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.

Sympathy for the Devil

So, you'd think a film about Margaret Thatcher - a unqiuely evil human being birthed in the infinite void itself - would probably wind me up. I watched The Iron Lady on Sunday, a film about her* and her despotic rule.

Thatcher polarizes opinion in the UK. You either love her or you hate her, so it was always going to be a bit difficult to approach the topic politically neutrally, but the producers have, by some rare miracle, managed to do just that*. Or they've managed to approach it in a manner that I give it gruding approval, which probably isn't the same thing.

Now, both the left and the right have been whinging about this film for awhile, and not everyone is happy with the way Thatcher is portrayed in the film, so I was a bit miffed when I saw it myself and found that it isn't even really about Thatcher.

Wait what?

Alright, I only saw half of it, but that was pretty much the first ten minutes and the last forty-five minutes. And what I took away from it was this.

It's a film about mental health. A very dark film at that.

Earned a nickname on the strength of her will. Then got dementia. Irony, huh?

Streep's performance is excellent in particular, although the film overall is well put together with a decent cast. It does a fantastic job of chronicling Thatcher's premiership in a series of flashbacks. The use of stock footage of the Miners Strike, Poll Tax Riots and Falklands War are used in an artfully haunting way, often playing out in the background as Thatcher (either as PM or in present day) justifies her decisions with characteristic Tory rethoric. In scenes of her time in office, the Iron Lady herself remains aloof and indifferent to the suffering and discomfort of people around her. Her famed drive and determination, evidenced through harsh speeches and tough choices, are portrayed in such a manner that, subtlely and without making any political judgement, the audience is left wondering how much of a line exists- and which side she falls on - between stubborn confidence and complete madness.

Jumping between the past and present, Thatcher narrates a lot of her decisions to husband Dennis. All the famous issues are represented, although not always in chronological order. You might thinks stock footage of people being brained by cops or ploughed down by horses is grim. You might find the footage of the aftermath of HMS Sheffield to be pretty upsetting. But that isn't really the point of the film, and in my mind, certainly not the worst bits.

The dark side, without giving too much away, comes in to play when it is revealed that Dennis is dead, and the person Maggie spends a lot of her time talking to doesn't actually exist. That's where it really gets you, and it is those scenes where my shrivelled, misanthropic heart gives a single beat.

I would advise skeptics to go and see it, but most people are going to have preconcieved notions - as I did, I suppose - and this will ruin the film beyond a shadow of a doubt. The cruelest irony, I suppose, is the right say it is a poor representation of a national treasure, and the left write it of as a biopic of monster. Its a big film, but I can't really see it hitting the Christmas DvD listings. I'd still encourage people to see it though, even if the end result is that it upsets you on every single level.


*Or it, since Hells minions are probably genderless.
*I expect, as Americans, they're not intimately familiar with her tyranny and thus can afford to be relatively objective, I suppose.

The Tenth Circle

Following my birthday, in which the steady footsteps of uncaring fate dragged me closer to the grave than anyone realistically wants to be, I went to the Lake District for what was conceived as a romantic weekend away. And while there was a certain degree of romance, as is charitable at this time of year, there was an impressive amount of undiluted hell.

Readers of the classical book The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, or avid players of the video-game Dante's Inferno*, will know that in the ninth, final circle of Hell, Lucifer screams in eternal torment and flaps his wings, freezing the ice which binds him to the Pit. This is, obviously, only half the story. Because beneath the frozen glaciers of the Ninth Circle, which Dante could not penetrate, lies the Tenth Circle of Hell. This is owned and operated by the National Trust. Membership is about eighty quid.

Treading in sheep dung. Possibly more upsetting than having your dead wife molested by Satan.

I found this out for free, though, at least at the start. We were in the Lake District. The Lake District is in Cumbria, a place that summed up in three words would be 'Hills, Lakes, Sheep', and is impossible to sum up in any greater length due to the complete lack of anything really to talk about. Much like classical mythology, what will henceforth be known as 'That Fateful Day' began by us paying the ferryman to cross the lake, thus beginning our descent.

Crossing the Styx courtesy of Cumbria Council. It is 50p for foot passengers, and £4.50 for cars.

Upon reaching the far side of Windermere, we skipped out most of the infernal circles although gluttony (3), avarice (4), and anger (5) would all play a prominent role in our journey. Ignorant of the fact that we'd obviously been assigned a casual stroll through the nightmare realm, we set off following signs (courtesy of the National Trust) for Beatrix Potter's house. Because, you know, that's cute. And not possibly related to Hell at all.

We even met a helpful traveller, who we will refer to as Virgil, partly because we never caught his name, and primarily because he had the whimsical attitude usually associated with a dead poet acting as a tour guide for Satan. Having taken Virgil's advice we decided to tackle what can only be described as 'A Fucking Huge Hill'. If anyone thinks I'm being melodromatic, you are wrong. I saw the top of an RAF Tornado whilst climbing that hill. And it was flying.

Anyway, we set off in search of Beatrix Potter, who I adamantly referred to as Beatrice, bringing us closer to Dante's tormented vision than I first realised.

Before long we were shin-deep in quagmire and sheep shit, completely lost and screaming our curses to the unforgiving sky. Every now and then we encountered Virgil, perched on a rock, wall, or animal carcass. He frequently offered condescending advice or information on the type of people condemned to live out their days drowning in animal by-product in the Tenth Circle of Hell, their failings and individual sins. At one point, the grasping hands of the recently damned must have grabbed my ankle, because I fell down a hill, sprained my knee or something, and spent the rest of the day limping over rugged terrain with said knee clicking every three steps like an agonising pedometer.

After finding our way off the godforsaken mountain and back down into the valley, we encountered a pub. Sure enough, Virgil was inside, knowingly smirking at my limp and supping a pint of real ale like a smug bastard. He didn't offer any sagely advice this time, but disappeared, leaving us at the mercy of uncaring fate, which is not known for it's benevolence or sound advice. We left the pub after eating our own bodyweight in soup and chocolate, and set off towards the next village, which would reliably contain Beatrix Potter's house. Unfortunately, once again we fell into the trap of following signs placed by the National Trust, which at one point indicated a direction precisely opposite to that of our destination.

But we followed it, because we're not an imaginative couple. By this point it had taken just over five hours to walk four miles. For anyone bad at math or fortunate enough not to walk long distances, thats about three to four hours longer than necessary.

The consequences of following the National Trust signposts - despite their previous betrayals - involved fording a stream, crawling through mud and barb wire, holding back demonic sheep with a burning brand, and eventually performing an 180% turn and arriving, miserable and wet, at the village that was only just down the road from the pub we'd just been in.

We saw Beatrix Potter's house. As houses go, it was alright, apart from you couldn't touch anything, there were rabbits, and because some of the rooms were off limits the entire building possessed a maddening geography whereby it appeared larger inside than outside, and bigger upstairs than downstairs. The net result was a considerable loss of sanity, as well as costing eight pounds. If anyone thinks eight pounds is a lot to pay to see the inside of someone's house, you are right. It is. The National Trust employee, Guardian of the Tenth Circle, told us that if we signed up the benefits reaped were so amazing they might as well be paying us to do it. After all their deliberately misleading signs had put us through, I almost throttled her.

After Beatrix's house we took the road home, walking and limping and making a point of willfully ignoring any National Trust signpost for Windermere, which I'm pretty sure would have seen us eaten by river-trolls before the end of the day. Virgil was not with us at this point, presumably because being a virtuous pagan he is banned from entering heaven, and thus he did not accompany us back across the lake.

Tl:dr? We got the shit knocked out of us. By nature herself.

Did I have a good time?

Yes, I did.

Am I going to try to be a better human being in order to avoid the Hell specially designed for amatur walkers?

You bet I am.



*You can only speculate which category I fall into.

Curriculum Vitae

In an attempt to finally find lasting employment, I am putting my CV out there for people to comment upon, hopefully helping to streamline the data and highlight my potential.


Dear Sir,

I was very pleased to learn of a vacancy in the putrid mire of corruption that passes for your company. My enthusiasm, spurred by depression, alcohol abuse and financial ruin has led me to apply for the advertised position. Please find my attached CV.

Kind regards,

Citizen Stevie.

Profile

I am experienced and decorated veteran of several retail chains. I saw action in the filthy pits of several grim northern towns, an experience I am assured is not entirely unlike Beirut. I have great interpersonal skills so long as the rest of the workforce shares my ignorant hate-fuelled opinions. My core strengths have been further supplemented by my University education, which involved high levels of critical analysis, selective reading, arguing with morons and a willingness to perform degrading acts of dubious morality with members of the teaching staff.

Education
University of Self-Importance: BA in Studies of Dubious Academic Merit (2010).
Dole Dodging Inner City College: Generic Studies (A),  Politicology (B), Cynicism (B) The Depressing History of Communism and Fascism (C) and English Literature (D) 
NCPLH Training (2008)
Fire Extinguisher Training (2011)
First Aid Training (2011)

Work History
 
General Retail Work - Supervisor 2007-2010
After demonstrating my superiority over my fellow vermin, I was promoted to Supervisor. The core skills in petty middle-management I developed included.

• Delegation of pointless objectives to people below me.  
• Demonstrating my honesty by not stealing from work due to a lack of opportunity
• Innovation by stealing things that were never missed
• De-escalation of conflict and crisis management without recourse to physical violence on over 60% of occasions.
• Disapproving stares, petty quibbles and mean spirited comments

I also performed general administrative tasks obviously designed by a malicious orangutan. I frequently interacted with varying levels of management, all of which were dicks, and helped lead a diverse team of trusting and vulnerable innocents into the very mouth of Hell in the name of corporate greed.

DO YOU WANT A BAG WITH THAT?

General Retail Work 2006-2007
As a general retail worker, my duties included robotic task repetition, cleaning,  humouring peasants and counting enormous piles of other peoples money.


Warehouse Worker (2005)
As a warehouse operative, I learned the value of efficiency, punctuality and hard work. This initial enthusiasm was quickly killed and buried under the patio by the cold reality of the working environment, the goal of which is to do as little as possible and blame everyone else.

Recycling Old News

Quite literally old news. I was supposed to post this in December and honestly cannot remember why. Maybe because it's obviously half arsed filler material? I don't know...

Watchdog Suggests Substituting Policemen with Firemen.

A study carried out by London School of Economics and The Guardian has found that anger at police helped fuel the riots that gripped Britain in August 2011. In an effort to prevent this from happening again, a Watchdog has suggested the introduction of riot tactics, which include replacing the popular hate figures with generally nice firefighters, effectively trained in the use of heavy fire suppression units and watercannons. The group - Watercannon All Natives Knowingly Exercising Rights [WANKER], has suggested that using watercannons to blast people off their feet with hundreds of gallons of foul liquid would minimise injury and protect the public. Unfortunately, they cost a lot and have to operate in pairs to guarantee flaying the skin off people.

So safe you can break-dance.

Police Crack Down on Illegal Do-Gooders

Police in Orlando have arrested several members of a group distributing food to homeless people. A spokesperson for the police said, "With the season of good-will upon us already, we need to be extra careful. Homeless people defaecate on local buildings, damaging brickwork with their highly acidic stool. They're a public nuisance and cost thousands of dollars in pest control. Feeding them will only encourage congregations of homeless people to gather in places." Before adding, "We're not against a bit of charity, in moderation, but people should remember not to take the piss when it comes to helping others."

A Bad Year for Dictators, People Observe

After the Arab Spring, 2011 was a bad year for wilfully malevolent people, someone has noted absently. The most recently departed leader is North Korean Premier Kim Jong Il, who finally passed away after a long battle with cosmic justice. A disbelieving world is still trying to make sense of it all. "Kim Jong is dead?" asked one bemused human, "I didn't even know he was Il."

But really, he was a monster.

The closed nation has called for a ten day mourning period, highlighting how much the departed leader will be Commumissed. Worried onlookers are wondering if it is possible for Karma to maintain its present level of ass-kicking, and if this is necessarily a good thing.


Reports of my Death have been Greatly Exaggerated, Says Bon Jovi


Bon Jovi has tweeted to prove he is not dead. This has made the news. We expect a statement from David Bowie later to deny allegations that he stuffed his tights during filming of the 1986 film Labyrinth. This follows a recent trend of celebrity clarifications which started back in June when Duchess Middleton admitted she could 'honestly couldn't give a fuck about the peasants' during Piers Morgan's Life Stories.

I'm not dead, just to clear that up.

Thieves Launch Damning Critique of Art

Thieves in Southwark, London, have made a damning critique of modern art by stealing a statue valued at over £400,000. The statue, entitled, 'Two Forms, Divided Circle, I Honestly Can't Believe You Think This is Art, I'm so Laughing at You', has been pinched by scrap metal merchants. People have been quick to condemn this, offer a reward for it's safe return and point out that it is worth much, much more the way it is than just as metal alone. Rational minded people everywhere have tried to draw attention to just how stupid this idea actually is. A source close to the thieves has knowingly remarked 'It wasn't worth £400,000 guv, but we did get a monkey from big Al.'