The Pen IS mightier than the Sword!
I’ve had a hell of a painful few days. Left in the lurch by a system designed to make people disappear. Turning them into somebody else’s problem. Emergency phone numbers got me put on hold; or worse yet inflicted elevator music on me. I started loosing it. When I found myself contemplating random acts of violence simpy to get noticed I got truly worried. Locking myself in my bathroom, the only place I could find which could be made secure, until I was able to calm down enough to find a safer environment.
So at roughly seven o’clock this morning I decided to go for a text based approach. Submitting the following as a complaint to Manchester Mental Health via their online form.
I could explain what’s going on with me. Or I could tell you why you’re so fucked-up but you’ve only given me one thousand characters. But Perhaps I’d just like something coherent to latch onto when I can’t cope. Events have pushed me over the edge The Police act like I’m the problem.
What do I do where there’s nowhere safe I can sleep? I’ve be up 72-hours. I’ve not taken my meds. I’m currently sitting where I’ve been told I’m a danger to others. Have little clue how to resolve the situation.
So unless you would like tell me who I’ve got to kill (and I’ve armed myself with something a little bit better than the traditional sword) perhaps you’d like to get someone from South Manchester Team Three to investigate why the occupant of 18 Xxx, Yyy currently has no intention of sleeping there again. If I don’t hear from somebody within a reasonable timeframe I’ll go with the plan of attacking my landlord.
Bleak irony in the extreme. Had the desired effect. Ontological weaponry designed to get through the cracks, using the preconceptions and prejudice I’m faced with to my own advantage.
I’ve since been told it got to the highest reaches of management. At one point even the deployment of Armed Police was considered. Then someone took the reasonable course of giving me a call to find out what was going on. Once I’d given them the title of the piece things started moving in the right direction. I received assistance in dealing with my immediate problems. The hope of a longer-term solution. And a list of the phone-numbers I should have been given in the first place.
Still, the system’s obviously in a mess. The ongoing industrial action is a notable highlight on a site ostensibly designed to support the community rather than employees. The team which supports me is 41% more expensive in regards to the costs incurred by service service users than the team based just a twenty-minute walk up the road. And don’t get me started on negligence which lead to my predicament.
Avon calling.
It's odd when you see two pieces of personal information collide across the interweb. Yesterday Apple phoned with an offer to up-sell an extended warranty. I don't need one. Apple's just work. Even when they don't. They're a bit magic like that. What worried me is that the information Apple seemed to think have was that I'd upgraded to Leopard. Surprise ensued when they learned this laptop came with Leopard installed. The upgrade was for my son. He got my old laptop, with a fresh Leopard replacing my tired and worn-out tiger.
Although to be strict to the truth my leopard upgraded itself to a snow leopard - with a collar; about three weeks before I even ordered it.
Odd that.
Serious Funny
I've never been one to do things by the book. Always preferring to find my own way. Take my recent incarceration on a psych ward: traditionally it's the book of Revelations that's required reading for us nutters. I don't know but I find the revelations of St. John the mushroom-head more than a little obscure. I've heard John was actually Mary, or perhaps Jesus' brother. Whatever the truth of the matter Revelations reads a little bit too much like an acid-trip for my tastes, so personally I found myself reading the book of Wisdom.
Although that book inspired my own bit of craziness. Take for example the revelation I received whilst contemplating a flower I painted for my wife; that the fundamental particle of time oscillates in six dimensions, with a zero point right at the centre, which gives seven dimension of time. Now flick thorough Genesis, spot something? Considering that astrophysicists are now able to find echoes of the Big Bang in cosmic background radiation I'm starting to wonder if the Bible's got echoes in it too. Flip to the end and all that Revelations trippiness; "six-hundred and sixty-six", or "six (I tell you three times)"? I'd have to see the original to be sure but it's odd that six popping up again.
Now I find myself running up against religious copyright: Zen has a good laugh sitting on #1; not sure who has #2, but two could be a reflection of one; #3 is a tie between Christianity, The Matrix, and atomic physics; #4 is the preserve of Golfers; Dischordians mess with fives and annoy Wiccans; Judaism waves a flag for #6 and hides behind #7; Chaos Magicians wield eights. All wonderfully bizarre.
Me? I play with Zeroes.
With some effort (a bit of spin basically) you can simulate any number with a zero. Then you can see some really weird stuff such as time sliding backwards, and entropy going the wrong way.
So just how many years do you get for breaking the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? Probably eternity knowing my luck.
From the Bridge of the Heart of Gold
okay, so if particle physics is basically spinning smaller and smaller rocks together faster and faster and trying harder and harder to make them bang into each other, consider this:
Take three Tarot decks, the essence of two universes, The Holy Bible & Harry Potter; and apply Daniel Jackson's grasp of wormhole connection protocol: Seven points; six coordinates, one origin. Allow it to curve by connecting to a handy source of entangled random: enter "seven points one origin" into google and hit "I feel lucky".
THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY
Okay, now, that's rather odd. Too late to stop it however, I've worked out the gate addresses and everything. Brief summary, The Hanging Man (XII), dives into The Devil (XV), seeking Justice (XI). I mean I simply wanted to demonstrate quantum entanglement and wavefunction collapse by manipulating three Tarot Decks, and demonstrate a relationship to Gringots Wizarding Bank. Although oddly the initials GWB haved more than one meaning...
So why are you still here?
Some time last year something happened to me which changed my view of the world somewhat. I began to see what was going on. Two weeks after that I discovered how you were doing it. Two weeks after that I killed my self.
That was just to survive.
Says something about this world, doesn't it?
But here's a thought. If time does not exist, and I'm lead to believe it's true. Then for what we describe as time to work the way we perceive it to work somebody has to enforce continuity. But I'm lying by the side of the M60 and my life is flashing before my eyes, so why am I still here?
Late One Evening
In the darkness, insanity moved my way. I was enveloped. Insanity and I are now one.
On the Events of Yesterday
Traffic was bad last night. So I didn't get home until 8pm. By which time my Son was in bed, so I didn't get a chance to speak to him. It seems that he was naughty at school. Pushing, spitting, and hitting at another boy. He'd forgotten about it all this morning. Took him a while to remember what he'd done.
It seems that the other boy, let's call him Ben, had started with scratching. They used to be friends, but then Ben, and I'm at a loss to understand the mechanics of this, turned into a bit of a bully. Now Ben won't stop being naughty, and won't go away. Yesterday my Son simply reacted in kind - understandable - but I'm far from happy about it. So I quickly ran through the How to Deal With Bullies speech.
The speech is different every time. But the basics are always the same. First the rules:
- Ignore the bully.
- Walk away if you have to.
- Don't get angry or upset.
- Don't hit back.
- Tell somebody
Then the reasoning:
- Do otherwise and you're just letting the bully know their actions are okay.
- Do otherwise and you provide them with exactly the sorts of entertainment they crave.
- Do otherwise and and when all is said and done you will be just as naughty as them.
Of course I usually forget one rule. The fact that - unlike the rest of the rules and reason - I didn't work it out for myself probably speaks volumes. But my Wife usually remembers and chips-in:
- Go find your true friends.
Let sleeping policemen lie?
It seems that the Conservatives are proposing the removal of all speed humps from British roads within two years, claiming the evidence is inconclusive and and it slows down the emergency services. However, the statistics seem to show that speed humps reduce fatalities by between 17% and 59%. Well, I live with speed humps. I drive over them daily. I live on a road which has them. I walk along roads with them. I've even contemplated them sociologically and philosophically. I am, I would say, an independent expert on my local speed humps.
So here's what I think:
- Speed humps get installed mainly to placate local residents over the hordes of ill mannered killer rat-runners. But then most really bad driving in the vicinity of speed humps is due to residents, not them that use the road as a "rat-run". Furthermore humps have no noticeable effect on cutting down the total amount of "rat-runners". However the seems to be some effect on the types of "rat-runner" - more soft-roaders, less cars.
- When installed speed humps can usually be driven over at precicely the posted speed limit. However they soon degrade. And the slower you make people drive over the bumps the more they'll accelerate afterwards. So after about six months the average speed of traffic is back to pre-hump levels.
- Drivers on roads with speed humps pay less attention to the conditions of the road as they are busy paying attention to the next hump. Which makes the road considerably more dangerous. However, the negotiation of humps, and the post hump acceleration, causes more noise, and it seems to be the noise which alerts pedestrians to take extra care.
As to my opinion on the Conservative proposals. Well it's nothing but a ploy to get votes. It's not like they care enough to actually want to make things better.
A New Approach
Last night, whilst a mate and I were bitching about how the obtrusiveness of Sky's adverts spoilt our enjoyment of Battlestar Galactica, I happened to mention that consumer electronics really should be rethunk. My mate agreed. I got stuck trying to describe my vision of technological utopia. When my mate piped-up saying that what we needed were huge storage arrays. When you buy a DVD you pop it into your DVD player and watch it as normal. Whilst watching it the system also copies it to your array. Hence, once you have watched the DVD once you never need the original media again. Great idea. But it'll never work.
Well, actually, it could work. It's just that it'll never be allowed to work. I've been thinking about the development of media in the 21st century quite a lot recently. As yet I can draw no real conclusions, except that mostly the problems are not technological. Which is nice. Because contemplation of thesenon-technological issues which I find most fascinating. I'm not helped by the fact that I'm having problems turning up hard data but what I can find only makes me think more (and a recent Vagueware post has made me think some more too).
Consider:
TV advertising in the UK generates £4 Billion a year. Counting only people with TV licences this figure is only 56p per person per day. Of course everybody pays for advertising. It's an indirect cost of the goods we buy. A tax levied by the market as it were. But I think I'd happily pay 56p PER PROGRAM on top of the advertising tax just to be rid of irritating commercials for the five or so programs I actively sit down to watch on a weekly basis. Now, given that a single episode of the sort of thing I like to watch costs up to $3Million, if I could find 3 million people who feel the same way then together we could commission our own episodes. And watch them advert free. Once we've done this there is nothing stopping us from selling broadcast rights too... thereby receiving a rebate on the aforementioned advertising tax.
I feel the need to contemplate this some more. Because although this sounds awfully simple it's not. And just trying to contemplate the effects on the status-quo has wasted a whole morning. But still. I don't think I'm alone when I suggest the time has come to change some things about the way we interact with our media. We need a new approach...
Political Disability
The other day I was having a quiet smoke, mindlessly listening to Radio 4, staring out of the window. When my attention was attracted to an item about a blind man who was decidedly irked. He'd been to a concert. During the interval he'd attempted to by a CD from a stall at the rear of the venue. Being unable to read the cover notes of the CD he'd asked the salesperson to read them to him. And received a negative response. After a bit of a drawn-out saga he eventually got an apology, some free CDs, and an assurance that the promoter would invest in "Disability Awareness" training for their staff.
All well and good. Only, well, the two blind people discussing this sad state of affairs started to talk about "normal" people in the same way as "normal" people used to talk about the disabled in the days before society started to care (before, dare I say it, political correctness). Lumping all non-blind people together as "they", and "them"; making broad assumptions; failing to see anyone else as an individual; failing to consider for one moment that people, no matter how "normal" they seem, may also be "disabled", or that everyone else also has rights. For instance, what if the person who refused to read the CD sleeve was dyslexic? What about their rights not to be embarrassed publicly. And what would have happened if the "normal" people in the queue had held-up the line because they wished to read the CD sleeve? I'm sure someone would have been rude to them too.
Now, I truly do believe that a disability should not define the person, and that with a little effort, and perhaps a bit of help with the obvious things, a disabled person can do anything a "normal" person can do. However I believe in creating a whole host of disability rights legislation we've reached a point where the disabled actively allow their disability to define who they are. Which surely is precisely the opposite of what was intended.
However, even though I think the current legislation is creating problems, don't for one moment thing I'm against it. Because even though some claim we've created a society based on 'political correctness gone mad', there are still a large number of unenlightened people out there. For instance I heard someone recently claim David Blunkett should not be Home Secretary. Because being blind means he cannot do a proper job. Okay, so I agree Blunkett is not doing a proper job and should not be Home Secretary - but that's because he's a populist-authoritarian neo-conservative - being blind has nothing to do with it.
The Power of the Dark Side.
Of all the things I cannot abide it's hypocrisy which gets under my skin the most. However, it does perform a useful role. It highlights areas where default assumptions are incorrect and hopefully leads to a better understanding and an adjustment of values. When it comes to evolving morality I can't currently think of a better tool. I'm not sure how, yet, but I think there is a point I want to make. About morality. As ever there is no real starting point for my thoughts.
Critical mass was achieved when I came across a story over on BBC News. It was about the British Navy recognising its first registered Satanist. My initial reaction was similar to that of Anne Widdecombe - itself a startling realisation. But the article went on to describe Satanism and one line in particular bothered me: "Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification".
Whereas I don't believe in most of the junk which religions wrap themselves up in, I do believe some things are right and some things are wrong. So rather than sin, I may talk about wrongness. Instead of referring to the seven deadly sins I may refer to negative emotions. Semantics aside, I suppose you could say that in broad terms I have a sense of morality which most would recognise in being Christian. Hence my problem with Satanism.
However. Consider the world of Advertising, and how the so-called sins are used to create the desire to buy something you don't need because you will experience a physical, mental, or emotional gratification. I've seen an advert for a television which basically said, "Buy this TV and people will envy you". Then there is an add for a car which says "Be ashamed of driving anything else". And lets not forget the Magnum "Seven Deadly Sins" marketing campaign.
Some would claim such advertising is merely postmodern irony. Perhaps it is, only very few people seem to know the meaning of the word "irony", and fewer still understand "postmodern". So until the world actually understand what "postmodern irony" is, and what it means, and how to spot it, I'll refuse to accept it as any sort of excuse and take things on face value. So I'll happily equate those who work in Advertising with members of the Church of Satan. Which is where hypocrisy comes into the argument. Either we condemn Satanism as wrong, and along with it the tactics of advertising. Or we accept both. To do otherwise would be hypocracy.
It's not MY fault!
I blame Wiggy. I do. He's a friend, and he keeps posting interesting stuff. Stuff which acts as an external force the the object at rest which is my brain. Often I want to comment, and with the new look Iconoplex, I could. Only I really do like to contemplate my comments. If I don't I merely tend to say a lot of nothing. So I'll wander off, potter around, wash the dishes, have a smoke, and contemplate.
As I think, my brain churns around and coughs-up other ideas. Soon I'm not in the same place as where I started. But I still feel I want to say something. I sit down, start a new blog, do some more pottering around when I get stuck. Finally loosing and recollection of what I actually wanted to say and head off into the irritation zone It started with Iconoplex, therefore it's Wiggy's fault. Q.E.D.
Only it's not Wiggy's fault. By saying otherwise I'm merely trying to be humorous. An outward expression of the mock anger experienced when my train of thought happily heads off on a tangent without me. But I've started to wonder if a casually ironic sense of humour is dangerous. That, perhaps, people don't realise where I'm coming from when when I casually suggest letting Liverpool burn to a crisp, or that we should pull out the plug and allow everything to the east of the San Andreas Fault slide into the Atlantic, or that a tactical nuke would finally solve the problem of who gets to control Jerusalem.
Oh, and in case you're wondering this WAS set off by something over on Iconoplex. In this instance it was remembering that I'd had the equal, but opposite, realisation many years ago. I realised that unlike me most people didn't believe we were all somehow related. People who couldn't imagine we all part of that greater being which is humanity. Wiggy's revelation stopped him feeling lonely. I'm still trying to figure-out what my realisation makes me feel. But it does, I think, in some part, explain the black humour.
Irritation
Of late I find my blog has become a little bit too technical. Not that there is anything wrong with this. Part of my reason for starting a blog was to give me a place to store the notes I create. There are three aims behind this. Firstly to create a formal repository that I myself can use. Allowing others access to possibly useful information is the second reason. The final reason is that fulfilling the second increases the efficacy of the first. So far I find I'm doing okay.
However, I also intended my blog as a place to explore ideas. Again having an audience forces me to do a better job. As to why I want to explore ideas... well, I need practise. So much goes on in my head that very rarely am I ever able to make much sense of it all. And I really would like to make sense of it all. I need to learn to focus: crystallise my thoughts: draw conclusions: look for flaws: address assumptions. Again, ignoring the cyclical stop/start nature of the muse, I think I'm doing okay.
To aid me with my blogging tasks I created a structure within which to work. The technical structure involves text files edited with Vim, Makefiles, several custom scripts, a CVS repository, and a somewhat crazy Apache setup. It can't have escaped your attention that there's supposed to be some content structure. There is also a structure to the way I write non-techie stuff. One idea per blog written in a five paragraph essay format. Only, I'm not happy with the structure.
I irritated myself into tidying thing up technically a few weeks back. It's still partly hideous, but I find it's not quite so obvious. The content structure is probably sub-optimal. Only, I don't really care. So I'm happy to ignore any deficiencies. But it's the writing structure that's I've been annoying myself with for the longest time. Things which seemed to follow a pattern, a progression, in my head don't come out right when I type. Hence my home directory is littered with the failed attempts to warp memes into any semblance of sense in the required format. I seem to get so far, realise I've not actually said anything I set out to. And stop.