Blog 124. I have T.I.T.s (Television Induced Tension Syndrome)

Regular bleaders know I suffer from P.A.N.T.S – see blog 53 - but after this half term I realise I also have TITs - Television Induced Tension Syndrome. It’s no laughing matter – it’s debilitating, scary and left me at one point feeling panic stricken and hopeless.

I often find myself mesmerised by the thing when I am in a house where TV rules, but this half term, at mum’s, I submerged myself in an ocean of TV over a 48 hour period and came up for air feeling vaguely brain damaged.

The root if the syndrome is – my own fault – a decade and a half without TV so that now when I am in the presence of the beast I have no defenses. I have lost my tolerance, my immunity. I have friends who manage to filter out the 89% rubbish and find their way to the rest – but they are skilled beyond my abilities.

And TV has changed radically in the last 15 years. Any chance of regaining resilience is thin. Where the prisoners at Abu Graib were reduced to pitiable, babbling wrecks with water-boarding, sleep deprivation and threats of death – the same results could be achieved with me in a locked room with a large TV showing – for example – only soap operas.

What has happened to soap operas? I recall watching Coronation Street with my folks back in the day – and the most exciting incident would be Ena Sharples changing her hair net. Now they’re packed with implausible, fantastical melodrama, underpinned by mind-numbing tedium and dull stupidity. That’s quite a balancing act.

Films are unwatchable unless you enjoy 3 minute interruptions every 5 minutes to view gormless women smiling at their cleaning products or gasping and groaning about their hair conditioner. Are they experiencing some sort of far-away ecstasy or do they have haemorrhoids?

I watched the iconic Come Dine with Me and thought that, for light entertainment, in the reality genre, I could cope with that. But then you watch two or three or four and the screen begins to swim before your eyes as the same people types in slightly different hair/make-up/clothes – all slightly delusional – slightly socially inadequate are paraded in front of camera to make fools of themselves. Do cameramen have to take special drugs?

Anything on Kid’s TV seems to be psychedelic and hyperactive and with plots that are un-childlike.

I clicked around until I found an infamous piece called Geordie Shore. I viewed 10 minutes of something so gross – so at-the-dog’s-arse-end of what humanity reveals of itself - as to be actually depressing.

And yet – when people find out I don’t have TV and haven’t for around 15 years – (and am not one of those people who substituted watching on-line for watching ‘the box’) they behave like I am the one who has a screw loose.

“What do you do” tends to be the main reaction. Like I must be frantically trying to fill the 16 hours a day that cannot be officially designated to bed-time.

Followed closely by “What do you talk about?”

I realise that in a society where there are magazines dedicated to the ridiculous on-screen lives of the soap-opera characters I may be a wee bit out of step. Every has-been comic now has his own chat show and/or game show slot, every ‘news’ presenter is a personality, the private lives of the cardboard cut-out breakfast show casts have become hot topics, food is entertainment not nourishment and the more ghastly bits of your personal life you expose or the more private the flesh - the more likely you are to be ‘trending’ in any 24 hours of the nation’s attention span.

What do I talk about?

Not bake-offs, not Davina’s waistline, not who is the most debased character in Geordie Shore...

Hmmm – what’s left?

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Check out the BGOTR 2-minute Soap Opera

http://youtu.be/aK8soOeNkqQ

As you can see – I didn’t waste half term!!!!

Blog 123. When I am Queen by Kate...

... and Camilla.

Following the hugely warm response last week to the idea of me being queen (I’m blushing) I felt I should blog-flog that particular horse and - like that daft cow Mayers – (too much farm analogy?) do a book – or at least a post on royal rich people I don’t know.

I considered the more proper title ‘When One is Queen’ but there are two of em lined up. ‘When Two is Queen’ didn't work. Then of course Cam aint gonna be queen anyhoo . She’ll be HRH/something/consort. So that idea went to hell.

So I will stick with when I am queen in my brown girl blog world and perhaps call the piece

My family and other animals (who will live off the state but still look down on other people) - or something catchy like that.

So here let me build on the promises I made last week with my queeny powers (like superwoman powers but without the uncomfortable knickers.)

To the people of Britain and BG world…

For all those who read 50 Shades of Grey – I will have a word with God and see if I can get those hours back for you. If you went to the film of your own volition you’re beyond help.

I dealt with tax dodgers last week – but for those equally heinous beings who let their dogs crap all over the places where I walk and only pick up the turds when they think others are looking, I will write a particularly long queen’s speech. Offenders will be forced to listen to it in a limbo land where it is always Christmas day – they are always waiting for dinner and they can’t have it until the speech ends – which it never does.

Skankers who swear on the bus, women who get drunk on trains and force everyone to listen to their weekend’s sexual exploits and businessmen who STILL think its fine to do that mobile phone I’m-so-important posturing in train carriages where you can’t escape, will all be escorted off said public transport by patrolling Dementors.

Men and women who wear so much perfume/aftershave that you can feel your lungs and eyeballs dissolving within 6 feet of them will not be allowed to board public transport (I’d rather sit next to one of those stinky old men who haven’t washed since 1993)

Harriet Harmon will be forgiven for coming up with the utterly ridiculous, condescending, patronising, pathetic, demeaning, embarrassing idea of a pink van to attract women voters – because prior to that she’s been ok.

I shall be forgiven by my teenaged daughter for the countless times I have ‘ruined’ her life. I do now know all the names of the members of 5SOS.

On my subjects birthdays (and whenever they feel fed up) they will be able to stay in bed, eat very messy almond croissants and watch old episodes of Columbo. Ditto when they're ill / tired / it’s raining or they feel like it...

For me - when I am ravenously hungry my gran will be flown by private magic eco-jet to Edinburgh airport having prepared roti and curry for my tea. I will eat this in vast quantities slurping and burping and dribbling and laughing like Henry VIII – but without the gratuitous bloodshed and without Hillary Mantel in the background going on about how they 'wouldn't have eaten that in Tudor times'. (How does she know?)

And we wouldn't need food-banks because I would set up an institution to see that resources were distributed fairly. I would call this thing – oh I don’t know – PARLIAMENT.

And we’ll all live happily ever after.

When I am queen.

Blog 122. Britain’s First Mixed-Race Monarch - Queen Amanda I

Following the recent hoo-hah over an unofficial biography of HRH Charley by some mad stalking bint called Mayers – the heir apparent has apparently let it be known that he ‘knows how to be king’.

Well – I’m pretty sure I’d know how to be queen – should the situation ever arise. I was, after all, on the front page of my local paper when I was 8 because I sent a letter to (and received a reply from) QEII.

Not only could I let all my family be supported by the state and live in a big house for free with people to bow to me and wipe my bum - my birthday is even on the same day as the queen’s. So - er – zeitgeist I think. Destiny. Fate. Providence.

I would do more than just be queen bee. Once in situ I would restore a proper monarchy; do away with this ridiculous celebrity-magazine nonsense. It's cruel to continue with a situation where they get all our dosh but are just cardboard cut-outs in daft clothes behaving like they were pickled in the 1950s.

And I would rule better than anyone.

Recently I heard Nickers Clegg pitching his election promises. After I stopped laughing I made a list of my new better-than-everyone-else queenly way of ruling Britain - 

I would – like Nickers – promise to cut less than the tories and spend less than labour.

I would be less faux-fascist than Farage.

I’d be more Mother earth than the greens.

I’d be more leprechaun than Fine Gael.

I’d be more haggis than the SNP.

I’d enforce Magna Carta so that we no longer have a situation where people on benefits are hounded to death for small debts they can’t pay while rich people get a polite request from HMRC for taxes they deliberately side-stepped.

I’d be more chocolate than Charlie.

More tennis than Serena and Venus.

More enigmatic than the enigma code.

Thinner than a model’s personality.

Fatter than a tax-avoiders off-shore bank account.

Softer than ‘hands that do dishes’.

Harder than an action hero’s chin stubble.

In the same way Tories argue that Scottish politicians shouldn't be allowed to vote on ‘English’ issues - I’d rule that you couldn't vote on anything to do with the NHS if you have private health insurance. Ditto education.

Tax avoiders would be rounded up and sent off to live (with all the other selfish spiteful people) on an atoll made entirely of money, adrift in shark-infested waters.

I’d be truer than Atticus Finch.

Faster than Usaine Bolt.

Calmer than Angela Merkel.

Braver than Frodo (and I would do even better death scenes than Sean Bean).

Sadly because my family is very mixed I can’t promise the in-breeding thing BUT...

I’d make sure everyone got at least one hug a day and everything including the internet and Stephen Fry’s gob would be closed on a Sunday.

I’d be the bestist queen ever ever ever.

God save me

Blog 121. Apple’s iProfit Success Secret is...

...Consumers are MORONS.

One has to assume this to be Apple’s working model.

I’m not sure how to spin this week’s blog out to the usual 700 – 1000 words because there is little else to say.

Apple’s £11.8bn iWatering first quarter profit is based on people buying shiny new shit because of a. sophisticated advertising b. the cynical, contemptuous short-term obsolescence built in to the last bit of iTat.

iConsumers are MORONS – is maybe a company mantra?

Perhaps if you’re one of the iPurchasers who bought new because the glossy thingy Apple sold you 6 months ago no longer does-iT, just repeat,

‘Consumers are morons’

until you get to about 800 words...

Cheers.

N.B in case of confusion

A customer is someone who buys what they need/want

A consumer is someone who shops for what is advertised regardless of price-benefit ratio.

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If instead of reading my rantings you'd like some comedy poetry, I'm doing the feature at The Blind Poet on Monday 9th Feb - proceeds going to Crisis.

Blog 120. From my Demon Toaster to Soylent Green...

...via TTIP?

‘Less is More’ was a consciously obscure minimalist fashion term. Now it beautifully epitomises life at the arse-end of Capitalism. Rampant Capitalism – that rabid dog that Thatcher took off the leash in the 80s savages us today.

I’ll get to the demonic toaster in a minute.

I was listening to a Radio 4 ‘commentator’ (clearly from the it’s-true-because-I-just-thought-it school of economics with a degree in ignoring-the-history-of-capitalism) bleating on about how we shouldn't obsess about inequality. Eye-watering wealth isn't a problem and – he opined – does not affect whether other people are poor. Really? He cited China as his shiny example with its burgeoning free enterprise and a growing middle class – everyone getting better off.

YES you idiot. That is how it starts. Ref; The Industrial Revolution and other stuff you could google. People trickle then pour in from the countryside to the new towns. They get exploited. Money is made. People organise themselves. There’s room for lots of snouts in the trough. Sometimes labour becomes in short supply so the workers have leverage to get better conditions and pay. Eventually gargantuan profits lessen and the only way for the top-feeders to maintain their profit margins is to cut wages and conditions (markets don’t just keep expanding) yada yada yada. Only these days the cycle goes faster.

Now Oxfam tell us we've reached a point where 1% of the richest people on the planet own half of the world’s wealth. 1% owns half and 99% share the other half.

1% of moneyed people owning half of all global wealth IS IS IS the reason folk at the at the bottom are starving/dying of curable disease/living miserable lives. It is a simple equation. Anyone who tells you it’s significantly more complicated than that needs a semester at the University of the Bloody Obvious (check out blog 77).

So – my new toaster.

I am not Mrs Gadget as regular bleaders know. For me a toaster is pretty modern and decadent. I was so pleased with the purchase that I read the instructions AND the warranty. It turns out that my warranty is void if my toaster gets “STRUCK BY LIGHTENING”. I kid you not.

At first I thought I’d bought a demon toaster. Was the manufacturer worried it would be targeted by an avenging deity? I had better not – I thought – eat toast from this toaster or I may become the handmaiden of Beelzebub. Then I recalled moving into my flat back in May. A cooker was delivered with no handle for the grill pan. I rang the shop and a young man informed me – with no trace of irony I could detect – that for health and safety reasons the manufacturers no longer supply a grill pan handle... When I asked if he thought it was safer for me to grab a hot grill pan without a handle he further informed me that I could buy a handle separately!!!!!!!!!

These silly examples are here purely to show how – in the west where you can’t rip people off blatantly because of the veneer of fairness - those guarding their profits have to do it subtly. But they are doing it. And everywhere less is presented as more whether its goods or service. My toaster warranty is worded to ensure that when the bloody thing breaks down after three months there will be myriad reasons why I cannot get a replacement – including satanic possession.

It’s why portions are smaller and you find strange things like non-specific horse flesh in your ‘beef’ burgers but not, as yet, Soylent Green.

On a grander scale tis why legal aid was cut and why things like the bedroom tax were introduced – so the poor get less. On the flip side the council tax and tax havens are there so the very rich contribute less.

One of the most insulting statements regularly used by the very rich is that people don’t realise how hard they work. The insinuation is that if the rest of the population weren't a bunch of lay-abouts they too would be rich. What rot. How hard do nurses work in a life and death setting? If anyone knows the disparity between the earnings of an NHS nurse on a 12 hour night shift and an even moderately successful hedge fund manager, do let me know. And just how hard do you have to work to inherit wealth - possibly made as the result of – oh I don’t know – diverting the natural resources of a country to your own benefit?

The fact is that those at the bottom of the pile have been hammered since the bankers wrecked the economy. As Capitalism runs out of steam the rich spend their efforts and considerable resources maintaining wealth and position. What is exhausting and insulting – like my toaster warranty – is all the ridiculous twaddle we are fed which aims to trick us into thinking it aint so.

Your mind may be brimming with books and films about nightmare dystopian futures where The 1% are using the rest as economic/service fodder. I have to say, the patterns emerging, that seem inevitably to lead there, are clearer than ever.

If you've not yet picked up on the potential giant backward step for mankind that is TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) I suggest you look it up.

If TTIP continues its secret un-monitored progress, are we not ever further along that road to capitalist hell? With profit interest trumping elected governments and protections against the worst abuses of trade wiped away, who knows? Like Charlton Heston’s Soylent Green (the 1973 sci-fi film set just 7 years from now) we may become actual as well as metaphorical fodder, cannibalised in order to preserve Paradise for the 1%.

Remember “Soylent Green is People”.

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No archive recommendations this week but there is a new cartoon if you click on the orange Amanda Baker in the right hand column.

Blog 119. Will tran-ban drive Russian motorists crazy?

(NB: I resisted the urge to call this blog ‘From Russia Without Love’!)

Where to begin with a response to the latest state-sponsored idiocy from Putin re banning trans-people from driving? The answer - my poetry pal Andi - who ably targets Putin with prose and poetry in this Brown Girl guest blog.

ANDI MOTHER HEN

Andi is 1.88m of gender conundrum who stumbled out of 70’s Rock ‘n’ Roll fog into the heady world of Performance Poetry around a decade ago. Swapping the drum stool for tour management in 1985, Andi took on the role of Tour and Events manager whilst writing about life’s twists and turns. Step-parent to six kids over thirty years and Mother Hen to hundreds of touring performers, Andi now performs her poetry regularly and headed the Acoustic Night Bristol group hosting Open Mics at Halo Café Bar for the last eight years. She loves Bristol!

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HEAVEN KNOWS I’M SLIGHTLY MISERABLE NOW

So, long before self-awareness took root, I remember being fascinated by colour, music and cars. The gender conundrum became apparent a couple of years later. Re-packaging, as I now describe my major life decision, came 45 years later by which time I had run the full gamut of role playing.  Yet those three stimulants have driven me all my life, bringing me undreamt-of experiences sublime, insane, physically painful and totally bliss-making.

As years passed observing misogyny and prejudice from inside my invisible string vest bubble, playing a masculine charade gave me time to pursue myriad interests. I held down scores of jobs that would be impossible as a Trans-lesbian in today’s Russia.

As a transwoman I would be labelled at best a misfit, sexually perverse and mentally deranged; now unfit even to manage a vehicle it seems. If I were ‘lucky’ they might still accept me cleaning the arse-cracks of my quadraplægic clients but how would I get to them if I couldn't drive?

What will be the futures of young transgendered Russians I wonder?

No chance their boys would resolutely grip the cymbal stands of their step-parent’s drum kit on a drop-side truck in a city parade. No chance that they would get heard and treated as a sentient being capable of love, responsibility for the health of others and a sense of community.

They will never drive through all four seasons from Bergen to Trondheim in one day, following two pert-buttocked, lycra clad road-skiers at 50kmph downhill through the mid Norway valleys. They will never get to rub noses and breathe in the grassy breath of an inquisitive, beautiful cow in a sleeping village or see NATO armed forces playing war games as I did when we drove back to Oslo.

Will they ever learn that Sat-Nav is a waste of time, try reading a map, write a prose poem about a man falling in love with the female voice on it and be able to perform it in public without derision?

I wonder how Putin would react if Charlie Hebdo front-paged him as a gay icon? If they haven’t already (other satirists have).

Of course Russia is not alone in this insidious action, sadly misinterpreting transpeople as deviants. But it has not always been so.

Wyanketcha, Berdache, the Native Americans called us – Two Spirit People – respected and revered as something special, often being the members of the tribe who knew about herbs, natural medicines and keeping the history and social balance of the tribe.

Clean up your act Vlad.

Why not try nailing the corrupt in your government, round up the child abusers, extremists and poisonous alcohol producers?

I guess there will now be a period of discreet social cleansing which in time will leak out on social media as surely as the incursions into Crimea and Ukraine,  fuelling more impotent outrage from some in more allegedly liberated countries.

For the time being I look on with underlying apprehension, sadness yet gratitude that I live here, for the time being cosseted by State pension,  wrinklies bus and railcard and a roof over my head.

GIVE THANKS

For the cumulative guidance, love and support that has taken me from wretched being to one-ness.

GIVE THANKS

For it came, not from one God, one source, but from each and every person I walked, talked and broke bread with.

GIVE THANKS

For those with whom I have shared the raw edges of pain, tears and heart-ache.

GIVE THANKS

For those who dedicate their lives to saving and improving the mortal lives of others. We all know who you are. Respect

GIVE THANKS

For those with whom I have worked and travelled, from all over the world. The diversity affirming our similarities and at the same time our individualities. Taken beyond traditional religions, the bond of humanity working together, catalysed by words, music and dance, transcends boundaries and bureaucracies extending knowledge and awareness.

We may march to different drummers

But we all need to feel the beat

GIVE THANKS

BUT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.

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Thanks Andi

Blog 118. Sexy New Politics

Is the SNP giving us Sexy New Politics?

I know the party itself aint new but their position, policy approach, possibilities and appeal seem fresh and sparkly like a washing-up liquid advertisement minus the portrayal of gormless women and ridiculously clinical houses and perfect teeth and children – (sorry I got diverted there).

Much as I planned not to be sucked into the full 7^th May melee in January, its’ irresistible. And the SNP with its 70,000 new members since the referendum is looking funky.

Having only become a Scottish resident last year, I raced to get registered to vote YES in September so I could support the only party that was talking passionately and sincerely about striving for a more egalitarian society - I’m still pretty giddy.

It’s like we were murdering Claire de la lune on cracked plastic recorders for the hundredth time in music class and the new 14 yr old came in and played Nirvana on her semi-acoustic guitar. Everyone’s standing round with mouths open.

It seems the other parties too have settled into human-like stereotypes we recognise.

If the SNP is the cool kid on the block, Labour is the deaf arthritic uncle who can’t keep up.

UKIP is the creepy neighbour leering over the fence who your mum warns you to avoid.

Tories are the skeletal old aunt who lives for the bridge club, smells of decay and expensive perfume, feeds the dog on fillet mignon but won’t help her struggling nephew.

The Greens are the prophets screaming in the wilderness.

The Liberals are... Who cares!

I voted YES – not because I am a nationalist but because I yearn for a more equal society like someone lost in the desert craves a cool sip of water. It’s thrilling that the SNP held it together so well after the referendum results.

Here’s to them – a little acrostic appeal.

Scupper the Negative Posturing

Of 

Stale Nepotistic Plutocrats

Let’s

Strike-out for New Possibilities

Fulfil

Scottish National Potential

Stop Nuclear Psychosis

Spread Nurturing Policies

Stuff Neanderthal Politicians

Stand up for No Prejudice

Commit to

Sustaining the National Panorama

(and a special one for me)

Support Nascent Poets J

Start Now Please

This week’s recommended blog is also one concerning the craving for equality -

Blog10. My One Night Stand with the Ghost of Bill Farrell