Kamelot...

... are a great big heap o' fabulous.



I want to write a post about the National Identity Register and its corresponding ID cards, but so frustrated can't construct sentences WORST IDEA IN HISTORY OF UNIVERSE argh.

Trans Day of Remembrance

It's International Trans Day of Remembrance tomorrow.

(Incidentally, I'm trying to black out this blog for that very reason). Embarrassingly, the top part just will not comply. Can somebody tell me how to do it?)

The list of names for this year:

Kellie Telesford

Brian McGlothin

Gabriela Alejandra Albornoz

Patrick Murphy

Stacy Brown

Adolphus Simmons

Fedra ?

Ashley Sweeney

Sanesha Stewart

Lawrence King

Simmie Williams Jr.

Luna ?

Lloyd Nixon

Felicia Melton-Smyth

Silvana Berisha

Ebony Whitaker

Rosa Pazos

Juan Carlos Aucalle Coronel

Angie Zapata

Jaylynn L. Namauu

Samantha Rangel Brandau

Ruby Molina

Aimee Wilcoxson

Duanna Johnson

Dilek Ince

Teish Cannon

Ali ? and two other women, names unknown

I didn't want to talk about "cause of death" and "age at death" in this post. These people, mainly young women from ethnic minorities, were not born to be murdered. They had personalities, friends, families, interests and passions.

I could link to the few cases in which we have information about one of these people as an individual, but it's always an addendum in a piece about their deaths.

So, all we have is their names. In the cases of most such victims, we don't have even those.

Sometimes, I fantasise that I could be allowed near these people's killers, with a weapon. Any weapon. The murderer of Kellie Telsford is walking free around London...

But the answer doesn't lie that way.

Just... remember.

Stephen Fry in America

I'm full of busy, so this one will have to be quick...

Anybody been watching "Stephen Fry in America"?

I think it was the last episode wherein we saw working-class American families eating at soup kitchens along with the homeless, because an ordinary 9-to-5 no longer pays even the grocery bill.

In the same episode, we saw a bunch of millionnaires wittering on about how socialised healthcare and other such things were BadWrong, because charity! and the trickle-down effect! could fix everything perfectly - and one simply needed to ostracise other rich folk who didn't contribute enough to Good Causes. Send 'em to Coventry.

...?

...oh, never mind.

My parents are travelling to the US this week. Because they've got a bit of nouse, they're aware that they'll only see the shiny happy parts. So they won't come home going "Everything's so BEAUTIFUL! And new! And the people are all so polite and welcoming! And we need to move there right now!!!" like I've heard so many deeply stupid white, wealthy, able-bodied tourists do.

On the end of that episode - it's sad that the American Dream still thrives, in a way. At least, the part about the streets being paved with gold. Those people were willing to die for the chance to enter the US - and plenty of them do, every day.

As Hagrid put it - "They want to sponge off the state! And get all the free... um... er... never mind."

I'm sure the tax dollars used to maintain that big fuckin' border fence could pay for a lot of life-support machines or schoolbooks. And if the authorities let in every Mexican in Mexico, and those people thus learned that their choice was between living in poverty in their homeland and living in poverty somewhere else (with added racial discrimination!) they'd soon go away again.

Oliver's Solution To Our Own Immigration "Crisis" will have to wait for another post, if those wishy-washy liberals won't let him simply do a swap - we'll have all the world's asylum seekers and economic migrants if it takes our Sun readers, fox-hunters, traffic wardens, the BNP, Julie Bindel, bankers and... y'know, child murderers and stuff.

Deal, world? Didn't think so.

On another political note, I'm getting into the anti-choice (sorry, pro-life-until-birth-after-which-who-gives-a-fuck?) mindset. I'm currently LRP-ing a pro-life Catholic French minister. While that sounds like lols all by itself, I know, the setting is a world troubled by zombies.

But they're not zombies! They're unfortunate victims of a psychosomatic illness, whom I'm sure can be cured with a little effort! We must keep every single one of them well and happy (Hagrid made the character, as you can tell if you've ever come across any of his more tiresome ones).

Politics

Oh, I know, one can blog about politics.

Whether one of my best friends excommunicates me or not, I might have to start voting Lib Dem.

Actually, look carefully at the alternatives. The only thing that would have stopped my becoming an ardent Lib Dem supporter is if, when Nick Clegg turned up at the university on Thursday, was if he had said "Hello, Oliver. I'm going to break into your house tonight and eat your cat".

If you actually listen to the man, you'll find out that he's a proper old-style socialist, with some caveats - caveats that I appreciate.

But the man can say what he likes, because nobody listens, anyway...

It's teatime!

Zombies!

I think that our culture is so media-saturated, we now all live our lives backwards. We went to a most enjoyable, and extremely peculiar, party last night... and we spent half of it discussing what headlines would be written if our campus media got the wrong end of the stick (there was only one sofa and about thirty people, so it was a bit of a squash).

I like "President in Five-Hour Halloween Orgy With Transsexual" best. He pointed out that his reputation would probably be greatly increased.

Now, what made this party peculiar? I hear you cry.

Well, the hostess had brought in a student of landscape gardening - who had landscape-gardened the living room. The floor was now a real lawn, and there was a beautiful shrine and grave (those of the teenage years of our hostess, who had just turned 20).

I really have nothing to blog about atm. I'm lacking inspiration on the serious stuff. I could post a picture of my new tattoos when they're healed, I guess. I'm going to go and play Zombie Fluxx now.

Foot... ball?

Right, David Mitchell can have his own category.



In some ways, I've grown up into a slightly shorter replica of my dad. In this particular, minor, way, we both pour a great deal of bile and contemptuous scorn into the word "football" - enunciating both its syllables, Foot. Ball.

Though my dad was actually on a school sports team, which would have been pretty much unthinkable for me. I can't quite look back at school P.E. and laugh yet - it's more looking back and screaming "Nononono make the memories stop I beg for a swift death".

And remember, I played with the girls! Well... I'm not sure that you can call them "girls", more "enraged she-beasts from the Book of Vile Darkness who've been handed blunt instruments and then cheered on in their bloodshed". If I'd had to share sports lessons with the other boys, I wouldn't be alive to write this.

Menstruation? It does rather jar with my sense of self, but I'm glad that the sports teachers never kept track of my menstrual cycle. Eight periods a month is probably not the ordinary number.

I guess the attendant anaemia would have explained my height and weight...

Anyway, come on, people. Give me a positive view of sport. One that doesn't recall me having my head trodden into freezing mud.

It's going to look like YOUR FACE.

Hey, real people have been commenting on this here thing. And I hadn't noticed. Ahoy there.

And I got my first insulting anonymous comment a few posts back, w00t.

Anyway, I has mostly been... worrying, because my marks this term have to be decent. And wondering if I ought to improve my idiosyncratic French, because I have just got to go and study some Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the flesh... paint... at some point.

Anyway, my rant of the day. I'm aware that we're having a global economic recession, sorry, "downturn" and that there are bigger issues out there, but this is my blog.

People who meet a tattooed individual, then trot out the cliche: "What's that going to look like when you're 80?"

Now, that doesn't annoy me because I've got tattoos. Nor does it annoy me on the behalf of others who do. The general response is a lighthearted "Fuck off, when I'm 80 I'll probably be in a wheelchair or dead; if a blobby tattoo is my biggest worry, my whole life is gonna be one giant party."

Of course, I'd say the same - but the topic, in all seriousness, is upsetting. I'm insulted, on the behalf of every 80-year-old in the country who finds themselves with another new physical disability every day, and every 80-year-old in the country who is in constant, debilitating pain.

The people asking that question are never, ever elderly themselves. And they're able-bodied enough to wander the streets being rude to people. They've never, ever considered what life might be like for the very old - they prefer to make jokes about their possible appearance.

Here's a classic case - my own grandfather, though something similar will happen to every one of us:

My grandfather can't walk any more. Because he had to have one leg amputated, an operation that had to happen under local anaesthetic, because a general anaesthetic would have killed him (yes, I realise that many women have caesarean sections under local - and that's just another type of bodily trauma that these appearance-obsessed people, who seem never to have encountered it, can ignore). He's blind in one eye, but has to lie with the working eye facing the wall because the appropriate side of his body gets too painful (he can't sit for long, for the same reason). He can't wash or dress himself, and has to use a catheter. Imagine how dignified that must make him feel.

So... in answer?

AWFUL. It's going to look awful. So, because tattoos start fading from the very beginning, I'm going to hide in a hole for the rest of my life, because my precious, precious looks are irreversibly damaged - because unattractive things and people shouldn't be seen in public. And when you're 80, and you still meet every stupid standard of beauty in the world and are also perfectly physically fit, because that seems to be what you're expecting, you can drop by my hermit-cave and laugh at me.

Edit: That's odd: I was thinking about tattoos and unconscious ageism, and don't have time to rant about the sexist vitriol directed at tattooed women - an awesome blogger read my mind and wrote one for me, today.