Not so Christian Voice

In the comments of my previous post (all those weeks ago... sigh), for some reason or other, and at no-one whatever's request, I grudgingly resigned myself to having to say something considered and articulate about free speech... fortunately, it so happens that Stewart Lee, the co-creator of Jerry Springer - The Opera, has already done the job for me :)

Well, not for me specifically... I didn't commission it or anything... I just mean that...

Look, anyway, if you have 40-something minutes to spare and don't mind watching lots of people saying stuff you already agree with (unless you don't; in which case, you probably should watch it, and not just because it's fun to shout stuff at people on telly) you can watch his documentary don't get me started... in YouTube-sized chunks here, here, here, here, here, then here. Unlike watching back-to-back episodes of Two Pints of Lager..., it probably won't be the worst thing you've ever done with 40-something minutes. Actually, that probably doesn't work, does it? Back-to-back episodes of Two Pints... would be more like 50-something minutes... No, never mind, that actually probably just reinforces my point.

[Sighs] It's no use. I tried, but it turns out I can't hold my tongue (eeeew, it's covered in spit):

1. Jerry Springer - The Opera DOESN'T portray Jesus as a coprophiliac sexual deviant. It's just the same actor in a very similar costume. If Stephen Green had seen the show he might have noticed. Oh, wait, apparently he did see the show. Still, to be fair, it must have been difficult to see everything properly while wearing blinkers.

2. If God does exist, He surely doesn't need defending. Surely. Even by humourless reactionaries who seem to think "the government is encouraging children into... infertility" (seriously, what?). Well, that's just the start of Christian Voice's nuttiness. I could go on... and on... and... but just take a look at their website. It's a veritable prelapsarian paradise of Christian love* and tolerance.

It isn't?

Really, I'm shocked.

3. Not really especially related to freedom of speech or Jerry Springer - The Opera, but anyway... I notice that Christian Voice has produced a Briefing Paper on Islam, which they believe to be "as dispassionate a piece of research as possible and... a true reflection on the beliefs of Islam." Wow. That must have been some piece of research. I wonder how many people worked on that "massive undertaking", how many people there were busily and thoroughly sifting out the "authorative sources", working night and day? After all there's "so much [material]" out there these days. There must have been at least, ooh, how many people...

You don't say. Really? Just the one? That can't be right. Oh well, I'm sure he must have been a highly regarded expert on...

No?

It was Stephen Green?

Of course it was.

Still, at least he has an MA. In something. So that's alright then.

(Hmm, you have to actually send away for it too. Might it be just a little too underinformed and inflammatory to be freely available and easily prosecutable? I wonder...)

4. And what's the thing that annoys me most about Christian Voice? That they're such easy targets. I mean, now I feel like a bully for even having said any of this. And how cunning and underhand is that? Bloody passive-agressive religio-nutjobs.

Actually, it was the stunning level of bigotry and intolerance that annoyed me most. Of course.

But that wasn't funny.

In any way.

[Sighs] And God forbid I should be serious...


Actually, I really shouldn't. Because if God is even remotely connected to Christian Voice then I can only conclude that: a) humourlessness is next to Godliness; and, b) that's not a God I ever want to get close to.


And here endeth the rant.


Tomorrow:

Facebook: cultural phenomenon, or first instruction in remedial reading classes?


*should anyone decide to be pedantic, what I mean is, if Christ came to save mankind from Original Sin, then Christian love must be, in a sense, prelapsarian.

Give money to Christian Voice: fund a mentalist

According to later today's Guardian, some pressure group called Christian Voice is trying to prosecute the producer of Jerry Springer - The Opera for blasphemous libel; also the Director General of the BBC for showing it on TV:

Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said in 2005 that the show portrayed Jesus as a "coprophiliac sexual deviant".

Hmm. Anyone else think Mr Green's case might be just slightly compromised by his familiarity with the correct term for being sexually aroused by faeces?

Good. Then if we're all agreed that he's at least put his foot in it*, I can skip the earnest ramblings about freedom of speech and instead let you know about a superb little radio programme I just heard: From Fact to Fiction. It's a series in which writers pen a 15-minute fictional response to the week's news. I've heard others in the series and not been especially enthralled, but last Saturday's was the best thing I've heard on radio in ages - a funny, witty, thoughtful, at times cuttingly satirical, surreal narrative called To The River, performed and written by a poet, Adrian Mitchell, and a singer, Andy Roberts. Yep, it does mostly rhyme, and there are short comedic songs... yet it's still wonderful. Get clicking before it's gone (probably by Saturday).


*To those with more visual imaginations than me: sorry. Also, to Mr Green's lawyers: that was A JOKE; and if it could remain a cheap one, that would be just peachy.

I'm sure it'll pass

There's one consolation to having writer's block: the fact that even though you aren't writing you still get to call yourself a writer. Which isn't so much a consolation as a lie. Still, it's quite a consoling one. And sometimes you take what you can get.

For those of you who might be reading between the lines, yes, I have writer's block. Although, how you can claim that was between the lines...

Anyhow, I think I know at least part of what's behind the block: I've got out of the habit of just coming up with stuff from scratch. During the MA there were always assignments - briefs, words, or ideas that had to be turned into something. Granted, I generally turned them into things that were very much my own, but there was always at least the smallest of starting points; the clicky thing that lights the gas, if you will. And if you won't: well, I suppose you could choose your own metaphor, but really you're just creating work for yourself.

I remember not needing prompts and deadlines - frankly, I'd be worried if I couldn't; it was only about a year ago. It was nice. I probably needed someone to shut me up or point out where I was being self indulgent, now and again, of course, like at the end of that last paragraph; and half the stuff I wrote never got finished... But still, I didn't really need prompts. And now? Well, this blog's the only thing I write from scratch, and just look at it. Poor limping creature with its uneven fur.

Oh well. There's a lesson to be learned, I supppose: you can't enter an institution without becoming institutionalised; at least a little. Still, I'd do it all over again. One of the best years of my life.

And I never was good at learning lessons.

Warming up

I appear to have injured my throat. By eating.

Unless there's some other explanation for why it rather suddenly began to hurt to swallow just as I came to the end of my evening meal tonight. I can't think of one. I was eating salad - not a very big one; there wasn't even anything sharp or spiky in it. And besides, it's not that kind of pain. Which all leaves me with just the one conclusion: in future, I shall have to warm up before eating.

Hmph.

Anyway, the apparent unfitness of my gullet wasn't really what I came here to blog about. I was actually thinking of trying to witter on about something writerly. You know, seeing as I threatened a week or two ago that this might yet turn into a writer's blog.

If any writerly types out there were waiting for that, incidentally, well done, you've been practising a valuable skill - writing seems to involve an awful lot of waiting (waiting for inspiration, waiting to hear whether people want your work, waiting for your benefits claims to be processed). All of which, I suppose, is only fitting, given the similarity between the two words - all too easily confused. In which case, maybe I could solve all our problems by thinking up a new word to replace 'writing'...

Of course. We could call it procrastinating.

Which would be great. For one, it would eliminate all these kinds of conversations:

"Are you writing, or procrastinating?"
"Weeeell..."

And wouldn't this be a great aphorism?

Writing is 1% inspiration, 99% procrastination.

Wait. No, it wouldn't. In my new scheme of things that aphorism would end up being:

Procrastinating is 1% inspiration, 99% procrastination.

Which makes no sense whatsoever. Shame. (Or possibly makes perfect sense. But that might just be me).

Oh well. On the bright side, at least I've fulfilled my intention of wittering on about writing for a while. So, then, time for a bit of good, solid procrastinating, I think.

Who says blogging's not a good warm up exercise?

Well, not for eating, though, probably.

Hmm... What?

I seem to have become very easily distracted lately. I'd like to think that this is because my mind is constantly assailing me with so many brilliant ideas at any given moment that to concentrate on even one of them and follow it to its inevitable brilliant conclusion is almost physically impossible, but, sadly, I'm not a monumentally arrogant arsehole. Not 'sadly' for everyone else, obviously; I, though, would quite like to have a self-image like that - unlike people with that kind of self image, it must be very nice. To be that self-confident, I mean. Anyway, I seem to have distracted myself again. Thank goodness, then, for that first sentence to remind me what I'm doing - on this occasion, at least, I won't be realising in three hours time that I've apparently forgotten to wash my hair. Again (don't ask). Anyway, being distracted.

As far as this distraction thing goes, it's fair to say that I really don't help myself: I just added a Google Reader widget to my iGoogle homepage. Now, each and every time I go there for some link or other, I shall instead find myself refreshing the reader box and only remembering what I wanted to look at some time later, most likely after a long and convoluted chain of other links and articles has led me to a story about the deputy mayor of Delhi being killed by monkeys, or some such other common everyday occurence (erm, not because I'm often to be found speculatively googling for recent cases of Asian dignitaries being mauled by apes, but because the article might contain some random word that jogs my memory - for instance: "Ah! Peanuts! Of course - I was going to read today's Peanuts strip. Bloody monkeys." Sadly, that's how my mind works. Or doesn't).

It's not even as if my brain needs outside assistance to get distracted - it's already capable of forgetting what it loaded google for within the space of a mouse click. So why I decided signing up to Google Reader would simplify my life I have no idea. I was probably distracted.

Anyway, I'm sure there was something I was supposed to be doing...

By, like, a proper production company, and everything...

I just found out today that my radio sitcom's going to be pitched to the BBC later this month :)

So, um, yeah, I guess this thing might yet turn into a writer's blog...

Who'd have thunk it?

This time, it really is about the news

Let it never be said that I don't make the same mistake twice. In other words, I bought newspapers again today. Two of them - the Sun and The Times. Actually, I meant to buy The Independent, not The Times, but clearly even at the purchasing stage I struggle to pay them adequate attention.

And I do struggle to pay them adequate attention; I seem to have some kind of aversion. Within a paragraph of any story, I've usually glazed over; assuming I've even got past the headline. And on the odd occasion I get to the end of a story, it's seemingly only after a supreme effort of will on my part; and the odd rest or two. I was being slightly disingenuous in my last post: often it's not boredom that stops me reading, it's some kind of mental reflex, equivalent to gagging. I find my brain rejecting the words, quite violently.

Let's take the front page of today's Sun:

I'm here, Dad...
I'll stay as long as it takes

BECKS' VOW AFTER DAD'S HEART ATTACK: SEE PAGES 4 & 5

Bollocks did he say that. Or rather, bollocks do they know he said that. Turn to pages 4 & 5 and sure enough, yep, they've paraphrased the words of "a source close to the family". There'd barely be a story at all without the words of this mysterious all-knowing "a source close to". There'd barely be a Sun, in fact. There's always an "a source close to". When we finally find this omnipresent celeb hanger-on he or she should be forcibly silenced so that we don't have to read yet more of these non-stories, the flappy-mouthed bastard. Perhaps by being forced to eat every single one of the innumerable words they've spewed out over the years - either they'll be too busy to speak for the next few decades, or they'll choke. Either way: result.

And what's the main headline?

MADDIE
'BURIED
IN SPAIN'

I am this far away from slapping my forehead over and over until those five words have fallen from my brain. Or my brain has fallen from my head. Whichever proves most expedient.

Yes, I know it has inverted commas around it, but could that be any more sensationally misleading on first glance? The first line of the text box next to it might as well say: "Made you look." It doesn't of course, although that would at least be more honest. As for what it does say there:

Kate and Gerry McCann were horrified yesterday as desperate Portuguese cops amazingly claimed the couple had buried missing daughter Madeleine over the border in Spain.

The latest in a string of sick theories from cops...

Nice to see The Sun taking a typically even-handed stance on whether these poor innocent Brits* had anything to do with their daughter's disappearance, or are just being wilfully tormented by a bunch of nasty foreigners set on prolonging their agony.

Don't get me wrong, I expect nothing less of The Sun - after all, what would it be without emotive, biased, manipulative and xenophobic reporting? (Answer: readable; credible; less popular, probably. Depressingly). And I have no idea what's true and what's not in the whole McCann saga. But is it really still news - front page news? Hello, what about Burma? Oh, there it is, in a speech bubble next to the blonde head of Amii, 20, from Birmingham, who has this to say:

It's horrifying to see images of innocent protesters being gunned down by soldiers simply because they are marching for democracy.

Which is presumably why such images, and any other mention of Burma whatsoever, have been bumped to page 12. Nice to see that its Page 3 girls now have a hand in the Sun's editorial decisions. Who'd have thought we'd see that day? Truly, we have progressed.

Tossing The Sun aside, then, let's move on to The Times.

It too has plenty of faults, of course; not least blandness, and the same ownership as The Sun. And sometimes that is why I glaze over as I scan its pages, why my brain rebels against the words, but there are other reasons why I struggle to pay the news - the serious news - adequate attention: sometimes I find myself caring. I hate it when that happens.

I wore a red shirt today in support of the Burmese. I doubt very much that it helped. And I can't say that I saw anyone else wearing one. But it was easy enough to do. Which is probably why I did it: if it had been anything more arduous, I doubt I would have. I'm a hypocrite. And I don't like to care - via then not doing anything, it makes me a hypocrite.

There's too much to care about. Too many stories from which some little detail of someone's humanity could leap out from amidst the rhetoric, agenda and non-stories of whichever paper I'm reading it in, and trigger not the mental gagging reflex I talked about but a lump in my throat. Too many lumps in your throat and you can't breathe.

Today, flip-flops, of all things, made me care, made me want to do something; made me realise I won't; made me realise I can't. They were on the feet of protesters being shot at and beaten by Burmese police and soldiers; and they were lying on the road, left behind as they fled. When, I found myself thinking, would you ever need to shoot at someone in flip-flops? What person has ever been a threat to society whilst wearing flip-flops?

There were other details, as well, buried towards the end of the main article; recounted once the journalist finally had some room to write, having got the blander, more ignorable facts out of the way, as journalists must. He must have been praying that the end of the article - in this instance, perhaps the most important part - wasn't cut, like so many are. Fortunately, as far as I can tell, it wasn't. It contained details of the kind of one-to-one human encounters, that, reported more or less baldly, without The Sun's blatant emoting, can bring a story home to someone; that can make it real. Maybe make it real to someone who can do something. At least, I hope so. Though I'm not sure what anyone outside of politics can do, or whether anyone inside politics will do anything particularly effective.

I said above that I don't like to care. In the case of Burma, it's because I can't do anything, anything meaningful. In so many other cases, it's because maybe I could. And it's because I know I won't. Unless it's easy. Like ranting on a blog hardly anyone reads.

I've linked to this before, but now seems to be an apt time to link to it again:

Suu Kyi/Giacometti, on Locus Novus.

I knew nothing about Aung San Suu Kyi before seeing that. Shortly after, I happened to read a chapter from the then still Chancellor, Gordon Brown's book, Courage: Eight Portraits - it was also about Aung Suu Kyi. The chapter was syndicated in The Guardian. If anyone reading this doesn't know anything about her, or the issues surrounding what's going on in Burma at the moment, I'd recommend at least reading what he wrote. She really is a remarkable woman.

As for Gordon Brown, it's probably too early to judge. I just hope that, unlike me, he has the courage of his convictions; clearly, someone else needs to.


*They're British, they must be innocent, remember?

Yet more biting, news-based satire

I've had it in my mind for a while to write, every week, something funny about, or inspired by, things from the news. Not necessarily satire; maybe just a short story. So, last Friday, to that end, I bought a couple of newspapers. Having finally got around to reading them, I can now report that:

1) The Countdown numbers game on the back of G2 is way more difficult than the telly version.
2) Unless it's already filtered through humour: good grief, the news bores me senseless.

Bugger.

The last few paragraphs might be worth reading, but I wouldn't get your hopes up

I decided I should blog more often. Sadly, I didn't decide what about. So, unless you have something better to do (I feel sure that you must; but apparently I don't, so I'm not going to presume), you'll just have to read along as - like some kind of curiously specific confectionery junkie in an understocked newsagents - I flail around, desperately, in search of a topic.

[Pauses a second for tumbleweed to go about its business].

Judging by that slightly tortured simile, your reading may not be entirely without pain. Or at least empathy for the plight of innocent similes, unwillingly conscripted into this mess. I'd apologise, but, frankly, if you're going to get sentimental about mere figures of speech, you're going to need to toughen up in this world, and fast. And receiving easy apologies from me certainly isn't going to do anything for your sense of realistic expectations.

Anyway, why should I? I mean, you don't have to read this; I, on the other hand, have to write it, and no-one's going to apologise to me for that, are they? No-one ever apologises to the author for what he's produced. No-one ever said to Joesph Heller: "Closing Time had lots of good moments, but overall was somewhat sprawling and oddly unsatisfying. Sorry about that." Did they? Most unfair, I think. After all, I'm sure he set out with good intentions. And didn't so many of us get to the end of Catch-22 wanting more of Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder, et al?

Of course, I'm not Joseph Heller. So I have even less right to expect apologies for what I write. And you, therefore, have even less right to expect apologies for having read it.

So there.

Of course, if none of you were expecting apologies, I apologise unreservedly.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Nowhere. As good a place as anywhere; though less preferable than somewhere (for a more exact, though less whimsical definition, see a dictionary). Oh well, I guess I could talk about fun stuff I've found on the internet...

If I'd found anything much lately, that is. I haven't. Indeed, last week, I found myself sitting in front of my laptop doing nothing, just staring at Firefox expecting to be entertained. At least ten minutes must have passed before I realised that that was what I'd been doing. "What the Hell are you doing?" I thought to myself, "You waste enough time without doing stupid things like that," and immediately loaded up FreeCell. Clearly, there is no hope for me.

Oh, I had a dream last night. I don't really remember it, but at some point I saw, handwritten very precisely in black felt-tip pen, near the bottom of a white-painted wall, the words:

PLEASE DO NOT ENTER THIS WALL.
INSIDE, IT IS SMALL
AND SMELLS OF VANILLA.

I found it very pleasing.

My continuing morbid obsession with the daddy-long-legs

There's a daddy-long-legs in my room. It's not relentlessy bumping into my head, trying to assault my laptop screen, or creating a strobing effect by flying round and round inside my lightshade. At least it's doing me that courtesy. No, instead it's endlessly half falling, half flying up and down a corner of my room, apparently with all the incompetence it can possibly muster. If anything I think that might actually be worse. It's not as if it's even a window that it's banging itself against. It's the intersection of two walls. There is NOT THE SLIGHTEST POINT to what it's doing. God, it's depressing.

I have said many times that I think the daddy-long-legs is the living refutation of the theory of intelligent design (unless God really did create it, in which case he's messing with our heads). Not to mention impossible to pluralise. I now also think it is the living embodiment of futility. And I DO NOT want to be sat here staring at the living embodiment of futility. How's a person supposed to achieve anything worthwhile whilst staring at the living embodiment of futility? How's a person supposed to contemplate the future? How's -

Oh.

I think it may have just dropped dead and fallen down behind my bedside cabinet thing. If anything that might just make it even more the embodiment of futility.

Still, at least I don't have to stare at it now. Bloody things.