Another damn blog http://thisisrjg.posterous.com More unedited thoughts from someone you don't know posterous.com Mon, 18 Feb 2013 04:07:00 -0800 I've moved http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/ive-moved http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/ive-moved

Due to Twitter's remarkably short-sighted decision to shutter Posterous, I've moved. You can now find me on WordPress, for my sins, with a blog I haven't had time to make look pretty yet. Go here.

Also, fuck you, Twitter.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:16:00 -0800 The spoils system http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/the-spoils-system http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/the-spoils-system

"I've got a box here," she said, "filled with gadgets and stuff that he must have bought. Could you look through it for us?"

Yes, Betty, I'm happy to, I lied.

She held the box close and took each item out of it one at a time.

"What's this?" she asked.

An early digital camera.

"Is it worth anything?"

Nah. It might get £2 or £3 on eBay, but it's very old by, you know, technology standards.

"Oh. Do you want it?"

No thank you.

She plucked another item from the box. "What's this?"

A brand new, unused Apple iPhone 3G.

"Oh. Is it worth anything?"

Oh yes, a couple of hundred pounds.

She placed it carefully on the sideboard and reach back into the box.

"What's this?"

A 32mb USB hard drive.

"Oh, is it worth anything?"

No, you get better ones free in Christmas Crackers these days.

"Oh. Do you want it?"

No thank you.

She reaches into the box again. "What's this?"

A brand new Blackberry.

"Oh, is it worth anything?"

About £600, I think.

She places it on the sideboard and reaches into the box again. "What's this?"

An scientific calculator. Bit of a museum piece.

"Oh, is it worth anything?"

Oh no, not these days.

"Oh. Do you want it?"

No, I'm alright thanks.

This continued for a very long time. For the record, Betty, I didn't want the expensive stuff either.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:53:00 -0800 Elderly actor joke http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/elderly-actor-joke http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/elderly-actor-joke

Lew Grade gets an audience with the pope.

"What do you do, my son?" asks the pontiff.

Lew replies, "I'm a theatrical agent, your Holiness".

The pope responds: "Moonriiiiiver! Wiiiider than a miiiiile!"

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:47:00 -0800 Take my hand http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/take-my-hand http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/take-my-hand

I would've been 6 or 7 years old. 1981, 1982, thereabouts.

At home time at my junior school, we all lined up according to our test scores for the day: the highest scoring at the front of the line, the lowest at the back. We were then marched in a "crocodile" to the school gates where the bus awaited to take us home.

I was always a straight C pupil. If a test had a 51% pass margin, I got 51%. If it was 75%, I got 75%. This is a great way to live: you don't get the pressure that A pupils get and you don't get the condemnation that F pupils get. Coasting through life has long been my policy.

For whatever reason, one Friday I had top marks in my class. This was my mistake. Perhaps the subject at hand had been one to really interest me, or was about something I already knew. Whatever, I came top.

I found myself at the front of the line. Everybody joined hands, as required of a "crocodile" (and terrible for me with eczema-covered hands: nobody wanted to join hands with the boy with such awful fingers). The pupil at the front of the line, however, got to hold the hand of the teacher.

My teacher was the first male teacher I'd ever had. He seemed impossibly old at the time; a year later he took early retirement at 55. He was well-built and hairy and very fierce. He was also a bit too free with whacking you on the hand with a ruler for imagined transgressions, but those were the times.

I went to the front of the line. He reached for my hand and held it in a gentle but firm grip. I can remember all this in Cinemascope to this day: the bright summer sun and cold East Anglian breeze; that breeze moving the hairs on his hand. The watch on his wrist. My little hand in his big meaty hand. The wait for the bell to go. The walk to the… for want of a better term, staging area, for the bus.

And I knew. I just knew.

This was right. This was how it should be.

All I would ever need was a strong male hand holding mine. Always.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:20:00 -0800 Dyb dyb dyb, dob dob... fuck off http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/dyb-dyb-dyb-dob-dob-fuck-off http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/dyb-dyb-dyb-dob-dob-fuck-off

The Radio 4 PM programme this week talked about the Scout's oath and plans to make a version for republicans and/or atheists.

I was an Cub Scout for two weeks. I had friends who were Cubs and, always aware that I had never fitted in with any club even at age 7, I wanted to join. So I signed up and went along.

A couple of things went wrong for me. First of all, I'm not a natural joiner and that means I don't fit in well with any club that will have me as a member. 

Then there was a dominant male in the group. He was too old to be a Cub and should've been shunted to the Scouts, but he was also an idiot who was better suited to being "king of the shits" and hanging about with boys 5 years younger rather than being "shit of the kings" in an older group. I bridled at being led by someone who was in charge because he was next in line: for that reason, I'm now a republican.

The group leader, ludicrously known as Akela, was a hard-faced bitch who hated children. That didn't help.

And I had real problems with the rituals. Whenever I see a mob forming, I back off: I'm not a mob person. Rituals are a Bad Thing - nothing ever good comes from them and many, many bad things do.

One ritual was to get in a circle and chant the Scout's oath. Something about doing my duty to god and the queen and so forth. This only came up on the second week and I was terribly, terribly uncomfortable.

It was made worse when everyone else put their arm in the air with three fingers hoisted. I did so too. Dominant Male was appalled. He spent the entire chant mouthing at me that I should put my arm down and should shut up. As it went on, he got more hopping mad. When it ended, he shot over to tell me I was a disgrace. I hadn't been invested as a Cub and had NO RIGHT AT ALL to do what everyone else was doing.

I never went back.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:32:00 -0800 Stick or spit http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/stick-or-spit http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/stick-or-spit

There's a *lot* of inbreeding in my family. Trying to chart my family tree beyond my great-grandparents on my mother's side gets impossible very quickly because of the number of cousins marrying cousins. Just trying to trace my great-grandfather Albert got me hopelessly lost because there were three Alberts with the same surname living in the same Ebbw Vale street in 1911 - all related to me by one route or another.

Needless to say, my mum's generation have made sure my cousins have all married out, while nature made sure that my genes die with me (bless homosexuality's many, many upsides).

However, the result of this unwise almost-incest has been to ensure that the cousins and their offspring all have a bunch of fun genetic disorders. Between us, we have thyroid problems (hypo and hyper), eczema, asthma, arthritis, haemolytic anaemia, spherocytosis, fibroneuralgia, deafness, migraines, heart disease, odd cancers and a propensity to thrush. Aren't you glad I'm not in the gene pool? Alas, we're all also hyperfertile, with the women particularly likely to get pregnant because he took his trousers off in their company.

I have a number of these things, but the main one I notice in adult life is the arthritis. Of all of the things I have or could have, it's the one I think I could most live without. It's not constant, but when it flares up, blimey does it hurt. You wake up on a damp morning and think... bugger. I'm going to be spending the day hobbling from room to room. It might be a knee, or a hip, or the fingers, or an ankle, or deep in a foot or arm. Sometimes it happens spontaneously later in the day, so you get to the supermarket fine, but walk home at an inch an hour, unable to put any weight on a foot that hates you and wants you dead (I'm told that's the arthritis bursting blood vessels, just to make sure you're not forgetting about its existence).

So sometimes I limp. I push on, because FUCK YOU ARTHRITIS. Sometimes I can't push on, so I use a walking stick and push on, because FUCK YOU ARTHRITIS. This was fine and dandy for many years. Then this present government came to power with an agenda: people who get benefits are "scroungers". The loyal press joined in, with the Tory comic The Sun even running a "shop a scrounger" hotline and putting sick people having a good day on their front cover.

The effect of this was to start ruining my life.

I work full time from home for a major multinational. I start early in the day and finish early, then, to make sure I see daylight, pop out to the gym or the supermarket or just for a walk. Even I need vitamin D now and again. This means that, at half past three in the afternoon, you may see me in the town limping and/or limping on a stick as I propel myself to Morrisons. I don't own a car because I don't need nor want one.

From late 2010 onwards, I've been getting abuse in the street when seen limping/sticking my way to the supermarket. Drivers wind their window down and shout "SCROUNGER!!" at me. Fellow supermarket customers tut-tut. Children say "what's wrong with that man, mam?" and their parents reply "he's malingering, darling". Loping along behind the ball-and-chain one wet day while on holiday in London, a man walking in the opposite direction twisted his face and spat on me. "Fucking scrounger" he barked.

On the plus side, during the Paralympics I got waved at by several drivers; once, while using my stick, I got stopped and a young man asked to shake my hand because I was "a hero". The week after the Paralympics, whilst limping but not on my stick, I walked past the local pub. Two drunk old gentlemen (it was 2pm) were just leaving. One tried to trip me while the other shouted about how I was a disgrace and - you guessed it - a scrounger.

So now I don't use my stick any more. I just walk in agony instead. And when I see angry-looking people nearby, I don't limp either. It hurts to the point that I'm left crying. But it makes you all happy, so, well, that's better then, isn't it?

This is all not good. Exhorting the population to hate a "lower" section of that same population will always work because humans are innately superior-feeling beings. Dictators the world over throughout history have used this to bolster themselves.

It is happening again.

And, if you've ever been ill, or you ever suspect you might get ill, be afraid. Be very afraid.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:03:00 -0800 Are you a dog person or a cat person? http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/are-you-a-dog-person-or-a-cat-person http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/are-you-a-dog-person-or-a-cat-person

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:28:00 -0800 Sit down next to me http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/sit-down-next-to-me http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/sit-down-next-to-me

Forgotten songs lead to forgotten memories.

This one I bought as a 7" vinyl single (disappointingly, just b/w a live version). My friend Dan reminded me of it just now, and thus of who it reminds me of.

His name was James Taylor and I think I'm still in love with him 22 years later.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:18:00 -0700 On being too clever for my own good http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/on-being-too-clever-for-my-own-good http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/on-being-too-clever-for-my-own-good

I spent my teenage years in a black funk. Really: it was awful, particularly for me and specifically for the people who had to live with me (ie my mum). Teenagerdom is, for most people, a terrible hell and once it's over we can all laugh about it. My version is no different: I can laugh about it now but at the time it was terrible.

That immature brush with depression was enough for me. I live day to day now in the sure and certain knowledge that I'll never be a teenager again. It fills my heart with joy to know this.

And then I got together with a guy who lived with depression. We'll call him Graham Bruce Robertson, because that was his name. For 15 years, I battled his depression with and/or for him. It won in the end, as it was always going to. But I learned a lot from it and am now a different person (not better, just different) from the battle. I certainly learned a lot from his death and the aftermath of a suicide [bottom line: you haven't prepared your family for it; they will not be better off for it; nobody at all anywhere will thank you for it; the recriminations and hate will bedevil multiple people's lives for half a decade beyond it].

And then, years later, I got depressed too.

There's a whole story to be told here that I can't tell because the internet is something mystical and scary and even hinting that you're not stood on top of a mountain singing about joy is enough to fuck off your employer. Especially if someone finds the posts, with quite some digging, takes screenshots and then shows them to your HR department because they're "concerned" (concerned that they could have your job's money if you're not happy with it). If that happened, HR would call you and have a go when you're already starting to get ill, making you get ill for real. And then email when you called in sick to tell you that they're disgusted by the scene you're making (I paraphrase, but nevertheless).

So I got depression.

I've been there and done that. I'm smarter than depression. I might not have saved Graham, but I knew what his depression was doing even while I was unable to stop it. I'm a classic gambler, and as a gambler, I know when I'm holding the losing cards but I also know that's not a reason to leave the table.

I'm now holding losing cards, but this time I can't leave the table: the cards are in my head. So I went to my GP. She's a nice GP, competent-seeming if brusque, unsympathetic without being cold. Her diagnosis was done on a standard issue checklist (in Word, natch).

The result was a course of propranolol, a betablocker that reduces anxiety. It worked in reducing my immediate symptoms - a constant sub-panic-attack - and I'm grateful for that.

But I'm done. I have taken all I can. I have survived everything that life has fucking thrown at me and thrown it back. And I can now no longer do any more.

That means, and I speak from experience, I need antidepressents. I need something, almost anything, that will make life just a bit easier to live with. Not forever. Just for a bit while I get my brain sorted. Just while I deal with the overlap between my current job and... either a new job or my current job going back to not sucking (hey hey, HR: I'll say this to your face if you like).

The problem is that doctors really, really don't like you pitching up already knowing the solution to your problem. Perhaps this works in the United States where television adverts tell you what's wrong and what drug to ask for and your HMO gives it to you. But in the UK, doctors really hate that.

My non-functioning thyroid means I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I'm on pills for it. Pubmed says this is normal. My GP says it's a mystery, but if I stopped eating junk food I'll get better (I'm a vegetarian foodie who home cooks everything, I say. Yes yes, that's good, just cut down the chips and burgers to 3 times a week says my GP). My mention of Pubmed made him turn purple. LESS BURGERS FIRST, he said heatedly. Uh huh.

On Monday I go back to my practice for a review. I know what I need: some sort of anti-depressant. I don't want nor need valium (although, blimey, valium is lovely). I want and/or need an "upper", something that will make me... me, at least for as long as it takes for me to become me again. But if I say that, I'll get nowhere. I know this already.

So I've got to fake the symptoms I've actually got in order to get help, like a junkie pitching up at the ED, in order to manipulate her into giving me what I need. The alternative is to say, correctly, that I'm actually coping quite well: not well enough to work or to hold conversations with people, but actually quite well *considering*. She'll smile, renew the propranolol, and send me on my way.

If I wasn't so clever, this wouldn't bother me. But I am clever. Clever-clever, most of the time. That's why I'm asking for help. I suspect I'm not going to get it. That's why I'm going to truthfully lie on Monday.

I don't think I have a choice.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:36:00 -0700 There's always something there to remind me http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/theres-always-something-there-to-remind-me http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/theres-always-something-there-to-remind-me

The drag singer at that rural pub sang it.

A guy, a friend of a friend, 27, gorgeous, was ever so friendly.

I liked him.

We play-fought, then we played being a couple for the drag artist's schtick.

He grabbed my crotch as his darts mates laughed.

He bought me drinks.

I enjoyed the attention.

We mock-kissed for a photograph.

He laughed with his darts mates about it.

I poured a pint of beer over him as part of a complex joke I still don't get.

He had me sit on his lap as a joke for his darts mates.

We all laughed.

I went home alone.

So did he.

I was 17 and a fool.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:58:00 -0700 What do the Tories want, blood? http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/what-do-the-tories-want-blood http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/what-do-the-tories-want-blood

Sent this evening. Let's see how long the government's mouthpiece in my constituency my MP takes to reply and how she squirms around this one.

Dear Esther McVey,

Please can you confirm the following:

1) That the government, of which you are a member, is seeking to privatise Plasma Resources UK and turn a not-for-profit part of the NHS into a profit centre for shareholders of (often foreign-owned) companies

2) That you personally support this policy as MP for Wirral West

3) That the sale is being run by Lazards, who are a major donor to the Conservative Party and are owned by major donors to the Conservative Party

4) That you personally support Lazards being paid taxpayers' funds in this way

5) That there will be a publicity campaign to tell blood and plasma donors, who are making donations free and in their own time, that a profit, largely from taxpayers' money, will be made from their donations

6) That you personally want such a publicity campaign to take place?

I look forward to hearing from you, directly, as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely, etc

 

[Reference]

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 21 Sep 2012 07:16:00 -0700 Lies, damn lies and the Mail on Sunday http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/lies-damn-lies-and-the-mail-on-sunday http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/lies-damn-lies-and-the-mail-on-sunday

Screen_shot_2012-09-21_at_15

The other weekend, that paragon of middle class values the Mail on Sunday decided to continue its sister daily's campaign to divide every substance and contrivance in the world into a cause of or cure for cancer.

That day's target: wind turbines. The Mail hates them and the middle classes fear having one in view of the stately home they dream they will one day own. The MoS got that useless idiot James Delingpole to quickly run off a factual-sounding piece of crap straight from the top of his own head, announcing the dangers to life and limb that living really near a wind turbine are bound to cause, despite the total lack of evidence (that's never stopped Delingpole before, of course).

Mailonsundaycomparison

What the story needed to really terrify the suburban masses over their lattes was a nice big picture of a huge wind turbine blotting the landscape. Here the MoS hit a snag: there aren't any. But just like the Mail never lets the facts get in the way of a good scare story, they also don't let the lack of a picture get in the way of printing a picture.

Some poor lowly art editor was drafted in to take an innocuous agency photo of a turbine and make it dark and broody and scary and cancerous. And then, for the online version, badly comp in a second turbine, presumably to double the fear and loathing and make readers clutch their pearls/BMWs/ponies all the more tightly as they fear the War of the Worlds-style march of the turbines over the horizon and into their very front gardens.

The problem with this is that the UK newspaper industry's own code of practice says that it's wrong. It must not be done. It is lying to readers and faking news. Do not do it, the code directs. Long story short: that's why we've just had the big Leveson inquiry and why we might now be getting some real regulation in future (although I suspect that we won't). So I complained to the Press Complaints Commission.

The last time this happened was a few years ago, when the Daily Mail wanted to bash the BBC but for once couldn't find a target. They settled on the old "Question Time is biased" crap, proving their point by printing the QT's audience handout... badly photoshopped to change the whole tone and direction. I complained to the PCC and the Mail removed the image but left the story in place (thus making the story make no sense) online, although the damage was mostly done in print. The PCC, in those pre-Leveson days, saw itself as a defender of newspapers against their readers and turned down my complaint out of hand: the Mail, they said, had printed the image in error so the case was closed. As I pointed out in my reply, the Mail took a document, paid somebody to crudely alter it, paid someone else to write a false story based on the forgery, then printed both together. All. By. Mistake. Yeah.

This time, post-Leveson, the PCC have been a bit more on my side than the Mail's. But only just. They have actually investigated the matter, the Mail have denied the charge but apologised weakly for using the image, and the PCC would now like me to accept the non-apology apology and move on. The other choice, they darkly hint, is for it to be stalemate and for the useless 'clarification' not to appear at all. Heads the Mail wins, tails I lose. Nice.

So, the next time you pick up a newspaper and see them making a big point, as they're all doing, that regulation as it stands works and anything else is just censorship, remember that they're lying to you. Also, the next time you pick up a newspaper, please don't let it be the Mail.

123977_Eds_comments.pdf Download this file

With thanks to Jude Gibbons and David Trussler.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:42:26 -0700 Send her victorias http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/send-her-victorias http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/send-her-victorias

Mike, as so often happens, is right. The "British" national anthem is a terrible durge. It's not quite the unsingable song of explosions and defeat that the Americans have to live with, but really: for patriotism-stoking, it fails hard.

But the English (yes, this a 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' type of post, feel free to move on) middle classes do have a soft spot for it, which is why it remains the divisive tune they seek to impose on everybody. See also Piers Moron, the story-faking, insider-dealing, phone-hacking shit who used to edit the Mirror (with safety scissors) demanding, loudly, that victorious athletes in the Olympics should hurriedly get their breath back and belt out this meaningless piss lest they be declared "unpatriotic".

Last Friday, I went to the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall for the first concert of the new season. As is tradition, they played 'God Save the Queen' at the start, in a stylised way. The occassion and the pace of the piece was clearly incompatible with singing along (we had a choir for that), let alone standing up for it. The programme for the concert noted that standing up, and by implication singing along, was inappropriate.

The woman in the row in front of me started it. As soon as she recognised the piece - and it's sufficiently bad that the slightest reorchestration renders it a mystery - catapulted to her feat in the middle of the first verse. Her neighbours followed suit. Others around soon joined in, until about a third were standing, the ignorant fools. This third were a mixture of people who hadn't read the programme and people who had but were easily intimidated by peer pressure. The latter are worth watching; they're the ones who will be informing on you to any Gestapo, Stasi, Securitate or Community Support Officer who asks if they've seen anything "doubtful" in their neighbours.

I stayed sat down. The song means nothing to me. I couldn't give a flying corgi about Mrs Mountbatten and look on in horror and disgust at the idea of her aging offspring taking over from her with his anti-science right-wing views. We could, of course, skip him and have his untested, young and possibly traumatised son, or his ex-wife's other child, take over. But if you're going to do that, why not have a poll and ask the people? And if you do have a poll, why not open it up to other candidates? And while we're there, set a term limit of 5 years or so?

Oh look, we're a republic.

But, people say pensively, what would we do with God Save the Queen, our national anthem? Well, here's a thing: why not retire it and its baggage? The original song, I believe, was written for nuns to sing in the hope that the then King would recover form his bleeding piles. Much better if we replace it with Jerusalem for England and Land of Hope and Glory for Great Britain. After all, Jerusalem actually mentions England, while Land of Hope and Glory really is a patriotic rouser of a song.

With a quick couple of acts of parliament, we could have something for everyone to rally round: a democratically elected head of state, a separate anthem for England and a song with new, consistent rules that don't require exhausted athletes to sing along for the benefit of discredited tabloid editors and don't confuse middle class people as to whether or not to stand after the person next to them sprang to their feet.

It's win-win.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:21:00 -0700 Your arse is mesmerising http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/your-arse-is-mesmerising http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/your-arse-is-mesmerising

A month or so ago I gave up smoking after a long and happy relationship with cigarettes. Gosh do I love cigarettes. The taste, the smell, the happy feeling on sparking one, the satisfaction on stubbing one, the fact that I look particularly cool holding one... there's no downside. Well, more cancer. But otherwise: I [heart] cigarettes.

But now I've stopped. And now I'm going to the gym five or six times a week, because there's no point being an ex-smoker and *also* being the size of a house. I've never been a member of a gym before, not a lift-weights-run-on-a-machine-do-sit-ups one, anyway.

This means I have only just discovered that there is a hidden sub-class of human being: people who go to gyms.

I was fully expecting a certain type of gym-goer. I would meet, I thought, and be sneered at by great big muscly men with tiny willies who spend hours in Holland & Barrett of a Saturday deciding on which huge tub of whey protein looks the most masculine and butch. And the gym does have a couple of them, but they're harmless because they're too busy hating the other men like them to notice the men who aren't "competing" with them for the title of World's Most Masculine Man With Added Masculinity And Some More Manness Added Just In Case Anyone Doubts You're A Man award. (BTW, these men are also sexually agressive toward women. The rest of this sentence writes itself, doesn't it, ducky?)

What I actually found was fascinating. The following mainly concerns men, as I mainly notice men. Give me time and I'll get just as judgmental about the women too.

It's a council gym, rather than an expensive and intimidating private facility, by the way. This skews the following list and influences the first option particularly.

  • Category One: dying people. The hour each day I spend there is spent in the company of one man who has recently had a stroke and is trying to strengthen his left arm. If Labour hadn't've made physiotherapy hard to get, he'd have help in his goal. Fortuneately, the Tory-LibDems have made sure that if he has another one, he'll die through neglect and being economically inefficient. There's also a man whose granddaughter brought him round to see the place and has never been seen since; he mainly wanders about bewildered and scared. Finally there's a woman who occasionally appears, but each time has worse track marks on her arms; the gym is someone's do-good idea of helping her rather than just prescribing her heroin and solving the problem at both ends.
  • Category Two: men (always) who have had a cardiac incident or have been warned about one coming. They either do lots and look exhausted all the time or do the bare minimum and look exhausted all the time. Again: more support than a gym membership is needed.
  • Category Three: women en masse. You do get boys (defined as males younger than me) en masse (testosterone makes them display like chimps). Never men (too homoerotic). You don't get girls en masse (too bitchy). Women en masse: lots. And they do everything en masse. Five of them, all on the stationary bikes. Five of them, all on the steppers. Five of them, all on the treadmills. Five of them, all on the machines. All on the lowest setting, all mainly chatting, all taking lots of breaks. Always en masse. Total wattage outputted: fuck all. They're there to socialise.
  • Category Four: stick insects. These people run to a particular machine and spend upwards of an hour adjusting every element of it - weights, seat height, reach, speed - until it's perfect for them. Then they do two, maybe three reps on it, wipe the sweat off, swig their Harrogate Spa water and go weight themselves. There are about a dozen men at my gym who do this, and one woman. All need help.
  • Category Five: I Am Better At This Than You. Oh, spare me from this person. You can spot them quite easily. They get on the machine next to you, rather than the next-but-one, ignoring the Urinal Rule. Then they set their machine to the same as yours, plus 1 - 1km/h faster, 1% more gradient, 1 point more resistance, 1 weight more. And match your reps. This way, no matter what happens THEY CAN BEAT YOU. These people are either of the same age and sex as you (depressing but I can kinda see the 'logic') or are (a) boys in their teens or early twenties; in which case, just pee around my machine, it's quicker, and anyway I usually do longer on it than you can manage, Mr Acne, so NER; or (b) women made entirely of muscle who, I think, need to show a man a thing or two; fair enough, but please don't pick this particular short, dumpy unfit poof in future, because you're only proving things to yourself.
  • Category Six: the spot reducer. Like my entire family on both sides (bless genetics) I have concentrated most of my excess weight directly into my belly region. Ideally, the gym will help me tighten that area and let me see my willy again. I will never have a six-pack, nor will I ever be describable as "thin". But I might be able to get back into those sex schoolboy shorts I bought 6 years ago, so that's all I care about. And I'll do best at that by having an all-round workout that touches everywhere; if I just did abdominal crunches, I'd end up with great big muscles with a happy layer of fat over them. So I pity the spot reducers. One guy in particular. He's pretty enough, and younger than me. He has great hair, although the bleach job doesn't suit him. The ear piercings are very sexy, the nose barbell less so. He's lythe and tall and I wouldn't kick him out of bed. But he has an amazing, disproportionately large arse. And all his workouts are aimed at it. He's failing badly at reducing his arse, because all he's doing is building muscle behind where genetics have decided to put his body fat. Between exercises, he looks carefully at his huge arse in the mirrors, perhaps hoping to see the signs of reduction kicking in. He wears tight lycra to facilitate the day when his arse stops looking like he's shoplifting pillows and starts looking like his ideal arse (by this point, his ideal arse will be one you could fit in a thimble - ugh). Of all the people at the gym every day, he is the one who will remain least happy with himself.

As to which category I fit into, well, I can't judge myself. Perhaps Category Seven: unfit bloke surprised to find himself at the gym and enjoying it. Of course - of course - I'm far more selfish and narcissistic than that and I fit in a different Category Seven, devoted to people who are judgmental pieces of shit. But I'm happy doing what I do and don't fit easily into any of the categories above. So I'll keep staring at Category Six's arse and hoping, for his sanity, that it does shrink eventually. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:59:00 -0700 Please help the cause against round numbers http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/please-help-the-cause-against-round-numbers http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/please-help-the-cause-against-round-numbers

5912946760_becca2264e_b
Image of tweet locations in Europe by Eric Fischer. CC-BY licence.

I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's only mild, and the ball-and-chain is happy to (correctly, natch) call it "your mild Asperger syndrome", as if that was better.

It's not bad OCD. I'm not touching my keys five times or washing my hands till they bleed (although, as hobbiest chef, I do wash my hands very often and can't abide them feeling sticky or dirty or the like). I'm not as bad as my father, who had a desk with everything at right angles to everything else and would explode if they were moved (my mum moved them often because of that). I'm not as bad as the ball-and-chain, who builds insane towers out of junk mail, magazines and books in his need to put things on top of other things.

But stuff fixes in my mind and I have to follow the pattern that has formed. If I spot a pattern in my life, I have to stick to it. As I say, it's not tracing woodlines on the floor or checking for accidental murders, but it still gets a bit in the way now and again.

About 6 months ago, I noticed that I'd followed 100 people on Twitter. The number of people you follow is under your control, unlike the number that follow you, and this was no problem. But by coincidence, the number remained at 100 for 3 months. Every time I followed someone new, breaking the pattern, someone old would leave. The number remained resolutely at 100.

Now it has to be 100. I can't follow 101 people because I follow 100 people. If the number drops to 99 or below, as happened when I challenged some sexists I was following on their sexism and they blocked me for not singing from their Manual of Feminism-as-a-weapon-against-men, I scrambled to find new people to make the numbers up to 100 again.

There are a couple of dozen people on my "will follow when other people leave or block me" mental list. There's also a semi-formal list of people that I will consider unfollowing when someone I feel I have to follow enters my radar. All of this is made worse by Twitter enjoying randomly unfollowing (frequent) and following (infrequent) people. You think you've got 100 people, then you find it's 99 for no reason. Or 101. The time I waste trying to work out the missing sheep or the interloper, then following someone on the reserve list (or forgetting someone I like who Twitter has unfollowed) then having the missing sheep reappear or the interloper leave and I'm back at 99 or 101... oh god, please help me.

How do I break out of this madness? I've been at 100 people I'm following, micromanaging that number, for 6 months now. The next "stage" would be 200, but I can't find 100 people who would match my present crowd of 100 left-leaning, liberal, not-too-prolific good people in the time required. And I'd just end up micromanaging the 200 too.

There must be a way to deal with this nightmare. But I don't know what it is. Anybody got any suggestions? Let me know. I'll be off washing my hands in the meantime.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 12:41:00 -0700 Mansplaining feminism http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/mansplaining-feminism http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/mansplaining-feminism

What is feminism? There's no easy answer, since any term that a couple of billion people would use to describe themselves is clearly going to have a multitude of meanings that are each only shared by a minority at any one time.

Let's try a different question: what does feminism mean to me? Or, why am I a feminist? I'm a feminist because I fundamentally believe that all people are equal. Every one of us, regardless of our sex, colour, sexuality, belief or whatever else you might like to pick as a division. I choose to judge each person I know on their individual merit, rather than by some arbitrary dividing line.

I'm a feminist because I believe that women, the majority of the population, are ill-served by society's norms in the West (and worse elsewhere). Women are equal to men, but men have the power, because men have the money and also because most men have actual physical power - the power to beat up and/or kill most physically smaller females at their will.

It is, however, worth noting that most men don't. Most men wouldn't even consider it. Most men would cut their own arms off before they struck someone physically smaller and weaker than themselves, regardless of their sex. But a tiny minority don't have this bar and it is (partially) because of them that I am a feminist.

Because I'm a feminist (and an anti-racist and so forth), I try to watch my language. The ball-and-chain sometimes complains about how politically correct I am, especially after I've barked his name at him sharply when he's used a word I don't like. I'm actually not very "politically correct" as some people define it. What I strive for is also known as "bias-free usage". At the first approximation, bias-free usage means not using adjectives that are irrelevant to the subject at hand. So the person who drove my bus was a person, unless their sex or colour or whatever was relevant (it rarely is) and the story I'm telling requires I mention something like that. And yes, that does mean I suffer from The Dimbleby Problem: the person in the green shirt, no the woman in the green shirt, no the black woman in the green shirt. I can live with the fumbling that bias-free usage can force on you.

Now, how far does bias-free usage go? Well, I don't expect it of others per se, but I will pull people up when they use badly biased words (as I define them, obviously). I'm more comfortable with writing and speech that uses "their" instead of "his" or "hers" - I'm afraid I don't hold with the "xe/xis/xeir" neologisms when "their" is available (although I do use "s/he" at a push). If forced by style to give a gender pronoun in writing, I'll generally use "she" rather than "he", but I'd rather avoid doing it at all.

By now, a proportion of the people reading this will have given up, fed up of the rules I'm scattering in their path. But these rules are no harder than the ones on commas and apostrophes (and there's only one: don't use commas and apostrophes like an idiot). By all means use "he" when you mean a person in general if it sounds better. Just be prepared to defend it. It's like rape jokes or jokes that take the piss of disabled people: I actually don't mind, even if the joke in question makes me uncomfortable. But you've got to be prepared to defend it, and not in a Ricky Gervais "well, my fans aren't offended and I'm best friends with Kevin Spacey" type of shit way either. There are actually no rules when it comes to word use, other than the speaker/writer being able to plausibly defend what they've said/wrote. If you've said it ironically or sarcastically or to make a point, then fine. If you've said it unthinkingly, then apologise and we'll move on, both wiser. If you've said it because you don't care or because you wanted to wound, even if you wanted to wound an individual rather than a perceived mass, then, well, we've got problems we need to discuss. Or you need to get the fuck out of my Twitter feed. Either is good.

Are there exceptions? Sort of. LGBT people can make jokes surrounding the words "queer" and "poof" and so forth. Women can call each other whores (except in the Daily Mail, because... well, we all know *why* you're saying it, you holier-than-thou turd). Black people can use the N word. But again, context is king. There's a difference between an LGB person saying "I'm surrounded by queers" and an LGB person saying "I hate and want to kill queers". It's a fine line, often hard to spot, but there is one, albeit surrounded by a lot of smudging.

What about oppressed minorities using derogatory language about the oppressors?

Well, it's awkward for a bleeding heart liberal to take on the language used by the oppressed against their oppressors. But I'm not actually a bleeding heart liberal. I'm a strident socialist with Marxist tendencies who happens to be a born social liberal. If you're using derogatory language against those you think are oppressing you, then fucking stop it. You're playing their game. You're giving the Daily Mail ammunition. You're putting off the vast majority of the rest of the population of the world who are on your side. I know why you're doing it, but you're being counterproductive. You're failing at what you hope to achieve and you're making the oppressor feel better about their oppression (they're oppressing you out of fear, not because they hate you for any rational reason).

And now we come back to feminism. Is the neologism "mansplaining" okay? According to a considerable number of my (now) ex-followers on Twitter, yes it is. Attacks on the oppressor (men) by the oppressed (women) are perfectly fine. Because they don't mean *you*, they've excepted *you* from that attack. They mean every other man. So that's okay then. When you point out the flaws in this insane argument, you're (I'm) a misogynist. I'm siding with the oppressor. I'm a man and have no idea what discrimination really means (coz deaf gay guys with arthritis never experience discrimination). GBT men don't live with *daily* discrimination like women do, so women are entitled to attack men verbally.

I thought the flaws in those statements were obvious. But the Guardianistas I follow(ed) didn't. I was repeatedly declared a misogynist for complaining about the word "mansplaining" and then blocked. Ho hum: it doesn't matter, since I don't follow sexists anyway so I'm well shot of them and their sexist attitudes.

At the heart of this kerfuffle was how to define "oppressed". When pushed, the ones who didn't like me objecting to the word "mansplaining" said that only the oppressed themselves could define who was oppressing them. I pointed out that the total fuckwits in the so-called "English Defence League", an off-shoot of the old National Front, defined themselves, wrongly, as "oppressed". If we follow that logic, it means we're not allowed to challenge the far-Right's language and beliefs because they are oppressed (as they define it). But challenging their language and beliefs is something I believe in doing as often as possible (I can't pass a so-called "Christian" with a selectively-quoted placard condemning gays to death without offering a heartfelt and sincere shout of "fuck you!" in response).

Sadly, a mention of the morons in the EDL was enough for some (otherwise sensible) people to declare loudly that they had been compared to the EDL by a misogynist. Really: if you need the word "compared" explained to you, then you have bigger problems than attempting to defend your use of neo-hate speech from fellow feminists. Then they and their followers blocked me en masse.

The experience has left me slightly hollowed out. I probably won't draw attention to the use of anti-male language in future, so score that one as a victory, people. But then I probably won't draw attention to the use of anti-female language either. But perhaps that's a victory too. Perhaps there *are* feminists out there who truly *do* believe that it's better to silence a fellow feminist they disagree with than to listen to what he has to say. I'm just glad I don't have to mix with them, whatever sex, colour, sexuality, nationality, locality, religion or class they claim to represent. I'm happy sticking with the majority for once.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:30:00 -0700 Seb Coe can suck my cock http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/seb-coe-can-suck-my-cock http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/seb-coe-can-suck-my-cock
  1. Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner. The use of our logo or any other Olympic or London 2012 Mark(s) as a link to the Site is not permitted. View our guidelines on Use of the Games’ Marks.

Here's a link to the ill-planned, over-priced, fascist-inclined, civil-liberties-destroying, corporate-minded disaster in the making that is this joke of an Olympic games website.

Now sue me, you fuckers.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 23 Jun 2012 04:07:00 -0700 Of fraud and fraudsters http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/of-fraud-and-fraudsters http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/of-fraud-and-fraudsters

6949214775_7c779cf0d7_b

Photograph by ell brown on Flickr. Creative Commons licence

If you, like me, have something incurable but treatable that, without treatment, would leave you unable to work, the NHS in England is grudgingly willing to let you have your prescriptions for free.

They don't make it easy for you to find this out. You need to either wade through dozens of forms and leaflets offering you ways of paying in advance or in instalments, or, as happened to me, pay for prescriptions that were keeping me alive for about a year until my GP casually asked if anyone had told me I could be having them for free.

For five years the NHS has been pumping an increasing number of pills in to me (mostly to counteract the side-effects of the previous set of pills, as far as I can tell) and it hasn't cost me a penny. Which is good, because otherwise it would be costing me over £40 a month just to stay alive. There have been times recently when I simply didn't have £40 for such non-essential luxuries as medicines to stay alive, so I'm grateful to Dr Botherway for mentioning the existence of the card in the first place.

These cards last 5 years. I've just reached that milestone and have been through the tortuous process of applying for a renewal - go to your GP, get a form, pick between the two types of hypoparathyroidism mentioned without really knowing which one you have, sign the form, return it to the GP, get him to sign it and post it, wait for anything up to 3 generations for the new card to come back from Newcastle… the usual experience when dealing with any bureaucracy that hates its customers (that is to say: all of them).

So I was very pleased to see an NHS envelope on my doorstep this morning. That was quick. Oddly large, bulging envelope… can't feel the card in it. Hmmm. Have they changed formats? Are they bombarding me with leaflets to get me to eat less meat… again?

Oh, if only. I opened the envelope and was confronted with two Penalty Charge Notices, for £88 each. Two badly (impenetrably) written covering letters. Two photocopies of the back of two prescriptions. Two identical two page forms asking for information they hadn't got (like my NI number and my NHS number… now that's worrying). And one envelope designed to take one very large cheque.

There was no "please explain how…" or "our records don't appear to show…" or any other attempt to communicate. Just the awfully written letter telling me that they had made rigorous checks of my February 2012 prescriptions and had discovered that I was defrauding the NHS of vital funds and must pay up immediately. This was annoying on several levels, as I'm sure you can imagine.

First, the letter is clearly actionable as it accuses me, baselessly, of fraud against an organisation that I'm loudly proud of and have attempted to defend - our NHS. That's defamation.

Second, I have to prove to them my innocence of these baseless charges. They don't make that easy, either, providing little or no space to write information like "I'm holding the fucking exemption card in my damn hand NOW, you berks" or the like. I also have to go out, get two photocopies made of my card and return it within 7 days… in a second class prepaid envelope. The clock on this started ticking when they posted the Penalty Charge Letter second class on Wednesday. The post around here is so slow, it won't get to them in time.

Third, the prescriptions themselves don't have a place to write the number of the card. No, really. You tick a box, but you don't provide proof. You can show the card to the pharmacist, but about 2 years ago they were told not to ask for it any more and when you do show it they show no interest whatsoever. One of the prescriptions has the number scrawled on it. The other is stamped "evidence not seen". So the evidence was seen, just very reluctantly.

Fourth, I now have a permanent record, as far as I can tell, sat on a file somewhere in the NHS saying that I'm a fraudster. One day I might go crawling to the NHS for some help, you know, dying or something trivial and a doctor ro administrator or receptionist will pick up the file, see "DEFRAUDED NHS PHARMACY FEBRUARY 2012" on it and let me slip to the back of the queue (this type of thing does happen: seven years ago a homophobic doctor kept pushing down the queue for investigations and operations because she felt I'd brought the symptoms of bowel cancer on myself with all the poky bum sex I wasn't having because I had the symptoms of bowel cancer).

Fifth, it would be really helpful if the NHS didn't spring nasty surprises like this on people who are on medication for disorders that are made worse by stress. I'd've hoped that was obvious.

Sixth, the cost of all of this. A letter to me, saying "Our records show you ticked this box but we can't match it to your card. Please write the number of the card here:" sent second class with a return envelope would cost comfortably under a pound and would offend nobody. An A5 envelope with 10 sheets of paper, 2 staples, a return envelope, a covering letter, photocopies and the whole swirling back room admin of trying, albeit not very hard, to match the prescription with the card plus going to a higher officer for permission to fine me, opening a file, maintaining it and all the rest can't come in much under £20, if not a whole lot more.

Sure, they'd make that up if I was indeed a fraudster. But they won't this time. Or, judging by this performance, most of the time. Instead this is just money that has washed down the drain (along with the billions in sweeteners to the private companies the Tories are selling the NHS to).

As ever, it remains true that our NHS could use a great deal of reform. But not this insane Tory/Liberal privatisation nonsense. Not the constant rearranging of the boardroom chairs and the merry-go-round of managers, managing directors, commissioners and all that shit. What our NHS needs is the simple application of common sense in all the things it does, from prescriptions to prognoses, from gynaecology to geriatrics.

Sadly, however, when was the last time you saw any politician with even a tiny grain of common sense?

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:02:00 -0700 Liberté, égalité, consterné http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/liberte-egalite-consterne http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/liberte-egalite-consterne

Here's something short I wrote for Transdiffusion's YouTube channel to accompany an odd video.

Advertisements in the 1980s sometimes provoke a smile of nostalgia. And sometimes a thrill of horror. Did we really have our hair like that, eat that rubbish and think grey, white and red slanty stripes were all you needed in a wallpaper or book cover to look super-stylish?

And then there's the French. Who knows more about style than the French? Nobody. But that comes with a failure to understand that some images can disturb. Now, *obviously* that is going to include Captain Birdseye dubbed - and badly overprinted - as Captain Iglo. But here we have a scratch card that wins you polystyrene bricks; customers who get violent if you don't stock Babybel; cats with radioactive footprints; margarine being chronically misused; an actor in a white coat pointing at a VDU ("trust me! I wear a costume and point effectively!"); children failing to eat biscuits; and dyed canaries.

And then they bring out the naked dancing women-chips, who cheerfully dive into hot fat (don't try this at home, kids) and then... go ice skating. Inexplicably.

Don't have nightmares.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Thu, 10 May 2012 12:19:00 -0700 And this is why campaigning against me is counterproductive http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/and-this-is-why-campaigning-against-me-is-cou http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/and-this-is-why-campaigning-against-me-is-cou

I'm not a Christian. I'm an atheist from a pair of atheist parents.

With a love of drama and performance (you see where this is going, right?) I did, however, attend after-school Christian clubs when I was a child.

My best friend in the early 1980s (I moved around a lot, so best friends came and went) was Ellen, and she was from a very very Christian family. When my love of acting and reading became evident, her parents invited me to join Treasure Seekers, an after school club run by the Methodists in Thetford. My parents put up no objections, so I went.

I loved the theatre of it all. The plays, the musicals, the recitals - even a basic, dull Treasure Seekers involved someone (hopefully me!) being called up to the front to read something. Did I ever actually believe? Probably not. The Methodists tended to assume that, if they've got you there, the work is done. Kinda like the Sally Army, who pump time and money into feeding and sheltering the homeless THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST IN 2012 and take the singing of a hymn beforehand as the entire price they charge. The actual saving is left up to Jesus or their god to take care of: they just do the bits needed to get people within shouting distance.

The theology of it all didn't touch me. This was A Good Thing really, because the theology of any religion makes the geeky scientist in me take a step back and start observing the anthropological specimens in front of me with ever more distance. When the BBC moved Doctor Who to a weekday night that clashed with Treasure Seekers, I stopped going to Treasure Seekers. The opportunity to act in front of an audience was nothing compared to the opportunity to watch Doctor Who and thus be the ideal person for the BBC to cast as the sixth (too ambitious), seventh (a teenaged Doctor? Yeah), eighth (they wouldn't cancel it OBVIOUSLY) or most likely ninth (beware, Eccleston, you stole my role) Doctor. My big role, despite a lack of (a) drama school and (b) talent, was on the cards.

Clearly this didn't happen, for the good of Whoers everywhere. I was left with a very shallow imprint of Christianity instead. This was enough to make me benevolent to all religions for most of my life. If you look at the headline rules that Christians, Jews and Muslims believe in (and, basically, all the other religions) then you get a set of rules that we should all work towards. Love, peace, integration, generosity, openness, happiness - every religion is based on these things. And so am I.

Time passes, with me generically benevolent to religion.

And then I'm invited to the Christening of Kate and Tim's first child. My partner of the time was a Christian, as were Kate and Tim. The Christening was a Methodist one. Nobody batted an eyelid at inviting the atheist gay lover of a parishioner to take part in the audience/congregation/whatever. The thing I saw was that we were welcoming a new member of the human race into our society - a good thing.

It turned out that that day was also whatever the Methodists have as an equivalent of a Mass. Dealcoholised wine was passed down the pews. When it reached me, I took it and, with a small smile, handed it on. The woman next to me was SCANDALISED and made it very clear how disgusted she was I hadn't taken part.

My respect for religion shrivelled in her glare. Exactly what part of her god's plan for us all involved a look of sheer hate and disgust at someone who felt they couldn't take part in their ritual? Suddenly, I started to see all religion as simply ritual - and rituals are by their very nature ridiculous. I said then I would never again go into a church voluntarily.

This is all a long way of saying how religion - ritual religion - decided to alienate me for not taking part. I was never really going to be caught, but the opportunity to keep me in orbit around religion existed; the opportunity to not make an enemy of me was there. People with religion didn't take it - they would prefer that I indulge in an unfamiliar ritual rather than try to adapt even by a millimetre the ritual itself.

So they alienated me from religion. They pushed me from being "agnostic" (in this case, agnostic meaning "it's bollocks, but it's your bollocks so that's fine") to being atheist. And then they (you know who I mean) started saying that my atheism itself was A Bad Thing and that I was a "militant" and a "fascist" and a "communist" for being an atheist. Of course, it didn't help when someone of limited metal acuity like Baroness Warsi tied her boat so firmly to that freak Nick Griffin's mast in an attempt to unite religious people (which includes neither Warsi nor Griffin) with "normality" (which includes neither Warsi's followers nor Griffin's).

They have labelled me a militant atheist. And so I now am. Fuck your rituals, you sad deluded proto-humans. Fuck your religions too, despite the whole love-care-forgive-include stuff that they say but you don't follow. And fuck your attempts to foist your insane, backward, racist, sexist, homophobic views on the rest of us in the name of what your so-called god requires of you. Fuck off, the lot of you. And then read this, from a man who is celebrating the holding back of the tide whilst admitting that you people have doomed yourselves.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham