s okay. Everybody knows everybody (which is cool), and everybody knows everybody’s business (which is less cool).

 Everybody also loves to drive rally cars (which is very cool), and just generally enjoys driving and all things motoring related. And I loved to drive. I mean, I LOVED to drive.

 Anyway, about a year and a half ago, I moved to a city. It turns out, city driving is not like country driving. There are no rules. There are no manners. There is no thought. It is not nice.

Today: Approaching a box junction on a four-lane road. Left lane for turning left, right lane for straight on. And, in the case of the jackass in front of me yattering on his mobile phone, BOTH lanes, at 5 miles per hour.

Now, being a reasonable sort of chap, I tooted my horn in as friendly away as I could. So. He slowed down. He looked back out of his window. He flipped me the bird. He yelled a torrent of abuse at me.

This is quite common in city driving: Ass-hat does something wrong to you, ass-hat blames you and road-rages you.

Oh, by the way, I’m a qualified driving instructor. My opinion of what’s wrong with people’s driving is invariably correct.

Anyway. The lesson here is this: When you road rage somebody, better pray it’s not a country boy. There are those of us who, purely hypothetically, might follow you home and belt seven shades of shit out of you for being such a twat. You road rage people because you think you are safe and there

I felt that I wanted to write a new post, since it’s been so long since I posted, but then I thought some more and realised that I actually don’t have much to say… What the hell; a blog is essentialy a device for pandering to the bloggers ego (i.e. assuming that anybody wants to read what I’m writing = an ego-trip), so I must assume that my own (often strange, usually skewed) ramblings are at least as important as everybody else’s. In fact, since this blog exists solely for my own amusement (anybody else’s emmotional responses to my blog are an unavoidable by-product, a bit like what Americans call ”Colateral Issues”, which means “we tried to bomb a tank but instead blew the fuck out of a school”), I must assume that (my world-view being dominated by the fact that it is MY world-view) my blog is way more important than anybody elses.

 I do, however, believe strongly in freedom of expression, equality, brotherhood and freedom, and all of that jazz, so if anybody reading this would like to use my own breath-takingly arrogant reasoning to justify their own blog: Feel free.

 In fact, here’s a nice stat for you: I start my new job next month. 6500 people began the selection process for it, 50 of us were appointed. That means that I’m in the top 0.796% of shit-hot employee goodness.

So I’m allowed to be breath-takingly arrogant, and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. 

You may now bow down and pay tribute. Thank you.

<rant>

I’m going to expand upon my post below with a diatribe about George Bush, Republicans, and rich, stupid, white, Christian Americans. If you don’t like it, or if you think you’re likely to take offence at such a diatribe, then a) go away, and b) don’t bother leaving a comment.

The “intellectual elite” you rabidly rant about is ME, and that means that I’m better than you, smarter than you, and will destroy your stupid Nazi ass in an argument.

Anyway. For many years, America’s government has pretty much owned the media, to the point where, for many outsiders like myself who have sattelite TV, watching American news programmes on CNN, Fox News and the like, has become very similar to watching Nazi propoganda from WW2. By the way, slight diversion here: America you did not win WW2, Russia did, check your history reading.

But I digress. For many years, the American right-wing media has sought to demonize African-American (in Britain we still say “black”, but then in Britain, it really doesn’t matter what colour you are) population, turning them into a source of fear and mistrust for the rest of American society.

Now American media/business/government (if you still think that those things are distinct from one another, LEAVE you fucking moron, they’re not) are trying to do something similar on a Global scale: Make the community scared of the man with the different skin colour/religion. This time he’s Muslim, and he’s an Arab. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that America owes a hell of a lot of money to Arab states which it would like a decent excuse not to pay back, or the fact that most Arab states have a goodly supply of oil with which America can keep polluting our planet and killing us for profit…

This time, however, something has gone wrong for America, and it is this: the rest of the world has not been force-fed your bovine, Nazi media for generations. We are NOT afraid of Muslims, in fact we don’t have anything against them at all. There’s a few who will insist on violence, but hey, there’s members of every religion who do that. Except Buddhism, they just get really good at fighting, then don’t fight.

</rant>

Let’s have a poll: Does anybody think I’m wrong when I say that when fiery nuclear death engulfs us all, a) it will be really easy to trace the blame back to America, and b) CNN, ABC and FOX will blame Arab or Arabs unknown?

Afternoon all, welcome back if you’ve been here before, and just welcome if you haven’t.

Today I’m going to produce a list of words to get myself noticed on the Google search engine, in a purely self-interested attempt to increase the traffic through my blog as an experiment to see how many people find my page through searching for those words on Google. And here’s the list:

Porn teen creampie vaginal anal internal dildo scat milf double tits breasts knockers pussy.

 This should be interesting if nothing else