Kids, Drunks and Pissed Off People...

... are the only ones who are honest... 

Don’t you just hate it when you only have half of the information you want and you can’t track down the other half?

As a general rule, my blogs are not planned, but if I have a thought out of context that might make a decent blog, I am sensible enough to make a note of it. That’s what I did in this instance. I jotted down a note, but not an attribution, and now I can’t attribute the quote that isn’t a quote because it’s really only a summary.

I didn’t think it’d be difficult to find the information later, but some silly sod misquoted or summarised as a FaceBook status update, which spread like wildfire, and now that’s all I can find.

Hohum.

Anyway, this is how it goes, and you’ll just have to trust that I did see this, and that I am reporting it conversationally, and that I’m going to give you my opinion on it, as I always do.

You’ll have to trust that I’m being honest, and, since this is a blog about honesty, I hope that will suffice.

The quote I saw, and I’m paraphrasing, of course... The quote I saw said that kids, drunks and pissed off people are the only ones who are truly honest.

I had one of those moments... one of my many moments when I wanted to throw my hands up in horror and scream at the World.

Do people really live like this? Is this the sort of universal truth whereby someone feels they can say this with impunity, that an audience, any audience will nod along sagely as if this is the accepted norm.

Oh good grief!

... are the only ones who are truly honest!

Look at that again. Think about it.

To be honest in the World and the society we live in, we have to be out of control of our emotions, we have to suspend our good judgement and we have to cast aside the social niceties.

Really?

I have a number of issues with that.

Firstly, I can’t believe it isn’t possible to be honest and still be able to moderate my language, maintain my composure and appear entirely reasonable while making my point.

Secondly, I don’t believe the World or the people in it are so fragile that they can’t handle my version of the truth, or even agree with it.

Thirdly, while I might be in a minority, when did the World become so cynical and why? And what is the good of us all shutting up and not speaking the truth when we might all be thinking the very same thing?

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with being a kid, and there’s nothing wrong with talking like a kid. Kids get a bad press. They get a bad press, mostly because adults are doing a crappy job of raising them. Kids are going to school in nappies because their parents aren’t toilet training them. Kids are screaming their heads off in restaurants, upsetting other diners, because they haven’t been taught not to. Kids are running riot in shops because their parents can’t be bothered to keep a tighter rein on them. None of that is the kids’ fault. Kids tell the truth, but they also learn to lie pretty young, and the first lies they tell are hilariously funny.

There isn’t much wrong with angry people, either. Bill Hicks was angry and he had plenty of useful stuff to say. Stewart Lee is angry, and probably my favourite comedian, the most politically aware, the man with the conscience. I can’t help thinking it’s time some of our right thinking, left wing politicians got angry and started telling the truth, for crying out loud.

Of course, our politicians should always have told the truth.

Like everyone else, I’ve been afraid of the truth from time to time, but I always do my best to gird my loins and say what I think. My mother used to tell us kids to tell the truth and shame the devil. I can’t help thinking that she might have had a point. 

Why Buy the Cow when you can get the Milk for Free part ii

First of all, let me say hi, it’s been a while. I’ve been madly busy, and I plan to write about that, but, today, I’ve got something to say, by way of a snark, and I plan to say it while I’m feeling exercised about it.

I’m going to pretend it’s Monday, mostly because I usually reserve Monday’s blog slot for remarks about something I’ve found in the Sunday papers. Today I want to talk about something I’ve found out about the Sunday papers, or, in this particular instance The Observer, although I’m sure the same holds true for most, if not all, of the Sundays and for many other papers, magazines, journals, and all kinds of  sites that take written material, articles and reviews.

The husband and I were sitting having a curry in Oxford last night with several graduate students, fine, talented, upstanding men, all, although I wonder if it isn’t a little odd that there wasn’t a single woman among them, but I digress... upstanding men, all, and we were discussing the fact that one of them has recently been asked to contribute occasional reviews to The Observer. He considers this to be a feather in his cap, and a foot in the door, a step on the path to becoming that which he’d like to be. That’s all good, and I was happy for him, until he said, and I quote, “Of course, I’m not getting paid for it.”

It was a casual, almost throwaway comment, and he saw no injustice in it. He said it with a shrug. It was only to be expected. 

I wanted to scream at him, and I very nearly did. I asked him whether he’d been in The Observer’s offices, which he has, and yes they are swanky, and the chairs in reception probably did cost a grand each. I asked him if he knew that the celebrity columnists were paid in the region of four figures for their weekly columns. I asked him whether he thought the staffer who subbed his reviews might expect to be paid, or the ad sales team. He pointed out that the other occasional, freelance reviewers weren’t paid. I asked him why they didn’t unionise.

Then I wondered which century we were living in for crying out loud. 

He pointed out that if he didn’t do the job someone else would. I pointed out that it wasn’t a job since HE WASN’T GETTING PAID!

You see, I got shouty.

He shrugged.

Then the bloke next to him talked about his internship on a radio show, and he named the left wing comedian who headed up the show.

Wait a minute, The Observer is reputed to be a left wing paper and this comedian is known for his left wing politics, and yet they are both exploiting kids for free labour. How does anybody sleep at night?

I very nearly called this blog “Elitism and Internships”.

There is a reason why this American model is bad for us, and it’s the same reason why it’s bad for the Americans. It’s because the best people for the job, don’t get the job... not the internship, and not the entry level job once the internship is completed.

The kids that apply for internships are the kids who can afford to work for nothing, which usually means their parents are picking up the tabs for their living expenses. The brightest and best are not necessarily applying for internships so there is a huge pool of untapped talent.

Many entry level jobs are being won by people who have internships on their cvs, because they are thought to be more experienced and more willing to work, after all, they were prepared to take an internship and work for nothing. The fact that they probably worked for nothing while suffering no hardship for their choices counts for nothing and is not even recognised, so that huge pool of untapped talent, the brightest and best that couldn’t afford to apply for an internship, is excluded from entry level jobs, and employees continue to miss out.

This system denies kids the opportunity to prove themselves and denies employers the best chance to employ the best candidates... And WORKERS DON’T GET PAID !

There used to be laws against workers not getting paid. People fought for them... centuries ago!

I don’t know if those two young men will rally. I wish they felt more militant about it. I certainly feel militant on their behalf.

When I told them I was writing this blog, their first reaction was to beg me not to use their names. All I could do was ask them what the hell they were afraid of. They are young men who ought not to be afraid of anything. How have we wrung the spirit out of our most promising, most articulate kids almost before they’ve begun? Why aren’t they politicised? Why won’t they stand up for themselves? What have we done to them?

I’ll tell you what we’ve done... We’ve lowered their expectations so far that they fail to see their own value. We do them a disservice.

I hope one day they’ll see that, and, when they do, I hope they will fight back, and I hope they win that fight, because it’s about time something changed.

Everyone’s talking about... Angelina Jolie’s Tits

Shocking, isn’t it, when I put it like that?

I was shocked, when I heard, the other day, that Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy as a result of her family medical history, her mother’s death, and her own dramatically increased likelihood of being a victim of breast cancer.

I was shocked that it is sixteen years since her mother’s initial diagnosis, and six years since her death, at the age of fifty-six.

I was shocked that Angelina Jolie is now within striking distance of forty!

I was not at all surprised by the media circus surrounding the announcement, nor that Ms Jolie decided to make a statement about her choices and her surgery in the press. I hope that what she has done will help to raise awareness for breast cancer and for preventive measures and care.

This is a very personal story, however, and one that affects very few women, most of whom will already be aware of their increased risks from the disease, because most of them will already have seen too many of the women they love suffer and die from this disease. The rest of us, those of us who follow the Stars, live in the first World and have all the benefits of modern medicine, including breast screening.

First World women will not be helped much by Ms Jolie exposing herself in this way, and the rest of the World’s women are unlikely to be helped at all.

I hope that Ms Jolie made good choices for herself, and that she has escaped a miserable fate. I hope that she lives a long, happy, productive life, raises her children and grandchildren, and even bounces her great-grandchildren on her slender, pretty knees in the decades to come.

I can’t help wondering, though, who advised her to go public with this very private information. I can’t help wondering which publicist sat down with what spin doctor and decided that if word ever got out that Ms Jolie had spent time in hospital and hadn’t been forthcoming about it, her reputation could be irreparably damaged. I can’t help wondering who stood up in a meeting and suggested that all hell might break loose if anyone ever found out that Ms Jolie’s perfect breasts had ever been under a surgeon’s knife, for any reason. 

Do they look a little higher or firmer or rounder, or even bigger than they used to, or should for a woman her age?

Angelina Jolie

I don’t read gossip, but it seems to endure in the World’s press and get more speculative and less pleasant with every year that passes. Who’s sleeping with who? And who’s had what work done? And is that a baby bump? And how much cellulite can one pair of thighs possibly sustain? seem to be burning questions in the minds of so-called journalists.

If I was Ms Jolie, I’m not sure I’d want the World to know what medical procedures I might have undergone, or why. I think the personal cost hugely outweighs any good she can possibly do for any potential breast cancer victim of her particular stripe, and I think her ‘people’ have done her a disservice.

Today I saw a comment on a newsfeed, suggesting that Ms Jolie couldn’t possibly know what other women in the same position go through, simply because she happens to be able to afford the best medical care and reconstructive surgery, as if that makes up for the trauma of the decision-making process or of losing her breasts, let alone her mother. Most women going through this don’t have the gaze of a hungry, bitter, cynical public on them, either.

I rather wish Ms Jolie’s ‘people’ had advised her differently... I rather fear that this is all she’ll ever be allowed to talk about from now on.

I also wonder how Hollywood will treat her. Notoriously conservative, TinselTown struggles to cast gay actors as leading men...

... It’s not a huge leap to wonder how the powers that be will deal with this, is it?

Antisocial Behaviour

The husband and I quite often go out for a drink on a Monday night.

I know it seems odd, but the reason we do it is because we don’t very often go out at the weekend, or, at least, we didn’t. Lately, we’ve become rather more sociable, and have taken one or two forays out on a Saturday night for dinner, and have enjoyed ourselves hugely. As a rule, though, we stay home on Friday and Saturday nights, leaving our local town centre to the young and gorgeous.

We go out for a drink on Monday nights, because it’s generally very quiet out, and because the husband has taken to drinking cocktails. We can be fairly confident that our favourite cocktail bar will be quiet, and Paul, who works the bar on a Monday night will have time to mix something special, often of his own choosing.

So, that’s where we were last night, in our favourite bar, drinking, I believe, a Pisco Sour for him and a Negroni for me, when a man walked in and ordered a Whisky, a McAllen, I believe, a double with one ice cube. He introduced himself to the barman by name, shook his hand and left a tip. He sat at the table next to ours, but with his back to us, and quietly drank his drink.

I was standing talking to Paul at the bar, and to the husband, opposite, when the customer interjected. His conversational gambit was entirely appropriate, polite and perfectly seamless, so, of course, he was soon included in the conversation. Why wouldn’t he be?

We started talking books.

When I came back from the bathroom, a little while later, the husband was apologising to the man. He had inadvertently let slip that Iain Banks is seriously ill. It turns out that the chap is quite a fan. When he got up to have his glass freshened at the bar, I naturally had his next drink added to our bill. I couldn’t have the husband drop a bombshell like that and not buy the poor man a drink. One thing led to another and we had a very convivial hour or two together.

It’s not a terribly unusual story, is it?

I would think not. This sort of thing happens fairly regularly. I talk to people all the time. On the other hand, perhaps that’s just me.

This man has been living in our town for nine months, having moved from Tooting to take up a job in our local hospital. He’s a doctor, as it turns out. He’s quite a junior doctor, but nonetheless, he’s a young professional, and he moved to a strange town, alone, nine whole months ago. He told me that last night was the first time that strangers had welcomed him into their circle, even for a drink and a conversation.

How bloody miserable is that?

He was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly nice bloke. In fact, he was a little more than that, because he was more intelligent, more educated, more socially aware, and  more willing to make an effort than a great many other people might be. He had popped out for something and walked into a bar on a Monday evening on the off chance that he might meet someone, and he’s been walking into public arenas on the off chance for nine months.

It shouldn’t be as tough as that! It really shouldn’t!

We’re all only too happy to meet and talk to total strangers on-line for no better reason than because they happen to have turned up in the same forum or chat room as us. They could be anyone, and probably are. We talk to people on the web with fake names and cartoon avatars, and we think nothing of it, but we won’t shake hands with a real person in a bar and share a drink with him.

Shame on us!

I think we can do better than that, don’t you?

Leo actually thanked us for not rebuffing his conversational gambit; he needn’t have. I like to think that’s something I would never do. You might think twice before turning your back the next time a stranger is friendly to you in person, because it might be a while since they had a real conversation with a real somebody, and, who knows, one of these days, you might be the new guy in town, and, do you know what? You just might meet someone fabulous.

The Big Bang Theory... For Really Reals!

It has become my practice to devote Monday’s blog to something or other of interest, to me at least, from the Sunday papers, except, yesterday, I didn’t get to look at the Sundays, because I was doing something rather more interesting... I was having a fascinating, real life conversation about extraordinary stuff, over a very good English breakfast cooked by the husband.

I haven’t seen Jules for a grillionty-ten years... He’s happy enough with that number, and he began his adult life as a mathematician... He and the husband were best friends at grammar school, back in the seventies and eighties, and, because of social networking... yes it does have its upside... Because of social network, they  rediscovered one another, reignited their relationship, and, as it happens, so did Jules and I, since we were also well acquainted, and while passing through England between his home in the US and a trade show in Germany, he came for said breakfast. I’m very glad he did.

Jules is unashamed to call himself a geek. He was a geek when we met, when computers had BBC emblazoned on the front and took 5 five inch floppy discs, when Pong was the height of sophistication in game consoles, and long before the ZX Spectrum was on the market. He studied maths at Cambridge and played long, involved, but fiercely exciting games of Traveller, which the husband refereed. 

Jules is my latest reluctant hero.

From time to time, you will hear me banging on about carbon footprints and climate change, and how we all have a responsibility to moderate our habits, to consume less, to get the ball rolling on doing something to preserve the planet we all have to live on, for our kids and their kids.

Jules talked about this very usefully, by pointing out that there are four types of people on the planet: those who have nothing, those who have a light bulb, those who have a washing machine, and those who have everything. If you’re reading this, you have everything. In any given timeframe a percentage of the population jumps from one bracket to the next, and with that jump comes a vast increase in energy consumption... And I mean VAST!

We all sit smugly talking about how we buy locally grown produce and offset air miles and use greener detergents and drive more efficient cars. We all blame the Americans for their gas guzzlers and the Chinese for their industrial development... 

... And we all consume the internet as if it were powered by fairy dust.

All those clouds run off servers that consume electricity, and they are all housed in buildings that are cooled, because those servers produce vast amounts of heat, and the air-con consumes more electricity, and the hunger for the internet, for instant global communication and networking of this kind is never going to change, and the demand is always going to be more and it is never going to go away.

Jules is working on the most extraordinary technologies. He’s all about applications, so he more or less refuses to take any credit for any of this, but I’m going to talk about him, anyway.

Here’s what’s happening in Jules’s company:

Non-silicon based technologies are being developed to build much more efficient transistors, so electricity can be used more efficiently, and produce less heat as a bi-product.

If that isn’t good news, I have no idea what is!

I use energy efficient bulbs, and have done since they were available, and I turn off appliances instead of leaving them on standby. When I replace an appliance, I also replace it with the most energy efficient option. I never wash at a temperature higher than 30 degrees, and so on...

It had never crossed my mind to think about how the electricity got off the grid and into my house, and from there into individual appliances and so on down the line, but I’m very, very glad that there are very clever people who think about those things for us.

We’re not going to turn off our appliances unless or until we have to. We’re going to have to adapt better technologies in order to reduce our carbon footprints on those things, and this seems to me like a very intelligent way to tackle one issue.

I had only heard about this technology yesterday morning, over breakfast, but, some Sunday, soon, you’ll be reading about it in your Sunday papers, and, very soon after that we’ll all be using the technologies that prove most efficient and cost effective, without even knowing that we’re doing it, because they’ll all be integral to the services and appliances we buy... Maybe, in the fulness of time, we’ll even see reductions in our fuel bills as a result.

Sometimes... you know... progress really is a good thing.

Just for fun, Jules took out a tiny little box and very carefully uncovered some of his product. These things were so small I had to look at them through a magnifying glass, and, if it wasn't enough that they're little marvels of technology, they are, also, terribly pretty.

I know it's daft, and I know that some scientist somewhere will tell me that human's perceive as beautiful the most robust or adaptive bits of nature, rather than the other way around, but, somehow, all the best bits of science always do seem to be the most beautiful, don't they?

Doctor Who... The In-Joke

I like clever people and the in-jokes they play.

I’m not necessarily claiming to be clever, but I plant lots of little jokes in my stories, simply for my own pleasure. They often revolve around names. For example, my story Cell for the Sabbat Worlds Anthology was about resistance fighters, so I gave them all monikers derived from old French, and just to add to my own delight, I gave them all Huguenot names, because that’s where Abnett came from, originally. Yes, it takes a little longer to research, but the names have to come from somewhere and it stands to reason that people from one region might have names that share something in common, so I’d be researching them anyway, so my little whims and jokes give me a starting point.

As many of my regular readers know, I’m not a great sleeper, so I put my iPad on my nightstand and tune in to NetFlix for boring tv. I don’t, after all, want anything that’s going to keep me awake. The other night, I was watching an episode of Kingdom with Stephen Fry; it was, in fact, series 3, episode 2, and it was a storyline about crop circles and UFO enthusiasts. Among the characters was Dr Who as played by Tom Baker, or, in this case, a lookalike. 

This was all meant to be amusing, and it was, of course.

It was the sub-plot, headed up by Lyle Anderson, ably played by Karl Davies, that had the pathos with an elderly couple threatened with eviction, but it was also in the sub-plot that the most satisfying joke of the piece was played out.

It was all in the casting.

Colin Baker as Dr Who

The elderly man, the mainstay of the couple, the householder under threat from eviction and the carer of fifteen dogs was played by non-other than Colin Baker... Dr Who number Six.

I do hope lots of other people enjoyed the joke, too, but I suspect whoever indulged himself with the casting choices really didn’t care, one way or the other.

The Gift part ii

Having talked about the myth of the poor artist, and how attached to it we all are, how poverty somehow feeds the artist, how he must be hungry or needy, in some way, in order to produce something of value, I was thrilled to be introduced to an opposing view while listening to Front Row last night.

Angela Gheorghiu, the singer, found that she was unable to perform when she was in a state of emotional distress. She actually left the stage and was hospitalised, during her divorce, and, quite literally, found it impossible to sing. For this artist, at least, hardship did not feed her art. To perform, this woman had to feel calm and content.

I wonder whether this holds true for other artists of other stripes. I suspect that it might. I suspect that it very well might hold true for artists who require the use of their bodies to make their work. An artist who cannot hold his pencil or paintbrush, because he’s so nervous or upset that he is shaking, an actor who cannot speak because he is so anxious he is hyperventilating, a dancer crippled by nausea resulting from grief or distress... None of these things is hard to imagine.

I wonder whether it might hold true for writers, too. I wonder whether I produce my best work when my life is easy. On the face of it, of course, my life is permanently easy.

On the other hand... I have stated, more than once, that I can work under most circumstances, that I simply sit at my computer and get on with it, because that’s what professionals do, and it’s true. What I don’t talk about much is the years that I spent editing and proofreading, and not writing, at least not much and not longform fiction. 

I write a lot, now, and I write through all sorts of difficulties. I very rarely have a day when I absolutely cannot put words or thoughts on file. They do happen, but I can reliably pick myself up and move on again, quickly, usually within a day or two and without any real fallout.

Those years spent editing and proofreading and working at the periphery, and wishing I was doing other things and wondering whether I ever really would were also the years I spent choosing not to medicate for my bi-polar.

It’s a choice that a lot of bi-polar people make for a variety of reasons.

We’re used to writers and artists and creative types being a little eccentric; we rather like them to be that way; it’s part of how we understand who they are and what they do. I have no problem being considered to be ‘creative’ or ‘artistic’ or ‘neurotic’ or even, at a pinch, ‘difficult’. In fact, during the time I’ve spent with the husband, and it’s been a bloody long time, it’s been a sort of charming aside that he rather likes ‘difficult women’.

I’m rather glad it became sufficiently unbearable for me to opt for medication in the end. I’m rather glad I decided I needed a break from all the things that I thought made me who I was and needed to be. I’m rather glad that my creativity was finally allowed to breath, that I was finally calm enough and content enough to be able to sit at a computer and put those thoughts and words down consistently and confidently, and do it often enough and for long enough to produce finished work, and to do it for... how many books is it now? Seven? With how many more in the pipelines? Well... that'd be telling.

Just like everyone else, sometimes we have to live with poverty and mental illness, but being creative shouldn’t bring with it a life sentence of either or both of those things. They don’t help us any more than they help any one else.

Poverty and mental illness are problems wherever they occur; there is no romance in them, so let’s not pretend that there is... even for creative types.