Monthly Archives: February 2006

How The Times lives

7

In an article today, the raising of the duty free limit is covered. In there, it states that the current €175 is being raised. It also says:

The current limit of €175, set in 1994, has been widely derided in Britain as ridiculously low, being little more than the price of two quality shirts or an ordinary watch.

€175 is £120. A shirt at £60 each ? I could maybe understand that one (at a great big push) but an “ordinary” watch at £120 ? No way. A very quick look at H Samuel shows over 300 watches below £100 and there will be other shops the same, so and “ordinary” watch at that price ? Grief, how the other half live eh ?
(I use a Swatch Skin Chrono. Not over £120)

I look more like I am

4

I said the other day that I’d changed something.
I didn’t use piercings as anything other than self-harm by proxy. It wasn’t to be cool. It wasn’t because I had a metal fetish. It wasn’t because I wanted to look ‘hard’. I used them to hurt – sticking pins into your flesh is not though well of. Having a guy shove a fat sharp needle through my flesh in various parts of my body was okay by most – and not seen as self-harm. So there was the aspect of hurting and continuing to hurt (tried stretching nipple piercings ? Ouchy). There was also another aspect, a deeper aspect which influenced the visible piercings – that of appearance. I wanted to look – and this word is woefully inadequate for this context – unattractive. I used to say that even on the busiest days in the city I always had a clear route through because people would get out of my way – 6 foot tall bloke, jeans, white t-shirt, shaved head, glinting steel, not smiling ..yep, I can see why. Underneath of course I was different but to the vast majority of people I was someone to stay away from. I liked that. A lot. Constantly being followed by security staff in stores got a bit tiring though. So I looked hostile, unattractive. This was a Good Thing because it reflected what I felt and how I felt. I said above I didn’t do it to look ‘hard’ – I didn’t. The hostile look was what I wanted – the fact others thought I was hard was a bonus (?) but it wasn’t my motivation. There’s a difference between hostile and hard to me.
So from 1991/2 when I got my first piercing up to about 18 months ago when I got my last and well in excess of 50 piercings overall (I pierced my right nipple vertically you know…. and I can see the wincing from here :) ) I did them all for negative reasons. Very negative destructive reasons. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I’ve changed.

A combination of life events, stopping drinking, the right meds, stability and also a lot of inner thought has made me realise that I wanted to change. Also key to this change was that I started disliking the way strangers were reacting to me. With the metal, I became visible, an object to be stared at (when we went around IKEA some weeks ago it was horrible to be stared at the way I was. 5 years ago I’d not have cared less) and something in me was starting to say “but I’m not like that any more”. I’m not saying that behind the metal I was an adonis, or that if I removed it then the all ladies would start throwing themselves at me (two at a time please girls ;) ) but I was a significantly different person whose deliberate chosen looks did not match the persona I was giving off. I wanted to remove the openly negative reactions. I wanted to fade back into the crowd. I wanted to be more like me. So I removed the three most prominent bits of metal from my lip. The labrets have all gone. In the image you can see here (I forgot to resize it. It’s huge) there have been changes. Those 3 steel items through my lip have gone. My tongue is also back down to 1.6mm from the 8mm it was there. My lobes are bigger though. And my hair is brown and not purple and spiky. If I don’t pull that face, people don’t recoil from me. That’s good. It’s good because the underlying anger has gone. I don’t hate the world any more. I don’t hate me any more. When you look as I did and you are angry at everything and you want people to ‘get the f*ck out of my way’ then such an appearance becomes self-reinforcing because they do get out the way, that is good, so I look good so I’ll keep it this way. But when the anger goes …. doesn’t work. Not for me.
Other metal has also gone. It’s gone not because others will see but because it doesn’t do what it did (no, not that one ….). It does not reflect me. It reminds me if anything of a chapter in my life which is closing. Tattooing is a different thing and much much more personal. It has meaning and depth so I don’t see that as self-harm by proxy. Tattoos are from me, to me. Piercings were from me, to you. There may well be reactions to those, but they’ll be different. Society seems to have a different attitude to face altering – or maybe that’s just my experience. Whatever, I’ve moved on. I took them out the other day and since then it’s felt right.

I’m more like me now :)

Spoons and rims

4

Today I decided to ‘unmothball’ the bike. So it’s had a good clean, puncture mended, new chain, seat repaired, brake cables sorted and lights removed. The nearest cycle shop does a full service for £30 (ex. parts) which would be very good value – I had a bike serviced a few years ago and the difference is marked. Down to me this year though. So right now it has some oil seeping (hopefully) into all the right (hopefully) parts and tomorrow – assuming not raining – I’ll fully test the cables. I really do hope the cables are okay – one of the most obtuse things in the world are bike cables. I think I’ll need to buy some proper cable lube though.
Spoons. I couldn’t find two spoons to take the tyre off (well, spoons I’d not get told off for using) so a screwdriver and a cake slice did the job :) Because I knew I’d got a flat I bought a puncture repair kit. And wow haven’t they changed ! (Note the space before the ! :) ) When I was a teenager, in a kit would be the ‘Vulcanising Solution’, some fine sandpaper, several patches, a little cube of french chalk and a small wax crayon to mark the hole once found. Today I found no chalk and no crayon. Do they intend to make finding and keeping the hole in sight so much harder ? Do they also intend that we glue our inner tubes to the tyres so causing more purchases ? Those little items are essential (remember the small rough patch on the reverse of the kit box for rubbing the chalk against ?). Why did they go ? They’ll be making self-adhesive patches and doing away with the glue next ! Luckily for me, the hole I needed to patch was not only large but also easy to find by studying other landmarks on the tube. And for chalk – I was in the kitchen so I used several pinches of flour :) ).
Tomorrow I ride, and maybe even fit the utterly pointless rear “what’s the point” mudgard.

Punctuation. Serious.

13

Following a comment in #wordpress, and a previous observation some weeks ago on the same thing, I have a question. In English, which of these is correct:

What time is it ?

What time is it?

And why.

Would patients please swear ? Thanks !

Reply

NHS staff abusers ‘face big fine’. Abuse staff and you could be fined. Good. Though this will ONLY apply to general hospitals and those judged to be “not mad”. Psychiatric and Learning Disability nurses will continue to put up with high levels of abuse and violence. Back to the news…. patients swear, patients get fined, hospital bosses promise that money raised will go toward “improving services”. Higher managers see this trickle of income so cut the budgets of those departments (or hospitals) by the same amount as the income. All of a sudden, it needs staff to be abused and threatened. If it were to place controls in situ to help not only would that alone cost it would also reduce the problem (happier staff !) but reduce the potential income (unhappy managers !). The managers will win of course.
This is income generation. Nothing more.

Has a UK blogger been sued ?

2

Last August I linked to a post where a blogger was being sued over comments left on his blog. I have no idea of the outcome (and can’t be bothered to search right now) but I was pondering what it would take for a UK blogger to be sued.
Example: If I worked for The Times, and I managed to get published a paragraph which stated that Jeffrey Archer has had sex with an inmate while banged up for his crimes, then the paper – and possibly myself – would be sued for libel. (Note: IF I said that. I didn’t. It was an example. Pretend.). So Mr Archer sues for libel. What he is suing for would be – I believe – a lie being published. A mistruth. A falsehood. (Mr Archer knows all about these too). What he is NOT suing about is the actual method of conveying that lie to the masses. He could argue that The Times had a circulation of X thousand which had caused him XXXXX embarrassment, but it’s the lie that counts.

What if I said it ?

I ping pingoat which pings other sites which means the potential readership of something I write is at least comparable. (Potential, not actual) (Though in fact, me doing it is worse. I can be more easily linked to.) So what if I said the same thing about Mr Perjury Archer ? Why not sue me ? The argument “Mark is skint so why bother” is – while very true – a wrong one because leaving the lie here amounts to permission to publish that lie elsewhere doesn’t it ? Example: I publish a lie in this post about Mr Archer. Whether or not he sees it is immaterial – it exists. In 6 months time, The Times also publishes that precise lie (does the source matter ?). Archer says he will sue and starts proceeding against The Times. At some point before judgement, my post comes to light. What happens then ? If he continues to sue The Times he would also have to sue me because my lie is equally a lie. Or does he sue them and then they sue me ? (but for what ? we both lied).
Is there – or will there be – a defence of “It was blogged before” because at the root of a libel is the lie – not the money (apparently). If there could be – because like all things it would need to be tested – then why don’t journos and the likes start blogging lies as a cover ? Is a blog sueable ? Or are some blogs more equal than others ? Example: If I wander around my village tomorrow handing out leaflets claiming the above about Mr Archer, someone involved in politics would hand it on, make a noise and something would happen. That sort of “something will happen” is what stops most of us from doing things – the unknown of the law in such cases. But something would happen I am sure. But what if I publish it online and take the url around to that person’s house ? If they passed it on, what would happen ? I suspect nothing would.
Because this is just a blog. So why sue a little blog over a lie ?

But if a lie is a lie is a lie then not suing is either admitting that the lie is a truth OR that the lie is not worth bothering with. But if it’s not worth bothering with when I say it, why is it worth suing a newspaper ? Money. Not the lie. Money.

Which means I am unsueable doesn’t it ?

Off to Bradgate Park

Reply

It was cold. It was breezy, but we went anyway. Me and J sat it out shivering on a bench while the girls took the dog for a romp up to this stone building (I forget the name) and then around the park (it’s massive).

Bradgate Park

Got several pictures including a couple of the girls which are really really good so they’ll be onto a CD along with a few others to be taken to be made into proper pictures. As with anything to do with them, it’s not going online.

Tidying

2

Second wordpress.com deleted
Typo blog here deleted
Bar one, flickr photos deleted (images of Google error messages get far too many views)
All unused db’s deleted
All domain files checked and many deleted
New domain up and running * 2
Scuttle upgraded
Wiki unlocked and private info removed

Todo:
Swear at router.
Redo abody pages in parts
Check all mail for ‘Todo’ label. And then do it.

Waiting for:
“You look different ……”. (still !)

Dying to die

Reply

The stories behind these two men are not the issue.
This man has died following a “long term refusal of food” and was in a psychiatric unit. He stopped eating in 2005.
This man has not died despite being on hunger strike because the authorities are force-feeding him and he is in a secure psychiatric hospital. They started force-feeding him in 1999.

It’s news, it’s not the whole picture but those fragments would suggest unequal treatment would they not ?

New hairdo ?

1

You know when the woman / partner in your life comes in with a new hairdo / makeup / pair of jeans / shoes / new earrings hidden behind their hair and they expect you to notice immediately ? And I do mean immediately ? And if you don’t they get all sulky and go on that you don’t love them and you never take any notice blah blah blah ? And they put you in the doghouse ?
I changed something this morning – J hasn’t noticed yet ….. more later ..