Gertsamtkunstwerk

What the God-botherers said

Neatly summarised by Corsair the Rational Pirate

(Why don't I still have a category for Religion? Because I'm struggling to come up with the right wording: Nutcases? Evil? Or Just Plain Wrong?

The attention switches...

The barbecue at the back seems to have died down after twelve hours, and now it's Portugal next door taking over from Colombia at the back.

He's kicked off again. Drunk and abusive and loud and violent. If I can be sure he's hitting her and not just slamming doors, breaking furniture, and throwing things, I'll call the police.

Mind you, I think she can look after herself. She was the first woman gunner in the Portuguese army.

And it makes a change from the horrendous caterwauling he does whilst accompanying himself on three chord guitar or synth played with all the skill of a Grade 3 pianist. He's a professional musician, apparently. Although another neighbour informed me they're both taking courses at the moment.

"Oh, is he learning to sing?" I enquired sweetly. My other neighbour couldn't move for laughing.

It's never a dull moment round here, I can tell you...

Assault at the Albert Hall

I was in the queue for the Ladies last night, after the concert had finished (so, no time pressure when the announcements tell you creatively that this evening's performance is due to strat in two minutes...).

There was a woman behind me who, when we were out in the corridor pushed into me. I didn't analyse the situation carefully, choosing to treat it as accidental, even though, really, I knew she was jostling for some sort of pointless advantage.

When it came for my turn to stand in the doorway, I stood back, leaving a gap between me and the woman in front. This was because one of the double-doors was locked shut I had tried, and failed, to open it two hours earlier, to the benign amusement of those waiting to go in), and people were struggling to get out past someone stood in the doorway. It made absolutely no sense to me to impede people trying to get out. But the woman behind me tried to shove me forward to force me to arse-fuck the woman in front of me. I didn't say anything, because just as her shoving me wouldn't get her to her piss any more quickly, me challenging her wouldn't relieve me sooner.

The woman in front of me got a cubicle, so it was almost my turn, and my responsibility to keep an eye for a cubicle becoming available. Just as I saw the door of the furthest-but-one cubicle open I also spotted a slightly arthritic woman trying to walk past a rather corpulent woman at the handbasin. I quickly considered my two options - wait a moment, or elbow arthritic woman out of the way, bum-shoving the fat lady into the handbasin. I chose to wait, just a moment. I was shoved in the back and propelled down the way, almost colliding into Arthritic Woman. When I reached the vacating cubicle, I had to wait until the previous occupier had moved out of the way. Well, I suppose I could have impeded her exit. Someone did that to me once. I figured that my need to wash my hands was less than her need to pee. She soon moved.

After I had peed, I went to wash my hands and spotted my assailant come out of her cubicle. So I went over to her and asked whether it was common sense she lacked, or manners, or both. Aggressively, she didn't know what I was saying, so I coolly explained how she had pushed me three times whilst queueing. She denied it - she was standing behind me. I repeated the facts (as I saw them), emphasising why I had left the gap, and why I had waited for the slightly infirm woman to come out. Again she denied it..."It was my bumbag!" she exclaimed triumphantly, finishing with you "I was just stood behind you...you COW. This conversation spilled out onto the corridor outside, I repeated that she had assaulted me, she repeated that it was her bumbag (as Jimmy remarked afterwards, if one of us had tried to touch the bumbag, suddenly, it would have been her's and, rightly, we would have been arrested for theft. But the fact that it's trying to fuck me up the arse somehow makes it a free agent). She was lying, anyway, in my heels she was actually shorter than me, (and twice as wide) and there is no way that her bumbag could have thumped me in the middle of the back.

I was really angry, but in a parallel way I was also sort of amused, because she kept repeating "I didn't assault you, it was my bumbag." She walked off in a huff, and some old fart waiting outside, presumably for his wife, was going "Sssh sssh," so I walked up and said "No, I won't ssshh. I was assaulted three times by that woman, and I don't come to the Albert Hall to be assaulted by some fucking American lowlife lying bloody scum who then calls me a cow." He didn't know what had happened - I'm sure if it was his wife who was assaulted, or whom I was expected to trample over to get the cubicle, he might have taken a slightly different view. I know a lot of people would just ignore it, not wanting a fuss, or fearing an even more serious assault from an obvious bully. And just because I suffered no injury nor lasting soreness doesn't make it not an assault.

Jimmy was waiting outside nearly fifteen minutes for me. As he stood there, another pair of Americans came out; the woman exclaiming loudly "Gee, gotta get a cab, in this city at this time...". Dozens of people turned and glared at them. If you can't cope with the maurauding Gangs of Middle-aged Middle-class Middle-England Prommers lawlessly roaming the anarchic streets of Kensington at nine o'clock on a summer's Saturday evening, rearrange the following words...Off Fuck.

Extraordinary

Beauty unseen, unsung

Sometimes I feel that Alison Lapper is just a self-publicist, but I do find her a fascinating woman, and this excerpt from her autobiography is thought-provoking

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner

Annie wants answers

Signs to tell that you had been living in London too long - or rather ways to show that you were now actually a Londoner regardless of where you came from in the first place.

1. You say "the City" and expect everyone to know which one.

Definitely

2. You have never been to The Tower of London or Madame Tussauds but love Brighton

Not true at all, but definitely true in spirit

3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Shepherds Bush to Elephant & Castle at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Dorset on a map.

Has an element of truth, again, in spirit rather than practice

4. Hookers and the homeless are invisible.

Yes

5. You step over people who collapse on the Tube.

Yes

6. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

No, can't swear in foreign

7. You've considered stabbing someone

Oh god yes. And strangling, shooting, and decapitation

8. Your door has more than three locks.

No - front door two, back door three

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

Yeah, on the whole

10. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a garden.

Grass? Who said anything about grass?

11. You consider Essex the "countryside".

No. I used to live there

12. You think Hyde Park is "nature".

Sort of. I don't really, but, y'know

13. You're paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it's a "bargain".

No, because I bought a freehold house in a desperately unfashionable area at the bottom of the market rather than insist on living somewhere fashionable. Thankfully, my area is now borderline hot.

14. Shopping in suburban supermarkets and shopping malls gives you a severe attack of agoraphobia.

Claustrophobia and homicidal paranoia

15. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the UK pay in rent.

I don't have a car; Himself parks his on our unadopted road, for free

16. You pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p.

Well, that question shows a lack of understanding of costings

17. You actually take fashion seriously.

Nay, nay and thrice nay

18. You have 27 different take-away menus next to your telephone.

We have about a dozen on a shelf in the kitchen

19. The UK west of Heathrow is still theoretical to you.

No, I am widely travelled throughout the UK

20. You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

God yes, nutcases or what!

21. Your idea of personal space is no one actually physically standing on you.

More or less

22. £50 worth of groceries fit in one plastic bag.

No, what rot. Someone's buying the wrong groceries from the wrong shop

23. You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories.

Yes, but, I have never made the mistake of getting into rogue minicabs alone, and I campaigned for the licensing of minicabs, so two of my worst cab stories involve the driver not knowing where he was going, and the rest are just about the boring offensive drivel emanating from the driver's mouth

24. You don't hear sirens anymore.

Not generally, but I did blog about the seemingly incessant sirens that followed the 21st July abortive bombings. Special circumstances, you see.

25. You've mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city's air/water quality and what it's doing to your insides.

No, but what's the point of worrying

26. You live in a building with a larger population than most towns.

No, I live in a freehold house in a once unfashionable part of town

27. Your cleaner is Portugese, your grocer is Somali, your butcher is Halal, your deli man is Israeli, your landlord is Italian, your laundry guy is Philippino, your bartender is Australian, your favourite diner owner is Greek, the watch seller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was African, your newsagent is Indian and your local English chippie owner is Turkish.

Yes to a couple, specifically. I doubt many people have "Indian" newsagents. But I do enjoy the fact that every nation on earth appears to be represented just in my immediate neighbourhood

28. You wouldn't want to live anywhere else until you get married.

What on earth does that mean?

29. You roll your eyes and say 'tsk' at the news that someone has thrown themselves under a tube train.

No, I feel compassion for the driver

30. Your day is ruined if you don't get a copy of Metro on the way to work.

I really don't think so - Metro, pile of cack, marginally better than the Sub-Standard Lite

Katrina

I have not blogged Hurricane Katrina. There is a part of me that discounts the British news media obsession with the USA, because I think a lot of it is based upon the accessibility of TV footage and the plethora of English-speaking witnesses, rather than news values eg last year's hurricane was all about Florida, and little about the Caribbean islands, even Jamaica.

But this is something quite different. Madmusings readers who know Megan (you know, the American woman who used to drink in the Trinity and was never allowed to join Streatham CLP), who may or may not know that Megan has just got a new job in New Orleans will be pleased to know I received an email on Monday saying

Dear All. shouldn't that be y'all I sent out a group email a few days ago with my new contact details, but I gave the wrong phone number. My landline number in New Orleans is xxxxxxxxxx. not for a while, dear...

For those of you who have expressed concern, I left New Orleans yesterday and am safe and sound at my mother's house in Lubbock. Hopefully classes will resume before too long...

I suddenly remembered that I have been to New Orleans. I looked through my photo collection,and realised I took very few photos actually in the city, more out in Louisiana, on the bayou and at a plantation. I was too busy having way too good a time; it's probably the only US city I would visit for its own sake; when Megan announced she had got a job there, I was "Wow! We are so going to visit you..."

I have just been horrified at what has been unfolding, glued to news bulletins for hours on end. I could go rationalising about it being no worse than natural disasters that hit, say, Bangladesh on a regular basis, but my expectation is that a country like the US with untold wealth, amazing resources, and a relatively corruption-free system of government, and used to massive logistical exercises could cope with such a situation.

On a newsgroup, someone posted an enquiry about how to donate (there were suggestions of Red Cross). Having watched a couple of hours of news coverage I posted

Hey, did you guys have an appeal to pay to send all the poor black people off to die in Iraq? Or do you just have one to have half-hearted belated search and rescue of the poor black people stranded in Louisiana and Mississippi?

Wisely, perhaps, most people didn't respond, but one person replied

If you pay attention to the newscasts, you'll see that it's mainly White people fighting in Iraq. We take lots of young Black men into our army to keep them off the streets of our cities but when real fighting needs to be done, they're useless; we keep them at bases in Okinawa or Berlin so they don't get in the way.

Many of your "poor Black people stranded in Louisiana" are shooting at the relief helicopters when they're not looting liquor stores; too bad the levees didn't break sooner and wash them into the Gulf.

There's so many answers I'm tempted to give, such as 'where did they get the guns from?' or just to highlight that that person other's post suggested that rather giving to the Red Cross they give to the Southern Baptist Appeal. I had to double-check it wasn't signed George W Bush, but I'm not sure that he, for all his bible-bashing Christianity, would ever be quite that callous. I thought it best to just let it sit there and speak for itself. There hasn't exactly been a rush of Americans leaping to shoot it down, though. Hopefully because they detest Off-Topic Threads rather than because they endorse the views. Good Morning, USA.

Mind you, I have just been watching Fox News and I am appalled. Apparently, this is the news channel of choice of the majority of Americans. It is a shameful. I have watched it for half an hour and they have told me nothing, absolutely nothing, except that Dubya's touring the region (from safe helicopter distance, of course), and that some pastor from California is preparing to give spiritual healing to the victims. Just what they need, on top of everything else, bloody Christian do-gooders.

You know, I was thinking, people in that situation have a moral obligation to loot. A police captain from Small Town, La, said as much on Channel 4 news: if someone is looting food, his police are instructed to do nothing; if it's a TV or whiskey, they're going to jail. Not shot on site, by the way, but going to jail. Although, if I was living beneath the poverty line - what, in the richest country on earth, ruled by Christians, they ought to be ashamed - if I believed the system had let me down, if I believed the system had never given a shit about me, sure, I'd be looting everything I could lay my hands on. The stores will all write it off to insurance anyway, and besides what good is a "Flood Clearance Sale". Not going to happen.

What no one has mentioned yet is whether they are sending in relief supplies of heroin and crack. I appreciate it is entirely unmentionable, and who knows how they could ever organise distribution (when they clearly haven't got a vindaloo as even how to distribute water and food) but if you have ever seen one crack-addict needing a fix, let alone a thousand, or ten thousand, you have some insight into what murderous desperation is.

Of course, no one is to blame for a Hurricane, it's just an Act of God. I wonder how the evil bible-bashers, Bush included, will explain that one away: perhaps as righteous retribution by their God on the indolent poor drug users of Decadence City (who don't matter because they don't vote, and sure as hell don't vote Republican).

I mentioned in a comment on someone's blog a few weeks back that I am currently monitoring the beginning of the end of the US Empire, and would write about its Decline and Fall if I wasn't so lazy. I think another chapter, titled "Acceleration", is just unfolding now. The Americans, in general, will remain oblivious as they are fed the Good News by Fox News, Inc.

I will, of course, recant my post if I hear that one million Americans have traded their SUV for a SmartCar/bicycle/walking-boots combination, but guess that the majority of the residents of 45 states are sleeping comfortably in the knowledge that they live in the Greatest Nation on earth - hey, Fox News has told them this is so. I think we can safely assume Dubya can organise a piss-up brewery, but do his talents go any further than that?

Currently listening to...

When my niece rang to nag me about blogging her mother's birthday, she asked me what music was in the background.

The answer

Fritz Wunderlich

Wonderful!

Happy Birthday Pauline

As sharp eyed- readers will have noticed I have been ordered to do what I was going to do anyway, mention my sister's birthday. I am not allowed to say how old she is but just think Keanu Reeves

Other birthdays today include:
1925 Russ Conway
1937 Derek Fowlds (Bernard in "Yes Minister")
1938 Glyn Worsnip ("That's Life")
1952 Jimmy Connors
1953 Keith Allen (comedian/actor)
1964 Keanu Reeves
1965 Lennnox Lewis

In 1945, Japan signed an unconditional surrender, bringing WW2 to an end. In 1666, the Great Fire of London broke out. In 1752, the UK adopted the Gregorian calendar. In 1870 was the Battle of Sedan and 1898 the Battle of Omdurman

What people wear

Oxford Street. I wandered into M&S for food and found to my horror that they were selling clothes. I suddenly remembered I need a new pair of smart winter trousers; it seemed criminal not also to get a top. Nice combination of black, white and grey, but I was sorely tempted by the vast range of deep plum clothes.

When queueing for the changing room I could not help notice that 90% of the adult female customers were wearing jilbaabs. If people want to wear them, I suppose that's their choice, although Jimmy argues that it isn't necessarily - if they chose not to wear them, they may be socially and economically ostracised. That aside, it kind of made me laugh. M&S have decorated the cubicle doors with pictures of women reflecting a diversity of ethnicity, mainly in states of partial undress or wearing fashionably immodest clothes. I wonder what jilbaab wearers think when confronted with such images, an enormous store selling a wide range of less-than modest clothes and women like me, happily revealing cleavage, neck, arms, and glorying, when outside, the warm sun and cooling breeze on my exposed skin.

I popped up to the lingerie section and confirmed that M&S have still not woken up to the fact that their cup sizes are insufficient to reflect the new way of measuring bra size (up the cups, down the inches). They're proud they're going up to G in their sexy lacy ranges. The Bravissimo catalogue has arrived. Many of their ranges go up to HH, and some even to JJ. I feel an email coming on...

I finally found the food section and was perusing the coffee when a jilbaab wearer grabbed my attention and demanded some answer of me. I haven't a clue what she wanted to know; her speech was entirely muffled by the contraption covering her face. I did try, but it was impossible. So I just said "I can't tell what you're saying, and I don't work here..." I did think of suggesting she asked one of the hundreds of jilbaab wearers, but I was trying to focus on my own shopping.

Later, negotiating Oxford Street, I could not help noticing that with just one exception, every person who stupidly impeded my way was a jilbaab wearer. I'm not talking about those, including myself, who are a bit clumsy or tardy in side-stepping and weaving, I mean those who deliberately make no effort to compromise. And I see it at bus stops - almost always, if someone is stood at the bus stop blocking the path to or from the door with no intention of boarding, they'll be in a jilbaab. I'm often tempted to say something along the lines of "I know that ridiculous get-up is supposed to make you invisible but you retain a physical presence and it's in my way." But I don't like confrontation, and prefer just a furious glare and tutting.

It seems that the reason that Muslim women wear the jilbaab is 'to discourage any molestation by men who are not her family members'. So, presumably, molestation by family members is okay? As a feminist I find this objectionable - if there is a problem with molestation, shouldn't something be done with the perpetrators. If I were a man I would find it deeply offensive that this belief system decrees that men only need one glimpse of flesh and they are totally unable to control their animal lusts.

Later, walking along Oxford Street, I noticed two women in hotpants, cut shorter than a cutaway bikini I could hardly fail to notice them, they were very tall, with legs up to my neck, they were walking as if on a catwalk, and looked as if they barely had a braincell between them. I was simultaneously aghast and amused; my amusement increased when I noticed two seventy year old Caribbean men sniggering, a twenty-something white couple making vomiting gestures to each other, three teenage boys (two white, one Asian) sniggering derisorily , and a fifty something white woman with a look of amused contempt on her face.

I suppose the two women thought they looked great and would have welcomed expressions of admiration bordering on the molestation. Little danger of that! The six men I witnessed did not look in the slightest bit tempted into uncontrollable animal lusts, struggling only, as I was, to hide their hilarity.