blog 167 Donald Trump / Katy Hopkins SCIENTIFICALLY explained.

No it’s not pretty and it is disturbing but there's an explanation and that always helps. The rabid Donald Trump, noxious Katie Hopkins and even pub fascist Nigel Farage can be explained by science. Hooray.

I am so relieved to be able to bring this to you in my last 2015 blog.

Last week I heard an interview with ‘scientist’ Alex Travis. He is part of a ground breaking (let’s hope Nobel Prize winning) team. For decades these science philanthropists have tried and tried and tried – bless 'em - to perfect IVF in dogs. I know – you’re thinking what I thought at the time - THANK HEAVENS. Because what the world is desperate for right now is IVF puppies. The globe needs IVF puppies like we needed Viagra and Botox (See blog 97 Viagra – Yes. Effective Cure for Malaria – No!) Well done Science.

But consider this -

What happened over the decades to those failed, malformed, IVF experimental, abnormal, botched, freak doggy embryos?

Yes - Trump – Hopkins – Farage...

During the interview the BBC interviewer laboriously (labradoriously?) fed Travis the usual line that this would – wouldn’t it – help us find cures for human problems – wouldn’t it. To which Mr doggy scientist stumbled an unconvincing yes. This was odd as he’d spent the rest of the time saying how doggy IVF had taken so long to perfect because it was so entirely different to the biological process in humans.

But at least now we know. And if anyone does come across Donald or Katie or Nigel don’t get too close and do call the dog wardens.

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I hope you enjoy the festive season. I'll be having a winter snooze being very tired. (I blame writing a weekly satirical blog – I think my irony is low...)

See you in January.

blog 166. OUT is the new IN

Weheeey. Get me. Ms Brown girl OUTSIDE the Ring - I’m so OUT I’m IN...

I read last week – on the internet so it must be true – that mixed race is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the UK. Mixed Race is cool.

As usual, commercial needs have trumped an institutional grasp of this situation. You can barely look at a billboard in the UK without seeing a pretty mixed race kid advertising cute clothes or whatever. And I am old enough to recall a time when if my parents saw a black face on the TV my brother and sister and I would be called into the living room to witness this strange phenomena. (See Stephen K Amos for really funny sketches on this point)

Ok so my parents were many decades ahead of their time and I am too old to give a fig about ‘cool’ now but it’s still nice to know.

In the 80s debates raged about terminology. For example did you refer to Asians separately from the ‘Black’ umbrella? In the US 'people of colour' was an acceptable term whereas 'coloured' was viewed as disparaging in the UK. It was a time when racism flourished and the politically conscious-raised simply regarded non-white as black. 

I recall a couple of years ago at a Meet the Promoters event in Newcastle trying to point out to the audience of venue key holders that many people - even in the NE - now looked like me. The entirely white, predominantly male barriers to the arts venues in the NE looked at me blankly. But it’s true. And what I love about it is that mixed race children seem to be the ultimate response to racism. Despite the endemic prejudice of our immediate history, black and white people have quietly got on with falling in love with each other.

It then occurred to me that other groups that think of themselves as outside the mainstream are possibly also more IN than they realised.

Gay men have always used the term ‘out’ when referring to admitting their sexuality. There is another implicit ‘out’ there as well. Some must realise that white hetro able bodied middle/upper class yada yada yada is the most IN club there is. So in coming out they are not only revealing their gayness they are stepping away from the benefits of that exclusive club. And it’s an odd one anyway because some in the gay community or the hetro have felt bound to ‘out’ gays who didn’t want to be out. The guy who employs my youngest daughter has a mug which says “no one knows I’m gay” which sums up the whole thing neatly.

Disabled people, like black people, don’t get to choose if the world knows about their ‘outness’ or not. And frankly neither do working people who bear the yolk of the world’s grind. And ironically some of the groups who clearly do not in any sense make up a minority in the way we mean when we discuss these bizarre human constructs – are not in a minority. Women. The afore-mentioned working people. If we could just tweak our perceptions enough we’d realise that OUT is the new IN. Minorities are the majority.  If you add up all the people outside the exclusive club of white male hetro able bodied born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-your-gob people who think the world owes them - they are so few and we are so many.

We, out here, make up the biggest club. We are so unbelievably out there – here - that we are totally in there (!). When you start to include other ‘outs’ the red heads, the ones with regional accents, the people who don’t conform to physical ideas of what is body-acceptable we are almost everyone.

In fact I think there are only about 3 people left in the IN club. Three shrivelled up apparently hetro able-bodied white guys who live in cities, have money and power, went to the right schools, married their cousins somewhere along the family tree were born with a sense of their own indispensability.

The only thing is they are behaving like they own the world and we are letting them get away with it.

Ok

So we need to have a think about that one.

Meanwhile – welcome to the new not-very-exclusive in club of not being in the club

165. Syrian air strikes & living in the Penissic era.

We’ve had the Jurassic epoch, the Triassic, Cretaceous and so on. This is most definitely the Penissic age.

It’s impossible to think of a time in history when avaricious, aggressive maleness made such a total mess of everything. They may have had the will eons ago but not the tools... so to speak.

The latest call for more bombing of Syria is so mindless, as to be explicable only as an excess of testosterone induced lunacy. There are a minimum of two very good reasons why we must not join in the Syrian bombing party -

a.     We know it won’t work (it never has before)

b.     We don’t really know why we would be doing it other than its something to do and we get to kill randomly with phallic shaped objects.

Oh and there is the issue of not hitting the correct targets – remember 40 dead working for or in the care of MSF recently? Even military types reckon bombing kills on average 80% innocent people.

Oh and there is also the horrible disgusting utterly revolting issue of rank hypocrisy. We would be bombing (trying to bomb) a group who have partly grown in viciousness and numbers thanks to previous disastrous Western interventions and who are occasionally funded by vicious regimes we still SUPPORT  and do arms deals with (cough – Saudi Arabia)

We’re overdue the Dawn of the Rise of the Fanny. Why is it not happening? We know that fiscal corruption is less likely when at least a significant minority of women are in strong positions in large companies – we need the same in international diplomacy.

Sadly, on the African continent, too many women are oppressed by poverty, lack of educational opportunities, FGM etc. In many places in the East women are hampered by a fascist interpretation of Islam. And everywhere they are stamped on by the boot of bigotry entrenched in other major religions. In the affluent West women are oppressed by – well frankly – women’s magazines, addictions to soap operas, bingo, consumerism and other embarrassing shit. 

So the testosterone fuelled dicks of the world are in the ascendancy. The global phallus just keeps rising and rising.

Interestingly if you take a good look at some of the world’s leaders as they wet dream of bombing Syria, you don’t have to readjust their features much to see the dick in them. Wherever there is mindless destruction there’s a nob. Assad is literally a walking penis with a bit of hair on top though someone did misplace the ears – they’re too low and just don’t look real.

Cameron with his tape worm Eton mouth is just a dick with the opening on the side instead of the end. Putin – say no more. No need to mention the Liberal has-been (never was) Clegg whose wife was so keen to tell us about his cojones. Lest I make you puke I won’t refer to Mrs Blair’s insistence on allusion to his bed prowess.

Months and months ago (even before I accurately predicted the UK election results) I fantasised about a world where the women politicians – Merkel, Clinton, that Welsh bird and Sturgeon, would get it on politically and start to deal with the boys. Sadly that dream came to nought. Merkel is valiantly battling, on her own, against a veritable tsunami of testosterone.

We don’t know what if anything is going to happen with Hilary in the US, The Labour Harmon – who although lacking in many ways maybe could have been something with the support of the other blonde bobs - is now politically defunct. But I still wish the women we have could form some sort of rearguard action. Couldn’t they be a 5^th column to stand up to the puerile peni?

My good friend Oonah referred to the world as being run by DICK. She does not mean someone of that name and she does not mean ‘a dick’ she means – unless I am mistaken – the whole notion of masculinity gone very very badly wrong. Out of control.

We are living in the Penissic era. And, like the Cretaceous, ultimately it will be a flop.

Last week I referred to the unholy alliance of two drug giants. On the one hand the American company that draws massive profits from the sale of Viagra. On the other the Irish pharmaceutical that makes lots of dosh from paralysing women’s faces with Botox. It is a joining of monsters for tax avoidance. This week I realise that it’s not just horrible. It is not just a grim judgement on our priorities. It is in fact a painfully accurate microcosm of the state of the world. 

The penises are drugged up on machismo and out of control. The fannies are paralysed and the goal is money, money, money, power, power, power.  Never mind the ongoing humanitarian disaster.

God (I hope she’s listening) help us.