Well, I've had a long conference with Old Man Money and it looks like visiting Canada will have to be a December/Christmas thing. Though recent events have upgraded a June trip from implausible to plausible, it has not yet graduated to wise. In short, I'd be cleaning out my savings account and leaving myself in a precarious position for when I returned to London. Plus I've lately been having crazy thoughts about "planning for retirement" and "not living hand-to-mouth". Sorry, to those who were hoping to see me sooner rather than later. If I had the ability, I'd visit in both June and December - with smaller trips all over Europe as well.
So now I am presented with the truly First World Problem of deciding what I want to do for a little vacation to celebrate my birthday and cap off what I sincerely hope to be the end of my "career" in data entry (it almost goes without saying that even though it's a month until this Network Rail contract finally ends, I've started hunting for a new and more stimulating job). On the one hand it's tempting to spend a modest wad of cash visiting Rome (before it crumbles) or somewhere in Greece for four or five days - seeking thrills and sights then coming back to London to decompress and recover from making the most of a few days somewhere exotic.
Or do I retreat to stay with my friends in Uffington/Oxford, take a few days off from hustle and/or bustle as well as the Internet (gasp) in order to seriously relax while focusing on writing and drawing in-between long country walks? Cheaper and more productive by far, but not as exciting or exotic - I certainly would miss seeing the Coliseum or the Aegean sea.
Perhaps I could be cheeky enough to do both, back-to-back?
In other news, here's an interesting artifact from recent British history which could be filed under the What's Got Us Whipped Up Into Hysterics Now? column. In the late '90's and very early 2000s's, up until terrorism stole our hearts and minds, paedophiles where the boogey-men supreme in England. Chris Morris, a father of two children and the man behind Brass Eye, got fed up with how the British people were being whipped up into absolute brainless terror so as to further the agenda of several newspapers, TV stations and politicians. Thus, though Brass Eye had been off the air for a few years, he resurrected his old show to produce a special entitled "Paedogeddon". You can find it on Youtube, split into three parts (1 - 2 - 3).
This article, What happens when you satirize hysteria?, does a good job of chronicling that brief period and the various reactions to the show. Here is a rather telling quote from the three page article, the italics added by yours truly:
"...a moral panic of gargantuan proportions has swept the land. Last summer in the English coastal town of Portsmouth, egged on by English tabloids running a "name and shame" campaign, mobs of vigilantes roamed the streets like medieval peasants. But instead of pitchforks they carried knuckle dusters and baseball bats, and rather than hunchbacks they were seeking "kiddie fiddlers," who existed only in the minds of the mob.
Dozens of people were wrongly accused, and one man, a pediatrician, had to leave the area after some of the protesters were confused by the term and torched his house. The pediatrician managed to keep his name out of the press, for fear that more crime might follow him. Another pediatrician, 30-year-old Yvette Cloete, had to leave her home in Gwent, South Wales after it was vandalized: Cloete arrived home from work to see the word "paedo" daubed all over her walls. Police say "the astonishing ignorance" of local anti-pedophile protestors forced her out. "
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7 comments:
The paedophile disguised as a school blew my mind. "We must catch him - he really is a shit."
The show itself is brilliant. It almost immediately becomes impossible to stop laughing.
On the issue itself though, I'm pretty damned torn. Even from my own experiences of friends et al. I have spoken with, it would seem that sexual abuse is as rampant as statistics would imply. And sexual abuse tends to fuck up a child somethin' fierce.
I wish that societies would begin to deal with this problem in a semi-constructive fashion, mind you. Right now, any paedophile is regarded as Basically Hitler instead of, say, suffering from a potentially dangerous neurological deviation.
This may not be a popular view, but there's something about research and therapy that makes more sense to me than reductionism. Oh well!
Speaking of Hitler, I re-read Maus today. Oddly, it wasn't the least bit uplifting!
ANYfucks...
I rather enjoyed the utter bullshit which Phil Collins and that DJ with the crap were coming out with - both were reading what they thought was genuine information from a teleprompter, neither was aware they were on a comedy show!
This is doubly amazing since the show had already made complete tits out of several celebrities and MP's in a similar fashion during the main run of the series a few years prior, on an episode which featured a ficticious drug called "Cake". To give you an idea, several folk of import where made to say that it was "a made-up drug....made up of chemicals". Sheesh!
Also: "My children are here with me tonight. They're safe, are yours?"
"I doubt it".
As for the problem itself, I've been lucky enough not to even (knowingly) have had any friends or acquaintences brush up against it. Though, DUH, I acknowledge that it's a serious problem which needs to be dealt with (in an appropriate , rational fashion)...I do really despise the hysteria and distrust it engenders in the population at large.
And let's not forget the hypocrisy - childrens beauty pagents anybody? You should also really check that last article I linked to. The part I'm thinking of is: "The papers which were frothing most exuberantly began quietly shooting themselves in the feet. One Mail splurge on the programme (headed 'Unspeakably sick', the words of one of the Ministers who hadn't watched it) was preceded by close-ups of Princesses Beatrice (13) and Eugenie (11) in their bikinis; in the Star , beside a shock-horror-sicko Morris story, sat a picture of singer Charlotte Church in a tight top ('She's a big girl now ... chest swell!'). Church is 15."
Pfffft - DJ with the CRAB
Charlotte Church does a nice version of Habanera...
I find the show hilarious from those clips. I'll need to look around more for the others.
On the subject though, I don't know how to handle it but it needs to be thought out well because what we have right now isn't working.
I vote for going to Rome or Greece. I've always been ridiculously jealous of the Britons because they're so close to everything- a 4 hour plane ride takes you to all sorts of amazing coutnries, wehreas a 4 hour plane ride from here gets you to Alberta, Indiana (whoopee!) or Florida- where Canadian retirees go to die.
You can stay home and chill with your pals anytime. Take advantage of a
living in Europe and SEE EUROPE!
Haha...okay Kate, just for you! I'm defintely going to pick up a big memory stick for my camera and be an untterly shameless tourist about it.
But yes, you're absolutely correct to point out the four hours flight measurment. Browsing the travel sites, I feel like I've just had a buffet placed in front of me after years of naught but a single vending machine.
Greece is the top big right now, and I'll have to decide soonish so as to book everything in time, but I could easily carthweel to Switzerland or Vienna instead - to pick two places. It's a pretty weird sensation!
You should probably go to Greece.
First its cheaper I think and second, nah maybe first, its the seat of learning in modern times.
And it sounds like your seat needs teaching LOL.
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