With Suspicious Minds

Anyone who had the misfortune of being in Halifax on the 26th of March may have noticed an area around the Town Hall and Princess St cordoned off with a heavy police presence. This had nothing to do with recent disappearances linked to the clawed ape-like 'under-terrors' that dwell in the town's sewers and can be found in the Accapulco on a Friday night. Instead, it was a bomb threat. I use the term 'threat' in the loosest possible sense, because I'm pretty sure it could be classified under urban regeneration.

The bomb was reported by a solider who found it behind the Army Careers Office. Sergeant Darren is quoted as saying "It was a metal cylinder. It was just sat next to the door. We need to be careful with being the army.”  Note the incredulity of it being 'just sat next to the door', instead of bouncing up and down on a Space Hopper like a normal suspicious package. You can probably forgive Darren for being cautious, though, as I imagine he's more than passingly familiar with the dangers commonly associated with high explosives.

Halifaxians, on the other hand, are not. Nearby buildings were evacuated, and hopeful residents gathered at the edges of the police cordon to see if anything were going on. Because witnessing a bomb blast first hand is so much cooler than being miles away, cowering under a table and saying the Lord's Prayer and waiting for the limbs to start raining.

"I don't know about you, Gary, but considering the amount of glass around, I really hope that thing explodes."

The local press have been all over the story, reporting it with the seriousness and professionalism we've come to associate with small-town publications.

UPDATE: SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE IS NOT SUSPICIOUS

I can only speculate that what they intended to say was 'Package is Not A Bomb'. The suspicion wasn't really the most dangerous outcome at the time. People did not let out a collective sigh of relief and say, "We'll, it's definitely a bomb, but at least we know what it is." Classifying it as not suspicious didn't spare the package from being carted off by police.

The internet was rife with speculation and over dramatic updates about evacuations, bomb squads and all that lot. Halifax's malnourished tourist trade were quick to jump on this morsel, though. Given you have no reason to ever visit, I suppose you can't really blame them. The Piece Hall tweeted:

"@thepiecehall is been used as an Evacuation point today for the bomb scare on Market Street ... please enjoy the this [sic] wonderful building".

"While this blows over, I know a great cafe on Market Street that does the sweetest cappuccino you will ever drink."

So whether you're waiting for the last chopper out of 'Nam, milling around a medical outpost in a football stadium during a zombie apocalypse, or barricading yourself inside a church crypt as the nukes begin to fall, at least take some time to admire the beautiful architecture. Maybe pick up some souvenirs.

A Man's World

It was International Women's Day yesterday, a day dedicated to raising awareness of gender inequality and congratulating women on the success of their struggle to distinguish themselves from domestic farm animals in the eyes of men everywhere. I'm sure there is a political way to look at it, but I like to assume it's just a patronizing and perverse scheme dreamt up by an insane torturer who congratulates his victims on freeing themselves from his hellish nightmare prison that they wouldn't have been in if it wasn't for him. Kind of like Saw.

International Women's Day also has other meanings, interpretations and rationals, but I won't go into them because feminism has never been my strong point and I don't want to screw up so badly that I end up insulting half of the human race.

The law of unintended consequence being as stringent and unkind as usual, International Women's Day has caused furore on the internet between people who actually know stuff about gender politics, and people who think everything is fine or are wilfully misogynistic neanderthals.

A commonly employed discourse I have seen is the lack of an International Man's Day. This has been championed by disenfranchised men everywhere, who are surprisingly keen on gender inequality when it affects them personally. After all, International Man's Day - which has been held as a daily event since the dawn of time when Adam said to God 'She did it!' - could provide them with yet another day dedicated to being slovenly, eating steak and abusing women the world over.

Well worry no longer, men, because there is an International Man's Day. It was started in 1999 to address the gender inequality of women having their own day and takes place on the 18th of November. Which you could have found out about with a bit of research and assuming self-righteous indignation  had not become the default setting for most people. I digress. Let the beer drinking, meat eating and lewd comments fly.

LOOK UPON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR

Reasons to Celebrate Being a Man*

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

2. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

3. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are.

4. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.

5. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.

6. If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.

7. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.

8. When I ask to see "the person in charge," odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.

9. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.

10. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.

11. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.

12. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.

13. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a "slut," nor is there any male counterpart to "slut-bashing."

14. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability or my gender conformity.

15. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring.

16. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.

17. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.

18. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

19. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. "All men are created equal," mailman, chairman, freshman, etc.

20. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

21. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.

22. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.

23. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

24. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.

25. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.

26. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media are filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer.

28. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

Doesn't that just make you proud of all we've accomplished?

*This was based on Peggy McIntosh's article on white privilege and taken as a PDF from MIT here. I was originally going to use statistics but given I'd found them on Facebook I couldn't verify them. So I started looking into male privilege, gender inequality and patriarchy and the amount of raw data from certifiable sources is so much that I wouldn't know which aspect to possibly begin with. Everything from box office gross for female made films right through to domestic violence, education and sexual abuse. So I settled for the above.

If any male readers are feeling pretty bad right now, don't panic. The first four articles I found by googling 'feminism statistics about men' came up with 'Feminism Exposed' ,'Feminist Myths', 'The Feminist Fantasy of Male Privilege' and 'The Problem with Feminism'. So I wouldn't worry, there are counter-arguments out there. Doubtlessly penned by someone so intelligent they've resorted to dragging their man-knuckles on the floor because defying the inexorable embrace of gravity is like spitting in the face of god.

Personal Exorcism

Originally written sometime in the middle of Saturday night.

I have not updated my blog recently. There are many reasons for this, which range from inebriation and laziness to just a general lack of funny. As David Mitchell said, it is hard to make a joke out of people getting machine-gunned in Syria.

Anyone who knows me relatively well - no, not you, drunk guy in the pub - will know that recently I've fallen on hard times. To be more accurate, hard times have fallen on me. I won't go into specifics. Specifics are boring, self indulgent and pretty bleak from where I'm standing. Suffice to say, I'm currently writing this on a notepad, sat on an unmade bed illuminated by a heat-lamp in my roommates VIV.

Soon my pet. Soon I will feed you the world.

In order to cope with the recent 'shit rolls downhill' events of the past two weeks, I have embarked on a purge of all the crap that has hung around me like thrice cursed albatross.

It has almost been emotional. Almost soul cleansing.

Get the Hell off me, bird.

I'm clearing my 'this stuff might be important later in life' file of all the random detritus it has accumulated in preparation for some serious abuse of the shredder at work tomorrow. It is a testament to the amount of crap a human being can accumulate in just seven years of adulthood. There are five year old phone bills addressed to my sister from a company I no longer use for a phone that no longer exists in this universe or any parallel planes of existence. There are papers from a union I am no longer in, and there is guidebook to a small ruined abbey in southern Ireland. And thousands upon thousands of bank statements.

There are scraps of stuff I wrote years ago and never finished. A welcome pack to a job I haven't done in years. There is a pamphlet on how to pay your TV license, how to fill in your tax returns for financial year 06-07, a stack of A4 envelopes. There is also letter to my university POLIS department telling them that I had reached mental terminal velocity, understood perfectly the dark face of humanity, and had to take some time off my course with an unfortunate bout of reality induced insanity that crushes the human soul.

There are also cards.  Christmas cards, Birthday cards, Valentines Day cards, Good Luck cards, Get Well cards, Happy Anniversary Cards - why do they sound like Happy Adversity cards? - Sorry You're Leaving cards and We-Are-Unbelievably-Sorry-We-Inadvertently-Crushed-Your-Youthful-Exuberance-And-I-Hope-The-Mind-Snapping-Horror-Of-The-Human-Condition-Is-Bearable-And-The-Drugs-Work cards. I've kept them because, well, everyone knows that cards are special. They hold memories, and without memory, where would we be?

I was going to go into them. The initial draft turned rapidly into a vortex of despair, though, whereby I start apologising to well-wishers I haven't seen in years for not living up to their throwaway cardboard crucifixes. And besides, they're my memories, not yours. So I won't write the last one-hundred words of this blog how they appear in my notepad.

If you're looking for the humour, I'm afraid it's gallows humour for today. And if you're looking for a conclusion, here it is. Its 3am. I have two stacks of paper on my bedroom floor. Tomorrow, or rather, today, one of them will be forced into the whirling blades of forgetfulness courtesy of work. The rest will stay, in case I need them. And you always have a reason to keep something, right? That little thing you just casually chucked in the bin is definitely going to bite you in the ass one day, so hang on to it.

It's always the little things that catch you out. Like the noticing, for no particular reason, that only the cards from one person are addressed to Stevie. No one calls me Stevie. And only one person I know in the entire world dots her I's with a tiny circle instead of a period.