Shits miscellany

[hirez]

There are semi-regular features here and in the Saturday Guardian Lit-Bit about books one can read again and again. The one that I always seem to forget, which is probably why I keep re-reading the thing, is 'The third policeman' by Flann O'Brien. I have no particular good excuse for forgetting it, other than the fact that it's a bit of an outlier in the normal run of things that I think I like to read. Which also means that the internal model I have of JH-R doesn't match the real one, and that's a bit odd when you think about it. I don't think the way I think I think. I can only guess that even though great wedges of the plot and smaller wedges of other stuff (Hatchjaw, bicycle osmosis, five-and-a-half on the lever, etc) stick in my head, the whole of the thing is just too good to remain properly in my memory. Not unlike the effect of attending a lecture by a particularly impassioned scientist. One potters out of the hall, filled with new and startling understanding of (physics|psychology|queueing theory|stack exploits), but by the time you've got to the bus-stop it's starting to leak away and when you finally try to explain it in the pub you're back to 'fire good, beer average'. And that's a bit of a bugger.

Anyway. If you've not read it, you should.

I'd do a poll about it, but I can't be arsed and all the answers would be 'Moles be rising'.


Message to the self-described parasites[1] in the banking industry: You're so not doing yourselves any favours here. I mean, if you want a torch-wielding mob of angry (and only very slightly smug) socialists to come crawling out of the woodwork, you just keep right on going.

(Which International are we on? Is it time for Socialism 5.0 yet? Does it work like M$ compiler releases, in that the even-numbered ones are a bit shit? Or maybe we need Web2.0 Socialism; rounded boxes, comrade-lists and Factions instead of Drama. I wish I'd gone to Newcon and had this idea close to Ken McLeod now.)


Meanwhile, I don my mr_tom cycling bowler and remark that the publicity fallout from EPO-jacking roadies is probably significantly cheaper than the likely damage from this mob of wide-suited greedheads.


Normally, I have a deal of time for the various ex-NME types that seem to have done well for themselves. However, this week's piece is a bag of maximum wrong with a sticker on it reading 'With free extra value wrongness'. The tech isn't the problem, it's the alleged nasty bugger who may (or may not. Jury still out, etc.) have raped and murdered the woman. The idea that women should be sold mobiles with panic buttons because they're otherwise too busy buying pink spangly phone-covers is... Clearly beyond my limited powers of self-expression.

I refuse to give in to the idea that no-one can help themselves.

Thankfully, there's this: http://www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk/

(Found via LJ during the week.)
(Modest proposal: all licensed cab drivers should wear skirts)

Ah, sod it. I'm going out on the bike. Maybe I can manage more than ten minutes without collapsing and needing to eat everything in the house. Maybe it's a side-effect of the Black Dog. (I don't give house-room to the 'D' word.)


[1] Seriously. I was in the local boozer one Christmas, probably circa 1992, and spent about an hour listening to some Barbour-jacketed city wallah bang on into his (and my) ale about how he was a parasite and hated himself and his life. Although clearly not that much, since he managed to ignore all of my suggestions about re-distribution of wealth in my direction.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

There's a reason my outlet is fake news.

Mind you, I am now following the US election. God help me.

[jendama.livejournal.com]

I don't "get" the mobile phone thing. Why would phones with panic buttons be the solution? Determining the root cause(s) would be a better investment of money that could then help drive the creation of permanent solutions (plural, as there is never just one cause). Otherwise then it becomes a female's responsibility to get a phone with a panic button, otherwise she has no excuse for being abducted and/or raped? That doesn't sound right on any level.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Exactly so.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Well, teenage girls DO often like pink spangly sparkly things. And so do some of us who are older.

I don't think a panic button is a bad idea in itself, and if it were an option I would seriously consider it because it sounds like it might actually be useful, the practicalities of furtling around in one's handbag at moments of panic aside. Why say that it's another reason to blame the woman for being raped as if that's a reason not to do it? Crying rape doesn't get people to come and help you so why bother, but on the other hand, if you don't, how can you prove you were really being raped?

Playing along with such doublethink isn't a solution to the problem. Some people will always believe the woman is in the wrong.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Hm. If the panic button turned the phone into a recording device that was spooling the data off to a store run by the mobile operator (as well?), I think I'd be inclined to call it a good thing.

It's just that tech fixes to social problems make me uncomfortable. They never seem to work out the way they were expected to.

I'm probably getting the words in the wrong order. Apologies.