Channel hopping while Rome Burns

This post was drafted at the end of July after a two month spell of hot, dry weather. It has been sitting around since then, waiting to be posted but always being pipped by something else. By coincidence, I finally published it on the same day as the Stern Report, which blows my argument out of the water rather.

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Is this it, do you think?I spent a lot of my early teenage years reading the apocalyptic Science Fiction of John Wyndham, in fact reading a lot of apocalyptic Science Fiction altogether, and pleasantly dramatic and terrifying stuff it was too. In the 1980s Ben Elton did a more modern version of the same thing.

And now here we are, where we all knew we would eventually arrive, though we all hoped that we’d somehow manage to change trains before we got here; on the verge of the apocalypse.

It’s ok, so long as you don’t look down.

• War - check
• Death - check
• Famine - check
• Pestilence - not quite,
  though Pratchett and Gaiman updated him quite brilliantly to Pollution, in which case - check.

You see, what none of the writers of apocalyptic SF got right was the tone of the times. They predicted mass hysteria in the face of global catastrophe in the style of a hapless citizenry fleeing invading Martians in Welles’ War of the Worlds, but we are mundane little creatures and no-one correctly predicted the banality of our current news reporting.

Orwell would have managed it. A lot of the dystopia in 1984 gets its power from the mundane banality of the world he describes, but he was looking at politics not climate change. If Orwell had been 15 years younger, and had an engineering or scientific background, he would have described just the sort of news reports we hear every day: Scientists say that we are on the verge of the 6th exinction, but first, the Cricket.

The cold wet August this year, September’s rush towards the autumnal equinox and October’s mild storminess means that most of us have forgotten just how hot and dry the summer was. However, I got an extra frisson of helplessness late in July when I heard something new on the radio: for the very first time I heard a prediction of a food-shortage in the West as a result of global warming. Un-nerving enough, you’d have thought, but the thing I found really disquietening was that it was not presented in those terms. As it turned out, normal service was resumed in August when it rained for most of the month. So that was all right then.

You see, in the news broadcast there was no drama at all. Blink, and you’d have missed it. It comprised the last two lines of this online report from the BBC on that most English of subjects the weather. It was entitled UK heatwave subsides for weekend which ends:

Current conditions combined with a cold and wet spring mean production of some crops has fallen by up to 40%.

Broad beans, potatoes, baby carrots and peas could be some of the produce in short supply over the next few weeks.

But remember that you read it here first, in those two lines about peas and baby carrots: maybe not this year, maybe not next, but there will be food shortages here in the West because of global warming. We are all doomed.

And next, Celebrity Love Idol.

Fictional Characters

I got this from Charlotte, but she credits it to Emily, and here are my answers:

The Fictional Character Meme

1. Which fictional character frightens you the most?

Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22. He is mindlessly, heartlessly mercenary and has no moral compunction whatsoever. What I find frightening about him is his casual, almost inadvertent ruthlessness. He follows the logic of the dollar, and so what for the rest? (I could draw parallells about votes and oil businesses and sandy places, but I’ll spare you).

2. Which fictional parents do you most wish you had?

The parents from Swallows and Amazons who set a high bar and empowered their kids through trust: “better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won’t drown”. How likely is it that any modern parents would give such unsupervised freedom to pre-teens and young teenagers? Though I do wonder how much time the children’s mother spent searching the lake with a pair of binoculars.

3. Which fictional character has the most balls?

The scene in Cool Hand Luke where Paul Newman is knocked down the ground and gets up, is knocked down and gets up, is knocked down and gets up first gave me the idea that it may not actually be about winning, it may just be about surviving. Based on that, and rather depressingly, the generic Dick Francis hero has that same relentless stoicism. In a useless attempt to dig myself out of this formulaic pit, I’d suggest Lymond from the Game of Kings series by Dorothy Dunnett, but his stoicism is jut irritating rather than admirable.

4. To which fictional character’s home would you most like to be invited for dinner?

Nanny Ogg’s. (I am such a lightweight when it comes to fiction). You wouldn’t know who you’d be going to meet, but the company would be ribald, the food plentiful, the scumble mostly apples, and you wouldn’t have to lift a finger for browbeaten daughters-in-law serving the meal and washing up afterwards.

5. If you could invite three fictional couples to your own house for dinner, who would they be?

Calypso and Hector Grant, mainly for Calypso to be honest, I’ve always been mesmerised by her cool blonde sexiness. Clovis, from Saki’s short stories, is single. Well he’s clearly gay. He is also extremely witty. Unfortunately I cannot think off the top of my head of a suitable male partner for him, but I have always liked Miriam from The Woman in White, is also single, also witty and also an outsider. (Why did Collins marry his hero off to the blonde bimbo, when Miriam was there all along?) My final couple are fictional but not literary. They are Morticia and Gomez Addams. Sexy again, outsiders again, they are devoted to each other, sophisticated, and charming.

6. Which fictional character could probably entice you into his/her bed?

I have always had the serious hots for Demerel in Georgette Heyer’s Venetia for, argggh, almost 30 years now. Low-brow once again, but either of them could bed me any time they liked. More poshly, Tybalt for some reason is even more compelling than Mercutio, and they are both pretty damn compelling. Not sure I fancy either of them now I’m past 14 myself though.

7. Which fictional character would most likely have broken your heart?

Odysseus. Sexy. Intelligent. Unfaithful. Clever. Witty. A loner. Well travelled. In bed with someone else right now. Bastard.

8. In which fictional character’s home would you most like to live?

Mrs Tiggiwinkle’s. I almost do, though one of Molly Keane’s grand Anglo-Irish mansions would be rather wonderful too. All that walking and riding and countryside and light and rain. And servants. I like the idea of servants.

Mary Kay II

When I came to my rather frightening conclusions about Mary Kay, I did so in the course of other musings about multi-level-marketing in general as well as Mary Kay in particular. While neither as big nor as hairy, they are still substantial and hirsuit.

The first and obvious thing is that multi-level-marketing simply does not work. I’m not sure if it ever did, but the internet has blown it out of the water altogether. Lovers of irony are delighted that Mary Kay’s mansion is available on ebay. One of the fascinations of Mary Kay Sucks (now moved to www.pinktruth.com) is that it gives such insights into an imploding world. Train crash. Slow motion. Cannot take my eyes away.

The second thing is that there is an unresolvable tension in the business. The consultant wants to sell retail, but every single other person higher up in the organisation wants her to buy wholesale. The business model is not about selling retail: the reward model is based on wholesale sales. If the reward model was changed so that retail sales were rewarded the great big lies about how easy or hard it is would be exposed. Yes, the schpiel is that it is about selling retail, but it seems that the only person who benefits from retail sales is the consultant herself. It is no surprise that the consultants are at odds with the rest of the organisation, the rest of the organisation really is out to get them.

This also means that the true customers for MK Corporation are not the public at large. The true customers are the consultants. Most business models are based on fair exchange: I get softer skin, you get money. However this business model is based on exploitation: I use my credit cards to buy wholesale and you get money. The product is irrelevant, to be honest.

This highlights what is so deeply shocking and exploitative about the MK model. People are encouraged to go into personal debt to finance inventory. It really is a scam. Some friends of mine who were involved in the multi-level-marketing of water filters in the 1990s invited me to join them on the basis that I could make umpty thousand a year. Fortunately at that time I had just started a real business which actually was netting the sort of money they were talking about, so I passed on that ‘opportunity‘. Hustlers and con-artists say that you can only con a greedy person. Well, the situation I was in meant that I did not need to feel greedy and so I was protected. But MK are working a con. Some of the women they draw in may be greedy, but I suspect that most are just aspirational. The schpiel about ‘executive level incomes’ simply does not work when people are ok with their situation in life. Not only is it a con. It is worked like a con, and I keep on coming back in horror to the thought of tens of thousands of women who are in poor financial circumstances to start with who then take on debt to finance inventory. Doing that to people is wrong. The hypocrisy of doing that and claiming to be doing it in a Christian way sticks in my throat so badly that I cannot bring myself to discuss it.

MK’s use of cult techniques has already been discussed extensively so I won’t add to it other than to say “what she said” and point you at the original.

As I said, I find the whole thing deeply shocking. I was relieved not to be involved in the MLMing of water filters in the 1990s, but far more relieved that my ex husband did not become involved in the selling of fake perfumes in the 1980s. I was desperate that he should not. It felt seedy. My skin itched. The reason he did not was pure chance. At about this time we threw a 75th birthday party for my father who was a particularly clear and honest man. Talking to my father’s friends, my ex realised what a greedy-seedy world MLMing is, and decided not to plunge into it. I was grateful for that throughout my marriage

Mary Kay: an abusive business model?

Like most people on WordPress I’m sure, I’ve become an addicted reader of Mary Kay Sucks (now moved to www.pinktruth.com), and originally this post was a series of musings on multi-level-marketing in general and MK in particular. However, it morphed half way though into one single Great Big unaMusing on the subject which, to be honest, has spooked me. I’d welcome any thoughts from any ex MKers, or anyone else for that matter.

You see, it seems to me that the dynamic of Mary Kay is very similar to the dynamic of abusive relationships.

I’m reminded of the character in Terry Pratchett’s book Guards! Guards! who ends up enslaved to a mind-reading dragon. All he can do is mouth “help me” in silent desperation to the head of the Assassin’s Guild. And what sort of help can an assassin provide? Quite.

Taken as a whole, posts and comments and all, it would appear that the entire organisation is made up of just such people; women who know that they are destroying their own lives and who are actively destroying the lives of others, but who are caught so deep they dare not think for themselves and cannot escape.

This is so like an abusive relationship that there is a doctorate in sociology or psychology right there, waiting to be done.

• Testimony from women who were in too deep to leave? - Check
• The realisation that their thought processes were not their own? - Check
• The experience of being lied to?
• The conclusion that they had been brainwashed?
• A history of being alternately praised and damaged and praised again? Check, check, check.

In an abusive relationship, the abuser isolates the abused person from friends and family members and strips away the abused person’s sense of self and their sense of self-preservation. Once the abused person is stuck in the situation, then the abuser creates and fosters guilt and duty and, more than anything else, creates and feeds a fear of leaving. Meanwhile somewhere in the back of the abused person’s brain there is one part which whispers “help me”, but it has to whisper it silently in case the other part of the brain hears.

I am not for a moment suggesting that the people currently still involved in MK realise that this is the dynamic that they are presenting to the world, and everything I have said here is my opinion only. However, the more I consider my own experience of relationships and of MLM, and compare it with what I read on MKS and on the internet, the more the thing chimes in my head.

Really nasty, isn’t it?

I’ve got other thoughts on MK, but this was the Great Big Hairy one.

Going underground

Last weekend the one who takes me places took me to Kinver Edge in Staffordshire. It’s an odd and interesting place, now owned by the National Trust. There is a large hill formed out of sandstone; the sand was originally desert sand-dunes and the rock is friable. Friable, as in rub it with a finger-tip and it wears away. As a result, people lived in houses wormed into the rock right up until the 1960s.

These houses were cute as buttons, whitewashed, with doors and windows fitted into brick which was used to square-up the holes in the rock. They look like hobbit houses, apart from the lack of round windows and BBC radio speculated that they may have contributed to Tolkein’s vision of Middle Earth. The rooms were limewashed, and the damp was kept at bay because the families who lived there had fires going day and night. The houses were warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The place is, as I said, now run by the National Trust, who have done a complete restoration of the lower houses. There were a total of 11 households and up to 40 people living in them. They were luxurious by 18th century standards, average by 19th century standards but primitive by 20th century standards and were condemned as unfit for human habitation after the Second World War. The last inhabitants were moved out in the 1960s. There is gas, but no running water, and no electricity. The wells broke when the water-table was lowered as a result of newer houses in the valley below.

You realise the extent of the work done by the National Trust and just how much the houses had decayed in the 40 years since they were last inhabited when you look at the places where there upper houses were.

and

I’m not really sure what to make of this. I rather wish I’d taken some interior photos to show you the tiled floor, white walls and ceilings, rag rugs, oil lamps, candles, tables and chairs, bed and eiderdown which the National Trust have put in place. They look very cosy. I wanted to go home and strip out three quarters of my posessions and put down rag rugs.

This is of course the familiar challenge between conservation, restoration and re-creation. On balance, I think that the National Trust have got it right, they’ve restored enough so that you get the idea, they’ve left enough un-restored for you to see how quickly the place will decay if not looked after.

It’s an interesting place, and it made me wonder why there are in fact so few troglodyte dwellings. I’d seen some about 20 years ago near Samaur in the Loire Valley in France. One can, it seems, now rent one of the Loire dwellings as a gite. The French troglodyte dwellings are not as pretty, or have not been restored as prettily.

Our Troglodyte Village is prettier than their Troglodyte Village.

Or maybe ours is just more restored; it was certainly inhabited more recently. And maybe the answer to why there were so few of them is that there weren’t that few, but they decay very fast indeed.

Anyway, not very thoughtful today but hopefully interesting, and both sets are well worth visiting, if you are near them.

More juxtapositioning

I was looking on the web to see if there is a book-group locally, and was deeply amused to find a coherent and sensible conversation about reading books on….

…. a forum called “Swinging Heaven”.

It really IS a site for Swingers.

It really is a conversation about books.

I’ve never been ill-disposed towards swingers, and now I rather fancy the idea of being felt up while discussing Ian McEwan, or chatting about Illywhacker between mouthfuls.

Well, its a way to meet people and to have something to talk about.

Good god, bad god

The devil may have all the best tunes, but god certainly has all the best choral music. I was listening to a Byrd Magnificat on the way in to work last week and started thinking about the good things about religions.

So: choral music, from plainsong to gospel taking a diversion through Buddhist and Hindu chanting, is definitely one of the best things about religion.

Also the concept of stewardship. This is a Christian one really, the idea that we are answerable to a deity for how we look after and manage their creation. Unfortunately some interpretations of this concept assume that we have been given the rights to own the world rather than the duty to act as its caretakers. No creator worth believing in would just hand over a jewel like this planet of ours for us to to destroy in the way we are.

Reciprocity. Christianity is keen on reciprocity. Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. This is is an exhortation to pay attention to karma really, isn’t it? However, Christianity does not seem to be as hot on cause and effect as Buddhism and Taoism are, with the Great Big Escape Clause In The Sky offering to let you off the hook: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:15.

Meditation. Stilling the mind. One of the things I really like about eastern religions and philosophies is just how damn practical they are. They give clear instructions. Breathe in-two-three, breathe out-two-three-four-five-six. Look at the candle. In-two-three. And guess what? Their instructions work.

Parables. All the great religions have wonderful parables, metaphors and fables. Love ‘em.

Architecture. Hard to beat a good medieval Cathedral in the impressive architecture stakes. Modern bridges do it, but not much else. Robes. Most good religions have impressive robes. Padded embroidery. Gold thread. I’m rather fond of the Orthodox tradition of long beard, square hat and fancy copes myself, though a mitre is very satisfactory in its own way and the red and orange robes of Buddhists are rather jolly. And ceremonial, there is something very calming about slow and measured movements which have been repeated for centuries and a good procession is always a pleasure to watch. And then there’s the smell of incense and the walking around with a censor so the smell of it gets everywhere. Ach, let’s face it: I’m a ritual-bunny.

But I think that’s about it. Good things about religions: choral singing, the concepts of reciprocity and cause and effect, instructions on how to meditate, a rag-bag of stories and metaphors, some neat buildings and robes and some soothing ceremonial. Mind you, any half decent military service should be able to deliver the goods in terms of costume and ceremony but they have a bad habit of doing it all to the sound of marching bands.

It’s not a long list, really, is it? And you are more than bright enough to know what I’d put on a list of things that are bad about religions. Me, I’m going to listen to that Byrd Magnificat

For m, and other large values of n

Gosh. I’ve just discovered something.

A whole new word in fact:

 

immanent

Now there was me thinking it was a typo lurking under your finger-tips when you are trying to type imminent. Nothing of the sort. Immanent is another word entirely. Then there is eminent which means well known, and enimen, which happens because white men cannot sing the blues, and M&Ms which are chocolates covered in blue-stuff.

Immanent means ‘inherent in, indwelling’.

 

Enimen’s fondness for M&Ms and his immanent flair for hip-hop made his eminence imminent.

Try saying that without re-gluing your dentures!

Sixes and sevens

• I think standards are slipping
• You find things rather challenging these days
• She is completely set in her ways

I am finding this world increasingly alienating. (Blair, Bush, Iraq, tailgaters, processed foods, processed musak, processed thinking, global warming, multinational corporations, international terrorism…) …

…slap me now before I get hysterical in public.

The question is, how much worse actually is it? Certainly, global warming is new, or does it just seems more likely? However, I strongly suspect that the reason I find the world nastier and scarier is because I am older, grumpier, more cynical and more easily spooked by things like Bush and Blair, liar Blair, it’s not fair, don’t you care? Nukes in Korea. Here and there. Iraq, terrorism, suicide bombers, suicide bombers with nukes, nuclear war no thanks, Chechnya, Georgia, Dubbya, Dubbya Bush, Wubbleyou Bush. Wubbleyou. Wibble you. Wibble.

Sorry.

I was fortunate to be born in a particularly pretty, particularly safe, particularly peaceful part of the UK. It was rural. Rural as in farms and villages and schools with 24 pupils. A smooth and rural prosperity. Roses above the door. Terrorists. Bombers. Afghanistan. More torture now than in the time of Saddam Hussain. More torture. More torture. Guantanamo, mo, mo, yo, yo. Yo! Blair!

These days two bedroom cottages are over quarter of a mil sterling, (that’s Mr Sterling to you and me), the pubs are restaurants, the post-offices are closed and the buses aren’t. Anything. The buses aren’t anything at all. They don’t exist. Exist. Exit. No exit. Extinct. Extinction. Sixth extinction. Specicide. Specious arguments. Extinctions. Extinction. Exit. No exit.

The place is full of television presenters, these days. It’s Surrey or Berkshire. It has no integrity and no soul. It’s suburbia for fex sake.

I moved away a couple of years ago, and though I blip back every now and again, I spent three nights there last week for the first time since I left. Never go back. No way back. Everything changes. No way back. No through road. No way out. No way forward. No oil. NO OIL. No way. No votes. Not enough votes. Steal an election. Steal a country. Hey, steal a country, why don’t you. Steal two. Steal three. Here, have mine. We don’t have it any more. Not since it was given away. A million in the street said ‘not in our name’. Not in our name. We’re sorry. Don’t kill us. Even though we’re killing you. It isn’t fai-ai-ai-ai-air.

I had been wistful about leaving, but I’m not now. The pubs aren’t pubs they are restaurants. There is nowhere for farm-workers to go wet their throat with a pint on the way home, because there are no pubs, and precious few farm-workers for that matter. The houses they were born in cost twenty years’ wages. But that’s ok. It’s all part of the global economy. International banking. International farming. Kenyan beans. Indonesian rice. Isreali avocados. Chilean grapes. Texan oil. Multinational corporations. Multinational manufacturing. Sweatshops. Five-for-a-tenner. Sweatshops. Slave labour. Slavery. Slaves. Gangmasters. Cockles and mussles alive alive o. Cocklers at Morcambe have drowned a drowned-oh. It’s ok - they’re illegals.

But is it me? Is this no madder than the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile crisis? Have we exchanged fear of tuberculosis, cholera and an early, painful, unnecessary death for fear of Tony Blair, Condoleeza and an early, painful, unnecessary death?

I’m glad I’ve moved to where houses are just ridiculously expensive, where my neighbours aren’t TV presenters. models, actresses and media whores, even if it is not dark here at night any more.

But is it me? Is it just that I’m older, or is the world nastier?

Whatever it is, I really HATE tailgaters.

Postcards from Blackpool

I spent this weekend in Blackpool. It was cold. It was wet. It was tacky: (”In Blackpool the things in the Poundshops are all over-priced”). But it was also photogenic:

Having already written about Picasso’s Gurnica here, it seemed worthwhile to show this. The rocket is apparently a familiar part of the Promenade, and is a model of one of Thunderbird Three. I wish now I had paid more attention to why exactly it had been repainted with a rendition of Picasso’s Guernica.

The Big One from the South Pier - I

The Tower from the South Pier - I

Seagulls alongside the South Pier

The South Pier

Old Bench

I liked the King Canuteness of this. They are doing a lot of rebuilding work to improve the whole length of the Promenade.

The Tower from the Ferris Wheel on the Central Pier.

Blackpool Valentine

The Big One from the South Pier - II
(This was taken about three hours or so after the first of this pair)

The Tower from the South Pier - II
(I should warn any emulators that the sand under the piers is boggy and rather dangerous - I’m not sure I’d try taking these photos twice).

The Largest Glitterball and the Biggest Rollercoaster

The Largest Gitterball in the World

New Bench

The Postcard shot

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A note on the photos: these are undoctored, and straight as they came off my phone, with the exception of the Postcard which I rotated by 3.5 degrees (I have a horror of tilted horizons). I did reduce them all to 30% of their original size, but I really could not be bothered to adjust any of them. They are, however, the best few of the 240 that I took. Even so, I love my phone.