Off My Trolley

WOW, we've been really crap at updating this!

What can I say - Pat got promoted, Nat came off his meds, and I was as flaky as I ever am.

So today: Good Deed For The Day

I have just done, my good deed for the day.

Locally there is a B&Q warehouse, which has shopping trolleys of hitherto unknown depravity, outlawlessness, and viciousness.

This scarred and ruthless bunch of wire-frame desperadoes make Clint Eatwood's "man with no name" and Sid Vicious look like dapper gentlemen, and the stars of WWF look like a bunch of beansprout-eating nuns.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the trolleys working their sentences out at my local B&Q - or perhaps, being harboured, I know little of trolley culture - are among the most savage and contrary metal steeds known to humanity: they are taking their revenge for every last canal-drowned member of their kind, while glugging down white spirit and snorting glue until their chrome coating peels off in despair - I have lost whole inches of shin flesh already to their incorrigible rage.

They have no tyres, they have fractured plastic on the handbar thingiebob, they have - absolutely no mercy. Mess with them, indeeed pull them out to carry your DIY supplies, purely at your own risk.

So, tonight, I ran out of nail polish remover, and so bethunk to get myself to the local late-night shop before I tucked into a big load of pizza, cider, and Dr Who DVDs.

Terrified

On my way back, I saw a nondescript gentleman heading into the car park of B&Q, pushing a terrified-looking Waitrose trolley (Waitrose being within 200 yards of B&Q) - that poor sad, shiny, green-barred fool was shivering, on its intact grey rubber wheels, with sheer TERROR at the prospect of spending the night - let alone its whole trolley LIFE - among the savage pack who service my local home improvers.

I did the unthinkable - alone, on the public highways at 10.45pm, I did say to this strange trolley hijacking freak, "that trolley comes from Waitrose!" (woo me!) and then offered, and proceeded to, walk it home - where it gratefully belonged, among the rest of the Waitrose green and shiny, well-behaved, NON-CARNIVOROUS, trolleys.

My local W serves organic, fair trade and farmer friendly tasty food to people who cannot leave the house without sporting at least ONE designer label - so you can imagine the poor little trolley's terror at being left to fend for itself among norf London's hardest chipped chrome gangstas.

Luckily the poor beastie met me before it was slammed into perdition, and I left it breathing a sigh of trolleyish relief in Waitrose's carpark, where the worst it will witness is a bit of dogging, and people recycling a large amount of Chardonnay bottles - every day.

I now consider this, a day well spent.

Plastic Bags Suck!

If you'd ever needed a reason, to abandon the plastic and reach for the real this is it.

Comment: Great God Of Gossip - LIVES!

Oh, my joy! Oh great God of Tediousness, You who birthed our modern media, isn't this great?
(I checked this out with Pat, or Padraig as he is today, and Nat_Chez, and they saw it too, so yea be it) – the village gossip is dead!

Long live, the village gossip!

Let me explain – back in "the olden days" we'd have, a small village, complete with inbreeding, rape and homophobia condemning the same among themselves yea most fiercely, while yet most of those actions were permitted to the masters who took the rent.

But it was, The Way Things Be.

Back then, in a small town, a LOCAL town, we'd have gossip, which "kept you in your place" – yes, securely owned by the community, but also securely OWNED by the community. Mercy to their whims.

At mercy of their stares, their speculation, their innermost "issues" projected/transferred, onto your sweet furry little arse.

RightWhingers

And now, oh how the right-whingers moan about lack of family values, lack of societal cohesion (ignoring it was that ultimate "righty" MaggieT who brought it about – but, I don't take sides, right and left both suck and the middle is grimmer still in the face of 2007's growing insane authoritarianism) – oh, but how they moan still, how much easier it is to look out upon this beautiful planet and make a horrible "them", and blame it for sacred "us."

So, we seem to some people, to have lost societal cohesion, family values – also known to those who have experienced tham as: grassing; bitching; bullying; ostracising; and, control via social pressures.

Fair enough.

Oh, but wait a moment – because upon yonder ridge I do see - - gossip magazines, that do pray and betray ("a source close to her, said" - not to mention the unmentionable mothers, exes, who sell out and speak up) -- and moan, and gripe, and WHINE - and: sit upon the pedestal of perfection no human is fit to sit upon until - -!

Behold! (gasps)

Yeah, and so behold, I do now see a larger village than before, and it's streets are paved in gossip, and despair. And yea, it is pleasing unto little piggy eyes which cannot behold something they do not have without crying tears of sheer pure acid hate.

I see strangers in Northumbria judging ye little Victoria Beckham from Leyton, and behold, if I was the God Of Smallmindedness, if I was The God OF Societal Control:
I do see people despairing and a wailing, and agnashing of teeth that models do not speak of the highest aspirations of soul, mind and intellect, and that vicars do shag:
if I alone was to be, your petty reason for mourning that tragic idea that humans are best left passing judgement upon each other, rather than getting peaceably on with their own lives – then yes, I’d rejoice in this stupid global village of paparazzi and candid cellulite shots.

God, can we never escape them!? Bummer!

(Next week - why it's okay to burn women if GOSSIP says they eat more/less/spend more on handbags than YOU. And just when you love yourself enough - here come the peasants with pitchforks!)

Charity Scrabble Tournament

Hi there,

this from the excellent Fiona Harrold's website:

"Fiona's friend Monica Garnsey tells us about a charity event to raise funds that will help rebuild a young boy's life.

On April 21st, at the Frontline Club, 9 Norfolk Place, Paddington, I'm having the latest of what has become an annual event, a charity party and scrabble tournament to raise money for Facing the World charity.

The parties are attended by lots of journalists as befits the Frontline, which is a members club for foreign correspondents, but also architects, telly people, bankers, fashion designers, entrepreneurs, all sorts.

You'd be surprised at the party people who adore Scrabble on the sly, and this is a chance for them to come clean about their obsession! There's room for all standards of players, from "I only play at Christmas" to life-long addicts.

Ali's Story

I'm a documentary maker and have made programmes for Channel 4 and the BBC in Iran, Iraq, Gaza, Russia, Bosnia, Thailand and Venezuala.

In 2003, just after the Allied Forces took over Iraq, I made a documentary film about two of the child casualties of the war, Ali Abbas (the little boy who lost his arms in a bomb attack, and is now living in the UK), and his hospital friend Ali Hussein, then 7, whose face was very badly hurt by a bombing attack that also killed many members of his family.

The documentary was called "The Tale of Two Alis", transmitted on Channel 4.

After the documentary, generous friends made it possible for the wonderful Facing the World charity, www.facingtheworld.net) which specialises in life-changing facial surgery for children, to give little Ali Hussein the new face he needed.

You can read a little about Ali's operation in 2004 here, on Facing the World's website.

Tickets for the tournament are £35, which goes straight to the charity, and available from me at monica.garnsey@gmail.com."

You can read more about this at fionaharrold.com or drop a line to Monica direct - monica.garnsey@gmail.com.

I'll be there and it looks like a fun evening - and for a worthwhile cause.

Online Writing Courses

Just a little note before our next proper update: this may be of interest to anyone looking to improve their blogging skills (yes, I've signed up for it too!) - NewsU Journalism Training.

"A project of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, NewsU is committed to providing interactive, inexpensive courses that appeal to journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media." (From their mission statement.)

The online courses are free right now if you register (also free - to do them you'll need Flash) and the "Writer's Workbench" course is very, very good indeed.

TV Comment: Dr Who, The Face Of Boe

OMG, what about the COCK of Boe? Nova phoned me to mention this idea first, so if she deletes this post she's a spoilsport, but what about that - the face of the man is 8 feet wide, minimum, and can telepathically communicate its longings and desires, so what about the rest of him?

The knees of Boe and the bellybutton of Boe interest me slightly less, but OMG if I'm to have a "close encounter of the third kind" - touchy feely - please let it be with the Cock of Boe.

My Google on various "(euphemisms for the male member) Of Boe" turned up no results, which is quite shocking given fanfic's tendency towards the gross (please, go Google your own variations on "body product"+"telly hero"+"sexual act + fanfic" to check that statement out - I really don't want to do it all for you and then link to them, it WILL put me off my supper!)...

So, I'm left hoping that one day some weird, dark-light will glow in my room, a tank will appear chuffing smoke (is it too much to hope it's some high quality hashish?) and then The Cock Of Boe will be resplendent in all its telepathic glory, cranking out fun games and groovy sexpower, ready to save the world.

PatB(e Bastard. Banned!? Oh well! - PatB)

Product Review: False nails

False body parts: generally something one avoids outside medical necessity.

However, the exception is acrylic nails, salon or DIY, which I've noticed have become way more popular for everyday wear by normal women (as opposed to porn stars and drag queens) during the last ten years.

Back when I was in my 20's, false nails seemed to be pretty much restricted to special occasions for most people, and I didn't see too many women in the street wearing them as part of daily life.

Manicure

I remember the main DIY option being solid colour stick-ons, but a recent trip to Boots revealed millions of variations - some are tips which are meant to be used with brush-on acrylic gels, and some are full-cover stick-ons, which come with complex designs or french-manicure style finishing.

Since my nails are now, and always have been, pretty crap (food supplements, creams, lotions and potions - tried 'em all, it's just the way I'm made) I figured I'd give it a go.

I want to find out whether, like high heels, these items are an impediment rather than a positive addition, as well as check out how long they last and how easy they are to apply, and remove.

So on test is: Broadway Nails Natural Square Full Cover (BNK01), £6.99 from Boots.

Application

There are two sets, a total of 48 nails to cater for variations in size and shape, so I had enough to choose nails that fitted exactly, though to fit my (very flat) index nail I had to do a lot of filing and trimming on one of the larger sized nails.

The nails are numbered, which makes picking out the matching size for both hands pretty simple.

I wiped my own nails with nail-polish remover to get rid of any grease and filed them as short as possible, and then applied the acrylics according to the pack instructions - glue on real nail, glue on falsie, align carefully and press together.

The glue that came with them (basically pink superglue, cyanoacrylate adhesive) was quite thick, and I would have preferred something easier to get out the tube in large enough amounts, but I suppose the manufacturers think that would be more likely to cause spillage.

I bought the longest size I could find, because I don't see the point in short false nails at all, but I did have to trim the index and thumb nails by about one third otherwise I wouldn't be able to type, and all of them needed a bit of filing to make the edges look more realistic.

First Day

The initial oddness wore off quite fast, the only potentially hazardous things I've encountered being opening my fridge (it hasn't got a handle) and opening cans. I suppose if I stay off the chilled Strongbow Super, I'll be fine... (I'm well classy, me)

They're quite fun to file and play about with, I don't feel too much like a drag queen, and aside from minor concerns - like "this was how the Borg started out - an extension here, a nip-and-tuck there, and then suddenly it was 'let's assimilate the entire universe!'" I feel quite comfortable with the whole concept.

I slept in them without accidentally removing any flesh, and by the second day two of the nails had begun to lift away at the inner edges, which is probably due to me being rougher with them than a more experienced wearer would be; I glued them back down with some regular runny superglue, which had better capillary action than the glue provided.

"Jewels Not Tools"

Luckily I'm not one of those poor souls with sensitive skin, and I really enjoyed picking off the excess superglue from my cuticles - it may be a bit harsh for some people though, so I'm not sure how they'd repair this kind of problem.

It's almost certainly not recommended if you have any medical conditions that affect your skin, and just to state the obvious, superglue can be dangerous, it bonds skin in seconds, so always handle it with care.

I did a bit of surfing to research the subject and found one fascinating site about salon acrylics, with the expression "jewels not tools" which I shall try to bear in mind - they are really great for picking your nose though, esp. the long pinkie nail, so I'll have to be careful not to accidentally lobotomise myself (thanks for that idea, Pat).

My dog loves the new upgraded Mummy Hands, he keeps coming over for a thorough back scratch, and practically purrs with pleasure. Men.

Impressions

They look striking: no-one's natural nails are that perfect, and the uniform glowy white is attractive, but a trifle odd.

I actually struck up a conversation on the tube yesterday when the chap sitting next to me asked me if they were real or not, which does indicate that people notice them - I also saw a few women checking them out as I was travelling about today, and it's hard to be certain, but I think most were trying to suss out if they were falsies.

One woman wearing very long nails herself (which were either perfect and natural, or very professional fakes) gave me rather a sniffy look - I suspect because they don't look like expensive salon gel nails.

My hands feel very elegant, which is unusual because I don't normally think too much about what impression my hands convey - they're there for doing things, and not as a decorative item - and because of that, it's possible I'm somehow moving and acting in ways that make them more prominent.

Attention

I can feel them, and I'm conscious of them, all the time - it's a bit like when I had my front teeth fixed and lisped for 3 days. I can't imagine how disorientating it must be to be one of these people who has lots of cosmetic surgery, through choice or necessity - it must be weird to have a body or face that changes dimensions significantly within 24 hours.

They've made me more aware of how much we take our body size and shape for granted, and how much data our brains must process just to maneouvre us through space each day.

It's also odd to have a previously normal body part that suddenly becomes a magnet for my own, and other people's, attention, and it's made me recognise first-hand how much the level of cosmetic grooming we women go in for, is directly related to our own comfort-zones regarding how much attention we can handle.

Decorating

I wear eyeliner every day, for example, and I never understood women telling me they "didn't have the time" to do anything like that, because it hardly takes ten minutes - but I do now get that if you're not used to decorating a part of yourself, it can actually feel tiring to be suddenly more conscious of your appearance.

Of course there have been acres of serious commentaries written on this topic, most of which I've read, but to experience it directly was a revelation because I get the impression most authors have found their own comfort level and stuck to it, and are writing to explain (and perhaps, defend) their own choices, rather than explore other options.

Luckily I'm confident/vain/mad/under the thumb of the patriarchy/secure in my femininity (yawn, delete according to your own preferences) - so, I can handle it!

Practicalities

I've managed to put on my makeup without removing an eye, and the washing up and normal chores like that don't present a major challenge. I've spent years carefully designing a lifestyle where household chores are minimised anyway, and that's paying off big style now.

Just typing this, I'm picking up WAY more typos, and I'm not sure if that's due to my fingers basically growing half-an-inch in length overnight or because I'm more conscious of my hands and concentrating too hard - to type accurately I normally kind of switch off from what my paws are doing and let them get on with it, and that's not happening any more.

Scratching is fun; sitting clicking them - 1... 2... 3... 4... - on the desk while I'm on the phone to someone boring, is priceless.

Plastic Fantastic

I found a nice piece of dried fruit from breakfast hidden under one of my nails earlier, and I can see the point that they may not be the most hygienic choice for people in jobs where that matters - the eerie white colour does make them look misleadingly clean all the time.

Walking my dog was potentially going to be a bit dodgy - I chickened out of potential horrors there and wore disposable gloves to pick up after him. I feel I need more practice before I dispense with those.

Tomorrow* is day 3, and I have a full day of stuff scheduled (including something I'm attending with Pat, which one of us will be describing for your reading pleasure on Sunday) so I look forward to throwing some new challenges at the cyborg nails...

But the verdict so far is I like them, and at £3.50/week they may become part of my regular grooming routine. I'll do an update when I remove them, so stay tuned!

(* I'm normally between 4 & 8 hours behind the rest of the UK, so tomorrow for me, at 4am on 14th April, is - 14th April. AKA, Saturday. I get on my own case about this all the time, so please don't feel you have to - Nova)

The Shallow End: Closer Magazine

(Welcome to my weekly column of guilty pleasures and shallow delights! PatB)

Closer magazine has the power to fascinate and disgust me in equal measures. Not least at my own reaction to this byproduct of modern culture.

Brain

It's a bit as though I was quietly picking my nose some innocent Tuesday afternoon, and unexpectedly pulled my own pulsating brain out, impaled on one elegant pinkie.

I'd have to just look, and blink, and maybe poke it a bit further, and work out how consciousness hasn't ceased yet in the face of this brave new horror - but at no point could the experience be called wholesome, or edifying.

I first picked up this atrocious excuse for journalism when I was nursing a loved one, 24/7, through what later turned out to be a terminal illness - the sleepless nights and locked-in tedium called for reading material, and nothing too heavy either, and the innocent pink stylings and dirt-cheap price caught my eye.

This magazine is the equivalent of some hideous Frankenstein's GM mutation of the logic - it regularly obsesses about celeb weight loss, celeb weight gain, anorexic teens and people so fat they cannot lead functional lives.

And whatever story it reports, there's an underlying implication that You The Reader know better, and have wisely maintained that "sensible approach," to both food and arse size, that is the supposed holy grail.

Fridge Raider

A weekly feature called Fridge Raider - I shit you not - offers possibly the most trite advice on diet you'll ever find this side of "don't eat poo, or fireworks" (fruit and vegetables are good for you! - no shit Sherlock?) and the magazine's actual main domain name on the net is closerdiets.com.

This week, we learn that Kate Moss is ethnically white, and Not Fat (breaking news, hold the fucking front page, because I thought KM was Oprah's nom de plume?!) and some pictures of her being - well, pale skinned, and slim - appear in the Pulitzer-died-choking page 5 accusatory article, "Here's Kate on a healthy baby diet!" - obviously I've spared you the full-on capitalisation there.

This devastatingly insightful commentary quotes various wafflings from: "An onlooker"; "A source"; ooh I'm impressed - and then rounds up this waste of manifest existance with the cracking observation that she went out in a minidress that "left onlookers horrified at her skeletal white legs."

Now, as a gay man, I'm not a fan of female legs in anything but the most abstract sense, but trust me, they're not skeletal (don't for god's sake buy this crap just to verify that fact) - they're just the legs of a normal slim woman. They're actually very pretty, there are many far skinnier ones I could think of.

Logic

Anyone who was horrifed by those pins needs to get themselves to a shrink quickfast, as we used to say back in my army days. And then it all talks some crappy blah about some kind of high-protein pregnancy-promoting diet... but by then this story has attained all the journalistic credibility of "Aliens Raped My Cat" and I just tuned out.

Next up in this week's car-crash for the rational mind is an article about Victoria Beckham. If you've read any of the shallow-press's stuff about this married businesswoman and mum-of-three*, you'll know that they tend to think she's not fat enough.

(*I can't work out why the media, who usually delight in persecuting insecure single mums on benefits, have taken someone who's the exact opposite as their main whipping horse, but I know the tabloid/gossip mag world doesn't use our earth logic.)

Closer meets its usual standards of reportage by quoting ""A source close to Posh (said)"; and then it waffles on about her - weight, and how she was photographed drinking (gasp - wait for it!) WINE.

Things like this suddenly make me a want to be militant atheist, because if these judgemental fuckers are made in God's image, I truly dread the prospect of heaven.

Thin

Turning the page (yes, there's no respite) I have a photograph that shows that Courtney Love is: 1. not a teeneager; 2. quite thin right now.

Good on her? Nope, we have to pick on her tummy, which perhaps not suprisingly on a mum of 42, doesn't resemble that of a 12-year old (imagine the headlines if it did - yeach, I could die from the self-righteous crap that would generate).

I'll skip "Pammie's Boob Job Goes Lumpy" "Hot Mums Are A Beach Hit" and "Martine Gets A New Man - And A New Figure" (and the accompanying "Fears For Skinny Charlie (Brooks)" - gosh, wonder where these women get their body issues from?! Damned celebs!) and sundry other crap ("Get A Beach Bum By Summer!") and move straight to the aforementioned Fridge Raider.

This is the crowning gem of this magazine, in much the same way squeezing white pus out is the highlight of having acne.

Revelation

This week, actress Hannah Waterman (me neither) "reveals" what's in her fridge.

She says: "I go to Waitrose once a week if I'm organised enough."

WOW!

She eats, we are told, Soya spread (? yeah soya's great, wonderful), Feta, mozzarella and goat's cheese, free range eggs, a bunch of fruit and some other veg and meat. AKA - food, basically.

A nutritionist with a cute (and rather large) double chin then smilingly comments on all of this, with the combination of tired cliche and faint praise you'd expect - "It's also really important not to cut out a food group without checking with your doctor or a dietician" she burbles: but, "Luckily, this fridge is loaded with fruit and veg - good to see." Aw, shucks.

Harold Shipman

Now, I'm not sure which "food group" Hannah's cut out - "dairy" is quoted but the SLIGHT mention of three kinds of cheese makes me think she may need a dictionary - and I wonder endlessly at the magazine safe-haven of "Check with your GP" - if you were 56, female, and your GP was Harold Shipman, that endless fail-safe advice may have misfired somewhat. GP as national treasure/font of all wisdom, another tired cliche.

There's more - sundry advice columns, puzzles, and a TV guide that has the saving grace of having large full-colour pictures of anyone sexy - but it's shot its load by then, and waist size gets barely a mention.

So, Closer - yes, I buy it most weeks.

Fancy

Yes, it's disgustingly inconsistent on women's weight issues, health issues, body-image issues, and offers extremely unoriginal ideas like - eat fruit, it's good for you.

But a little bit of what you fancy does you good, and if watching this sad carnival of foolish fantasy, aggressive envy and journalistic ridicule helps me to establish my own fabulousness - and actually have a bit of respect and sympathy for people caught in the public eye, which let's face it our British anti-success culture hardly promotes - then it's served its purpose in my life.

Rant: Dr Who & The "Spunky Assistant"

(This post refers to events and character developments in a number of episodes, from the start of the new series in 2005, through to yesterday's The Shakespeare Code, but I don't THINK it contains any detailed spoilers - Nova)

Martha Jones

Dr Who tends to be remembered through rose-tinted glasses: the old series, old companion and the last Doctor always look much better through the misty lens of fond memory.

Because of that, I wanted to give it a couple of episodes before I passed judgement on the Doc's new assistant, Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman).

Two eps in, and one very funny (and very cleverly handled) bedroom scene aside, and she's making a good impression - she fits the ongoing trend for companions to stand up in their own right and question and challenge the Doctor, rather than being kidnap fodder with a big loud scream, and she handles the odd situations she finds herself in with admirable poise - flirting with Shakespeare and grabbing scanners from Judoon space police.

And actually, it's that trend that's beginning to bug me a bit.

Maybe I'm just "pre-menstrual" or plain pissed off, but how far into hero territory are ALL female lead characters now required to go?

Ellen Ripley

Alien's Ellen Ripley, who started this trend, broke new ground for sci-fi heroines by refusing to be a victim, and by fighting back against massive odds, despite various limited armouries, with all the guts and gusto of any male action hero, and she deserves a place in history for forever changing the representation of women in movies.

Sarah Connor in Terminator picked up the baton, especially in T2, and a return to the bad old days of female lead as ornamental scream-machine is now unthinkable.

But at what point does this trend become just another limiting stereotype, and create its own kind of damage to the self-esteem of girls and young women?

Men, on the other hand, have always had access to a full range of personas, because aside from the quipping action hero, there's the thoughtful and reluctant hero (Blake from Blake's 7, Neo in The Matrix), the cowardly joker (Vila in B7) and the scared guy who gets roped in and somehow comes through at the last minute - Purvis in Alien Resurrection comes to mind, the little guy who uses his chestbursting alien to save Call's life.

Women have gone straight from victim to hero, preferably with a dash of noble self-sacrifice, and there's still no grey area for us - for example, I can in no way imagine sneaky Adam from Dalek and The Long Game, Mickey the idiot, or Captain Jack the conman, as female characters in this current Whoniverse....

Entertainment

In the wider media, men have the option to be slobs, and so be cute; be layabouts, and yet be quietly noble; be traitors, yet be witty; lecherous, yet lovable - or to be pretty much anything else they choose.

They tend to be judged less on having pure morals and a perfect character, than on their entertainment value as a whole.

Yet I cast my mind back over the new series of Doctor Who and all, ALL the female characters who've had more than a bit part have been: brave, resourceful, self-sacrificing, noble, good and strong - most of them have been witty as well!

It's surely a clever adaptation of the Madonna-whore complex that all women must be shown as wholly perfect, in order to get any respect at all?

Notably, malevolent female characters like Cassandra, last night's Lilith, and the Plasmavore have all been non-human in either form or original species, and all fairly unsympathetic/unlikeable - so far as I can find, there have been no young female humans who have been anything less than great since the series returned in 2005.

Insecure

Now, I'm not suggesting that some sub-Bridget Jones neurotic would necessarily make a great central character for a show like Dr Who, or be in any way a better role model, but surely painting ALL young females as heroic is every bit as straight-jacketing as having them faint screaming at the merest hint of trouble?

Surely women are not so insecure still, that the only reflection of our kind we can handle from the media is this absurd caricature of spunky resoucefulness, moral rectitude, unlimited courage, and "get up and go"?

I'd like to see women represented as fully, roundedly human - equally capable of being crappy, having an off-day, or having base motives as male characters.

I simply cannot see any other way in which we'll break the restrictive corset applied to all minorities (in representation if not mass of numbers) in which one of us represents all of us, and is held up to be a kind of figurehead.

Assumption

Not so long ago, any person from a minority ethnic group in the public eye would often be asked to speak for all people in that group, and/or treated in the media as though they did, despite the denial of humanity inherant in that assumption.

To switch genres for a moment, it seems that a lot of the flack garnered by the character Bridget Jones, who does stand alone in the bestseller charts as being a likeable, yet deeply flawed, lead female, was because women are still seen (by ourselves as well as the media) as an homogenous mass, whereby one woman can then let the whole lot of us down, because we are not truly individual.

Notably, such accusations of gender traitor were never levelled at comparably stupid, weak and needy male characters in comedy, such as Hancock, Steptoe Jnr or Rodney the Plonker. Frasier had many of the same issues as Bridget, yet I don't recall outraged columns about how men think of more than finding love and increasing their status.

And can you even imagine a FEMALE Mr Bean?!

Moral Ambiguity

If comedy - intrinsically a genre about absurd people doing stupid things so we can laugh at them - still has restrictions on how it portrays women, what chance does sci-fi, which relies heavily on heroes and villains to drive the plot forward, have of throwing in the odd less-than-perfect female, who makes big mistakes, screws up or acts selfishly, while remaining likeable and sympathetic?

Captain Jack had a large amount of moral ambiguity around his past, which ran through right into his first appearance as a con-man on Dr Who in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - if women are to ever be shown as real people rather than cardboard cut-outs, then it's time we had an equally personable - and equally flawed - female step up as more than non-human villain of the week.

It's generally the mark of a gender-oppressive society that women are handed the role of self-sacrificing carriers of the moral burden, while men are held far less accountable and given far more freedoms.

And as long as the only female characters we're asked to like on this series are pure of heart and noble of deed, we may not have stepped quite so far away from the bad old days as we think.

Editorial: First Edition

Welcome and thanks - to the first edition - or "post," or "internet sneeze," "electric jizzlob," or whatever you like - of SkinnyGriffin, where a bunch of the exact same people your mother warned you about rant about stuff, establish boundaries, and create evidence to later be used against them.

To get things rolling, we have been trolling real life for - weeks! - to bring you the best stuff we could find, buy, or steal (or that no-one else actually got round to posting, you-know-who-you-are) in the world - or at least, within bus distance of our homes/treehouses/piss-drenched doorways.

We'll update at least every Saturday, for certain, and probably far more often than that - aka, everytime we get day passes from the high-security prison/asylum known as "everyday life."

We've also, with our love of contrariness, done this bassackwards - scroll down to read some good stuff (or see the menu at the side) and enjoy, and if you want to contribute, contact us via the comments page or e-mail queenofthebadgers@yahoo.co.uk - this e-mail will shortly be pulled once the spambots get it, and we'll do something proper, but for now, it stands.

See you in hell sweetheart,

SkinnyGriffin xxx

Interview: Kory Clarke from Warrior Soul, Nottingham Rock City, 24th March 2007

If there was any way I could write this stuff as being about a nineties rock band still doing the biz after 16 years - uplifting, safe, very slightly ironic - then please believe me, I would.

It would be just so cosy, so nice, so - unchallenging.

Thing is, Warrior Soul (which was basically pared down to frontman Kory Clarke, and then built up again, as good or better than the original) – that Warrior Soul, is not about the past.

(They actually never were, for all the Doors and Iggy references lazy reviewers threw up time and again, in a desperate effort to have seen it all before.)

Fuck-Off Teeshirt

Warrior Soul, perhaps alone among all the bands that hit our consciousness in the nineties, deserve to wear a big fuck-off teeshirt saying "I Told You So" - now that Nirvana has self-destructed, Soundgarden is silent - and, as predicted in GNR’s Paradise City, Captain America is, finally, dead.

When Kory Clarke agreed to an interview at Rock City, Notts, you can understand I was well keen to hear where he thinks we're at right now.

==

Nova: So, Warrior Soul hit the UK in 1990, '91, and ten years later, there was the 9/11 thing in 2001, and now Warrior Soul are back – tell me what's changed for America, what's changed for you?

Clarke: I've put Warrior Soul back together, it's been in hiatus, and my explanation of the rest and as for what happened, what's changed, I think the documentary Loose Change, which is online, probably covers a lot of what I think is going on right now.

And, as for Warrior Soul, we're doing a new album, and I'll express what I think of all that, on the new record.

N: We read about stuff like the US Patriot Act in the UK, and I wonder, how does it affect an artist, someone with a public voice – what's the feeling for you as someone who's not just clocking in and keeping your head down?

C: Well certainly, some of the laws, that they're trying to get sneaked through the Congress right now that affect free speech, that could certainly harm an artist like me, and it's meant to.

N: Is the wider political environment harmful? We seem to have imported wars from the Middle East to our own countries, the US, the UK, I wonder why?

C: It can certainly harm anyone – and it's coming up from all over, not just there, we have people coming up from the south: what I think is, it's designed to dilute the belief in your nationality - that your country doesn't matter, your rights don't matter. You don't matter.

N: What do you think about the way the Oklahoma bombing got blamed on nationalists, but there are so many questions…?

C: I think that was probably a run-through. I think maybe for several other things that happened.

War On Terror

N: What’s the "war on terror" about for Americans?

C: I'm just a rock dude, I don't undertand it all! (laughs) No, be serious, go on.

N: We've got a lot of big rock bands who broke in the nineties coming over now, playing arenas and stadiums, and I love it but it’s like "The Silence of the Lambs" – how come they're not talking about this stuff?

C: I think they're scared. They've always been chicken!

For the first time in my life, I've felt personally like there's a lot of decisions made at the top that, it doesn't seem like the world's a normal place right now, these guys are beyond ruthless, and it's not that safe to speak your mind in front of a microphone.

Why would anyone risk their life!? Point is, they're not here to do something, though they probably do behind the scenes, and I don't know what – I'm sure there's tons of charity work, stuff like that.

Re-Release

N: And Warrior Soul are coming back, when we most need to hear this stuff.

C: Well, I re-released all the records, because I thought, it's still good, it's still relevant, so let's get it out there, and let's go out and do a little tour, and we're also doing the Dirty Rig tour.

I'm not doing politics in Rig! It's just, seriously rock n'roll.

N: It's almost a political statement just to say, "I want to do, what I want to do" these days…I mean we have one CCTV camera to every 14 citizens here in the UK, watching every choice and every move.

C: My comment is, why?! What are you being protected from? The security side – nah, I just don't want to talk about that shit, just put a chip in my arse!

Shaman

N: A lot of your stuff references psychadelia, the sixties, the whole trippy thing – and there's a shamanistic precedent of using altered states to bring back truth and power.

You guys have referenced the whole idea of altered realities, so, what do you think you bring back from that perspective?

C: Well Daoist meditation, at this point, going through the energy fields that we're going through on the planet - and it's bringing a huge psychic awareness as well as huge energy - anyone can access it through meditation, if they want to.

The success of things like The Secret and all this stuff, there's this growth in people whether they're artists or not, in this area of meditation this reaches out and brings more love into the world.

As an artist, when I am performing, I am putting on a play, every night is a different play, with the characters being the songs, and I just like to perform.

I don't know if I'm trying to get into trance necessarily, at one time I probably did that, I'll tell you though now I'm more like - Vegas! The Rat Pack!

N: It's always been pretty counter-culture to be so physical – you should really just become a slave - clock in, clock out, eat GMO gruel, live for the TV …

C: You don't feel that's appealing?! It's, no, maybe not!

N: When has Warrior Soul manifested its goal? What's the guy in your audience getting then?

C: When, I'm playing the stage I want to be on, the people there are learning about performance, about society, about what's going on, and he has what he believes.

Victory

N: And if "Warrior Soul" was an entity, to be a bit surreal and abstract, when has the Warrior won?

C: That's a good question – I've never been close enough to find out. Yet. I'd visualise, people clapping, everybody in love, everybody having a great time.

I'm not trying to deliver some sort of cosmic message, what I'm trying to do is shake my arse, and throw myself round, sing some cool shit, and I give you my soul, you give me your money!

I wanna love everyone - I think what I want is, people need someone sometimes to stand up, okay, but I can't do that right now and so I'm the misfit guy, who just got picked on and is still kicking them back and saying, fuck you, still, I didn't turn into Bon Jovi!

N: There's like, the politically aware band, the hedonist band, the whingey "life hurts me" band, and what I love about Warrior Soul is you transcend those boundaries, you have the attitude and yet you feel and you say fuck you, and you don't get sliced into focus group categories, or a single facet.

C: I just write about, whatever I fucking feel like, so yeah! But transcending the boundaries, yeah, (laughs) you can write that one down.

N: Thank you very much, Kory Clarke.

==

So, Kory would still NOT get up onto his goddamn pedestal, where he belongs by right but from which so many of his peers, his partners in grime, have fallen so hard - and so permanently.

But then, Warrior Soul has never been about preaching and leading in the first place – they take away our excuses for living the half-life, the safe-life, exactly by not being superhuman/subhuman cartoon cliches.

Licence To Live

In an age where our very identity is a commodity licensed back to us (via a smartcard) from the state, we all need to hear this more than ever, rather than handing off onto selected heroes to numb us into complacency, and make all our desires into a niche market.

The songs WS pushed into our consciousness, like Superpower Dreamland, The Losers, The Wasteland, are more relevant now than ever, and if that seems at odds with Capital Radio's sugary airwave Prozac, or the "one issue band" that died off when we outgrew that issue (Zack de la Rocha, I'm talking to you - the internet machine being the greatest freedom tool yet invented, and what about the camera phones blowing the gaff at Abu Ghraib - so, duh, Mr spiky head) then ALL of that is exactly why WS are a band we need more now than ever.

And after the chit-chat ended and some beers had been drunk, this amazing rock n' roll band did one of the top kick arse rock shows I've ever seen, proving that in the end, the best way to fuck the "powers that be" is to simply be human, be yourself, and not give up.

Warrior Soul's back catalogue is available from Escapi Music and Dirty Rig are playing in the UK throughout May. For more info on Warrior Soul, you may like Jon Reed's most excellent writings on them - JonReed.net.

(This interview was arranged in conjunction with Organ magazine, and conducted on 24th March 2007)

Rant: Let's Save the World In 2012! Buy The Mayans A NEW Calendar

Yes, for only £5.99 you can halt all those tedious death dreams that haunt your inbox and the newage parts of the net - by buying the Mayans a NEW calendar!

In 2012 the Mayan's calendar RUNS OUT, and in one of the most widely reported stationery glitches in human history this is believed to herald - well, all kinds of things really, from yer basic apocalypse with the dirty great scorpions, to a new era of love, light and peace.

I put it down to a bored clerk on a Friday afternoon wanting to jack in the calculations for the day, something which anyone who's been a recipient of benefits from the DSS or family tax credits will know can have truly life-altering consequences.

However, the Mayans are credited with profound wisdom beyond our own (mainly due to the fact we wiped a lot of them out and feel guilty) and so this one event is making ripples right across the actually small community of people who surf for crap on the net.

Meanwhile, people hung up on their own importance are rushing round like headless chickens offering guidance and teaching of what to do during this important era in world history - and if you've seen or read Eco's Name of the Rose, you'll know what a joke that is!

Let's buy the Mayans a new calendar! Let's put a stop to everyone's hopes that normal life with its tedium and uncertainty is going to be nicely sorted out in 2012, and plunge them back into an existential pit of cynicism and despair where they belong!

Right now, only £5.99 will get you a basic Justin Timberlake calendar from Waterstone's, thus guaranteeing the manifest reality 365 more days of business-as-usual, with no "get out of jail free" card where angels or Atlanteans from Zenussi save your scummy sinning arse from taking responsibility, and paying those catalogue bills.

And - in a one-time only offer - because we still have 5 YEARS to get this right! - I am offering you the chance to almost literally play God - put in an advance order NOW at WHSmith, Waterstone's, Borders or your local corner shop for the first 2013 calendar available, then post it off by first class post to:

The Mayans.
Maya.
Somewhere with no overpasses, and probably no roofs by now
either, and therefore intrinsically more spiritual than
my own comfy middle-class home,
South America,
The Earth.

"You know when Spirit calls, you will not be found wanting."

Thank you for listening to this message.

Music Review/Rant: Nine Inch Nails at Brixton Academy, March 10th & 11th 2007

It's hard to work out what would actually make Trent Reznor happy.

Buxom or starved groupies, insanely devoted – we're talking NIN logo tattoos, getting kicked in the head so they can be down front at the barrier, flocking by the handful, living the life all gothically attired or otherwise - obviously that doesn't give him any noticeable jollies; and fair one, it is all a bit dull for anyone over 35.

A meritocratic universe whereby talent reaps its own reward, and places those most skilled at the top of their game? Nope, he's there already. But it still hasn't turned his frown upside-down.

And "God money's not looking for the cure" – obviously not the cure to whinging about your success, because when that is the stock-in-trade of your act, it'd be a bit of a shot in the foot after all.

(And if God Money WAS looking for The Cure, well, Trent's dropped the goth stylings from his Robin Finck days, so tough luck God.)

Rhyming

Maybe Trent wants a universe where God asks him to spout rhyming lyrics, a bit like in Bill and Ted where the eternal teenagers (and Keanu Reeves was certainly no teenager when that was filmed) mouth dumb lyrics and get kudos from A Higher Power?

That seems to be the gist of his "protest" song, The Hand That Feeds, a song as shallow and catchy as anything Duran Duran ever did.

God does seem to be a bit of an obsession with NIN, which is odd really given that America as a whole is obsessed with various forms of that same being and its worship, from "my country right or wrong/one nation under god" to suicide bombers, real and imagined, and it's this that Trent and co are claiming to be individual against.

So what does Trent want, given that sex, god, money (and God Money) and everything else are targets for his inexorable rhyming?

Incidentally, if I've given you the impression thus far that I despise NIN, think again – I am writing this with a crick in my neck due to the headbanging and jumping about I got up to throughout their entire sonic fairytale of disconnection and debasement.

Their sell-out shows at the Kentish Town Forum in 1994 literally changed my life, and had a serious influence on the subsequent choices I made musically (both as a performer and buyer) and stand out in my memory as being breathtakingly powerful and skilled.

Self-Abuse

But to see this in 2007, the exact same act of self-expression, self-abuse and soul-baring that I saw in '94, is painful and since I can't help but have an opinion, frankly it all makes me think that someone is resisting his own personal growth.

NIN is, and always has been, Trent Reznor – he looks a bit like Roy Castle with his new haircut, but his talent, integrity and devotion are undeniable.

He still has the sexiest voice in music, and that's quite an acheivement. It's just a pity he's still where he was lyrically, music-wise and performance-wise 13 years ago.

The only thing that's changed onstage, is that the stockings have been replaced by jeans and the rubber gloves and panstick are noticeably absent – cutely, and no doubt entirely coincidentally, echoing the emancipation of housewives from c.1950 – 1980.

So while I'm no closer to knowing what might cheer him up (did I hear "random arseholes on the internet not writing uninformed shit"? – nope, must've bee the floors creaking, the wind in the trees) I can and will hope that he finds it and uses it to creatively fire his genius, and move NIN on a bit from where it's at right now.

Betrayal

It may be that audience expectations have held it there more than anything – I recall an interview where Trent said he could live without ever playing Head Like A Hole again – and it's often the case that when artists draw the line on their pasts, and make a statement about that, their long-term fans experience it as a betrayal.

But something's got to give here for me to continue to respect NIN, and that something may have to come at a seismic level because this project has always seemed like it was ripped out of one man's heart bleeding, and any changes to that output will probably not be superficial matters of style, instrumentation and clothing.

I have loved the NIN we've come to know, right up to tonight - and I really, truly, hope I don't ever have to see it all again.
(written 2am, 12/03/07)

Book Review: Stephen King's Cell

There are six things I loved about this book, and two that missed the mark, but the good stuff was so damn good I decided to share them.

NB: this whole post is pretty much spoilerific, so you may want to skip it if you're looking forward to reading the book unspoiled.

The Pulse

The basic premise of this book is that a pulse – we're lead to believe it's electromagnetic but it's never spelled out at length – is sent via mobile phones, or as the Americans quaintly call them, cellphones – and they erase all conscious thought and turn the recipient into a raving homicidal maniac.

These people – "phoners" – then begin to flock together in a mindless, yet deeply eerie, way.

(How the average redneck/chav actually spotted the difference is open to question – phoner, hoodie or good ole boy, confusion must've reigned in many areas.)

Sharing The Love

The stuff to love comes in this order, and I reckon this is King's best high-concept book since Christine (it's better written and tighter as well):

1. Mobile phones destroy the world - as opposed to just being a crime against good taste, good manners and the environment.

Got to love the way Mr King takes one existing niggle – teenage girls are scary, fandom taken to excess gets weird, and what happens to a car that's caused fatalities? – and turns them into such exquisite entertainment!

2. Mindless people flock together, yet rip apart outsiders - yup, the recent mini-riots at Primark and Ikea, and a good hard look around you will verify that. If I was more intelligent I could probably make a better socio-political point here, but use your eyes and remember school, if you went, it's all there....

3. Empty minds love easy listening - phoners flock at night to stadia to listen to the only kind of music that isn't worsened by being converted into Muzak, nothing challenging, nothing that might rock them out of their weird mind-sharing unconsciousness. "Wind Beneath My Wings," "Fly Me To The Moon" - big band and Dean Martin, music to have no thoughts to.

4. Humans have innate, and immense, psychic potential yet it's repressed - the phoners can levitate, control normals, move objects by the power of mind and communicate telepathically at will. These are similar themes to Carrie, and The Shining, and stand up well here adding the only "supernatural" element without being an imposition or device.

That they're probably very true and fit in nicely with the experience of my SkinnyGriffin posse, is an added bonus!

5. The. President. Of Hah-vud - frontman used by the phoner mass mind, he's as indelibly etched on my brain as King's Carrie's Mom and the Caretaker of The Shining - secondary characters whose enigmatic yet archetypal presence adds depth and who give me, to use a technical term, the willies.

6. Latin as the language of the mass mind - of course, we see what we want in everything, and I admit I see the mass mind using this dead language to hide behind as rather reminiscent of lawyers, but either way it's a well neat touch, and makes the dream scenes (where the lead characters are judged for acting against the phoner herd) very much less cartoonish than they could have been.

There's some more neat bits here, again through my own lens because I have no idea whether the author intended them (or if they were just impressed on his own programming):

"911" becomes the call for help that wipes the brains of the majority of the human species;
the rounding up of normals into reservations - where they are simply and efficiently converted into phoners;
and the way brandnames - our former gods, our mojo and talismans - are represented throughout in special fonts, in a world destroyed forever and in which they have absolutely no meaning left.

The only two things that sucked came, as many of King's sucky bits do, towards the end:
the bus filled with explosives is pure deus ex machina, there's no way it's integrated into the plot right until it's needed and it stands out like a coldsore:
and the way blowing up a fairly small bunch of phoners, in one part of the United States, somehow represents victory.

Both of those, I can easily forgive, because this book continues to echo in my head and has made me more aware of how reliant upon technology we all are now, not only to serve us but also not to turn round and rip us to pieces. I'm sticking to texting from now on....