Commitment

So, Renee Zellweger has started backing out of her marriage. An annulment; this generally meaning there was some sort of fraud involved. Not financial fraud - though it could be that of course. Seems she was not turning up with him where he was singing. Having heard him I can understand that. He didn't go to the Hollywood-scene events she attended. Maybe it was that. There was a lack of commitment shall we say.
I've turned these pages over to Fred Reed as a sort of guest writer. Just so long as he is happy with the mention and doesn't want money. However, some while back he wrote this on the question of commitment and I'm going to place it before you.
Ladies and gentlemen (drum roll) Mr. Fred Reed

Sex Finally Explained!

Fred Did It, His Own Self

I'm trying to figure out sex, and why people get in an uproar about it, and run around waving their arms and hollering, and everybody's mad at everybody else.

It's because men can't tell sex from tennis. We can't help it. It's a character defect built into us, like tail fins on a fifty-seven T-Bird.

Yep. That's it. I've just solved the question of the ages. Right here. Contributions welcome.

Best I can tell, ninety-eight percent of women are mad because all men want is sex. (Actually we want other things too, like big-block engines, dogs, and really bad movies with lots of gratuitous violence.) On the other hand, men are ready to become monks. It's because they can't talk to a woman for five minutes on a bus before she wants commitment. To a woman commitment seems so obviously good that she can't see why he'd rather have pellagra. Which is what men think about sex. So the two glare at each other like two possums with only one garbage can.

It's too bad. A lot of people end up being unhappy because of it.

The problem, it says here, is that to men sex is a primal drive that doesn't have much emotional content. It's just sex. It's like when you have athlete's foot, you scratch it, but you don't have an emotional bond to it. Sure, a guy can commit to a woman, as evidenced by innumerable marriages that happen despite experience and common sense. Sex can have emotional importance to him with a woman he wants to keep. But he doesn't have a hard-wired connection between sex and commitment. To him they're separate things, like jackhammers and Vienna sausages. You can have both at the same time, but you don't have to.

By contrast, for women, sex seems epoxied to a lot of emotional freight. A woman sees sex as a step toward commitment, as fifty years ago a man saw commitment as a step toward sex. When the man doesn't see the connection, she thinks he's just plain wrong-headed, and mean spirited, and a nickel-plated sumbitch.

Which brings us to tennis. (Bet you didn't see that coming.)

Men think of sex the way they think of tennis. Suppose I want to work off some energy. I call my buddy Ralph, and we meet at the courts, and have a good time for a few sets -- sweat and grunt, twist our ankles, fall down and break things, and end up in a mild coma.

When we're through, he doesn't want me to marry him. When in fact I don't, he doesn't feel exploited. In fact, he feels deeply relieved.

That's how men look at sex. A man genuinely doesn't understand why he can't say to the young lady in the next cubicle, "Hey, Jane, what say we go to my place at lunch for a roll in the hay?" ("Fred -- you've got hay at your place?") He may like Jane, think she's bright and fun, have no slight desire to exploit, use, or degrade her. They may have been friends for years. But if he made what would seem to him a perfectly reasonable suggestion, she would explode and file at least a dozen lawsuits.

Yet he knows that she isn't opposed to sex, and isn't opposed to him. If he took her to three movies, so that the whiff of commitment hung heavy in the air, like methane over a summer swamp, she'd be worried if he didn't make the suggestion. So why not . . . ?

He doesn't get it.

The woman's lack of the tennis instinct, or the man's possession of it, complicates life for everyone. It ain't her fault. It ain't his fault. It's how we are.

To aggravate things, we're timed all wrong, like streetlights in New Jersey. After a certain age, somewhere around thirty, a woman's interest in commitment rises, while a man's declines -- just as a man's sex drive declines as hers rises. (Actually, sex may be a vast practical joke. If there's a better explanation, I haven't heard it.) Guys who are single in their mid-thirties are frequently comfortable with bachelorhood or, having been raped in the divorce courts, attached to it as tenaciously as panicked barnacles. And so guys, not looking for marriage, go into relationships knowing that they are going to end miserably. Three months, and the Marriage Monster raises its fanged head. It's as predictable as morning.

Somehow having a mate seems much more crucial to women than to men. A guy with a girlfriend may figure she's peaches, better than a competition yo-yo with extra strings. He may be proud of her and proud of himself for having her. If the Red Army attacked her, he'd leap in front of her like a spring-wound damned fool and die a pointless but gaudy death. (That too is built in.) But she will still be only a part of his world, along with motorcycles, the job, great software, rock climbing, or drinking beer and talking dirty with other guys.

Maybe this is why men are happier than women with intermediate degrees of commitment. If Willie Bob starts dating Maggie Lou, and she's fun, he'll just naturally keep on doing it. Left to himself, two years later or twenty, he would still be dating her, and be perfectly happy. His attitude is that if it works, why meddle with it? He doesn't see dating as having to Go Somewhere like an evicted tenant. Depending on how much company he really wants, he may figure seeing her three times a week, and being left alone the rest of the time, is just right. He isn't exploiting her. He's just happy as things are.

She won't see it this way, or at least not for long. It's not because there's anything wrong with her, or with women, or for that matter with men. We've just got different operating systems. What she sees as God's intended result of dating, so clearly right as not to be examined, he sees as at best an unnecessary complication, at worst as giving up title to his house. He asks the, to him, reasonable questions: "Gee, Maggie, what would be better if we got married? Would sex be better? Food? What's your point?" He's genuinely puzzled. She thinks he's being exploitative, that she has been had again, another five years wasted, men, the bastards.

There's got to be a better way. I just don't know what it is. www.fredoneverything.net

Pleasures of friendship

I had a telephone call today from a friend. Nothing unusual in that I hear someone say. Well, in this case there was. My caller was someone I first met just about ten years ago and last met over six years ago. A male work colleague. I never formed the opinion that we were close friends but my work strayed into his area of responsibility and vice versa. We would attend corporate hostility things together because that is how we were invited. I suppose the only shared personal interests we had were dogs and photography.
What struck me as unusual today was that he referred to himself as an 'old friend'. Back when we saw each other regularly, I regarded him as more of a acquaintance at work than as a friend. It was just as easy to get along with him as it was to fall out or be at loggerheads. Working relationships jog along better within a friendly atmosphere and the Bosses are happier. My caller today gave the reason that he was updating an old contacts list and seeing my name prompted him to call.
After we finished speaking with the usual protestations that we would do better at maintaining contact I started thinking just who else might call proclaiming we were brothers in arms. Obviously, family - mine and Norma's - were included. Other than the kids I have no family above ground. Norma's people were many but they are whittling down as age bites. There is a young woman who worked as one of my mail clerks whom I pushed up the promotion ladder very quickly. She writes at Christmas and on my birthday. That was about the sum total of friends I had made in civilian life stretching back to 1974. Friends? Hardly. I prefer a solitary life and am well able to live life on my own without a network of supporters - so far that is.
But, curiously, I do have a number of people whom I regard as very valuable and staunch. These are guys who were in the Army with me. Our friendship started over fifty years ago. Some of them I have not seen for thirty or so years. We may not have spoken in that thirty odd years. It could be that I would not now recognise them should we meet by chance. Where I have met some more recently, we pick up as if we were together just a few days previously. Instant sunshine.
I cannot work out just what makes these Service pals so very much more attractive and durable than people I met as a civilian. It is not as if we went through any great cathartic experience together. Maybe, as other ranks, we shared a dislike of officers and their doings but even this dislike was never very strong. Certainly not enough to bind us as we did. I take part in a forum with five or six of these guys and we banter about things way way back in the same style and manner as we did when we actually saw each other more frequently.
Whatever it is, this is what I understand as friendship. I think I have satified myself why I was amazed at my caller regarding himself as a friend. He lacked the sort of friends I have and was having to do with second or third best.

Nice to know why I do this

A new "Blog Trends Survey," conducted for online giant America Online July 17 to 22, 2005 through Opinion Place by Digital Marketing Services found that most bloggers aren't hanging shingles as wanna-be cyber-journalists, political activists, or covering news. Instead, nearly half surveyed bloggers say they use the online journals as a form of therapy, writing about personal issues and events.
The survey questioned 600 people over 18 years of age who write one or more blogs on the Web. The resuls showed nearly 50 percent of bloggers write online journals as a form of self-therapy, with fully one third writing about self-help and self-esteem topics. In times of high anxiety or need, 32 percent of surveyed bloggers said they turn to family and friends, but nearly as many (31 percent) said they turn to writing in their blog or reading blogs of people experiencing similar issues. (In contrast, only five percent said they seek counseling or professional help during these times.)
In contrast, only 16 percent of bloggers say they're interested in journalism, and only 12 percent use their blogs to break or keep up with news and gossip, and a mere 8 percent write a blog with political content.
Bloggers also reported they don't feel much pressure to write a blog: only 16 percent reported they keep a blog because it's trendy, although 21 percent said they write because their families or friends do. Two thirds of surveyed bloggers said they feel they can write about anything they like, and roughly two thirds also reported that, while they care how often blogs they read are updated, they don't feel obligation to update their own blogs regularly or frequently.
Similarly, only 12 percent worry about their blogs being witty or funny, only 23 percent worry about offending anybody with their postings, and 60 percent say their blogging personality is "laid back", while 3.8 percent describe themselves as perfectionists or compulsive bloggers. However, for all bloggers' relaxed attitudes, the audience still matters a bit: 65 percent report feelings of disappointment if they receive abusive or negative comments.
This is where this came from http://news.designtechnica.com/article8336.html

Oh heck!

I think I would prefer not to know this. Of course, it comes from the Press in America so it may be something along the lines of little green men and flying saucers abducting the local village idiot.

15 September. Three lab mice carrying deadly strains of plague have turned up missing from separate cages at a bioterror research facility in Newark, sparking a hushed, intensive investigation by federal and state authorities.

Racist bigot bstard

Way way way back when I first started this blogging mania, I set out certain things about my personality. Main amongst these was my conviction that I had been an undiagnosed sufferer of Aspergers Syndrome. Undiagnosed because the Syndrome had not been formed in my childhood. My youth and late teens were marked by efforts made by others to ‘cure’ my behaviour which was seen as anti-social. I will dignify these efforts as tough love and, whilst I cannot see that they cured the Syndrome, they forced me to recognise that some things were unacceptable to other people and I had best modify my manners. One of the things I had to deal with was my attitude towards others not of my race. I saw them as different – not inferior or superior – just dissimilar. Until relatively recently, this attitude was not controversial. Now however, one is thought of as a racist or bigoted. Any debate about the difference will be diverted into inevitable argument and derision. I adopted a position that I call reverse apartheid. Instead of keeping others away from me, I kept myself away from them. Physically, mentally and socially. As I do not have any specific animus towards those of other skin pigment or race, I would like to enter into a debate on the points they make when complaining about the way they are treated or regarded.

It is this background that makes me enjoy the writing of Fred Reed. He has the ability to say things the way I would and the exposure that makes it possible for him to express his views.

Deep thoughts lurk here

If you are short of a good book to read, have a look at this report about my old mate Mazlow. He has some quite developed ideas about what makes a satisfied individual. At one time, I was a great fan of his Triangle of Needs and could use it to describe just about anyone with whom I came into contact. I had stopped at a fairly low level of the Triangle and wondered what it was that stopped me following the path detailed by The Master.
Discussion with those more learned than I - yes, maybe with the alcoholics under the bridge - showed that I had in fact got to the top of his triangle by getting a full grip on what he describes as Adventure. Adventure is the need for an adrenaline rush, to have new experiences, to travel, to have major experiences, to have drama in their life, to have a sense of anticipation about upcoming events. I have been described as an adrenaline junky. If I cannot access the juice, I may create a situation where fight or flight becomes important. Not always a good thing.
I found psychology and sociology very interesting when I did my studies courtesy of OU. I thought that my service life had taught me a heck of a lot about these. What I got from the formal studies was WHY things I foresaw actually arose or came about. People are fascinating and Maslow is a good place to start. Even if you just look-in to see what is your prime motivator or need.

The Mouse wandered

Oh – good Lord!
I was in M & S web looking for ideas for a lunchtime sandwich. Whilst I agree that in certain circumstances, this would form a very acceptable sandwich, I think it would be a bit too rich at my time of life.

Same shit - different date.

It seems that the Government has a busy agenda for today. Amongst other things I see:

1. Early reports this morning suggest that with fuel protestors numbering in the dozens, widespread disruption to petrol supplies is not likely. Ahead of the protests the head of the Environment Agency urged ministers to stand firm in the face of "sabre-rattling" from the haulage industry. Talking to ePolitix.com, Baroness Young, the agency's chief executive, said the industry was failing to take advantage of government services which would help them use fuel more efficiently. "It is always disappointing if government wavers in the face of blackmail," she added. Will she repeat this to those engaged in dealings with Sinn Fein/IRA? Are there not situations where the Government is the blackmailer? Oh yes – where is pc now with the adverse connotations of blackmail?


2. The Ulster secretary has announced that the government no longer recognises the Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando ceasefires. Peter Hain told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "What I have done in this decision overnight is to send an absolutely crystal clear signal out to everybody that we will not tolerate violence, that it does not pay." The Cabinet minister also holds talks on loyalist violence and the peace process with a Sinn Fein delegation including Martin McGuinness, Gerry Kelly and Alex Maskey. Surely the very fact that he will meet and discuss such matters with three (supposedly ex-) terrorists makes a nonsense of his declaration of the value of violence.


3. Foreign secretary Jack Straw delivers a keynote speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies on 'why Iran matters'. Can he include George Bush in the distribution of his draft speech?


4. Culture secretary Tessa Jowell today defends the government's decision not to require cricket Tests to be broadcast on free terrestrial television. Writing in the Telegraph, she says that the government is unable to prevent the contract with Sky going ahead. They have already protected some sporting etc. events saying they are Heritage Events and have to be shown free-to-air.


5. Environment secretary Margaret Beckett delivers a keynote speech in New York on green issues. Appropriate given the backlash about conditions in New Orleans>


6. Defence secretary John Reid holds talks with his Russian counterpart. How to stage a withdrawal from Afghanistan that looks reasonable?


7. Health secretary Patricia Hewitt delivers a speech on care outside hospital. Most likely place to find it – outside.


8. The government's environmental watchdog has warned ministers not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" in their drive to reduce red tape. Speaking to ePolitix.com, the chief executive of the Environment Agency said that "modern regulation" should not become "no regulation or deregulation". Baroness Young said it was possible to reduce the burdens on businesses without lowering standards of environmental protection. But she also highlighted the usefulness of government rules, saying they could create employment and encourage innovation. There was also a call for ministers to bring forward new incentives for environment-friendly behaviour. And consumption should be tackled by "getting up the price of things that we don't want consumed", she added. Rules = employment. Gainful employment or checkers of tick-boxes on official forms


9. Rural affairs minister Jim McKnight launches a consultation on heather and grass burning and is later among the speakers at the LGA's annual rural conference. Something tha has been done since time immemorial - what's new?
   


10. Sports minister Richard Caborn begins a regional Olympics tour in Cornwall. Likely to achieve a great deal towards an event centred on a relatively small part of London.


11. Jim Murphy, Cabinet Office minister with responsibility for e-government visits the Isle of Lewis to see how IT helps improve the lives of people in remote areas. Can someone not just tell him and save an expensive visit. If IT is so good – what price video-conferencing.

All in all, they’d be better off sitting at the Oval watching re-runs on the big screen.

Anyone smell a rat?

I have been re-reading the official 9/11 report. It is quite a complex document and requires study and not just reading. The style of the report is innovative to anyone who reads UK-style government reports as it is more like a novel that a Chapter 1, section 1 The Beginning sort of thing. I wanted to give it a bit of a revision after the hurricane of theories that have grown up around the incident. Real conspiracy-theory fodder certainly but some of these do seem well constructed.
Lots of things in the official story just don’t seem, prima-facie, to line up. There is the Pentagon attack where a considerable body of ‘evidence’ suggests that it was a missile strike and not a large airliner crashing into the building. Seems that Old Rummy has spoken in public about missile strike. Given he is a bit flaky, nothing conclusive about that but it is just another pennyweight on the scales of belief.
There is also argument about recovery of any black boxes. Seems labourers at WTC are quite clear that such items were recovered but that mention of these finds was muffled by the FBI. There is a suggestion that the second aircraft which struck the WTC was a military 767/300 and not a American Airline 767/200. Different shape and weapons pods under the wings are cited as background for this allegation. It is almost arbitrary in all good conspiracy theories that someone who gets close to ‘The Truth’ dies either at their own hand or some unlikely accident. Yes – there’s one here as well in the form of a TV reporter who claims that he was warned in an anonymous telephone call that he would be killed if he did not cease his inquiry. Sure enough, he dies in what looked like suicide and none of his friends is able to explain what made him do this.
There were initial reports that identification of the terrorists on the planes was wrong. Of these 19, seven have resurfaced alive and well. It is claimed. This may have a reasonable foundation as some deceased’s parents denied that their lovely boy could not possibly have done such a thing. Formal identity is not a high priority in many Arab countries,
There are a myriad pieces of ‘evidence’ which support these theories. As fast as the conspiracy supporters make their claims, the debunkers hit back. Just doing a search on Google for 911 Conspiracy shows how near to a business it has all become. One ‘fact’ has taken on a life of it’s own. Muslim media firmly believes that the attack on WTC was not just an attempt to divert attention from poor economics but involved Israel. This comes from a "news report" that 4,000 Israelis called in sick from their jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Nice, but no where near that number were employed in the building.
For?
Counter
And a nice Wiki

Might be a cop?

You Might Be A Cop If....You have the bladder capacity of five people. You have ever restrained someone and it was not a sexual experience. You believe that 25% of people are a waste of protoplasm. You think it is perfectly normal to discuss dismemberment over a gourmet meal. You can identify a negative "tattoo to tooth" ratio just by looking at a person. You find humour in other people's stupidity. You disbelieve 90% of what you hear and 75% of what you see. You have your weekends off planned for a year in advance. You believe that a "shallow gene pool" should be grounds for an arrest. You believe that the Government should require a permit to reproduce. You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says "Boy, it sure is quiet around here". You believe that chocolate is a food group. You have wanted to hold a seminar on "Suicide, getting it right the first time., You believe that "too stupid to live" should be a valid jury verdict. You have had to put a complainant on hold, while you laugh uncontrollably. You have wanted a terrorist to deliver a Ryder truck to a particular bar. You believe the dispatcher is possessed. You think caffeine should be available in I.V. form. You have heard: "I have no idea how that got there," on more than a few occasions. You suddenly realize one night that you are patrolling the Twilight Zone. You have learned a lot about paranoia, simply by following random cars around in your patrol car.

Better than nothing?

Anti-terror police told to target Asians
A fresh row over stop-and-search powers has erupted after it emerged anti-terrorist police had received orders to single out black and Asian people.Civil liberties campaigners and black groups have reacted furiously over orders to the British Transport Police which say terrorist suspects are of "Asian, West Indian and east African origin". They have urged the Commission for Racial Equality to investigate.Independent8:35:13 AM   

Well, why not? Generalise or specific targets? I care not so long as someone is doing something and not just walking about with their thumbs up their fundament.

Give me back my Youth

I was waiting for a prescription at the chemists today when I was spoken to by a, what is it they call them, Lady of A Certain Age? I did not understand her approach at first – it was not as if either of us had stepped on the other’s toes. She was asking me if I had enjoyed the final day of the cricket. As I was not wearing my MCC tie at the time, (irony) she had no way of knowing if I was a supporter of Kipling and his muddied oafs. But, no, she gabbled on which gave me the chance to observe her more fully.

She was well coiffured and the war paint was impressive if a little much for Duns at 10:30 in the morning. She was quite trim and curvaceous in the Marilyn Monroe slightly chubby sort of way. Her secondary sexual characteristics were displayed in a style akin to Rigby and Pellier’s finest products where they were lifted as if on a shelf but not crammed together like economy class passengers. From the front, she suggested a nice backside. She had a quiet voice, upper register. I could not tell if she were one of those Scots who have no discernable accent or English. She had the habit of a low-frequency blink which served to draw attention to lashes and eye-socket make up. She seemed to hold her hands at about bust level and to flutter them to add emphasis to her speech. I was able to get this input in a very quick manner due to my many years as a heterosexual male with quick eyes. She remained on the subject of our cricket re-birth. I empathised with the occasional hmmn, hum or whatever one does.

I was served. I said to my Mata Hari look-alike that I had to go and wished her good day. It was as she manoeuvred to get ahead of me that I looked down at her feet and I then realised that I had been accosted by a Fluffragette. The idea behind this was explained by Cherri Gilham in her “Fluffy Manifesto” in the Daily Mail. A fluffragette is a pre-feminist type of woman who aims to control men by using feminine wiles and sexual power. As Ms Gilham put it, they intend to, “giggle, pout, flirt and coo” their way to emancipation. The term was popularised in a rejoinder by Suzanne Moore, a feminist and columnist in the Independent (and formerly of the Guardian, where she had a huge spat with Dr Germaine Greer, who famously described her as wearing fuck-me shoes, a term invented in the eighties). My accoster was wearing incredibly sexy shoes. Just little straps of almost nothing. Think Audrey Hepburn having Breakfast at Tiffanies. Of the whole composition that was My Mysterious Woman, these tiny flimsy sandals were the most expressive element. Sex on wheels – with a message exactly as described by the educated Aussie. I left the shop and looked around the Square. I almost expected to see a Daimler with a chauffeur booted and spurred. No – nothing out of the ordinary. Who she is or was, I do not know. What caused her to open a conversation with me is also a mystery. Whilst I was the best looking male in an otherwise empty shop, that does not explain it. At my advanced age, I was content to let things lie as they fell but in retrospect, it was very intriguing. Ships that pass in the night and all that sort of thing.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/wordsof97.htm

Some advice is just too obvious

Jews and Freemasons controlled war on Iraq, says No 10 adviser
By Toby Helm(Filed: 12/09/2005)
Tony Blair decided to wage war on Iraq after coming under the influence of a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons, a Muslim barrister who advises the Prime Minister has claimed.
Might sound unbelievable but that is what the guy said. No 10 has said that B Liar does not always act on what he is advised. Fine – this nutter has a history of rabid comments about freemasonry and Israel so how the hell was he ever appointed to be an adviser?

New Mandy assistant.

Seems Mandy claims his eye was taken of the ball re bra etc imports from China because he was just too too busy.
He has been given a new assistant (left)

The World in which I have to live today

Peter Hain has condemned another night of loyalist violence in Belfast. "This is taking Northern Ireland, or attempting to take it, back to a hideous dark past," he told BBC Breakfast. "These were serious attempts to kill police in some instances. This is really not loyalism but gangsterism masquerading in this community." Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin told Radio 4's Today programme there is "an absolute vacuum of leadership within unionism at the present time". Later today chief constable Sir Hugh Orde will brief the Northern Ireland secretary on the riots, which left at least 18 more officers injured overnight.

The involvement of troops in NI came after demonstrators found a way of rent-a-rioters in dispersed geographical locations so that the then RUC became worn out travelling from one riot to another. Billy Bliar will be in trouble if he has to find soldiers to beef up the PSNI. The police feel hard done by and morale will not run on zero if they sustain too many causalities. They are a police SERVICE not a police FORCE.

David Blunkett is planning a major shake-up of the welfare state. In an interview with the Independent, the work and pensions secretary says a green paper to be published next month will go much further than reform of incapacity benefit. "It is going to be a radical look. I want to go wider than incapacity benefit," he says. "The whole benefit system is a patchwork of past ameliorations and contradictions, with sticking plaster all over the place."

Cheap jibe here is what he will do about working mothers who cannot work as they find themselves harassed by putative fathers seeking access to the kid with two daddies.

Labour peer Lord Layard calls for a network of 250 treatment centres to offer psychological therapy to the public. In a lecture to be delivered at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, he warns that unhappiness is Britain's "biggest social problem".

Sort of ‘drop-in’ centre for depressives? Can you imagine the scene in your local super-market? Very small queue at Customer Complaint and a loop around the store and out of the door of assorted nutters, weirdoes and people annoyed at not being invited to Jordan’s wedding – count me in for some of that. My draft has a red line under nutters – is it warning me that this is a new non-p.c. term?

Murphy's Law

Dealing with terrorists.
Is this the way to go?

Read about it here....

Small things amuse small minds

Well - it made me laugh.

Fleeing the Cuckoo's Nest

Advisers appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair are proposing that Britain get rid of Holocaust Memorial Day because Muslims find it offensive, the British Sunday Times reported.
That seems to be the latest from the funny farm that is the caring, empathy-showing government of nuts currently trying to run this country (into the ground). At a time when it seems important to show that Muslims cannot have everything they want in pursuit of an Islamic world, we are examining how to roll over once more.
Yes – they might find it offensive. What degree of this offence comes from their extremists who rant that Israel should be driven into the sea? I might say that the sight of dogs copulating in the street is offensive to me. After explanation, I might find it less upsetting. On a side note, why do we see less of doggy sex in the street than I remember as a kid?
What needs to be explained is that it is the enormity of what the holocaust was in itself that is being remembered. The way in which human beings could be corrupted into the planning and arrangements required. The total lack of humanity in the way the massacre was carried out. The obscene disposal of victims. That this was not isolated to a few might be seen in the denial of those who lived under the black clouds of humans being incinerated. The continued arrogance of those same people when marched around extermination camps when these were exposed to us.
Whatever onlookers may say of the way Israel has reacted to the intifada, there has been no suggestion that deaths of Palestinians and others has been planned. If Muslims want some day to remember their dead, let them exercise a democratic right to achieve this. Holocaust Day was not handed to the Jews on a plate. If we talk about offence to some particular community, what offence will we cause to the Jews by getting rid of it?
Oh yes – admission time. Islamic demands do leave me cold. I am antipathetic to almost all Jewish propaganda and can recognise the difference between Zionists and Jews.
I know this opening resembles a rant. Given last night’s dreams, I should be watchful lest I am sent off to the care of Nurse Mildred Ratched. At some stage I was in what looked like a hospital room. Every so often, groups of up to six people in white coats would come into the room. No physical examination was made but they made notes on clipboards. No one spoke. I tried to leave my room but the door was locked. There were drawn curtains but when I pulled them back, there was no window or other opening.
Finally, a big Hattie Jacques-type nurse came in. She did not approach the bed but stood just inside the door and said, “Time for electrical treatment”. I very clearly remember my reply as “Good – when I have had the ECG, maybe we will know what is wrong with my heart”. Her reply was “No. It is ECT you are getting”.
In my waking hours I am able to understand and correct for dreams, nightmares and even night horrors. This does not stop them bothering me. Whilst no way a follower of Doctor Ron Hubbard, I know the benefits that Scientology claims for micro waving the brain.
I’m off to find a compassionate American Indian who can put me out of my misery at the appropriate time.