I would think that all paedophiles (male or female) are obsessed with control but don’t feel particularly able to relate to other adults, and the most compliant victims would therefore be kids.
In which I make light of the latest ‘flu ‘pandemic’
It’s been a long time (six years!) since the last deadly virus outbreak* (H5N1 was serious but nowhere as scary as SARS).
You could read the Herald (or the Daily Mail) and decide that WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE LIKE THE PIGS WE ARE OMG OMG OMG OMG** (!!!!!!!) or you could read the WHO advisories and realise that while we should be concerned at this new strain of swine influenza, there’s no need to panic just yet, because we simply don’t know enough right now*** (‘All 20 cases have had mild Influenza-Like Illness with only one requiring brief hospitalization. No deaths have been reported.’).
As always, wash your hands thoroughly and frequently and cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze. And use a tissue, for Gawd’s sake.
* Long-time readers will remember when, at the height of the SARS outbreak, I suffered anaphylactic shock and staggered breathless into the emergency room and they tried to get me to fill out a form as my airway closed. And then I had to get a shot in my arse. And then I slept for two days because my body was so wiped out from the reaction. That was fun! Let’s do that again.
** The One True God™’s punishment for not turning away from the infidel’s false religion?
*** Apparently this virus can spread with human-to-human contact. But the mortality rate doesn’t seem quite as serious as SARS.
Being a lower-wage earner suddenly doesn’t seem so bad
… being plunged into poverty won’t be so much of a bump.
As Neil said, holy cow, the UK is pretty much bankrupt.
(Well, I’m the one who’s saying holy cow, Neil has this grim schadenfreude thing going.)
Here’s a radical way to help with the books — let’s legalise, regulate, and tax drugs! If the government can ensure a clean, affordable, and transparent supply of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, speed, ecstasy, and whatever else, they can distribute to authorised vendors (say a chemist) and duty could be paid on it. Illegal dealers would still exist but most users would be able to get a quality product legally. There would be less of a resource strain in terms of emergency services and perhaps long-term care. The police wouldn’t have to spend so much time on the users. And jails! The issues of overcrowding in prisons would be significantly reduced.
Win-win all round, I’d say. Too bad the political will to do something like this is about as firm as soup.
(Diesel prices went up this morning. The duty is only meant to increase in September. Hmph.)
(As long as we go teetotal, stop driving, and keep our jobs, we’ll be just fine…)
Twitter will save the economy
Just watching Channel 4′s coverage of the budget. Don’t see how snide remarks from people on Twitter are at all helpful or particularly relevant to economic analysis.
Rabbiting
I seem to be more willing to eat vegetarian food at lunchtime rather than at dinner. I have no idea why this is. (I’m trying to eat less meat because I don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables. I’m not going vegetarian on y’all.)
Review — After the Plague
There’s a new man in my life. I have a literary crush on T.C. Boyle*.
I picked up a copy of After the Plague
I’m not a reader of short stories, I find them on the whole unsatisfying, like eating a rice cake when you could be having a sausage roll, if you get my meaning. But the way this man has with words, oh my! The Love of My Life has got to be one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve ever read — the pain of love found and love lost almost made me cry (but I kept a hold of myself, I was on a train and it would’ve looked weird to start tearing up on the London-Glasgow route).
No story in there is ho-hum. For reasons unknown, The Love of My Life is the one I found most memorable (no, nothing like that has ever happened to me), but they were all brilliant, and I devoured that book in a couple of hours. If you’re a reader of short stories and you haven’t experienced the pure, unadulterated genius that is T.C. Boyle, go out now and buy one of his books. You won’t regret it.
* Given my other literary crush on Neal Stephenson, I may have an unacknowledged thing for weird-looking authors with big beards.
Cheep cheep
Everybody and their grandmother seems to have a Twitter account these days.
That’s not a problem, what I find annoying is everyone who uses Twitter is tarred (and feathered?) with the same brush — Why would you want to tell everyone what you’re doing anyway? It’s so banal! It’s lame to talk about what you’re eating for breakfast. And so on.
I only follow people I know. The people I know don’t Tweet because they’re desperate for popularity. They don’t post five gazillion times a day about what they’re eating and thinking and if they’re scratching their bum (or balls). And if they do sometimes, it’s so infrequent it doesn’t matter. I have friends I haven’t seen in years, and this is a way for me to feel I’m still involved in their lives in some remote way.
And I only Tweet if I spot something interesting or have thought of something kinda bonkers that I want to share. And if strangers follow me because they hope I’ll follow them in return, sorry. To me, Twitter is a microblogging service. It’s not a lifestreaming app. My life is boring and filled with work, commuting by bus, and painting walls and ceilings.
Incompetence on show
Poor police work and overall incompetence wastes time and money. Poor fella who was wrongly identified as a bank robber and spent a year in prison. The true perpetrator (who has been identified) won’t be charged?!